Author: fifteenkey (Page 35 of 95)

Nielsen’s ratings tell us “American Idol” is the most viewed show in the United States of America and that PBS shows like “Frontline” don’t make the Top 20. I wonder what percentage of “Idol” viewers find “Frontline” “boring?” So while a large number of Americans drool over the failings of talentless sonic hopefuls, our country is crumbling. I suppose that’s the point of escapist TV. Here’s some evidence of the sorry state of our republic and why we need a complete “national makeover.”

• General Motors, once the world leader in automobile manufacturing, needs more of our tax dollars or they face bankruptcy.
• Nouriel Roubini, one economist who predicted our current financial slam dance is now saying many of our major financial institutions are insolvent and the only way to save the system is to nationalize it.
• Moving on to the means to our ends, in January, we lost some 24 soldiers in the Army to suicide. That’s more than we lost in combat.
• Paying for some of this economic Mariana Trench, the economic stimulus bill to be signed by President Obama on Tuesday raises the national debt ceiling above Twelve Trillion Dollars.

The problem is “the ugly American” as perceived by many in the rest of the world. We’re ignorant from failed education, yet arrogant from chants of “USA!” and we’ve been trained by our financial puppet masters to expect instant and cheap gratification. The problem is the illusion of “cheap” has been created by governmental and personal deficit spending and any gratification worth experiencing isn’t instant.

• GM is the victim of the business cycle. They’ve been making cars longer than foreign competitors, so their legacy costs (evolving union contracts, pensions, and the cost to finance them) saddle them with an uncompetitive financial burden. They’re going down, so let’s not strap any more tax dollars to their rusting hull.
• Nationalize the major banks, then break them up and reprivatize them as smaller, more localized entities so there’s real competition. Since 1959, the percentage of American business profits grabbed by our financial institutions has increased from 14.96% to 33.36% in 2007. A good deal of their $10.5T profit over those years has gone to the personal wealth of the Gordon Gekko’s running them.
• War cannot continue to be a major instrument of our foreign policy. It’s 2009 people. Our last justifiable military action was booting Hitler out of Europe. Since then our warring ways have built a shameful military-industrial complex that needs to be largely dismantled.
• Ten and One Half-Trillion (and rising) of national debt combined with $2.596T of US consumer debt is proof that we cannot afford what we’ve been sold as the “American Way of Life.” Is it just coincidence the $10.5T debt ($10.2T accumulated since 1959) is nearly equal to the profits (and profit growth rate) of financial institutions over the same time period? Probably, but with labor costs shrinking as a percentage of non-financial industry costs, where has the borrowed money gone?

I contend most of it has gone into the pockets of the “financial masters of the universe” and that’s exactly where it should come from to pay it back.

• Any weekend without vomit or diarrhea is a good weekend.
• Bruce’s halftime gig was cheesey.
• The Vermont Teddy Bear Company V-Day ads are aimed at male cretins.
• NPR reported yesterday 15% of women send themselves flowers on Valentine’s Day.
• I wonder if Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner will ever have credibility in his new job.
• Alex Rodriguez should have a monster season this year now that his steroid secret is out. Of course the Yankees can’t win with him, but that’s another story.
• I’m still feeling there’s another shoe (or two) to drop in our economic crush.
• I sure hope there’s accountability on how this stimulus package gets spent.
• I’m thinking yoga.
• I have a presentation to a couple hundred people next week and about 3 slides (and no jokes) completed. Is that bad?
• My taxes are filed and I already received my state refund.
• I’m very proud that my daughter finished high-school while doing a great job raising her Madison.
• “Blues Clues” is now over so it’s time to make Maddy breakfast.

Bye.

25 Mostly Random Things About Me…
1. It was a dark and stormy night…
2. As a kid, skipping church and buying a bag of barbecued chips with the money Mom gave me for the felt covered collection pan seemed like the right thing to do.
3. Getting caught stealing an “Almond Joy” from the Greenwood Pharmacy at 10 may have circumvented a life of crime.
4. Running Dad’s burger stand on Revere Beach was a summer job a couple years during high school.
5. Drinking a couple beers with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley from KISS at the “Lord Wakefield” Hotel around 1977 while wrapped in a leather coat and a Jimmy Page hair mess was kinda cool.
6. High school senior year began at 16. Malcolm Gladwell says that’s a huge disadvantage and perhaps the cause of maturational retardation.
7. Swishing a ¾ court length shot just before the half of a JV game in HS was exhilarating, but sadly, it only counted for a deuce back then.
8. Very little blogging has been happening lately, so why this?
9. At 50, only 3 companies have employed me since college.
10. Music is always heard, even when none is playing.
11. Of three grandchildren, Madison lives with me, and Mackenzie visits often, but Kolby was adopted by another family.
12. ADD is pretty much a given, but certainly not ADHD.
13. After scoring a 36 on a college Stats mid-term worth 33, it was clear the other students were not pleased with whoever screwed the curve.
14. Waiting tables was a first gig for a couple years out of college…while taking acting classes.
15. Driving cross-country was a bi-annual event during college, but it took over 40 years to set foot in Manhattan.
16. Tar Hut Records was a small indie record label 2 partners and I ran from 1995 – 2000. We released 9 records.
17. I saw the Monkees at the old Boston Garden in the 60’s. Years later I heard Jimi Hendrix opened, but I have no recollection of anything more than girls screaming.
18. 900 miles each way was not too far from Tucson to see the Stones in Boulder, Co in 1981.
19. Being a father has been a Dickensonian “best of times and worst of times.”
20. I have nothing to fear but fear itself.
21. I broke my zygomatic arch playing baseball on July 3, 1975. Surgery followed the next day.
22. I’m just beginning to understand,

“You need elephant balls
If you don’t want to crawl
On your hands
Through this world” – Tom Petty

23. So I’m reading a book on assertiveness.
24. I’m getting to the point of almost figuring it out, but…
25. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

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.