Coyote Blog

I am all for restructuring the whole social security system, but, as I have written before, we cannot let the government invest social security funds in private equities.  The potential for manipulation and creeping socialism are astronomical.  Its easy to picture fights over whether the social security funds should be invested in tobacco makers, gun makers, hospitals that conduct abortions, Domino's Pizza (that donates funds to oppose abortion), Haliburton, etc. etc. 

I have always used government-funding of universities as an example -- the government uses the leverage of this funding (and the threat of its withdrawal) to force all kinds of regulations on universities.  Today, we have a good case example that is even more directly applicable. 

Over the past several years, Calpers (the California state workers retirement fund) has been a great example of how government control of equity investments can be a disaster.  In the case of Calpers, their huge pension investments automatically make them one of the largest investors in each company in their portfolio.  Calpers has used that power wisely at times, promoting improvements in corporate governance, but has also used it astronomically poorly. 

Under Sean Harrigan, Calpers portfolio has been unbelievably politicized, up to and including having the portfolio use its ownership in several grocery chains to support striking members of the grocery union run by... Sean Harrigan.  Professor Bainbridge has a couple of good roundups here and here.

If we are change how social security funds are invested, let individuals make their own investment choices. 

A regular feature, it is explained here. Many of our ACME products come courtesy of this site.

Usually, to keep with our theme, I try to stick with products used by our friend the coyote. Given that the weekend is approaching, though, and you may be looking for the right purchase to start out your weekend, consider this great ACME product:

I can imagine the pricing:
Talking Model: $20.00
Non-Talking Model: $30.00

Enjoy!

Vote here.  Make sure to click on the "best of the rest" category.  And, if you are so inclined, don't hesitate to vote for this site!  If you are too lazy to scroll, you can vote for us here.

Like much of the media, the proliferation of blogs are leading new bloggers to seek out new niches.  Here are two pretty narrow, though as a guy, fairly compelling ones I found today:

The first is the NFL Cheerleader Blog.  Hmm, if I could find a way to get paid to write that blog, my life would be complete.

The other is RemoteBlog, a blog dedicated entirely to universal remote controls.  If that is too niche for you, you might like Gizmodo or Home Theater Blog.

By the way, if anyone is itching to send Coyote a Christmas gift, I will gratefully accept one of these bad boys.

Previously, I explained why I like Football Outsiders here. Their week 12 statistical rankings of teams is here.

If you really want to dig into NFL stats, this is a great site.  Also, they just ran their model restrospectively on the year 2000.  And, what do you know, our beloved Arizona Cardinals again came in dead last, with the worst full-season score in the history of the rankings.

I know this will come as a shock to many people, but grand jury testimony is supposed to be secret and stay that way.  I mention this, because lately, "sealed" and secret court records seem to inevitably end up in the media.  The most prominent example is yesterday's leak of Balco grand jury testimony, though the Clinton-related grand juries seemed to be sieves as well.

There are real reasons for secrecy in grand jury proceedings.  The most obvious is that grand juries have often been used to build cases against organized crime figures, and those testifying may be risking their life to do so.  More recently, with the enormous power of the press to convict people even before they go to trial, sealed testimony can help protect reputations as well as the presumption of innocence.

Now, I am not a lawyer, and I would love to hear what Volokh has to say.  I suspect there are those who would argue, as they did in the (admittedly different) case of the release of Jack Ryan's divorce records, that transparency in the legal system is more important than individual privacy.  This may or may not be true legally, but I think it would hurt the grand jury process, and anyway, I don't think this is what happened here - the Balco testimony looks to have been leaked illegally.  By the way, I am tired of the notion that journalistic privilege stemming from the first amendment trumps legal compliance with any other laws.  I know the press loves having this, sortof like the double-O license to kill, but I don't buy it.

UPDATE#1

Hey, maybe I can be a lawyer.  Here is Eugene Volokh talking about journalistic privilege today!

UPDATE#2

I forgot to mention that there is an exception to secrecy - the witness may publicly discuss their own testimony.  Again, however, I do not think this is the case here.  I don't think Giambi released these details about his own testimony, and the format of the article - with both sides of the Q&A, is pretty clearly from the transcript of the hearings.  Besides, if Giambi were going to voluntarily go public with this admission, he is much more likely to get paid $10 million to tell it to Barbara Walters than he is to anonymously leak it to the SF Chronicle.

I just got back from about 10 days on vacation.  My bookkeeper takes care of all the mail that is vendor related, and I get what is left.  Unsurprisingly, I had about 60 pieces of mail, which is actually pretty low since we are in our off season.

However, when I started going through it, I was struck by how much was government related.  Out of those 60 pieces of mail, 5 were small checks (pay phone commissions, that type of thing), about 5 were from private parties and the rest was all government -- department of labor, department of revenue and taxation, vehicle registrations and issues, etc.  Have we really come to the point that 80% of my correspondence is with government regulatory and taxation authorities?  Part of this is because we are in 10 states, as I have discussed here, but it still seems excessive.

The one dominant piece of mail was a survey from the Department of Labor in every state we operate in.  The first thing I do with these surveys, as discussed here, is check to see if they are voluntary.  If so, they immediately get circular filed.  I don't want to spend the time, and I don't think the government needs the information.  In large part data is just the job security of the bureaucracy - more data means more people collecting and analyzing and reporting, and, the worst, proposing new regulations and taxes based on the data.

Two states, California and Florida, required the survey get done, so I did it.  Actually completing these surveys really got me irritated,  There is very little on this thing that we don't already report to the government.  Already, we have to report every individual person's wages each month or quarter.  Why is this not enough?  Mostly, this survey just asks me to aggregate the data the government already has in different ways.  Why can't they do that?  What are computers for, anyway?

UPDATE #1

I got the following comment:

And you'd like them to propose regulations based on incomplete data?

It is not the accuracy of data that is objectionable - it is the ridiculous detail.  For example, does the government really need to know monthly employment levels by detailed SIC code by county?  This just leads to some government staffer saying - hay, the employment in the tourism business in Maricopa county fell by 1% in August - we need a taxpayer funded initiative to promote tourism there, yada yada.  And whala, pork is born.  See examples here.

Yes, its up again.  As usual, I will be linking to some of my favorite articles later today when I get time to read through everything.  Enjoy.