If you’ve read my book, you know my exact political affiliation. But I’ve never come out and plainly articulated it here. When you lean hard left on personal liberty issues and hard right on fiscal policies, it’s awfully lonely, and frequently annoying, to talk politics in this country. But a lot of that’s changing. The parties have driven us to a new nadir, where no one has any faith in anything taking place in Washington anymore, be it Democrat or Republican policy. People want something else, and not just in regard to one or two finite programs or issues. I get the sense we’re waking up and realizing we’re not being honest with ourselves about our reality, our expected standard of living… what we can afford as a nation. I think a lot of us are interested in reaching the broader arguments about what kind of country we are – a true capitalist nation or a banana republic welfare state for special interests and any entitlement class that can be congealed into a voting bloc.
I’ve touched on those issues before, here and here. But this time I wanted to offer a different perspective, from the angle of someone younger, along the lines of the piece I did with Alex J. Mann. And not a standard liberal or conservative, not even a classic moderate. Someone with a Libertarian bent, more interested in fiscal than social policy. A reader who writes at a political blog, Truthvmachine.com, under the title “Evil Conservative,” and who happens to work in an industry at the center of the current political debate over health care reform, volunteered. Here’s what came out of it.
PL: Why the name “Evil Conservative”?
Well I had to go with that name because “Evil Whig” sounded weird, and I’m not a Republican, although I mostly support them at the national level. Republicans at least let you put your hands on the desk when it’s time to bend you over to pay for their government expansion while the Democrats make you hold your ankles come tax time. I have a distrust of the two parties in power and prefer to focus on the real issues facing our country, particularly the economy. The deficit and debt will always be important to me. Those two things are spiraling out of control mainly due to entitlements that need to be drastically reduced in size and scope. A person that wants to do that is perceived as evil and uncaring so I embrace the label.
The name is also a response to the big-government evangelicalism that George W. Bush euphemized as Compassionate Conservatism, which is close to the platforms of Christian Democrat parties found in other democracies. You’ll notice in other democracies the differences in the parties is typically on social policy and only moderately different on economic policy. Instead of free markets they have social markets created by Handicapper Generals that decrease the number of lower outliers, but it also stifles the innovative and risk-taking outliers who can rise above. We have that compression here in America more and more everyday.
PL: I think a lot of the policy debates we’re having these days are proxies for the bigger discussion of which direction our society should take: personal freedom or collectivism. People appear to be seeking an Option C approach outside the orthodoxies the parties offer.
There should definitely be an auxiliary debate on the issue of personal freedom vs. collectivism during this health care reform campaign. Maybe we can finally start viewing money outside the preschool-level mentalities that use it as a pretense for class warfare or value it as an end instead of a means. Money should be defined as the primary tool a person can use to have freedom of choice in a free society instead of something to be acquired for acquisition’s sake or to be used to buy stupid crap.
Political organizations that support capitalism with an emphasis on individuals and small businesses seem to have brushed aside the importance of educating the public on the fact that capitalism is what got mankind out of the caves and fiefdoms, caused him to stop killing his fellow man and instead work together (to put a computer phone in everyone’s pockets). That second town hall debate between McCain and Obama was the worst defense of capitalism against collectivism I have ever seen in my life. I threw more things around my living room during those ninety minutes than during any Giants or Mets game. Okay… the Mets still have the record. But McCain is a close second place.
It’s also possible these organizations are deemphasizing support for personal financial freedom because it’s politically unpopular to scare people with the notion they’re responsible for themselves, as opposed to wards of the government, corporate America, or even the small business they work for. Being responsible requires a lot of work and being part of the collective is easier. It’s said democracies will naturally die out in a short period of time because eventually the citizens will vote themselves treasures from the collective coffers. We are definitely approaching the point of becoming an irreversibly Euro-socialist state and too many people are content with that.
EC: If you could change one thing about America with some Option C solution, what would it be and what do you think the fallout would be?
I’d decouple benefits from employment. It’s an outdated paradigm from the 50s that doesn’t work in the global economy. And no, I don’t buy the argument that it encourages broader risk pooling, which keeps the costs of benefits lower than it would be if we bought health insurance directly. We’ve never tried it any other way and the structure we have doesn’t work. What’s the definition of madness? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? The solution should be a total rethinking of the marketplace, with an emphasis on direct purchase – privity between the buyer and seller alone – not a more robust version of what we already have with government indirectly controlling the market via the public option.
It would also be nice to see Obama do a press conference defining the word “insurance” for the American public. “Insurance” is something you tap into upon the occurrence of an event you’ve paid to have covered. What we have now is a third party administrator ostensibly paying for every health care service, necessary or not, telling people after the fact whether a procedure is covered. That’s insane. What other industry offers services without knowing whether it’ll get paid? Could you imagine going to your mechanic, handing him a credit card and telling him, “My lender might pay for this service, or he might not. He’ll let you know in three weeks. If he rejects it, send me the bill.” Everything elective should be straight out of pocket. A patient shouldn’t even be allowed to submit it to insurance. Insurance should cover only what’s medically imperative. Preventative care’s a nice idea, but it’ll never cut costs. All that’ll do is encourage more consumption, and more bad debt write-offs for providers.
EC: As someone in the employee benefits business, I know health care from many angles. If we are going to buy individually, it needs to be mandated like car insurance. Insurance is based on the law of large numbers and if the numbers are too small there will be adverse selection. You raise good points I’ve expanded upon here.

(more…)

What to say about bourbon? If you’ve read this, this, this or this in the past four and a half years I’ve been writing, you know it’s pretty much a second form of blood for me. Hell, my book’s an all but thinly veiled love letter to the stuff. In a world where most of our days are spent pretending we’re nothing like we actually are, bourbon’s a form of truth serum – a bullet train back to the Self:

Scotch will make you charming, vodka’s liquid Percocet, and beer a fount of oafish non-sequiturs and flatulence. Red wine will put you to bed, white’s piss, and tequila’s vomit fuel. But bourbon, well, bourbon is the cocaine of alcohol, amplifying every aggressive angle of your personality and dragging all the rotten suppressed thoughts to the surface. Your judgment isn’t compromised – it’s bloodied with brass knuckles, curbed and left on a sewer grate for dead. You’ve nothing but a mindful of terrible ideas – equal parts dumb, dangerous and malicious – and twice the energy you need to act on every single one of them. Simply, concisely, a bourbon drunk’s what you’d be in the jungle. And it’s simple fact to anyone who knows the stuff – you’re more who you are on bourbon than you’ll ever appear sober. Bourbon is liberation, but only for those willing to embrace their inner baboon.
Happy Hour is for Amateurs, pp. 198-199.

I’d like to think that nails the subject in full. Sums up what any serious bourbon drinker understands about the whiskey – what sets it a breed apart from any other form of liquor.* But enough of that introduction. Here’s the meat of this piece, the five best bourbons I know:

5. Wild Turkey 101

Don’t let anyone tell you Wild Turkey is rotgut drunkard whiskey. This is as smooth as bourbon comes, deceptively easy to swill, with a deep caramel finish typically found in rum. But this is no bottle of Mount Gay or Captain Morgan’s… Not the kind of liquor some sorority pledge mixes with Diet Coke, guzzles on an empty stomach and vomits all over your coffee table. The 101 is Fuel – a belligerent, obnoxious drunk. The stuff’s clearly loaded with sugar and you can feel the glucose rush, mixing with and amplifying all of your “ethanol muscles.” Perhaps it’s that quick, cheap energy that gives the bourbon such a uniquely aggressive buzz. Or maybe it’s just the bottle. Fancy bourbons tend to come in fancy bottles – ovoid, square, hexagonal, with all kinds of etchings and carvings in the glass. Turkey’s in a classic round whiskey bottle. The kind William Munny threw from his horse in the thunderstorm before he assassinated a roomful of vigilantes and sprayed Little Bill’s brains all over the barroom floor in Unforgiven. The kind made not for pouring, but swigging from as though it held water. It’s comfortable in your hand, almost too much so, taunting you to take another pull. Come on… Hit me again, candy-ass. Like you actually have a sack. I’m obviously not one for those “Enjoy Responsibly” messages tacked onto liquor ads, but I’ll offer this about Turkey 101: Careful, you’re playing with highly unstable ammunition.

Recommended for: Sabbath concert tailgates, snowmobile rallies, adult competitive vandalism.

4. Knob Creek

If bourbon were India Pale Ale, Knob Creek would be the best of the Double IPAs. It tastes like it’s got twice the ingredients of every other bourbon and doesn’t try in the least to hide any of its 100 proof bona fides. Still, it’s not overpowering. Chocolately, syrupy, but also at the same time sharp. And though it’s only one proof unit under Turkey 101, it’s not an aggressive buzz. Not in the least. Just an excellent all around whiskey, perfect on the rocks, and the kind of flavor you’ll want to gulp and swish around the tongue. The stuff also tastes great with cigars – black maduros specifically.** A “big” whiskey in every regard, and one you don’t want to dilute with water, but savor like an after dinner drink, or fix into a neat Manhattan. At first, of course, because after three Knob Creeks, the fourth’ll taste like soda and let’s just put it this way… The next morning, you’ll feel all that “flavor” pulsating in your head.

Recommended for: Crippling yourself at steak joints and cigar bars while people talk golf, the market and the heinousness of income tax.

3. Blanton’s

This is a controversial pick. Some people think this is an overpriced bourbon trading on status as the first mass produced “single barrel” brand. They’re half right. Blanton’s is overpriced. No way in hell it’s worth $45.00 a bottle. I don’t care that it’s the favored julep bourbon of the The Derby crowd. Call me a boorish ass, but horse racing’s always struck me as a really short, really dull form of funny car racing for the country club set. And having spent more of my youth roaming around golf courses than I’d ever care to recount, I can say this of the average clubhouse boozehound: He doesn’t know liquor from lacquer, let alone good from bad bourbon. You could feed half the drunks at a horse race Old Crow with a splash of Scope and they’d never be the wiser. But all that said – the silly metal horse on the top of the bottle and contrived pretense aside – Blanton’s is great fucking whiskey. It’s sweet and perfect deep burgundy. Not as dark as Knob Creek, but heavier than Maker’s Mark, with just a hint of tanginess to counter its sugary side. The distillers could’ve taken a few more chances and made Blanton’s more distinctive, but I don’t think that was their aim. I think their intent was simple – take a standard, tried and true recipe and execute it perfectly. Which they’ve done.
I must confess, however, I’ve a soft spot for this whiskey. I was drinking Blanton’s the morning I got married, and the taste takes me right back there. That was a damn good month. If there’s a feeling in this world better than getting on plane after your wedding and leaving all the irritants of the shit existence we call “office life” behind, I’ve yet to know it.

Recommended for: A flask in your tuxedo. (It’s terrible luck – and terrible form – to get yourself hitched stone sober. Don’t feel guilty. She’ll be on third champagne at that point. It’s all fair.)

2. Baker’s

Not to be confused with Booker’s, the raw, 127 proof bourbon sold in a wooden casing, Bakers is the much harder to find 107 proof variety of Jim Beam Distilleries’ “Small Batch” line. Harder to find, probably, because this is an amazing goddamned bourbon, better than the rest of Beam’s brands by a long measure. If Turkey 101 is the smooth bourbon with the aggressive buzz, Baker’s is the aggressive bourbon with the smooth, slow buzz. Why? Because there’s no good reason to drink anything that tastes this amazing fast, and considering the way the spicy, oaky flavors from the barrel jump out and bite your tongue, there’s no reason you’d never want to. This is a bourbon to leisurely sip, as close as you can to neat – the $30.00 bottle that tastes as good as, if not better, than anything else out there… the one you hide in the corner of the liquor cabinet, never to be wasted on guests. Or on yourself. Drink three of these up front at most, then shift to something cheaper.

Recommended for: Nightcaps after long days at the office, when you need a fast, tasty “bullet in the head” knockout and don’t have any dope lying around.

1. Woodford Reserve

Now, you might be thinking, How can he say Baker’s is the most flavorful bourbon of the bunch and then rate Woodford Reserve above it? Because intensity of flavor isn’t everything. If you like drinking bourbon the way people who really like drinking bourbon like drinking bourbon, when you drink bourbon, you want to drink a lot of it. And if you’re going to drink a lot of it, Woodford Reserve is the bourbon you want to be drinking. The taste is gingery, sharp, and light, and it never dulls the tongue. Your sixth tastes a lot like the first and the buzz is fucking divine. I don’t know what the people who make this stuff do in the distilling process, but it’s clearly filtered more, or uses a far better quality of water, than any of the other brands. Every bourbon talks about how it’s crafted from the essence of some pristine spring or creek. Woodford actually tastes like it. True or not, you get the sense you’re drinking something made in an entirely organic process. And the next day confirms its purity. Of all the liquors here, this is the easiest on the body – an almost hangover-free whiskey. The other nice thing about Woodford is it’s a fine year-round bourbon. Knob Creek, Baker’s, Turkey… these are a bit too heavy for the warmer months. A Woodford on the rocks works as well in seersucker at a summer wedding as it does on the couch, watching Detroit and Dallas embarrass themselves in the usual post-Thanksgiving rituals. Adding up all the factors a person could assess in bourbon, I can this without hesitation – you can never, ever go wrong with Woodford Reserve.

Recommended for: Brunch, breakfast, bar mitzvahs, drives through the countryside, the symphony, funerals, wakes, Ramadan, do-it yourself oil changes, patching the roof of the garage, dance marathons, Take Back the Night marches, children’s soccer games, Psoriasis Awareness Week, first holy communions, steeplechase, Spanish Civil War re-enactments, marriage counseling, kite-surfing, deep water competitive swimming, AA Meetings, cat shows, Flag Day, swinging parties, pre-teen beauty pageants, black masses, skeetshooting, marlin fishing, Lent, public executions, cliff diving, pottery classes, whale watching, moped jousting and exotic piercing preparation.
_________________________
* My assessment of the top five gins is here.
** This might be a subjective thing, as I’m not a cigar smoker, but do like maduros.

Michael: Moe Greene will sell us his share of the hotel and the casino so that it can be completely owned by the family.
Fredo: Hey, Mike, are you sure about that? I mean, Moe loves the business. He never said anything to me about sellin’.
Michael: I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.
- The Godfather (1972)

Anyone looking at the outrageous rise in fees and partner compensation in the legal industry, and particularly at large firms, over the past decade, can’t help but see what looks like a huge, but quite perplexing “rollercoaster” trend in the data. Perplexing because instead of a general upward trajectory interrupted by occasional corrective dips, as normal market gravity would dictate, this rollercoaster just keeps going up – a run of substantial hourly rate and compensation increases, seemingly unabated by any of the downward pressures impacting the broader economy (the 2000-2001 recession; the drops in various sectors since the onset of housing’s slide in late 2006).

Why? Well, as the recent implosion of the big firm business model proves, it wasn’t brilliant management. It’s also pretty obvious law isn’t recession proof. That leaves us with these probable causes – madness, greed or, most likely, a combination of the two. An envy-fueled mania driving thousands of crazed paper-crunchers high on the delusion they should be paid like venture capitalists or hedge fund partners to reward themselves imperially, raising “Profits Per Partner” in massive increments year after year using a mix of borrowed money and merciless fee increases… Ratcheting a string of cars up the side of that rollercoaster, unaware or unconcerned they were trifling with an economic peak, a point where the lead cars would soon cross the top, tip to the other side and drag the whole line down behind them.* Ignorance and opportunism working together in lockstep efficiency – the young not knowing any better, the old exploiting the moment. Really, what incentive did an aging equity partner have to put on the brakes? Why not milk the machine for a final run of monster paydays before retirement? Leave the kids to sort out the mess when the economy catches up with the model and everything goes to shit.

Let’s be charitable for a second – give the old bastards the benefit of the doubt. Assume the managers of the big firms driving the industry-wide run of increased fees and debt used to to fund partners’ compensation over the past decade were as deluded as everyone else who didn’t see the crash coming. That somehow, despite the intense analytical skills and skeptical eye required to succeed in their profession, they actually believed the jerry-rigged gains and rosy forecasts were credible and merely increased their rates and borrowing accordingly.

Because it really doesn’t matter. Whatever the cause, the fees firms think they deserve are tacked to yesterday’s fictions – economic projections and paper gains now eviscerated. Those rates have a long way to drop. And no, remaining flat is not dropping. Or at least it shouldn’t be. Not if the buyers of legal services start negotiating as they ought to. If you run with the rollercoaster analogy above, we’re only about two thirds of the way down the “corrective” or “down” side of this economic arc. That means there’s a lot of value out there for purchasers to wring out of the law firms that service them.*

Yet the questions I keep seeing in articles about the legal industry are, “When will the storm pass?” “When is the legal market going to revert back to where it was before?” In an article in last week’s Philadelphia Inquirer a well known legal consulting firm noted that despite the downturn and despite client demands for an alternative, the outdated and universally loathed billable hour system – the prime cause of bill padding, client dissatisfaction and just about every inefficiency in the delivery of legal services – remains the entrenched industry standard. And as recently as December, 2008, in the midst of the bank collapse hysteria, ninety eight percent of firms interviewed said they were raising rates in 2009.

So I’ve got to ask Corporate America, Where are your balls? We’re in a deflationary spiral, with the cost of everything falling like a stone and you’re accepting rate increases from your lawyers? In case you haven’t read any news about the field lately, the large firm sector isn’t teetering on its heels. It’s hanging on the ropes for life, barely able to stagger through a mandatory eight count. You realize this is the craziest buyer’s market in history, don’t you? That you’re not holding most of the cards in negotiating fees, but all of them? You understand just how much money you’ll save over the long term by exploiting this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, right?

It isn’t a hard concept to grasp. Consider the Fed’s inability to create a market in “toxic” mortgage backed assets. You know how the real problem isn’t a lack of buyers, but a lack of sellers? That the banks would rather hold on to the paper and pray it appreciates over the long term than dump it at a steep discount and take the loss?

Well, that’s easy for banks to do. They have cash flow just sitting still, government lending windows, increasing reserves and they can raise money from investors if they need to. Save stretching their already strained lines of credit at terrible rates, law firms have none of these options. It’s not like you don’t know their business. Everybody knows how professional services outfits work. They run on limited, finite margins, with partners creaming off all non-allocated revenue for themselves. If their workforce’s hands aren’t moving on billable tasks, they run out of cash and collapse, in fairly short order. You, Corporate America, are their sole source of liquidity. Their lender of last resort, only hope of a bailout.

At this moment, given the dearth of business activity, panic and glut of labor in the legal field, purchasers can start demanding massive fee discounts and the larger leveraged firms won’t even be able to bluff through the negotiation. Buyers in many areas could argue for 33% discounts and their lawyers would have no choice but to eventually take the business. Sure, they’ll scream about how the service will be compromised, or about how operating costs won’t allow them to hold to the discount for long, but that’ll just be a bargaining posture, to drag a 33% discount up to 20-25%, which still leaves the buyer with a sweet deal.

And any games of chicken will be short. Threaten to bid out your business and you’ll get a call back within twenty four hours. Given the uniquely cannibalistic nature of the industry, firms know if they don’t take the deal, three more desperate competitors will. And the white shoe outfits trading on brand name know that if a lesser firm, or boutiques, get the business, they risk blowing a huge market advantage – keeping clients convinced they deliver a level of service far above what can be found at smaller or cheaper competitors. That risks depressing the market value of their services permanently.**

So the only question is, why, Corporate America, haven’t you thrown the knockout punch? Jammed a Tyson upper cut into the glass jaw of the big firm business model, a structure that, while providing necessary services, has also been parasitically siphoning profit from you for decades with its preposterous rates, overstaffing of projects, overbilling and endless ancillary expenses? It’s time to put it on the canvas. And all it takes is a wave of Fortune 100 anchor clients pushing for nasty alternative or discount fee arrangements while threatening to bid their work out to start a rapidly accelerating industry wide race to a new basement in rates. Once you get to that point, you basically control the future trajectory of fees, almost like health insurers controlling and flattening the income of doctors. Remember also, as the big firm fees go, so go the rest of the industry’s.

I don’t know why this hasn’t happened yet, but as a shareholder of a few companies, I’m curious. I wonder if it’s because the general counsels of a lot of large corporations come out of the firms they hire as outside counsel, and these people don’t know much about the legal services market beyond their old firm and its competitors. Maybe it’s because those GCs want to keep their old firms happy in case they need an “of counsel” position somewhere if their corporate employer goes under or downsizes them. Perhaps companies simply didn’t care in the past, figuring a few million in excessive legal fees per year was chump change in an overheated economy.

Well, today every nickel counts. If you’re in upper level management, it might be time to push stronger cost-cutting directives on your general counsels. Ask them why they aren’t driving the company’s legal expenses down by at least a third. Why isn’t the company using this opportunity to set a new, drastically decreased baseline for fees? It’s their duty to management, to shareholders, to extract the meanest bargain possible. And it’s not like there’s any excuse. This is elementary business, Management 101. When you’re gifted the exceedingly rare power to radically reduce a cost for the long term, you push it as far down as you possibly can.**** The leverage will never be better and if there’s any hesitance about kicking an industry while it’s on its knees, remember two things. One, you can always blame it on your company’s decreased revenues. That’s an all but impenetrable explanation. Two, you’re dealing with the legal industry here. Those firms would do the same to you without blinking. And bill you for the time spent planning and executing the hit.
____________________
* For years, lawyers have used what Milton Friedman described as a “license-leveraging scheme” to dictate prices to buyers. It’s about time buyers shift the power dynamic in the relationship back to where it ought to be.
** Yes, the large firm sector that drives the cost of legal services pulled back a bit in the recession of 2000-2001, but as soon as housing started the next bubble it made up for lost time with gusto, increasing fees all over again.
*** The difference between a $250 and $400 associate in the same market is mere branding premium. At a certain point, the law’s the law, the facts are the facts. In litigation, most of the work at that level’s fungible doc review, research, depositions and cut and paste briefs. The higher level $500 and up lawyers do the actual arguing.
**** To associates and junior partners who might take issue with someone advocating what sounds like violence to their already savaged industry, think again. These recommendations would actually help associates and young partners. Firm have already cut to the bone in terms of head count. They need hands around to do the work senior partners won’t or can’t. Future cuts can only come out of upper level partners’ compensation.

Unfortunately, as I was not in a cave on another planet for the last two weeks, like everyone else, I was forced to consider the death of Michael Jackson. And more than that, the all too common cautionary tale of the artist lost early – one more creative mind ground to dust in the showbiz machine. That’s the romantic spin. Vulnerable, sensitive soul driven to an early grave… Well, there’s obviously a lot more to it than that, but who the hell wants to go there? From every angle, it’s a dull, tired narrative. The better story’s the impact, what it felt like when you heard someone as ubiquitous in our culture as The King of Pop kicked the bucket so suddenly. Where you were sitting and how it was all personalized in your head.
I didn’t care much about Jackson, considering him, as most did, a once brilliant long washed up talent with appalling private appetites. But I still won’t forget where I was and what I was doing when I heard he’d died. The image of the moment sticks in your head, changing the commonplace activity you were engaged in at the time into an oddly resonant context. And it brought me back to some other notable deaths, in particular one of a legendary rock star who was, through my late teens and early twenties, omnipresent and, to borrow a phrase used to describe the Clash, “the only [guitarist] that matter[ed].” And so here’s my take on a death that occurred nearly fourteen years ago – the passing of Jerry Garcia.
No, I didn’t write this today. Among the numerous other things I did instead of attending classes, during law school I managed to write a 200 page book, mostly a slop of barely connected college recollections and a couple law school anecdotes. I figured I’d put a few coherent bits of the thing on the website this summer, and with Jackson’s death, now seemed as decent time as any to post some text about Garcia dying. I tried not to clean it up too much, to preserve the eye and voice I had at the time.

(more…)

Last week I did an interview answering questions from a recent college graduate, a few of which touched on the job market and economy facing people in his position. But those are my opinions, and I’m far divorced from ground zero in that discussion. Eighteen to twenty-four year olds might be a nice chunk of my audience, but I don’t know what it’s like to be in or coming out of college at a time like this. Everything’s been turned on its head, all the rules changed mid-game and no, the smart money isn’t betting its temporary. Hell of a shitstorm to face in your early twenties, and I’m not sure anyone can truly describe the experience other than the people in the eye of the hurricane – the kids graduating this year, scratching their heads and thinking “Now?”

I found one of them. His name’s Alex Mann. He majored in business, interned at a Wall Street bank in college but ultimately decided he didn’t want that path. He’s now in the process of getting an internet start-up off the ground. He’s also a writer, with a website at alexjmann.com. I asked him some questions about what it’s like graduating into the nastiest job market in history and he hit me with a few follow-ups. Here’s the interview, pretty much uncut:

PL: What’s it like graduating into this mess? I mean, what’s the overall attitude? I got out of school in a lame period in the economy, but this is ridiculous.

AM: Initially, it was a bit of a shock as the economic events unraveled before our eyes throughout the school year. No one expected it to get this bad–and then the situation continuously dipped far worse beyond anything we’ve experienced or been taught about. The surprise misery was followed by a sense of acceptance that it’s just a “rough time” to be graduating. The message that the universities attempt to signal to us is that economic downturns happen, but this time it’s just worse.

The most amusing aspect of the economic situation is the aura of sympathy the college graduate receives from older folks. When I hear the typical “congratulations on graduating!” delivered as a praise for a recent collegiate accomplishment, I sense a bit of “we fucked up” behind the nostalgic smile. But, the sympathy only goes so far in making us feel any better. Our frustration stems from the lack of control and little understanding we face. There is only so much we can absorb from reading the news online, because the real grasp of the current economic environment comes from actually experiencing it professionally, which few people my age have. You’d think the universities would use this as an opportunity to teach about excess leverage, regulation and the fallacy of systematic risk. But, no. Curriculum followed as usual, with little focus on “what’s going on” or “why it’s happening.”

The truth of the matter is that it’s messy on multiple levels. The jobs that used to be there, open-armed, ready for fresh, naïve college graduates, simply aren’t there. The whole “what are you going to do now?’ dialogue has gone beyond just being annoying and repetitive; it’s become an almost touchy subject. The answer, in most cases, is either “nothing” or “wait it out.” Some graduates start businesses, and some are going back to school. Some are sitting on their hands, just waiting. The overall attitude is generally apathetic.

AM: Who do we point our fingers at, if anyone, with everyone ducking aside to avoid blame? Sure the economy is cyclical, but how does someone my age actually arm themselves to prevent the shit hitting the fan this hard, again?

PL: The first question’s tough. It’s a combination of things. You’ve got people I’ve described in the piece I just did for the Fourth of July, and in addition to them the interventionists – the government agencies who pushed for more lending to increase home ownership among people with bad credit, despite the clear ridiculousness of the concept. It’s really amazing a guy like Barney Frank can blast bankers in hearings while his imbecilic support of subprime-friendly policies in large part created the environment in which this disaster took root.
The second issue’s easy. Never forget about gravity. The only people who profit from bubbles get in early. When the mainstream media’s stale analysis deems a market overheated, it’s already cooked. Never jump in because you think you’re missing something. Leap in late and all you’ll do is ski the backside of the curve down to the x axis. Shiller’s Irrational Exuberance explains the rest of it – the behavioral side – eloquently. Great book. You can apply its lessons to any bubble. I remember hearing about people living off home equity lines and thinking, “Where’s Shiller on this?” Sadly, though he wrote a few articles warning about housing, his follow-up, The Subprime Solution, came long after the horse had left the barn.

PL: Is the plan of college kids still pretty much the same? The rich kids work for dad or live off a trust, the middle and upper middle class kids go get internships at consulting and finance outfits and head off to those jobs where you work for twenty-five years at something you don’t really like and then hopefully retire early?

AM: It’s a mixed bag. I admit there is a healthy feeling of independence from most students I speak with. I sense that there isn’t a whole lot of pride in going to work for your father anymore, or at least admitting to it publicly. On the other hand, when no other paying options exist except that one some are willing to suck it up. However, you’d be surprised by the herds of anxious students still dying to get entry-level positions on Wall Street. With head count on the banks being cut and pay scales decreasing like an avalanche, there are still an unfortunate number of students chasing just dollar signs. It’s a perfect example of the entitlement my generation expects. Because they understand portfolio theory and the discounted cash flow model, they think a six-figure job should be waiting for them. Reality hasn’t caught up with the idealistic culture yet. Expectations are still high that Wall Street will turn around, and the money will flow again. It may or may not, but I don’t think anytime soon. And finally, there is nothing wrong with a job on Wall Street. But, many don’t know what they are getting into beforehand besides the paycheck.

The “work then retire” culture is the same, only because that’s still what is being taught. That’s what are parents are doing, so that’s the culture we know. But, a difference I’ve noticed is that there is the expectation that we’ll hold various careers in a similar field, with the more glorious, exciting ones coming with time. It’s still climbing the ladder, just with different shapes of notches. There’s the expectation of having to climb, with splashes of randomness every now and then.

AM: What options, if any, existed when you were graduating, besides the traditional ones? Did anyone that attempted to avoid the “work then retire” path look like a hippie? What were students running towards in your day? Were the “prestigious” (I use this term lightly) positions mainly found in law and medicine?

PL: My options were better than yours. Hiring wasn’t robust by any means, but most of my friends took the consulting or Wall Street route. Nobody judged the people taking alternative routes (skiing out West and living on Ramen noodles, working in a coffee shop and following some jam band, etc…) as “hippies,” but that might be more a statement about my social scene than about the generally pervasive attitude toward those types. And why I’m still close to many of my friends from those days. You’d have been considered an asshole to criticize people for following less trodden paths. I think quietly a lot of the people headed to work for Andersen Consulting (Accenture, now) quietly envied the guys going to live on an island in the Pacific and study marine life for the government. Medicine was a true calling, and as such it was always respectable. Law was never considered a prestigious career at my school. Among the types of people who cared about their careers, it was considered a stupid move. Too much work for limited upside – a terrible bargain. Kids aiming for Wall Street would never slum in law. It’d never even cross their minds.

PL: What do all these kids who planned to follow that easy track and had it pulled out from under them intend to do now? What’s the backup?

AM: If there is one upside to the economic downturn, it’s that suddenly we’ve been put in the position to creatively fend for ourselves. For instance, when all of the traditional career options that a business major typically approaches have gone thin, the desperation is followed by a wave of experimentation. The suit-and-tie guy type that majored in finance is applying to ESPN and the NFL, because he’s always loved sports and couldn’t get a job as a banker. The artistic-type who majored in advertising is applying for a job at an animal protection non-profit she supports, simply because the jobs on Madison Avenue have become obsolete. In my opinion, this is how it should be. College, or any form of education, shouldn’t create a path or destiny. It should create options to choose our own.

The few ambitious ones are going into entrepreneurial ventures. But, the majority of students are too scared to take that responsibility, because society tells us otherwise. A positive sign is there are plenty of students attempting to use the Internet to either market themselves, or to attempt to monetize their ideas. There are mini-movements of students realizing that they can leverage the Internet to do both what makes them happy and creates cash flow (yes, both!). It is uncommon though.

So, yeah, the economy sucks. Jobs aren’t being handed out like they maybe used to be. In my opinion, they never should have. Even if the money isn’t flowing, scarcity is forcing young adults to experiment with what makes them happy. I assume this works, until you have the pay the bills. That’s not so bad, is it?

AM: There’s a strong sense of entrepreneurship with people my age now, even if they aren’t all acting on it. There’s an itch to go do something on your own. Did you sense that with people you encounter my age? Why do you think it’s happening now, if it hasn’t before? Is there anyway to be entrepreneurial within a large organization?

PL: Yes. I think your generation is a lot more independent and skeptical, in a good way, than mine. We still believed in the system as it was, as a lot of the information showing the emperor had no clothes wasn’t available to us in the pre-internet-available-everywhere world. I don’t think I’m old enough or versed enough in history to say whether the urge to work for yourself has grasped another generation more or less than yours, but I don’t think the desire was nearly as prevalent in my generation.

There are few ways to be entrepreneurial in large organizations. Hierarchies by their nature slow processes down and create political environments in which idea-oriented types quickly become disenchanted. Corporations breed “safety-minded” employees, as in “obsessed with keeping their jobs above all else.” These types don’t put anything on the line and they view any suggestion of change as a threat.

Don’t get me wrong – corporations do a lot of good. The power of all those pooled resources delivering services and products changes a lot of our lives for the better every day. Problem is, their size and formalized structure also hold back a ton of innovation, and ruin a lot of good minds. I know loads of people who went into corporate life vibrant, filled with ideas, and are now just surfing, milking the machine, consummate “safety employees.” Hell, I was one at a couple points in my career. When the money’s good, you think, “Why fuck with things… What am I going to gain trying to make things better? It’s just added work.” It’s awful, really, the way that mindset permeates corporations. The only people who seem to have been taking chances in business recently are on the finance side, and they’re the only ones who shouldn’t have been.

PL: Kids aren’t dumb enough to be entering law school to duck the tough job market, are they? Those poor bastards are fucked. I see the professional service industries in this country headed for for the meanest of all reckonings. Even when the economy picks back up, corporations aren’t going to start paying consultants and lawyers the outrageous, unjustified rates they were getting in the run up to this collapse. The buyers are discovering the enormous amount of leverage they have in that relationship, and the servicers can’t bluff in response. They don’t have any reserves. If their hands aren’t busy with billable tasks, their cash flow disappears, so they’ve no choice but to take the work at the buyer’s demanded discount. If they play chicken, the buyer will find somebody else to do the work at a steeper discount. And the race to the bottom in unit price in those fields is only just beginning. The white collar services industries are going to have to wait a decade to see anything near their old rate structures.

AM: Sadly, your message hasn’t been broadcast loud and far enough. Law school, and even MBA programs, are still being used as excuses to “wait it out.” Some planned to do it, some didn’t. The ones that didn’t plan are attending more out of desperation. You’d think reading the news and having a basic understanding of economics would sway kids away from dishing out a few hundred thousand dollars for additional education right now. That’s a hefty debt that isn’t going to be easy to pay off like it used to be. And, I don’t think there is anything wrong with additional education. I just think it needs to be timed and aligned right, which is often not the case.

AM: Why do you think additional schooling, now more than ever, is facing diminishing returns? In which situations, if any, would you recommend someone to get their law degree or MBA?

PL: Waste of money. Better to go to b-school than law school, of course, but neither’s worth a quarter of the enormous tuition charged. I’d recommend you get a law degree only if you’re absolutely in love with the field, know what the business side of it is like, know what the industry’s future holds and still want to do it. In that instance, I’d also recommend you seek out a good psychiatrist, immediately. As to b-school, I can’t think of a reason to go other than mom and dad are paying for it. Nobody wants to hire a person who went to b-school straight out of college. If you need something to enhance your resume, join the Peace Corps or something like that – something that shows you have a soul. Differentiate yourself from the “wind up dolls.” If a person told me he spent $100k in loans to wait out a bad job market getting a superfluous degree, I wouldn’t hire him to watch my pets. How can you trust someone with judgment like that? But a guy who told me a story about building bridges in some impoverished part of the Third World? That’s a guy you’ve no choice but to respect. An interesting back story goes a lot further than the typical canned script.

“Well, I always wanted to work in securities litigation because I love the intellectual challenge and…” What’s an interviewer thinking hearing pap like that? Somebody, please… fucking shoot me.

PL: Is this stuff I hear about “Gen Y” or whatever they call you all demanding a work/life balance true? If so, I’m heartened, but do you really expect corporate America to cater to that demand? I would if I were in management. I’d see it as a great opportunity to use people sparingly, flexibly, at less cost to the company. I mean, why not let a person who wants balance work decreased hours? It’s a win/win. But I don’t think a lot of managers older than my generation understand that. I think they have this archaic notion of everyone having to “pay his dues.” Is this Gen Y phenomenon real, and if it is, what’s the biggest gripe it has with our current corporate employment structures? What makes recent graduates so unwilling to go along with old systems?

AM: The only people my age that actually refer to themselves are “Gen Y” are ones clueless enough that think the title entitles them to special treatment. It doesn’t.

But I do think there is a demand for more balance in our careers, but not in the most traditional sense. Rather than just time “away” from work, there is a demand for more correlation between what we actually want to be doing, and what we have to actually have to do, day-in day-out, for our job. You hear about companies like Google who offer their employees a few hours a day to work on something independently, and that is desirable. It’s not that we are lazy or don’t want to do work; that has nothing to do with it. It’s more of a demand for a selfish productivity that I’m sensing from people my age, where they want the work they are told to do to be related to what they want to do.

From my perspective, the “pay your dues” culture still exists, and it always will. Who doesn’t want to hassle the new guys? Currently, I think it’s more prevalent in the traditional outlets like law, medicine and politics. But, there are a lot of bigger companies that are avoiding it, or at least appearing to, for PR purposes. When these larger corporations come to recruit (or at least when they used to), their pitch revolves around the balance they offer new employees.

The biggest gripe we have, especially in this environment, is that we look up at the public executives, business leaders and media personas, and see a lot of unhappy personalities. Or, we read articles about 30-somethings, just 10 or so years older than us, that are glad to be fired in this down market, simply because it gives them an excuse to take a long-term vacation on their savings. There’s a certain dignity in not wanting to be a miserable fuck when you’re older, and that’s finally begun to sink in.

The reason the old system is being pushed aside, pried open, or at least being exploited, is because of the technical innovation. We have access to so many different career paths that didn’t exist 20 – 30 years ago. We also have access to valuable, publicly available information sources that are not taught in school. Our generational uniqueness is that we understand technical tools better than most people older than us. That gives us a type of stomping ground when we’re told what to do and how to do it. In most cases, we can do things faster and cheaper.

AM: When you graduated, did people your age refer to themselves with a stupid generational name, like someone owed them something? Was there any actual expectation that you were supposed to like your job, or would that have been naive? Is this new attitude just a reactionary trend to the current economic environment, or is it realistic that the majority of new professionals will be happy with their careers?

PL: Yeah, I think Douglas Coupland coined “Generation X” somewhere in the early ’90s and the media flogged the term into the ground. We didn’t expect to like our jobs. The expectation was that you got the internship or grad degree, got into a good job and busted your ass with an aim toward getting a huge payday or saving enough of a big salary to get out early and live a gilded long retirement. Not much analysis beyond that.

It’s not realistic that a majority of professionals would be happy with their careers. On one level or another, being a professional is doing somebody’s homework for money. And most of what pays well pays well because nobody wants to do it. It’s dull, irritating and stressful. In most jobs, dollars and enjoyment of work are inversely proportional. That’s the biggest point of friction I’ve seen between your generation and those above mine in the workforce. People my age are with you. We want you to change the system because we’re young enough to adapt and your attitude toward work is healthier and lot more sensible than the one we grew up with. The people above us, however – I’m not sure they’re fans. A number of them view this downturn as a validation of their ethic, and an opportunity to re-establish the, “It’s work, and work isn’t supposed to be fulfilling” mindset as the dominating ethos. I don’t think that’s going to succeed, however. I think most of your generation is fundamentally unable to abide unhappiness in your work lives. I don’t know why, but whatever the reason, that’s a good thing.

PL: I think your generation sits in a uniquely powerful position right now. On one hand, you have nothing to lose by opting out of the usual tracks and working for yourselves. Or you could be so frightened that you revert to a fifties mindset of just being happy you have a job and sucking it up with no complaints, lowering your expectations. You know which track I’d prefer to see people take, but as to the striking out on your own thing, the vexing issue is always, “In what?” What industries do you see emerging as opportunities?

AM: The one unique advantage my generation has over any other one is familiarity with emerging Internet technology. And, I’m not just referring to the repetitive skill of setting up a Facebook and Twitter account for a corporate client who doesn’t “get it.” I’m referring to solving actual, human problems using available communication tools, regardless if it’s called “social media” or not. The tools will never replace humans, but they can help.

Look at the reaction to the Iranian election online. A lightweight Internet application, Twitter, has created a sense of healthy transparency in a geographic arena that has been traditionally stubborn by design in the past. The conversation has always existed, but now it’s being funneled and aggregated online. The tools haven’t created the conversation; they just created an outlet. That’s more democracy than Iran has ever felt.

Certain saturated industries have still failed to catch on to the available technology. The education sector and political sector, as they have historically been, are laggards in adapting. I see this as an inefficiency with the potential to exploit for someone that understands the space. Obama felt the success of having a new media team, and now every politician is going to want one. An opportunity I am spotting is media tools and information sources for politicians. Also, the traditional textbook industry is dying before our eyes due to digital publishing, so universities are looking for digital, low-cost and collaborative classroom tools to use instead. Easy opportunities exist in plugging these holes of inefficiencies with already existing technology.

Finally, I don’t think “going out on their own” is necessarily the most productive path for many to take, even if it’s the most prideful. As you know, it takes extreme amounts of discipline that just aren’t common if you haven’t had a real job before. And, building a lemonade stand or writing a blog about sports won’t cut it. My recommendation for the entrepreneurial ones would be to join a younger, smaller company or start-up that is relevant to their personal interests. Or, find a position in a larger company that grants you the freedom and mentorship of a smaller firm. This way, you’ll get access to the individuals who have been on their own independently before, and if you can, have the creative freedom to make decisions without them being filtered out by too many hierarchies.

AM: Where are the opportunities in law? Is there any use, or even any need, for technology in your field? For a kid fresh out of school, would you recommend biting the bullet to start their own company? Like you said, no one is going to question the time lapse in your resume used for experimentation.

PL: Regulatory work, perhaps. Plaintiff’s law for a while. But neither has much of an upward trajectory. There’s a glut of people going into plaintiff’s work right now because there are no jobs at firms and there’s no barrier to entry in becoming a negligence lawyer. As to the regulatory stuff, as much as that area will grow, it’s not an zone of opportunity for new lawyers because it involves a lot of years of experience with the agencies one is working with and against.

Starting your own company is never going to be cheaper. If you can do that and you have a serious business model, not doing so would be letting a golden opportunity pass.

PL: Periods of creative destruction are gifts to those positioned to exploit them. Do today’s graduates see this as an opportunity or is the attitude more one of fear?

AM: There is level of fear on a large scale. What my generation has experienced is more than a down economy and high unemployment rate; it’s bigger, more grandiose than that. We’ve seen a complete breech of trust, from the top down. I mean, the companies that have gone down the drain are the same companies used as examples in our fucking textbooks! What does that tell you? It’s a complete global blackout that proved just how connected and coupled the world of business is, and how a small change can have massive, unexpected result. The piggy bank as we know it has been officially cracked open and flushed.

But, I’m optimistic. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that my generation has experienced a unique economic downturn. I think the less jobs that are simply “handed out,” the more picky students will be in the future to find something they actually want to be doing. And, I think that’s a good thing, even if it took a recession, lost jobs, and a whole lot of debt to make that idea a far-fetched reality. We don’t “want to die before we get old.” There’s a healthy, long-term vision, at least looking down the road, that we’ll find a sense of balanced, professional solitude that many older than us never found.

AM: Should someone my age be fearful? What does being fearful accomplish, if anything? Are things as bad as they seem, or at least as bad as the media makes it seem?

PL: The lower-to-mid middle class of this country is dead, all but destroyed. You’re alright. You have a facility with numbers and an understanding of finance, and those skills will always be useful somewhere. The trick is finding the next explosive growth area and getting in at the basement level now. Sucks to research that in such a fluid, confusing environment, but compared to the forty, fifty and sixty year olds getting wiped out in the downturn, your problems are gold plated. The only concern is going to be the taxation leveled on you and me to pay for all the people who are getting crushed in this economy. Until the cost of foreign labor meets the high cost of domestic labor, American workers with low level skill-sets are going to keep getting savaged. As are a lot of high end service providers. Law’s fucked right now and medicine could turn into a disaster for docs if this health care thing passes in the wrong form. But you’re not in these fields, and like I said, you understand numbers. You’ll be fine down the road. Your frat brother with the history degree? He might be fucked. Might have to write books for a living or something like that.

“Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you’re being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don’t forget what you’re celebrating, and that’s the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn’t want to pay their taxes.” Sound familiar? It’s a line from Dazed n’ Confused, delivered by “Ms. Stroud,” the bleeding heart liberal history teacher – a bit of silly dialogue capturing some of the naive philosophizing in fashion at the time.
It’s a joke, of course, mocking the idealism for idealism’s sake that materialized in the country’s post-sixties hangover. But as I watched the movie the other night (it’s on an HBO rerun loop this month) it struck me – Ms. Stroud sounds like a lot of stuff we’re hearing today. The populists, the protectionists, the redistributionists… A fair number of people are offering the same criticisms of this country made in the seventies.
Look at any magazine, paper or twenty four hour news channel and you’ll see a piece on why or how excessive risk created this economic crisis, and why we may want to move back to the temperate habits and goals of the “company man.” How we might be returning to the safety and comfort of traditional, long term employment and putting aside the entrepreneurial mindset and hyper-capitalism of the last few decades. Resigning ourselves to a future of lowered expectations and greater structure and giving up our love affair with risk. And that somehow this would be a good thing.
A highly impressionable swath of the public, and the media that serves them the red meat populism they want, seem to be reaching a consensus our society was far too enamored with the concept of risk. We’d be better served to work steadily, loyally at a job “producing something” than attempting to front load ourselves an early retirement using leverage or striking out in entrepreneurial ventures. That’s a shame, because risk – sensible risk – bears none of the fault for our current financial mess. It’s maligned for no good reason, confused with the actual causes. And this is a dire concern, because right now, sitting in the shithole we’ve dug for ourselves, risk is our only hope out.
As with any large event, a million smaller, finite causes led to the disaster that started last September. But they can broadly be boiled down to three simple categories, each of which might sound and look like “risk” but in reality is something entirely distinguishable.
On the corporate side there was opportunism, exploitation and fraud. Opportunism in that the people who were involved in creating and selling mortgage-backed securities and the people who brokered mortgages to home buyers both worked under “heads I win, tails you lose” bargains. Bargains so one-sided only a fool wouldn’t have abused them. By as early as 2005, economists were warning that the housing market was overheating and would inevitably bust. At this point, the mortgage brokers on Main Street and the securities packagers and salesmen on Wall Street had two options. Suck all the profits they could out of the bubble before it burst, ballooning it even higher in the process, or pull back. Neither had any real skin in the game. Both knew they’d be laid off or see drastic decreases in income after the bubble burst, and that if they didn’t push the market even further, someone else would. They did what any opportunist would – bankrolled as much as they could and waited for the walls to come down.
This led to the exploitations and frauds. Bankers pimped what they had to have known were garbage securities to all sorts of investors while brokers pushed liar’s loans to any buyer with a heartbeat. Even the smaller local and regional banks got in on the deal, writing mortgages for people who clearly couldn’t afford them, taking fees and flipping the paper to the larger securitizing banks. Everybody was incentivized by short term income structures and nobody faced any responsibility. Everything done at the banks was under the corporate umbrella, every actor one of thousands. The same went for the mortgage pushers. If countless other brokers were writing up garbage notes all over the country and every transaction was plausibly honest on its face, what chance was there any single malfeasant would ever face charges?

(more…)

The biggest obstacles to formal pot legalization are the types of people arguing most vehemently for pot legalization.
- Me, on Twitter (April 15, 2009)
Of the myriad disingenuous arguments for marijuana legalization made over the years, none is less credible or more embarrassing than the present claim that rolling back its prohibition would create a desperately needed windfall in tax revenue for the states regulating its sale. The dumbest position yet. Dumber than the medicinal marijuana argument that has anyone claiming anxiety, sciatica or swimmer’s ear walking out of “clinics” in California with bags of Blueberry Indica. Dumber than that nonsense your pony-tailed uncle spews about how hemp is superior to nylon – how we can build radial tires for Peterbilts from it we wanted to. “The Swedish do it, man… Or was that the Finns? I always mix them up. Which one’s the island?”
Have you tried to make Champagne lately? Vodka? How about a nice Bourbon? Can’t do it, can you? But if you could, you would. Who’d ever go to the liquor store again if he could brew Basil Hayden’s or Perrier Jouet in his basement? And that’s exactly what’ll happen if the states legalize dope. Everybody you know who’s smoked pot in the past or continues to recreationally use it today – roughly a quarter and a fifth of the people you’ve met under 50, respectively – would start up a garden or grow room in his house. Neighbors would swap strains of Sativa at coffee klatches the way they swap tuna casserole recipes. And that tax gain to the states? Minimal, if anything. A slight bump from the shoppers looking for super premium stuff only a large retailer could import. Or lazy jackasses like me who don’t know shit about gardening.
But it’s not the imbecilic economics of the argument that make it so offensive. The thing that makes this pitch so horrendous is it’s a clear, pathetic pretext. If you support the concept of legalization as an issue of personal liberty… If you believe that we don’t have a Bill of Affirmative Rights and Entitlements, but a Bill of Limitations on How Much Government Can Interfere in What Ought to be Private, Personal Decisions… And if you believe in having a society of people who take personal responsibility for those decisions, then you’re smart enough to realize that this type of silly Trojan Horse argument ducks a long overdue conversation America needs to be having with itself.
As well meaning or effective as they might be, pretexts are sleazy arguments. Something hired liars use in courtrooms, lobbyists stuff into talking point memos and television ministers spit from the pulpit as “1-800-GIV-2GOD” flashes on the megachurch’s Jumbotron. They’re what you say you’re doing when you can’t say what you’re actually doing because what you’re actually doing is dumb, solely self-interested or malevolent. They’re also embarrassingly obvious. Anybody with a child’s appreciation for the art of debate can spot a pretext coming a mile away. And no, the fact that the other side’s position is a fraud doesn’t give you license to offer an equally false response, particularly in regard to an issue as important as personal freedom.
Why? Because all a pretext does, all it can ever do, is degrade and confuse the debate, invite the usual crowd of scolds, zero tolerance zealots and nanny state teetotalers to offer equally disingenuous arguments. That or the pretext’s dim, but often effective counterpart – the “Slippery Slope” rebuttal:
“Legalize marijuana and we’ll be substantially closer to balancing California’s budget!”
“But–but–but if we allow that, then the people will use ecstasy, and then cocaine, and when they get bored with that they’ll go on to LSD, and then they’ll go on to PCP and heroin and as the older people become junkies the children will have no guidance and the users will get younger and younger and we’ll have it in the high schools! We’ll have the PCP and the LSD and the heroin, and grade schoolers will be sniffing the Angel Dust! I know what happens with this! I grew up in the Sixties and my sister followed the Jefferson Starship and she was never the same and you might think it’s harmless but when it comes to your third grader with methamphetamines, you tell me– tell me! Who will think of the children!”*
Never underestimate the power of an hysteric’s imagination. They may not be much for facts or logic, but they can whip up doomsday scenario PR attacks faster than Simon Cowell can fart one hit wonders onto the pop charts.

(more…)

I used drink a lot of gin in college. When you’re young and you don’t know enough to drink your liquor straight – that the sugars in what you add to it are seventy percent of the hangover – you drink it loaded with mixers. And everything tastes great soaked in tonic.
Then, of course, there was this unfortunate incident I wrote about earlier, with those overtones of “kidnapping,” “assault” and “terroristic threats,” inspired by Tanqueray. That got me rethinking gin. Not in any sense of concern, or quitting it. More with an eye toward change – to the easier, smoother white liquor (one that might not have me aiming weapons so easily).
I shifted to vodka as my default “clear liquor” and a long time love affair ensued. Vodka’s the cleanest of buzzes, and with some Eastern European blood in my veins, it went down like mother’s milk. Somewhere in the fading days of college, I forgot about the charms of gin. I stuck with the bourbon for friends, the vodka for anesthetizing myself at business-related gatherings and the scotch for, well… Good scotch was a special event thing, for raping a friend’s expense account. There’s lovely ring to the words “Johnny Walker Blue” followed with, “Yeah, we’ll call this a ‘business dinner.’ You’re a client!”
“Of course I am. Now let’s get down to brass tacks on this Penske file. You’ve got one of those Dartmouth kids fucking the whole thing up.”
“Is there a good hand job joint nearby?”
“Which would you prefer on the charge receipt? ‘A-1 Briefcase Repair’ or ‘House of Crepes, LLC’?”
I’m going to miss the boom years. I didn’t get rich myself, but there was always that sense of excess – that the money would never stop. You didn’t have to work on Wall Street. You only had to be in its shadow. Family, friends, neighbors, half of everyone you met… The world was drunk on its gains. Even the fucking lawyers were enjoying high class scraps. An actual trickle-down revolution, from ‘96 straight through to ‘07. And now it’s over – popped finally, For Real. And here we are confused, trying to grapple with a semblance of what it was like in the days before the cleaning lady was worth six figures in Cisco stock and the high school guidance counselor down the street was flipping vacation homes in Naples and Avalon with financing from Bloated and Overlevered Bank, Inc.
People old enough to remember that decade say today’s like the ’70s. I wouldn’t know. All I remember of those days was riding in the back of my old man’s red coupe, hearing that sax line from “Baker Street” and all those awful Eagles tunes. To me it feels like the early ’90s, the fading but nasty edges of the George Bush I Recession. And perhaps that’s why I recently rediscovered gin. A sense of déjà vu, of a feeling I had back then that all wasn’t going so well. That vodka wouldn’t dull things enough, and bourbon would clarify too much. Gin’s a nice middle ground – a sneaky, quirky buzz. Stronger than vodka or scotch, and smooth where bourbon enflames.
But who knows why, really? Might have just been laziness – finding a bottle of Tanqueray in a pile of holiday gifts, reacquainting myself with the taste and thinking, Damnit. Where have you been the last sixteen years?
I’m the kind of person who meets a problem head on, and I view the lack of gin in my recent history as a deeply disturbing shortcoming. In the spirit of making up for lost time, I’ve been soaking it up like a bar towel for the past several months. And I feel a need to share my experiences, in the hope nobody will forget the gin the way I did, and look back with all that regret.
I’m nothing if not a giver, so here we go – my top five:

(more…)