My CMS

Our “justice” system prevailed. It hung another black man. OJ Simpson was sentenced to 15 years for his heinous crime. He “stole” his own possessions back from a fence. Some of his friends helped and some of them may have had weapons. It wasn’t a wise thing to do, it may have been criminal if it were true. The evidence, as usual points both ways. But…

What is wrong with this result is that he was hung for it. for something that  is much less a hazard to society than say an armed bank rodder that may serve three years and be paroled early. That armed robber would probably serve less than a year if it was his first conviction. An arogant black man gets 15 years for his first conviction.

What about the Enron folks? how many of them really served any time and get out still rich? Their actions affected millions of people, not some criminal fence selling stolen property.

What about police thugs that assault people, finally get caught for one of their many inproprieties and then retire?

What about mortgage bankers swindling homeowners and then suffering the penanty of accepting a bailout from the government?

OJ gets to spend the rest of his life in jail for a crime similar to stealing a loaf of bread, stealing from a theif. POOR OJ! Poor us. We really need to work on our “justice’ system.

As usual with elections, you win some and lose some.

Of course Barak Obama winning is a great sign of hope for the future.

I’m really happy to see that Proposition 1A, the High Speed Rail initiative has won. As usual, California leads the way and hopefully the rest of the country will follow and rebuild our passenger rail system, a much more effective and efficient method of travel.

I’m VERY disappointed that Proposition 8 won. It is an extreme step backwards for California. It is the anti gay marriage initiative. Government should NOT support religious views as a function of government. It should maintain order, and the safety and security of ALL citizens. This measure doesn’t do that. Government should regulate marriages similar to the businesses they are. If people don’t want the government to sanction marriage for gays, it shouldn’t for straights either. Let the churches copyright the use and definition of marriage. Take all reference to marriage out of the laws and substitute civil union for all, gay and straight. It would have been a lot easier to just use marriage for all and apply it equitably instead and let the those churches that only want straights limit themselves, not others. Of course, it should have been obvious that it shouldn’t pass. No initiative modification to the constitution is ever an improvement to the original document.

I was watching the old TV show Perry Mason as I often do at lunch time and was considering why people would murder someone for $5,000 or why someone with $50,000 would be considered wealthy. That’s a problem with old black and white TV shows, they are kind of dated. Anyway, I had to remember that up into the mid ’60′s you might be able to buy a house for that $5,000. That puts a different perspective on it.

With the recent crash of housing prices most everywhere I was trying to put it all into perspective. My parent’s bought a house about 1940 in Bakersfield that I was raised in. It probably cost them $5,000 and included 2.5 acres. It was a nice three bedroom house with big rooms and the yard made for a nice playground. They yard was actually made much bigger because there were open oilfields adjacent to it.

In the early 60′s I remember the family went house looking and similar sized houses with a much smaller lot cost about $10,000. 20 some years and a doubling of price.

In 1974, I bought my first house in South San Jose for $23,000. To me, that seemed like a lot but other areas of town and other nearby towns had ordinary housing going for the mid 30′s. A little over 10 years and another two or three times increase in price.

In 1979 we bought our house in downtown San Jose for $75,000. Five years and the price of a house tripled. The next year, our new neighbor downtown sold his house, 1/2 the size of ours and 30 years older for $130,000. He did it by placing a sign on the main street one weekend and had three offers that weekend. I measure that as one year and a 100% increase. Do you see a problem here?

In 1988 we bought our house in Bakersfield for $95,000. It remained at that price for years slowly rising to about 110,000 by the late 90′s. We decided to sell in 2005 but delayed putting it on the market to do some fixup. Similar houses were now, suddenly selling in the high $300,000 having been in the mid $200,000 just the previous year. All this in a market that one has to wonder why anyone would want a house in. We tried to sell the house ourselves when we were through fixing it up but prices were now dropping. While we were holding open houses we dropped the price each week and still didn’t sell it. When our “listing” with Help-U-Sell over, we signed with an agent who sold the house in the first weekend for our asking price which was now $70,000 less than we started at. It sold for $300,000. That house now might sell for $200,000. A really significant drop in price from the boom we saw when we decided to sell. Bakersfield is typical of much of the real estate market in California, Nevada, Arizona,Texas, Florida, and probably lots of other places to some lesser but still very significant extent.

In 1989 we bought our current house in Palo Alto for $300,000. Six months previously, the people we bought from had turned down an offer of $375,00 for the same house. The market was correcting and fortunately we got in at the bottom. Houses in the neighborhood are now still selling with 7 figure prices. There hasn’t been a drop here, yet. The price increased 300-400% in 18 years.

So what’s the story here? Housing prices rise and fall but usually they drop to their real value after an unrealistic increase to an un-real value. You usually don’t loose money if you buy when it’s priced realistically.

Another thing about housing in the US. People buy too big of a house. Nobody really needs a 2000 sq ft house unless they have more than the usual 2-3 kids. First there is the waste of extra materials and then there is the waste of extra utilities like lights and heating. I think we’re in for an extended period of adjustment in housing. Too much of it, too much of the wrong size, and too much in the wrong place. This adjustment period will take a bit longer than the adjustments in the mid 70′s, 80′s and 90′s.Of course, that’s assuming we do have a soft landing and not a crash.

Sometimes, laws are needed to assure people and businesses act responsibly. More often than not such laws are not well thought out. While enjoying my breakfast this morning at a new Kaiser hospital, I noticed a sign on the wall, much like you now see at all businesses in California. It’s a proposition 65 required posting about the potential for cancer causing chemicals being used. Every business posts them because everything causes cancer. So wouldn’t it be better to save the environment and not waste resources saying to obvious just to prevent some lawyer from suing you? I think the intent was to point out real hazards like air pollution, or such but it becomes less than worthless when it’s posted everywhere for everything.

This case was even worse here at Kaiser because the wording of the sign wasn’t just the standard “we may have something that causes cancer around here” type of sign. They mention in their sign that the drugs they prescribe may cause cancer but the doctor considered well before prescribing the drugs. That’s comforting but is it really necessary to tell us something everyone should already be aware of. What a waste of effort! Dreaming up the wording, posting the sign, reading the sign, all a waste of time.
Someday I’m going to have to start the campaign for a law mandating PERSONAL responsibility. You’re responsible for the obvious fellow. Someday!

I’ve thought all along that Mr Bush’s War was an evangelical crusade. While watching a report on the training of army chaplains on the News Hour on PBS I learned that more than half the army chaplains are evangelical protestants. Should that be interpreted as war mongers? Having a volunteer military is dangerous enough but adding too strong of an evangelical element to the mix is extremely dangerous. Is the mix adequate to assure extremists don’t take over the military possibly at the expense of civilian control?

Sorry folks, we really need the draft, not to fuel wars but to prevent them.