Trailer Trash - Does Living In A Trailer Park Make Sense?

Trailer Parks are an odd phenomenon.  You own the trailer, but rent the lot, with no guarantee of what the rent will be.

I live in a State Park, and we kiddingly call our house "the brick trailer" as it is an unimaginative ranch home.  We rent the land from the State of Georgia.  It is not a big deal, the lot lease goes for 80 years at this point, and our annual lot rent is less than $500.

(Before you cry outrage, I do have to pay a $640 fire fee, $2500 in property taxes, a parking fee of $90 a year, sewer, water, and trash fees of about $250 a quarter, flood insurance, wind insurance, fire insurance, and of course utilities. It comes out to about $850 a month, without a mortgage).

Others are not so lucky.   Many people live in trailer parks - buying trailer homes and then renting a "space" in a park to live in, paying a monthly lot rent and sometimes utilities on top of that.   If you watch COPS often enough, you know what a trailer park looks like.   And sadly, this cost-effective form of living is often marred by the fact that such parks attract marginal characters.

This is not always the case, however, and a well-managed and disciplined park, particularly an over-55 park, can be clean, neat, and drug and crime-free.  Of course, the rent in such parks isn't free, and utilities are extra.

Recently, a fellow in Texas made the news as he bought yet another park (he owns a bunch of them) and then raised the rents, raising the ire of the residents.  He is pretty famous, I guess, for putting on seminars on how to make big money owning trailer parks.   And according to some sources, he is the 10th largest owner of trailer parks in the country.

Remember what I said about the poor taking crappy deals all the time?  The kind of deals that look cheap at the get-go, but are actually more expensive than what the middle-class pays.   The poor are poor because they bite on shitty deals all the time, which is what keeps them poor, if in fact makes them poor.

The trailer park buyer guy got a lot of bad press as he comes across as a greedy landlord in some of his seminar presentations (at $2000 a pop, I bet he makes more in these seminars than anything!).   But is this guy any worse that the payday loan place?  Or the buy-here-pay-here used car guy?   Or the check cashing store or the rent-to-own furniture dude?   Of course not.  He's just one in a string of people who exploit the poor.

Now of course, you may say that there is no need to go to a check-cashing store or a payday loan joint or all these other bad bargains - but that everyone needs a place to live.   And you're right about that.   But living in a trailer park is often a bad bargain disguised as a good one.  Since lot rents can be very low - sometimes only a few hundred a month, it seems "cheaper" than renting an apartment, in terms of monthly costs.  But you usually have to buy the trailer, too, and that can make the cost far higher than renting an apartment.   And trailers, unfortunately, depreciate over time, so by the time you make the last payment on your trailer, well, you have to buy a new one.

And many folks do just that, thinking it is a smart choice, going from trailer to trailer, convinced they are doing well as each trailer is "newer" and "better" than the last.   But at the end of the day, all you have is a bunch of cancelled checks for lot rent and trailer payments and no equity in anything whatsoever.  The guy selling you the trailer and the guy renting you the lot, on the other hand, made out like bandits.

The trailer park dude said a lot of things in his seminars that come across as hard-hearted and downright mean - particularly when taken out of context.  Being a landlord is no easy deal, to be sure, and you can't be a "softie" as people will walk all over you.   But then again, you don't have to come across as a dick, either.

But his strategy is valid.   He buys older trailer parks from "Mom and Pop" owners who built the parks years ago, and are now elderly and ready to retire.  These are the "greatest generation ever" (and later) folks, and they are retiring in droves and want to sell out.   And usually, toward the end, they haven't done a lot of work to the park - or raised the rents in years.   Living in the park itself, they may have become too personal with their tenants and feel sorry for them and thus have kept rents far below market values.

And the tenants, of course, like this.   And no, none of them took the money they should have been paying in higher lot rents and put it into a money market fund or paid off the loan on their trailer.   They bought a new Camaro, which is now up on blocks in the trailer park.   Some of the lot rents quoted in the article were startlingly low - on the order of $165 or so, in some circumstances - including utilities.

It is easy to blame trailer park dude for jacking the rents and charging for utilities.  However, he has paid off Mom and Pop, who owned the park and are now in Florida retired.   So he has to make a return on his investment, and likely even pay a mortgage on the place (perhaps to Mom and Pop who took back a note).  You could blame trailer park dude, or blame Mom and Pop who were so nice to everyone and all, but in the end, wanted to cash out on the deal.

Not charging for utilities, of course, is insane in this day and age.  Trailer homes are notoriously poorly insulated and can be real energy hogs.  And if electricity and air conditioning is free, why not just leave all the doors and windows open?  Maybe that explains why, when you drive through a trailer park, there is always some sketchy-looking guy leaning in the open doorway of a trailer with a three-day beard and wearing a dirty wife-beater (with a beer and ciggy, natch) - or the door is just left wide open.

If you are paying below-market rents in an apartment or trailer park, you can't expect that trend to continue forever.   Eventually, the market wins out and rents will go higher.   The smart thing to do would be to realize this, bank that difference and be prepared to pay higher rents when they come, or move to another place at that time, where rents are lower.   People who live in trailer parks, of course, aren't very smart, which is why they bit on this bad deal in the first place.

One of the interesting things trailer park dude did was charge a parking fee for cars.   At first, this just seems like outright greed.   However, there may be a method to the madness.  You see, one problem with a trailer park, is that people tend to collect old and run-down cars and park them next to, behind, or in front of, their trailer.  "I'm going to fix that someday" is a phrase commonly heard.  And Mom and Pop, being nice and sharing a beer with Cletus now and then, tend to forget about the Camaro on blocks, and if you mention it to them, they say, "what car?"

The parking fee is a neat way to limit how many cars are on the lot, and get rid of them (by having them towed for not having a permit) and also keep track of who is on the property.   One problem with trailer parks is drug dealing - and drug dealers do not bring up property values or make life better for the tenants.   So a parking sticker is a neat way to police the property and discourage those 15-minute visitors.

But what about the pee-pul?   The folks in these parks are indeed mostly working poor, working at low-wage (but not minimum wage) jobs.   They have money, but they spend it often as fast as they make it, often on very shitty deals like payday loans, rent-to-own furniture, and trailers and trailer parks.

The article cited above claims that the tenants "can't afford the $3000 to $5000 it would cost to move the trailer" and thus are stuck.   Why it would cost $5000 to move a trailer worth maybe $5000 is beyond me.   Commercial haulers aren't cheap, to be sure, but $5000?   That seems a bit specious to me.  Of course, the tenant always has the option of selling the trailer, but that is another problem with the trailer park - used trailers are hard to sell, and not many people want to live in your trailer in your park.   But that illustrates why living in a trailer park is a raw deal - you can't pick up and leave, if you want to, even if your home is on wheels.

But these people have rights!  They should sue and win!   Well, I hate to see anyone get their hopes up on that.  Because they will lose, in the short run or the long run.  The landlord (trailer park dude) claims they are all on a month-to-month basis, and if so, he can evict them if they don't pay their lot rents.   If they do indeed have a lease, they may win in court, in the short-term, but at the end of that lease, which is not more than a year, well, guess what happens?   Yea, you have to pay the increased rent or leave.

This is why I say living in a trailer park is a shitty deal - the kind of shitty deal the poor bite on.   You own this trailer, which maybe costs tens of thousands of dollars new, but is now worth nearly nothing, and expensive to move.   Worse, it is parked on someone else's land, and unlike me, you don't have an 80-year guarantee of what the rent will be like.  You are at the mercy of the park owner - or the new park owner, if the current park owner decides to sell, which he will eventually do someday.

With an apartment, you have to pay rent, to be sure, but the rents are based on what others are willing to pay.  And since you don't have some enormous trailer to move, you can pick up and leave at the end of your lease, if the landlord raises the rent.  This is why as a landlord, I charged slightly less than market value for rent, and did not raise rents every year - vacancy kills, and I would rather have a long-term tenant paying a little less, than tenant "churn".  You actually make less money when you charge more, sometimes.

Of course, the guy I sell the  building to, at a profit, will have to charge more money for rent, to pay for the mortgage he has to service, which is why it is common that rents go up (to market values) when a new owner buys a property.  This isn't rocket science.

So, are there no checks and balances at all?   Unlike an apartment renter, these folks will find it much harder to pick up and move on.  However, over time, if the landlord is charging over-market values for rent, the tenants will leave - and no new ones will replace them.   On the other hand, if he is charging what others are charging - fair market values - well, he really isn't "gouging" anyone, is he?  The tenants were being undercharged and now are paying market values.

And certainly, it is not "outrageous" to pay for your own utilities in this day and age.  And if you read the article closely, you'll see some of the instances of "doubling the rent" (which by my math, isn't doubled.  Twice of $370 isn't $610, it's $740) are actually a slight increase in lot rent plus the utility bills the tenants are now required to pay.  $450 a month plus utilities is about what most parks charge, across the country.  If are paying less than that and getting free utilities don't expect that to last long.

But of course, that is not as good a "capture the eyeballs" story as "greedy landlord (nearly) doubles the rent on poor working immigrants!" which is what generates click-through revenue and sells newspapers and raises ratings.  Oh, and it sells newspapers in the UK, where citizens will "bite on" any story that makes greedy old capitalist USA look bad and makes socialist UK look like heaven-on-earth.   Right?

If you are thinking of living in a trailer park because it is cheap, think about what you are doing.   It is akin to the families who live 10 or 12 to a house in the ghetto, with bars on the windows and lots of expensive electronics, new cars, and fancy clothes, as many of the GS-2 clerks at the Patent Office did.  They traded real wealth for the appearance of wealth as many rural poor do in trailer parks.  They may be living in a trailer, but they have a fine ride and a new smart phone!   Well, some of them do this, anyway.

A better bet is to live in a better neighborhood, even if it means you have no flat-screen TV, no fancy car, and no smart phone - and even if it means that you spend a huge chunk of your take-home pay on rent or mortgage payments.   The middle-class does this which is what separates them from the poor, in many instances.

The poor choose differently, or become poor by making poor choices.   The very poor will live in a trailer in the country and spend hours driving to work, on the premise that being able to hunt deer makes it all worthwhile.

Choices?  Yes.  Poor choices?  Yes also.  Often the choice which has a lower monthly cost (or allows you to buy "more stuff") is a worse choice than the choice involving a higher monthly cost, but a lower overall transactional cost over time.

This is not to say that living in a trailer park is always a bad choice in every circumstance.  My late sister started out renting a trailer in a trailer park.  As a result, they were able to live cheaply and save up some money to buy a real home.    Since they rented the trailer, they had a lease with the trailer owner, and were not tied to the trailer, if they should decide to move.  The trailer park was a transitional place for them - like renting an apartment, a means to an end.  But as a lifestyle choice, well, you are trading low monthly cost for security in the long run.

As for trailer park dude?   Well, he will likely make a lot of money, if he fixes up these older parks and can thus justify higher rents.  That, of course, requires investment and risk.   If not, well, the competition will clean his clock.   Just because it doesn't happen instantaneously, doesn't mean it won't.   These things may take weeks, months, and years.

(And given property values in Austin, Texas, I would not be surprised if someday, the entire place is bulldozed and made into a housing development or condos, or some other better use of the land.   When you rent in a trailer park, you have no guarantee of perpetual ownership, unless the trailer park is a co-op, and that's another nightmare entirely!)

But quite frankly, I don't think these tenants have a legal leg to stand on.   A Judge is not going to decide sua sponte that he has the power to set rents and whether or not utilities are charged.   And wishing it were so, is just an exercise in futility.

A reader provided this link to a video about "Trailer Park University."  Even if you don't plan on becoming a "Trailer Park Millionaire" think hard before you buy a trailer and plop it down on a rented space in a trailer park.   You are over a barrel if the owner decides to double the rent!

UPDATE:  A reader provided a link to this interesting article about the history of mobile homes.  Good reading!

Normative Cues and Financial Markets

Investing is confusing as the media hypes all the wrong messages.

It is funny (and sad) to hear some comments from folks about investing.  People say things like, "It's all a scam!" or  "No wonder the market keeps going down!"  or "I just don't know how to invest!".  And given the normative cues that the financial media and the trading companies provide, it is no wonder people feel this way.

Some folks have been burned so often that they believe our economy is "imaginary" and that only a "real" economy of bartering will survive the "coming meltdown".   Ron Paul is one of those who believe this sort of thing.   And he is selling a "financial survival kit" of course - to those same people who got burned over and over again by other con-jobs in the past.

Why do people feel this way?  Why are ordinary Americans mystified by our financial system?   The answer in short is, poor normative cues.   What we are told to watch and concentrate on, is only a small portion of the overall financial system.  As a result of these skewed norms, we have a distorted or inaccurate view of the markets and investing.   And perhaps this is by design.

What sort of things am I talking about?  Here are just a few:

The Daily DOW:  Every day, the financial channels and sites hype what the DJIA (or the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ or whatever) did today, or even in the last hour.  If you think about the "stock market" chances are you think of that ticker, which appears on most investment pages and financial channels, giving you the latest prices on various stocks.   Who reads this?  No one.   No one, that is, other than stock traders buying or selling a particular stock at a particular time.   And even then, they look at individual prices of stocks on computer screens, not some "ticker" scrolling at the bottom of the CNBC page.

So why do they have the ticker?  Back in the day of ticker-tape, it was the only way to check the prices on stocks in real-time.   Today we have computers.  The "ticker" is just a decoration at this point, something to fill up the screen and make things look busy and important.   And the normative cue is this:  The price of a stock is everything and you should concentrate on stock prices on a day-to-day basis if not a minute-by-minute basis.

That, of course, would be the worst way to go about investing. 

Big Losses, Small Gains:   Many folks who don't invest will tell you the stock market is in the tank and that the economy (the "Obama Economy") is in ruins.   Nothing is further from the truth, of course.  But why do people think this?  Again, normative cues at work.   When the stock market drops dramatically - by a percent or more, it is reported widely in the press.   But a gain of 5% over several weeks or months barely gets a mention.   Only after years of gains, does someone point out, "hey, this is the largest bull market since...." and even then, the story is couched in terms of "when will it crash?"

So the average person thinks the market is doing badly - or far worse than it actually is - even when the market is doing well.   I have had people tell me that the market did poorly under Clinton (of course, he's a Democrat, right?) and then even worse under the first part of the Bush Presidency.  And it goes without saying that Obama screwed everything up.  If this was all true, the DJIA should be at 50 right now.  But of course, it isn't.

Dividends:  You never see a ticker for dividends.  In fact, on most financial websites, it is hard to find information about dividends.  The same is true for the financial channels, who never mention dividends, other than once a year when they trot out the "dividend geek" and have him bite the head off a live chicken for entertainment value.   Then it's back to share price, share price, share price!

I have accounts with multiple sites, and only one of them, E*TRADE, even gave you a concise listing of your dividend payments (and projected future payments).  But even that site presented your overall "profit" on a stock in terms of share price only.   So, for example, if you bought 100 shares of ACME for $1000 which paid a 5% dividend, and ten years later, you sold it for $1000, your online trading site would show a 0% gain overall (which in terms of capital gains, is true) but would not present clearly that you made $500 on your $1000 investment in dividends - a 50% profit if you will, over ten years.

Most financial sites hide dividend information.  You might find it in a monthly statement (on page six) every quarter.   Financial news programs rarely mention it, as noted above, other than on slow news days.  But dividends are a big part of investing in stocks, particularly these days, when treasuries are paying so poorly and yet many companies are paying 3-6% in dividends.

Note also there is something called the effective dividend rate that is never, ever discussed, as far as I can tell.   For example, I bought a stock for $100 a share that paid a 3% dividend.   Pretty paltry rate of return, right?  Well, today the stock is worth $200 a share and still paying a 3% dividend.   But since I only paid $100 a share for the stock, not only do I have a nice capital gain here, but my effective dividend rate on my investment is now 6%.   That's not bad in this day and age.

Hype:   The financial media hypes things like IPOs because they are interesting - something is happening in real-time and it generates viewer interest.  They also tend to hype tech stocks as they are sexy and can shoot up and down in price.    There is no "story" about a company whose share price slowly goes up over time and cranks out a nice dividend - a company that is not run by crooks or MBAs looking to cash out.  These quiet companies are all over the place, but never mentioned by the media.

So your average Joe reads about the WILGROWCO IPO and puts $5000 into it and loses half his money and then says the whole thing is a scam.   Which would be true if the entire investment market consisted of over-hyped tech IPOs.   But it does not.

Stocks, Stocks, Stocks:   To hear the financial channels and investment sites tell it, the only thing to invest in is stocks, either directly or through mutual funds.   But there are other investment instruments out there, of course.   You can buy bonds - debts basically.    And some of these bonds can do better than stocks - even stocks in the same company.  I bought GE stock and GE debt.   The debt is worth more than I paid for it.  The stock it not.   Tech company stocks never pay dividends, but tech company bonds pay interest.  And when a company goes bankrupt, stock holders are wiped out, while bond owners may get some payback on their money or stock in a new company formed from the wreckage of the old (such as happened with GM).

There are a host of things to invest in, from REITs, to municipal bonds, to government securities, to insurance vehicles, to Real Estate, to Annuities, to, well, even gold and other commodities.   Not all are suited for every investor in every market, and it goes without saying that investing all in one thing is never a good idea.   But it doesn't hurt to shop around and explore different options.

* * *

 The 401(k) and IRA laws have forced us all to become investors - or end up destitute in our old age.  It is an interesting experiment to be sure, but one fraught with peril.  And the largest peril, as I see it, is that a large number of people in the US either choose not to invest at all (but rather buy a new Jet-Ski) or invest poorly in over-hyped schemes that end up costing them money instead of making money.

Joe Blow buys gold at $1500 and now has lost nearly 1/3 of his "investment".   He bought a mini-mansion with a liar's loan ten years ago and lost that.  Before that, it was Enron stock, or maybe some dot-com IPO in the 1990's.   Today, he hopes to make it all back with some new tech IPO coming out tomorrow.   

He's not investing, he's gambling.   And all gamblers eventually lose, the longer they play, particularly when they constantly play sucker's bets.

Sadly, our educational system today fails to teach even how to balance a checkbook or how compound interest can make money for you, over time.   I know I never learned such things in High School, college, or even law school.   Finance is something of a mystery to most of us, and what they "teach" us on television are all horribly wrong things.

What I have learned is that there is no real secret to success - no short cut or insider deal to making lots of money.  Just put aside a little bit every week, every month, every year, and invest in a panoply of different things - some conservative, some more aggressive.   Walk away from anything hyped on the television - once an "inside tip" is broadcast to 300 million people, it no longer is an inside tip.

And when something sounds too-good-to-be-true, like flipping houses for 30% profits in a week without doing any work, or stocks that shoot up in value while the underlying fundamentals of the company remain unchanged, then just walk away.

Walk away from the hype and disinformation.

Lunatic Fringe

What makes people believe in conspiracy theories and other fringe political beliefs?  Mostly, it is a form of mental illness.  Mostly, it is depression.

A friend recently asked me what I thought about all this "Jade Helm" nonsense.  And I replied that I hate to even legitimize that sort of nonsense by discussing it.
 

Snopes had an interesting discussion about conspiracy theories and how to create and fester them.  It went something like this:

1.  Look for inconsistencies in any story (and there always tons of them) and start harping on them, even if they mean nothing. Make ominous comments about "unexplained inconsistencies."

2.  Disregard overwhelming evidence that disagrees with the conspiracy theory, or argue that it is alleged or unproven.  Shift the burden of proof to the other side (you need only make an allegation, they have to prove you are wrong!).

3.  Just make shit up.  If someone tries to discredit it, then argue they are part of the conspiracy as well.  This is a very convenient tactic, as the more people argue you are wrong, the more you can say that this is proof you are right!  The very action of debunking a conspiracy theory is proof the conspiracy is real!

4.  Wash.  Rinse.  Repeat.

It isn't hard to do, whether it is space aliens building the pyramids, the Kennedy assassination, the moon landing, or whatever.   And people will go along with this nonsense as well.   Because people don't like to think, they'd rather feel sorry for themselves and wallow in self-pity.

As I have noted time and time again, conspiracy theories are the ultimate time-wasters and wasters of emotional energy.  If you believe in them, they do nothing for you, personally (although I suppose the real conspiracy is the person who puts these theories out there - designed to get you all depressed and angry and to vote a certain way).

What is scary to me, today, is that conspiracy theories are no longer the outliers of wacko fringe thinking, but pretty much the mainstream of what used to be the "Grand Old Party" as evidenced by the goings on with the Texas governor - clearly pandering to the lunatics in his party.   How sad!

So who believes in this shit?  Mentally ill people, mostly.  Mild or wild, you can spot a nutter from 100 yards away by his spouting of conspiracy theory nonsense.   It is the ultimate form of externalizing as it puts the onus of all their problems onto someone else.

For example, on one discussion group, the premise was that the "imaginary economy" (you know, banks, money, stocks, real estate, jobs, products, stores, etc. - it all looks frighteningly real, don't it?) is going to collapse any day now.  The "real economy" - bartering chickens and canned goods for gold and ammo - is what really matters.

To these folks, saving for retirement or buying a house is a sucker's game, which is a really handy thing for them to say, as they haven't saved a dime of their own money, but rather "invested" it in gold bars (that lost 1/3 of their value) and boxes of moldering ammunition in their bunker.    So they are not being lazy or stupid by failing to hold a job or save a nickel, they are being smart for investing in the end times!   You can see how this bootstraps itself.  People believe what they want to believe and usually what they want to believe is that what they are doing is right and that this hat looks good on them.

Politically, these folks are all over the map.  One way you can tell all this "FEMA Detention Camps" nonsense is nonsense is that the exact same theories were being bandied about by leftist crazies when Bush was President.   I kid you not, some lefty friends of mine were convinced that Bush was going to round them all up, put them in detention camps, and then declare himself dictator for life.   Some of these folks actually left the country to avoid the supposed round-up.

Now, eight years later, the same stories and YouTube videos are being spread, but this time, it is Obama that is the malefactor.   Of course, this is nonsense.  If there is anyone who wants to leave the White House, it is Obama, who is looking forward to retirement and $300,000 speeches, like Billy Clinton did.

And Bush?  He was weary of the job as well - particularly with the economy collapsing during his last year on the job.  Oh, right, that never happened.  Sorry, what was I thinking?

That is a problem with the conspiracy theorist - truth is something very elastic.   Names and dates get mixed up and problems associated with one party or President get morphed to another.  I met the other day, a couple from the Carolinas, who you would think were very liberal people.  He was an aging Vietnam Vet.  He had marched in the civil rights movement and was proud to say that he shook Dr. Martin Luther King's hand.

But in the next breath, his wife chimes in that "President Obama took all the jobs away" which is why they left the Carolinas.   Never mind that Obama inherited a wrecked economy and high unemployment, and since he took office (which coincided with nadir of the stock market) the economy has been on a tear for six years now, with the stock market steadily climbing, and unemployment steadily decreasing, all while inflation and interest rates remain at record lows.  By any other measure, this would be considered a successful Presidency.

But that is the nature of these sort of theories.   They are not designed to get most people to believe in them, but rather as part of a background noise - a Greek chorus if you will - of chanting discontentment and unhappiness.  Because, if you can keep people depressed, anxious, nervous, and passive, it is far easier to manipulate them.

To put them in detention camps?  Hell, no.  To put them into a 72 month car loan and a toxic mortgage on a mini-mansion and a new cell phone plan.   To get them to spend every last nickel they make and then get them to believe that this is a normal condition and that "you can't get ahead so why bother trying?"

People in detention camps are not profitable.   Making a detention camp out of a Wal-Mart makes no sense.  An operating Wal-Mart superstore is a license to print money, which is why I own stock in this "imaginary economy" company.

The real conspiracy theory is right out there for anyone to see - it is the actions of the marketers and the marketplace to get you to make poor financial choices and oftentimes - most of the time - these "conspirators" win, because they have a strong ally in your weaknesses.  You desire the mini-mansion, the flashy new car, the latest smart phone (the entire smart phone thing being one of their greatest accomplishments - enslaving a generation to little glass-and-metal boxes).

On the other hand, if you eschew the noise and the madness of the world and embrace reality - real reality, not "reality TeeVee" reality, you can make money like a bandit in the United States.   All you have to do is put $5 a day into savings, rather than into a designer coffee or a smart phone or cable TV or a leased car, and within your lifetime, you could end up with anywhere from $250,000 to a million dollars.

Sadly, most folks think that being "rational" is to believe everything the television says, or that whatever their neighbors are doing is a good idea.   It is not.   Most people in this country are on economic self-destruct, most of the time.  For some, it is just human weakness - the desire to "have it all now" and then "blame someone else later".  For others, it is just mental illness - that makes them believe that some wild conspiracy theory is true, but that investing for the future is a con.

Ceding Control?

In the news tonight, I'm pretty and my boobs are perky.  Film at 11!

Quick Quiz:

The news media is which of the following?

A.  A public service run by networks and media conglomerates to keep everyone properly informed and up-to-date in a modern Democracy.

B.  A commercial news programming service that is unfortunately biased by the political interests of the owners of the media outlets.

C.  For-profit entertainment programming run by the entertainment branches of major networks and media outlets for the sole purpose of making as much money as possible by selling eyeballs to advertisers, by intentionally distorting the news in order to "get you to watch more".

Some of you are naive enough to actually believe that (A) is correct.  And in the early days of television and radio news, when news divisions were not beholden to entertainment divisions of media companies, perhaps a little bit of this was true.

Some of you are a little more crass and believe (B) might be true, and to some extent, maybe it was, back in the days of network news which was often accused of having a liberal bias - that is until Fox found out that having a conservative bias would build ratings, too (particularly when you are the only conservative game in town).

The correct answer, of course, is (C).  News programming is entertainment only.  In fact, Fox News, when applying for its "Fair and Balanced" trademark, put down under "goods and services" the description "Entertainment services in the form of news broadcasting..." or something similar. 

News divisions are now subservient to entertainment divisions at most networks, and even "News" networks are all about entertainment and selling eyeballs.   The name of the game is to get people to view the program.  The more people view, and the longer they view, then the higher your ratings.  The higher your ratings, the more you can charge for ad time.  The more you can charge for ad time, the more money you make.  It is as simple as that.

There are some small caveats, of course.  The Odious Glenn Beck discovered the hard way that while ratings are important, demographics count as well.   You don't want to have high ratings among people who are poor and stupid.   Towards the end, Beck's advertisers consisted only of gold sales companies (often tied to Beck himself) and companies selling penis enlargers.  Do the math on that demographic.   It ain't selling airtime!

The news media has discovered that in order to sell eyeballs - either through network ratings or click-through revenue from websites (or even newspapers and magazines), you have to tell people what they want to hear not what they really need to know.  So when a news story breaks, you want to say whatever it is that gets people to keep watching.   So we have things like obsessive coverage of the "tot mom" trial, while in the meantime, thousands of children are abused and killed every month, and their fate goes unnoticed by the media, as the public doesn't sympathize or somehow identify with the accused.

Or you have a reported shooting that turns out not to have happened.    The news anchor tweets, "Well stay tuned to Fox News until we figure it out!"  I am not picking on Fox - CNN is just as bad, if not worse, in terms of engaging in rampant speculation and rumor-mongering.

Watching the news media every day, whether it be on television, the internet, or through newspapers or whatever, is not necessarily going to make you "well informed" or a better person or more knowledgeable or whatever.  It is just going to waste inordinate amounts of your time, make you anxious and depressed (the recipe for good little consumers!) as well as passive.  It will also make you horribly ill-informed as to what actually goes on in the world.  What history writes about topics versus the news, are two different things, as the reporting on Columbine aptly illustrates.

So, unplugging from the media is really important in order to get ahead in life.  The messages you get from the media are either entirely wrong or just largely inaccurate.  They tell you to invest in all the wrong things and send the worst possible messages (don't bother saving, that's hard!  Lease a new car instead!).  The "financial channels" are, of course, the worst of the lot.

In response to this, a reader writes that I am not being kept "up to date" on the latest happenings in the world!  Moreover, I am "ceding control" of my life to others by not being constantly informed on things going on in the world!

OK, well let me explain it a bit clearer.  I am not "ceding control" to others by not obsessing about what events that do not affect me directly, happening in another State, in real-time. 

Rather, it is smarter to wait and see what the real truth is.  Before we had television and radio, this is exactly what people did, by the way.  And they did pretty well (although the print media was, and is, distorted as well, to suit the commercial ends of the people printing it).

In Ferguson, it turned out the "real truth" was that  the fellow had just robbed a store, had lunged into a police car, and then ran toward officers with his HANDS DOWN when told to halt.  The DoJ concluded this, the grand jury concluded this, even President Obama concluded this.

The media, rushing off with the "story" got it all wrong - reporting rumors instead of facts, reporting "eyewitness testimony" of people repeating things they heard, but never saw firsthand.

Yet people who watch the "news" are still convinced that injustice was done in Ferguson, and moreover, this is part of a nationwide pattern of Police brutality.

The guy in Staten island selling illegal cigarettes was the same deal - he had a record as long as your arm and refused to cooperate with the police, instead trying to "negotiate" his arrest and when that failed, physically resisting police force.  No sympathy from me.  It has never been the policy in this country that once you are put under arrest, that you start arguing your case with the arresting officer.  You comply, go to jail, and then get released and later on "tell it to the Judge".   When you resist the police, they use their police powers to bring you into custody.  And if you are a 350 pound tub 'o lard, this may mean you get injured or even killed in the process.  That was a choice you made when you decided to argue with a cop.

This latest case?   Well, it initially appears to be a case of police brutality, once again, based on initial media reporting.   But now the coroner is saying that he hit his head on a bolt in the van, and a fellow inmate claims he was flailing around in the van, intentionally trying to injure himself (presumably to foster a case for police brutality).  Is this true?

We don't know - yet.   In all three cases, people used these incidents as pretexts to run wild and riot - and even kill police officers.  The real story comes out later. And it turns out that the media was BAITING US by reporting inaccurate data - knowing that it would get people to watch obsessively - capturing eyeballs for advertisers.

And even when there is video of an event, it can often be inaccurate.  We had a case here recently where a drunk and disorderly lady was "slammed to the ground" in what some called "Police Brutality".   And if you watch the video on YouTube, which only shows part of what happened, you might believe this.  But if you saw the whole unedited video, of a woman in a fuge state biting and attacking police officers, well, you might come to a different conclusion.

It is like that stupid "Collateral Murder" video, which was heavily edited and a different soundtrack placed over it, to make us think that U.S. Soldiers were just gleefully shooting civilians and children on purpose.  In that case, however, the reality was, some Reuters reporters decided to "tag along" with insurgents carrying grenade launchers.  What the fuck did they think was going to happen?  From 200 yards away, you can't tell the difference between the insurgent and the "reporter" (actually an independent contractor hoping to sell compelling footage of U.S. Soldiers being killed), nor can you aim at one and not the other, even if you could.

It is not hard to manipulate people's perceptions, even with "live video" and perhaps especially with live video as often a narrative or clever editing can be used to make things appear as they are not.

I am not "ceding control" to others by being contemplative and waiting for the real story - the story history writes, not the media.

If anyone is ceding control, it is people who obsess about being "plugged in" to the media 24/7 and then speculating on the latest events of the day.  What ever happened to that Malaysian airplane?  It turns out that watching television as hard as possible didn't find it.  And it never will.   Maybe someday, they will figure it out.  In the meantime, obsessing about it doesn't accomplish much.

Recently, there was a shooting in Texas that some are calling a terrorist act.   Not watching the news, I missed the minute-by-minute speculation-a-thon that really wouldn't have informed me of much.   The next day, it is a three-paragraph article in the paper.   A month from now, we'll likely know much more, and a year from now, much of what we "know" today will turn out to have been wrong.

In the meantime, not watching the news and obsessing about it hasn't really changed my personal situation, since I don't live in Texas, don't attend anti-Muslim rallies, and don't engage in Jihad.

Knowing all the "latest goings on" in the world might be handy for water-cooling chat at work, but it really doesn't help you personally.

Unplug the 24 hour news cycle and free your mind!