Category Archives: The Depression

Fascinating Map

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Showing the numbers and proportions of secession petitioners by state. Found via Jeff Soyer.

I laughed when I saw California with the lowest proportion of the population. Massachusetts was tied for second with Maryland, with Illinois third and, it appears, Minnesota fourth. No surprises there, or with Alaska having the highest percentage and Texas the highest total.

Of course, the question of secession was settled by force over a century ago, but that makes it neither less appealing nor less of a political statement to agitate lip service toward it.

Oh Megan

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Good points, but…

Four pound sugar bags have been an option for at least four years. I first encountered them in Stop & Shop, the company that brought you Peapod. At times, they were lower per pound so I’d buy them.

People aren’t stupid. We do notice size changes. It is frustrating, but you have to be a relatively monied, inattentive shopper not to notice 16 oz cans becoming 14, and so forth. Cranberry sauce. Tuna. I’ve even noticed smaller kielbasa for the same price as a pound. At least sugar had 4 lbs as an option, with 5 lbs remaining standard. That may have been an early instance of trying to give people on a tight budget a smaller size at an easier to take price, though there have always been one pound sugars for that.

Size changes aren’t new. It’s been happening with candy bars since I was a kid, decades ago.

Another size reduction? Potatoes in 4 lb bags. Not universal, but they exist, and are marketed at what would be a decent or sale price for five pounds, making it easy to be fooled into grabbing a bag, thinking it’s a deal. Very important to pay attention to those unit prices.

Elections Have Consequences

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I knew there were tax changes coming, barring anything done to avert them, and I just discovered one aspect I’d not know of before in the chart here. Child tax credit is going from $1000 back to $500 in 2013. That may not suddenly mean we owe more, or even that we get less back in earned income credit, but it may be a close thing, or may matter in a couple years.

Not that the child tax credit should even exist, but since it does, and it potentially affects our finances, why would we approve of an arbitrary drop? As such things go, it seems least worst, in the manner of the EIC if you’re really into evening things out. The trouble with the EIC is the donut hole dropoff, which we start to approach, in which your effective tax rate is staggering. Even now, I figured out last tax year that each dollar of self-employment income I might add means 47 cents in additional tax. If I charge you $40 to fix your computer because I figure that’s all you can afford, or all the market will bear, I make a tad over $20 of it in reality, and no matter that I spent three hours, for which I should have charged between $120 and $300. But this is not about pricing and marketing and even the effects of self-esteem on same.

Also, the more direct impact on us is the end of the payroll tax reduction, which arguably should never have been enacted anyway. But since it was, the end of it represents a substantial tax increase on people of modest income. We’re talking about eliminating what we saved by canceling our landline, to put it in real terms, or enough to get McDonald’s 2-3 times a month… except we don’t do that, because the money isn’t there! If it’s not there for things we want or need, how is it there for a tax increase? It’s not. Nor is it there to be a portion of the additional we’d need to spend on groceries in order to change my diet to comply with what the cardiologist wants to see to maximize my lifespan and minimize my chance of additional stents or worse. Not. There. For. Health. So it’s not there for taxes, either, and if you think Obamacare is going to help me afford to eat healthier, you’re delusional.

The thing is, again, the tax shouldn’t have been cut in the first place, so nobody would be able to miss it. Or it should have been eliminated 100% in a massive overhaul of everything. As long as you pay lip service to it being a retirement account, or even if you don’t, and instead recognize it as a wobbly pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme, cutting that tax makes no sense, as it affects if either way.

The child tax credit, though… As a matter of social policy, what is it? It recognizes that people with children could use an added tax advantage because OMG expensive. By extension, it makes having children a prioriy of the government. New subjects citizens to help keep the social security Ponzi scheme economy going in the future, replacing older workers as the retire, and some so the whole scheme economy doesn’t collapse.

Back to the donut hole. It’s more than the taxes. My 47% assumes self-employment, and would be lower otherwise, but if it’s employment or business income, if it takes time away from home, it means daycare. If I were to trade in my part-time job for full time, there would be an immediate daycare “tax” of $270 a week. Not even guessing at how much more that might be in summer or school vacation weeks. I have to account for that, elimination of the EIC, even though for us that has been on paper and being taken to cover old tax debt each year, incurring income tax on income that had none before as well as the added income, insurance costs that will change, and costs associated with commuting and having less “free” time. Working from home or doing business from home and flexibly/less than full time modifies that, but doesn’t avoid it entirely. For a specific potential job, I estimated needed $40,000 a year above the income I make part time just to stay even. Not compensating me at all for taking my time. That’s basically $43 an hour for each extra hour above what I work part time.

No wonder I still keep thinking what I have to do is make a living at self-employment and/or writing and/or part-time work from home.

Things have to change, in any event. My reaction to the election was a coldly furious resolution to be prepared to survive whatever happens. Ironically, that means improving my income. Expenses have nowhere to go but up, since we are about as to the bone as possible. I figure on being better able to cover living expenses, while continuing to keep them as low as possible, while preparing against disaster, disruption, lack of income in the future… all the things that can happen “unexpectedly” (if you have blinders on). It’s great to hope things go well and change for the better, but in reality it could take decades to recover from this depression and from four more years of fundamental transformation. If it happens at all. In the long view, the tax blip coming up is nothing, and could help things turn toward the saner sooner rather than later.

I Compose the Best Posts in My Head at Work

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I just don’t remember them later!

I was wrong, obviously. I forgot Wizard’s First Rule: People are stupid. Thought of that at work, while my thoughts churned.

I can’t go Galt now, or I would. Planned or not, I’ve de facto been going Galt for the past four years. I said things would get better regardless who won. I didn’t say they’d stay better, let alone get as much better, and as I conceded to a leftist acquaintance, we would crash either way. Just why sooner rather than later?

No, I have to change my life to what will seem to be better and wealthier, because I can’t go unprovisioned into the darkness, and provisioning takes money, while it still buys things.

Republicans will have to change. Mitt ran a good race, as a better candidate than I’d have imagined. Cerainly none of the crew were better, which is a sad statement. Sure, there were some near misses and some excitement, but they all were flawed. He didn’t emphasize social conservatism, yet the party has saddled itself with that to the point people assume. From what I could see, that was what people feared. While they didn’t need to fear it, republicans need to be more overt in recognizing and acknowledging it’s over, that there’s a new normal. Better to focus on the economics that will no go out of style, and improve foreign policy while keeping the general tenor of strength and world leadership.

The sad thing is, before Bush hit his second term and went crazy, or perhaps showed what was always there, when Bush was running, it seemed like republicans has overtly become the big tent party. It’s better, or at least no worse, to be gay or a minority and go republican. (Note that I am leaving out libertarians here, though I did have thoughts on that and Gary Johnson as well.) If there are loudmouths who sound like they’ll take away your right to early term abortions or stand fast in the way of marrying whoever you want, well, they are loudmouths, not representative. Sadly, democrats project. They project fraud onto republicans, while being the primary home of it. They project racism onto republicans, while being the current and historic home of it.

It was always discomforting that Mitt was the grandfather of Obamacare.

He was also too nice, too non-specific economically, and too easily associated in people’s minds with Bush, who remains poisonous. In some ways, I’d call this a referendum on Bush versus Obama. If I had to make a choice of having Bush back or keeping Obama, I’d go for Bush, but it would be a razor thin thing, holding my nose and hoping he didn’t screw it up. Mitt is no Bush, but it took me a while to get enthusiastic rather than resigned to him.

It’s just an election, at least. Hugo Chavez was elected, so how bad could it be?

On the plus side, I was not looking forward to blogging critically of the Romney administration, given the morass it faced. Oh, I would have. I may have more fun going all out on the clown who’ll inherit his own (and yes, GWB’s) mess.

As for the voters, you own it. You voted for it, and oh won’t you get it. Thanks for taking me along. Appreciate it. Especially you single issue voters (see above, and also delusions like that there’d cuts to school funding enough to matter – as if that’s a federal issue anyway) and people who grew up financially privileged as children of rent-seekers or workers of angles and influence or thuggery however polished, who seem yet to have learned of the real world. Good luck with that, eventually.

And yes, I voted, so even to you pathetic morons who spout the witless line about not having the right to complain if I didn’t vote, I sure as fuck will complain. Boy will I complain. If that were all you reaped from what you’ve sown, you’d be lucky, and I’d be thrilled. Are you ready for what’s coming?

Insurance Games

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I work at a large company that provides a health insurance benefit for part time employees who have worked there over 1000 hours, or about a year. We’re drawing toward the end of the second year of that.

There are two plans. Let’s say that one costs $10 a month and has pathetic coverage, a catastrophic plan that is marginal until you have been personally responsible for $5250, after which it pays everything that it covers. That’s over 1/3 of my gross income there, and could easily be half of someone’s income, depending on location and seniority. That’s equivalent to an out of pocket maximum closer to $25,000 on the income I’d need in order to be out the other side of the donut hole. I am up over $3000 of that so far this year. That’s a lot of years of making sure the providers get at least $10 a month to avoid having it sent to collections.

The other plan, which I was on last year, costs five times as much, and covers much more. That year, I only saw a doctor a few times, and for whatever reason I never saw a bill. I’m pretty sure I should have seen bills for a portion of each office visit. I was supposed to have been on the same plan, but the company defaults your choice to the bottom plan, and in a tricksy accident I was not allowed to select the one I wanted. You know that’s a guarantee I’d actually need the coverage for that year. In six more days, I will get to select again, which is a relief.

I am also covered, into the beginning of next year, by the part of RomneyCare called Health Safety Net, which is backstop coverage for people who are poor, but not so poor, and have crappy insurance that they can’t actually afford to use but that satisfies the mandate. I had thought that covered all the things, and that was why I never saw one bill from the doctor last year. However, it covers stuff at hospitals and “community health centers” (what are those? where? who designates them? couldn’t tell you!), but not at regular practices. That would encourage one to hit the ER for something relatively mundane, which makes no sense, given the alleged overuse of ERs by poor people was the driving force behind RomneyCare. I have never done that in my life, and it would never occur to me, unless I had an emergency. The practice I use has after-hours urgent care that’s pretty easy to get into, and they have people on-call for emergency visits. Usually seeing a nurse practitioner, but no need for more for most things. Heck, when middle child broke her arm, we went there, not ER. NP saw her and then our family doctor, who is her boss, stepped in to help put on a cast. We didn’t even have to see the orthopedic people.

As an aside, the wife is on separate insurance, through her employer, and the kids are fully covered by RomneyCare, but we pay a monthly premium for that. Not sure how we’d do it if kids were on an employer plan for probably more additional premium than the state charges, but were not as well covered. I know! We’d magically up our income tens of thousands of dollars to get to the other side of the donut hole. Can I digress like a fiend, or what?

Where was I? The point of this was to discuss my EOB (explanation of benefits) for the 34 hours I spent at the hospital, getting a cardiac catheterization that resulted in two stents, followed by time in a room for observation – otherwise I’d have been home same day.

The cath and stent procedure was free as part of a large study I agreed to participate in for the privilege of it being free, and not having to be transferred to another hospital if they found blockage that could be treated with stents. (Bypass would have required transfer, since there is not a full cardiac unit there – thus the study showing the efficacy of hospitals being able to do stents without full cardiac units.) I thought that was cool, and a worthy goal. Cost didn’t matter so much, since RomneyCare would backstop the hospital charges.

On the EOB, there is no indication that anything about the event was “free.” It may be that there is some tiny portion of the charges that is what they actually meant that is not noticeable in its absence. The hospital billed over $60,000 for the 34 hour stay, plus another $2500 for the hospitalist in charge of me for most of that time. Great guy. Chatted with him twice, briefly. He even gave me his cell number in case I needed anything after I got home and couldn’t reach anyone. Even in the middle of the night… call. Except… his number was nowhere on any of the paperwork. Oops.

About $40,000 of the total on the main bill was “physician” charges. Since the hospitalist was covered elsewhere (and the insurance actually covered all but around $400, after discounting it to about $1600 they’d actually cover), that was all for the excellent cardiologist who did the “free” procedure and presumably the anesthesiologist. I expected the retail on the procedure not to be cheap. Specialized room, team of people, special prep and recovery area, special skills and equipment… but, yeah, don’t think so, especially “free.” The room overnight, amazing nurses, meals, whatever… those were apparently around $4000-5000 of the total charges.

Anyway, insurance denied most of it, either not covered or separately billed items already included elsewhere not being allowed. I maybe should have called this “hospital games,” since the culprit here appears to be the hospital, but I suspect this is what they have been trained to do by the government and insurers, as self-defense. If my old business could only have collected 30% of what we billed our clients, our prices would have gone up accordingly, and every scrap of any billable time or expense would have been included. Like when I’d go to four people to solve minor problems in 15 minutes, that was our minimum increment of .25 hours (which was too low), it could instead have been four minimum charges for four incidents, making it 1 hour.

The part they didn’t deny, but discounted deeply, was the physician charges, implying that those are so large because they already incorporate all the supplies, labs, etc. Net result is almost as low an insurance payment for the 60k as for the 2.5k. The other thing they paid is a tiny indigent care surcharge the state collects.

I was pretty amused by the whole thing. I’d never be able to pay my share of it regardless, so as well for them it’s backstopped. But it makes me wonder what they bill RomneyCare now, and what that coverage allows them to get paid for. Is the 60k thing a ploy to get a ton of state money? Or will the state pay only what the insurer left me for a balance? No idea. What should happen is I will either never see a bill from the hospital, or I will remind them of HSN if I do, and will never see anything else about it.

I was opposed to RomneyCare, and can’t believe I am supporting Mitt for President, not that there’s a choice, but with actual enthusiasm. It has been good to us, though. Not that times should have been this rough. I call myself “pragmatic libertarian, because I’d love to see that pure society, but we have to get there from here. You can’t just snap fingers and make it so. You have to backtrack through the bramble maze. People can’t be left in the lurch as if there is and has always been a free market economy. It’s an interesting question, then, how you backtrack to FDR, undo the effects of wage controls that made health insurance a free perk of employment that could differentiate employers, undo the effects of insurance being for maintenance, not “insurance,” and undo the effects of later adding Medicare/caid in part because of the effects of FDR on the market, making matters vastly worse. You can’t just press Ctrl-Z on entrenched policies and their aftermaths. I hope we can make a start, though, before it gets out of hand.

Little Did He Know…

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The person referenced in this repost on job hunting and referrals, who was hopeful about how much better things would be (having gotten decent at the time) once Bush was gone, has been beyond struggling under Obama. Maybe before, but that rendered it hopeless. I have no idea how he has made it during sometimes extended times of no income, no savings, no resources, not even anything qualifying him to plead disability. He went through every available week of unemployment and extensions. Though it is interesting that once that was over, he did find a something, anything type of job that was even nominally technical.

I’ve been down enough myself, given up when I shouldn’t have and all that, but I am still torn between smug at someone who makes Obama look right wing suffering from this economy, and sad that someone as reasonably talented as he is has been left in the cold.

As for me, I haven’t given a reference for a former collegue/report in years, though there have been times I stood ready when asked, simply never hearing from the prospective employer. The last thing like it I did was a written recommendation for someone to get into a college program to change careers, rather than to get a job. I am still in touch with enough former colleagues and managers to wrangle references, most likely, but they’re getting a bit stale at this point. Even the one I’d get from my former big client’s office manager is not especially current.

It Gets Better

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Well, maybe.

I’ve been thinking that barring the coup scenario, and barring total collapse of the worst kind, there will be economic improvement regardless of who is elected.

Heresy! Right?

Maybe not. Look, it will still be relative, and will still vary depending who and on their specific actions or lack thereof, and on Congress, for that matter. However, we’ve been holding our breath, marking time, holding back, perhaps even actively not wanting to contribute to an economy for Obama to pillage or to reflect well by.

After the election, will we really keep marking time for another four years? To that same degree? Perhaps we’ll not act quite the same as we would in a more rational economy (talking relatively here… when was the last time the American economy was truly rational?), but are we really going to hold as much back?

So yeah, barring further meltdown, which is possible, given quantitative easing gone wild, and the pulling aside the curtain of any pretense of sound money, regime uncertainty will be relieved to some degree and things will improve… to some degree. It is entirely possible that the tax cliff will be averted, if Obama wins, since Congress will have no downside to legislating accordingly. Not that that changes the Obamacare taxes, or the law’s overall economic consequences, and not that we won’t have the same cliff looming in another year.

I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Outdoor Classroom

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The elementary school attended by the older kids has a new “outdoor classroom” this year. While there’s probably some Gaia worship and being Environmentally Correct involved, it boils down to teaching kids about gardening. Sort of a miniature vo-ag program. They are learning about composting, for instance, which may be environmentalism, but it’s not extremism, and was something done when I was a kid and before, like, forever.

It occured to me that this is timely. If things crash to that degree, they could use the knowledge toward growing food. I like practical education. That is, if there’s time enough before it crashes, and of it doesn’t crash too hard even for that to matter. I’ve had a potentially lengthy post brewing in my mind about just what a crash might look like, and how socio-infrastructure inelasticity would have to affect it. (I love coining terms. Makes me feel like the Bernanke of phrasing, only not dangerous.)

Chances are that a crash won’t be so great as to mean mass death and destruction, unless there is a coup, which I started thinking about as a possibility a while back. Didn’t want to mention it aloud, since I remember how insane people sounded when they were frantic that Bush was going to cancel the election and stay in office. That would never have happened, since for all his faults, he is honorable and not that level of power hungry. Then I started seeing others mention it, including one detailed analysis of how it might go if Obama tried it. Right, Google exists! I think I read this one, which still sounded like it might be a bit over the top. Remembering that it said “Barack Obama is, unfortunately for America, a profoundly stupid man” made it easier to find with a search.

Anyway, I was a vo-ag student in high school, and I grew up about as close to farming as is possible without growing up on a farm. It makes me happy to have my kids learning something about one of my first strong interests/career aspirations. We had chickens. When I was very young we had ducks. I spread tons of manure from cows, horses and chickens. I helped plant, weed, and harvest vegetables. There was always a compost pile, if not any as intently managed and harvested as is possible. We did dig fresh soil from the the fully composted parts, but mostly it was a place to dispose of garbage and yard waste. It’s sad to live in a yard that, apart from being not ours, has no space for that. The closest I’ve come is pulling weeds from the flower bed in the front and leaving them to die and disintegrate as a sort of mulch on a bare area of my tiny adjacent herb garden.

I should take a cue from the school and my worries, and make even greater efforts to teach the kids the practical. Not just as a side note, like showing them how to build a fire when we were camping, and explaining the need for air flow. Or telling my son in passing yesterday how starting a fire by rubbing sticks together really works, since he picked that notion up somewhere. When my oldest was very young, as young as 3-4, I would give her pointers on what to do if she was trapped out in the cold, or lost. I sometimes have shown them what they can or cannot eat from “the wild.” They need more of that, alongside things like handling money, and the instilling of ideals. But I digress.

Self-Inheritance

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I have long been well aware Obama was a key figure in the housing bubble and collapse, and to me it should be as much in everyone’s awareness. Since it clearly isn’t, since he appears to have a chance of winning the upcoming election (though I doubt he will even come close), it’s worth shouting from the virtual rooftops: Obama caused the collapse he inherited and worsened.

Not all by himself, since it goes back to Carter and was exacerbated by Clinton, but Obama was the lever pushing on Clinton.

And frankly, I think there was a bubble/excess rate of house price inflation before 1996, never mind afterward. Then it got truly crazy. Everyone was in on it, too. Every lawyer who handle real estate closings and talked up people about how of course they could get a mortgage, there were ways. Firsthand experience, there. Every realtor who delighted in the pace of sales and ever increasing prices. Every speculator who took advantage of the expanding bubble to flip and walk away. Madoff’s non-losing clients may have been subject to clawbacks, but the flippers and realtors will never be held to account for the profitably merry ride. Not that they necessarily ought to be. I’m not even sure Madoff’s non-losing clients should be, if they were in and out with no provable knowledge of fraud. It’s just a thought and an observation of the overheated time. I would not have touched a house then, because they were so obviousy overpriced. I probably wouldn’t have, even with an income that would allow it. Not unless I wanted to be one of those flippers. I could almost wish, given where I ended up.

Anyway, it seems karma has a sense of humor, laying the consequences of Obama the community organizer/lawyer on Obama the pretend president.

American Commodus

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I love this!

I should really post about the 47% thing, which I saw somewhere corrected anyway, as far as who is not paying taxes and such, and how it’s not entirely a fair characterization. Thing is, Romney is allowed to use hyperbole and oversimplification in a fundraising speech to supporters. How scary does it sound to people who want Obama defeated and have the bucks to contribute, pointing out that there is a base that will automatically vote for him and that it’s large?

In reality, here in Massachusetts there is much disgust and dismay with Obama and ObamaCare among the working poor. If you could sever Boston and Cambridge from the state, I have little doubt Romney would carry Massachusetts. From here on the ground, I see him having a closer shot at it than you might expect. And not because he was much beloved as a governor, or RomneyCare is such a beloved accomplishment, whoever crossed and dotted the details once he’d padded his wannabepresident credentials with a single term.

So let’s get over the 47% thing already. I know that’s not the job of the press. The job of the press is to get Chavez Obama reelected, even if it’s not in their best interests.

Random stuff:

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Keep in mind that some of these articles/posts have been open in my browser for the last week, so yes, not only am I behind the times but I have no idea where I found some of them. In any case:

More about the Depression. Like the policy suggestions or not, this lays out the landscape pretty neatly. Ugly freaking landscape, though.

George Takei Wonders What Happened To The Republicans Who Are Against Big Government. Excellent question.

I’m relieved to see that cilantro-hate may not be a character flaw after all. ;-)

I want to write more about this later, but I think I would love to have this fellow as my doctor.

I was wondering how long it would be until Gary Johnson’s presence in the race would start to cause some interesting effects.

Again with the Depression.

And lastly, for the moment, I’d just like to point out that I have a serious crush on UfYH. (This may be NSFW depending on your workplace’s tolerance for strong language and/or employees spending hours tumbling through tumblr.)

Let’s try this again:

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Romney, And The GOP, Still Haunted By The Legacy Of George W. Bush: I quit voting after that election, because having 43 on my conscience was more than I could take. Also, philosophical objections that are looking less and less applicable to the current climate. Romney may have his very, very bad points (and remember, I live in Mass so I’m suffering the consequences of some of them right now), but I’m really feel like this election may make or break any chance we have of a recovery, not just in terms of re-obtaining some of the America that was but in terms of getting the hell out of this depression. So I’ll probably vote for the son of a bitch, because it’s the last thing I can think of to do, short of getting ready for the revolution.

We should probably be prepping anyway, but it’s hard to put the money into it when you’re busy trying to just make sure that you have enough money to get to work so that you can buy more gas to get to work. We’ve been operating without a buffer for years, and all it has taken is a medical bill or two to sink us almost completely again. I just got a huge raise that is GONE with a new set of bills. Every time I think of how hard I worked for that and how much I was looking forward to buying a decent pair of shoes, I cry. But there are some things in life that are not optional. Food, shelter, and medical care come to mind.

My major beef with Romney is, of course, Romneycare. That’s a whole ‘nother post, and one I will no doubt get to soon. I do wonder, however, how well it might have worked if he had been involved in the implementation of the thing, rather than having to leave it to Deval Patrick.

The other reason I’m going to have to break down and vote is because Elizabeth Warren absolutely MUST NOT reach the Senate under any circumstances. And that election is absolutely winnable for Scott Brown. Thank God!

Town census this year still had me listed as registered, but I think I might double-check with the town clerk, just in case.

Referential Posterity

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In a past life, I was the colleague and then technical supervisor of a ton of people who supported Visual Basic for Microsoft.

Especially given my central role in keeping many of those people in touch with each other, this means I am still being used as a reference more than five years later. I wonder how long this goes on… Not that I mind! If they ask detailed questions, I may have trouble remembering exact answers, but I certainly know who from that group I would hire. Most of them, in fact, but some more than others.

Today one of the ones I see with regularity contacted me needing references. He’d never needed any until now, and lost track of most of the people who would be appropriate. I’d hire him without hesitation. The last work he had started out as a three week contract to do some database conversion, and ended up being more than a year of porting code to VB.NET, and fixing what had previously been ported unsuccessfully. After that, he’d been looking for a few months.

His observation is that things are getting better; tech work is more available and employers are showing real interest in hiring.

Then he went astray, remarking it should get even better once Bush is gone! Hellloooo… the collapse of tech work, and to some degree the wider economy, came from where? The economy is now improving why? To the degree an administration’s policies have anything to do with it, the answers would be, respectively, Clinton and Bush.

It was just an idle remark. I chuckled good-naturedly at the joke and said nothing. We have never discussed politics, and I couldn’t have told you where he stood until today. Perhaps a guess, based on what “lifestyle issues” might be a factor, but never anything so clear.

Since he wasn’t vociferous, it doesn’t bother me that he made such a comment. I have friends whom I relate to on matters not political, and it all works out fine. I get terribly uncomfortable if they not only bring up the political, but harp on it.

But I digress. Back to the topic of references, it would be interesting for me if I ever went back on the job market. References would have to be people who were clients, people who reported to me, or possibly a person or two I interacted with at Microsoft in Washington. I have no idea how to reach anyone I ever had as a supervisor or manager.

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