Z

The Legal Rag

Vol. 3 No. 2 Read Z the Blog at http://zlegaltimes.blogspot.com/ Nov '08

The Uniquely Gregarious Source Of Legal News And “Divers” Contrary Information

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Editor's Cut

October Baseball

Let Them Eat Cars

Supreme Court

Obama Campaign as Poetry in Motion

Good businesses for 2008-09

From Z Editor Year Three, Issue Two: the rag has been going for Sixteen numbers. Thanks to all who wrote for motivating me to keep it on. Notice I've dropped “monthly” from the title, and replaced it with, well, you have eyes. Monthly was no longer accurate, a minor detail easily corrected.

We've “fallen back” and added an hour of sleep to our drinking schedules; many apologies for missing the Summer issues; the days were too long, the weather too good, the time scarce to sit down at my computer for any length of time. What else, not even a vacation this year, as we were busy visiting colleges and universities, writing the admissions applications and getting ready for a big high school senior year. Daughter Regina is a big Kahuna now, co-captain of the varsity soccer team that won last year's State Cup, and getting ready for engineering school next Fall. So far, Pitt (Swanson School of Engineering), Drexel, SUNY Maritime have delivered acceptances. WOW.

October 2008 also means the Phillys beat the Rays in the World Series after the first ever rain-suspension in World Series history, becoming champs again after about ninety years (I just love those trivial baseball stats); update your own football schedule, pardon me, but Skins play Steelers on the first Monday night in November.

I was playing too much fantasy baseball in July and August. A curious addiction it was. I moved from last or next to last, made playoffs this year, and finished fourth. What did I learn? This is a game of beauty, timing, nerves, skill, patience and strength, mind over matter, and managerial wit, most of which I already knew from having played a little in my day. There is no substitute for the crack of a wooden bat making contact, no similar trajectory of the pill leaving the park in a parabolic arc, of waiting for the call on a close play at home.

Playing baseball, and watching the game being played is one thing: reviewing and utilizing statistical results is another matter entirely. The game can be captured only in part as a game of stats, with a dash of unpre-dictability thrown in; you have to be a little lucky, keep the team healthy, and not be too quick to give the ax early in the season to a veteran player who might be having a slow start. You never know when those old warhorses are going to fail, and by the same token, when they might get hot with the bat. I hated losing OF Ryan Church to a concussion in mid-season. He was on a streak, and I hope he's okay. I was forced to play rookies and youngsters toward the end and found that unfortunately, they were predictably a little unpredictable. You live and learn. For one, OF Crawford got hurt and didn't play well for me in September. Same goes for SS Hanley Ramirez, who finished the season with a top five ranking overall but didn't produce the numbers I needed in the playoffs. Maybe he was making too much $$$ already, and had insufficient incentives to win! The Rays had the second smallest payroll. By comparison the Yankees with one of the highest if not the highest bankrolls in the game didn't make a contest of it in the end. It was the hungry factor: who was hungrier. Too bad the Rays lineup just couldn't get it done, yet I'm glad Philadelphia won.

I had an awesome early relief/closer and starting pitching crew, e.g., Cole Hamels and a few others, but they didn't all come through in September because not all were on contender teams, strong down the stretch, except Cole. We made it a close finish for second, lost that and played for third in the second round of the playoffs, but in the end we pooped out and finished up fourth.

With big money come big responsibilities (and long hours). I dream of owning or just managing my own real, live, baseball club some day, even if it's in the minor leagues. There might just be money in it. Actor Jim Belushi owns a couple of small franchises. Maybe I can get him, or Gretski, MJ, or another one of those rich, yet humble, guys to put up a stake for one. With the coming deflation, we'll soon see even better investment returns in sports and entertainment, and gambling and liquor sales. Or let's make a movie! We'll base it on the best-seller screenplay I'm working on called “America's funniest prison stories”.

For now, Let them eat cars: buy cars, sell cars, wreck cars and buy and sell and trade and fix up and repair more cars, especially high end interiors, which is the business Z operates when not writing this rag. It's the perfect cover for, ... our Superhero, ... Major BATMAN!

Of course, the Supreme Court has returned to session and there's been cause to review the legal blogosphere and news. I apologize I've been failing to keep up with the Circuit cases, but as always if there's a question just ask, and I'm on it.

The federal benches have been filling up (to here) with people from the “right” (not the antonym for the word: wrong); thank god he, Bush, didn't get to put another justice on SCOTUS; which all goes to show the law has been evidencing signs of change in the more radically conservative direction. I didn't think it could get any worse, but I was wrong. What this means for the most part, is, “anti-”: anti- Roe v Wade; anti- criminal defendant and defense bar; anti- immigrant; anti-fair trade; anti-gay; anti-gun control; anti- labor; anti- social security, anti- medicare and unemployment insurance; anti-worker, and can you think of any more? I'll take your comments to heart – you can take mine with a grain.

Poetry in Motion: The Obama Campaign When Conservatives begin to advocate expending Your common resources and wealth, aka Our tax dollars, on protecting and preserving their own hides (and nest eggs) more than on growing the overall wealth, and health of the common-weal, and rather than sharing the proceeds of improved labor productivity fairly with those essential to it, those whom make it possible, I'm speaking of the workers that make economic growth, wealth and health possible; then, and only then, economic conditions will be ripe for revolt, repression, and political change. We seem to be getting close to that place at the present time.

You can't have missed the fact that Obama kicked McCain's butt; or perhaps it was the inevitably tanking economy which did the dirty work. But tell me this, would you vote for a ticket with a gal who can't give a straight answer to the question: what magazines do you read? If she is the future of the Republican party, the Republican party has no future for the foreseeable, vacuous, and infinite, tomorrow. None whatsoever. Period. Nada. Notta. Nyetsky. No. Hell, No. Get me the foreign language dictionaries ... please.

Clearly all she was reading were propaganda talking points prepared by the politicos that ran Bush's presidency in cahoots with the good but misguided and fast-talking Karen Hughes from that lovely ol' place we call Texas. Give it up already, guys; we have your number. And ol' John Mac might have a lot of energy left in that seventy year old frame, but he can't always remember to speak the words he means to speak (most recent case in point is where he blurts the not-soon-to-be-VP Palin is “Senator” – she is actually a governor; sir, you were the senator in this race).

With respect, McCain clearly forgot to review the meaning of the phrase: mean what you say. The Straight Talk Express lost it's wheels and it has been one ugly thing to see.

The other thing that lost wheels, perhaps due to the excessive application of certain lubricants, were the Wall Street banks. That, and Your Four O One K's. I have a little one, and it got even littler. I hope you weren't planning to retire this year because you just lost half your assets.

Good businesses to be in right now: Oil, oil and gas, petroleum, petro- engineering, oil rigging, oil construction, oil engineering, oil futures, oil derivatives, oil options, short selling oil, oil delivery, oil storage, oil drilling, oil exploration, oil geology, oil geography, oil and climate change research, oil and loss of glaciers and polar ice sheets, oil sales, oil trading, oil with OPEC, Venezuelan oil, Russian oil, Kazakhi oil, Gulf oil, Middle Eastern oil, oil pipelines, oil motherfucking oil, and other foreign and domestic intercourse with, over, under and through oil, oil and gas;

That, and other energy of all kinds, wind, solar, bio-fuels, batteries, coal, hydro-electric; if you were smart you bought oil. It is now ripe time to sell. Check that, last month was the time. It's gone back down under 60 dollars per barrel. Gas around here is just under two bucks, but they are expecting it to go up next year. Curious. Curious also how the market value of homes all across the country did the same thing that oil did. Is this more than just coincidence? Guess who got fucked?

All that stuff re: Hillary and Bill is over and done with, OMG, and things appear to be getting back to normalcy within the Democratic camps. I am so glad to see that everybody seems to have regained their senses. A historic victory, but do not measure the drapes just quite yet, should do wonders for Dems, wanderers of the political wilderness. Let's hope it does the same for the economy, and soon.

Last issue, I noted AWA seemed just another way to kick felons after they are already down. Here's a quote from my April 08 issue: “Wouldn't the greedy and mean of heart just love to have another source of cheap unemployable cash labor? And we could build bigger bridges for housing the homeless ones too.”

Well, it appears that the powers-that-be have responded to the call by tanking the economy and spinning off ever more jobs, either forever or just by sending them overseas. Do you see a conspiracy to create more cheap labor here at home? Too bad it won't work, because all the pink slips are resulting in spending like molasses, both inflation and deflation, and a downward spiral into poverty for all but the very few, very filthy rich. President Elect Barack Obama promises to update our infrastructure, which should produce a much needed, if somewhat small, construction boom regardless of home sales. We'll need to build very big bridges as part of that program to house all of the homeless from the 2008-09 rounds of recession, depression and foreclosures.

Don't get me wrong. A few new bridges are certainly going to be better than old, decrepit ones, or even no bridge at all, or a bridge to nowhere, and bridges in Iraq and everywhere else except here at home, which is what we've been getting and probably will continue to get from conservative Republican, states' rights, YOYO policies; that and newer, bigger prisons to employ more prison guards converted from ranks of the jobless. Guess what bigger prisons means? Bigger prison populations. You don't think they're going let brand, spanking new prison beds go empty, do you? Get the picture? A lot of us have, and that is why I am glad Obama will be our next President.

I, for one, do not believe in corporate welfare. A corporation should not require public assistance beyond the protections and laws available to all. By definition a corporation is designed to produce goods and or services, and to add value in the marketplace for and on behalf of the owners, the shareholders. When one fails, it is not the place of John Q. Public to provide artificial respiration. We already have a body of bankruptcy law and corporate liquidation processes for that. When a corporation fails we should account for the failures and hold the individual managers responsible. That's what they are highly paid for. They are not supposed to play golf, or fiddle, when the company is folding.

Similarly, ones whom have done well should reap rewards. Ones who have had the misfortune to bear the brunt of somebody else's shortcomings should be assisted as much as possible. There should be incentives to engage in proper, non-risky investments and business activities, and conversely, penalties for engaging in the risky.

We should assist hapless homeowners who are making efforts to stay in their homes, for they've done nothing wrong, assuming they followed the rules in obtaining their RISKY mortgages. It was not their fault the mortgages were risky. It was the bank's: banks took that risk. We'll all be better off if we can immediately begin conserving the costs of the foreclosures, which are only heaping additional distress and other transaction costs onto the pile of crap evidenced by declining prices in certain regional markets for homes at this time. It seems they've figured this out already. Now, what about that Auto Industry? I buy that one more than giving Wall Street Banks all that money. I think that was a lot like the last loot and booty of the Bushy people. Such Shrubs.