Maybe the "good old days" really were.

How could it get worse? According to US Government reports issued today, new unemployment claims reached a 16 year high. Claims lasting more than one week are at a 25 year high. New home construction hasn't been this slow since 1959. That's no typo. 1959. The Dow is under 8000. GMAC won't lend you money without a 700 credit score. The Detroit Three CEOs flew into DC yesterday (in private jets, mind you) to beg Congress for $25 billion as bankruptcy rumors circle like vultures around GM and Chrysler. Loan delinquency rates are at an all-time high. OK, I think you get the picture. The only bright side is oil is at a 4 year low-it closed at $49.62. Some bright side. Our Fed funds rate is 1% and credit is flowing slower than cold creamed gravy. I'm afraid this is the big one, as Fred Sanford used to say.
Truthfully, I never worried much about recessions. Things slowed for a year or two and then got better. I'm afraid that won't happen this time. How do you recover from losing your home? What about the 45 year old autoworker whose industry has been so downsized he has no hope of ever working there again? How does his family recover? Go back to school, right? Right. Where will he get the tuition? He can't pay it back even if he could find a willing lender. Even if he does, where will he work? What industries are going to absorb the torrent of the newly jobless? Even McDonalds doesn't need that many people. Have we peaked as a country?

RIP Circuit Shitty

If you haven't heard, Circuit City filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today. One of two things will probably happen: they'll survive for a while as a vastly downsized company then fail or they'll get bought out by some private equity firm that'll screw it up so bad they'll have to bring in the liquidators. Why, you ask?
It's funny that you and I know why, but the so-called experts have run the company straight in to the ground. Service, plain and simple. To wit:
1. Last years stunning mass firing of thousands of (mostly) fairly knowledgable non-commissioned salespeople, replacing them with 8$ an hour cashiers who don't know XM from HD, 7.1 surround from star 69, or megabytes from microwaves. If I wanted that level of "service" I can go to Walmart. Customers? Fuck 'em.
2. High pressure pitches to buy overpriced "protection plans" that were an exercise in futility in that nothing was covered, complete with....
3. Indian call centers. Nothing says contempt for the customer like a script-reading automaton you can't understand.
4. Service departments that don't service. Even if it was covered they couldn't fix it. I had a Tivo that had to go back three times before they gave up trying and replaced it. They spent more than the Tivo's cost on shipping alone.

CC claims the credit crunch, liquidity issues, and competition have forced them into Chapter 11. Bull. Best Buy is doing fine, thank you very much.
Why? The salestaff (usually) has a clue. Their management thought "Gee, customers LIKE to talk to someone who can actually find their ass with both hands and knows a pixel from a pixie stick." Voila! Profits.
Few people can walk into a big box store, face a wall of dozens of (item name here) and make an informed purchase decision. Buying a $2500 Flat screen TV isn't anywhere near the same as buying batteries. Radio Shack has forgotten that, and so has CC. I'm not betting on either of them remembering anytime soon.

One strike and you're out. Works for me.

Not sure what else I can say about this other than it's a great idea. Really. There are far too many professional baby machines that litter the landscape with their crotch-droppings only for the additional welfare benefits and then the kids end up frequently horribly abused by them, their gone-with-the-wind dads and/or other morons, crackheads, perverts, and others. Then they and their ultra bleeding-heart legal aiders plug up the court system trying to get the kids back just to start the cycle all over again. Think of the savings in welfare costs alone! The fact that I as a Libertarian agree with a Socialist, however, is giving me a migraine.
PS-don't bother with the "draft bill" link-it's in Dutch.


Women in the Netherlands deemed "unfit mothers" may soon be forced to take contraception, if a draft bill currently before the Dutch parliament is passed. The bill "targets women who have been the subject of judicial intervention due to their bad parenting," says its author, a member of the Netherlands' socialist Labour Party.

Under the proposed legislation, a woman judged unfit who refuses to take contraception and becomes pregnant would have her child taken away at birth. The infant then would be placed in a foster home.