Supreme Court Errors - #1. Giving Money to Politicians is Protected Speech

The Supreme Court made a HUGH mistake when it decided that giving money is the same as speech that is protected by the 1st Amendment. Or maybe it was not a mistake; maybe it was corruption.

The 1st Amendment states the following:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

That is a regrettable run-on sentence that clumps together three different restrictions on the Congress. Let’s focus on the freedom of speech restriction portion of the Amendment:

Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;

The subject of this section of the 1^st Amendment is spoken or published by the press. The meaning of "the press" at the time of adoption included all forms of printed speech produced and distributed by in written form. A fair application of the 1^st Amendment to modern conditions would be application of the restriction to include all forms of published speech that have emerged in the intervening years, such as broadcast radio and television.  These are modern manifestations of the “press” that existed at the time that the Bill of Rights was ratified.The scope is clear and it remained clear until the activist Court imposed their dictatorial redefinition of speech to include gifts of money to politicians in office, also known as bribes.

But the Court, actually the corporate-friendly members of the Court known as Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia, and sometimes Kennedy engaged in a, Earl Warren-like act of tyranny and decided that for the first time in the history of the United States, the “speech” in the 1^st Amendment did, and was always intended to protect gifts of money to politicians while they were in office. And these are bribes. Let’s be perfectly clear about this: No one gives money to a sitting government official except with the expectation of getting something in return. The President is not a charitable cause, or a foundation for social good. He is a man with great power to control the employees of the Executive Branch of government which happens to include all Federal Regulators. Regulators, as in, the people charged with telling Banks what they cannot do and enforcing it, and imposing all sorts of rules and restrictions on the purveyors of food and medicine about how they must make, label, and sell their product, and lots of expensive rules about how manufacturers must dispose of waste products. All of these rules are without a doubt inconvenient and costly to the businesses that must comply with them. It is often MUCH cheaper to pay politicians to change the rules or to order the regulators to back off.

The redefinition of “Speech” to include gifts of money to politicians is one of the biggest misstates that the Supreme Court has ever made. Money is not speech. Corporations are not people.

How To Succeed in Business

It is the conventional wisdom that all it takes to succeed in America is a good education and hard work. 
 

This mythology serves several factions that promote it endlessly. Colleges love it because it imbues their product with value without actually requiring them to be accountable for delivering anything valuable in exchange for four years of tuition. Businesses promote it because it assures an endless supply of bright young people who will work hard and put in thousands of unpaid hours of effort in the belief that they will be richly rewarded with “success” later in their career. Politicians promote it because it covers of the ugly reality that capitalism in American has degenerated into a purely exploitative system that succeeds by paying workers far less than the value of the goods and services they product.

So what does it really take to succeed in business in America? The answer is revealed by examining a few illustrative real-life examples.

Apple, Inc.

First, let’s talk about John Sculley, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak and Apple Corporation. Wozniak was the worker in the original Apple Corporation. He invented the first few computers pretty much single handedly. Wozniak was the perfect model for a successful worker. But he did not rise to the top of Apple, Inc. as a result of his undeniable competence and hard work.

Jobs had the vision to see the large potential market for Wozniak’s invention. Wozniak either did not see the potential, or did not have the drive to pursue it. Jobs had drive. And he had the ruthless ambition to screw anyone who got in his way. Jobs took Wozniak’s invention and created a business to produce and promote it. Wozniak did receive a minority share of the new company, but Jobs retained the controlling interest.

Enter John Sculley. Sculley had a good education, and had had some marketing success at Pepsi. But Sculley had no knowledge of information technology or electronics and no vision for the future of the company. Sculley had business executive skills. He worked on the Board members with charm, bullshit, and personal attacks on Jobs (which was easy because Jobs was abrasive and abusive). Sculley somehow convinced the Board that Sculley, not Jobs, had the vision and wisdom to guide Apple, Inc. to a greater future. This was of course a complete lie. But for the moment it worked. Sculley rose to the top of Apple, Inc. by using his business skills – Bullshitting, back-stabbing, brown-nosing, bragging.

Under John Sculley's leadership Apple, Inc. lost the lead and withered. Shareholders finally had enough, and Sculley was eventually ousted, and more mature Jobs returned. Sculley left Apple and never succeeded at anything for the rest of his career. The story at Apple was not unusual in its day. Several other promising technology startups were taken over by untalented individuals who’s only skill was the application of the business executive skills. Ashton-Tate was an unfortunate victim of the well dressed corporate artists.

General Douglas MacArthur

General Douglas MacArthur was a legendary five star Army General. He graduated from West Point Military Academy and had a military career that spanned World War I and II, and part of the Korean war. He rose to become General of the Army and commanded over a hundred thousand troops. He presided over the reconstruction of Japan after World War II with the authority and respect of Nobility. The Emperor of Japan was in fact subordinate to MacArthur. 

MacArthur was bright but he was not the brightest man in his class. His rise and success were the result of a careful and relentless campaign of advocacy waged by himself and his mother.

Douglas was raised by his mother to be the King and he had the carefully nurtured ego to fulfill the role. She was at his side throughout his career from boyhood, through West Point, and beyond. She wrote countless letters to Senators, Congressmen, Presidents, and senior military officials, explaining at every opportunity how Douglas was the perfect candidate for promotion and why selecting one of the the other candidates would be a dreadful mistake. Douglas himself was no slouch at public relations and self promotion. He saw himself as an actor on the huge theater of the world, and groomed himself in every way to fulfill the role he sought. He identified what the leader should look like to the troops, civilians, and politicians, and he fashioned himself to fit the image that the role required. In post World War II Japan, he had himself transported about Tokyo in a shiny black Cadillac limousine loaded with chrome and adorned with 5-Star General and American flags, escorted in a motorcade led by siren-sounding jeeps staffed with MP’s wearing chrome plated helmets and dressy combat uniforms. His passing was like a parade, and all civilians would stop and stare in awe as the motorcade passed by, many of then them bowing. He was the King of Japan.

Although his theatrics were sometimes rather obvious, he was all in all extremely successful. He and his mother never held the naive notion that a man could expect to rise to become a five star General and a commander of half of the armed forces in America merely by doing a good job and quietly waiting to be recognized and promoted. MacArthur's mom knew that the world does not work that way.

Which brings us back to the point of this rather rambling discussion: What does it really take to succeed?

Machiavelli had it right. If Americans could stand the truth about their economic system, and if business schools were truly interested in conferring the skills required for success upon their students, the curriculum would consist of intense study in the six “B”s of business success:

1. Bullying
2. Bullshitting
3. Bluffing
4. Bragging
5. Brown-Nosing
6. Back-Stabbing

These are the means of ascent, young man. If you thought you would be promoted and rewarded for doing good work, you are hopelessly naive. Corporate America is not a meritocracy at all. It is a competitive ruthless environment where the strong survive and nice guys are prey. Get real.

It is an unfortunate fact of life in America today that a person who does good quality work and lots of it is most likely to be exploited and used rather than promoted and rewarded. A person who has exceptional creative talent and produces extremely valuable work product will be extremely exploited. In other words, the more valuable your work output, the more the corporate system is going to screw you. Just ask one of the unemployed American former information technology employees of the Disney corporation, who laid them off en masse and replaced them with immigrant workers - not because Disney was in trouble, but because of pure greed. Disney actually posted record profits and the CEO collected a record bonus shortly after he screwed the American IT workers.

Basically, if you are willing and able to do anything extremely well, you should work for yourself in an entrepreneurial arrangement. The farther you get from an employee-owned company, the worse the exploitation will be, and the more that success is a product of the skillful application of the six “B”s.

So there you have it young man. Stop beating your head against a wall. Corporations prosper by getting people to work and produce the goods and services that generate corporate revenue, and then paying the workers as little as possible. If you are a natural bully, physically large, smart, ruthless, and have a taste for constant stress, perhaps you are suited to a career as a corporate executive. But if you enjoy doing a good job, if you take pride in your work, and if you are indeed capable of producing valuable work, you should stay away from corporations.

Yahoo! Evil Empire!

Yahoo! has apparently devoted its entire enterprise to political correctness and it will punish Yahoo! users who do not conform to their distorted views.

Yahoo! publishes "news" stores with provocative titles to generate clicks. The financial business of Yahoo! is clicks. The more people who click on Yahoo! pages, the more revenue Yahoo! earns from advertisements. Yahoo! often publishes fake news and intentionally distorted news to provoke viewers to click on their pages. The distortions became particularly harmful and malicious during the media storm following the attack by Michael Brown on the police officer and the officer's shooting of Brown. Yahoo! was one of the most active media publishers who repeatedly published false stories that Brown was an innocent victim which incited riots that resulted in the destruction of private property in Ferguson MO and attacks on police officers nationwide, some of them fatal.

To generate more clicks Yahoo! has developed a comment feature that lets readers type in their own comments in response to Yahoo! stories. The more false and outrageous the story, the larger is the volume of comments objecting to the falsehoods which results in more clicks.

But Yahoo! implemented an even more evil element to their comment feature: Censorship. Yes, a national news organization that relies on freedom of speech for its very existence engages in censorship. Yahoo! began censoring comments that told the truth about the happenings in Ferguson MO and elsewhere. This censorship would mislead readers to think that the only widely held opinions where the opinions approved by Yahoo!

But the evil minds at Yahoo! found an even worse practice to use to push their politically correct agenda: Yahoo! will lock the email and contacts of commenters who persist in expressing opinions that Yahoo! disagrees with.

Let me be perfectly clear. I am not talking about comments that include profane or obscene language, or comments that advocate illegal acts. Yahoo! is censoring comments that express in civil language a point of view about race and racial violence that disagrees with the distorted politically correct views propounded by Yahoo! corporation.

Yahoo! is for idiots.

About Those Lazy Freeloading Americans on Welfare

To those who complain about the "47% freeloaders and Americans who are "too lazy to work", a history lesson is in order.

Following NAFTA and WTO in the 1990s opening the floodgates to Chinese and Indian imports, 17 million American jobs disappeared. The losses were not confined to the lowest paid low skilled workers. American skilled workers were also harmed including some of our highest skilled IT workers.

Fast forward to 2008 when the financial industry crashed the world economy. It was not war, drought, earthquake or any other natural disaster that crashed the world economy; the financial industry crashed the economy after they defeated financial regulation and enabled unlimited leverage in pursuit of unlimited profits.

In the years following the crash millions of young Americans graduated with college degrees (and student debt) to find that there was no appropriate job for them. Some took hourly menial jobs, some went back to school to try again to make the American myth work for them. Others stayed home with their parents, disgusted and disillusioned.

In the years since the crash corporate America has recovered and posted record profits. The nation’s GDP has risen to new highs. The stock market indices have hit new highs. But we have persistent large unemployment and underemployment, and by some measures the domestic economic teeters on the edge of falling back into recession.

American workers are not indestructible. After an individual who has done all the things that are supposed to guarantee success (education, hard work) gets screwed by seeing they job transferred to foreigners, or finds that the expectation of a good job for that expensive degree and high GPA was just an empty promise, that individual will most likely never believe in the American economic system again.

We have 49% of Americans on various forms of government assistance because the national business friendly policies of the past 20 years have left the nation without enough jobs and no alternative ways for the displaced individuals to earn a living. (citation: Wikipedia). The bitter truth is that the business-friendly policies have resulted in the highest GDP ever and more billionaires than ever have left tens of millions of American workers out of the fruits of the new economy.

This has created a persistent economic lethargy in America because those American workers who were so cavalierly replaced and discarded were also the American Consumers who supported 71% of domestic economic activity with their spending.(Wikipedia)

The macroeconomic effect of screwing American workers is measured and quantified by the metric “Wage Share” Wage Share is the proportion of the production of American businesses that is paid out to workers in the form of wages and salaries. Wage share in America peaked in the late 1970’s which was the heyday of the American Middle Class. Wage share began declining in the 1980’s with the passage of laws that made it easier to not pay American workers overtime, and failed to raise the national minimum wage to keep up with inflation. Wage share fell more sharply following the passage of NAFTA and adoption of the WTO that subjected American workers to competition workers in low-wage third world nations. (Citation: Wikipedia article on Wage Share).

People are people. We do not have a generation of 50 - 100 million people with defective DNA. The lack of widely enjoyed prosperity by American working people is the result of laws that America passed to make it easier for business to produce without paying wages to American workers. The result is an economic system that lets a very few people harvest the wealth produced by the nation’s workers, and leaves tens of millions of working Americans and their families out of the rewards. The ones at the bottom of the economic finish line – an increasingly large number – turn to the government for assistance with healthcare, food, and housing. In a democracy, the politicians cannot survive if they do not respond to the basic needs of the voters.

So now we have our business-friendly economy. We have more billionaires than ever – 536 according to Wiki – and more Americans receiving government assistance than ever – 151 million in total.

It raises the question: What is our national economic objective? If we want to have the most billionaires and the highest GDP, we have succeeded. We can bask I the glory of the incomprehensibly large amounts of wealth harvested by Gates, Buffet and others, a sort of sycophantic economic system where the workers gain satisfaction by seeing a few kings elevated to riches beyond counting. If on the other hand, we seek to have the highest GDP so that all working Americans share in the resultant prosperity, then we have failed miserably.

It would not break new ground to require American corporations to pay middle class wages to American workers. Through the industrial age corporations have repeatedly found ways to exploit public resources in pursuit of profits, and government has repeatedly stepped in and required companies to internalize the business costs that they would prefer to ignore. Think about the costly changes imposed on business to correct workplace hazards that sicken and kill employees; smog so thick that it kills people and degrades the quality of life for all nearby residents; water pollution so bad that no fish can survive in the rivers adjoining the factories. American workers are a resource in the economic environment. The consumer economy depends on American workers being paid a fair share of the production they produce.

Home Buyers Beware: Master Fees = Master Screw Job!

Corporate developers have adopted an audacious money making scam called "Master Fees" or "Master Development Fees".

Home buyers are of course usually inexperienced. How would any individual become a professional, experienced home buyer? Developers are exploiting their customer's inexperience by tacking the Master Development Fees onto the price of new homes and pretending that it is normal and reasonable. Buyers who raise any questions are give a well rehearsed theatrical presentation designed to make it clear that the buyer is a hopelessly inexperienced simpleton for even asking such a silly question.

Here is how the scam works:

A developed buys some undeveloped land and pays acre prices. If the land is located close to a developed area and does not have any serious faults, it may cost from $5000 - $20,000 per acre. For this example we will use a midpoint of $10,000 for the cost of the undeveloped land. So our theoretical developer buys 100 acres for $1 million dollars.

The developer completes all of the improvements needed to prepare the land and divide it into building lots for construction of individual residences. They file a development plan and obtain approvals from the municipal authorities. They clear the land and perform any necessary grading and filling to ensure proper drainage. The install the streets, drainage system, curbs, utilities, and all amenities for the new neighborhood like street lights, green areas, recreational areas, and possibly a clubhouse and pool. All of these improvements take time and money. Upon completion the developer has invested $5 million dollars and produced 250 building lots. Total investment is $6 million, or $24,000 per building lot.

The developer could sell the lots for a profit and move on to another project. Corporate developers complete the neighborhood by building the residences to conform to an overall aesthetic theme. They then sell the home and the lot to the retail buyer. For this example we will assume the developer constructs single family residential homes of about 2500 square feet with attached double garage, and sells them for an average retail price of $300,000, which is $50,000 for the building lot and $250,000 for the home. The builder is making a profit on the lot and another profit on the sale of the home.

However, the developer tacks a Master Development Fee encumbrance on each home sold to recover all the money they invested in the land. So on the one hand they are profiting on the markup of the home and the lot. Then they get the home buyer to sign what is essentially a second mortgage that obligates the buyer to pay the developer a monthly fee for about 15 years which will reimburse the developer for all of the land development costs. Its like a car dealer tacking on an extra $100 a month for five years for an "assembly fee".

Experienced Realtors know that this is a screw job. That is why the sales agents you will encounter when touring the developers model homes will usually be employees or captive agents of the developer.

What can a buyer do? The best advice is to refuse to buy a new home that is encumbered by a Master Development fee.You need to consider that you when you sell the home someday you will be unable to find a buyer willing to repay you for the Master Fees that you paid. You might feel like the last and greatest sucker in the deal.

The Greediest Bastard of 2015? You Decide,

For this post I am going to nominate a few individuals as candidates in a contest to decide who is the greediest bastard in the United States in 2015. I will leave comments open so that you can nominate your own candidate and express your vote for a winner.

Bob Iger - Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company

2015 Compensation: $46.5 Million

In October last year Walt Disney told its American information technology workers that they were being laid off and replaced by foreign workers who are in the United States on H-1B visas. But first, the American technology workers would be required to train their replacements. There is no sense passing up an opportunity to add humiliation to financial ruin when you are screwing your workers.

This isn't the first time Disney has screwed its workers. In May of this year, Disney announced another layoff of American technology workers to be replaced by H-1B foreign workers, but put the plans on hold in June. In 2013, Disney laid off its top hand-drawn animation artists. In 2014 Disney laid off 700 workers in another animation division.

This brutal treatment of the employees who create the products and make the machines run was not done to save the company. Indeed in November, Disney announced record financial results. The driving motivation for screwing these employees was greed. Bob Iger was rewarded for his stewardship by raising his total compensation for 2015 to $46.5 million. Bob Iger's net worth is estimated to be about $80 million, so he is a relatively inexperienced at screwing the people who do the work in order to get rich.

Therefore it is with great pleasure that I hereby nominate Robert Allen "Bob" Iger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company as the 2015 Greediest Bastard in the United States of America.

What would Walt say?

Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals

I have mixed feelings about nominating Martin Shkreli. For those of you unfamiliar with this name, Martin is a former hedge fund manager and current CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who made headlines recently when it was revealed that he had obtained in August 2015 a monopoly on production of the generic medicine Daraprim, an FDA-approved therapeutic that is used to treat patients with toxoplasmosis including in AIDS populations. Martin then raised the price of Daraprim from$13.50 per pill to $750, an increase of over 5000%. One wonders why he did not round it up to a neat $1000 per pill, or even $10,000.

Congressional Democrats and candidates joined in a call for an investigation. But this is mere showboating. They all know that what Martin did is legal in America.  In America, it is and has always been perfectly OK for health care providers to charge as much as possible for medical care. Restraint based on the health provider's need for revenue or the patient's ability to pay are gone, discarded anachronisms of a a bygone era when the weakness of a conscience was not considered a character flaw. This noble capitalist model is the reason we have the most expensive healthcare in the world. We can all be proud of the fact that the American capitalist healthcare system has created far more wealth for healthcare providers than in any other nation.

On the one hand, he is obviously a predator using his capital and intelligence to obtain a monopoly on a medicine that is necessary to preserve the life and health of certain individuals and raising the price over 5000% to enrich himself and his backers. There is no doubt that Martin has the intellectual capacity to predict the adverse effects his actions may have on patients, insurance companies, and government healthcare programs that are funding care for some of these patients. Another point in favor of Martin’s nomination is that he has not provided any useful product or service or funded research that may eventually do so. Martin is executing a pure monopolistic money grab leveraging the patient's wish to stay alive to maximize Martin's personal wealth beyond an amount that any person could possible spend on their personal needs in a lifetime. 

On the other hand, Martin’s money grab was so blatant and callous that he has become a poster boy for greed and the evils of mixing free market capitalism with the healthcare business. Perhaps that is due to his youth and inexperience and immersion in the Wall Street culture where there is no right or wrong, only rich or not rich. His egregious example may eventually provoke constructive reform which would imbue his actions with a constructive social purpose thereby seriously weakening his qualification to be the Greedy Bastard of the Year. Another mitigating factor is that Martin did not invent this particular predatory practice; an activist group found that at least 19 other pharmaceutical firms have done the same thing. They make money the old fashion way: monopolies. Unlike J.P. Morgan, the new generation of monopolists see no need for forbearance or moderation, because when you have a billion dollars no one else matters.