Thanks for the accuracy

"The poverty rate among Black married couples has been in the single digits since 1994.  You would never learn that from most of the media.  Similarly, you look at the Blacks that have gone on to college or finished college, the incarceration rate is some tiny fraction of what it is among Blacks who have dropped out of high school." Thomas Sowell

As the Trayvon Martin case has illustrated, certain news outlets perpetuate the 1950's and even the 1960's weltanschauung when it comes to Blacks in America.  It is a profound act of racism on the part of such media.  In order to perpetuate their own popular stereotypes, media outlets like MSNBC are in the ironic position of continuing to diminish the accomplishments of Blacks in America and their perpetuation of racial stereotypes is as racist now as it was sixty years ago.

The situation involving Herman Cain was even more illustrative of the deep, disturbing racist hearts of the media .  MSNBC gave us another glimpse into those racist hearts when they seated a bunch of short skirted white women around the table, talking about how the "Tea Party" would react to the age long stereotype of the Black man as a sexual predator.  It was shameful and did great injustice to Black men everywhere.

Socking it to the rich

With the election coming on, it is a good time for class warfare so the rhetoric about tax cuts “for the rich” has ramped up even though we say we are going to be “more civil” in our public discourse.

Class warfare is divisive in nature and it is intended to be.  People, who are down and out, having lost their jobs; experienced reduced income levels, or seen their benefit packages evaporate, make good tinder for the class warfare fire.  Especially, when they see Wall Street bailed out, spineless corporate governance, and fat bonuses for corporate executives who have all but ruined their companies.

In Japan, corporate misfeasance is considered disgraceful and would only earn the shamed executive a possible date with an ancient ritual involving a very sharp knife, not a golden parachute.

The truly frightening thing about taxing the rich is that much of the rhetoric originates with the rich.  When the richest and the third richest U.S. Senators advocate taxing the rich, you have to wonder what they know that the rest of us do not.

Of course, we all know that Mitt Romney is rich, but taxing the rich is not part of his every day political message.  Of course, Romney is rich enough that the media elites wonder how he could ever connect with the average American.  Too bad they didn’t wonder the same thing when the rich John Kerry ran for President. 

When Warren Buffet argues for a stronger capital gains tax, you have to wonder how he will evade it.  After all, as we have been lectured, isn’t that what rich people do?

The rich today are markedly different than the rich of the early 20^th Century.  The rich of the early 20^th Century derived about 20% of their income from work.  The rest was inherited wealth.  Today’s rich, by contrast, derive about 60% of their income from work, not inherited wealth.  Today’s rich are more likely to be self-made, not those “who won the lottery of life” as a popular ex-President likes to say.  They were self-made because they worked their behinds off.

The Obama Administration thinks if you earn over $250,000 a year, you are rich.  Try telling that to a family of four, financing two children’s college education, while both parents are working.  Try accepting that definition from a bunch of people who do not have a clue how much a gallon of milk costs.

So what happens when government decides to go after the rich?  Such policies inculcate some of the most creative and bold faced evasions we could ever imagine.

The richest U.S. Senator berthed his new 75 foot yacht in a neighboring state where taxes are lower.  Since such a scenario is beyond the wildest dreams of most of us, we can only wonder why an advocate for taxing the rich would not practice what he preaches.

The State of Oregon decided to “sock it to” the rich in 2010.  Ten thousand people were taxed right out of Oregon toward, presumably, friendlier environs like Texas.  Did taxing the rich expand Oregon’s tax base?  How did that work out for Oregon?

The City of Detroit has a hugely diminished tax base because the city also liked to “sock it to” the rich.  In Detroit’s case, the rich became the suburbs and Detroit became the pits.

The more predominant self-made millionaires of today, extra sensitive about the wealth they amassed through hard work and innovation, have developed a new form of evading governmental designs on wealth confiscation.  They establish and capitalize a charitable foundation, thus, denying government’s powers of confiscatory taxation.

So, if Senator John Kerry, Warren Buffet, and other incredibly wealthy Americans advocate taxation of the rich, but at the same time, implement a range of tax evasive behaviors, where will the tax burden fall?

Since the poor pay no taxes, the burden falls upon America’s diminishing middle class.  This shameful trend continues despite all the rhetoric about preserving the American middle class.  If the middle class is as important as the politicians tell us it is, then stop the enabling and the lying.

GSA-What should have stayed in Las Vegas

Geez! Just three years ago, President Obama was telling everybody that the lavish trips on corporate jets to Vegas would be out of the question.  If the American people were going to bail out the banks, the era of living high on the hog was over.
Three years later, an agency within the Executive Office, the General Services Administration, whooped it up to the tune of an $840,000 conference, complete with comedians, mind-readers, and God only knows what other taxpayer funded entertainment these valuable federal employees may have desired.
The extravagancies and waste were horrible enough in a country where we are reminded daily by government elites about those who are suffering out there, but the arrogance and the callous disregard for taxpayer resources are enough to drive even the most stable personality off a tall building.  Derisive skits and comments about taxpayers show an unbelievable arrogance and carelessness.  It adds a lot of fuel to the notion that there really is a war of the public class on the private sector.  Now, they laugh at and mock us while sitting in their hot tubs, drinking wine, and making tasteless jokes about hard working taxpayers. I hope this isn't more of the "Hope and Change we were promised three years ago.
"Brand new computer, and underground parking and a corner office...Love to the taxpayer".

Love THIS,

Madame Secretary

This view originates in West Michigan, hence the name of the column.  I may not be addressing specific to West Michigan issues, but I do address larger issues relevant to the values of West Michigan.

Here is a toast to our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.  Madame Secretary was photographed over the weeked, tossing down some brewskis in a night club.  Not only has she been a bright light of an otherwise undistinguished cabinet, but seeing here downing the brewskis cements a place in my heart.  Madam Secretary, I would be honored to toss a brewski with you anytime.  That is a West Michigan value!

Girls Behaving Badly--Sure do hope this does not alienate my brother, Marc

Even though I voted for Barach Obama, it is not likely I'll do so again--although you can never sell the Republican Party short -- in their own tormented convulsions, it is still possible, even likely, they'll vomit up an even worse alternative.  But even the lassitudes of the Republican Party operation cannot match the kabuki antics of the rich and not-so-famous operatives on the political Left.  Enter a Hillary Rosen, monthly visitor to the White House, and an employee of the Democratic National Committee.  Ms. Rosen opined that Mrs. Romney should have no opinion on the economy since she has never worked a day in her life.  It is this kind of insipid nonsense that makes me pray for a head on collision.  And, more importantly, it is more evidence that the gang that can't shoot straight can't shoot straight.
Let's see--raising five sons, all of whom are tax PRODUCERS, battling breast cancer, and battling Multiple Sclerosis and she hasn't worked a day in her life?  Where pray tell did Ms. Rosen do her research?
Rosen was the architect of the strategy of elevating the very busy sex life of a little rich white girl attending a private Catholic university to a demand that the health care system finance her sexual extravagancies.  This in a health care system that is already caving in our financial house.  Looks like none of thes eself indulgent crusaders are concerned about maybe plugging resources into AIDS research or research for cures and therapies for Multiple Sclerosis and Cystic Fibrosis.  They want it all!
Now that Ms. Rosen is 0 for 2, and even has Debbie Wasserman-Schultz tweeting apologies, Ms. Rosen might want to re-think her next political caper.  Right now, she is showing a lot in common with a North Korean rocket.

The Professoriat and Diversity Day

At a recent event celebrating (?) diversity, the name of Trayvon Martin was invoked no less than five times, indicating that achievements in diversity would be taking second place to the favorite practice of harpooning the Great White Whale.  While my previous posts have not been perfect, it was nonetheless disconcerting to see a host of misspellings and grammatical errors in the signage at the event--and this was a university setting.
The professoriat was at the forefront of the Trayvon parade, citing the need for justice.  Justice is something with which the professoriat should have a much closer acquaintance--so that they may finally know justice.
In the Duke Lacrosse case, several years back, 87 professors with absolutely no grasp of the details or the facts all signed a letter condemning the team long before the players saw their own mugshots.  "What does a social catastrophe look like?" the professoriat asked in the open letter.
A social catastrophe looks like a lynch mob committee of the professoriat--is this what they teach--in addition to misspelling and grammatical catastrophes?
A social catastrophe looks like a pack of greedy racial profiteers parachuting in to stoke the situation sure as second teeth for personal gain and group entitrlements.
Can anybody tell me what happened to the young lady who was involved with the Duke Lacrosse team?  I wonder if she has been graduated by now thanks to that Jesse Jackson scholarship.  Of course, the state investigators concluded she would make a very poor witness since she rarely resides on Planet Earth.
A social catastrophe looks like 26 process steps to fire a tenured professor even if he has traded grades for sex.  Notice that when it comes to firing tenured professors, well.......we'll just take our sweet time--justice can certainly wait when it comes to important people like us.  Everybody else??  Off with their heads -- immediately!!

Don't Mess with California

This is an update of a column I wrote for a business publication a coupl of years ago.  It addresses the climate, attitudes, and environment necessary for growth.  It found many of these qualities well embedded in the crazy quilt we know as California.

A Change in Scenery

The economic development profession is well represented by the International Economic Development Council (IEDC).  The IEDC, in January, held a leadership summit in San Diego, California.  Usually, a national event will bring together some 300-500 practitioners from across the nation, Canada, and a few from much farther.  The IEDC provides important information, and advances the education and training of economic developers. 

I used to eschew such gatherings due to an ultra competitive nature.  I honestly could not stand to be in the same room with other economic developers, many of whom were my competitors.  As the years passed and I was asked to present at some of these events, sharing the stage with other economic developers, the ultra competitive nature gave way to more neighborly feelings. 

Being in San Diego for several days constituted a significant change of scenery for me and the weather had very little to do with the change.  Rather, I can easily recall two nearby lunch conversations on two successive days, both of which dramatically illustrate the continental divide between prosperity and stagnation.

The first conversation occurred at an outside café where my spouse and I sat near a group of four young “venture boys” as I called them.  They earned the designation because of their incessant conversation about starting new companies and raising capital.  These were not economic development practitioners, but they certainly represented pure grist for the economic development mills.  At once, they were planners, dreamers, and unbelievably optimistic, not at all worried about failure.

Richard Florida, of the “creative class” literature, would have been proud.  Not only did these young men steep their conversation in “venturespeak”, but they had their tattoos and piercings.  One even brought his pet rabbit in a cage to the luncheon meeting.  I guess we, in Michigan, need to develop our quirkiness.

The second lunch conversation took place exactly twenty four hours later.  Situated at a table adjacent to us were three young women and five young men, all of whom were Black.  Most likely in their late twenties, these young people carried on a conversation that delved into meeting sales targets, upgrading software, and technology developments.  Again, their milieu was one of dreaming, planning, and sharing an unbridled optimism about their business and career prospects.

My spouse noted that between that conversation and one we had heard the day before, you could tell we were not in Michigan.  That had nothing to do with the fifty degree difference in temperature in the weather.  That did not matter to me.  There simply was a huge chasm between the conversations I overheard in California, and the ones I overhear in Michigan.

I share most of the late Mike Royko’s feelings about California (one giant cuckoo’s nest), but I could not help but feel that the conversation of these young people, the hopes and dreams expressed, is one of the reasons why they are enjoying prosperity and we remain mired in stagnation, still fearfully hypnotized by the rustbelt mentality.

Encounters with economic developers reinforced these perceptions.  Retorts from my colleagues concerning economic development ranged from the mournful (“It must be really tough in Michigan.”) to admiration (“If you can do that work successfully in Michigan, you can do it anywhere.”). 

Our problem is not only the sagging Michigan auto industry and the inability of our rust belt institutions to make us competitive, but we have allowed this malaise to infect and diminish our natural optimism and the art of the possible.

California has a horrible reputation for overregulation, very high taxes, and legislated quirkiness.  Many of the state’s traditional industries, especially defense and aerospace, lay in ruins.  The state’s enormous tax rates drove businesses across the borders into adjacent states. 

But, nonetheless, California is a hot bed of economic activity.  Its universities are dynamic and stuffed full of new technologies, just waiting to be rocketed through commercialization processes by willing scientists, entrepreneurial professors, and optimistic young people sharing lunch.  In short, California has crossed over, utterly and completely, to a new economy that treasures optimism, risk taking, and the art of the possible.

I oftentimes tell people that in the economic development business, one cannot afford to be constantly optimistic.  After all, when just about everybody had decided Ann Arbor was Michigan’s shining star and hope for the future, the Pfizer downsizing demonstrated the vulnerability of every community, even Ann Arbor, to humbling economic circumstances.

Nonetheless, the tie between prosperity and attitude seems to be strong, even symbiotic.  As we remained walled in our rustbelt prison, we might remember that we have the will, the brains, the drive, and the money to turn our state around and reclaim our position of global pre-eminence.  We might expedite the process of recovery by talking loudly about our dreams, our prospects, and our new love for risk taking.

The new economy favors people strengths.  California talks the talk and it walks the walk.  Michigan needs to start doing both and very soon.

Okay! Finally! What is wrong with hard work?

If you are called to be a street sweeper, sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry.  Sweep the streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

Unless you are a student of the person I am quoting, you will have to wait until the end of this essay to know the source.  The statement was made over sixty years ago by somebody who knew hard work and, in the course of his life, was elevated to the status of an American icon.

Contrast that statement with the exchange between Newt Gingrich and Juan Williams in a recent debate of the Republican Presidential candidates.  Juan Williams asked Gingrich if he could possibly be aware of how insulting and offensive it was to the “African American community” to hear somebody like Gingrich suggest that young African American males do janitorial work around their schools.

I did janitorial work around my school, even delivered milk to other students in my school.

Juan Williams is not a bad man.  In fact, his spirited defense of Bill Cosby was both passionate and necessary when Cosby called out African American families and demanded they do better by their children.  And yet, taking form within the ideology of modern day Liberalism is that most work is beneath the dignity of certain subsectors of the American pluralist system.  Unfortunately, bright and authoritative people like Juan Williams have swallowed this flotsam, lock, stock, and barrel.

I don’t really care for Gingrich that much, but his view of the spectrum of work to management to ownership seems to me to be the very thing that will deliver the ultimate political and economic emancipation to Black America. 

I come by these beliefs honestly.  My mother preached “the dignity of all work even if it is cleaning a toilet.”  It was and is inconceivable that in my life that any productive work or any productive enterprise could possibly be insulting or offensive or ever beneath my dignity.

The phrases, “chump change” and “hamburger flipper” have hardened into pathologies that discourage and otherwise prevent would be entrants to the work force from gathering the tools they need to advance and become better productive and caring human beings.

In my youth, in addition to helping clean up my elementary school, I delivered the Detroit Free Press at four o’clock in the morning to 110 people, everyday, whether Christmas or ten below zero.  I cleaned a hotel kitchen every day.  The smell of rotting cabbage leaves is permanently embedded in my nasal sensors.  I night clerked at the same hotel.  I bagged groceries, stocked shelves, and mopped and waxed the floors of a local grocery store.

At the university, I continued to do grocery store work, collected dirty laundry, and distributed clean laundry.  I served as a supervisor in my dormitory, trying to make thirty six guys behave.  I worked on the Great Lakes ore freighters where I cleaned my share (and Juan Williams’ share) of dirty toilets.  In graduate school, I worked in a wine and cheese shop, riding my bicycle to work seven miles one way.

I served as a research assistant to numerous professors.  I was given the jobs they did not want to do—for good reason.

None of this was offensive.  None of this was insulting.  Every job, no matter how disagreeable, was a step toward something better.  This was a crucial part of my life and a crucial part of my eventual career as a Chief Executive Officer of a nonprofit corporation.  My training convinced me that no work was beneath the dignity of the CEO if it was in the interest of the company to be successful.  So I answered phones and licked stamps when it became necessary.

Suddenly we live in an era where elites like Juan Williams have created and enhanced a toxic culture that just about eliminates the possibility that a young African American could do what I did with my work life.  And yet, here I stand, taking great pride in all the work I have done.  I am retired, but I have used my gains to help finance educational opportunities for African American students interested in aviation and aerospace careers.  I do this in spite of the toxic culture that does everything it can to put the lid on the aspirations of African American youth and otherwise confine them to government or street dependency.

Is it any wonder that young people, being fed this garbage by so-called respected leaders in society, bear the burden of this loser culture comprised of inept educational systems, horrifying dropout rates, violence, and a total incapacity to live productively, let alone compete globally against people who revere education and are not at all afraid to get their hands dirty?

The quote?  Oh yes, it came from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

So, if you ever visit the King Memorial in Washington, D.C., and you see a tear run down the great man’s face, you will know why.

AP

The Associated Press polled Black and White Americans about the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman case.  As can be expected Blacks believed a murder was committed.  Whites generally wanted to see the evidence before deciding.  What bothers me is that no news media outlet bothered to poll Hispanics, America's largest minority, the ethnic group to which Mr. Zimmerman has a blood connection.  In the media rush to create a racial situation, they have inadvertently created another racial/ethnic situation because they evidently DON'T care what Hispanics think.

What is wrong with hard work?

Where are the marchers?

Yesterday, marches in support of justice for Trayvon Martin took on a national scope with rallies taking place in Grand Rapids and Battle Creek.  Although I didn't hear anything, Kalamazoo is a good town to protest anything, so I would imagine they had their version as well.

On St. Patrick's Day weekend, ten Blacks were murdered--by other Blacks.  A six year old girl was splattered all over her mother as they sat together on the porch of their house.

Where were the marchers?