Pro Commerce

Goodbye street people

We had friends in town last week who hadn't been here in awhile.  They noticed a significant decline in visible homeless.

Now the S.F. Examiner reports that nearly 1,000 homeless have been escorted to the bus depot and given free tickets out of town in the past nine months.  The program costs $100 per homeless person who leaves town, not counting the time of the police who escort the bus patrons on their way. Really cost effective.

I estimate that we had 5,000 homeless a year ago, now we have 3,000.  The bus escort service (Greyhound therapy) accounts for half of the disappeared, the social service harassment constitutes the rest. 

The social service harassment consists of nine social workers who keep offering help to the homeless, day after day.  The woman with a flag and dolls across the street from City Hall has finally left after six months of social service harassment ("Please let us help you.")

Health care

There is a trend towards low cost drop-in clinics.  Apparently the first two are in San Mateo and San Francisco.  The story is in the S.F. Examiner.

Many large investors are getting into this field.  Walgreen's and WalMart are planning similar offerings. This is clearly a market response to a strong need. 

The fact that it began as a service to Latinos also says something about the Phillips' thesis that new businesses start on the periphery of society.

Dead and finally gone

Just in case you missed the news. Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White were guilty.  Julius Rosenberg was a spy and deserved to die for treason as revealed by Kruschev and the declassified Venona papers. Sacco and Vanzetti, executed in 1927, were guilty according to their fanatic supporter Upton Sinclair.  Poor Roger Coleman, executed in 1992, turns out to have failed his second and most recent DNA test.

Our system is based on the demand that all innocent and guilty criminals plead innocent in order to get a trial and free lawyers who will try their cases in the press if the press is interested.  Criminals with lefty political leanings get the extra benefit of  becoming martyrs. 

I hope my readers understand that not all judicial systems in the world work this way.

I was a stupid gullible fool for most of my life. I believed that Julius Rosenberg, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were unjustifiably executed. 

Cable car fares

More than a year ago I raised the issue of obvious theft by conductors on the San Francisco Cable Cars. I wrote a blog and wrote a few letters. All the cable car employees are participants in the theft.

Now it appears that the Mayor has noticed the problem and intends to do something about it.  I don't think the theft exceeds $5 million nor do I think the Mayor will do much about it.

I can smell fraud based on decades as a banker and a corporate treasurer.  I don't blame the cable car conductors.  When you create a cash system without controls you are inviting theft and should expect it to happen.

Reading democracy

I wonder when Edmund S. Morgan's book American Slavery, American Freedom made it into college reading.  The book was published in 1975 and among other things, argues that Virginia colonists were particularly sensitive to the issues of being free citizens because they owned slaves.  Thus slavery was an ingredient in the desire for independence from Britain?

Morgan's thesis is not of importance to me because I know that democracy came from the Vikings who settled much of England in the 11^th Century. Their descendants where the colonizers of the United States.

Condi revolution

One person has shaped our future probably more than any person since the parameters of the Cold War were established fifty-five years ago.  Dean Acheson is given much credit for those policies.

Condoleezza Rice was the person who made public our national security position when she was chair of the NSA four years ago July.

Again as our Secretary of State she established our new State Department policy six months ago, again in July. 

From now on the top ranks of State Department professionals will only be promoted from the ranks of people who have served in two hot spots; no more cookie pushers who served in Paris and Vienna.  That will change American foreign policy for the next several decades and the effects should be visible within five years.

To add frosting to the cake, Secretary Rice has eliminated U.S.AID, which was an independent agency.  The A.I.D battle has been going on for twenty five years.  A.I.D, our main development agency, is governed by thirteen mutually contradictory rules.  For example: priority in development must be given to food self-sufficiency.  However another rule is that no crops can be supported that could compete with U.S. domestic crops.  A.I.D is controlled by budget builders in the Congress, a hopelessly ineffective morass. 

Condoleezza Rice, the most influential person in global politics, is not appreciated by the black community nor the women’s movement.  That’s good, she should never be viewed, by decent people, as a black or as a woman.

Hamastan

The electoral victory of Hamas is shocking.  I have no wise policy advice.

This is a good time for all of us to learn about Democracy; keep our eyes wide open and watch carefully.  This is an especially important lesson in democracy for Arabs.

So far no tyrant, fascist or terrorist organization has won a democratic election and had a positive outcome.  Starting with the Nazi Party, moving to Algeria, Iran, Nicaragua and Hizbollah in Lebonon we are batting zero for democracy.  In each case, the democratic winner abolished democracy.

Justice over-reach 2

The Justice Department demand for porn search data from the search engines is short sighted and harmful to our country. 

Right now, the global Internet is based on U.S. standards, on English and U.S. companies dominate the Internet . The policy of Google to fight the U.S. Justice Department and to accept Chinese search restrictions is consistent with the U.S. staying the dominant force on the Internet.

No country or peoples wants the U.S. government imposing its values on them and certainly not through U.S. global corporations.  That is why Google has taken the right stand. I support Google.

Today, as it has been for sixty years, global air traffic is entirely in English and an American aircraft manufacturer is the dominant player.  That would not be true if a bureaucratic Justice Department had seized a foreign airliner in 1953 and held it on the tarmac for a week.  If the 1953 Justice Department had seized a foreign airliner in 1953, English would not be the sole language of global air traffic and Boeing might not even exist. 

What the Justice Department did with its porn search demand, if unblocked by Google, would rapidly destroy the U.S. dominance in the global Internet as people everywhere and their governments seek protection from the megalomaniacal imposition of U.S. values.

Right now I have also wised-up.  The Patriot Act should exclude searches of library users.  The reasons are weak but the principle has been violated and now I see that all researchers must be protected.

Cities

I love cities. I visit the fifth ring suburbs because that is where America’s vitality is these days. Cities are where I feel comfortable: diversity, dialog and social skills.

The best expert on cities, a man who has spent his life doing hands-on-research on cities, author of the Book of World City Rankings and Livable Cities Almanac, is retiring as chief economist of New York City and now has a blog.

I highly recommend my friend John Tepper Marlin’s blog: cityeconomist.com

(Photo of John, clearly jovial, and wife Alice)

Justice over-reach?

The U.S. Justice Department has asked all U.S. search engine companies for data on pornography searches to support a Federal case involving Internet porn filter blocking.  Google has refused to comply.

Has the U.S. government gone far outside reasonable bounds in asking Google to produce data on searches?

The answer to this question can be recognized easily by asking "What subject the U.S. government was asking for data about?"  Pornography data for a Federal child pornography case. 

Won't stick my neck out

I was going to write about the business advice I gave to the founders of mountain biking.  In looking up the current status of the founders  I found that Gary Fisher and Joe Breeze have created different histories.

Joe acknowledges Gary as his co-founder but Gary acknowledges Charlie Kelly as his co-founder of mountain biking.  They were all hippies, they all played a key role and I can offer no help on the history.  The best history is given by Charlie.

When the Briarpatch team of consultants visited the shop near San Rafael, in roughly 1979, there were three people from the shop who joined us. 

What was interesting...

Banking

One of my readers asked me to look at the Wikipedia section on banking and see what I could do.  There is too much to fix so I decided to do occasional pieces here on banking.   My perspective is as consumer who knows how the system works.

First choose a bank that has branches or ATMs where you travel, commute or a bank that subsidizes your ATM transactions.  Roughly 95% of your transactions will be with ATMs or online.  If you travel internationally, open a Citibank account so you get local cash in most parts of the world. Getting an online payment system is necessary especially if it is free.  Otherwise an online banking service is worth a few dollars a month. I write only three checks a month these days the rest of my payments are online.

Next figure out how to get overdraft protection on your account.  A savings account is the best choice for overdraft protection.  Overdrafts are one of the main sources of revenue for banks these days. The overdraft fees are high.

Worse than the high fees for overdrafts is the Bank Overdraft Hell.  If you get three overdrafts in a short period and don't pay the fees within three months you join five million Americans on the no-bank-account list.  The list will ban you from opening a bank account for five years.  No appeal exists.

Enough banking for today.

Absence

The absence of protests about the plutonium powered generator on the Pluto orbiter two days ago has meaning to me.

First, and most importantly, it clearly shows that the environmental movement has disappeared. This happened about ten years ago.

Second, the subset of enviros who could understand the threat of plutonium burning up in the upper atmosphere during a space launch, are in a moral limbo.  They have discounted the threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons program, they attacked the president and the intelligence services for over reacting to the threat of nuclear weapons and they oppose preemptive military action against Iran and North Korea. They have little moral standing to protest a cigarette package amount of plutonium.

Lastly, I believe that the great 45-65 year old post hippie generation is so depressed by their perceived failure to change the world, that they can do little more than smoke dope, watch TV and pop Prozac.

The average is all there is

In the endless and unrewarding debate about global warming, a scientific fellow assured me that new computer models could handle "boundary conditions" which made its climate modeling much more accurate.

Sorry, we are not dealing with math or statistics that I don't know.

All climate models are....

Gay marriage

There are some new considerations in gay marriage.

What I found interesting is that a gay couple I know is planning to get married this weekend.  A wonderful couple ... I wish them well.

They will be married in a church and they have already signed a domestic partners agreement. Under California law, effective a few weeks ago, a couple with a domestic partners agreement have ALL the legal rights and obligations of a married couple. (The Mark Leno bill.)

At this point, that seems a model of good sense.  Further fighting on this issue would have to be about the only remaining element that distinguishes between a gay church marriage with domestic partners agreement and a straight church marriage with the automatic rights of a domestic partners agreement. Is that a battle worth fighting?

Courtesy?

I raised an issue of courtesy that overlay a moral dilemma in an earlier blog and got some helpful responses.  Let me comment that courtesy has only one goal which is to make all social transactions move smoothly.  That is not a constraint of moral action.

However, I don't detect real problems in the interaction of courtesy and morality being confronted in the popular columns of Miss Manners, Ann Landers or their offspring or Dr. Laura.

I was visiting some of my grandchildren......

Free speech?

This blog is a continuation of a discussion about a moral question that has turned into a question of free speech.

The issue of free speech and censorship has an interesting story that most people don't know.

In 1962, Charlie Gluck, who ran the Survey Research Center in Berkeley had done a study of anti-Semitism in America and found a long standing distribution.  Most of the white American population had a low level of anti-Semitism, under 17% but Roman Catholics had a high level, above 40%.  Blacks were at 26%. 

Gluck a highly respected researcher, took his data to the American bishops at the Vatican Conference II; they circulated it and Gluck got the Vatican to end the "Jews killed Christ" libel.  Within five years American Catholics held roughly the same level of anti-Semitic views as the rest of white America.  The Blacks hadn't changed and still haven't.

Message: Prejudice of this sort is a group pattern that can be combated with social pressure from within the group, especially with responsible leadership, where leadership exists.

Steroid

I love that word.  Beef from outer space?

Leon Kass had a WSJ tirade against athletic enhancing drugs.  His point is that athletics is generally about honing skills of strength, will and coordination of ordinary humans to exceptional levels.

To me, making something like steroids illegal is foolish.  As with other drugs, the market will supply the customers.

My suggestion is to require athletes who enhance their athletic skills with drugs must post some disclosure on their person.  Let the team mates and competitors deal with them appropriately.  Every strategy for defense against drug users would create an interesting new twist on the sport.

Activist newspaper

I find it fascinating that the only major newspaper with an activist bent is the same one that has a sense of humor on its editorial page: the Wall Street Journal.

On Thursday the WSJ had a lead article on Coke being stupid about keeping Mexican bottled Coke out of the U.S. because it infringes on (probably illegal) bottling franchises.  Mexicans in the South and Mexican-Americans prefer Coke bottled in Mexico because it uses cane sugar not corn sugar used in USA bottled Coke (Europeans get beet sugar in their Coke.)

The WSJ had three articles on executive compensation, all taking the position that something needs to be done.  I hastily got off an email to the writers of the articles pointing out the exemplary behavior of PG&E on this issue.

Footnote: The "crusading Lefty" LA Times did a four part series on what a sicko schmuck Caesar Chavez was.  Its absolutely true.  But the LA Times wouldn't write the article until the United Farm Workers Union was on its death bed.

New war

I've started asking my Lefty friends how they would view an American led bombing attack on Iran, North Korea or both.

This is a good time to get your friends reasoning on this subject.  It is easier for me to listen when no controversy is raging in the press, its easier for them to explain their positions.

Do your friends have a reasoning capability or is everything just a reaction against American military whatever it does?  You'll have to find out for yourself.  I'm beginning to find out the reasoning skills or lack of reasoning skills on the part of my friends.

Frankly, I'm  quite surprised at the reasoning of some of my friends.  The number who will wait until millions die before responding makes me happy that these people are not in positions of national responsibility.

I was wrong

The local San Francisco press needs to do what I’m doing: apologize. I apologize for believing and passing on wrong information.

“The Starbucks bomb wasn’t a bomb and the alleged bomber had nice things to say about Starbucks: The device found in a San Francisco Starbucks earlier this week (wa)s not a bomb after all...

”Sources say the device that police referred to as an "improvised explosive device" was actually an old flashlight with corroded batteries.

”Police were holding Ronald Schouten in connection with leaving the suspected bomb in the restroom of a Starbucks on the corner of Bush Street and Van Ness Avenue Monday.

”"I love Starbucks," Schouten  said ... on Thursday. "I love that Starbucks on Van Ness and Bush. The people are saints. They know I'm homeless. They let me drink coffee for 50 cents. I love those people."”

History of the Civil War

I still hear it said, on occasion, and I know it is still taught, that the Civil War was about states right to secede. Since I’m reading David Reynolds’ the history of John Brown, Abolitionist : The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights there can be no doubt about the main issue of the war.

I came across the words of the song John Brown that Julia Ward Howe heard in 1861 in Washington D.C. from marching soldiers. She wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic to go with the words of the John Brown marching song, which she published in the Atlantic Monthly.

SEC plan

Next week the Securities and Exchange Commission staff will present the commission with a plan for reporting of executive compensation.  The plan is taken almost directly from the reporting requirements that I negotiated with Pacific Gas and Electric in 2004 (jointly with the Greenlining Institute). The PG&E reports were submitted to the SEC and the staff discussed it in June of 2004.

What the SEC staff is now proposing for all public corporations is a slight improvement on my package in one way, it requires an estimated "total compensation" figure.  It is lacking in another way, which is my requirement that all underlying documents, such as goals, targets and actual wording of compensation programs be published on the web.

Still, if the whole staff package is accepted it will be a great accomplishment.

Individuals and milieu

I am a firm believer that individuals can have historic impacts on their society.  I have seen many of my contributions become important and significant.  I’ve also seen many more fail and some lead to harm.

Milieu matters.  This issue comes up because I was impressed with the influence of Japanese design in Israel (from retail shops to public graphics) and I met one of the key graphic designers who brought this style from Tokyo where he had worked for 11 years.

Can Israeli design go to Japan? 

I met a young woman in San Francisco, a few weeks ago, who is the editor of one of the Japanese young girls' magazines.  I asked if she knew about the sexy Israeli bridal style?  “No.”  So I sent her some photos and she is going to use them in the next issue of her magazine.

Will my tiny act result in a new style in Japanese bridal dresses?  Depends on the milieu.  The Japanese view American wedding paraphernalia as a form of high style.  Will "sexy" fit in with “high style” in Japan.  Tune in next year for a report. (Click to enlarge photos.)

Beliefs and actions

I said in a comment below that beliefs precede actions and if you want to avert the action you have to change or suppress the beliefs.

Yesterday a functioning bomb was left in the Starbucks bathroom at Bush and Van Ness.  Nobody was hurt, thanks to a reliable Starbucks employee and the bomb squad.

This could well be the beginning of Lefty home grown terrorists.  We’ve had them before. 

If I were a responsible Lefty, who derides Starbucks (and almost every Democrat I know openly spews Starbucks hate), I would change my tune.  I would start going to Starbucks and explain to any fellow Lefty who asks “Why?” that “since Starbucks came to San Francisco the number of independent coffee houses has tripled ... Starbucks is good for independent coffee shops.” 

Anti-PC portfolio

The anti-PC portfolio is two years old this week. It includes Citicorp, Haliburton, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Starbucks and WalMart. The anti-PC portfolio is up 27% while the Dow Jones is up 6% for the same period.

Keep betting against the Lefties and enjoy your capital gains.

Hippy History

I want active participation in this project.  Hippies made an extraordinary contribution to American life that is sadly unappreciated.  I believe part of the bi-coastal malaise and bitterness is the surviving sense of hippies and others from that era that their 25 year endeavor to create a new world failed.  It was not a failure.  The hippy successes are part of the American mainstream and have made life more colorful and pleasurable.  The great hippie experiment needs to be appreciated. 
-----------------------------------------------

Is it fair to suggest that the hippy experiment was the greatest voluntary human experiment in history?

The hippy experiment began in 1964....

Googlalia

Google is now reported to be using html language on its blogs and other Google sites to block non-Google search engines. Google claims a business motto of “Don’t Be Evil.” (*See the HTML that is used to block search engines at the bottom.)

Google is automatically evil.  To most Arabs and fellow anti-Semites Google in Hebrew is evil; to the Chinese government the Google listings of Falun Gung’s websites is evil, to the North Korean government everything about Google news is evil and to Fidel Castro and his fellow Latin despots all Google data searches that show the economic outcomes of communism are evil.

But a corporation is not a moral institution so my complaint is about Google’s managerial stupidity.  Blocking other search engines for the presumed benefit of Google does three things: it encourages retaliation, it will destroy Google’s positive reputation in a short time when the press understands it and it will dissuade other companies and good employees from joining Google in its ventures.

*Jason Ducek: “Search engines....

Moral question?

If you like moral questions you’ll help me answer this one.

Lillian is having coffee with a small group of her friends, including Elmagoop.  Elmagoop is an Egyptian immigrant who professes the standard Egyptian views about Jews controlling the media, Israel running U.S. foreign policy, the validity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and has said that the Jews got out of the World Trade Tower before the planes collided with it.  In short, a neo-Nazi Arab.

Harry, a friend of Lillian’s, approaches the table, says “Good morning” to everyone he knows and Lillian has to introduce him to Elmagoop, who he doesn’t know.  Harry is a Holocaust survivor.

Moral question: (a) Does Lillian have any responsibilities in this case?  (b) Would she have any responsibility if Harry appears ready to sit down and join the group?

Change the issue to see how it influences your moral position.  Elmagoop spent one year in prison on a hit and run homicide case and Harry just lost a child in a hit and run incident.

Change the issue again.  Elmagoop is a registered sex offender out of prison for several years and Harry’s youngest daughter was raped a year ago.

What is the appropriate moral reaction to (a) and (b)?  How does your reaction change when the hit-and-run issues or the sex offender issue is introduced?

My answer is that .....

Morning after

The photo on the right was not pre-arranged. The site is Market Street and 16^th, the wine glass is left over from New Year’s Eve in San Francisco and the twigs are the aftermath of a horrendous wind and rainstorm. The storm blew down a one-ton branch of the cypress tree next to my house. The branch just missed a new car but broke the rear window.

The photo on the left represents what I believe to be an emerging trend. This wonderful flower shop on 18^th was open at 9am on New Year's Day. It looks like the demand for flowers and flower arrangements is growing rapidly enough to warrant a flower shop openning at unconventional times and days.