Who can afford this stuff?

Posted on February 19, 2013 by The Old Wolf

The Eclipse

The Eclipse, a yacht whose price tag could well be as high as $1.2 billion, owned by Russian “businessman” Roman Abramovich. Those scare quotes are a deliberate insertion – anyone in Russia with that much money and power, and you wonder how high the pile of skulls is upon which that fortune rests.

Annual operating costs: $50 million. Fuel cost: $600,000 per tank.

The $100 Million Penthouse

in 1993, Steven Klar paid $4.5 million for a penthouse in Manhattan’s Spire building. He’s since put $5 million into improvements for the 8,000 square foot residence. Now he wants to sell it for $100 million, giving him a modest 800% return on his investment. Who says the rich are getting richer? And greedier? Naah…

A dining area in the penthouse, which occupies the top 3 floors of the building, with 360° views from every floor.

The Spire Building, showing the top 3 floors which comprise the penthouse.

The Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4

Price tag: betwen $387,000 and $445,000, depending on whom you talk to. But it comes with everything you’d expect in a car with Lamborghini on the hood. The 700hp V-12 will get you anywhere you want to go, as fast as you dare to drive it. Breaker breaker, got a picture-taker, old smokey’s at 43…

Crespi Hicks Estate

Romanovich’s Yacht makes this home look like a piece of camel ejecta in terms of price, but this property is currently listing for $135,000,000 – the most expensive residence on the market today.

The Crespi Hicks Estate

Library

42,500 square feet of luxury on 25 acres of wooded land in Dallas, certainly on a par with the luxury mansions of the railroad tycoons of yore. Alas, the real estate market has hit the super-rich as well as the middle class… Forbes estimated this property was worth $1.4 billion in 2008.

The Vertu TI Android Phone

This phone will run you about $10,000. Of course, it has a titanium case and a “virtually unscratchable” screen, but like the short-lived “I Am Rich” iPhone app, this phone simply screams “Lick my boots, peon!” Good for a high-powered CEO, I guess – the kind that enjoys an annual $145 million bonus for firing 37,000 people.

———-

This kind of money is being spent around the world on a daily basis by the super rich and the ultra-rich. Now, the global economy is much larger than anyone can really imagine; for example, $700 billion (an unimaginable amount of money) would only be sufficient to buy 2 cups of Starbucks every day for a year for every person in Brazil. On the other hand, how many schools would that build or equip in our own country? How much farther would that kind of money go in India, or Pakistan, or Mauritania?

Each of us will someday be held accountable for what we do with our stewardships, either by God or by history, depending on how you look at life.

Just something to think about.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Vaclav Havel on Hate

Posted on February 11, 2013 by The Old Wolf

An excerpt from Václav Havel’s 1990 speech to the Oslo Conference on “The Anatomy of Hate”. Click through for the full text.

“When I think about the people who have hated me personally, or still do, I realize that they share several characteristics which when you put them together and analyze them suggest a certain general interpretation of the origin of their hatred.

“They are never hollow, empty, passive, indifferent, apathetic people. Their hatred always seems to me the expression of a large and unquenchable longing, a permanently unfulfilled and unfulfillable desire, a kind of desperate ambition. In other words, it is an active inner capacity that always leads the person to fixate on something, always pushes him in a certain direction, and is in a sense stronger than he is. I certainly don’t think hatred is the mere absence of love or humanity, a mere vacuum in the human spirit. On the contrary, it has a lot in common with love, chiefly with that self-transcending aspect of love, the fixation on others, the dependence on them, and in fact, the delegation of a piece of one’s own identity to them. Just as a lover longs for the loved one and cannot get along without him, the hater longs for the object of his hatred. And like love, hatred is ultimately an expression of longing for the absolute, albeit an expression that has become tragically inverted.

“People who hate, at least those I have known, harbour a permanent, irradicable feeling of injury, a feeling that is, of course, out of all proportion to reality. It is as though these people wanted to be endlessly honoured, loved and respected, as though they suffered from the chronic and painful awareness that others are ungrateful and unforgivably unjust towards them, not only because they don’t honour and love them boundlessly, as they ought, but because they even or so it seems ignore them.

“In the subconsciousness of haters there slumbers a perverse feeling that they alone possess the truth, that they are some kind of superhumans or even gods, and thus deserve the world’s complete recognition, even its complete submissiveness and loyalty, if not its blind obedience. They want to be the centre of the world and are constantly frustrated and irritated because the world does not accept and recognize them as such; indeed, it may not even pay any attention to them, and perhaps it even ridicules them.

“They are like spoiled or badly brought up children who think their mother exists only to worship them, and who think ill of her because she occasionally does something else, like spending time with her other children, her husband, a book or her work. They feel all this as an injustice, an injury, a personal attack, a questioning of their own sense of self-worth. The inner charge of energy, which might have been love, is perverted into hatred toward the imputed source of injury.(…)

“It is said that those who hate suffer from an inferiority complex. This may not be the most precise way to put it. I would rather say that they are people with a complex based on the fatal perception that the world does not appreciate their true worth.

Another observation seems worth making here. The man who hates does not smile, he merely smirks; he is incapable of making a joke, only of bitter ridicule; he can’t be genuinely ironic because he can’t be ironic about himself. Only those who can laugh at themselves can laugh authentically. A serious face, quickness to take offence, strong language, shouting, the inability to step outside himself and see his own foolishness these are typical of one who hates.”

Hável’s words offer the best explanation for anti-social behavior that I have ever read. Among others, they could be applied to:

1) The Hitlers of the world.

These are mercifully few, because the perfect storm of circumstances which sweeps them into positions where their hatred can directly affect millions is a rarity.

2) Bullies, abusers, and racists

In schools, in corporations, in politics, in families, their influence is limited to their direct sphere of influence and usually constrained somewhat by social conventions and the need to hide their meanness from all but the victims whom they affect.

3) Internet trolls

To anyone who frequents the internet, there seems to be a disturbing abundance of these, and I have mentioned them previously. Again fortunately, the vast majority of these are wretched, impotent losers who fill comment boards with their piss and vinegar but are capable of nothing more. The few who venture past invective into the realm of stalking or cybercrime are usually caught and dealt with.

4) People who behave poorly in public

Not Always Right is dedicated to stories about the horrible customers that retail and customer service workers have to deal with all the time. My favorites are always the ones where they don’t get away with their douchebaggery, like this one.

I don’t often focus on hatred and ignorance, preferring instead to fill the space around me with positive energy, but in order to fight hatred, it must be seen for what it is. Near the end of his speech, Hável said, “We must struggle energetically against all the incipient forms of collective hatred, not only on principle, because evil must always be confronted, but in our own interests.” Echoing these thoughts, John Howard Griffin, concluding his epic work Black Like Me, wrote, “If some spark does set the keg afire, it will be a senseless tragedy of ignorant against ignorant, injustice answering injustice – a holocaust that will drag down the innocent and right-thinking masses of human beings. Then we will all pay for not having cried for justice long ago.”

The Old Wolf has spoken.

No [insert group here] need apply

Posted on February 7, 2013 by The Old Wolf

It wasn’t pretty. “White only.” “No Irish need apply.” “Japs go home.”

While we flatter ourselves to think that these shameful episodes in our country’s history are now a thing of the past, discrimination in many aspects of life continues. While more subtly than in years past, blacks and hispanics continue to fight discrimination in the workplace, in the housing market, and in social situations. Women and the gay^[1] community are discriminated against constantly and openly. People with excess weight are treated like pariahs. Mormons are routinely pilloried by the media with seeming impunity. Despite the ADA, people with disabilities^[2] still find barriers everywhere in society and individuals and companies who don’t give a rat’s South-4o. In fact, “-isms” are so rampant in our society that there are hardly enough nouns to cover them all. Oh, and there’s one more that employers might just as well hang out these days:

Just try looking for work and being close to retirement age. It’s like you’re an invisible leper with terminal halitosis.

No, all is not lost. Public awareness continues to grow. It’s better than it was. But let no one think we live in “lamp beside the golden door” egalitarian society that the picture books talk about. In this country, some animals are definitely more equal than others.

Ever notice how the roaches scurry for cover when you flick the light on? That’s our strongest weapon. Shining the bright light of exposure into the dark corners of intolerance. Keep fighting the good fight, and our children and their children will have a better world than we do.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] “Gay” in this context is a portmanteau for “not straight”. GLBTAlphabetSoup is just getting too complex for my poor brain.

[2] Give it a rest. They’re disabled, but not “less than.” I don’t put stock in political correctness for its own sake.

Zero Tolerance: France vs. the good ol’ USA

Posted on February 1, 2013 by The Old Wolf

From This Is True:

ZERO TOLERANCE, THE FRENCH WAY: A police officer in Ustaritz, France, was summoned to an elementary school’s cafeteria to remove a 5-year-old girl only identified as “Lea” as classmates watched. Lea’s crime? Her parents had not paid 160 Euros (US$220) in accumulated lunch fees. French officials were outraged when the report hit the news. “All children in France should be eating in their cafeteria, and not be victims of acts which, of this nature, are acts of violence,” fumed French Education Minister Vincent Peillon, who said he was “shocked” that the police were called. France’s human rights organization has started an investigation “to identify the successive dysfunctions that led to this situation,” says its director, Dominique Baudis. The police officer did as she was told: she removed the girl from the lunchroom, and took her home. When she found no one there, she took her to the police station — for lunch — and then took her back to school. (RC/Time) …See? It’s just that easy.

ZERO TOLERANCE, THE AMERICAN WAY: Melody Valentin, a fifth-grader in South Philadelphia, Pa., found an L-shaped piece of paper in her backpack in class; her grandfather had made it. As she went to throw it away, a classmate saw it and told the teacher Melody had a gun. “He yelled at me and said I shouldn’t have brought the gun to school,” Melody said through tears. “I kept telling him it was a paper gun but he wouldn’t listen.” As other students watched, administrators searched the girl and questioned her. Other children started to call her a “murderer,” and her mother had to pull her out of school to stop the bullying. The mother notes that the girl is having nightmares over the incident, and school officials refuse to comment. (RC/WTXF Philadelphia)

Slight correction: the school officials are the nightmare, and the silence is their defense.

Zero Tolerance in American school systems is nothing more than Zero Common Sense, driven by soulless attorneys hungry for billable hours and racked with paranoia.

Don’t put up with things you can’t change; change the things you can’t put up with.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Do Abusive Cheapskates Have a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy?

Posted on January 31, 2013 by The Old Wolf

A recent article at AOL Jobs has been today’s Internet sensation. It seems a pastor stiffed a waitress and added a snotty note on her receipt about giving 10% to God, so why does a server deserve 18%? A followup article at The Consumerist prompted an update of the original article, but it raised an interesting question or two. (Read both articles for the relevant facts.)

A lot of people are focusing on Applebees’ firing of the person (not the server involved in the incident) who posted the picture. That individual said later, “I did my best to protect the identity of all parties involved. I didn’t break any specific guidelines in the company handbook — I checked.”

As readers, we’re on the horns of a dilemma, because douchebaggery of this nature is very appropriately outed… or wait, is it? Is this fodder for an article over at Not Always Right (here is a delightful example) or is it senseless voyeurism of the kind we would expect to find in the National Enquirer or People magazine?

Well, I don’t read either of those publications (although I am a proud owner of a copy of The Irrational Inquirer, a parody edition by Larry Durocher and Tony Hendra), but I find both angst and satisfaction when reading about ignorant behavior toward those who serve the public, especially when it’s richly rewarded.

The “pastor” (and I use the scare quotes deliberately) left her nasty note in public, and so on the one hand her shame should be public. On the other hand, I think the poster of the photo made some tactical errors by reporting the incident without removing any PII (personally identifiable information). As much as I was sorry to hear she was fired, I think I have to stand with Applebee’s on their personnel action – the posting of the photo was a breach of expected privacy, even if the person involved was a total jerk. You’ll notice that “Not Always Right” is very careful to give only the kind of store and a generic location, and never reveals names, dates, or identifiable places.

Moral: If you’re going to out the douchebaggery, make sure you do so in a non-identifiable way, or you might just lose your situation!

The Old Wolf has spoken.

A Sad Tale of Abuse of Power

Posted on January 26, 2013 by The Old Wolf

On May 21, 2012, Barbara Alice Mahaffey died of colon cancer in her home in Vernal, Utah. It was 12:35 AM, and her husband Ben and a friend who was also an EMT were at her side. Within ten minutes, a hospice worker and a mortician were present to attend to the remains… along with Vernal police officers Shawn Smith and Rod Eskelson. Instead of allowing Mr. Mahaffey to grieve and attend to his wife’s body, they insisted that he stop what he was doing and help them search for any prescription painkillers his wife had been using.

The search was warrantless. No one knows how the police came to be there in the first place.

“I was indignant to think you can’t even have a private moment. All these people were there and they’re not concerned about her or me. They’re concerned about the damn drugs. Isn’t that something?” Mahaffey said. Mahaffey said he was treated as if he were going to sell the painkillers, which included OxyContin, oxycodone and morphine, on the street. “I had no interest in the drugs,” he said. “I’m no addict.”

Not surprisingly, Mr. Mahaffey wasn’t happy about what happened, or how he was treated. He complained. And the story gets worse.

Mr. Mahaffey says he asked Assistant Police Chief Campbell where his officers had gotten authority to enter the home without invitation and conduct a warrantless search, and was abruptly told that the Utah Controlled Substances Act granted the requisite authority.

City Manager Ken Bassett dismissed plaintiff’s concerns by saying that his own parents had recently passed away, and that although their prescription drugs had not been seized by the police, he would not have cared had the police done so. He also informed Mr. Mahaffey that he was being “overly sensitive to the actions by the police, and that the police were only acting to protect the public from the illegal use of the prescription drugs.”

The city attorney told Mahaffey that his contract with Good Shepherd Hospice waived his rights to be protected from police intrusion in his home, but no such clause in the contract appears to exist.

Chief of Police Dylan Rooks allegedly told Mr. Mahaffey that “this is a great program and we’re going to continue it,” meaning the active pursuit of drugs in the community.

After trying to have “meaningful, man-to-man” conversations with Vernal officials, and finding them “rude and condescending,” Mr. Mahaffey turned to the courts and filed a federal lawsuit against the city, police officials and the two police officers who invaded his home.

I don’t much care for attorneys, and there are far too many frivolous lawsuits clogging up our court system. In this case, however, it appears that everyone in Vernal has lost their sense of decency and humanity.

“Note the utter lack of compassion, the inability to see a grieving husband as anything other than a potential drug dealer. Note the priorities on display. The most important thing the cops had to do that day was get those drugs out of that house. Preventing someone from using Barbara Mahaffey’s pills to get high, or preventing Ben Mahaffey from–God forbid–using pain medication not prescribed to him at some point in the future, was more important than giving a widower a last moment of dignity to say goodbye to his wife of 58 years.” (Radley Balko, Huffpost)

The maraschino cherry on top of this cake of shame is found in this article from the Salt Lake Tribune, which reports that a former Vernal detective has been charged with stealing prescription medication from a couple under the guise of repeated “pill checks.” It would seem that the elected and appointed officials in Vernal would do well to cleanse the inner vessel and re-examine their priorities. Violating basic dignities at one of the most sensitive moments in a person’s life bespeaks a shameful lack of humanity; this lawsuit should act as a wakeup call for those involved, but based on the response thus far, what I’m predicting is that they will circle the wagons, deny any wrongdoing, and continue their campaign of ignoring fundamental civic rights.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Sources:

Raping the public… legally

Posted on January 25, 2013 by The Old Wolf

About a decade ago, my identity was stolen. An insurance card I had given to a family member was lost in the state of Florida, and some drone got his hands on it. All of a sudden I was being contacted by debt-collection companies for things like trips to a hospital in an ambulance, 9 months worth of rent, cell phone accounts with T-Mobile, and a host of others.

It took me about 4 years to get my credit reports cleaned up, and countless hours of time on the telephone, writing letters, and filing police reports. Through it all was dealing with the collection companies, and it was brutal. These people are relentless bullies, and they care about only one thing… collecting. Explaining to them that I did not owe said debts was fruitless. Explaining that I had been the victim of identity theft was wasting breath. Even after multiple explanations, I had agents offer to discharge the debt if I was willing to pay 50¢ on the dollar. Nothing I said made a difference. They kept calling until I informed them, by law, that they were no longer allowed to do so. ^[1]

Now comes word of a new scam being perpetrated on the public by a company called Corrective Solutions, and others like them. This article in LA Weekly outlines how DA’s offices have partnered with some very ugly, very mean people to terrorize consumers into paying stiff fees for bounced checks, all in the name of “diversion” – meaning keeping cases out of the court system – but really for only one purpose – increasing the flow of revenue into the DA’s coffers.

An extract from the article outlines the sad tale of Carole Hirth:

In fact, it was banker scheming that landed Carole Hirth in trouble last year. More than a dozen major banks have paid multimillion-dollar fines for reordering purchases and delaying deposits solely in order to generate overdraft fees. In Hirth’s case, PNC was holding her direct deposits until it withdrew her outgoing charges — effectively overdrafting her account so it could charge extra fees.

She knew none of this at the time she wrote a $393.86 check to Dominick’s, a Chicago grocery story. The 59-year-old was in the hospital being treated for Crohn’s disease when the check bounced. For some reason, the store never tried to redeposit it, which most merchants do. If it had, Hirth says, the check would have cleared. Instead, the Safeway-owned chain sent her a letter.

“I had been back from the hospital for just four days when I checked the mail and thought, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” she says.

Hirth went straight to Dominick’s, wrote a new check and paid a $35 bounce fee. She considered the problem fixed.

But four months later, she received a letter from the Cook County state’s attorney. It said that she’d been accused of deceptive practices and that she faced up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine. The only way to avoid this fate was to pay $649.86, which included penalties and a diversion course.

“I already paid them,” Hirth says. “I contacted [the grocery store’s] ethics department and said this was just wrong. I spend enough money there. I told them they should work with me. I told them to look up my Safeway card. I’ve been shopping with them for the past 30 years!”

Safeway said there was nothing it could do. She’d have to contact the state attorney’s office.

Hirth called the toll-free number on the letter but got nowhere.

“They accused me of committing a fraudulent act. They said that if I don’t pay everything and take their class, I could be arrested and end up in jail. He was very, very mean,” she says. “I told him that I didn’t understand how that could happen. I said I’d already handled it, it should be cleared up, but he just went on and on and on.”

Hirth wrote another letter to Safeway, begging the grocer to contact the prosecutor’s office on her behalf. The letters and phone calls kept coming.

It wasn’t until she got in touch with Arons that she discovered she wasn’t being threatened by Cook County. It was Corrective Solutions, which has contracts with 21 counties in Illinois.

Notice three major instances of douchebaggery in this one single story:

Bank malfeasance (reordering deposits and withdrawals to create deliberate overdrafts and charge fees)
Corporate insouciance (once a charge has been submitted to collections, nobody gives a rat’s south-40 – there appears to be no one inside a massive corporation who cares or who can deal with human situations)
Consumer intimidation by Corrective Solutions using the name of Cook County to perpetrate their scheme, but fully with Cook County’s blessing.

The Napa Valley Register filed an article in October of 2012 describing a class-action suit against Corrective Solutions and another company, and outlining practices similar to what happened in Hirth’s case above, but the news is not good – most consumers won’t even benefit from any possible settlement, and the companies will likely continue to operate in one form or another. Indeed, Corrective Solutions is a rebirth of American Corrective Counseling Services, which lost a class-action suit against it, filed for bankruptcy, paid nothing, and began operating a few months later under a new name, free and clear, as reported in the LA times article.

The fight against this kind of corporate and governmental misbehavior continues. The war will be long and hard, and there will be bodies left on the battlefield, many belonging to innocent victims who made honest mistakes and found themselves caught up in a web of greed. The good news is that many legal advocates are aware of what is happening, and will continue to fight until this sort of program is outlawed by statute.

In the meantime, the more people who know what’s happening, the more ammunition they have to fight back. Read the linked articles. Be careful with your finances, and don’t roll over for the bullies.

This has been an Old Wolf public service announcement.

[1] A recent example: A family member has set up payment arrangements with a collection company in Idaho, in order to pay off a medical bill. The payments have been kept current for the last 18 months. Despite that, this letter is sent out monthly:

No mention of current account status, no “thank you for your payment,” just the constant threat of legal action. I’ve written the office to complain about this lack of courtesy and ethics, and no one has ever bothered to respond.

You can’t discuss it, but I can.

Posted on January 21, 2013 by The Old Wolf

From MSN News:

Kindergartner suspended for comment on toy bubble gun

MOUNT CARMEL, Pa. — A 5-year-old Pennsylvania girl who told another girl she was going to shoot her with a pink toy gun that blows soapy bubbles has been suspended from kindergarten.

Her family has hired an attorney to fight the punishment, which initially was 10 days but was reduced to two.

Attorney Robin Ficker says Mount Carmel Area School District officials labeled the girl a “terrorist threat” for the bubble gun remark, made Jan. 10 as both girls waited for a school bus.

Ficker says the girl didn’t even have the bubble gun with her and has never fired a real gun. He says she’s “the least terroristic person in Pennsylvania.”

School district solicitor Edward Greco tells pennlive.com that officials are looking into the case. He said school officials aren’t at liberty to discuss disciplinary actions.

You aren’t at liberty to discuss disciplinary actions, but I am.

You are douchebags.

Idiots.

Paranoid schizophrenics with delusions of relevance.

For your gratuitous information: A child of 5 has no conception of reality when it comes to gun violence. They play with water guns and bubble guns and toy guns and parrot what they see on television. They have no idea what a real weapon can do to a human body. They play.

When reasonable adults hear a child of that age say something inappropriate, they take them aside and explain it. They offer benefits and consequences. Maybe she loses recess and goes home with a note pinned to her jacket.

But you don’t sodding call her a terrorist and suspend her from school for ten days, you asswaffles!

You blistering simpletons, you have done more to warp that little girl’s world view than anything she might have seen on television. She will never forget this event, and it is likely that she will never understand why such a firestorm of stupidity ignited around her. She will only know subconsciously that she did something horribly wrong. and will never look at another firearm in the same way again, even though carrying a legal one might save her life when she’s older.

Here’s a piece of unsolicited advice: Stick to chasing ambulances, and leave 5-year-old girls alone. Better yet, find a profession far, far away from people, where you can do no more damage with your pompous self-importance.

The Old Wolf has discussed.

Gotta Catch Them All Ages, Part 2 (From Not Always Right)