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Archive for the 'Business' Category

Larry Flynt wants money?

January 7th, 2009 by Scott Younker

I came across this today.

Let it soak in a moment…

Okay, so we have Larry Flynt and the Girls Gone Wild guy (who I could have sworn was in jail for tax evasion or something along those lines) asking the government for a $5 billion bailout. Their DVD sales have slipped, but their website growth has actually increased in the past year.

And their reasoning for this is not that they need money but rather:

[T]he industry leaders said the issue is a nation in need. “People are too depressed to be sexually active,” Flynt said in the statement. “This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex.”

“With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It’s time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly.”

I am as pro-porn as the next pro-porn person, but this is just god-damn ridiculous. What I’d like to see is exactly what Flynt’s plan is for rejuvenating the sex lives of Americans. Personally, I’m doing alright, but still …

I guess we’ll see how broken the government is depending on what they do with Flynt’s request (ignore it, I imagine).

A final note, the quotes from that article are the most amazingly vague quotes I’ve seen in some time, and we just had an election.

How Do You Spell “Scapegoat”? “D-E-R-E-G-U-L-A-T-I-O-N”

December 8th, 2008 by Vincent

Over at Reason, Catherine Mangu-Ward has a long piece that helps to deflate the notion that Congressional Democrats and many on the left have been pimping lately: namely that “excessive deregulation” is chiefly to blame for our current financial woes.

I don’t really have time to summarise the whole thing right now, so I’ll just offer this quote:

Letting Freddie and Fannie get away with murder wasn’t deregulation. It was bad governance. And letting deregulation take the primary blame for a credit-fueled housing bubble and its aftermath isn’t an argument. It’s misdirection.

Today’s economy has done a lot to discredit the free market in the minds of a lot of people. Nanci Pelosi and friends are doing their best to put even more nails in the coffin and drooling over the prospect of the Federal Government assuming even more control over the commanding heights of the economy. Why let them go completely unchallenged? Read the rest.

Alan Pittman Spreads The Stupid

November 9th, 2008 by CJ Ciaramella

Eugene Weekly special investigator Alan Pittman has a great, definitely-not-socialist article in this week’s EW titled “Spread the wealth in Oregon.” Here’s the lede:

With Barack Obama popular in Oregon while calling for a tax increase on those earning more than $250,000, could such a tax plan work here?

Tell me, Alan Pittman! I certainly can’t guess what your answer will be.

If Oregon state income taxes were raised 10 percent on those earning more than $250,000 adjusted gross income, taxes on everyone else could be cut about 4 percent, according to an EW analysis of state tax return data. That’s an average savings of $86.

Why, what a novel idea! It’s practically foolproof. For example, if I was an evil, evil rich person, I certainly wouldn’t move to a different state to avoid getting raped by taxes. Nope, I would sit tight and make less money. All that stuff about people being “rational actors” is just plain phooey. In fact, I’m sure the wealthy would flock to Oregon! Nothing drives entrepreneurs and business into a state like a draconian state income tax. Hold on, I’m going to quote something else silly Pittman said:

Oregon’s wealthiest could easily afford a tax increase. In the last three decades the income of the wealthiest 1 percent of Oregonians has doubled while the wage of the typical Oregon worker has dropped slightly after adjusting for inflation, according to the Oregon Center for Public Policy (OCPP).

Oh yes, easily. But who cares if they can afford it? It’s their fault for being so inconsiderately wealthy in the first place. Pittman is right; the rich are a resource to be harvested, like timber or zinc.

By the way, this isn’t Pittman’s first call to action against the landed gentry. I’m going to go out on a limb and venture that he is not in the $250,000 income bracket. Just a guess.

The End of Capitalism?

October 21st, 2008 by Vincent

Not so much:

The point here is simple: Trust no one who declares an end to a system as complex and successful as capitalism, or who sees the current crisis as the long-awaited fulfillment of Marx’s voodoo economics.

[…]

[C]apitalism, globalization, and the free market aren’t going anywhere. Yes, unemployment is still only 6 percent—it will most certainly rise—and the stock market isn’t quite in full collapse, but is suffering from periodic seizures. And indeed, we are most certainly heading towards a severe recession. But capitalism is durable, and has sustained itself in far worse situations. So ignore the disaster socialists: They are, after all, only taking advantage of the current crisis to try a little shock therapy of their own.

Etc., ad nauseam, and all that. The stick that poked the hornet’s nest is laying over here.

Oh, and unrepentant Marxist and grudgingly repentant Stalinist historian Eric Hobsbawm has criticized capitalism. I guess the verdict is in, then, huh?

Blowing Sunshine…

September 16th, 2008 by Vincent

Calling it “a ray of economic sunshine”, Doug Chuck Sheketoff at Blue Oregon heralds Oregon’s impending minimum wage hike from $7.95 to $8.40, marveling over the fact that it will mean “an extra $936 a year for a family with one full-time minimum wage worker.”

As one person in the comments section of his post mentions, this is probably going to have consequences for  small employers who may have to cut hours (or even jobs) to continue to make the bottom line.

Almost comically, another commenter replies that, in order to offset the harm of the wage increase, business owners should… you know… just raise prices a little bit.

And the wheel goes ’round…

[EDIT 09/17]

Apologies to  Chuck Sheketoff for somehow mixing up his first name. Fixed now.

Losing Georgia

August 11th, 2008 by Vincent

Russia’s invasion of Georgia on Friday has been illustrative in a number of ways:

First, it’s now clear that Putin’s Russia is undeniably set upon a course of regaining at least de facto control over its former satellites, some of which have been resisting Russian and Soviet expansion for centuries.

Second, NATO’s almost complete irrelevance has been laid bare. If the member states’ reluctance to contribute combat troops in Afghanistan weren’t enough, NATO’s dithering on admitting Georgia because of Russian security concerns means that Russia basically has unofficial veto power over NATO decisions.

Third, and related to the above point, Europe’s commitment to resisting Russian expansionism can probably no longer be counted on in any serious way, given that the economies of Europe are heavily dependent on Russian oil and natural gas exports. Standing up against Russian aggression, especially if Russia establishes control over Georgian pipelines, would be economically hazardous for the rest of Europe. It’s likely that the most we can expect is a few sternly-worded expressions of “concern” and efforts to “resolve” any conflicts involving Russia, which the Russians would be more-or-less free to ignore unless they were generally favorable to their interests.

Finally, the essentially anti-American and anti-Israeli character of the so-called “anti-imperialist” crowd has been confirmed. There have been few expressions of “solidarity” with Georgia and none of the lionization we’ve seen heaped upon “the resistance” in Iraq and elsewhere (remember “We are all Hizb’Allah now!“?).

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The Kids Aren’t Alright

August 5th, 2008 by CJ Ciaramella

The City of Eugene is currently considering an ordinance that would allow the city to ban alleged lawbreakers from the downtown area for up to 90 days. And by “alleged lawbreakers” they mean “goddamn street kids.”

The proposal was spurred in large part by Betty Snowden, owner of the Glamour Girls and Guys shop in downtown (and host of the totally awesome “Hats Off” public access show). A couple of weeks ago, Snowden testified before the City Council about the constant harassment she faces. From the R-G article:

Snowden, who is black, said the conflicts have escalated in the past year. She refuses to let the mostly young people congregate in front of her store, and she said they are retaliating against her with threats, racist epithets and vandalism. She said she was struck by a young man last year. The gangs, as she calls them, vomit, urinate and defecate in front of her store when it’s closed.

[…]

“When we get there, ‘nigger’ is already (written) on our door,” she said, her voice rising, mixed with anger and heartbreak. “Then they’ll pass by. This isn’t three or four of them at a time. This is 20 or 30 of them, passing by over and over and over (saying) ‘You nigger. You bitch. You are going to be killed.’ This goes on on a daily basis.”

And from today’s R-G article:

The morning after the article was published, Snowden said she found human feces in front of her door.

Last week, surveillance cameras that Snowden uses to monitor the front of her store videotaped a young man ramming a bicycle into the front door, and other young men trying to pry plywood off the storefront. The plywood was covering a window broken in an earlier vandalism.

Mayor Kitty Piercy said she was reluctant to give her support to the proposal because it allowed for people who were only “alleged criminals” to be evicted and denied them a trial. I agree that the proposal is a little odd and sounds hard to enforce, which is why I plan on introducing another proposal, the “Spray Street Kids With Pressure Washers and Soap Until They Leave Act of 2008.”

In all seriousness, though, the real solution is greater police presence, which thanks to the testimony of Snowden is now happening.

Selling Water to Fund State Programs

August 4th, 2008 by Vincent

Kari Chisholm at Blue Oregon is expressing shock! and indignation! at a new plan floated by Oregon Republicans: selling water to water-starved states like Nevada and California (though interestingly, his link to the Republicans’ “Leadership Fund” doesn’t mention the plan at all). He quotes Jeff Mapes at the OregonLive blogs:

David Nelson, R-Pendleton, who convinced the Senate R caucus to take up this idea, insists that times have changed and that Oregon could be a Saudi Arabia of water. “We wouldn’t allow them to take it,” he says of other regions. “We would sell it to them.” And he adds that it could make the kind of profits that will help support a level of state services that the taxpayers aren’t willing to fund.

Mapes points out that there are several problems with the plan, not the least of which is that Oregon is already embroiled in all sorts of water-rights litigation involving Native tribes, farmers, and fishermen. Such criticisms are certainly fair and, as the continuing controversies surrounding the Columbia and Klamath flows illustrate, the issues involved are delicate and often intractable.

Chisholm, on the other hand, seems to feel that the idea itself is beyond comprehension, having little to add aside from

Seriously.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Perhaps Kari Chisholm is unaware that the Bonneville Power Administration already sells massive amounts of hydroelectric power from the Columbia to neighboring states and that California already gets huge amounts of water from sources like the Colorado River, which has experienced increasingly smaller flows as places like Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico (which is legally entitled to part of the Colorado River flow), to say nothing of California itself, require increasingly large amounts of water to sustain growth.

Or perhaps he does know that electricity generated by the BPA is consumed in other parts of the country and is simply under the same misapprehension as one of the people posting in his comments section and believes that BPA power is simply given away free to people outside the Pacific Northwest rather than being put to good use near where the power is generated.

Either way, and admitting that there are some real potential issues that arise if we start selling water to California and elsewhere, why does Chisholm think that the plan is so utterly beyond the pale? If the water can be spared without endangering fish runs and Tribal fishing rights, etc., one fails to see how making up for budget shortfalls by selling water is supposedly so outrageous.

After all, we all know that the budget isn’t going to shrink itself since taxpayers aren’t terribly excited about taking even more money out of their pockets and the government isn’t willing to alienate interest groups by cutting programs. It’s clear we can’t rely forever on Band-Aid measures like Federal timber payments, so if a profit can be made using some of Oregon’s natural resources, and it can be done without endangering other interests that Oregonians have decided are important (fish runs, etc.), it seems incredibly short-sighted to pass up that opportunity.

[EDIT]

Then again, maybe Kari Chisholm was too caught up in basically calling Gordon Smith a fatty poo-poo head to be bothered to write anything more substantial about potential plans to exploit Oregon’s natural resources.

KULTUR KAMPF – McGriddle Edition

July 31st, 2008 by Timothy

I was going to post this as a comment, but it’s pretty goddamn long.

In comments to this thread, commenter protagony writes:

and even taking insurance out of the picture, obesity effects other people besides the individual, for example that persons children, who will probably grow up to burden the system as well.

If you take the things government does to disburse this effect across many, many pocket books, you’ll notice that being a fat ass only kills you. I might also suggest that learning the difference between affect and effect will help you communicate your unfortunate ideas more clearly. I’m just looking out for you there, mate.

What you’re neglecting is that the same informational problems faced by the poor are faced, in aggregate, by the government. In fact, third-party decision makers have less information than first-party decision makers do so you’re looking at even more informational difficulty. This LA ban is especially ironilicious given that the said same politicians worked hard to keep out Wal-Mart and its large, cheap selection of produce. If South LA is anything like San Antonio, it wouldn’t surprise me if many times the produce quality is actually better at Wal-Mart than it is at the local grocery. About 60% of the time that’s true for me, and I live in a fairly affluent part of town.

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This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

July 17th, 2008 by Vincent

Reason is running an interesting article about the demise of Microsoft’s “PlayForSure” music standard and the legal obstacles that have been put in place to prevent people from circumventing DRM (digital rights management) schemes that supposedly protect “content” from unscrupulous computer users:

Convinced that the tight integration between iTunes and the iPod was the secret to Apple’s success, Microsoft abandoned the PlaysForSure approach, shuttered the MSN Music Store, and built the Zune around yet another proprietary format.

As a result, music in the PlaysForSure format will not play—for sure or otherwise— on a Zune music player.

 …

In ordinary circumstances, you would expect entrepreneurs or volunteers to pick up Microsoft’s slack and offer software to convert those old recordings to another format.But the Digital Millennium Copyright Act transforms what would normally be a promising business opportunity into a federal felony. Not only will PlaysForSure music not play on a Zune, but the DMCA makes it illegal, punishable by up to five years in jail on the first offence, for third parties to offer utilities to bridge that gap…  Under the DMCA, no one may “circumvent” a copy protection scheme without the permission of the platform’s owner.

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Possible 2010 Ballot Initiative to Legalize Pot

July 9th, 2008 by CJ Ciaramella

Proponents of legalizing pot have begun collecting signatures to place an initiative on the 2010 ballot that would decriminalize marijuana in Oregon. Sounds groovy, right? Well …

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission would manage the program, which would license approved individuals to cultivate the product for sale.

Oy vey! If you thought the OLCC’s alcohol regulations were asinine, just wait until they have control of weed. Even if passed, I wonder how effective the program would be when citizens are given the choice between trying to navigate all of the OLCC’s sure-to-be maddening regulations or just going to a black market dealer.

A similar initiative might end up on California’s ballot this November.

Payday Lenders Cash Out of Oregon

July 8th, 2008 by CJ Ciaramella

As The Oregonian reports, payday lenders have all but disappeared from Oregon due to broad-sweeping legislation that put a cap on the interest rates they could charge. The moral crusade, led by the Oregon Legislature to get some feel-good, populist approval, enjoyed widespread support from consumer advocacy groups who claimed payday lenders were “predatory.”

Indeed, everyone’s been slapping each other on the back and declaring the “end of the predatory lending crisis,” but have they really quashed the insufferable evil of short-term, high-risk loans? No. (Surprise!)

In Oregon, officials now worry most about residents going into debt with payday lenders on the Internet, Tatman said.

Internet lenders selling to Oregonians are required by law to register with the state and abide by its regulations, but many do not.

It is difficult for the state to control Internet payday lenders who charge triple-digit interest rates, Tatman said. “If we could just get our arms around the Internet better to make sure people don’t jump out of the fire and into the frying pan.”

Who could have seen that coming? Why, It’s almost as if people seek out services to fulfill their needs! And if they can’t find a loan on the Internet, they can still seek out an illegal loan shark who will break their fingers if they’re late on payment. Huzzah!

Also, I haven’t heard a peep out of the Legislature about other “predatory” ventures such as the Oregon Lottery and its video poker machines. Is it any coincidence that payday lenders would often open up offices next to establishments that owned video poker machines? Oh, but that money goes into the state coffers, so it must be alright. I guess the moral of the story is the government won’t abide competition when it comes to swindling people.

Reason also has a write-up of the story.

Sorry, you’re going to need a permit for that

June 4th, 2008 by CJ Ciaramella

PSU student Adam Sweet and his brother started a part-time moving business with their pickup truck. Soon business was flourishing, and they were successful enough to afford a real moving van. They christened their new, full-time outfit “2Brothers Moving Company.”

Imagine their surprise when the state fined them and towed their truck because they didn’t have a “Oregon Intrastate Certificate to Transport Household Goods or Passengers.” In the state of Oregon, all moving companies must be licensed. Now Sweet, with the help of the Pacifica Legal Foundation, is suing Oregon Attorney General Hardy Meyers, claiming the licensing system violates his 14th Amendment rights and provides “an unequal and unconstitutionally protectionist advantage to established moving companies who are able to limit their own prospective competition.”

Here’s what Sweet means by “protectionist advantage”: Even if 2Brothers had applied for the license, they probably wouldn’t have got it. The state notifies all other moving companies about a new application, and if they object, the application will be denied. According to the PLF, every company for the last two years that has applied for the license has been denied. This reminds me of something. What’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, right:

Cartel: a combination of independent commercial or industrial enterprises designed to limit competition or fix prices

Surely the fact that 2Brothers were significantly undercutting regular moving companies had nothing to do with the state bringing the hammer down on them. Here’s the case complaint, and there’s a video from the PLF after the jump, complete with sweet graphic representations of economic oppression.

Update: Crossposted over at Oregon Catalyst.

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Eugene fines local bar for shrubbery, sense-making

May 7th, 2008 by CJ Ciaramella

The city of Eugene has fined the Horsehead bar $12,960 dollars for a row of arborvitae in the bar’s outdoor smoking area. The city’s smoking ordinance mandates that at least 75 percent of a smoking area be open to outdoor air, and, according to the city planning commission, that row of plants constituted a wall, violating the ordinance.

The owners of the Horsehead are understandably pissed, especially since they already spent $10,000 tearing down the old fence that used to enclose the area in an attempt to conform to the 2005 smoking ordinance. The new row of arborvitae was supposed to allow air to circulate and give patrons privacy from downtown Eugene’s omnipresent street kids and hobos.

Apparently the city of Eugene has a very loose definition of “wall” because the planning commission also deemed the wrought-iron fence around Jameson’s outdoor area violated the code. Patrons are no longer allowed to smoke there, either.

Just another ridiculous moment in the annals of bureaucracy. For all those interested, there will be a smoke-in on Monday, May 12, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the EMU amphitheater to protest all such asinine ordinances and laws targeting smokers. See you there.

P.S. The R-G story I linked to up top has a picture with the offending “wall” in the background. See for yourself. If that’s a wall, then I’m the bastard child of Elvis and Mother Teresa.

P.P.S. Hey everyone, we’re on Fark. So, uh … go us.

Cleaning the Filthy, Filthy Survival Center!!

May 2nd, 2008 by Amy

Need I say more?

Edit: I was very drunk when I made this post originally. Apparently some peoples’ idea of cleaning out Suite One doesn’t involve boxes, several hand-trucks, and a U-Haul, but merely some Simple Green and a recycling tub. To each his own, I suppose.

If you’re interested in assisting with the Suite One clean-up, considering it is “filthy, filthy”, click the link above, or just join the group and encourage my idea of cleaning-up!

P.S. Drew, are you circumcised I’ll ask this at a more appropriate time.