[Coronita]

[quote=phaster]
speaking of the general population, “Piggs” and retirement planning ever consider the parallels to classic story of the three little pigs?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kT2Kt8TVPU%5B/quote%5D

There’s a big problem with the 3 little pig story relative to real life. In real life, the pigs that built home out of straw and wood will complain and then demand government to make them whole. And that doesn’t matter what political party they associate with, as we clearly now see.

[Coronita]

[quote=bearishgurl][quote=flu] … There’s also unnecessary waste in our legal systems. Particularly how ridiculously expensive.legal counsel is. Just a few months ago, I was in a jury selection group for a case that was going to trial over someone that shoplifted some toiletry items at Walmart. Seriously, we need a two day trial for this?[/quote]flu, the crime you describe here is a misdemeanor in CA and typically adjudicated quickly and sentenced without trial. Your “defendant” must have had numerous (2 or more, but likely more than 2) priors of petty theft and/or grand theft.

The facts of the crime and the circumstances surrounding the offender often dictate whether prosecutors and judges go with the misdemeanor or felony label….

(emphasis mine)

See: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-wobbler.html

and: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law%5B/quote%5D

Thanks for support my claim that our legal system is bloated with unnecasriky complicated and circular jargon with the sole intent and purpose to add thick layers of bureaucracy and bloat, and I guess, provide additional jobs that normally would not be needed if the legal system was actually just simplified.

[Coronita]

I never understood the logic of people who work at a defense business/job complaining about h1bs or illegals. Neither of them directly impacts their job security. How unecessarily big a bloated defense budget we end up having does…which is ironic. Defense business and employment is just one step down from government handouts IMHO. It’s a much bigger burn on our tax dollars and epitome of government waste than all the social welfare that illegals consume.(not that I particular support illegal aliens either)

How much did we spend on that joint strike fighter again?

There’s also unnecessary waste in our legal systems. Particularly how ridiculously expensive.legal counsel is. Just a few months ago, I was in a jury selection group for a case that was going to trial over someone that shoplifted some toiletry items at Walmart. Seriously, we need a two day trial for this?

[Coronita]

[quote=ucodegen]@flu

You might want to check the history of IBM Watson. It is ‘Deep Blue’s spawn, not something weird (yet again) from Microsoft.

With the Microsoft chatbot, some people realized that they were dealing with a parrot, a not particularly bright one at that, instead of an AI. An AI would have asked why the person wanted it to repeat everything said.

PS: IBM Watson bought some critical medical companies recently. It would probably do better at analyzing xrays, CTs and MRIs than sending them off to some cheap sweatshop in India. It will probably be more consistent than can be achieved even with well trained individuals.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-ibm-watson-is-transforming-healthcare-2015-7%5B/quote%5D

I’ve very familiar with Watson…. I saw it on Jeopardy one time 🙂

I think more impressively is if Watson can replace a $300-400/hr attorney. We have way too many lawyers and folks in the legal profession in this country that way over complicates simple things, more so than doctors.

[Coronita]

[quote=ucodegen][quote=ocrenter]a better question would be “do we need people”.

ultimately AI will prove to be superior to human beings in all aspects. And a mechanical body with infinitely exchangeable and upgradeable parts will be superior to biologic based, age limited body.

Do we want to go there is the question…[/quote]
We are already going there… IBM Watson has entered the market.[/quote]

…or maybe not….

http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/25/technology/microsoft-sorry-tay/index.html

Microsoft ‘deeply sorry’ for chat bot’s racist tweets

Microsoft admits that it could have prevented its chatbot Tay from turning into a raging racist online.
The company launched the bot as an experiment in AI on Wednesday, and in less than a day, it began to tweet things like “Hitler was right I hate the jews” and “I f—— hate feminists and they should all die and burn in hell.”
Tay is essentially one central program that anyone can chat with using Twitter, Kik or Groupme. As people talk to it, the bot picks up new language and learns to respond in new ways.
But Tay also had a “vulnerability” that online trolls picked up on pretty quickly.
By telling the bot to “repeat after me,” Tay would retweet anything that someone said. Others also found a way to trick the bot into agreeing with them on hateful speech. Microsoft called this a “coordinated attack.”

Lol

[Coronita]

[quote=gzz]I had no problems with both BPM and ApMex via eBay.

I think RCM’s “20 for 20” is kind of gimmicky. They are also known to not properly clean their dies, resulting in “milkspot” on their coins. Google image for examples. Ends up effecting about half of all Canadian silver coins, some quite badly.

Recently there was a deal where major seller was doing 5oz sunshine bars for about $81, which worked out to Spot + 38 cents with free shipping if you used a cash-back credit card.

I am excited to receive my first 100oz silver bar soon, I think silver is the way to go right now, and it is just more fund to have a big hunk of precious metal compared to the amount of gold for the same price (about 1.25 oz).[/quote]

Funny you should mention about milkspot… I got a tarnish spot on one of my Golden Eagles I received recently. I was a little hesistant to send it back, but after talking to apmex, they exchanged it no questions asked.

[Coronita]

[quote=gzz]The platinum coin you linked to would be about $25 over spot if you used a 2% cash back credit card. That is a good but not amazing price.[/quote]

Have you been able to get platinum at or below spot?

[Coronita]

[quote=gzz]Your low bar is 720?

Mine sometimes goes to 710 or so despite nothing negative on my report and 10+ years of regular student loan payments, solely because I churn frequent flier and cash bonus credit cards every 9 months or so.

I think you really just need the report, which the tenant can get for free and email to you. Check the “negative” section to see if there are any real problems.

People who have no loans and never got a credit card often have low credit scores.[/quote]

Well, it’s more of a rule of thumb, it’s not totally fixed at 720. But I don’t accpet emailed copies of a credit file. I’ve had situations in which applicants intentionally tried to doctor an emailed copy.

[Coronita]

Geesh BG, how many “illegals” mexicans and “anchor babies” stole your paralegal jobs? Really?

It’s like the same question I asked Paramount. How many H1-B or even U.S. citizens that are asian stole Paramount’s defense jobs?

Seems like there’s a lot of hate and blame going around. Don’t get it when it doesn’t appear to apply.

[Coronita]

[quote=joec][quote=outtamojo]I work in a hospital- 25 years now. When someone comes to me as a patient, they have no history- they are just a human being in need of help. Fvck those hospital workers if they are treating patients differently or lowering standards of care based on personal politics. They need to get another freaking job like border patrol or something as they are unfit for their present job.
Question: name someone who said it was ok to take advantage of the laws of the land? What’s the difference between Trumps bankruptcies and someone taking advantage of citizenship laws?
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2016/03/on-face-nation-today-john-dickerson.html?m=1%5B/quote%5D

I was actually saying the illegal patients were being the jerks/rude and the hospital workers were merely complaining about these illegals, not that they were actually giving crap healthcare to them.

I pretty much ALWAYS disagree with BG, but again, I have heard this point from hospital workers/nurses so for what it’s worth, I think it is a problem that needs to be addressed.

The whole born here, be an instant citizen should be changed IMO. I hear people from China do it too. I don’t think it benefits America to have this anymore…especially in this day and age.

Also, these illegal people don’t pay their medical care so it’s just you and me paying for illegals to have their babies here. Maybe you have extra dough to pay more healthcare and maybe this is why part of our healthcare is so expensive, but I don’t need or want to encourage this type of behavior.

Provide basic care, send them back after…

All IMO of course, and I am NOT a Trump supporter…

Also, it maybe hypocritical to complain about illegals coming and them giving you a job if you work in those hospitals, but the illegals taking advantage of this is not paying your bills or salary. I think a lot of hospitals under this type of work is actually looking to usually shut down or close since no one is actually paying them (just the government) which is probably a lot less that what it costs, since you have an extremely high risk high cost procedure (pre-natal and child birth).[/quote]

I’m curious. Who uses more welfare benefits, like free hospital care…. Illegal aliens or people who live in the south who are U.S. citizens? I have my hunches, but anyone have a convenient fact table? Sorry, unless one’s paying his/her fair share of taxes and not milking some public benefit, he/she really shouldn’t be complaining.

I think in this country, we just have a competition from people who feel like they shouldn’t pay for something…And when there are other people of different kindsd encroaching on their free ride, they complain.

I believe in absolutes. If you want to talk about removing welfare for everybody, ok that makes more sense than targeting select groups on who to help.

As someone eloquently put it, I’m sure we’re paying for someone’s welfare in Mississippi

[Coronita]

[quote=joec][quote=flu][quote=TeCKis300]Any recommendations on resources to do credit checks?[/quote]

This one is easy… Experian Connect.

http://www.experian.com/connect/

Basically, you sign up for a free account. From your Experian account, you send an email requesting the tenant prospect to register and sign up and to “share” his/their credit file with you. They pay $20 or so, and then they can share the credit file with you through Experian. Experian sends you an email, you log in and view their credit file. They don’t see your SSN, and you don’t see their SSN. I use this for all my tenants. I don’t accept “hand copies” of credit files they email or fax me (because they can be doctored).

As far as employment verification, I just get them to send me the phone number for to their HR department, and have them sign a consent for employment verification screening. Then I contact the HR dept for employment verification WITH income verification. If it costs money, I tell them to pay for it.

I don’t do normally do background checks if the employees work at reputable company. I assume the reputable company already did a background check prior to hiring them.

If you need a property manager, I can recommend one in South County. He probably does north county too… PM me.[/quote]

Thanks for sharing this…doubt I will need this anytime soon, but looks like a good way…

I suppose you don’t rent to people who work at very small companies (which can be faked like fake referrals)…[/quote]

Actually, I am currently. Size of company doesn’t really matter, it’s just a matter of how quickly can someone prove the make X and have credit score Y, and if necessary, prove the don’t have criminal record Z. I turn a lot of people away who have credit scores lower than threshold (my low bar in a high demand area is 720) .

Legally, you can’t stay a preference for tenants of a particular source of income,nor should you because you can eliminate a lot of good tenants. But the requirement is can you prove you make X to afford the rent, can you prove your credit is good, and can you prove you aren’t a criminal? Proof of income can be with different ways…employment verification, tax returns, 3-4 months of pay stubs, cash in bank account, etc,etc,etc.

[Coronita]

[quote=joec]Maybe some people are supporting Trump purely for his tougher sounding immigration stance. Some folks I spoke to know co-workers say that they are supporting Trump because they work in hospitals and am sick of all the free healthcare and lack of gratitude from illegals.

At the end of the day, I’m guessing a lot of these people just don’t care as much about all the other downsides of a Trump presidency, but want to shut down the thing that affects them the most.[/quote]

This is really ironic. Because if it wasn’t for the demand of ER care, the same folks complaining about those people would probably be unemployed from lack of demand.

It’s like people who complain about a bloated government but then work for a defense company or the government itself.

[Coronita]

[quote=spdrun]One of the best tenants I’ve had was a freelancer. We talked about what he did, I was convinced that he actually knew what he was doing, and we signed a month-to-month lease on trial basis.

No employment verification requested, and I think I did the guy (as well as myself) a favor by being flexible.

Didn’t do a background check either. I feel that anyone who’s paid their debt to society shouldn’t be under disability for life.

BTW – the hole in your idea of large firms doing background checks, is what if something happened AFTER s/he was hired?[/quote]

Well if they, for example, get arrested for something bad, they wouldn’t be employed anymore either. And in my cases, if my tenants do something bad, I think that probably would ruin their chances of getting a green card. It’s not that I wouldn’t consider freelancers. It just happens in my submarkets, my applicants tend to be tech workers at a big company, so it makes my life a lot easier.

[Coronita]

[quote=TeCKis300]Knew I could count on you guys. Great nuggets in there! Will definitely pickup that book.

I’m a professional cat herder at work, so managing this doesn’t worry me.

So what’s the general strategy for picking up rents? Do you all prefer paper checks? It’s only like 20 minutes away from home so some face time and regular visual of the place is probably not a bad thing.

I heard some mention of auto-deposits. For those that use it, what are you using? Direct wire, paypal, etc?… you know, in case I get lazy.[/quote]

As far as how to collect the rent check…. The first month check and deposit I always require a bank check and require it to clear before they move in. So I require it at least 1 week before move in date. Subsequent rent, I just tell them to send it to me at a PO Box at least 1.5 weeks prior to the first on the month, and I would hold it until the first of the month. A lot of tenants use bill pay and just have the bank mail me a check to my PO Box.

I offer a 3 day grace period, with a 4-5% penalty for being late. But you should note: technically late fee penalties may/may not be enforceable and some cases that challenge whether they are legal or not. The way I explain it to tenants is, make everyone’s life easier and just don’t be late. However, in the rare occasion that my tenant was late (probably due to the delay in the mail), I never collected a late fee.

If you need a property manager, I can recommend one in South County. He probably does north county too… PM me.

[Coronita]

[quote=TeCKis300]Any recommendations on resources to do credit checks?[/quote]

This one is easy… Experian Connect.

http://www.experian.com/connect/

Basically, you sign up for a free account. From your Experian account, you send an email requesting the tenant prospect to register and sign up and to “share” his/their credit file with you. They pay $20 or so, and then they can share the credit file with you through Experian. Experian sends you an email, you log in and view their credit file. They don’t see your SSN, and you don’t see their SSN. I use this for all my tenants. I don’t accept “hand copies” of credit files they email or fax me (because they can be doctored).

As far as employment verification, I just get them to send me the phone number for to their HR department, and have them sign a consent for employment verification screening. Then I contact the HR dept for employment verification WITH income verification. If it costs money, I tell them to pay for it.

I don’t do normally do background checks if the employees work at reputable company. I assume the reputable company already did a background check prior to hiring them.

If you need a property manager, I can recommend one in South County. He probably does north county too… PM me.

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