Month: November 2010

People who have been around these parts for a long time know that I am a vocal advocate of (occasionally) doing things on principle even if they are less than logical. For example, I've talked about online advertising a number of times. With the number of people who read this thing weekly, I could throw up some BlogAds and google thingies and make an estimated $100-200 per month. Since I could use the money, refusing to do so is stupid. But I know it's stupid. I choose to do it anyway because I hate the fact that we are being advertised to on every screen and flat surface on Earth, 24-7. But there is no way I'm going to argue that A) my one-man boycott accomplishes anything or B) this makes economic sense.

I can appreciate, in other words, the nobility of fighting for a lost cause now and then. On that level I understand the fight that abstinence-only sex education (AOSE) advocates are fighting. In some ways it is admirable to see people committed purely on principle to an idea that makes as much sense as a rubber crutch. I mean, the Catholic church can attest to the fact that despite 1,900 years of consistent effort it is pretty much impossible to convince people to stop banging. We know it isn't going to start working now. We know that kids, especially in rural areas where there isn't much else to do except meth, are going to have sex. They just are. This does not perturb the AOSE supporter. It is a matter of principle, and I understand that. But I can't respect it.

It was almost too easy to make jokes during the 2008 election about Sarah Palin's love of abstinence-only education and her teenage daughter's terrific success at getting knocked up before graduating high school. Sometimes life works out a little too perfectly. What isn't quite as funny as this news that Alaska is taking a run at becoming the Clap Capital of America. That's right, gonorrhea rates have jumped 69% (again, isn't life hilarious?) in a single year from 2008 to 2009. Look out, Mississippi! Alaska's coming, pun intended.

Principled stands are only admirable inasmuch as they don't affect anyone else. Refusing to vaccinate your child, for example, is disgusting because Mommy's little theory exposes a powerless child )and all of his/her neighbors and classmates) to substantial risks. AOSE has similar public health side effects if sex education programs have any effect whatsoever on high school students; admittedly, this might be a bad assumption. I empathize with the urge to speak out in support of one's beliefs, but I wonder how long the rest of us are supposed to play along with this anachronistic little experiment in social engineering. At best, Sex Ed classes are meaningless and AOSE isn't making anything worse. At worst, it's contributing to easily preventable public health problems. That sounds like a pretty lousy hill on which to dig in and take a stand.

(Welcome back.)

I try not to think about 2002 and 2003. America was a truly awful thing to see while it was pregaming the Iraq War. Watching the American public, desperate as it was to lash out incoherently in post-9/11 rage, swallow one tablespoon of horseshit after another as the previous administration engaged in the greatest marketing campaign in history was not pleasant. It was a real reminder – not a Teabagger's "Obama = Hitler" reminder – of how thin the line between American-style democracy and fascism really is.

For me, one of the most frustrating things about the argument for war in Iraq was that it was transparently ludicrous (even if believable to the average Hannity fan) when applied to Iraq but entirely accurate regarding another threat in which the Bush folks had no interest: North Korea. I am not exactly a neocon. My AEI membership application would likely be rejected. But if ever there was a logical, persuasive argument to be made for "regime change", North Korea would be it.
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Still is, in fact.

Consider everything we were expected to believe about Iraq apply it to North Korea. Secret plan to develop nuclear weapons? Iraq never got off the drawing board while North Korea developed an elaborate underground program that has produced functioning warheads. Unpredictable, dangerous dictator? Check. Human rights abuses? It's doubtful that anyone can match North Korea on that account. Proliferation risk? Iraq had nothing to proliferate except imaginary WMDs to sell to imaginary Hussein-friendly jihadists while North Korea has peddled its nuclear technology to Iran, Syria, and anyone else with hard currency. Destabilizing to the region? Iraq was largely irrelevant on the global stage while NK is a geopolitical powder keg. Threat to our interests and allies? Well, Iraq could lob some 70s-vintage Scud missiles with conventional warheads at Israel; NK can deliver a nuclear warhead to Japan or Seoul. Belligerent aggression in international affairs? Check.

Since the Iraq storyline was actually true regarding North Korea, why didn't it interest the Bush administration? We can only speculate. Take your pick: Lack of plausible connections to terrorism. Overriding desire to establish an American puppet state in the Middle East. Lack of, um, "resources of strategic value." Military preferences (North Korea's military, although horribly trained with antiquated equipment, is very large and considered highly fanatical; Iraq's numbnuts military would prove far easier to pound into oblivion). Unacceptable risk to allies, namely South Korea and Japan. Pissing off China. And so on.

Whatever the reasons, North Korea has only gotten crazier and more dangerous in the interim, and the president who prided himself as the great protector of American interests merely punted the issue to his successor. The bizarre North Korean leadership seems intent on A) provoking war or B) provoking concessions without realizing that it is actually provoking war.
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On the Sunday morning circuit, John McCain noted that China's coddling (or at least blind-eye-turning) toward its backward neighbor is the primary problem in the region. He implies, and it is hard to disagree, that South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. would gladly turn NK into a charred bomb crater if not for fear of Chinese retaliation.

This raises two very interesting questions, in my opinion:

1. Why is China willing to ignore or even actively condone North Korea's dangerous, unpredictable behavior?
2. What does South Korea actually want out of this situation?

As odd as it seems, South Korea and China may be acting based on a shared interest in maintaining the status quo. Why? Let's just say China does not relish the thought of a North Korean collapse followed by hundreds of thousands of refugees swarming across the Yalu. Similarly, South Korea recoils at the prospect of a sudden reunification (or proxy thereof) making its government and society responsible for millions of homeless, impoverished, brainwashed, and unskilled ex-Communists looking for handouts.

Although it is implausible, the preferred outcome appears to be a stable if somewhat hostile North Korea. There is little doubt that American, Japanese, and South Korean military power could eliminate the government and military infrastructure of North Korea if desired. But who desires it? We don't want to spend the money or manpower on another war. South Korea doesn't want to be forced to fill a North Korean power vacuum or face the prospect of China doing so in the wake of a war. China wants as little to do with North Korean affairs as possible and needs a million refugees like it needs an asshole on its elbow.

So. Where does this situation go from here? If I was better at game theory I would try to describe the bizarre equilibrium that the players have reached on the Korean peninsula over the past 30 years and hazard a guess at what happens if North Korea continues to upset it.
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As it stands, though, I know nothing beyond the obvious facts that nothing good is going to come of this situation and that South Korea's political leadership can only take so much provocation without responding.

The holiday shopping season is upon us, which means it is now incumbent upon you, the American consumer, to rescue the economy by spending like a PCP-addled Powerball winner. Don't have the money? Well of course you don't. But you DO still have those credit cards, right?

One of your hardest tasks on "Black Friday", aside from maintaining a high state of situational awareness (keep those heads on swivels to avoid being trampled like a Peruvian soccer fan), will be to find the perfect gift for that special wingnut in your life. You know, the Uncle who forwards dozens of weekly emails about our President's uncanny resemblance to the Biblical antichrist, the circumstances of his birth, or his impending plan to beat 10 Marines to death with a Koran every day for the next 2 years. Or maybe you have a little one in your life who you're trying to nudge down the correct ideological path; the gifts you give today can pay huge dividends down the road. When little Billy is in college 15 years from now, snorting drugs off his john's naked back, you'll be sorry you wasted the 2010 gifting season on Sonic the Hedgehog's return. Instead, why not give him a gift that he'll love now and benefit from later?

I'm big on shopping, of course, so I'm here to help you with some tips for the shopping season that I guarantee you will not find elsewhere. Shh! Keep these to yourself. Other shoppers are your competitors, and you want to keep your edge! First, a few general Black Friday shopping tips.

1. For the best 5:00 A.M. sales, anxious bargain hunters will begin lining up Thursday evening. Get the jump on your fellow shoppers by burglarizing the store a few days in advance. Better yet, conduct careful reconnaissance of the store's delivery schedules and hijack the truck en route. Trucking companies are heavily insured and drivers are instructed to offer no resistance.

2. It's too late to bone up on your Krav Maga skills, but advance planning is the key to prevailing in violent encounters in the toy department. Remember that there are no rules in a street fight; an effective tactic is to politely allow a competing shopper to cut ahead of you in line and follow up with a sharp, debilitating hook to the kidneys when his or her back is turned. Sure, they might get that limited edition Barbie, but they'll have to celebrate that victory while pissing Hawaiian Punch for a week.

3. Ignore the fallacious argument that things are cheaper and easier to find on the internet. Let the suckers fall for that. You should be in line at Best Buy no later than 2:00 AM on Friday morning if you want to get this year's hard-to-find electronic items like the Droid or Nintendo Wii. Likewise, the only way to get this year's hot toys is to exchange elbows Charles Oakley-style with suburban cow people in a dimly lit Wal-Mart parking lot in the middle of the night.

That's all well and good, but it leaves open the most important question: what to get? Here are a few trending items to keep an eye on. If you hope to land these popular gifts you need to formulate a shopping strategy now!

Mike hits one so far out of the park that it can only be compared to an old Comiskey Park roofshot from the likes of Greg Luzinski. I can add nothing to it.

Michael Mandel handed glibertarians some first-class wanking material when he wrote a paper arguing that the real problem with the post-millennium economy has been…drum roll… too much regulation. Of course, common sense tells us that the banking/lending industries were, if anything, almost totally unregulated. But it's hard to dispute the hard facts, which Mr. Mandel happily provides:

Wow! Hard to argue with that. Unless, of course, one bothers to peer a little more deeply into those Dudley & Warren BEA numbers Mandel cites:

After all these years of writing, I find few things less useful than pointing out that right-wingers are hypocrites. Sometimes it's fun or instructive depending on the context, but overall it adds little to the public discourse. Pointing out Teabaggers on Medicare, red states dependent on Federal tax dollars, and other similar examples is about as necessary as pointing out that the sun comes up daily. All of conservatism is built on a fundamental hypocrisy: that government is Bad, except for all of the things I want it to do for me. Which I don't want to pay for, incidentally.

Any argument that begins with a caveat like the preceding is bound to have a ", but…" So, that said, this whole Let's Revolt Against the TSA / Don't Touch My Junk thing is so far beyond ridiculous that I'll suffer my own statement of the obvious for a day.

Charles Krauthammer is one of many columnists banging this drum in the last few days, trying mightily to turn irritation at airport security procedures into some combination of the Montgomery bus boycott and the Salt March – not to mention a total validation of Teabagger Doctrine:

Don't touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm election voter. Don't touch my junk, Obamacare – get out of my doctor's examining room, I'm wearing a paper-thin gown slit down the back. Don't touch my junk, Google – Street View is cool, but get off my street. Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon – my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I'm a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?

WOLVERINES!

Other rants bear overblown titles like "TSA has met the enemy – and they are us" and other such faux-populist nonsense. This is so far beyond stupid that I am not sure where to begin. So let's begin at the beginning.

Look. The TSA was created by these same people who now find themselves in vocal opposition to it. It was born of the post-9/11 fear and paranoia of America's business travelers, crotchety grandparents, and mothers burdened with strollers. Soccer Moms. Late Life Libertarians (?). Knee-jerk suburban reactionaries.

Xenophobic hicks. Whining Baby Boomers. They demanded that Big Government protect them from their fears and brown people (to the extent that the two diverge in their minds). Washington responded with the greatest display of bureaucratic firepower and security theater the world has ever seen. The TSA is everything that the 2002 Yellowcake-from-Niger obsessed American public demanded: a big, expensive show, the primary and perhaps only purpose of which was to make people feel better.

Let's be frank. Any remotely clever person who cared to do so could think of about a dozen ways to sneak dangerous or banned items onto an airplane.
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We know goddamn well that a walk through a metal detector and a quick pass of our baggage through a screening device aren't really going to "protect" us. Sure, it will catch some portion of the potential terrorists, namely the really dumb ones.

But come on. If security is really the goal here, it is not only logical but necessary that passengers be screened – either visually or by hand – for items taped to their bodies. Now that we're at that point, people get pissed.
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This is what you wanted. You wanted security. You demanded it. You wanted someone with a uniform and a badge to reassure your imagination that Osama bin Laden was not going to blow up your 12:35 nonstop from Chattanooga to BWI.

Then again, maybe all we really wanted was the Theater. Or maybe the TSA has always been a huge pain in the ass of the American traveler, but for some strange reason no one felt much like lashing out at Washington over it until their was a CommieFascioMarxist black guy in the White House. Maybe talking about our rights – which we essentially punted on between 2001 and 2008 – is just the lamest, most transparent kind of excuse for people like Krauthammer to grind a political ax. People are irritated because of a new security procedure at the airport? My word, how unprecedented. It must be because everyone hates the government.

I don't dispute that most of what the TSA does is silly and marginally effective at best, nor do I question the sincerity of travelers who say they're annoyed. I guess I just question their timing.

I am not the least bit ashamed to admit, as longtime readers know, that I respect the hell out of a good crook.
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Thieves, burglars, con artists, grifters…I believe that they deserve the punishments they get if caught and convicted, but like many people (judging by the ratings and box office receipts) I admire a good heist. I'm not talking about people mugging old ladies and doing drive-bys.
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I'm talking about Great Train Robbery type stuff. The dude who stole the goddamn Mona Lisa. The Hitler Diaries. Those Brazilians who robbed a bank by digging a 260-foot tunnel into its underground vault while posing as a construction crew at the neighboring building. And despite how disgusting and symptomatic of the decay of our governing institutions it may be, I even have to admire the sheer balls required to pull off fraud on the scale of an Enron.

That said, I am unable to find any art in the lending/housing crisis of the past two-plus years. Rather than being the work of flashy con men with schemes that require as much luck as talent, the great mortgage ripoff is largely the work of sociopathic, overgrown fratboys with no morals (Even the crooks we tend to love on film live by some sort of code, even if only the norms of the underworld) and bloodless Russian and Chinese mathematicians programming the catastrophe as dispassionately as would do their taxes. It's just sad. From every possible angle. In a dream world in which the perpetrators would be arrested and held accountable for their actions we couldn't even fake an "I have to hand it to you, kid, that was one hell of a plan." It's as though we were robbed by a computer.

That's how I have felt since this all began.
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It was not until today that I paused to reconsider my position.

Matt Taibbi's latest, which is lengthy but mandatory reading, focuses on how eager our nation's courts are to help insolvent or federally bailed-out banks fuck homeowners with laughably fake documents standing in for long-ago lost paper trails. In it he briefly mentions a new example of kind of thievery indicative of a born thief – simple, brilliant, and requiring little more than enormous balls to pull it off.

First, a short aside. In my three years in the collection industry, I became well-acquainted with a little known profession called process serving. When someone is sued (for example) they must be served with legal documents that summon them to court and so on. I'll spare you the details, but generally speaking an individual must be served in person by a process server acting within the laws of his state and county. This means that people who can't be found – either by design or by the transient, off-the-grid nature of their lifestyle – cannot have a judgment made against them in court in most cases. Cops serve process (for a set fee) but, shockingly, do a half-assed job of it. Basically they knock on the door, and if no one answers they say the person can't be found.

This is where the private process servers come in. For a fee they can find just about anyone. They are similar to bounty hunters in their persistence and often checkered backgrounds (lots of ex-cops, disbarred attorneys, and so on). The important fact is that they are expensive and the individual who is being served is responsible for the fees. So, in my previous job I always told individuals with whom I spoke, "Look, you can accept this summons voluntarily, or we can have Jeff (our server) serve you. He will find you, and you'll owe us the $300-500 he costs." It wasn't a bluff. Jeff was ex-Special Forces, had a little drug problem, and could find Judge Crater if you paid him enough. Even though engaged in a soulless profession, I tried to be honest with people: trying to avoid service would just end up costing them more.
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Defendants must pay service fees even if they win the lawsuit; that will become important in a second.

Taibbi uncovered an ongoing scam in Florida – probably elsewhere, too – in which banks were making up attempts at process service to stick mortgage holders with a big bill they had to pay even if the bank's suit was unsuccessful. They were telling judges (and the courts were more than happy to buy it) "We tried to serve Joe Blow on ten occasions, and we just couldn't find him. Never home. He was really trying hard to hide from us, the bastard. Here's the bill for $1500." And none of it ever happened.

With all the robo-signing and whatnot, take note of what was happening here: our major lending institutions were using fake process servers to serve fake mortgage documents. That's…incredible. It is so absurd it circles back around to brilliance.

I have a deviant mind, experience with a seedy industry, and a pretty thorough understanding of how hard the law allows financial institutions to ream people who owe them money. Despite all of that, I never would have thought of this in a million years. The people at JP Morgan, Bank of America, et al who concocted this have truly impressive minds for larceny. They are born thieves. My first thought is that it's too bad they chose to waste such criminal brilliance on an industry as dull as finance. Or maybe they recognized their unique gifts at a young age and naturally gravitated toward the industry where they would be in high demand.