Houston Area Leadership Vacuum: We Will Spare NO Expense on the Road to World Classiness.

After all, what's $2MM amongst friends?

Montrose Bridge Lighting Gets Chance to Shine. Dug Begley, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

Montrose officials spent more than two years working on ways to relight the bridges. After securing $1.4 million in state funds for a $1.7 million rehab of the lights, the management district opted for a more expensive plan to relight the bridges, after a presentation of options by Gandy², a local lighting design firm.

So, in total, the project is going to cost around $4MM (That's $1.7MM original cost plus an approximately $2MM "cost overrun"). Which, when you're spending other people's money, is really nothing at all. Not when you really have a chance to make the neighborhood shine in advance of the Super Bowl.

Show me ONE City that strives for World Classiness that DOESN'T have LED Rainbow Lighted Bridges I dare you.

Just ONE.

I mean, what would visitors for the Super Bowl think if they drove down the IH 69 corridor and saw just regular bridges?  That's not World Class.

Never mind that a lot of us questioned the wisdom of installing the lights on the original bridges in the first place. It seems we've flushed those worries down the memory hole. After all, lights burn out and they have to be replaced and, well, to be honest, it's not OUR money we're spending....

So now we begin the process on doubling down on the boondoggle, only this time it appears that we're picking the proposal from the highest bidder.

Maybe, in 10 more years, when we need to replace the lighting again, someone can come up with a $10-$20 MM proposal that will be needed to make Houston "World Class".

Only then will the world classiness circle be fully complete.

The definition of insanity as practiced by what passes for leadership in the Houston Area.

Shutter The Ed Board: They're not even trying at this point.

The Houston Chronicle Editorial Board on the State of the Union Address.....

Challenges Ahead. HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

Shot....

In the final State of the Union address of his presidency, Barack Obama was eloquent, forceful, appealingly personal - and ultimately unpersuasive. Unpersuasive in large part because the bulk of his audience in the House chamber Tuesday night was unpersuadable.

As Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged years ago, he and his fellow Republicans dedicated themselves to thwarting, obstructing and disrupting the Obama presidency at every turn, regardless of whether their recalcitrance was in the best interests of the nation.

Chaser...

Democracy, as the president noted, doesn't require that we all agree; in fact, rote agreement is repugnant to the very nature of democracy. What it does require is what he called "basic bonds of trust between its citizens." Democracy doesn't work, he said, "if we think the people who disagree with us are all motivated by malice, or that our political opponents are unpatriotic." 

It is possible that the two passages above were written by separate people. However, judging by the language it is highly unlikely.  This then means that the Houston Chronicle has a member of its editorial staff who doesn't have the self-awareness necessary to craft a coherent thought, that no one else on the editorial board thought this was odd, and no editor gave this a once-over and said. 'Hey, wait....'

Conflicting, partisan, cognitive dissonance such as this reveals a lack of professionalism and maturity of argument. It's binary thinking in a complex world, in the 4th largest city in America, that has no business in a newspaper of record.  Houston, for all of its warts, deserves better.

And while it's good that the Houston Chronicle has decided they should hide this behind their pay-wall (where few bother to read it) it should also act as evidence for leadership that Jeff Cohen and Company have exceeded their useful life as opinion writers and should either remove themselves, or be forcefully removed, to allow the resources to be better deployed toward the actual business of news gathering.

Since we know however, after several years of chastising the Editorial Board for their continued slide toward irrelevancy, that the Houston Chronicle leadership is not going to do this. (For some reason, newspapers consider unsigned editorials and opinion columnists to be the key to world classiness [as opposed to solid journalism, which is world class]) the only recourse is going to be to ignore this going forward.

Call it a late New Year's Resolution if you will. To not pay one iota of attention to either this Editorial Board, or any of the prominent political opinion writers at the Houston Chronicle.

Given this effort it's clear our lives will be better off for it.

 

Houston Area Leadership Vacuum: The HISD Fish is rotting from the head.

I give you, Rhonda Skillern-Jones and Manuel Rodriguez Jr.....

HISD Board to consider rolling back ethics rules. Ericka Mellon, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

The Houston school board on Thursday will consider relaxing its ethics rules three years after tightening policies to curb perceptions that contractors were buying influence.

 

The proposal would lift a ban on trustees voting on contracts involving donors who contributed at least $500 to their political campaigns in the past year

Of course, the problem here is that the policy flies in the face of HISD's incumbent protection program:

Manuel Rodriguez Jr., the HISD board's first vice president, said Wednesday that he supports changing the policy, especially after coming off a tight re-election campaign late last year. He said some candidates feel handicapped in fundraising under the current rules

Ah, I see.  When it comes to re-election some HISD board members have heard passing mention of ethics, and then toss them in the trash when presented with a check. Of course, Rodriguez is in line to become the new board President, which is convenient, since he feels that there's NO WAY someone could "sell their soul for $2,000".  A paragon of virtue he is.

That the board is trying to roll these ethics reforms back  while there is increased scrutiny on how the District does business as a whole should not go unnoticed. HISD is currently a financial mess ran by bottom-tier trough feeders whose sole purpose in life is not teaching children, but maintaining their place in TheMachine.  They are fringe members of the ruling class who apparently simply take the worst of DC Politicians and regurgitate it:

Skillern-Jones, who easily won a runoff in December, said changing the policy was not her idea, but she supported it enough to put it on the agenda. She would not reveal which trustees favored the change.

"I have to read it in depth," Skillern-Jones said Monday.

Trustees were supposed to have a chance to discuss agenda items at a meeting Monday, but Skillern-Jones canceled the session, saying she expected to lose a quorum and noting that two new trustees would take office Thursday. Harris, the board member who had planned to leave, said she agreed to stay, however.

 

Not only do we have "we have to read the bill to find out what's in the bill" but we also have meetings being cancelled for indeterminate reasons.  So we have a bad bill, lack of responsibility surrounding who supports said bill, and dodgy actions leading up to the vote on the bill. It's the triumvirate of suck for local politicians. Skillern-Jones with the rarely seen triple.

Of course, the easy answer would be to encourage people who live in HISD to "vote the bums out" but there are two reasons why that's probably not going to happen.  1. All of this is happening right after an election, so by the time the next one rolls around the news cycle will have churned multiple times and people will have forgotten. 2. Most voters don't pay attention to school district elections.

Since the media doesn't want to put serious resources to investigating the school districts (or any level of local government really) there will be no real focus on the board as they continue to move forward. While this appears that it won't pass, there will be no serious repercussions felt by either Skillern-Jones or Rodriguez to make a future board President shy-away from proposing it again in the future. This is why ethics reform, in all honesty the foxes presiding over the hen-house, is often a political pipe-dream.  Even in DC we don't pay enough attention to Congresspersons to prevent them from enriching themselves in ways that would put private business people in jail.

Even more concerning is that HISD currently has people sitting in key positions on the board who consider their personal fund-raising needs to be above good stewardship of taxpayer money. In a representative government with an active citizenry this should result in angry mobs with pitchforks demanding accountability. In today's Houston it's going to result (I'm guessing) in this blog post, a couple of hot-takes on Twitter from some local reporters, and a "we'll see what happens" from the InterLeft.

And all of the players will sit for re-election, or election to higher office, in the next election cycle without a pang of conscience for what they are doing.  After all, it's only breaking the rules if you get caught.  And to have a pang of conscience you first need to HAVE a conscience.

Houston Economy: Let's talk for a minute about the Oil and Gas Industry*.

Gloom & Doom.

If you read through the pages of the media all is gloom & doom as the oil industry reels from low prices caused by supply glut caused in part by a big slow-down in the global economy coupled with the refusal of any producing bloc to agree to cut back.

The details are much more complicated than that but in general that's a pretty accurate overview of what's going on right now.

At this point you might as "We're still drilling?" and the answer to that is "Yes, we are." Although it's at much lower levels than it was in a high-price environment.  There are many reasons why a company might still be increasing production during a price environment such as this, lease obligations, sunk costs, contracts, marketing obligations, pipeline obligations etc. but a large part of it is that continued growth acts as a hedge to bottoming stock prices.

In short, market analysts expect companies to increase production at certain rates. Failure to hit these rates is generally seen as a "bad thing" in terms of market share and can result in the price of a company's stock free-falling.

The problem, as I see it, is when the cash-flow needed to continue development develops a conflict with the cash-flows needed to continue dividends to shareholders.  Some companies will kill the dividend, some companies with kill growth. Both options will have a negative drag on stock price initially, but I believe that stopping development would be more beneficial to the long-term health of the market than would ending the dividend.

Granted, there is some development that companies cannot avoid.  For example, most processing contracts with plants come with minimum volume requirements that the plants need to maintain efficiencies, the same goes for transportation contracts and pipelines.  The operators of both the pipelines and the plants don't want to see their volumes reduced because it hurts their profit margins (their profit is based mainly on fees and tariffs, not on commodity price [plants are more sensitive to price fluctuations than pipelines, due to processing allowances etc.]). Because of this they have no incentive to work with producers to cut down on volumes.

Royalty owners (private) want to see more production as well.  Already most private royalty owners are seeing their checks cut by almost 2/3rds from 2013/2014 levels. For most seniors living on a fixed income this is quite the shock to the system.  The only way to hedge against this is for companies to continue drilling on their leases.  However, owners of non-developed leases should be OK with companies waiting until higher margins can be found.

Finally, governments (yes, even the Federal Government) are pushing for increased production. State and Federal coffers are losing revenue to the point that they're seeking to re-write the rules to punish companies during market downturns and hedge their revenue from price fluctuations. In short, the Government still thinks that oil and gas royalties are annuities.  As such they're writing new rules and leases (including Texas FWIW) which could serve to further retard exploration on government lands even IF the price returns to $50-$60/Bbl since they would make other opportunities more profitable.

I've said before that the companies who did not take on a lot of debt, and who had discipline when signing leases and agreements would have the flexibility to ride this out. Those companies who lost sight of fundamentals, or who bought high and at poor terms to get into rich areas, will shortly be paying the price.  For all of the talk of bankruptcies etc. what you're more likely to see is a wave of mergers and acquisitions now that so-called "big oil" has purged it's balance sheets of non-core assets.

Yes, this will mean a loss of jobs, damage to the local real-estate markets as homes are lost and offices consolidate, but it will also mean a stronger, leaner Oil and Gas industry on the other side. While this also means that Houston Region is in for some tough times, it could be doubly tough for the City of Houston as more and more companies seek to operate in the much-cheaper suburbs.

Oil and Gas companies are currently bringing their costs in-line with a protracted low-price environment, something they have the ability to do right now because they DID learn their lessons from previous boom/bust cycles.  The companies that didn't learn will soon be gone, their assets purchased by the survivors.

Remember that when you read the gloom and doom stories and the chastisements that another boom was "pissed away" because it wasn't. Anyone suggesting otherwise is telling you a lie.






















































*Note: As I've stated many times before: I am employed by an Oil and Gas firm in Houston. Some might call this bias, I would suggest that it's insight.

Reality Check: So you didn't win the PowerBall.

As you wake up this morning and realize that you didn't win the PowerBall lottery and that $1.5(ish) Billion is NOT coming your way. I think it's smart to sit back a minute and ponder why we thought we could win in the first place.

The idea that "someone has to win it, why not me?" is a compelling idea that has no basis in reality. It's also a fool's dream.  That doesn't mean that you shouldn't play, for fun, on a lark, because if I said that I would be pretty hypocritical considering that I too purchased two quick-pick tickets (with the multiplier) for a total expenditure of $6.

To be truthful, I'll be glad to hit enough numbers to win my money back. I think if I hit the PowerBall on one ticket I would do that (since I played the multiplier).  That's fine with me.

I don't play the lottery. The reason that I played this time is because I have always said that I would buy a ticket if the jackpot reached a Billion dollars. I played once before, over a decade ago, when it reached $100 Million for the first time. The drawing came and I didn't match a single number. As a joke I told everyone that I would play when it hits a Billion, thinking that was a number I'd never see, and I could keep my change in my pocket instead of voluntarily paying a tax.

To quote Rick Perry "Oops."

So, I've thrown away $6 which I'll never see again, with the less than an atom's width hope that I'll somehow match enough Ping-Pong balls to at least get it back. Even then, the odds are against me (and you). The problem I have with this is that people say "You can always dream." when speaking about the Lottery when it's not really a dream at all.  The Lottery acts as a government-sponsored nightmare that is, in reality, a tax, voluntarily paid by those who don't pay much attention to probability.

I don't begrudge anyone their choice of gaming. I try not to be a conservative scold (of the kind you see in news story comments that make fun of those who do) but I will point out that many people who are gaga over the PowerBall would break out in hives if you proposed slot-machines at race tracks. If you want to gamble your money on the Lottery then I feel you should have the ability to do so. On the other hand, I enjoy playing poker, and blackjack, and 3-card poker, and video poker, all games with much better odds than the Lottery and a much higher expected payout over time. Games (OK, excepting 3-card poker) where some strategy can increase your odds and give you a chance to walk away, in the short term, with some winnings. I also enjoy sports betting, another game that requires skill to do well, as well as a healthy dose of luck..

Despite the fact that I have better odds at winning at these events, the State of Texas has decided that I must leave the State to partake in them. They don't want me risking $300-$1,000 playing table games or betting sports, but have no problem with Texans spending that much for a 1-in-292 Million chance at hitting it big.

Why?  Because Texas doesn't want the competition.

Of course, we could go bet the ponies, and some do, but the State now wants to deprive us of that privilege as well.

As you get your coffee this morning (unless you're like Tom Brady that is) and get ready to trudge toward work for another day, don't head there with a heavy heart or a sense of disappointment, because this was always how things were going to be. And it may be that they were always going to be that way because the Lottery is a rigged game.  Maybe that's why States like Nevada outlaw lotteries choosing to allow residents to engage in regulated casino gaming. Gaming that, while still offering up poor odds, is a lot better than what Lotteries are offering. Give me the 0-3% house edge on blackjack any day. (with perfect strategy, using a good system)

So, this morning, we're all getting up and heading to our jobs. Some will be disappointed that they didn't strike it big, or that they didn't even match some partial numbers and win anything. I haven't checked yet this morning to see if there was a winner, although I imagine their has to be just based on the sheer volume of ticket sales.  Then again, I thought that on Saturday when the Jackpot hit $900 MM.  I was wrong then as well.

So I hereby state that I will not play the Lottery again until the Jackpot reaches $1 Trillion.

I should be safe for a while.  You might want to make the same pledge as well.  Heck, take your lottery money to the horse track and put it towards a Pick-4 if you like to gamble a little. Your odds will be better and pulling for the ponies is a lot more fun than watching Ping-Pong balls come out of a machine.  You might help save Texas racing as well. And while it's ridiculous to think that no one will play the lottery, if we could cut down on the number of people who play it then maybe we could force the Texas Legislature to take an honest look at gambling as a whole?

I know.....a 1 in 500 Million chance of that happening, which makes it less likely than hitting the PowerBall Jackpot.

National Politics: An Unserious Speech for an Unserious President.

I stopped watching the State of the Union Address somewhere in the middle of the 2nd Bush Presidency.  Part of the reasons for that can be found in this piece on the pageant by Kevin Williamson of National Review Online the remaining reasons are that I find political speeches, almost in their entirety, boring. For many of the same reasons, I don't watch political debates. If you honestly don't know who you're voting for by this point in the game maybe you should question whether or not you should really be voting.

While debates are bad enough (Oops.) the spectacle that surrounds the SOTU address is a special kind of political stupid.  From Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee camping out for hours like a pre-pubescent fangirl trying to capture a Belieber moment with 0 to the rounds of laugh-track like cheering when a.) the President is announced, b.) when he says something regarding a policy that's never going to pass and c.) when he finally closes up shop, it's a political spectacle for low-information voters. It's the worst type of political fawning and hero worship and it needs to go away.

If blogs are an online ego-stroke, then the SOTU is a nationally televised ego-stroke for politicians who receive too many of them in the first place.  We hold up these experts in spin and obfuscation to be Gods of public discourse and then get upset when they turn out to be petty feudal Lords just trying to retain their holdings. We've abdicated rule of our own lives to the Government and are disappointed when they don't pay proper attention to the things we think they should. We've lost the ability to think critically, instead asking that a group with the intellectual ability of cheese to do our thinking for us. Then, when things don't work out (The Affordable Care Act for example) we listen to them tell us that the solution to the problem is designed by the same people who created much of the problem in the first place.

In a sane society, Nancy Pelosi ("We have to pass the bill to find out what's in the bill"), Charlie Rangel ("I laugh when people say 'have you read the bill?"), Harry Reid (“I have been a fan of earmarks since I got here the first day.”), Mitch McConnell (“The biggest hero to emerge from the hearings before the 9/11 Commission has been the Patriot Act.”), John McCain ("The problem, is that most members of Congress don't pay attention to what's going on.") and Barack Obama ('If you like your Doctor, you can keep your Doctor") would be run from the public stage in a hail of half rotten vegetables.  Yet, as media coverage makes perfectly clear our current society is neither rational or sane.

We have become the citizenry that Obama predicted, a nation of bitter clingers. Bitterly clinging to our government subsidies and the clawed hand of dependency that's there to help us in our race to the bottom. So gone are we that Obama actually spent time chastising people who dared to disagree with him that America is not still great. That he even had to defend the premise supports the case of the opposition. It also set up the election for the Democrats.

We are now a country of whiners and enablers (I write while whining) who pick and choose facts that prop up the heroes we have chosen for ourselves and we don't react well when the facts suggest that we are wrong. Our sole purpose in politics these days is to be seen as "cool". That's why Millenials flock to Democrats, because the cool sycophants in Hollywood are telling them to do so, not because they have some unique understanding of domestic finance or international geopolitics. When they're not playing on social media they probably give little thought to that anyway and wouldn't understand it much even if they did.

What is not in doubt is this: America developed the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen. It created wealth such that it's dispersion redefined our notions of empire. No longer did a Country need to invade with military force to gain influence. After the rise of America this could be accomplished through the markets. Granted, it wasn't always successful, but more often than not we got our way. However, this is a reality that's currently in decline, and the sooner we come to terms with not being the economic bully on the block, and start talking about how to deal with it, the better off we'll be.

It's much like the brouhaha over climate change.  Right now the focus of the world is on how to prevent it. This assumes that mankind has the ability to alter the climate of Gaia at all.  What we should be focusing on is how to DEAL with it once it arrives. The problem with that theory is that there's less extortion money for the ruling class to collect. Our politicians know this, but none have the courage to speak the truth.

The rub to all of this is that I'm not writing today with any solution in mind. I'm not sure how those of us who believe in free markets and reduced dependency can reverse this tide. It's one thing to say we need entitlement reform and point out, rightly, that increasing food stamps and other give-aways don't hurt the poor but make them less dependent, but it's another thing altogether to get people to see through the rhetoric that "those on food stamps didn't cause the great recession". Straw-men arguments and non-sequiturs are the norm in political discourse, not the exception. The first step, obviously, is to elect representatives who don't use this language. The problem is they are few and hard to find.

The three biggest problems that we face as a country today (domestically) are over-taxation, burdensome, complicated regulation and government scope-creep. These have led to a business environment that is unhealthy, shedding good-paying jobs and creating a permanent underclass in American society. Amazingly, you're going to hear little about this in the run-up to the election as the debate is centering on immigration, free-speech and gun-control.  Not that the latter three issues aren't important, but they're unlikely to be resolved or even, seriously, acted on. They are fodder to fire up the low-information base and deliver votes. Meanwhile, the man behind the curtain (the bureaucracy) is slowly choking the livelihood out of business.

And yet, all we heard last night was some such about cynicism, from the other side.

So I didn't watch.  We would all be better off if we gave the political class the classic middle-finger extending gesture of pointing the remote directly at their noses, and changing the channel.

Talk amongst yourselves. Let us know when you're serious about actually getting things working again.

Why I wouldn't go into Business Today. (Things I think about when Collge Football ends)

When I was younger, I didn't dream of being a policeman or a firefighter or an astronaut, I think I had a pretty good idea that I was never going to be a pro athlete, and while I considered writing as a career I soon realized that I lacked the talent to do so at a profit.

What I really wanted to do was own my own business.  That was, and in a small way remains, the dream.

It's a dream that I now acknowledge will never come close to fruition, and the following story is why....

Actress Thandie Newton calls out Starbucks for offensive coffee display. Chron.com

"Pursuit of Happiness" actress Thandie Newton sparked a social media controversy with Starbucks Monday after tweeting a photo of a questionable store display.
 

The English actress' photo shows a black child-like figure at the counter of a central London Starbucks that was being used to display Colombian coffee beans, reports the Mirror. Along with the photo, Newton wrote, "Seriously @Starbucks? At the counter - Loin cloth and Safari hat on a black child. Happy New Year circa 19th century."

I realize that this is going to be construed wrongly, but I am NOT defending Starbucks here. Yes, I was on their side during the whole (silly) Red Cup debacle and I really didn't give two shakes whether or not they wrote "race together" on my cup.  I'm not typically one to fret about 'news' of that type.

Nor, honestly, am I really all that beat up inside over one Starbucks, in Central London, using a racially insensitive figure to promote coffee from Colombia.  Of course, as I've stated, I'm Caucasian (and therefore [according to some] infinitely privileged and don't understand the oppressive racism that people face in a Central London Starbucks)

Was Starbucks correct in removing the display?  Of course. At this point you're stupid if you use human likenesses to display anything other than clothes.... and even then.

This is not to suggest that racism, and racial oppression, is not a thing. Certainly there are, especially among the poorer class, real atrocities that we've seen are taking place within the realm of human slavery etc. We should all work to stamp that out.

But, racism from a financially well-off actress in Central London? We should all be so oppressed in life as Ms. Newton.

All that said, there is no way that I would even think about starting a business that served the general public given today's society.

Won't make a wedding cake for a Mrs. and Mrs.?  Offend the GLBTPQ movement who will then redress for supposed grievances from the Government who will seek to deprive you of your livelihood.

Will make a wedding cake for a Mr. and Mr.? Offend the Religious right. Who will then spend much time holding up signs in front of your place of business telling all and sundry that you are "going to hell" for a business decision.

You can sell an Advent calendar, a coffee named "Merry Christmas Blend" and a variety of other Christmas items but, if you pour that coffee in a plain red cup, you're committing just the latest atrocity in the war on Christmas.

If you choose to say "Merry Christmas" then you're offending the Athiests and Agnostics.

Serving cow offends the Hindus (and the Vegans, but pretty much everything offends them), serving pork offends the Muslims and the Jewish people and serving a vegetarian option offends certain members of the carnivore class.

Worst of all, any mistake your company makes (no matter how small or insignificant) will be instantly posted for the world to see on either Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. You will be instantly vilified by the perpetual outrage machine and you and your family will be held up as the "Worst Person in the World" until the next worst person comes along.

You could potentially receive death threats and threats of harm to you and yours, there will be active calls for your arrest, imprisonment and public flogging all for daring to make your breakfast scramble with eggs that are not free range.

Serve coffee that's properly hot? You can get sued if some idiot doesn't realize that they're drinking a hot product. Fail to accurately list one of 1,000,000 foods that can potentially cause allergies? We'll see you in court.

Oh, and the customer in front of me spilled his soda, I slipped on the resulting spill and hurt my pride. I'll be suing you for $1,000,000,000 in emotional damages. I'm emo you see and there's a lot to damage.

And this is just what the mob can do to you.  I haven't even gotten to the government yet.

We currently are ruled (that's not a typo, they feel that they are ruling us now) by governments who truly believe that your economic success does not spring from your efforts, but from their divine wisdom. As such, they feel that your profit and well-being is something that they have the right to forcefully take if you fail to pay sufficient tribute.

You will now be forced to subject your food to very expensive laboratory tests in order to display the calorie counts on your menu.  If the lab makes an error in an inexact science?  You will be sued for making people fat and the government will fine you and take away your two first-born children as penance. You will then be restricted to serving only bananas for the next year until you work off your caloric debit to society.

Before any of that however you have to navigate a bureaucratic maze of complexity beyond the dreams of Kafka.  By the time you finish paying all of the permitting fees, dba fees, operating license fees and various and assorted other duties to your rulers you'll have just about enough money left to hire an employee, who will then try to unionize or will demand time off to picket for a $15 living wage.

This type of treatment of private enterprise used to be called "protection rackets" and were rooted out by the very same government.  The truth is that nature abhors a vacuum and the very same regulators that were once on the side of business are now actively working against it.

We can bemoan the loss of the local mom & pop shop in the city center and blame Wal-Mart and other big-box stores until we're blue in the face.  But the fact is that we've killed those little stores through a combination of our overinflated sense of outrage and our malfeasance at the ballot box.

Where it was once the citizens vs. the "man" it's now become the citizens vs. the citizens who demand that the "man" come down viciously on that part of the citizenry currently out of favor.

In short, we're doing all of this to ourselves.

And it's not going to get better, it's going to get worse.


I greatly admire those who are willing to go through all of this and face certain financial ruin to be their own boss. I would like that very much, but I'm a realist.  You start a business today for two reasons. 1. You are young. 2. You have no prospects.  Youth and desperation are what it takes to succeed in America today.  It also helps to have political patronage, which can shelter you from bad decisions and provide income even to those with no business acumen.

The game is hopelessly rigged. And I have no desire to enter a rigged game.  At least, not right here in Houston, and certainly not right now.