Month: January 2009

I welcome President Obama’s efforts to court bipartisanship with Republic… (Pardon the interruption, but Madison just vomited all over my bed while watching “Blues Clues.” I didn’t think the episode was that bad. Upon further review, she also wretched in her crib overnight. OK, we’re all cleaned up and snuggled under blankies. Close supervision will commence.) …and in Congress, but the news that at least 2 of his Cabinet nominees have failed to pay substantial amounts in taxes is a little, um, taxing to this supporter.

First, now-Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001 to 2004, but that didn’t stop a mostly Democratic Senate majority from confirming him. Now it emerges the big O’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, former Sen. Tom Daschle, failed to pay $128,203 in back taxes.

It’s troubling that the individual selected to lead us out of a financial mess caused by avarice and deception and positioned to head the IRS cheated on his taxes and still was confirmed by the United States Senate.

The problem is many of our corporate and political leaders feel they are entitled to skirt the rules like collecting $18B of taxpayer money in bonuses when their behavior may yet sink our country. It is bred into many of them early in the form of “special favors” from parents, teachers and draft boards when the indiscretions of these elite are treated differently than those committed by kids living in Newark or South Central LA. In the case of Secretary Geithner, it was the Senate that chose to look the other way.

It was refreshing to hear President Obama call last year’s Wall Street bonuses “shameful,” and to send a message to Citicorp to “fix it” when reports of their $50M corporate jet surfaced, but when he’s willing to seat people in his Cabinet who are essentially guilty of the same kind of greed and cheating of the Wall Street executives he scolds, well, that’s just hypocrisy.

Is “lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you” limited to the holiday season? I wondered that today as I pushed my snow blower around the driveway in the snow while trying to beat the freezing rain. I did, but man, I am sick of this winter and it’s still January! Anyway, as a follow-up to my Christmas Eve post, “When will it feel like Christmas?,” I give you this story.

With my Dad up from the Villages, we piled him, Megan, Kyle, Maddy and Maddy’s “Big Papi” into the car for a trip to Mom’s for dinner. Now it was probably the first Christmas dinner with my parents together in oh, forty years, and when my dad opened his “money card” present from his former bride and a single dollar came floating out, it started to feel a little like Christmas. Dinner was good and overall it was a wonderful day with family.

Everyone was kinda quiet as we began the round trip, so I fired up the iPod “Holiday” playlist. Of course Kyle and Megan started it, and for the next 40 minutes we belted out the classics:

• Blue Christmas – Elvis
• Jingle Bell Rock – Bobby Helms
• Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree – Brenda Lee
• Holly Jolly Christmas – Burl Ives
• Bing Crosby –It’s Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas

I think I even heard my Dad mumble out a few notes from the passenger side. The spirit of the season filled my TSX sleigh and I’m happy to report it felt a lot like Christmas.

Awhile back I wrote a post called “Capitalist Terrorism” at the time when Wall Street was holding a gun to our head insisting the whole financial system would resemble the twin towers if we didn’t pay their rans… uh, bailout of $700B dollars. We did of course and the banks went about their business of huge bonuses, corporate jets and other Caligula-like behavior. They just didn’t lend out much of our money to um, us. Well, that changed today as banks erected a huge wad of $22.5B to help Viagra maker Pfizer get up $68 billion to take over rival Wyeth.

Oh, and 19,000 human beings currently employed by the two firms will lose their jobs to “cost cutting.” Gotta serve those shareholders, ya know. Just today, some 40,000 job cuts were announced by our friendly, neighborhood corporations including:

• Sprint Nextel Corp – 8,000 jobs
• Home Depot Inc – 7,000 jobs
• General Motors – 2,000 jobs
• Caterpillar Inc. – 20,000 jobs
• Texas Instruments Inc. – 3,400 jobs

In an effort to “shore up” balance sheets and income statements, these companies are killing what they need for recovery and survival: consumers. You can’t sell a blue pill to a guy after you’ve taken his mojo.

Update: Looks like the new administration is going after these um, “business leaders:” “ABC News has learned that Monday officials of the Obama administration called Citigroup about the company’s new $50 million corporate jet and told execs to “fix it.””

And…from Reuters: “New York’s attorney general issued a subpoena to former Merrill Lynch Chief Executive John Thain on Tuesday in a probe into bonuses paid to the firm’s employees just days before its takeover by Bank of America Corp.

“The fact that Merrill Lynch appears to have moved up the timetable to pay bonuses before its merger with Bank of America is troubling to say the least and warrants further investigation,” Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a statement.”

This 1,474-Megapixel pic of President Obama’s Inauguration is awesome. If you zoom in just behind the President, you’ll see the crazy Nazi guy from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in the black hat (natch), and to the back right, the solitary black Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas… apparently sleeping.

Last night I left the office early, departing at 5:45. Ten hours were enough after the 14 hour numerology marathon Wednesday. When Elvis left the building that night at 10:30, the lights had gone auto-off in my office ten minutes before the last calculation had been checked and meeting files sent down the ethertube. As I shuffled out the side door into a parking lot of one, my body was vibrating like a tuning fork of worry. Were the numbers right? Would they be challenged? Would I respond assertively if they were? Music. I needed a sonic jolt to settle the vibration, but rock couldn’t stop the relentless biowaves. It was like my body was rejecting melody. I heard it above the din of numbers swimming like frenzied piranhas feasting on an unfortunate swimmer, but I couldn’t feel the rythym and my body was incapable of responding to it. I finally switched over to the local classical station which fortunately was softly streaming. I briefly passed through my kitchen long enough to maul two Megan meatballs on my way toward unconsciousness…

One brief cry from baby (Megan says she’s a toddler now, but I’m unaccepting) Madison ripped my eyelids open at 4am and immediately the high pressure flow of numbers and worry began to run. The tuning fork effect had subsided some, and I descended for my vitamin and coffee ritual that turned out to be a vitamin and methamphetamine mud surprise. Yeah, Megan had made me a sextuplet shot of espresso, straight-up. Calculations were double-checked and in some cases corrected. Maddy cried for her Papi near six. We shared a nice breakfast of fresh mango, turkey sausage and oatmeal… By 6:50 I was out the door. A few final tweaks to the presentation and then Michael Buffer said it was time. Here’s a quick video of the meeting’s opening few seconds…

I stepped through the data minefield without blowing myself up and shortly after our CEO excused himself for another meeting, my recommendation was accepted. The answers to my earlier questions were all affirmative, as was the experience. Except for the tuning fork part. I don’t recommend that. Fourteen hours of breaking down data is no different than six hours less breaking down rocks, and I’ve done both (neither in prison). I had pushed my limits and the information overload exacted a price, but also a reward. Since Wednesday, I’ve been unable to consume information (news, markets, opinion) like “normal.” Last night as I lay on the couch watching my daughter and granddaughter play without a PC, smartphone or TV news binky, calm gathered around me.

Yesterday I read somewhere that January 19th was a peak depression day in the US. Between the post-holiday winter deadness and forgotten resolutions, it was forecast to be a shitty day. I left my office at 7:30 and spent the commute chatting about the sad state of a loved one. My driveway was impassable thanks to the plow man. A few minutes later the hum and vibration of the snowblower was barely sensed above the Heatbreakers in my head. A clean driveway always lifts the spirits.

I have a feeling today will be better and a lot brighter for many.

I really wanted this post to be special. The passage of the measurable, especially those ending in a zero should be. Thirtieth birthday… 50th anniversary… Ten Years Gone… 600 goals.

All that went out the window today when I received the best voicemail ever. My last post included heartfelt memories of the transformative power of music. I wrote, “Yeah, music can do that.”

Unfortunately it can also do this.

The pages are turning, and a few back my friend Barb and some of her Freehold homies all put together compilation CD’s they shared with each other called “Music that matters to me,” based on the Starbucks “Artists Choice” collections. The “Music that matters to Barb” included, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, the Kinks, the Clash and the Cure. Bruce is in there (natch), but so are the Strokes and Madness… It’s a “Mad Hatter’s Tea Cup” of a sonic soundtrack to her life.

Back then I began to fill “Blog Ideas” with a list of my own, and it’s been sitting there since April of 2005. Scanning down to a random spot on the list I come to:

• Ultra Violet (Light My Way)
• Petty
• When Doves Cry

Not coincidentally, I somehow flowcharted myself to this cute diagram at 5:30am, but it’s a recent rediscovery of the Mudcrutch frontman that got me writing.

Yeah, my sub-list above contains U2 and Prince songs, and Tom Petty.

And now a word from my morning commercial experience…

Doctor my eyes have seen one sweet LCD HDTV in the Panasonic Viera Series. My aunt needed a new TV and wanted HD, but she knew nothing about them so she asked for help from her tech-geek nephew. Auntie Bev has limited space, so my online and brick/mortar research turned up the 26” Panny TC-26LX85. It has a crisp HD picture and a superior imaging of “regular” TV channels. This is a very important consideration as most HDTV’s make regular TV look awful. Oh, and I had another great buying experience with Chris Majoros at Cleveland Plasma. Yeah, they’re in Cleveland…

Now, back to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers…

The Boston Phoenix calls their July 15, 1978 shared bill at the Cape Cod Coliseum with the J Geils Band the 29th greatest show in Boston concert history. Yours truly missed it, but best bud Dillard did not, and my introduction to TP began. My first Fall in Tucson, Arizona was dominated by Petty’s first two records, but mostly the sophomore effort “You’re Gonna Get It!” Man, I lived the words of that record and when it was followed up with 1979’s “Damn The Torpedoes,” Tom Petty became a star. I hung in there through “Hard Promises” in 1981, but once I moved back East things changed. Around 1985 I went to see the band with a girlfriend at the Worcester Centrum. A teenage girl next to me screamed through the entire show like she was seeing the Beatles in 1966. It was a nightmare and we left. Since then 23 years passed and I kinda left Petty back there. Yeah, I heard the radio hits over the years, but didn’t purchase any records with the exception of 1999’s “Echo,” a dark brooding record made during his painful divorce. I listened to that tape endlessly while running away from life that year.

Last week I spent $40 in iTunes gifts on his first two remastered records, Echo and “Wildflowers,” a record I need to listen to with headphones late at night with a Maker’s Mark and a cigar.

Tuesday was a tough day at work. For the commute home, a newly loaded iPod fatty accompanied me and I queued up “You’re Gonna Get It.” I was immediately transported 2677 miles into my old apartment at “Casa Del Oro.” I anticipated every chord and the evergreen with orange highlights shag rug still looked sweet. Tom Petty was on the turntable. Yeah, music can do that.

“How deeply these songs affect people in such a way that when you hear the song you know like where you were and even the feeling in your gut when you were fourteen hearing that song.” – Eddie Vedder in the Petty documentary “Runnin’ Down a Dream”

2009 is here and in the long-running “good versus evil” tilt, evil is still winning. I have a quasi-theory about the journey of man along a singular plane. One direction is our good and the other is well, not good. Since the beginning of time, the human race has sprinted in each direction with many of us pursuing both paths simultaneously.

As I walked the floors of the Portland Museum of Art on Saturday with my brother and son, reward was a few gems in their closing Impressionist show, the attached and historic McClellan House, and the discovery of Lynne Drexler’s (1928 – 1999) work.

There was beauty everywhere and my family enjoyed the immersion. Kyle asked several times, “What is that, Dad?” Each time my response was “anything you want it to be.”

At the same time on the other side of the world, Israel was reaping massive retaliation on Palestinians in Gaza. Most of the world was calling for a cease-fire, but my country blocked a UN Security Council effort to demand one. A short war isn’t good for business, you know, and our “defense” focused corporations like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics, just to name a few of the 185,000, have numbers to meet…

“You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.”

From Carl Sagan’s “Contact,” 1997