A Simple Fire and Business Ethics

Most arsons of commercial properties tend to be done by the owners. Often the reason is that a failing business needs the insurance money, other times it is done to make way for new developments. In Los Angeles a few years ago a developer was told that he would not be allowed to remove a historical building so he bulldozed it anyways and then paid the fine. In the end, he was allowed to develop the property anyways, the City Council just waited until the public forgot, it didn't take long.

A very long time ago I lived, for a short while, in Haverhill, Massachusetts. It was actually in the national papers being listed as the worst city in America. It was an old mill town that became a symbol of our lost industrial base long before the steal mills left. If you want to understand me, you have to understand what I have lived and seen. It was a desperate place that had no hope; but, somehow the hardworking old school people that lived there still had integrity and believed that they would somehow hold out, they believed in community and helped one another.

Well apparently one of the factory mills that had been there for about a hundred years (1884) and been abandoned for decades has mysteriously burned to the ground the day before the mayor of Haverhill was to meet with someone who "planned on redeveloping the property". According to CBS Boston, the fire appears to have been intentionally set. What a surprise. What lucky timing for the developer.

I am a socialist libertarian. I believe in America and I believe that people should have as much personal freedom as they can without working against American interests. If you are against this nation than I believe you should be given the choice between leaving this nation and taking nothing with you or being treated as a traitor to this nation under the Patriot Act. I don't believe you should get benefits or tax breaks from this nation for working against this nation's people.

My readers should read "The Scarlet Pimpernel". He was an aristocrat (I am not) who thought that the French went to far, were too extreme during the French revolution in killing the aristocrats who destroyed their lives. He believed in mercy and letting people leave the country rather than being guillotined. He risked his life to save bad people from suffering more than they needed to. I am with that philosophy. I am a pacifist at heart.

The problem with extremism is that it ceases to believe in compromise and seeks revenge instead. The people in charge of this country have become more and more extreme in believing that only they deserve to benefit from this country. The response, as history shows, is slow in coming; but, it always comes. The Magna Carta came about because the English monarchy was willing to compromise, the French monarchy was not. It openly told it's own citizens that they did not matter and the response was equally extreme. I don't want to see that play out in America; but, I fear it will.

Looking Out For You and Your Families Interests

Political choices are a lot like business choices. In the end people make choices based on personal interests. Business is very cut and dry on this. Many CEOs have gone on record that what is best for this country is not a consideration in business, their only duty, they will tell you, is to the stock holders. Following that logic, a citizens interest is only for them and their family. So here is the question, is this country working for you?

For 99% of us the answer is no, not anymore. Why else would congress only have 7% of us supporting them? Clearly half of us are under direct attack from the system. Our congress and business leaders want to eliminate all the benefits that one achieves from working hard all your life for your family. They want to end social security (which we pay for), welfare (which more and more will need as we outsource jobs to foreign countries), food stamps (which is the only way many poor can eat at all) and our ability to organize to complain. The political system and the financial system have both been caught for being rigged to only benefit a very small percentage of us.

Are you hopeful that your children will have it better off than you? Do you think they will? While our children are sent off to foreign countries to die and fight for big oil, upon returning they are ignored. It is unlikely they will go to college or get a job that pays well. The truth is that if you are under 40, your prospects are not that good unless you hit the lottery or make very rich friends. These are the real driving forces behind the Tea Party, the Occupy Movement, Trump's doing well in the polls and Bernie Sanders support and I now fear that the establishment will not listen or understand any of it, just as Louis the 16th never got it.

When things in a country go bad, people wait for improvement, they support trying all kinds of things until they see that nothing they do improves their situation or gives them hope for their children. When they figure out there is no way to improve their children's lot in life, they stop supporting the government and accept that they must cheat the system or change it through any means possible. Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, understood this and in the book he says that Sancho Panchez was as honest as a poor man could be. The Soviet Union failed not because of a revolt; but, because none of its people would support it. The same is true for ancient Rome, it fell from a lack of support on the inside and that allowed for attacks to be successful from the outside.

Donald Trump is both right and wrong about something. He believes our politicians are stupid and that is why he believes the Chinese are beating us. If we are as a nation are competing with China, why are we sending them our jobs and why are we sending our technologies there? Even the dumbest person does not give his strengths to his opponent to use against him. Our corporate leasers see it to be in their personal interests to sell us out as a nation.

If you doubt me, go back a post or two and see what Jamie Dimon said about how this nation is doing, the said better than ever. He also said that we should continue electing politicians that go with the status quo. Kids, the status quo is not working for just about all of us and we all know it, that is why we have ceased having confidence in congress.

The un-Patriot-ic Act says that if you work for the interest of a foreign government against those of the United States you can go to jail, without due process and be held without a trial indefinitely. As a consequence we have jailed people for wanting to leave the United States to work with certain Arab factions; but we give tax breaks to companies that send American jobs to China. Think about it.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Says This Is The Best Time For America.

Yahoo - Business Insider - JAMIE DIMON: 'America has the best hand ever dealt right now'. 

Jamie Dimon, he CEO of JP Morgan recently made the following quotation:

"Make a list of everything important, rule of law, low corruption, unbelievable innovation, entrepreneurship ... the deepest capital markets — I'm not talking about banks. I'm talking about venture capital, private equity, companies, individuals, the best science, technology, engineering, math the world has. In fact, we train 40% of them [to] go back overseas."

His quote shows just how out of touch with Americans he is. We have the highest percentage of people without jobs in just about our whole history. We have the highest income inequality since the early industrial revolution. We have been involved in the longest wars in our history and the highest debt in our history. What Mr. Dimon is talking about is what is important to him. Let's look at the specifics of what he is saying.

1. Rule of Law. Well Mr. Dimon has overseen his company while it has had to pay over $25 Billion in fines for rigging all the financial markets. The law may be harder on the rest of us; but, no bankers went to jail for destroying this nations economy.
2. Low corruption. Again, more corruption than ever before has occurred since 2002. The housing bubble and stock market insider trading have been rampant and again with few if any jailed for it.

Those are the two things he listed as the most important. He never talked about the things that matter to most of us because those things are not his concerns.

Clocks and Bombs - Ahmed Mohammed and Stupid Media

By now everybody has heard about the 14 year old Muslim student, Ahmed Mohammed who made a clock, brought it to school, one teacher thought it was a bomb and he was taken out in handcuffs. I don't usually write about these types of news stories because there is too much out there already. To tell you the truth, I didn't even bother reading any of the news about this until today. I read the story because a famous Atheist named Richard Dawkins decided to write about it and actually said that people should have been scared, then Bill Maher said that the teachers should have been scared because Muslims are responsible for all the bombings in the last 30 years. These two morons were not alone in their stupidity. Others have claimed that this was all done intentionally to make a viral sensation.

Now here is where the garbage story falls apart. The first teacher in the school to see it was the engineering teacher. He actually told the kid he had done a good job. It was an English teacher that thought it was a bomb. That might make sense; but, here is what does not. The kid told them it was for his engineering class, didn't anyone bother asking the engineering teacher before arresting the kid? When they opened it and didn't find any EXPLOSIVES, why did they arrest him anyways? If he really wanted it to look like a bomb wouldn't he have put phony dynamite sticks or clay that had C4 written on it, something that looked like an explosive? I should also point out that the media claimed it was in a suitcase, it wasn't, it was in a large pencil case.

The schools explanation was that the student handbook prohibited kids from bringing in "suspicious" looking items. Huh? If kids take engineering classes and build stuff it would all look homemade and weird. I should also point out that the school gave the kid a 3 day suspension even after they knew it was just a clock made to impress his engineering teacher. While the school invited the kid to return they never apologized. Now, we can look at this as anti-Muslim, Arab paranoia or any other racial thing; but, in my opinion they would have arrested a white looking Christian too. The real paranoia involved was school paranoia and increasing restrictions and control of students.

Here is the thing about the media anymore, everything is put into very small boxes. Everytime a cop kills an unarmed black man, it is a black versus white thing. The conservative media makes it about people being anti-cop. It is neither. The fact is that the police have increasingly been shooting all people, whites, Asians, you name it; however, it is disproportionately blacks. The problem is bigger, it is police who shoot first and ask questions later. The police have become increasingly militarized and increasingly oppressive.

The media focuses it all on race and ignores the bigger issues because racial tensions get better ratings and people allow their responses to be more polarized. About the only reason I still write this blog is because I continually hope that people will begin to see how the media manipulates us  to miss the real issues.

New Thoughts on Trump

For most of my career I was a negotiator of contracts. It was not the only thing I did; but, it was an important aspect of my career and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the give and take and the mental chess game that it involves. I also enjoyed public speaking and I have often heard that that is most people's biggest fear. I think I am just twisted. Negotiations involve a lot of pressure when done up close and in real time, they require you to be fast on your feet. I was.

When making business deals I have certain beliefs. Firstly, you can never lie. Not to anyone. If you lie to your wife, I cannot trust that you will not lie to me. If you cheat people in your personal life or business, I cannot trust that you will not cheat me. Sometimes you have to deal with people that lie and cheat; but, you cannot trust them and must understand they will cheat or lie to you. If you want a real association, a long term situation, it is only possible if both sides stay constant and honest with one another. I can absolutely say that people that hated me personally trusted that when I said something, I meant it. I have people that have personally tried to cheat me in my career come to me and ask for help for the good of the organization and I helped them.

I have to add a caveat to what I have been writing. Look, there are times when you and the person that you are negotiating with have interests that are different. That happens in life and business. In those situations you have to make it clear what your interests are to the other. That can be tough to do and there are times when certain things will prevent that from occurring because of responsibilities. Everybody understands this; but, if you cannot say anything you still don't get to lie to a partner. Let them know that you are not free to discuss an issue or just don't talk to them at all. I was negotiating with someone once and we were at odds, it was unclear if our partnership would continue and they had lied to me. I was friends with a couple of this persons associates and they had to not talk to me while things worked themselves out. I didn't get mad at them for avoiding me, I preferred it to their lying to me. In the end things worked out and we were all able to be friends again.

Boy, this is a long and boring lead up to a thought on Donald Trump, lol. I was reading some things that Trump had said, he understand negotiations. Trump is not stupid and can think on his feet. I have read stories about how Trump inherited 20 or 30 million dollars and that is why he has money now. No, in fact many people have inherited money and failed to increase it. Trump is not some trust fund baby living like a sleaze as many  of them do. Trump risked it all and not just once, that takes courage. He didn't need to increase the money he inherited, he could have lived off it. He wanted to prove himself and he did.

I am not for throwing out all illegal aliens, at least not the Mexicans. I like Mexicans and California used to be theirs, we stole it from them, Texas too. Read your history, we stole it. Let's look at history. We paid for Louisiana  and Alaska, we stole Hawaii, we previously stole California and Texas from Mexico. My disagreeing with someone does not mean that I cease to see them for who they are or understand them. Everyone that disagrees with me is not an idiot, not even when they are wrong. Trump is smart and that is the one thing that no writer is talking about.

Banking Crime

Yahoo - Business Insider - It looks like banks might have rigged another huge market.

Well, it looks like the banksters got caught rigging another market, this time it was the market for U.S. treasury notes. In my mind that is not just felony theft and fraud but also constitutes treason. Why haven't any of the presidential candidates commented on all the market rigging by the banks?

Now, I am for putting criminals in jail and would be more than happy to see the people who rigged our financial markets and stole the retirement money from workers in jail. That hasn't happened yet so consider my newest proposal, don't let companies that rig markets get any tax deductions for ten years. They are not afraid of going to jail because they own the politicians; but, they are deathly afraid of not being able to rig the tax system so that they get more deductions than the rest of us. As Matt Taibbi pointed out, they deduct the fines they are charged from their taxes. How is that right?

Thoughts On Women - Cosby Versus Trump

I attended my last concert of the year tonight and couldn't watch the debates. When I got home I was able to watch a number of videos about it and read the news. Seems like all the candidates went after Trump (that was not hard to predict) and the media salivated over the meaningless. Rather than focus on positions they focused on how many good one liners the candidates got off. The item that seemed to be the biggest focus of the media was Carly Fiorina saying that women knew what Donald Trump meant when he made a comment about her face before. The second most talked about line was Jeb Bush asking Trump to apologize for saying his wife was Mexican and Bush pointed out that she was Mexican. I don't think I would say that someone attacked my mother if they pointed out that she was Irish, she was as was my dad and my whole family.

Both Bush and Fiorina along with the media have attempted to imply that Trump thinks women are less than men. There is a problem with this claim, look at the women Trump has surrounded himself with during his life, they are not bimbos or idiots. Trump likes smart women and has defended who chose to be in beauty pageants. The media had tried to get one of Trumps ex-wives to talk dirt about him; but, she wouldn't she said he was good to her. Now personally, I have no idea what Trump is like with women in private or the bedroom. I know that person I knew who met him said he was very pleasant and courteous to him in private. But, this post isn't about Trump.

The media seeks to sell us stories and images, they have never cared how truthful they were. I live in a town where they make movies and sell images. I know for a fact many lies that the media has told about celebrities. Some of the most vile people in this world are promoted as caring and compassionate by the media when they are actually just jerks or worse. Now we get to Bill Cosby. I refuse to, at this time without a trial, say that Bill Cosby is guilty of raping all the women who have accused him of doing so. I do believe in innocent until proven guilty. For the moment lets say I would be surprised if nothing had happened. Still, Cosby is not the focus of this post either, the media is.

The media gladly accuses Trump of being anti-women. Where were they for the past 50 years in regards to Cosby. Many in Hollywood believed Cosby was taking advantage of women, some thought it was common knowledge in the industry. Why did the media, which now says he was a rapist, ignore all these questions in the past and is yet so quick to imply bad intent by Trump?

How is it that a media that focuses on the Kardashians rear-ends can claim that Trump is sexist? The media is always talking about whether or not women have had face lifts, breast implants and their age. Look at the movies that have 60 year old men dating 25 or 30 year old women. The media you see is nothing more than the illusion that they can sell and make off of. Believe it. The same people that report the news meet with other celebrities in private and at parties, they do hang out together often. Jimmy Kimmel and Justin Timberlake are not the only celebrities that are friends. John Stamos is good friends with Don Rickles, they spend a lot of time together. When you are in private with people, going to their houses and spending evenings together, you get to know them. Cosby spent time with people in the media, he had friends with people in the industry; but, it was not profitable to accuse him of being a sleaze bag to women as he was Mr. Wholesome and that image sold. His current image does not sell.

The media has attempted to categorize Fiorina as a defender of women and equality. This is the same person who supports banning abortions, is against Lesbians marrying and does not support mandatory maternity leave being offered by companies. Huh? Please, show me a POLICY that Trump is touting that is anti-women's rights. I'll wait.

I will talk about abortion for a minute. I believe all abortion is killing another human. As far as I know, my position on this has never changed. I also don't believe in slavery and don't believe I can or have the right to control another's body. My daughters all know that if they had an abortion, I would be very disappointed in them. I would offer to take on a child of theirs if they were raped and didn't want to raise it. I would not lock them in a room and force them to have the child, that would be slavery and controlling someone's every move is worse. By the way, Trump has said that one of his focuses will be on healthcare for women. The media ignores all of this and focuses on trivial statements rather than statements on policy.