The Official Rick Bell Blog

THE DREADED MARIO HERBST

This small post is dedicated to a man/boy who, though we met many times, I never engaged in conversation. A man/boy named Mario Herbst. That is no pseudonym. The lawyers be damned. If he takes offense to what is written here, come and find me. I’d love to have our first chat.

In speaking of my childhood, it often comes across as seemingly idyllic. Life in the suburbs; stable, nurturing parents; fragrant orange groves and an open field with a creek as my playground; riding on bales of dull white cotton in the Disneyland Christmas Parade; a mother who really knew how to cook. At first blush, some less fortunate may wish they could have traded place. That is until they learn the saga of Mario Herbst.

We had an older kid down the block who talked us into dropping our drawers as he claimed he was studying to be a doctor. Brian Williams was his name. (Yet again, the lawyers be damned). I should be talking to a therapist for the rest of my life about Brian according to the namby-pamby child psychologists. But the shrinks would be wrong. If I am paying a buck seventy-five an hour to talk to anyone, I’ll be talking about Mario Herbst.

Mario was gifted: not as a singer, not as a poet, not as a painter. But he was an artist of sorts. He was, to put it indelicately, a fart* artist.

Mario could break wind anytime, anywhere, on command. It was his gift. I hope his offspring, if anyone was unfortunate enough to mate with him, are reading this page. And it is my hope that his children look at him with disdain from this day forth. I hope his employer, an employer who is offended by nothing, nay nothing, more than the those who “blow the bowel bugle” is reading this post. And it is my hope his employer is in a firing state of mind. I hope his gastroenterologist (I picture a diminutive Indian woman easily offended by coarse, brutish Americans who have mastered the “trouser cough”) is reading these words. And it is my hope it is just before deciding which of her two sickest patients--Mario being one of them--will be placed in the placebo group of a promising new drug trial and which will get the lifesaving medicine. Enjoy the sugar pill compadre! I hope… well, you get the picture.

Mario was introduced into my life by my older brother Randy (that’s Glen Randall Bell if you are one of the aforementioned lawyers). Randy learned of Mario’s “gift” and put him to work at stake dances. Stake dances, in the late seventies and early eighties, were a big deal for Southern California Mormons and their friends. One Saturday a month, a stake (a grouping of local congregations) would hire a rock band and host a dance for youth ages 14-18 (and a few pathetic 21-year-old guys who couldn’t play in their own league).

As kids are inclined to do, they formed small groups of eight or so around the dance floor. As the music blared, Mario would walk by one of these gaggles of youth, pause briefly, and flatulate some of the worst smelling intestinal gas known to man. Unheard over the music, he would just walk off as his compatriots observed the aftermath surrounding the targeted group. Invariably, these unsuspecting youth would soon begin to gag on the vile stench and begin accusing one another. Chaos and hilarity were sure to ensue.

My brother, one of the observing compatriots, enjoyed this little game so much he decided to create a home version. In the home version, there were no stealth launches of decaying fecal vapor. Randy would simply pin me to the floor and Mario would assume launch position, target my face with his anus and “step on the duck.” Half the size of my brother. I was helpless and exposed. Many a time have I inhaled the noxious mixture of hydrogen sulfide and methane that Mario produced.

(As I write this, it occurs to me that my brother could not have avoided the flatus being expelled as well. Apparently that was part of the thrill.)

Three and a half decades later I still shudder when encountering the name Mario. Those were experiences that left me scarred. I couldn’t even enjoy Nintendo’s Mario Bros. when it was all the rage. (Though it is fitting that Mario and Lugi battled creatures emerging from the sewers below New York. I’m pretty sure what emerged from Mario Herbst could compete with any major metropolitan sewer.)

*My lovely, innocent daughters, who have been exposed to more than a few internal eruptions of my own, may take exception to the word fart. They prefer the more benign “toot.” With all apologies, toot implies the puff a unicorn might accidentally make as it hops over a rainbow. Mario did not toot. When he let it rip, his bowel explosions would put said unicorn in the ICU.

Twitter This!

Quick! What’s the most important issue you are following this week? Obama’s Supreme Court nomination? GM’s impending bankruptcy? Pakistani nukes falling into the hands of the Taliban?

Well if you are a devotee of the rapidly growing social networking and micro-blogging site Twitter, it’s more likely that what tops your list is Star Trek movie reviews, the latest topless photos of Miss California or the most imaginative fake porn star names you can use to spice up your online accounts.

Be brief. Be bright. Be gone. Such is the mantra of Twitter, the service that allows users to instantaneously send and read updates known as ‘tweets.”  With a maximum of 140 characters per tweet, Twitter might even have the Ritalin crowd wondering “is that all?”

The well-funded site is in the midst of a heavy media blitz that has organizations like CNN and The New York Times singing its praises. Where there is smoke there is fire. Where there is hype surrounding a new technology… well, I’ve been an IT consultant for 15 years and unfortunately high tech hype usually means a PR firm just snagged a big retainer.

But not wanting to judge too harshly, I decided to sign up for a free Twitter account (the company has yet to monetize its site) and give it a go. With three email accounts, a cell phone, a Blackberry, a LinkedIn account, a FaceBook account, a Tagged account, a subscription to The Wall Street Journal Online  and monthly subscriptions to Audible and  Jigsaw I was a bit reluctant to sign on for yet another techno-distraction. But sign on I did and I boy was I ever under whelmed.

The gist of the site is that you can follow other Twitter account holders who post short answers to the question of what are they doing right now. I signed on to follow everyone from The New York Times, a handful of celebrities, ESPN, and anyone in my Yahoo contact list that happened to be signed up as well.

Following just 19 accounts, the to do list of tweets demanding my attention filled up quickly. What was I doing? I already have 1116 lower priority work emails dating back months that I have yet to open and another 2119 on Yahoo and 514 on Gmail that will likely never see the light of day. On a good week, I am only four days late on responding to messages on FaceBook--and I haven’t had a good week in some time. I have long since given up monitoring my RSS newsreader that tracks my favorite blogs and news sources.

But I trudged forward. As I scanned through the tweets, ranging from news headlines with imbedded hyperlinks to the full story to the inane “Hi, I just flew in from DC and the flight seemed longer than usual” all I could think of if the was a book I read back in ’92 by Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.

Postman’s contention is that in a Technopoly, technology is god. If it is newer, flashier or faster it’s undoubtedly better. Questioning the techno-god is heresy. The result, Postman contends, is a glut of quickly delivered information that loses its usefulness and becomes “a source of confusion rather than coherence.”

The Twitter press spin is that tweets matter. They allow members pose important questions and track important events. Examples floated in The New York Times, for example, depict Twitterers (“twits” for short?) asking followers if they know of any research related to a particular topic or allowing them to follow the removal of a brain tumor by asking important questions of the surgeon such as “what music are you listening to?” Heady stuff.

In my area of specialization--PeopleSoft HR/Payroll systems--multiple forums, user groups and bulletin boards have existed for years. These resources allow me to solicit feedback from my peers… and allow for responses in full sentences, and, dare I say, paragraphs. A witty micro-blurb might not prove too useful when 15,000 employees are waiting for me to debug their payroll system.

Though I appreciated how easy Twitter made it to follow news sources and blogs, I already have online tools for this. Different isn’t necessarily better.

What’s more, there is the question of whether society benefits from being deluged with yet more information that may or may not do much real informing. The UK’s Daily Mail, for example, recently reported on a study at the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California that indicates that the digital torrent of information from networking sites could have a long-term damaging effect on the emotional development of younger people’s brains.

Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, coauthor of the best selling book on attention deficit disorder (ADD), Delivered from Distraction, also question the impact of such technologies. “Raised on a diet of sound bites and electronic stimulation, children can lose the ability to carry on extended conversations or listen to one,” Hallowell notes. He goes on to raise the concern that the onslaught of new technologies may actually be “training” our children to develop ADD.

Questioning new technology is not all together new. In Plato’s Phaedus, King Thalmus questioned the god Theuth as to whether the invention of writing would create a vast population of readers with declining memory skills. Readers filled with the “conceit of wisdom” instead of real wisdom as they were doing little more than regurgitating someone else’s words.

In hindsight, most of us agree that society has benefited from the written word, especially since the advent of the printing press. This is true even though not all that is written is beneficial. Books, newspapers and websites are awash with written garbage. And, more relevant, much that is published is little more than a form pop culture cotton candy for the brain.

Does it matter that Twitter’s primary use is little more than a delivery source for pop candy? One can not live on steak and potatoes alone. There is nothing wrong with the occasional sweet treat in an otherwise balanced diet. Like the concern over the advent of writing, I’ll leave the final verdict on Twitter for a later date. But on first glimpse, the concern should be raised that the more we use technology to deliver pop candy fixes, the more we risk losing our appetite for more substantive fare and degrading our ability to tackle challenging mental tasks.

Debunking the NY Times Myth of Boy Scouts as Hitler Youth

The Internet is broken… and I don’t know who to call.

It’s not that the whole darn thing is awry. You can still get email, download ITunes, and, I heard from a friend, view rather disturbing porn. But the doohickey that corrects erroneous posts by The New York Times is on the fritz.

What’s frustrating for troubleshooters is that the problem seems to be intermittent.  When NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd ripped on Dick Cheney again using a chunk of copy lifted from Josh Marshall’s blog at Talking Point Memo last week the problem was spotted immediately by bloggers—two days later the Times posted a correction acknowledging Dowd’s lack of “attribution.” But when Times’ reporter Jennifer Steinhauer unfairly characterized the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) as morphing into an extremist paramilitary organization the same week, the Internet’s NY Times truth filter crapped out.

Steinhauer’s article set off my personal bullpucky alert system as I have some familiarity with the BSA. My father was a Scoutmaster for 15 years and I participated in the program as a Scout from age 8 to 16, a leader for 3 years and an active participant in Scouting activities with my two stepsons for another 7 years. But while I read the story and cried “bunk,” the collective wisdom of the Internet failed to amend the alarmist “reporting” replete with carefully edited, terribly inflammatory quotes and staged photos designed to elicit a negative, emotional response.

The article was so distorted and slanted that to distinguish it from a National Enquirer piece Steinhauer had to drop in five dollar words like “obstreperous” to let readers know they were getting their information from the venerated New York Times.

Though entitled “Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More” the article reported on the activities of Explorers, not Scouts. Associating Scouts with Explorers is like associating the USC football team with the Phi Beta Kappa weekend softball team just because they happen to be affiliated with the same university—though the latter far more loosely.

Exploring, which comprises about 10% of BSA-affiliated participants, is about career exploration, not the woodworking, Scout-O-Ramas, camping and merit badges the general public pictures when Scouting is mentioned.  Explorers fall under a not-for-profit corporation called Learning for Life that is merely a coeducational affiliate of the BSA. Explorer “posts” are run by sponsoring police departments, fire stations, or private sector organizations in areas such as law, health, engineering, skilled trades  or aviation.

News flash Steinhauer, the fact that some Explorer posts are affiliated with the U.S. Border Patrol does not signal an “intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions...” Though I traded Scouting for dating when I turned 16, the age at which most youth begin participating in Exploring, several friends joined the program. Guess what? 30 years ago Explorers were riding along with cops, going through training simulations with SWAT teams and role playing with undercover agents assigned to drug details.

Jennifer, my dear, perhaps you don't like that the Border Patrol arrests your beloved illegal... strike that... "undocumented" immigrants or that it considers marijuana an illicit substance. It may irk you that they don’t coddle terrorists.  But their training simulations are hardly a new aspect of the Exploring program. New to you doesn’t make it is news.

That the Times slanted the story surprises me little. But where is the Internet and blogosphere on all this? My beloved, do-a-good-turn-daily, borderline pyromaniac, Boy Scouts aren’t training to fight terrorist or anything else for that matter. For Pete’s sake, the BSA still includes paintballing and laser tag on their list of unauthorized activities. 

Having gone on many a campout in recent years, I am more than familiar with the Scouting version of don’t ask, don’t tell. When the urge to paintball (or man’s-most-awesome-invention-ever as I like to call it) gets too strong, Scout troops unofficially organize wildly popular ‘This-isn’t-a-Scouting-Activity!” paintballing  excursions.

Oh, and Ms. Jennifer, when boys assume a stance for pictures with their paintball guns, they try to look as menacing as the Explorers in your photos with their air soft plastic pellet guns—it’s what teenagers do. They strike a pose. They scowl. They play the bad-ass role. They act like teenagers.

Working for an organization with a propensity to cherry pick the facts that best conform to its worldview, Steinhauer didn’t just report on a competition held by an obscure group of Explorer posts in Imperial County, California (with advisors suffering, admittedly, from severe foot-in-mouth disease), she made the extra effort to abruptly segue into allegations that police officers are sexually abusing Explorers.

The blogosphere went wild regurgitating her allegations and her reference to an unspecified University of Nebraska (NU) study as proof that Boy Scout leaders were ramping up to give Catholic priests a run for the dubious lead in the ‘No-Child’s-Behind-Left” sweepstakes. Not one of the 23 blogs I visited dug deep enough into her mention of a report to find that it was a study by Samuel Walker and Dawn Irlbeck, entitled: “Police Sexual Abuse of Teenage Girls: A 2003 Update on Driving While Female.”

The NU report, which focused primarily on allegations by teenage females pulled over by cops and prostitutes threatened with arrest by cops, did indicate that there had been some allegations of abusive comments or actions directed towards female Explorers who had gone—unescorted--on ride alongs with male officers. Hmmm, coupling teenage girls with male cops is a bad idea? Who would of thunk?

Unlike the Times or the blogs, the NU study did note that when the problem surfaced over a decade ago, Explorers implemented a requirement that at least two adult, non-police supervisors act as chaperones at all Explorer functions.

Perhaps the blogosphere didn’t dig deeper into the difference between Explorers and Scouts or the facts surrounding old allegations of sexual abuse because they were too busy crafting predictable Hitler Youth analogies. Depending on how the blog leaned politically, headlines portrayed “Scouts” as either ‘Cheney Youth” or “Obama Youth.”

(Cheney, of course, is fun to hate. Obama took a hit because the Times article mentioned that a role played by a “terrorist” in one of the simulations was that of a “disgruntled Iraq war vet,” rekindling outrage on the right over a recent Department of Homeland Security document identifying Second Amendment supporters, pro-life advocates, and returning war veterans as potential terrorists.)

Smart move on the Times’ part. By distracting the right wing bloggers with the war-veteran-turned-terrorist angle, traditional supporters of the BSA got off track in their commentary and “analysis.” Instead, they joined the fray labeling Scouts as “Boy Storm Troopers of America” and “Homeland Gestapo.”

The fact that the commentary quickly degraded into Nazi comparisons may provide an insight into why the Internet didn’t self correct. Early pioneers of the Internet who posted discussions on Usenet forums found that arguments, if carried on long enough, frequently resulted in someone dropping a Nazi or Hitler comparison. This occurred so frequently that an adage known as Goodwin’s Law developed stating that such comparisons were almost inevitable.

A corollary to Godwin’s Law states that once a Nazi analogy is made the debate is over and whoever made the comparison automatically loses the debate. In the case of the Scouting story, commentators bypassed reasoned discourse and immediately played the Nazi card. The discussion terminated and truth lost out.

Is the Media's Love of Obama Killing Objectivity?

Working as an indentured servant for my school newspaper 20 years ago I was awarded the distinction of “Best News Writer of the Year.” What a sham!

No, there wasn’t any Joe Biden-esque plagiarism. It’s just that I never conformed to the role of a true reporter. The practice of gathering and disseminating information while striving for unbiased viewpoints was not a concept I grasped. My opinions have always run deep. I was an editorial-page columnist masquerading as a reporter. Whether covering campus pay phone contracts (hey, this was 20 years ago) or a proposed baseball stadium, my point of view guided how I selected and strung together the facts. Objectivity was for sissies.

Operating under the “it-takes-one-to-know-one” principle, it’s painfully obvious that the majority of the “reporters” working today have that same objectivity-be-damned perception disorder when it comes to covering Barack Obama. During the campaign, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, John McCain and Hillary Clinton all complained that the media fix was in for Obama. Now, a recent study by the respected Pew Research Center gives weight to those allegations.

In reviewing Obama’s first 100 days in office, Pew noted that Obama enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George Bush during the same period of time—42 percent of the Obama stories were positive compared to 27 percent for Clinton and 22 percent for Bush. Another 30 percent were neutral.

Rather than blush, the media scoffed at these findings. “The newscasts reflect reality,” said Rick Kaplan, executive producer of the CBS Evening News. “Everyone, including Republicans, would have to say his first 100 days have been great.”

Apparently Kaplan was too busy polishing his “Change We Can Believe In” buttons to note the Rasmussen Reports daily tracking poll from May 3rd, 2009 that found that 43 percent of voters disapprove somewhat with Obama’s performance and 32 percent of the nation’s voters strongly disapprove.

I’m no right winger, and it’s in my best interest as an American if Obama hits a homerun with his agenda, but when I turn on the news I want fair and balanced—and I ain’t getting it.

In his first 100 days Obama slammed in the single largest government expenditure ever--a nearly $820 billion stimulus package--without the transparency and five day online public review period of all legislation he promised during the campaign. His deficit-laden $3.2 trillion budget--the largest ever—also warrants more than a little scrutiny.

Where was the mainstream media on Obama using the stimulus package to undo Clinton’s Welfare Reforms of 1996, or creating a $5.2 billion pot that the scandal-plagued ACORN operation can tap or slipping in highly controversial controls of doctors in private practice?

Perhaps it would help my objectivity-challenged counterparts in the press to pick up a copy of “A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media.” Written by Bernard Goldberg, the former CBS newsman, the book bemoans the self-induced collapse of his beloved profession.  Less of a slam of Obama than the title implies, Goldberg laments the demise of honest journalism. Even the most strident Obama supporter will wince reading the section in which The Washing Post’s ombudsman Deborah Howell admits to the media bias in her own paper.

But honestly, do you need a book to see that the mainstream media loves Obama to a fault? The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics requires its members to distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. I, for one, can’t keep my opinion out of my writing. I understand first hand how difficult it is to be a true reporter. But is it too much to suggest that journalists who can’t distinguish between fact and commentary bow out of the newsroom and find their rightful place in the editorial department?

My Night With Perez Hilton

Taking a sauna at a West Hollywood bathhouse with Michael Huffington last night the thought occurred to me to ask him about his ex-wife’s liberal news website--The Huffington Post. “Mikey,” I said, “people are saying that Arianna’s news lackeys are unfairly and illegally using copyrighted material to stuff their pages full of content. Whatcha think about that?”

“That dumb bitch is going to kill my Google stock if she doesn’t knock that crap off,” he erupted. “I wish she’d take some lessons from my buddy Perez.”

On cue, gossip-blogger-turned-erstwhile-beauty-pageant-judge Perez Hilton popped up from Michael’s lap.

“Dumb bitch,” chimed in Hilton, “I’ve got the easiest gig on the planet and she’s going to jack it up.”

“I have no discernable talent, no original thoughts, but I’m a great plagiarist,” Hilton boasted as he rubbed his plump, red cheeks. “I learned the hard way that you can’t just blatantly reproduce copyrighted material. You’ve got to do a little transformation. Ingest, digest, excrete… that’s my mantra. The problem with Arianna is she’s pushing it too far and might call down the wrath of the traditional media on us all.””

Perez should know. Since founding perezhilton.com (formerlySixSixSix.com) in late 2004, Hilton has been hit with numerous copyright infringement suits for offenses such as posting Britney Spears songs before they were released, linking to a copy of Colin Farrell’s infamous sex tape and posting a copyrighted paparazzi photo of John Mayer and Jessica Simpson.

Like many on the net, Perez didn’t immediately grasp the concept that just because you know how to copy and paste, copyright holders still have some protection from having the potential market for their work diminished.

“It’s all about understanding the ‘fair use’ doctrine,” Hilton opined. “The Constitution protects copyright holders. Fair use allows the limited use of material without requiring permission from the rights holder. But fair use means I have to use that material for purposes such as criticism, comment, or,” he winked, “news reporting.”

“Now I’m just a drama grad from New York University,” Hilton added, “but my attorney taught me that the law favors ‘transformative’ uses of copyrighted material. I’ve found that jotting down a few lines of commentary underneath a video post or digitally altering a photo covers my oft-admired buttocks.”

“So that’s what’s up with all the inane comments you couple with your pinched videos and the sophomoric doodles on the photos you post,” I observed.

“You betcha, cupcake,” he twittered. “Post an untouched AP photo of Mike Tyson and I’m looking at another lawsuit. “ But if I use the Telestrater effect in Photoshop to create an amateurish illusion of semen dripping out of Tyson’s mouth, I’ve got the Los Angeles Times defending my right to achieve a ‘satiric or humorous end’. If I want to add a video clip from Extra! on Lindsay Lohan, I just jot down some comments about how she’s ditching the ‘bush’ and going back to the ‘peen’. Copyright problem solved.”

Hilton continued, “That’s what HuffPo doesn’t get. They grab a couple of paragraphs verbatim from someone else’s website and call it a ‘Quick Read.’ The problem is there is no commentary, no opinion, just copy and paste.”

“They argue that the ‘Read the Whole Story Here’ hyperlink they add constitutes fair use because readers can use it to link to the original work... Wrong! Hilton snapped angrily. “This is the Internet. The simpletons who visit aggregation sites like mine read in snippets. Welcome to Web 2.0. Someone who has read two entire paragraphs of a story can hold themselves out as a de facto subject matter expert when they regurgitate what they read on their own blog. No one is savoring every syllable of a 2,000+ word news story anymore.”

The heat of the sauna was starting to sap my strength. Michael retreated to a corner of the sauna bustling with activity and obscured by steam. But Perez just continued pontificating:

“Worse yet, Huffington doesn’t quite get that another tenet of fair use is that the courts look at how much of the work is quoted in relationship to the entire body of work. Back in December of ’08, Arianna’s minions grabbed two paragraphs from a Chicago Reader blog for one of their entries. That’s two paragraph’s from a post that, in its entirety, was a whole two paragraph’s long.”

“Huffington needs to calm the hell down or she’s going to blow it for the rest of us,” Perez vented. “The courts have yet to weigh in definitively on whether search engines and aggregators have a valid fair use claim under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Google is copying the headlines it displays word for word and media giants such as News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch and MediaNews executive Dean Singleton are starting to squeak about how this skirts the fair use provision.”

Perez made me think. America loves to litigate. Media giants, who continue over leveraging their companies even as subscriptions and ad revenues plummet, might just see dollar signs in going after news aggregators. The need for short-term cash to make interest payments might just blind them to the fact that most aggregators are actually driving eyeballs to their sites and to their online advertising.

There is a big difference between someone like Matt Drudge (who coincidentally was sharing a sauna with us but will deny it if ever asked) who just posts hyperlinked headlines that takes the reader directly to the original source and Huffington who reproduces enough of the news post to make clicking through to the original source unnecessary. But will the courts see that?

Don’t ruin it for all of us Arianna! Whether my frontal lobotomy has me jonesing for a quick recap of far left news or oxygen deprivation has me veering off to the far right, I love biased sites that pull together the selective snippets of news that support their flawed, unbalanced arguments.

The more I thought about what she was doing, the angrier I got. “Stop flagrantly skirting fair use you dumb bitch!” I muttered as I snuggled up to Perez. “There, there honey cheeks,” Hilton said soothingly, “Arianna might goad big media into crushing us, but you got to knock off the potty talk. It’s just ugly and misogynistic when a straight man talks that way.”

Bailout Misdirection

Misdirection. As bailout billions fly around Washington DC, be wary of the frantically waving right hand. More likely than not, it’s pulling your attention away from the left hand that’s pulling off nasty little tricks.
 
After DC fanned the populist outrage over retention “bonuses” paid to AIG’s troubled Financial Products division, Congress has since been consumed with using the tax code to retroactively target those greedy executives and grandstanding to see which congressperson can express the most disgust.

The public’s focus is squarely on the $165 million paid to AIG executives and what on what the government can do to limit compensation at companies receiving bailout funds. And given the shenanigans surrounding the rest of the bailout funds, many in Washington probably prefer it remains that way.

Debating government oversight of compensation is a bit of a red herring. When Chrysler received government loan guarantees in the ‘70s, the necessity of cutting wages was agreed to before Congress voted. Similarly, when the Big Three automakers approached Congress late last year looking for a handout, few had an issue with the government asking for executive compensation and union contracts to be revisited.

 It’s a simple case of the Golden Rule: He who has the gold (or Chinese-financed deficit spending) makes the rules. Congress could have better addressed the AIG bonuses upfront if the legislation wasn’t so rushed.

So why is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wanting to keep the focus on this topic by expanding it? “The issue of excessive compensation extends beyond AIG and requires reform of the system of incentives and compensation in the financial sector,” Geithner said Monday in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee.

In Monday’s committee hearing it seemed that Geithner opted to stoke the compensation furor rather than directly address the few brave congressmen and women who pressed him on where the bulk of the bailout funds were going.

Nice diversion.

Less than 0.1% of the $180 billion received so far by AIG went for bonuses—payments that Obama’s Treasury Department and Senator Christopher Dodd wrote language to protect in the so-called stimulus bill.  Though the campaign of “change” promised transparency, the White House, Treasury Department and majority of Congress seem hesitant to discuss the remaining $179,835 billion.

Like the stimulus bill, the bailout bill was hastily written and pushed through with negligible review, discussion or debate. Almost $335 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds have been committed to date and it doesn’t appear a single troubled asset has been removed from any bank balance sheet.

Where did the money go? Though the Treasury Department isn’t saying much, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that in the case of AIG, billions in TARP funds are being funneled to US banks, foreign banks and investment houses that used “naked” credit default swaps (CDSs) to gamble on the collapse of the housing bubble.

No wonder DC isn’t talking. The TARP bailout is essentially like using taxpayer monies to cover a Las Vegas casino’s house losses because the bookmaker got the line wrong.

Unmerited executive bonuses are simple to understand, so they make for an easy distraction. CDSs are a little more obscure… and those who profited from them, along with their lackeys in public office, seem intent on keeping it that way.

Basically, a CDS is a contract that allows an “investor” to bet that a credit instrument, like a bond or loan, will go into default. All the buyer needs to do is make a small (often less than 0.25% of the contract amount) annual payment to the issuer—one shiny quarter, well played, can earn you $100.00. These unregulated derivative “investments” even allow for betting that a company’s credit rating will be downgraded.

As it is for Amish folk vacationing on the French Riviera, the problem with these swaps is the rampant nudity. Since CDSs are basically unregulated, naked or unsecured swaps are allowed. An investor can purchase a CDS even though he does not own any of the insured instruments or have a stake in the company being bet against. Naked swaps aren’t about prudently hedging an investment; they are just cheap bets with long odds and a ridiculously high upside.

AIG’s Financial Products division was a major player in the CDS market that exploded to a notational value of $45 trillion by the end of 2007. Once considered sucker bets because defaults and bankruptcies are historically rare, naked CDSs exposed AIG to devastating losses because a number of institutions used the swaps to speculate correctly on the demise of the securitized mortgages that glutted the market. AIG bet otherwise, held no offsetting investments, and priced the swaps too cheaply. When the market went bust, the otherwise profitable AIG faced ruin because of one risk-laden business unit.

Before the dust could settle, billions in bailout out dollars where pouring into AIG. No one told the public anything other than “AIG is too big to fail.” When folks went in for a closer look… BAM! The bonus and compensation furor was ignited.

The truth, however, is that the billions being pumped into AIG were being paid out to speculators who arguably should have taken a haircut.

Goldman Sachs, for example, got an estimated $12.9 billion of the AIG dollars even though the Goldman noted on a March 20th, 2009 public conference call that their exposure was minimal if AIG had been liquidated.

AIG's other trading partners—such as Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and Barclays—received $32.7 from AIG to settle the derivative contracts, essentially pushing more cash to the same group that had already received TARP money or foreign banks that taxpayers might take issue with subsidizing.

The dirtiest secret of all is that these institutions were fronting bets placed by hedge funds. Note that in 2008—the year that most investors realized staggering market losses—the top 25 hedge fund managers garnered a total of $11.6 billion in compensation because their funds reaped hundreds of billions by betting on the housing bust. TARP dollars insured that these bets were paid in full instead of being used to address “troubled assets.”

Hedge fund managers, as exemplified by George Soros who put up tens of millions in “soft money” to get Obama elected, are notorious for pumping millions into campaign coffers—65% to the Democrats and 35% to the Republicans in 2008. SNAP! Don’t look at that! What do you know, Soros—who personally made $2.9 billion using swaps to bet on the housing bust—just cropped up in the Wall Street Journal with an op-ed piece calling for CDS regulation… joined days later by Geithner expressing the same opinion. Kind of like Bonnie and Clyde calling for improved bank security… after they robbed the banks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Was 'W' the Worst President Ever?

As orgasmic liberals sharpen their chisels and survey Mt.Rushmore to determine the best placement of Barack Obama’s head shot, their cohorts in academia are working overtime  to put a punctuation mark on the election of ‘08: Ensuring that George “don’t-call-me-shrub” Bush is recorded in the annals of history as “The Worst President Ever.”

Oh how the mighty have fallen. Following 911, George’s approval rating soared above 90%. But with an unpopular war, a ballooning deficit and a Dick for a vice president, George wound up his second term less popular than a website hawking used hemorrhoid cushions. In an informal History News Network  poll of 109 professional historians (academic “Doctors” who can’t prescribe the stuff that kept Anna Nicole Smith looking so lucid before she kicked) 61% rated Bush Part Deux as the worst in the nation’s history.

Granted, it’s hard to argue the ‘W’ will ever crack the top ten (or even the top forty) list of all time greatest presidents, but worst ever? This is America people. A man (for now) has had to sell his soul so many times over to get a sniff at the presidency that the office, by definition, has attracted some of the most questionable characters of all time.

With no universally-accepted metrics for gauging “worst ever,” the label is so subjective that, depending on your perspective, it can be slapped on just about any president. Consider this:

Worst President Ever – The Libertarian View:

As a closet Libertarian my philosophy is simple: Elect the person who will do the least--and by least I mean expansion of government. Every night I run to the TV set hoping that Obama will drop a Regan-esque: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” But alas, all I hear is “stimulus” and ‘investment.”

Poll my fellow delusional, took-one-too-many-political-philosophy-classes Libertarian party members and one name rises to the top of the worst: Franklin Roosevelt. While those not delusional enough to see limited government as viable, consistently rank FDR up with Lincoln and Washington (I suspect because he repealed prohibition) Frank New Deal-ed the federal government into the ever growing behemoth that frightens the bejesus out of Libertarians around the country.

Worst President Ever – The Economist View:

Since 1854 the U.S. economy was been through 32 cycles of expansion and contraction. It’s what free market economies do. Yet for some reason we give some president too much credit for the expansions and curse others for the contractions—and economists can’t agree on why.

For every economist who wants to blame Bush deficits and bank deregulation for the current fiscal crisis, you’ll find others that blame Clinton’s pressure on lenders to offer home loans to the economically disadvantaged. Randomly pick economist and you’re sure to find one that pegs Hooverat the worst because of his association with the Great Depression, Carter as the worst for his association with stagflation or Ford as the worst for his association with ever rising golf course green fees.

Worst President Ever – The Dove View:

The historians surveyed by HNN frequently slammed Bush for dragging us into a “totally unnecessary“ war with Iraq. As opposed to the totally necessary wars with Spain, Korea, Vietnam and Grenada? One can argue that Bush believed his own weapons of mass destruction argument. You can hardly say that for Lyndon B. Johnson who, according to recently declassified files, gave a false pretext for The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which gave him the exclusive right to use military force in Vietnamwithout consulting the Senate.

Vietnam War American Casualties: 58,209. Iraq War American Casualties: 4,257+. (And Google “Filipino civilian casualties during the Spanish-American War” before playing that card.)

Worst President Ever – The “What Happened To My Beachfront Hacienda?” View

Speaking of a false pretext for war, let’s not forget James Polk. Rebuffed in his attempt to purchase the Mexican territories we now know as California, Nevada and Arizona, the mullet-sporting Polk goaded the newly independent nation of Mexicointo a war in 1846 so he could justify the annexation of those lands.

Realizing the great injustice that was done, it speaks well for the Holy Trinity of Liberal Saviors--Barbara Streisand, Susan Sarandon and Sean Pean—that they have collectively agreed to sign over the deeds to their California estates to the first (don’t-you-dare-call-them- illegal) ‘immigrants’ that can trace their lineage trace back to General Santa Anna.

Worst President Ever –The AndersonCooper Metrosexual View:

Tipping the scale at over 300 pounds and the last, to date, commander-in-chief to sport facial hair, no president screams “makeover” like William Taft. Would he even get a sniff in the era of television?

Worst President Ever – The Mormon View:

In 1862 Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act declaring that the practice of polygamy was illegal in all U.S. territories. The same woman every night? I think not.

Worst President Ever – The Anyone with a Shred of Integrity View:

“I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false…” “What do you mean do I remember a blue denim dress?”

Worst President Ever – The April 15^th View

After a 10 year trial run in the 1800’s, the Supreme Court declared federal income tax unconstitutional in 1872. Leave it to Woodrow ‘who-names-their-kid-Woodrow’ Wilson and the 16^th Amendment to make federal income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system. Every April we can celebrate the little amendment that gave rise to Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930’s, Johnson’s Great Society of the 1960’s and Obama’s And-You-Thought-Bush-Knew-How-to-Run-Up-a-Deficit Spendfest of 2009.

My worst president ever? Did I mention I am a closet Libertarian?

Lessons from the Recession

Recessions, in large part, are a result of waning consumer confidence. So at first glance it makes sense to look past the bad news and get people’s glasses optimistically half full again. Writing for The Daily Beast, Mark McKinnon urged President Obama to stop being so concerned with managing expectations and communicate enthusiasm. “You were elected because you are a walking, talking hope machine” writes McKinnon. “Plug that sucker back in and crank it up to ten.”

Not so fast there Mark. The U.S. has deep, systemic  problems that would only be temporarily masked if hope-crazed consumers blindly dipped into savings, ran up credit cards balances and took out new loans to spur another fleeting rise in the gross domestic product (GDP) of which 70% is driven by consumer purchases.

“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal. “They are opportunities to do big things.” Emanuel, though speaking of the fear mongering being used to push the Obama agenda, may be on to something. The economic crisis can be used to drive home some painful lessons that government, business and individuals are in desperate need of learning.

Government spending, which accounts for 19% of our GDP, has far exceeded revenues for years. Were we to address our national debt--which stands at $10.9 trillion dollars today--every man woman and child would need to cut at check for $35,809.65 And that staggering sum ignores the additional $56 trillion in unfunded liabilities needed to support social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare—programs that are set to implode.

Worse yet, the deficit continues to grow at the rate of $3.71 billion dollars a day and the Keynesians in charge of the government purse strings see cranking up that deficit to be the only solution to the current economic crisis.

Despite years of lip service concerning deficit reduction, politicians have shown that they can’t make hard choices. Our rate of indebtedness is so great that if were we to apply for membership in the European Union we would be rejected. The debt-to-GDP ratio for the U.S. is in the neighborhood of 76%, far in excess of the 60% maximum established by the European Union’s Maastricht Treaty.

Proving that the only thing worse than complete Republican control of the reigns of government is complete Democratic control, the three tax-and-spend horsemen of the Apocalypse--Obama, Pelosi and Reid—are out to prove that government, government and more government is the cure for what ails us. Perhaps the pain of a deep recession, coupled with the realization that government can’t magically make it dissipate, might be what’s needed to show Americans that the two party system is broken and real change in government is imperative.

What’s more, it appears that American businesses might need a little pain therapy as well.  In the past, recessions have served as the harsh taskmaster that forced businesses to cut costs, streamline operations, diversify their customer base, ratchet down inventories and focus on service. But in today’s climate of government bailouts, the only lesson businesses seem to be grasping is how to grovel and beg at the off ramp of the Federal government expressway.

Bankers, who in recent years hastily and irresponsibly wrote loans because they knew they could be repackaged as securities and sold off to investors, don’t need a bailout. They need to relearn the importance of writing solid loans that have a legitimate prospect of being repaid.

Automakers need to respond to changing market trends and build products that attract consumers who are concerned about the environment and who are still reeling from recent spikes in gas prices. Of course durable goods sales are down 28%, everyone is waiting to see the auto industry’s next move. The first round of automaker bailouts taught no lessons and only served to delay painful, but necessary restructuring.

Though socialist systems have failed for years, the U.S. seems hell bent on proving that to itself.  Having sunk approximately $70 billion into AIG, the government now a 78% shareholder.  What lessons has AIG learned under the government’s tutelage? According to The Wall Street Journal, AIG is now discounting offerings so heavily to attract new business that they are saddling themselves with policies that will be unprofitable for years. Bailouts don’t help businesses operate more efficiently, they just subsidize ineffective management.

If American’s weren’t so busy pondering important issues such as the merits of the octomom’s latest video blog or whether Rhianna should get back with her abusive boyfriend we might be able to learn some lessons from this recession as well.  

First, we need to unlearn the dangerous lesson taught by the housing boom: Don’t worry about the credit card debt you are racking up because house values only move in one direction—up. When you get saddled with too much consumer debt, simply refinance your house and pay down those balances.

Second, if the housing bust made one thing clear it’s that someone who has not learned to manage their finances well enough to put together a significant down payment probably has no business buying a house. Homeownership entails unanticipated costs. A leaky water heater, new roof or blown air conditioning unit can quickly overwhelm someone who only knows how to live paycheck-to-paycheck. Yet Obama and company feel the need to bail out these unfortunates as well.

Fortunately, it appears that the recession is teaching individuals one important lesson. Savings rates jumped to 3.6% in December 2008, 3 times the 2007 average and far above the 0.04% rate in 2004 during the housing boom. Fear apparently is an effective teacher.

Refined by their struggles during the Great Depression, my parents, Preston and Frances Bell, exemplify frugality, preparedness and living within one’s means. Values they had etched into their core during years of struggle and hardship. Though never wealthy, the current economic downturn has left them unfazed. Their house is paid for, bills are almost nonexistent, and cash is on hand. Contrasting my parents with the majority of Americans who have immediate gratification as their mantra, one can only hope that the current recession teaches some long overdue values.

Wall Street Bonuses

As financial industry executives crowded the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) trough late last year one thing was notably absent—leadership. Instead of stepping up to the podium to thank taxpayers and offer a vision for navigating out of the crisis, the Wall Street executives fell silent. Perhaps they were too busy refurbishing their corner offices or ordering private jets. Perhaps drawing up paperwork for an estimated $18 billion in year-end bonuses diverted their attention. Whatever the case, Americans looked for a visionary path from trouble to prosperity and saw only the dark abyss of greed and incompetence.

This wasn’t always the case. In his 2007 New York Times bestseller, Lee Iacocca lamented, “Where Have All the Leaders Gone?” In this new era of rewarding executives for failure, the more appropriate question is, “Where Has Lee Iacocca Gone?”

TARP (or the How-Henry-Paulson-Guaranteed-Himself-Six-Figure-Speaking-Engagements-For-Life Program as it will come to be known) is hardly the first time the Federal Government has bypassed laissez-affair economics and helped right a floundering ship. In the early 1970’s, troubled aerospace giant Lockheed sought and received government assistance. In 1979, a legend in the business community was born when Chrysler Corporation Chairman Lee Iacocca endured months of heavily-scrutinized Congressional hearings to secure $1.5 billion in government loan guarantees to stave off creditors and save his company from bankruptcy.

What sets Iacocca apart from his financial industry counterparts today is that he opted to lead rather than immediately cash in on the largess of the taxpayers.  Securing the loan guarantees was only the beginning. As it stood in 1979, Chrysler needed to sell 2.2 million cars a year to break even, but was only selling half that amount.

Union

contracts where in disarray. Billions in loans, with interest rates over 20%, where past due, and customers where opting for higher-mileage imports in droves. A multifaceted problem demanded decisive, visionary leadership. Leadership that Iacocca delivered.

Faced with having to ask his unionized workforce to take substantial pay cuts, Iacocca cut his own annual salary to $1.00 and demanded that his executives take a 10% cut as well. Only then did he begin to negotiate with the unions. A far cry from the “leadership” displayed by Merrill Lynch executives, for example, who awarded themselves with $4 billion in bonuses for racking up an estimated $27 billion in losses last year. Bonuses that, in one form or another, were bailout subsidized.

Iacocca also took out print ads and television commercials to thank the taxpayers for their assistance and outlined a vision for the reemergence of Chrysler Corporation as a leading automaker and employer. “Thank You.” What a concept. Rather than express their gratitude for taxpayer assistance, TARP recipients instead send out their spokespersons to explain away lavish bonuses, costly executive retreats, and expensive perks such as new private jets. Putting taxpayers on the hook for billions is one thing, not thanking them is inexcusable.

Far more important than Chrysler’s expressed gratitude was the extraordinary efforts undertaken to reinvent the company. Labor agreements were reworked, with the average union member taking a $10,000 cut over a 19-month period. Loans were renegotiated. Plants were modernized. And a new line of high-mileage, front-wheel drive “K-cars” were introduced. Iacocca had a vision. His workforce and his customers were inspired. As a result Chrysler returned to profitability within 3 years, issued a wildly-popular stock offering and paid back the government-backed loans 7 years before they were due. The vision offered up by the TARP participants? “Keep that checkbook open, we’ll probably need more.”

Today’s financial industry executives sorely lack the leadership qualities that made Iacocca an icon--opting to compensate themselves prematurely rather than earn their reward. Not surprisingly, the public outcry has reached the White House. In response, President Obama has stated that he will now cap the compensation for executives who request further TARP assistance at $500,000 annually.

America

moves closer to socialism with government taking a controlling interest in the means of production and the getting directly involved in private sector compensation.

Sadly, it was all avoidable. Americans, with perhaps the exception of teacher union leaders, get the concept of pay for performance. In the end, his turnaround of Chrysler made Lee Iacocca a very wealthy man. (By exercising stock options, not siphoning off tax dollars.) Americans love to reward success. But lavish bonuses for failure? That has to stop. True leaders must emerge or government control of the banking industry will continue unabated and the confidence Americans need to shake off this recession will never be sparked.

McCain vs. Obama

Watching CNN last night I was astounded by how many Americans are still identifying as “undecided” with the election just days away. Then it hit me, I have been totally irresponsible. Maybe, just maybe, the undecided voters are waiting for me to opine.

I apologize America. Been a bit busy as of late and haven’t had a chance to blog. But since the fates of Obama and McCain hinge on the wisdom typed clumsily by my fingers I guess I better get cracking.

Let’s start with the leader. Barrack “Thanks-for-THAT-middle-name-absentee-Dad” Obama. On the plus side, Obama is a bit of a “wouldn’t kick him out of my bed” looker. Firm buttocks, a melt-my-steely-heart smile, and deep, dark, penetrating eyes. But after a night of mattress rodeo, is he someone I’d be comfortable waking up with everyday?

Oh, heck no! The Obaminator loves him some levying of taxes. At the core, he’s a repackaged tax-and-spend Liberal. It astounds me that people can’t look past the rhythmic pacing of his speeches and his aforementioned firm buttocks and see this.

Look at his record. He promised to cut middle class taxes when he ran for the Senate. Then promptly forgot that promise and voted to raise taxes on people making as little as $40,000. Gee whiz, Ricky, he looks so doggone earnest.

People, wake up. Last week (after the debates were over) he dropped the income level of who he says he’s taxing more from $250,000 to $200,000. The Wall Street Journal took a closer look and lowered that projection to $140,000.

Mark my words (preferably with a pink highlighter) a month after he takes office he’s going to announce that Bush screwed things up even more than he realized and many more of us are going to have the bear the burden of financing his plethora of new initiatives. I do not want my wealth spread around any more than it all ready is. Don’t know that the Obama Nation is getting my vote.

Now for McCain. His saggy buttocks aren’t parking themselves in my bed. Sure, I’d take his wife Cindy out for ice cream once or twice and Sarah Palin can come calling any time she wants. But McCain fails to float my little dinghy.

This isn’t age-ism. There are plenty of 70-somethings who I’d date. Preferable ones with enormous wealth, a bad ticker and an aversion to prenuptial agreements. I just don’t see how a man who admitted a year ago that economics wasn’t his strong suit should be leading us during these trying times. I am all for the surge in Iraq, but this is not a one issue election. We need someone who can move us forward.

Did the Republicans just write this election off? Their crop of presidential contenders during the primaries was about as appealing as a website hawking secondhand hemorrhoid cushions. They offered questionable relief and did nothing to erase the memory that the last Republican was kind of an abnormally enlarged vein occurring inside the anal sphincter.

I look at McCain bumbling his way through the presidential contest and it reminds my why I defected from the Republican party and registered as a Libertarian. But alas, the electorate needs me to decide so decide I must. Can’t play my Libertarian card and escape this one.

Alas, I must go with a guiding principal that has never failed to help me in the polling booth—“Pick the one who will do the least damage.” Let’s see:

Obama
- increases taxes
- moves us towards Nationalized Health Care (ask Canada how that’s working)
- increases the scope of government
- no hottie in the VP slot (sorry Joe)

McCain
- Cuts taxes
- Has such a convoluted health care plan it will never pass
- Keep Pelosi and Reed in check, slows the growth of government
- Brings bonafide hottie to the VP slot who can field dress a moose to boot

Decision: Vote McCain and give thanks that he will only last one term

Collaboration Leads to Innovation?

Leave it to a food blog to teach me the value of collaboration and Web 2.0 socialization of ideas.

Backing up, I’m not what you would call a natural team player. Though I play well with others in the sandbox of life, my work products tend to be solo efforts. As I watch my daughters navigate the college years where now where nothing seems to be an individual assignment, I am grateful I made it through before group projects became all the rage.

I only worked on one group project in college--and I’m still miffed about it. Out of a group of six, two of us did 90% of all the work. And one of us, namely me, was saddled with pulling it all together the night before it was due.

So when the evangelist of the New Web started preaching the value of collaboration I was not a ready-made convert… until, as I mentioned, I started following a food blog

As my waistline battles will attest, I likes me some home cooking. So naturally the first widget I added to my Google homepage was a link to a popular food blog. At first I simply tracked the recipes being posted to see if there were any I wanted incorporate into my Sunday dinner extravaganzas.

Then one day, when the stress and tedium of corporate life could not be alleviated by playing cell phone Tetris in a bathroom stall, I decided to navigate the comments of said food blog. Expecting nothing but thumbs up and thumbs down I was amazed but what I found.

Some comments clarified how the recipe should be executed. This proved especially valuable on recipes for baked goods. (I can cook, but my baking--like my love life--often comes up limp and unfulfilling.) Other comments suggested variations on the basic recipe that even my fertile imagination would have never conjured. And the thumbs up/thumbs down comments helped guide my decision as to whether I should plagiarize the recipe and attempt to pass it off as my own creation… oh wait, I would never do that. 

Collaboration really does translate into innovation. As I began to grasp that concept I saw the utility of incorporating sociability features (comments, ratings, wikis, etc,) into the software and web development projects I was working on. Eventually this gave birth to www.brainstorm101.org, a website that allows the public sector collaborate on innovations, best practices and challenging questions—allowing for real change in the way government operates.

Does everyone contribute equally? Of course not, But as my food blog experience taught me, too many cooks actually don’t spoil the broth. Working together, far superior results can be achieved

Can collective genius reshape government?

The issues facing local, state and Federal government are acute. Declining tax revenues, increased demands for services and a majority of the workforce quickly nearing retirement.

The solution is you. Using www.brainstorm101.org, you can participate in a shared public sector idea bank—the key word being “participate.”  www.brainstorm101.org is not a static repository of information, but a Web 2.0-powered site where members rate, enlarge upon and refine best practices, innovations and answers to pressing questions.

For many, Web 2.0 just means sociability—the meeting and greeting of people. This is an important aspect of the New Web, but sociability is just the beginning. The real dividends are realized when the tools allow you to form a community and tap the power of collective genius.

www.brainstorm101.org is less about social networking and more about capturing, refining and sharing actionable information. The site fundamentally improves the way managers and employees interact as all community members are free to post, review, and refine best practices, innovations, questions and answers. Information is not pushed from the top down, but springs forth at every level—collaboration replaces strictly-enforced hierarchies.

Because all contributions can be reviewed and rated by the community, weaker submissions are naturally weeded out… our search engine actually retrieves higher-rated contributions first.

By keeping the site closed to predatory vendors and prohibiting recruiting we encourage openness. We are, by design, less about making contacts and more about sharing information. It is about enlarging the idea bank.

www.brainstorm101.org represents a new attitude of how government can be transformed--mass collaboration and shared solutions are the key.

Though open for free to early adopters, there will eventually be a modest fee for organizations joining the site. We don’t want vendor clutter (no ads) and we are funding focused data mining activities. Our Internet librarians are embarking on a nationwide effort to tap into the most successful employee suggestion/innovation programs in the public sector and collect the best in best practices.

Care to join us as an early adopter? Contact [email protected] or [email protected] today.

Would Barack's Plan Kill the Economy?

As a registered Libertarian I don’t have a viable dog in the fight for the presidency. But as a taxpayer and citizen, I am more than a little concerned who ultimately wins out. The key issue for me is not just gas prices, the war, or whether to hug or throttle Nancy Pelosi. The key issue for me is whose definition of rich wins out.

McCain commented recently that someone with a net worth of 5 million dollars falls into that category--I ain’t there yet. Obama, on the other hand, lowers the bar significantly. Under the Obama Nation, $250,000 a year slaps you with the rich label and slates you to be taxed aggressively.

Hold on, I make more that $250,000, but I don’t feel rich. My house is modest, my ride is a Hyundai and the last shopping spree I went on was at Costco… the churro at the food court was delicious by the way.

With two ex-wives and two college-age daughters there is plenty of income redistribution going on in my life without the help of the government. Granted, I make more than many of my peers, but I wish Mr. Obama would consider the three things with my disposable income:

1. I indulge in the occasional facial and massage… I’m metro sexual that way.

2. I participate in more than my fair share of fantasy football leagues… I’m a pathetic loser that way.

3. I put my money into launching new businesses… I’m a believer in the American Dream that way.

On the side from my day job, I am currently employing a programmer, a business/QA analyst, a marketing consultant and an office assistant to help me launch www.brainstorm101.org – a Web 2.0 site designed to help public sector professionals share ideas and create shared solutions to problems that vex local, state and Federal government. Getting government to run more efficiently… hmmm… correct me if am wrong, but isn’t “Change” a hot topic right now.

Obama, please hear this… If my taxes go up, the people working with me are out of a job. The site is in the early adoption phase, and without cash infusions from my personal savings there is no way we can continue to operate. It’s a simple formula: keep my taxes reasonable, I continue to invest and jobs are created. It really is that simple!

This isn’t a theory. It’s reality. Why don’t tax happy politicians see that? I’m sorry Mr. Obama, but if you really want what’s best for the American people, maybe it’s your thinking on the definition of rich and the real impact of increased taxes that needs to change.

21 Questions for God

1. Design flaw... Why is there a toxic waste pipeline running right next to the recreational area?

2. Ear hair!?! Were you just trying to tick me off?

3. Song of Solomon Chapter 7 reads in part:

    1 HOW beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.
    2 Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.
    3 Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.

Why isn’t Song of Solomon referenced more in Sunday School?

4. Why aren’t people possessed with devils anymore? Or is that Donald Trump's deal?

5. Does it annoy You when hardcore rappers thank You during their Grammy Award speeches?

6. More annoying... Bitter atheists or self-righteous fundamentalists?

7. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

8. On any given day, how many lottery-related prayers do You get? How does that stack up against prayers of pure gratitude?

9. Where’s my hamster?

10. Why is a carrot more orange than an orange?

11. Two soldiers on opposing sides of a battlefield pray fervently. Which one do You listen to?

12. Proverbs 10:4 says "He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich…" Does that mean we are supposed to work to get ahead rather than pray to get ahead?

13. Paid clergy? Wasn’t what was given given freely?

14. “Thou shalt not kill” was written before freeway driving was invented. Any chance for a rewrite?

15. If eating pork is a no no why are BLT's so tasty?

16. Is there a sin worse than gossip?

17. Why is it so hard to forgive?

18. Do You really have to bless everyone who sneezes?

19. Are You a cat person or dog person?

20. What happens to the socks we lose in the dryer?

21. Any chance for a do-over?

Somebody Call Me a “Doctor”

Rarely am I at a total loss for words. Though rarely eloquent, I do have a gift for inane babble. At least that was the case until yesterday.

Yesterday I made the mistake of listening to Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “Keep Hope Alive” radio program on a road trip from Arizona to California. As I listened, I knew I needed to do a less frivolous blog than usual. But when I sat down at the computer last night no words could properly capture my reaction. I was totally speechless.

Now, some 24 hours since the airing of the show, I am just beginning to wrap my mind around the experience. My first thought is: “I must immediately pull my daughter out of college!” My second thought is: “There needs to be Federal restrictions on who can prefix their name with the title of “Dr.”

First, let me make some things clear. I am neither liberal nor conservative. I have no loyalty to any major political party. I’m of the opinion that any politician who has made an impact on the national scene has sold his or her soul so many times to gain that standing that they have little value to me. The same can be said of political commentators with celebrity status (the Rush Limbaugh’s and Jesse Jackson’s of the world).

In the interest of full disclosure I should point out that I lost all respect for Jesse since seeing him in action at his Rainbow/PUSH coalition “church” on the south-side of Chicago back in ’82. There he was, amongst the poorest of the poor, talking about how he was one of them. He too lived on Chicago’s south side. He knew their struggles.

His impassioned speech was quite effective. The audience was literally waving their limited cash in the air, ready to give generously of what little they had. Living on the south side myself, I saw one glaring flaw in his speech. In the middle of the housing projects and dilapidated dwellings to the south of Chicago lies a little white bread enclave surrounding the University of Chicago known as Hyde Park. At the heart of Hyde Park lies an exclusive gated community filled with multimillion dollar homes--one of the most expansive of which belonged to the good Reverend himself.

Saying he lived on the south side is like me saying my dream vacation is going to a Third World country to do charity work. Of course by “Third World country” I mean Tahiti. And by “charity work” I mean throwing twenty dollar bills at a pool boy dancing seductively in a Speedo.

This past Sunday, Jesse’s loose grasp on facts was again in full force. Over a two hour period he made the following assertions:

1. While the families of the victims of 911 were so generously compensated that they are now millionaires, the victims of Hurricane Katrina have received “absolutely zero.” Umm, didn’t they all get debit cards for short-term needs? Aren’t the city and its levies being rebuilt? Didn’t the Katrina tax break spur an unprecedented outpouring of donations topping $11 billion? But wait, Jesse has a march organized this weekend in New Orleans, so I guess “absolutely zero” plays a little better.

2. The war in Iraq is responsible for last week’s Virginia Tech massacre. Jacksonian logic works like this: The Iraq war is putting guns in the hands of young people and teaching them to “kill without conscience.” The Virginia Tech shooter was young, had guns and killed without conscience. Hence the Iraq war fostered this tragedy. What? I haven’t taken a class in Aristotelian logic in some years, but did he just say “If A equals B then shower flip flops are bananas?”

3. The war in Iraq, the Virginia Tech shooting, the Don Imus firing, the firestorm surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the slashing of budgets for mental healthcare by Ronald Reagan make it imperative that the march in New Orleans this coming weekend be supported. Stop! I can’t even begin to relate how he tied these disparate issues together. Basically the Jesse approach is to throw out hot button topics, get listeners fired up and encourage them to get on his website and support his causes. Thoughtful reflection is not recommended.

Wow! After two hours of this I was mentally exhausted. But my beef is not with the 99 Cent Store knockoff of the Saks Fifth Avenue original Martin Luther King. My beef is with his panel of so-called experts. Throughout the broadcast Jesse pulled in a gaggle of "Dr.’s" from some of the top universities in the country.

Call me jaded, but I’m guessing these aren’t the kind of doctors who can prescribe the kind of drugs that kept Anna Nicole Smith looking so lucid. I’m thinking they are doctors like I’m a rocket scientist. Sure I’ve taken an excessive amount of college courses and written numerous papers, but my only successful “launch” was a bottle rocket at a Mexican beach… as I danced seductively in a Speedo.

Despite their degrees and titles, not one of these holders of a doctorate stepped up and questioned the butter-knife sharp logic of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. These molders of young minds just jumped into the conversation, fanned the flames of entitlement fever and ultimately plugged a book or newspaper column which they had authored.

Holey Cheese Batman! Are these the people we want shaping the next generation of leaders? Do these mush-brained academics deserve their self-bestowed titles? Please, can we limit the conferring of "Dr." to individuals who probe my rectum for signs of prostate trouble and not their personal amusement?

Over the entire two-hour broadcast only one individual challenged the reasoning skills of Pastor Jackson… and he was no self-described academic physician. He was a caller who had been relocated from the 9th Ward of New Orleans to Houston. A caller who Jesse apparently wanted to hold out as a poster boy for his upcoming march. Only one problem. While the caller was displaced by Hurricane Katrina, rather than complain about the hardships endured he said it was the best thing that ever happened. “I had no economic opportunities living in the 9th Ward,” he said. “Moving to Houston was the best thing that ever happened to me. Now I can build a life for my family.”

Then the caller went silent. “And we are marching to help people like you too,” interjected Rev. Jackson to the approval of his supporting cast of Dr.’s.