Costco CEO Pay

There is no better way to lead than by example.  Way too many CEOs of publically held corporations make way too much money despite the fact that they are beholden to a Board of Directors and that their salaries and their compensation package are for the most part, quite transparent.  Many articles have come out in recent years in which it is stated that CEO pay in ratio to worker pay has exploded and in fact according to the Huffington Post: "today Fortune 500 CEOs make 204 times regular workers on average, Bloomberg found. The ratio is up from 120-to-1 in 2000, 42-to-1 in 1980 and 20-to-1 in 1950."  Are CEOs 204 times more valuable than the average worker, which is an increase of over 1000% since 1950?  That answer is absolutely not.  What has increased 1000% over the ensuing years is the CEOs rapacious greed, which has been rubberstamped by their dereliction-of-duty Board of Directors.

Fortunately, not every public company follows this footprint.  For instance, there is Costco which ranks as #22 on the Fortune 500 list with yearly revenues in 2013 of nearly $100 billion dollars.  Their current CEO is Craig Jelinek, who replaced former CEO James Sinegal (co-founder) in 2012.  Jelinek's salary is $650,000 annually with a bonus of up to $200,000, and stock compensation based upon company performance which can add a couple more million dollars in compensation to him.  According to Costco the average worker makes $20.89/hour, before overtime and benefits, or about $43,451/year.  Additionally, the annual turnover rate is less than 6%, which is incredibly low for a retailer, with nearly 88% of all Costco employees receiving health insurance.

This Costco philosophy of being fair to their employees is also part and parcel of their business model to their customers in which Costco is known as marking up their products no more than 14-15 percent over cost.  The reason behind this belief is that Costco feels that they only offer a limited amount of value by providing products to customers and therefore they pass those savings onto their consumers. 

Additionally, one of the things that Wall Street seems incapable of understanding and comprehending is that the worth of a company, the value of a company, cannot always be determined simply by stating that if we lowered that cost our profit would rise, or if we increased that selling price our margin would increase.  There are intangibles in any business model that don't easily translate into numbers, and some of those intangibles involve doing the right thing for your customers, for your employees, and for your collective moral climate.  I do believe that customers take more pleasure and satisfaction out of shopping at a store in which the pricing is fair to them and in which the employees are paid a fair wage. Henry Ford put it best one hundred years ago, when he raised the compensation rates for his employees not only to improve employee productivity, retention, and well-being, but also to put more money into their pockets so that they too could afford to buy the very automobiles that they were assembling.

Corn Ethanol

I eat corn and most people eat some sort of corn product or utilize it in everyday things; for instance, high-fructose syrup which you will find in many sodas is corn based, yogurts, gum, salad dressing, toothpaste, and even perfume all utilize corn.  Corn is used extensively in livestock feed, it is a food staple throughout the world, and the United States is the largest producer and exporter of corn in the world.

With over 850 million people worldwide suffering from undernourishment, it is surprising that corn is now also being utilized as a fuel.  This would imply that corn ethanol is so sufficient, so cost-efficient, so abundant, and in such high supply, that utilizing it as a fuel is the most efficient thing and the most practical use of corn and that this therefore is the right thing for the United States to do.  The facts, however, don't support this thesis.

First, putting aside the obvious fact that corn is a wonderful and efficient food item with a multitude of uses, when one considers corn ethanol as a fuel, you must first rate this ethanol in comparison to the gold standard which is oil.  Is corn as efficient with BTUs as oil?  For instance, using E85, which is a blend of 85% ethanol and 15%, Oak Ridge National Laboratory reported that "…25-30% tank loss in mileage due to the lower energy density of E85."  So clearly, E85 ethanol is not as efficient as oil. 

The next question to ask is how much energy does corn ethanol use in order to produce its fuel energy in comparison to oil.  While experts have weighed in on both sides of the equation, theoildrum.com, states: " …that energy conversion efficiency of gasoline is higher: roughly 1 unit of fossil fuel energy to create 4 units of gasoline compared whereas 1 unit of fossil fuel energy to create 1.3 units of ethanol."

I don't think that there is any doubt that oil is a much more efficient unit of energy.  However, surprisingly, the Model T which was first brought out in 1908 could initially run on gasoline, kerosene, or ethanol.  Henry Ford said "There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for one hundred years,"   and Ford believed that alcohol as a fuel was the fuel of the future, but history to date, has proven him wrong.

This leads to a further question, is it possible that corn ethanol is on the right track as an alternative fuel but it itself is not the most efficient renewal fuel to develop?  That answer would appear to be yes.  Putting aside the usual political shenanigans, the agricultural subsidies for votes, the lobbying, dirty money, cronyism, and other nonsense, there are plenty of other possibilities, limited only by our own imaginations and dreams.  For instance, former Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, said, "cost competitive, energy responsible cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass or from forestry waste like sawdust and wood chips… …. contains more net energy and emits significantly fewer greenhouse gases than ethanol made from corn."

Perhaps the great Henry Ford was a visionary and was right about alcohol (ethanol is a type of alcohol), and we just have gone about it the wrong way.

Communes and America

As more and more Americans seem more and more willing to become wards of the State, to want the State to be all and provide all, to sacrifice some of their liberties in order to have more of something else provided to them by the State; it makes one think that this is really a version of a Socialism.  If you were to break down Socialism to its core, or to scale it way, way down, it would be a commune.  A commune is a group of like-minded individuals who have sacrificed their individual identities and possessions in order to reap the benefits of being with a group of people that work together, share together, live together, and prosper together.  It's all for one and one for all.  On the surface, for certain individuals it sounds like nirvana, a truly democratic society in which no one person is above it all, the fruits of the commune's collective efforts are shared together and the joys of true brotherhood are experienced.

Yet with the exception of communes that are faith-based, communal living in America has done quite poorly over the long-term with virtually no real success.  While there may be many reasons for communal failing in America; even reasons of our current State interfering, infiltrating and actively trying to bring down the commune, most communes fail because the people participating in it lose their desire to continue with the lifestyle that they once voluntarily embraced.  Like government programs, communes when they initially start are well-meaning and sound good, but living in them day after day, year after year, takes its toll.  When everything is owned in common and it is the collective work-rate that determines how much food is produce, clothes that are created, housing that is built, medical care that is provided, it is easy to say to oneself, "I'm doing more than the others, I deserve more," or to say, "I'm not here to be anyone's slave, I will work at the rate that I find to be satisfactory, nothing more, nothing less." 

It is human nature that the goals and visions of one's utopia differ than another's.  Because of those differences you will create conflict and because of that conflict the whole edifice is in danger of collapsing upon itself.  Additionally, communes have rules and responsibilities, whereas there is a significant amount of people that believe that life consists of hand-outs that have no strings attached, but in fact, the old proverb "there's no such thing as a free lunch" is not just a proverbial truth, it is truth itself.  Communes without a higher God to answer to, but simply based on people working together for a common purpose will find that that common purpose is hard to lock down and defined.  Additionally, while adults are capable of making decisions and sticking to them and their vision, children are an entirely different prospect.  While some children may be delighted to be living in a communal situation with other children who are like their brothers and sisters in-kind, others will find the need to answer to the siren call of the real world.  As a commune gets older, gets more mature, it must have new blood, new recruits to sustain those that are no longer able to produce or perform at their previous work-rate so that if the children fall away, the commune itself is in danger of following suit.

For those communes that are faith-based, however, while their success and sustainability are not guaranteed, they have required a sacred sacrifice on the part of their adherents and it is that sacrifice and commitment that enables that commune to have a good chance of survival and the tools thereby to thrive.  Communes, who necessitate a "weeding out" process to ascertain your true intentions and to determine your suitability for their mission, for their purpose, are essentially the only communes with sustainability. 

Men with a common purpose that is above their selfish desires, that live for a higher purpose, are the essence of a good commune and Christian thinking as a whole.

Christ as the Lamb and the Lion of God

Most of us are quite familiar with the images and the persona of Christ as the Lamb of God.  Scripture underscores this in several passages such as:

                The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. (John 1: 29)

                The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth. (Acts 8:32)

                And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. (Revelation 7:10)

These above passages signify that Christ sacrificed Himself willingly on the cross as the ultimate sin offering to God and consequently for the redemption of humanity that in their collective ignorance had lost their way.  The amount of humility, discipline, courage, and self-control exhibited by Jesus the Christ to perform this sacred duty for our behalf was incredible and worthy of our utmost respect and love.  For a man, any man, let alone the Christ, to be subjected to painful and bloody beatings of his body, mocked and scourged, and then crucified like a common criminal when Christ, himself, had committed nothing to warrant these actions is excruciating to know.  This is the Chosen One of God, innocent, the Lamb of God, treated with abject contempt.

But fortunately, the story does not end there.  How could it?  Christ sacrificed his physical body and emptied his ego for our behalf to demonstrate that the greatest of us all surrenders Himself to God, and that our Spirit, our Soul, forever triumphs over our physical body that so many of us wrongly place too much attention to.  Still further to the point, Christ then resurrected Himself physically for our benefit to prove to us that it is the Spirit that manifests the body and not the other way around; and it is this bodily resurrection, this reconstitution, that built the foundation of the Christian religion as we know it today. 

The former is of the Christ, as our redeeming Lamb, but what of the Lion?  We read:

                        And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. (Revelation 5:5)

The Lion as referenced in this scripture refers to Christ, who is of the tribe of Judah, which is the lineage of King David of the Old Testament.  It is important to understand Christ as the Lion, whose symbolic reference is one that is a King, fearless, majestic, and all mighty.  There is no God but our God, who is second to none, He is All and will ever be All, He is unchanging, He is justice, He is Truth, He is love, He is our King, and His Son is our Lion, who will forever protect us, guard us, redeem us, and when necessary will correct us, for God's justice will not rest forever.

Bullying

With the exception of Montana, every state in the Union has some form of anti-bullying legislation for school-age children as part of their law and all of this has occurred within the last few years.  While press conferences celebrating this legislation are often applauded and praised, I do take exception to all of this unnecessary legislation which while well-meaning is misapplied.

Going through adolescence is a difficult process and within this growth there are bound to be plenty of tests, turns, and trials.  Bullying is often a rite of passage in which some are bullied, some are the bully, and some aren't impacted by bullying at all.  The basic question comes down to whether or not children are mean and nasty to one another.   Well, yes, often many adolescents are.  We may not wish that that is the case but the fact of the matter speaks for itself.  Anti-bullying legislation won't stop that behavior, it will simply be another case of an unnecessary bureaucracy interposing itself on children, with the mistaken vision that this law will allow us to get along and that justice thereby will be served. 

Before I go any further, let me allow you to know a little background of my own life in being bullied.  I was always physically the smallest or nearly the smallest male while going to school, in which some of my contemporaries were 60% larger or even bigger in size than I was.  I would say most of my bullying incidents mainly came about because of my smart-ass mouth but certainly not all of them.  Perhaps I would make a comment in class that would embarrass one of my bigger classmates and he would want to take it out on me later, so I had more than one of these confrontations.  Well, being bullied, being threatened or even hit, by a bigger boy that I could not possibly beat up is not an enviable position to be in.  The best defense in those types of situations is to try to make peace, apologize, humor, cry, or a combination thereof.  In really bad situations I would tell my parents and something would be worked out, in others, I learned to avoid that bully, and quite frankly I don't ever remember becoming good friends with a bully.  Now, the above all has to do with me being clearly outclassed in regards to size and strength, but that wasn't always the case with every bully I came across.  Sometimes, the person bullying me was perhaps only 30% bigger than me and in those cases, given the right circumstances, I would fight back, and I usually after a push by my foe or something to that effect, I got the first real punch in.  In those situations, and probably without exception, fighting back, no matter the end result (and usually that result was a good one for my fighting self), I garnered a lot of respect from my contemporaries, and quite frankly it made me feel good about myself. 

You could say that bullying was never always a negative, it taught me that there are consequences to your own actions in regards to what you say and what you do, and that there are times in which you must be a doormat, but there are also times in which you are called to be courageous.   I remember one embarrassing incident during gym, when a much bigger and mean-spirited boy deliberately splashed hard on a water puddle in which the water got all over the front of my gym shorts, and then had the gumption to turn to a couple girls that were walking our way and say, "he just peed in his pants".   I quickly thought of a lot of possible responses I had, but none of them made any sense, I mean to deny that I peed in my pants would serve to confirm that I actually had, to explain the real situation to the girls would take too long and wouldn't be believed anyway, and ultimately I didn't say a word at all but went about my business, and later I had a good chuckle about it, because although quite mean, the bully had played it well.

Anti-bullying legislation isn't necessary and isn't warranted.  You have a voice, use it; you have a body, use it; you have a mind, use it; you have parents, use them; you have school authorities, you can also use them.  Whatever that you do, don't quit on yourself; I never did and neither should you.

Annex Baja California

California is our most populous state and directly south of California, across the border in Mexico is Baja California which is subdivided into Baja California and Baja California Sur.   It should be a desire of the United States to annex Baja California, but first a little historical background.  Two hundred years ago, Mexico was a country that was twice as large as it is today.  Our states of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada, and Texas (our second most populous state) were all once completely within the confines of Mexico.  Additionally, the states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming have territory within them that were also once part of Mexico.  The United States of America would not be the country it is today without these states and the territories that we captured or won via war whether foul or fair.

America has a contiguous border on the north with Canada and on the south with Mexico.    In regards to Canada, their per capita income and their per capita wealth is comparable to the United States; unfortunately, the situation in Mexico is pathetic, with per capita income at very low levels and the distribution of this income skewered to an elite and consequently the vast majority of Mexicans are quite poor, and this despite the fact that the wealthiest country in aggregate in the world shares a 2,000 mile long border with them.

The idea of annexing Baja California is something that was attempted previously through conquest by William Walker with a small group of adventurous men in 1853.  Walker's efforts, however, were not backed by the United States, and in fact Walker would be tried for violation of our Neutrality laws, and additionally his mission of conquest of Baja California ultimately ended in failure and defeat.  Fast forward to the present time and Baja California looks like a land that under the right aegis could become a future paradise.  Baja California is an 800 mile peninsula with the Pacific Ocean to its west, and the Sea of Cortes to its east; it's perfect for tourism, agriculture, shipping, and manufacturing.

Of course, Baja California is already populated by a few million peoples and they are of mainly Mexican descent.  The annexation of Baja California would not forcefully remove historic residents from Baja California although as part of eminent domain within the annexation there would be a movement of some of those peoples.  Also, the annexation of Baja California would provide better income opportunities, education, and a pathway for those residents to apply for United States citizenship. 

To effect this annexation, eminent domain would be necessitated and would include all of Baja California with the exception of the major cities of Tijuana, Mexicali, and Ensenada which would be separately dealt with.  The annexation of Baja California would be accomplished with probably the largest bond offering in the history of America, and therefore the world.   This process of change would take time, logistics, and no doubt leave some trail of tears.  However, one need only look at the material difference between our two countries to understand that this leap of faith, would be of massive mutual beneficence and I do believe that Mexico would be amendable to the right overtures and the right deal.

The Water Scam

The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) was passed in 1974, in order to protect the public from contaminants in our public water and to promote the safety and protection of these waters.  Overall, in aggregate, our tap water is quite safe and is regularly tested for pollutants to protect the public.  Since safe water is essential and fundamental for our good health it is imperative that our tap water continue to remain safe now and into the foreseeable future. 

Many people do not like to drink tap water unfiltered and the filtering of tap water by the consumer is relatively low-cost and worthwhile.  One must recognize, however, that the filtering of tap water will not purify the water, but it will help considerably in removing chemicals, such as chlorine, and sediment from the tap water.  However, in order to purify tap water, one must purchase a water distiller purification system, in which the water is first heated to the boiling point, which then creates steam which is collected by the water purification system and ultimately that steam is converted back into liquid form, but without the contaminates. You can also purify tap water given the property tools through de-ionization or reverse osmosis.

The above would indicate that there are plenty of tools at our disposal to assure ourselves that our drinking water is clean, especially if the tap water is essentially safe to begin with.  In cases in which the tap water within your community is contaminated, the usage of such water for drinking purposes without taking the necessary steps to purify it, would most definitely put your health in danger.  Fortunately, in those communities in which the water has tested poorly, we have ready access to plenty of good, safe, bottled water which is a blessing.

What is puzzling; however, are those that deliberately purchase bottle water in which their tap water gives every indication of being safe.  Not only that, depending upon what type of water that you purchase, you may be purchasing tap water itself in which the sole difference is the area of the country that the tap water originates from.  While there is water that you can purchase that is labeled as carbonated, underground, glacial, artesian, or as spring water, you will pay dearly for the privilege of drinking it.

For instance, for 2012, Americans spent a staggering $11.8 billion dollars on bottled water, in which for most of us, free tap water is readily available.  I mean I know people that instead of providing tap water for their pets to drink provide them instead with bottled water.  Why? I believe that Americans buy so much bottle water because they treat water as if it is a special beverage, worthy of its own packaging, its own cachet, and its own place.  For instance, when you have company over, and you offer them something to drink, you can't possibly consider giving them a chilled glass of tap water, or tap water on ice, or tap water poured from a pitcher; no, you must provide them with their own bottle water, hopefully from the right company with the right prestige. 

The Last Great Hope for the Republicans -- Win California

I've previously discussed that the Democrats have a stranglehold on the Presidency and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.  The reason that I say this is the mathematics of the present era in which over the last six Presidential elections, or twenty-four years, there have been eighteen states and the District of Columbia that have voted Democratic in each of those years.  The total electoral votes for those eighteen states and DC, which includes California, is 240 electoral votes in which the President need only 270 to be elected.  The Republicans on the other hand, however, have just thirteen states for a total of 102 electoral votes that have voted for the Republican candidate in each of the last six elections.  The difference between these two numbers are so great, that it is essentially a foregone conclusion that the Democrats will win the Presidency unless the biggest State of the Union was to flip to the other side, by backing a favored son.  California was not always a reliable Democratic ticket, as seen by the fact that first Nixon and then Reagan were able to carry the state.  However, since that time, the demographics of Republican registration has slipped considerably, so that today registered Republicans make up a mere 30% of the registered voters in California.

But all is not lost, because first in 2003 through a recall election, and then in 2006 when re-elected, an Austrian born body builder and actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected the Governor of California.  If a man such as Schwarzenegger can do it, it would be considered reasonable to believe that the right candidate could do it on a Presidential scale in the near future.

California is the key to any hope for the Republicans in future elections, as a successful carrying of California would subtract 55 electoral votes from the Democrats and add 55 electoral votes to the Republicans, narrowing considerably the Democratic certain numerical advantage from 240-102, to 185-157, which makes it a real horse race.

But whom would the Republicans run?  They could only consider running someone with a highly favorable public perception that is either from the entertainment world, the sports world, or possibly the corporate world.  This particular person need not currently be a registered Republican, in fact in all probability that person would probably not be a registered Republican, and so the flipping of that particular registration would probably be done behind the scenes, and would remain unknown until such time as it became appropriate for a coming out party for said candidate.

For those who are appalled that someone that is not a professional or experienced politician could have the audacity to run for President, the answer to that would be the public approval rating of politicians in general which is abysmally low so to be perceived as an outsider, would be considered by a significant portion of the people to be a breath of fresh air. 

Although there are many reasons why people vote for the people that they vote for, often times, it does come down to people voting for people that they like, and it's as simple as that.

The Money-changers and Jesus

Each of the four gospels has the story of Jesus and the money-changers, John's story is earlier in Jesus' ministry, and the other three synoptic gospels place the money-changer story at Jesus' final Passover.  The story itself seems out-of-place, Christ the Redeemer, losing his temper, losing his cool; Impossible!  But that perspective isn't correct and first a little background on this passage.

In Jesus time, the Passover was one of the festivals in which Jews from all over the land, made the pilgrimage to the Holy Temple of Jerusalem.   As part of the process of the pilgrims showing their humility and thankfulness to God, sacrifices and/or temple donations were mandated to the temple religious authorities.  In Jesus' time, there was no common currency between distant communities; additionally it was considered a sacrilege to donate coinage with graven images (i.e. Roman coinage) as opposed to appropriate Jewish coinage so monies therefore had to be converted to conform to Temple policies.    All of this seems both practical and reasonable.  However, we read: "And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,   and said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves."  (Matthew 21:12-13)

This seems like an extreme overreaction by Jesus.  For instance, nowhere within the gospel do we read that the money-changers were cheating their clientele; it seemed on the surface that the money-changers were merely providing a well needed orderly market and service for the pilgrims.  What then is the problem?  The problem fundamentally is that the material world has polluted into the spiritual temple of our hearts and our minds.  The purpose of Passover is to show devotion to our Lord, everything else that takes us away from this purpose is at odds to it, what should matter to use is our right relationship with our Lord, especially on the very days and times that we have specifically set aside to worship Him.

Therefore Jesus' overturning of the tables and the casting out of the money-changers is to dramatically show us that our behaviors and our minds are not right thinking and that consequently we need a "wake-up" call to re-orient ourselves to our primary purpose which is devotion to God and nothing else.  Jesus cast out the money-changers to shake us out of our lethargy and to admonish us that our primary purpose is to love our Lord our God with all of our heart, with our entire mind, and with our entire being.  Jesus had no choice but to treat us as recalcitrant children in which a mere gentle admonition would not be enough to garner our attention and to protect us from our own errors and thereby place us back onto the straight and narrow path.

Jesus never lost his temper in this instance, he instead inserted his Divine Presence to rebuke those who mean well but are fogging the Divinity of God to our ultimate disservice.  Our enemies are not always those that are our fiercest rivals but those that think they know right but are wrong.

The Great Migration

The Emancipation Proclamation was implemented on January 1, 1863, legally freeing all slaves in any State that was still in rebellion against the Union.  The South was officially vanquished on April 9, 1865 with Lee's surrender at Appomattox.  Soon thereafter, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were ratified to our Constitution.  These Amendments eliminated slavery, made citizens of all native born peoples, and gave the vote to all men.  These Amendments in principle thereby gave all Constitutional rights to those that had previously been enslaved and treated as property.  Unfortunately, despite some initial progress for blacks after the Civil War, the South would rise again and essentially subjugate the blacks within their borders to conditions that were alike to slavery but not called slavery.  These became known as "Jim Crow" laws in which blacks were subjected to unequal treatment, arbitrary law, denied their civil liberties, and segregated from whites in employment, education, and social interaction.

It was during World War I that the beginning of the great migration was first enacted.  The industrialized north had relied upon immigration from Europe to fuel its needs but when the War began, that immigration from Europe came to a halt and with America officially entering the war in 1917 and having to build up its military forces and armaments for its own use and its allies, there was an acute labor shortage in the North.  This labor was fulfilled by recruiting blacks from the south and this recruitment became an exodus of over 400,000 blacks between the years of 1916 to 1918 that migrated from the South to the North, at a time in which the black population in the country as a whole was only about 8 million blacks.

It was these migrating blacks, the Northern newspapers such as "The Chicago Defender", and the trains that ran south to north, east to west, which became the foundations that would enable blacks to escape from the oppression of the South to the possibilities of the North.  Was the North that "promised land" that so many blacks had hoped for?  It was and it wasn't.  But at least in the North, there were no segregated trains, no segregated movie theaters, no segregated schools, and no lynching,   Additionally, in the North there were opportunities for employment, for home ownership, for voting, which simply didn't exist in the racist South.

In the North as well as the West, a diligent black man, reliable and with good work habits, was desired, employable, and could make a living wage despite the fact that he was limited to only certain jobs, often denied promotion, and was paid less than a white man for similar work.  Also in the North, a black man could own property in certain areas of the city, have a family that he could provide for and protect, and begin to become part of the American dream.  In the South, a black man could never truly be a man, because the South feared the black man and thereby oppressed, emasculated, and abused the black man because he was perceived as a threat to the Southern way.

It is a blessing though, that in America, people can vote with their feet.  Before the great migration around 87.5% of blacks lived in the South.  After the great migration ended, around 1970, it was about 50:50.  To leave your place of birth, to leave the only thing that you have ever known, to face the unknown and the uncertain, takes great courage and can put your very life in peril.  These men, women, and children that were part of this great migration are the true trailblazers and the forefathers of the civil rights that were achieved many years later.  We owe them a great debt of gratitude because their sacrifices came with much blood, sweat, and tears.

Golden Parachute

Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) have never been compensated any better than they are today, in which their corporate salaries, perks, and bonuses routinely crush the average pay of other employees at their conglomerate.  To make matters worse, somehow it has become standard for CEOs and other high executive officers to get a golden parachute payment for retirement, replacement, or even for dismissal.  That's a crying shame, a sham to the stockholders, and a disgrace to those who are in charge of corporate governance.

The so-called reason for CEOs to receive a golden parachute is in case of a merger or acquisition in which the CEO might be terminated upon the consummation of the deal.  Give me a break!  CEOs and other highly compensated executives make enough money in one year than most people make in their lifetimes!  These executives are highly placed and most will have no problem with finding some sort of suitable employment at a high salary with some other corporation or end up working as a highly-paid consultant.  In any event, for a real CEO, a golden parachute shouldn't be necessary.  Either he is as good as he claims to be in which case he is already richly compensated or he is some sort of failure and throwing good money after bad is a very bad business practice.

Golden parachutes help to give CEOs a Messiah complex, that is to say, that these particular executives are so important, of such value, that it is the corporation's duty, its obligation, to pay them onto perpetuity.  What rot!  The CEOs primary duty is to the shareholders and not to himself.   Therefore, every dollar, every perk, every benefit given to the CEO is taken from the stockholders as a whole.  It is up to the Board of Directors to quit rubberstamping corporate pay, corporate perks, and corporate golden parachutes and make decisions that are in the best interests of the corporation and its stockholders.  Every man likes to think of himself as irreplaceable, but the fact of the matter is that graveyards are full of people who thought the same thing, and the world still goes on. 

Golden parachutes are simply not necessary for executives that are highly compensated and rewarded well enough to begin with.  However, I am not completely opposed to a golden parachute for a merger as long as the condition would read that all employees that are terminated, replaced, or retired, because of the merger or takeover are compensated with the same percentage compensation package as the CEO.  After all, it's only fair that what the goose receives, the goslings should receive in kind too.

In absence of that sort of democratic and fairness in regards to a corporate golden parachute, then golden parachutes should be retired to the dustbin of history.  At a date and time in which so many employees are employed "at will" and therefore can be terminated at any time for virtually any reason, those that are far higher up the food chain, should also be employedunder those same trying conditions. 

The golden parachute for CEOs is nothing more than "gaming" the system, and the system is gamed far enough already.  Game over.

Fractional Reserve Banking

Fractional reserve banking is a fraud upon the American people and other countries in which their central or controlling banks practice the same thing.  The very definition of fractional reserve banking should send shivers up and down one's spine.  Basically, a deposit is made at a bank, and by law the banks need only hold a portion or a fraction of the demand deposits place into the bank and can thereby loan out the remainder of the money to the public at large.  To translate it another way, you make a deposit into your bank in good faith in which you can demand your money back at any time for any reason from the bank.  Instead of safekeeping your money and possibly even charging you a fee for doing so, the bank instead, loans your money out and hopes that you won't come a knocking on the door and demand your money back.  It's quite clearly a formula for disaster and is deliberately duplicitous in its nature.  The apparent purpose of fractional reserve banking is to keep the money flowing and in circulation to the public at large, noble goals for what they are worth, but fractional reserve banking is not the ideal way to do this.

In actuality, fractional reserve banking benefits the banks most of all through the power of leverage.  They banks are protected by law and afforded the opportunity to lend out monies that they no longer have on demand and thereby make profits from doing so.   This is a beautiful system for the banks as long as the public doesn't make a rush to retrieve their monies all at once. If, however, there is a run on a particular bank or banks, and people who made these deposits in good faith, demand their deposits back now, the whole house of cards is in a position of imminent collapse.  This is the fundamental problem and error of allowing fractional reserve banking for demand deposits. 

Far better it would be to have our banking system return to full reserve banking.  Within full reserve banking, a depositor would be given the opportunity to either make his deposit, a demand deposit, and thereby the bank acts in a fiduciary capacity to protect his deposit and in all likelihood would charge a fee for doing so, or the depositor could take all or portion of the monies deposited and be issued a certificate of deposit, or a time deposit,  in which a particular term length amount and interest fee would be assigned to the depositor for the term completion of said loan.  All of this would be on the up and up, in which no money is being created out of thin air, no leverage is being utilized by the bank, and money itself maintains its utility and its usefulness.  This would bring back sound money to our country and would substantially stabilize its value.  In fact, with full reserve banking, our government could still issue fiat money and not have to revert back to the gold or silver standard, so that there would be no return to the brow of labor being crucified on a cross of gold.

Fort Knox

“Goldfinger” is one of my favorite movies, the plot is a little bit difficult to swallow, but suffice to say that the villain, Auric Goldfinger, really does believe that Fort Knox is the biggest repository of gold in the entire world and his sinister operations center around compromising that gold, and thereby making Goldfinger’s gold much more valuable and he, much more powerful.  Now fifty years later, questions have continued to be asked as to whether Fort Knox has as much gold as it purports to have.

Fort Knox is estimated to have 147.3 million troy ounces of gold, in which with gold priced at about $1250/ounce this is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $184.1 billion.  Incredibly, the reserves at Fort Knox have not been audited since 1953, and it is questionable what that audit even accomplished.  What should be done at Fort Knox is a complete and thorough audit of the gold, to determine not only its quantity, its weight, but also its purity, as urged by Ron Paul and so many others.

The audit of Fort Knox is a no-brainer.  Yearly physical audits are a requirement for most companies and not to have an audit for over sixty years of a task as straightforward as determining how much physical gold Fort Knox contains is inexcusable.  The lack of transparency and the absence of an up-to-date audit is prima facie evidence that all is not sound at Fort Knox and the estimates of the gold that is contained there is thereby highly suspect.

Our government has an obligation to be a good steward of our money and to be forthright and honest in regards to what or what isn’t contained at Fort Knox.  If there isn’t a story at Fort Knox, that all the gold that is supposed to be there, is there, than why not take the steps to document that information in such a manner as to prove that to the American people beyond a reasonable doubt.  

In fact, the government for its own purposes, even if not publicly disclosed, should desire to know how much gold is or isn’t at Fort Knox.  Quite frankly, I don’t believe that anyone alive actually knows how much gold is at Fort Knox and apparently those in power deliberately do not want anyone to know.  Smoke and mirrors can only work for so long and I am amazed, that Fort Knox, gold, and how much or how little gold there is, has survived this long without the ghost being given up.

Gold has been currency in many civilizations over long periods of time, because of its scarcity, its malleability, its lack of oxidization, and its desirability.  Any government can print reams and reams of paper money, can create fiat currency, but that currency will at some point become worthless or nearly so because governments come and governments go through conquest, abandonment, or decay. In fact, gold is the real deal and that is why alchemists tried so hard to change base metals into gold for so many years.  Is Fort Knox the real deal?  In absence of any verified proof, the answer is clearly no.

Federal Deficits

This is a country that lacks both the courage and the conviction to raise taxes on its population in order to balance its budget and thereby run a sound and fiscal federal government, nor does our country have the will to reduce expenses, expenditures, and budgets in order to help accomplish that goal.  While there are plenty of other nations that suffer from the same problem, none are of the size, the girth, and influence as the United States.  Additionally, there are numerous countries that don't run a fiscal deficit; in fact they currently have surpluses, in which of note we have South Korea, Norway, and Brazil.   America has not always been this profligate, and we need only go back to as recently as the years of 1998-2001 in which our federal government actually ran a surplus in each of those years to demonstrate that, but since that time American has become especially imprudent as in each of the years of 2009-2012, our deficits were the highest the country has ever experienced since its creation, even adjusting for inflation for the World War II deficit spending years.  That obviously bodes very poorly for our country's fiscal responsibility going forward.

These massive federal deficits are essentially an unfair and unauthorized taxation on our youngest generation and on generations of Americans to come.  America has borrowed again and again against its future to pay for guns and butter today.  To make matters worse, the United States simply won't own up to the fact that its spending and deficits are out of control and fiscally irresponsible.  To hear House Minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, recently state that: "the cupboard is bare, there's no more cuts to make," in regards to the federal budget is to know that America is morally bankrupt and on firm footing for complete fiscal bankruptcy. 

Business cycles of booms and busts are pretty much the historic norm, despite the belief that government can control or mitigate these cycles.  Consequently, in lean years, it is not surprising that our federal government will run a deficit that is to be expected, but within those lean years, there should be mandated a fiscal tightening on the government itself, but in fact that isn't happening at all.  While incomes for the majority of Americans have been stagnate for almost two generations, those that live and work in the surrounding areas around Washington DC have seen an explosion in their income gains.   The reason for this is as simple as the closer you are to the power source, the further up in the food chain you are especially to the contracts, contacts, and to the lobbyists, the bigger the slice of pie that you will reap and those that touch the money first always get the most benefit from it.  Those that are connected will reap the biggest benefits of a federal budget currently in the neighborhood of $3.5 trillion. 

America is playing a shell game with its taxpayers, it's rigged, it's wrong, and it can't go on forever.   No child likes to be told "no", no man likes to be denied, nobody really likes to lose, but the reality of the situation is that when anybody tries to be all things to everybody, in-discriminatory, undisciplined, unprincipled, unscrupulous, self-centered, and double dealing, it will end with everybody receiving a really raw deal.

Drugs

One of the biggest scourges in America is the abuse and over-prescription of drugs, be it legal or illegal.  What is this lure that gets reasonable men and women to keep making decisions that are poorly thought through, with detrimental effects, and devastating negative consequences?

While there are a lot of reasons why people voluntarily take drugs I will discuss some of the most prevalent.  For some people, there is somewhat of a misimpression that drugs will help them to cope better, to feel better about themselves, and/or to function better in society.  The error in this type of thinking is not to acknowledge that life itself will have its up and downs, its highs and lows, and its challenges.  Drugs don't necessarily solve the inner problem, but more often than not help to mask the problem, but the problem still remains.

For most people, you don't need drugs to feel better about yourself or your situation.  You may think you need drugs but that judgment is often erroneous.  People who consider themselves to be in dead-end jobs, or a dead-end life, or dead-end dreams, often turn to drugs because their life is so humdrum, but the taking of the drugs doesn't improve the life or the situation, it only possibly helps to alleviate it temporarily but the underlining problems are still there, unaddressed and unanswered.

To take away the need for drugs, often you must find a purpose in life that is outside of yourself, a drive to better the world, or to improve your neighborhood, or to help someone in need.  When you have a determined purpose in life, when life has meaning to you, the need or the desire for drugs is dissipated.  Additionally, one must stand up and take responsibility for their decisions and their life in order to beat-down the lure of drugs and its culture.  A man with a purpose in life, a man with focused goals, will not allow himself to get sidetracked by the smokescreen and falseness of drug intoxication.

Man has a yearning desire to feel peace, to be blissful, and to be calm and centered.  He wrongly believes that through drugs he can achieve these goals but in fact drugs deadens the senses, deadens the mind, and turns off the very light that man needs most.   The lure of drugs is the delusion of shortcuts that man wrongly believes will bring lifelong bliss with little or no effort.  Every time that you take a shortcut, you have in fact, wandered away from the straight and narrow path and have instead taken a side path to nowhere and to darkness. 

While drugs rightly prescribed and taken under supervision have their place and their effectiveness, recreational drugs seldom do.  While taking these recreational drugs you feel fortunate if you achieve euphoria or even bliss, but this will dissipate to be replaced once again with emptiness and hollowness.  Therefore you will desire to repeat this cycle again and again, but like a rat in a cage that gets up on his exercise wheel and falsely believes that he is running to freedom or better days, you will instead be on the wheel of life that goes nowhere, takes you nowhere, and ends nowhere.

Annoying Do-Gooders

Doing good and being good is a wonderful thing.  Your life is made up of the decisions that you make each and every day.  If you consistently make good decisions, you will grow as a human being and will be a net benefit to society at large.  This doesn't mean that making good decisions and doing good deeds will always bring beneficence to you; you can most definitely do the right thing and die for it that is the unfortunate nature of this fallen world.  Still it is well worth your while to be true to yourself and to be a virtuous person of good heart, good deeds, and good faith.

What, however, is an annoying do-gooder?  An annoying do-gooder is someone that insists that they know what is best for you and to show their conviction of that attitude, they will do everything within their power to compel you to conform to what they perceive to be the right behavior for you.  While the intent may be to improve that person's character and to straighten out that person's ways, unfortunately that vision often comes from someone that has "a beam is in thine own eye." (Matthew 7:4).

To make matters worse, do-gooders have taken to changing the game from simply one-to-one consultation, whether desired or not, to utilizing the force of government to compel so-called right behavior from recalcitrant individuals.  For instance, while there may be valid reasons why people that smoke should not be allowed to do so inside buildings in which the ventilation is inadequate or the like, it makes no logical sense that people can't smoke outside in the open air.  The do-gooders will claim it's a health hazard but there appears little or no hard empirical evidence to support this accusation, and if you allowed this fallacy to be swallowed, than where do you draw the line as there are probably an infinite amount of activities that people engage in that are both annoying and possibly harmful.  

The do-gooders of today's world want you to conform to their particular brand of group think.  They want you to listen to their music of choice, dress like they do, talk like they do, visit and frequent the places that they do, weight the same weight as them, think like they do, and be just like them.  That's silliness of the highest order but to makes matters worse, the do-gooders will stop at virtually nothing to see that their thinking is the law of the land.  That is why each year we have more and more laws that circumvent our freedoms, our choices, our desires, and our free will.

People will make bad decisions that are obvious to us, and probably are just as obvious to the people making those decisions.  That is their choice, as a good neighbor we can help them to see other choices,  but ultimately sometimes you must first do the wrong thing before you can learn how to do and desire to do the right thing.  We call that behavior: free will; the do-gooders, however, are the opposite of free will, they are our regulators.

Server Minimum Wage

Most of us visit a restaurant at least occasionally in which as part of the final payment of the meal, a tip is typically left for the server.  The tip is left to the discrimination of the patron in most parts of the United States and as a consumer I do prefer having that discretion as to how much tip amount to leave for a given meal, depending on service and performance.  However, there is the other side of the tip equation and that is the server's side.  Many of our laws have exceptions, and in the case of waitresses the minimum wage has an exception in which instead of making at least the federal mandated minimum of $7.25/hour, their minimum wage is set at $2.13/hour as a "tipped minimum wage" and it has been set at $2.13/hour since 1991.  While the law states that your server must through tips and their hourly wage make at least the minimum wage per hour, in practicality any server making the "tipped minimum wage" is going to get $2.13/hour and the balance of their pay, no matter how little or how much, will come from tips, and that is pretty much the end of the story.

Obviously, the lower minimum wage for employers is a great benefit as their labor costs go down, and they can afford to overstaff their restaurant because of it.  Also, since their servers are making such a paltry rate per hour, it is easy to make as a condition of employment, hours in which the server must be at the restaurant in order to help set up tables for the opening of business as well as closing tables at the close of business.  It seems to me that it is hypocrisy of the highest order when people that are making sub-minimum wages are put into a position in which they are working at the restaurant in a particular duty in which there is no possibility of making a tip (e.g. setting up tables before the restaurant is even open to the public).  That isn't fair and the personnel that are making less than minimum wage while doing these duties should be compensated at full minimum wage or better.  For instance, if on a normal day of an 8-hour shift, there are two hours in which the restaurant was either closed to patrons, or no longer were serving meals to patrons and you are working in various job duties for the restaurant during that time, it should be mandated that you receive the full minimum wage or better.  Making just this small change would be fairer for the servers in general, and it would also necessitate management to be more efficient in utilizing its labor resources because they would be more cognizant of the true costs involved.

Of course, there is another more straightforward argument which is whether servers should be paid less than minimum wage to begin with.  There are seven states in which that question has been answered: NO, and one of those states is the largest in the Union, which is California.  The last I checked, California has many, many restaurants and doesn't seem to suffer from not having too many, which implies that restaurants can do just fine by paying their servers a full minimum wage. 

I do not believe that it is step too far to update our minimum wage laws to reflect that tipped employees should make the full minimum wage.  While you could make the argument that this change should be done immediately, I would not be opposed to it being stepped in over a period of three or possibly four years to give those states and restaurants enough time to adjust to the new labor law.

Genetic Modified Organism (GMO)

Science most definitely can get ahead of the curve and in the case of genetically modifying organisms, they have.  I don't believe that is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that GMOs in and of themselves are bad or necessarily dangerous but they are an artificial change to an organism and when it relates to humans and their consumption of food products, human beings have a right to know whether the food that they are consuming has been modified by a GMO, and further that the given GMO has been tested by an independent panel to determine its safety and appropriateness before being offered as a substitute or alternative for non-GMO products.

Quite frankly, there isn't any compelling reason why GMO foods need to be offered for human consumption as our current yield on crops is quite impressive without GMO products and creating GMOs merely for the convenience of large chemical conglomerates such as Monsanto and DuPont is arrogant and incorrect.  GMOs are a fascinating area of study, of interest, and of potential, but within this field, there is an absolute obligation to match man's brilliance and invention with concern and consideration for the safety to the public at large.

Another way of looking at GMOs is acknowledging that although man has developed the capability to genetically modify organisms, it therefore does not follow that all organisms should be modified.  It would be far better, to be far more selective in the modification of organisms, and to recognize the purpose of said modification.  Modifying crops so that they are more resistant to certain insecticides sounds like a great idea, but a better idea is to modify the insecticide so that it is less toxic to crops, the environment, and humans.

The food that we consume is the fuel that powers our bodies.  It is quite possible within the consumption of GMOs that the danger becomes not from the occasional digestion from GMO foods from time-to-time but from the accumulation over a lifetime of such consumption.  Why should humans be subjected to such a potential risk if there isn't any valid or real compelling reason to do so?  Additionally, it seems quite fair and reasonable that consumers be allowed the choice of whether to ingest GMO products by proper labeling being provided to them because without such labeling and transparency, humans may unintentionally be consuming products that they would not willingly and voluntarily be signing up for.

The creation and release of pharmaceutical medicine goes through an extensive vetting process within the FDA, but prescribed medicines are something that you take ultimately at your discretion and with a doctor's supervision.  When it comes to food, however, we have to eat in order to live, those decisions are made by individuals, and it is important that we are knowledgeable about the food products that we consume.  It therefore seems reasonable that GMO products must be labeled and also tested in such a way that they are known as being truly safe for human consumption.

Victimless Crimes

What are victimless crimes?  There are several ways to define this, with the best way, to simply state the obvious, a victimless crime has no victims and therefore the only reason that it is a crime is because the State has decided to make it a crime.   The most common victimless crimes would be: prostitution, illegal drug use, and gambling.  However, some people believe that euthanasia is a victimless crime, I don't agree and it is implicit that if someone assists you in committing suicide, that that is a crime, but even without assistance, euthanasia has a victim, which is the person himself committing suicide.

In regards to gambling, many people have an interest in playing cards or dice or sports betting in which they get pleasure out of the possibility of winning money and are willing to take the risk in doing so.  Most states now have some form of legalized gambling, with regulatory authorities and licensing.  Gambling that is on the up and up has no victims, because the choice to gamble is left in your hands.  However, in the case in which a gambler is being cheated, for instance the cards are marked, or the dice are loaded, or the sport event has been fixed, there most definitely is a victim, and therefore that would not be a victimless crime, but in absence of such cheating, the choice to spend your money gambling should be your choice alone.

I am somewhat amused by illegality of certain drugs in America.  The reason I say this, is that there is a misimpression in America that if a drug is legal that it is OK to safely take, and that if a drug is illegal that is unsafe to consume in any amount, but that isn't true at all, because some legal drugs are quite toxic and some illegal drugs are not. The State arbitrarily decides which drugs are legal and which are not and the decision should not be the States to make in the first place.   The choice should be made by the individual and most informed individuals would have a preference to take drugs that are manufactured with controls, clinical trials, and oversights as compared to "street drugs".  It is not for the Government to decide what you should or should not ingest into your body and certainly it is unfair and a waste of community resources to incarcerate people that use or take so-called illegal drugs.   As for those that sell drugs in which they have not been licensed to do so, that should be a crime and there should be appropriate penalties for doing so depending upon the danger and dosage of the drugs sold. 

As for prostitution, this is typically a transaction between two or more parties in which each performs their part as part of an agreed upon verbal contract.  As long as each party does their part, it isn't the business of the State to interfere in the transaction.  There isn't anything wrong with people or the State considering the act to be immoral, but I do take exception to it being treated as a crime though.

Crimes in which there is no victim should not be criminal acts.  Adults should be able to make decisions as adults, we may not approve of all of them, we may not agree with all of them, but those decisions should be left up to the individual for better or for worse.

The For-Profit College Scam

It's always about the money and it doesn't help that the government shoots itself in the foot time-and- time again.  Perhaps the government has noble goals by promoting higher education with Pell grants, Stafford loans, Perkins loans, or various other governmental loan programs out there that ostensibly were created to give opportunity for low-income students to attend college.  The problem with these loan and grant programs however, is that they are structured in such a way that the for-profit colleges utilize them again and again as their "go-to" formulato model their business educational program.  For instance, in Tom Harkin's investigation of for-profit colleges in 1992, the report concludes that for-profit colleges received about $32 billion in taxpayer payments thru Pell grants and Stafford loans for 2011.  In fact, the general consensus is that these grants and loans make up around 85-90 percent of for-profit college revenues so that their business model is purposely constructed around these taxpayer-backed monies.

For-profit colleges have minimal interest in actually educating their students, as their incentives are built around recruiting specifically students most likely to need funding by Pell grants and Stafford loans since this money supply is guaranteedor granted by their respective government agencies.  The budgets of for-profit colleges are built around marketing and recruiting, and their incentives are structured specifically around those incentives.  For-profit colleges spend considerably less than traditional colleges for teacher's salaries and the costs for students of attending for-profit colleges are significantly higher than traditional colleges.  The success of for-profit colleges comes down to an insider knowledge of working the system to their advantage and the utilization of massive amounts of monies spent specifically recruiting the student base that they are seeking, which are their primary goals to the virtual exclusion of all else.

If the government was serious about putting an end to the abuse of the for-profit college system which is detrimental to students for the inferiority of the education, the expense of the education, the lack of discretion of students qualifying for the education, and the unnecessary debt burden of students for this education, the government would amend their rules for Pell grants and Stafford loans immediately.  The fuel that feeds for-profit education is the grants and loans that the taxpayers of America are stuck making good on.  For-profit colleges would take a significant blow, they would have to re-invent themselves if these funds were severely restricted or removed from their business model.

The government has the power to give and the government has the power to take away, it need only exercise those powers to correct this injustice to students, to the taxpayers, and to the educational system in general.  If for-profit colleges want to exist or co-exist into the future, they will have to morph from their present state of marketing and recruiting scams with little real emphasis on valid education, to become true institutions of higher learning that help to create prepared minds that are of service not only to themselves but to society at large.