From the âThose who do not learn history are doomed to repeat itâ department, there is this quote from Harry S Truman:
If itâs a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I donât want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.
Steve Israel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Robert Bennett (the Democratic brain trust behind the Demâs 2014 performance), clearly didnât learn much during their history lessons.
We all have different values and interests, so it is natural that we disagree on public policy. Open and honest debate would be healthy, but our politics these days is mostly negative, destructive and often dishonest. Speaker Boehner warned the President not to “poison the well” of goodwill by taking action on immigration. In almost the next sentence, the Speaker himself poisoned the well by saying the House will vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act (a vote that will go nowhere). Regardless of what you think about either issue, the Speaker’s words ended any shot at constructive debate. Mr. Boehner isn’t stupid. While being hypocritical is bad policy, it is often good politics.
This is what happens when you vote based on political ads:
Along with the conservative wave, voters also went in another direction:
We live in a time when we require drugs, super-heroes, and religion to help escape the realities that we have created for ourselves. Now is not the time to drift off.
Despite their intent, those that didnât go to vote also voted:
Be afraid, be very afraid:
Finally, letâs remember Tom Magliozzi, co-host with his brother Ray, of NPR’s Car Talk, who died this week from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. Car Talk was a temple of funny advice, mostly about our problems with cars. But they often got into other areas. The Wrongologistâs favorite was their philosophical deliberation on the question:
Do two people who donât know what they are talking about know more, or less, than one person who doesnât know what they are talking about?
With this discussion, they illuminated a key question about our politics. The boys easily addressed the issue: two people who know nothing actually know less than one person.
If you think about ANY two politicians, you know they were correct.
âDemocracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, they deserve to get it good and hard.â âH. L. Mencken
What has changed in our recent elections is that most American people live lives of barely suppressed ill-feeling. Americans have become hoarders of grudges, with voters believing that current politics bring only a sense of outrage, a feeling of being pushed aside, and made to feel small, or diminished.
They see those in power not as helpers and protectors of our people and our traditions, but as predators, out for whatever they can get. Our politicians see their own ideas for change as blessed, and the ideas of their opponents as damned.
Elections should attempt to bring out the best, not the worse in ordinary people. But in 21st century elections, this superordinate goal exceeds the peopleâs grasp.
Our political process has devolved. We have a deterioration of our public conscience, a smothering of community spirit when it comes to the vital issues of public life. Great ends are to be achieved by tawdry, underhanded or inadequate means.
We now try to reach political heaven mostly using the methods of hell.
Songs for todayâs music break
We start with a song tribute to a guy that doesn’t let democracy mess with his plans. Its âGo Hard Like Vladimir Putinâ by A.M.G. You had to expect there would be a Putin rap, and it comes straight outta Moscow by two black guys who emigrated from Africa. K. King, is from Zimbabwe via London, while Beni Maniaci is from Kenya. Both moved to Russia in the early 2000s to study medicine in Volgograd. It isnât clear if they are still in medicine after this became a huge hit in Russia, but they say they are booked solid through December:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDIlQ3_lsKE
Difficult to imagine someone saying âGo Hard Like Barack Obamaâ or, âGo Hard Like Mitch McConnellâ.
Next, a song that hopes democracy will solve the world’s problems. It is Jackson Browne who has a new album and a new song both entitled âStanding In The Breach“:
Sample lyrics:
You don’t know why, But you still try for the world you wish to see. You don’t know how, it will happen now after all that’s come undone. But you know the change that the world needs now, is there in everyone.
Regarding our democracy, the Wrongologist simply doesnât get it: Those most at risk of disenfranchisement, more regressive taxation, greater risk of losing their jobs, safety net and reproductive freedom, canât be bothered to go to the polls.
Meanwhile, working class whites vote against the ACAâthe best thing US government has done for working class people since Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.
âYou canât always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you needâ â Rolling Stones
Democrats seriously suck at politics. On the other hand, you can fight the opposition, you can fight the media, you can fight the money, and you can fight vote suppression.
But, idiocy is damned near invincible. And sadly, idiocy is pretty well distributed across party lines:
After a massacre on par with the catastrophic election of 2010, 2014 proves that you hold elections with the citizens you have. Democrats didnât accept that reality. As the Wrongologist said on November 3rd:
The Democrats have no closing argument. The great tragedy of the Democrats is that they still believe politics is about competing sermons.
They ran to the right, distanced themselves from the Obama agenda, and hoped that their ground game would bring them victory. It didnât, and itâs not going to be easy to get the same quality of GOTV effort that Obama got in 2008 and 2012, after coming up so short this time. If you look at the political map, what you see is red and purple counties in suburban and rural areas that taken together, in low turn-out elections, are now equal to anything that solidly blue urban areas can muster. This problem prevents any Democratic effort to undermine the ability of Republicans to successfully gerrymander secure districts.
Are establishment Democrats who are now on their way to their lucrative post-political careers, going to have the will to fight for anything before they go? Beltway Democrats have a lot to answer for. And one question is whether the Democratic Party is more than a regional party that can win in only a few coastal states. Their political infrastructure has now mostly gone to seed. Here is a modest program for improvement:
1. The old guard leaders must go. The Democratic caucus should throw out the entire leadership team and start over. Why would any candidate want to brand themselves with the organizations run by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Debbie Wassermann-Schultz, Steve Israel, and whoever it was that allowed Democratic Senate candidates to run this yearâs content-frees campaigns?
2. They should look at the political landscape: People are discontented. Why? In part, because incomes haven’t risen in 15 years. What did Democrats do in response? Nothing. What did voters do? They voted enmasse for the party that has done everything possible to keep their incomes down. Apparently, any change was better than more of the same inaction.
3. They need to listen to constituents. The current bunch are over-manipulative, over-controlled, and fools for the money. Over the past 30 years, the Wrongologist has met with Governors, Senators and Congress people to push policy ideas. But today, what mostly comes out of those meetings (if they will take them) are platitudes and polite put-downs.
4. They need to realize that good Ideas can come from the people: The purpose of Occupy Wall Street was to drive the 1%-99% inequality idea. It gained traction. Everyone knew it was true, but Democrats could (or would) not operationalize any policy from the idea. They let the bankers off the hook, while mildly pushing tax reform and the Minimum Wage. Maybe what we saw last night was the âRevenge of Occupyâ.
People tend to believe what Republicans say about Democrats, instead of what Democrats actually say about themselves. Their peer-pressure techniques block out reasoned political conversation. This has the effect of isolating people, and convincing them that everyone around them believes Republican-speak, and that to cross that line will result in personal approbation, or possibly, social excommunication.
Allowing this to continue has been the greatest failure of Democratic leaders.
The problem is that people either don’t know what the Democrats and the Republicans stand for, or donât really care. Based on the Pew poll of voting types, nonpartisans have no idea who runs what in Congress.
If we can get voters to understand what Republicans are for and what Democrats are for, there could be Democratic majorities even with the level of turnout we saw yesterday. This is âbrandingâ, and Democrats have to stop letting the Râs do it for them.
Look, we’ve made surprising progress on some issues in the past 6 years. The gap is with connecting the winning issues to the winning candidates. Unless the Democratic Party changes, it is a casket for progressive ideas and candidates.
A little known fact is that over the past 40 years, the number of fires in the US have dropped dramatically. Consider this chart fromVox, based on data from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA):
The number of fires responded to by municipal fire departments in 2013, about 1.2 million, is roughly a third of the 3.3 million responses in 1977. Note that these numbers don’t include wildfires, which aren’t dealt with by local fire departments and as Vox reports, keep getting worse.
And since the US population has increased by 44% during that same period, this is a pretty remarkable trend. It seems that most of the improvement can be attributed to things we would expect: stricter fire codes, fireproof building materials, cars that catch on fire less often, and installation of protective devices like smoke alarms.
Yet, during the same period, the number of firefighters has increased:
Paid firefighters have increased by roughly 48%, from about 230k in 1986 to about 340k in 2012, in line with the population growth. The number of volunteer firefighters has remained the same. We now have more firefighters fighting fewer fires. So, what are all these firefighters doing?
Firefighters now respond to many more medical calls per year than actual fires. In fact, the chart below shows that fires and false alarms held steady or declined, while medical calls grew from 5 million to about 22 million by 2012. There is also a slightly better chance that the fire engine is responding to a false alarm than to a fire:
The decline in fires has put firefighters in a curious position. What should they be doing to justify their (in most cases) growing budgets? Vox quotes Libertarian economist Alex Tabarrock of George Mason University:
Firefighters face what I’ve called the ‘March of Dimes’ problem. After polio was cured, the March of Dimes looked around and said ‘what do we do now?â Firefighters have been facing the same problem.
Now, there is little in city life that is more reassuring than walking past the neighborhood fire house. It reminds us that there are people in our employ who are ready to strap on equipment and head into danger to help out one of our neighbors. But it wasnât always that way:
The Wrongologist may be one of the last persons who remembers when homeowners paid a fee to a for-profit fire department to protect your property. That was in Brooklyn, NY in the early 1950âs. The fire company placed a medallion on the homes of their âclientsâ, and didnât protect any homes without medallions. There was no public FD service in that neighborhood until the late 1950âs.
The Boston Globe reports that the Boston FD accounts for 7.5% of the city’s total budget, while NYC spends $1.72 billion on its FD. It is difficult to tell people that fewer firefighters will keep them just as safe, and the political fall-out for any mayor who tries to dramatically reduce firefighter head count would almost certainly be gruesome. Talk about poking the bear.
But what is the highest and best use for idle firefighters? Could cities work to slowly transfer firefighters to EMT, Park Rangers, Inspection Services or other city jobs? What about the pay differences? There are always efficiencies to be gained in public jobs. It seems sensible to start reducing staffing levels and adjust the number of fire stations, given the occurrence of fires.
Efficiencies might be found by using better processes, such as integrating the dispatch services operated by EMT and Fire, or by using different tools. For example, if cities want to use firefighters as extra paramedics, maybe sending smaller trucks or motorcycles equipped with oxygen for cardiac situations, might be workable. The motorcycle would likely get on site sooner, and the crackerbox EMT truck could follow behind for transportation of a patient to hospital. There would always be some extra portly people who canât be carried down 5 flights of stairs by 2-3 people, so they would have to wait for reinforcements. But there should be no need to dispatch a fire truck just to be sure more lifting power is available if needed.
Natalie Simpson, a SUNY Buffalo professor who studies the history of emergency response, says that because of the nature of the demands we put on fire departments, we can’t really shrink their ranks, and there are problems with putting them in different vehicles too:
If you say, ‘there’s very few fires, so we don’t need as many firefighters or fire engines,’ a fire is still eventually going to break out…And without the same response resources, you’re going to have the same number of very few fires, but some of them are going to become catastrophic.
Her view is that we need to have a surge capability to respond in any given area to make sure that the few fires that do occur can be put out quickly. We can model those issues as we ALWAYS do in the private sector, to determine optimal staffing and equipment for the required level of response.
No one should be saying that firefighters aren’t heroes, or that they didn’t show amazing teamwork and bravery when on the scene of a fire. But all that bravery should not by itself, justify inefficient numbers. Every dollar we can save is a dollar that can be better used elsewhere.
Today is Election Day, and it seems even the Main Stream Media circus has limited interest.
And if you look to the left, we finally have a proven case of voter fraud. Its certain that this little Havanese didnât vote using its own ID.
Whatever the results, progressive ideas and politics will continue to decline because todayâs Democrats have moved to the right from where they were 40 years ago.
Based on the content of the 2014 mid-terms, Democrats are seeking to âconserveâ society as a 20th century education, an 18th century government, a neoliberal economic ideology, and contradictory policies in foreign affairs.
There is no energy in the mid-terms behind real reform, even well-protected Senators and Congresspersons are only willing to preserve watered-down versions of marriage rights for all, Social Security/Medicare, some semblance of a non-military expense category in the federal budget. And no one is for healthcare for all or addressing climate change. The Republicans mainly want to preserve wealth, protect large business and continue to go through the motions of appeasing their social conservative base and the gun lobby.
The tactics of both parties more or less âworkâ, if by that we mean to build long, lucrative political careers. There is no sense that any policy means much to Americaâs politicians who mostly speak in platitudes and rarely say what they mean.
Theyâve fooled us for decades and âthe peopleâ seemingly never tire of the BS. The Republicans have a closing argument that the Rude Pundit paraphrases thusly:
The Republican National Committee is up with an ad that throws every scary thing in the world at you. “ISIS gaining ground. Terrorists committing mass murder. Ebola inside the US, Americans alarmed about national security,” says the ominous voice ominously. “Whatâs President Obama doing? Making plans to bring terrorists from Guantanamo to our country. Ignoring the Constitution, the Congress, and the American people. November 4th, Obamaâs policies are on the ballot. Vote to keep terrorists off U.S. soil. Vote Republican.
The Democrats have no closing argument. The great tragedy of the Democrats is that they still believe politics is about competing sermons.
That is a nice fantasy, but that isnât how politics works today. Any attempt by Democrats to engage in a policy struggle with Republicans that fails to understand how powerful people on the right use a multitude of sophisticated techniques that would make Machiavelli faint, is doomed to failure, and the proof of this is right in front of us today.
We live in the mess these people are making. We have to vote, organize, and persuade others to vote if we are to make safe, secure lives for ourselves and for our families.
Here is Tuesday linkage:
Election officials in 27 states have launched a program that threatens a huge purge of voters from the rolls. The Interstate Crosscheck program has generated a list of 7 million names that state officials say represent people who are not only registered, but have actually voted in two or more states in the same election. You be the judge.
Whatever the governor does, whatever your state representative, your state senator does, whatever they do, we are the ones that will decide whether it is constitutional; we decide whether itâs lawful. We decide what it means, and we decide how to implement it in a given case. So, forget all those other votes if you donât keep the Ohio Supreme Court conservative.
The Small Business Majority, an organization of 30,000 small business owners, released the results of a September 2014 Internet survey of 900 small business owners that showed that 78% of their group believe we should change our current election system to one that allows for multiparty representation, a system that could lead to election of parties other than the Republicans and Democrats.
The WaPo reports that US-backed Syria rebels have been routed by fighters linked to al-Qaeda. Half measures donât work. Either we decide to go all-in with Assad, or letâs go home. His is the only force in the area capable of crushing ISIS. At the same time, we should remove the PKK and any other Kurdish forces from the terror list and supply them with the best weaponry. That is, if we really want to win.
Are you tired because you got an extra hourâs sleep last night? Letâs get your brain started with a question: Who benefits it the government funds the development of new technology?
Answer: Private corporations.
Economist Mariana Mazzucatoâs book about the role of the State in innovation, The Entrepreneurial State says that the image of a useless State at odds with a dynamic private sector is a myth. Mazzucato reveals in multiple case studies that the opposite is true; the private sector is only willing to invest after someone in a garage has a good idea that must be commercialized, or after the State makes a seed investment.
She describes how it worked with Appleâs iPhone and Googleâs search engine. In both cases their popular consumer products benefited from state financing of basic research. For the iPhone, some of the technologies that make it âsmartâ were funded by the US government, such as the global positioning system (GPS), the touchscreen display, and the forerunner of the voice-activated personal assistant, Siri.
As for Google, development of its fundamental search algorithm was funded by the National Science Foundation. Plus, of course, thereâs that thing called the Internet, another government funded venture, which makes the iPhone “smart”, and makes Google searches useful and valuable.
The right-wing myth is that the government needs to be completely out of the way of business, except for providing tax and regulatory incentives for private companies, to make them âwantâ to create the products they sell.
But, in the real world, many successful companies harvest the work of others and repackage proven technologies into successful products. In the 21st Century, companies often just mine the surface of their technology estate. When “innovative” companies are hugely profitable, often they buy back their shares and/or raise dividends, but do not invest that much in their long-term futures.
Finally, despite the fact that some companies directly benefit from taxpayer-funded technologies, they âunderfundâ (via tax breaks and holding profits offshore) the government that helped develop technologies that led to their success.
The obvious way for the public to âprofitâ from socialized risk is to retain some ownership of the technologies that underlie those successes.
Another myth that needs to be exploded is that companies will not introduce new products if they canât own 100% the intellectual property behind the products. Not true. Today, they often share their technology ownership with other firms. And it is inconceivable that a growing public estate of licensable technical know-how would sit under-exploited, if it could be licensed by corporate America.
Of course milk is good for you! Well, maybe not as much as the milk-industrial complex wants you to believe. Swedish researchers took two groups, one with 61,000 women and the other with 45,000 men, and followed them for 20 years to see if milk intake was related to fractures or to death. Apparently, not so much. Maybe you should give Almond milk a try.
Using CDC data, a study finds that high rates of ADHD diagnoses correlated directly with state laws that penalize schools financially when students fail. An ADHD diagnosis can take a student out of the statistics. The five states that have the highest rate of diagnoses â Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indiana and North Carolina â are all over 10% of school age children. The five states with the lowest percent diagnosed â Nevada, New Jersey, Colorado, Utah and California â are all under 5%.
The US has changed its H-1B record retention policy. The US Department of Labor said that records “are temporary records and subject to destruction” after five years, under a new policy. But, the H-1B visa lasts 6 years. The total database is about 1GB, so whatâs the issue?
The Air Force doesnât have enough mechanics for its new F35 fighter: The reason is political. The Air Force was counting on training A-10 mechanics, but Congress is blocking the Air Forceâs plan to retire the A-10 aircraft. It could take 12 months longer than proposed to get the F-35 in the air, if the A-10 stays online.
The war between the banks and phone companies over mobile banking in Kenya heats up. After the huge success of mobile banking in Kenya, commercial banks began to invest in mobile phone-based banking, including selling their own SIM cards instead of using those issued by mobile phone providers. Now, the mobile phone operators are crying foul.
When the TuNur project in the Tunisian Sahara comes online in by late 2018, it will provide clean and reliable power to more than 2.5 million UK homes. The project will be connected to the European electricity grid via a dedicated cable from Tunisia to Italy. The UK participated in funding the project.
Your wake-up song is from Trigger Hippy, a new roots super-group founded by Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman, and singer Joan Osborne. It is an amalgam of country, blues, soul and rock. Here is âRise up Singingâ, so time to rise up:
Let this thought guide your week:
Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth. – Muhammad Ali
When people decide not to vote because the parties are not different from each other, candidates with strong ideological commitments win. That elected person then tries to move the country in the direction of an ideology supported by a minority of voters.
For the past 20 years, that direction has been a death warrant for the American middle class. If you think that the middle class is really what made America âexceptional,â then those political leaders elected to implement and sustain a corporatist agenda have worked to destroy the American Dream, while they hypocritically endorsed and exploited it in order to get elected.
The US is in the middle of a course of corporate political imperialism that has savaged average Americans, while it enriched plutocrats. Wealth has been consolidated, the means-of-production have been concentrated in the hands of a few corporations, and big business has effectively purchased our governments, both state and federal. Mostly because not enough of us take the time to bone up on the issues, or to vote in the off-year elections.
Two things need to change: First, more people need to vote. Second, we must throw off our corporate political masters. As long as we have a situation where corporations have all of the rights, but none of the liabilities of the people, they always have a competitive advantage over the public.
For both your Halloween hangover and your pre-election headache:
Jeb Bush floats idea of continuing the family dynasty:
Ebola Volunteers are heroes and potential disease vectors. Some politicians canât hold both thoughts:
Other epidemics caused by not voting:
Texas has apparently âsolvedâ the voter fraud problem:
Boo, itâs Halloween. Are you going as Beetlejuice, or do you have a cool Halloween costume? Do you have Gluten-free treats for the kids? Amazing snacks that look like eyeballs and intestines? Pumpkin carved with teeth that look like the Manhattan skyline? Well, two out of four is batting .500, which the SF Giantsâ RF Hunter Pence got close to with .444. If youâre scoring at home, weâre happy for you!
Madeline Albright one-ups Conan:
Today, Halloween-themed music:
Here is the 1978 hit about everyday monsters in the city. âWerewolves of Londonâ, by the late Warren Zevon has lyrics that make werewolves seem like an everyday phenomenon: âLittle old lady got mutilated late last night, werewolves of London again.â Join the pack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhSc8qVMjKM
Second, âMonster Mashâ by the late Bobby Pickett. Here is a young Dick Clark on American Bandstand in 1962 introducing Bobby Pickett, who performs his throw-back Halloween classic, in which he succeeds in sounding like Boris Karloff:
Next, âThrillerâ by the late Michael Jackson. This is a 13+ minute video about a nightmare with zombies, directed by Jon Landis. The song/dance routine that most of you have seen on TV starts at 9:41. If you start then, you will miss Vincent Priceâs ârapâ at 6:35 and the entire premise of the production. Michael says “I’m not like other guys,” at the start of the video. That was in 1982, and may have been the truest thing he ever said. This gets the Wrongologistâs vote as best Halloween video:
Finally, on the last day of October, âWhen October Goesâ from Barry Manilow. I KNOW, who thinks Barry is relevant? Well, he is today:
The lyrics are from a poem by Johnny Mercer. Mercer’s wife found them following his death. She gave the poem to Barry, who later said it took him just 15 minutes to write the tune. It is from Barryâs great jazz album of the 1980s, 2:00AM – Paradise Cafe.
This year, Republicans did not put up a challenger in 37 House races, while Democrats did not field candidates in 32 districts, according to the Cook Political Report. Another 8 House districts will see no contest between the main parties, because of the âtop twoâ primary system used in California and Washington state. These 77 single-party House races are a high number by recent standards. In 2012, there were 45 of them.
In todayâs Democratic Party, challengers seldom see a primary attack from their left, while Republican incumbents often fear attacks from the right. The Economist quotes Rep. Mike Capuano (D-MA) who is running unopposed: (brackets by the Wrongologist)
In politics, Republicans are like dogs, working as a pack [while] Democrats are the cats.
Few races for the House are closely fought. Roughly 80% of the 435 members have little or fear on election day. Given the very high costs of getting elected, there are fewer opposition candidates in historically safe House districts.
Turning to the Senate, in July 2014, 42 Senators (41 GOP and 1 Dem) succeeded in killing Bill S2569, which would have repealed the corporate tax break for shipping American jobs overseas (you need 60 votes to overturn a Filibuster). And on Nov 4th, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) and all the other Senators (running in this cycle) who voted against the Bill will be re-elected.
DC insiders think that this is a feature, not a bug. Would voters tolerate a Congress with hundreds of uncontested seats?
Independents favor Republicans by 20 points: Republicans have discovered that a sufficiently united party can obstruct everything and anything, but largely escape blame for the resulting gridlock.
The most politically engaged states: This study shows the most engaged states had a more highly educated population, higher per capita economic output and fairer tax systems. Massachusetts and Colorado were #1 & #2. West Virginia was #50.
The US is developing better relations with Iran: If permanent, the shift could drastically alter the balance of power in the region. If the nuclear issue is resolved, this could be Obamaâs greatest legacy. But, it risks alienating key US allies, like Israel, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
Some of Bachâs masterpieces were composed by his wife: A documentary film, âWritten by Mrs. Bachâ makes a case that Anna Magdalena Bach actually composed some of works attributed to her husband, Johann Sebastian Bach. And she had to cook and clean.
Who is watching the World Series? Apparently, fewer of us than ever: The last time the World Series averaged more than 20 million viewers was in 2004 when the Boston Red Sox defeated the St. Louis Cardinals to take their first title since 1918.
We have the methods, materials, and expertise to handle any of our major problems, be it with economic growth, war/peace, income inequality, social malaise or, outbreaks of serious infectious disease. Our problem is that in all of these areas, we have chosen not to use our abilities to solve any problems that involve use of the commons because the Congress wonât agree that the commons can be used for these things, except in an academic sense.
In America, when push comes to shove, it is you and the people you feel are part of your clan or tribe that countânever mind that we live on a finite planet with finite resources and carrying capacityâthat is irrelevant to the vast majority of us.
Now, along comes Ebola, and, collectively, we have chosen to ignore the problem, to slow roll vaccines that could treat it, because, capitalism.
Are we going to realize that simply following our own self-interest may not be in our self-interest? That maybe the culture of narcissism may not be all itâs cracked up to be? The Ebola diversion from real election issues will not stop, however. If it does, the media will simply find a new shiny object.
Could our leadership class be motivated enough to actually be responsible, and not just to APPEAR to be responsible?
Tokyo has way fewer homeless than NYC. Why? The Japanese Constitution guarantees its citizens âthe right to maintain the minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living.â That document was drawn up by Gen. MacArthur during our occupation after WW II. So, because of the US, the Japanese have a stronger safety net for their citizens than we do in our own country. Ironic, or what?
Corporate Wellness programs are ineffective: The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) survey found that 36% of firms with more than 200 workers, and 18% of firms overall, have wellness programs. The Upshot says they rarely work. Quelle surprise!
Business Insider says maximizing shareholder value is bad. OMG, what would Mitt say? James Montier, a behavioral finance writer, believes that companies should be required to focus on running their businesses, producing quality goods and services, treating customers and workers fairly, and creating shareholder value as a by-product, not as an objective.
