Big

I’m trying to decide when “bigger” becomes “badder.” An article in the newspaper recently referred to larger entities –commercial entities—trying to climb on board the organic bandwagon. And as usual, the larger entities were beginning to absorb (swallow) some of the smaller entities, as large entities are wont to do. The article was all about one of the smaller entities, EdenFoods , and how they are working hard to avoid being swallowed.  See, we all know what happens when large, in this case food companies, take over smaller ones. All of the standards by which the smaller entity maintained its essential goodness, are eventually discarded because they conflict with-- guess what-- making profits (see Wal-Mart).

And if it isn’t some corner of the food industry, it’s banking. And if it isn’t banking, it’s clothing. If not clothing, then I don’t know, housing. It doesn’t seem to matter much. Whenever a business entity gets beyond some size, the rules of behavior seem to change automatically, like some evolutionary rule.

In days of yore, just after dinosaurs had ceased roaming freely, banks used to be limited to a single state. And there used to be rules which prevented those single-state banks from engaging in, say, on-line gambling. Then something changed and banks were allowed to open in any state, gobble up local banks at will, and engage in on-line gambling. And what happened? Well, the banking industry collapsed, and we the people were forced by our government to rescue them by borrowing money from China to prop up these indecent entities.

Now was that implosion caused by size? In my mind, size was the driving factor, because beyond some size, intelligence seems to fail. At some stage, the Peter Principle (remember that ironclad principle??) seems to engage firmly and the very large entities begin operating as if on autopilot (you know . . . the way republicans want the world to operate). And, while autopilot works in limited situations in things like airplanes, it rarely works in complex situations.  For example, you really cannot fight a war successfully using the autopilot mode (see the Charge of the Light Brigade, Vietnam, the unnecessary war in Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan). And apparently, you cannot operate the world’s financial systems while on autopilot (see Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, et al).  Instead, you evidently require actual human intelligence, which is capable of detecting particularly stupid forms of greed and that other problem that seems to affect banking, LBS—the little boy syndrome. The little boy syndrome is a state of being in which we decide to give all of our money to greedy little boys, while telling them to go play nice on the street. Then, when they inevitably lose all the money because they are greedy and stupid, we pretend to be shocked at their behavior.  So, we need actual human intelligence to detect that the LBS has kicked in, requiring adults to intercede, assuming always that some adults actually exist within the banking industry (I wonder whether that is a scientifically testable hypothesis).

So, maybe we need protections against size, or against Big.  Maybe, for a start, we need to go back to some first principles. For example, maybe banks should be limited to single states again. Breaking up banks might even be fun. I’ll bet we could devise some kind of video game based on breaking up banks, and Apple could devise an App for the I-Phone, letting us all play “Break the Banks”.  Oh, and let’s not forget gambling. Yeah, assuming we all still think that on-line gambling is generally a bad thing, morality-wise, why would we let our banks engage in activities we know to be amoral at best? So, no on-line gambling for banks.

And then we can return to those wonderful days of yesteryear, when too big to fail meant too big to exist, and we can begin again operating our anti-trust regulations, preventing all commercial entities from getting “too big to fail”.  And the little companies that produce organic food stuffs can continue to produce according to their organic quality standards, without fear of being swallowed.

Yeah, that would be nice.

Happy 4th

So a Happy 4^th of July to one and all. In years past, we would drive into DC to observe the spectacular fireworks display on the Mall. Our last viewing of those grand lighting up of the sky was in 1976, the 200^th celebratory event. As always, the fireworks were amazing and the crowds horrendous. Getting back home was always a special treat. I always thought that the only ones who were really enjoying themselves were those fortunate few who were sitting in the middle of the Potomac in their boats, watching from their watery vantage point.  The rest of us poor schlunks had to schlep back home in our cars.

But of recent times, we have moved back to nature so to speak.

This . . .

 and this . . .

Has been replaced with this . . .

Sitting by our pond with a glass of wine, watching our koi’s and our family of birds, dragons and other assorted critters cavort, feed and otherwise entertain us.

We still think fondly of the good old days, but now the fireworks are mostly in our memory banks.

But we do hope that you all have a grand time and that, if you are watching fireworks, that they fulfill your every desire.

On 57 Years

Ahhh, Tom Cruise is divorcing . . . again. Wow, Dog bites man . . . real news. Next they’ll be telling me that Newt Gingrich is divorcing Plasticwoman. Such tales are evidence that we have way too much news media pursuing way too little news. Perhaps we need to move to a system where we get one hour per day of news coverage, which is probably more than we need, but give the newsies their due. They need to earn their megabucks salaries.

And on that same front, I understand that Rupert the Magnificent is breaking up his empire into two entities: News, and Entertainment. Now, if we assume that the Times of London and the Wall Street Journal still pretend to news, I wonder how the rest break up? We know that the Faux News Network is definitively not news, but what exactly is it? Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert are our very own fake news shows, but they are comedians, and they are in fact funny. The Faux News Network is not funny—ever. They cast delusional psychopaths, and blond bimbos, all of whom read from a script written for them by Rupert’s hidden staff. No fun there. Faux News is in fact the PR arm of the republican party—remember them?? The Grand Old Party. Ah yes, definitely the party of the 19^th century.  So, maybe Faux News goes into Rupert's Faux entertainment group, not because they’re entertaining, but because they’re just not news, by any definition.

Now if we can just get the various entertainment divisions to shut up about Cruise, Gingrich et al, whenever they get divorced, we’ll be happier.  We don’t care people, unless you attempt in your pathetic little ways to speak about the sanctity of marriage. Please, refrain guys.

But on that subject, good marriages, happy marriages, marriages that demonstrate the worthiness of the institution, we must give thanks to that grand old day, July 2^nd, 1955. That was the day my wife of 57 years agreed to marry me and said, “I do” And I repeated the vow to our minister, Mr. Zeltner—now he was a grand old man. We dearly loved Mr. Z. And unlike priests today, say of the Catholic Order, Mr. Z, a good man of that non-Catholic world called Episcopalians, pronounced us Husband and Wife . . . in sickness and health, til death us do part.

We took those vows seriously. And we have lived a good life together. Life is not always easy, but somehow ours has always seemed, well, just very, very good.  We have little rituals each day that we follow. We have a morning cappuccinos, and toast, “To us,” just before we go to sit beside our koi pond and feed the koi’s, watching them cavort, and admiring our birds, our dragons, our hummers, as they feed within our little outdoor garden room. We look each other in the eyes, when we toast one another, with a glass of wine as the sun begins its descent.

And we kiss good night as we head off to the land of wink and nod.

All good.

So, to my wife of 57 years, I toast you my dear, for making my life the wonder it is. Love is good, and I do so love you.

SCOTUS

Wow, a truly historic and amazing decision. With Roberts siding with the four thinking justices, they have now accorded constitutionality to Obama's health care law. How good must that be for the 40+ million previously uninsured? Maybe now, Mr. Scalia will take EJ Dionne's advice and retire from the court to resume his political career out of the closet--he may be the first openly "closet-republican" now outed.
But enough of the SCOTUS dregs (aka Big Tony). We must applaud Mr. Roberts and his four colleagues for considering the totality of the issues facing the Nation and come down on the side of rationality, as well as the ultimate good of the American people. Perhaps now we can consider moving the issue along to begin thinking of a true single payer system, in which we move insurance companies out of the decision mix. Now that would be truly monumental.
But, for the moment, we should take our wins as they come.
Thank you Mr. Roberts and your thinking colleagues.

Ethical Slopes

Maureen Dowd had an interesting column in the NY Times yesterday. She speculates on the possibility that the Nation’s moral code is slipping down that old slippery slope. Her two main examples are Jerry Sandusky, and the Catholic Church, with its Nazi Pope and pedophile priests. It seems increasingly clear that there are no heroes in either case. People knew what Sandusky was doing, among them that old patron saint Joe Paterno, and they turned a blind eye. In the Catholic Church, the damage was worse, given the fact that higher-up church officials, perhaps up to and including his majesty the pope(s) knew and simply transferred the pedophiles to other unaware parishes. Clearly, the Catholic Church no longer enjoys any moral authority. And now, Penn State has joined the ranks of the “see-no-evil” institutions.

Ms. Dowd’s vision of us slipping into a moral dystopia assumes we weren’t already there. I actually see no slippage. Instead, I see a periodic drawing back of the Oz curtain, to expose the wizard at work. Only in this case, we periodically expose the morally corrupt segments of society. Those segments are always with us. But being Americans, hopeful ever, we wish to be lied to. We actually insist that our corrupt societal segments lie to us. How else to explain the continued existence of the Catholic Church? How else to explain the many Penn Staters rushing to defend the character of Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State officialdom?  Indeed, how else to explain Rupert Murdoch’s Faux News Network, the largest cache of lies ever to masquerade as a news network?

As yet another example, we have Madame Governor Nikki Haley’s legal team that has come up with that neat defense of her apparently unethical behavior—everyone in the South Carolina legislative system practices such unethical behavior, so how can anyone criticize her? Don’t you love it?

So, as we enter the serious stage of our presidential political season, we really need to understand that our officials, be they public or private sector, often will simply do as they wish, without regard to the moral implications of their actions.  Whether their actions including raping innocent children, raping the environment, or stealing from the public, they will not be stopped, until we agree to stop them. So long as we are content to keep the curtain closed, allowing the wizard to practice his tricks, we will all be exposed to potential grievous harm.

Societies will be judged by their treatment of the most vulnerable among us.  We all can act in ways large or small to bring about an ethical society. We need to keep foremost in our minds that not to act in the face of evil is to collaborate with that evil.

Fathers Day

Fathers’ Day is a special day for us guys, at least the ones of the Father set. It always makes me think back to when our children were little ones and fathering often meant holding a little one to shelter or just cuddle. But it was after the kids were no longer kids when a different set of joys began—the ability to talk as adults, with the full understanding that your kids had/have an independent view of the world, and that you really don’t know everything. When they leave the nest, you hope that they leave as prepared as possible.  When grandchildren arrive, a new realization sets in. Although you now have new loved ones, you also have different responsibilities.  Your children are now the principal caretakers of this new generation. It is not that you have no responsibilities to the new generation, but your responsibilities are not those of the parents. So, again, you must enter a different relationship with your children, now fully adult.

Because I guess we all need to think of ourselves as all wise and all knowing, these new relationships are not always easy to engage, or free of problems. What we hope for is that our children will lavish the love and the care that all children need to become fully functioning adults and, as importantly, partners and eventually parents of their own little ones.

So, having reached an age at which I can see three generations ahead, I am happy that the process continues to play out and I can see that each successive generation that has followed me is forging ahead to become successful adults. And all this reminds me of a saying attributed to that wise old man, George Bernard Shaw:

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

May all the generations ahead rediscover the essential truth therein.

So, til the next Fathers’ Day, Ta ta . . .

Presidents and Bidness

So the Mittster now thinks it’s ok, maybe even desirable that our Constitution should redefine the requirements for Presidential candidates to include at least three years business experience.  I guess that’s to assure that we might have more candidates like himself, Shrub, and that old Republican favorite Herbert Hoover.  I mean, his requirement would eliminate one of their standard bearers, St. Ronald, as well as Ike, but what the hell. It would also, of course, eliminate FDR, JFK, Bill Clinton (the last guy to produce an actual budget surplus) and Teddy Roosevelt.  But Joe the Plumber would be OK. And, of course, The Donald, one of the Mittsters most vigorous supporters.

I suppose, since he wants it inserted into our Constitution, we would need to define what he means by “business experience”. I mean, would he include my picking corn and tomatoes as a 13-year old in that definition? I figure my summer jobs alone would almost give me the prerequisites.  Does babysitting count?? Surely, my summer jobs would count at least as much as being a banking CEO who led the country over a financial cliff.  And would you have to have been rated as “successful” for it to count? So, would Shrub’s experience in Texas, during which he tried and failed to find oil be counted?? And does playing the part of a delusional psychopath on the Faux News Network count? See, we would really need to get specific here.

So, Mitt’s suggestion may still need some work. But good going, boy, at least it’s a sign that you’re not yet brain dead.

But, I would like to return to another area of inquiry. It has been suggested by some wag that the Mittster may actually be a unicorn—you know, one of those mythical creatures, shown below without his human disguise:

I grant you that I am not sure that the Mittster’s big hair style hides a unicorn’s horn, but hey, what do I know?? Something like 25,000 people in Arizona have raised the question, so we need to at least consider obtaining some evidence. After all, I am told that:

• Many people believe he is a unicorn.
• Many people say he is a unicorn.
• Someone read on the internet that Mitt Romney is a unicorn.
• The Man from Ulandia: The Unauthorized Biography of Mitt Romney, states that Mitt Romney is a unicorn. If it is in a book, it must be true.

So, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to be sure. Maybe we should ask Mitt’s Mexican family whether any of them married a unicorn.  Couldn’t hurt.

Always thinking.