899 Corporations Are People

899 Corporations are People

(Note to readers:  The male gender in the following post refers to both male and female and is used to avoid sentence awkwardness and unneeded complexity and to adhere properly to the rules of grammar.)

Our thanks to Mitt Romney for clarifying that while reeling madly through the early days of the campaign for the Republican presidential nominations.  

Of COURSE corporations are people!  It says so... well, it says so somewhere.  And it’s about time we started TREATING them like people, too.

Like when you’re on the bus or the train and one of them steps on your toes?  Step back!  Or when one of them crunches your 401k?  A good right cross to the jaw will put him or her in its place.

When a corporation robs, rapes or murders you, put him on trial. No more consent agreements with the FDA over lead poisoning.  Put ‘em on trial.  Let a jury of his peers have the final say.  It’s the American way.

When one of them pays no taxes, haul him off to debtor's prison.

When one of them careens down the road, zig zagging across lanes and breaking the speed limit, pull him over, give him a breathalyzer and if appropriate, send him to the drunk tank and then court for a DWI.

When one of them plays his music too loud after 11 PM, call the cops.

And when one of them falls on financial hard times, by all means, write the welfare checks, hand out the Medicaid cards.  When one moves into your neighborhood, bake a pie and bring it over -- or at least make sure the welcome wagon gets to his house.

“All (the corporations’) money ultimately goes to people,” says the candidate.  Right on, Mitt.  But how much, in what proportion and WHICH people?  Your dad, a true corporate titan, is whirling in his grave.  He’s muttering “where did I go wrong?”  He’s looking at that bloated business you occasionally run comparing it to the actual industrial corporation HE ran and saying corporations like yours are nothing more than money movers, they don’t MAKE anything.

If you asked George Romney “is American Motors a person?”  He’d probably answer “Yes, legally.  But really it’s a company that makes cars.”

If you asked Thomas Edison “is General Electric a person?”  He’d probably answer “No, it’s a bunch of crooks that make lightbulbs and it screwed me at the poker table.  Out thieved the master thief, me!”

Edison was wrong.  General Electric is a light bulb maker that owns a bank.  A person has to have a body.  And a soul.


Shrapnel:

--A friend reports a recent day-long power failure in her community, during which she and her husband were forced to slow down and enjoy each others’ company for lack of light, TV, computers, etc. A wonderful island of enforced comradery.  Betting is, there will be a mini-baby boom in that town come June 2012 or thereabouts.  

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

898 Again Orwell

898  Again Orwell

Orwell was pretty much right when he wrote 1984, he just got the year wrong.  But there remain lessons un-drawn from his book about a culture and government crazily spying on everyone.

The two minute hate.

Orwell’s citizens of “Oceana” are forced to watch a daily film (probably a Blu-Ray or at least a DVD by now) depicting faces of the “enemy,” and to allow themselves to be whipped into a frenzy of loathing.

But between groups like the tea party and the religious right abetted by the 24 hour news cycle, who needs Blu-ray?  And two minutes is hardly enough time.  Make it perpetual.

Obama, Casey Anthony, Muslims (they’re the new Jews,) old folks (they’re the new African Americans,) Democrats (they’re the new Soviet Communists,) the government, Mama Grizzly.  Pick your side and take your pick.  No, it’s not just the right wingers.  But it’s the right wingers who have given new legitimacy to all this.

It’s no longer enough to just dislike someone or some thing.  It’s gotta be hatred.  And not just ordinary hatred.  It has to be “I want to throw a rock through my TV set,” tooth-grinding, frothy-mouthed run-wild-in-the-streets hysterical hatred.

What’s really scary is the potential of the tube and the internet and talk radio to spawn a leader of riots.  We’re pretty close.   Nancy Dis-Grace is one notch down from motivating roving bands of thugs into the streets to “correct” “wrong” jury verdicts.  Until he became too insane even for Fox TV, Glenn Beck was one notch down from sending roving bands of thugs into the streets to eliminate any registered Democrat.  

And heaven help us when the mainstream haters harness the power of rap and hip hop to help move their message along.

These days, two minutes is not enough.  Or it’s too much.







Shrapnel:

--People who find it unacceptable, unseemly or impossible to admit concupiscence for Casey Anthony have found an acceptable outlet for their energies.   Now, long after the trial, it’s disguised as “justice for Caylee” or outrage at a “wrong verdict.”  Nonsense... what you’re seeing and maybe feeling is blood lust hatred.

--Then, in Durham, NC, there’s littering hatred and a shooting death.  It happened about ten one recent night when a visiting high school football team from suburban Pittsburgh went wandering through the parking lot of a strip mall while eating peanuts and dropping the shells as they went, angering another out of towner, a Texan up and east for a funeral, whom police say pulled a gun, killed one of the kids and wounded another.

--According to Google, this blog had as many readers in South Korea last month as it did in the United States, along with a scattering of “hits” in places like Latvia, France, Israel and Ukraine. Can anyone explain this?  Or is it just monkeys typing in search boxes again?


I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com.
© WJR 2011

897 The Menu

897 The Menu

Menus used to be lists of stuff at the restaurant.  They’re still that, among many other things.  But maybe not for long.

What if the restaurant eliminated the wait staff and put telephones on each table.  Order by phone and the food comes out on a conveyor belt.

“Welcome to Bill’s Fine Dining.  Please press one to order.”

(beep.)

If you know what you’d like for dinner, please press one.  To hear our menu of choices, please press two.

(beep beep)

Today’s special is Bill’s Fine Dining Philly Cheese Steak.  Would you like to order that? Press one for yes.

(beep)

Bill’s Fine Dining Philly Cheese Steak is available in rare, medium, medium well and well done.  Please press one for rare, two for medium, three for medium well and four for well-done.

(beep beep beep beep)

Bill’s Fine Dining Philly Cheese Steak well done comes with french fries.  If you would like to upgrade to Bill’s Fine Dining Delicious onion rings for only $1.29 additional please press one.  For regular fries, press two.

(beep beep)

You have ordered Bill’s Fine Dining Philly Cheese Steak, well done with regular fries.  To confirm your order, please press one.

(beep)

Would you like something to drink with that?  If so, please press one for hot drinks and two for cold.

(beep beep)

You have chosen cold drinks.  For alcoholic beverages please press one.  For soft drinks, please press two.

So it goes.  Half an hour later, the conveyor belt starts to move and there’s your food.  Except you got onion rings instead of fries, the Cheese Steak is cold and undercooked.  And they sent the wrong size beer.

So you pick up the phone.  

Welcome to Bill’s Fine Dining.  Please press one to order.

(long pause)

Main Menu:  For food menu, press one.  For customer service press two.

(Beep beep.)

“Your call is being transferred.”  Click, followed by music on hold, “Love Makes The World Go Round” by Percy Faith.”

Finally:

“Welcome to Bill’s Fine Dining Customer Service.”  For questions, please press one.  For order adjustments please press two...” (beep beep) “For catering orders please press three.” (Beep beep.)  “For questions about opening your own ‘Bill’s Fine Dining Franchise...(BEEP BEEP!) please press four.” (BEEEEEP BEEEEEEP!)

“Your call is being transferred.  Please wait for the next available customer service representative.  This call may be monitored for service quality and training purposes.”

Finally:

“This is Billsfinedining customerservicemy name is Ann.”  (Heavy Indian accent.)
You try to explain.  She says

(unintelligible)

You say “My order is wrong”

She says

“I’m so sorry sir.  (unintelligible.)”

You hang up, eat your mis-cooked and cold sandwich, drink your wrong size beer.

The phone rings:

“Please put your used dishes on the conveyor belt.  Thank you.”

You comply.  A little computer printer you hadn’t noticed prints your bill.  You take it to the front counter where a real live human being takes it and types in some numbers.

“Did you want to leave a tip on this, sir?”

“Are you nuts?  The food was wrong.  The drink was wrong and the customer service woman was hard to reach and impossible to understand.”

“Yes, but you didn’t put your used silverware on the conveyor belt, sir.”

“The phone told me to put my dishes on the belt and that’s what I did. It didn’t say anything about silverware.  Plus my sandwich was cooked wrong and they sent out the wrong size beer and they gave me onion rings instead of french fries.”

“I’m sorry sir, I’ll call customer service.”

“Please, no.  Just take my money and let me out of here.  And put a 20% tip on the bill.”

You walk to the door.  It’s locked.  There’s a phone.  You pick it up.  It says “thank you for visiting with us.  To unlock the door, please press one.”

(beep)

“For security purposes, please enter the paid order number on your receipt using the keys on the telephone touchpad.  If you don’t have your paid order number, please wait for Bill’s Fine Dining Customer Service.”

Shrapnel:

--You think this story is far-fetched?  Just wait.  The day it turns real will soon be here.  As soon as they find the right customer service call center -- one exactly as described above.”

--Thanks to a long-time reader for providing this description of Congress:  “A nursery school for the criminally insane.”  That’s only partly right.  A nursery school has teachers.

Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times that S&P proved itself dumb and blind when it approved the deals that caused the mortgage mess.  He also says, correctly, that the rating agency shouldn’t  be downgrading US debt.  But S&P raises some pithy observation in the message that goes along with the downgrade, essentially blaming the tea party for putting America in a position where it can't govern itself.


I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

896 How To Read Your Phone Bill

Admit it.  You do not understand your telephone bill.  So as a public service, here is the Wessays™ guide to reading and comprehending it.

The first question that usually arises is “Why is it never the same twice, even if I don’t use the phone at all for two consecutive months?”  The answer is simple. The bottom line is generated randomly based on a complex formula to determine what you might have done, even if you’ve done nothing.  Your phone number is put into a computer which adds, subtracts, multiplies and divides both it and the total of the digits by a variable determined by averaging the diastolic blood pressure of the top 50 executives at the phone company.

Problem solved.

There probably are terms you actually DO understand, like “line charges,” “usage charges” DSL charges, that sort of thing.  But there are those for which definitions are known to only a few in the billing department.  Here are some examples and their definitions, gleaned from deathbed confessions of accounting department retirees, but not from hacking voicemails or bribing workers.

Telecommunications Relay Service:  This is phone-speak for the price of bouncing your call around inside the company building, searching for an open line out.  It costs money to trap your call inside their headquarters and then dawdle around looking for a wire to whomever you’re calling.

VLD State and Local Tax:  VLD stands for “Very Last Day.” This is a relatively small levy collected each month in case you should decide to cancel your service.  It’s collected by your locality for not knowing how to reach you if you move.

VLD Gross Receipts tax surcharge:  This is an extra charge only when the tax collector forgets his lunch money and is hungry.

Federal Universal Service Fee:  This is an amount collected so that the Federal Communications Commission can figure out if you’re being overcharged.

Adjustment due to change in rates: it’s usually a refund of under ten cents and is determined by the Federal Communications Commission, using the larger Federal Universal Service Fee as previously described.

Non-Basic Charges:  This is the money they collect for supplying you with services you thought came with the deal when you signed your contract.

Some other tricks they use:
--Listing a customer service phone number that’s one digit short, giving you the missing digit and not telling you where it fits in among the other six.
--Advising you to use their website to report DSL problems.
--Placing long series of meaningless numbers at strategic spots around the bill to further confuse you.
--Placing what you were supposed to have paid and probably DID pay last month at the head of a long column of figures and misleading you into believing it’s what you owe now.
--Printing you bill as one long sheet of paper and then cutting it up into smaller pieces so a topic heading is never on the same page as the topic.

We hope giving you this information and explaining these terms helps you understand what you’re paying for and how much and to demonstrate our long stated notion that private bureaucracies are every bit as confounding and fossilized as government bureaucracies.



Shrapnel:

--The farm team system seems to work pretty well for baseball.  Bring ‘em up and send ‘em down as needed.  It doesn’t work too well in government.  Once you’ve promoted someone, they stay promoted until they die or lose elections, usually the former.

--Want to annoy a cop?  Ask him or her “When was the last time your radar gun was calibrated?”  That’s sure to draw stares of hatred, even if you weren’t pulled over.

--Unfair speculation:  Fiat has reentered America, introducing the silly looking model “500.”  Those of us who have owned machines of this brand will assume that the model name designates its life expectancy, probably in kilometers.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

895 They Have Better Deadbeats Over There

895  They Have Better Deadbeats Over There

The venerable Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC to you, bills itself as the “World’s Local Bank,” but apparently it’s gotten a little too local.  And so they’re going to cut back a little here and there -- and here and there -- and there and here, and lop another 25 thousand employees off the payroll and close a bunch of US branches and open a bunch of new ones in places where people actually have money, unidentified “emerging markets.”

These 25 thousand will join about five thousand others who already have been canned.  

London based HSBC is among the world’s largest retail bankers.  And our money is no longer good enough for them.  They took a beating in the bank meltdown here and they’ve had enough of us.  And, incidentally, of Russians and Poles.

Granted, the US dollar ain’t what it used to be or what it should be and the Ruble never was worth anything.  So why not substitute a currency with some growth potential.  Like the Kwacha of Zambia or the Lev of Bulgaria?

Plus the mere announcement that they’re closing up shop here shot their stock through the roof of the London Stock Exchange and yanked the entire Financial Times Stock Index higher, at least for awhile.  No surprise there.  The higher the body count, the higher the stock goes.  How about firing everyone, and set stock exchange record highs.

Well, blokes, lots of luck over in Zambia and Bulgaria.  No pesky banking regulations there.  Plenty of loan business.  And it’s well known that the business owners of Uzbekistan and Cambodia are far more reliable than, say, DuPont and Microsoft.

A better class of deadbeats.   And no debt ceilings.

But all those closings here may be premature. A little patience and we might be as third world as Haiti and Croatia.  We’re certainly heading in that direction.

Shrapnel (sorta-sports edition):

--First it was Tonya Harding, former champion skater and attacker of a competitor, now it’s Octo-mom Nadya Suleman turning semi-pro boxer.  Suleman has a bout scheduled in Massachusetts.  Guess all the donations ran out and she still has that mortgage and all those mouths to feed.

--Plaxico Burress signs with the Jets, Michael Vick is back on the field, Ben Roethlisberger hasn’t been in known trouble for -- oh, it must be months now.  Maybe they should call it the National Felons League.  Anybody know if OJ is interested in coaching when he gets out of jail?

--Already overtaxed voters in Nassau County on New York’s Long Island have defeated a nearly half-billion dollar bond issue to rebuild the ramshackle Coliseum, home of the ramshackle NHL Islanders whose lease expires in 2015, if the building holds together that long.  The Isles haven’t won a Stanley Cup in 18 years.  A better performance on the ice might lead voters to re-think their rejection as would a mass exodus of the political hacks that pass for government out that way.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments and unsolicited credit card offers to wesrichards@gmail.com.
© WJR 2011

894 The Evening Paper

894 The Evening Paper

A friend commented on Wessay 892, I Don't Understand, saying that long list of things left un-understood could be blamed in part on the 24 hour news cycle...”  among other things.

The genie is out of the bottle and no one’s going to shut down CNN, HLN, MSNBC, Fox and all the all-news websites.  And “everyone” “knows” that the day’s-end newscasts on NBC, CBS and ABC are practically anachronisms, thought unlikely to gain audience over time, no matter how well they summarize and “investigate” what went on today.

The news weeklies like Time and Newsweek are fighting to stay viable and for the most part failing.  “The Week” is a good alternative because like the 6:30 network newscasts, it tries to summarize what went on and like Google and Yahoo, they are a news aggregator rather than someone trying to convince you they’re bringing “perspective” or originality to stories everyone has already covered.

So in the face of the “print news is dead” conventional wisdom, how about a completely unrealistic choice for people who don’t need the TV shrill fests on in the background all day:  bring back the evening paper.

The network newscasts killed that animal with some help from a stock market that closed too late for the final figures to make the business page and the proliferation of night games in professional baseball, basketball and hockey  to make the sports page.

Digression:  many telemarketers who used to interrupt your dinner are out of work because of the do-not-call laws.  Many of these could be harnessed to deliver an evening paper that might arrive on your doorstep around the time they used to make the obnoxious calls.

So how about an evening newspaper that tells you the day’s news without all the clattering that goes on during a developing story on TV?
A school bus or an airplane crashes around noon.  NewsNet’s NewsCopter is on the scene showing you pictures.  NewsNet’s NewsAnchor, usually someone shrill enough to raise the dead even when whispering, tells us a bus or plane has crashed.  “We don’t know how many people were aboard.  We don’t know whose bus or plane it was, where it started, where it was headed, why it crashed, how many people died or were injured.  Hour after hour, the “live coverage” continues.  There’s a new piece of information here and there.  We get a body count.  It goes up.  It goes down.

Five hours later there may be a fairly complete story available.  The evening paper would have that information without having to keep yapping for five hours and playing the same ten second video clip over and over and over.

Most of us don’t need to know any more than the basics.  And the basics aren’t immediately available right away.  But once TV starts the story, it can’t stop.

The fight over the budget can get a day’s end summary, and all of the small things that happen between 9 and five can be either compressed into something comprehensible or ignored.

So, someone, please try this.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com.
© WJR 2011

893 Always On

893 Always On

Those of us old enough to remember early television know that it took a few moments for the sets to warm up and start running.  The vacuum tubes inside them and in radios took a few minutes to get going.

Today nothing’s like that except the toaster and the oven.  Everything else “warms up” instantly.

Why?  How?

Because nothing is ever really “off.”  Not anymore. It’s on “Standby,” breathlessly awaiting your command.

Your cell phone charger draws power when it’s plugged in, even if you cell phone is not attached.  Ditto your iPod, iPad, Kindle, and anything else with a battery.

When your laptop computer is charged, and it’s still plugged into the wall, it’s still drawing power.

When your TV is “off” it’s still drawing power.  It’s on Standby.

See all those lights on your cable or satellite box?  What do you think allows them to shine?  Why, goodness!  It’s the electricity from your wall.

The cordless phone is always on.  To correct that you have to pull it out of the wall once it says “charge complete.”  

The clock on the microwave, the clock on the stove, the clock on the coffeemaker, the night light in the button for your doorbell.

Nothing is off.

Nothing.
Your burglar alarm is always on, and, of course, you want it to be.  Same with your wall or desk clocks -- the few that still run on household current. (And when was the last time you heard anyone say “household current?”)

Now, granted, these are not big users of electricity.  But while rates are as high as they are, they are SOMETHING.  Probably more than the corkscrew bulbs which you bought for an arm or the LCD bulbs you bought for an arm and a leg and which use relatively few watts.

How many TV sets do you have? How many battery operated this-and-that pads and pods and cell phones and cordless phones, cameras and video cameras.  

And how about the refrigerator?  Does the light really go out when you close the door?  Are you sure?  ABSOLUTELY sure?

You push the little push thing on the refrigerator frame and the light goes out.  But you can’t see when you actually close the door.  Maybe it’s a “smart” refrigerator (like a “smartphone”) and can tell the difference between when you push the push-thing and when the DOOR pushes it.  (And you can’t set the timer on a camera and seal the camera in the refrigerator and have it take a picture, because the flash will make it look like the light is on, even if it isn’t.  And probably you shouldn’t sit a small child in the thing and close the door, even for a moment.  Who knows, maybe the phone will ring, you’ll answer and leave the poor kid in there until he suffocates.)

Shrapnel:

--You can help make this posting more complete.  Do you have a tankless water heater, a “Hoveround” or a sleep number bed?  If you do, please check and see if they’re actually all the way off when not in use.

--A lesbian couple was strolling around at Dolly Parton’s “Dollywood” Amusement center near Knoxville, Tennessee, when a worker asked one of the them to turn her tee-shirt inside out while on the grounds, lest it offend the rest of the patrons because it said “Marriage is so Gay.”  At least they didn’t throw the women out of the place.  Don’t ask don’t tell lives.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com.
© WJR 2011