China School Killings

I am going to bed and hate reading these articles. One more, read my previous posts about school killings in China. I do not wish to discuss; but, see the pattern.

Writer's Block

Sorry all, I have writers block. I just didn't see any news stories worthy of writing about today. The thing to do when you want to be a writer is write anyways. We shall see what comes of it.

I think I shall talk about blogging. I wonder about those who don't know me and read this, what must they think. Then there are those who know me; but, may have been unaware of what my opinions and thoughts are.

No, I will talk about blogging. I saw a name. I received an e-mail from a social network that I never go on, it had a name. I knew the name, it was the sister of the woman I loved before I met the ex-wife. It made me pause. We meet so many people in our lives, some for a time and some for a lifetime. Never can tell which when you meet them, never can tell what the relationship will become.

Relationships are mutual or slavery. A mutual relationship has to be allowed to develop over time. Both parties decide on how much they will give and take. How much of yourself you will let the other person know and how much of themselves they will show you. The more intimate, the more each shows.

Blogging, if to be intimate, must be truthful. Not absolute truth, we all continue to learn about ourselves, your truth at the moment. I have written things and changed my mind later; but, when I wrote it, it was my truth. When we meet people in person for the first time we are more guarded then when we blog.

When I meet someone I don't usually start by telling them I have Herpes. Yet, people who read the blog and do not know me personally know that I do. Writing must be personal or it is very boring.

Being guarded when we first meet someone is not about hiding things, it is about establishing trust. Trust should be the start of all intimate relationships. People will have sex with people they do not know at all, for them it is neither intimate nor a relationship. It is sex.

A relationship develops over time so that the parties can gain trust and establish context for each other. If I tell you one opinion that I have and you do not understand the context it is easy to misunderstand the deeper meaning. We can very intimate with certain people in some ways and not in others.

I have a very dear friend. She and I went through our divorces at the same time. I love her very much and we are very intimate; but, never romantic. We chose not to be that way because it just didn't feel right and we liked our intimacy. Our intimacy was in openness regarding everything. She knows things about me that others do not and vice versa.

Our attitudes about relationships really define our attitude about ourselves and how much value we place on others. This brings us to privacy. Privacy is about freedom and relationship. If I invade your privacy, I deny you the freedom of choice and create an oppressive relationship, one of advantage rather than trust.

We dislike our government invading our privacy because it means that we cannot trust them and that they are not honoring our relationship. Spies are disliked because they do not respect privacy. When you are at war, you expect your privacy to not be honored by the people you are bombing. When you are developing a relationship, you expect your privacy to be honored. When you are truly in love, their is no privacy and everything is exposed because the trust has developed and you wish to share all.

In business I have often heard to say that I trust nobody. I am not that way socially. In business people must represent their businesses interests. This requires that they keep somethings private. Everyone, outside of my organization, knows quite well that I will protect my organization. I put it right up front, few doubt it and those who test it never doubt it again. At the same time, I have been blessed that those I do business with know that I will do the right thing.

Because of my beliefs in relationship, I have managed to develop healthy business relationships. Business partners are probably more open with me than others they deal with. I honor that and respect it. The best business relationships are where each party recognizes the others interests and respects them even when they conflict. When they conflict, it is a matter of openly dealing with one another.

Let us say that you have a company that sells widgets and I buy widgets. My business changes and I no longer need widgets, you would understand if I stopped buying them. If you needed to raise your price on the widgets, I should also understand. As long as both are open and truthful, resolution can usually be found and even if you cannot work together, the door is always open to working together in the future.

The same is true of personal relationships; but, only to a degree. In both instances we still have to meet our contractual obligations unless released by the other party or incapacitation. When we unilaterally violate our agreements, we lessen ourselves. We diminish our capacity for meaningful relationships. Spies never have healthy personal relationships because they must lie to their partners.

We need to learn to develop healthy relationships. We can only trust some people so far, they are meant to have a limited relationship with us. This is not always a bad things, people have different interests. The question is not whether or not we can be completely intimate with everyone, everyone is not ready at the same time. It is a question of having as much intimacy as possible with everyone, the degree depends on both sides ability to be honest. The weakest link approach to relationship.

If you do not trust women (or for women, if you do not trust men), how can you have a meaningful relationship? If you are just out for yourself, how can your business partners trust you? How much are you really trusted, do you know? I have had enemies and even my ex ask me for help, how about you? How trusted are you?

If your even your friends do not trust you, you should check yourself. Look at things the proper way, not from your perspective. If you lie, it is because you think people trust you and you are willing to violate that trust, what will the result be when they discover you have lied? They will not trust you anymore, you are destroying relationship rather than building it. When you tell the truth and it is inconvenient, you are building relationship. Relationships of intimacy are built around telling the tough stuff.

Well, that seems to be all I have. At least I wrote.

WiFi was down - Lets talk pensions

Sorry for not posting, my wifi went down. Okay, now lets talk pensions a bit more. Public pensions versus private pensions. Lets talk about why the public pensions are in trouble. Firstly, they were not funded. Each year the state and local governments were supposed to put money in the pension funds, they did not put in the promised amounts because they counted on the existing investments to keep growing.

Over the past two decades bubbles in the stock market and housing market created big returns on investments. The state and local governments were flush with money because of the tax revenues they received. Rather than put in their promised investments and matching funds, the governments expanded services. The pension funds had so much more than they needed that the governments gave increases in the promised payouts.

There was a time in California where Orange County and San Diego were considered the best investors because they sold assets and invested in high return instruments. When the markets crashed, the two were ready to go into bankruptcy. I remember a highly placed local official saying that "We shouldn't sit on our assets", he thought he was so amusing. He wanted to sell all City assets and invest. Why use prudent investment in secure holdings if you can make money off the market? BECAUSE MARKETS FLUCTUATE AND YOU NEVER RISK YOUR HOME OR RETIREMENT.

Shortcuts, ponzi schemes and easy money. Hey, they could have invested in Berkshire Hathaway and not had a pension problem. Public pension funds anticipated returns of 8% a year. That is insanity when inflation has historically been at 5% a year, it assumes you will not make any bad investments of have wild fluctuations in the market. You don't make those assumptions with pensions. Berkshire Hathaway has averaged a 25% increase for forty years or so.

Let us look at what the public pension funds did invest in. CIM Group, for one. The pension funds invested in political investments and many of them failed. Politicians and their friends sat on the pension boards along with union leaders. A cozy group that I have previously shown. The union leaders wanted pay increases and earlier, more lucrative retirements for their members. The politicians wanted union support for their elections. Third parties were used to choose the investments, frequently staffed by friends of the politicians and the unions.

Everything went well enough while the market bubbles grew; but, as with every fairy tale there must be a bad guy. The bad guy was reality, bubbles burst. When the housing bubble burst it took every scheme with it. Fear of the bubble bursting led pension boards to invest in groups doing business with their own organizations, a form of insider trading. Nobody said anything because it was the most likely way to save the pensions and hide the impropriety. It didn't work.

Currently the Federal government is investigating these transactions. It will not be pretty, how could it. Because it was all conducted by buddies and friends, well, things were allowed to happen. Your average teacher, cop, government worker had no idea what his union and the politicians were doing. The middle men for all of this were paid tens of millions, more for being quiet than anything else. The people on the pension boards were given things, over a million dollars in bribes by one of them in New York alone.

Why aren't the unions screaming about Elliot Broidy and Villalobos, why aren't the politicians screaming about the insider investments. It is simple, they were all involved. How come the newpapers are not talking about the connection, how come they are not talking about the underfunding of the past two decades by state and local governments?

In the immortal words of Johnny Rotten, "Ah-ha-ha. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Well kids, we all have. Corruption happens incrementally, it starts small and like an "I Love Lucy" show ends up escalating because you need to lie more and more to make the first lie sound true.

It has been well documented that CIM Group was funded by public pension funds. It has been well documented that they invested in projects which the governments, whose pension funds invested in them, had influence over the projects. Community Redevelopment Agencies were quick to authorize projects for CIM and happy to give them grants and loans. Why did the City of Los Angeles loan $30 million to Cirque De Soleil when it couldn't pay it's own bills. Maybe because CIM Group owned the venue where they were to play. It is possible is it not.

For those new to the blog, read the previous articles on pensions and you will see that I have linked to original documents and reports by traditional media with all of the pieces proving the above. Now, the question is what do we do.

I will start with some simple things. Union members did not keep a good enough eye on their leadership, I am equally guilty of this. Non-involvement allows these things to occur. It is our unions, not the leaderships and we pay the price. Next, we cannot look for shortcuts ourselves, we have to get back to basics. Our unions should not support politicians merely because they will support us, they will not, they are politicians and when the hard times come will give us up in a second.

IBEW is being sold out by the politicians it promoted. Then again, it shouldn't have sought to control them, it should have sought politicians who would do the right thing. Same for the other unions. Unions have a place it is not in politics. We need to get back to basics. We need to look to do an honest days work for an honest dollar. We need to seek to have politicians who truly care about their responsibilities. If we allow the system to be corrupt we guarantee failure eventually. The time is here.

As I sit here those involved are busy trying to hide what occurred, it is too late. They should be buying luggage and updating their passports. The proof is out there and as the pensions are audited the questions will arise. The politicians think the answer is to take away the pensions and reduce them, this has a consequence. If we put the penalty on new hires, they will not come to government. Government should have the best and the brightest, with no reward for success and humiliation for every mistake, why would they join the government for long?

Someone said that public pensions should invest in government bonds, not a bad idea. It leads the employees to want to see projects come in under budget and on time, it means our retirements will be as solid as our work. The person who said this to me is a really smart analyst. Probably better than me; but, I haven't been at my best.

The advantage of 401k plans for employees is that you can switch companies. You do not want people like me switching and going into private industry, you do not want me advising private companies on how to make money from local governments. Government is run by lifers, people who understand how to make the crazy work. When I get home at night I am researching my industry, someone has to.

We need to return to a time when companies were loyal to employees and employees were loyal to companies. It was what made America great, the Japanese imitated it and succeeded, now everyone is out for themselves and nothing works. It can't. If only one dog can win that means everything fails.

The best thing to fix the pensions is to stop the craziness and get back to sound investment in us, invest in ourselves, in our work, in our own institutions. I have posted on the car companies and raised the same questions. Be well.

Before I go. Here is the CIM Group website. Go to the part that says "Case Studies" and see what they did. Downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood are particularly interesting. Remember they did this with funding from CalPers and Lacers, your public pension funds. Hollywood is interesting because CIM purchased properties prior to the adaptive reuse ordinance. What good guessers they were.

This little article will help you to see. Elliot Broidy sat on both CalPers and the City of Los Angeles Police and Fire Pension Board. Mr. Broidy was put on the Los Angeles Board by Antonio Villaraigosa, our Mayor. Mr. Broidy voted to invest $30 million the Police and Fire Pension Fund in the CIM Group which was an investor in Markstone, his own company.

Now for you kiddies who have some fun, find out how many of the old buildings that were converted into lofts had proper asbestos removal, find the permits. Now ask yourself what happened to the head of Building and Safety. Oh, and the supergraphics in Hollywood that caused such a stink, they were put up by, go on guess, CIM Group.

I make no money from this blog, I have absolutely no economic interest in anything, ex cleaned me out and left me the debt. I do however have an interest in seeing things get back on track. We cannot fix the pensions with more of the same, it won't work. Ron Kaye has a website lacleansweep. As far as I know, I never the man. I disagree with some of his suggestions; however, I like the title. We need to start over and get back to basics.

If he really wishes to improve things, their group might consider involving the people who will have to do the work, the City employees. Rather than treating them as the enemy, he might consider working with them and holding those who were decision makers accountable. And to the unions, same thing, should be working with the community not just for our interests, for the City's interest. Hey, I am happy to annoy anyone even the devil himself.

Don't jump to conclusions

An article about Bell City politicians, thievery and the Jewish mob. There will be more of these stories. Other cities including Los Angeles. Do not blame the jews for all of our problems. Mafia is mafia and the mafia in Los Angeles was always the jewish mafia, never the Italians.

Surreal Fire

Dear readers, I can see the red sun, I can smell the smoke. The Crown Valley Fire is just south of me. I left this morning to go a few hours away to meet with a business associate, when I left the fire was further away. When I returned the whole sky was orange with smoke.

I have been through fires before. I stood on a roof during the Simi Valley one block away from the fire and managed to help get some horses out of the area. I have driven through a fire in the hills around Los Angeles. This fire is different somehow. I didn't expect it to make it to where it did.

I gassed up my car when I got back today. I figure if the smoke becomes too hard on me I will just go to Palm Springs or Las Vegas. Our fire fighters are doing a good job and we do appreciate them. Let us pray that none of them gets hurt.

DRAT, another article

Okay, so someone data mined Facebook and posted all the information where it could be seen and linked to other personal information. To develop relationships of trust, ones in which we speak freely, people must respect your trust. Facebook is a whore because they made changes to your privacy without telling you in advance, they did not respect their relationship with you.

Part of the issue is unilateral versus consent. Informed consent. The ex gave her boyfriend my personal e-mails and then told me nothing I said was private. She used my trust in her against me. She told me that our conversations were private and then made them public, actually worse, she gave them to her boyfriend.

I hired someone from another department, he is dead now; but, never forgotten. I hired a second person from another department. I told them both the same thing. I will never ask for information about your department that was given in confidence and I expect that you will never give confidential information about my department to others.

People tell me things, some in confidence and some in the hope that I will release the information. I try to find out what their intent is. I try and act as a filter with integrity. I am imperfect; but, I try. There are many things that I have not posted. There are many secrets that were given in confidence that I have not posted. I respect that trust I was given and that mine was respected, it is about mutuality. Even though my ex-wife treats nothing I have said with privacy (her words), I still respect hers. I may get angry at times; but, I will not post her name, nor mine.

Facebook does not respect it's relationship with you. It does not consider anything you post as private. Someone recently stalked the founder of Facebook and attempted to say that because he did not respect privacy they wanted to see how he felt about disrespecting his privacy. I disagree, we cannot promote privacy by violating privacy. Pretty much my problem with Assange and Wikileaks.

God has other plans

I had not intended to write again tonight because of the bronchitis. Problem is, there is a great article about Wikileaks and it dovetails with my last post. The article discusses how Wikileaks publication of certain government documents regarding the war was criminal.

Wikileaks left the names of hundreds of informants on some documents. There is a very real chance that these people will be killed. The documents were leaked to Mr. Assange or stripped from the web. If they had been leaked to the Afghans we are fighting then that would be traitorous for an American. Mr. Assange is not an American. The release of the documents may make him an enemy. If I release a foreign nations secret documents it is spying.

Somethings are private and somethings are state protected. If I beat my child and break a bone, it should be known. What is rightfully private and what it means to release such information is the line we must understand. The ex gave her boyfriend some of my e-mails to her, they were private and she knew they were just meant for her. She informed me that nothing I ever said to her was private although together 27 years.

The issue is the same in both examples. When do we have a duty to keep things private and when do we have a duty to investigate and possibly report? I believe it depends on the level of trust and the intimacy or risk of harm. I would respect Mr. Assange more if he had either left out the names or took a position in favor of the Afghans insurgents. I can respect releasing our information if he is willing to be treated as the enemy. If he wished to be a reporter then he should have erased ALL the names excluding the President of other elected officials. We have a right to know their decisions.

We have done some bad things in Iraq and Afghanistan, these things should be known; but, not the names. Our need to know and our right to know is so that we can decide as a nation if we want to be in these wars and if we are doing things in the right manner. We don't need the names of the informants to make these decisions unless they are officials.