Student aid raises tuition

Pell Grants Flunk Out

 Excerpt:

Started in 1972 to help poor kids pay for college, Pell Grants are now so broad that more than half of all undergrads benefit. In the 2009-2010 school year (the most recent data available), 60% of all college students received a grant—a total of 9.6 million students. Between 2008 and 2010, the number of Pell grantees increased by almost 50%, roughly doubling taxpayer cost.

...

Because the amount of a Pell Grant for full-time study depends on both a student's financial straits and the cost to attend school, better-off students often receive the large Pell Grants and apply them to more expensive schools. According to Ms. Robinson and Mr. Cheston, in 2009-2010 20% of Pell grantees from families making over $60,000 opted to take their federal checks to schools that cost $30,000 or more per year. That luxury wasn't available to students from lower income families, who attended ritzy schools at a much lower rate.

Universities learned long ago how to capture the extra cash and adjust their price schedules accordingly. While Pell Grants and other student aid are intended to make college more affordable, they're contributing to the ever-higher tuition spiral. Write 100 times on the chalkboard: Student aid raises tuition.

Comment: Another government created bubble.

Obama as "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer"

Noonan: Who Benefits From the 'Avalanche of Leaks'?

Excerpt:

Liberally quoted in the Sanger book, and in Dan Kaidman's "Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency," is the White House national security adviser, Thomas Donilon. When I was a child, there was a doll called Chatty Cathy. You pulled a string in her back, and she babbled inanely. Tom Donilon appears to be the Chatty Cathy of the American intelligence community.

It is good Congress has become involved. They wonder if the leaks have been directed, encouraged or authorized, and by whom. One way to get at that is the classic legal question: Who benefits?

That is not a mystery. In all these stories, it is the president and his campaign that benefit. The common theme in the leaks is how strong and steely Mr. Obama is. He's tough but fair, bold yet judicious, surprisingly willing to do what needs to be done. He hears everyone out, asks piercing questions, doesn't flinch. He is Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer.

Comment: The leaks are a sort of swashbuckling bravado!

More on Robert Gates' advice:

After the killing of bin Laden, members of the administration, in a spirit of triumphalism, began giving briefings and interviews in which they said too much. One of the adults in the administration, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, reportedly went to Mr. Donilon's office. "I have a new strategic communications approach to recommend," he said. What? asked Mr. Donilon.

"Shut the [blank] up," Mr. Gates said.

My fine

Comment: While we waited we watched half a dozen or more cases. Many were DUI's and all of them were the 2nd arrest. And all of them had a fine of $ 900 with $ 800 stayed .. for a total of $ 100. Mine was three times that amount. Doesn't make sense but I had budgeted $500 so I'm not complaining

College scholarships meant only for Whites?

White student lauded after returning college scholarship meant for blacks

 Excerpt:

The scholarship application itself stated only that African-Americans were “encouraged” to apply. Warren applied online and apparently never saw a separate letter sent to school counselors specifying that it was for black students.

Comment: Here's my question. Suppose a group of us got together and funded a scholarship only for Whites. Would that be racism?

Subaru starts after hibernating on lake bottom

This Subaru Started After Sitting On The Bottom Of A Lake For Three Months

Excerpt:

This semi-beater ’96 Legacy was driven on the ice some three months ago, as a guy went fishing. Despite his claims that the ice was strong enough, the Legacy went through the ice, head-first. The driver only had time to turn off the engine and get his dogs out of the trunk, as the Legacy soon fell completely through and sank to the bottom of the (admittedly characteristically shallow, four-meter-deep) Finnish lake.

Comment: HT. Photos with first link!

On being handcuffed

Above is an image of me on crutches from last month (Kerrville TX with my Mother, wife and sister)

I can't stand up without crutches. With crutches I walk about 1/4 the speed of normal walkers and cannot walk very far. 

But for expired tabs, the Plymouth police thought it necessary to take away my crutches, pull my arms behind my back and cuff me. 

I'm a real threat to society!

 

Final thoughts on arrest and legal situation

 

• I was wrong. I did fail to pay my tabs. I'm not sure how that oversight occurred but it did.
• I'm glad that the Plymouth police stopped me! I really mean this.
• My saying - and I did say this when asked - "I drive the vehicle about once a week" was perceived to be some sort of admission that because I only drove it once a week that somehow I thought it was OK to not pay my tabs.
• Unfortunately my saying "[it] was just an oversight on my part" was ignored.
• The charge of "intent to evade taxes" was an egregious completely unsupported and unprovable charge. (I proved this by demonstrating that I have consistently paid my taxes and that the really expensive taxes I gladly pay. Take for example my property taxes which may be paid biannually (I believe they are due in May and October). The last two years (since have paid my mortgage off and I manage my own escrow and pay the taxes directly instead of having the mortgage company pay the taxes from escrow), I have paid my entire annual property tax amount on the first day I was able to pay them on the Hennepin Co tax site. This is not the action of a man who intends to evade taxes. Additionally one can easily reduce taxes legally. I do not invest in the Nuveen Minnesota Intermediate Municipal Bond Fund but as an investor I could easily invest in this fund and avoid $ 48 of Minnesota state taxes. I'm smart enough to know how to legally avoid $ 48 of state taxes. I'm not stupid enough to think I could evade taxes by not paying license plate tabs on a 10 year old truck! Intent to evade taxes ... ridiculous!
• About the Plymouth police ... I appreciate you ... I really do. Thank you for serving our community. But was it really necessary to handcuff me and bring me in for this! I think not! You could have done better.
• My own out of pocket was a $ 300 fine, $ 78 in court costs, and $ 100 to get my truck of of impound.
• But the city and state wasted resource as well. How much did it cost you?
• I think that giving me a ticket for $ 300 would have saved me time and money and would have been a better use of state resources!
• Finally I thank Steve Goldfarb - the attorney who represented me! I would never go to court without professional representation. The stakes are too high and the system is stacked against the individual. This man worked aggressively for me!

 Comment: For all posts on this subject click here (scroll back to the 12/30/2011 post for the first)

Our celebration tonight

Kathy and Roger (Sister-in-law and Brother) came by for dinner. We had pizza. Then we watched the following video .... then we had ice cream and coffee

Resolution of Court case

Peet Court Outcome 06082012

After a full morning in court, we return grateful for the outcome. I had been charged with a Gross Misdemeanor - an "intent to evade taxes" Early this morning I prepared talking points to review with my attorney. As follows:

• I've lived in Hennepin County for 16 years and over this time frame I have paid $ xx,xxx in property taxes. I documented the previous year's taxes for my attorney
• Last year alone I paid $ x,xxx. in state income taxes. I had documentation for this
• The amount of "evaded" taxes was less than $ 100.
• My other car - the Buick - has annual license tab fees of $ 251. Again I had documentation that I had paid that. The reasoning here is that if I intended to evade taxes, I would evade taxes on the much more expensive vehicle.
• My concluding point: I am not a tax evader. And that the failure to have current license tabs on my truck was a simple omission and there was no "intent to evade taxes"

My attorney met with the Plymouth attorney. The charges were reduced from a Gross misdemeanor to a Petty Misdemeanor (there are three grades of misdemeanor in Minnesota: Gross, Misdemeanor, and Petty Misdemeanor A Petty Misdemeanor is not considered a crime in Minnesota ... it is more like a traffic offense. I paid a $ 300 fine and $ 78 in court costs.

He's brave, he's green, and he's queer

Gay Green Lantern may be seen in a different light

 Excerpt:

"He's going to be the leader of the team, this dynamic hero, he'll do anything to save people, the bravest man on the planet. Why not just make him gay as well?" says Earth 2 writer James Robinson.

Comment: And I thought it was Robin!

Unemployment ticks up to 8.2%

US stock futures plunge on dire jobs numbers Excerpt:

U.S. employers created 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate ticked up to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent. Economists had forecast a gain of 158,000 jobs. The Labor Department also said 49,000 fewer jobs were created in March and April than first expected.

Comment: My earlier prediction on 12/29: "Unemployment will briefly drop and then increase before the election" Yesterday was a friend's last day at work ...

Court Date June 8th

Peet Court Summons

On the Facebook IPO

Facebook Shows There's a Sucker Born Every Minute

Excerpt:

Consider that as Facebook readied its IPO, there was a lot of shifty business: On May 15, the price was boosted to $38 from a range that bottomed at $28. The next day, the offering size swelled by 50 million shares. Then came a disclosure that insiders would sell 53% more shares, or 84 million shares, in the IPO than previously planned.

... By the time the shares went public last Thursday and started trading Friday, Facebook was close to becoming a $100 billion company with a price-to-earnings ratio of roughly 100. Those were pie-in-the-sky numbers by many measures.

They were ridiculous when you consider that Facebook reported April 23 that its growth had stalled. Revenue fell 6% in the first quarter. Profit fell 32%. There were other warnings, too.

General Motors Co. pulled its advertising from Facebook, saying it wasn't seeing a return on its investment. This wasn't the first time advertisers showed skepticism.

Facebook itself acknowledged that nearly half its advertisers considered the site experimental. In other words, as underwriters were touting the IPO and increasing its size and price, Facebook was acknowledging that it had either hit a rut or that its most robust period of growth—the kind that might support such inflated valuation models—was over.

Here's the upshot of all this: None of these factors was hidden. Facebook disclosed its worries about advertisers. It disclosed its slowing growth and all but acknowledged that it wasn't going to grow and support exponential price growth the way Google Inc. did after its IPO in 2004.

Comment: Benjamin Graham, The Intellegent Investor has an entire chapter on avoiding IPOs. It's simply not value investing. A couple of other articles with quotes: Facebook IPO Fiasco: Here’s How Small Investors Got Rolled Over

But then there are the recent revelations, which is that big institutional investors had much better information about the current condition of Facebook's business than small investors did.

This revelation may well have played into the modest stock "pop" on the first day of trading, and it may also have caused some would-be long-term institutional investors to jettison Facebook's shares, thus exacerbating the price decline.

The information that big institutions were given was estimates for Facebook's future performance, which were developed by the underwriters' research analysts. These estimates are verbally distributed in most IPOs, and the institutions use these estimates to help decide on a fair price to pay for the stock.

In Facebook's case, however, the underwriters' analysts cut their estimates midway through the roadshow, which is a highly unusual and negative event. They did this because Facebook told them that its business outlook had deteriorated--information that was not given to small investors.

As a result of this estimate cut, combined with an increase in the size and price of the deal and the number of shares sold by insiders, some institutional investors "got the willies" about the Facebook deal. Individual investors, meanwhile, were unaware that anything had changed.

Facebook Under Fire: It’s the Valuation, Stupid!

Schiff says Facebook is only the latest example of a flawed system. He blames the regulators, not because there are too few rules, but because there are way too many.

The high cost of jumping through regulatory hoops means only more mature, expensive companies can afford to go public. Up until then, the only people invested in a company were Venture Capitalists, Private Equity, and assorted well-connected, well-heeled individuals.

Those lucky few are using the IPO as a chance to cash out to the public. "By the time the average American gets a shot at all, the upside is gone," says Schiff. In the case of Facebook, the little guys may have gotten doubly hosed. During the road show, the underwriters reportedly lowered earnings estimates prior to the IPO, then only disseminated the news to select institutions and clients.

The specifics of Facebook are different, but in the larger picture Schiff says the Facebook IPO is no different than any other offering. The insiders who are selling know the company is ripe to be sold while the outsiders wager on better days.

Schiff says of the average IPO investor: "You're betting on the come but meanwhile you're paying through the nose." That's not a recipe for investing success.

Beard zenith

I started the beard on October 1st. I had intended to shave it on March 1st to celebrate Spring (which in Minnesota is really about May 1st!)

Mom asked me not to shave it - she wanted to see it. By this time it felt too long but I wanted to see my Mother (picture above on May 17th. Mom turned 92 on May 9th)

When Mom saw it ... and felt it ... her response was "I don't like it!"

Kathee trimmed it to 1" today. Feels and looks better.

Picture above: Mom, Nancy, and me in Kerrville TX

Bill's BBQ Kerrville TX

On Thursday May 17th we visited the Texas Hill Country and stopped for lunch at Bills BBQ in Kerrville, Texas Tom, Bill's grill master, took our picture. (Mom, Kathee, Jim, and my Sister Nancy)

LBJ Trip

Kathee and I returned yesterday from our San Antonio trip. We left Thursday May 10th, spent the night at Guthrie, Oklahoma and then on Friday May 11th, we drove to Mother's house in Arlington TX. On Saturday May 12th, taking 2 cars, Nancy (my Sister) and Mother and Kathee and I drove on to San Antonio. We stayed the week at the Hyatt Wild Oak Ranch. That week, Robert Caro's 4th volume of the LBJ biography was published. I received it just days before our trip. My Brother had read volumes 1-3 and recommended volume 4 to me. But it was George Will's column that persuaded me.

Excerpt:

Robert Caro's "The Passage of Power," the fourth and, he insists, penultimate volume in his "The Years of Lyndon Johnson," which when completed will rank as America's most ambitiously conceived, assiduously researched and compulsively readable political biography. The new volume arrives 30 years after the first, and its timing is serendipitous: Are you seeking an antidote to current lamentations about the decline of political civility? Immerse yourself in Caro's cringe-inducing catalogue of humiliations, gross and petty, inflicted on Johnson by many New Frontiersmen and, with obsessive hatred, by Robert Kennedy

The trip was not really an LBJ trip - it was to celebrate my Mother's 92nd birthday. But I worked through the LBJ book last week. Additionally we visited - and this was an absolute highlight of the trip - the LBJ Ranch and Texas White House.

The "Little Pig"

We've had one of these for almost 25 years. I bought in on Colorado Avenue in Denver (I think in 1988). Kathee uses it on the stairs. What a solid little performer it has been. The image above is from an Ebay ad for a used one.

Today I did a little bit a Internet research on it. I found this interesting:

A forerunner was the The Compact Vacuum Cleaner: Compact Vacuum Cleaners were among the prizes offered on the 1950s television game show “Queen for a Day.”

  A bit about the history of the "Little Pig" as it is sometimes known:

Interstate vacuums were originally produced and patented by the Interstate Engineering Corporation, and they are responsible for the creation of the compact vacuum. Both Interstate Engineering Corporation and Interstate Electronics, a sister corporation, were owned by Interstate Aircraft. Their first manufacturing plant opened in El Segundo California in 1937. These vacuums were originally made to clean the Howard Hughes Company aircraft fleet during the nineteen forties. Due to their success at cleaning the aircraft, and the fact that the company already had the necessary tools and dyes for the vacuums, these machines were sold to the public by door to door salesmen starting in 1946.

The compact vacuums were only sold by the salesmen; but in 1949, the Revelation vacuum cleaner was introduced to retail outlets and was only available there. The compact vacuums designed and patented by Interstate Engineering Corporation were also featured as prizes on a nineteen fifties game show called "Queen for a Day."

Throughout the years, the Interstate Engineering Corporation has moved several times, merged and been sold, and it now exists in two different companies run by descendants of the founder of Interstate Engineering Corporation. The two companies operate under the names of Tristar and Air Storm, and sell vacuums based on the original compact vacuum model. The Interstate Electronics Company is still in business today. The design of the vacuums sold by Tristar has changed little since their patenting, with only the motor and internal components changing, not the external assembly. The Tristar Company has many different vacuum models, including the EXL, PN5, C6 and C7. The company has canister and compact models for home and business use. The Mg series of Tristar vacuums are designed to bring ease to cleaning by providing cyclonic action and consistent power for all types of cleaning and use. The cyclonic action allows the Tristar cleaner to keep dirt and dust from clogging the filters as it pushes the debris away from the filter, not into it.

I'm not sure if the units can be purchased new but parts and supplies are readily available - for example here.

"Sometimes Mr. Market behaves like 'a psychotic drunk'"

Live-blogging Buffettpalooza

 Excerpt:

Carol Loomis presents a question from a shareholder who asks why Berkshire shares have been undervalued for so long. Mr. Buffett responds by taking an even longer view. “We’ve run Berkshire for 47 years. There have been four or five times where we thought it was significantly undervalued,” he says. “The beauty of stocks is they do sell for silly prices from time to time. That’s how Charlie and I have gotten rich.” Then he turns to his usual speech about investing in stocks, giving a shout-out to Ben Graham’s idea of Mr. Market, which he says investors should think of as their partner. The beauty of having Mr. Market as a partner, he says, is that sometimes Mr. Market behaves like “a psychotic drunk.”

Comment: An "Oracle of Omaha" moment. More: On Wells Fargo:

Asked why he bought J.P. Morgan Chase stock for his personal account but not for Berkshire Hathaway, Mr. Buffett explains that he prefers Wells Fargo -- of which the company owns 400 million shares worth $11 billion or so at year-end -- better. "My best ideas are all in Berkshire," he says. "That I can promise you." "I know Wells better and it's easier to understand," he says, adding that he bought Wells Fargo in the first quarter.

On Wal-Mart:

"I don't think there's something fundamentally dishonorable about Wal-Mart," Mr. Munger says. At companies of the scale of Wal-Mart or Berkshire, with 270,000 workers, "I guarantee someone is doing something wrong right now," Mr. Buffett says. "I guarantee 20 people are doing something wrong."

On Investing:

"Investing is not really that complicated," ... Mr. Buffett says patience is the key virtue in investing, and that those who understand the market is a tool rather than an adviser will do well over time. The market is often wrong for a variety of reasons, he says, and those who bear that in mind can take advantage of the market's pluses, such as transparent prices and liquidity.

On Prostate Cancer:

"I have four doctors. At least a few of them own Berkshire Hathaway, though I don't screen them." He and his family listened to doctors a few weeks ago. His plan says survival rate is above 99%. "Maybe I will get shot by a jealous husband," Mr. Buffett says. Mr. Munger says he doesn't know if he has prostate cancer "because I don't let them test for it."

In rare agreement with Governor Dayton

Dayton vetoes fireworks bill, citing hazards

Excerpt:

Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed a bill to allow the sale and use of a wide array of consumer fireworks, including aerial rockets and firecrackers. He said in a veto letter, issued less than 90 minutes before the midnight deadline on Saturday, that it's "government's foremost responsibility to protect the safety and the well-being of its citizens." The bill, sponsored by Rep. John Kriesel, R-Cottage Grove, and Sen. Mike Jungbauer, R-East Bethel, allowed the sale and use of the full range of consumer fireworks in Minnesota, but only between June 1 and July 7. He noted that after Minnesota legalized ground-based fireworks such as sparklers and small cones in 2002, injuries have spiked, particularly among young people.

Comment: Because I have a neighbor who thinks it is appropriate to launch bottle rockets without any consideration as to what house they may hit or whose yard they land in. (I've visited and talked directly to the man and also called the police about the issue another time). The sound of a bottle rocket hitting my siding is an irritant.

On the hook

Public on hook for Vikings stadium overruns

Excerpt:

The agreement to build a new Minnesota Vikings football stadium in Minneapolis features a key difference from the plan to build the project in Ramsey County and even from the Minnesota Twins' new Target Field. Once it is built, any Vikings stadium operating cost overruns ultimately will be the public's responsibility. And not just overruns. The public will be legally obligated to maintain the stadium "in a manner that is first-class and consistent with comparable" National Football League stadiums -- a clause that could translate into substantial future costs

Comment: Once again demonstrates that MN legislators are not really representing the people. Agents of the NFL and the Vikings!