Category Archives: Random Blogging

Business Now and Then

There’s an interesting story making the (internet) rounds about Apple Corporation’s recent shareholder meeting.

Evidently, some Apple shares had been purchased by an organization devoted to climate-change denial. At the meeting, the group’s representative challenged Apple’s Chairman over the company’s considerable and laudable efforts to minimize its carbon footprint (including the hiring of a former EPA Secretary to oversee Apple’s environmental practices). He objected to the company’s environmental efforts, because they cost money without enhancing the return on investment, and were thus not in the best interests of shareholders.

Apple Chairman Tim Cook basically told the guy to stick it where the sun didn’t shine– that if he didn’t want a socially responsible company, he shouldn’t own the stock.

As gratifying as that response was, the exchange highlighted a major problem with the way far too many businesses operate today.

Most companies aren’t in Apple’s enviable cash and market position. The focus for most publicly traded companies these days is “shareholder value”—as defined by the next quarterly report.

It was not always thus. When most companies were still controlled by those that founded them, when they were operated and managed by people who owned them rather than by hired guns with golden parachutes, having a reputation as a good corporate citizen was a point of pride. Decisions took account of the long-term interests of the enterprise—and long-term was not the next quarterly report. There was recognition of the relationship between the health of the community and the prospects of one’s business.

If you look around Indianapolis today, you can see the difference between businesses run by their owners and those run by professional “managers” who all too often have no connections to the city and are marking time until they are “promoted” elsewhere.

Our civic life is poorer for the loss of people whose own prospects rose and fell with those of their companies and their communities—and who understood that responsible citizenship is good business.

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A Question for Tom DeLay (Yes, THAT Tom DeLay)

Since getting out of prison, Tom DeLay has made periodic forays into the political spotlight. (You might have expected–in light of his still-recent incarceration and general humiliation–that he would show some shame or remorse, but he appears incapable of either.) Every once in a while, there will be a reported “sighting,” accompanied by an idiotic quote, all of which has been worth  ignoring, perhaps with an eye roll or shrug.

But The Raw Story has a quote that is men-in-the-white-coats jaw dropping.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) this week warned Americans to remember that God “wrote the Constitution” based on the Bible.

During an appearance on John Hagee Ministries’ Global Evangelism Television (GETV) network on Wednesday, host Matt Hagee asked the Texas Republican where the country had gone wrong.

“I think we got off the track when we allowed our government to become a secular government,” DeLay explained. “When we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that he wrote the Constitution, that it’s based on biblical principles.”

Lest you think I am making this up, you can watch the video at the link. (To be fair, DeLay isn’t the only lunatic recasting the nation’s charter as God-given. Remember “My God is bigger than their God” General Jerry Boykin? He recently claimed that Jesus wrote the 2d Amendment.)

This is probably a good place to start humming the theme from Twilight Zone.

Anyway, here’s my question for former Representative DeLay: If you believe that God wrote the Constitution, as well as the Ten Commandments (tablets containing those pesky prohibitions against stealing and bearing false witness), shouldn’t you be just a teensy bit worried about your immortal soul, since you rather consistently violated both?

Just asking.

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Words of Wisdom

I don’t know Phillip Gulley, although I wish I did. I became aware of him through his essays for  Indianapolis Monthly–essays I wish I’d written. They are gems–both in form and substance.

In the most recent Monthly (not yet online, so I can’t link) he wrote something that expresses my own frustrations so perfectly I just have to share/steal:

Winston Churchill once said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.” We are in the trying-everything-else days. I have no doubt America will finally do the right thing, that the sun will shine once more, but I am weary. Weary of bumper-sticker answers to complex problems. Weary of lies shouted as facts. Weary of office holders who speak of freedom and opportunity but destroy the bridges that lead to both. Weary of arrogance masquerading as accomplishment. Weary of the scowling dismissal of science and reason, the raging hubris, the manipulation of democracy by the powerful. Weary of allegiance to a party and not a nation.

That says it all–and it speaks for so many of us who are less eloquent.

I just hope he’s right about the sun shining again…..

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That Scary Black Man in the White House

The Right Wing has its panties in a bunch again. According to the usual suspects, President Obama issued a National Defense Resources Preparedness executive order that gives him “unprecedented new powers to appropriate national resources.”

And what does Snopes have to say about this latest evidence of Obama’s usurpation of power and disregard of the law of the land?

The Executive Order itself is nothing more than a restatement of policy that has been in place for decades and grants no authority to the President or the Cabinet that they don’t already have under existing law.

It has become fashionable to attribute the constant hysteria over anything and everything that Obama does to the same hyper-partisanship that prompted “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” And certainly, partisanship bears some blame.

But let’s get real.

I detested George W. Bush. I disagreed with his naive “faith based initiative.” I was appalled when he took the U.S. into the Iraq War. A list of Bush policies that pushed me out of the Republican party would fill pages of text.

But here’s the thing: these were actual policies. When the man was first elected, I found him likable enough–I certainly didn’t detest him before he even took office. And most of the people I knew who came to dislike him intensely (and were probably unfairly critical from time to time) were also reacting to things the man actually did.

Obama hadn’t even taken office when the ugly emails and the out-and-out lies began. The racism that fuels talk radio and “birthers” and insane accusations is too thick and too widespread and too obvious to ignore. The absolute unwillingness of the Republicans in Congress to work with this President–even to implement programs that they originally proposed–has brought this country to a virtual standstill.

One result of this behavior is ironic: those of us who are repelled by what we see as unhinged, vicous and consistently unfair attacks from people who simply cannot come to terms with the fact that we have a black President find ourselves defending Obama even when he is implementing or continuing policies we would otherwise criticize. As I wrote to a good friend,  there’s plenty to legitimately criticize. I’m no fan of the NSA, drone strikes and several other policies this administration has pursued. But calling Obama lawless and a communist, making hysterical accusations about things that previous presidents–including the sainted Reagan– did routinely with absolutely no pushback is so manifestly unjust, people who are fair-minded get protective.

A Facebook post from a (very Republican) friend of mine is a good example of what I’m talking about:

Ok, let me get this straight: Ted Nugent–who during the 2012 campaign declared that if Obama was reelected he (Nugent) would either be dead or in jail within a year (a not-so-veiled threat against the President of the United States)–last month called President Obama a “communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel.” And now, the GOP front runner for the Texas governorship not only welcomes Nugent on his campaign but calls this unhinged racist hater “a fighter for freedom.” What’s wrong with this picture?  The Lone Star GOP needs to find a candidate with the basic decency of Gov. George W. Bush. (I didn’t like him as a president but he was no racist hater. I wonder if the same could be said about Greg Abbott. A man is judged by the company he keeps.)

Allowing buffoons and bigots to become the face of the GOP just pushes moderate folks who might otherwise be inclined to vote Republican into the D column.

Defending racist rants as if they were legitimate criticisms, vowing to block this President at every turn (and damn the common good), repels people of good will who would consider — and perhaps be persuaded by–valid and thoughtful critiques.

There aren’t enough angry old white guys to elect a President. Get over it.
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It Really Sucks to be Poor

It costs a lot to be poor. Just a few examples:

A recent report released by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Postal Service reports that 68 million Americans — more than a quarter of all U.S. households – have no checking or savings accounts.

How do people get along in a society where payments are made by check, or increasingly, electronic transfer? How do the (growing numbers of) people scraping along paycheck to paycheck access short-term loans when they hit a rough spot?

Evidently, by spending a lot more than the rest of us.

According to the report, these households collectively spent about $89 billion in 2012 on interest and fees for non-bank financial services like payday loans and check cashing. That works out to an average of $2,412 per household. The average underserved household spends an astonishing 10 percent of its annual income on interest and fees — about the same amount they spend on food.

As Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote in a column commenting on the report, “The poor pay more, and that’s one of the reasons people get trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder.” Poor people disproportionately rely on the check-cashing stores, pawnshops, payday lenders, and other predatory financial services that took customers for $89 billion in interest and fees in 2012.

But poor people have to contend with more than just predatory lending; they have fewer options across the board.

A few days ago, I wrote about the connection between poverty and marriage; it appears that despite the undeniable correlation between the two, we had the cause and effect backward. Poverty prevents many poor single moms from marrying in the first place. Subsequently, I found research (from professors of psychology and and organizational management) demonstrating that poverty also makes it harder for poor couples who are married to stay that way.

The problem is not that poor people fail to appreciate the importance of marriage, nor is it that poor and wealthy Americans differ in which factors they believe are important in a good marriage. The problem is that the same trends that have exacerbated inequality since 1980 — unemployment, juggling multiple jobs and so on — have also made it increasingly difficult for less wealthy Americans to invest the time and other resources needed to sustain a strong marital bond.

Poor people divorce at a rate that is thirty percent higher than their wealthier peers, with all of the emotional and financial distress that divorce brings in its wake.

Back in 2001, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote Nickeled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting Along in America, in which she documented the difficulties faced by low wage workers–  the added costs for shelter (the poor often have to spend much more on “rent by the week” fleabags than they would pay to rent a decent apartment because they can’t afford the security deposit and first-and-last month rent payments) and food (the poor often live in “food deserts” and have to buy food that is both more expensive and less healthy).

Let’s not even get into medical and dental care. That’s a subject for an entirely separate diatribe. (Folks who can’t afford regular, preventive care end up very sick in the ER, costing everyone more money.)

If we really expect poor people to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” maybe we should help them afford the bootstraps.

 

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