Courier Journal - Fall 2023

I know three people who died of heart attacks in my time as a software analyst/engineer. Some of them younger and in better health than me. So when I had a heart attack this past January, still unemployed from my IT career, I decided to find something that I enjoy to do that ... well ... won't kill me. One of the joys of my life is driving around Vermont. So I became a courier and now I drive all over VT and get paid for it. I don't get paid a lot, less than half my old salary. You could say I am working for benefits and winding down to my retirement. I am enjoying it.

After a regiment of training and tests, I started off delivering, solo, in the towns of Charlotte, Vergennes, North Ferrisburg and Shelburne, and occasionally in Panton and New Haven. These are all beautiful towns that hug Lake Champlain south of Burlington along routes 7 and 23. These are truly stunning places. 

Here is an example of a driveway I had back down in my truck.  It is not the most difficult one I've had to do either. 

I believe I was at the foot of Mount Philo in North Ferrisburg when I took this.  That is Mt. Mansfield, VT's largest mountain, in the distance. 

This is the Otter Creek taken from MacDonough Park in Vergennes (the smallest city in the US).

Taken from a covered bridge in Charlotte, VT (I believe):

This horse farm is in Shelburne. 

I believe this is West Charlotte.

I don't take pictures while I am driving. I have to pull over or sometimes, I am delivering something and I see something picturesque while I am at a stop ... I pull out my phone and snap it. I was planning on taking a picture of something beautiful everyday, but that is difficult when weather is bad.  Also, something else happened.

This is a long route which means a very long day. On some days, I was in at 6:30am and out at 7:30pm, not getting home until after 8pm while my son was going to bed. I was exhausted and made mistakes because of it.  I told my boss that I thought this route was a young man's route and I didn't think I could take it. He understood and we worked it out that I am a part timer now. This is actually great for me, because I get home in the afternoon now and can usually catch my son's bus. I keep my full benefits as well.

Now I am driving the Burlington priority route. I still really enjoy this, although it is less pretty, this is a really great city. I deliver priority packages all morning to the College, Church Cherry and Main Street area. I get a few non-priority packages in the afternoon and then I head home. I deliver blood to the Red Cross, drug and vaccines to pharmacies etc. It is a good living. 

I try to time it so that I am around Church Street for my break. So I can go to Muddy Waters for some chili and coffee or one of the other funky cafes. I am getting to know the business people on my route, some of whom I see everyday. While some of the drivers who deliver to Burlington seem to be burnt out on my place, I seem to love it more everyday, warts and all. Hopefully that doesn't change. 

I do have a suggestion for you if you want to make things easier for your delivery person. Make sure the number of your house is visible. If you are rural, try to put your number on the road somewhere. I waste a lot of time trying to find the correct house. It is not always obvious. On the days I do work late, finding a house in the dark is very challenging ... especially if the number on a brown house are also brown or just not posted. Make it obvious and easy to find and read. Safety is something to which we all contribute.

Future of Local Journalism and the Collapse of the Fourth Estate

Disruption (or creative destruction) in an economy can be a great thing and an awful thing simultaneously. When the automobile was introduced, this disrupted the livelihood of thousands of people who sold and serviced horses (horse-breakers and blacksmiths) and wagons (wheelwrights). While they all lost their jobs and businesses, thousands of businesses and jobs were created making cars, paving roads and selling gas. Disruption is inherit in capitalism. Technology is not the only disruptor, but it is the most common. The biggest disruptor in my life has been the introduction of the internet and ecommerce. Almost every industry has been affected: music, education, retail, movies and gyms among others. 

Brick and mortar stores are being killed by Amazon, movie theaters are being killed by Netflix and music stores almost don't exist anymore because you can buy a song instantly on your phone or stream for free. Jobs and careers have really been shuffling for the past decade or two. I have benefited by this as well. I have been able to have a high-tech job and tele-commute to NYC each day while living in my rural home in northern Vermont. This wasn't possible twenty years ago when I moved to VT. 

Of all these disruptions, the one that bothers me the most is what is happening with local newspapers. Local news is expensive. Newspapers have to employ reporters who attend town and city counsel meetings, local events, sporting events, car crashes and fires. This is, of course, in addition to their overhead and the expenses of producing the paper. Traditionally their revenue streams are the selling of advertisement space and classifieds. When I was young, if you were looking for a job or looking for a kitten, you had to pick up the local paper. Now you can go on Craigslist for free. Craigslist devastated the classified revenue for papers, which in turn greatly reduced circulation. When circulation is down, it is harder to sell advertisement. Collapse ensued. 

In 2000, the advertising revenue for newspapers peaked to over $70 billion in the US. In 2018, it had dropped to under $15 billion which is lower than the 1950's. As of 2019, 65 million Americans live in a county with one or zero local news sources. How do citizens stay informed if there is no local news source? How can they vote confidently? How do they find out about businesses that is polluting their water or a politician that is stealing from them? They don't. Meanwhile, your local clueless jackoff has a YouTube channel, he's "telling it like it is" and giving it out for free. People are not just uninformed, they are misinformed. 

Some papers are hanging in there with a digital presence, but digital advertising revenue is still very low. There is also an increase of digital subscription in the past few years. Four in ten people under the age of 35 have at least one digital subscription. Young people are figuring out that paying for media means you get better information. Regardless, the outlook for local news to remain local is not good. When is a local paper not local? 

Since its founding in 1906, Gannett has been going around buying up small newspapers and other media markets. In addition to owning US Today, they currently own 260 daily local newspapers and about 300 national papers. These including The Providence Journal, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, El Paso Times etc.  They own media in 47 states and Guam. This is a lot of power. Gannet is not immune to circulation problems. They are losing circulation even higher than non-Gannett papers. Here in VT, our "local" Gannett paper, The Burlington Free Press, circulation is down more than 36% since 2017. How long can they can survive with numbers like that? 

The Void: In capitalistic societies, the voids left by failing industries and businesses are often filled quickly but not always in desirable ways. The New York Times this week ran an article about how pay-to-play organizations are filling this void. Political and/or corporate PR groups are paying free lance reporters to write articles supporting their agendas. That agenda could be to promote their business or attack their opponents in an election. These articles are then sold to less than credible "news" papers and not labelled as advertisements, which they should be (according to the Federal Trade Commission). Here is a list of them organized by state. You may recognize some of them. Perhaps you get one of them free in the mail or perhaps, you pick one up outside your local market. They look legit because they might have a real article about your local high school soccer team or a local fire, but they are not. In 2010, there were five of these. Now there are over 1200. Something you should always remember, when you get something for free, it is not the commodity, you are. You are being manipulated into voting for someone or buying a product.  It is not journalism that you are reading but an advertisement. 

On a more positive note, David Plotz, one of my favorite podcast journalists, has created a new venture called City Cast. Print may be dead or dying, but podcasting is thriving. He is trying to create a network of local podcasts in cities around the country where the void is at its worst. I listen to podcasts all day at work. When I jump in my car, I put them on. We listen in bed. If there was a local podcast that I liked, about my town or larger local towns, I'd be listening. I feel so clueless about local news and politics. He is trying to get this going, guess what? ... he's hiring.  Contact him if you are interested. I contacted David on Twitter to find what towns they are going to start with and I haven't heard back yet. I assume medium size cities like Portland or Cincinnati. Regardless, I am excited about this. Hopefully it is coming to your town soon. 

The Longterm Social Effects of this Crisis

The greatest long term effect of the Spanish Flu pandemic in the early 20th century was its effect on World War I. It hit Germany and Austria before it hit France and England giving the Allies early advantages and the Allies eventually won the war. This flu is often considered the "forgotten" pandemic because there was so much else going on in the world at the time, not just a World War but other major illnesses also hit the world around the same time: yellow fever, diphtheria, cholera and typhoid.  History classes often overlook the diseases of this era because of the war. The Spanish Flu lasted 36 months and killed 50 million people. We all hope this pandemic won't be as devastating. At the writing of this sentence, the world is at three million and counting.

The long term effects I am talking about in this post are the social ones. The Spanish Flu left people with a lingering lack of trust in strangers. Strangers carry disease. This lead to isolationism and xenophobia giving way to fascists like Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Of course, there were other factors, like a horrendous war, but the flu contributed to it. Anti-Semites have long linked Jews to the plague. Hitler famously referred to them as "racial tuberculosis" in "German lungs."  Such vile terms were more effective with the memory of the Spanish Flu fresh in their memory. .

It is impossible from this vantage point to predict the long term effects of COVID-19 on our society. Most lasting societal changes usually come as a surprise. Henry Ford had no idea that the mass production of cars would lead to more teenage pregnancies and air pollution. Did the flood of boys without fathers after World War II bring us rock and roll?  Did Roe v. Wade help bring us low crime rates decades later due to the lack of unwanted children? These are thought experiments. Let's do it, a COVID-19 version.

Celebrity: Celebrities have been showing us who they really are in this crisis. Maybe we'll finally stop making otherwise stupid, careless and mega-privileged people famous. Maybe we'll be more selective on who gets to be famous or perhaps put them on a lower pedestal. Of course not all celebrities are so bad. The smart ones know how to control themselves and shut up. You notice that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt haven't stuck their feet in their mouths, but the hyper-narcissists and morons surely are.

• Ellen DeGeneres (aka Queen of Nice) compared her quarantine to being in a prison while she lives in a beachfront palatial mansion 
• Evangeline Lily urged people to ignore social distancing rules and isolation using terms like "Marshall Law" on Instagram which she obviously doesn't understand nor know how to spell. 
• Actress Jaimie King released a video thanking the virus 
• Gwyneth Paltrow is tweeting about what the best dildo to use during isolation, selling them as well. Some poor warehouse worker is risking his/her life to get someone a dildo. 
• Sam Smith tweeted the stages of his meltdown while he had to deal with isolation in his $15 million London mansion
• NBA player Ruby Gobert touched a bunch of mics at a media event as a joke. A few days later, he tested positive.
• Gisele Bundchen posted a picture of herself in front of a tropical waterfall meditating.
• High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens suggested that people dying is "like, inevitable."
• Bette Middler is figuring out what her appliances do, no joke.

While many of their fans are living in tiny apartments, some of them under duress ... we get a crash course in how crudely unequal our society is. Our doctors, who keep us alive, don't live this way. Entertainers do. Will income inequality become an even bigger issue after this crisis?

Entertainment: When next year's television shows roll out, will they be including the pandemic in their story lines?  Do we want them to? Do you prefer them to have more of an escapist quality? Will we get to see the family on "This Is Us" in social isolation ... where will the plot line come from. We get to watch them binge watch other shows and argue ... not so fun.

Concert venues will be devastated by this crisis.Our days of hanging shoulder to shoulder in the dark listening to our favorite bands jam may be a thing of the past. They will be the last businesses to be allowed to open and for all we know, may not be allowed to fill them in like they used to.  This means that entry and/or beer will be more expensive ... I cried a little bit while writing this.

Environmental: Quarantine is only a few weeks old and already we see the environment recovering. Factories are idle, planes are grounded and commuters are staying home. We have cut carbon emissions worldwide by 8% and energy use is down in some places by 25% of last year. Some cities are reporting seeing constellations for the first time in decades. With the city streets desolate, wild life is returning to some areas that haven't seen them in decades. We will return to our old ways soon enough but this quick recovery might really inspire people to change. Stay home, use less, use mass transit, telecommute ... these are easy to do for some of us. We might just get into the habit.

Cities around the world have closed more than 1,000 miles of streets to cars for the use of bicycles. How much of that is going to be permanent? Seattle has already announced that 20 miles of their new bike only roads will be permanent. If the locals like it, it will stay. So if this is happening in your area. Contact a politician to keep it. They are probably desperate to find ways to make citizens happy right now.

Hate: Hate crimes are already a lot higher for anyone that looks Chinese. Trump hasn't helped with this. "Go back to China," "Kung Flu" and "Wu Flu" are all things being said to and about people from Far East origins. Hate will only subside until we get rid of the creep in the White House, but it will never go away permanently. The protests in Michigan and other states have been organized by white supremacy groups. Many of the people showing up don't even know this. I hope this is all temporary, but isolation breeds contempt and xenophobic (the evil twin of isolationism) is not far behind. I fear these people will get more powerful the longer this quarantine lasts. Here is a list from the Anti-Defamation League of anti-Asian incidents in America since this crisis began.

Sporting Events: Maybe we'll have standing ovations for doctors, scientists and other essential workers during our sporting events rather than for the military. Instead of players wearing khaki to honor the troops, maybe they will wear smocks to honor the real heroes, and not those who make invasions possible. We live in a violent nation, with a violent past. It would be nice, if our priorities could finally change.

Parades: Maybe our parades will celebrate these essential workers as well.

The Work Place: A lot of mangers are going to realize after this is over that remote employees are quite productive. I have been doing it for twelve years now and it has its distractions but compared to the distractions of being in the office, it is nothing. No one is coming into my office to talk about the game or the weather, and I have no commuter traffic to stress me out.  Telecommuting is the way to go. Those who can do it, will. Office spaces will become like empty warehouses, and food delivery, during work hours, will spike to new heights. This is not going away.

Teachers: The only real distractions, for a lot of us, these days is that kids are at home. Will there be more respect for our teachers now that many parents had to teach their own kids and they getting first hand knowledge how difficult their angels really are to teach? or how difficult teaching actually really is? I'm guessing that the snow day will no longer exist now that we know teaching can happen remotely. Teachers should have a national strike in the Fall, demanding more pay.  We'd all freak to think that we'd have to have our kids home anymore after this Spring and cave immediately. 

Essential Workers: Will people have more respect for essential workers? I am not talking about me, someone who supports a hospital's software system. But those who bring us food, stack shelves, drive trucks and buses. They are not staying home and they are keeping us alive. I am guessing once this is over, we will go back to paying them badly and not providing them health care. That's the America I know. Hopefully, I am wrong. But with scum like Trump and his loyalty cult in charge, I don't see how change for the essential worker could be possible. Can you imagine how bad it would be without Obamacare (aka the ACA)? And yet, Trump is still busy trying to repeal it. I'm guessing (and hoping) that Medicare For All will get a big boost from this crisis, but I have been very wrong about this type of thing in the past. I did predict a landslide victory for President Gore.

Trade: Isolation will raise its ugly head again. I am expecting that domestic manufacturing will make a comeback. We still have factories in the US now, but not like in the past. I expect factories, mostly with robotic workers, will increase. Buying American will give people a sense of security and consumers will pay more for that feeling ... but not a lot more.This come back will be short.lived. Businesses will find new and creative ways to trick people that something is made domestically and eventually, they will forget all about this.

The Economy - What industry will recover? Will people go to gyms anymore now that they know how easy it is to do the trainer thing on-line. I want to know how my favorite restaurants are going to survive this. Restaurants have such a thin profit margin. How could they possibly survive this? I have a friend who is a contractor who did two hours of work in April, doing a training on Zoom. The state of Vermont used that as a reason to reject him for a small business grant. You think quarantine has been crazy, the recovery is going to be completely nuts.

After the Spanish Flu, if you had the flu and survived, this gave you economic benefits over others who had not. At this point, we don't know if having COVID-19 makes you immune. If this does end up being true for COVID-19, I could imagine that anyone that works with the public would have the advantage in a pre-vaccine economy.

Privacy: Those in charge know that when we are in crisis, we are more likely to accept power grabs... think of the Patriot Act after 9/11. Some authoritarian countries are using this crisis as justification to monitor their citizens. I can imagine this will get worst before it gets better. Expect more invasion of your privacy. It will be justified under the moniker of public health.

New Cold War: Will this crisis spark a new Cold War with China. Should they pay for their negligence in the matter of the spreading of the virus and the lack of openness? As soon as healthcare workers started getting sick, they should have told the world about it. There was a three week period that we could have stopped this pandemic or at least saved many lives. Perhaps they should reimburse the world, but they won't so why push it? It also sets an awful precedence, especially with the recent discovery that the Spanish Flu started in Kansas. If we push this, they may just close their doors to the world. You think a world where is China is open is a bad thing, wait until they shut their borders!

Politics: Maybe we'll stop electing politicians who are ignorant of science. Germany elected a Chancellor that has a PHD in Chemistry who wrote her thesis on quantum chemistry ... the US elected a President who doesn't understand and rejects evolution. Guess which country has been better prepared for this crisis?  Perhaps the Republican Party's war on science will finally come to an end.

Trump missed a golden opportunity. Great presidents emerge in the midst of great crises. FDR with World War II and The Depression, Lincoln in the Civil War ... we remember them as great leaders for taking us forward. We barely remember Hoover and Buchanan ... because they faltered. This disease's second wave will be hitting us badly right around the time of the presidential election. Hopefully, people will remember Trump's disastrous performance and lack of leader while they go into the polls. 

The countries doing the best during this crisis are the countries with the strong safety nets: Germany, South Korea and Taiwan. The countries with libertarian bents, the US and the UK, are fairing badly. Will we learn from this lesson? COVID-19 is the first truly global event in human history. Perhaps it will make the world closer.  It is hard to be believe when yahoos with guns are storming statehouses.But maybe this crisis will just scare enough people to move us along on this matter. Government can be a good thing with the right people in charge.

Hindsight 2020: July 2019 edition

It is easy to say that a lot of these candidates should drop out if they are still only at 1 or 2% in polls at this point in the race, but it is still early. In 1991, Paul Tsongas wasn't even at 1% at this point and he went on to win New Hampshire and won five of the first 15 primaries/caucuses. He ended up losing to Bill Clinton who was also polling below 2% at this point in 1991. Jimmy Carter was only at .75% at this point in 1975. I realize we live in a very different era now, but a long shot still has a chance at this point. I am not predicting a surge for Michael Bennet or Tim Ryan, but I am not ruling anything out either.

On all the polling I see, five candidates stand out: Biden, Sanders, Harris, Warren and Buttigieg. Biden is always first and sometimes with a double digit lead. Polling is imperfect and it is still early. Most Americans don't pay as close attention to this as I do. Most voters pay attention to the election like I do the Super Bowl. The day before the game, I ask who's playing. Those of us paying attention pick the candidate for the rest of them. We need to pick someone who can beat Trump.

I found the debates very interesting and entertaining. I hate having raise-your-hand type of questions in a debate but with this many candidates on the stage, I can't see how we could avoid it. These debates were much better than usual. Some real discussions, disagreements and arguments happened. We can argue policy all we want, but no one is going to beat Trump because of great policies. That might serve them well in the primary but not in the general. If voters voted based on who had the best policies, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore would have won in landslides. Voting is more primal and emotional.

I thought Castro, Sanders, Warren, Harris, Delaney, Booker, Buttigieg, Swalwell and Hickenlooper, all did well at the debates. O'Rourke, Biden and Gabbard, not so. Both Harris and Warren are surging since, Biden, Sanders and Buttigieg are falling.

I am torn because I like what some of the people on the left have to say. Warren and Sanders appeal to my sense of wanting to tear the whole shit house down and rebuild from ground up. But it is this very thing that is going to scare the heck out of the moderate voters in the general election. If it is Warren/Sanders against Trump in the general election, the moderates will have no place to go again. They will split their votes or vote third party or just not show up ... just like they did in 2016. This is why I am drawn to a moderate like Joe Biden who is ahead in the polls right now. I have no love for Joe Biden. I think he, like all of these candidates, is flawed. But in the general election, if the moderates have a choice between Biden and Trump, they will flock to Joe. In 2016, a ton of Obama voters voted for Trump. Was this because they loved Trump? Of course not. It was because they hated the alternative, Hillary. We need an alternative that is at least palatable to the moderate. Trump will try to make Biden seem as unlikable as Hillary in the next few months, but I don't think he'll succeed. I know some Republicans that hate Trump as well. Some of them even voted for Hillary but most did not. Most of them will NOT vote for Sanders or Warren but they would for Biden, Klobuchar, Hickenlooper or Delaney. The goal here is to defeat Trump. Remember: Perfection is the enemy of progress. If you are waiting for the perfect candidate to vote for, you could be waiting a very long time.

Trump has a steady base of support but after that, his support is slim. We need to go after these slim supporters. To do this, Democrats need stop talking about the minimum wage. The people that are hurting the most now are people that used to have $30 to $40 an hour manufacturing or mining jobs. A $15.00 minimum wage just makes them shutter. Democrats used to do well with this crowd. How do you attract them without lying to them? Be honest and tell them that their old jobs aren't coming back. Tell them about the new jobs they will get in the Green Economy. Trump attracts them by lying to them and demonizing immigrants. The higher ground of the truth is a winner here.

Announcing:
Joe Sestak is a Congressman from Pennsylvania. He is ex-Navy and a Persia Gulf War vet. I am sure he is a great guy but we don't need anymore candidates.

Our Field:
Joe Biden rolled out a climate change plan much of it may be plagiarized.

Pete Buttigieg said he wants to depoliticize the Supreme Court by expanding it to 15 judges, 5 Dems, 5 Reps and 5 chosen by a bi-partisan group. He is having difficulty on the home front with a police shooting in South Bend. His honesty about it, during the debate, was refreshing.

Julian Castro announced a policy on policing. He wants federal oversight, standards and demilitarization. He held a town hall on Fox News. He says he supports a Marshall Plan to address problems in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Bernie Sanders wrote an Op Ed in the New York Times about his financial struggles and income inequality. He announced a bill in the Senate that would cancel all student loan debt. This would really work for me if it were retroactive.

Cory Booker released his housing plan that includes tax breaks for renters.

Steve Bullock wrote an Op Ed for the Des Moines Register about defeating Citizens United.

Eric Swalwell appeared on The View. He released his gun control plan.

Elizabeth Warren introduced her Green Energy Economy Plan. She appeared on The Ezra Klein Show podcast. She also announced another plan, this one to eliminate private prisons. 

Andrew Yang was on Real Time with Bill Maher and the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Amy Klobuchar was on Face the Nation. She has stated that she plans to give mental health a top priority. 

John Delaney was on The View. It is too bad he is not polling higher. I think he would make a fine President. He is the only candidate to admit that he supports the Trans Pacific Partnership. 

Kamala Harris released an immigration plan. She was on Face the Nation.

John Hickenlooper released his climate change plan. He supports the Green New Deal but not the job guarantee component. He also wants to give all people who are here illegally, a 10 year visa.

Tim Ryan was on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah and Morning Joe.

Michael Bennet was profiled by Yahoo! Finance focusing on his health care plan. He also introduced (along with some other Senators) the Hunger-Free Summer for Kids Act of 2019 which attempts flexibility in providing for hungry children.

Tulsi Gabbard was on Real Time with Bill Maher. She had made it clear, ending wasteful wars is her top priority. She is a combat veteran and brings this experience to the job.

Jay Inslee announced his fourth climate change plan, the Freedom from Fossil Fuels Plan. 

Power Rankings:

We have 25 candidates. If I had to rank the Democrats in order of my personal preference, I would do so in the following manner: 

Warren

Biden

Buttigieg

Booker

Sanders

Inslee

Klobuchar

Swalwell

Harris

Delaney

Hickenlooper

Castro

O'Rourke

Gabbard

de Blasio

Ryan

Bennet

Bullock

Moulton

Messam

Yang

Sestak

(I probably won't vote if the people below get the nomination)

Gillibrand

Gravel

Williamson

I expect this to change.

Trump Log #47: Leadership by Troll

Each day I read the news, I am amazed that Trump still has any supporters. It is not just what he says that is disgusting, unprofessional and out of touch with reality. It is that his decisions and actions are having a disastrous affect on our lives, our future and the lives of everyone on the planet. I have stated in the past that his supporters fall into two categories: scum and/or morons. I double down on this. If they haven't figured out by now that this guy is a disaster for everyone, they are just hopeless.  So why are you still friends with any of them?  Why are you still doing business with any of them?  There is a business in my town that has a huge Trump sign out front. They will never get my business! Not only is Trump fucking you over, his supporters are also. They are also fucking over your children and everyone you know. Trump is only half the problem. The other half is that he still has supporters and that makes it impossible to do anything about him. They are just as much scum as he is because they justify his actions.

Trump Log:

Monday 6/4/18 - Trump's EPA director, Scott Pruitt, is using his staff (government employees paid with your tax money) to do personal work for him. This guy needs to go. (Source: Washington Post)

Tuesday 6/5/18 - Mueller accuses Trump's campaign chairman of witness tampering. (Source: Washington Post)

Wednesday 6/6/18 - Mexico imposes $3 billion tariff on American goods.  Trump wanted a trade war, he got it. (Source: Washington Post)

Thursday 6/7/18 - Trump signs the Veteran's Health Bill while his own administration works hard against funding it. (Source: Washington Post)

Friday 6/8/18 - In a big win for chemical companies, Trump's EPA will no longer look at air, water or ground contaminants when it determines the health and safety risks of potentially toxic chemicals. (Source: New York Times)

Saturday 6/9/18 - The best thing about the ACA (aka Obamacare) is it prevents insurance companies from rejecting you for having a pre-existing condition. But now, Trump is going after that too.  (Source: Washington Post)

Sunday 6/10/18 - Trump is driving away our greatest allies. His behavior at the G7 summit is an embarrassment. This is very scary. (Source: Washington Post)

Prior Trump Logs:
Issue # 1 - posted November 15th, 2016
Issue # 2 - posted November 22nd, 2016
Issue # 3 - posted November 29th, 2016
Issue # 4 - posted December 6, 2016
Issue # 5 - posted December 12, 2016
Issue # 6 - posted December 19, 2016
Issue # 7 - posted December 26, 2016
Issue # 8 - posted January 3, 2017
Issue # 9 - posted January 10, 2017
Issue #10 - posted January 17, 2017
Issue #11 - posted January 24, 2017
Issue #12 - posted January 31, 2017
Issue #13 - posted February 7, 2017
Issue #14 - posted February 14, 2017
Issue #15 - posted February 21, 2017
Issue #16 - posted February 28, 2017
Issue #17 - posted March 7, 2017
Issue #18 - posted March 14, 2017
Issue #19 - posted March 21, 2017
Issue #20 - posted March 28, 2017
Issue #21 - posted April 5, 2017
Issue #22 - posted April 11, 2017
Issue #23 - posted April 18, 2017
Issue #24 - posted April 25, 2017
Issue #25 - posted May 2, 2017
Issue #26 - posted May 9, 2017
Issue #27 - posted May 16, 2017
Issue #28 - posted May 23, 2017

Issue #29 - posted May 30, 2017

Issue #30 - posted June 6, 2017
Issue #31 - posted June 13, 2017
Issue #32 - posted June 20, 2017

Issue #33 - posted June 27, 2017
Issue #34 - posted March 12, 2018
Issue #35 - posted March 19, 2018
Issue #36 - posted March 26, 2018
Issue #37 - posted April 1, 2018
Issue #38 - posted April 8, 2018
Issue #39 - posted April 15, 2018
Issue #40 - posted April 22, 2018
Issue #41 - posted April 29, 2018
Issue #42 - posted May 6, 2018
Issue #43 - posted May 13, 2018
Issue #44 - posted May 20, 2018
Issue #45 - posted May 27, 2018
Issue #46 - posted June 3, 2018 

The United Viral Video - A Guide to the Situation

Do you ever see a commercial on television that is so disconnected with reality that cognitive dissonance sets in? What you are watching is so completely incongruous to your experience that it causing you confusion. An example of this is those Discover credit card commercials that claim that they are so pleasant to deal with that is like talking to an old friend. I had a Discover card for a short time and it was an awful experience. They had some of the worst customer service and the amount of junk mail, spam and telemarketing that I received increased astronomically. The card was accepted virtually no where. Their main source of revenue must be selling the names of their customers. They treat you like an old friend? Ya, maybe one that you severed ties with years ago because they're an asshole. So yes, I get confused by their commercials. It is so obviously a lie, like listening to Trump talk, I have to shake them off. Shudder! I have the same feeling when I see United Airlines slogan ... "Fly the friendly skies."

It almost seems like companies like Discover and United Airlines have to over-compensating for their biggest failings ... a lot like when Trump says, "No one treats ladies with more respect than me" or "Hispanics love me." We know they are lying. United's customer service is the worst of any airline I have flown on and I have heard even worse stories about them from friends. So when the viral video came out of the United passenger being removed from a flight, no one was surprised. No one that flies a lot anyway. I would stop using them, but when you live in an area with a small airport like I do (with only four airlines), often you don't have a lot of choices. Only four airlines service the Burlington airport. If I'm flying to Chicago, which I do often, I'm probably taking United.

If you are one of those people that has never flown or hasn't done it very often, you must be thinking "What the fuck!" when you saw this video. The rest of us feel that way also, but there is an explanation for this situation and it is not entirely United's fault. I, in no way, want to seem like I am apologizing for the United. I am a little tired of this story but now that the fervor has died down, I can see it with some perspective. Let's exercise this beast.

Why do airlines overbook? What is passenger bumping? Why is it a good thing? Airlines overbook their flights. This is for a good reason. Many passengers just don't show up for flights, whether it is traffic that made them late for a flight, they forgot about it, got lost on the way to the airport, got very sick and even, died. Overbooking prevents the plane from being empty or half empty when it flies. Operating a 747 is extremely expensive. If a flight is mostly empty and the plane or crew is not needed at the next airport, your flight is going to be cancelled. Keeping a flight reasonably full keeps costs down. This is one of the reasons flying is so much cheaper than it was decades ago. They'd fly a half empty plane and eat the cost. Airlines now are very good at predicting how many people aren't going to show up and they overbook accordingly. Usually it isn't a problem.

United Flight 3411 wasn't overbooked but it had no empty seats. This is only a problem if the airlines needs seats for their employees to get to another airport. In this case, there was a flight in Louisville, Kentucky that needed a crew, four people - pilot, navigator and two flight attendants. They needed to get from Chicago to Louisville for a flight leaving that airport. If there are no seats available, which isn't that rare, airlines look for volunteers to get bumped. Bumped means that you get placed on the next flight available to your destination, you don't have to pay for that flight because you already paid, you get offered a voucher for another flight and if you have to stay overnight, you usually get a hotel stay for free. A good deal! When I was younger and poorer, my wife and I used to do this intentionally. We ended up getting vouchers for our next vacation a number of times. United Flight 3411 offered a $400.00 voucher to their passengers while they were already boarded on the plane.  No one bit, so they offered a $800.00 voucher ... still no bites. It was at this point, that United does a lottery and forces people off the plane. Four people are chosen randomly.

As you can see, United's procedures for bumping passengers is awful. This is expected because pretty much every customer service experience I've ever had with United has been bad. Most airlines bump passengers when they are in the terminal at least an hour before the flight boards. Asking for volunteers after they have been settled into their seat is just dumb. Delta Airlines actually asks passengers when they check-in whether they are open to being bumped. Very smart! So if they need to bump someone, they seek the people who agreed to it already. I have not yet had a bad experience with Delta by the way. To go further as to how ridiculous United is, to tell someone they have to get off the plane after they have waited, boarded, squeezed their bag into the overhead and then settled into seat is just moronic. Why anyone thought this was a good idea I don't know. I'm surprised something like this hasn't happened before now.

Don't get me wrong, United is not 100% to blame for this situation. As F. Scott Fitzgerald says in The Great Gatsby, "it takes two to make an accident." The guy who got booted takes a lot of this blame. I won't use his real name, lets call him Dr. Douche Bag, for short Dr. Bag. Here are some thoughts about him:
      1) For one, when you are in an airport, especially post-911, when people in authority come up to you tell you to leave your seat, you get up and leave. Tensions are high in the airports, don't be defiant, don't be proud, say "yes, sir" or "yes, ma'am" and do what you are told. Even if there is an injustice happening, which there wasn't, don't resist it, because if you don't, things are going to get worse and probably fast. People who work at airports are stressed out! Don't push them, if you do, then you are the problem, not them. This guy was flailing his arms and berating the police when they showed up. Not a good idea. They have enough shit they have to deal with than to deal with your shit.
       2) Dr. Bag was holding up a flight, when he resists leaving a plane means everyone is held up. Not just everyone on his flight. But everyone else down the line as well. The flight crew on your flight may have another flight, the extra flight crew definitely has another flight and the plane that you are may be needed for another flight. How selfish are you that you think your schedule should hold up all these people? Bummer! You were chosen in the random lottery. Adults deal with these things. Throwing a temper tantrum is not how adults deal with this situation.
        3) Dr. Bag claims that he has patients to see in the morning. Guess what? Everyone on that plane had something to do the next morning. That's why United was not able to get volunteers. Louisville is a four hour drive from Chicago. He could have rented a car and been home a short time after midnight. If he didn't want to drive, a bus from Chicago to Louisville is about seven hours trip. He could have napped on the bus and gotten home late and still seen patients in the morning. He could have spent the night in Chicago, at United's expense, gotten a voucher and caught the 7:35am flight the next morning that arrives in Louisville at 9:35am. He could have gotten most of his morning schedule in. 

Misnomers: Social media exploded after this incident. So much so that I really got sick of it. There were so many more important things happening including a couple of shootings and some innocent people killed by chemical weapons not too long before this incident. In the current political moment, the mobs that gather on social media love victims. One victim is easier to comprehend than hundreds or thousands, especially one caught on video.  Lets talk about what social media got wrong:
      1) This is not racist. Because he is from Chinese and Vietnamese descent, some have jumped to the conclusion that this is racism. That's right, whenever anything happens to anyone that isn't white, racism is the cause. But there is zero proof of this. Four people were chosen to leave the plane: Dr. Douche Bag, his wife and another couple. I have been googling like mad to find out what the race was of these three people but I have found nothing. I am willing to bet that the other couple is white, mostly because if they weren't, then everyone that is claiming racism would be using that as an example. I don't know the race of his wife, but please note, she left the plane quietly. United uses a computer generated algorithm that searches for the passenger manifest for people who don't have kids, don't have disabilities or connecting flights etc. So it isn't exactly random but it doesn't search for people with Asian last names either. I haven't looked at the code, but in my 20 plus years as a software engineer and analyst, I cannot imagine anyone writing code that searches for Asian people to be booted from planes. This is just nonsense, paranoia and grandstanding. It only goes to show how far our society has jumped the shark on this subject.
       2) The same people who are calling this racism are also stating that the doctor is 69 years old and shouldn't be asked to leave the plane. I find this ironic in that the people hopping on the racism wagon are being ageist. What? Because he's 69, he cannot be bumped from a plane?  Too frail to wander the airport? Really? Hillary Clinton is 69, Bernie Sanders is 75 and Donald Trump is 70 ... it seems that the nation is okay with a person in their 70's running the country ... but United is awful to bump a 70 year old from their flight.
       3) Social media gets a lot of things wrong, because people are ignorant often mouthing off about things they know nothing about. Often they don't read articles, only the headlines and respond emotionally. One of things I saw people saying was that it was United employees pulling this guy from his seat. This isn't true. They were O'Hare Airport police and there were four of them. These people are paid to keep everyone safe at the airport and I am glad they are there.
       4) He is bleeding, but he wasn't hit by the police. He was bleeding because he swung his arm, lost balance and fell hitting his head on the armrest. The images in the video are powerful but as usual, they don't tell the whole story.
       5) The title "doctor" commands a lot of respect. When people see a doctor being dragged from an airplane, they are bit more peeved than usual. But this doctor is well known to the locals of Louisville and not for being respectful. In 2005, he was found guilty of dealing drugs, trading drugs for sex and lost his license. He just gained his license back in 2015. So whether he needed to see patients in the morning ... maybe ... maybe not. But respectful doctor ... eh, probably not.

The short of it, if you are asked to get off a flight and you really need to be home the next day, well ... it is probably a good plan to get off the plane and rent a car, or take the early flight in the morning. Unless you are a media whore, that is probably your best bet to get home without the drama.

The First Cyber Bully President - Trump Log #5

If you are wondering what it is going to be like to have Trump as president, look no further than the experience with Carrier Corporation this week. Trump campaigned to make corporations, that move job abroad, to pay higher taxes as a punishment. Yet, he does the opposite with Carrier and he portrays it as a success with most of the media is taking the bait. Carrier did keep about 1,000 jobs in the US which is great for those people who get to keep their jobs, but over 1,000 jobs still moved to Mexico. Also, those 1,000 jobs that stayed are going to be funded by Indiana tax payers. Instead of making a corporation pay, they are getting rewarded for keeping less than half of the jobs in the plant. Trump's Vice President, Mike Pence, is still the governor of that state which made it easier to get this done. You have to wonder if they are going to try to "make America great again" by micromanaging like this and how effective it is going to be when he doesn't have a governor in his pocket. All of it is difficult to bear, especially the backslapping from our hapless media outlets. 

Among Trump's picks for his cabinet so far we have an education secretary that is against public education, an EPA secretary that is hostile to the environment, a HUD secretary is against integrated housing and a small business director that has never owned a small business. Once again, we have an anti-government administration that will prove how ineffective government is by making it so.

Trump Log:
12/13/16 - Trump nominates Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, America's top diplomat. He is another oil man with a ton conflicting interests in the Middle East as well as strong ties to Russia.  (Source: Washington Post).

12/12/16 - Even though there are more states that have legalized pot (in one form or another), Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions may be more interested in going after potheads than hate groups. (Source: Politco)

12/11/16 - Trump continues to bring into question any information that doesn't support him and his agenda regardless of where it is from or who is stating it. This includes reports from the CIA about Russian hacking. He continues to miss daily intelligence briefings. You have to wonder what his relationship will be with the FBI and the CIA once he is president. (Source: Washington Post).

12/10/16 - Trump's Transition Team is creating a hit list of Dept. of Energy employees in the past who worked on climate change. (Source: Washington Post)

12/9/16 - Trump's erratic behavior and inconsistent message is making it difficult to do business in America.  The auto industry is stymied as to what the new President's policies are going be. (Source: New York Times)

12/8/16 - Trump appoints oil man and opponent of Obama climate change policies, Scott Pruitt,  as head of the EPA. (Source: New York Times)

12/7/16 - Isolationism affects more than just the economy. The world has less war today than at any point in human history, a global economy has a lot to do with us. (Source Washington Post)

****
Prior Trump Logs:
Issue # 1 - posted November 15th, 2016
Issue # 2 - posted November 22nd, 2016
Issue # 3 - posted November 29th, 2016
Issue # 4 - posted December 6, 2016

Trump Log - Issue #1

It has been a week since the election. Not many historical events have done more in altering my world view.  When I was young, the assassination of John Lennon changed my outlook on life. It reminded me that this shit is real. In my adult life, if the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01 did anything to me, it made me ever more skeptical of religion, but this was not earth shattering for me. I was already done with religion. What really changed my world view was the day after 911,  September 12th, 2001. When I saw how my country reacted to the attacks, I knew it was not in the country that I thought I was. The hate, the fear and the rage ... had me questioning my life here and how I fit in, if at all.  While a little of that still lingered, it mostly scabbed over to a point that I could ignore it. The womb opened again last Tuesday. I have a feeling that it is going to be a long four years.

While I am grateful that the American president does not have a lot of power there are a lot of things that he can do that could damage our country and planet for years to come. I am mostly talking about the environment, but the economy and his potential Supreme Court nominations terrify me. 

To keep myself sane, I am limiting myself to one disturbing report per day.  You will find them below. Consider it my Trump log. If I keep this up for the next few years, I will have a nice reference point for you when you are arguing with that racist friend of yours ... or maybe for the toppling of a tyrant.

Trump Log issue #1:

11/15/2016- If the US pulls out of NAFTA, we are supposed to follow WTO rules when dealing with Mexico.  Trump claims that he would ignore this. This would not only devastate the Mexican economy but could result in international sanctions against the US.
(Source: The Guardian)

11/14 - Among Trump's list of possible candidates for Energy Secretary, is an oil billionaire from North Dakota. One of the top priorities will be the repeal of the Obama's Clean Power Plan, an executive order that helps to limit carbon emissions from power plants.
(Source: PBS)

11/13 - Trump names three of his grown children and his son-in-aw to his transition team along with well known white supremacist (aka alt-right) Stephen K. Bannon.
(Source: New York Times)

11/12 - Trump's tax plan is not only bad for everyone except the very rich, but will badly affect charitable giving.
(Source: New York Times)

11/11 - Trump campaigned that he would not have any lobbyist involved in his administration. Three days into his president-electhood he breaks that promise.
(Source: New York Times)

11/10 - Sarah Palin is being considered for a cabinet appointment, possibly Secretary of Interior. We'd have a developer in the White House and an idiot in charge of the National Parks. 
(Source: Slate.com)

11/9 -Myron Ebell is spearheading Trump’s transition plans for the Environmental Protection Agency. He is a well known climate skeptic. You can kiss the Paris agreement good bye ... no America, no China or India either.
(Source: Scientific American)

Go Fever

I have Go Fever.  I get it often and I get it bad. Go Fever is an informal term that was created by NASA by the engineers involved in the Apollo I fire that resulted in the death of all three astronauts involved. It was also used after the Challenger disaster in 1984 and the Columbia disaster in 2003.  It is the frenzy that occurs by individuals and groups when involved in a big project. As go-live approaches, one's ability to see problems are diminished for fear of failure or of dragging your team down. No one wants to be the one to cause a project to miss its go-live date.  The money, the stress and the amount of time put into the project can contribute to the fever. One has a tendency to not see problems in this state of frenzy or to diminish their value.

This is not a failing in personality or character, it is just the residue of stress, just an aspect of being human. The big difference between me and the folks who work for NASA is that no one dies when I get the fever. There might be some money or good will lost , or inconvenienced doctors or patients, but no one is going to die because of my mistakes. I work in medical billing, I don't touch those machine that go beep. The Freakonomics podcast recently interviewed Allan McDonald, one of the engineers on the shuttle. He says that the more successful a person or organization, the worse the fever can get.  Prior to the Challenger disaster in 1984, NASA had never lost anyone is space. The Apollo I accident happened on the test pad and Apollo 13 failed but was ultimately saved due to their innovation and creativity. So you could say, they were going into the space shuttle project quite cockily. You can't learn from you mistakes if you haven't made a lot of them and you feel infallible.

I am blogging about this because I learned from my failures in the past. It is one of the reasons why someone with 20 years experience is better than someone with zero: we've already made our failures and have learned from them. A true failure is one that you haven't learned from. Freakonomics talks about a pre-mortem (as opposed to a post-mortem) on projects where they go over everything that can go wrong.  This is a lot like what I do with my team of testers. They test the code that I write and they get back to me about problems. We try to think of every way the software can be used and test the hell out of it.  I fix the problems reported and we start over again. As Go Fever sets in and gets stronger, my idea of what a problem is gets smaller and smaller. I tend to accept some problems later in a project that I may not have accepted it earlier.  This is why engineers don't test their own code. The testers are a fresh set of eyes that look at a project from a perspective that the coder could never. I have been working the same project for about a year now. My go-live date is the first week of August, a couple of weeks. My Go Fever is quite bad right now, not fatal, but I am looking forward to it being over.

Song Dissection: Skateaway

I was a fairly depressed person in the 1980's. One of my biggest causes of my angst is that something I loved was being destroyed before my eyes ... and ears. I thought rock and roll was dying.  Everything coming out seemed so over produced. Each time a new album came out of one of my favorite musicians, it was a great disappointment. The rawness, the intimacy was gone. All I could think of was some corporate douche sitting at the sound board with a pile of cocaine in front of him yelling at a band, like Heart or Genesis, that they need to add more synthesizer or insert sax solo here... or "you need more hair spray, your hair is not tall enough." Rock and roll made a lot of money in the 1970's so that meant that a lot of people got involved in it for reasons other than making great music like making money. Dumbing down the music is great for sales.

MTV (Music Television) also happened.  Having a network dedicated to pop music was good for the industry for a lot of reasons. Bands had a place to communicate almost directly with their fans for the first time. Before MTV, performers would have to hope for a rare spot on the Ed Sullivan Show, American Bandstand or Top of the Pops.  MTV had tour dates and interviews and fans could see their favorite performers readily and, of course, there was the music video. The video was a new creative medium that attracted film people to music in new creative ways. This is a good thing, but it also had a bad effect on music. The music wasn't just audio now, it was visual. The big money labels wanted to manage the image of musicians as well as their audio output. This is virtual death to creative types.

Here is what the awesome Wilson sisters from the band Heart looked like before the MTV era. 

Here is after:

Of course, they had their biggest hit "These Dreams" in the MTV era which is a pretty dreadful song co-written by one of my favorite song writers Bernie Taupin. Since this is a blog post about Dire Straits, I won't pan it any further. The era was in need of a new kick ass rock band.

I was only 12 when "Sultans of Swing" hit my FM station in 1977 and I had already started my Dylan obsession. I just had bought my first Dylan album in cassette, Infidels. My first exposure to Dylan was from MTV, the Sweetheart Like You video. Imagine that!  The first time I ever heard Dire Straits, I thought "Wow, Bob Dylan can sing!" Of course, I was mistaken it was Mark Knoffler not Dylan. If Dylan had a better voice, he'd sound like Knopfler. This band had everything. They had one of the best guitarists in rock history (27th on Rolling Stones top 100) , a killer rhythm section, a good singer and decent lyricist. How could MTV ruin this band?

Dire Straits was just so talented they could do whatever they wanted in regards to their image. They could be themselves. Mark Knopfler was a white balding Brit in his late 20's who went on stage wearing head bands and wrist bands. Talent trumps trendiness. How does a band like this survive in the era of MTV? They confront it head on. The song and video of Skateaway is about the movies we make in our head when we hear music, that which the music video robs us of. It is on their third album "Making Movies", arguably their best, which gets its title from the lyrics of the song (see below).

The lyrics are straight forward and the video is sparse and to the point. It is about a girl, a "roller girl," skating through traffic. She has headphones on and she is in her own world. While the world is at a standstill she weaves in and out of traffic freely. The "city's been so rude to her" but this is her revenge, she "tortures taxi drivers just for fun." It is escapism, but it is the "rock n roll dream" that makes her want want more, "the music make her wanna be the story."

Ironically, it is hard not to see this video in my head when I hear this song. I prefer to make own movies when I hear a great tune, but is one of the better videos I have seen. I like how the band comes in at the end and just sways back and forth. No glitter here, just rock and roll.  Rock and roll survived and is better than ever thanks to bands like Dire Straits who kept it burning through the dark ages of the 1980s.

Skateaway

lyrics Mark Knopfler

I seen a girl on a one way corridor
Stealing down a wrong way street
For all the world like an urban toreador
She had wheels on, on her feet

Well, the cars do the usual dances
Same old cruise and the curbside crawl
But the rollergirl, she's taking chances
They just love to see her, take them all

No fear, alone at night
She's sailing through the crowd
In her ears the phones are tight
And the music's playing loud

Hallelujah, here she comes, Queen Rollerball
In an Enchante, what can I say, care at all

You know she used to have to wait around
She used to be the lonely one
But now that she can skate around town
She's the only, only one

No fear, alone at night
She's sailing through the crowd
In her ears the phones are tight
And the music's playing loud

She gets rock 'n' roll and rock 'n' roll station
And a rock 'n' roll dream
She's making movies on location
She don't know what it means

And the music make her wanna be the story
And the story was whatever was the song, what it was
Rollergirl don't worry
DJ play the movies all night long

She tortures taxi drivers just for fun
She like to read their lips
Says, "Toro, toro taxi see ya tomorrow, my son"
I swear, she let a big truck graze her hip

Ah, she got her own world in the city, yeah
You can't intrude on her, no, no, no
She got her own world in the city
The city's been so rude to her

No fears, alone at night
Sailing through the crowd
In her ears the phones so tight
And the music's playing loud

She gets rock 'n' roll and rock 'n' roll station
And a rock 'n' roll dream
She's making movies on location
She don't know what it means

But the music make her wanna be the story
And the story was whatever was the song, what it was
Rollergirl don't worry
DJ play the movies all night long, all night long

Slippin' and a-slidin'
Yeah, life's a rollerball
Slippin' and a-slidin'
Skateaway, that's all
Skateaway

Shala, shalay, hey, hey, skateaway
Now shala, shalay, hey, hey
She's singing shala, shalay, hey, hey, skateaway

Shala, shalay, hey, hey

Door Mats, Boot Lickers, Cage Rattlers and the Squeaky Wheel

The story of John O'Neill is one of the saddest and frustrating I have ever heard.  I don't know many stories that show the problems with modern American culture more than his story. He was the one FBI agent who knew about the threat of al Qaeda. When he followed protocol, he was ignored. He complained and stepped on some toes, he was made a pariah. He "retired" in frustration and started his job as head of security at the World Trade Center just a couple of weeks before it was brought down by al Qaeda, a horrible tragic irony. His body was found in the wreckage a few days later.

O'Neill's story is another example of the wrongness of the old idiom "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." When the squeaky wheel is a person, it usually doesn't get the grease. They usually don't get listened to or placated in anyway. They usually get ignored and as the squeaking gets louder, they eventually get labeled a "complainer" and get marginalized. I like the term Cage Rattler better than the Squeaky Wheel. It has better imagery. One of four things can happen to the Cage Rattler in any modern American organization.

(1) The Cage Rattler can become so frustrated that they stop complaining, they internalize their frustration and then they become apathetic. Like a doormat, they learn to be quiet, accept that they will be stepped on, learn to say "thank you" and are just glad to get a pay check. Most people are Doormats. They have lost all passion for their jobs. They learn not to question authority, not to speak up; it isn't worth the effort. They know they can't change anything. Their work with lack creativity and are, possibly, not very productive because of this.

(2) The Cage Rattler can get sick of being ignored and just quit, like O'Neill, and move onto a new job hopefully where they are in charge. The best place for a Cage Rattler is to be self-employed or to be in a position where they are beyond reproach. They need to have a lot of freedom and power to implement meaningful change. (3) If the economy is bad and they can't move on to another position, this can become a bad situation. The complainer can escalate their complaints so much that they annoy the wrong people, they rattle the wrong cage, and just get fired. This is the worst scenario. I've seen this happen to a lot of people. It is can get explosive. It is best to quit any job, if you can, before things get this bad. Just remember, one common way of fixing any problem, is replacing the person that keeps bringing it up. The Squeaky Wheel doesn't get more grease, it just gets replaced by a new quiet wheel.

(4) The best scenario of course, is the complainer gets listened to, the problem is resolved and everyone moves on. If O'Neill had been listened to, there would probably be a few more skyscrapers in Manhattan right now, there probably wouldn't have been a very expensive war in Afghanistan, the Patriot Act probably wouldn't exist and hopefully, the NSA wouldn't be tapping all of our phone. It is my experience, working in software support for almost two decades, that complainers are your friends. When one person complains, they are usually representing a bunch of other people who haven't bothered to. If your organization is a software company, complainers help identify bugs to improve your product. If you are a teacher, complainers help educate more students. If you are a security organization, complainers save lives. Embrace your complainers. No, they don't like complaining. No one does. If no one is complaining, there is probably something very wrong.

Cage Rattlers aren't the problem. The worst person you will meet in any organization is the Boot Licker. I'd rather have someone complaining to me than to have someone manipulate me. I once worked in a team of four guys at a software company. We shared a workload. Three of us worked very hard, but one guy did nothing. He spent most of the day socializing, usually on the phone with friends. Whenever a manager walked by he appeared to be talking to a customer. All talk of Whoopie's gown at the Academy Awards or which restaurant was hotter ceased at the right time. He was good at this. How did he get away with it? For one, Doormats were everywhere. He was such a "nice" guy and so well liked that if you complained about him, you were the problem, not him. He was a great talker. Whenever big meetings came up, he always chimed in at the right time. He was very good at getting himself on the right project, at the right time and taking as much credit as he could get away with. There aren't many more frustrating experiences than when you have worked very hard on a project and someone who has done nothing gets all the credit. A team with two Door Mats, a Boot Licker and a Cage Rattler is not a good combination. Boot Lickers are rare, but there is no better way to turn a Door Mat into a Cage Rattler.  Put him/her on a team with a Boot Licker and watch the transformation.

Women and Labor

Back in December, in my tribute to Podcasts, I mentioned that my Monday morning ritual is listening to C-SPAN podcasts. This is still true.  I have actually always worked with noise. Perhaps it is due to being from a large family. My first college roommate noticed and was so annoyed by me doing homework while blasting Pink Floyd albums that he decided to hide my Final Cut album for a few weeks. Later, in grad school and while a professional, I worked while listening to NPR and now Podcasts. My wife comments often about how I don't like silence. This is true. Silence is boring. Noise, under controlled conditions, makes me productive.

This week's C-SPAN American History podcast was so interesting that it might have been distracting. It was about women in the work place covering the span from World War II to the 1970's. The most interesting thing I learned was that after WW II, women worked down, not out. I had always heard that women, who were working assembly lines and other war industry during the War, went back to being  housewives after the war. When in actuality, after the war, they didn't return home but simply were demoted to lower paying jobs. The attitude was that they were taking "a man's job and earning a man's pay." I can be sympathetic to both the men and the women in this situation, in that, it must have sucked for the women who lost their jobs but also, the men who made the sacrifice and left their jobs to go overseas, really deserved their job's back.

By 1950, there were as many women in the work-force as during the war. They were just in lower paying jobs after the war.  Their pay during the war wasn't as high as their male counterparts, but they were still higher during the war than after.  About 25% of woman sixteen years or old were in the workforce. We are at about 60% now. They went from riveters and assembly line workers to clerks, secretaries, teachers and nurses.

By end of 19th century, women were dominating teaching. In the late 19th century until the 1960's many states had marriage bars which were laws preventing married women from working in some professions, mostly teaching and clerical work. If a teacher got married, she had to quit her job. The baby boom of the 50's caused these bars to go away. Market demand is king which in this case is a very good thing. A nursing boom also happened in the 50's due to the American healthcare systems shift to a centralization around hospitals.  Secretaries, stenographers and file clerks expanded due to the boom of office work. All those women who were working during the war, who liked it, had plenty of other places to find work but still opportunities were very limited in scope and as well as upward mobility.

By the 1970's woman started breaking into professional jobs like management, doctors and clergy. Blue collar professionals like plumbers and electrician still have few women, but that may be a case of self selection rather than gender bias. This I do not know. By the mid-1980's, I was entering the workforce. In my home state of Rhode Island, I obtained my first professional IS job (Information Systems) at a children's clothing manufacturer, located in the south. Their data processing facility was located in Cumberland, RI. I was working the 3rd shift (7PM to 7AM three days a week) as a computer operator on an AS400 IBM mid-range computer. I was being trained by a young Syrian-American woman about my age named Myra. She had more experience than I did and had a degree while I was still working on mine. She was making much less than what I was making (my memory is not good here). I complained to my manager, Bob, about this and he justified it by stating that men were the head-of-household.  I expressed displeasure about his justification and Bob stated that I can resolved this in a very simple way ... I could take a pay-cut to be equal to Myra's.  Of course, I didn't take the pay cut. I had rent and tuition to pay. I cannot imagine this happening today, thirty years later. I cannot even imagine someone's gender coming up while we interviewed anyone and discussed their pay scale. This is progress.

I will not be so bold here to say that the gender gap does not exist. Not only don't I want to deal with the angry email that I would receive, but mostly because I have one major looming question: What does a workplace without a gender gap look like?  If all the stats are collected and we make all the controls we can think of for other factors like experience, education, hours worked, visibility and age/era one entered the work force (I am sure there are more), will we ever be at 100% equal. Aren't there too many factors to get equality? Isn't there always going to be one side always doing better than another? When you google this subject, you get so much data and so many different opinions. I found President Obama's comment about women making 77% of men. I found Slate Double X's article (their feminists wing) that disputed Obama's number stating it was closer to 91% with men working longer hours. I was going to make a link to the specific article, because it made so many good points, but I cannot find this article anymore. I can find some right wing articles that use Slate's to justify their rants. It is a very contentious subject. It has been a long time since my college statistics classes, but 91% with this many factors, seems an awful lot like equal, considering a margin of error.

Everyone you talk to says that the gender gap is unjust, but if that is so, then who is doing it? In such a competitive economy, why would anyone not pay a good employee what they are worth? Job offers are usually based, somewhat, on the prior job's salary. So if there still is a gender gap, is it just due to the fact that we still have people in the economy who were hired when there was one? So again, I won't be so bold to say that the gender gap no longer exists, but that in the last 20 + years, I just have not seen it and have difficulty even imagining it in our current culture. Perhaps I just lack imagination.