The Ant and the Grasshopper - One is a little different....Two Different Versions............Two Different Morals

One is a little different.... Two Different Versions................. Two Different Morals

OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away..

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'

Acorn stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.' Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it..

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.

The puprose of a business is not to provide jobs!

The purpose of a business, small or otherwise, is NOT to provide jobs to the populace. The purpose of a business is to make money for the owners. For some reason, President Obama and the Democrats (i.e. liberals) believe that the existence of a business is to provide jobs regardless if they are needed or not. This sounds a lot like a government job. Hire people to do nothing. Forget about being efficient.  I would love to hire more people because that means that I have more business and need more employees!  Which means that I am making more money!  How horrible will that be!?!?!


At this weeks “Job Summit” that President Obama held, he actually was criticizing businesses, particularly small businesses, for doing more work with less workers. WOW, how horrible it is to be more productive!! President Obama stated that was bad and needed to change! He wants businesses to hire people just to hire people not because they are needed. No wonder the government is so inefficient and bloated.

This week just shows how President Obama, and the people who he has surrounded himself, have no idea how to run a business. No one in his administration, including Obama, has ever run a business; met a payroll; or had to make the hard decision to layoff or hire.

They have no idea how to fix the economy or the unemployment problem because they have never been outside of Washington or the halls of academia.

The best way to solve the unemployment crisis is for government to GET OUT OF THE WAY!

If the President wants to know what it will take to get business hiring again, the solution is fairly simple.

Cut taxes (real taxes not the campaign promise kind). This will put more money in people’s pockets and, they will start spending again.

Deregulate! Contrary to the popular myth, deregulation DID NOT cause this economic crisis. Actually, it was the governments medaling in the economy that directly caused it through FNMA, Freddie Mac, and Congress not doing their job.
Allowing businesses to FAIL!!! There is no such thing as “too big to fail” for a business. This is a myth made up by “BIG business” and regulators to allow them to get government bailouts. There is nothing wrong with bankruptcy!! Even after the government took over GM and gave it billions in “loans”, GM still filed for bankruptcy. All that did was screw the shareholders and creditors; and payoff the unions.

It is really sad that during the 2008 campaign many people said the Presidency does not lend itself well to on the job training. Unfortunately, that has proven true. I just hope that we can survive it!

Title Agents Warned of CFPA Impact on Business!

I received this today from ALTA's Justin Ailes:

Yesterday, representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (USCC) warned more than 200 participants during a conference call the negative impact the proposed Consumer Finance Protection Agency (HR 3126) will have on the business community, including the title insurance industry.


Featured speakers were Ryan McKee, senior director of the USCC, and Jason Matthews, director of congressional affairs of the USCC.

McKee offered an overview of the proposed CFPA, which would vastly regulate a large portion of the business community. This includes any business that provides flexible payment options to customers and any company that provides service to financial institutions, such as settlement service providers and title insurance.

"Bottom line, no matter where you are in the chain, even if you have no direct interaction with the consumer, you would be regulated by the new agency," McKee said.

Click here for more on the CFPA, such as a list of town hall meetings on the CFPA, ALTA's one-pager explaining the proposed agency, and the proposed powers the agency could wield.

Primary supervision and enforcement authority over the consumer financial protection functions currently performed by the federal bank regulatory agencies and the Federal Trade Commission (the "FTC") would be transferred to the CFPA, including exclusive authority over all related research, rulemaking, guidance, supervision, examination and enforcement activities. Accompanying this transfer of authority would be the transfer of exclusive rulemaking and examination authority to the CFPA for the consumer protection provisions in at least 16 existing federal consumer protection laws, including the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act ("RESPA") and the Truth-In-Lending Act ("TILA").

McKee explained that the agency could issue any new regulations regarding the types of services that can be offered and also would have the authority to conduct costly examinations of businesses to verify compliance. She said the CFPA also could require standardized reports from businesses, including title agents, at any time. This would require new technology to produce the reports.

"If approved as written, the federal government will tell consumer what they can buy and will tell businesses what products they can offer," McKee said. "Complying with the CFPA would impose new costs on any company involved with consumer finance transactions and these costs will be passed on to the consumer. There will be restricted access to credit at a higher price."

Fees also will be levied on small businesses and title agents to fund the agency. McKee said the CFPA would be able to decide who pays what without any congressional review.

"In effect, it can decide what its expenses are and how bit it wants to be," she said. "There's no guidance in the current language on who pays what."

The USCC has commissioned a study to see what impact the fees will have on small businesses, McKee said.

After McKee summarized the CFPA's potential impact, Matthews provides a view from what's shaping up on Capitol Hill.

"I am seeing that they intend to sweep up the entire industry and create a regime that is breathtaking," Matthews said.

Once Congress returns from its summer break Matthews expects action on the CFPA to speed up. He said Sept. 23 is the target date for the House Financial Services Committee to take action, and expects some modified version of the bill to be sent to the Senate.

"Fundamentally, we are opposed to a standalone agency; we are working to make improvements where we can in the House to get the most problematic provisions removed," Matthews said. "Then work with Senate to continue massaging the bill."

He said he had a series of meetings with Democrats and Blue Dogs that have expressed some level of discomfort with the proposal.

"Specifically, they are worried about the preemption clause that would allow state attorneys general to bring suits based on violations of the CFPA and the scope of what businesses are covered," Matthews said.

He suggested business leaders contact their congressional representative to let them hear that the proposed CFPA needs significant modification before it hits the President's desk. Some key targets include Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee, including Tim Johnson (S.D.), Mark Warner (Va.) and Michael Bennet (Colo.)

"The play will be in the Senate and the good thing about the banking committee is that it has a number of moderates who can influence how this debate turns out," Matthews said.

As suggested above, please contact your representative to relay your concerns about the proposed CFPA. You can click here for a list of August Town Hall Meetings of members of Congress. If you need help finding and contacting your elected representatives or to set up a meeting to express your concern about the CFPA, click here. Check out this outline of the powers of the proposed CFPA and this ALTA one-pager with talking points on the impact on the title industry.

Never in a America!?!?!?! Only at Barack-N-Large!

We say this all the time. This or that would never happen in America...not in THE United States of America!

So what are some things that we say would never happen in America? How about government take over certain industries? How about the government asking citizens to snitch on fellow citizens? All these "Czars" who answer to only the President? Or...government run health care?

These are things that we thought would never happen in America. But, they are!

Since, January 20th, 2009, these things have become a reality. The government take over of GM and Chrysler. The President FIRING the chairman of GM...a private company! The government tried this during WWII, but the Supreme Court said that it was unconstitutional in the steel mill cases. How is it constitutional now??????????? Why isn't anyone with standing (i.e. a GM stockholder) file suit to stop them?????

The summer, the White House ask citizens to snitch on their neighbors if they heard "fishy" comments about the health care "reform". How old school Soviet is that!!!

And now, the administration wants to take over the health care and "reform" it. Which really means a giant leap towards a government run health care. So much for incrementalism. Of course, if you disagree with them or question the over 1000 pages of HR3200, you are a racist or right-wing terrorist.

What is really disturbing is that I feel that the real America is slipping away; and, it has been for the last 40 years. But, instead of a gradual decline, I think that we have gone over the cliff!

I am going to take the President Obama at his word. He stated in the debates that you should judge him by who he surrounds himself.

I have looked at who is surrounding himself with and it scares the hells out of me! I have order Saul Alinsky's book Rules for Radicals. This is one of Barack Obama's heroes.

I am going to read it and report on it on this blog and compare it to how the Obama Administration is running their presidency. Something tells me that it will be like reading Adolf Hitler's Mein Kompf and comparing how the Third Reich operated.

In the movie WALL-E, the controlling entity was a company called Buy-N-Large. My wife came up with another controlling entity...Obama administration called Barack-N-Large. They are trying to control everything and everyone. Then, I took it one step further. The main character is called WALL-E which stands for "Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth class".

Now, I came up with a new name for WALL-E for the Barack-N-Large era.

WALL-E stands for WE ARE LOSING LIBERTY - EVERYONE!!!!!!!

Working for the government

Thomas Jefferson warned against "labor[ing] sixteen hours in the twenty-four" just to "give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government...."

Apparently, the memo didn't get to Washington, DC. According to the Cost of Government Day (COGD) report, prepared by Monika Ciesielska for the Center for Fiscal Accountability, a project of Americans for Tax Reform, Americans this year worked from Jan. 1 to Aug. 12 -- a staggering 224 days -- just to cover the cost of government. This is nearly one month more than last year (July 16) and the first time COGD has pressed into August.

Of course, Cost of Government Day is only a national average. Some states are worse than others. Connecticut, New Jersey and New York had the highest cost of government. In Connecticut, COGD is Sept. 7 -- Labor Day, appropriately enough. Meanwhile, Alaska had the earliest COGD -- July 11.

Given that spending through July skyrocketed by 21 percent ($530 billion) over 2008 and that Washington has amassed a revised 2009 budget deficit of $1.6 trillion -- almost quadruple 2008's $459 billion -- the taxpayer overtime hardly comes as a surprise. The government will burn through 61 percent of national income this year just to fuel itself. Hardly a bright dawn to the promised "new era of responsibility."

For everyone that is taking the bar!

The 23rd Bar Exam:

Please let me write down the correct answers; Let me fill in the “bubbles”.

I renew my hope; Lead me along the fact patterns for the MBE’s sake.

Even when I go through the longest essay, I fear no question for You are with me;

Your number 2 pencil and blue book—they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my proctors; You anoint my head knowledge; my brain overflows.

Only correct answers and luck will allow me to pass and be an attorney all the days of my life, and I will practice in the state and be admitted as long as the Tennessee Supreme Court allows as long as I live.

Amen.

Title Insurance Protects Your Investment

During the closing process, make sure you add an Owner’s Policy of Title Insurance to your Loan Policy

After a months-long search, you finally find your family’s dream home—a safe neighborhood and great schools, and a big backyard for the swimming pool you plan to build. You move in and hire a contractor, but a few days into construction the contractor finds an underground utility line running right through the middle of your backyard. You check your title insurance policy, and find out that the title search did not discover the easement. What do you do?

Here’s another scenario. After retiring, you decide to downsize and buy a smaller townhome on a golf course. A month after you move in, a man knocks on your door and claims he is the real owner of your home. Upon further investigation, you discover that the sellers weren’t the real owners, but people posing as the owners. They searched the public records for a home with out-of-state owners, forged and recorded a fictitious deed, then sold the property to you before the real owners (or you) discovered the scam.

Sound farfetched? Both of these scenarios really happened. To protect your investment from these and other serious problems, make sure you have title insurance.

Title Insurance 101

Title insurance insures that the title to your property is clear, with no known liens or encumbrances, such as unpaid property taxes, recorded liens, or street and sewer easements. If a title defect is discovered after the policy is issued, such as an undiscovered easement or forged deed, your title insurance company will seek to resolve it.

It is worth noting that no matter how far back the title issue goes, a title claim is filed against the property’s current owner of record. For instance, there might be a missing heir from a previous owner who comes forward after the property was bought and sold several times to different owners. The claim would be filed against the property (and current owner), even though the claim is from the past.

Another important fact that the majority of buyers don’t understand is that there are actually two types of title insurance policies—a Loan Policy, which protects the lender, and an Owner’s Policy, which protects the homebuyer.

Loan Policy vs. Owner’s Policy

The Loan Policy insures the lender for the amount of the mortgage loan. All lenders require title insurance before they will even issue a loan. If a title defect is later discovered, resulting in a claim, the insurance company will indemnify the lender up to the outstanding balance of the loan. A Loan Policy affords no protection for the homeowner.

For a one-time fee at closing, you can obtain an Owner’s Policy, which protects your investment for as long as you (or your heirs) have an interest in the property—even a hundred years from now. In many areas of the country, the seller actually pays for this coverage.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you buy a house for $200,000, with 20 percent down and a mortgage of $160,000. The lender will insist on a Loan Policy to cover the $160,000 loan. For an additional premium, you can obtain an Owner’s Policy to cover your $40,000 investment.

To take it a step further, let’s say that a number of years down the road, a major title loss occurs. At that time, the mortgage balance is $120,000. The Owner’s Policy would then cover you for up to $80,000. But without an Owner’s Policy, you would get nothing.

One Out of Every Three Transactions Has a Title Issue

What kinds of problems do title professionals look for? They research the complete history of a property by scouring through public records and their own title plants to ensure there are no hidden problems. If they find an issue, they take care of it—typically without you even knowing about it. Or, if the problem is not easily resolved, they will notify you before you close.

Title issues occur with surprising frequency—in an estimated one out of every four residential real estate transactions. The job of the title professional is to ensure that you have a timely and trouble-free closing by avoiding the risks associated with title problems.

But, as the above stories illustrate, occasionally there are unforeseen problems with the title after you move in. Fraud and forgery are the most common problems that go undetected in a title search, but there can also be unrecorded easements, mistakes in the public record or title claims by unknown heirs. Owner’s title insurance protects you for not just the amount of the claim, but for your legal expenses as well.

Back to the Opening Stories

Let’s go back to the real-life stories at the beginning of the article. In the case of the utility easement, because the homeowner had obtained an Owner’s Policy, their title insurance company paid to have the underground utility relocated so they could build their swimming pool. For the retired couple who were victims of forgery, their title insurance company negotiated with the out-of-state owners, and reached a settlement so the couple could remain in their home.

Let’s face it—you certainly have more than enough to think about during the closing process when purchasing a new home. For peace of mind that comes from knowing your investment is protected, for as long as your own your home, be sure to obtain an Owner’s Policy in addition to your Loan Policy.