WASHINGTON – Elena Kagan was sworn in Saturday as the 112th justice and fourth woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath to Kagan in a brief private ceremony at the court. Kagan, joined by family and friends, pledged to faithfully and impartially uphold the law.
Afterward, she smiled broadly as a crowd of onlookers stood and applauded. “We look forward to serving with you,” Roberts said.
Kagan, a former Harvard Law School dean who most recently was solicitor general, was President Barack Obama’s choice to succeed retired Justice John Paul Stevens. Republicans criticized her as a political liberal, before the Senate confirmed her this past week on a vote of 63-37.
She was sworn in twice Saturday by Roberts — reciting one oath as prescribed by the Constitution during a ceremony in a conference room at the court with only her family present. Kagan then recited a second oath, taken by judges, with her family and friends and reporters present.
Kagan won’t be formally installed as a justice until Oct. 1 in a courtroom ceremony at the start of the court’s new term. But after the oaths taken on Saturday, she will be able to begin assuming her duties as a justice, which include reviewing cases and emergency appeals filed to the Supreme Court.
Kagan, 50, joins Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor on the nine-member court, which often divides 5-4 on high-profile cases such as gun rights, discrimination and campaign finance. The first woman in the court’s history, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, retired in 2005.
Kagan isn’t expected to alter the ideological balance of the court, where Stevens was considered a leader of the liberals.
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Supreme court justices always go through a “trial by fire” as they should. They get to decide what laws stay and which laws don’t for several decades to come. Oddly enough I’m actually ok that Kagan is sworn in because she is a liberal (or supposedly she is; she is accused by some on the left of being too “moderate”). That is because the Supreme court SHOULd always be closely divided ideologically to ensure there’s always fiery debate on each issue (it is currently 4 left, 5 right).
Since she has no history that we can really rank on expect her to be moderate or left. That’s just my guess. This actually favors us rightwingers because there is actually a chance she could go to the right. However, she is the brainchild of Obama, who desperately knows he will have a ton of people and states challenging him on the Health Care bill plus Immigration, and really any of his future pet projects. Kagan may attempt to support Obama however he wants the supreme court of the land to vote so watch out in the future.
Of course if she upholds the obamacare bill and federal oversight over immigration (the latter is more likely to favor uncle sam and not the states) then well I guess we are fucked.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Lauded for making Hewlett-Packard Co. the world’s biggest technology company, CEO Mark Hurd was in talks for a new contract worth about $100 million, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.
Instead, he’s getting almost one-third that much just to go away.
HP said Friday that it ousted Hurd after its investigation of a sexual harassment complaint found he had falsified expense reports and other documents to conceal a relationship with a contractor. Hurd also allegedly helped the woman get paid for work she didn’t do.
She worked for HP as a host at high-profile events accused him of sexual harassment, a person with intimate knowledge of the case told The Associated Press. The person requested anonymity because this person wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the details of the case.
In recent weeks, Hurd was in negotiations for a new three-year contract worth about $100 million.
News of his abrupt departure sent HP’s stock tumbling nearly 10 percent after hours Friday. Shares of the world’s biggest maker of personal computers and printers have doubled in value during his five-year stewardship, and HP became the world’s No. 1 technology company by revenue in that time.
Hurd’s “systematic pattern” of submitting falsified financial reports to hide the relationship convinced the board that “it would be impossible for him to be an effective leader moving forward and that he had to step down,” HP general counsel Michael Holston said on a conference call Friday with analysts.
“The facts that drove the decision for the company had to with integrity, had to do with credibility, had to do with honesty,” Holston said, declining to elaborate.
Holston said the inaccurate financial reports related only to Hurd’s personal expenses.
Hurd, 53, acknowledged there were “instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP.”
High-profile Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred said she is representing the woman and “there was no affair and no intimate sexual relationship” between her client and Hurd. Allred, reached by The Associated Press late Friday, declined to comment further.
The person close to the case told the AP that the woman worked as a host for more than a dozen events for CEOs that Hurd attended between 2007 and 2009. The person said the disputed expenses range from $1,000 to $20,000 each for travel, lodging and meals.
The person said many of the expenses were for meals after the events and that Hurd insists they were legitimate business expenses. The total amount of the expenses in dispute could not be learned.
Hurd has offered to repay expenses that were incorrectly filed, this person said.
The married father of two will get a $12.2 million severance payment and nearly 350,000 shares of HP stock worth about $16 million at Friday’s closing price. The company also extended the deadline for exercising options to buy up to 775,000 HP shares.
The company’s chief financial officer, Cathie Lesjak, 51, was named interim CEO. She has been with the company 24 years but has taken herself out of the running to fill the position permanently. HP has set up a search committee to look for a permanent replacement.
HP’s shares, which closed Friday on the New York Stock Exchange at $46.30, tumbled 9.7 percent after hours to $41.85 as investors reacted to the news released after the close of markets.
Beloved by investors for his relentless cost-cutting — and scorned by thousands of laid-off employees for the same — Hurd was seen as rescuing the company from the mess left behind by his predecessor, Carly Fiorina.
Hurd has transformed the 71-year-old company from a computer and printer maker hooked on profits from printer cartridges into a company that looks a lot like its archrival IBM Corp., a major player in technology services and other fast-growing areas.
Though their underlying stories are very different, Hurd’s departure is like Fiorina’s in one key way: Both were forced out with the company about to reap the benefits of sweeping changes they made at the Silicon Valley institution.
Fiorina left in 2005 in the wake of her decision to acquire Compaq Computer and an ensuing upheaval over her personality and her business strategies, but the divisive deal proved instrumental in HP’s ascendance under Hurd.
By comparison, Hurd is departing after cutting tens of thousands of jobs and launching an expensive expansion, including the $13.9 billion acquisition of technology-services provider Electronic Data Systems, the $2.7 billion takeover of computer-networking equipment maker 3Com Corp. and the $1.4 billion deal for mobile phone maker Palm Inc.
To reassure investors, HP, based in Palo Alto, previewed its third-quarter results late Friday in advance of a detailed report Aug. 19.
The company said it expects to report earnings of 75 cents per share, compared with 67 cents a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, the company says results will be $1.08 per share, a penny ahead of analysts’ current expectations. Revenue is expected to rise 11 percent from last year to $30.7 billion, slightly higher than analysts’ expectations.
The company’s forecast for the current quarter, which ends in October, is roughly in line with analysts’ expectations.
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Mixing pleasure with business doesn’t bode well. She wanted shit, he gave it to her. I’m guessing at some point he had to say no and she got angry. Certainly not a good way to end a relationship.
Just goes to show having money and power don’t always gets you the girl you love. Let that be a lesson to you. At least Hurd can retire in peace and shame.
This case is all too uncommon and there are 1000′s of this happening every day I bet.
DETROIT (AP) — After a five-year wage freeze, Ford Motor Co. Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. is getting paid again.
It’s another sign that the automaker founded by his great-grandfather Henry Ford is healthy enough to award its top executives generous pay packages. The company recently said it earned $2.6 billion in the second quarter, its fifth-straight quarterly profit.
Bill Ford will be paid $4.2 million in salary and in stock options worth $11.6 million. The total represents pay he has earned over the last two years. He was to be paid Friday.
“The ongoing success of Ford Motor Company is my life’s work and I am fully confident we are on track for sustained profitable growth through our commitment to building great products, a strong business and a better world,” Bill Ford said in an e-mail to employees obtained by The Associated Press.
In 2005, when Bill Ford was chairman and chief executive, he stopped taking a salary or bonus as the automaker floundered and racked up record losses. The following year, he stepped aside as chief executive and hired former Boeing Co. CEO Alan Mulally for the job. Mulally has been widely credited with streamlining the company and turning its operations around.
In 2008, Ford’s compensation committee ruled that Bill Ford could be paid from the beginning of 2008 on once the company’s automotive operations returned to profitability. The committee recently decided those conditions have been met. Ford made $2.7 billion in 2009, its first annual profit in four years.
Ford’s U.S. sales rose 28 percent in the first six months of this year, almost double the overall industry’s sales increase, thanks to well-received products, good quality rankings and consumer goodwill. Unlike General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, Ford avoided bankruptcy and didn’t take federal bailout money during the economic downturn last year. Ford also grabbed sales from Toyota Motor Corp. after Toyota recalled millions of vehicles for safety problems.
Ford has said it expects to make a profit this year and next and expects to end 2011 with more cash than debt. Right now it has $27.3 billion in debt and $21.9 billion in cash.
Mulally made $17.9 million in 2009, about 1 percent more than the prior year. Most of that total was in stock options; his salary was $1.4 million. Both Mulally and Bill Ford took a 30 percent salary cut in 2008 that remains in effect.
Still, Mulally’s salary has been a sticking point for some of the company’s factory workers, who cited his pay when they rejected a new round of wage concessions last October. The United Auto Workers union didn’t immediately comment Friday on Ford’s decision to restore Bill Ford’s salary.
In a filing Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Bill Ford also said he is selling $28 million worth of shares. In the e-mail to employees, Ford said he is selling the stock to pay off personal loans he took out in recent years to purchase Ford shares.
He also said he is donating $1 million to a college scholarship fund for employees’ children.
In afternoon trading, Ford shares rose 1 cent to $12.99.
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Patience and working for free pays off. 5 Years is a long fucking time to not get paid.
Hopefully the leadership can keep costs down and keep the labor unions from sucking all of Ford’s cash this time around.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Verizon Communications Inc and Google Inc agreed to a deal over how Internet traffic will be treated, two people familiar with the agreement said on Wednesday.
The deal centers on a set of rules, called net neutrality, that determines how Internet traffic moves over land lines and to wireless devices involving payment by Internet companies seeking a faster traffic.
Verizon will not block or slow Internet traffic over land lines but could do so to wireless devices, one source said.
The agreement comes among a series of closed-door meetings at the Federal Communications Commission involving the two companies, AT&T Inc and other Internet companies to set rules for the industry.
One source said Verizon and Google were still trying to determine when to formally announce the deal, and how to involve U.S. Representative Rick Boucher who has acted as a mediator to the talks.
Verizon and Google have worked closely in the wireless device area. Verizon Wireless, a venture between Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc, depends heavily on phones based on Google’s Android software for growth.
“We’ve been working with Google for 10 months to reach an agreement on broadband policy,” Verizon spokesman David Fish said.
A Google spokeswoman could not be reached for comment.
At the FCC phone, cable and Internet companies have been meeting with senior officials in an effort to reach a consensus on how Internet access should be regulated.
The FCC voted in June to collect public comments on whether the agency should reclassify broadband regulation under existing phone rules — typically considered a stricter regulatory regime.
The FCC vote came after a U.S. appeals court ruled that the agency lacked authority to stop cable television company Comcast Corp from blocking bandwidth-hogging applications.
The public interest group Free Press and others criticized the agreement.
“A deal with Verizon cements its market power, and could make it more difficult for new app developers and software entrepreneurs to reach consumers,” Free Press President Josh Silver said.
AT&T said it is not a party to the deal between Google and Verizon.
“We remain committed to trying to reach a consensus on this issue through the FCC process,” said Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s senior executive vice president legislative affairs.
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So, how long before more people like me can’t just blog about whatever the fuck I want.
No doubt evil control freaks will use this simple deal as an excuse to regulate internet freedom. Reclassifying broadband as phone lines. Are you fucking kidding me?! So that means my fios line is the same as a telephone line?! Verizon repeatedly says it replaces it completely!
Thankfully Verizon and Google actually have a great record of keeping its customers and freedoms/privacies as its #1 goal. What I really do fucking hope though is that they somehow keep the FCC from fucking overstepping their authority and go from a simple “wireless deal” to “we’re going to have to regulate everything, first apps that suck traffic then “blogs” that hog a lot of traffic” like you know this blog or huffington post or the Heritage foundation. Hmm, come to think of it maybe that is why Verizon and Google spent so long talking about this shit, I’m hoping they know about the evil elite.
Some would say Verizon and Google are the evil elite, fast becoming one, or already one. So far I have to disagree because both companies haven’t really done anything on purpose to disrespect the people or its customers. Sometimes they fuck up and make mistakes, but that’s just human, making honest mistakes. Disrespect is like the asshole cable companies like Time Warner who promise 25 megabit bandwidth or 50megabit or whatever, then they cap you. Verizon at the least (for now) prevents the MPAA and other stupid shits from harassing Verizon for illegal downloads or gives you unlimited use of your promised bandwidth. Google restores rankings after a while but it takes them *forever* which is why people panic on the internet marketing world like on the webmasterworld forums for example.
AT&T wasn’t a party to this and as you know they are the internet provider for Apple’s Iphones and shit. Verizon and Google are partnering together to take on Apple and At&t, so they will keep each other in check and hopefully keep the internet as free as possible. Iphones and Android/htc phones are arch rivals, not too unsimilar to how much bill gates and steve jobs actually hate each other’s guts.
Business in the end game is all about ego and who has more money that they do NOT need. Damn, I ask myself, what can I do to think like that?
Of course I could be wrong and this is all a conspiracy against the people. What do you think?
With U.S. stocks rising convincingly over the past month, fund managers and analysts making the rounds on business TV channels are again openly day-dreaming that retail investors, safely parked in bonds over the past two years, will finally come out to play.
Dream on.
Their PR exercise is based on the idea that stock market gains are telling a good story of things to come, which therefore would reduce the need for the safety of bonds.
Unfortunately, the bond market’s generally been much more accurate than stocks at predicting economic trends.
The verdict is in: As the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 gained about 7% in July, government bonds also gained and their yields, which move inversely to prices, fell.
Yields on two-year notes, which closely track expectations for the key interest rate controlled by the Federal Reserve, plumbed fresh record lows.
The reason? The economic “recovery” is slowing, as is evident in almost every piece of economic data over the past month, especially in the slower rate of growth in the second quarter.
So what could make retail investors, many of them baby-boomers who’ve seen their stock investments tumble more than 50% from peak-to-trough twice in the past 10 years, embrace the shaky proposition that stocks are a better deal now just as the economy starts sputtering again?
Fair enough, earning season has shown that corporate America is again able to deliver on profits, thanks to cost cutting, global sales and easier year-on-year comparisons.
But whatever global growth these firms managed to draw from came thanks to massive spending from governments.
That spending, which in the U.S. was too small to begin with, is now fading away, being replaced by austerity measures in large parts of the world.
We were told that cutting deficits, which go up in recessions, was a good idea, because bonds would sell off, and yields — and the commercial interest rates tied to them — would soar.
Yields on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes, which are a good measure of growth and inflation expectations and are used to benchmark mortgage rates, did rise from 2.5% in March 2009, when stocks began a massive rally, to nearly 4% in April of this year.
But they’re now at 2.9%, going down along with growth expectations.
And with little chance of further government spending to boost the U.S. economy, an increasing number of analysts, including Bill Gross, the co-founder of bond giant Pimco, have joined serious economists in expecting deflation by next year.
And of course, they were joined last week by St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, who ditched his previous fears over inflation. The move fueled expectations that the central bank might eventually announce further easing measures, such as again buying bonds.
Reacting to Bullard’s switch last week, Dave Rosenberg, market strategist at Gluskin Sheff, said the Fed’s case for doing so is growing stronger by the day. In his daily note, the famously bearish analyst, formerly at Merrill Lynch, made a simple call: Buy bonds now!
More easing from the Fed wouldn’t hurt stocks either, mind you. But until a clear economic picture emerges, that’s far from a convincing endorsement of why investors should get out of bond funds.
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In a nutshell the argument here is that because people have dire outlooks on the economy 6-12 months from now, they flee to the “safety” of bonds and shit. Debentures, preferred stock, corporate bonds, etc. These pay fixed income every 3 months (typically 3 months) and when you get your dividend income (passive) the rich generally reinvest it to compound their returns. Downside is it can take a long time for you to make a decent amount of money doing this, but it is safe and secure.
Deflation has already been happening since the crash in 2007. It still is going on. Personally, I hope it continues so that I have enough time to go into the markets and buy shit up. Stuff and stocks can be bought today for pennies on the dollar or 25 cents on the dollar etc. Sadly though, this means my own personal businesses elsewhere will continue to suffer shittier sales as people restrict spending even more.
NEW YORK (AP) — Sidney Harman, the 91-year-old founder of audio equipment maker Harman International Industries Inc., has agreed to buy Newsweek, ending a nearly half-century chapter for the magazine as part of The Washington Post Co.
Jon Meacham, the magazine’s top editor since 2006, will step down.
Newsweek has been struggling to find a profitable niche amid poor economic conditions and a flood of online competition. Declines in circulation and advertising led to a nearly $30 million loss in 2009, and Newsweek expects to lose money again this year.
In a statement Monday, Post Co. CEO Donald Graham said Harman has pledged to keep most of the magazine’s staff. Financial terms were not disclosed, although the Post Co. said it is keeping the magazine’s pension liabilities and certain other employee obligations.
“In seeking a buyer for Newsweek, we wanted someone who feels as strongly as we do about the importance of quality journalism,” Graham said. “We found that person in Sidney Harman.”
Graham added, “He has pledged not only to continue to produce a lively, compelling and first-rate news magazine, but also an equally dynamic Newsweek.com.”
Harman is the husband of Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., chairwoman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence.
Harman International Industries makes equipment under such brand names as JBL, Infinity, Harman Kardon and Mark Levinson. Its audio products are used in such auto brands as Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz, BMW AG and Toyota Motor Corp’s Lexus.
The Post Co., which acquired Newsweek in 1961, has been looking for a buyer since May, when it hired the investment bank Allen & Co. to help shop the magazine to potential bidders.
Despite continuing losses, Newsweek drew several offers, including ones from Newsmax Media, the publisher of the conservative monthly Newsmax; Open Gate Capital, the private equity firm that owns TV Guide magazine; and Thane Ritchie, a hedge fund manager who made an unsuccessful bid last year for the company that publishes the Chicago Sun-Times.
With the print industry in decline, the Post Co. likely sold Newsweek at a fire-sale price. Bloomberg LP bought BusinessWeek last year for just a few million dollars.
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I’d imagine my fellow rightwing nutjob buddies are going ballistic on this one. Me, I actually don’t care so much (yet). Why? Because the people of any sort, can have a voice online.
The future is the itnernet. The future is now. The future, is here.
Sidney runs a successful business as illustrated on this article. No doubt he can turn Newsweek around, much to the dismay of the right. What intrigues me is how a lefty can run a business. It’s like saying ot me “a socialist owns this big corporation that is profitable.” What the fuck, aren’t they for anti-business and pro-tax increases on the rich?
This is what actually makes me suspicious because I smell lies. I’m thinking it’s just another selfish rich fuck that wants all the money for themselves and fucks the rest of us over with lies and platitudes “Oh you gotta help the poor, you gotta tax the rich!” which really translates to “You all are slaves and I will turn you all against each other while I quietly take and keep all the money for myself, friends, and family, hahaha! When you’r all poor you won’t realize that all along the laws you passed fuck you over some more and give me what little power and money you have left to ME”.
The flip side is this guy understands that the easiest way to be rich is to give shit away (preferably for free) and be generous. Liberals are SUPPOSE to champion this shit (which is probably why they’re so powerful) but their spirit and message gets confused in all the hate mongering and lack of financial aptitude among many of their followers. The low form of liberalism is “Robin Hood” thinking, steal from the “rich” and give to the “poor.” Sounds noble but at the end of the day, it’s still fucking stealing. And who gets to determine the point of view of who is “rich” and who is “poor?” At least I like to admit that I’m stealing when freedom allows it. The same issue plagues us righties, except that few of us understand the power of liberalism.
Needless to say, the rightwing better embrace a little more “liberalism” and reach more people. If they don’t, we’re all going to sing Mao Zedong’s communist anthems in our stadiums or our children in grade school and we will have our own “great leap forward” program where we can happily rush our people into death and starvation because the expectation is way too fucking unrealistic. We can also kill 11 million Americans just like fucktard Mao did to my people in the 1950′s. Look it up everyone, the “Great Leap Forward” and come to your own conclusion. You know where I stand, and I won’t stand for it to happen again.
How much does it cost to have fun in Dungeons & Dragons Online’s free-to-play world?
The catacomb is dank, decrepit. I’m creeping towards gold and glory. My party — friends whose skills complement my own — have toiled through a labyrinth of twisted passageways for hours in search of a magical artifact. After battling hordes of skeletons and zombies, undying creatures that claw their way up from ancient coffins, we finally find the chest we seek… tucked away behind a locked gate.
A lock. I swing at it with my sword a few times. No telltale “clank” of metal-on-metal that suggests I can beat my way in. Worse, we have no rogue in our party. No way to open the gate and claim our prize.
“OK guys,” I say into the headset. “Two seconds while I buy a Bell of Opening.” A few keystrokes later and a few coins of fake currency poorer, the prize is ours. Who needs a damned rogue?
Last year, Turbine surprised the MMO world by opening the gates to Dungeons & Dragons Online, allowing anyone to simply sign up for an account, download the client, and save the world of Eberron — all for free. Gone are industry-standard subscription fees, replaced by an in-game eCommerce system filled with items and content that players can buy, on-demand, whenever they wish. Turbine gambled on the idea that giving their content away will make the game better — and even make more money.
The gamble paid off. According to a recent NPD report on Online Gaming, DDO has gone from being the 11th most popular MMO to the third, with 8% of the market searching the city of Stormreach for danger and “phat lootz.” DDO is now more popular than Guild Wars, Final Fantasy XII, and even Turbine’s own Lord of the Rings Online. The move has been so successful that Turbine is taking LOTRO free-to-play by the end of this year, positioning themselves as the Western kings of free MMOs.
As a World of Warcraft addict, I’ve found the “Turbine Model” intriguing. While many players have been digging through DDO’s content for free, I’ve been shelling out $15 a month to Blizzard for the privilege of running the same old heroic five-man instances or leveling yet another alt. Was I missing something here, and how much would it cost me to find the fun? I decided to find out.
Battling On a Budget
My core question on this expedition was this: Is Turbine’s success with microtransactions due to nickel-and-diming their player base? How much am I going to shell out to get the full experience in Stormreach?
To do this right, I set myself a budget of $20 to spend inside Turbine’s in-game DDO Store. I vowed to log my purchases and in-game experiences and keep track of every temptation to ease my way through the levels. As it turns out, the urge to channel my inner-teen-girl mall-shopper in DDO hit me right from the get-go.
[00:01] Character creation. First opportunity to buy Monk class. The moment I click on the class, a separate pop-up window opens for the DDO store. The Monk is 795 points. I don’t even have any points yet, but 795 seems like it must be a lot. Too rich for my blood.
[00:04] Oooh, another class for sale, the Favored Soul. It’s a healing class like Cleric, but doesn’t solo as well, and it’s also 795 points. Pass.
[00:07] Uh oh. Races for sale. Warforged are creatures made out of metal and wood, like fantasy robots without the silly steampunk. I don’t want to be a robot.
[00:10] The Drow is tempting, at 596 points. Bonuses to a few ability scores like Charisma, plus it’s just cool-looking. I’m going to be staring at the behind of whatever model I choose for long periods of time, and the Drow females are… well, eye-catching.
After a few minutes of deliberation, I’m ready for my first purchase. A Drow I shall be.
eCommerce in the Time of Eberron
Before I buy my way into a dark elf body, I decide to crunch some numbers on these Turbinespacebucks.
[00:10] 420 points costs 6.50. So: 6.50 / 400 = 0.01625. Wait, is this the right math? My head hurts.
[00:23] I hate math. Maybe Google has the answer?
I find a blog post that expounds on the sliding exchange rate for Turbine Points. On the low end, it averages out to 61.5 points per dollar. On the high end, buying 5,000 points for $50 equals 100 points per dollar.
To buy the Drow race from the beginning, a new player will have to spend $13.00 on two 420-point packs, or pick up the 1,550-point bundle — which costs $19.50. That’s a surprising amount of money 10 minutes into a game that’s supposed to be free.
It’s not an uncommon purchasing pattern, according to Fernando Paiz, the Turbine executive producer who moved DDO from subscription to free-to-play. “There’s a kind of player who shows up and says, ‘I’m willing to spend $20 to make my experience with this game the best it can be from the beginning,’” he says. Even then, players are left with a bundle of points to explore the rest of the DDO Store’s inventory.
As I’ll find out later on, I could have actually unlocked the Drow race through normal gameplay, and humans make better clerics. But at least I’ll look awesome from the beginning. Geez, I still haven’t finished character creation.
[00:35] Took me half an hour, but Larvayas the Drow Cleric is born! And on the character select screen, she’s half-naked. SUCCESS!
Convenience for Sale
As I start my journey to Stormreach, I find a steady stream of reminders that an easier — not cheaper — path exists.
[3:07] I’ve been grinding early content for a few hours. It’s fun, and different enough from WoW that I don’t feel like I’m playing a ghost of a game. But another death during a newbie quest makes me think I need a little something, a little help. Maybe I should buy a hireling?
Added about 18 months ago, before DDO went free, hirelings are essentially NPC pets you can buy to make soloing or small groups easier to manage, a strategy used extensively in Guild Wars to make group content soloable. Each hireling lasts for an hour of game time and can be bought in two ways: from in-game vendors for around seven gold, or from the DDO store for 10 points. While I can only have one vendor hireling active at a time, I can use four DDO Store hirelings at once. Forty points doesn’t seem like a lot, right? Way less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
[3:10] While browsing the Store for Hirelings, I find +1 Full Plate Armor for 50 points. This chain shirt was starting to feel janky, anyway. I’ve got points to burn.
Tally: Four hirelings — 40 points. +1 Full Plate — 50 points. 90 points total. 864 points left.
[3:32] The hireling thing is amazing. I can summon a whole party using Turbine Points, and then heal them like normal characters. I may never need friends again! Oh crap, I got distracted.
Tally: Four not-dead hirelings — 40 points. 824 points left.
Replacing the need for social contact is fine and dandy, but the DDO Store also offers quest-aid items that you can buy mid-dungeon.
[6:45] Encountered a chest that’s behind a locked door. No way to open it on my own, unless I buy a Bell of Opening from the DDO Store. Cost: 95 points. Hell yes!
[6:46] The chest contains “Protective Gloves.” What, am I going to clean my oven? Where’s my +4 Mace Of Laundry!?
Browsing the store, I find items that will boost experience or loot gained while adventuring, speeding up the leveling process. These seem like must-buy items if you’re trying to catch up with your friends.
[7:53] Decided to buy an elixir of experience to burn through this newbie area. A Lesser Experience Elixir costs 50 points, and gives 10% extra XP for three hours. I would have paid a ton more than that. I’d pay a few bucks a pop for the equivalent in WoW.
[9:22] Used my first “spirit cake” to resurrect myself in a dungeon. Stupid spiders. Cost: 150 points.
[11:56] Forgot to buy a Pinch of Bull Dung before my hot date tonight. Not often you get to say that. I need the smelly stuff as a spell component for some of my better cleric buffs. Turns out I can just buy it from the DDO Store too, for 40 points. Convenient. Dungeon not wasted.
Tally: Lesser XP Potion — 50 points. Spirit Cake — 150 points. Stack of Pinch of Bull Dung — 40 points. 624 points left.
I’m burning through points pretty fast, although to be fair, I’ve played 12 hours of this game — less time than it takes to play through most $60 titles. Simply having access to those “change” points after my Drow purchase has enabled me to try things out. The money’s already been turned into non-convertible spacebucks, so why not use it? It’s the same model that keeps Xbox Live users shelling out dough for uneven bundles of Microsoft Points. The remainder adds up.
With all the XP potions, extra components, and fancy armor for sale, I’m shocked I haven’t bought anything bigger. Turbine has a giant amount of content for purchase in the DDO Store through Adventure Packs — modules of dungeons and adventures, just like in real-world Dungeons & Dragons. But I’m already drowning in a sea of free content. Even the cheap packs seem like unnecessary expenditures.
Fernando Paiz tells me that most people are perfectly comfortable grinding through the free offering. “We have tons of free content for players, close to 100 hours at this point, without ever having to spend anything.” For the most part, I seem to be following his script. It isn’t until I encounter an NPC who entreats me (me personally, because I’m special, right?) to topple the nefarious Sharn Syndicate that I finally get upsold. The story hook is intriguing, and I’m curious if this paid content is something special.
[14:03] Finally buying my first Adventure Pack, Sharn Syndicate. It costs 350 points. Adding one friend for some duo quests. A 180-minute guest pass for Sharn runs me 27 points, on sale.
Even then, it’s because I had points to spare. The quests in Sharn Syndicate are significantly harder than what I’ve experienced in DDO’s free offering, so much so that I dragoon a friend to come and help. This is the genius of Turbine’s guest passes for Adventure Packs — I didn’t make my ranger friend drop $5 on a module he doesn’t need, but instead paid a few points for his temporary admission to the funhouse.
“Selling content was a bit of an experiment for us,” says Paiz. “People told us, ‘You can’t charge for content! That’s not free-to-play, people will leave!’ We held pretty fast to doing that in our model.” Eventually, it paid off. As the player base churns through free content and begins leveling alts, many dip into the Adventure Packs to add spice to the level-grind, even at lower levels. The community even keeps an up-to-date review list of the content, targeted specifically at alt-grinding. Paying a la carte means players can pick and choose, skipping packs that don’t fit their needs.
Those high-end purchases are a slow burn for Turbine, but ultimately produce big numbers.”It didn’t happen the first month,” says Paiz, “but over the several months we’ve been live, content, races, and classes have become our largest category in terms of dollars generated over a given month.”
This Year’s Model
Twenty hours of solid MMO fantasy gameplay later, I’ve got 247 of my initial 1,550 points left. For my $20 investment, I ended up with a level 5 Drow cleric that can solo DDO’s easier quests or heal party members in tougher areas. I’ve long since outgrown the fancy armor from the DDO store, but still find myself thinking about buying XP potions.
Admittedly, I went points-crazy. I didn’t need to spend any money at all, but my purchases made my initial 20 hours flow just a bit better. Most people don’t even bother; Fernando tells me that “20% of our active players are spending money in the store,” but that 20% includes monthly subscribers — who get a points stipend, broadly unlocked content, and other benefits — giving Turbine the double-dip. Even with the freeloaders, the DDO Store has turned the game into a cash factory. According to a presentation given by Paiz at the LOGIN conference earlier this year, DDO’s monthly revenues are up over 500% in just six months.
Turbine’s revenue model is built on making the game a little bit easier if you’re willing to pay, but balancing that “little bit” is key. “We never had the desire to put in, say, a +5 Amazing Frost Ax and charge $50 for it,” says Kate Paiz, Fernando’s spouse and LOTRO’s executive producer, who’s currently taking the Turbine model to Middle-earth. “We had many years’ worth of data from players in terms of what they did or didn’t like, which areas they found fun or found hard, what their wish list was.”
And like any good online company, they used that data to make the user experience better and bring in more dollars. Google does that with online advertising; the New York Times does it for content. Eventually, the store itself becomes another source of data, bringing Turbine closer to its players while maximizing revenue. It’s clearly working for DDO, and I suspect it will work for LOTRO as well.
Will it spread? Will Blizzard’s foray into selling in-game content (I’m looking at you, Celestial Steed) expand into a full-on movement to the Turbine way? Perhaps not. Blizzard, as the 11-million subscriber continent in the MMO sea, can likely milk the old-school model indefinitely. But for the rest of the world, I’m convinced: The Turbine way works.
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I’ve played DDO before. It’s a lot of fuckign fun when playing with FRIENDS. It’s really god damn lame to solo. It use to be annoying to level (still is) but they made it easier recently and for free so it’s not too bad.
Yes drow = awesome. For min max warriors I go with Drow warrior but Human warrior is great too because of the feat every 2 levels plus the usual 3rd level multiple feat in addition; warrior class is all feat based which makes them insane.
Anyway I digress. Micro-transactions work gangbusters. Zynga game network, famous for Farmville and Mafia Wars runs the same principle. They made $500 million in revenue last year in the sale of fucking virtual goods, all micro-transaction, all voluntary. Insane isn’t it? (I personally don’t believe it’s that high). Their games are all free to play. If you look closely at this article it makes high numbers like 500% or whatever but doesn’t disclose hard revenue.
What I don’t get is LOTRO is vastly profitable and pretty popular (they have almost 500k subscribers all paying at least 12-16$ each don’t they?) but Turbine wants to shift it to the same business model. That is what is most shocking. Free is great because you get people like me gaming all the free content and constantly playing. This is actually good because you always want people to see that someone is playing in the same area. It’s like the playground back in school. Do you want to play by yourself or where all the kids are? Hmm well even at our young age we recognized when it was lame to play by yourself and figure out where all the fun is. It’s no different when we get older.
I ran a counter-strike temporarily (I love that fucking game) and I always wanted to run a server. Little did I know, it is SO FUCKING hard to get people to play in it. The reason why the steam client always shows these bogus servers with 31/32 players is because they’re all stupid redirects. Had I known the shitty server host I was using would allow BOTS to play in the server, then at least the few people who did join the server would stay long enough for more people to come in and populate it to the fullest. Sadly the shitty service I used did not allow bots. What a fucking ripoff. Needless to say the server was cancelled and I was out $60. I was angry but hey, most lessons in life are priced fairly so I can’t bitch too much about it.
So it makes sense that this move by Turbine and really most modern-day game companies are doing the same thing. They have too. World of Warcraft
Whether you’re running a FPS cstrike server or a mmorpg, you need bots (server type games) or npcs (mmo’s) to keep the people happy and playing. Make all the money in the world and then remake the game in your own image.
Still, I want to know how much money was really involved and how many subscribers we’re talking about. Since it probably doesn’t hit 1 million, nobody wants to say. It’s a damn shame really but oh well.
The takeaway is, I’m very surprised they will take a pretty decent success Lord Of The Rings Online and make it free to play. I’m very interested to see how all this shit plays out for when I figure out a monetization model for my games.
New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner is plainly fired up and ready to go. In a losing battle to secure passage of a bill to fund health care and compensation for ill 9/11 rescue workers, he unleashed a tirade against what he called unprincipled GOP opponents of the measure.
The House voted down the bill, which would have provided $3.2 billion over the next 10 years to fund freehealth care for 9/11 rescue and recovery workers who have fallen ill from toxic smoke and debris they breathed at the World Trade Center site. The bill would have also provided $4.2 billion in compensation over that same span. The legislation proposed to pay for the benefits by closing a tax loophole on foreign subsidiaries that do business in the United States.
The House Democratic leadership employed an arcane procedural maneuver to suspend the rules before consideration of the bill (titled the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act). Democrats reportedly used the gambit to prevent House Republicans from swamping the otherwise popular measure with what Democrats called excessively partisan amendments. But in order for the bill to pass in this form, it needed a two-thirds majority. The final tally was 255 for it (12 of them Republicans), and 159 against (four of them Democrats).
[Photos: Ground Zero construction continues]
Some GOP opponents painted it as a “slush fund” for New York that the rest of America would be forced to fund through tax increases. In response to the measure’s defeat, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg blasted both sides of the aisle.
“It was wrong for the overwhelming majority of Republicans to vote against the bill, and it was wrong for Democrats to bring the bill to the floor under rules that made passage so much more difficult,” he said.
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent concurred, citing Democratic incompetence and Republican political chicanery as the principal reasons for the defeat. Sargent wrote that the Republicans are trying to “render government ineffective in order to deny Dems victories, create a sense that government is broken and has failed to deliver, stoke anti-incumbent fervor, and ensure that Dems bear the brunt of blame for government dysfunction.” He adds, “Dems need to stop responding superficially to Republican opposition, and tailor their response to the GOP’s underlying strategy.”
Meanwhile, Weiner is still talking, going on Fox News Friday morning to blast his Republican colleagues in a debate with GOP Rep. Peter King (a sponsor of the bill, who harshly criticized Democrats’ decision to go for a two-thirds majority).
“You know, this is not something that got rushed through, this is nine years in the making,” Weiner said. “This is doing the right thing, and we should have passed this bill overwhelmingly without any controversy at all. But unfortunately, the party of ‘no’ hit a new low last night.”
The bill’s defeat now means that ill 9/11 rescue and recovery workers and their families will have to seek recourse through the U.S. court system for their medical expenses.
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As much as I would love to support the right, on this I have to be upset about. It’s absolutely a fucking travesty that we basically abandon those who saved lives and sacrificed a lot for our asses, especially in our time of need. To be fair, the republicans seemed concerned that there was basically some kind of pork barrel shit in this bill.
So I mean, who is holding the 9/11 workers political hostage? Believe it or not, I think it might be the democrats (which is why a lot of ppl feel the dems share the blame stating the bill is “unpassable”). Hmm unpassable and saying the right is the party of no. That means pork barrel folks. At least 12 republicans had some sense. The other 154 just didn’t go along with it.
For fucks sake this isn’t healthcare reform. Stop fucking adding extra shit and just give the 9/11 workers their fucking proper due. Christ I can’t wait for November.
FYI this bill did nearly pass, if you do the math 255/414 (not sure where the other voters went so i guess some congressman didn’t show up for work today) the “yay” vote came out to 61.2%, almost 2/3rds majority. So had the others been present for work they would have passed the bill. Quite possibly the reason for the missing the vote is because they did not WANT to vote on this bill and alienate so many people on such a hot button issue.
It’s good politics to skip out of critical votes because if you vote one way, you piss off 1 sect of constituents and if you vote the other way, well you piss the others off.
Man, talk about sacrifice. I feel for those 9/11 workers that got caught up in this shit and still aren’t getting their fucking due.
Twenty-one years ago, Li Lu was a student leader of the Tiananmen Square protests. Now a hedge-fund manager, he is in line to become a successor to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Mr. Li, 44 years old, has emerged as a leading candidate to run a chunk of Berkshire’s $100 billion portfolio, stemming from a close friendship with Charlie Munger, Berkshire’s 86-year-old vice chairman. In an interview, Mr. Munger revealed that Mr. Li was likely to become one of the top Berkshire investment officials. “In my mind, it’s a foregone conclusion,” Mr. Munger said.
David YellenFrom left to right: David Sokol of MidAmerican, Warren Buffett, Wang Chuan-Fu of BYD and Mr. Li.
The job of filling Mr. Buffett’s shoes is among the most high-profile succession stories in modern corporate history. Mr. Buffett, who will turn 80 in a month, says he has no current plans to step down and will likely split his job after he leaves the company into separate CEO and investing functions. Mr. Li’s emergence as a contender to oversee Berkshire investments is the first time a name has been identified to fill the investment part of Mr. Buffett’s legendary role.
The development illustrates that Berkshire is moving toward putting in place—possibly sooner than investors anticipated—certain aspects of its succession plan.
The Chinese-American investor already has made money for Berkshire: He introduced Mr. Munger to BYD Co., a Chinese battery and auto maker, and Berkshire invested. Since 2008, Berkshire’s BYD stake has surged more than six-fold, generating profit of about $1.2 billion, Mr. Buffett says. Mr. Li’s hedge funds have garnered an annualized compound return of 26.4% since 1998, compared to 2.25% for the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index during the same period.
Mr. Li’s ascent on Wall Street has been no less dramatic. He spent his childhood shuttling between foster families after his mother and father were sent to labor camps during the Cultural Revolution. After the Tiananmen Square protest, he escaped to France and came to the U.S. Investors in his hedge fund have included a group of senior U.S. business executives and the musician Sting, who calls Mr. Li “hardworking and clever.”
Mr. Li’s investing strategy represents a significant shift for Mr. Buffett: Mr. Li invests chiefly in high-technology companies in Asia. Mr. Buffett typically has ignored investments in industries he says he doesn’t understand.
Mr. Buffett says Berkshire’s top investing job could be filled by two or more managers who would be on equal footing and divide up responsibility for managing Berkshire’s $100 billion portfolio. David Sokol, chairman of Berkshire unit MidAmerican Energy Holdings, is considered top contender for CEO. Mr. Sokol, 53, joined MidAmerican in 1991 and is known for his tireless work ethic.
In an interview, Mr. Buffett declines to comment directly on succession plans. But he doesn’t rule out bringing in an investment manager such as Mr. Li while still at Berkshire’s helm.
“I like the idea of bringing on other investment managers while I’m still here,” Mr. Buffett says. He says he doesn’t preclude making a move this year, though he adds that there is no “goal” to bring on an additional manager that quickly either. Mr. Buffett says he envisions a team approach in which the Berkshire investment officials would be “paid as a group” from one pot, he says. “I don’t want them to compete.”
Mr. Li fits the bill in some important ways, Mr. Buffett says. “You want someone” who “can think about problems that haven’t yet existed before,” he says. Mr. Li is a contrarian investor, loading up on BYD shares when they were beaten down. And he’s a big fan of Berkshire, which may also help his cause. “We don’t want them unless they have special feelings about Berkshire,” Mr. Buffett says.
But hiring Mr. Li could be risky. His big bet on BYD is his only large-scale investing home run. Without the BYD profits, his performance as a hedge-fund manager is unremarkable.
It’s unclear whether he could rack up such profits if managing a large portfolio of Berkshire’s.
What’s more, his strategy of “backing up the truck,” to make large investments and not wavering when the markets turn down could backfire in a prolonged bear market. Despite a 200% return in 2009, he was down 13% at the end of June this year, nearly double the 6.6% drop in the S&P-500 during the period.
Mr. Li declines to discuss a potential Berkshire position, saying only that he feels fortunate to be a member of the Berkshire inner circle. “This is the stuff you can’t conjure in dreams,” he says.
Mr. Li was born in 1966, the year Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution began. When he was nine months old, he says, his father, an engineer, was sent to a coal mine to be “re-educated.” His mother was sent to a labor camp. Mr. Li’s parents paid various families to take him in. He was shuttled from family to family for several years until moving in with an illiterate coal miner, with whom he developed a close bond, in his hometown of Tangshan. Living apart from his family as a child taught him survival skills, Mr. Li says.
He was reunited with his family, including two brothers, by age 10, when a massive earthquake hit his hometown, killing an estimated 242,000 people in the area, including the coal miner and his family. His nuclear family was spared, he says, but “most of the people I knew were killed.”
At the time, he says he had no direction and was fighting in the streets. Mr. Li says his grandmother, who was among the first women in her city to attend college, inspired him to begin reading and studying. He later attended Nanjing University, majoring in physics.
In April 1989, he traveled to Tiananmen Square in Beijing to meet with students who were gathering to mourn the death of Secretary General Hu Yaobang, who was viewed as a supporter of democracy and reforms.
The students protested against corruption, among other things, and Mr. Li helped organize the students and participated in a hunger strike.
He and other students fled to France. Later in 1989, he traveled to the U.S. to speak at Columbia University, where human-rights activists embraced him as a hero. He spoke little English but landed an advance to write a book about his experiences.
Helped by financial scholarships at Columbia, Mr. Li quickly learned English. He simultaneously earned three degrees: an economics degree, a law degree and a graduate degree in business, according to Columbia.
With his student loans piling up, Mr. Li attended a lecture by Mr. Buffett at Columbia in 1993. At the time, the 1990s bull market was in full swing, and hedge funds were on the rise. Mr. Li says in China he didn’t trust financial markets but hearing Mr. Buffett helped him overcome skepticism about stock investing.
He began dabbling in stocks using money from his book advance. By his graduation in 1996, he had built a sizable nest egg and says he thought he could retire. Instead he took a job at securities firm Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette and then left to set up his own hedge fund. In 1997, he had set up Himalaya Partners, a hedge fund. Later he started a venture-capital fund to invest in U.S. technology companies.
It was a heady time on Wall Street. The Internet boom was beginning. Investors were clamoring to find hot stocks.
Through his human-rights contacts, Mr. Li quickly attracted well-heeled clients including Bob Bernstein, former chairman of Random House and founder of Human Rights Watch as well as the musician Sting. Other investors included financier Jerome Kohlberg, News Corp. director emeritus and Allen & Co. executive Stanley Shuman and hedge fund manager Jack Nash, Mr. Li says.
But Mr. Li bombed out in 1998, his first year as a hedge fund manager. His fund, which was invested chiefly in Asian stocks, was hammered by the Asian debt crisis, and lost 19%.
“I felt bad that people had trusted me,” he says. “All they knew was I was a student activist and all they saw was losses.”
His fortunes rebounded as the Asian crisis quickly faded. As 1998 began, so did a huge new bull market. By now, the hedge-fund industry was growing gangbusters, and by the end of 1999, Mr. Li’s fund had regained its losses.
In 2002, hedge-fund giant Julian Robertson gave Mr. Li money to invest in his fund on the condition that the fund would make bearish as well as bullish bets on companies.
It wasn’t a good fit. Mr. Li says he “hated” betting against stocks, complaining that he had to “trade all the time” to adjust his portfolio. (The remaining parts of the fund now are being unwound.) Mr. Robertson declined to comment on the business relationship.
One of Mr. Li’s human-rights contacts was Jane Olson, the wife of Ronald Olson, a Berkshire director and early partner at a Los Angeles law firm Mr. Munger helped found. Mr. Li began spending time at the Olsons’ weekend home in Santa Barbara, Calif., and on Thanksgiving 2003 met Mr. Munger, whose home is nearby.
Mr. Munger says Mr. Li made an immediate impression. The two shared a “suspicion of reported earnings of finance companies,” Mr. Munger says. “We don’t like the bull—.”
Mr. Munger gave Mr. Li some of his family’s nest egg to invest to open a “value” fund betting on beaten-down stocks.
Two weeks later, Mr. Li says he met again with Mr. Munger to make certain he had heard right. In early 2004, Mr. Li opened a fund, putting in $4 million of his own money and raising an additional $50 million from other investors. Mr. Munger’s family put in $50 million, followed by another $38 million. Part of Mr. Li’s agreement with Mr. Munger was that the fund would be closed to new investors.
Mr. Li’s big hit began in 2002 when he first invested in BYD, then a fledgling Chinese battery company. Its founder came from humble beginnings and started the company in 1995 with $300,000 of borrowed money.
Mr. Li made an initial investment in BYD soon after its initial public offering on the Hong Kong stock exchange. (BYD trades in the U.S. on the Pink Sheets and was recently quoted at $6.90 a share.)
When he opened the fund, he loaded up again on BYD shares, eventually investing a significant share of the $150 million fund with Mr. Munger in BYD, which already was growing quickly and had bought a bankrupt Chinese automaker. “He bought a little early and more later when the stock fell, which is his nature,” Mr. Munger says.
In 2008, Mr. Munger persuaded Mr. Sokol to investigate BYD for Berkshire as well. Mr. Sokol went to China and when he returned, he and Mr. Munger convinced Mr. Buffett to load up on BYD. In September, Berkshire invested $230 million in BYD for a 10% stake in the company.
BYD’s business has been on fire. It now has close to one-third of the global market for lithium-ion batteries, used in cell phones. Its bigger plans involve the electric and hybrid-vehicle business.
The test for BYD, one of the largest Chinese car makers, will be whether it can deliver on plans to develop the most effective lithium battery on the market that could become an even bigger source of power in the future. Even more promising is the potential to use the lithium battery to store power from other energy sources like solar and wind.
Says Mr. Munger: “The big lithium battery is a game-changer.”
BYD is a big roll of the dice for Mr. Li. He is an informal adviser to the company and owns about 2.5% of the company.
Mr. Li’s fund’s $40 million investment in BYD is now worth about $400 million. Berkshire’s $230 million investment in 2008 now is worth about $1.5 billion. Messrs. Buffett, Munger, Sokol, Li and Microsoft founder and Berkshire Director Bill Gates plan to visit China and BYD in September.
Mr. Li is able to travel in China on a limited basis today, but he hopes to regain full travel privileges soon. It isn’t clear how he is viewed by the Chinese government.
Mr. Li declined to name his fund’s other holdings. Despite this year’s losses, the $600 million fund is up 338% since its late 2004 launch, an annualized return of around 30%, compared to less than 1% for the S&P 500 index.
Mr. Li told investors he took a lesson from watching the World Cup, comparing his investment style to soccer. “You may very well work extremely hard and seldom score,” he says. “But occasionally—very occasionally—you get one or two great chances and you make decisive strikes that really matter.”
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Personally I despise Warren Buffet. I think he is a hypocrite and a selfish liar. I still respect his investment acumen and he absolutely is better than me in many ways. He also gives way more money away (really?) than most of us make in 20 years of working at a job. His pro-tax stance and increased government regulation flies against the belief of most business owners or anything capitalistic. I just feel Mr. Buffet makes all his money, then turns around and says we need to pay our “fair share” then fucks us some more. That’s how it feels like.
So with that said, I was really suspicious of this Mr. Li guy. Of course when you read this heartbreaking article, he’s a real champion of democracy and one smart fucking guy. His parents were sent away when he was less than 10 years old, was taken in by strangers, and then horribly saw his closest friends and foster family killed in a tragic disaster. That’s a lot for anyone to swallow. His mind is most certainly grounded in fucking reality. He’s seen too much bad shit to fuck around with stupidity or irrational idealism.
He knows what is real or what isn’t. He has seen and endured death and hardship and he’s a much better human because of it. He has hit rock bottom and thrived.
So, fast forward to post Tienanmen. Technically all his income derives from BYD so he essentially placed all his eggs in 1 basket. He also invested in a company or industry he knows a fucking lot about (in this case energy storage, specifically lithium ion batteries). This principle is exactly how Warren invests. He shuns tech shit because he doesn’t know or care to know about it but he does recognize that the best returns come from people who have specialized knowledge of a field or area of expertise. Enter Mr. Li.
I’d be real interested to study his investing acumen but with investing being a difficult fucking science (not skill) doing exactly what Mr. Li did doesn’t guarantee returns. Often, it leads to failure. That is the paradox of investing that makes it so fucking hard to succeed in. He also has patience to wait shit out for years, which sadly a lot of us folks lack.
I will be watching this with mild interest as I figure out the way to be investing on my own account but this story is definitely quite inspirational. Don’t feel discouraged. The greatness of America is that any person, idiotic, foreigner, illegal, whatever, can make it big. I mean a Chinaman from China makes more money than most Americans. We can learn a lot from this person.
FYI China has restricted his travel “privileges” for obvious reasons. They dont’ want someone this influential agitating domestic unrest. Also, China wants to claim “yeah we got amazing citizens, look at Mr. Li!” but at the same time they don’t want someone who basically told them off in 1989 (Tienanmen Square). So the Chinese walk a fine line between “yeah he’s awesome and a symbol of our great and glorious country CHINA!” but htey also basically revile him for “betraying” the communist government in 1989. Just because a lot of us are smart and fucking clever doesn’t necessarily mean we’re all going to get along. Lots of issues flying around, always clashing. It’s human.
Throughout his presidential campaign, then-candidate Barack Obama promised the American people: “If you’re a family that’s making $250,000 a year or less, you will see no increase in your taxes.” After he became President, Barack Obama reiterated that pledge, promising the American people in hisSeptember 9th health care press conference: “The middle-class will realize greater security, not higher taxes.” But Obamacare does contain tax hikes. Tons of them. From taxes on tanning beds to taxes on employment and investments, Obamacare is a certified job-killing machine.
None of these taxes touches the lives of every American as closely as the individual mandate to purchase health insurance. For the first time in American history, Obamacare forces all Americans to purchase a product or face sanction from the Internal Revenue Service. This is clearly a tax, as pointed out by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos during a September 20th interview with the President himself. In an exchange that can only be described as “Clintonesque” Stephanopoulos pressed President Obama to admit his individual mandate was a tax. But President Obama refused to acknowledge reality and denied it. Stephanopoulos was forced to read the definition of “tax” straight from Merriam Webster’s Dictionary. But even then Obama refused to come clean: “George, the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. … Nobody considers that a tax increase.” Well nobody but President Barack Obama’s Justice Department.
The New York Times confirmed Friday that in preparation for defending constitutionality of the Obamacare individual mandate in court, an Obama Justice Department legal brief argues that the penalty used to enforce the mandate is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes. Mr. Obama’s own Justice Department further repudiates the President’s earlier statement by noting that the penalty is imposed and collected under the Internal Revenue Code, people must report it on their tax returns, and that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will cost Americans $4 billion a year. Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin told a meeting of progressive activists last month that President Obama “has not been honest with the American people about the nature of this bill. This bill is a tax.”
The fact that the Obama administration and their allies are now admitting the individual mandate is a tax betrays their very real fear that the Supreme Court could find Obamacare’s individual mandate unconstitutional. In the bill itself, Congress identified the Commerce Clause as the source of their authority to force all Americans to buy health insurance. But as our legal team has made eminently clear, the mandate does not purport to regulate or prohibit commerce of any kind. To the contrary, it purports to “regulate”—and penalize—inactivity. If the Supreme Court allows the Obamacare individual mandate to stand, then Congress could do anything it wanted. They could: require us to buy a new Chevy Impala each year to support the government-supported auto industry; require us to buy war bonds to pay for the Iraq and Afghan wars; or force us to eat our vegetables.
But even if the Obama administration is now admitting the individual mandate is a tax, that still does not make the law constitutional. Rather than operating as a tax on income, the mandate is a tax on the person and is, therefore, a capitation tax. Therefore the 16th Amendment’s grant of power to Congress to assess an income tax does not apply. The Constitution does allow Congress to assess a capitation tax, but that requires the tax be assessed evenly based op population. That is not how the Obamacare mandate works. It exempts and carves out far too many exceptions to past muster as a capitation tax. The Obamacare mandate is still unprecedented and unconstitutional.
But perhaps more importantly, what does the episode say about the integrity of the White House? The President went on national television and insisted in unequivocal terms that his individual mandate was not a tax. Now his administration is saying the exact opposite. At what point do the American people lose all faith in this President’s word?
Quick Hits:
- According to new data from the International Energy Agency, China has passed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest energy consumer.
- The National Association of Home Builders said Monday that its monthly reading of builders’ sentiment about the housing market sank to the lowest level since March 2009.
- According to Gallup, a record six of 10 non-retirees predict Social Security won’t be able to pay them benefits.
- Americans are turning away from home phone lines and toward mobile, but a federal program continues to pour $8 billion a year into phone service for rural homes and businesses.
- Unions are hiring nonunion workers at the minimum wage to protest for higher union pay.
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Are you FU:CKING KIDDING ME?! People actually thought Obamacare was NOT a tax increase?! Lmao! If this didn’t impact all of our asses I’d be laughing. But I’m not really laughing. The capitation tax (this is a new one) says it is to be levied based on population. I’m interpretting this to mean everyone and every souless entity (namely corporations of all forms) need ot pay this shit. It’s not completely strong as enough of the population is in fact paying this new requirement.
But perhaps the most damaging assertion, the one I originally thought of the day this healthcare bill passed was that it penalizes people for inactivity. This flies against freedom in its most basic form. This will set a dangerous precedent that will allow the government in the future to force us to buy other shit. As long as it is a “commercial” need for the sake of survival of “america” they can pass whatever they want. The Supreme Court will know this shit is unconstitutional but will they save the Constitution or just decide to rape it and let Obamacare pass?
Personally I know this is already unconstitutional on many levels (primarily because of the requirement to buy insurance). The problem is so many people want healthcare passed that they really don’t give a shit if the requirement to buy is constitutional or not. Therein lies the problem. I think what will happen is the Supreme Court will have to juggle Obamacare plus Arizona’s (and really all states’ rights) immigration bill. They need to carefully weigh whether forcing change under the guise of health outweighs the future precedent for allowing the government to “determine” what else we need to “buy” and whether states have the right to defend themselves or not.
Personally I’d like to see Obamacare gone and states right prevail. The federal government is too one sided (democrat or republican, whoever is in charge) and it is better to just let states do their own thing. That way people’s disgruntlement can be handled by the state by the people. The people contacting the federal government is a lot more difficult to feel like you’re being heard.
But yes if Obamacare does pass with that requirement provision, it will be a few years before the next administration decides we need to start buying other shit to keep the “company” going. Imagine being required to get credit cards to keep asshole big banks in business or buying shitty fuck GM cars that cost way too much and suck ass in quality just so some fat lazy fucks who haven’t worked in 20 years can get their pension. Sorry but this is why people turn to militias and get violent? Me? I’d join them but I think it’s more prudent and intelligent to just flee to a different country. If people won’t learn through logic, they will learn through failure, misery, pain, and hitting rock bottom. Just don’t expect people like me to stick around for when rock bottom hits; it won’t be fucking pretty.