OK, I’m finally breaking down and joining the other bloggers who post song lyrics they think are really cool but probably mean jack spit to 99% of their readers. This one is from one of my favorite rockers, Marius Müller-Westernhagen:

Ich bin der schwärzeste Neger,
ich bin der jüdischste Jud.
ich bin der deutscheste Deutsche
ich hab’ das roteste Blut.

Schweigen ist feige Reden ist Gold.
Schweigen ist feige Reden ist Gold.

Ich hab’ die weißeste Weste,
ich hab’ den größten Schwanz,
ich fress’ von Allem die Reste,
ich bin dein Rosenkranz.

Schweigen ist feige Reden ist Gold.
Schweigen ist feige Reden ist Gold.

Mir ist so kalt,
mir ist so kalt.
Mir ist so kalt,
so schrecklich kalt.

Wenn der Himmel
sich öffnet,
an jenem jüngsten Tag.
Wird die Liebe sich rächen,
an dem was wichtig war.

Schweigen ist feige Reden ist Gold.
Schweigen ist feige Reden ist Gold.

It’s recently come to my attention that Hillary Clinton and I have more things in common that either of us might have thought. A non-exhaustive, likely-to-be-updated-per-comments list is below the fold.

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The recent post about Paul, Hastings’s idiocy (made worse by rumors that two of the anonymized partners, and not the nice one, are fellow Boaltholes), got me to thinking about the other group of a-holes who pop up in the context of layoffs: headhunters. Don’t get me wrong; not all headhunters are a-holes. Headhunters have the same problem as lawyers, bankers, Palestinians and used car salesmen: 99% of them make the rest of them look bad. The headhunters who placed me (rather quickly, I might add) after I got shitcanned last year were great. So I’m not talking about them, just all the other guys.

Like, for example, Lawcrossing, who today sent me the follwing email under the subject line “Bad News: Law Firm Layoffs Increasing.” No shit. not sure why the spammed the message to me, as I don’t work for a firm, but that’s neit her here nor there. The email continues:

One of the most frightening things about any job

…including any job one might hope to obtain from Law Crossing, but never mind that…

is that you could potentially be let go at any moment. When the work inside law firms starts to slow down, when performance reviews get “weird,” and when you start hearing about people you know leaving under unusual circumstances, it is often a good reason to be nervous.

Indeed it is. However, if you’re insinuating that anyone should necessarily quit his job - as opposed to simply updating his resume and keeping abreast of what’s out there - all because other people have either gotten canned or quietly left of their own accord without giving proper notice (don’t laugh - that happens too, and a lot more often than you might think) then it bears noting that too many job hops also doesn’t look too hot in the eyes of prospective employers, especially if you can’t explain them better than saying “I thought they were going to can me so I canned them back first.”

If You Are Laid Off From a Legal Job, Your Chances of Finding a Job Just as Good Are More Difficult
Legal careers are fragile. If you are out of work for even a few weeks, it can be extremely difficult to find another job-the perception is that you must have been fired and with good reason (even if this is not true).

Really? My own experience does not bear that out. When I quit private practice to go in-house in 2002, I got no signing bonus, no relocation assistance, just a slight pay cut in exchange for an implicit (but, as it turned out, illusory) quasi-promise of working fewer hours. When I quit that job to get the hell out of California, I did get a healthy relo package, but the process of getting that job to begin with lasted a good four months. Then, when that employer turned around and canned my ass for no good reason (OK, from the perspective of the idiot I worked for and the complete moron that he works for, it’s probably a great reason) I ended up out of work for a whopping 7 weeks, or 6 if you go by the day I was offered the job as opposed to the day I started actually working there.

Ah, but you ask, is the new job “just as good” as the last? Actually, no, it’s better. The pay is identical, assuming I piss my employer off badly enough to preclude me from receiving any year-end bonus whatsoever. If I get a $1 bonus, the pay is better, despite the fact that I now work far saner hours, and despite the fact that the cost of living in Winston-Salem is about 10% below Richmond’s. That, plus the fact that everyone I work with is really cool, which is a lot more than I can say for my prior employer. As to the companies themselves, let’s just say I’m now working for a Fortune 100 company, while my prior employer barely made the Fortune 500 in my first year there, fell out of it in the second, and is nowhere near it now. Nor is my experience out of the ordinary; once I took that cursed job I soon learned that my predecessor had been canned under equally shady circumstances; he too quickly obtained employment from another, more prominent company in the same industry.

So no, I don’t think getting canned is a death knell to one’s career. The possibility that it might be once scared the crap out of me, as this email was intended to do. It doesn’t anymore.

If you are at a major firm, losing your job (even if you are laid off) may mean you never work for a major firm again.

Nice weasel word, “may.” Are firm jobs really that different from in-house? Maybe, but I rather doubt it, since the usual scare-stories from headhunters imply that if anything, in-house is worse.

At LawCrossing We Consolidate Every Legal Job in the United States and the UK and Are Exceptional at What We Do

Nicely tautological, that. Of course they’re very good at what they do. What they do is scare the crap out of you. The email didn’t scare me much, but probably would have if I’d gotten it as recently as a year ago. It probably did scare most other recipients. So yes, I concede that they are good at what they do, if only they would try applying that skill toward something more productive.

Remainder of email deleted for space.

Uncly-Wuncly asks “It’s true. In the event I actually run into him, anything you want me to ask? Should I ask about baseball or McCain-Feingold?” Since I’m going to the convention, too, I echo the question. In the highly unlikely event that I get a chance to ask him anything, what should the question be?

Paul Hastings is learning this lesson the hard way. A few words to the semi-wise^*, so hopefully your company won’t have to:

1. If you need to lay people off, lay people off, but admit that you’re doing it to cut costs. Unless something drastic has happened in the last three months, don’t simultaneously insult both the outgoing employee’s work product and his/her intelligence by throwing together a few obviously pretextual, eleventh-hour performance reviews that fly in the face of every regularly scheduled performance review you provided before.
2. Hell, even if you did can the employee because you weren’t happy with his/her work, ask yourself if you have a credible, face-saving way to spin this as a non-performance based, “sorry, your position was eliminated” downsizing. If such an opportunity exists, take it.
3. If the person you’re thinking of laying off / shitcanning / etc. is pregnant, and hasn’t anything just about anyone would consider a hanging offense, think twice and then a third time before doing anything that will make you look like a total shithead.
4. If that same person just miscarried, don’t even THINK about it.
5. If, after reviewing rules 1 through 4, you are still convinced that simultaneously terminating and insulting the employee is a smart thing to do, don’t try to bribe that employee into not talking smack about you.
6. Last and least, if you are a famous national employment law firm, and your particular branch is located in a state that prohibits noncompete and non-solicitation agreements, don’t try to bribe that same employee into signing an agreement that violates that law, as well.[See update.]

^*I’ve never really been comfortable with the phrase “a word to the wise.” After all, if the guy you’re talking to is so damned wise, why did you need to tell him this stuff? Then again, I’ll grant that any potentially good advice assumes some wisdom on the part of the hearer; if you thought he was too foolish to listen, you’d probably save your breath.

More here, here, here, here and here.

UPDATE: After re-reading the “non-compete” provision, I think it’s not a non-compete after all, but a promise not to re-apply for work there. Not a likely violation of B&P Code 16600, but a violation of common sense if nothing else. If they don’t want to re-hire her a year from now, two years from now, or whenever, that’s their prerogative, but what’s the point in contractually barring someone from even applying for a job?

Is Marci Milfs really upset over racy books being sold to teenagers, or does she just like irony?

Drudge’s election day reports are almost always wrong, so but if he’s right this time about a 15-point loss for the Hildebeest, Operation Chaos may soon be in chaos itself. As a registered Republican, I can’t do much about that, but if you’re a registered Democrat or independent in this state, you can. Keep Hillary’s campaign alive, both for Rush’s reasons and because quite frankly, if a Democrat victory is a given this year, President Billary would be the lesser evil.

Meanwhile, in the primary that I can vote in, I plan to vote for Fred Smith. Pat McCrory struck me as a decent guy, and actually made the better imporession of the two in the recent Civitas debate, but John Hawkins thinks McCrory is a RINO, and as a recent transplant who’s almost as clueless about state politics as most people are about the national variety, I have little choice but to defer to John. I am curious, though, as to what kind of RINO McCrory (allegedly) is. From where I sit, RINOs come in two classes:

1. Real RINO. If this guy gets the nomination, we might as well cede the general election to Moore or Perdue, ‘cuz a Democrat is really going to win anyway. Examples of Real RINOs: Lincoln Chafee, Jim Jeffords, Michael Huffington (back in the days when they pretended to be Republicans at all). Depending on what issues you care about, Mike Huckabee may warrant the label also.
2. Quasi-RINO: OK, not really Republican in name only, and certainly better than any Democrat, just not Republican enough for one’s taste. Examples: John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Bush (definitely the first, and arguably the second).

My sense is that McCrory is more of a Class 2 RINO than a real one, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Errr, I mean, if we come to it, which we won’t if Smith wins.

UPDATE: Looks like Drudge was right for a change. At the local level, McCrory it is, so here’s hoping my sense about him was righter than my sense about Drudge being predictably wrong. Type 2 RINOs I can deal with, Type 1, not so much.

Captain Ed thinks that incomepoop Al Franken is finally on his way out of politics. One can only hope.

… how much Dan Besse’s campaign had to pay the Whizz Urinal not only to endorse him themselves, but also to run five letters praising him and zero letters opposing him on a single day.

I’ve not been tagged but none of the participants are tagging anyone this time around, so I guess I’ll tag myself. Not that tagging oneself is all that unusual, they say 95% of male bloggers have done it before and the other 5% are liars, so I figure it’s my turn anyway. So here’s what I’d do if I were temporary dictator:

1. Enact a “no, you dummies” amendment to the First Amendment so as to clarify that “speech” includes “money contributed for purposes of promoting political speech.”
2. Since we’re busy tinkering with the First Amendment anyway, add another provision allowing … nay, requiring … all consumer protection laws, especially truth in advertising laws, to apply to political and commercial speech alike. Wanna legalize fraud? OK, you’re the legislature, you can do that. But if you want to make it a crime to lie about the widgets you’re trying to sell to the most gullible elements of society, then you’d better also make it a crime to lie about the much more nefarious political widgets you’d force down all of our throats if elected.
3. Prohibit Congress from even considering replacing the income tax with a national sales tax until all advocates of the latter are in full compliance with #2, i.e., don’t use the phrase “fair tax” to describe a tax that may or may not be a good idea, but which in any event has squat to do with fairness.
4. Aw hell, between the “fair” tax, HughesNet’s “fair” access policy, every teachers union’s “fair share” agreement and worst of all, “FAIR,” let’s outlaw the word “fair” altogether.
5. Delete the militia clause from the Second Amendment. Maybe the Supreme Court will find some deep, useful meaning in there, but I’m not holding my breath. Mostly that throwaway clause has accomplished nothing except to (1) give the gun-banners cover for arguing that the Second Amendment doesn’t really mean what it says, and (2) confuse the hell out of the rest of us.
6. National CCW.
7. Some would-be Nifongs of the Constitution are advocating making it a crime to pass an unconstitutional law. Bugger that. It’s bad enough having courts strike down laws they don’t like on the specious view that they are “unconstitutional,” do we really want to add criminal penalties into the mix? Besides, as those who study the Constitution rather than worship it are generally aware, most of that document is pretty damned technical. It’s not a holy writ that prohibits all Very Bad Things, nor does it necessarily allow all Good Things. That said, every civil officer does take an oath to defend it, so what say we meet the CONstitutionalists halfway with a measure that makes it a crime to knowingly enact an unconstitutional law, and also make it a crime, carrying the same penalty, to knowingly (or shoulda-known-ingly) attack the constitutionality of a constitutional statute in court. This important principle was established in the 1921 case of Goose v. Gander, but has yet to be implemented across the country. It’s about time.
8. Depending on my mood, either repeal Section 1983 outright, or replace it with a loser-pay rule. If the ACLUs and the Yagmans of the world want to make a career out of suing the government taxpayers for supposed civil rights violations, fine, but they’d better pick their targets carefully.
9. Criminal jury acquittals would be appealable.
10. Jurors inclined to refuse to apply the law, as instructed by the court, would be allowed a 45 minute recess to obtain their toothbrushes, which they would definitely need if they do it. Exception: if either party to a civil or criminal suit is a known “fully informed” jury activist/nullificationist, the opposing party will have the option of waiving the rule of law and instructing the jury to give the bugger a taste of his own medicine.

UPDATE: Ride Fast describes my dictatorship as “scary.” Well, duh. Aren’t they all? Given that he also calls for national CCW, I’ll assume that’s not what he finds scary about mine in particular. Maybe the part about jury nullification coming home to roost? I can just here the counter-argument now: “No, dammit, nullification is only there so juries can nullify the laws I don’t like, not the ones that protect me!”