Amen. People need to accept that is a progression of technology and that things are not going to happen overnight.
I bought my 2002 Prius after a six month wait time. I paid more for it then a comparably equiped gas car. There was no economic rationale for my purchase -- I did it because I loved the car, and had the privilege of driving a cutting edge piece of engineering for going on seven years now, with minimum maintenance and hassle. There's something beautiful about driving with virtually no noise and I still smile when I roll up to a stop sign and the engine shuts off.
Moreover, I am willing to pay higher than market rate because of the externalities associated with having the world's first mass-produced electric car:
I am supporting an environmental technology that I believe in.
I am supporting green-tech projects, built in America.
I love driving on electric power only.
I am willing to take a risk on buying the Volt or the Prius or any other quasi-experimental first-generation piece of tech hardware because I have the money.
I am buying it because as a child I wanted to know why I couldn't put a windmill on top of the family car and use wind power to make it go.
The key to realize here is that nuclear decommissioning funds are collected from electric ratepayers (i.e., you, me and everyone we know). When the electricity markets were deregulated in the 1990s, there was a real concern that nuclear plants would not be able to cover the costs of decommissioning. Most state public utility commissions imposed a non-bypassable stranded cost adder to your electric bill. A portion of each electric bill is thus deposited directly into the nuclear decommissioning trust fund. In a way, the fund is very much like a pension obligation. Companies are required to pay into the fund at a level specified by the NRC. When they are short, the company either has to step up its contribution or the state public service commission has to approve a greater contribution from ratepayers. Actually, I thought it was a very positive sign that the NRC has been so public and transparent at pointing out this potential problem.
Yes, the judge ruled as a matter of law that the fair use defense is not applicable in this case. Fair use is what lawyers call an "affirmative defense." The defendants have to convince the judge that, as a matter of law, they are entitled to present an affirmative defense to the finder of fact (either the jury, or if there is no jury, the judge). If the judge finds that the defendant has not met their burden of proving their affirmative defense, then the defendant is not permitted to present evidence in support of that defense.
Entirely standard practice and sets the stage for an appeal to the higher courts. In the American system, appeals as to a judge's finding regarding the law is what is called a de novo; meaning that the appeals court will review anew the lower court judge's legal findings. By contrast, the standard of review for findings of fact is the "highly deferential" standard. In practice, this means that it is much easier to prevail on an appeal regarding a judge's finding of law then it is to say that the judge/jury made an incorrect finding of fact. The upshot is that the defendant now has a nice clean legal issue (to wit, whether fair use can apply in cases like this) to present to the appeals court. Very nice from a law professor's point of view, though not a strategy most trial attorneys would endorse.
Yes, IAAL, but I am not your lawyer -- and there are an infinite number of permutations on this theme that justify(?) my billing rate. Consult one of your own for more info.
Folks -- you need to understand, this defense was designed to fail at the trial court level. Under the American court system, the trial court judge determines the facts of what happens (sometimes aided by a jury) and then applies established law to those facts. The parties can then appeal to the higher appellate courts if they think the judge erred in applying the law, or, as in this case, arguing that the law should be changed.
The type of fair use argument presented here was doomed to failure at the trial court level. Any lawyer would recognize this. However, now that the judge has made a decision of law that the fair use defense does not apply, the defendant can appeal to the trial court. The problem with celebrity/academic lawyers is that they aren't really representing their client -- they are trying to score political points and make ground-breaking precedent. Hopefully their client realized what he/she was signing up for.
Other way around. The 20 percent note is subordinate to the 80 percent. 80/20 mortgages were a common method of getting around lending restrictions. Generally, the 80 percent majority first lien is senior, and then 20 percent remaining amount (in old days, this would have been the downpayment) was also financed at a significantly higher rate. Welcome to 2006.
Actually, what they are doing makes perfect sense and is in fact likely required by law. More importantly, a court proceeding is the only fair way to conduct this type of proceeding.
Think about it -- most states require that a judge review a foreclosure before it can be processed. One of the requirements is that before the property is sold that all potential lien holders must be contacted and given their chance to assert a claim. In fact, before the property can be sold, the secondary lien must be extinguished -- which requires a court order. Likely, the only way to proceed is to sue all the other lien holders.
Don't forget -- Wells Fargo is about to foreclose on some poor soul, and it not only holds the first lien, but the second as well. Likely, the two liens have different terms. I suspect that there may be some mortgage insurance involved in this case. It seems likely that the first lien is insured by a mortgage insurance company separate from Wells Fargo. ACME Insurance Co. has an incentive to protect its investment by actively litigating to protect its interests vis-a-vis the second lien holder. Most commercial insurance policies have a clause that allows the insurance company to appoint a lawyer to defend its interest. Thus even though Wells Fargo NA is the litigant (on both sides), it's entirely possible that they have little control over the litigation of the case.
Further, involving a judge when there is so obviously a conflict of interest is a good way to avoid being sued in the future. Most likely, there is a "Chinese Wall" separating the different branches of Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo has a fiduciary obligation to the landowner in this transaction.
With any of these permutations, it is perfectly logical that Wells Fargo would file suit against itself where there is such a flagrant conflict of interest. The presence of a judge in the proceeding -- at a minimum -- will give a veneer of credibility to the proceeding and (theoretically) ensure that the landowner's interests are represented.
Taking the insurance example, it might be in Wells Fargo's interest to dump the costs into the first or second lien. Generally, a first lien is less risky than the second lien. Perhaps the first lien requires the lien holder to repay all costs associated with foreclosure, while the second lien does not. Perhaps there is sufficient money in foreclosure to cover the first lien, but not the second. The possible permutations are endless. Either way, it is possible that Wells Fargo could serve its corporate interests by "rigging" the system in its favor.
Or it could be a big cock-up. Pretty funny either way, but not necessarily crazy.
To me the test of a good wireless carrier is whether I can travel from Washington, DC to New York City by train and maintain a wireless connection. I'll even give them the tunnels. I am a business traveler and basically work up and down the east coast. The fact that I cannot maintain a wireless internet connection on either T-Mobile or AT&T up and down the Northeast Corridor is nuts. If competion is such a driver of innovation, why has no one capitalized on the ultimate high-dollar captive market???
Actually, you are effectively imposing a cap-and-trade with a quicker elimination of credits. In economic terms, what you are suggesting will eventually happen. As credits become scarcer and more expensive, the price of coal-fired (and to a lesser extent natural gas) electricity will increase, and carbon-neutral resources will look better and better.
The other thing to keep in mind is that it is amazing expensive to build new coal generating plants because of the environmental restrictions. The Clean Air Act (applicable to the US) basically adopted your strategy in 1990. New coal facilities would be required to install the "Maximum Available Control Technology" (or MACT). It was envisioned that older plants would eventually die and any replacements would have to include state-of-the-art MACT environmental controls. Of course, the energy industry responded by refusing to ever retire their old plants and just patching them up. In some cases, the utilities effectively tried to replace the entire unit in order to get around MACT. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) responded by adopting rules that said once you replace a certain percentage of an older facility, it would have to undergo what's called a New Source Review, or NSR, and possibly comply with MACT controls. Very expensive litigation ensued (and is on-going today).
For better or for worse, the US has adopted very stringent reliability standards where the overwhelming concern of grid operators is keeping the lights on. Without a mix of generating technologies (including coal and particularly natural gas), it would be impossible to maintain the type of one-year-in-ten reliability metric that's common across the country (i.e., one failure every 10 years). Many utilities have even more stringent standards. Unless we are willing to sacrifice reliability, stopping all construction of new combustion generation will not work. Renewables just aren't there yet. But at heart, I think what Congress is trying to do is create an economic system that will eventually result in the same type of phase-out you are advocating. Just over a longer time scale and without the loss of reliability that would accompany your more drastic proposal.
This article is worthless. It ignores several critical facts: (1) the European cap-and-trade will reduce emissions over the next few years; (2) the over-allocation of initial credits is being addressed; and (3) a comparable cap-and-trade system effectively eliminated the acid rain problems in the United States due to SOx emissions in the 1990s.
In fact, I think the European experience has been enormously beneficial.
First, it has demonstrated that a carbon trading market can exist without bankrupting power producers or other emitters of carbon. The very fact that prices have remained manageable is critical to the fact that the power generation industry in the United States has largely supported the recent cap-and-trade legislation. (Full dislosure: I coincidently work for a company that happens to be part of USCAP, though I only work on climate change tangentially. The thoughts here are my own.)
Second, the EU's grand experiment has created a new industry of carbon brokers who go around the world identifying and pricing potential carbon offsets. The fact that we now have some transparency and price discovery surrounding carbon offsets is a huge benefit. It also has lead to the preliminary steps for creating fungible and verifiable carbon contracts. For example, in a market-based system, a one ton reduction in carbon emissions in China should be able to fetch the same price in Europe or the United States. However, we need set metrics to verify the reduction and to avoid double counting. The European experience has given us lots of experience in what we need to do.
Third, the European experience demonstrated the critical need to accurately quantify the carbon emitted by industry. It is no coincidence that one of the Obama administration's first actions when coming into office was to order industry to begin reporting their carbon emissions.
Finally, we cannot miss the point that Europe is reducing its emissions. Cap-and-trade programs are designed to ratchet down emissions over time. Every year, another 2 percent of the credits just disappear. So the over-allocation may have decreased the speed at which the carbon reduction occurs, but less carbon is being emitted today.
Consider this: a government says "Ok, we'll only sell licenses to produce 100 million tons of CO2 per year." Factories produce a net 130 million tons of CO2 that year, even though they were only licensed to produce 100 million. There is no mechanism the government can employ to enforce the licenses. They could potentially fine the "overproduction" but that doesn't actually prevent the production of the CO2.
The whole point is that the fine eliminates the economic incentive for a company to violate the permitting requirements. Sure, someone can always violate the law, but a sufficiently large fine (usually some multiple of what it would have cost to comply), coupled with a compliance monitoring system, removes the incentives to cheat. Liken it to robbing someone. Sure, I can steal a little old lady's purse, but the potential downsides are significant.
The way I understand it, if I do some activity that offsets CO2 production, I get a credit. The problem is that word "offset". If it was only for sequestration that would be great, but my impression is that if I create a wind farm that produces the same power as a coal plant that would produce 1 million tons, I get a 1 million ton CO2 credit that I can sell to someone else. But since it's possible to create an infinite amount of things that do not emit CO2, there is no cap here either because it doesn't actually prevent the creation of more CO2 - or whatever the target emission might be.
Your understanding is not correct. You receive offsets when you either: (1) sequester carbon, or (2) directly eliminate existing point-source carbon emissions. Creating a windfarm will not provide you additional carbon emissions credits, while planting/preserving a forest or closing down a coal-fired power plant would. You may be mixing up the concept of a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) obligation which requires utilities to acquire a certain percentage of their power from renewable resources with cap-and-trade.
Note, however, that cap-and-trade provides a significant boost to lower carbon generation resources. When a power plant determines the cost of its energy, a cap and trade provides an economic value to the emissions credits. The electricity produced by a wind farm that has no carbon costs is put at a relative competitive advantage to a coal plant.
The biggest issue I see is that CO2 is a byproduct of simply being alive, so you will get into the mess of "do you tax all CO2 emissions, or only those made by machines? What about if some farmer burns brush in his yard? What about campfires?"
Actually, the law already takes this into consideration. Almost all environmental laws apply to stationary "point sources" that emit more than a specified amount each year. The quantity that it takes to be a regulated point source of emissions depends on the specific chemical be emitted, but is typically sized so that only large emiters are required to comply.
The only real solution is, even though it's not political, is to simply tax CO2 emissions straight up. Those who don't emit don't pay the tax, those who do pay it. For consumers it's simple - you roll it into fuel taxes because CO2 emissions are directly linked to fuel consumption. For powerplants and such you do the same, and the taxes get passed on to consumers.
Nothing inherently wrong with a carbon tax. But it does not permit businesses to compete to eliminate carbon emissions at the lowest price. It also increases the price of certain staple commodities by an enormous amount.
The article was actually a series of three articles about the bizarre circumstances surrounding the death of a young man in DC, while he was staying over at the house of three gay friends (who were involved in a three-way relationship) in a wealthy section of DC. The three friends reported being asleep and waking up to find their guest murdered (I'm greatly simplifying.) The police think the three gay men were involved in the murder and have concocted a bizarre (not saying wrong or right -- but it is bizarre) story that the guest was accidently killed in sex game run amok, and that the three .
Honestly, the story wasn't very good. There was no lede. There were no breaks in the case reported for the first time by the paper. The main thing it had going for it was group sex. The strong implication of the article was that the police thought these three guys were guilty because they were into kinky group sex and S&M. Then when it came time to actually prove something, there was all-too-common in DC story of police labs losing evidence and screwing up.
I'm sure the Post editors compared this sensationalist story with the Chandry Levy expose they printed maybe a years ago (which I understand actually led to someone being arrested), and found it lacked oomph. There was no there there as an old boss used to say. Combine that with the obvious homophobia of the police detectives initially assigned to the case, and the whole thing was a muddled morass of conflicting information. Clearly the housemates were not entirely forthcoming and that their stories were not entirely consistent, but there was no clear evidence that they committed murder either.
Hmm... Over a given half-period of the sine wave, wouldn't they be the same?
As I remember (and I am rusty), a derivative is simply the rate of change of a given function, or effectively the slope of the curve. Over a half period, at any given point along the sine wave, wouldn't the change in slope be the same as a parabola? In other words, isn't the shape of one "wave" in the sine wave a parabola? I may be mis-remembering, but I don't think I'm that far off.
But more to the point -- the conversation we're having is *exactly* the type of discussion that would be fabulous to encourage in our educational system. The rights and wrongs of it are not really relevant until we put the kid in charge of building a bridge. We are talking about teaching an understanding of principles -- not focusing on results. It's like teaching the scientific method (or putting together a research brief, for that matter) -- the actual results are far less important than the process.
Talk about missing the point! The attitude that a student is wrong if he or she were to mis-interpret the math underlying a natual phenomon is precisely the problem with the educational system. A student making such an observation should be praised and encouraged to continue exploring. Who cares if it's technically a sine wave instead of parabola??? If he goes further in math/science, he or she will learn that periodicity is actually a sine wave. If not, he will simply appreciate that there is some connection between physical behaviors and certain math concepts. Either way, the profound joy of discovery will stay with him.
Besides, if I remember my math, a sine wave is simply made up of a string of parabolas with a change in the inflection point at Y = 0. (Not bad for a lawyer, eh?)
This man is a beautiful dreamer. I don't think his rather Platonic vision of the perfect math class will ever be acheivable. But there are a bunch of half steps that I think would really help math and address his fundamental point that math, as it's currently taught, is boring as all heck and does nothing for the vast majority of us who don't use calculus or even algebra in our day-to-day lives. I mean really, the last time I did anything more than basic algebra was tutoring others! And while learning math so that you can help someone elses' kids study for a test is a fine goal, I'm not sure it's really worth the thousands of hours I spent taking math!
First, *use* math to solve real problems and explain real scientific principles. Radio Lab (THE official National Public Radio show for geeks everywhere) had a great little episode where some student "discovers" that the periodicity of a pendulum forms a parabola when charted on a graph. Wow! That's heady stuff. (It's the first story of this episode.) Understanding the interaction of science and math -- the universe, really -- is something that we can teach. Integration of math and science gets us part of the way there.
Second, incorporate the history of math into math class. Math advances all occur because of some historical context. Combining the two is a half-step that will get students to understand "why" we created this math, even if they never quite get the quadratic formula down. Combine these two principles, and it would go a long way.
Even with your interpretation, we end up with a conflicting statement in the IRS regulations. On the one hand, the coins are legal tender. On the other hand, they are not readily negotiable instruments. When there's a potential conflict between different terms of a statute or regulation, in the law, we have a decision tree framework that generally goes under the term "rules of statutory construction."
First, does the common sense reading of the statute follow resolve the dispute? If not, then go to step two.
Second, is there a way to interpret the statute and apply it to the underlying facts in a way that resolves the ambiguity without torturing the language? If not, go to step 3.
Third, look to the underlying intent of the statute (including legislative history and general purpose clauses) and adopt the interpretation that results in the most just outcome.
Fourth, go to court and argue that the statute is constitutionally vague.
I think no matter which step you adopt, the outcome is the same.
PS -- Note, this is a highly simplified list of statutory construction principles and would never past muster in a legal brief. But you're not paying me for a brief, now are you?
The IRS taxes all wages and other forms of compensation based on the fair market value of the items or services provided to the employee. From the IRS website:
Wages not paid in money. If in the course of your trade or business you pay your employees in a medium that is neither cash nor a readily negotiable instrument, such as a check, you are said to pay them "in kind." Payments in kind may be in the form of goods, lodging, food, clothing, or services. Generally, the fair market value of such payments at the time that they are provided is subject to federal income tax withholding and social security, Medicare, and FUTA taxes.
Apparently, the tax cheat is arguing that gold coins are cash. I think the more reasonable interpretation is that gold coins are not "a readily negotiable instrument," and thus fall under the definition of an "in kind" payment. In kind payments are taxable at the fair market value "at the time they are provided" to the employee.
Really, this particular IRS rule is a common sense rule of reason. Moreover, the "all debts" language is not unlimited. The classic example is that someone does not have the right to pay their traffic fine in pennies just to spite the court. Really people -- not that complicated.
Why do people assume that a former RIAA lawyer is not going to vigorously defend the American people? I was going to go off on a rant and explain (for the billionth time) that lawyers have an ethical obligation to zealously advocate for their clients; that professional responsibility demands that lawyers follow the instructions of their clients (up to a carefully defined point); and that lawyers represent murderers and rapists all the time without personally endorsing those pursuits.
But then I thought about all the people employed in the tech industry that have no love for the companies they work for, and are even openly dismissive of the products they once peddled. If I wanted to diagnose the problems associated with a particular code or piece of software, who better to ask then the people who created the software's architecture? The law is exactly the same way.
Moreover, these are exactly the right people to bring the RIAA to justice. They better than anyone else understand the legal strengths and weaknesses of the RIAA's position. Really people, do you think that these people sell their souls to the RIAA for all eternity? They understand the tactics and how to fight them.
Someone might look at my current employment as an energy industry lawyer and say I am unqualified to take a job with the government regulating the energy industry. These people are morons. There are few people qualified to police an amazingly complicated industry than those who were once a part of it. Barring corruption and direct conflict of interest checks (which are mandatory), if I were in charge of regulating an industry I would insist on hiring people with experience. Why is this so hard to understand???
You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you? LexisNexis is a news aggregator and the anti-trust implications of licensing your stories to a research tool like Lexis is entirely different then companies colluding amongst themselves to set prices. Sorry.
I made a poor decision not to return my G1 within the 2 week "trial period". Now I'm stuck in a two-year T-Mobile contract with an Android-specific data plan. I could cancel, but thus far, I'm not annoyed enough to shell out $400 for the privilege of changing to another phone with another carrier that will no doubt annoy me too.
While I've adapted to the phone's limitations, my initial experience has really soured me on this particular piece of hardware, even though I think the Android OS is decent enough for my purposes. So I wonder, will I be able to purchase one of these other Android-enabled phones and just switch the SIM card? Would T-Mobile even know that I had done so? Would they care?
There are very free lunches in the world of energy production and consumption. Lightening the color of pavement and roofing materials about as close as we get. From a DOE study:
As an example, computer simulations for Los Angeles, CA show that resurfacing about two-third of the pavements and rooftops with reflective surfaces and planting three trees per house can cool down LA by an average of 2-3K. This reduction in air temperature will reduce urban smog exposure in the LA basin by roughly the same amount as removing the basin entire onroad vehicle exhaust. Heat island mitigation is an effective air pollution control strategy, more than paying for itself in cooling energy cost savings. We estimate that the cooling energy savings in U.S. from cool surfaces and shade trees, when fully implemented, is about $5 billion per year (about $100 per air-conditioned house).
Amazing, isn't it? Two to three degrees in temperature reduction in a major city just by resurfacing, repainting, and planting trees. Yeah, sure, it's not sexy. But the cost savings... staggering. Add in the health benefits of reducing smog, plus the reduction of human misery from over-heated citys, and you wonder why we haven't done this years ago.
I know this is going to sound like a self-serving political statement from a hardcore Democrat -- but well done, President Obama. You picked a scientist to run an agency. You gave him a mission to better humanity through reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption. You gave him a platform where he would be heard. Well done indeed.
Um.... We in the legal industry solved this issue about 3,000 years ago -- back at least to Roman Times. You need to establish your identity for a legal purpose? You go to a notary public, prove your identity to the impartial 3rd party (the notary), the notary stamps the documents with a pretty stamp, you submit the original documents to the ISP.
Is it possible to forge such a certification? Of course. Just like it's possible to forge any document. Would I blame an ISP that had a notarized attestation and supporting evidence? Nope. Why the convoluted logic for a relatively simple problem?
Craigslist has a long standing tradition of donating all revenues earned through the Erotic Services section to worthwhile charities, dealing mostly with domestic abuse and other charities that provide services to women or prostitutes. Currently, CL charges $5 per post in the Erotic Service section.
In fact, all of this information is listed on the Erotic Services homepage....
which.... I've heard about. From someone else. In passing. No, I don't remember his name.
It sounds like "real" old whiskies are set to see a dramatic increase in price. Imagine if a rare collectible that fetched thousands of dollars at auction were about to become 50 or even 80 percent rarer. The intersection of the good old supply and demand curve sounds like it's about to jump....
But really, who needs anything better than a 16 y.o. Lagavulin, anyway? F'ing Snobs.
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Ever driven a Prius? You can drive in electric-only up to about 40 MPH, if you coax it.
I bought my 2002 Prius after a six month wait time. I paid more for it then a comparably equiped gas car. There was no economic rationale for my purchase -- I did it because I loved the car, and had the privilege of driving a cutting edge piece of engineering for going on seven years now, with minimum maintenance and hassle. There's something beautiful about driving with virtually no noise and I still smile when I roll up to a stop sign and the engine shuts off.
Moreover, I am willing to pay higher than market rate because of the externalities associated with having the world's first mass-produced electric car:
I am supporting an environmental technology that I believe in.
I am supporting green-tech projects, built in America.
I love driving on electric power only.
I am willing to take a risk on buying the Volt or the Prius or any other quasi-experimental first-generation piece of tech hardware because I have the money.
I am buying it because as a child I wanted to know why I couldn't put a windmill on top of the family car and use wind power to make it go.
The key to realize here is that nuclear decommissioning funds are collected from electric ratepayers (i.e., you, me and everyone we know). When the electricity markets were deregulated in the 1990s, there was a real concern that nuclear plants would not be able to cover the costs of decommissioning. Most state public utility commissions imposed a non-bypassable stranded cost adder to your electric bill. A portion of each electric bill is thus deposited directly into the nuclear decommissioning trust fund. In a way, the fund is very much like a pension obligation. Companies are required to pay into the fund at a level specified by the NRC. When they are short, the company either has to step up its contribution or the state public service commission has to approve a greater contribution from ratepayers. Actually, I thought it was a very positive sign that the NRC has been so public and transparent at pointing out this potential problem.
Yes, the judge ruled as a matter of law that the fair use defense is not applicable in this case. Fair use is what lawyers call an "affirmative defense." The defendants have to convince the judge that, as a matter of law, they are entitled to present an affirmative defense to the finder of fact (either the jury, or if there is no jury, the judge). If the judge finds that the defendant has not met their burden of proving their affirmative defense, then the defendant is not permitted to present evidence in support of that defense.
Entirely standard practice and sets the stage for an appeal to the higher courts. In the American system, appeals as to a judge's finding regarding the law is what is called a de novo; meaning that the appeals court will review anew the lower court judge's legal findings. By contrast, the standard of review for findings of fact is the "highly deferential" standard. In practice, this means that it is much easier to prevail on an appeal regarding a judge's finding of law then it is to say that the judge/jury made an incorrect finding of fact. The upshot is that the defendant now has a nice clean legal issue (to wit, whether fair use can apply in cases like this) to present to the appeals court. Very nice from a law professor's point of view, though not a strategy most trial attorneys would endorse.
Yes, IAAL, but I am not your lawyer -- and there are an infinite number of permutations on this theme that justify(?) my billing rate. Consult one of your own for more info.
Folks -- you need to understand, this defense was designed to fail at the trial court level. Under the American court system, the trial court judge determines the facts of what happens (sometimes aided by a jury) and then applies established law to those facts. The parties can then appeal to the higher appellate courts if they think the judge erred in applying the law, or, as in this case, arguing that the law should be changed.
The type of fair use argument presented here was doomed to failure at the trial court level. Any lawyer would recognize this. However, now that the judge has made a decision of law that the fair use defense does not apply, the defendant can appeal to the trial court. The problem with celebrity/academic lawyers is that they aren't really representing their client -- they are trying to score political points and make ground-breaking precedent. Hopefully their client realized what he/she was signing up for.
Other way around. The 20 percent note is subordinate to the 80 percent. 80/20 mortgages were a common method of getting around lending restrictions. Generally, the 80 percent majority first lien is senior, and then 20 percent remaining amount (in old days, this would have been the downpayment) was also financed at a significantly higher rate. Welcome to 2006.
Actually, what they are doing makes perfect sense and is in fact likely required by law. More importantly, a court proceeding is the only fair way to conduct this type of proceeding.
Think about it -- most states require that a judge review a foreclosure before it can be processed. One of the requirements is that before the property is sold that all potential lien holders must be contacted and given their chance to assert a claim. In fact, before the property can be sold, the secondary lien must be extinguished -- which requires a court order. Likely, the only way to proceed is to sue all the other lien holders.
Don't forget -- Wells Fargo is about to foreclose on some poor soul, and it not only holds the first lien, but the second as well. Likely, the two liens have different terms. I suspect that there may be some mortgage insurance involved in this case. It seems likely that the first lien is insured by a mortgage insurance company separate from Wells Fargo. ACME Insurance Co. has an incentive to protect its investment by actively litigating to protect its interests vis-a-vis the second lien holder. Most commercial insurance policies have a clause that allows the insurance company to appoint a lawyer to defend its interest. Thus even though Wells Fargo NA is the litigant (on both sides), it's entirely possible that they have little control over the litigation of the case.
Further, involving a judge when there is so obviously a conflict of interest is a good way to avoid being sued in the future. Most likely, there is a "Chinese Wall" separating the different branches of Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo has a fiduciary obligation to the landowner in this transaction.
With any of these permutations, it is perfectly logical that Wells Fargo would file suit against itself where there is such a flagrant conflict of interest. The presence of a judge in the proceeding -- at a minimum -- will give a veneer of credibility to the proceeding and (theoretically) ensure that the landowner's interests are represented.
Taking the insurance example, it might be in Wells Fargo's interest to dump the costs into the first or second lien. Generally, a first lien is less risky than the second lien. Perhaps the first lien requires the lien holder to repay all costs associated with foreclosure, while the second lien does not. Perhaps there is sufficient money in foreclosure to cover the first lien, but not the second. The possible permutations are endless. Either way, it is possible that Wells Fargo could serve its corporate interests by "rigging" the system in its favor.
Or it could be a big cock-up. Pretty funny either way, but not necessarily crazy.
To me the test of a good wireless carrier is whether I can travel from Washington, DC to New York City by train and maintain a wireless connection. I'll even give them the tunnels. I am a business traveler and basically work up and down the east coast. The fact that I cannot maintain a wireless internet connection on either T-Mobile or AT&T up and down the Northeast Corridor is nuts. If competion is such a driver of innovation, why has no one capitalized on the ultimate high-dollar captive market???
Actually, you are effectively imposing a cap-and-trade with a quicker elimination of credits. In economic terms, what you are suggesting will eventually happen. As credits become scarcer and more expensive, the price of coal-fired (and to a lesser extent natural gas) electricity will increase, and carbon-neutral resources will look better and better.
The other thing to keep in mind is that it is amazing expensive to build new coal generating plants because of the environmental restrictions. The Clean Air Act (applicable to the US) basically adopted your strategy in 1990. New coal facilities would be required to install the "Maximum Available Control Technology" (or MACT). It was envisioned that older plants would eventually die and any replacements would have to include state-of-the-art MACT environmental controls. Of course, the energy industry responded by refusing to ever retire their old plants and just patching them up. In some cases, the utilities effectively tried to replace the entire unit in order to get around MACT. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) responded by adopting rules that said once you replace a certain percentage of an older facility, it would have to undergo what's called a New Source Review, or NSR, and possibly comply with MACT controls. Very expensive litigation ensued (and is on-going today).
For better or for worse, the US has adopted very stringent reliability standards where the overwhelming concern of grid operators is keeping the lights on. Without a mix of generating technologies (including coal and particularly natural gas), it would be impossible to maintain the type of one-year-in-ten reliability metric that's common across the country (i.e., one failure every 10 years). Many utilities have even more stringent standards. Unless we are willing to sacrifice reliability, stopping all construction of new combustion generation will not work. Renewables just aren't there yet. But at heart, I think what Congress is trying to do is create an economic system that will eventually result in the same type of phase-out you are advocating. Just over a longer time scale and without the loss of reliability that would accompany your more drastic proposal.
This article is worthless. It ignores several critical facts: (1) the European cap-and-trade will reduce emissions over the next few years; (2) the over-allocation of initial credits is being addressed; and (3) a comparable cap-and-trade system effectively eliminated the acid rain problems in the United States due to SOx emissions in the 1990s.
In fact, I think the European experience has been enormously beneficial.
First, it has demonstrated that a carbon trading market can exist without bankrupting power producers or other emitters of carbon. The very fact that prices have remained manageable is critical to the fact that the power generation industry in the United States has largely supported the recent cap-and-trade legislation. (Full dislosure: I coincidently work for a company that happens to be part of USCAP, though I only work on climate change tangentially. The thoughts here are my own.)
Second, the EU's grand experiment has created a new industry of carbon brokers who go around the world identifying and pricing potential carbon offsets. The fact that we now have some transparency and price discovery surrounding carbon offsets is a huge benefit. It also has lead to the preliminary steps for creating fungible and verifiable carbon contracts. For example, in a market-based system, a one ton reduction in carbon emissions in China should be able to fetch the same price in Europe or the United States. However, we need set metrics to verify the reduction and to avoid double counting. The European experience has given us lots of experience in what we need to do.
Third, the European experience demonstrated the critical need to accurately quantify the carbon emitted by industry. It is no coincidence that one of the Obama administration's first actions when coming into office was to order industry to begin reporting their carbon emissions.
Finally, we cannot miss the point that Europe is reducing its emissions. Cap-and-trade programs are designed to ratchet down emissions over time. Every year, another 2 percent of the credits just disappear. So the over-allocation may have decreased the speed at which the carbon reduction occurs, but less carbon is being emitted today.
The whole point is that the fine eliminates the economic incentive for a company to violate the permitting requirements. Sure, someone can always violate the law, but a sufficiently large fine (usually some multiple of what it would have cost to comply), coupled with a compliance monitoring system, removes the incentives to cheat. Liken it to robbing someone. Sure, I can steal a little old lady's purse, but the potential downsides are significant.
Your understanding is not correct. You receive offsets when you either: (1) sequester carbon, or (2) directly eliminate existing point-source carbon emissions. Creating a windfarm will not provide you additional carbon emissions credits, while planting/preserving a forest or closing down a coal-fired power plant would. You may be mixing up the concept of a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) obligation which requires utilities to acquire a certain percentage of their power from renewable resources with cap-and-trade.
Note, however, that cap-and-trade provides a significant boost to lower carbon generation resources. When a power plant determines the cost of its energy, a cap and trade provides an economic value to the emissions credits. The electricity produced by a wind farm that has no carbon costs is put at a relative competitive advantage to a coal plant.
Actually, the law already takes this into consideration. Almost all environmental laws apply to stationary "point sources" that emit more than a specified amount each year. The quantity that it takes to be a regulated point source of emissions depends on the specific chemical be emitted, but is typically sized so that only large emiters are required to comply.
Nothing inherently wrong with a carbon tax. But it does not permit businesses to compete to eliminate carbon emissions at the lowest price. It also increases the price of certain staple commodities by an enormous amount.
The article was actually a series of three articles about the bizarre circumstances surrounding the death of a young man in DC, while he was staying over at the house of three gay friends (who were involved in a three-way relationship) in a wealthy section of DC. The three friends reported being asleep and waking up to find their guest murdered (I'm greatly simplifying.) The police think the three gay men were involved in the murder and have concocted a bizarre (not saying wrong or right -- but it is bizarre) story that the guest was accidently killed in sex game run amok, and that the three .
Honestly, the story wasn't very good. There was no lede. There were no breaks in the case reported for the first time by the paper. The main thing it had going for it was group sex. The strong implication of the article was that the police thought these three guys were guilty because they were into kinky group sex and S&M. Then when it came time to actually prove something, there was all-too-common in DC story of police labs losing evidence and screwing up.
I'm sure the Post editors compared this sensationalist story with the Chandry Levy expose they printed maybe a years ago (which I understand actually led to someone being arrested), and found it lacked oomph. There was no there there as an old boss used to say. Combine that with the obvious homophobia of the police detectives initially assigned to the case, and the whole thing was a muddled morass of conflicting information. Clearly the housemates were not entirely forthcoming and that their stories were not entirely consistent, but there was no clear evidence that they committed murder either.
Hmm... Over a given half-period of the sine wave, wouldn't they be the same?
As I remember (and I am rusty), a derivative is simply the rate of change of a given function, or effectively the slope of the curve. Over a half period, at any given point along the sine wave, wouldn't the change in slope be the same as a parabola? In other words, isn't the shape of one "wave" in the sine wave a parabola? I may be mis-remembering, but I don't think I'm that far off.
But more to the point -- the conversation we're having is *exactly* the type of discussion that would be fabulous to encourage in our educational system. The rights and wrongs of it are not really relevant until we put the kid in charge of building a bridge. We are talking about teaching an understanding of principles -- not focusing on results. It's like teaching the scientific method (or putting together a research brief, for that matter) -- the actual results are far less important than the process.
Talk about missing the point! The attitude that a student is wrong if he or she were to mis-interpret the math underlying a natual phenomon is precisely the problem with the educational system. A student making such an observation should be praised and encouraged to continue exploring. Who cares if it's technically a sine wave instead of parabola??? If he goes further in math/science, he or she will learn that periodicity is actually a sine wave. If not, he will simply appreciate that there is some connection between physical behaviors and certain math concepts. Either way, the profound joy of discovery will stay with him.
Besides, if I remember my math, a sine wave is simply made up of a string of parabolas with a change in the inflection point at Y = 0. (Not bad for a lawyer, eh?)
This man is a beautiful dreamer. I don't think his rather Platonic vision of the perfect math class will ever be acheivable. But there are a bunch of half steps that I think would really help math and address his fundamental point that math, as it's currently taught, is boring as all heck and does nothing for the vast majority of us who don't use calculus or even algebra in our day-to-day lives. I mean really, the last time I did anything more than basic algebra was tutoring others! And while learning math so that you can help someone elses' kids study for a test is a fine goal, I'm not sure it's really worth the thousands of hours I spent taking math!
First, *use* math to solve real problems and explain real scientific principles. Radio Lab (THE official National Public Radio show for geeks everywhere) had a great little episode where some student "discovers" that the periodicity of a pendulum forms a parabola when charted on a graph. Wow! That's heady stuff. (It's the first story of this episode.) Understanding the interaction of science and math -- the universe, really -- is something that we can teach. Integration of math and science gets us part of the way there.
Second, incorporate the history of math into math class. Math advances all occur because of some historical context. Combining the two is a half-step that will get students to understand "why" we created this math, even if they never quite get the quadratic formula down. Combine these two principles, and it would go a long way.
Even with your interpretation, we end up with a conflicting statement in the IRS regulations. On the one hand, the coins are legal tender. On the other hand, they are not readily negotiable instruments. When there's a potential conflict between different terms of a statute or regulation, in the law, we have a decision tree framework that generally goes under the term "rules of statutory construction."
First, does the common sense reading of the statute follow resolve the dispute? If not, then go to step two.
Second, is there a way to interpret the statute and apply it to the underlying facts in a way that resolves the ambiguity without torturing the language? If not, go to step 3.
Third, look to the underlying intent of the statute (including legislative history and general purpose clauses) and adopt the interpretation that results in the most just outcome.
Fourth, go to court and argue that the statute is constitutionally vague.
I think no matter which step you adopt, the outcome is the same.
PS -- Note, this is a highly simplified list of statutory construction principles and would never past muster in a legal brief. But you're not paying me for a brief, now are you?
Apparently, the tax cheat is arguing that gold coins are cash. I think the more reasonable interpretation is that gold coins are not "a readily negotiable instrument," and thus fall under the definition of an "in kind" payment. In kind payments are taxable at the fair market value "at the time they are provided" to the employee.
Really, this particular IRS rule is a common sense rule of reason. Moreover, the "all debts" language is not unlimited. The classic example is that someone does not have the right to pay their traffic fine in pennies just to spite the court. Really people -- not that complicated.
Why do people assume that a former RIAA lawyer is not going to vigorously defend the American people? I was going to go off on a rant and explain (for the billionth time) that lawyers have an ethical obligation to zealously advocate for their clients; that professional responsibility demands that lawyers follow the instructions of their clients (up to a carefully defined point); and that lawyers represent murderers and rapists all the time without personally endorsing those pursuits.
But then I thought about all the people employed in the tech industry that have no love for the companies they work for, and are even openly dismissive of the products they once peddled. If I wanted to diagnose the problems associated with a particular code or piece of software, who better to ask then the people who created the software's architecture? The law is exactly the same way.
Moreover, these are exactly the right people to bring the RIAA to justice. They better than anyone else understand the legal strengths and weaknesses of the RIAA's position. Really people, do you think that these people sell their souls to the RIAA for all eternity? They understand the tactics and how to fight them.
Someone might look at my current employment as an energy industry lawyer and say I am unqualified to take a job with the government regulating the energy industry. These people are morons. There are few people qualified to police an amazingly complicated industry than those who were once a part of it. Barring corruption and direct conflict of interest checks (which are mandatory), if I were in charge of regulating an industry I would insist on hiring people with experience. Why is this so hard to understand???
Sir, I salute you.
You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you? LexisNexis is a news aggregator and the anti-trust implications of licensing your stories to a research tool like Lexis is entirely different then companies colluding amongst themselves to set prices. Sorry.
I made a poor decision not to return my G1 within the 2 week "trial period". Now I'm stuck in a two-year T-Mobile contract with an Android-specific data plan. I could cancel, but thus far, I'm not annoyed enough to shell out $400 for the privilege of changing to another phone with another carrier that will no doubt annoy me too.
While I've adapted to the phone's limitations, my initial experience has really soured me on this particular piece of hardware, even though I think the Android OS is decent enough for my purposes. So I wonder, will I be able to purchase one of these other Android-enabled phones and just switch the SIM card? Would T-Mobile even know that I had done so? Would they care?
Amazing, isn't it? Two to three degrees in temperature reduction in a major city just by resurfacing, repainting, and planting trees. Yeah, sure, it's not sexy. But the cost savings ... staggering. Add in the health benefits of reducing smog, plus the reduction of human misery from over-heated citys, and you wonder why we haven't done this years ago.
I know this is going to sound like a self-serving political statement from a hardcore Democrat -- but well done, President Obama. You picked a scientist to run an agency. You gave him a mission to better humanity through reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption. You gave him a platform where he would be heard. Well done indeed.
Um.... We in the legal industry solved this issue about 3,000 years ago -- back at least to Roman Times. You need to establish your identity for a legal purpose? You go to a notary public, prove your identity to the impartial 3rd party (the notary), the notary stamps the documents with a pretty stamp, you submit the original documents to the ISP.
Is it possible to forge such a certification? Of course. Just like it's possible to forge any document. Would I blame an ISP that had a notarized attestation and supporting evidence? Nope. Why the convoluted logic for a relatively simple problem?
Craigslist has a long standing tradition of donating all revenues earned through the Erotic Services section to worthwhile charities, dealing mostly with domestic abuse and other charities that provide services to women or prostitutes. Currently, CL charges $5 per post in the Erotic Service section.
In fact, all of this information is listed on the Erotic Services homepage....
which.... I've heard about. From someone else. In passing. No, I don't remember his name.
It sounds like "real" old whiskies are set to see a dramatic increase in price. Imagine if a rare collectible that fetched thousands of dollars at auction were about to become 50 or even 80 percent rarer. The intersection of the good old supply and demand curve sounds like it's about to jump....
But really, who needs anything better than a 16 y.o. Lagavulin, anyway? F'ing Snobs.