About Me 0095: January 2011

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Importnace of online reputation management

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This tends to become an incredibly sturdy selling point for businesses as well as persons, to understand that they are cleansing and safeguarding their reputations and cyber photographs, whereas at the same time running an extremely helpful marketing initiative. In some cases suppliers entirely disregard their former promoting efforts on the internet and select the benefits of On line Status Management.

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Monday, January 24, 2011

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

All the US government was interested in, Erekat went on, was "PR, quick news, and we're cost free", ending up with the appeal: "What good am I if I'm the joke of my wife, if I'm so weak?" | Facebook | Reddit | Digg | StumbleUpon ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

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Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple airs new 'two is better than one' iPhone spot. Find more iPhone news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

4 Detroit Police Officers Shot; Gunman Dead - Detroit Local News ...

DETROIT -- Four Detroit police officers, including a commander, were shot Sunday afternoon inside a station in the department's Northwest District. Monday, January 24, 2011.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Making Money Guide

A couple of months ago, I bought this drawing from New York artist William Powhida. It’s called “A Guide to the Market Oligopoly System”, and it’s lots of fun, as well as being very astute.

It’s dominated by a big pyramid, with “the yearning masses” at the bottom — “submerged artists”, “deep in debt”, with enthusiasm rather than money. There’s a little dot over on the left, saying “you are probably here”. Powhida explains the economic condition that most artists find themselves in: There are always more people who like to earn their income as an artist than there is demand for them: there is a structural excess supply of labor. So, why do they persist? It’s a labor of love, or willful ignorance of the odds.

At these levels, art-making is simply not an economic activity, and as such it might be the purest art of all. There’s something quite noble about a labor of love, and indeed most artists, galleries, and museums at much higher levels of the pyramid are happy to continue to pretend that the art they’re showing is still a labor of love, even as it sells for millions of dollars. Art is getting bigger and glossier because that’s where the money is, but few artists (Takashi Murakami, perhaps?) will unabashedly admit that they make art for the money.

For the most part, then, as you rise up the pyramid, you encounter a steady increase in hypocrisy and artspeak, with the latter largely designed to obfuscate the former.

At the same time, however, it’s easy to sneer at the labor-of-love types: the art world has internalized the idea that labors of love are only worthwhile so long as they fetch a goodly number of dollars, or at the very least have a veneer of art-school sophistication — a veneer which becomes even more important if your art is popular or decorative or minimally functional. (Elsewhere, Powhida notes that “fashion isn’t considered art. Sorry!”)

The next level of the pyramid is what Powhida calls “the broad primary market”, which includes “tons of commercial galleries everywhere” as well as non-profits, pop-ups, co-ops, and the like. This is the point at which art starts being traded for money — the artists in question typically make a three-figure sum selling smallish works, with larger pieces at more respectable galleries going for a few thousand.

At this point, both artists and collectors start thinking in terms of what any given piece might be “worth.” Everybody in the system — artist, collector, gallery — has a natural desire to want to believe that an artwork is “worth” more than the collector paid for it, and that the trajectory of the artist’s future career will mean that in years to come, the collector will be able to sell it at a profit.

This is where the collector hypocrisy comes in: collectors love to say that they buy art just because they love it, and that they will never sell it. For them, just as for the artist, it’s important to keep up the pretense that what they’re doing is a labor of love; when collectors are caught flipping artworks to auction houses and making a profit on the deal, they’re sneered at, especially if they don’t immediately reinvest the proceeds in even more art. But the fact is that beyond a relatively modest initial level, no collectors will buy anything unless they think that it has real monetary value now, or will have it in the future.

This is why galleries are so important: they’re the mechanism through which an artist’s career can be tracked and reduced to a handy dollar figure. Everybody knows that there’s much more art than science to setting the dollar amount, and that’s why they always keep an eye on the auction houses, which are considered more objective. There’s an interesting tension here: galleries and artists love to see new records being set at auction, even as they hate the collectors who take their work to an auction house in the first place.

The auction houses are actually two full notches higher up on the pyramid, above the blue-chip galleries in London, LA, and New York and the major art fairs such as Art Basel and Frieze. At these levels, art becomes more explicitly a commodity: virtually everything bought here has some kind of immediate resale value, and you’ll probably be able to borrow cash money against it if you put it up as collateral. Galleries will nearly always buy back the work they sold you, if not at the price they sold it to you for, and much of the work will happily be accepted by the big auction houses.

The barriers to entry, at this level, are high: in the primary market, individual artworks start in the five-figure range and go right up into seven figures or even eight for massive works by megastars. Meanwhile, the same dealers operate a highly-exclusive secondary market where works can occasionally break the $100 million mark.

As its position on the pyramid suggests, the auction market is even more exclusive. It’s actually smaller, even as a secondary market, than the behind-the-scenes dealings of gallerists, and it’s also much more brutal in its assessments of an artist’s career trajectory. Auction houses are happy to sell relatively cheap works by up-and-coming artists, but they are much warier of more expensive works by artists seen as being on the decline. There’s still a market, for instance, for 80s superstars like Julian Schnabel or Eric Fischl, but you’re very unlikely to find their work at auction: they’ve been kicked out of the auction world, back down to the primary dealers.

It’s worth noting that this mechanism creates a very strong survivorship bias in the official art-market returns, quoted by Powhida at being 0.55% per year. Those returns are calculated by looking at pieces which have come up for auction more than once, but the fact is that in the big auction houses will often simply refuse to accept pieces which are no longer in favor, with the result that those works end up being sold in the opaque secondary market of galleries, and never get incorporated into official statistics. Auction sales are emphatically not a representative sample of secondary-market art sales more generally. What’s more, most art collections are built up in the primary market rather than the secondary market, and art indices give no indication of the rate of return on primary-market purchases, again because those numbers are so opaque.

Most people who buy art will, to a first approximation, “lose” all their money: like most other consumer products, it won’t or can’t be resold after being bought. Many of those people kid themselves that their work is “worth” roughly what it would cost them to replace it; they’re only disillusioned when they actually try to sell the thing and find no willing buyers. And even the clear-eyed often think of their art as a lottery ticket: it might be worthless today, but maybe, in the future, if the artist becomes hugely successful, it could be worth a fortune.

Art only really becomes an asset class at the very top of the pyramid: the auction houses, the museums, and the stars (a/k/a Damien Murakoons). Artists are constantly if slowly being inducted into this world, and museums are constantly receiving donations of art and buying it themselves, thereby taking it off the market. As a result, the total size of the market remains roughly constant, even the art which makes up the asset class is constantly changing. Right now, you’ll find Richard Prince and Francis Bacon in high demand; in ten years’ time it’ll be someone else.

One of the things I like the most about Powhida’s piece is the various different ways that he characterizes what you might think of as the y-axis: the thing that changes as you go higher up the pyramid. One sequence looks at the artists, who go from “submerged” to “emerging” to “established” to “stars.” Another looks at the artists’ net worth, which goes from “deep in debt” to “loaded.” Then of course there’s the price of art: “hundred$” to “thousand$” to “million$.” There’s a line characterizing the art from the collector’s point of view, from “speculation” to “investment.” There’s an upside-down pyramid, showing the art world in terms of effect rather than mass. And then there’s this:

You can argue the toss on some of these, but the main thrust is clear: the value of a work of art is to a very large degree a function of the city where it’s being sold. New York’s at the top of the heap (or, to be precise, Manhattan); Berlin punches well above its weight; Paris, the erstwhile center of the art world, is conspicuous by its absence.

Art schools, too, are ranked: Yale’s at the top, followed by Columbia, RISD, the Art Institute of Chicago, MICA, Cal Arts, UCLA, Bard, and Pratt. No foreign art schools are on the list, which is a shame, but Powhida is a very American artist.

In any case, I love this particular piece — I’m geeky enough to think that there should be much more art with footnotes — and I’m glad to own it. Naturally, I’ll never sell it. But I can still dream of a day when Powhida is famous and it’s worth a fortune.

It’s being reported by BGR that some Best Buys may be unable to activate new T-Mobile lines at their stores. Normally, you may think “What’s the big deal?” but it’s causing issue for those hoping to buy the new Nexus S superphone. With Best Buy unable to activate a new service line through T-Mobile, some BGR readers are reportedly having to pay the full retail contract-free price of the Nexus S ($530) in order to assure that nobody else nabs their phone. Brutal!

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id="more-50668">According to the reader, he couldn’t activate the new line in store, and after heading home, he called back and after repeated calls, they said that if he wanted to get a Nexus S, he would have to pay full retail for the phone. Now, this seems to be an isolated incident, and who knows if the guy was black listed by T-Mobile or something.

BGR reached out to Best Buy’s press relations people, who apparently didn’t respond to their questions. Have any of our readers had this issue? We’d love to find out. Tell us about it in the comments section.

To briefly recap the specs of the Nexus S, it’s not a bad phone, though it’s basically a Galaxy S with Google branding and a curved display:

4-inch OLED contour display
1GHZ processor
512MB RAM
16GB storage
Android 2.3
5MP Camera w/ LED flash

Source:http://removeripoffreports.net/

Iranian men to be stoned to death over gay sex - Pink News

Two young men who filmed themselves having sex have been sentenced to death by stoning in Iran. The film was discovered on the mobile phones of Ayub and Mosleh, 20 and 21 years old, by agents of the Iranian regime in the Kurdistan city ...

Perfect Market, news ad firm, lands $9 million in funding round ...

Perfect Market Inc, a start-up that seeks to help news organizations make more money through online advertising, has won $9 million in new funding in a round led by Comcast Interactive Capital, the cable giant's venture arm.

Pitchfork: The Strokes Confirm Release Date for New Record

TwentyFourBit points out that the Strokes' bassist Nikolai Fraiture has confirmed a recently speculated rumor concerning the release date of ...

Friday, January 14, 2011

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The main areas of law which are still eligible for public funding are Criminal, the Tenant part of Landlord & Tenant and Family/Matrimonial. Some criminal matters may be means tested and may require a contribution towards the legal advice costs but legal aid is available for most people facing criminal prosecution.

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The situation with Aid for family/matrimonial matters is somewhat different and the rules are beyond the scope of this article. Broadly speaking if a litigant is on benefits then they won't have to make a contribution toward their legal costs and it will all be funded by Legal Aid. If they are not on benefits and earning a wage they may have to make a contribution towards the cost of their legal work. It happens that very few people who are not on benefits fall in to the category where all their costs would be publicly funded.

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It can be very hard when you are applying for a bad credit mortgage, and it feels like all the odds are stacked against you. The feeling of going in to see a loan officer just hoping that they will be favorable toward you and that you might just have a chance of buying a home. The situation may be grim and you're feeling completely overwhelmed anyway, but know that millions before you have been in your same shoes. There is light at the end of the tunnel no matter how dark it may seem. Here are three simple steps that you can use to help you apply and possibly get a bad credit mortgage.

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News Corp.'s iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, delayed, reports say ...

The Daily, the iPad-only newspaper from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., is being delayed a few weeks, according to the Associated Press. The digital paper is still working out subscription details, the AP said.

Apple, News Corp delay The Daily's debut | iLounge News

iLounge news discussing the Apple, News Corp delay The Daily's debut. Find more Apple news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

News Story Details

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Thursday, January 13, 2011

Making Money Through

Two years into the Obama presidency and the economic data is still looking grim. Don't be fooled by the gyrations of the stock market, where optimism is mostly a reflection of the ability of financial corporations -- thanks to massive government largesse -- to survive the mess they created. The basics are dismal: unemployment is unacceptably high, the December consumer confidence index is down, and housing prices have fallen for four months in a row. The number of Americans living in poverty has never been higher, and a majority in a Washington Post poll said they were worried about making their next mortgage or rent payment.

In a parallel universe lives Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama's former budget director and key adviser, who even faster than his mentor, Robert Rubin, has passed through that revolving platinum door linking the White House with Wall Street. The goal is to use your government position to advance the interests of your future employer, and Orszag and Rubin's actions in the government and then at Citigroup provide stunning examples of the synergy between big government and high finance.

As Bill Clinton's treasury secretary, Rubin presided over the dismantling of Glass-Steagall, the New Deal legislation that would have prohibited the creation of the too-big-to-fail Citigroup. He was rewarded with a $15-million-a-year job at Citigroup, where he became a leader in the bank's aggressive move into high-risk ventures. An SEC report in September claimed that Rubin as Citigroup chairman was aware that the bank failed to disclose $40 billion it held in subprime mortgages before the collapse.

During those years at Citigroup, Rubin financed the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, an economic policy program, and named Orszag, a Clinton economic adviser, as its director. The Hamilton Project continued to celebrate Rubin's deregulation philosophy up to the point of utter embarrassment. Clearly, Orszag is not easily embarrassed, for upon taking his new job recently he boasted "I am pleased to be joining Citi, with its unmatched global platform and dedication to providing clients with service and advice."

The most damning comment on this corrupt syndrome was offered by former Citigroup co-chief executive John Reed, who had worked with Rubin to get Glass-Steagall reversed and now is a sharp critic of the result. "We continue to listen to the same people whose errors in judgment were central to the problem," Reed told Bloomberg News. "I'm astounded because we basically dropped the world's biggest economy because of an error in bank management." Reed estimated that the financial deregulation proposals contained in the Dodd-Frank bill and other reforms of the Obama administration represent only 25 percent of the change needed.

The failure to provide serious regulation of the financial industry to avoid future downturns is documented in devastating detail in that Dec. 28 Bloomberg report, written by Christine Harper:

"The U.S. government, promising to make the system safer, buckled under many of the financial industry's protests. Lawmakers spurned changes that would wall off deposit-taking banks from riskier trading. They declined to limit the size of lenders or ban any form of derivatives."

The reason for that failure is obvious from the president's choice of advisers featuring Rubin acolytes from the Clinton years. Harper writes: "While Obama vowed to change the system, he filled his economic team with people who helped create it," referring to, among others, Timothy F. Geithner, who had gone from the Clinton Treasury Department to head the New York Fed, where he presided over the salvaging of Citigroup and AIG. As Obama's treasury secretary he was quick to appoint a Goldman Sachs lobbyist as his chief of staff. Geithner's subservience to Wall Street was reinforced by White House top economic adviser Lawrence Summers, Rubin's deputy and then replacement in the Clinton administration who pushed through the repeal of Glass Steagall and fought against the regulation of derivatives.

And with the decisive assistance from both a Republican and Democratic president, all has worked out just as planned for the banks. Harper reports: "The last two years have been the best ever for combined investment-banking and trading revenue at Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Morgan Stanley, according to data compiled by Bloomberg."

It's all wonderfully bipartisan. Recently it was announced that Carlos Gutierrez, commerce secretary under George W. Bush, had been named to a high position at Citigroup. For President Obama, there's no cause for worry about the loss of indispensable talent from his administration. Orszag's replacement as head of the Office of Management and Budget, Jacob J. Lew, was both a member of Rubin's Hamilton Project and a former Citigroup executive -- thus insuring that government of the banks, by the banks, for the banks shall not perish from the earth.

The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives has begun the process of repealing the Healthcare law. Some have argued that, because the Senate may not repeal it as well, and the President will likely veto it, the House’s repeal is purely “symbolic.”

Just as the reading of the Constitution on the floor of the House, on Wednesday, was symbolic of a “return to constitutionalism,” as Charles Krauthammer writes, the repeal of the Healthcare law in the House will be symbolic not just of the fact that Republicans have heard the will of the American people, but also that they fully understand that the new law is, only superficially, a jumbled and thoughtless mess of rules about how healthcare should be delivered and paid for in this country. In reality, the Healthcare law is a liberal power grab that is gradually permitting the federal government to control more of our lives, making more people dependent upon the government and continuing the culture of dependency among minority groups who, up until now, have mostly voted liberals into power. The symbolism of the repeal will ring loud and clear.

Liberal Democrats will be launching a big campaign over the next few days, doing what they always accuse Republicans and conservatives of doing- “fear-mongering.” They will be telling their constituents that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the repeal of the Healthcare law will increase debt, that Republicans don’t want people with pre-existing conditions to have access to health insurance, and that Republicans want to defund Medicare, new chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan, has set out why these claims are wrong.

However, one of the features of the new Healthcare law, already in effect, is the extension of healthcare coverage to adult children (up until 26 years old), a hallmark of the true intention of this law- to make more people dependent, while it raises premiums on private health insurers who need more money to meet this new requirement.

For those who do not have adult children in the 21 to 26 age range, would it surprise you to know that these adult “children,” who are now covered, are not required to even live with their parents to remain on their plans, and that they may even be married and still be covered under their parents’ health plans?

Through the new Healthcare law, liberal Democrats have gradually introduced the concept that adult children should remain dependent on their parents, and when their parents are not around, perhaps the government can take over in that parental role? Of course, this new rule comes at a time when the economic decline made it difficult for young adults to obtain jobs. This is how the gradual creep of dependency begins: introduce a law which creates dependency on the government at a time of crisis, so that uninformed Americans will see it as a caring and positive intervention to help them in their time of need. This is how every entitlement legislation begins, and why none has ever been totally eradicated thus far, mainly because people have come to expect these benefits.

One of the newly elected members of Congress who understands well the liberals’ drive to make more Americans dependent on the government is Colonel Allen West of Florida. Congressman West will be serving in the Congressional Black Caucus and hopes to represent conservative philosophical ideas such as the importance of individual responsibility, creativity, and entrepreneurship.

In addition, as a result of the left’s encouragement of this culture of dependency, those who are truly in need will no longer have to seek voluntary assistance from neighbors and communities. Conversely, neighbors and communities will not be encouraged to voluntarily reach out to others because the knowledge that the government will provide for their friends’ needs may cause them to think twice. As such, dependency on the government creates more distance, and less connectivity, among members of a community.

At this point in time, any resistance to repealing the Healthcare law, and replacing it with commonsense legislation that reflects free market principles, will be almost entirely about continuing the culture of dependency, a hallmark of liberalism, that has taken over this country. We can be sure that liberals from the previous Congress will try hard to keep this culture in place. Their ability to remain powerful depends on it.

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Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

This news is devastating to the Southern Coal Fields and our entire state. The Spruce Number One permit was issued years ago after undergoing a comprehensive permitting process. It is hard to understand how the EPA at this late hour ...

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

Social news has many flavors. Twitter and Facebook function as social news feeds with your friends pushing out stories they find interesting. But what about news about your friends or other people you care about?

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Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

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Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

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Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

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Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

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Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

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Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

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Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

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Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

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Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

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Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Harvard Undergrads Launch Newsle To Find News About Your Friends ...

Monday, January 10, 2011

Making Fast Money

And to think, our departed coach Hoody McDaniels ran the Broncos franchise QB out of town and tried to get this guy. But I guess not all is thorns on the rose for Matt. He signed a $62 million contract on one decent season of play and can snicker all the way to the bank.

The Chiefs have some other worries as well. As fast as RB Jamaal Charles is, he isn't an every down back. He had a very nice run in the first half for KC's only score, but other than that 41-yard scamper had only 41 more yards the rest of the game. And Thomas Jones and Dexter McCluster, the other two RBs, were almost invisible, getting 15 and 5 yards respectively. And Dwayne Bowe, their No. 1 WR? He had goose eggs. Zero receptions for zero yards, just about the performance he had against Champ Bailey in the second game against Denver.

So, as much as KC improved, they have a long way to go to be an elite team in the AFC.

The Chargers, well, they have once again tried that old San Diego trick of starting slow and thinking they would sneak up on the rest of the division at the end. But this time they couldn't put the finishing touch on their finish and had the humiliation of playing Denver in the last game of the regular season for nothing but pride. And they won the Pride Bowl, beating the Broncos in Mile High Stadium 33-28, in spite of their typical lousy special teams play.

As long as they have Norvie Boy Turner at the helm, they will never make it to the Super Bowl. He chokes worse than a Chihuahua on a dinosaur bone. But at least he kept his job, unlike Tom the Cable Guy in Oakland and McDaniels in Denver. The Chargers do have one other thing none of the other three teams in the division have, though: a legitimate Pro-Bowl QB in Phillip Rivers.

Mollie Vandor is the product manager for Ranker.com where she likes to make lists about reading, eating and bad-TV-watching. She’s also the media director for Girls in Tech LA. You can find her on Twitter @Mollierosev and on her blog.

Whether you’re looking to make a big change, or just tweak a few little things, the new year gives you the perfect opportunity to reflect on your behavior and resolve to do better going forward.

Of course, it’s one thing to say you want to tackle a typical resolution like get in better physical shape, get in better financial shape or — like many of us who work on the web — get your social media presence in order. It’s another thing to actually accomplish those big, broad goals.

So this year, instead of making your goals big and broad, why not take a page from the web world and use analytics to pinpoint the specific stuff you want to change? And, by that same token, why not use data tracking to hold yourself accountable for keeping all those resolutions too?

Read on for some tips on how to use social media to corral your New Year’s resolutions. Let us know in the comments below what tips worked for you, or share your own resolution advice.

Let’s Get Physical/>

There’s the freshman 15 everyone gains from collegiate pizza and beer, and then there’s the startup 15 many of us tech geeks gain from sodas and office snacks. Between the time spent sitting in front of a computer screen and the time spent networking over drinks and dinners, it’s easy to put on pounds when you work on the web. Of course, you can always try the startup diet, but that’s not necessarily going to work for everyone.

Keeping a food and exercise log might sound like a daunting task, but it turns out you may already be tracking some of that data without even knowing it. Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">foursquare actually lets you see your entire checkin history and, if you do a quick search, you can find it so you can easily see whether you’ve really been going to the gym or frequenting your fast food runs.

Similarly, the Foursquare stats page lets you see your own checkin trends in handy graphs and lists. There’s even a site called weeplaces that lets you turn your Foursquare, Facebook Places and class='blippr-nobr'>Gowallaclass="blippr-nobr">Gowalla checkins into graphic visualizations. And, weeplaces will let you filter those visualizations by food-related checkins and parks and recreation checkins, so you can really get a handle on your history.

class='blippr-nobr'>Google Mapsclass="blippr-nobr">Google Maps also lets you search your own history, so can get a visual reminder of the places you’ve been searching for, and start picking up on trends in your own behavior. You just have to enable it. And, of course, there’s the age-old pedometer, made a lot easier and more fashionable via a host of iPhoneclass="blippr-nobr">iPhone and Androidclass="blippr-nobr">Android apps that let you easily track how much you’re walking without having to do anything more than a quick download.

Of course, once you establish the things you want to change about your eating and exercising habits, you still have to make those changes stick. class='blippr-nobr'>Appsclass="blippr-nobr">Apps like LoseIt, Weight Watchers and LiveStrong let you log calories you eat and calories you burn via your smartphone. Fitango prescribes personalized plans to help you get in shape, and gives you a forum for sharing milestones you meet with your friends. Similarly, Phitter is like a fitness-focused class='blippr-nobr'>Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter stream where people share weight loss trials, tribulations and tips to help keep each other going.

Or, you can try something like the Social Workout Challenge, which gives you fitness goals to meet and a community of people to keep you accountable for meeting them. If you really want to take your weight tracking to the next level, there’s even a scale that automatically tweets your weight to the world. While you’re at it, FixNixer and QuitMeter also give you similar tools for tracking your way out of a smoking habit, another great way to get yourself in better physical shape in the new year.

Money, Money, Money/>

For many people, the New Year is also a great time to get a fresh financial start. But again, it’s a lot easier to make changes going forward when you know how you’ve been behaving in the past. That’s where a site like Mint.com can be very handy. class='blippr-nobr'>Mintclass="blippr-nobr">Mint aggregates all of your various accounts, including credit cards, bank accounts and assets, and then turns your spending habits into easy-to-read charts and graphs that show you where you’re spending and where you could be saving. It even lets you compare your shopping and spending habits with other people in your area, so you can see how you stack up. Many credit cards, like American Express Blue and Visa Signature, also give you year-end spending summaries that show you how much you’ve spent, how much you’ve saved, how much interest you’ve accumulated and more.

Once you’ve nailed down how your money is going out the door, you can start figuring out ways to keep more of it in your wallet. Again, this is where tracking will be key to actually keeping those resolutions. First, you can establish your financial goals via an online calculator, which lets you figure out exactly how much to start saving. Once you’ve figured out your goals, there are more than 50 great, free mobile apps to help you track your spending. On Facebook, the BillMonk app will help you keep better track of those tricky situations where you’re sharing a bill with friends, and you need to make sure everyone knows what they owe. XPenser lets you record your expenses from any device, including via tweet and e-mail, and TweetWhatYouSpend gives you a forum for sharing your expenditures with everyone on Twitter, so your friends can help hold you accountable when you blow your budget shopping those post-holiday sales.

Get Your Social Media in Shape/>

Whether or not you work on the web, if you’re reading class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable, chances are you have a social media presence. And, just like your physical and financial identities, your social media self might be due for a little makeover in 2011 too. The good news is that the data is even easier to find when you’re talking about your personal tech habits. For example, you can use the Top Words app to figure out the topics you talk about most on class='blippr-nobr'>Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook. Klout tells you which topics you talk about the most on Twitter, and all sorts of other stats that will help you pinpoint what it is about your social media presence that you may want to change.

Similarly, BackType analyzes your Twitter profile and tells you what percentage of your tweets are replies, retweets, links, etc. Like Klout, it also tells you who you’re influencing and who your influencers are. And, it shows you your most shared sites. All of these are great data points for determining things you’d like to change about your social media presence. Finally, ViralHeat gives you in-depth analysis of the sentiment around your various social network profiles, which really lets you hone in on how your social media behavior is being received by your followers on Facebook, Twitter and across the web.

Once you’ve established what you want to change, you can set up ViralHeat to send alerts and updates directly to your inbox so you can track the impact of those changes on the fly. Similarly, since Klout and BackType both update regularly now, you can see your statistics change as your behavior does, which is a great way to keep yourself motivated. And, of course, make sure you set up Google Alerts to track all the activity around your various accounts.

If your resolution involves blogging more often, there are plenty of apps to help you do that on the go, right from your phone. Another way to remind yourself of things you want to blog, tweet or post about is by using a service like TwittRemind, which lets you tweet yourself reminders to do things throughout the day.

To make the most of your many profiles, consider setting up a hub page via a service like about.meclass="blippr-nobr">about.me, which lets you showcase all your profiles in one place. Or, sign up for a social network aggregation service to make it easier to make changes on all your profiles at once. You also might want to consider setting up a targeted Twitter list of friends and followers who can help you hold yourself accountable and focus your social media efforts so you can minimize the number of relationships you’re managing and maximize the return you’re getting from all these changes.

New Year, New You/>

Whether your New Year’s resolutions involve getting yourself in better physical, financial or social media shape, the web can help you figure out exactly what you want to change and how you’re going to keep yourself accountable for changing it. 2011 is a brand new year and a completely fresh start, and, breaking your New Year’s resolutions is so 2010.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 10 More Creative Uses of the New Facebook Profile [PICS]/> - 10 Cool Facebook Status Tips and Tricks/> - 6 Reasons Why Social Games Are the Next Advertising Frontier/> - 3 Things Brands Must Do to Reach Millennials Online/> - How Social Media Can Help With Your Long Distance Job Search

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, DNY59

For more Social Media coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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Denver Broncos News: Horse Tracks 1/10/11 - Mile High Report

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PHOENIX -- A 22-year-old man described as a social outcast with wild beliefs steeped in mistrust faces a federal court hearing on charges he tried to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in a Tucson shooting rampage that left six people ...

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The new president of ABC News says the door remains open to some form of future partnership with Bloomberg News.

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The new president of ABC News says the door remains open to some form of future partnership with Bloomberg News.

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The new president of ABC News says the door remains open to some form of future partnership with Bloomberg News.

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Your daily cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .. Horse Tracks.

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The new president of ABC News says the door remains open to some form of future partnership with Bloomberg News.

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Your daily cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .. Horse Tracks.

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Your daily cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .. Horse Tracks.

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The new president of ABC News says the door remains open to some form of future partnership with Bloomberg News.

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Your daily cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .. Horse Tracks.

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Your daily cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .. Horse Tracks.

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The new president of ABC News says the door remains open to some form of future partnership with Bloomberg News.

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Your daily cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .. Horse Tracks.

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Friday, January 7, 2011

Making Money From the Internet

Ruh roh. After yesterday's euphoria around the new year wiping the
economic slate clean, investors woke up and realized that, well, a new
year does not wipe the economic slate clean and unemployment remains
unhealthily high (and as unhealthily high as if it had shared a needle
with Gia Carangi), housing prices have either already started their double dip or are getting ready to double dip (and for the record, Money McBags hates double dippers), and JWOWW still wants her nude pics back. So some things are still rotten in the state of Ben's market.

A sobering day caused large cap stocks to mildly sell off while small cap stocks went down like someone named Ms. Candy Deepthroat
at an NBA all-star weekend (and Money McBags promises he couldn't make
up anything as bizarre as that). So has the market topped or do we pray
to the great Bernanke Put in the sky and buy the fucking dip? Money
McBags' cognitive dissonance hasn't been this high since Paul Krugman
won a Nobel Prize in Economics or since he learned of something called adult chocolate milk
(because really, why would one need to mix malt liquor with anything?
It is perfectly delicious on its own), so he is going to remain
cautiously hedged right now even though the market still feels like it
wants to go up more than a priapism sufferer after shotgunng a case of
viagra.

As for macro news, the Fed released their minutes
from last month's meeting and to save you from inelegant prose, Money
McBags can sum up the minutes in four words "Same shit, different day."
If you read the minutes, and Money McBags recommends that if you do,
you not be operating heavy machinery (so sorry Lexington Steele, you'll
just have to read the Cliffs' Notes) and you say goodbye to your loved
ones ahead of time (because reading the minutes could put you in a
deeper sleep than Terri Schiavo), you'll see that the Fed governors found
some things were getting a nut hair better and other things (like
unemployment, housing, and shit that matters) remained worse than a Mary
Meeker internet call or whatever it is they show on the Style Network.

The key point is that the Fed is determined to stick with the pace of
the $600B Treasury bond-buying program because in their estimation (and
remember these are highly paid witch doctors), the economy is still
struggling, or to use a more technical term, "eating a fat dick." Some
investors thought the Fed may not employ the full extent of the $600B
but "members emphasized that the pace and overall size of the
purchase program would be contingent on economic and financial
developments; however, some indicated that they had a fairly high
threshold for making changes to the program." So this means that
QE2 is here to stay because to give you a hint how high the Fed's
threshold is, Janet Yellen doesn't even have a safe word to mumble out
of her ball gag when playing "bubble my asset" in the Fed's
headquarters.

In other macro news, according to the Commerce Department factory orders were up .7%
which beat analyst guesses of a .1% decline and is consistent with
yesterday's rise in the ISM (and leave the first J off for savings).
This marks the first time since the depression began that two disparate
yet similar statistics have kind of matched when delivering relatively
positive news which has left Money McBags more confused than he is over
whatever this angry birds
thing is to which people are so fucking addicted. But he guesses even a
broken clock is right twice a day (unless it is digital and out of
batteries, but whatever). Orders have now risen in four of the last
five months and excluding transportation, orders were up a cockriffic
2.4% which was the highest since March and likely driven by demand for
the production of more naval movies.

Internationally, inflation is coming to Europe
and Money McBags only hopes it remembered to bring its deodorant with
it because it sure as heck won't be able to find any when it hits the
continent. Annual inflation rose 2.2% in December from 1.9% in
November according to an initial estimate from Eurostat, which is the
EU's version of the B(L)S only even douchier. It is the first time
inflation has been above the ECB's 2% target since 2008 but luckily core
inflation was only ~1% (you know, the prices of shit people don't
actually buy) so the ECB can continue to make up different metrics to
show inflation has been tamed.

In the market, auto sales were up
~7% for the month thanks to people losing their jobs and having to
downsize to cars from apartments. Ford, GM, and Chrysler sales were all
up over 7% while Toyota was down .4% as a result of a spate of recalls
and people preferring shittier made cars. In addition to strong auto
sales, retail sales were up 3.6% last week compared to a year ago despite a ridonkulous snowstorm on the East Coast and people not having any fucking money.

As for stocks, Motorolla split in to two companies
today which will allow shareholders to lose in two different ways now
instead of just one. The company split its consumer business,
which makes cell phones people no longer use and cable set-top boxes
which will soon be outdated, from the professional business, which sells
police radios to state governments who can no longer afford them and
barcode scanners to stores going out of business. So in short, the
business plan may be a bit more lacking than that of sex.com's
(and two important notes here on that sex.com article. 1. The url
sold for $13MM which is only $3MM more than the asking price for the
award winning When Genius Prevailed and WGP certainly has the better
content so just remember that potential buyers. 2. To the guy who
bought the url and has no idea what to do with it, um, you have heard of
titties,
right? Shit, you don't need to go all Porter's five forces to figure
out what to do with sex.com, fuck, it's an easier business plan write
than the one for BAC (Step one: Get too big. Step 2: Fail. Step 3:
Profit) so Money McBags will be happy to put his MBA, his CFA, and his
love of T&A, to work on a consulting basis to help out).

Elsewhere grocery stores sold off after Morgan Stanley cut its rating on Supervalu
to "Nofuckingvalu" and told clients to underweight the stock due to
margin compression. And finally Atheros Communications was up 18% on a rumored buyout from Qualcomm as Qualcomm seeks a way to get in to the tablet market to lose to Apple in yet another vertical.

Money McBags has plenty more today as he gets his small cap on (and he doesn't just mean his jimmy cap) at the award winning When Genius Prevailed. So click over and take a look, or just browse through the archives as you might find some very useful material and analysis.

I have never been a gambler.

I pay attention to horse racing twice most years, and three times at most. I find out the winner of the Kentucky Derby (though usually not by watching the actual race) and then, when the Preakness rolls around, I check to see if the same horse has won both races.

If so, I pay just enough attention to learn if that horse also wins the Belmont Stakes, taking racing’s prestigious Triple Crown. The last time a horse actually won all three races was in 1978, so since then my excitement over the Belmont Stakes has been pretty limited.

In spite of all that, I thought I knew at least one thing about the gambling world: The house always wins. But it turns out that’s not the case when New York City or New York State takes the bets.

In early December, after about 40 years in business, New York City’s Off-Track Betting Corporation (OTB) closed its doors when it failed to receive a hoped-for legislative reprieve. In its last full fiscal year, ending March 31, the state-controlled corporation operated at a loss of $37.2 million after handing over the money it was required to give to the state, local governments, and race tracks. At the time of its closing, OTB had also racked up a pension bill that, together with health benefits promised to retirees, could be greater than $600 million.

This is a pretty astonishing feat considering that OTB’s business consisted of taking money from people and then giving some of it back to them. This is a business which was previously handled by neighborhood bookies, who never seemed to have a problem making money at it. To be fair, the bookies probably had a less generous pension plan.

Yet both New York City and New York State managed to fail to make money in the business of taking money for nothing. The city finally gave up in 2008, when it handed its mess over to the state.

Officials have tried to blame OTB’s collapse on decreased interest in horse racing. Speaking with The New York Times, John D. Sabini, chairman of the State Racing and Wagering Board, referred to off-track betting as “an industry that’s having a tough time…in a tough economy.” But while decreased demand is a fine excuse for not making much money, a gambling outfit should still be able to avoid losing money. All you have to do is reduce expenses to match revenues.

OTB could have easily closed down many or all of its betting parlors and relied on a small staff to manage Internet and phone traffic. For some businesses, atmosphere is everything, but OTB considered it a major upgrade in “customer amenities” when it installed restrooms and seating in 1993. It seems safe to say then that, while some may have enjoyed a sense of camaraderie in the storefront parlors, most people didn’t turn to off-track betting for the luxurious environment. With the cost savings from closing physical locations, OTB could have done some advertising to try to boost demand. That is what any rational manager would have done.

Unfortunately, instead of having rational managers, OTB had New York City and then New York State.

OTB was designed to function as a public benefit corporation, an entity that operates like a private business but turns over its profits to the state. However, everyone knew that OTB, being affiliated with New York City, was almost certain to become a bastion of patronage, if not corruption, and probably would never admit to having any profits to give back to the government. So lawmakers decided to have the corporation pay the city, and later also the state, a portion of its gross revenue, rather than its net profits. As Assemblyman J. Gary Pretlow of Mount Vernon succinctly explained: “If they’re allowed to pay on the net there would be nothing left over.”

This structure meant that the state was sure of getting some money, but it also meant the government had little reason to encourage OTB to cut costs. Meanwhile OTB had no assurance that it would have enough money after paying the state and the city to actually cover its operating costs, let alone reinvest in its business. The result was inevitable. Now that inevitability has come to pass.

It may take some skill to lose money collecting bets, but it’s the kind of skill New York has in spades. When it comes to the sport of mismanagement, there’s no doubt about it: The people who run the Empire State are thoroughbreds.

For more articles on financial, business, and other topics, view the Palisades Hudson newsletter, Sentinel, or subscribe to my daily opinion column, Current Commentary.

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