A Good Graph

It's good because it points out the hooey that is the norm in economic reporting these days. The Ruling Conventional Wisdom thwacks the unemployed (as if being unemployed isn't enough of a hit) by claiming that they don't have the skills necessary to get jobs in the New New Economy. They're too old, too uneducated etc. But that's not true. If that were true, wages would be rising in the occupational groups where skilled workers were hard to find. But wages are falling among almost all groups. And wages are falling more among some better educated groups than among high school graduates. What this non-economist thinks is that wages for all but the highest educated workers are flattening--falling to levels close to that of high school graduates--and will remain there for some considerable time.

One of the Evildoers Got It

but a six-month suspension and a charge of $4,000 in costs doesn't really repay all the tenants that David Endres and his law firm evicted illegally. Endres is notorious, and has been for years. Tenants Together first went after him in 2009, and after a long, hard slog, the State Bar gave him a slap on the wrist. And they didn't get him for illegally evicting tenants but for running an eviction mill, where non-lawyers signed his name to eviction lawsuits. Okayyyy... Hey, that's a lot more important than the rights of tenants, honesty, fair dealing, integrity and the like.

It should be noted that the powers-what-be would have picked up on the robo-signing scandal a lot sooner if they had paid attention to what was happening to tenants in foreclosed properties. Robo-signing was the norm, not the exception.

Channel 10 (in Sacramento) also reported the story.

BofA Getting Tough

on beleaguered homeowners. And this means they're going after the tenants in foreclosed properties. The Tenants and Foreclosure blog has, for quite a long time, gotten between 3,000 and 5,000 hits a month. Last month, though, my blog received nearly 8,500 hits. I tried to figure out why. I checked the referrals to see if I'd been picked up by an aggregator. That happens every so often, and I'll get 800 hits in a single day. It's cool, but it doesn't last long. But I wasn't--my hits are still google search referrals. Well, now I know that it's not because of the quality of my writing, my gentle wit, or obvious intelligence. But, oh well.

On September 11

I was going to try to write something in commemoration, but Paul Krugman did it better than I ever could. As J said, "almost poetry."

But the worst, worst, most appalling media event immediately after the bombing was the first 60 Minutes after the bombing. In one segment a woman whose husband was almost assuredly killed was, with her extended family, walking the streets of New York, posting flyers, checking with hospitals, accosting strangers, hoping against hope that somehow her husband had survived. It was sad, and I was weepy. The very next segment was one encouraging us to go shopping. Yeah, shopping.

I'm So Vain

that it's embarrassing. But you can see me here. J created the poster, and did the lettering freehand. I wouldn't be able to do that well with stencils.