This week will be the inaugural of a new feature called Idiotic Bumper Stickers . Nothing gets my goat more when driving than to read a stupid bumper sticker on a car and see the driver smugly operating the vehicle as if the debate is over. I just can’t keep my snarky comments about the stickers to myself.

Things have been a little quite around here lately. I switched jobs, and well, to be frank, just haven’t had the motivation to sit at the computer and blog. That isn’t to say I don’t have things to say. I do.

I finally left Greenberg Traurig. I can’t say that I am going to miss it. I don’t have anything negative to say about the firm per se (although I wouldn’t take my work there because it is way too expensive), but the interoffice politics had become nasty over the last year and I was over it. It was apparent something needed to change when shareholders in my own group weren’t on talking terms and the associates were the ones caught in the middle like teenage children in a nasty divorce. Needless to say, it wasn’t pleasant.

Moreover, they really got my goat with the salary/bonus/hourly rate issue. Greenberg really hounded the associates about their profitability. Associates typically don’t have much say with respect to their profitability. Associates don’t set their salary, their rate, or have any voice in the allocation/decision making of overhead, nor do the associates have any control when the time they bill is cut.

So it came as no surprise this year when they jacked my rate from $335/hr to $370/hr, and especially in this climate where collections are difficult, and told us that we would be lucky if our salary didn’t decrease. I suppose the rate increase anticipates the fact that collecting 75% of bills on average is great, so why not just boost the bottom line of the bill so that 75% translates into more dollars. I digress. For the second year in a row we got a song and dance about how nobody was going to get bonuses and things were really tight and the folks in New York and Miami were not going to be able to afford a private jet and would be relegated to first class on commercial jets and blah blah blah (kidding about the jet stuff, but I would be lying if I didn’t think the sob story song and dance was motivated by such **altruistic** motivations).

I am usually a guy who is grateful to have a job, but I was a little miffed that they raised my rate 10 1/2%, and told me to be grateful even if they cut my salary. Bear in mind that as your rate increases, so does the pressure and stress to produce high quality work.  As an attorney, you have a good idea of the cap that can be charged for a given project and you try not to exceed the cap or your time gets cut and they give you an even harder time about your profitability. So typically, if your rate increases substantially, you expect your salary to jump a little to make up for the added hassle your life has just become. Instead, Greenberg threatened to cut salaries while raising associate rates, and blamed it on the associates themselves. Jaded as I was, this only seemed like a plot to put more money in the shareholders pockets at the expense of the associates. Not exactly a warm and fuzzy climate to work.

So when the two shareholders I work with decided they were gone, I saw it as an opportunity and sought a job at the same firm: Luce Forward Hamilton & Scripps. Instead of a large multinational firm of 1,800 attorneys, it is a regional firm (California offices only) of about 200 attorneys. I am optimistic the move is a good one. We are starting a Technology Law group and the firm is giving us the resources we need to be successful. The move has been stressful, but as I said, I am optimistic.

Here is my bio and picture . I got to pick the background… hey, when did male pattern set in? I could swear I used to have less forehead.

Finally!!!

This is one of my favorite days of the year each year. It means summer is coming, which means late light. It is 7:20 pm, the kids are in bed, and it is still light. Yipee!!

I just love sticking it to cell phone companies. (This isn’t me by the way… I would have lost it about 45 seconds into this…)

For a long time, I believed the core principle of the environmental movement was population control. Don’t get me wrong, I am about as conservationist as it comes. I love the outdoors, and I believe in good stewardship (i.e., we can still both protect certain areas of the forest, while at the same time allowing responsible logging).

But this …

COUPLES who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government’s green adviser has warned.

Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming . He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.

First, the science supporting global warming is suspect. Politics and science have never made good allies if we want to get to the heart of the science. More and more officials and studies are finally coming out questioning the science of global warming.

I digress. Here, in all its unabashed glory, is a person spouting the central theme of the environmental movement. Contraception and abortion?!? Heart of the fight?!?

Another post will have to get into detail about the faulty assumptions here. Suffice to say, depopulation is a much graver problem than global warming or environmentalism. Our economies, our lifestyles, and modern day society is dependent upon population growth. With 6 billion plus people, has anybody starved because we can’t produce enough? No. The world produces plenty of food, and always has. So what exactly is the "unbearable burden?"

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Referring again for Obama’s call to end the petty grievances in Washington and "heal," Nancy Pelosi is still at it even after George W. Bush is now ex-president:

Pelosi said one of her favorite moments from Inauguration Day was when Marine One lifted off the Capitol grounds, signifying former President George W. Bush’s exit from Washington. "It felt like a 10-pound anvil was lifted off my head ," she said.

Classy, Madame Speaker. Even the media has found it in its heart to have some respect for Bush now that his term is over.

UPDATE

Somebody has been listening :

Bloomberg article headline reads "Obama’s First Civility Test Is Pelosi’s Manners ."

Liberalism: Mortgaging the future to feel good today.

More of the same :

[President Obama] cited the worst U.S. economic conditions in 70 years and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as having placed the country in crisis and said it was time to "proclaim an end to the petty grievances " that have long divided Americans.

"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly," he said.

Why now? Why not two years ago? Why not six months ago?

Liberals mistakenly think that merely proclaiming that the age of partisanship is over, it is over. I’m sorry, but Obama’s statement just reeks of disingenuous. If liberals were committed to "ending the petty grievances," they wouldn’t be clamoring for Bush’s head on a pike today. They wouldn’t have waited until the first day they are in charge to offer the olive branch.

The time for sincerity has long passed. If you are really serious about ending this sort of squabbling President Obama, you liberals will have to take the first steps. And let me clarify, merely saying "let’s be friends" doesn’t count. You will be judged on what you do , not what you say .

To all the liberals, the ball is in your court now. Let’s see what you do with it.

UPDATE

The headline says it all:

Bush Mocked As He Arrives on Inauguration Dais

Yes, let’s put aside our petty grievances…

Today is the inauguration of President Obama. I hope he has his Presidential Seal ready.

This morning’s reading was a little hard to stomach, mostly due to the smugness underlying the articles I read. Two headlines caught my attention. Unfortunately, I think these headlines paint a somewhat accurate picture of the way liberals think.

1. The first is an article by Robert Shrum entitled "Battered Liberal Syndrome ." He explains that Barack Obama will succeed because he is reaching across the aisle in an effort to end partisanship.

He writes:

I’m convinced Obama’s right to pursue the politics of change in his own remarkable fashion. Americans are fearful, but they yearn to be hopeful; that’s why they voted for Obama. They want solutions, not ideological battle. His stratospheric approval rating as transition yields to inauguration suggests how far he has moved beyond his Election Day majority and how effectively he has harnessed the public will. This could be a powerful force for advancing his agenda—and he’s not going to jeopardize it by letting his presidency be cast in partisan terms.

…

Everyone assumes that partisanship ultimately will reassert itself—in a year or two, or certainly four. Differences will remain and debating them will always be the essence of democracy; the sense of a new dawn may fade. Yet maybe there is a chance we’ll see change here, too—that the political clashes of the future will be more respectful, less angry, more open to finding common ground . . . . Today, Obama speaks for America in part because he respects and responds to voices across the American spectrum . At times, this may discomfort progressives. The end result, however, may be a cure for Battered Liberal Syndrome. It may also usher in a new, if imperfect, progressive era.

What bothers me is this: why did liberals have to wait until their man was in office and they control the legislature to have "a more respectful, less angry, more open" discussion? Over the last eight years, hasn’t nearly all the vitriol from the American public come from the left? What I take away from these sorts of statements is that liberals will only play nice when they are in charge. If liberals really wanted to extend an olive branch (which I don’t believe they do… see below), the time to do it is when the other guy is in office. Liberals have had eight years to play nice, but they haven’t.  It simply doesn’t look genuine when, after winning, you say, now things will be different. Now we won’t be angry. Now we will have a respectful conversation.

2. The second is a pair of articles about prosecuting George W. Bush. Did I mention that there isn’t an olive branch? Here is case in point.

(I have to be honest. I am not a huge G.W. Bush fan. I am conservative mostly from a fiscal standpoint, and he has been anything but a fiscal conservative.)

From Pelosi Open to Prosecution of Bush Administration Officials

I think you look at each item and see what is a violation of the law and do we even have a right to ignore it ," the California Democrat said. "And other things that are maybe time that is spent better looking to the future rather than to the past."

Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced Friday he wants to set up a commission to look into whether the Bush administration broke the law by taking the nation to war against Iraq and instituting aggressive anti-terror initiatives. The Michigan Democrat called for an "independent criminal probe into whether any laws were broken in connection with these activities ."

From Bashers End Bush Era Deflated by Lack of Prosecutions

Activists who have spent years protesting President Bush admit their chances are slim of seeing Bush or any members of his administration face legal recourse for what they say are "crimes against humanity."

While Shrum tells everybody that partisanship and vitriol are over, his friends are busy setting up the gallows for President Bush. What’s even more ironic here, is that according to Conyers, a "criminal probe" needs to be set up to see if any laws were broken. In other words, Conyers, Pelosi, and the rest have no concrete evidence of any wrong doing.

They want a witch hunt.

Pelosi justifies herself with the "we don’t have a right to ignore it" mantra. Ignore what , Madame Speaker? Moreover, since when does the legislative branch enforce the law ? Since never. That is the job of the Executive branch, which is exactly why Pelosi et al. need Obama to be on board with their lynching of Bush, and the source of the frustrations for the lack of prosecution for the so-called crimes against humanity.

Here we have liberal retribution at its finest. Why are these people so bent on prosecuting Bush for war crimes? Where is the outcry against the terrorists for their crimes against humanity? Are you angry at Bush because he kept us safe for the last seven years? Because he stumbles over his words? Because he took us to war and actually used our military for more than just funding the college education of our troops?

No,  this goes back to the Monica Lewinsky scandle. The liberals have waited a decade for some payback for impeaching President Clinton. It is their turn to loudly proclaim "off with his head." And in so doing, they show their true colors.

On one hand we have Mr. Shrum’s smugness, and on the other we have the balance of the left’s hatred. Sorry, Mr. Shrum, but I don’t see the conversation in Washington becoming any more civil now that Obama is on the beat. The problem is largely with yourselves. A civil discussion doesn’t work when you are only willing to be civil when your guy is in the house and when you are getting your way. It doesn’t happen when you are turning the leader of the other party over to the liberals in the Hague for prosecution of war crimes. The truth is that even now that your guy is in the house, your people still aren’t civil.