9/24/2015 1:05 PM
Gotta get these grumbles and vents out of my head, because
it’s getting too crowded up there.
Hard to believe, but there’s a thread that runs through VW, CentCom
and Eli Broad’s wallet. Watch:
If you don’t already know about the VW “clean diesel”
engine’s smoke-n-mirrors about its ability to meet anyone’s emission standards,
read this to get caught up.
So VW’s lost about a third of its stock price, its CEO has
resigned, and now some think Germany’s whole economy make take a serious hit,
because the VW/Audi/Porsche industrial complex is such a large part of
Germany’s export market, which in turn is why Germany gets to look down its
nose at Greece. Yes, I mentioned Greece.
VW flat-out lied about its “clean diesel” engine’s ability,
masking their inability to overcome the laws of physics by making the car’s
software lie about performance when it knew it was being tested.
It was a neat trick, a new solution to the auto industry’s age old annoyance, no, anger, at
external regulations. Not a single warning of the disastrous sales collapse
that would follow any regulation ever appeared. Safety glass, seat belts,
side-visible turn signals, third brake lights, unleaded gas, emissions
standards, every one was going to be the end of the industry, making cars too
expensive, causing sales to plummet. Nope. Never happened. Bad design, by the
industry itself, caused the real problems. From the amazingly bad esthetics of
the Ford Edsel, to Ford’s equally horrible exploding Pintos, from Roger Smith’s
destruction of the Cadillac brand for 10 years, to Lee Iacocca’s executives
selling over 60,000 cars they’d driven as company perks, with the odometers disconnected,
the real sales problems have been caused by the company executives themselves.
Number One Lesson here: when a lobbyist or executive says a
regulation will destroy her company, either she’s wrong, or she knows her
company is doing something illegal, and the new regulation will expose it. You
only need the history of the auto industry, at one point the largest industry
ion America, to know this is true.
(Number Two Lesson: When you hear "Clean Coal" think "Clean Diesel". Same marketing needs. Same lies.)
In other news, Gregory Hooker, the Iraq analyst at the
Defense Intelligence Agency and CentCom, who blew the whistle on the terrible
situation assessments and terrible planning that went into Junior Bush’s
invasion of Iraq, has called foul on the assessments and methods that the current CentCom leaders are using to run their war in Iraq and
Syria, especially against ISIS, or ISIL, or whatever their brand name is this
month. Back in 2005, he wrote a book about how badly Operation Iraqi Freedom had been planned. Because he and
most of the rest of his group had been Iraq analysts since 1996, he got to see
the whole thing up close.
And guess who’s doing the bad work now? Same positions as
during Junior’s invasion: the guys at the top. Back then, it was the Bush Admin
that wanted a small force, quick in-and-out, and no real consideration for the
follow-on. Now, it’s the two most senior intel officers at CentCom, Maj. Gen.
Grove and his deputy Greg Ryckman, who are changing the analysis, to prevent
bad news from getting to the president and others. Maybe because the military
doesn’t like criticizing its own operations. Here’s my favorite quote from the
NYTimes article: “What are the
strategic objectives here? There are none. This is just perpetual war,” said
David Faulkner, the former targeting director at Centcom”.
Read the whole article. The idea that bad news needed
multiple sources but good news just one source tells you all you really need to
know about the management at the top.
How about something more local, more Los Angeles? How about
that school up the street? You know, the incredibly awful cesspool of
degenerate union teachers, only in it for themselves, and to hell with any of
the children trying so desperately to learn in those overcrowded classrooms?
Yea, me neither. But those are the schools that Eli Broad says we have. And he
and his buddies are going to figure out a way to spend $490 million of ourmoney, not theirs, ours, on their pipedream of schools they run, the way they
want to run them, with personnel only answerable to them, for the students they
hand-pick as being worthy of their new methods, but with our money. Oh, and did
I mention, no public oversight?
Here’s an idea: How’s about Mr & Mrs Broad, and the
Gates’, and all their bazillionaire friends, put up the money, buy the
properties, and build the schools they say are the future? Maybe put enough in
a trust to pay the teachers at their new private schools for another twenty
years. And then let in any kid who shows up. No charging the parents fees. No
making the kids pay for supplies. Take it out of the money the Broads, et al,
are making off their investments.
Hey, Eli, your silence is deafening….and expected. “Gimme
the money, and don’t ask questions. I’m a billionaire, so I must know about how
to teach seven-year-olds.” This sounds so much like Trump it’s scary.
Look, I know our schools have problems. FOX News, the GOP,
and Charter School executives, er, advocates have been pounding on this story
ever since the Supreme Court decided we had to let blacks into public schools
with the whites.
But every proven solution is being avoided with this
proposal. Smaller classes equals better individual attention equals better
learning and better grades. Better pay means a better pool of teaching
prospects equals better teachers. More teacher involvement in class planning
means better retention instead of 20% of new teachers bailing out within fiveyears. And mentor-teachers helping new teachers means better teachers means
better learning from kids means better grades. And guess what every one of
those proven solutions means. Money. Money we don’t want to spend. Money we
have a hard time getting from taxpayers who’ve barely gotten a raise as a nation in almost forty years. Money that instead went to the billionaires and
their hedge fund managers, money parked off-short to avoid any taxes at all.
So hey, you
cheapskates. Instead of trying for two bites of the apple, by first demanding
and getting tax cuts from the politicians you own, and then trying to make a
buck or gain political power by trying to take over the very institutions your
tax cuts have impoverished, just put up or shut up. Don’t try to pick our
pockets twice. Put some of your pocket into the game. Whatsa matta? Chicken?
I said there was a thread running through all these. Do you
see it? Do you see the engineers, the analysts, the teachers and students,
working as hard as they can, with what they’re given, and getting it right far
more often than not? And do you see management, just as often, not wanting to
hear bad news, not wanting to admit difficulties, or that they could be wrong
about a subject they know nothing about? Whether it’s a military commander not
understanding Iraqi cultural conflicts, or chairmen from Marketing not understanding
the physics of diesel combustion, or a billionaire real estate developer
thinking he knows something about teaching grade school, the hubris of thinking
your ability in one field makes you an expert in another is a classic mistake
of the high and mighty.
Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the “known unknowns, and the
unknown unknowns”, and maybe his cohort of smug bastards ought to listen to
that tiny bit of his wisdom. It may be the only wisdom he had.
And since quoting Rumsfeld leaves a bad taste in my mouth,
let me end with a quote, said by both Katherine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, in the
movie ‘The Philadelphia Story’:
“With the high and mighty, always a little patience.”
My patience with them, however, has just about run out.
9/24/2015 3:19 PM
