I have been remiss in bragging enough on my oldest nephew, Marc, who was an integral part in making the new C6RS's - first one delivered on the air to Jay Leno (who else?!). Also, he sent me a pic of my brother's car, a 1967 Camaro RS/SS convertible. Marc inherited it after my brother died and I've often wondered how it was, given my affection for classic cars.
"I can finally talk about the top secret project I have been working on for the past six months. If you or any of your friends are interested in seeing it go to www.prattmillerc6rs.com. I made all the Carbon fiber body and duct work for this car. There are some great pix on their website. Although I made a Mosler MT900 for George Lucas and Dale Earnhardt Jr. crashed a C6R I made , I think Jay Leno is a bit more famous so this is by far my greatest claim to fame. So check it out it is beautiful. ~Marc"
Gallery
Monday, September 29, 2008
Bragging Rights
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Fey's Palin on SNL vs. The Real Couric Interview
Scarily, the SNL spoof is hardly a spoof! Check out the similarities to the real Couric interviews:
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Let's Play "Wall Street Bailout"
Rep. Kaptur speaks to Congress:
"For years now, they’ve told us that we can’t afford—that the government providing healthcare to all people is just unimaginable; it can’t be done. We don’t have the money to rebuild our infrastructure. We don’t have the money to wipe out poverty. We can’t do it. But all of a sudden, yeah, we do have $700 billion for a bailout of Wall Street."
-- Sen. Bernie Sanders, the longest-serving independent member of Congress in American history.
Raleigh Crime Map
Found this while trolling the N&O. Quite a listing of crimes for a single day (when I checked 25Sept)
Raleigh Crime Map
Friday, September 26, 2008
For The Bon Vivant On A Budget
From a NYTimes article by Eric Asimov - he lists several Beaujolais, which I do think of as economical but not much else than again, I still think of George DeBeoff when I think of that wine.
Here are his French treasures under $20, listed alphabetically:
Domaine des Aubuisières/Bernard Fouquet Vouvray Cuvée de Silex 2007, $16.99
Rich and lively with minerals and a touch of honey. (Importer: Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, Pa.)
Bernard Baudry Chinon Les Granges 2006, $17.99
Pliant and fruity with a healthy dollop of earth. (Louis/Dressner Selections, New York)
Pierre Chermette Domaine du Vissoux Beaujolais 2007, $14.99
Pale, pure, absolutely dry and refreshing. Textbook Beaujolais. (Weygandt-Metzler)
Clos Roche Blanche Touraine Cuvée Gamay 2007, $15.99
Juicy and minerally; my Thanksgiving wine for crowds. (Louis/Dressner Selections)
Marc Kreydenweiss Costières de Nîmes Perrières 2005, $15.99
Felicitous combination of fruit, funk and earth. (Wilson Daniels, St. Helena, Calif.)
Marc Ollivier Domaine de la Pépière Muscadet Sèvre et Maine 2007, $12.99
All texture and tanginess, not extravagant fruit. (Louis/Dressner Selections)
Château d’Orschwihr Alsace Riesling Bollenberg 2006, $18.99
A dry Alsace nod to earth and flowers. (T. Edward Wines, New York)
Thierry Puzelat Touraine KO In Côt We Trust 2006, $19.99
Loire malbec, gorgeous, pure and delicious. (Louis/Dressner Selections)
Domaine Rimbert St.-Chinian Les Travers de Marceau 2006, $13.99
Light, juicy, floral and tangy. (Jenny & François/U.S.A. Wine Imports, New York)
Domaine Sainte Barbe Mâcon L’Expression du Chardonnay 2006, $15.99
Lively and fresh, with minerals and citrus. (A Becky Wasserman Selection/Willette Wines, New York)
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Having a child is the single best predictor that a person will go bankrupt
This is from an op-ed in the Harvard Gazette from Harvard Law professor, Elizabeth Warren. Though the article is dated 2003, it's very reticent today.
"Even though the modern two-earner family brings in 75% more inflation-adjusted income than the one-earner family of a generation ago, it actually has less discretionary income -- and far more financial instability. The primary reason: The decline of public education has dramatically raised the price of housing in good school districts, prompting parents to overstretch on mortgages and bid up the price of a middle-class life.
Encouraging this trend is a deregulated lending industry, which has adopted the step-right-up antics of carnival barkers. Thirty years ago, the typical family had no choice but to scrape together a 20% downpayment. Today, it's often 3% down, and Americans are urged by Internet lenders to take out 120% mortgages. "In their desperate rush to save their children from failing schools," the authors write, "families are literally spending themselves into bankruptcy."
At the same time, these middle-class couples are working in an era of unprecedented job insecurity, when even top-tier MBAs can easily get whacked. Salaries as well as health insurance have become a now-you-have-it, now-you-don't proposition. Since the 1970s, the risk of involuntary job loss has soared 150%, while the chance of losing health coverage has increased 49%.
The research includes a survey of more than 2,000 families who had filed for bankruptcy, told a different tale from familiar bankruptcy sagas of the elderly, the young, or the profligate. It also draws upon 30 years of bankruptcy, U.S. Census, and Bureau of Labor Statistics data to provide a provocative reason why so many of the supposed-to-be-rich -- people with college degrees, good jobs, and their own homes -- have become the newly poor.
"We discovered that having a child is the single best predictor that a person will go bankrupt," she says. By the end of this decade, one of every seven families with children will file for bankruptcy.
Even more surprising to Warren were the causes of this financial breakdown, which she assumed would implicate the battered culprit of overconsumption of luxury goods. "I thought I would write a story about too many trips to the mall, too many $200 sneakers, too many Gameboys," says Warren.
But stacks of government data on consumer spending, which she combed through as a Radcliffe Institute Fellow in 2002, proved her hunch wrong. Compared with a generation ago, she found, today's middle-class families earn about 75 percent more (all figures are adjusted for inflation), thanks in large part to Mom's entrance into the work force. But after shelling out for four fixed expenses - mortgage, health insurance, child care or education, and car payments - today's median-income family has less left over, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than the single-income family of the 1970s.
"Families are not going broke over lattes," Warren quips. "Families are going broke over mortgages."
| 'Families are not going broke over lattes. Families are going broke over mortgages.' - Elizabeth Warren, the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law Read more about Warren's research |
There goes the safety net...
Warren has reported her findings, as well as a few proposed solutions, in the book "The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke".
The book's title highlights a central paradox of middle-class families today versus a generation ago: While middle-class families generally need two incomes to make ends meet, it's reliance on that second income (usually Mom's) that's putting them in financial peril. By counting on two incomes to fund the basics of a middle-class lifestyle - including modest homes in safe neighborhoods with good schools and high-quality child care, preschool, after-school care, or college - families have forfeited their safety nets.
"When a family builds its budget around two workers ... they're much more exposed to any economic disruption," says Warren. A generation ago, if the sole breadwinner lost his (or her) job or became disabled, the family had a backup earner who could step into the workforce. Further, reliance on two incomes makes families twice as vulnerable to layoffs.
"The two-income family is like a speeding race car," says Warren. "It goes faster than its one-income counterpart, but if it hits a rock, it careens out of control and crashes."
Making those crashes all the more devastating, Warren adds, is a deregulated consumer credit industry that she calls "a monster that feeds on families in trouble." With both incomes committed to fixed costs, families who hit a financial rock in the road turn to credit cards, mortgage refinancing, and payday lenders - often at ballooning interest costs that drag families into a spiral of debt. More and more often, bankruptcy is the only way out. This year, more children will live through their parents' bankruptcy than their parents' divorce.
Blame it on good schools, safe neighborhoods
How did being middle class get so expensive? The answers run contrary to popular wisdom as well as to Warren's own assumptions. Today's family is spending 21 percent less on clothing, 22 percent less on food - including eating out - and 44 percent less on appliances than they did a generation ago. Warren notes that a combination of lowered production costs and changing lifestyles are at work. Discount stores, meals that include less red meat and are more likely to have been purchased in bulk from wholesalers like Costco, and casual dressing at all ages have spelled savings for families.
Nor are warehouse-sized McMansions to blame; this type of housing is generally not going to middle-class families. Although housing costs have skyrocketed nationwide in the past generation, the size of average homes has grown far more modestly, by less than one room between 1975 and the late 1990s, Warren found.
Instead, Warren points the finger at two concepts dear to the hearts of almost all Americans: safety and education. Both are perceived to be more elusive now than a generation ago, when families bought a house they could afford and sent their children to the school down the street without a second thought. Now, she says, middle-class families are stretching themselves to the breaking point to afford homes in safe neighborhoods and "better" school districts.
Warren insists she's not discussing a phenomenon exclusive to Cambridge academics or the wealthy go-getters of Boston's tony suburbs who measure the subtle distinctions between two towns' outstanding public schools. "I'm talking about families that are weighing the differences between Plymouth and Weymouth," she says, describing two middle-class communities south of Boston.
Not surprisingly, improving public education is one of the policy fixes "The Two-Income Trap" recommends, along with reining in the credit industry and boosting family savings with tax policy. But families need to save themselves, she says, and trimming out the daily latte isn't going to do the trick.
"We recommend that families take a financial fire drill," she says. What would you do if one income disappeared? The answer, she admits, can be painful to contemplate, but she nonetheless encourages families to create a plan - savings to cover the mortgage payment for a few months, valuables to sell, a relative to move in with if circumstances dictate giving up the house - before disaster strikes and debt rages out of control.
"I can't say strongly enough how decent and hardworking these people are," she says. "The cost of being middle class has shot out of the reach of the median family. For millions of families, the situation is getting desperate."
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
CEOs involved in financial meltdown paid millions
I've always had an issue with this subject. Ben & Jerry of the ice cream empire capped their wages at a percentage above the lowest paid employees and if they received a pay increase, everyone received that same percentage. This is what I found today in Triangle Business Journal:
As Congress considers a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street and the banking sector, there are calls to restrict the pay and severance packages for CEOs at investment houses, banks and mortgage lenders poised to benefit from the plan put forward by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke.
Executives from some of the major investment and commercial banks involved in the financial upheaval and bailout earned hefty paychecks last year, according to proxy statements outlining their salaries, bonuses and stock options:
- Lehman Brothers Chairman and CEO Richard Fuld Jr. received compensation valued at $34 million in 2007. Lehman (OTC:LEHMQ) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month.
- Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), which Sunday gained Federal Reserve Bank approval to become a bank holding company, paid Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein $70 million last year. Co-Chief Operating Officers Gary Cohn and Jon Winkereid were granted compensation worth $72.5 million and $71 million, respectively.
- Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack earned $1.6 million. Chief Financial Officer Colin Kelleher got $21 million in compensation last year. Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) this week received approval to become a bank holding company, a shift that allows Morgan and Goldman to bring in bank deposit assets, which offer more solid financial footing.
- Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain was paid $17 million in salary, bonuses and stock options in 2007. Merrill (NYSE:MER) is being acquired by Bank of America (NYSE:BAC). BofA CEO Kenneth Lewis earned $25 million in 2007.
- JP Morgan Chase & Co. Chairman and CEO James Dimon earned $28 million in 2007. Chase (NYSE:JPM) acquired troubled investment house Bear Stearns earlier this year, with the federal government promising to take on as much as $30 billion in Bear assets to help get the deal done.
- Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd received $11.6 million in 2007. His counterpart at Freddie Mac, Richard Syron, brought in $18 million. The federal government announced earlier this month it was taking over the mortgage backers with Herbert Allison to serve as Fannie CEO and David Moffett the new CEO at Freddie.
- Wachovia Corp. Chairman and CEO G. Kennedy Thompson received $21 million in 2007. He was succeeded by Robert Steel as CEO in July. Steel is slated to get a $1 million salary with an opportunity for a $12 million bonus, according to CEO Watch. Wachovia (NYSE:WB) is one of the banks that could be sold in the midst of the financial crisis.
- Seattle-based Washington Mutual (NYSE:WAMU) will pay its new CEO, Alan Fishman, a salary and incentive package worth more than $20 million through 2009 for taking the helm of the battered bank, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.
CEOs of large U.S. corporations averaged $10.8 million in total compensation in 2006, more than 364 times the pay of the average U.S. worker, according to the latest survey by United for a Fair Economy. In 2007, the CEO of a Standard & Poor’s 500 company received, on average, $14.2 million in total compensation, according to The Corporate Library, a corporate governance research firm. The median compensation package received was $8.8 million.
On top of this, it just adds to my disgust to read this minutes later:Homeless Students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC school system to top 3000 this year
Monday, September 22, 2008
3 more stations eyed in gouging probe
Ouch! That smarts!
I'm sure they think they're clever with the headline...
Internal - Realist - Powerful
You Are Internal - Realist - Powerful |
You feel your life is controlled internally. If you want something, you make it happen. You don't wait around for things to go your way. You value your independence and don't like others to have control. You are a realist when it comes to luck. You don't attribute everything to luck, but you do know some things are random. You don't beat yourself up when bad things happen to you... But you do your best to try to make your own luck. When it comes to who's in charge, it's you. Life is a kingdom, and you're the grand ruler. You don't care much about what others think. But they better care what you think! |
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Our Vanishing Hemlocks
I wish I had taken the photo with the waterfall. It was very similar to the mix of green and grey that has taken over our mountains.
This video shows the devastation occurring in our mountains. When I traveled with a dear friend through Maggie Valley and up into Tennessee the end of July, I saw the landscape rife with dead, gray trees. It has been so incredibly pervasive. I knew the drought had been terrible, and still is, in the region, but I suspected a borer or pest was the culprit since all the trees seemed to have the same leaf or needle. The trees have been infested by an introduced insect pest — the hemlock woolly adelgid. Honestly, it was so devastating that I didn't even recognize the trees. I don't even know if the Eastern Hemlock will recover once you see how much we have lost.
Can we save the hemlocks?
The Vanishing Hemlock: a race against time is a documentary to bring attention to the need for action. The government's lack of response has posed the greatest hazard. We can hope enough resources will come in to save the last old-growth stand of our beautiful Easter Hemlocks.
Research is showing how the large stands of hemlocks have created a unique ecosystem and now that is being threatened.
Friday, September 19, 2008
This Past Year's Netlflix Rentals
These are the movies I've rented since this time last year. Some are for my son, some I've rewatched but I do that less often since I made Netflix my video store of choice. I've actually been with them since their inception. And yes, I'm a little generous with the ratings :D
