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Random Thoughts With A Point
Jul. 13th, 2012 09:48 amLike the title says:
1) James Fallows is starting a series on "casino capitalism." His first article wonders if the Chinese investors who are buying the bankrupt Hawker Beechcraft corporation are going to stick the US taxpayers with the pension liabilities. He also notes that the US investors who bought the company so overleveraged it that the only way to make money on the deal was to flip it quickly. Money quote: "When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done."
2) From the always-interesting Lawyers, Guns and Money, the saint and the sociopath. We now know that Joe Paterno was covering up for child rape for over a decade. During that same decade and at least two decades prior, Paterno talked about how "Penn State football was, in his words, a “Grand Experiment” — an island of old-fashioned virtues in the sordid sea of big-time college football, where doing things the right way while building moral character and molding tomorrow’s leaders took precedence over the won-loss record." The massive ego that would commit this evil while thinking one is right will find its way into one of my books.
3) In a two-fer from Lawyers, Guns and Money, forest fires and exurban housing. The money quote: "The fundamental problem is that wealthy people have moved to the forest edge, built large homes without proper vegetation clearance to protect those homes from the common fires in dry-land western forests, don’t want to pay taxes or serve in rural western volunteer fire departments, and demand full service from the government for every little problem they have." As they say, denial isn't just a river in Egypt.
1) James Fallows is starting a series on "casino capitalism." His first article wonders if the Chinese investors who are buying the bankrupt Hawker Beechcraft corporation are going to stick the US taxpayers with the pension liabilities. He also notes that the US investors who bought the company so overleveraged it that the only way to make money on the deal was to flip it quickly. Money quote: "When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done."
2) From the always-interesting Lawyers, Guns and Money, the saint and the sociopath. We now know that Joe Paterno was covering up for child rape for over a decade. During that same decade and at least two decades prior, Paterno talked about how "Penn State football was, in his words, a “Grand Experiment” — an island of old-fashioned virtues in the sordid sea of big-time college football, where doing things the right way while building moral character and molding tomorrow’s leaders took precedence over the won-loss record." The massive ego that would commit this evil while thinking one is right will find its way into one of my books.
3) In a two-fer from Lawyers, Guns and Money, forest fires and exurban housing. The money quote: "The fundamental problem is that wealthy people have moved to the forest edge, built large homes without proper vegetation clearance to protect those homes from the common fires in dry-land western forests, don’t want to pay taxes or serve in rural western volunteer fire departments, and demand full service from the government for every little problem they have." As they say, denial isn't just a river in Egypt.
