Administrative: June 2005 Archives
I've decided I've allowed myself to become distracted from my main focus.
This blog was begun with the idea of consumer issues and education foremost. My ambition is to be as much the "go to" blog (or "go sub" for programming purists) as Michelle Malkin is for immigration or La Shawn Barber for race relations or The Truth Laid Bear for what's going in in the blogosphere.
Like them, I'm going to continue to cover other issues, and blog on other subjects, I hope with at least a fraction of their competence and vision.
I am committed to the Raging RINOs, and the Life Liberty Property Alliance as well. I also broadly support the goals of several other groups and hope to be considered one of their ideological friends. These include but are not limited to the Axis of Naughty, Gunbloggers, Milbloggers, and the Wide Awakes.
I'm not going to back off on any issue. I'm self-employed in a profession where all I need is a miniscule proportion of that market in order to do quite well. As long as I keep myself in compliance and keep producing a minimum amount of business, I'll have a place to work. If one person becomes offended and refuses to do business with me, quite likely somebody else will seek me out for the same reason. If you don't like my opinion and want to change it, you're going to have to convince me I'm wrong, misdirected, misinformed or just don't understand the situation. You can't call my boss and get me fired. You can't embarass me enough to shut me up. And I learned a long time ago how to handle threats. I don't suffer intimidators gladly.
But in looking over my blog yesterday, out of fifteen posts on the main page, only two covered the issues this blog was founded to address. That needs to change now It doesn't have to be twelve or fourteen. If I can keep it at five or above, I'll be happy. And so, from now on I'm going to do ONE "Daily Links" post, and add to, amend, and update as the day goes on. Trackbacks will be something I limit to when I do some serious work on an issue (or when invited). If anyone has a link on a consumer issue, particularly big ticket items such as financial planning, insurance, mortgage, and real estate where there is a real financial penalty for not getting it right the first time, I want to be on top of it. Send it to "issues at (the domain name)". It's going to be at least one link to your blog if I use it. I am and always will be on the lookout for helpful submissions and I actively want cobloggers for areas I'm not qualified in. If anyone has suggestions for how I can better automate my search for issues on my topic before the blogosphere, PLEASE tell me, as I'm pretty decent with search engines but not so hot with other web resources, especially automatically updating ones. (I'm just learning to use Blogrolling!)
I realize that I have concentrated upon mortgages in my articles. I have also have two major postings on the buying and selling or real estate set to go in the next week or so. Mortgage and Real Estate have gotten the posting thus far because it is there that I see issues every day. Whereas my licenses are still current on financial planning, it's not where I talk to people every day. I will get to the financial planning issues, and if you have a special request, send it to me at requests at (domain name)
Had a problem with my domain forwarding because my registrar game me the easiest answer for them, rather than the one that would actually accomplish what I needed it to.
I believe I've got it fixed now, but of course it's not going to be reliably there for a day or two until it percolates through the internet.
A public Thank You to Chris at Powerblogs for taking the time to tell me how to get the problem fixed even though it wasn't under his control.
to Glenn and the Axis of Naughty
Frank J. is occasionally amusing. Glenn is essential
A blogging alliance
Their credo is at The Politburo Diktat
Found them on The (New) Truth Laid Bear Well done Bear.
I believe, and have for many years, that where a rule of law is operative, the most effective weapon to use upon those who are abusers of what sort or another is to shed light upon their doings. Indeed, I have long thought that this is the best indicator of the strength of the rule of law - that once sufficient light (publicity) shines upon a given subject, those whose responsibility it is to perform the relevant governmental tasks will attack the problems, as opposed to those performing the illumination.
Given this, my first thought was actually to use Flashlight Crusade as a working title (and indeed, have registered that domain as well). My wife suggested Diogenes.com, after the well known pauper who spent his life looking for an honest man. However, given the number of cockroaches about, I don't want something the image of something handheld, where the cockroaches go back to doing the same old thing as soon as the holder moves on. I want this stuff to stick around, and continue to illuminate the subjects covered so that said cockroaches have to start acting like responsible human beings if they have any desire to avoid being stomped. If they act like responsible, respectable human beings, they become responsible, respectable human beings. And unlike Diogenes, I happen to believe most humans are basically honest, likable folks. However, many professional fields (including my own) are set up such that people are trained in them by basically being told, "This is the way things are done," and expected to conform because that is what is necessary. Given this as a reality, it is very difficult for an individual practitioner to stand up and say, "No. That is not the way to be treating people who put money in my pocket and food on my family's table," especially given that the mechanisms for changing these behaviors place one at a competitive disadvantage - in other words, if you try to be morally better than the competition, your business is likely to fail. And the motivations for continuing the prevalent (disreputable) practices and even enhancing them are large - these tend to be those who succeed wildly in the given fields. Quite simply, the existing practice is that individual practitioners (and group practitioners) "go along to get along". They do things the way the industry has always done them, so that must be okay, and because if they don't, they are not likely to succeed. Suffice it to say that my plan is to give them, as well as consumers, the ability to improve this situation.
I don't believe my ability to shed light is unique, nor do I believe myself immune to making mistakes and inadvertently committing the errors I go on about. I am intentionally trying to set up the conditions of maximum transparency here, for myself as well as everyone else, so that people can call me on my errors as well. I'll never improve if I don't know I've fallen short. I happen to believe that appropriate accountability for everyone is a good thing. Most people have heard variations upon Oliver Cromwell's famous "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." One of my tenets of day-to-day life is to realize that Cromwell himself was failing his own challenge. So I try to conduct error checking on my own, but the point of all this is that if you have your own Searchlight, Flashlight, or even Lamp to wield, please let me know. I can't be a crusade all by myself.
Contents Policy
I'm going to spend a lot of effort to keep this site as civil as possible. While the use of profanity is not going to be banned outright, it will be heavily scrutinized and discouraged. In either posts or comments, the challenge will be to speak to the issues of the argument and debate, not to the personalities. Simply because something is not profane does not mean it will not be deleted, either, if a post or comment fails on this point, or on other grounds of merit (faulty logic, abusive, etcetera). Think of the site as not quite family safe, but where it fails to achieve family safeness I hope you will agree that the lapse will be compensated for by the content.
(I'll admit I love a good Cluebatting, and am considering a category for it, where less restrictive policies apply, but am concerned it may sabotage the ability of the site as a whole to keep the debate civil. It is an unfortunate fact that these things do tend to spill over, and while a good Cluebatting is a joy to read, a poor one is pathetic, and they all tend to lower the level of mutual respect. I also am painfully aware certain people cannot be dealt with except by wielding a Plutonium Plated Nuclear Cluebat of Doom. My contention is this should still be the last resort, rather than the first.)
To encourage keeping the debate as issue oriented as possible, anonymity is going to be treated as somewhere in the spectrum from Officially Discouraged to Officially Frowned Upon to Officially Banned, with the emphasis tending towards the more severe end of the spectrum. Being anonymous is not being accountable for what you say and do. If I say something that's mistaken, misleading, or just a flat out lie, my credibility and reputation should suffer appropriately, and if you want to share my stage, you've got to live by my rules. The only beneficial uses of anonymity that I have observed in my time on this planet thus far is the ability to call someone else's attention to a situation, which that entity then investigates and stakes their own public credibility and reputation upon reporting. Even in mathematics or the hard sciences, unless your audience has the individual ability to evaluate the argument on its own merits (Something only a small portion of the populace possesses at the higher ranges), the debate usually comes down to credibility, and credibility proceeds from reputation. Anonymous has none.
To start with, I'm going to limit comments to 2048 characters - 2k. I may adjust this up or down as time does by, but the idea is that if something is longer than that, it probably deserves a post of its own. Send it to me via email. Credit will be given, if used.
I'm going to try to keep individual expert essays to a length most people can read in a break at work. If you want to submit one (or many), keep it to a manageable length, and aimed at a general audience of high school graduates. The point is not to bring the audience up to a professional level of competence, but to bring them to a point where they are educated consumers with a high probabilty of getting the best available bargain. In some cases, even a very narrow topic will require longer treatment, and that is fine, but the ambition is to make it comprehensible, accessible, and memorable, as well as accurate.
The Book on Mortgages Everyone Should Have
What Consumers Need To Know About Mortgages
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What Consumers Need To Know About Buying Real Estate
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- Day by Day It is site policy to list the main page of every site I reference. Sometimes the real world intervenes and I haven't gotten to it yet, or one falls through the cracks on a long post with multiple references. It is also site policy to list the main page of every site that lists this one on their equivalent roll, as well as the main page of all sites that are members of any of the same groups this site is a member of. Please send me an email with a link to the main page of your site if I've overlooked you (dm at the domain name). For the clue-challenged, note that it is a requirement for your link to appear on every page of your site, just like mine does, and I will not link to spam sites.