Category Archives: Sociology

For Sale, Cheap

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We all know about using Craigslist to find adult–some might say illicit–activities.

Fort Pierce, Florida, police arrested 35 people as part of a prostitution ring that used Craigslist to set up “dates” last September. Now, 40 states including Vermont have joined in an agreement with Craigslist to crack down on prostitution after Alexis Serrano, 23, of Shelburne, was charged with prostitution. Court papers show she was one of dozens of Vermont women who offered erotic services via Craigslist. Florida will not sign the new agreement.

Advertisers will need to provide valid telephone and credit card information to post erotic services ads. The website will provide that information to authorities if subpoenaed. Started in 1995, Craigslist has websites in more than 50 countries.

There could be other illicit activities associated with Craigslist.

I listed my Keyscar on the popular website last fall. It was a great ad with top notch copy and great pictures. I did not have to provide a credit card but I did include my phone number.

I didn’t expect to get half a dozen offers with certified checks for more than the asking price. The moral of this story is that many, many crooks will offer you a bogus certified check for more than the purchase price and ask you to pay the “overage” to their “shipping agent.”

Don’t do it. They will walk away with your goods and your money. You will walk away with a very small piece of art suitable for framing.

ramsey wrote:

Hello,

I was opportuned to see your advertised Car .So I picked interest in it, moreso with the full description that was attached to with the advert, kindly get back to me with your selling price. Also I will like to know if you will accept a banker draft or a certified personal cheque for the payment . Since I have not seen the pictures clearlly, I will like to know it’s present condition, Also tell me if the Car has ever been involve in any form of accident ? If yes, Don’t essitate to tell me the affected part.

Your fast responce will highly be appreciated .

Regards.

Donald Duke wrote:

Hello…

Thanks for your response to my mail and I want you to consider that its sold, pls do withdraw the advert from craigslist to avoid disturbance.I want you to know that I will be paying with a bank certified check and to also notify you that shipping funds will be included with the payment that is coming to you. so therefore.I will need you to provide me the following information listed below, so that I can ask my secretary to issue out the payment to you.

Full name to write on the check…………
Full Physical address to post the check…….
city………………….
state………………
zipcode………………..
Home & Cell Phone to contact you

*** Note that the payment will be shiped to your address via COURIER NEXT DAY SERVICE and I will like you to know that you will not be responsible for shipping I will have my mover coming over to your location for pick up after the receipt of the payment
Thanks

I am pleased to report that I did get a couple of legitimate nibbles on the car and did, in fact, sell it to a nice couple in Key West.

I am also pleased to report that I just bought a refrigerator via Craigslist.

Nothing ever goes quite as planned. A couple of years ago the 18 cu. ft. or so fridge my folks had used for umpty-ump years started making really loud graunching noises. Its doors sagged so the cold air kept running down the street. And it was a bit undersized for my liking. I watched the bulletin board at the Post Office and found a perfectly good used side-by-side for very little so I grabbed it and moved my folks smaller box outside to be the “bait fridge.”

It still makes a lot of noise so we don’t run it very often.

The perfectly good used side-by-side stopped making cold last week so I looked on cragislist for a replacement. See, I can’t suspend my disbelief enough to shell out more than the cost of a brand new Chevrolet 5.3 liter crate motor for a pretty white box that makes cold.

Sears had plenty of choices but nothing I could buy. A LG side-by-side, $1,300, a GE side-by-side, $1,600, a Kenmore 3-door “trio,” $2,000, another Kenmore 4-door, $2,700, and an 18 cu. ft. Kenmore top freezer bare bones box for $425.

As my friend “Bob” said, $1,200 is too much. $3,000 is mindless.”

I agree wholeheartedly.

With the economy crunched, I’m surprised there aren’t many newish used fridges on the market. After all, there are certainly thousands of newish used homes. I did see a one-or-two year old glory model LG refrigerator advertised in Key West for $1,500. That’s too much for a new one, let alone used.

Craigslist had a 3 year old Admiral listed for significantly less. The new-to-me fridge is in place. It is clean, well made, and in excellent shape.

The fridge was in the Stanley Switlik estate. That beautiful home sits on a some lovely Marathon acreage with water on three sides. D’Asign Source is designing and building a private home for the new owner.

I paid cash for the fridge.

Conservation of Resources

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It is more important to honor Martin Luther King Jr. than to honor blacks.

It is also more important to honor George Washington and Abraham Lincoln than to honor “Presidents.”

And it is more important to honor Mollie Beattie than to honor women.

What? You’ve never heard of Mollie Beattie?

Black History Month is celebrated each February in the United States and Canada and in October in the UK. This month-long homage highlights contributions of black people and events.

Presidents Day (note the lack of an apostrophe) is a federal holiday here in the United States. We celebrate not on February 12 or February 22 but rather on the third Monday of the month so we can have a three day weekend.

Women’s History Month in March is major commemoration of the economic, political and social achievements of women.

Wow.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that American women can now own entire properties by bequest or outright purchase. The farmhouse we bought in Vermont came with an interesting history: the first Mrs. Stevens to live here outlived the first Mr. Stevens to live here (this was originally the Stevens farm). Mr. Stevens, apparently worried that his children would turn their mother out, bequeathed to her the use of a bedroom, “cooking facilities,” and the cellar for storage.

I’m glad that American politicians can now spend endless time on world-altering events like declaring holidays and then going on them.

And I’m glad that Americans, whether black or white or purple or green can now buy houses, build businesses, go to school, marry, and vote. When I lived in New Jersey, the election judge who signed me in was a black man named Harper. He looked at my ID, looked at his name badge, and looked at my ID again.

“Oh,” he said, “You’re from the other side of the family.”

I was pleased but someday, we won’t notice which side of the family we came from.

We certainly need Presidents. Without them, Congress would have run amok with all this holidaying far sooner and the now-233 year history of this particular democratic experiment would have been written in about 87 years.

Martin Luther King Jr. started out as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Alabama. As arguably the strongest voice for civil rights, he was first a man people might never heard of.

Mollie Beattie was a Vermonter and the first woman to lead the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. As arguably the strongest single voice for wildlife conservation, she was a woman most people still have never heard of.

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are larger than life now but they were just George and Abe to their families and to the people nearest them.

They all gave us something more. George and Abe share two important traits with Martin and Mollie: they did more than they thought they would and they all inspired us to do more than we thought we could. That’s heroic.

We need heroes. When we honor mere Presidents, all we get is another sale.

It’s the Economy, Stupid

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The accent may be on the wrong syl LA ble.

A friend mentioned that he had heard that a very large bank was talking to the Fed about liquidity problems. He was nervous that we might be on the brink of something way uglier than most are thinking.

He had probably heard the first rumblings about the Bear Stearns calamity. JP Morgan Chase agreed Sunday night to acquire B-S but the problem in the financial markets is widespread and still growing. The Wall Street Journal has a short history of troubled investment bank sales here: snipurl.com/21y4f

We recovered from the junk-bond market debacles and from the savings and loan scandals and from the insider trading/arbitrage adversity. We will recover from this sub-prime mortgage mess, too. Nonetheless, I am not happy about owning banking stocks right now.

That said, I have two thoughts for my friend.

Really.

Just two.

(1) 99.94% of the ARM crisis has been caused by systemic fraud (as in felonious behavior) on the part of the mortgage sellers and particularly the banks that financed the mortgages, then resold them as “secure” investments to pension funds and the like. The only good news is the Saudis and the Chinese appear to hold at least some of the paper.

(2) There is no real real estate problem no matter what the news says. Lemme repeat that. There is no real real estate problem no matter what the ID10Ts in Congress say.

We own a house. The roof still keeps the rain off, the heat still keeps the cold out, and the rent-a-cat still curls up by the fire. It absolutely does not matter to me today if this house is worth a dollar, a million dollars, or something in between. As it happens, the house is worth more than when we bought it. Yay! It’s also worth less than it was a year ago. Boo! Oh, wait. I didn’t sell it a year ago and I don’t plan to sell it today so its value on the market is of absolutely no consequence to me.

OK, its value on the market is of absolutely no consequence to me except when I pay taxes on its value but that’s a whole nother story.

Now the bad news. In other words, here’s why my friend may be right.

Nobody believes me.

We are so driven by this Chicken Little squawking about the housing sky falling that we really really believe the end is nigh.

And so it will be.

For a while.

Wot to do, wot to do.

Buy.

Warren Buffet is a whole lot smarter about this stuff than I am. His advice is simple. When you find a good property at a bargain price, buy it. Unfortunately, nobody believes him right now, either.

It’s not just the economy. It’s the stupidity of the herd that drives the economy.

Sit Next to Me

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Alice Roosevelt Longworth embroidered on her sofa pillow, “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.” Gossip is the chief currency in news and in “news” magazines, so that may now be the majority motto.

Loving gossip isn’t new. Alice Roosevelt became an idol to Progressive Era women around the world, Carl Anthony wrote, and her style of detached disdain is celebrated today.

Two of my acquaintances are worlds apart in that attitude. One whom I’ll call John because his name is John, revels in gossip and in bad news about anyone outside of his own circle of friends. Maybe even within his circle of friends. The other whom I’ll call Juan because his name isn’t, is more data driven.

Juan works for “Infonablah,” an electronics company that is a very likely takeover target. They have a couple of new products and a still-useful older product line. (This is not a Microsoft v. Yahoo story.) The WSJ has reported talks about a joint venture between the large Chinese conglomerate Batooey-dot-com and Infonablah. Juan designs interface modules for Infonablah’s consumer goods division here in Vermont.

Juan foresees Infonablah stocking up on next generation goodies and letting the current customer stuff go to the “low cost” manufacturing centers Batooey maintains in China and on the South Pole. He figures the Batooey engineers are thinking the same thing.

I don’t know that Batooey would give Infonablah its next gen stuff; I think it’s more likely that Infonablah will be stripped and will disappear. Their current customer stuff will definitely go to low cost centers no matter what else happens.

That said, “combining synergies” in B-speak always means more layoffs.

Here’s the heart of it. John doesn’t know Juan but his reaction to this story would be glee when he figured out that Juan’s job might be in jeopardy.

That saddens me.

We peeps spend entirely too much time reveling in the downfall of our peers.

I like gossip as much as the next guy, but Alice was wrong. My mom and hers before her were right. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

=============

When I wrote this piece, I used TLAs (a three letter acronym for “three letter acronym”) to stand in for the real company names. Juan then worked for DGX, a biz about to be consumed by Wall Street Greed and a Large Chinese Conglomerate (LCC). A quick Google search showed me that DGX is Quest Diagnostics and LCC is the USAirways Group. I neither recommend nor pan these securities.

Pennies

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I get a lot of, um, opportunities to contribute to one cause or another. Some are actual non-profits. Others are simple pitches for a product. Most are couched as “Buy Now!” and “Just 27 cents per day!”

I didn’t understand until I read Nicholas Epley opining in the New York Times:

“People are more likely to donate to a charity
when the cost is described in terms of pennies
per day instead of dollars per year.”

It has never occurred to me NOT to multiply it out. That 27 cents a day for the DVR is another $100 bucks I won’t have at the end of the year. I do that automagically and without much forebrain activity.

People are sheep. That isn’t news.

Oh. Wait. Our fuel oil for last year cost only $8.22 per day. And this year is a leap year so it will be even less.

There. Wasn’t that better?<BR>