Deny until you cannot anymore.

Governor Blagojevich is refusing to resign and insists that he did nothing wrong. We should err on the side of him being innocent until proven guilty, but it's tough to do in this case. When I hear him say that he did nothing wrong, it reminds me of the many times that other public figures have vehemently denied wrongdoing and later confess. Usually, the more stacked the evidence is against someone, the more strongly they object. It's become a kneejerk reaction for me to quickly find guilt in someone when they plea innocence.

I can understand someone lying to avoid punishment. What I don't understand is when people who commit crimes of such proportions rationalize their judgment in backwards ways. When someone commits a small crime such as stealing food, it can be rationalized because they were hungry. Although it may have been wrong to steal, we can sympathize with the hungry person's theft. It makes sense. However, there's a whole other type of person who commits a crime and justifys it with the loosest of standards. They'll use circular logic or flawed reasoning. I think the governor falls into this category.

As strange as it sound, he may actually evade conviction.

The Economist

I asked for a subscription to The Economist for Christmas this past year. During my first job when I worked in Chicago, I remembered reading some really interesting articles in it. I originally thought that it was some sort of professional trade magazine and that the average person would be lost. I thought I'd share my insights for anyone who's thinking about picking up an issue.

First of all, the magazine title may be a little misleading. It's not ENTIRELY about economics. Many of the articles in it are about politics/government, world affairs, public policy, and science/engineering in addition to economics. So, if you're someone that wants to stay well informed about what's generally going on in the world, it's an excellent source. Most people say, "Why would I want to pay for a subscription to a magazine/journal/newspaper when I have the internet?" True, the internet can be a good source for news (and just about anything else depending upon how scrupulous you are), but a lot of it gets watered down by pop culture and is very Western-centric. What kind of dress some celebrity wore to a awards ceremony will get more coverage than an African country's government being overthrown in a military coup. That's fine. I get it. The internet sites are only showing what people will find entertaining.

For anyone who wants to expand their horizons and learn about what's going on in the world, I'd highly recommend picking up at least one issue. The world does not end at our borders.

Don't they get it?

My wife and I recently purchased a Samsung PN50A550 television. The purchase made me think about store retailers vs. online retailers in general. When I looked at the particular model in a local Circuit City, it was priced at about $1440. This was after a 30% discount. Add 10% Cook county sales tax and it would be about $1580. On top of that, they didn't have any left in the manufacturer's box so if you wanted to buy it, you had to take the one on the shelf. If there was a problem with the unit, you would have to take it up with the manufacturer because the store was going out of business. Needless to say, I had hesitations. Nevertheless, I liked what I saw and it was in the $1500 price range that my wife and I were shooting for.

I held off and went home to check out the online prices. I found the same model at amazon.com for about $1490. No sales tax, no shipping costs. If there were any problems with the unit it could be returned up through January 31 with the shipping completely paid for. It looked like the amazon.com deal was better in every way over Circuit City. Poor Circuit City had to pay for the sales staff, inventory, the building, and other general upkeep costs in order to entice me to buy from them. So, I freely enjoyed the benefit of their showroom and setup, but the benefit of amazon.com's price. Doesn't Circuit City (or any brick and mortar store) know this is happening? What are they doing to combat it? I looked into the price a bit and found out that amazon.com had been selling the unit at this price for several months. Circuit City had to go through a bankruptcy liquidation sale in order to lower their price 30% to come close to being competitive.

I can understand the Circuit City price being a little higher due to costs, but their pre-discounted price wasn't even in the ballpark. Consumers are being more educated and the internet is not going away anytime soon. It will be interesting to see how the competition develops.

Down time

I haven't posted in a while. November and December are those two busy months during which free time is used up preparing for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Vacation time is over and it's back to reality. I'm usually pretty good about staying current on what's going on but I let a lot of that slide during the last month or so. It was only until I happened to hear by chance on the radio that Rod Blagojevich had appointed someone to Obama's vacant senate seat. One word to describe the governor's character would be "brazen" and the recent appointment doesn't do anything to rebuke that.

Overall, the down time was good. No worrying about the economy, work, stressing about applying for business school... The last month was all about football, food, and family.

Fuzzy math

I've only been a homeowner for about a year and four months. I figured that there would be a learning curve when it came to taking on this responsibility, but that I could eventually figure out all that I needed to know... except my property tax bill. The first year that we paid our bill (actually my mortgage company escrows the payment for us), the total came in two installments of about $1050 each, for a grand yearly total of about $2100. This was the amount that was expected based upon what the previous owner was paying. No surprises. The first half of this year yielded a payment of about $1050. Once again, no surprises. The second half of the year I received the other payment request and this time it was for about $2600. Surprise.

That brought our 2008 total to about $3750, about an 79% increase. Wait, it gets better. Instead of the payment being 1050 + 2600 = $3750 next year, it may be 2600 + 2600 = $5200. That would be a 148% increase of our original $2100. I called Susie, who represents the company who runs our condo association, and asked if this was correct. I was told that the association hired a lawyer and he was successful in getting the amount reduced and that the amount that we would have paid would have been even higher.

I did some searching around the Cook county assessor's webpage and think I found a few answers. Assessments are done every three years. One-third of the county is done during one year, the next third is assessed the second year, the last third assessed the third year. The cycle then repeats. The assessment that I am now paying is actually based upon an assessment done in 2007, which was probably when the real estate market peaked. The increase is therefore the difference between the assessed value in 2004 compared to the newly assessed 2007 value. I suppose it makes some sense, but it still doesn't make me feel any better. I'm probably going to give our condo association one more call. A 79-148% increase just doesn't sound right.

I'll leave you with a picture I found amusing. You can pay your property taxes through Chase Bank so they put out this little advertisement. Notice the woman handing over her check with a big smile on her face. She seams thrilled that she gets to hand over her money.

"Yay! I just got gouged on my tax bill!"

Obama wins

At about 10pm central time, NBC called the contest for Obama. It looked like it was steadily heading that way during the course of the night and this was the final confirmation. One of the themes surrounding the election was that it would be historic regardless of who won. We would either have an African-American president or a female vice-president. Being from the Chicago suburbs, I'm pleased with the result, but the reaction from the masses was much more than I expected.

Let's put this in perspective... We won 6 NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls. One of those teams was possibly the best basketball team ever, finishing with a regular season record of 72-10. The Bears won Superbowl XX with possibly the greatest football team ever assembled, finishing 15-1 and trouncing the Patriots in the Superbowl 46-10. The White Sox won the World Series a few seasons ago, sweeping through the playoffs and losing only one of those games. The University of Illinois Fighting Illini almost had an undefeated basketball season a few years back. Needless to say, we've had our moments of celebration and joy. What I saw last night was more dramatic than any of those.

Whenever a presidential candidate won, there would be scenes of celebration for the victor as well as the moment of defeat for the loser. By the next morning, it was back to work as usual because most felt that we had just picked the lesser of two evils and that not much would be different, regardless of the outcome. Last night people were crying tears of joy, speechless in disbelief. People across the world were celebrating. Even the news media and journalists had a subtle partiality towards Obama. A crowd of several hundred thousand people stood for several hours in Grant Park to hear a victory speech. The sentiment of the U.S. and the world was one of renewed optimism and hope, not just passive acceptance. With the rest of the world's economies and well-being so strongly tied to U.S. policy, it's understandable that the world would be watching as intensely as they were. As a German diplomat once said, "When the United States coughs, the rest of the world gets a cold."

When Bush won both of his terms, I was pretty bummed for a few weeks because I felt that the "system" didn't work. I felt that the country would truly be worse off because of our elected choice. If McCain won last night, I wouldn't have really felt that badly. I think he would've done a good job as president and I wouldn't have had the the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had in 2000 and 2004. Considering the general ill will towards the Republican party, I think McCain was up against a lot right from the start. Indeed, many senators and congressmen lost their seats for no reason other than the fact that they had a capital R next to their name instead of a capital D.

We may not have all voted for him but it in everyone's best interest to make sure that he succeeds. Let's have a good four to eight years.

Get out the vote

A coworker or mine is fairly active in the political scene and we will frequently exchange ideas on political topics. She has been actively volunteering for some time and I felt that it was time for me to step up to the plate and do something instead of just saying something. I signed up to be a volunteer for the democratic party and finally got a call from them a few days ago. They wanted me to do some canvasing in Indianapolis but I had to turn them down since it was short notice. Instead I volunteered to assist at the local phone bank.

I got there at 9am this morning and I wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to do. The woman in charge explained that they have lists of registered voters in Indiana (a state that's pretty much up for grabs) and that they want to encourage those people to get out and vote. The interesting part was that they didn't want us to try to ram some sort of democratic agenda down their throats.

We were given a basic script to follow and a list of people. The list had a person's name, their phone number, and the location that they should go to if they wanted to vote. Additionally, we would inform them that the polls would close at 6pm and that if they needed transportation to the polling place that all they had to do is call 1-876-MY-IN-OBAMA (I think that's what the number was, maybe it was 877 area code). After the call, we would mark a comment indicating the result of the call. Sometimes it was a disconnected or wrong number. Sometimes the person already voted or had no interest in talking to us. We were never told to encourage anyone to vote Obama, just to vote.

Most of the calls were fairly routine but one call stuck with me. I was an elderly woman and her husband that I called. I asked them if they voted early or planned to vote on Tuesday. She told me that they were both disabled/handicapped and that they didn't get out much. I gave her the phone number that she could call if she needed a ride to the polls. She got a pen so she could copy the number down and I repeated the number once again for her. I called a total of 58 people but it felt good to know that it made a difference for at least two of them.