Ed Talks Money Management

For only the sixth time in its history, the Dow Jones lost more than 500 points today, dropping about 3% of its value. This is small potatoes compared to Black Monday in which it lost 22% of its value in 1987. Some of the other big drops were related to political fears such as the outbreak of War in Europe in 1914 and the 9-11 attack in 2001.

I called the children and assured them that we had lost not one penny in the crash, so I see no great change in the ability to pay tuition. We didn't lose anything on Black Monday in 1987, either. In fact, we haven't had any stocks since the kids were young in the early eighties.

I was born with stock. My grandmother used to say, "There are shanty town Irish and silk stocking Irish, but we're stock and bond Irish." She also used to tell me the first investment was in education, because when the market crashed, no one could take away the education.

I got rid of the stock I had inherited (and the very little I bought on my own) because I was suing corporations. I did not want any issue that I had a conflict of interest by keeping stock in companies I may want to sue. Beyond that, an incipient ill-informed Marxism made it harder and harder for me to own that stock.

I was a naive quite conservative Texas Democrat when I showed up in Chile in 1972. ITT's involvement in undermining and eventually murdering Salvador Allende was a story that unfolded both while I was there and then over the years. It was not the sort of thing to give you a warm and cuddly feeling about the corporations, and this was before I heard of the likely Heinrich Himmler connection to ITT. The more I saw of corporations, the more absolutely evil they looked to me. Union Carbide and the Bhopal disaster pretty well sealed it in 1984.

Besides, I've always managed to spend about 110% of my income, no matter how high or low it is. It is helpful to be morally opposed to investing in stock when you can't make yourself save money anyway.

The kids are well-educated, though. So today I am gratified that I have not taken the foolish course of investing for retirement or our old age. Nothing ventured, nothing lost.

Freedom of Speech and Freedom From Quartered Troops, Illegal Searches, Hopes for Penumbras and Emanations and other Mournfully Expectant Desires

Granddaddy of all Bloggers

WWMD

"I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more, as I grow older; for, methinks, custom allows to age more liberty of prating, and more indiscretion of talking of a man's self." The granddaddy of all bloggers (hereinafter GOAB) tells us.

What greater security in freedom of speech GOAB offers from "custom;" far more constant, than that whippersnapper, the First Amendment.

This brings me to further discussion of the Bill of Rights, in particular the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 9th and 10th.

First, to my Primo (that is, both directly descended from the McGroarty family of County Donegal, by way of Wilkes-Barre, Penn.--everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's day) and his concern for the 1st Amendment. Also, to offer to him the sincerest form of flattery.

The First Amendment is gone. Justice Holmes burned it in the burning theater. Adams and Woodrow Wilson jailed it during time of war. And then most deadly of all, the corporations bought it: Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth.

You and I, Primo, can say most anything we want because we have no power. No one cares because no one listens. But imagine if either one of us owned one of the big five. Only then would we find out if First Amendment provides any protection. My hunch is that just as free speech disappears in time of war, a clear and present danger would exist if either of us were in a position of power.

Now back to the antinomianism. Neither your hero Voltaire, nor my hero GOAB had the benefit of the Bill of Rights. The salvation of society, in the unlikely event it occurs, will not be by law, but by grace. The Bill of Rights, however graceful, is still law.

Now the 3rd Amendment, alone, seems still to be around and strong. I search the house each day and find no troops quartered.

The 4th Amendment appears to have been repealed with the war on drugs. I did not read about the repeal in the advance sheets, but try to keep someone out of the slam on the flimsy grounds that he has not been secure in his person, house, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Fellow blogger, BobbyWC describes his hope for the 9th Amendment. The 9th and 10th Amendments describe the rights and powers being retained by the people. These amendments had a brief flowering with the Right of Privacy being found in the "penumbras and emanations" of the Amendments. Outside of this pleasing phrase, not much satisfaction has come from 9 and 10.

Charles L. Black in his slim book, A New Birth of Freedom, argues the Declaration of Independence, in particular the "right to the pursuit of happiness" be carried down into and through the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. He argues the result "will be a thoroughgoing and never-ending working-over of the regime of law..." leaving folks alone to pursue happiness, which he thinks is not a bad thing.

Life in the Fast Lane

Touring Downtown

Thanks H-E-B

HEB carts are an important means of transportation in our neighborhood. Kathy and I will sit on our balcony and watch the carts go by filled with kids or lawn care tools or personal effects--and sometimes even groceries.

There are other forms of transportation as well: a lot of walking, biking and motorized wheelchair driving from the high rise nursing home down the street. There are also cars, monster HEB grocery trucks that set off the neighbor's burglar alarms and skateboards. But the signature vehicle of the neighborhood has to be the HEB shopping cart.

I am not sure how you get one, but it is clear, when you are through with it you can leave it on the side of the street. Every day a guy with a pickup truck drives around and loads HEB carts into the truck which he apparently takes back to the store on Elizabeth Street.

At first there was no reason everyone could not leave the store with a cart, but now metal pilings have been driven in the ground to create a gate around the carts at the store. Someone told me (a clerk?, a customer?, a panhandler?) that I would have to pay a $5 deposit if I wanted one.

HEB appears to be out of character in its generosity in allowing the use of the carts. Maybe this is not true and there is cottage industry of threats and bullying surrounding the carts and who gets to use them and who brings them back. I have not tried, since both of our cars usually run and when mine doesn't, Kathy will sometimes let me borrow hers.

When I say the generosity would be out of character for HEB, I am aware that HEB advertises they give away turkeys and other food at Thanksgiving and Christmas and send food to Mexican orphanages. Good for them. But my impression of the company stems more from years of reports of mistreatment of employees and having customers arrested for shoplifting and fighting customers or employees who had the temerity to slip and fall on the premises. From nightmare experiences, HEB could strike fear in the hearts of some people just like other initials like CIA, KGB and IRS.

Charles Butt waged a political campaign to make sure no one could sue them. And pity the poor Lopez supermarket when an HEB came to the neighborhood.

I still shop there, of course. No principle of corporate bad citizenship is likely to overcome my desire for convenience and cheap groceries. Back in the day when I was trying to observe a boycott, I would sometimes eat grapes and lettuce and I readily hop on a Boeing manufactured jet and use DuPont and AT&T products although I rank those corporations with those that sold opium in China and colonized India. Anyway, I don't claim to be part of the solution as a consumer.

Grocery stores are notoriously difficult to unionize and as food delivery becomes more complex, food coops seem like romantic dreams. And every attempt I have made at a victory garden has failed, although I did enjoy the worms I got at the composting class. Alas, readers true, any thoughts about improving the way we get food?

More Jail Musings

"When is my death row job available?"

Archer Daniel Midland could do executions cheaper

All rise!

Finally some real judicial economy.

Cameron County does not have the worst jail in the world. In fact it is not even the worst jail in the Valley. On a scale of bad, worse, horrible, the standings would be Cameron County, Willacy Detention Center, with La Villa coming in last. These are all places where federal prisoners are kept, but the last two are privately owned facilities.

My impression has been that La Villa is by far the worst of the three and lately there seem to be fewer Brownsville prisoners housed there. Maybe the U.S. Marshal's office finally gave up on them. I had one client in La Villa who tells me he screamed for twelve hours trying to get attention during an appendicitis attack. The other guys in the jail were screaming with him. He didn't die and after his surgery, he cleaned up pretty well, but it could have been bad. He was in jail on a charge of entering the country illegally.

There are certain things that privatization may make cheaper, but depending on the goals involved, it sure doesn't make things better. Private jails may make a profit, but they don't do much for the quality of justice.

Why not sell the courthouses to Walmart and allow them to use Walmart greeters as judges? This would be cheap. The same for executions. Executions could be contracted out to Archer-Daniels-Midland. They could use the same employees used in the slaughterhouses. This would be cheap.