Granite Bay, California is ranked number 74 on Money Magazine's Best Places to Live. Los Lagos is a gated community in Granite Bay, home to executives and local basketball stars. Even within the gated community, one finds gated estates. The community features a beautiful pond/park next to the guard shack. Even in the Sacramento area, where most of our state's leaders keep at least a part-time home, Los Lagos is a special neighborhood befitting of movie stars and sports "royalty" (the local basketball team is the Sacramento Kings).
6080 BARCELONA CT, Granite Bay, CA 95746 is a bank repo priced at $944,900. At 4500 square feet on an acre, it is perhaps a modest home for Los Lagos. It doesn't even have a pool. But with HOA dues of just $175, it is a cheap entree to a neighborhood just across the street from Eddie Murphy's 10 acre estate (on the market for $6.9 million). Zillow reports 2007 property taxes at $12,577, making the old valuation somewhere around $1.257 Million dollars. But the last sale, presumably the bank repo, was only $866k, so don't cry for the bank yet.
5634 VIA AVION, Granite Bay, CA 95746 is more befitting the storied opulence of Los Lagos. At over 7,000 square feet on a 1.7 acre lot, this house is a bank-owned, as-is bargain at $1.539 Million. The new owner will only need to install a pool, add some landscaping to block the view of the power lines, and update the decor. Zillow reports 2007 property taxes at $24,326, making the old valuation somewhere around $2.43 Million dollars. But the last sale, presumably the bank repo, was only $1,710,00. It would appear that the prior owner (or the second mortgage and the prior owner) took a $700k loss, with the primary mortgage only losing a couple hundred grand (including repo costs).
I expected the real estate market to drop. Even I didn't expect to see open houses of bank repo homes in Los Lagos.
Monday, April 21, 2008
You don't have too many guns in Chicago. You have too many criminals.
32 people shot, 6 killed, in violent Chicago weekend - CNN.com: "CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- An epidemic of gunfire rattled the city during the weekend, with at least 32 people shot and six killed.
Police Superintendent Jody Weis blamed an excess of guns and gangs for the rash of violence. 'There are just too many weapons here,' Weis said at a news conference Sunday. 'Too many guns, too many gangs.'"
I once lived near a military base, where they had a LOT of guns. In all the time I lived there, they did not have 32 people shot in violence, nor 6 people killed violently. Over several years, shootings in that community that was chock full of guns did not add up to 32.
In suburban Pennsylvania, I learned to shoot a 12-gauge in my teens. Three of us teens loaded up the shotgun, a handgun, and a bag of rounds, and off we went to the outdoor shooting range. The friends who taught me to shoot taught me to be careful, too. It didn't take a parent lecturing us - we wanted to be safe, we didn't want to hurt each other or someone else, so we took it upon ourselves to include safety alongside "this is a trigger" and "here's how you load it." We had no adult supervision, and I don't even remember paying for the range time - it might have been a public park set up specifically for target practice. As far as I know, we were well within the limits of the law. You don't send kids out into the woods to hunt deer without giving them an opportunity to learn to shoot first. I never much thought about it - children didn't shoot up their schools back then, although we did hear about the odd adult shooting up an office or post office - but it was commonplace for a family to have guns in the house. Even children as young as 10 had hunting guns of their own. Between our own families and our friends, we all had access to guns.
We didn't have 32 shootings (not counting shooting at game while hunting) ANY weekend the entire time I lived in Pennsylvania. We didn't lock our doors, we didn't live in fear, and - remember, I'm in my 30's. I'm talking about the mid-80's to early-90's, not the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s. I read two newspapers in high school - the local paper and the Philadelphia paper - and I'll tell you, we didn't have many break-ins, muggings, burglaries, rapes, or robberies, either. All those guns - rifles and handguns and cross bows and knives and arrows - probably every other house had at least one gun - and we didn't have "an epidemic of gunfire" rattling the city, the county - heck, we didn't even have many shootings in Allentown/Reading, an area that still hadn't recovered from the steel bust. All those guns sat quiet, unused, unwanted for any purpose beyond hunting, target practice, skeet shooting, and perhaps home defense. Thousands upon thousands of guns, never once used in the commission of a crime.
So, to Police Superintendent Jody Weis, I would like to say this: You don't have too many guns in Chicago. You have too many criminals.
Copyright 2008 All rights reserved
Police Superintendent Jody Weis blamed an excess of guns and gangs for the rash of violence. 'There are just too many weapons here,' Weis said at a news conference Sunday. 'Too many guns, too many gangs.'"
I once lived near a military base, where they had a LOT of guns. In all the time I lived there, they did not have 32 people shot in violence, nor 6 people killed violently. Over several years, shootings in that community that was chock full of guns did not add up to 32.
In suburban Pennsylvania, I learned to shoot a 12-gauge in my teens. Three of us teens loaded up the shotgun, a handgun, and a bag of rounds, and off we went to the outdoor shooting range. The friends who taught me to shoot taught me to be careful, too. It didn't take a parent lecturing us - we wanted to be safe, we didn't want to hurt each other or someone else, so we took it upon ourselves to include safety alongside "this is a trigger" and "here's how you load it." We had no adult supervision, and I don't even remember paying for the range time - it might have been a public park set up specifically for target practice. As far as I know, we were well within the limits of the law. You don't send kids out into the woods to hunt deer without giving them an opportunity to learn to shoot first. I never much thought about it - children didn't shoot up their schools back then, although we did hear about the odd adult shooting up an office or post office - but it was commonplace for a family to have guns in the house. Even children as young as 10 had hunting guns of their own. Between our own families and our friends, we all had access to guns.
We didn't have 32 shootings (not counting shooting at game while hunting) ANY weekend the entire time I lived in Pennsylvania. We didn't lock our doors, we didn't live in fear, and - remember, I'm in my 30's. I'm talking about the mid-80's to early-90's, not the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s. I read two newspapers in high school - the local paper and the Philadelphia paper - and I'll tell you, we didn't have many break-ins, muggings, burglaries, rapes, or robberies, either. All those guns - rifles and handguns and cross bows and knives and arrows - probably every other house had at least one gun - and we didn't have "an epidemic of gunfire" rattling the city, the county - heck, we didn't even have many shootings in Allentown/Reading, an area that still hadn't recovered from the steel bust. All those guns sat quiet, unused, unwanted for any purpose beyond hunting, target practice, skeet shooting, and perhaps home defense. Thousands upon thousands of guns, never once used in the commission of a crime.
So, to Police Superintendent Jody Weis, I would like to say this: You don't have too many guns in Chicago. You have too many criminals.
Copyright 2008 All rights reserved
Friday, April 04, 2008
Non-profit healthcare - "Nonprofit is a misnomer - it's nontaxable"
Today's Wall St. Journal features a front-page story about nonprofit hospitals. The line in the title is a quote from the article, attributed to Edward Novack, president of for-profit Sacred Heart Hospital in Chicago.
WSJ says "about 60%" of U.S. hospitals are nonprofits, 23% are for-profit, and 17% are run by counties, states, or the Federal government. So nonprofit hospitals make up the bulk of hospital care, which accounts for 31% of medical care costs. Highly relevant, then, to any discussion on rising health care costs.
Nonprofit hospitals are generally 501(c)(3) "charitable organizations," and used to be required, under IRS code, to provide charity care for the poor. When Medicare/Medicaid were created, hospitals claimed that the demand for charity care would become too small for the hospitals to meet minimum requirements for charity care, so the IRS rules moved away from requiring hospitals to care for the poor, and moved towards requiring hospitals to provide a more generic "community benefit."
Hospitals classify some interesting things as "community benefit." One hospital cited in the article, BJC HealthCare out of St. Louis, classifies employee salaries as "community benefit"; spokeswoman June Fowler justifies this classification by saying, "The impact that any organization that's job-producing and buying goods has on a community is of benefit to that community." Other hospitals use their research and/or medical training programs to meet community benefit requirements.
One of the most galling "community benefit" claims is the write-off between "normal charges" and Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements. If a procedure costs $50, and the hospital used to charge $100, they raise the price to $300 and then claim $225 in "community benefit" when Medicare reimburses them $75.
But they're not-for-profit - surely the money they take in goes to good use? The article compares several hospitals in Chicago; Northwestern Memorial (nonprofit) derives 6% of revenues from Medicaid, while for-profit Sacred Heart derives 62% of revenue from Medicaid and then pays taxes on their building and their profits.
Where, then, does the money go? The article includes a chart of "Some of the best paid nonprofit hospital CEOs" with compensation ranging from $3.3 Million to $16.4 Million. For context, the article cites two for-profit hospitals' executive compensation - but under $250k. Executive compensation can include reimbursement of Country Club dues - because it gives the executive access to "potential donors." That's right - despite big piles of cash reserves, minimal charity care, exclusive luxury accommodations, etc. - a contribution to the local glitz and glam hospital is a tax deduction as long as it's a nonprofit under IRS regulations. Nonprofit hospital construction spending is climbing, and Northwestern Memorial provides an example of some of the expenditures - not just building plant and medical equipment, but also flat-screen TVs and room service, with Lake Michigan views from some rooms.
When you build a luxury hospital for the wealthy, how do you keep the riff-raff out? How about aggressive collections. The percentage of uninsured patients at Northwestern Memorial is reportedly less than 5%. Fret not, dear reader, Northwestern's CFO, Peter McCanna, tells WSJ that they only sued 82 patients in 2006 and 2007. The article doesn't mention how many accounts were sent to collection agencies, nor whether the hospital uses kind-and-gentle collections agents or the more aggressive, call-people-at-work-and-never-let-up types.
Yes, folks, the real problem with health care in this country must surely be greedy health-insurance companies - it couldn't possibly be greedy doctors, greedy hospitals, greedy labs - or ineffectual tax law. Oversimplification of a problem leads to oversimplification of the solution, which isn't a solution at all.
WSJ says "about 60%" of U.S. hospitals are nonprofits, 23% are for-profit, and 17% are run by counties, states, or the Federal government. So nonprofit hospitals make up the bulk of hospital care, which accounts for 31% of medical care costs. Highly relevant, then, to any discussion on rising health care costs.
Nonprofit hospitals are generally 501(c)(3) "charitable organizations," and used to be required, under IRS code, to provide charity care for the poor. When Medicare/Medicaid were created, hospitals claimed that the demand for charity care would become too small for the hospitals to meet minimum requirements for charity care, so the IRS rules moved away from requiring hospitals to care for the poor, and moved towards requiring hospitals to provide a more generic "community benefit."
Hospitals classify some interesting things as "community benefit." One hospital cited in the article, BJC HealthCare out of St. Louis, classifies employee salaries as "community benefit"; spokeswoman June Fowler justifies this classification by saying, "The impact that any organization that's job-producing and buying goods has on a community is of benefit to that community." Other hospitals use their research and/or medical training programs to meet community benefit requirements.
One of the most galling "community benefit" claims is the write-off between "normal charges" and Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements. If a procedure costs $50, and the hospital used to charge $100, they raise the price to $300 and then claim $225 in "community benefit" when Medicare reimburses them $75.
But they're not-for-profit - surely the money they take in goes to good use? The article compares several hospitals in Chicago; Northwestern Memorial (nonprofit) derives 6% of revenues from Medicaid, while for-profit Sacred Heart derives 62% of revenue from Medicaid and then pays taxes on their building and their profits.
Where, then, does the money go? The article includes a chart of "Some of the best paid nonprofit hospital CEOs" with compensation ranging from $3.3 Million to $16.4 Million. For context, the article cites two for-profit hospitals' executive compensation - but under $250k. Executive compensation can include reimbursement of Country Club dues - because it gives the executive access to "potential donors." That's right - despite big piles of cash reserves, minimal charity care, exclusive luxury accommodations, etc. - a contribution to the local glitz and glam hospital is a tax deduction as long as it's a nonprofit under IRS regulations. Nonprofit hospital construction spending is climbing, and Northwestern Memorial provides an example of some of the expenditures - not just building plant and medical equipment, but also flat-screen TVs and room service, with Lake Michigan views from some rooms.
When you build a luxury hospital for the wealthy, how do you keep the riff-raff out? How about aggressive collections. The percentage of uninsured patients at Northwestern Memorial is reportedly less than 5%. Fret not, dear reader, Northwestern's CFO, Peter McCanna, tells WSJ that they only sued 82 patients in 2006 and 2007. The article doesn't mention how many accounts were sent to collection agencies, nor whether the hospital uses kind-and-gentle collections agents or the more aggressive, call-people-at-work-and-never-let-up types.
Yes, folks, the real problem with health care in this country must surely be greedy health-insurance companies - it couldn't possibly be greedy doctors, greedy hospitals, greedy labs - or ineffectual tax law. Oversimplification of a problem leads to oversimplification of the solution, which isn't a solution at all.
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