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Just when you thought the flying experience couldn’t get any worse, this month Spirit Airlines began charging passengers $45 for any carryon bag placed in the overhead bin. While some may view this as a necessary step to keep airlines operating in the black, I think I stand for most when I classify this in one word: CATASTROPHIC.

Before you think this is an overly dramatic reaction, let’s consider a few facts. First, Spirit is not struggling to make ends meet--the company has strung together six consecutive quarters of profits, with the last report being a $22 million profit for the first quarter of 2010. In the past year alone we have seen fees for checked luggage raised from $10 a bag to $25, and even $50 in some circumstances. And now they want to charge for a carry on? When is it going to stop? $5 for a bulky sweatshirt?  $10 if you’re wearing a sports bra?

This is nothing more than a move to squeeze travelers for more money while consumers are trying to find the light at the end of the economic tunnel.

My issue here isn’t with Spirit Airlines—frankly they’re like the indie band that sets up in the parking lot at a Dave Matthews concert. And with fares as low as $10, their small market of passengers may care less about an additional fee. The issue is if the major players adopt the precedent Spirit has established.

Some travelers have welcomed the fee, thinking this will solve the problem of passengers trying to cram everything they own into their carryon and slowing down the boarding process. I say, think again.

This isn’t going to convince anyone to pack lighter or to just carry a toothbrush and an iPod when they travel. Any individual who pays an extra $45 is even more likely to jam their suitcase to the max--its human nature.

While airlines obviously need to make up for lost revenue and the lingering effects of the poor economy, there are far better solutions than charging passengers for taking their belongings with them. Here are several fees that seem much more agreeable (and we would be much happier to pay):

    * $5 fee to sit in a Crying-Baby free row during red eye flights.

    * $7 fee for a #2-free bathroom. (May have to be enforced via the honor system.)

    * $25 fee to fly the plane for a while. Want to attempt a landing?  $50.

    * $10 fee to deliver the safety announcement.

    * $15 fee for the solution to the Sudoku puzzle in the in-flight magazine.

    * $20 fee to swap seats with the person next to Pamela Anderson

A few more industry-saving solutions:

    * Organize rows by drink preference for a cost-savings of one flight attendant per flight.

    * Hold a raffle for “Guess who’s the Air Marshal?”

    * Install a karaoke machine onboard. (They always save a failing business.)

    * Buy Sierra Mist in bulk. (I’m pretty sure those tiny cans are more expensive than airlines think--at least that’s what I’ve been led to believe since every time I ask for a full can I receive a disapproving look from the flight attendants.)

Of course, there are more practical solutions such as renegotiating oil contracts, opening up routes controlled by the legacy carriers to smaller, more profitable airlines, and simply adjusting ticket prices to account for higher flight costs. I really don’t think people mind paying a fair ticket price if they are guaranteed there will be no hidden fees when they arrive at the airport. It seemed to be working fairly well from 1903 until just a couple of years ago. The cost of oil has since retreated to normal levels, yet the fees remain--it’s high time they stop.

Regardless of the industry, angering your customers has never been a way to save a business. We want to fly on your big shiny planes. Please help us.

For more fun and to join the nationwide campaign against baggage fees, logon to www.beendelayed.com.

The coalition will closely watch the ongoing budget process, paying careful attention to behind the scenes negotiations to make sure that our state’s environmental protections are not weakened and that communities are not shut out of decisions that affect their quality of life. The Planning and Conservation League (PCL) is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit advocacy organization, working in the State Legislature and at the administrative level in state government to enact and implement policies to protect and restore the California environment. For more information see www.pcl.org

Back when Marilyn Randall was a kid, she didn’t have to send a friend request in order to become someone’s friend.

“When I see kids with their heads buried in laptops, or texting on cell phones, it disturbs me to think of how technology has changed the way our kids socialize,” said Randall, who has authored a series of children’s books on friendships including For Faithful Friends, The Best of Best Friends and Share From the Heart (www.marilynrandall.com). “Our social networks are actually raising our kids to be extremely unsocial, and I think it’s changing society for the worse.”

Randall’s point is that the way kids make friends, and learn how to value those friendships, becomes the way they look at friendship as they grow to adulthood. If the only socialization that our kids learn is from cyberspace, friendships will become less valuable in their lives, and as disposable as email.

“If we allow our kids to learn that all you need to do to make and keep friends is to click ‘accept friend request,’ then we’re devaluing the power of friendship,” she added. “Conversely, if all they have to do to end a friendship is click on ‘block user,’ then friendships become fleeting and easy to discard without a second thought. It also causes this ‘all about me’ mentality, prompting many children to grow up without consideration for others because they haven't learned to properly interact with others.”

Randall wants children to learn about friendship outside of cyberspace, more like the last generation of kids who grew up without PDAs and ready access to Internet social networks.

“When I was a kid, we didn’t have cyberspace,” Randall said. “The only space we knew was where the astronauts went and the space in our backyards. We didn’t meet in chat rooms. We met at the park or the playground. And we didn’t just talk -- we played and we interacted and we learned about the world around us through experiences together. I’m afraid the next generation of kids will miss out on that socialization because of their dependence on technology to manage their friendships.”

Randall’s tips for parents who want to help their kids better value their friendships include:

    * Balance Cyberspace with Real Life -- If your kids use social networks, make sure they actually get together with their online friends once a week to do something. Take the time to make your home available, even if their friends simply come over to share a pizza. Help your kids balance cyberspace with the real world.

    * Limit Internet Use -- A generation ago, parents would limit the amount of television they would allow their kids to watch, and monitor what they watched. Place time limits on the time your kids spend online in the same way, and monitor which sites they use to chat with their friends.

    * Set An Example -- Show your kids how you interact with your friends, and show them the value those long term friendships have in your life. If your kids see that you have long-term, close and fulfilling friendships with others, they’ll emulate those kinds of relationships in their lives.

“It’s ironic to me how the existence of all these different communication technologies has actually managed to make us feel more distant from each other,” Randall added. “We all have multiple email addresses, online profiles and cell phones, but somehow we feel more far apart than ever before. Maybe what we need to do is teach our kids to put the computer down, and go outside and play with their friends.” - Press Report by Russ Handler.

The night the piece was unveiled Ms. Ayr shared thoughts about “Be Ruinart”.  “I was asked to create my interpretation of what Ruinart champagne would look like as a contemporary art piece. I was given a bottle to enjoy and sit alone with my thoughts.”  “The name Ruinart was something that caught my eye; ‘art’ being in the name of the champagne itself.  How could this champagne, art and the excitement built up within be combined and conveyed on a canvas?”  Ms. Ayr stated that as she opened the bottle, the Champagne cork popped and champagne spilled out.  Melissa took this into the studio and used paint tubes spilling out of the bottle onto the canvas to convey an explosion of art.

Ms. Ayr was inspired to use paint tubes in “Be Ruinart” because of a story about Picasso.  While living in Lake Tahoe, Ms. Ayr had an opportunity to work with DA Russo, a student of Pablo Picasso.  He would speak of his time living with Picasso in France when he was a young boy.  According to DA Russo, Picasso was known for keeping the left over tubes of oil paints his students discarded.   He had a box near the door of the class where the students would dispose of them.  When the box was filled Picasso would snip off the ends of the tubes, butterfly the tubes and then use the remainder of the paint that was left inside for his own art.

“Be Ruinart” is a 3-dimensional multi media painting on hand stretched linen.  Melissa states, “In the painting, I have included over 40 opened tubes of paint I used myself and have butterflied open.  I have also included my own pallet, a pallet knife, a sable paint brush, a pencil sharper, oil paint medium, a bottle of Ruinart champagne, the Ruinart cork and wrapper, small speaks of clear plastic, and my signature monarch butterfly.  If you look closely you will find a Dragon, a symbol of creativity. “

“Be Ruinart” is a Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessey commission with a mission.  “Be Ruinart” will be represented at Art Basel Miami in December 2010 and then auctioned off in New York in January 2011.  The painting will benefit the Museum of Arts & Design in New York with 100% of the proceeds donated to the Museum for their education programs. To find out more about the “Ayr Art Transformation Tour” and artist Melissa Ayr visit http://www.melissaayr.com - Press Report by Harris Warren

In lieu of the recent release of, Wall Street, Money never sleeps, by Oliver Stone, I reflect back on some of the lessons we have learned as a nation, collectively as cities, counties, countries, down to the person regarding this last decade of greed and gluttony.Two of the seven deadly sins. Wall Street was my favorite movie in 1984 and inspired me to pursue a career in Real Estate Development. I went on to get my Masters of Real Estate Development Degree from the University of Southern California in 1991. Three of my classmates and I, distinguished ourselves by purchasing an apartment building in 1990 and sold it for a profit as a part of the “Real Deal” class project. I made the dean’s list with a 3.7 GPA, and as they say, the rest is history. History literally and figuratively.  I now teach three courses in Business, Business Management and Business Ethics on the subject and have a development company.  I feel that it is my duty and obligation to share with countless others, students, aspiring entrepreneurs, the history and the lessons learned from this past decade and reflect on the future to share with these bright minds that they must create something more tangible like Facebook, Google TV, Iphone, or software applications than greed, money, artificial wealth and creative banks products/instruments that led to housing crash in 2008. We must take a fundamental look at ethics and ownership and forge new ideas and ways of thinking in the decade ahead of us to take our country back.

Many people may not remember the Saving and Loan crisis in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Some of the same people that led President’s Bill Clinton’s economic team are some of the same people that are leading President Barak Obama’s economic recovery team. “History not only repeats itself, but some of the same characters repeat themselves in different roles and capacities.”  The movie’s line in the script  by Gordon Gecko, the character played by Michael Douglas in both movies, said that “ I have been known to say that Greed is Good, but now apparently, it is legal.”  We have seen many times where something may not be illegal but it is unethical. “Greed can be the root of all evil, and money can continually feed  and support that evil habit to win, to acquire, to become the biggest, to settle a score or just because one can. Look at the scandals that followed the first movie, with less regulation, after President Clinton left office and during the George Bush era as president that was considered Lazze' Faire government  regulations and a capitalistic society that said greed is legal, just don’t get caught.  The lack of oversight and regulation on the federal, state and local levels led Bernie Madoff, a stockbroker, once was known as the King of Wall St., who was indicted and sent to prison this past year for his $50 billion dollar ponzi scheme in December 2008, to be dubbed as the worst ever white collar criminal that cost many people their wealth and life savings.

He was sentenced to life in prison.  In May 2006, Kenneth Lay, CEO, Jeffrey Schilling CFO, who had led Enron to be one of the nation’s largest companies, were both convicted of fraud and conspiracy upon the company’s collapse. They were large Bush supporters and manipulated the energy market and led to a virtually collapse of Southern California energy market due to overinflated prices. Lay died in prison of a heart attack and Jeffrey Schilling had many of his convictions overturned.  In June, 2003,  Bernard Ebbers, former CEO , WorldCom CEO, was  sent to prison for the $3.8 billion dollar accounting fraud that led to Verizon purchasing the now defunct MCI Communications at the time was the 2nd largest telecom in the nation and SBC Communication to purchase ATT.  Dennis Kozlowski, former CEO of Tyco International, was convicted in  2005, for  fraud, used his company funds as personal piggy bank to throw lavish parties, including a $2 million dollar birthday bash for his second wife in 2001 known as the “Tyco Roman Orgy”, disguised as a shareholder meeting in Italy and to fund his extravagant lifestyle with a $30 million dollar apartment  in NY with $6,000 shower curtains. He is in prison for 25 years. A common end result of greed. He is considered one of the 10 ten crooked CEO’s of all time. Greed is not good. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and we have to get back our moral compass in business and in life, as many of us lived above our means with a lot of debt and no savings.

The collapse of the housing sector has spread though this economy and other countries like a virus taking down once sound large institutions with it. This can be largely traced back to the Countrywide CEO, Angelo Mozilo who is on trial for fraud. His now defunct company was purchased by Bank of America.  Wells Fargo, the largest lender in California, purchased Wachovia Bank. Chase bank purchased Washington Mutual. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and Countrywide were the origins of the housing market we live in today and all centered around Wall St., toxic complex housing products sold and repackaged all over the world and greed. 

All those who saw the housing market collapsing and shorted (bet it would fail)  with hedge fund companies are primary to blame much like those CEO of  the late 90’s. In 2010, look at the greed by Goldman Sacs CEO and stockbrokers, who bet against their own clients on the housing collapse and settled with the SEC, for the largest ever fine handed to a bank $550 million. The CEO said they were doing “Gods work.” The City of Bell’s City manager, Robert Rizzo was making $1.5 million, more than triple what the President of the United States makes.  He and eight other City employees  were indicted and are in jail for using tax payer dollars to fund their exorbitant salaries, causing the California legislature to look at how pensions are funded, revealing and limiting city pay for all government officials. You don’t have to look far to find a case study in greed, money, power and corruption. In the movie,  Wall St., it is hard to find one villain, much like it is in to find out who’s at fault or  to blame for what happened.” 

The movies plays out what is the realty of America’s consciousness…revealing glimpses inside our  souls as to why we do things, the motives behind them and the consequences for our actions. Real Estate investing is not emotional. It is the economics and fully understanding what you are buying and what value it has today or will have in the future. Home buying can be emotional. Many speculators who jumped into real estate head first in 2001-2009  had no idea what they were in for a wild ride and ever bothered to have a true understanding of the science of real estate. Real estate was like the new great sales marketing job, easy money, even though there are different types of real estate such as commercial, industrial, retail, office, and residential real estate. The most over-used and misunderstand phase of this past decade has been, I’m into real estate. What did that mean? Money or Debt? Did anyone care or was it was just a sign of the times that were to come? Most disciples of real estate understand that every third decade the market corrects itself and the basic premise of what comes up, must come down. It’s is knowing and understanding value, equity, when to buy, what price to buy and when to sell. That is measured by your ability to afford what you’re buying and how much you are buying. 

Sounds simple right. Wrong. How did we end up on a rollercoaster ride in the real estate market for the past decade and who is to blame for its lasting effects on this economy?  When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac along with the most politicians decided that everyone should own a home, it sounded like a great idea at the time. But you have to set parameters that make sound economic  sense. The optimal word is SHOULD. But everyone can’t own a home for many reasons. If incomes do not go up proportionately with housing rates then affordability is an issue. If you do not document a person’s income that increases the possibility of fraud. When your debt to income level exceeds a certain amount then you may be more likely to default. If your credit score(s) are not at a certain level then it might mean that you may have a higher probability of not paying on time. All of these are problems, but if you sell a mortgage based upon knowing those things and then have interest rates that will balloon and a valuation system that is not an exact science, there is a high possibility that your house may not be worth what you borrowed money for it today.Bad things will happen.

Much of what happened over the past decade in the deterioration of the housing market can be attributed to Wall Street greed on making money on complex mortgages in which they split and sold mortgages over and over around the world to the point in which almost everyone was affected by those complex derivatives, mortgage backed securities, and other creative ways to make money on the backs of many Americans who couldn’t afford what they were buying, did not have adequate insurance to protect what they were buying and didn’t have the  income to support themselves if something bad happened to what they were buying.  Second, the Regulators, such as the SEC, who were under the Bush Administration were asleep at the switch. They looked the other way, they allowed greed to super cede principle. Third, the Bond rating agencies like Standard and Poors, and Moody’s, that were supposed to call a pig, a pig and didn’t because they were making money too. They gave AAA rating to companies deserving a B and allowed themselves to get in bed with the ones they were suppose to regulate. They too looked the other way as capitalism spiraled out of control. 

Many of these companies are under investigation by the SEC for their roles  Fourth, the Banks, who in their quest to be the biggest, stop doing what banks do; they took unreasonable risks and hid bad loans off their books, used questionable accounting practices much like Enron, Ebbers and others to deceive many investors that they were ok, when in fact they were not. If they were to release all the foreclosures on their books they would be virtually insolvent, yet they rewarded executives for failure with enormous bonuses. Fifth, the insurance companies like AIG that also couldn’t insure all those with policies if the house of cards would collapse like it did in October 2008 and also paid enormous bonuses for failure. Sixth, the hedge fund managers who knew this would fail and bet that it would fail and won. And lastly, the individual homeowner who didn’t bother to read the fine print on what you bought until it was too late. The ones who thought that the entire Southern California market from San Diego to San Francisco, which was overvalued by 30-40%, would continue to go up. For that matter, all coastal areas of the U.S. were overvalued by 25-40%. To the many sales agents that plunged into the residential real estate profession with the ink barely dry from their license, to the numerous mortgage companies and mortgage brokers who would sell you anything and everything as long as they could make some money from it. To the many that used their homes as an ATM’s machine and cheap mortgages to artificially stimulate what was an already ailing economy. Many of these mortgages had no documentation of income, required little down, and had teaser rates that would adjust and adjust and ultimately force them into foreclosure.

As a result, many of you have gotten out of real estate and moved on. Some of you are in jail for fraud and other misdeeds for being too greedy and not playing by the rules.  Others are making money on it. Many of you are stuck in mortgages that are worth more than your home and you are finding yourself in an impossible situation. Just remember, banks do not want to own your home, they make money on loans, so read the fine print, man/woman up and go in there fighting for the best modification you can get and then don’t default. Burying your head in the sand and hoping it will go away in not an option.

Do a short sale and investors are now turning to flipping properties because cash is king. They also changed the laws on Flipping in January 2010 so check out the occupancy requirements for flipping and do get involved in flopping or we will be reading about you next year. Bundle properties or create a Real Estate Investment Trust with others to pick up 4-plex and 6-plex and some multi, single family units, if you can.  Limit your risk and exposure and don’t bite off more than you can handle. And still there are the real estate speculators/investors/homeowners that will just give back the keys, take his or her lumps, and consider it a learning process, a painful expensive one and wait for the other shoe to drop. It may take up to a year or so, but it ultimately will fall. 

As the market continues to adjust there are still some value in buying and selling real estate so long as you read my opening statement. Negotiate a good interest rate.  Downsize. Rent out your home. Cut up your credit cards except one or two and cut your living expenses. If California is simply unaffordable, move to the Midwest, South or a more affordable city. In any down market what is one person’s trash or misery can be another’s ones treasure.  Just do your home work this time, read the fine print and don’t buy anything you can’t afford, and live within your means, until the next downturn…. Or will you continue as business as usual and reappear in a different costume….. A Wall St. CEO……..Happy Halloween. Power UP! - Ronald is the Managing Partner of the The Onyx Group, A Real estate Development/Consultant Company.