Daily Archives: Jul 6, 2012

View 731 Friday, July 06, 2012

The morning LA Times has a story about San Bernardino County studying a proposal to use eminent domain procedures to acquire underwater county homes, then negotiate new financing for the householders so that they can continue to live in their houses. The Times didn’t seem to know what to think about it, but when the Rush Limbaugh show came on his substitute certainly did: it is theft, he said. Robbery. Thievery.

The scheme is simple: the county seizes homes whose value is less than the mortgage. The county then pays the banks who own the mortgage the fair market value of the houses, and in essence holds the mortgage for all those living in the houses who are willing to pay for them at the reduced value and at the reduced payment rates. The county charges the current interest rates or perhaps a bit more to help finance the bureaucracy and the whole seizure-remortgage process (current proposals contemplate a minimum bureaucracy and private contracts for most of it). The banks who made the loans eat the loss, but they do get the current fair market value of the house. In the ideal case the householder has paid something as a down payment. One presumes that he ‘loses’ that in the sense that when this process begins the householder has zero equity, but since the refinance will be, presumably, a thirty year fixed interest mortgage, the householder begins to build equity from that moment on. He goes from negative equity to zero.

I am not at all sure this is theft. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but it’s worth discussing, and the more I think on it the better it sounds. Yes, the bank loses the difference between the amount loaned and the current fair market price. The question is, hasn’t the bank already lost that? The county gets the benefit of a householder owner who will keep the house from falling into desuetude. The county economy gets the backload of underwater domestic real estate cleared and a normalization of the housing market. The householder gets the house at the cost of all of his now-non-existent equity.

Do the benefits outweigh the intrusions? This is a county effort. Not state, and certainly not Federal. It is a bit of strain on the eminent domain precedents, but it’s not that great an extension of the power and presumably it could be written to make precise what it’s precedent for. Among other things it concerns owner-occupants, not properties occupied by renters, or abandoned places bought for a flip. I do note that even those might be discussed: what you don’t want is a lot of vacant housing turned into flophouses and drug centers.

It makes sense on the moral side. For good or ill the government did persuade people to get in over their heads. There has been considerable time since the housing bubble burst. I do not see this as encouraging more people to play flip games and inflate a new bubble. And the banks are not being robbed of anything they actually have, assuming that the fair market price assessments are honestly done.

I think if I were a San Bernardino County Commissioner I might be persuaded to vote for this; I’d certainly listen to the pitch.

Anyway that’s what I was thinking about on my morning walk.

Here is a mystery that has me puzzled, presuming that the facts are as stated. I’ve seen nothing else about it. Anyone know what’s going on?

http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/bizarre-chinas-eerie-ghost-cities-arise/ 

Eric is here and we’re going to get some cleanup work done this afternoon.

The Ray Bradbury Memorial LASFS meeting is tomorrow, Saturday July 7 at 2 PM at the LASFS clubhouse. Ray joined LASFS in the early days and has been a member ever since. A number of people will tell Ray Bradbury stories.

View 731 Thursday, July 05, 2012

I hope you had a good Fourth. We stayed home, joined by my son Alex and his wife, and by Larry and Marilyn Niven. Then today Niven and I went up the hill.

For reflections on the Fourth see https://statelymcdanielmanor.wordpress.com/ 

In digging for something else I came across this:

Ortega y Gasset’s “Revolt”

and the Problem of Mass Rule

E. Robert Statham, Jr.

http://www.mmisi.org/ma/46_03/statham.pdf

It is not a substitute for reading Ortega’s Revolt of the Masses which is one of those books that every civilized person should read as part of his education, but it is a good exposition on Ortega’s thesis. It will seem quite alien to many. Ortega, after all, said in answer to the charge that he was in favor of aristocracy said that he was guilty of much more than that: he believed that societies were societies to the extent that they were aristocratic, and if they ceased to be aristocratic they ceased to be societies. The Revolt of the Masses is why he holds that view. This essay in Modern Age – a journal founded by my mentor Russell Kirk. One of his collaborators in the founding of Modern Age was Kenneth Cole who was my professor at the University of Washington. If you’re looking for some heavy reading, this essay is worth your time. And if you haven’t read Ortega, put him on your list. You should.

It’s late, and it was a strenuous trip up the hill. I went to the LASFS meeting after dinner, and it’s very much time for bed now. More another time. LASFS will have a memorial meeting in memory of member Ray Bradbury this Saturday at 2 PM. A number of people who knew Ray will be there. The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society has a tradition: death will not release you, even if you die; which is why I say member rather than ‘former’ member. Ray would agree. I’ll tell a couple of my Bradbury stories. Others will tell even better ones.

Larry and Marilyn Niven, and alas my old shed needs painting worse than I thought. Sable is negotiating for anything Marilyn didn’t eat. Viking dogs don’t beg, they negotiate…

It got hot on the trail today. Sable sees a big handsome Husky Malamute coming up the hill.

I got this on another conference. Then a Pentagon contact told me his IT guy told him to check his computer

In case you haven’t heard, come Monday, the FBI is going to take down a DNS server safety net that could leave thousands (or more) U.S. internet users without internet access. This is not a hoax, it’s a real thing.
If you have not gotten your computers checked for the malware, please go to this link ASAP (http://www.dcwg.org) and do so. Otherwise, you risk being offline until you can get your computer fixed.

That got me asking my security experts about it, and Rick Hellewell has this to say:

True….somewhat overhyped, but true. See msnbc story here http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/malware-may-knock-thousands-internet-monday-864024

Facebook and Google users may have already gotten warnings. But that link is a good place to check; it’s run by the FBI.

..Rick…

Eric Pobirs expands:

From the descriptions I’ve read it’s very unlikely for an actively used machine to be infected and the user unaware. The malware was usually accompanied by other items that did obnoxious stuff like ad popups. I strongly suspect the estimated 350,000 infected systems are rarely used directly and things like monitoring systems checked by remote access or machines that have been left running and completely forgotten.

http://www.dns-ok.us/

This site, link provided by the DCWG.ORG site, appears to be a simple and painless test.

I wonder though, if instead of shutting everything down on the substitute DNS servers, if they should spend a day or so redirecting anything that talks to them from a web browser to a page saying YOU ARE INFECTED in big text and linking to the DCWG site. Perhaps they have and I just missed the mention.

Eric