f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

Below are a few ONEsies (odds-n-ends) piquing our interest this lovely mid-September morning, plus a handful of haiku by our Honored Guests culled from a new “joys of the seasons” collection with a riparian theme.  Rather than wait to release them in one gushing punditry torrent, I’m going to drib and drab my blurb posting as the day “progresses” and my energy level and attention span wax and wane.  So, please stop back to see what has bubbled to the surface.

rivermoon
we run
out of words

…. by Roberta Beary, Esq. – from “Season’s Greetings 2009: Stream – River,” ed. Mohammed H. Siddiqui

. . . lawyer career choices:  Long before this weblog existed, the alter egos now known collectively as the f/k/a Gang were bemoaning the fact that too many of our best and brightest youths were choosing the legal profession as their default career (rather than choosing more productive and personally rewarding jobs) and doing it mostly on the basis of greed and misguided status-seeking (notions reflected, for example, in “1L of a Decision,” Aug. 16, 2005, and the recent and much-ignored “EnvyEsq works too much,” Sept. 4, 2008).  In the wake of the Wall Street upheavals of the past few day, blawgers Elie Mystal at Above the Law and Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice have been wondering — with their very different perspectives and audiences — if there are wise career choices and options for those already possessing law degrees.

• On the same day that Law.com ran the article “Sunny Forecast for GC Jobs in Clean-Tech Industry” (The Recorder, Sept. 16, 2008), Above the Law started the open-thread question “Is In-house still worth it?.”  Elie explained that “It wasn’t long ago that both associates and partners regarded moving in-house as a ‘golden ticket.’ Better hours, comparable pay, and a sweet ‘Executive Vice-President’ title.”  But, he asks, “As financial services firms break up and merge, what happens to the in-house attorneys caught up in the mix?”  You’ll find scores of comments at AtL from the young BigLaw (and wannabe) crowd.
• Today, Elie followed that up with “The IRS is still hiring” (pointing to post at TaxProfBlog, and noting a 72% job satisfaction rate at the agency).  Such government jobs will seem like a very big let down to many of the readers of AtL.

• Scott Greenfield has decided to leave “the goings-on for those who dream of vast wealth and importance” to Elie at Above the Law.  At Simple Justice, he instead opined, “Today would be Good Day to go Solo” (Sept. 15, 2008).  Noting the rocky times ahead for many in the world of Big Law, Scott says:

“There is still real legal work to be done out there.  There are regular people who need lawyers.  There are always defendants in criminal cases, though no Biglaw refugees are equipped to represent them. . . .

“While it’s too late to get ahead of the curve, there’s still time to do something about your lot in life before the pink email arrives at your crackberry.  Susan Cartier Leibel is about to open the digital doors of Solo Practice University.  Carolyn Elefant has written the definitive book on the mechanics of opening a solo practice, Solo By Choice.. . . .

“Not all of you will make it.  Not all of you deserve to make it.  . . .  But some of you will see the writing on the wall.  Don’t pass up the available opportunity and resources that are here today.  It’s decidedly unclear what tomorrow will offer.”

Scott’s approach jibes with our own inclinations.  We feel bad for all those who entered law seeking the high life, and are now wearing golden shackles on a sinking ship.  The f/k/a Gang stands by our traditional position on lawyer career choices:  We’d be a much happier lot if we could “just” settle for making a comfortable living doing a job that helps regular folks solve and avoid problems, assert their rights, or defend themselves.

in a deep eddy
the child’s boot surfaces
momentarily

… by Tom Clausen – from “Season’s Greetings 2009: Stream – River,” ed. Mohammed H. Siddiqui

. . . Friedman Wants More Engineers:  Tom Friedman also hopes our talented youth will make better career choices and learn from Wall Street’s excesses (“Keep It in Vegas,” New York Times, Sept. 17, 2008)

“The market is now consolidating this industry, with the strong eating the weak, which will impose its own fiscal discipline. Good. Maybe then more of our next generation of math geniuses will think about going into engineering the next great global industry — energy technology — rather engineering derivatives.”

Tom also has some smart words about how to have smarter government regulation: “In sum, government’s job is to police that fine line between the necessary risk-taking that drives an innovation economy and crazy gambling with other people’s savings in ways that threaten us all. We need to make sure that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas — and doesn’t come to Main Street. We need to get back to investing in our future and not just betting on it.”

afterwords (Sept. 18, 2008): Roger Cohen sounds a similar career theme this morning in his New York Times column, “The King Is Dead.”   He says “The leverage party’s over for the masters of the universe,” and that

“No better illustration exists of a culture where private gain has eclipsed the public good, public service, even public decency, and where the cult of the individual has caused the commonwealth to wither.”

Cohen has wondered “why do freshmen [from our best schools] bursting to change the world morph into investment bankers?” Apparently, it was the money and the fact that everyone was doing it.  Cohen advises:

“The best and the brightest should think again. Barack Obama put the issue this way at Wesleyan University in May: beware of the ‘poverty of ambition’ in a culture of ‘the big house and the nice suits’.”

” . . . It’s time for the best and the brightest to step forth and rediscover the public sphere.”

Cohen suggests a good place to start would be looking into the idea from Felix Rohatyn and Everett Ehrlich of creating a National Infrastructure Bank, or N.I.B.  Not a bad idea at all.  There are surely other important ways to use one’s brains to serve the nation rather than serve what Cohen calls the Money and Me zeitgeist.

those sensitive neocons (September 16, 2008): Following up on themes found in our “Lipstick Lynch Mob” post from Sept. 11, Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg makes a lot of sense in his Fresh Air commentary yesterday “Lipstick on My Choler (Or, Did You Call Me a Pig?)”  (listen here to the 5-minute podcast from NPR).  As Fresh Air notes, Nunberg asks “who’s responsible when words get misconstrued — and whether there’s an irony when a cultural conservative complains that a progressive has been insufficiently sensitive.”  For example, he notes:

“So if you were an upstanding cultural conservative, you might see something undignified in the McCain campaign’s reaction to the lipstick-on-a-pig remark. At times it seemed like a send up of radical feminism drawn from a satirical novel by Christopher Buckley or T. Coraghessen Boyle — the keening indignation, the burrowing for far-fetched meanings and unconscious motivations, and above all the insistence that what matters isn’t what someone actually says, but the way we take it.”

drizzle __
nothing disturbs the order
of the waves

… by Gary Hotham – from “Season’s Greetings 2009: Stream – River,” ed. Mohammed H. Siddiqui

. . . . . update (2 PM):

. . . Church and Politics: It must be difficult to be a “liberal” or moderate practicing American Catholic in this election season.   For example, today’s NYT article “Abortion Issue Again Dividing Catholic Votes” (New York Times, September 17, 2008) tells us:

“A struggle within the church over how Catholic voters should think about abortion is once again flaring up just as political partisans prepare an all-out battle for the votes of Mass-going Catholics in swing-state towns like Scranton.”

As we’ve pointed out previously, conservative American Catholics have tended to ignore the Church’s “social” teachings on justice and charity — despite Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est“(”God Is Love”; 2005).  Instead, they’ve focused on telling those who want to be faithful Catholics how they should vote, with publications like the “Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics” (see our prior post).

According to the Voter’s Guide (and its FAQ), “A well-formed conscience never will contradict Catholic moral teaching.“  And, five current political issues — abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and homosexual marriage — are “non-negotiable” because they involve “intrinsic evil.“  “Serious Catholics” are told, therefore, they have the moral obligation to avoid voting for any candidate who supports the “evil” position on any of these issues.  Issues such as “just war,” the death penalty or economic justice are not part of the non-negotiables list.  Apparently, they can’t be taken into account when one of the candidates is on the wrong side of the “evil” list and his opponent is on the “right side.”  As I said above, it’s must be hard to be a liberal or moderate practicing Catholic in an important election year.

first day of winter
my walk extends
to the middle of the river

… by Yu Chang – from “Season’s Greetings 2009: Stream – River,” ed. Mohammed H. Siddiqui

. . . . . . update (7 PM):

consumer credit bill of rights : A New York Times editorial this week challenged Congress to act on the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights before the elections in November.  See “Consumer Protection” (September 13, 2008).

“For all of these candidates who keep talking about helping the ordinary American, this should be an easy one. Get behind the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights now, before the election.”

. . . “Mr. Obama and his running mate, Senator Joseph Biden, should urge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who appears to be listening to the bankers more than consumers — to allow a vote on the bill before the November elections. They should sponsor the same legislation in the Senate and invite Senator John McCain, who has pledged to help struggling Americans, to join the fight.”

How your Congress-person or Senator votes on this bill would be an important indicator of whether she or he puts the consumer or the banking/credit industry first.  Here’s an outline of the Bill (H.R. 5244) found at the website of House Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY).

The Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights:

-Protects cardholders against arbitrary interest rate increases
-Prevents cardholders who pay on time from being unfairly penalized
-Protects cardholders from due date gimmicks
-Shields cardholders from misleading terms
-Empowers cardholders to set limits on their credit
-Requires card companies to fairly credit and allocate payments
-Prohibits card companies from imposing excessive fees on cardholders
-Prevents card companies from giving subprime credit cards to people who can’t afford them
-Requires Congress to provide better oversight of the credit card industry
-Contains NO rate caps, fee setting, or price controls

For a one-page summary of the bill’s main provisions, click here.  To read the entire bill, click here. For a nice explanation of what the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights will do, with the important problems described and industry arguments rebutted, see this post by Adam Levitin of the Credit Slips weblog.

There are a lot of good, needed protections in this Bill.  I especially like the requirement that card companies fairly credit and allocate payments.

Personal Grievance: Bank of America recently refused my request that they allocate part of my monthly payment to a $6.95 item that is on my credit card account due to an automatic charge for accident insurance offered through BofA.   The rest of my entire balance (many thousands of dollars) has a 0% interest rate until next March.  BofA allocates all payments first to that no-interest part of the balance, and therefore charges me a finance charge each month of $4.95 on the $6.95 balance, which has a nominal interest rate of 9.99%.  A nice “gotcha” that really irks me.

river stones
each one a turtle
of its own

.. by Tom Painting – from “Season’s Greetings 2009: Stream – River,” ed. Mohammed H. Siddiqui