economy – Page 17 – Hopeful Romantics

California Wildfires Are the Lesson We Never Learn

It is wildfire season in California. The first typically come in early to middle autumn when the land is dry as a bone and the Santa Ana Winds blow hot air to fan the flames. A spark here and the fire is started. A few burning embers caught up in the winds, and the fire spreads to catastrophic proportions. If not every year we are treated to this disaster, it is a good many years.

Later, when winter comes and the rains pour down, the burnt vegetation and barren landscape will never hold back the waters. We will have mud slides. More disaster. Sliding mud, believe me, is a horrible menace. Water running downhill can cause tremendous damage. Think of mud as dense, heavy water, and you begin to see its capability. I saw it one year roll through a house like a mucky wrecking ball. Good thing my neighbors weren’t home that day. Would have killed them, for sure.

So with the first we have the news crews. We have the stories. We have the macro stores, told from helicopters and from the fire lines, dealing with the overall intensity of the fires, where it is spreading, its percentage of containment, and the number of houses the first have destroyed. We get to see the burning hillsides, the houses bursting in flames like Maison Flambe. We see the fire fighters struggling bravely to contain and push back the surging conflagration. Every year.

And every year we also get the micro stories. The up close and personal stories. We see men adn women sharing tears, sifting through the ruins of their houses, the charred remains of their personal possessions. We see them looking for their pets, looking for what remains of family heirlooms and photos. We hear them trying to console themselves by showing gratitude for the fact that they are still alive and all the lost were the material possessions. We see these people go from a multi-million dollar house to a cot in a gymnasium shelter in twenty minutes time. Fires move quickly in the mountain and canyon areas.

It is hard not to feel sorry for them. You feel sympathetic, share at least a modicum of pain. You put yourself in their shoes. You wonder what it would be like. And while I feel the sympathy and empathy for people who have been victimized by natural disasters, I also wonder what they were thinking when they decided to build their homes there.
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I realize this is an age old question. People wonder it about those who build their house to closely to a river that is prone to flood. People wonder about trailer parks and domiciles built in the path of hurricanes and tornadoes. Sometimes you can’t help it. Sometimes the hurricane, fire, flood or tornado just takes a wrong turn and comes barreling down your boulevard.

But the fact remains many of these houses should never be built on hilltops, canyons and wooded areas where they are just inviting disaster to come for a visit. We have seen this movie enough times to realize as beautiful as it is in these places, we just can’t afford to be building there. It is stupid. It is even more stupid when the same people build and then rebuild, after a previous disaster.

I know, you live there, you love the view, it’s so romantic, the great whatever, but it seems like it is my tax dollars that are bailing you out. It is me who has to smell or the charring that is exacerbated by the housing developments. Days of foul smoke and smoky stench. Yes, it would be there anyway, but it would never be the disaster it is if the houses weren’t part of the equation. It would just be burning woods, canyons, the natural cycle where fires eliminate the surplus vegetation.

This is a lousy economy. It doesn’t have to be made worse by stupid planning and development. We do not have to build on every square inch of the natural landscape. We don’t have to transpose the natural landscape with an ugly housing development that is destined to be destroyed by wildfires. And in a time when neither federal government or state government has the money to maintain what mediocre civic services we already have, we really don’t need to be shelling out money via emergency funding so homeowners can indulge themselves in places they don’t belong.

I believe the first time there is a disaster, the government helps you out. The second time, if you persist on living where you shouldn’t be building, you had better have adequate insurance or be prepared to be on your own when the disaster strikes. Sure, the fire fighters will be noble and try to save you, your pets, and your house. But if they can’t, then it is up to you to pick up the tab. If you can’t pick up the tab, if insurance rates are so dear that you can’t afford homeowners’ insurance, then be prepared to suffer mightily. Be prepared to suffer financially. Be prepared to move elsewhere. Instead of where you don’t belong.

CSI Is Just Another TV Show In Los Angeles

The public sure loves its true crime stories. The public also loves television shows that approximate true crime, like CSI, which most know stands for Crime Scene Investigation. The CBS Television Network programs CSI in a number of cities. The cities range from New York, Las Vegas, Miami, but not Los Angeles.

The show is produced from Los Angeles, but any producer who chooses to approximate a true crime cop show, using LA as the background, better move the bar that much further from fact toward fiction. The same my hold true for New York, Miami and the other cities where the show is located as well. The intrepid cops who solve these difficult cases my in reality be confronting the hardships and obstacles found in the Los Angeles labs.

In Los Angeles, cases are severely backlogged, there is gross mismanagement and alleged lack of supervision in the divisions responsible for both the fingerprint samples and the DNA. There is a stuff shortage, a misplacement of specimens. Court cases are backlogged and trials are often delayed. There are inaccuracies and errors. Critics claims the LA Police Department has no plan as to how to rectify this grievous series of foul ups.

The century old wonder of the fingerprint is somewhat of a fallacy. The crime scene unit investigators are only able to recover fingerprints from any one of the 2,400 annual crimes scenes about 60% of the time. And then when the files, or fingerprints, are misplaced, the adeptness and fortitude we admire on on CSI, the TV Show is lost in CSI, the reality.

As far as DNA is concerned, there are about seven thousand cases where the specimens are backlogged. To be kind the Lab personnel is extremely understaffed. The City lacks the money and he people to conduct what most would deem truly efficient investigations. With forthcoming budget cuts, the rather dire conditions that have been reported in the Los Angeles Times among other places, may not be getting any better.

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I realize that it is tough to be a cop. It is tough to be a police lab technician in a large city where despite all reverie that violent crime has gone down there is still plenty to go around. Yes, it’s tough to be a cop and it is tough to be the lab technician. But it’s a lot tougher to be a crime victim.

Crime victims expect justice. They should get it. Often they don’t. Los Angeles has seen more than a few cases where hte obviously guilty were set free. In some cases they were free to do it again. But with crime victims there is a need to believe in some criminal and societal code. A moral and ethical code where the powers that be will do their very best to bring the criminal to justice.

Increasingly, we see their very best is lacking. Their very best isn’t even good. So when you are a victim of rape and you are looking for justice, for some form of retribution that will at least in some small way alleviate the shock and terror you have experienced, along with injury to body and psyche, you expect to encounter the long arm of the law and not delays and excuses.

Which makes this all worse I fear is that with the economic downturn crime and unemployment are among the few things that will rise. People get desperate and even the more restrained and less violent of criminals may be prompted to commit violent criminal acts. The streets will be more dangerous, and the criminals will know by the time the labs get around to retrieving their DNA and fingerprint samples they could possibly die of old age.

After the collapse of our economy , for those of you who can’t experience one more shock and disillusionment, keep your eyes on CSI. It’s a better world on your flat screen TV.

Selling Your Home Without a Broker

I live in Brentwood. Brentwood is known for many things. Its show business residents first come to mind. But it is probably most famous for the murder scene of O.J. Simpson’s wife, Nicole, and the O.J. Simpson house, which has since been razed.

What Brentwood is not known for is its poverty. Mind you, among the glitzy multi-million dollar homes there are people who reside more modestly in condos or apartments. A lot of single women live in he neighborhood. It is safe and shopping and the coffee shops are within easy access. But poverty? There is none to be found.

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There are two times that people eschew realtors and try to sell the house themselves. The first time is when there is a housing shortage, as there was a few years ago, and people were at your door begging and bidding for the opportunity to move in. Houses then went for ten, maybe fifteen percent more than listed price. To sell your house was like shooting fish in the barrel. So why give the realtor his or her six percent, when you can put that in your pocket?

Even the realtors knew this, since many cut their commissions in half. Selling a house was easy. Just list it. The banks were forthcoming with mortgages for just about anyone. Appraisals seemed arbitrary, if not a flight of fantasy. So just put up the sign and close the deal when the throngs come banging on your door.

But there is a second window when people try to sell their houses. This is now. This is when the marekt has fallen so steeply that the sellers will be taking such a hit they simply can’t afford to give up the realtor commission. And since the realtors know that no house is an easy sell, they will hold for the most part to their six percent. So when your house drops thirty percent from purchase price, giving up another six percent is unthinkable for many people. Especially those people who bought at the high and are now in the hole.

Come Sunday I will be driving toward the beach down San Vicente Boulevard and with this economic downturn and a further drop in the real estate market, I expect to see even more houses listed with “For Sale By Owner.” This indeed is a new sign. A sign of the times.

Financial Meltdown Remedy–Stashing Your Cash in the Home Safe

Selling Safes

As the financial crisis worsens more people are taking their money out of banks and buying home safes. They feel their valuables are better protected when it is closer to hearth and home than it is in a bank that could fail at any minute. They are stashing gold, jewelry and cash. According to an article on CNN, home safe sales are up by at least fifty percent.

I am sure the trend is catching on. And with the trend come the bragging rights. We often love to brag about the most insipid of things. In communities where life is too often measured by who has the nicer car and who maintains better lawn care, this is a one more topic for the cocktail and barbecue circuit. I am sure we will here from people who ten minutes ago didn’t know a safe from a cab stand, all about the intrinsic qualities, the locking devices, style, weight and, naturally, the size and cost.

The financial meltdown is hardly funny. But aspects of running out to buy a home safe that you believe is safer than banks, is pretty funny in a darker way. It reminds me of the old timers and miser of yore who hid their money under the mattress, or in the cookie jar or the cut out pages of a book. My grandparents long ago employed one such fellow who discovered to his dismay that my grandmother on a cleaning spree unwittingly donated the cobwebbed books and, consequently, his money to the Salvation Army.

With mattresses now so technologically advanced, it is really difficult to hide more than a few bills under one. Too much cash can ruin the rest on a Tempurpedic. The cookie jar is a tough place for stashing gold, and the safe, well, as good as it is, it’s vulnerable to burglars and home invaders.

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The really good, expensive, home safes may be impervious to the blow torch or maybe even to dynamite. Well, some small amount of dynamite. But they are not impervious to someone sticking a gun in your face and ordering you to open the safe, before they kill you. Will this happen? As the economy continues its downfall, you will see more crime. You can’t count on much, but you can sure count on that happening.

The geekier burglars will hack in to vendor databases and find out where you live. Intercept your mail. Whatever. So what’s the trend, then? Install an alarm system. That will protect your house and your safe. Until the geeky techno burglar bypasses your alarm and gets into your face, or waits in hiding until you come home, sticks a gun at your head and orders you to open up. Burglars driving by will see the new alarm sign and figure, ” there has to be a safe in there.”

Now I’m not saying someone shouldn’t have safe. Probably they should. A good fire safe is excellent for protecting valuables against a fire. It’s a great place to stash some cash for emergencies and some of your jewelry and the kind of bonds you can easily have replaced. It’s great for your prized autographed Babe Ruth Baseball or a document signed by Abraham Lincoln. Whether it is good for stashing gold bullion, as some are wont to do right now, well that is another story.

So what to do with most of your cash, your valuables, and, if your are lucky enough, your gold coins and bullion? Stick them in a bank. After all, that’s what banks are made for.

Business Remains Steady for the World’s Oldest Profession

The world may be going to hell in a hand basket, but the world’s oldest profession is enjoying a steady business. According to an article in the the New York Daily News, business is pretty good. However, there is one difficulty–there is less business at the upper end, so to speak, where fantasy call girls are getting anywhere from $1 Thousand to $4 Thousand and hour.

I guess that’s where the belt tightening operation is taking place. Fewer players are loosening their belts and letting their pants fall and paying that kind of money. Instead as one Madame Sadie reports in the article, her girls are doing a brisk business at $260.00 and hour. Still not the cheapest time, but cheaper than the $1 Thousand. The article doesn’t say whether she offers block booking or group rates.

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Even Said admits that her clients are calling her prostitutes less frequently. They are holding out, let’s presume, for when the drive really builds up, rather than the regular…regular. Others are getting only a half hour’s worth, where the once retained the girl for an hour. So there is a downside. It would appear this is something like people getting haircuts. Leave it go a couple of weeks longer.

At the end of the day, or night, it is nice to see that some businesses are maintaining. The employees are making some money. Now if they only had somewhere to invest it….