A Rat's Eye View

3/09/2015

#98 Redneck Conservatives

[This is another old rant, pre-Rat, in fact. The original piece was published in the Orange County Register, in 1986. I discovered it in a fit of hard disk sterilization and it seemed appropriate to this year just as it did during the Reagan years in SoCal.]

The onslaught of "redneck" conservatism is prompting me to write this. A combination of the micro-minded (I apologize for the Communist metric term.) state representatives Dornan, Ferguson, and their supporters, the comments of the Contra Costa County District Attorney (DeBeer, L.A. Times, 6/22/86), the insidious attack on free speech that the Meese commission's blackmail represents, and our pitifully confused president's defense of his awful court selections have overwhelmed me. I am under personal pressure to defend the "real" standards that America represents. Standards that were expressed and well documented by the "real" Founding Fathers; not Reagan's contra imitations.

First, I want to establish two definitions.

The Right often applies the descriptive terms "Bolshevik", "commy", "red", "pinko", and (when they are feeling sociable) "socialist" to any opinion and opinion-holder on the liberal side of George Patton. When this scale of analogy is applied to themselves (as in "Nazi", "fascist", etc.) the right wing acts like they have been horribly wounded. Tough. If you can't take it, don't dish it out. On an unnecessarily civilized scale you good ole boys are practicing vicious forms of argumentum ad hominem (personal slander) and ignorantiam (ignorance). If you can't be restrained to argument by the logical rules of debate, don't expect your opponents to be so shackled.

The second defiled word that I want to reclaim is "conservative". The present political definition of "conservative" is a fundamentalist, anti-human rights, supporter of the loudest, most macho posturing demagogue (unless the "conservative" is that demagogue, then he simply supports himself). Webster's has a more satisfying definition; "a cautious or discreet person...tending to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions...marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners." I believe that definition applies to many of the people that the right opposes and few of the politicians they support. Especially the last section; "elegance, style, or manners" are in short supply from the far right. Take a look at the Times picture of Dornan and Ferguson (Hayden, L.A. Times, 6/24/86) for examples.

I think any intelligent reader of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Jefferson, Paine, Washington, Whitman, or Thoreau would be forced to link Tom Hayden's positions closer to a true "American" stance than the rantings of Bobby Dornan or the posturing of Guilt Ferguson. The difference between the quality of Dornan's "a liar . . . a coward . . . and a traitor" (or Dornan's ranting at a closed door, "I am a member of Congress!") and Hayden's "My country, let me right the wrongs" should shed some light on the subject. These two "conservative" politicians remind me of another phony patriot's heroism. Anybody ask where "Rambo" was during the Vietnam period? He wasn't hiding behind twenty layers of officers and enlisted men, but he was safely in a foreign country exposing his chest at a girl's school. It doesn't take courage to assume a right-wing stance.

This country is full of simple people, who will follow the man who tells them they are "number one". They will follow him off the tallest cliff top. Hitler didn't go against the popular grain. Dornan and Ferguson know where the prevailing winds blow. They know the cost of fighting the crowd (They may not have a motive, though.). History contains a long list of men without morals and/or wisdom who followed the chanting of the masses. It does not present them well.

I can't give a retired general much credit for patriotism. Possibly radical protectionism, but not patriotism. Scores of these profiteers parade their self-claimed heroism after short twenty-year careers of poor quality middle-management while having their every whim catered to by enlisted boys. Then, using the guise of "sacrificing servant", they double-dip into the public coffers with civil service careers or political ambitions; paid for by the companies whose over-run, pitifully-designed products their mis-managing allowed into the cynical military industrial simplex.

Military men are military men. They aren't about ideology and it doesn't matter which side they are on. For them, the struggle between right and wrong is reduced to tactics and firepower. If our imagined invaders leave anybody in place, it will be the middle-to-upper military management. It would not be cost-effective to replace them, since they won't need re-training or expensive additional linguistic education. If they are left in place (or slightly re-sorted) they will carry on as before with a few new phrases to shout at their fool soldiers.

During a recent conversation about the real or imagined threat presented by Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, I began contemplating what changes would occur from such an invasion. The most radical right-winger's scenario goes along these lines: The far-right often uses examples of what sets us apart and above the "communists". Freedom of speech and press is often example numero ono. I've noticed that "conservative" politicians seem to be in the forefront of censorship's fan club. I suspect that they are merely honestly interested in their own comments and would be strongly in favor of shutting the rest of us up. Freedom of religion is close to every rightist's heart. Especially those fundamentalist types who offer the rest of us the freedom to join their religion or find somewhere else to live. And we can take our radical, pornographic, or un-nationalistic free press with us! Their interpretation of these freedoms seems to closely resemble the freedom another Mr. Christian offered Captain Bligh.

I could be missing something, but this all seems suspicious. It has been often noted that government officials are most interested in limiting access to documents that chronicle their foul-ups and criminal actions. I suspect that the government officials in the Kremlin who are responsible for the notorious communist press repression are the same kind of people that are interested in that sort of authority in our own government. In fact, I suspect that, if the Russians could have non-violently overthrown our political system, they would employ the same people just to simplify the language difficulties that a new government would face. Walt Kelly and Pogo might be even righter (no pun) than ever with "We have seen the enemy, and he is us."

From sometime in 1986

3/02/2015

#97 Management Perks and Necessity (2004)

From the working class employee’s perspective, "upper management" is the portion of the company that has no purpose. The higher-ups attend every party-time trade show, personal improvement seminar, and marginally work-qualified travel junket the company can afford. They often attend events the company can’t afford. In many organizations, a "need/not needed" formula can be applied to the company’s positions: “the people who are required to do work are necessary, the people who are are not are expendable.” Using this formula, you may find that most of your company’s executive branch is expendable.

For example, assembly personnel are logically required to be at their work stations on time, every day, for the whole day. They have to be in place because they are part of a process that allows for no surplus staffing. Many executive positions are allowed total freedom of arrival and departure. They don’t have to be in place because the company will function just as well without them. Their absence is often an improvement in the workplace. Using my formula, these executives are expendable and the assembly personnel are not.

I’m not interested in why business works this way, it just does and every company generates its own reasons for executive existence. “They were there first,” is as good an explanation as you are likely to get. What I am interested in is the few managers who actually want to make a contribution and don’t know what that contribution should be. So, if you believe you “deserve” your big office, your tiny work load, and your out-of-proportion salary, find something else to read. The rest of this article is going to continue to insult you and question your value to your company, the economy, and world ecology. If you want to make an important contribution to your company and employees as a member of what Peter Drucker calls “the management class,” please read on and I hope to repay your effort. You are a rare bird who needs help to avoid extinction.

A simple perspective every manager should take is, “What services do I manager provide to the people who work for me? Do those services justify my existence to them and to my own managers or customers? How do I add value to those services so I can continue to justify my existence and increase my value in the future?” The answers to those questions will return an answer to the next question, “What am I worth to my customers?” You can replace “customers,” with employees, supervisors, other departments, and the end users of your product or service. In most companies, the customer is the enemy; no matter where he comes from. In a well run company, customers come from every direction.

In the usual organization, the only real customer inside of the organization is the CEO, owner, or Big Cheese. If Cheese has lost that critical bit of perspective, the company will exist soley to provide for his gratification and only the foolish dedication of a middle manager or two will drag out the company's painful death. If Cheese has at least some grasp on reality, he or she will give some direction to the people who do the work and that will contribute enough to the company direction to prevent bankruptcy. If your name is Cheese and your style falls in these two categories, either you go away or your company will; it’s only a matter of time. If Cheese is one of those rare birds who recognizes and promotes the company’s real customers, the problem becomes a matter of pursuing excellence with some real hope of achieving it.

How do you know if your company is mismanaged? If you are the mismanager, you probably don't have any way to know, because your employees won't be honest with you and you aren't likely to be honest with yourself. But positive answers to the following questions are a good sign that your company is troubled:

Is there more than one corporate vice-president? (If the country only needs one, and no one knows what he does, why do companies need more?)
Are the executives more inclined to play golf/tennis/etc. than to do work?
Does the company tend to have "jeans days" when the execs are on business trips?
Do people act cautious when you're around?
Get resources, protect from other managers and customers, play politics?
Do unsigned memos about “dysfunctional companies” appear on your desk?

The most important thing to remember about managing is "power corrupts." If you know that your position is corrupting you and you attempt to limit that effect, you have a shot at doing something positive in your position. If you pretend that it can't happen to you and ignore your power abuses, you will drift into uselessness; eventually becoming a person the company can do without.

September 2004

2/23/2015

#96 Hairy Jealousy (2004)

The older I get the more I notice idiotic little things popping up in my psyche. Thirty years ago, I watched “suits” march off to work and marveled at how robot-like they seemed. While I was not exactly a freak, I was confident in my safe distance from the average working man. I had hair over my shoulders. I wore sandals to work. I played guitar and wrote stories and read science fiction. I was cool. Thirty years later, I was a minor league suit. Monday through Friday, I wore a tie and shoes that are less comfortable and more socially acceptable.

More than the tie and dumb shoes, I think a sign of my sellout is that I sometimes caught myself thinking another man’s long hair is “unprofessional.” You know the guys I’m talking about. The lawyer with a ponytail. The computer programmer doing a Jim Morrison imitation. The dreadlocked engineer. It only passes through my mind for a moment before I snuffed it out, but it irritated me that it was there, ever.

I admit that a lot of the origin for the thought comes from my work environment. I’m was an engineer in a medical devices company. There is probably no more stodgy, uncreative, mindlessly, conservative business in the world than those companies producing products for doctors. No one with half a talent world ever work for an established medical devices or drug company, because those places are so stifling that ideas slip out of their hands like a bar of buttered, wet soap. In a medical products company, “unprofessional” means anything from not being properly dressed to discussing screwed-up products out loud. You can stumble into more “career limiting mistakes” in that business than you can on a battlefield. People are judged by microscopic social errors and inane business traditions and surviving every workday is a painful test. So we get really critical of diddly, unimportant things.

But that isn’t what the hair thing is about. Long hair is a completely different “professionalism” issue. Being successful and letting your hair grow flaunts male modesty. It’s a way of saying, loudly, “I don’t give a damn what you think. I don ‘t have to kiss anyone’s ass. I’m talented enough, or rich enough, that don’t need this job.”

Men don’t mind brilliant or rich men who conform, like the rest of us, to robot-ness. But it really annoys us to have our own menial, gutless, slave status thrown back in our faces. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Ross Perot, Arnold Swartzenegger, and the majority of rich, famous guys respect this ritual. They wear uncomfortable, geeky looking clothes. They cut their hair so short that their ears protrude from their heads like microwave antenna. While we might resent their wealth, we never have to resent their freedom. For some of these guys, the richer they get the more enslaved they look.

That’s comforting, from a sick, pack animal kind of logic. That’s the way it should be, as far as the herd is concerned. Don’t show off your wealth and your freedom, pick one and keep the other hidden from our view. We can deal with a long haired dude flipping burgers or pushing a broom. A pony tail and a Mercedes is too much of a blow to our pride. Success and freedom are so far out of the reach of the average working stiff. We don’t want to think about what we’ve given up to be useful corporate fodder. So keep your hair under your hat if you don’t want to be called “unprofessional.” Like you’d care.

September 2004

2/18/2015

Boomers Are?

Last night sucked.

I’m taking a woodworking class in Winona and the “class” has turned out to be a woodshop free-for-all. Nothing wrong with that, although I’d have appreciated a little more instruction and structure. Most of the “students” are 50+ year-olds who have taken the “class” a dozen times for the access to the tools and are building a variety of furniture bits for their homes. Considering how far I’m driving for this class, I’m not learning nearly as much as I’d hoped. I suppose that’s how education is supposed to work.

The class starts at 5PM and ends at 9PM with a break at 7-7:30. Last night during the break I had to listen to a trio of crackers (including the instructor) jabber about how much they hoped someone would assassinate President Obama and the current Pope. Obviously Faux News drones, but not the kind of people I’m used to being around by a long shot.

And that’s for a reason. My tolerance for stupid has vanished in the last decade. I don’t do well with superstition/religion, racism, cowards, chicken hawks, or ignorant crackers who think the United States is a territory of the Israeli nation. Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin debating with them. Their knowledge base is so limited, perverse, and arrogant that they barely seem human to me. A couple of short conversations with those people and I start thinking about my dream retirement home in the side of a Montana mountain. It’s not all that comfy, but I would never have to worry about visitors and the ones who make it past the “trespassers will be shot sign” will discover that I’m not kidding with that warning. When I move into that abandoned mine shaft and set up house, do not come visiting.

To be fair, these three old white guys are somewhat likeable, if you can keep their minds focused on work. They are moderately helpful, moderately-skilled carpenters. One of them is a "retired" 62-year-old rich legacy "farmer" (He leases the land he inherited and lives in the city in a mansion.), who is mostly trying to prove how hip he is by playing with the school’s state-sponsored tools while complaining about having to pay taxes for stuff. He’s a southern boy who considers himself to be hip because he likes old black blues musicians, but he hates President Obama and black people in general. He’s convinced he’s going to “heaven” because he’s "reborn" and really gets testy when I mention the camel through "the eye of a needle" thing. He contributes $22/month to some crippled vets thing and a larger pile to his politically-based church and that’s his guarantee to an eternal life at the right hand of one god or another.

The instructor is just a simple, small-town, working-class racist. He thinks he’s hiding his racism behind a political ideology, but his take on the US Constitution is so demented that he couldn’t out-debate a smart ten-year-old in a fairly managed civics discussion. He’s pissed off about Obamacare/Romneycare because he thinks his state-provided health insurance has been degraded by the ACA. Like many of the folks who are on the public dole, pretending to be “public servants,” he’s against all parts of the government except the ones that provide him with a comfortable, secure middle-class life.

The third leg of this unstable stool is a religious nutbag who is convinced the Apocalypse is coming “because gays.” Yeah, that sentence doesn’t make sense, but either does anything this doofus says. Like too many Boomer males, this idiot is pissed off that the world doesn’t have to bow to his perverse version of Christianity and that people can’t be made to behave in a manner that doesn’t make him uncomfortable. People like this have convinced me that everyone who “doesn’t like Obama” is a racist and everyone who freaks out about gays is in the closet. Everyone.

A good bit of the break-time conversation was about how much better off the world would be if someone assassinated President Obama and the current Pope. Then, they got into a heated, ignorant discussion about how far off-base Pope Francis is getting and my comment that “he’s awfully Christian, isn’t he?” went right over/under their heads. The crazy third leg went off on gays and lesbians and the Apocalypse and the loony rich guy started babbling about being reborn as the only path to heaven, regardless of his wealth, greed, and general uselessness to humanity and nature. The instructor just muttered about how much he hated Obama and barely kept “niggar” out of his ranting. (Fuck you and your “n-word” bullshit. We all know what you assholes want to be saying, and don’t, because you think it proves you are civilized.)

The interesting part of the crazy guys' dialog was when the rich asshole started ranting about how Obama wasn’t taking the ISIS “threat” seriously and the religious nut joined in with insane talk about nuking ISIS. The rich guy pretended to be questioning modern patriotism and asked if any of us thought US citizens would “pitch in” against a common enemy, like we did in WWII. I’d checked out, by then, but I should have said, “Nope. No way the 1% would allow a 90% top tax rate to pay for a war. Rich people mostly take from society. They get pissed off when they are asked to contribute more than voluntary tips to the servant class.”

I drove my 60 miles back home last night thinking, “this is a waste of my time.” I hauled the bits of my project back with me, thinking I’ll finish it up on my own equipment. I’m still waffling on deciding if I’ve had enough of this or if there is more I could learn for my money. One thing is for sure, there are way too many people like this from my generation and if people under 40 don’t vote like no American generation their ages have ever voted, they and we are all fucked.

2/16/2015

#95 Going Postal, a Rational Response (2004)

If you talk at any length to those of us who works for a large company, you’ll eventually hear some comment about “going postal.” When you dig a little ways into why they might use this language, you’ll find that they may not be kidding. Even more to the point, it probably makes sense to consider that line of thinking.

The U.S. Post Office, for instance, is not much different from the worst-case major corporation. The working class is stressed, strained, and maligned by a management class that is unskilled, unsympathetic, and rarely available or useful. Post Office employees often complain about working under conditions where they are treated as not much more than a part of the machinery. Management considers their employees' lives to be of no more importance than the junk mail they sort and deliver. People are hired and fired and reassigned for the strangest, most irrational reasons imaginable. People are put into situations where they snap. When they do, they sometimes come to work heavily armed. They “go postal.”

Using the classic Western model for heroism, the lone gunman who finds protection from injustice by blasting his way through the bad guys, going postal may not be an irrational response. We are surrounded by a barrage of major powers that don’t care about justice. The workplace is just the first in a long line of conflicts where we are helpless to put things right. From the IRS to the welfare system to chain stores where we return defective products to minimum wage workers who could care less if we “have a nice day,” we are powerless to find a fair deal. If Bruce, Arnold, Sylvester, and the other muscle guys can shoot their way out of impossible situations, why can’t the rest of us?

Let’s face it, there is nobody out there protecting the ordinary citizen. The people who are supposed to be protecting us are just in it for the power and money. We’re like Joseph Heller’s man in the street crying “Help, police!” hoping someone will step up to save us from the police, lawyers, employers, government, and our violent neighbors. But we’re alone against those hazards. No can or will help us fight those battles.

The Dilbert^© cartoon constantly illustrates what life in corporate America is like. A mindless herd of marching management morons make decisions that destroy the companies we depend on. MBA pinheads who know more buzzwords than an Air Force general, but who don’t meet that same low common sense standard, decide what we do and when we do it for the majority of our waking hours.

That’s no small portion of life, either. Someone estimated that, out of a 30 year working career, most of us get 1 1/2 years away from the job before retirement. You work until you're mentally dead, you retire, you die. What a life! If anything puts the phrase “wage slave” into context, that ought to do it.

If we screw up and step over one of the thousands of boundaries that define the margins between legal and illegal, the penalties often make the Spanish Inquisition look like the good old days. We are under threat of imprisonment or poverty for more causes than Sam Clements ever imagined back in the 1800’s when he analyzed the English penal system and found a few hundred capital crimes. We have crime in the streets, in business, and in government. We have redefined capital crimes in the twentieth century. Unless you are a case-hardened criminal, going jail isn’t just “paying your debt to society.” In the U.S., when you go to jail you might as well be dead. You can get hung, gassed, or injected through a direct sentence. You can get any of those things, indirectly, as part of a minimal sentence in our over-crowded prison system.

With the exception of Tim Allen and one other guy whose name escapes me, jail time is pretty much the end of any hope for a normal life in this country. Rehabilitation is a concept that only applies to white collar prisons. The rest of us are tossed to the wolves. So the only honorable way out, when backed into a wall, may be going postal on the folks who built the wall, put you against it, and laugh at your predicament when they escort you to the door.

September 2004

2/09/2015

#94 Exit Interviews, Why Bother? (2004)

It seems like every company is doing exit interviews these days. Supposedly, the reason is to learn why employees are leaving, to slow the turnover. Exit interviews are about as likely to accomplish that task as Congress is to reform campaign finance. The problem is that the people gathering the information don’t know what to do with it and the people who need the information don’t want it.

The simple fact is that ex-employees are not going to burn bridges in today’s competitive job market. Even if the exiting employee doesn’t expect to ever return to the company, he still may want a good reference. Telling the straight truth about ex-bosses, past projects and products isn’t going to make friends and it isn’t going to accomplish anything. Most likely, it won’t do anything at all.

Most company’s Human Resources departments are so insular and isolated from every other department in the company, that the results of exit interviews die in the employee’s personnel folder. HR departments are the most resented, bureaucratic, unresponsive area of many companies. Middle managers avoid contact with their HR representatives at all costs. Upper management has organized its HR departments to confound communication, not enhance it. HR managers are extremely successful at this assignment. With all these obstacles, is it any wonder that exit interviews are regarded as nothing more than a mindless hurdle on the way to the last paycheck?

The first HR department, at Ford Motor Company, was managed by a processional goon, Harry Bennett. The original purpose seemed to be to find the optimum methods to abuse employees. Today, they are a lot more subtle than their predecessors, but the function is not significantly different.

August 2004

2/02/2015

#93 WHAT THE HELL GOOD IS PUTTIN' ALL THE JUNK IN SPACE? (2004)

[This is a fantasy short-story I wrote some time ago, during the end of the Reagan years. I decided to dump it into the Rat Rants because I didn't know what else to do with it.]

The Russians and the Americans decide, in a fit of teamwork, to "utilize the resources of our two great nations" and split the cost of a manned space station and giant radio telescope. The Star Wars program is scrapped as part of the deal. Since the government never gives up funds it has managed to tax out of the public, the funds are spent on the space station. The space station gets finished and the two nations have more tax money to spend. They spend it on a space manufacturing facility. The two nations' research and development industries have been working a lot on space and a little on consumer/industrial products. They are working smarter and at an elevated technical base after closing their mil-industrial facilities and moving the really valuable engineers to more productive tasks.

The Russians and the Americans are once again the world leaders in technology. They move all polluting manufacturing tasks off-planet.

The Japanese want part of the economic pie. The Americans and Russians are wealthy enough to buy great toys and the Japanese want to build great toys. The Japanese are not afraid of the Russians and not controlled by American regulations. The Japanese begin SALT XIII negotiations with the Chinese and Koreans. With Japan in the lead (barely), the Eastern block begins work on a space bridge, with facilities in the center of the span for zero gravity manufacturing. The bridge is complete in 6 years. The bridge is profitable in 10. The Eastern block makes great toys for the Americans and Russians.

The American consumer market is very wealthy and can afford to share the wealth. The Russian consumer market is about as profitable as the American market was during the 1960's. Many developing countries test the new Russian market for consumer products. The Russians and Americans have perfected space habitats and are considering terraforming experiments on a twin planet in Alpha Centauri.

The West Germans and East Germans get united because the Russians have their eyes on the sky and don't pay attention to terrestrial boarder shifts. The Germans collaborate with the Swiss to "keep technology in the hands of artisans who are concerned with workmanship." They make tremendous gains in superconductor and particle force theory and develop a superconductor-based generator that powers a drive that harnesses the anti-mass characteristics of the atom. They are commercially competing with the Eastern block for the 50 year East/West reunion.

The Eastern block has made ownership of space habitats a cost-effective, consumer product. Thousands of families move into the asteroid belt to work and live in the non-national manufacturing facilities.

The "Keep Terra Clean" movement restores natural balance to the earth's environment and life forms. Thousands of acres of rain forest are re-planted. The atmosphere of the earth becomes controlled and the ozone is re-designed to be 100.000000001% efficient. The oxygen generated by the system is sold to the space colonies. The rare gases, metals, minerals, and chemical combinations are sparingly parceled out to the colonies. This trade finances a cottage industry based, high-technology, back to nature life-style economy throughout the earth.

The Americans and Russians are somewhere out there.

You want to know why all the space junk is floating around the planet? That's why we did it!

1/26/2015

#92 Voting Ourselves Rich (2004)

Our democracy is on a cusp. The last statistics I read, several years ago, predicted that by 2000 more than 30% of the working public would be employed by government offices. I believe we've whipped past that percentage, like it was a parked car, and are heading off toward 50% in the next few years. Our "conservative" spend-and-spend (as opposed to liberal tax-and-spend) politicians mis-leaders are building a government that will be more total than anything communist Russia ever conceived. From local to federal government offices to all areas of education to military service to the myriad of government contractors who serve the whims of bureaucrats, we have created a monster of government in this country. After government underwent a few years of shrinkage during Clinton's administration, that odd Bush brand of Republican socialism has brought back big, arrogant government with a vengeance. We're going to see a lot more of Big Brother before we ever again see less of that evil monster.

Excessive government employment is a sign of a failing economy and a fallen culture. There has been a lot of babble about a "service economy" in the last couple of decades. Much of that hype is disguising the fact that the overwhelming majority of "service employees" are civil servants. Civil servants, like most employees of local or national government, primarily serve themselves. Very few of the concepts of customer service or accountability filter into government offices. But that's not the worst aspect of mindlessly growing government. The fatal flaw in our current system is that government employees can vote themselves into becoming the idle moderately-wealthy majority. In many ways, they already have.

Since a very small minority of working citizens vote, as few as 20% during a non-Presidential election and no more than 40% during Presidential elections, it's possible for the highly organized civil servants to elect their candidates for every office, at every level of government.

There is no profit or productivity statistic for government employees, but there should be. A way to put productivity into the national equation is to remove government employees, all of them, from the employment statistics. Consider every single government employee, elected or otherwise, as unemployed and make it a national cause to put them on the employment roles. If we can decide on the actual purpose of the government and, then, stick to making government perform those tasks, we could instantly start reducing the size of that monster. The best way to improve any system is to measure it and the way to measure national productivity is to only consider "working" folks as working folks. People on the dole, either goofing off on the welfare roles or wasting resources in city, state, or federal buildings, should be on the unemployment roles with no 6 month period where they are removed as "permanently unemployed."

September 2004

1/19/2015

#91 Revolting Developments (2004)

Do yourself a favor and read a book. Not just any book, but this book; There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos, by Jim Hightower. Jim is one of those characters that corporate/political America would label "a bleeding heart liberal." Jim calls himself a "progressive." Anyone who meets this ex-politician, sometimes talk radio host, unashamed Texan would have a hard time labeling him as anything other than an immensely practical American. Which is pretty much all it takes to be defined as liberal in this corporate right-wing environment.

If you think corporations should pay for the environmental damage they do to the health and property of others, you're a pinko-commie liberal. If you think that cutting government costs should include cutting corporate welfare, eliminating tax breaks for the ultra rich, and returning government agencies to their intended tasks of protecting citizens and the country's best interests instead of acting as corporate PR and legal defense hacks, you're a left-wing, socialist liberal. At the core, the American majority is liberal, but they are so indoctrinated to believe that philosophical stance is a bad thing that they mislabel themselves as conservatives and shoot themselves in the foot on Election Day, year after year. And the rich get richer, the government becomes less concerned with "by the people, for the people," and we become more like the countries most of our ancestors fled to come here.

It's easy, natural, and understandable to give up and say, "What can I do? The voters are idiots, the politicians own the political system, the big corporations own the economy, and my tap water is so polluted that my whites are no longer whiter." In human history it appears that regular intervals, somebody, somewhere, comes to the realization that the Powers that Be only exist at the will of the working classes. The ability to manipulate the effort and ingenuity of people who actually accomplish work is all that provides them wealth and power. More often than not, the someone who comes to this realization is simply driven to become one of those manipulators and that sort of "revolution" is about as revolutionary as repainting an old car. We have that sort of revolution, every 2 years, in the US. We call 'em "elections," but they have become something more like paint jobs.

The 2000 and 2002 national elections were among the shoddiest paint jobs in American history. If the next few years don't spawn some sort of reaction from the middle, working class I think it's safe to say we've seen the beginning of the end for American dominance in world economic and political affairs. If we can't run honest, democratic elections, we can't demand the respect of countries that can. If our corporations become money laundering institutions for international corporate criminals, working people will find other places to invest their money. If government loses the faith of working people, the value of our currency, our trade, our position in the world will devolve to nothing more substantial than fear of our weapons of mass destruction.

Without respect, fear is a double-edged sword. Fear motivates opponents to resolve the emotion. You can't remain afraid of a school yard bully without either trying to run, hide, or find allies and strike back. That's true for our country, too. American citizens are once again considering immigrating to more neutral countries, Canada being the most popular. Hiding isn't an option, so fear and terrorism are the likely to increase if we continue on the international bully path. France has been more successful than anyone would have imagined at turning the European Union's attention from the north, Russia, to America. Islamic fundamentalists are rallying followers to protect themselves from undirected the US's 9/11 retaliation. If Islamic countries join with the EU against the US, we will have isolated ourselves from a large portion of the world community.

August 2004

1/12/2015

#90 Parking in the Red Zone (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day
One of the many signs of a management vacuum is the institution of assigned parking. Execs, ignorantly and arrogantly, convince themselves that they need their names on a parking spot as a symbol of corporate dominance, sort of like pissing on a tree to mark territory. It ought to be obvious to anyone with a frontal lobe that any exec who arrives for work so late that he can't find parking is really demonstrating how unimportant he is to the business.
In fact, I think a smart stock buyer would consider checking out corporate parking lots to see how many assigned parking spaces are unfilled each morning. The more empty spaces, the more deadwood in high places. For that matter, the existence of assigned parking out to be one of the statistics a corporation should be forced to publish in its financial statement.
The managers just about anyone can agree are worth their weight in parking lot paint cans don't need assigned parking. They beat everyone to work and can park anywhere they want to park in an empty lot. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, David Packard, and the ever shrinking collection of execs who know their business and get things done, practically lived in their offices during the period when their presence actually made a positive difference in the function of their company. Nobody contested their parking rights because nobody else was looking for a parking space when they arrived at work.
The concept of assigned parking, in reality, punishes the rare inspired employee who is motivated enough to be at work early. First, it's likely that someone that driven will have an armload of work to carry into the office. Two, it's de-motivating to trudge in from the hinterlands past all those empty, named spaces knowing that wasted real estate will remain unused until the morning golf game is finished. Three, assigned parking is rarely assigned based on anything valuable to the business.
Sometimes handing out a named parking space is an act of management cowardice or neglect. I have worked for three companies that provided spaces to execs' secretaries. Not because the secretaries were valued employees, not because they had work to carry into the office, but because they were nasty, ill-tempered people whose bosses were too gutless to fire, reprimand, contradict, or refuse when the secretaries asked for perks they had no reason to receive. [I'm sure you're surprised than an exec might be cowardly.]
By far the most gutless parking assignment I've seen was self-generated by a janitor. He was able to mark his spot because he had control of the can of paint used to label parking spaces. Now, I'm waiting for you to top that for non-existent management.
August 2004

1/05/2015

Confusing Signs

A recent ATTN.COM article shrieked, “The State of Millennials' Finances Says a Lot about Our Economic Recovery.” The article ticked off the scary signs of a failed economic recovery:

Low trust, lower savings.
Higher education means higher costs
More education, fewer jobs...?
Underemployed and undereducated?
Decreased buying power

It’s pretty clear that several of these complaints are contradictory. Lower savings means decreased buying power. Which is it? Higher education or undereducated? After a thousand words of whining about how badly the poor Milennials are being treated by reality, the article admits, “Despite hardships, Millennials remain uniquely optimistic about the future. But at the same time, data shows they are relatively unattached to political organizations. Last month, almost 80% of young voters sat out on the midterm elections.” Finally, this last bit isn’t confusing at all. Two clear characteristics about Millennials are clear: they are lazy and they are entitled.

Before you get your panties in a wad and whine “we’re not all lazy,” I know. Nothing of anything is all anything. However, it’s also true that 90% of everything is shit. The shit the Millennials represent is specially sorry. In my opinion, nobody has ever been braver, more on-target, or more politically creative than the Occupy Wall Street kids. I would put their energy and dedication against any generation’s social protest movement from the 1900’s labor movement to the Vietnam protests to the civil rights movement. Occupy is heroic and very Millennial. The other 99% of that generation can’t be bothered to crawl out of their parent’s basement for breakfast.

In conversations with several realtors regarding selling our 1.4 acre, 1900 square foot home, we have been given the same message repeatedly, “Young buyers are lazy. They do not see the potential in anything that will require them to do work. Fix everything, replace everything that needs replacing, paint everything, and sterilize the place.” When I asked how that would play out with the 1.4 acres of yard that needs at least 3-4 hours of work every week to stay reasonably under control, they all said, “That’s in the fantasy zone. They will imagine themselves able to take care of a park because it fits their delusional fantasies. Just make it look neat and don’t talk about the work required to do that.”

In a moment of despair a friend commenting on her kids’ inability to drag themselves out of their parents’ home and begin their own lives, she said, “They want to start off where we ended up.” I’ve seen a lot of that, too. I taught at a technical college for 12 years and the resistance to learning core skills was impressive. How these spoiled, lazy children expected to make a living in an industry (music) that was not only in severe economic decline but that has always been highly competitive completely evaded me. As expected, most of the school’s graduates ended up in completely non-music related businesses doing the sort of tasks they could have been doing without any education at all.

Supposedly “youth unemployment is stuck at 17.7%.” I wish I could say I am surprised or that I believe the economy is at fault for this sad state of affairs. However, the fact is that I wouldn’t hire many of the people I had in my classes for menial labor, let alone the skilled labor they pretended to be training for. The fact that Congress is working hard against the best interests of that group of citizens (and the rest of the 99%) is in large part the fault of this huge non-voting block. The 18-40 managed to drag themselves off of mommy’s couch to elect Obama in 2008 and to a massively lesser extent in 2012, but they failed in their responsibilities in both the 2010 and 2014 elections and have no grounds from which to complain when the Republicans trash their future by overriding Obama’s vetoes in the next two years. This bunch of coddled kiddies want to blame Boomers for their problems, but they’re going to find that when the Boomers are gone their own kids will shift that blame to their own parents who are going to do what they’ve always done; whine and screw off.

#89 Marketing Wizards (2004)

The Internet economy died when marketing gurus decided that website ads were ineffective. How they made that decision is about as logical as all of the rest of marketing decisions.

Take, for instance, television advertising. Nothing costs more than television advertising, except government. How does a company know its advertising dollar produces income? The Neilson rating system. How do the Neilson ratings determine a program is "popular?" The folks with the Neilson monitors have left their TVs on a program for at least 5 minutes. Those five minutes don't have to be five minutes of advertising, either. Just any old five minutes will do.

Pretty scientific, don't you think?

Last year's ABC attempt to buy Letterman to replace their evening news is based on the idea that people will go to bed, leaving their boob tubes on ABC (and Letterman, who certainly bores me to sleep), and wake up to Diane Sawyer or some talking head selling widgets. If you turn on the tube, head for the bathroom, and leave the box on that channel for five minutes, up go the Neilsons.

What would you spend for the science behind that kind of advertising clout? Personally, I'd rather have a website ad. And I'm not convinced that website ads work, either.

Obviously, ads do something. Otherwise, George Bush II wouldn't be in office. He sure wasn't elected based on performance, capability, intelligence, or good looks. He's proof that most Americans don't know "What me worry?: Alfred E. Newman from "E=MC²" Albert Einstein.

Marketing gurus seem to think that the 18-35 year old male is especially stupid, vulnerable to advertising, in other words. I guess it's possible that 18-35 year old males elected Bush. I have to say that's a disturbing thought. I wouldn't put that whatever group who elected GWB in charge of parking my 35 year old pickup. That rust-bucket still has some practical value.

August 2004

12/29/2014

#88 Making a Case for Intolerance

U.S. citizens are probably the most persecuted group of humans in the history of the world. Every once of us is a member of some kind of minority. If we're not, we pick a hobby that makes us a minority. If we're the ruling majority, we make a law that classifies us as a minority and we run with it. Whatever group we belong to, no matter how small or weird, we expect that group to be honored as a minority and to be respected as if we are making a valuable contribution to the culture.

One of my hobbies is motorcycling. Less than 0.5% of U.S. citizens own motorcycles. Probably half of that group owns a Harley that is mostly unridden, either because it's broken or because its owner is investing a small fortune in customizing the bike and it hasn't been completely assembled since the early years of the Vietnam War. So, an optimistic estimate of motorcyclists on the road, paying license taxes, contributing to air and noise pollution, amount to a measly one in four hundred citizens. That's a serious minority.

I live a few hundred feet from a freeway. I know that's not smart, but it's something I've mostly come to terms with. I can safely say that a disproportionate contribution to my neighborhood's noise pollution comes from motorcycles. The blast of motorcycle exhaust noise often overwhelms the blat of semis, the boom of rolling ghetto blaster pickups, and the other 399 of 400 vehicles on the road.

You'd think that noise pollution, alone, would make motorcyclists a bit apprehensive about their status in the vehicle culture. Because of our minority status, we seem to be more arrogant about our social standing, if anything. We have successfully overturned noise pollution requirements, helmet laws, emission standards, and common sense through political action and a lot of whining.

That appears to the standard practice for all sorts of minorities.

Christians represent 5% of the religious world, but that doesn't keep one sect of Christians from acting like the Pope is the true ruler of the universe or another sect from believing that their favorite wild-eyed evangelist is God's only direct spokesman. Christianity isn't alone in this sort of "my universe, love it or leave it" fantasy. In fact, it's hard to find a dominant religion on this planet that isn't similarly deluded. Taken individually, every one of these religions and sects of religions are a minority but they have taken their minority status and turned it into a political advantage, in their own minds. Combining martyrdom, fanaticism, terrorism, and secular nationalism into a frenzy of self-delusion, the world's minorities create pockets of majority status for themselves.

Like US motorcyclists, this sort of deluded outlook often gets run off of the road by reality. Combining nationalism with religious minority paranoia is scary stuff, though. That throws what Mr. Bush calls "weaponsh of mash disrushon" and a higher power's justification to use those weapons into the mix. We're now operating at the intellectual level of "my god is tougher than your god."

Another country operated on this level of paranoia in 1936 and their national delusion became a reality a few years later when all of the folks they imagined hating them really did hate them. Germany followed a nutball, paranoid, I'm-doing-God's-will wacko all the way into World War II, under the justification that they were a picked-on VIP minority. Crazy people are specially noxious when they collect in large groups and begin sharing their fantasies. Sane people tend to want to put walls around them, isolate them, and remove their access to weapons and pointy objects. Or blow them up. If we don't find a way to police our crazy people, the rest of the world is going to start wondering if they need to do it for us.

August 2004

12/25/2014

#125 Merry Xmas (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day
Scrooge has nothing on me. "Bah, humbug," would be the nicest thing I can say about this phony, greedy, superstitious holiday. I grew up in a tense, unbalanced Midwestern home where this particular holiday brought out all the worst in our tension and imbalance.
Giving and getting presents was only a part of the stress. Like most Americans, we were driven by guilt to spend every nickel we had on things that the receivers would want nearly as much as a case of the clap. Like many Americans, the "festivities" were wrapped in superstitious semi-Christian ritual designed to make every freakin' moment as guilty and unpleasant as possible.
In my old age, now that my kids are grown and living happily (I hope) in their own families, I do my best to avoid everything about this nasty commercial ritual. Of course, the superstitious aspect of Xmas is lost on me. I'm not Christian, Jewish, or Islamic, so the Jesus, Jehovah, Mohamad, or Superman myths are just a collection of sheep herders' tales amongst a long, long list of sheep herders' tales that have complicated human history and rational thought since the first caveman painted a space ship on a cave wall and claimed that someone had stuck a probe in his butt.
I can't escape the guilt crap of being a Midwesterner. I still buy something for everyone I love. I try to convince myself I go through this ritual for some reason other than the ones that actually motivate me. It's not true, though. I'm as guilt driven as I was when I was a child in my father's house. I'm just fighting harder to reclaim this dreary time of the year from the marketing scumbags who currently own the period between Thanksgiving and Xmas. I figure that the more people I can convince to do the same, the fewer marketing jobs there will be and the better the rest of us will live. Or something like that.
I'm not mortified enough to try and pretend that I like Xmas, though. I am upfront about how much I hate this stupid holiday. I'm not talking about dislike, distrust, or distain, either. I mean I "hate" Xmas and everything it stands for. Xmas is not about love, sharing, compassion, friendship, family, or faith. It's about greed, power, control, guilt, and fear. Scary people trying to sell garbage and superstition to timid people who hate their lives so much that they spend more than they earn to massage their guilty, selfish hearts for long enough to make the scary folks a little richer and more powerful. Even buying some little thing for the people I love is contributing to the things I dislike the most about my country. Someone stronger, more patriotic than me would completely ignore the holiday. A person worthy of the title of "American citizen" would go public in his dislike of this holiday and do everything in his power to break the chain. I guess I'm public now, maybe I'll have done some damage to the chains in my own life. You are free to work the links of your own chains.

12/22/2014

#87 Miss Manners? (2004)

A recent news broadcast commented on a school program in Chicago that claimed to be teaching "manners" to inner city kids. On the surface, this probably seems like a good thing. There's a myth in American culture that well mannered get ahead. We like to think that good manners are among the skills that allow people to rise to the top of society, politics, and business. There is what seems like an infinite number of stupid assumptions that we make about our society.

For instance, occasionally someone points out the fact that we are a highly class-focused culture and that the rich and ruling class regularly pay considerably less of their income toward supporting the culture that, primarily, exists for their use and abuse. The politicians and spiritual leaders whose purpose is to act as the buffer between the working class and the ruling class will burn precious resources in accusing that person of trying to divide the country into "haves and have-nots." Of course, we are a nation of haves and have-nots, but it's considered "impolite" to remind the have-nots of the condition of their condition.

It's a dichotomy. Life is full of them.

Often in American life, it appears that telling the truth is impolite.

Another difficult concept to comprehend is how manners will help working class (or children who want to become working class) get ahead in the world of business. Let's take a walk around Success Street.

While, on the surface, the people who control business and politics appear to be well dressed and properly mannered, that surface analysis doesn't tell a useful story. In front of the media or customers, the average ruling class representative can, mostly, appear to be civilized. That's only a small part of the requirement for being a well-mannered person. Even the coarsest fool knows to be polite around power (except for those drunken idiots on "Cops").

In practice, the rich are irrationally selfish; hoarding resources to themselves at the expense of their neighbors and fellow citizens. They buy politicians and the media to create laws to insulate themselves from responsibility to their communities. In times of great need, they will do anything to avoid sharing their wealth and, often, choose those times to flaunt the fact that they are not "like ordinary people." In practical application, the rich are as likely to be vicious, self-serving, and arrogant as a crack dealer. Those characteristics are rarely considered to be well mannered, regardless of social position. Fortunately for the rich and powerful, they get to make the rules so they rarely have to suffer ill comparisons.

However, I think we ought to develop a nation-wide program to teach manners to the rich and powerful. Someone who understands the situation of the pampered and powerful and has the courage to explain common decency to the uncommon would be required to do the teaching. Ralph Nader comes to mind, to toss a name into the hat.

July 2004

12/15/2014

#86 The Real Them (2004)

"Character," "ethics," "morality," and other right-sounding buzzwords have been the watchmarks of the last few elections. The media wants to pretend these things are difficult to evaluate, and they are if you don't use a little common sense. The major media is just one never-ending infomercial and common sense is never part of any marketing plan, so they are the wrong place to go for that resource. I think the easy source is history; a candidate's history, a party's history, and, in the case of parties that are trying to create a royalty class, the candidate's family history.

Take our last collection of Presidents, for example. In modern history, say from Lyndon Johnson forward, we have a fair collection of characters to review. We have the right wingers: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I & II. We have the left or center: Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. I can't seen how anyone could consider either Johnson or Clinton "left," but we'll put them in that category to make Republicrats happy.

If personal character were a real issue, you'd think that, once someone was on the public dole for the kind of cash that ex-Presidents rake in, a person of character would feel some obligation to the people footing his bills. So, let's look at the ex-Presidents and see what they did for the public after they left the bright lights. And they should have been doing something for the public, since they are on the dole big time.

Johnson left office in shame. His "War on Poverty" was buried under the Vietnam war garbage and he was practically blasted from the primaries by a series of people he once considered his friends and allies. He quit the race for President before the 1968 Demolican convention and before he suffered the ignominy of becoming one of the rare standing Presidents defeated by his own party. Even after all that embarrassment, he followed his Presidency by staying involved in several of his pet social reform programs: Head Start and the Peace Corps. But, mostly, Johnson faded into Texas society and was a drain on the taxpayer for the rest of his life.

Nixon ran and hid after being impeached and nearly convicted for a collection of crimes. Before leaving office, he pardoned a pack of hardened corporate criminals and replaced himself with a Republicrat crony who had balls of fluff and the brains of a golf ball, Jerry Ford. After leaving office, Nixon became a right wing spokesperson and a corporate board member of a collection of companies who owed him a boat-load of cash for years of non-observant government mismanagement. So much for character and a much larger taxpayer drain than Johnson, since Nixon built a collection of "memorials" to himself which were funded and maintained by taxpayers.

Jerry Ford served out his appointment term as President, lost the 1976 election, and returned to playing golf with his corporate buddies. Other than an occasional figurehead position as a "moderate Republicrat leader," Ford has been on a vacation since (and mostly during) his term in office. Still, no character showing and more wasted tax money.

We've heard almost as much from Jimmy Carter, and received more value from him, after his Presidency as during. He's been involved in Habitat for Humanity, actually building houses along with finding funding for this charity. He's worked with Amnesty International and a collection of democracy-promoting organizations, often putting his own life at risk to observe elections from South America to Africa to Florida. Finally, a large bit of character and something for our money.

Then, Reagan, who didn't show a lick of character before, during, or after his Presidency, followed in the traditional Republicrat model. Most of the way to senility, before he started his 2nd term of office, Reagan did a little international corporate speaking for huge sums of cash after he left office and, then, succumbed to his natural state; napping and mumbling. Reagan did receive some monster payments for 15 minute formal mumbles in Japan, as a repayment for his handing massive quantities of US natural resources and political power to that country's elite. Republicrats named every road and public building they could desecrate after this President, in an attempt to rewrite history so that it might look at Reagan's term in office more kindly. Which means more tax money than ever was tossed after this lost cause. Still, we're back to no character, again. However, if suffering a terrible late life is God's will, Reagan's fate would almost make me into a believer. On the other hand, taxpayers got stuck for a huge medical care bill for Reagan's last few years of drooling.

Bush I was the most obvious characterless character the Republicrats ever elected. He was a corporate scumbag before his term as Vice (the most perfect application of this term ever) President and went right back to scamming the public with oil execs, military-industrial execs, power and communications execs after he left office. Bush I hadn't done a single lick of selfless activity since he came to government and has been totally wrapped up in creating wealth for himself since he left. If character really mattered, Republicrats would be ashamed to show their faces or include "character" in their chants after having pawned this scumbag off on the country. Republicrats are totally devoid of character, however, and no act of failure or immorality shames them.

Clinton, the right wing's "character" whipping boy, has followed, a few steps, in Carter's footsteps. Bill Clinton has continued to work for peace in the Middle East, being a part of peace negotiations and working for world peace foundations. Clinton has stayed at the job he started in eastern Europe, whenever he's given an opportunity. Until recently, he'd stayed low-profile in the 2004 election process, probably because he's such an easy target for the morally corrupt right who want to use his personal failure as evidence that they massive moral void is justified. Clinton is young and what he does with his personal popularity and clout is yet to be seen. Still, not Republicrat characterless.

Bush II was a clueless, money-grubbing moron before he stumbled into the Presidency and it's safe to say he will remain one afterwards. His associations are the same as his father's; evil and greedy. His motivations are not as convoluted, though. He's lazy, dumb, and spoiled. It doesn't take much to make that kind of rich kid happy, so he'll vanish from public life and continue packing his pockets with cash after he leaves office. Character? Never had any, never will. His claim to moral fame is that he managed to stop publicly packing his nose with coke and hasn't been caught driving drunk for at least a decade. Not much of an achievement, but the best we can hope for from Republicrats.

July 2004

12/08/2014

#85 The Purpose of A Business (2004)

In my foolishly mismanaged career, I've worked for really small and really monstrous companies. The difference between small companies and large companies is, mostly, money. The little companies don’t have much, big companies have a lot. Otherwise, the little companies do the same, stupid things that drive sane people insane in the bloated, brain-dead humongous companies. Money allows the big guys to get by with more stupidity, but stupidity is its own reward and you never want to sell short the capacity of really small companies to shoot themselves in the foot.

Take bureaucracy, for example. You’d think that little companies would, by nature, avoid designing useless accounting practices, stuffing offices with purposeless middle managers, and putting layers of interference between the people who do work and the people who are expecting to have work done. You’d be wrong. Far too many small companies are influenced by the management practices of the biggest, least efficient role models. Small company managers suffer the delusion that their purpose in the company is to live a life of leisure and uselessness. Once they can afford a couple of employees, they shuffle off responsibility and critical functions to those minimally paid employees, under the hallucination that employees are motivated to do a better job than the idiots who own the business. That might work until the employees realize that they are being taken for granted, used and abused, and they adopt the “I don’t give a shit” attitude of their employer. One thing about crappy jobs, there is always another one.

That’s the odd thing about management’s attitude. When a store owner, company executive, or business owner manages to kill the golden goose, there isn’t another similar job around the corner for them. You’d think they’d be more concerned about keeping their good thing alive, but they’re not, apparently, that bright. It’s true that dumb asses flock together and it’s also true that the “good ‘ole boy” network hangs pretty tightly, but the preponderance of jobs available in the good ‘ole US of A are minimum wage. There‘s no shortage of ex-execs holding on to the remains of their severance packages, shipping fancy resumes to uninterested personnel departments, and hoping another ship will come in before they have to look for real work. Another ship that they can help sink, once they’re safely accommodated in a padded chair behind a loading dock-sized desk.

I’ve written about this before, but it is true that some companies seem to go out of their way to hire execs who have failed before. The fantastic “logic” often spouted is that a failed exec will have learned something valuable about the experience of failure that will somehow translate into success for the moronic fools who give the failed exec another chance. I suppose these idiots bet on losing horses with the same logic.

No, most execs don’t learn anything from their failures, except how to do less work, make fewer decisions, and to attract as little attention as possible. Of course, those were the skills that took them up the corporate ladder, initially, so they must be mission-critical skills in any business.

Or the real deal may be that leadership is overrated, under-realized, and grossly over-paid. Several companies, in the early stages of the latest economic crash, relieved themselves of CEOs, CFOs, directors, and other bloated titles without function and found that there was no need to re-fill those positions. They simply saved the cash, spent it on their corporate functions, or distributed the money among people who actually did work and performed tasks that needed performing. I’ll admit that this is a rare company, but, since I’m a firm believer that “99% of everything is crap,” any bit of rational thought is encouraging.

June 2004

12/06/2014

#84 Restructuring the Rat (2004)

Another half year has gone by and I've written damn little in this journal. It's not that I haven't had lots of ideas and tons of material. It's an election year and I'm part-time employed. Those two activities alone are enough to start me ranting endlessly. But I managed to create a monster, a maintenance monster, with the structure of the Rat's Eye View webpage and finally it killed off my desire to write these things. In a fit of inspiration, I completely restructured the website into my version of a blog journal. No more "This Week's Rant" page. Everything gets dumped into the current year's list of babble. No more snazzy index that allows readers and website search engines to find a particular rant about a specific subject. Every damn thing I've written is going to be dumped into annual files. The newest stuff is on the top of the page, the old crap is at the bottom. If I had a readership, I'd be concerned that I've managed to lose their historical interest. I don't, so I'm just doing this make life easy for myself. And, after all, that's what really matters, isn't it?

My hope Is that I'll write a lot more because of this easier, less accessible structure. I've thrown readership counters on each of the annual pages, which will give me some idea if any of you are out there reading what I write .

I write a column for local motorcycle magazine, called "Geezer with a grudge." the idea behind that column is that I write something that pisses off the magazine's readers, they write a nasty letter to the editor , if they write often enough, the editor has evidence that there are a lot of readers out there in magazine land, and he can justify his ad rates. The page counters are doing the same job for me. I'm not writing this drivel for my health. At least, I'm not posting it to a webpage for that purpose . I created these web pages in the hopes that either attract a readership. So far, that experiment has been a dismal failure, but I've written about one million bytes of text in the effort. As a writing experiment, I can't call it worthless. As a self-promotion experiment, it hasn't been worth much, though.

June 2004

12/01/2014

#83 Conservative Morality

In case you haven't figured it out on your own, the title of this rant is irony. Conservatives have about as firm a grasp on morality as Gee-Whiz Bush has on the state of the economy. The two claims to moral fame held by the religious right are non-reproductive sex (they're again' it) and forced Christianity (they're for it).

On all other issues, conservatives could care less about the poor, the underprivileged, the abused, downtrodden, good manners, or common decency. The new and old Right are for the power and wealth of those who already hold power and wealth, for keeping the rich, rich and the poor, poor. They are so inclined to bear arms against their fellow citizens that they form organizations to prevent any semblance of rational legislation controlling personal weaponry. They gloat over the fact that Amerika has stockpiled more of its citizens in prisons than most of the other industrialized nations put together. They hate freedom of the press, civil rights, habeas corpus, women's rights, taxation of the rich, and cereal with raisins. They're all about dismantling the education system and replacing it with menial labor vocational training for everyone who wasn't born leaching from a trust fund. In fact, there isn't a single positive human value that the Right would fight to protect. If it ain't about greed or power, it's not an issue for these very un-conservative conservatives.

For that matter, the two moral issues they cling to are not about morality, but about greed and power. Any group that claims to be pro-life but is so much in love with capital punishment is, obviously, conflicted. As far as I can see, the conservative dislike for abortion is that the procedure removes the possibility of a later-in-life execution. That's a power issue, not a moral point. The conservative passion for government control of bedroom activities is a combination of repressed sexual anxiety or a desire to control every non-economic human activity. You can't tell the communists from the conservatives without a conservative media to label the two.

Either the conservative gods are astoundingly stupid, or they're thoroughly disbelieved by their let's-pretend-worshipers. Conservatives hunt through whatever sheepherder tales they claim were written by the hand of whatever god for any excuse to kill, steal from, or rape and pillage their enemies of the moment. I'm not just talking about our local nutball Christian "conservatives," I mean every conservative on the planet; Christian, Muslim, Moonie, Mormon, Communist, or whatever timid person's flavor-of-the-century we're suffering at the moment. If these people aren't killing someone or planning to kill someone, they're unhappy as hell.

[As a historical aside, read John Adam's defense of British soldiers from post-Revolutionary War execution, “. . . We are to look upon it as more beneficial, that many guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one innocent person should suffer. The reason is, because it is of more importance to the community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world, that all of them cannot be punished; and many times they happen in such a manner, that it is not of much consequence to the public, whether they are punished or not. But when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, it is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security. And if such a sentiment as this should take place in the mind of the subject, there would be an end to all security whatsoever . . .” Now that's a liberal!]

Two unbelievably vicious examples of Right immorality demonstrated their wrongness recently, during Minnesota's 2002 Senate campaign. First, the Republicrat candidate waged a smear campaign against the only populist politician left in Washington, Paul Wellstone. When Wellstone's plane went down a few weeks before the election, the Demoplicans stuffed the vacancy with Walter Mondale. In a panic, Republicrats worried about losing the election out of sympathy for Minnesota's great loss. Conservative whackos stormed the Fitzgerald Theater where a debate was the be held between Mondale and Abnormal Coleman. Outside the theater, they paraded with signs that read "War Means Jobs."

War means jobs. Now there's a strong moral position for you. They were worried that Mondale might not let Gee Wiz carry on his war-plans-slash-economic-recovery-strategy and that resistance to rational thought might cost them precious military industrial jobs. I'd never been more disgusted by my fellow Americans.

But conservatives keep trying to set new records for immorality. In New York, there is a 30 year old Republicrat governors' legislation, called the Rockefeller Law, which puts "drug offenders" in prison, regardless of previous history, mitigating circumstances, or breakfast cereal preferences. Recently, there has been some questioning of the fairness or rationality of a law that tosses people in jail for crimes against themselves. Some famous rappers are putting themselves in between the law and common sense. They're asking why people should be jailed for life, or the majority of a life, for drug possession, especially possession of amounts small enough to barely qualify for personal use.

And the conservatives are upset. Not because they believe the punishment fits the crime, but because they are concerned that precious right-wing jobs will be lost in the prison system. Who cares if people are unfairly stripped of their lives, families, and freedom? Let's face it, it's obvious that prison guards are old fashioned conservatives and it's hard to find high paying jobs for that sort of upstanding low-tech citizen. Mostly, because the kind of person who would take a job as a prison guard is uneducated, unskilled, and otherwise unemployable. So what's a person's life compared to keeping conservative dumbshits employed?

Morality, who needs it when you can pretend to have it and the rest of the country is too terrified of you to correct your error? If we truly wanted to wage a war on terrorists, conservatives would be in deep shit. The terrorists of the world are all conservatives stumbling along behind one deeply flawed fantasy or another. A war on real terrorism would be one that could be easily conducted at home and it's a war that should be won at all costs. The future of our Constitution and world democracy depends on rooting out conservatives and putting them where they can do no harm. I'm thinking positions as sanitation workers is about as critical an industry as conservatives are capable of serving.

March 2004

11/26/2014

Dumb Kansas Expressions

I have a terrible admission to make and it appears to be something I am stuck with for life, which at 66 probably won't be all that long. I first tried to put this apology/admission on Facebook, but Facebook's crap editor defeated me. So, it's here. I grew up in a place and time where the phrase "boy howdy" was as common as "please," "thank you," "can I help with that," "you're welcome," and "if you need anything, please call." Unfortunately, for me and my father and brother "boy howdy" shortened to "boy" by the time I was an adolescent. It is an expression I've used reflexively for at least 60 years. As in "Boy! That's awful." Or "Boy! I wish I'd thought of that." Or "Boy! That tastes like crap." It probably looks worse in print than it sounds, but I can't say that since I'm usually wishing, once more, I'd kept my hillbilly Kansas mouth shut when "boy" introduces yet another sentence. If I'd have been from New York or California, I'd start every thought with "um" or "you know" or "you know what I mean" or "like." But, nope. I'm from 1950's western Kansas and I'm stuck with "boy."

According to the Word Detective, "It’s pretty hard to think of a single aspect of modern life that isn’t connected to Howdy Doody in some way. To those of you born after 1960, 'Howdy Doody' may have been just a wildly popular 1950s kiddie TV show, but the rest of us know that time and space began with Buffalo Bob and Clarabell the Clown. Someone should tell those physicists that they’re wasting their time searching for that Grand Unified Theory of Everything. It’s Howdy Doody all the way down." And I grew up with that freaky little ginger puppet as big part of my childhood, my hometown culture (I won a Ralph Edwards-sponsored contest when I was a kid), and we never missed a show, even when I had to hang out with neighbor kids to see it since my father didn't buy a television until I was 13.

Continuing with the Word Detective's analysis, "The original lexical function of the phrase was simply to catch the listener’s attention, equivalent to saying 'Hey, mister…', but today 'boy' used this way signals that the speaker considers what follows to be important or surprising ('Boy, I never thought they’d actually fire me')."

Yeah, all that is true. But in some social situations it doesn't feel right. If feels like I've slapped someone in the face and I don't mean to do that. Stupid as it may sound, I am not calling anyone "boy." I'm just a hick stuck with a stupid word for practically every moment that mildly deserves an exclamation mark. At this point in my life, I wouldn't mind replacing "boy" with "like," as much as I hate that word for any It's not gonna happen, though.

11/24/2014

#82 The Vanishing Middle Class

The Middle Class. Who’s in it? Who’s losing ground and falling into poverty, slipping from success into homelessness? The Middle Class, that’s who. For the last two decades, the banking industry has been spending tens of millions of dollars to find a way to have its cake and eat it, too.

The bankruptcy bill, the one the credit pushers have hustled past their representatives in the US House and are about to bribe the Senate to pass, the one Bush has guaranteed passage of when it hits his desk, is about to finish off what little is left of the Middle Class. When the credit mafia has this bill in hand, they’ll be free to hustle their 30% interest rates on anyone unlucky enough to either be uninformed or unlucky enough to be among the 100 million Americans who don’t have health insurance. Since this same group of crooks is enjoying the use of public cash for as little as 2%, this is the kind of profit margin the old, underground mafia used to call loan sharking. Once upon a time, the federal government occasionally put folks in jail for this kind of predatory activity. Unless the middle class comes to life and defends itself, the only folks going to jail will be ex-members of the working class on their way to debtor’s prison.

Yes, Virginia, debtors prison, that nasty old relic that our founding fathers brought with them from “Old Europe,” as Bush’s Rummy called it, is about to make a comeback if the credit pushers have their way. Even better, though, will be the practical slavery debtors will experience when the safety valve of personal bankruptcy is eliminated. Of course, the ruling class won’t be inconvenienced by any of this unpleasantness. Corporations will still be able to escape their debt through Chapter 11, 13, and other numbered Swiss and Maryland accounts. Executives will still be immune to the economic hazards their incompetent management creates, through the protection of corporate law. The only folks who will be affected by all the outrage caused by America’s out-of-control debtor problems will be the middle class.

Sometime in the middle of the 1970s, the Powers That Be decided that the country no longer needed to encourage the existence of a middle class. Once there was a VA Bill, which was intended to revitalize a middle class that had been destroyed in the Depression and create a skilled labor force. It was discontinued under the argument that the VA was intended to provide for veterans of actual wars, not a “minor police” action like the little thing going on in Vietnam. Since then, finances have tightened up, working wages have shriveled, prices on almost everything have inflated, and jobs have vanished. The term “full time job” is practically historic. The phrase “permanent job” is downright obsolete.

Being old enough to remember when a family could be supported by a single income, I wonder when the middle class will get tired of all this. I wonder what kind of poke with a sharp stick it would take to make the people who work for a living rise up against the ruling class who have taken them for granted? I wonder if Americans are worthy of the label? Are we Americans or are we Old Europeans? Do we remember that the American Revolution was, at the core, a class war and that any time we’re fighting a class war we’re being true to our democracy? Probably not. But maybe recreating slavery and debtors’ prisons will remind us who we are and what we have lost.

February 2004

11/17/2014

#81 Vanishing Definitions (2004)

Twenty years ago, I took an American Government course from Dr. Herrick Arnold, at Orange Coast Community College. Dr. Herrick was a local Republican wig during the Nixon years, which cost him his political career and stuck him in a community college. One of the many things I got out of Dr. Arnold's class was a set of economic definitions that have stuck with me for life. One of the other things was an understanding that all systems gravitate toward developing an elite class.

When Americans debate politics and economics (you can't have one without the other), we tend to believe that the two poles are right and left, capitalism and socialism. The extremes appear to meet so closely that you can't tell the right from the left. Practical applications of communism and fascism are so alike that they may as well share the same name. Unfortunately for the middle class, practical applications of capitalism and socialism depend on the center (politically and economically) to support the extremes. What we need to develop are common terms that actually have meaning in a discussion.

Dr. Arnold's definitions of capitalism, socialism, and communism are the best I've ever heard. He defined capitalism as a system where all assets are privately owned and the government's tasks are restricted to national defense and a few core maintenance tasks. Taxation is purely for the purpose of generating revenue for these basic tasks.

The USA, for instance was relatively capitalist from 1776 until the early 1800s. After that . . . you pick your definition from the following options.

Socialism is a system where the nation's assets are co-owned, some are private and some are government. Taxation and tariffs are used to raise revenue for basic functions, to control and direct economic and social activity. Bureaucracy is moderate to large, depending on population size and available resources. Most of the world’s democracies have been socialist, by this definition since the 1900s.
Communism is a system where the nation's assets are government-owned or centrally managed by an organization that passes for government. Bureaucracy is huge. Taxes don't exist because the government receives all of the nation's revenue and distributes it as it sees fit. Supposedly, "to each as he needs, from each as he can provide." However, government is, by nature, corrupt and distribution is the problem in communist states. Most multi-national corporations act as communist states within their realm of power. A realm that is growing exponentially in the US.
Capitalism is a system where the nation's assets are privately-owned. Bureaucracy is minimal and only provides basic services; national defense and management of major natural resources, for example. It's a wonderful ideal that always fails due to human nature. Humans are vicious, stupid, and selfish and need constant supervision of they'll piss in their own drinking water. In history, capitalism always gets replaced by socialism or a dictatorship after the capitalists ruin their own living spaces.
A dictatorship is what most historic forms of government amounted to, including theocracies and monarchies. The ideal is a Benevolent Dictator. Since this has, supposedly, happened in monarchies in the past, many conservative dreamers hope it could happen again. Of course, these dumb asses think the 1950s were an idyllic time in the US, so what do they know? The problem with this "theory" is that there is always a problem with the successor. Since a dictator isn't elected, any damn fool can end up in charge of the guillotine. Usually, a damn fool does.

Other systems exist, but they're just variations on these three major categories. Theocracy, for example, is just communism with funny hats and shoes and men wearing dresses. Anarchism, the political theory that opposes all forms of government, is capitalism without national defense and with choking air pollution and a planet so over-heated by unrestrained human misbehavior that all life ceases to exist in a few years.

Socialist democracy is flawed and full of traps, but it's still the best system we have. Nuts.

January 2004

11/10/2014

#80 Creating Patriots (2004)

One of the great flaws in our country's self-defense systems is that those who administer the system claim to be super patriots for their sacrifice. Without a shred of evidence, they claim to have made sacrifices for the good of us all. Usually, the sacrifice was one they made of someone else.

The thing the majority of government employees are most interested in protecting is their pensions. They are often willing to sacrifice integrity, justice, and their country's best interests to protect a benefit that no longer exists anywhere but in government. Pensions are so rare in modern life that, if it weren't for government, it would be safe to call them ancient history.

So, how do we create patriots in government?

For starters, we remove the present crop of drones and their reason for government employment; the pensions. All of them, civil service, postal workers, military personnel, elected officials, every last government employee loses their pension and any hope they might have that the rest of us will pay them to idle away their golden years in luxury or double-dipping. Of course, this would result in mass exodus from government "service," but who would that inconvenience? In 1996, the House and President Clinton got into a budgetary pissing match and "shut the government down" for three weeks. Other than the fact that savings was negated by the foolish payment of "lost wages" to the government employees when the offices reopened, there was a lot learned by the experiment. Various federal offices had to identify crucial jobs and critical employees and keep them at work. Non-critical employees were sent home. Why they were brought back is a question that might never be answered. In functioning businesses, non-critical workers get laid off, not paid for not doing the work they usually don't do.

One of the big complaints about the government shutdown was the fact that a few thousand rich folks were deprived of passports. The rest of us should have considered that a benefit. If the rich can't troll off into the third world looking for new places to ship American jobs, the rest of us are better off. If they have to keep their vacation money here, spending it in American resorts and spas, we're better off. If trickle-down works at all, that's about the only way it works. So, it's pretty difficult to find a task the federal government does that the working class wants it to be doing.

I suppose you'll argue that, if federal employee benefits are reduced to the level of non-socialized occupations that we’ll end up with no one wanting to hold public service jobs. And that’s bad because . . . ?

Take away the salary decisions from the people who get the salaries. Put the government's salary budget on the ballot every two years. Especially Congress' salary decisions. When they do a poor job, or no job as Congress did during 8 years of Clinton’s administration, they get paid accordingly.

January 2004

11/03/2014

#79 Dangerous Illusions (2003)

All Rights Reserved © 2003 Thomas W. Day

If we ever needed to be comforted that "things are going to be ok," it's probably now. The nation's cities are overpopulated, over-crowded, under-managed, and more dangerous than they've been since the turn of the last century. People are afraid that they're going to be raped, robbed, murdered, and/or squashed by falling 747s piloted by Islamic terrorists. We are turning timid as quickly as our social environment is growing aggressive. The solution is . . . television.

In 2001, the National Crime Information Center reported 840,279 missing persons (of which 85-90% are children) and the fraction of those returned is so unpredictable that I was unable to find a meaningful statistic regarding the nation's unsolved missing persons resolution rate. The fact that the missing persons statistics are not delineated into categories makes it difficult to isolate kidnappings that were investigated from the other categories of missing persons. Regardless, with those huge numbers of missing persons, in 1985, the NCIC entered only 14,816 cases in its involuntary missing files and the FBI only chose to investigate 867 cases, some of those were adult victims. Out of that tiny fraction of the nation's missing persons, an even more discouraging number were "found," most commonly dead.

This ought to be especially discouraging because it's obvious that the Feebs are cherry picking the cases to select ones that they expect to solve and they're still not getting the job done. An imaginary 63% of U.S. committed murders resulted in prosecution in 2000 (down from 79% in 1976). I'll explain in a few sentences, why I classify that statistic as "imaginary." While crime goes unsolved and we become more isolated in our homes and communities, television's CSI Miami and Vegas are wrapping up every vagrant's death as neatly as Xmas packages.

Missing, the television myth that glorifies the FBI's never-before-sighted exercise of human compassion, actually cares if taxpayers miss an appointment. The ultimate television hoax, X Files, portrayed an FBI agency that went out of its way to read case files. I admit that I'm a little jaded about television's fairy tales.

Twenty years ago, my stockbroker was an ex-Atlanta detective. He'd quit and restarted his career when he found himself unable to carry on normal conversations with friends or family. He was beginning to view everyone as scum floating at the top of the pond. When he decided to leave the policing business, standard operating procedures were changing in the nation's cop squads that made him feel his occupation was even more pointless.

In the early 80s, urban police departments began to imitate the FBI's long held habit of "ganging" crimes on to the sheet of whatever high profile "most wanted" criminal they'd recently stumbled upon. What this means is if Mulder and Scully tripped over a serial murderer and someone handed them enough evidence to securely lock that person up for life, what's the harm in sticking a few dozen unrelated homicides on that bad guy to clean up the paperwork? After all, how often are our sluggish government bureaucrats likely to trip over another Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, or even someone as dangerous as Married with Children's Al Bundy? You gotta do what you wanta do and they do.

So, if the federal cops claim that they have a 63% resolution rate on murder, I figure they're probably batting somewhere below .200. The difference between imaginary crime fighting and reality are on television almost every evening. I drive by the real guys most every morning on the way to work and, if that group of civil servants could chase down a donut, it would only be after a waitress has corralled it on a plate for them. After they satiate their compulsion to "protect and serve" themselves, they are too fat to actually chase criminals.

A guy I worked with a decade ago, is more the kind of person I'd expect would excel with the FBI. He was a failed medical student, turned MBA-adorned middle executive in charge of covering up our employer's antics with a collection of unreliable and hazardous medical products. He was being actively recruited by the FBI because he was, obviously, their kind of guy. His motivation for attending to the task of joining the FBI was "they have a great pension plan" and "I can retire when I'm fifty and consult for the companies I've investigated." It's good to have high moral standards and lofty goals when you're heading off to protect the public.

The now famous Elizabeth Smart story ought to tell us everything we need to know about crime fighting's capacities. A girl obviously kidnapped and held, practically in plain sight, a few blocks from her home by a vagrant her parents had hired to do grunt work only a few days before the kidnapping. If the FBI and local cops could solve any crime quickly, this should have been the one. As happens far too rarely, a half-year after the kidnapping, a citizen recognized the kidnapper based on an artist's sketch of the suspect and called it in to the cops who managed to drag themselves away from donuts long enough to rescue the girl. The FBI and all their mythical resources were useless and it was only the competent work of a beat cop that saved Ms. Smart from spending another year as a hostage in her own neighborhood. Remember that her kidnapper was a transient who'd done maintenance work for the Smart family only a few weeks before the kidnapping.

Can you say "obvious suspect?"

Maybe this heartwarming story makes you feel comfortable about your "police protection," but I'm not that simpleminded. John Walsh and his television program have made it clear to anyone capable of rational thought that the only way to rescue our loved ones from the worst people on earth is to drop our lives, sell everything we own, hire private investigators and spend all of our waking hours in pursuit of these criminals. The police, the FBI, and all of the King's men are useless. They're too worried about parking violations, speeding ticket quotas, pension plans, and outsourcing donuts to be distracted by our problems.

But not on television.

The worst (most corrupt, least courageous, most self-serving) police force in the nation, New York's tubby-blue constantly-shifting line, are practically competent on television. One of the most notoriously gangland related cities in the world, Las Vegas, has CSI uncovering killer DNA on every carpet fabric in Nevada. The FBI finds missing vagrants, children, lawyers, and other otherwise ignored citizens in hours, often before the victims miss a single dose of some equally mythical life saving medication. Pretty soon, I expect we'll see a series on how loving and helpful LA cops are to minority citizens. Why not? It wouldn't be less believable than picturing FBI agents in motion. How about a show illustrating the SEC's relentless pursuit of corporate criminals? That would be as believable as Spiderman, but no less so than Missing or "NYPD Blue.

December 2003