People say that Obama is not a Christian, because they do NOT want to AGREE with Obama on ANYTHING.
When people say that Obama is not born in the US, what they actually mean is that they are unable to see a legal truth if it comes up to them wrapped in the robes of Moses.*
When people say let's build a wall, what they actually mean is that they did not see the Berlin Wall and that they are too uneducated to estimate the enormous costs of building and maintaining the ineffective edifice.
When people say that life begins at conception, what they actually mean is that men have a right to control women's bodies.
When people say that Hillary Clinton lies, what they actually mean is that, "Bush lied, therefore Hillary lies."
Now we are going to have a national drama over those heavily edited Planned Parenthood videos. From its beginnings, Planned Parenthood has done nothing but provide safe, necessary health care to females.
Now honestly, did you think Congress was going to do what we all need which is TO PASS A LONG TERM TRANSPORTATION BILL? No, that would be work. No one gets on TV for actually doing their job.
* It is possible that this statement is also a recognition code for white and male supremacists.
Monday, September 21, 2015
Thursday, September 17, 2015
DOUBLE TROUBLE
A kid in Texas gets arrested for bringing a home made digital clock to school. I knew a teenager who built a working computer in a cardboard box. He called it "The Homeless Computer" and carried it in his backpack.
It never occurred to me to advise him that he could be arrested for carrying his cardboard computer to school. Of course, he was blond, so I was less worried about him being arrested.
Like all prejudicial actors, the school and the local cops are saying, "He did not cooperate, all he would tell us was that it was a CLOCK." (Of course, it WAS a clock.) It is surprisingly easy to justify your prejudices by finding some law or rule that the victim violated.
People are correct when they say that prejudice is disappearing in the US. If you have only ONE reason that people can be prejudiced, then things are pretty OK.
But if you are Brown, a nerd and a Muslim, then you can be totally misjudged.
If you are disabled and fat, then people feel free to ignore or harass you.
If you are Brown, a married gay, and a deported felon, the appellate court will twist the law to rule against you.
The Texas kid will be OK. He will get to go to Google, Facebook and the White House. A NASA tour is in his future.
But all those kids with double and triple trouble, those we have to help.
A good start is to laugh at our silly fear of circuit boards and APOLOGIZE to the person who was misjudged due to prejudice.
It never occurred to me to advise him that he could be arrested for carrying his cardboard computer to school. Of course, he was blond, so I was less worried about him being arrested.
Like all prejudicial actors, the school and the local cops are saying, "He did not cooperate, all he would tell us was that it was a CLOCK." (Of course, it WAS a clock.) It is surprisingly easy to justify your prejudices by finding some law or rule that the victim violated.
People are correct when they say that prejudice is disappearing in the US. If you have only ONE reason that people can be prejudiced, then things are pretty OK.
But if you are Brown, a nerd and a Muslim, then you can be totally misjudged.
If you are disabled and fat, then people feel free to ignore or harass you.
If you are Brown, a married gay, and a deported felon, the appellate court will twist the law to rule against you.
The Texas kid will be OK. He will get to go to Google, Facebook and the White House. A NASA tour is in his future.
But all those kids with double and triple trouble, those we have to help.
A good start is to laugh at our silly fear of circuit boards and APOLOGIZE to the person who was misjudged due to prejudice.
Monday, September 14, 2015
RANCHING RULES
If you open it, SHUT IT and make sure it is shut.
If you turn it on, TURN IT OFF.
If you use a tool, CLEAN IT AND PUT IT BACK where you got it from.
Do NOT leave ANYTHING where it can injure a human or an animal.
If you have an animal, you have to feed, water and clean up after it.
Keep your voice down, I am not in the barn.
It is amazing how useful these rules are.
If you turn it on, TURN IT OFF.
If you use a tool, CLEAN IT AND PUT IT BACK where you got it from.
Do NOT leave ANYTHING where it can injure a human or an animal.
If you have an animal, you have to feed, water and clean up after it.
Keep your voice down, I am not in the barn.
It is amazing how useful these rules are.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
MAXIMIZING PROFITS CAN BE DANGEROUS
Sometimes maximizing current profits causes your company to have no future.
An easy example of this is making shoddy products. You make a neato* thingie** that looks like it works well, but does not actually work at all. Initially, you sell LOTS of neato thingies. But no one ever buys a second thingie. Eventually, you go out of business.
Another example is when a company does not appear to care about its customers and/or suppliers. As soon as alternatives become available, customers and suppliers go somewhere else.
Sometimes, maximizing profits can put the entire world at risk. One person, in charge of the home mortgage security insurance division at AIG, put the entire world wide economy at risk, when he continued to OK insurance on mortgage loans securities WAY past what AIG could cover if lots of people decided to not pay their expensive mortgages. (Which predictably happened when house prices went down instead of up.)
Our current tax and accounting rules ENCOURAGE THIS KIND OF RISKY BEHAVIOR, as corporations are judged almost entirely on their quarterly earnings.
We can fix this by instituting a short term capitol gain tax of at least 40%. Then we could slowly lower this tax yearly until there is no capitol gains tax after 20 years. This would encourage long term thinking.
We could also modify the accounting rule that requires expensing stock options at the time the options are granted. We could allow a company to NOT expense stock options if:
1. The option vests within one year.
2. The options are evenly distributed within the company based on RANK rather than salary.
This will eliminate the bullying behavior that is meted out to young people in order that their manager can give himself all the stock options.
We should NOT allow upper management to get any more than 20% of the stock options granted. Stock options are a fabulous way to get the workers to work together to make the company the best that it can be. Then EVERYBODY makes more money.
Those companies who encourage people to work long hours in order to prove their "street cred"*** are destroying the lives of young people, who need to learn that work is only one aspect of life. Even work you LOVE, is not worth giving up time with family and hobbies.
WE CAN, AND SHOULD, FIX THIS NOW!
* Neato, is slang for something that appears to be something that you would want to own, because it is unusual.
** Thingie, is slang for an object that you do not want to bother to describe or name correctly.
*** Street cred is short for street credit. It usually means that you are respected as a member of your profession in that you can actually solve real problems or do respected art.
An easy example of this is making shoddy products. You make a neato* thingie** that looks like it works well, but does not actually work at all. Initially, you sell LOTS of neato thingies. But no one ever buys a second thingie. Eventually, you go out of business.
Another example is when a company does not appear to care about its customers and/or suppliers. As soon as alternatives become available, customers and suppliers go somewhere else.
Sometimes, maximizing profits can put the entire world at risk. One person, in charge of the home mortgage security insurance division at AIG, put the entire world wide economy at risk, when he continued to OK insurance on mortgage loans securities WAY past what AIG could cover if lots of people decided to not pay their expensive mortgages. (Which predictably happened when house prices went down instead of up.)
Our current tax and accounting rules ENCOURAGE THIS KIND OF RISKY BEHAVIOR, as corporations are judged almost entirely on their quarterly earnings.
We can fix this by instituting a short term capitol gain tax of at least 40%. Then we could slowly lower this tax yearly until there is no capitol gains tax after 20 years. This would encourage long term thinking.
We could also modify the accounting rule that requires expensing stock options at the time the options are granted. We could allow a company to NOT expense stock options if:
1. The option vests within one year.
2. The options are evenly distributed within the company based on RANK rather than salary.
This will eliminate the bullying behavior that is meted out to young people in order that their manager can give himself all the stock options.
We should NOT allow upper management to get any more than 20% of the stock options granted. Stock options are a fabulous way to get the workers to work together to make the company the best that it can be. Then EVERYBODY makes more money.
Those companies who encourage people to work long hours in order to prove their "street cred"*** are destroying the lives of young people, who need to learn that work is only one aspect of life. Even work you LOVE, is not worth giving up time with family and hobbies.
WE CAN, AND SHOULD, FIX THIS NOW!
* Neato, is slang for something that appears to be something that you would want to own, because it is unusual.
** Thingie, is slang for an object that you do not want to bother to describe or name correctly.
*** Street cred is short for street credit. It usually means that you are respected as a member of your profession in that you can actually solve real problems or do respected art.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
MAKE THE AUTHORS PAY!
Amazon has decided that it does not want to pay sales tax on books. They intend to take all taxes out of the amount that they pay AUTHORS.
All Amazon does in publishing my book* is to provide an ebook format and put the book on their website. They do NOT edit, market, or do anything that an old time publishing firm used to do. For that they already take way over 50% of my profits.
Now, they are refusing to add taxes to the price of my book. They suggest that I raise the price of my book, in order to cover a multitude of international taxes.
This is what happens when you force people to work long unpaid hours. All internal decisions get made with only one thing in mind. MAXIMIZE PROFITS. Because how else to you get people to volunteer to work late at Amazon rather than play with their kids? You hold out a carrot of "you could get seriously rich."
This is the model that old time American law firms use. They get 20 new lawyers to work 80 hour weeks with the promise that a one of them will become a rich partner of the firm. Then they make life MISERABLE for anyone with the temerity to have children or a hobby.
Those people who are harassed, quit, leaving the healthy and selfish to become partners. And we wonder how people like Trump have no problems hiring legal bullies to keep the peasants in line.
When this model is used in techie companies, the company becomes obsessed with profits, to the point that they try to fire people who use their health insurance.
I liked Amazon because they have large, white on black type for their ebooks. Now I worry that Amazon is willing to sacrifice the authors who made them into the company they are today.
* "Pawns of Power" by Pamela Smith.
All Amazon does in publishing my book* is to provide an ebook format and put the book on their website. They do NOT edit, market, or do anything that an old time publishing firm used to do. For that they already take way over 50% of my profits.
Now, they are refusing to add taxes to the price of my book. They suggest that I raise the price of my book, in order to cover a multitude of international taxes.
This is what happens when you force people to work long unpaid hours. All internal decisions get made with only one thing in mind. MAXIMIZE PROFITS. Because how else to you get people to volunteer to work late at Amazon rather than play with their kids? You hold out a carrot of "you could get seriously rich."
This is the model that old time American law firms use. They get 20 new lawyers to work 80 hour weeks with the promise that a one of them will become a rich partner of the firm. Then they make life MISERABLE for anyone with the temerity to have children or a hobby.
Those people who are harassed, quit, leaving the healthy and selfish to become partners. And we wonder how people like Trump have no problems hiring legal bullies to keep the peasants in line.
When this model is used in techie companies, the company becomes obsessed with profits, to the point that they try to fire people who use their health insurance.
I liked Amazon because they have large, white on black type for their ebooks. Now I worry that Amazon is willing to sacrifice the authors who made them into the company they are today.
* "Pawns of Power" by Pamela Smith.
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