Short-sighted politicians or visionaries

The Duluth News Tribune editorial board asked for questions to ask candidates. I was fortunate to have two of mine be selected. For city councilors it was, "Is it more important to attract businesses or people to Duluth?" For school board members it was, "Is it more important to have students pass reading tests or read and discuss?

I didn't see all the responses because I didn't read much about candidates whom I could not vote for. What I did see is competing school board candidates answer, "Read and discuss." Hurray! Long term thinking. I was really disappointed to see competing council candidates answer "Business". How short sighted?

Don't they remember all the fiascos of businesses that were attracted with big fanfare and they were going to provide jobs? Far too many of these businesses never provided all they promised, and too many left town or folded.

The "correct" answer is people because people create businesses but businesses don't create people.

I saw some vindication of this in "That used to be us" by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum.

Attracting a big plant is harder because there are fewer and fewer because of robotics. "What a town needs to thrive today is a hundred people starting companies that employ twenty-five people each, and twenty people starting companies that employ fifty each, and five people starting companies that employ three hundred people each."

Taking a different tack, how are you even going to attract businesses or people to Minnesota when many people don't want to move here because they think it is too cold? On the other hand, many people in Minnesota don't want to live anywhere else.

Many people forget that Minnesota once was a hot bed of creativity and still has many large corporations that are designing and manufacturing a wide range of innovative products. But given the political dominance of "no new taxes" and "cut spending" people, we have cut way back on our investment in creating and educating people who will carry on this tradition.

And if Minnesota regains its image as an innovative place to be, it will attract both people and businesses. The computer business in Minnesota and canoeing in the Boundary Waters attracted me forty-eight years ago.

Bankers - Foxes guarding the chicken house

I have seen the first name of James Dimon, CEO and Chairman of the Board of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. sometimes spelled Jaime or Jaimes. While reading a Wall Street Journal article on how banks' profits falling, I saw James Dimon mentioned. I decided to check how is name was spelled on the J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. web site. This eventually led me to the names of the board of directors.

How do all these people paid highly by other companies have the time to run another company (or even more)? The list at http://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/About-JPMC/board-of-directors.htm includes the CEOs, presidents, or chairmen of the board of Springs Industries, NBCUniversal, Honeywell, American Museum of Natural History, GrayLoeffler, Clear Creek Properties, Yum! Brands, and Johnson & Johnson. The only retired executive in the bunch is a former CEO of ExxonMobil. Many of these people also serve on the boards of yet more companies at $100,000 per year plus for showing up at five or so meetings a year - nice work if you can get it.

The real kicker about foxes is that James Dimon is on the Board of Directors of The Federal Reserve Bank of New York. I thought the Fed was supposed to regulate the banks.

Is "prosperity" worth the cost?

Many are pointing at North Dakota as a low-tax state that is prosperous. If so, why are so many people moving out of the "high-paying jobs" areas. For some of the answers on all the costs on local people who don't have or want those jobs, see "America's Boomtown locals to big oil: We want our town back!", Blake Ellis, CNNMoney, 2011-10-24.

Job creators or job dissimulators?

"Every day lately, we hear politicians intone the term "job creators" when in reality they are referring to the interests of financial hustlers, hedge-fund operators, credit-default-swappers, manipulators, polluters, unsafe employers, and all manner of characters who do not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as giants like Steve Jobs and Bob Galvin.

"Let us admire and treasure the real leaders in job creation among us and properly recognize them when they die.

"We need all the Bob Galvins and Steve Jobs we can possibly produce."

- "Business forum: Galvin, Jobs: Visionaries and job creators", Jim Buckman, Star Tribune, 2011-10-24

Buckman's piece was a tribute to Bob Galvin who led Motorola when it created the cell phone that in turn made it possible for Steve Jobs and Apple to create the iPhone. They died about a week apart.

A sour hour

Speaking of cell phones, I spent over an hour worrying about the whereabouts of my cell phone. I didn't think I had left it on the table at a potluck last night. I couldn't find it in any of my pockets, pants, jacket, or shirt. It wasn't in the car. It wasn't on the dining room table or buried in the stack of newspapers. I couldn't find it on our dresser. I couldn't find it on my cluttered desk, even when I moved the clutter around.

I called my cell phone and received immediately the message: "Either my phone is turned off or I am driving. Please leave a message and I'll return your call as soon as possible." Because it answered immediately it was turned off.

OK, I guess I'll suspend service. I went to Verizon's website, signed in, and suspended the service.

For some reason I wondered about the charging unit for the phone. I looked at an outlet on my desk's backboard and saw the charger plugged in with the cord dangling down. At the end of the cord was my cell phone, hidden by one of the freestanding speakers for my computer.

I went to Verizon's website and restored service. I called our home phone with my cell phone and the former rang right away.

As my wife says often, "It's around here someplace."

Is this the time for a new major party?

In 1854, Whigs who were not happy with the party's policies formed a new party, the Republican Party. Not until 1860 did the Republicans win a presidential election. That president, Abraham Lincoln, increased the involvement of the federal government into the affairs of the United States - Homestead Act of 1862 that gave low cost land to settlers, Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864 the subsidized the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, and Morrill Act of 1862 that gave land for the land-grant colleges.

Now the Republican Party is dominated by people with a narrow understanding of the Constitution and a narrow understanding of how a vibrant economy works, an economy supported by government-provided infra-structures.

I doubt that a new party will be formed by grass-roots action, be it the Coffee Party or the Occupy Wall Street activists. I think a new party will only be formed by a dedicated group of professional politicians. I hope that there are enough "old-school, New England-type" Republicans, tired of being beholden to the corporate-sponsored Tea Party, who will form a new pragmatic party. There are plenty of Republicans who have a broader view of what needs to be done. Unfortunately, many were defeated by Tea Party candidates in 2010. These "losers" could provide a nucleus for such a party. They have small chances of fielding a popular candidate by November 2012, but who knows what could happen in 2014 and 2016.

Founding optimists

"[The electors] will not be liable to be deceived by those brilliant appearances of genius and patriotism, which, like transient meteors, sometimes mislead as well as dazzle."

Federalist No. 64, "The Powers of the Senate", John Jay,New York Packet, 1788-03-07, on the age restrictions in the Constitution for the House of Representatives and for the Senate

Oh, how I wish that Jay had not deceived himself.

Computer translations

Some of you may have heard the joke about the first computer translation from English to Russian and back. Supposedly "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" came back as the "The vodka is good but the meat is rotten."

We have some Russian guests and one of them used www.translate.ru, which translates whole sentences rather than just words. Almost everything I asked it to translate into Russian I asked it to translate back into English. If I didn't like the result, I reworded the English and tried again.

When I tried "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." the back translation was weaker but still close: "The spirit wishes, but the flesh is weak."

Note: You don't have to read Russian to use this translator. Use http://www.online-translator.com/Default.aspx?prmtlang=en instead.

Libya - how to tell hot news topics

I've been watching Al Jazeera's Libya Blog for several weeks, always hoping that the end of Gaddafi was close. Sometimes the news has been sparse; sometimes the news comes flooding in. Sometimes I have gotten immediate access to the blog; sometimes I have to wait and wait for any items to even show in the window.

Today, after the death of Muammar Gaddafi, is one of those latter times. The little circle is going around and around in the corner of Firefox' window and the lower corner has "connecting to aljazeera.com…" I wrote the first paragraph and part of this before the loading of the page was complete.

I assume that aljazeera.net is so popular around the world, that its servers must be overloaded.

Whatever, let's hope for a long life for a free Libya.

P.S. A few hours after I wrote the above, access to Al-Jazeera is quicker. It must be because it is past midnight in that part of the world.

Another example of the lop-sided "free" market

I recently saw a letter to the editor or an online comment that an employer will pay you what your worth, implying take it or leave it.

But who is deciding "worth"? Is it an employer who has carefully considered the benefits of an employee and what the current market price is for said employee? Or is it a penny-pinching Scrooge who will pay as little as possible, regardless of how much benefit (and profit) the employee will bring to the employer?

If the labor market is truly free, both employer and employee will have sufficient information to judge what a "fair" wage is. If the labor market is truly free, potential employees should be free to enter or leave it. Too often, this is not the case, many potential employees are not free to leave the labor market, unless there is free food, shelter, and clothing for themselves and their families.

The 1% earned their money?

Anybody who reads the news regularly knows that there is plenty of back-scratching in the executive suites and board rooms of large companies. Not only do they provide bribes, er, campaign contributions to OUR supposed representatives, but they reward each other handsomely with no justification other than some mumbo-jumbo about performance in the proxy statements.

There is little mention of all the people who are paid far, far, far less but made all this "performance" possible. It's a bit like d'Artagnan of Three Musketeers fame who kicked his servant Planchet for "poor performance" but the servant did almost all the work except the sword fighting.

For some examples of this over-compensations see "The Most Outrageous Acts of Corporate America", The Daily Ticker with Daniel Gross, 2011-10-20.

Little bucks demonstrations vs. big bucks advertising

Mark Jeneson wrote "Make change with money, not protests" as a local view in today's Duluth News Tribune. Online it's titled "Create change through spending, not Wall Street protests".

Jeneson argues that taking all one's money out of the big banks will bring about more change than protests. However, these little private acts will only be known by a few people and may or may not spread. These little acts have a small chance of making major headlines.

To make headlines, most people need to demonstrate. They don't have the big bucks to advertise like the Koch brothers and their surrogates. Think of demonstrations as middle-class political advertising. If the cause is popular, more people will take part and more headlines about the cause will be made.

Let's kick the Koch-Cain habit!

Who decides the government of the United States? We the People or they the money?

Who decides the government of the United States? A well-informed populace of high-turnout voters or a secretive group of manipulators who only want their "people" to vote?

I thought I had a new revelation of how manipulated we are when I read "Pizza Magnate Herman Cain Has Extensive Ties to Powerful Koch Group", Huffington Post, Ryan J. Foley, 2011-10-16.  I started playing around with Koch being the start of Kochaine and then thought, oh, Koch-Cain.

Well, I was late to the party again. I found about 16,800 results for "Koch-Cain" as a single phrase. The first two were "Billionaire puppeteers at it again? Exploring the connection between Koch brothers and Herman Cain", and "Does GOP Cocaine = Koch-Cain? Are Koch bros Buying GOP Pres Nomination by Supporting Herman Cain?"

I haven't seen anyone writing this yet, but I have a feeling that besides Cain being a puppet of the Koch brothers, he is cynically being used as their "black candidate" against Barack Obama.

If you don't like this cynicism and manipulation, if you would rather have democracy than plutocracy, be sure to vote in every election, especially in November 2012. Please put in VOTE in capital letters on your calendar for November 6, 2012. Please ask all your friends and relatives to do so. To avoid any manipulation, be sure you have registered well before and have a valid ID.

Suit with cigar, another update

Was the suit with the cigar at the Occupy Twin Ports demonstration a real counter-protester or was he a spoof? See "Occupy Twin Ports, 12 Oct. 2011" and "The suit with the cigar, an update".

One friend opined that he was a "Colbert", meaning that he was doing a Stephen Colbert skit.

Today another friend said she was sticking her sign in front to the suit whenever she could. She said that he said he had never smoked a cigar before. I guess that clinches that he was spoofing.

BTW, I looked up Stephen Colbert and went to http://www.colbertnation.com. There was a wonderful section with Harry Belafonte. The interview was a good mix of humor and seriousness.

Fable about a king's palace

A fabulously rich king decided to build a fabulously magnificent palace. He got his privy council to agree because he argued that doing this project would create many jobs for the five years it would take to build it and for the years beyond that to maintain the palace.

For starters, he took by eminent domain 10,000 acres of prime farmland by the river. People said it would reduce the food the country could grow to feed itself. The king replied that the project would create jobs.

He had 10,000 acres of prime forest cut down to supply the lumber for his palace. People said it would decrease wildlife habitat and increase flooding. The king replied that the project would create jobs.

He hired 1,000 workers to build his palace. People said it would decrease the number of workers to build and repair houses. The king replied that these workers would be paid high wages.

He had a million gallons of water per day diverted from the river to supply all the fountains, to water his extensive lawns, and many other uses. People said it would practically dry up the river reducing the water downstream for drinking, washing, and irrigation. The king replied that the project would create jobs.

He built no sewage treatment system to handle the garden runoff or the flushing of 1,000 toilets. He said it would cost too much money. People said sewage would make the river downstream unsuitable for drinking and washing, and irrigation. The king replied that the project would create jobs.

And so it came to pass that many people were hungry because there was insufficient farmland to feed them.

And so it came to pass that many people became homeless as the cost of existing houses skyrocketed because no new house were being built.

And so it came to pass that many people became sick because of the lack of clean drinking water.

And so it came to pass that many people migrated to lands where there was plenty of farmland and clean water.

And so it came to pass that tax revenues dwindled because there were fewer people to pay them.

And so it came to pass that the banks foreclosed on the king's palace because he couldn't pay back all the loans he had taken out to build the palace.

And so it came to pass that after an unusually heavy rain, a mudslide from the former forest buried the partially built palace.

What's the point of this fable? It can't happen here. Oh, but we are a nation populated by people who immigrated from lands that did not have good governance. Will we follow as we lack the foresight to rein in the indulgences of the wealthy as they create short-sighted projects using jobs as a justification without regard to all the other costs?

8 things a hand dryer can't do

Hand dryers are replacing paper towels in more and more restrooms. Managements often do this to avoid the litter of paper towels and the costs of refilling the dispensers and emptying the trash containers. However, like many cost savings, these savings can be a cost shift to others. Paper towels can do so much more for the users of restrooms than hand dryers can.

1. Dry hands in 30 seconds. I and many other men dry our hands on jeans rather than wait and wait for a hand dryer to do the job.

2. Dry hands quietly. The noise of some hand dryers probably exceeds healthy sound levels.

3. Wipe up spills on clothing.

4. Wipe a runny nose.

5. Wipe a sweaty brow.

6. Staunch bleeding from a minor cut.

7. Wipe excess water from a sink.

8. Dry hands when replacing a contact lens.

And I'm sure you can think of many more uses for paper towels that hand dryers are useless for.

Quote of the day – money and Congress

"Money is not evil. Buying and selling Congress to protect Wall Street, is."

Sign carried by Sally Paulsen, Treasurer, Independence Party of Minnesota, at OccupyMN on 2011-10-07. See "IP impressions of OccupyMN".

Her colleague Ted C. Williams gave a more jaundiced view. He thought many of the demonstrators wanted to show they were mad but that they didn't have any answers. How many problems throughout our history have been pointed out by those who were mad before anything concrete was done? Taxation without representation, slavery, women's suffrage, alcohol abuse, labor laws, civil rights, wars…

Business people are demonstrating against business?

I kid you not! "A suited protester from the Occupy London Stock Exchange holds a placard stating 'Time's Up!' whilst business people walk by as they continue their demonstration that started on Saturday outside St Paul's Cathedral, near the London Stock Exchange in London, Monday, Oct. 17, 2011." This was in the notes to photo 6 of 63 from "Occupy Wall Street: Images from the Front Lines", Yahoo Finance!, 2011-10-17.

I read this as "business people are demonstrating as they walk by." "Business people" is the first plural subject in the above paragraph.

I guess I can't complain too much. Today I found a "the the" in a blog entry I wrote five years ago.

The fallacy of ranking states by "tax burden"

It is quite the fashion to rank states by "tax burden" or how "business-friendly" they are. But are these the only criteria for determining where to live or headquarter a business?

CNN published several lists of the Fortune 500, and with a bit of wandering I found the number of Fortune 500 headquartered in each state. I used the "Pick a state" section of "Fortune 500 2011: States: California Companies".

I found tax rankings at "The Tax Foundation - Facts and Figures Handbook: How Does Your State Compare?".

I put this data in a spreadsheet and tried to figure out a correlation. I found this difficult because there is such a wide discrepancy between corporate headquarters and "low tax" states. For example, the Tax Foundation ranks New York third in "tax burden" but it has the headquarters of 57 of the Fortune 500 companies, and Texas is ranked 32nd with 51 companies. The external factors could be that New York is the "financial capital" of the U.S. and that Texas has the most oil and related companies.

I finally sorted them by "tax burden" and then summed the number of Fortune 500 companies per state for groups of 10. Starting with the "worst ten tax states", the totals were 208, 79, 96, 93, and 20.

Other external factors could include that Arkansas has four Fortune 500 companies because Sam Walton lived in Arkansas and the other three companies have a lot of business with Wal-Mart. I don't know. Or what influence do physical geography, economic geography (like rural vs. urban), social environment (cosmopolitan vs. distrust of "outsiders"), and historical factors have. It would take a few volumes to figure all of this out.

Oh, yes, how about a high "tax burden" making a state a better place to live - parks, schools, excellent infra-structure, transparent government, and on and on?

But the "bottom line" is that "tax burden" is only one factor of many in determining the success of businesses and the quality of life in any give state.

The Occupy movement shares a goal of the American Revolution

The Occupy movement is demonstrating against the power of large corporations that is backed by the power of the state. One of the complaints of the American Revolution was the power of a large corporation, The East India Company, backed by the power of the British state.

See "American Rebellions" by Thom Hartmann and "Boston Tea Party", Wikipedia.

You might say the modern Tea Party has taken on the wrong target, instead of limited government they should be seeking limited limited liability corporations.