ex•tor•tion [ik-stawr-shuh n] –noun
1. An act or instance of extorting.
2. The crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one’s office or authority.
3. Oppressive or illegal exaction, as of excessive price or interest: the extortions of usurers.
4. Anything extorted.

Early in our industrial infancy, the cheapest labor was often recent immigrants, indentured for their trip from the old world. Like many nubies, they were mocked as unsophisticated or slow witted by some in pop culture for their low socio-economic standing and lack of understanding of local norms. They were employed at a slower rate than assimilated workers. Unscrupulous business owners, and I might add, political parties, took unfair advantage of their ignorance. Workers were hired under misleading arrangements specifically worded to entice these workers into unfair contracts. The workers did what all workers in a free market do when treated dishonestly, the walked out. This wiped the gotcha-smile right off the bosses faces. The bosses could not infringe upon one’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One of the principles essential to the right to pursue happiness is the ability to keep the fruits of one’s pursuits, the protection of private property. The bosses wanted to get the production from the worker, and keep much of the remuneration as well.

To infringe upon this right required collusion with government.

Fraudulent employers got bigger, helped elect business friendly politicians who then enacted laws allowing employment contract skippers to be arrested and to allow local police to enforce the terms of the contracts. Railroads, coal mines, steel, were industries notorious for taking advantage of workers, enforced with the help of local and state police. They paid in script only accepted at the over priced company store. This is the part of the story we have all heard. The employees banded together and stopped working. Without production, the bosses could not buy the government they needed to keep the employees working. Such collusion only works to the advantage of the privileged few. We elect our government and the majority of Americans do not appreciate fraud and corruption, even now. Once the lights were turned on, the roaches scurried.

For most of the rest of our country’s history, unions could strike and business owners could fold. Pay and benefits were negotiated somewhere in the middle. All agreements were subject to either party simply walking away, at least temporarily. If the business folded, no amount of picketing would create money from thin air. If the employees walked, no amount of retained profit would produce. Soon equilibrium was reached whereby the employees felt favorably compensated, the business owner had labor he could count on and little changed year to year. Employees questioned the relevancy of the unions and hesitated to pay the dues for no change year to year. But politicians, as they are prone to do, followed the politically expedient source of money and grew to be on the “side” of unions, for a price. The unions used the means at their disposal to enact favorable legislation of their own. So was born the closed shop. If you wanted a job in a union shop, you had to join the union, often before applying for the job. Anyone who was not pro-union would not be allowed to join and therefore could not get the job. Friends and family were the only ones allowed to join and dissention in union matters was scarce. Even with this arrangement, employees were less and less interested in joining unions and paying the extorted dues. Non-union shops could pay less and charge less and fire people more easily, at the same time, they hired more easily and sometimes the take home pay was higher as no one was supporting a union infrastructure. This was especially true for other countries. Soon, a new generation of workers grew up only hearing stories of the labor movement. Their union loyalty faded as the union looked less and less like the savior of mistreated employees, and more and more like the bloated bureaucracies that had enslaved their grandfathers. Unions needed a better way of growing members in order to survive.

One option, the hard way, was to insist on minimum standards for members for training, ethics, dependability, etc. They could insist on eliminating poor performers from their ranks. This would give unions a reputation for the best employees for the money and guarantee a steady supply of employees wanting to join and a steady supply of employers wanting to hire them. The downside, the dues would have to be really low to keep newly employed members from leaving once they got the job. And, there is the downside of having to produce something in return for the dues after years of getting closed shop dues for relatively little. But if they could find another option, a new steel industry or a new coal industry, where the businesses hardly had any competition for employees, it would be much easier. Such a business would be staffed by employees with little choice but to work for the union. What would be even better is if they could do so in an industry with considerable profit margin from which to negotiate. The search was on for an industry with unlimited funds, relatively high tolerance of favoritism and nepotism, and a favorable political climate.

The perfect industry exists. However it was illegal to organize until the late 1950’s. Then a New York City mayor wanted to secure a few city worker votes and the public sector union was born. Democrat politicians across the country rushed to add public sector union members to their roster of campaign contributors. The unions could push the entitlement form of pay and benefits, and get the government to pull their closed shop union dues straight from the employee’s paychecks. The union could then use those dues to help elect pro-union politicians with which to negotiate those entitlements. The position normally held by the business that could go out of business was now filled by the tax payer. The tax paying public can not cease to exist due to unprofitable employment arrangements. Moreover, the union employee gets to vote for their representative on the government side of the table, same as any other tax payer. They then also get to send a second negotiator on the union side. The first places to adopt such laws were those states where a large portion of the state’s employees worked for big, heavy industries which were already union supporters. The rust belt fell first along with steel and dockworkers heavy states. More would follow as right-to-work states had uprisings to get the “right” to extort higher pay from their taxpayers as well. All went as planned, at first.

The arrangement in Wisconsin threatens the golden egg laying goose for two simple reasons: Greed and incompetence. Pay is peanuts; the big money is in pensions. A public sector worker can work for 30 years as a teacher, from 25 to 55 years old, retire with a pension, live to be 85 years old, and draw more in pension in those 30 years than they were paid to actually work 30 years. Each time a teacher in Wisconsin retires, the cost of their replacement is double, one for the replacement, one for the pensioner. In a private sector business, where pensions have long gone the way of the dinosaur, the money for the pension would be set aside each year the teacher worked. The cost would be obvious as the $52,000 teacher also had $52,000 set aside for her pension in hopes that she only lived 30 years following retirement. Retired teachers who live to be 90 could see 5 years when the cost is triple. The number of retirees, who do so, increases every generation, as does the base pay, all of which is renegotiated each year. The public sector union employee in Wisconsin grew up seeing their parents get this pension, without paying into it themselves, and now expect the same. They see it as a right. They feel entitled. Public sector pay and benefits outweigh the private sector employee packages from which the public sector pensions are paid, and the private sector employee also paid for a significant portion of their own retirement. Private sector pensions are all but nonexistent because no one can predict how long a new 25 year old employee will live after retirement. No business decision can be made 30 years in advance with any security. Private sector employees must live off of the retirement they helped pay for as well as continuing to pay for the public sector pension for a retiree who did not. The cost of a public sector union employee far exceeds that of the private sector employee’s pay and benefits. Which would be OK, if the electorate feels they are getting their money’s worth. The downside of favoritism and nepotism in an environment of employees motivated by belief in entitlement to the job, is that performance will always be lackluster at best, and never approach the performance where continued employment and promotion require it. Indeed, the union can be counted on to talk higher performers into slowing down or performing less to prevent bringing undue attention to the overall lackluster performance. But the internet allows parents to realize that their students are more likely than other similar students to perform poorly, despite spending much more per capita on education. As teacher pay increased, public school student performance decreased. We understand child learning better now than in previous generations, we have computers and other teaching tools available to us like never before, and a large portion of Wisconsin public school 8th graders cannot read proficiently.

But the death knell for the public sector unions in Wisconsin and the rest of the U. S. sounded when they took a stand on the ability to renegotiate their position, on the promise of accepting pay and benefit cuts now. They got the nation’s attention when they stated flatly, that cutting pay and benefits for union members instead of raising taxes on everyone was solving a money mismanagement problem on the backs of the unions.

Really? The collective scowl from the country was palpable.

Although they were correct about the mismanagement, it was at the hands of the union-elected miss-managers. Taxes had already been raised 60% to pay for the existing packages as businesses left the state. Fewer students to educate could not be accepted as a sound reason to lay off unneeded teachers. The teacher’s union wants everyone to pay even higher taxes, following an election upset run and won on the promise of cutting spending and taxes,  The union promises that union members will take a small hit now, so long as they get the opportunity to negotiate themselves raises and increases in the future, (when they can get more union friendly politicians elected). What I heard was, “We will keep the roaches out of the kitchen so long as the light is on.” Such negotiations in the past have often been accompanied with back pay for those cut years. In other words, “Write us an IOU for the “pay cuts” we are borrowing from the next generation of workers we are under-educating, or we will shut down the underperforming school system we took an oath not to abandon. Really, we promise.” To put it in terms some of you might appreciate, they said, “Nice school system you have here. Be a shame if something bad were to happen to it. A threat?!! Heavens no, it is illegal for teachers in Wisconsin to strike! I’m just sayin’ if something were to happen, organically without our community organizers community-organizing it . . .”

We are at a crossroads in this country on so many levels, but this is ground zero for the entitlement culture war. (Wisconsin is also seen by many as the beginning, ground zero, for union solidarity of past unions. I find this ironic, but perhaps fitting that the attempt to skew the political processes in favor of the privileged few, on the backs of the many, would be exposed there and defeated there.) If Wisconsin folds, so folds the country.

I call for the formation of a new union, one representing the over 80% of all workers who are not currently represented. I suggest that membership be open to all taxpayers not belonging to a union and that membership can be begun and ended year by year, with a prorated refund of dues anytime a politician you don’t want to support is supported. I suggest that we vote ourselves the “right” to bargain and the “right” to have union members pay OUR retirement and healthcare. In fairness, the unions will likely loose the ability to negotiate pension and healthcare soon either way. Perhaps we should only reserve the one right we truly do have; the right to the pursuit of happiness; the right to keep our property. I suggest we organize a taxpayers union and strike to end the extortion of our property on the threat of public employee sickouts. I want the right to strike and put the golden egg laying goose out of the egg laying business. I want to strike to end the practice of borrowing from our children without their informed consent, to send from balanced-budget/right-to-work states like Virginia, to states like Wisconsin.

We can survive without public sector unions. They cannot survive without us.

I was surfing for some news this evening on my Sirius Radio while driving in my car. The dreaded drive hours, more advertising than music. Today reminded me of those days, I was flipping through my news channel presets and thankfully the BBC doesn’t care as much when we are in our cars. But eventually I stumbled onto Stuart Varney filling in for Neil Cavuto on his business news program Your World. He was doing an acceptable job in being politely cynical of the assertions of Dennis Kucinich, (D-Representative of Ohio’s 10th). I feel no need to be impolite, but ration is neither polite nor rude so I feel no desire to ignore the truth in the name of being polite. Nor do I feel the need to be disrespectful of Mr. Kucinich, he is willing to put his feelings out here for the likes of me to challenge, which is more than I can say for many of his 535 or so Congressional colleagues. But fallacy deserves no respect, as misleading people, no matter if inadvertent or well intended is to be eliminated whenever it is discovered. You be the judge of my reasoning.

The discussion that caught my attention, (in addition to not being another advertisement extolling the virtues of buying physical gold or online data backups), was about President Obama’s stated intent to “invest” in, among other things, an expansion of the Smithsonian Library to the tune of $100 million. Small change compared to the high speed rail President Obama wants to replace the mostly empty slow speed rail the government currently “invests” in every year. Mr. Varney asked how the conversation could be about lowering the deficit in the same breath as suggesting that we borrow more money to build infrastructure. Mr. Kucinich said several incorrect things but I will only challenge one of them, “We need to have good paying jobs in America, and when the private sector isn’t creating the jobs, the public sector has a moral responsibility to do that.” His assertion was that government spending on infrastructure creates jobs for people who then pay taxes and tax revenue will go up, reducing the deficit. Sounds good, a kind of Government-Reagan-Trickle-Down on steroids, investment for short.

First think back to high school (I know, it hurts), do some math using the Smithsonian expansion as an example since the round $100 million price tag makes it somewhat simple. I am a simple man, I need simple explanations. If all the money went to pay people doing these new jobs, none for materials etc., and all the new employees make more than the magical $250K, and do not take advantage of any of the myriad deductions like employer provided health insurance, so they all pay the maximum 35% back in the form of income taxes, the tax revenue would be $350,000. Tax revenues cannot be increased with the spending of tax revenues, as this is not an “investment” but rather an expenditure. Even if we grant poetic license to the use of the word investment, spending $100 million in hopes of getting a maximum $350,000 return is a terrible investment. But, I can cut the guy some slack since he blurted out his financial rationale in the middle of making the bigger point that this is a moral imperative.

I looked on Mr. Kucinich’s website where he claims to be “America’s Congressman,” and “America’s most courageous Congressman.” He also asks that visitors sign a petition to make healthcare a “civil right”. I know from such that he is drawing on people’s feelings more than their logic. If health care is a right, a person could infringe on someone else’s rights simply by choosing to become something other than a doctor or a nurse, or an orderly. The government could put people in jail for such infringement on people’s right to their health service. It seems obvious to me that Mr. Kucinich turns to his sense of morality for guidance instead of his sense of reason. It does not take courage to do what feels right. Courage is doing the right thing when people like Kucinich want you to feel like it is wrong or immoral. I contend there is no contradiction and that logic will give you the morally superior direction. People who do not turn to logic first, often disagree with me. I could be wrong. This is such an instant.

If you want to put more people to work, do you borrow money to hire them and then tax the pay to pay it back, with interest? Or do you let them keep the money to start with and save the overhead and interest? Logically, you choose the most efficient method which is the one without the interest. The one who would get the money now, and be taxed later may not like it, but in the end, some wealth is consumed in the borrow-spend arrangement. If your answer requires some leap of faith and ignorance of logic with an explanation that sounds something like, “the prosperity if creates will employ more people and amplify the effect,” then I suggest your answer is based on hope not reason. Los Vegas was built and thrives on people waging their own money on hope and a roll of the dice. Consider how powerful such hope is with other people’s money and a belief in “moral responsibility. If people hired by government investment would be able to pay back the loan with interest in the form of taxes, then government subsidy would not be needed. They would be able to borrow the money themselves, which is an investment by the lender in the worker. They would pay it back themselves, right? This is the logic behind school loans, borrow now and pay it back via the job you get later. The benefit of teaching a man to fish far outlasts the original investment. But where will the job be for the person working on the Smithsonian expansion once it is finished? This is the fallacy of all government “investment.” They all rely on a ponzi scheme of some sort where more and more people pay more and more into the scheme to keep it going. The Smithsonian job is an example of a Government bubble; take away the subsidy and the job is gone. The private sector is not investing in the project because there is no economic return. To keep the job, more borrowing or taxation and subsidy will be required. This is not creation, but consumption. But this spending is not about investing, or even getting a larger Smithsonian, or putting people to work or any other morally admirable goal. It is about getting money from some people, namely those of the future, and giving it to others, namely those of the now. You can try to assign any number of motivations to this desire, for example now people vote now, and future people vote later. Maybe Mr. Kucinich prefers to entice people to vote for him now as apposed to hoping they will vote for him later. But I don’t need to question his motivation, I can simply point out that his logic is flawed.

As I have pointed out, government infrastructure spending, although tolerable in some circumstances, is a form of consumption. But I assert his main failing in logic, which prompted this post, is that Mr. Kucinich suffers from selective morality. Albeit well intentioned, he is a hypocrite, although I suspect he is not aware of it. He is like the person who insists that the rich pay their share of income taxes, and then do not disclose all their income on their own tax return. Mr. Kucinich took a solemn oath to defend the Constitution of the U.S. He did this freely as a condition of the job of U.S. Representative. There is no provision in the U.S. Constitution confirming Mr. Kucinich’s assertion that the Federal Government has any authority to provide American jobs because he is unhappy with how the private sector does so. This does not change for good paying or otherwise. It does not change because Mr. Kucinich would choose industries different from that of the private sector. Further, there is no provision in the U.S. Constitution with which moral responsibility is implied. Mr. Kucinich is attempting to use the office which he holds for personal motives of morality, as he defines it. Mr. Kucinich took an oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies and then ignores that oath and the Constitution or assumes the Constitution is flexible to fit his own morality. Even if he were attempting to persuade me to donate to his cause of my own free will, I must be skeptical of his description of moral responsibility when he has turned his back on his freely accepted responsibility to the Constitution. His oath did not stipulate enemies who would attack the Constitution, or break it, or bend it to their will. His oath stipulates ALL enemies. He is the domestic enemy he is sworn to defend against.

If I substitute President Obama for President Mubarak, how different is the story. Does President Obama demonize revenue producing business as President Mubarak does the gift giving west, all the time relying on such funds to pay for his endeavors? Did President Obama not promise better government but deliver more government? Are the Tea Party attendees much different than the protesters in Cairo, simply without the violence? Would President Obama have attempted to physically shut down the news media and internet if such were within his power? I assert that he certainly tried to marginalize those portions of both which questioned him in the hopes that we would effectively do so. We have net neutrality, whatever that will turn out to be.  Proposals for reviving the fairness doctrine and giving the President an internet cutoff switch are ever in the Washington D.C. vernacular.

We are different from the Egyptian people in so many ways, mostly differentiating our heritage from the vision President Obama has for America. Our press will always be free as long as any of us are. We will be free to express ourselves to each other without fear of government prosecution so long as any act is without such fear. But when I saw President Mubarak arrogantly offering a 15% raise to government employees who had been told for years that the public coffers were dry, I could remember the self admitted “amused” President Obama smirking about Tea Party protests, “You would think they should be saying Thank You,” to Democrat-fundraiser applause.

Are we different from Egypt? Yes vastly. But will these differences prevail or will the vision President Obama has for us? Will we remain the shining example of what free people can do and lead Egypt by example to their new future? Or will we follow them as every socialized society before us, into the cycle of promise, tax, oppress, and collapse? We get to decide. Will we be content with borrowing a 15% raise from our kids and simply say, “Thank you President Obama”? Time will tell, but I like the odds, given the increasing size of the crowds in the streets during Tea Parties.

Oops:  In discussions about the situation in the middle east, my friends and I speculated about the state of Egypt and what affect other conditions in other countries would have if they coincided with the unrest in Cairo.  One such country that received considerable amounts of our time was Turkey.  I prepared this post well after midnight the first night, and proof read it the second and decided instead of using a generic country in the middle east, I would use the events in Egypt specifically.  I opened the document and replaced the generic language with Turkey and Turkish, instead of Egypt and Egyptian.  Those of you who know me, probably simply read in the proper language as you read, the rest of you now have a glimpse into the hell endured by the first group.  You both have my sincerest apologies.

It occurred to me that much is happening in the big-picture-philosophy world that contributes to the stress of some people. (Could it relieve the stress of some?) I recently had a discussion with one such person about their attic and property taxes. Specifically, each reassessment brings a new discussion about a storage room in the attic. It seems that the building plans show an alternate room in the attic. The alternate room was not finished when the house was built, but plywood was put down so the area could be used for storage. I’m certain many of you have space in your attic where you store stuff, (for lack of a better term.)

The situation is that each time the property is reassessed, it is based on the generic building plans, purchased from one of those plan books you can get al Lowe’s, not the actual building constructed. It would seem that this is easier that way, for the reassesser. Each time, a trip to the local tax office, a short wait in line, and the explanation that the information is already in the file, resets the floor area which establishes the amount of tax owed.

For some reason, this stuck in my craw. I can’t seem to shake it.

The tax is based purely on the assumption that the more you own, the more you are able (and obligated) to pay, every year. There is an income/wealth test for property ownership. If you cannot afford the tax then you are obligated to sell the property to someone who can. This skews property ownership towards the ones who have and against the ones who have not. The haves must take some of wealth they already have to pay for the property they intend to keep. Those who have not, must earn enough to pay income taxes and use a portion of what is left to acquire property. Then they must earn enough to pay income taxes and still have enough left to pay the property taxes. A person of moderate means often cannot inherit property and afford to pay the inheritance tax, income tax on their moderate income, and have enough to pay the recurring property taxes. There is an income/wealth test for inheritance.

How is it that the government is somehow entitled to more tax money, based simply on the wall treatment of an attic room? There is no link between that room, and any service the government provides. There is no link to the function of government. But that is not unusual; there is no link between sales taxes and the use of those taxes. So it took me a while to figure out why I could not let this one go. My conclusion is that property taxes are immoral. I believe that all confiscatory taxes are immoral.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it is easy to say such, and just as easy to discount such with the argument that there are legitimate functions of government, and that they must be funded. Even so, this is my conclusion: Just as tyranny is the opposite of freedom, the taking of a portion of a person’s property, for the simple reason that it exists, is an infringement on the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Bear with me, this sounds a little like a math proof. You know the ones we had to learn in high school geometry? Ok, so nearly all of you just clicked the delete key. Kudos to you.

For the rest of you, show me where my logic fails. The founding fathers wrote the constitution, in part, to protect the ownership of private property. They believed, as I do, that the ability to keep the fruits of one’s labor is the basis for the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The short version, if a person raises crops, just enough to survive, and cannot keep them, that person will starve. If a person can just feed themselves and the government takes the smallest portion, that person starves. Today, if a person lives on their own land, their own property, and never leaves, takes no service from the public at large but stays on their property for their entire life, they would loose that property in the name of supporting the common good as defined by those collecting property taxes. Today, a person is not free to live of their own devices. Today, a person who raises enough food to support themselves, has to raise enough additional to sell at market to pay the property taxes or have the property confiscated to pay said taxes.

The break even condition is unsustainable for the individual. One must make enough extra, be wealthy enough, to support the programs deemed needed by the governing body (street sweeping, welcome centers, etc.) or become a ward of that body. In the example I have chosen, the person who owns enough land to feed themselves and never leaves the property or takes any service from anyone outside their property, must sell a portion of what they raise to pay the taxes, and then presumably sign up for food stamps to eat. This person would have to give up feeding themselves to support the program that would feed them. That is, of course if they could qualify for food stamps and own property. In theory, this person would have to sell a portion of the property to pay the taxes and each year, the ability to feed themselves would diminish and a portion would have to be sold to make up the difference. Eventually, the property would be gone, and the person would be a ward of the state. This additional burden on the state routinely requires increases in revenue, which makes it more unlikely that a have not could earn enough to own property.

I call this unsustainable because you must either create enough wealth in excess of what it takes to survive at the government manipulated standard of living and pay for your share of the care of those who do not, or be one of those who do not. In other words, you must either be an excessive wealth producer and support the programs of the government or be a wealth consumer and survive on those programs. You cannot survive in the middle, there can be no sustained middle class.

A person living by one’s own labor, burdening no one else, totally free from owing anyone, is in a downward spiral. They would owe a portion of their property to the government for the simple reason that they exist and own property. Someone in the past, who earned excess wealth, (more than enough to feed themselves), paid for that property with money which was taxed as income if it happened in the last 70 years. But if for any reason the excess wealth production slows enough, to less than roughly two times that needed to live, and if they ceased to produce excess wealth to be used for government programs, the government will confiscate said property and put it in the hands of someone who will. The government comes first.

This person could loose their property because the assessor classifies attic storage space as “livable” space which moves them from the just-barely-feeding-themselves and funding the government category to the soon-to-be-a-ward-of-the-state category. I could not show up on their door and insist that they support my social agenda with a portion of their property. If I showed up with an armed person and insisted at gunpoint, I would go to jail. If I organized a municipality and showed up with a uniformed tax official and insisted that they pay a portion of the official’s salary with their property, I gain the power to imprison that person and take their property. The taking of property to spend on causes not supported by the person who just had their property taken, does not become moral when more than half of us vote together to do so. Theft by proxy is still theft.

I ask this: Are you free? Can you live alone on your own property? Are you free to live your life regardless of the unrelated decisions of someone else? I suggest you are not free. You only own your own property, keep your own income, pursue happiness, so long as you are allowed to do so. Your property is only yours if you are producing tax revenue in which case the government will “allow” you to keep it.

Are we moving toward freedom or tyranny? Can you still sell it all and go bankrupt to pay for medical procedures to save yourself or a loved one? Will that freedom be lost because it is deemed “unfair” or the process too expensive for the single payer to pay? Tyranny is the opposite of freedom. Which is more moral, freedom or tyranny?

Do you do what we are encouraged to do, and pay off your balances each month? Do you not borrow more than you can pay off each month? If so, God bless you, but the following will cause your head to hurt.

When the federal government spends more than it takes in, it is called a deficit. They (we) borrow the difference. Congress wants to raise the debt ceiling, the limit on their (our) credit card, so that they can make the payments on our existing debt. They want to do this in a year the deficit has doubled. Spending is up, revenue is down, and Congress wants a credit limit increase to pay the minimum payments on the difference. What a gig!! They set their own pay, set their own credit limits, and do not have to pay the payments – ever!!! They tell us they expect tax increases on the rich to pay for all of this and more.

Want some perspective?

I have seen this, which I cannot independently confirm, so correct me if you are good with numbers: If we collect a 100% tax on the profits of ALL of the Fortune 500 companies, it would take 145 years to pay the principle.

The principle is 12 trillion dollars by the way. Heard of the rule of 72? At 3%, which is what I expect we pay on federal bonds, the principle doubles in 24 years. That means to me, we cannot tax the rich more, enough to pay off the debt before it doubles.

Do you not agree that making the minimum payments is a bad idea? Are you OK in lending them more money to make the minimum payments with no plausible explanation of how they intend to pay it back?