The Other GM Bailout

The Other GM Bailout: Corporations in the red, as GM was for years, are allowed to carry forward net operating losses that reduce their future tax liability when they are making money. GM had accumulated about $45 billion in such profit-shielding chits by 2008, with a book value of about $18 billion. When companies enter bankruptcy, carry-forwards disappear or are greatly limited under IRS section 382, which kicks in when ownership changes by more than 50 percentage points.

The point is to prevent companies from buying assets solely for tax arbitrage or tax avoidance. But starting in 2009, Treasury began to issue regulatory "notices" that suspend this law when it comes to Treasury-owned stock. The provisions also apply to AIG and Citigroup.

so we taxpayers gave money in a bailout and then lost money in potential tax revenue.

Sorry liberals, you can't blame this one on greedy big business. This is all government doing.

What about the people whose identity he stole?

IRS Employee Stole Data To Forge $8M In Fraudulent Returns - Slashdot
Do they get any compensation?

Gasoline deliveries and the economy

If there is one thing Freakonomics taught us is that seemingly unrelated data sets can often be important predictors of human behavior.

Guest Post: Why Is Gasoline Consumption Tanking? | ZeroHedge

I don't know about rest of the country but demand is going to go down in Maryland as the General Assembly considers more gas taxes.

Good.

A VICTORY FOR CITIZENS IN THE WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY: Public can record Baltimore police officers …

This should be the case.  So long as the videotaping does not interfere with the police doing their job, such as getting in the way of a crime scene, or putting officers at risk, the public should be entitled to video the officers.  Cops have to be held accountable and a public armed with cameras is the best way to do it.

It may be an extreme case, but.....

It is totally possible.  Disgraced teacher is worth $10M, makes $100,000 a year, does nothing, & refuses to leave - m.NYPOST.com

Louisiana's Governor betting big

On Revolutionary education reform

With Gov Bobby Jindal and a Republican controlled legislature on the verge of radically expanding school choice programs, Jindal may very well be providing education watchers a unique real life laboratory of democracy and public policy.

But is Jindal really taking a risk? 

Even now, 80% of New Orleans students attend a charter school and some of the most egregious education barriers, like the racial achievement gap, are falling. 

Of course the teachers unions are fighting tooth and nail, but it is hard to argue with the success of New Orleans.  What will the educational establishment think when Louisiana tops the national rankings and do so with less per pupil spending than most other states?

Orwellian Justice in New Haven--This Time against a Professor

Orwellian Justice in New Haven--This Time against a Professor.

I read with disgust the hit piece on Yale University quarterback Patrick Witt, who as a finalist for a Rhodes Scholarship make a difficult choice and decided to play in the annual Harvard-Yale football game. Whether this was a wise decision is irrelevant since it was Witt's decision and he has to live the consequences of that decision. However, the New York Times intimated, without detail that the reason why Witt withdrew is because of an informal sexual assault complaint that was lodged against him by an unnamed woman. The Times ran with the piece without much in the way of confirmation.

The problem as pointed out by KC Johnson in this piece, is that Patrick Witt's reputation is damaged, possibly beyond repair, and he has little recourse to find out who did it since Yale is not conducting an investigation into who leaded the information about an informal complaint.

Which brings me to the informal complaint process. Now as a private university (although it aspires to hold higher standards than some mere public university), Yale University does not owe it students or faculty any of what we would consider normal due process rights, such as the right to face one's accuser. In Witt's case, he may have known the name of his accuser, that fact is a little less than clear since all the stories that I have read have stated that the "parties" agreed to keep things confidential. The problem is that "parties" is not defined. An informal complaint process, as it is described by Johnson, allows for little or no investigation and ca be started on little more than a "worry" or whim. The process appears to be designed to allow an accuser to "regain their sense of wellbeing" and gives the accuser control over the process. Nevermind that the infomration complaint process does nothing to determine if the accuser is right or even partially right or simply misunderstood something.

No, the informal complaint process is designed label someone, possibly wrongly, as something to be feared, punished and ostracized.

The funny thing is, as can be found in the first link in this post, now that the process has been turned on a professor, will there be any changes to the policy. In the professor's case, he wasn't even aware that an informal complaint has been made--but he would be subject to "monitoring." Guilty until proven innocent.

Now that the process is used against professors--will there be change? I wouldn't count on it.

Women In Sports

I saw this piece at the Sports Law Blog about women in sports. Although I grew up with Title IX (well it was passed when I was three years old), it was not until my middle and high school years and beyond that I really saw the effect.

As a kid I played soccer for most of my youth (after two years of very unsucessful baseball). Eventually after a couple of years, I began playing for the club travel team. At that time, in the late 1970's and early 1980's, there were no dedicated girls teams after just 7 or 8 years of Title IX. My travel team had a one girl (Lara) on the team and that was it. By the time I was in 7th grade, my father began coaching the local high school girls team and most high schools in the North Florida did not have girls teams. The team my father coached was the only school in the county that had a girls team. My middle school didn't have a girls team. To say that there was a gulf in class between the girls teams and the boys team would be a minor understatement. However, my father was a pretty good coach and was able to guide the team to a respectable .500 season for the first two years of his tenure. Eventually, the freshmen he had in his first year improved enough by the time they were juniors to make a good squad.

By the time I reached high school a couple of years later in 1983, there were girls junior varsity and varsity teams and a plethora of youth teams that were feeding into the system. In the span of just two or three years, girls sports positively exploded in my hometown. There were girls leagues for soccer, bastketball and a growth in the softball leagues. Growing up in North Florida, where football was king, girls were no longer relegated to softball, swimming and cheerleading. It was positively fantastic.

Fast forward to my life now, I coached soccer last year for my daughter's team. Granted she is six and at that age, boys and girls play on the same team. I had the usual mix of gifted young athletes, super aggressive players, talent, passion, heart, determination and skill levels. The beautiful thing is that you couldn't really tell the different among the boys or girls (other than hair). My four best players included two girls. My most aggressive player was a young girl who would mow you down rather than look at you (but loves to wear dresses to school). My best goal keeper was my daughter. True, as these kids get older, their skill level will diverge a great deal, but at least on the rec leagues in my area of the country, there are coed teams well into the high school ages and that is a good thing.

High school teams in my county are terrific--boys and girls. The girls teams of today would probably absolutely destroy the best boys teams of my youth. The girls are fitter, stronger, faster, more technically skilled and understand the game on a mental level. These young ladies are more confident, assertive (and yes they can have just as bad a potty mouth as the boys and I issued two yellow cards in my last game for these young ladies dropping the f--- bomb fairly loudly) and in control of themselves that girls were when I was in high school. I graduated high school 25 years ago this year and the difference is marked.

Did Title IX do all this? Who knows. But I will say this, it certainly didn't hurt. Sports provides so many opportunities for kids of either gender, it helps them grow, physically, mentally and emotionally. It builds friendships, it builds independence and let's face it, it is fun. My hope for the girls of this generation exiting high school in a world in which Title IX has always existed that they understand the impact that Title IX had on their opportunities.

__________________________________

Check out my soccer blog at Nutmegs and Stepovers

really?

WH: Women 'Deserve' to Have Catholic Church Buy Them Sterilizations, Contraceptives and Abortifacients (Fred Lucas/CNSNews)
Last I checked health insurance was a benefit that is not required to be offered.

Word Play Gone Awry

A Slate resident feminist hears Gov. Christie talking about oral sex when he's obviously not.

Course, as Althouse points out, the writer's name means nothing.

Random Thoughts--January 6, 2012

Been reading a lot about President Obama's unconstitutional "recess" appointments.  Why is everyone surprised?  Our govenrmental leaders' (of both parties) disregard for the Constitution is not a surprise, why should this one be any different.

If Republicans in the House had any balls, they would impeach Obama for violating his oath of office.  He won't be convicted by the Senate,of course, but can anyone tell me exactly how Obama has preserved the Constitution of the United States?

Scientists have cloaked a moment in time.  Wait, What?  Check this out.  If they can do this, how soon before we get a Star Trek transporter so I don't have to sit in traffic between DC and Richmond, VA when I want to visit my family in Florida?  I don't need to be transported all the way to Florida, say DC to North Carolina would be fine.

Here's something to shut the environmental nutcases up:  New Materials Remove Carbon Dioxide from Smokestacks, Tailpipes and Even the Air.  Faster please scientists, I am getting sick and tired of some one driving an SUV or a private plane bitching at me because I emit CO2.

Finally, who is writing Chevy's press releases?  Bill Clinton?  It ain't a recall, but all owners of Chevy Volts are being asked to return their cars for "structural improvements"  It's a step below a recall.  Wait, how is it not a recall?     Ifyou are asking owners to bring the car back to the dealer, it sure sounds like a recall.  But then, it depends on what your definition of "is" is, right?

__________________________________

Check out my soccer blog at Nutmegs and Stepovers

“Does the First Amendment Protect Your Right to Speak for a Living?”

Short answer--yes.

The Volokh Conspiracy » “Does the First Amendment Protect Your Right to Speak for a Living?”

And Florida is wrong to require a license to be an interior designer (yes, you read that right). Of course, Florida is not the only state to require a license for interior design--two other states do as well.

Pretty damn dumb.

__________________________________

Check out my soccer blog at Nutmegs and Stepovers

Clear campus rules needed on ‘harassment’

Greg Lukianoff, the President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, has this piece in The Washington Post.  Key takeway

The concept of freedom of speech is under fire by college campuses AND the Obama Administration:

Overly broad harassment codes remain the weapon of choice on campus to punish speech that administrators dislike. In a decade fighting campus censorship, I have seen harassment defined as expressions as mild as “inappropriately directed laughter” and used to police students for references to a student government candidate as a “jerk and a fool” (at the University of Central Florida in 2006) and a factually verifiable if unflattering piece on Islamic extremism in a conservative student magazine (at Tufts University in 2007). Other examples abound. Worryingly, such broad codes and heavy-handed enforcement are teaching a generation of students that it may be safer to keep their mouths shut when important or controversial issues arise. Such illiberal lessons on how to live in a free society are poison to freewheeling debate and thought experimentation and, therefore, to the innovative thinking that both higher education and our democracy need.

Just because I say something that you don't like doesn't make harassment.  It might make it rude, it might make it unpleasant, but it doesn't mean it should be banned simply because some college administrator thinks it is harassment.

__________________________________

Check out my soccer blog at Nutmegs and Stepovers

Why getting a good education and a good job doesn’t necessarily mean going to a four-year college

James Pethokoukis is talking about that issue and is reading a book by Charles Murray called Real Education, a book I have read as well.

A few weeks ago, President Obama made a speech to a bunch of high school students in Osawatomie, Kansas which Pethokoukis quotes:

But we need to meet the moment. We’ve got to up our game. We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission — a national mission. Government and businesses, parents and citizens. In this economy, a higher education is the surest route to the middle class. The unemployment rate for Americans with a college degree or more is about half the national average. And their incomes are twice as high as those who don’t have a high school diploma. Which means we shouldn’t be laying off good teachers right now — we should be hiring them. We shouldn’t be expecting less of our schools –- we should be demanding more. We shouldn’t be making it harder to afford college — we should be a country where everyone has a chance to go and doesn’t rack up $100,000 of debt just because they went.

Vice President Biden also made a similar speech in December at a high school in Jacksonville, Florida where he said,

A college degree “is about dignity, a sense of yourself, this notion of self worth, your standing in the community … it’s about becoming a better man and better woman,” Biden said. It’s about a person’s “social acceptability … the sense of your self worth and accomplishment. … Folks, it unlocks the mind and it serves as a tool to increasing civilization and progress.”

“A college education is almost a prerequisite to the middle class,” he said.

(Sorry, I forgot to link the original story on my facebook page when I posited this to my friends).

The fact is that, as lots of commentators are talking about, a higher education bubble is about to burst and it is not going to be pretty. Murray and Pethokoukis are arguing that we are sending far too many people to college and the message that we are sending that college is the only way to the middle class is pure bunk. My parents are solidly middle class, even upper middle class, and neither of them finished college. My mother went to a two year nursing school program and my father is retired Navy and I wouldn't not classify my upbringing as anything other than middle class. My sister is getting her degree at age 38, my brother is in the Army and doesn't have a degree, yet they are middle class Americans.

The fact is that the path to middle class success and security has never been about a college degree--it has been about being willing to work hard. Sometimes that work is what we traditionally consider blue collar work and that blue collar work can be incredibly lucrative. Skilled labor, such as welding, plumbing, steel working, etc. is in huge demand and the pay is incredible since there are so few people with the skills to do things like highway welding or steel work for bridges and other infrastructure that such workers might make $150,000 a year with over time. Sure they have to work in the elements, but really, that makes them so much more valuable.

This might be funny to say as a lawyer sitting behind a desk most of the day, but there is nothing wrong with sweating at work. There is nothing wrong with a man or woman who works hard, takes care of themselves and their family, who works honestly and who pursues their own happiness without a college degree. They are honorable men and women. The fact that our President and Vice President demean (whether intentional or not) the millions of Americans (including most of our military) who don't have college degrees as not being middle class or somehow worth less as humans and as Americans is insulting in the extreme. To tell our children that people without college degrees (including some of those kids' own parents) have no standing in the community, have no social acceptability because they don't have a college degree (meaning my parents) is the worst kind of elitism.

President Obama is right, we shouldn't be expecting kids and families to rack up $100,000 of debt to go to college. But at the same time, we shouldn't be expecting every kid to go to college. College is not a guaranteed path to the middle class.  However, our nation has spent the past two decades touting the importance and necessity of "going to college" that it has probably affected the economy in the short term.

The only legitimate message about education that should be preached is that kids should finish high school, then they should work hard at what they do to earn a paycheck.  Success comes from hard work, not a piece of paper.

A rare personal post

Every once in a while, I feel compelled to write a personal post, something about what has been happening in my life.

As the start of the new year 2012, I have found that a great deal of my life has come into focus a little, various strings of thought that had been out there flapping in the winds of my brain, have seemingly come together, woven together as the result of a some serious time spent thinking about my life, about what I want (and don't want) it to be about.  I am struggling to find more positive energy in my life.

On a professional level, my career has come to a crossroads.  While I don't anticipate abandoning the law as a profession anytime in the near future, I have begun to think that my current legal practice is filled with a fair amount of negative.  I meet clients when the excrement has hit the wind generating device.  While I hope they appreciate the effort I and my colleagues put forth (and many have expressed thanks), I rarely see clients in the best possible light, at a time when they are at their best.  I don't blame the clients at all, it is the nature of being a litigator.  But I have had a few episodes in the past six months or so that have given me a better insight into the kind of law I would like to practice and that involves dealing with clients in a more positive light, helping them achieve their goals as businesspeople and as humans, rather than when it has all gone haywire.

Being a litigator can be a great deal of fun, I am competitive, I like to win and I like a competition that has rules, but allows for some creativity.  But litigation is also very negative as well.  It is a zero sum game.  If  you take a case to court, there is a winner and a loser--that is what a court does.  Even if you settle a case, both sides win and more likely both sides lose.  It is not very satisfying.

But there is so much negative energy that flows from litigation that I believe it has been affecting me on a personal level.  The confidential nature of my work (and I take my ethical obligations seriously) forbid me from talking about my work in too much detail with my wife.  I talk in generalities, I talk about procedure--which is pretty damn dry--and I internalize things.  Sure, I can talk to my colleagues about the cases, but I don't like talking too deeply about my personal life at work.  So the separation of the two means that work's negativity bleeds over into my home life and the stresses of my home life bleed over into my work.  The result has been that both my home life and my work life have been negatively affected.

Thus, the search for some more positives in my work life means that I can help clients move forward with the things that make them happy.  Being the general counsel to entrepeneurs is what I am looking for.  So that is where I will be focusing my attention.

But I have also found that so much of what I considered so important for so long is just a load of crap.  I used to follow politics so closely, but I am simply disappointed in our leaders of both political parties.  I suppose I am not the only one, it is something of a movement in the country I believe.  But at the same time, I know that all the shennigans affect my life professionally and personally.

I spent some time seeing my family over Christmas and New Year's and they don't seem as engaged in the whole political farce and they seem happier for it.  I was recently asked if I was interested into returning to the political arena as a staffer or as an attorney and I said no.  It is not that it would be a step back in my career, rather it was a realization that I am sick of politics.

I have been reading Declaration of Independents and some of the thinking there so summed up my thoughts,  I am fiscally conservative and socially liberal., I do believe in free minds and free markets, I do think that neither party is interested in even what they say they believe--they are only interested in prolonging their power.

And so, in the dawn of our New Year, I have decided to attempt to rid myself of as much of the negative influences as I can.  I can't abandon politics, but I can limit my involvement.  I can't abandon my career, but I can change course.  I will pursue my own happiness.  I will seek out more time with people who are positive, who are actively pursuing their own happiness.  Who knows, maybe we will help each other find our happiness.

__________________________________

Check out my soccer blog at Nutmegs and Stepovers

Random Thoughts--January 3, 2012

The World better not frakking end this year--I haven't been to an MLS cup final or a World Cup on foreign soils or an Olympic games.  The rest of my bucket list needs some serious attention as well.

I did some math today and realized, that if I didn't have to pay my mortgage (or rent) for an entire year, I still wouldn't be debt free.  That is a troubling thought.

Take that last thought and expand it writ large to the United States--pretty frakking sad, isn't it--for me and the nation.

What should you do if you are stuck on a mountain road, behind a nasty accident for the better part of two hours---play Bubble Buster on your phone--I did and got farther than ever.

Dear  Crayola---your Color Wonder toys are wonderful--except on small matter---those glitter versions of the paper should come with a warning--"If you open this, it will look like a fairy threw up in your car."  Keep up the good work otherwise.  Thanks, Matt

__________________________________

Check out my soccer blog at Nutmegs and Stepovers