Author Archives: Jon Lowder

Old Is Relative Until You Are, Old That Is

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A couple of recent events have made me realize how old I’m getting and how un-hip or un-cool I’ve become.

I’m trying to get back into tennis after a bid of a break over the last couple of years.  I entered a tennis ladder and I’ve now played four guys.  The oldest was 70 and I would have sworn he was 58, tops.  Then he told me that if we got to a third set I’d have to be responsible for the score because he’d be tired and hi memory would go kaploot.  When I realized he wasn’t joking it hit me that he really was 70 and I was feeling a litle whipper-snapperish.  It didn’t last long.

I played the youngest yesterday; his mom had to give him a ride to the court because he’s not old enough to drive.  It hit me that he’s only two years older than my son.  I told him that if we played a third set he might have to keep score and/or carry me off the court, but he didn’t get it.

He was a bit shy so during changeovers I’d try to get him to talk.  I finally succeeded when I asked him if he’d gone to a Green Day concert (he had on a concert T) and he said, "Uh, yeah."  I mentioned that I’d seen a tape of a live show they’d done in a bar and the bass player broke his nose (hit himself with the bass while he was jumping around) and kept on playing.  He asked when it had happened I said some time in their early days and he said, I quote: "Wow, that was like way back in the 80s wasn’t it?"  It occured to me that he wasn’t alive in the 80s.  Sheesh.  And he beat me.  Crap.

So that was one event.  Another was when I started thinking about my cool-quotient in terms of technology.  I always thought of myself as being slightly ahead of the curve…I mean hey, I blog.  But then I realized that I’ve never:

  • Edited video on my computer.
  • Put together a playlist for an MP3 player, much less carried an Ipod.
  • Played a video game online.
  • Played a video game on my kids’ Xbox.
  • Gone to a tech convention.
  • Sat in a navel-gazing seminar on "new" media.

So I’m decidedly un-cutting edge and I’m actually quite comfortable with it.  That must mean I’m getting older.  Other signs include:

  • Bathing suit models are beginning to make me uncomfortable because they aren’t a whole hell of a lot older than my daughter.  The term "dirty old man" permeates my brain.
  • Ear hair.
  • Nose hair.
  • Beginning to not care that when I take off my shirt the term "Austin Powers" pops into everyones head.  My cousin, Jeff, didn’t stop at thinking it.  He blurted out, "Damn, Jon, you’ve got the Austin Powers rug thing going on."  Used to care, now not so much.
  • Beginning not to care that my hairline looks like a satellite image of Brazil’s coastline.
  • I’m making fun of pop culture.  A lot.
  • I hate American Idol with a depth of passion that I used to reserve for sanctimonious a-holes.

You get the idea. The bad news is I’m not even 40 for another four months, which means I need to get a grip, or at least a little perspective.  Anyone know an octogenarian up for some tennis?

Raymond May Be a Greedy SOB, But High Gas Prices Aren’t His or Exxon’s Fault

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There’s an interesting column over at Motley Fool about how we really can’t blame the oil companies for high gas prices.  The writer, Glen Kenney, works at an oil refinery and does think that ExxonMobil’s retirement package for its outgoing CEO is wrong.  Here’s what he said:

Exxon did increase its profits fourfold during Raymond’s tenure, and
he did make the right call in acquiring Mobil at depressed prices,
making the newly formed ExxonMobil the world’s richest company. Some of
this good was due to Lee Raymond’s guidance, for which he should be
recognized, and some of it was merely the luck of market conditions
that would have happened had Donald Duck been CEO.

The ExxonMobil board of directors gave Raymond a retirement package
worth at least $400,000,000. That’s a lot of zeroes. That’s probably
more than the combined retirement packages of all the employees where I
work. Do I personally think he, or anybody else, deserves that kind of
money? No! NO! A thousand times NO! Is he worth that much
money? Yes. The bottom line is this: Whether it’s a CEO’s pay or an
athlete’s, it’s a free market. The person is worth whatever somebody is
willing to pay for his or her services.

Did his huge paycheck increase the price I pay for gas? NO again! I
saw in Exxon’s annual report that they have a total refining capacity
of 6.2 million barrels per day. At that rate, Raymond’s retirement
package cost less than half a cent per gallon, if it were paid for in
just one year.

Now, even though I don’t believe it cost me anything, his retirement
package was a slap in the face and an insult to all us working stiffs
out here. I feel the same way about the athletes who sign the
$250,000,000 packages, or who get the $50,000,000 endorsement checks.
(But perhaps if I could hit a baseball 500 feet 70 times a year, I’d
change my mind.) I’d like to see the ExxonMobil stockholders send a
strong message to their board of directors, declaring they
won’t support any more insults like the Lee Raymond incident.

It is a slap in the face when an executive gets that kind of compensation.  I have no problem with people getting paid lots of money; that’s what the free market is all about.  The real problem I have is when people get outsize pay for what they’ve accomplished. Can we honestly think that one person made that large an impact on an organization?

But there’s a remedy for this situation in the free markets as well: shareholders.  If I were a shareholder in ExxonMobil I’d be gunning for every member of the Board right about now.  What they’ve allowed to happen is outrageous and in the long run it will most likely hurt the company.  There will come a rainy day when that $400 million would have been nice to have in reserve.

And as far as gas prices are concerned Mr. Kenney thinks we’d do a whole lot better spending our energy looking for ways to decrease the demand for oil rather than beat up on the providers.  I’ve read the same over at Boyd’s blog and I tend to agree with them both.

We Can Trust Them, They’re Working for National Security

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Here’s an interesting tidbit from BusinessWeek:

President George W.
Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad
authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded
companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure
obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the
Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained
eye.

Unbeknownst to almost all of Washington and the financial world, Bush
and every other President since Jimmy Carter have had the authority to
exempt companies working on certain top-secret defense projects from
portions of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Administration officials
told BusinessWeek
that they believe this is the first time a President has ever delegated
the authority to someone outside the Oval Office. It couldn’t be
immediately determined whether any company has received a waiver under
this provision.

Honestly if I’d read this a week ago I probably wouldn’t have paid attention, but since I just finished reading “Conspiracy of Fools“, which is a detailed look at the Enron/Andersen debacle, I have to say I find this development disturbing.  You see I used to assume that for the most part if you were a c-level executive at a Fortune 50 company you’d at least be smart and pretty good with management and financial basics.  I also assumed that their auditors would catch on to any really serious malfeasance. This book cured me of those delusions.

I also always assumed that every company had its crooks, and that every company does whatever it can to jack up its financials, but I never imagined that the crooks, especially the stupid ones, could climb so high and not be caught. 

So we only have to look back five years to see a spectacular example of how bad companies can behave, and how lax the oversight can be in the higher reaches of corporate America, and yet now we have the administration potentially providing a cloak of secrecy  to these  guys?  Why give an exemption?  Why not just get some auditors with top-secret clearance?  And why delegate the authority to your chief spy?

Who am I kidding asking these questions?

SSPs!

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When I was a kid, way back in the 70s, my favorite toy was my SSP racer.  I haven’t seen them for years..until now.  Someone has loaded a video of old 70s toy commercials on YouTube.  Commercials include Bing Bang Boing, SSP, SSP Pee Wees, Water Wiggle, Bug-Out!, Screech, Masterpiece.

Totally unrelated: when I was a kid I asked my mother why God let hurricanes happen.  She used my SSP as an analogy and I’ve never forgotten it, but that’s another post.

Donations to 2004 Presidential Campaigns

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Here’s a cool little Google Maps mashup.  It shows the breakdown of donations to the Republican and Democrat presidential campaigns by zip code.  Here’s the breakdown for my zip code, 27023:

Total Number of Contributors: 26
Number of Democrats: 9
Money from Democrats: $5,310
Percent from Democrats: 19.762%
Number of Republicans: 17
Money from Republicans: $21,560
Percent from Republicans: 80.238%

If you visit the page of results you can also see a map with the familiar Google Maps balloons on them.  Click on the balloon and you can see exactly who gave how much to whom for each donation in the zip code.  Good way to see who your neighbors are supporting.

Here’s the breakdown of my brother’s zip-code, 22314, just a stone’s throw from D.C.:
Total Number of Contributors:
629
Number of Democrats: 326
Money from Democrats: $350,075
Percent from Democrats: 44.527%
Number of Republicans: 303
Money from Republicans: $436,142
Percent from Republicans: 55.473%

Wannabe Congressional Spam, Part Deux

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Earlier this month I posted about a piece of SPAM I received from the campaign of Rory Blake.  Well, damnit, I just got another one from them.  Let me share it with you:

Subject: Let’s Do It!

Body:
$10 for Change

 
 This is your year: the year for change.


You can reclaim your government. You can make it once again a government of the people, by the people, and, yes, even for the people. It’s been a few years since you could say that, hasn’t it?


Yes, you
can reclaim your government, by changing it, one Congressional seat at
time – beginning with your own, North Carolina’s Sixth Congressional
District. You can help elect Rory Blake.


And if you were to do this, how much would it be worth to you?

How much would be worth to you to reclaim your government?

$10, maybe? After all, your share of the national debt is about $30,000. So $10 is not so much, is it?


Well, that’s what we need from you. Yep, that’s it: $10. Now, be honest, that didn’t really hurt, did it?

Why?
Well, let’s face it. No one knows Rory Blake’s name. But everyone knows
Howard Coble’s. So we need to get
Rory’s name out there, around the District. How? The old fashioned way:
signs and bumper stickers. And the new way: a Podcast. $10 from you is
what we need. Just click here to contribute.

$10 for Change.
Your contribution of just $10 will tell the people of this District
that Rory Blake is your
candidate. $10 will buy the signs and bumper stickers and Podcast you
need to do your part to reclaim your government. Amazing, isn’t it?
Just $10.
No joke. If everyone on our mailing list contributes $10, we’ll be able
to buy the signs and bumper stickers and Podcast we need.

Of course, we would very much appreciate a larger contribution, but, honestly, $10 will do it for now. After all, we are Democrats, not Republicans. And we are dealing with smaller vendors, not Halliburton.

When?
Now. Today. We need to start putting signs in our yards and stickers on
our cars and a Podcast on the Internet – today. Today. Click here to contribute. Now. Today.

How? This is the easy part. Actblue.com provides contribution services for Democratic candidates. Actblue
has collected millions for Democratic candidates all across America, and Actblue is collecting money for Rory Blake.
So you can trust Actblue when they ask for your credit card number. It’s quick. It’s simple: just click right here to contribute.

$10. That’s it. Not the thousands of dollars the PAC’s are giving to Howard Coble. Just $10. And all you have to do is click  here to contribute.

We can do this: $10 at a time.
To give yours, just click here.

Democracy … not corruption. That’s Rory’s promise to us. And that’s our promise to each other.

You can do this.
We can do this. We will do this.

Pass the Word.
We can make this happen. Forward this to everyone you know in the Sixth
District who wants change this year. Invite them to help make this
happen too. Tell
them to visit the campaign Web site, www.blake06.com. Invite them to contribute $10 by clicking here.


Remember, this is our country. This is our government. This is our year.

We can do this. No … We will do this. And with your help, we will begin today: click here.

I have to tell you that writing like this makes me wonder if he’s running for Congress or VP of the 10th grade class. My favorite line, besides the "Let’s Do It" cheerleading is, "Of course, we would very much appreciate a larger contribution, but, honestly, $10 will do it for now. After all, we are Democrats, not Republicans. And we are dealing with smaller vendors, not Halliburton." 

That’s the dumbest damn thing I’ve heard in a long time. Democrats don’t get big bucks from big business?  Please.  They’d be a lot smarter to play the outsider card, not the Democrat card.  Right now the general feeling is that those in power are dirty or corrupted by power regardless of their party affiliation.  They should play up their candidate’s outsider status and the fact that he isn’t a member of the club of the corrupted.  In fairness the message starts out with that theme but they can’t resist pulling the partisan card and killing it.  After all they might be able to pull in the independent or disillusioned Republican votes if they played it right.

Oh, and let me again point out that sending a partisan message to a stated independent who doesn’t even live in the congressional district their running for is probably not the best idea.  That tends to lead to pissy blog posts about how stupid you’re being.

The Mass-Affluent

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I learned alot from a three-paragraph blog post on BusinessWeek’s Hot Property blog.  For instance:

  • The Mass-Affluent: 33 million households that have investable assets between $100,000 and $1 million
  • The Mass-Affluent’s assets: 37% of their total assets tied up in real estate (23% in principal residences, 14% in investment real estate)
  • The wealthier’s assets: 21% (13% principal residence, 8% investment real estate) for those with investable assets of $1 million or more

And then there’s this scary quote:

No doubt, some of those mass affluent are the ones who were sold the
interest-only mortgages. That’s why their financial squeeze is only
just beginning as interest rates rise.

“Stupid in America” is Pretty Smart

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John Stossel is my favorite TV news guy.  I don’t always agree with him (usually do though) but I find his reporting to be thoughtful and I enjoy that he takes on everyday issues from a kind of common-sense point of view.

Earlier this year he took on public schools in his piece “Stupid in America” and once again I found myself agreeing with him.  He points out that we pay way too much for sub-par education and he feels that the best way to fix the problem is let parents choose the schools their kids go to.  Amen, brother.

Each year we get to see a multitude of new teachers via our kids.  You can always tell which teachers are engaging the kids because those are the subjects they talk about.  Usually, but not always, their grades are better in those classes but they always LEARN more in those classes.  Fortunately we’ve found the vast majority of their teachers to be at least average and some to be very good.

When we moved here we limited our search to a very finite area because of the schools.  It was the number one driver of our decision and we were fortunate that we had the flexibility to choose our location based on school performance. If we didn’t then I’d want the opportunity to get my kids into a decent school on my own.  Hey if I’m going to pay the bills (taxes) then I should be able to say where I’m getting the service.  And if you don’t give me that choice then you should set it up so I can be part of the hiring/firing process.  One way or another there needs to be accountability and the best way I know is the free-market system.  Perform or go out of business.

Our school system, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, is actually pretty progressive, providing parents with the opportunity to pick between two or three alternate schools if they don’t like their child’s “home” school. They call it “controlled choice.”, and they even provide busing to the alternate schools. It’s not perfect because you’re still stuck if all the choices stink, but still it’s better than most school systems I’ve heard of. 

I’d personally like to see a system similar to what they have in western Europe (it’s described in Stossel’s piece) where each student basically has a price tag on them.  The school that attracts that student gets that student’s funding, so the schools are highly motivated to keep their customers, the students’ parents, happy. With that one fundamental change I think you’d make things like “No Child Left Behind” unnecessary since the parents would be able to leave the underperforming schools behind.

Unfortunately I think there will be ice skating in hell before that happens.

Another Reason I Love Jon Stewart

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The first time I remember seeing Jon Stewart he was hosting some short-lived late night show on CBS (I think it was CBS) and I just stumbled across it.  All I remember is thinking, “Damn that guys short” and “Damn that guys pretty funny.”  So when he took over the Daily Show I made sure to watch and have been rewarded ever since. 

Thanks to Patrick Eakes I just found the commencement address he gave at William & Mary in 04.  It has what is now my favorite quote about the war:

We declared war on terror. We declared war on
terror—it’s not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I’m
sure we’ll take on that bastard ennui.

Of course with his first name you know he has to be brilliant; we “Jon” folks are a pretty sharp lot.