Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 617 Editor's Choice: 9
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And did I mention
[Read the article: New home sales: The downward spiral continues]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We just got hit with a 2% 'transfer tax' on all existing home sales, thereby sucking another several thousand dollars out. If they really wanted to put the brakes on the market and crash it hard, they couldn't have done a better job. Double the property taxes and then add 2% transfer fee onto the sale. We always knew local government was pretty corrupt but they don't even bother to pretend not to be rapacious bastards anymore.
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That's because it doesn't really matter
[Read the article: The undecideds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We'll get X and X will do pretty much nothing. It doesn't matter who X is or which party X is from. It's all just designed to pretend to placate half the voters and enrage the other half. We shouldn't take it too seriously.
Candidate in '08: A vote for....something, or not.
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Which of course is simply retarded racist nonsense.
[Read the article: Brazilian ethanol: Too cheap to meter]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Brazil's problems for the last 100 years were Brazil's alone. We didn't invent the Banana Republic. They did. If they'd like to sell us a product at a price we'd like to pay, that's wonderful. Anything else is rhetorical horseshit like all the other fools we've seen tramp their way to NYC this week. In the meantime Lula - try getting your contracts with Venezuela on power generation enforced. Or when Chavez tore them up was that the White Man's Problem too?
BTW, is there anyone out there in IT? Brazil's IT market was THE most restrictive in the world until recently. 100% had to be indigenously developed and sourced. This meant a crazy quilt of paper companies DBA Brazilian firms with fees I mean bribes going every which way. Plus - take a look at Brazilian telcom. Expensive and underbuilt. That's what having closed markets and then turning around and making demands gets you.
Oh I know this kind of post coloialist talk plays well to the bongsmokers in the audience at the Daily Show or here at Potemkin Willage #54 People's Industrial Blogging Combine but it's nonsense. And what's worse it simply wrongheaded. Everyone knows that as soon as we met Brazil on those terms they'd turn around and accuse us of forcing them to destroy the rain forest to make the stuff.
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Nancy
[Read the article: New home sales: The downward spiral continues]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You got that right. 3 more years & I move back to NYC. If that means I have to step over the starving bodies of ex hedge Wall St. flunkies then it's just that much sweeter.
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What makes you a victim if you buy a house
[Read the article: New home sales: The downward spiral continues]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A real asset that costs 10x more than your annual income. I fail to see how you've been victimized. What has happened is that someone told you a supermodel was giving out free blowjobs and new BMW's and you, for whatever strange reason believed it. Those people aren't victims, they're greedy.
My house, at today's prices, costs 2.4x my household income and the total mortgage remaining is maybe 90% of my total household income. When I bought, I was adventurous, it cost 2.6x my household income. One refi to a 20 year 4.75% fixed note, no closing costs no PMI. Total equity after 11 years is about 2/3rds of the average sale price today.
See it's not hard to be fiscally conservative and prudent. And it doesn't even require you to save your ass off and live like a pauper either. So when someone comes to you handing out free money and blowjobs from supermodels, it might not be all that it appears to be.
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All over the road with Jenna Bush
[Read the article: Jenna Bush is just not the Winnebago-driving type]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Someone's bound to get killed in that Drunk Driving Carney Show. It runs in the shallow gene pool they call a dynasty.
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So does this mean Salon is done with 2000 straight days of promising an Iran invasion tomorrow
[Read the article: What you missed while watching the new "Bionic Woman"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and will switch to 2000 straight days of promising an Israeli invasion of Iran tomorrow? I just want to get a picture in mind of what the next several years of Salon 'reporting' will look like.
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Blah blah blabbity blahblah bleen
[Read the article: Does a bigger Army mean another Iraq?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Break it down - what does 100k more field-able troops translate to in terms of monthly recruiting targets? 10% more, 15% It's actually not that hard to do from workforce pool perspective. Son of a friend of mine is on Parris Island now with the USMC. They paid this kid a nice chunk of change to sign up considering what his other options at the time were. I bet if the armed forces wanted another 100,000 people they could get it.
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The reason they are the mercury militia
[Read the article: Autism debate, Take 5,832]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Is that this 'debate' always comes with a neat package of 3 million other things we need to eradicate from the world such as GM food, walking around without bike helmets, teens driving cars, all fat everywhere, 2nd hand smoke, 3rd hand smoke, cellphones and on and on and on.
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The KSA is the personal property of 7000 people
[Read the article: Don't cry for Saudi Arabia]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Literally the kingdom is the property of the 7000 princes of the al Aziz ibn Saud clan. It's important to keep this in mind. It's not a country per se as we are normally accustomed to. They outlawed most common forms of slavery in 1962 or 63.
Now having said that, they're not stupid. They've educated their elite for decades in the west fully understanding that an ignorant uneducated cradle to grave welfare state populace is the best way to maintain. And with these expensive western education they've managed to wrest a sort of plan for the future. Today the KSA's government budget is more than 60% of the total GDP. Most of their total revenue comes, obviously from oil. But they understand that that's not forever. So they've diversified. They for example own more than a quarter of Citigroup. They realize that in 30 years they'll have to live off their investments when the oil taps out. They can't build out their own labor force. Today barely 2.7 million Saudis even have jobs. Most are on the dole. The schools are in the dark ages and even if they wanted to build out a modern infrastructure they couldn't. In 30 years 75% of the population will be under the age of 18. Now don't expect them to evolve into the Mideast Hong Kong either since sharia banking places too many restrictions on how they can operate. No - they have to be straight investors, basically economic parasites off the financial engine of the rest of the world.