According to this post at the Fayetteville Flyer, the Fayetteville School Board has voted to expand the High School at its current location rather than move.
If you don’t care about Fayetteville or it’s High School, then just take my word for it, this is good news.
According to the New York Times, Secretary Paulson said today that he’s willing to change the bailout plan to address executive compensation.
This seems like a fake bargaining chip to avoid the plan’s real problems. I know lots of people are in favor limiting bailed out companies to the federal pay scale. I understand the sentiment, and am not opposed to the proposal, but I feel like the motivation behind it is mostly for the wrong reasons. If people were justifying this based on some good cost benefit analysis then that’d be fine, but I don’t have any handle on how much executive salaries are really costing these troubled firms, and I’m pretty sure supporters of this type of proposal don’t either. Instead I think support is ultimately coming from jealousy and mistrust of people with huge huge salaries and/or a desire to get back or get even with ‘the people that got us into this mess.’
Maybe most of these executives aren’t talented or valuable enough to justify making 10-100 times what the president does, but maybe the best are, and will leave if they aren’t fairly compensated. Either way, executive compensation isn’t and shouldn’t be the focus here, and I hope the public’s distaste for huge salaries doesn’t make our lawmakers forget that. If we want to hold these firms accountable for their mistakes, let’s make sure we’re making good investments with our 700 billion, and at prices that are favorable to the taxpayers since for once we’re the ones with cash to spare.
Many have decried the proposed government bailout currently being rammed down our collective throat as “socialismâ€. I want argue the opposite, however: that the proposed government bailout is really fascism. Let’s agree that socialism is roughly defined as the government command and control of private business, and fascism the command and control of government by private business.
In tax circles, the “Wall Street Rule†refers to the de facto rule that, given any transaction or investment for which the tax treatment is unclear because of the absence of IRS guidance, after enough investors have developed expectations of a given tax treatment, the IRS will not upset those expectations even though it is under no legal obligation to do so.
Thus, the Wall Street Rule is a rule under which private business effectively usurps the IRS regulating function by dictating the tax treatment of a certain investment or transaction and “forcing†the IRS to concede to such treatment.
The behavior of the stock market over the past few days seems to be another instance of the Wall Street Rule in a slightly different context. After two days of grievous losses, stocks rebounded spectacularly on last Friday, just on the rumor of a possible bailout. And today, after news that both Democrats and Republicans, for populists and libertarian principles respectively, sought to stymie or modify the proposed bailout, stocks again dived.
Thus, the stock market have painted our Congress into an untenable corner. The market has developed an expectation that Congress will approve an unfettered bailout, and quickly. If Congress fails to deliver, stocks will plunge, and Congress will be left holding the political bag. Congress, understanding this, is therefore forced to pass the bailout Wall Street has come to expect. And so you have fascism: private business usurping the legislative function of Congress to get the bailout it wants.
The Freakonomics Blog may be about economics, but Steven Levitt doesn’t study the banking system, so he asked his colleagues that do to answer some FAQs about the current crisis. What he got back is the best synopsis I’ve seen on what’s happening. If you aren’t 100% surewhat’s been going on, why Bear Stearns was saved and Lehman wasn’t, etc., etc., then it’s well worth the read.
Diamond and Kashyap on the Recent Financial Upheavals - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog
Thanks to Josh McGee, who linked to this on the facebook.
One good thing I can say about McCain is that he’d probably be a better President than me, or at least for the next year or two. I can’t say this about Palin. This video demonstrates just how average and uninformed she really is - she doesn’t know what the Bush Doctrine is and she resorts to painfully poor political mumbo jumbo.
I just saw this frightening post over at Downloadsquad
Basically, the bill allows the DOJ to sue copyright infringers on behalf of the content owners (i.e. movie studios and record companies). JttM Legal Experts, is there any precedent for this? Seems crazy/scary to me.
If you see this guy, Tony Jaa, don’t fight him. If you missed his first big movie, Ong Bak, check out the highlights here. Then check out the promo for Ong Bak 2, which is coming in December. I’ve heard he’ll beat you up if you don’t watch these videos right now. Need more?
I’m kinda burned out on the Mac vs. PC ads, so even though I’m no big MS fan, I was glad to hear Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld were gonna do an ad campaign as a kind of answer to Apple’s spots. The first Seinfeld and Gates ad was disappointing, though, and only vaguely funny. Now the second installment is out. It’s still not really an ad for anything, but this one does seem to have a point, and it’s also pretty funny.
One thing I can’t figure out is the format. They seem way to long for TV (this one is 4 1/2 minutes long). Are they just web videos? Anybody seen one on broadcast?
The first weekend of NFL football ends tonight (Monday, Sept. 8th) with a BANG - McFadden in black. The Raiders host the Broncos at 10:15E on ESPN.
Here’s what I expect to see from these two extremely similar teams:
These are two wear-them-down run-oriented offenses; and with both teams possessing excellent pass-defenses (check out those four cornerbacks), mediocre receivers, and new offensive lines that lack the necessary cohesiveness for pass blocking, I expect run, after run, after run.
Both teams will start with the same game plan:
1) run the ball with some success
2) protect the ball (win the turnover battle)
3) good special teams play - good punts, good returns, make FGs
4) get ahead and force the other team into passing situations
5) run the clock out against fatigued defenders
The difference between the two teams will probably be that the home-town Raiders have the better running backs. The Raiders rushing attack starts with Justin Fargas, not McFadden. Fargas gets the veteran nod after a strong season last year in the same offensive scheme. Kiffin, who has been extremely impressed with Darren and plans on utilizing all of his gifts before the season is over, says that tonight will not be The McFadden Show. He says he’s worried that the pressure might be too much, since it is his first NFL game and it’s Monday Night Football. (This would be The McFadden Show if I were the coach, since Darren usually plays his best in high pressure games. I’m wondering if Kiffin is bluffing). The Raiders have another stud RB right behind McFadden - the young, big, fast, shifty, and soft-handed Michael Bush. The biggest potential downfall of this crew is a lack of depth at the fullback position, since they lost their best blocking fullback to a career-threatening injury last week.
If the Raiders have a large lead, I highly doubt that the Broncos can pass their way back into the game, or break off long runs. If the Broncos have a large lead, the Raiders will look to big TE Zach Miller down field, or hopefully they will give McFadden chances to break some long ones.
(Did you catch Felix’s first game yesterday? He took his first carry into the endzone from 11 yards out and finished the game with nine carries for 62 yards and 1 TD.)
If you haven’t visited www.ted.com, now is the time. The site offers tons of “inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers.”
Here’s their quick self-summary:
“TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week.”
This one, is far from the most interesting, but there’s an incredibly amazing octopus at the end that I think everyone needs to see.
least skip to the end where an octopus will blow you away.
