UPDATE: We don't care anymore. We've been absorbed into the Borg.

We continue to work out bugs with the MSIE implementation of CSS. We think the problem is with the use of the "background" elements.

Wednesday Sep 17, 2008

"Believe me: don't believe me" Department (reprise)

"Trust"? "Credit"? "Fiduciary"? Yeah, Right.

Many years ago, we got a phone call from Smith Barney® (a brokerage shoppe). A fellow reminded us that he had called us some time back and made a recommendation and that the stock recommended had risen miraculously and he was calling from the Riviera and making his pitch between sipping Mai-Tais and smooching expensive women.

Okay, not exactly.

When we managed to slip a word in edgewise, that word was that we already HAD an account with Smith Barney®. The guy hung up so fast he damaged his wrist.

Think about this. The guy lied. He'd never called before. He was counting on the average person having no clue what phone calls he got a year ago.

WHY did he lie? He lied to get us to trust him with our money. He lied to gain our trust.

It's even more insidious. Lies disorient both the liar and his victim. When somebody tells us he called us a year ago, our first thought, it "Gee! We don't remember that? I guess he must have a record of it or something." By controlling the presentation of reality, the liar tries to gain the mastery. Because we had an account with Smith Barney® we were kind of wondering if our representative had detailed this guy to call us, say because she was busy or ill.

At the time, our child was deathly ill, seriously, and her care was emotionally and physically demanding, and mentally fatiguing. As far as the cold-caller was concerned, this just made us all the more ripe for the plucking.

Smith Barney® was paying somebody to exploit our weakness, and to do so in the name of trust, belief, credit, like that.

Another one: We go down to my local BB&T® (Branch Bank and TRUST®) to do something or other, and a lady we've known for more than twenty years tries to get us to get a BB&T® Debit Card. We try to give her all the polite reasons why we don't want to do that, to no avail. Clearly the higher-ups have put the pressure on her.

Finally we ask, "Isn't it true that your credit record gets dinged everytime you open up a new credit or debit card account?" She actually looked down in shame. Why the shame? Because the NAME of the outfit includes the word "TRUST", they are violating my trust to make a buck, and she knew it. This debit card was not about OUR good. We were being pressured to do something that would cost us something (not much, but something); the cost was not being disclosed in a straightforward manner; we called them on it ; they were abashed. They had hoped we were ignorant. (As we indeed are — but not THAT ignorant.) BB&T® (Branch Bank and Trust®) was seeking to exploit the weakness (that is, ignorance) of their customers, and they did it under the banner of Trust!

At least they, or some of them, they have some shame left.

The banking business, financial businesses generally, depend on "trust" and "credit", on faith and belief. And yet many, perhaps not all, in these businesses blatantly and routinely violate and forfeit faith and belief. What is up with that?

It gets worse. Dig it: It used to be that trades "settled" 5 business days after they were made. You ask your broker to sell a stock, and you have a week to get the certificate and "power" to the bucket brokerage shoppe. So for those of us who are afraid of people who lie to one to gain one's trust, we could keep the securities in the local safe deposit box and we had a decent amount of time to convey them to the shoppe.

But then, "in order to serve YOU better!" they got the settlement time reduced to 3 days. That means that, if you share our mistrust of people who don't even bother to put their hands behind their back when they have crossies, you're going to have to pay for express mail to get your stuff to the shoppe. A little premium, a little drag, a little friction is added to each transaction. But don't worry, it FEELS like you're being messed over, but they TOLD you it was in order to serve you better!

After all, would they lie to you?

Oh, it gets better. Don't touch that dial! Then if you're going to keep your certificates in your local safe deposit box instead of letting the shoppe have custody, in order to serve you better, they're going to charge a higher fee for the privilege of doing business with them.

You know, if we can't get them to stop trying to serve us better, we're going to go broke here!

If we can muster the thumos (look it up) we will soon add the wonderful tale of how Smith Barney® treats their slaves, uh, I mean clients.

But in the meantime, we recommend that everyone read, with care and attention, Dante's Commedia, and especially the Inferno. It's not that abusing trust gets you a black mark on some divine scorecard. It's that it harms YOU. It's a pre-Christian notion, one that shows up in Plato's Gorgias, that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it.

---

Monday Sep 1 , 2008

And Now for Someting Completely Different Department

"Third World Telepone Service at Embarq®

So. Like. Saturday we try to get online. We are so far up the in the holler that neither statellite nor cable nor any other creatue but telephone lines can reach us, so, for our sins, we are on dial-up.

We get the "no dial tone" message. So we pick up the phone. We hear a static-filled buzz. Using our cellphone we battle through the Embarq's menus (actual quote: para español, oprima el dos.) menus to get a nice lady who says a man will fix it by 7:00 P.M of that very day! She also gives me a repair ticket number.

Yeah, well. At around 9:30 we call the number the nice lady gave us if we should want to follow up for some reason. When we choose the offered wonderful new automatic report feature we get (a) asked to hold while we are tranferred to a human; and (b) told, after a brief wait, that, well, actually, there are no humans around but they just can't wait to hear from us during regular business hours (which they do not define.)

So we get all creative and dial another number and repeatedly hit the 'O' key. We are told to wait for 17 minutes and we get a human who says she'll refer us to her supervisor. Now, don't jump to cocnlcusions here! We were nice to everyone and called 'em either ma'am or honey.

All these humans were very nice.

The nice supervisor human tells us that mirabile dictu there are many outages in our area, so the repair dudes are backed up. But she'll make sure the repair dudes contact us when the outage is fixed. Then she admits she can't really make sure but she'll put a request in big letters on our form.

Sunday passes. No phone service.

Monday around 10:00 AM we discover that being punted to the "we can't wait to talk to you" message was not a fluke and that the fallback of leaning on the 'O' key works again.

This time a lady tells us that the repairs guys aren't working today because it's a holiday.

So, yeah: 48 hours without phone service. We haven't had a storm, an earthquake,or a riot. We did have a little rain. Okay, almost 6 inches of rain.

Tuesday, Sept 2nd

Oh it just gets better and better! We did learn that folks come to the Embarq office at 0800 ET. But today while waiting for one of these people and listening to the Embarq equivalent of the Darth Vader leitmotif we get cut off. Yep. Our call is very important to them, but when they have too many very important calls, evidently they just kind of let them slip off-line.

But then a nice lady actually asks us for our repair ticket number! Wow!

We volunteered to go outside and verify for the nice ladies that the problem is not with our equipment. This involves a phone, a screw-driver, and earwigs. When we return from this mission (yeah the problem is not in our house) we're promised by a recording that our problem will be fixed by 4 PM and by a person that it will be fixed by 7 PM "today".

Having been trained in "Divinity" we recognize that with God a thousand years is as one day and a day as a thousand years. While we're grateful for being given a chance to see what that means existentially, we hope that Embarq doesn't think it's the Creator. But one day has already been like 2.5 days, and now they're kind of promising it'll be like 3 days. But, of course, once 1 = 2.5 it can pretty much equal whatever you want it to equal.

We'd like to suggest that the Democrats are having their desires granted. America is becomoing a third world country. This is third world telephone service. The only really creative part of it is the way the story changesYou can't have a toilet which really flushes, you can't have a shower which really rinses, and now you can't have a phone which really works. And these folks are hoping to bring the same degree of bureacratic obfuscation and obstreperousness to our medical system, as they also work hard to guarantee that education no longer pursues the gaol of making children fit for lives of virtuous freedom, lives where when you know that you aren't even going to try to fix the phone for 3 days you say so.

Wednesday, Sept 3nd

First, and alleluia, the phone works again. So we can get online again. We're sure our reader is thrilled.

But Embarq continues to amaze. Things got a little funky on the phone. There was some disagreement about what our job number was, and evidently the Embarq policy is to update the "promised by" time without telling the customer. This means that when the customer (that would be us) says, "But, but, you said the it would be fixed by date X," they replay, "No we said it would be fixed by X+2; it says so right here on my computer."

So things got a little heated and we asked to speak to the supervisor di tutti supervisores. This worthy was engaged and would call me back on our cell phone.

Imagine our surprise when we got zero, count them, zero phone calls from supervisors on the cell phone. But surprise turned to bitter hilarity when we checked our voice mail, and found that the supervisor had left a message for us on, wait for it — yes, campers she returned our call on the phone line which was out of service!

Some people are just, well, not the sharpest knife in the Williams Sonoma gourmet butcher block knife holding thing. But some, and our hat is off to them, raise stupidity to an art form.

We are just grateful that we could have been a part of the process which climaxed with the phone company calling us up on a line that was out of service. We're working on a way to get our creditors to do the same.

---

"Believe me: don't believe me" Department

"UBS Writes Off $19 Billion" (with bitter commentary)

This is high-class operation, so we start off with a quote:

UBS Unveils $12B Loss, Write-Downs of $19 Billion; Chairman Marcel Ospel Steps Down

ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) -- UBS AG's chairman abruptly resigned Tuesday as the Swiss bank reported a first-quarter loss of $12.1 billion and said it would seek $15.1 billion in new capital.

UBS revealed more serious damage from exposure to the U.S. subprime crisis and said it expects write-downs of approximately $19 billion.
(Read it.)

The article goes on to say that, hey, it's really all right, don't worry, Marcel "Marceau" Ospel is really one heck of a guy and he probably wants to spend more time with his family anyway. Nothing to see here, move on.

But then, maybe not.

We recall receiving communications (No, not the cold calls - we once got a cold call from a house where we already had an account!) which told us that in order to serve us more better the brokerage house was going to sock us with a fee if we didn't leave our securities in house name and with them. And then — and it is just so heart-warming how these people are always and sacrificially looking out for MY best interests — they were going to reduce the settlement time from 5 bidnis days (for those of you who don't keep up with this stuff, that means "a week" in bidnis talk) to 3 bidnis days! Which meant that if you didn't get your loot or your empowered stock susstiffikates to them REAL SOON (sooner than the UPS can reliably deliver them without your paying for express mail)they they're going to sock you with ANOTHER fee!

Dad gum! If they weren't looking out for my best interests so hard, we could be rich! And we all know that riches place the soul in peril — easier for a camel to pass through the knee of an idol and all that... we appreciate their sacrifice.

What is going on here is pressure from the securities industry. They will penalize us and make our lives harried and inconvenient if we don't trust them enough to let them hold our stuff in their name — so they can lend it to some guy who really HAS to have a house big enough for his 60" wide-screen TV and just as soon as he's got that straightened out he's going to get a job, honest!

Can we talk?

Do the word "fiduciary" mean anything to you? The "fid" ought to be a give away. It has to do with faith and trust. When the average unemployed, depressed, former sheep-farmer, clergy-dude, law enforcement officer, and amateur theologian hands his stuff over to these clowns, he gives them his trust as well. And he trusts them to look out after his best interests, to construct a weltanschauung in which his interests and those to whom he is entrusting his stuff coincide. That there is the whole premise of the industry. You know? Like "Gotrocks Bank and Trust"? "Fidelity Bank" ? "you can trust us. Hey, we're on YOUR side!"

Okay, so explain subprime loans. Heck, explain the fifty-gazillion daily entreaties we get in the mail. But they're not entreaties, they're proclamations of our incredible good fortune because The First Galactic Bank of of Ottumwa has decided to give us a piece of plastic which will ding our credit rating if we just allow them to give it to us and which will tempt us constantly to spend money we don't have on stuff we don't need.

Trust. Fidelity.

We go down to our local bank, and the poor tellers (our peeps, and we've known them for a quarter of a century) are begging us to let them open a credit card account for us. So we ask them, "Isn't it true that every time you open a new credit card account your credit rating gets dinged?"

Silence.

A nod.

Now these are our friends. They've prayed for our family, We've bought the 2,000 calories per bite munchies to raise money for their church. We go way back.

But somebody in North Carolina decided that looking out for the client's best interests is WAY over-rated. WAY!

First Principles - or very nearly

The premise of the United States is NOT that people are saints. It is that they are, by and large, trying to determine what the right thing to do is, and then trying to do it, at least some of the time. And there is maybe also a hidden premise that if we, individually (and that's important), bear the common good in mind, by and large things will work out pretty well.

To say the same thing another way, look at, say, fire insurance: Rightly understood (and that's important too), it's like this: In general it doesn't do the community or me personally a stitch of good if your barn burns down and you go broke. And of course, it's not so good for you either. So we all agree to kick in a little loot so that when your barn burns down, the financial hit for you is mitigated to the point that you can survive acceptably. Insurance of this kind is really "bearing one another's burdens" proactively. That's a good thing.

Of course, there will always be some bozo to try to game the system. He'll try to exploit unfairly the virtuous acts of others to his own gain. Life comes with bozos. That's the way it is.

But when being that kind of bozo has significant influence on the ethos of the fiduciary industry, we're in trouble.

Virtues, anyone ?

Another common name in the fiduciary industries is "Prudential". The "Cardinal Virtues" are Justice, Courage, Prudence, and Temperance.

Do you think they talk about those virtues in Public School? When people talk about "the good life" do they mean a life which is governed by virtue or do they mean Hugh Heffner? When people talk about the Freedom do they mean the opportunity to practice the virtues? Or do they mean Lindsay Lohan?

Do they discuss "Justice" in business schools? In law schools?

Does it make moral sense for someone to lie to you to gain your trust, and to get you to let him hold your money? Does it make moral sense for banking leaders to reward their employees for persuading their customers to make decisions which harm them financially? Imagine Daddy coming home after a hard day at the "Your Bucket Shoppe of Mortgages" or "Subprime R Us" and proudly telling his daughter, "I made a lot of money today persuading people to buy what they cannot afford."

Can we learn that Courage may be required to explain to the shareholders that we could have made money betraying the trust of our clients, but it wouldn't be right?

Can we learn that Prudence may be required to explain to potential customers that it is not in anybody's' interest to make loans which cannot be repaid?

Can we learn that Temperance may be required to decide that big screen TVs do not belong in households where children have trouble with their homework?

Do we even want to learn that Justice is not served when trust is betrayed?

Do we realize that the virtues are the essential elements of freedom?

Take a look: Fiduciary Institutions not only lied to us and betrayed our trust — and make such lies and betrayal part of their business philosophy. They also urge and encourage us to forsake temperance and prudence. And now, guess what: The Feds are going to try to regulate the Fiduciary Industry because evidently they didn't care to regulate themselves.

(We need to be clear. It wasn't just the Movers and Shakers, the Marcel Ospels. It was a culture that tells you that "You deserve a break today ," that if someone has a bigger TV than you, there's an injustice being committed, that, as Barak Hussein Obama said, you have a "right" to prosperity, which implies that if you do NOT have a 60" plasma TV, someone is ripping you off, and the gubmint should do something about it. It was YOU, if you believe that nonsense.)

Do the math. Freedom and Dignity? Or 60" Plasma TV?

We're afraid to hear your answer.

---

"Let's make THEM pay for US!" — and what happens when we think that way ...

Settle back children and let Papa tell you story of the days when the County foolishly allowed him to be a deputy:
Long, long ago, when the world was young ...

A guy is explaining to the judge why he sort of, well, um, didn't show up for two court dates. It's like this: see, he works two jobs, and he can't really control when he's free, and if he comes to court, he might lose one of these jobs ...

So the judge is looking through his file and asks him how long he's had both of these jobs. "Oh, you know, since such and such a time."

The judge then asks him why he didn't mention the other job when he filled out his form - under oath - to request a Public Defender, on the grounds of not having enough money to pay a lawyer...

He couldn't say, He just doesn't know.

At this point, we feel it might be helpful to point out that the guy was NOT Bill Clinton.

The judge does not nail him for perjury or contempt, and since he's the last case of the morning, the court goes into recess. As our hero gathers his effects from the defendants' table he goes on a quite rant about how the judge has no right to know how many jobs he has: It's an invasion of privacy, a violation of his right to privacy ...

So, dig it: The guy thinks he has a RIGHT to perjure himself to get a lawyer at the tax-payers' expense. Hey, he's a member of a minority, he doesn't have a whole lot of money, blah blah blah. HE has a RIGHT!

We bring this to your attention only because it is an example of an overlooked fulfillment of a prophecy made by the despised Cassandras of the right: When we delegate the works of mercy which we ought to perform as private citizens or as members of NGOs, like, say, churches, the beneficiaries think they have a right to our money, so much of a right that they have a consequential right to break the law to get the money and services to which they have a right.

And as their rights to the various government treasuries expands, and as demagogues persist in telling them they have rights to more and more, to more than can possibly be delivered, the people who work for the government in the basic services — roads, safety and security, law enforcement, water, sewage, etc. — get less and less of the budget. And the citizens will only brook a tax rate that is so high and no higher.

It's already clear that single payer health systems lead to a decline in care and an increase it waiting times. The iron clad law is that fixed prices lead to a decline in supply and quality.

In the man who lies to get his "right" to free counsel we see the harbingers of general decline in the effectiveness of government. In the shift away from the canon of equality of opportunity toward that of equality of outcome, and the consequent condemnation of the successful we can discern the decline from the goal of freedom to that of license.

A nation whose citizenry thinks that the the government ought to pursue happiness for them is a failing nation.

---

 

 

Oh darn! Now The US will be threatened with death! We're, like, SEW sorry!

---

02.02.06

revised 01.13.06

Um. Can we talk? Department

Not to in any way distract anyone from important issues, like Brittany's sanity --if any, but, um, ...
"

We're at War Here, okay?

 

 

We really really hate to disturb anybody, really.
We just have this thing about people who think that something is accomplished when a bunch of airplanes are driven into buildings and a lot of people die.
AND we have this thing about a populace so poorly served by their educators that they have no clue about what happens when a representative government fights a war.
AND we have a thing about a people most of whom think the word "duty" is kind of a joke, or a word "those people" think is important, but we sophisticated people know is just a product of deconstructible hormone-imbalances, economic inequities, and unresolved mommy issues.
AND we have a great big homper-stomper thing about people whose idea of leadership is to tell transparent lies to the people they seek to lead, AND an even bigger than THAT thing with people who excuse that as part of politics.

AT LEAST since FDR we have been steadily inculcating a cultural assumption that somebody else can take care of it. It is now so deeply ingrained a notion that many think that to try to take care of things yourself, things like the protection of your family and the education of your children, is at the very best a kind of swagger and bravado.

Well, yeah, we know you're surprised to learn this, But we disagree. It's just kind of a shame that ALL the leading contenders for the Presidency will cheerfully lie themselves blue in the face or spout empty promises packaged in vapid phrases because they know that the traitors of the MainStreamMedia have absolutely no principles left at all, unless you count a vague dedication to the proposition that they are just so much smarter than you are as a principle. It's gonna be rough four or five years people.

Don't forget to say your prayers.

The messed up Code:

div.linkbox {
float: left;
width: 38%;
border-color: #0000FF #FFFFFF #FF0000 #FFFFFF;
border-style: ridge;
border-width: medium;
padding: 0.3em;
margin-right: 1em;
font: bold .75em "Verdana", "Geneva", " Arial", " Helvetica", sans-serif;
background-image: url(images/tiles.jpg);
background-color: #FAEBD7;
}

Firefox has no problem with this, GO figger.