Bugging in, bugging out, and why neither really works.

My ancestors escaped Russia in post-WWI, because they saw which way the wind was blowing. If they had followed the advice of "survivalists" and "emergency prep gurus", they would be dead.

The thing that no one talks about as a component of emergency preparedness is having infrastructure in another country to sustain you: bank accounts, storage lockers, businesses, and a second passport to get there. A storage locker in a foreign country can run as little as $20 a month, and a foot locker in a friend's garage there often is free. For as little as $2000 you can have an entirely separate life to get to in the event your current country goes psychotic - and yet no one does this.

"Bugging in" doesn't work if the local disaster is longer than 3 weeks in length as you become a target after local supplies are exhausted.

"Bugging out" to the countryside doesn't work either, as then you're more isolated and are a target as well.

When my ancestors saw the conscription and farm confiscations, they set up a base of operations in Chicago with distant relatives. They had a trunk pre-packed in the cellar. When the government came to town and started grabbing all the males for the army, they grabbed the trunk, hopped a boat, and were running a successful butcher shop in Chicago three months later. Everyone who stayed died or was enslaved - the "bugged in" ones had their houses burned down around them and the "bugged out" ones were rounded up and shot eventually.

Their successful business also allowed my great-grandfather's family to send money and supplies to anticommunist groups at virtually no risk to himself in the US, and they were proud when the USSR finally fell. Their old bug-out trunk is still in my basement, and I have the first money my family ever made in the US hung in a frame on the wall, it's a 1904 Morgan silver dollar.

In another part of my family, all their eggs were in one basket despite being wealthy. They didn't leave the country when the Nazis took power, and as a result half of them died in death camps.

Whole Foods and GMOs.

I was pointed to this article, let's look at it.

"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must."   -  Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

Out of context.  WF is looking at two options - total deregulation or coexistence with the organic standards. 
 

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

Uncited assertion.
 

In a cleverly worded, but profoundly misleading email sent to its customers last week, Whole Foods Market, while proclaiming their support for organics and "seed purity," gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the "conditional deregulation" of Monsanto's genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa. 

With the other option being total deregulation.  From WF's blog, it looks like the USDA had already decided between two options and that greater control of GMO was not one of them.
 

Beyond the regulatory euphemism of "conditional deregulation," this means that WFM and their colleagues are willing to go along with the massive planting of a chemical and energy-intensive GE perennial crop, alfalfa; guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers and destruction of the essential soil food web by the toxic herbicide, Roundup; and guaranteed to produce Roundup-resistant superweeds that will require even more deadly herbicides such as 2,4 D to be sprayed on millions of acres of alfalfa across the U.S.

 

Uncited assertion.
 

In exchange for allowing Monsanto's premeditated pollution of the alfalfa gene pool, WFM wants "compensation." In exchange for a new assault on farmworkers and rural communities (a recent large-scale Swedish study found that spraying Roundup doubles farm workers' and rural residents' risk of getting cancer), WFM expects the pro-biotech USDA to begin to regulate rather than cheerlead for Monsanto. In payment for a new broad spectrum attack on the soil's crucial ability to provide nutrition for food crops and to sequester dangerous greenhouse gases (recent studies show that Roundup devastates essential soil microorganisms that provide plant nutrition and sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases), WFM wants the Biotech Bully of St. Louis to agree to pay "compensation" (i.e. hush money) to farmers "for any losses related to the contamination of his crop."

Um, that seems pretty common sense to me in light of Monsanto's tendency to bring lawsuits against farmers that get GMO in their fields.
 

In its email of Jan. 21, 2011 WFM calls for "public oversight by the USDA rather than reliance on the biotechnology industry," even though WFM knows full well that federal regulations on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) do not require pre-market safety testing, nor labeling; and that even federal judges have repeatedly ruled that so-called government "oversight" of Frankencrops such as Monsanto's sugar beets and alfalfa is basically a farce. At the end of its email, WFM admits that its surrender to Monsanto is permanent: "The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well  True coexistence is a must."

Again, the momentum is towards GMO foods entering into the "natural" foods feedstream, and WF isn't going to fight this battle, but rather is going to confine their efforts towards keeping their organic line GMO-free.
 

Why Is Organic Inc. Surrendering?

According to informed sources, the CEOs of WFM and Stonyfield are personal friends of former Iowa governor

Uncited assertion.
 

, now USDA Secretary, Tom Vilsack

The same guy that pushed SB510.  Bad guy for sure.
 

, and in fact made financial contributions to Vilsack's previous electoral campaigns.

Uncited assertion.  From what I've researched, Mackey has contributed mostly to Libertarians, and none of Vilsack's campaigns are mentioned in public records.
 

Vilsack was hailed as "Governor of the Year" in 2001 by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and traveled in a Monsanto corporate jet on the campaign trail.

Uncited assertion.
 

Perhaps even more fundamental to Organic Inc.'s abject surrender is the fact that the organic elite has become more and more isolated from the concerns and passions of organic consumers and locavores. The Organic Inc. CEOs are tired of activist pressure, boycotts, and petitions. Several of them have told me this to my face.

Personal anecdote.
 

They apparently believe that the battle against GMOs has been lost, and that it's time to reach for the consolation prize.  The consolation prize they seek is a so-called "coexistence"

That's pretty much the only line you need to read in this article.  If you're WF, you tried to get GMOs out but are now going for the compromise instead of trying to hold your position.  This is smart business, move on from the battlefield when it's apparent you aren't winning.
 

between the biotech Behemoth and the organic community that will lull the public to sleep and greenwash the unpleasant fact that Monsanto's unlabeled and unregulated genetically engineered crops are now spreading their toxic genes on 1/3 of U.S. (and 1/10 of global) crop land.

Uncited assertion / opinion.

 

WFM and most of the largest organic companies have deliberately separated themselves from anti-GMO efforts and cut off all funding to campaigns working to label or ban GMOs. The so-called Non-GMO Project, funded by Whole Foods and giant wholesaler United Natural Foods (UNFI) is basically a greenwashing effort (although the 100% organic companies involved in this project seem to be operating in good faith) to show that certified organic foods are basically free from GMOs (we already know this since GMOs are banned in organic production), while failing to focus on so-called "natural" foods, which constitute most of WFM and UNFI's sales and are routinely contaminated with GMOs.

WF tried, and now they're withdrawing as it's apparent it's not working.
 

From their "business as usual" perspective, successful lawsuits against GMOs filed by public interest groups such as the Center for Food Safety; or noisy attacks on Monsanto by groups like the Organic Consumers Association, create bad publicity, rattle their big customers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger, Costco, Supervalu, Publix and Safeway; and remind consumers that organic crops and foods such as corn, soybeans, and canola are slowly but surely becoming contaminated by Monsanto's GMOs.

Whole Food's Dirty Little Secret: Most of the So-Called "Natural" Processed Foods and Animal Products They Sell Are Contaminated with GMOs

The main reason, however, why Whole Foods is pleading for coexistence with Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, BASF and the rest of the biotech bullies, is that they desperately want the controversy surrounding genetically engineered foods and crops to go away. Why? Because they know, just as we do, that 2/3 of WFM's $9 billion annual sales is derived from so-called "natural" processed foods and animal products that are contaminated with GMOs.

"Natural" does not mean GMO-free.  We already knew this.
 

We and our allies have tested their so-called "natural" products (no doubt WFM's lab has too) containing non-organic corn and soy, and guess what: they're all contaminated with GMOs, in contrast to their certified organic products, which are basically free of GMOs, or else contain barely detectable trace amounts.

Really?  Where is a link to the test results?  A paper?  Anything?

Approximately 2/3 of the products sold by Whole Foods Market and their main distributor, United Natural Foods (UNFI) are not certified organic, but rather are conventional (chemical-intensive and GMO-tainted) foods and products disguised as "natural."

Again, we already knew that "natural" means nothing.

Unprecedented wholesale and retail control of the organic marketplace by UNFI and Whole Foods, employing a business model of selling twice as much so-called "natural" food as certified organic food, coupled with the takeover of many organic companies by multinational food corporations such as Dean Foods, threatens the growth of the organic movement.

Covering Up GMO Contamination: Perpetrating "Natural" Fraud

Many well-meaning consumers are confused about the difference between conventional products marketed as "natural," and those nutritionally/environmentally superior and climate-friendly products that are "certified organic."

Retail stores like WFM and wholesale distributors like UNFI have failed to educate their customers about the qualitative difference between natural and certified organic, conveniently glossing over the fact that nearly all of the processed "natural" foods and products they sell contain GMOs, or else come from a "natural" supply chain where animals are force-fed GMO grains in factory farms or Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

Well, sure.  WF could do more, but they're not.  This is hardly an indictment.

A troubling trend in organics today is the calculated shift on the part of certain large formerly organic brands from certified organic ingredients and products to so-called "natural" ingredients. With the exception of the "grass-fed and grass-finished" meat sector, most "natural" meat, dairy, and eggs are coming from animals reared on GMO grains and drugs, and confined, entirely, or for a good portion of their lives, in CAFOs.

Again with the natural vs. organic.  Again, WE KNOW.  This article is going on and on.

Whole Foods and UNFI are maximizing their profits by selling quasi-natural products at premium organic prices.

No, WF charges what the market will bear. 
 

Organic consumers are increasingly left without certified organic choices while genuine organic farmers and ranchers continue to lose market share to "natural" imposters.

 

It's no wonder that less than 1% of American farmland is certified organic, while well-intentioned but misled consumers have boosted organic and "natural" purchases to $80 billion annually-approximately 12% of all grocery store sales.

The Solution: Truth-in-Labeling Will Enable Consumers to Drive So-Called "Natural" GMO and CAFO-Tainted Foods Off the Market

There can be no such thing as "coexistence" with a reckless industry that undermines public health, destroys biodiversity, damages the environment, tortures and poisons animals, destabilizes the climate, and economically devastates the world's 1.5 billion seed-saving small farmers.  There is no such thing as coexistence between GMOs and organics in the European Union. Why? Because in the EU there are almost no GMO crops under cultivation, nor GM consumer food products on supermarket shelves. And why is this? Because under EU law, all foods containing GMOs or GMO ingredients must be labeled. Consumers have the freedom to choose or not to choose GMOs; while farmers, food processors, and retailers have (at least legally) the right to lace foods with GMOs, as long as they are safety-tested and labeled. Of course the EU food industry understands that consumers, for the most part, do not want to purchase or consume GE foods. European farmers and food companies, even junk food purveyors like McDonald's and Wal-Mart, understand quite well the concept expressed by a Monsanto executive when GMOs first came on the market: "If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."

At least you should cite the guy that said it, Norman Braksick, Asgrow CEO.

The biotech industry and Organic Inc. are supremely conscious of the fact that North American consumers, like their European counterparts, are wary and suspicious of GMO foods. Even without a PhD, consumers understand you don't want your food safety or environmental sustainability decisions to be made by out-of-control chemical companies like Monsanto, Dow, or Dupont - the same people who brought you toxic pesticides, Agent Orange, PCBs, and now global warming.

So buy organic instead, don't blame WF for putting food on the shelf that people have indicated they will buy.
 

Industry leaders are acutely aware of the fact that every single industry or government poll over the last 16 years has shown that 85-95% of American consumers want mandatory labels on GMO foods.

Uncited assertion.
 

Why? So that we can avoid buying them. GMO foods have absolutely no benefits for consumers or the environment, only hazards. This is why Monsanto and their friends in the Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations have prevented consumer GMO truth-in-labeling laws from getting a public discussion in Congress.

Although Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio) recently introduced a bill in Congress calling for mandatory labeling and safety testing for GMOs, don't hold your breath for Congress to take a stand for truth-in-labeling and consumers' right to know what's in their food. Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the so-called "Citizens United" case gave big corporations and billionaires the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) to buy media coverage and elections, our chances of passing federal GMO labeling laws against the wishes of Monsanto and Food Inc. are all but non-existent. Perfectly dramatizing the "Revolving Door" between Monsanto and the Federal Government, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, formerly chief counsel for Monsanto, delivered one of the decisive votes in the Citizens United case, in effect giving Monsanto and other biotech bullies the right to buy the votes it needs in the U.S. Congress.

With big money controlling Congress and the media, we have little choice but to shift our focus and go local. We've got to concentrate our forces where our leverage and power lie, in the marketplace, at the retail level; pressuring retail food stores to voluntarily label their products; while on the legislative front we must organize a broad coalition to pass mandatory GMO (and CAFO) labeling laws, at the city, county, and state levels.

The Organic Consumers Association, joined by our consumer, farmer, environmental, and labor allies, has just launched a nationwide Truth-in-Labeling campaign to stop Monsanto and the Biotech Bullies from force-feeding unlabeled GMOs to animals and humans.

Why not just label organic things as "Not genetically modified"?  That's something that every organic producer could do right now.

All in all, this article expends much wind without actually saying much.  We know that natural doesn't mean organic and non-GMO.  WF tried to change regulations, but failed.  They failed but at least they're trying to compromise instead of giving up entirely.  I could do without the Chicken Little tone of the article and all the uncited assertions, it dilutes the message.

Why foreclosures are down.

The reason for this is not less people defaulting on their mortgage; in fact, that number has gone up.  What has happened in the last 3 months is what a lot of people are calling "Foreclosuregate":

1.  You buy a house and sign a mortgage note.
2.  The note is sold to a variety of institutions.
3.  Circumventing the county recorder's office, the note is recorded as transferred in a banking holding company (that has no employees BTW) called MERS.
4.  You then default on your mortgage because you lost your job.
5.  A bank or mortgage servicer calls you to foreclose on your house.

Now it gets fun.

6.  Two more banks call you to foreclose on your house, as the note transfer was erroneous or recorded improperly.
7.  You pull a "show me the note!" requesting that the entity that has standing to foreclose on you actually owns your mortgage.
8.  All three banks that called you cannot produce your original wet signature, as it's been destroyed after the mortgage assignation was put into MERS.  However, existing law demands that this document be produced to foreclose.
9.  Banks start creating mortgage notes retroactively (google "robosigning") to be able to foreclose mortgages they think they own.
10.  Homeowners find out about #9, #8, and #7 and dig in their heels with court proceedings.
11.  Foreclosures drop.

As you can see, the reasons foreclosures dropped is because banks engaged in a game of three-card-monte with your mortgage to the point where no one including them knows who owns it, so the rate of foreclosures had to go down.

Prices are still too high.  Don't buy.  Don't buy.  Don't buy.

Why I will not intervene to save people I don't know.

I choose not to get involved in third party conflicts unless there is a threat to me, my best friend, or immediate family.  If I see someone getting mugged/beat up, I'm going to call 911 and be a good witness.  That's it.

Here are my reasons.

1. There are too many variables, and things are not always as they seem. Undercover cops, some consensual role playing sex game between men or women, the victim being the opposite of what it appears, a domestic where both parties will attack me if I intervene, etc.
2. A third party under lethal threat has just as much opportunity and right to CCW as I do. The fact they choose not to does not obligate me to risk my life, money, and freedom to save them.
3. In all likelihood, those I would save probably think that anyone not the police who wants to carry a gun should be classified as a dangerous felon mental case, and will sue me if anything goes wrong.
4. I am not the police. The police have machineguns, helicopters, radios, but all that does not matter. The most important thing that the police have backing them when they intervene in cases like this is the blue wall of silence and millions of taxpayer dollars to pay lawyers if they screw up.  I have neither.
   
5. Much of violent crime consists of one criminal getting even with another criminal over some business dispute or show of disrepect. Why save one criminal from another?
   

The only time I will shoot other people when they threaten a third party is if I see someone get executed in cold blood and the shooter is between me and the exit, in which case I am going to go through him as I leave.

What an Uber is.

I thank my Dad profusely every Father's Day for saying: "No, I will not pay for you to major in political science, journalism, or any soft science like psychology or economics. Engineering, hard science, or nothing. Your choice."

There was some discussion of how companies need to pay more for entry level positions, and how not doing so meant missing out on the "Ubers", people who were very productive.

Myself being a present "Uber" at designing wireless and storage products (not my words, my old CEO's) and having worked with several Ubers at various companies, I have some knowledge of how this works.

I can say that an "Uber" to use the terms of the discussion does not cold-call companies or really ever apply for a job anywhere after they attain a certain level of notoriety. They are continously employed until they choose not to be, and if suddenly laid off a recruiter usually will call them in a few weeks. Ubers have a good network, and if they say "hey, I lost my job" it spreads through the network and people call *them*.

And with Ubers, there usually is no interview at all, the resume and reputation speaks for itself. Companies calling an Uber know that they are very likely employed now, or if they aren't it wasn't their fault, and in order to lure them they have to meet their demand. If someone is sending out resumes and looking for work and getting no results, they are by definition not an Uber, and you as a CEO are not "losing out" on an Uber if you circular file a resume that asks 175% of what you have budgeted for the position. If they're an Uber, you already know about them, know what they make, and whether you can afford to hire them.

As such, I've been cold-called by a company, they put the offer out for a job (no interview), they said "$120K plus stock", I said "$175K flat" because I knew the company management and knew it was going to be a death march, they balked, I shrugged and kept working at my $120K job, and they went under 26 months later.

A lot of Ubers just want to work on cool stuff and don't want to deal with running a business of their own, they just want people to hand them cool projects and a team, leave them alone, and pay them. Sure, some get the business feva (like myself) and will start to strike out on their own, but not everyone is like this.

Your level of Uberness will depend on the economy, the direction of the field, and the day of the week. My old boss's definition of Uber was if you get 2 cold-call job offers a month in a down economy. Sometimes I got that, sometimes I didn't, but I didn't really care. It used to really torque my ex that I said "They laid off the entire R&D department including me today. Eh, someone will probably call me soon" and have it happen.

But that doesn't mean I think I'm invulnerable. Not in the least. I'm cautious with my finances, network like hell, subscribe to 5 technical journals and read 10 more at the library, maintain a blog so my network knows what I'm doing, and work on my own projects to keep all the mental tools sharp and ready to go, even ones not related to my present job or consulting project. I know that if I slack, the industry passes me by. If I get arrogant, I stop generating value add at the same rate and my $150-200/hr loaded consulting rate does not look nearly as good.

McMansion conversion to apartment buildings.

Every town has its old mansions that have been turned into apartment buildings.  I think this is going to happen again with empty McMansions, and ParaPundit does too.  Accumulating cash to buy up McMansions and convert them to boarding houses might be a smart play.

How to pay less money to the banks, get loans for everything except a house.

Buying a house is the single largest contribution to a banker's bonus that you will ever make.  Even at today's low interest rates, on a $250,000 loan you will wind up paying out $600K!  Typically, car loans are for 36 months, and interest costs are relatively low.  Consider. You want to buy a $20K car and a $250K house.  If you follow the advice of people that say "pay cash for cars, they're a depreciating asset!" and pay $20K cash for the car instead of putting that $20K towards a house, you wind up paying over $18K more over the life of the home loan because you're paying off that $20K over 30 years instead of 36 months.  By taking out a car loan and putting your cash reserve towards a home down payment instead, you save $17K over the life of the home loan.