I sat this morning and gazed over news, and this one small item lay there....a C-SP*N/PBS survey. They went out and asked around a thousand 'likely voters' (hint: not regular people but people who say they usually vote)....about how familiar they were with the Supreme Court.
Roughly fifty percent could not name a SINGLE member of the current court.
I would suggest that if you'd based the poll off just regular people at some flea-market....it would have even gone down to maybe 20-percent naming one single guy/gal off the Supreme Court.
But the real question here....is it important to know the members of the court? Basically....NO. It doesn't change your life or improve your disposition. It doesn't comfort you at 11 PM at night when your husband is still out drinking, or having to talk to some idiot teacher in the school because of a poor grading system with your kids. Frankly, it doesn't matter for the bulk of us.
For journalists, or the PBS crowd? Well....they'd like for people to get all pepped up and care.
Can folks name all the NFL teams? I would imagine among likely male-voters...more than sixty percent can name two-thirds of the teams.
Can folks name their two senators? I would take a guess that barely a third of all likely voters can name both senators from their state.
Does any of this matter.....that's really the big question.
Thursday, 30 August 2018
Wednesday, 29 August 2018
Business Management Style by Mennonites
My brother and I had a short chat on business changes, and I offered the opinion that one might want to adapt to the Mennonite business culture. The thing is.....no one has ever written a book on the topic. I sat and pondered over the subject, coming to ten basic Mennonite business topics:
1. Everything you do....has to be done in a frugal way. You would not go and put a $500,000 statue up in the entrance of the building. Nor would you offer leased cars to any of the executives. Nor would you let people stay in four-star hotels while on business trips. Nor would you pay some loser-employee more than what they are actually worth.
2. Never overstate your intentions. Mennonites don't hype things much....either it works or it doesn't. If you developed a product that does exactly what it was supposed to do....you simply stand there with your arms crossed against your chest, grinning from ear to ear, and state your success in a very limited way.
3. No booze or drugs. Clean lifestyle is expected, period. If you need to celebrate something....coffee and cheesecake are acceptable.
4. Trashy talk and how to handle it. Basically, you take the employee into a private toilet area, and wash their mouth out with soap. If they can't handle it....take them to HR and let them go.
5. A true Mennonite comes into work prepared to stuff twelve hours of work into a normal eight-hour day.
6. In a true Mennonite business culture....every joke that is told in the work-place....is clean enough to tell Grandma.
7. In a Mennonite work-place, you don't waste money on AC or extra heat. You keep the windows open. And none of those modern screens for the windows either.
8. If you cheated the customer.....you should expect to be shunned.
9. You tend to rise at 4 AM, drink an abundance of coffee, face the rising sun with almost tears in your eyes that you can only work till the sun goes down, and feel enthusiasm burning in your gut.
10. You feel a sense of wickedness and sorrow, when having to touch anything built with technology beyond 1890. The guilt bothers you daily, and you just hope that folks wise up eventually and resettle to the 1890 way of life and business.
1. Everything you do....has to be done in a frugal way. You would not go and put a $500,000 statue up in the entrance of the building. Nor would you offer leased cars to any of the executives. Nor would you let people stay in four-star hotels while on business trips. Nor would you pay some loser-employee more than what they are actually worth.
2. Never overstate your intentions. Mennonites don't hype things much....either it works or it doesn't. If you developed a product that does exactly what it was supposed to do....you simply stand there with your arms crossed against your chest, grinning from ear to ear, and state your success in a very limited way.
3. No booze or drugs. Clean lifestyle is expected, period. If you need to celebrate something....coffee and cheesecake are acceptable.
4. Trashy talk and how to handle it. Basically, you take the employee into a private toilet area, and wash their mouth out with soap. If they can't handle it....take them to HR and let them go.
5. A true Mennonite comes into work prepared to stuff twelve hours of work into a normal eight-hour day.
6. In a true Mennonite business culture....every joke that is told in the work-place....is clean enough to tell Grandma.
7. In a Mennonite work-place, you don't waste money on AC or extra heat. You keep the windows open. And none of those modern screens for the windows either.
8. If you cheated the customer.....you should expect to be shunned.
9. You tend to rise at 4 AM, drink an abundance of coffee, face the rising sun with almost tears in your eyes that you can only work till the sun goes down, and feel enthusiasm burning in your gut.
10. You feel a sense of wickedness and sorrow, when having to touch anything built with technology beyond 1890. The guilt bothers you daily, and you just hope that folks wise up eventually and resettle to the 1890 way of life and business.
Tuesday, 28 August 2018
Amount of Time to Hype McCain?
The news media has until noon on Thursday to hype Senator McCain. At that point, the funeral is done, and only the matter of the Governor picking the short-term successor remains.
Does anyone care about the hype? No.
I would take a guess that forty-percent of all Democrats saw nothing much to appreciate about Senator McCain. And I suspect at least fifty percent of all Republicans feel the same way. The fake hype won't really do much to change public opinion of the guy. Most folks are locked in for respecting or disrespecting the guy.
Does anyone care about the hype? No.
I would take a guess that forty-percent of all Democrats saw nothing much to appreciate about Senator McCain. And I suspect at least fifty percent of all Republicans feel the same way. The fake hype won't really do much to change public opinion of the guy. Most folks are locked in for respecting or disrespecting the guy.
Consulting the Right People
As a kid going up, we had a pair of brothers in the local area who were noted for 'creativity', jeopardy, and peril. Basically, they wandered around and asked....if you did 'A' and 'B', what would really transpire?
A good example was an open field, a truck with no rear window left in it (don't ask why), and then asking could you set the truck off in first gear, climb via the window (both of them), get to the rear of the truck to touch the bumper, and return to the interior of the truck, all in the space of half a mile (before the truck plunged into a 10-foot revine)?
In the 1970s, you could do stuff and somehow survive. Today? I think you'd push the envelope even further, and their risk assessment would go way off the charts.
Generally, after the summer pause, you'd return to school and get a run-down of what they'd accomplished in the summer vacation period. School in some way, limited their activities, and probably kept them from far more dangerous stuff. I would imagine that they could accomplish at least a hundred acts in that 40-odd day period that were worth discussing.
Most other kids wanted to hear of the exploits of the two, but would generally condemn the behavior as risky. Course, the two had scientifically proven various ways of handling wasps or bees, or how to handle the encounter with a disturbed bull on a rampage. In today's world, I think they'd have three or four recipes developed for explosives.
Here's the thing though....in today's world, if you were going to step out into some crazy scenario with a high rating for danger, you'd likely prefer to go call up someone like this, and consult with them. There's a high probability that there's some history existing and you might learn one important lesson out of epic moment from 1974 where danger was thrown to the wind.
A good example was an open field, a truck with no rear window left in it (don't ask why), and then asking could you set the truck off in first gear, climb via the window (both of them), get to the rear of the truck to touch the bumper, and return to the interior of the truck, all in the space of half a mile (before the truck plunged into a 10-foot revine)?
In the 1970s, you could do stuff and somehow survive. Today? I think you'd push the envelope even further, and their risk assessment would go way off the charts.
Generally, after the summer pause, you'd return to school and get a run-down of what they'd accomplished in the summer vacation period. School in some way, limited their activities, and probably kept them from far more dangerous stuff. I would imagine that they could accomplish at least a hundred acts in that 40-odd day period that were worth discussing.
Most other kids wanted to hear of the exploits of the two, but would generally condemn the behavior as risky. Course, the two had scientifically proven various ways of handling wasps or bees, or how to handle the encounter with a disturbed bull on a rampage. In today's world, I think they'd have three or four recipes developed for explosives.
Here's the thing though....in today's world, if you were going to step out into some crazy scenario with a high rating for danger, you'd likely prefer to go call up someone like this, and consult with them. There's a high probability that there's some history existing and you might learn one important lesson out of epic moment from 1974 where danger was thrown to the wind.
Monday, 27 August 2018
Sunday, 26 August 2018
The Various Versions of McCain
Senator McCain passed away over the weekend. Most folks (Republican and Democrat) have an opinion over the guy.....some extremely positive....some extremely negative. I tend to look over the guy, and would suggest that there are at least eight versions of McCain:
1. There is the marginal Navy pilot version. This is the guy who probably should have been let go from flight activity but he was the admiral's son.
2. There is the POW version. Over this episode, spending five years as a prisoner, he deserves some credit.
3. There is the husband-McCain version who came back from the prisoner situation....having various affairs over the next five years and he ends up divorcing wife number one.
4. There is the Senator version where he marries Cindy, and leaves the military, to get into politics.
5. There is the Keating-Five version where McCain took roughly $120k in campaign contributions, and attempted to halt the government take-over of a savings-and-loan. It was never enough to get jail-time but it demonstrated a fairly poor choice of judgement.
6. There is the two-time presidential candidate version of McCain, who just plain failed to connect to Republicans in general.
7. There is the McCain version who got cozy for unknown reasons with ISIS thugs in 2013, and had at least one meeting to work out details in the Syria civil war.
8. And then there is the McCain version that opposed anything that Donald Trump attempted as President.
The problem is that you can find a couple of reasons to respect the guy, but poor judgement decisions continually caused you to disrespect the guy.
1. There is the marginal Navy pilot version. This is the guy who probably should have been let go from flight activity but he was the admiral's son.
2. There is the POW version. Over this episode, spending five years as a prisoner, he deserves some credit.
3. There is the husband-McCain version who came back from the prisoner situation....having various affairs over the next five years and he ends up divorcing wife number one.
4. There is the Senator version where he marries Cindy, and leaves the military, to get into politics.
5. There is the Keating-Five version where McCain took roughly $120k in campaign contributions, and attempted to halt the government take-over of a savings-and-loan. It was never enough to get jail-time but it demonstrated a fairly poor choice of judgement.
6. There is the two-time presidential candidate version of McCain, who just plain failed to connect to Republicans in general.
7. There is the McCain version who got cozy for unknown reasons with ISIS thugs in 2013, and had at least one meeting to work out details in the Syria civil war.
8. And then there is the McCain version that opposed anything that Donald Trump attempted as President.
The problem is that you can find a couple of reasons to respect the guy, but poor judgement decisions continually caused you to disrespect the guy.
South Africa and the Land 'Chatter'
Over the past week, President Trump talked about South Africa and this seizure of land deal. A lot of journalists are stumbling over the topic and generally....people are missing the big picture. So I'll offer this insight.
First, South Africa is about the size of California, Oregon, Washington State, Nevada, and Arizona. Population? Just about 56-million. It might surprise folks.....but the bulk of the population lives on the eastern end of the nation.....go figure around two-thirds of the nation there. The western half is sparse, and less populated. You can also say that most of the population on the western end lives around five or six major urban areas.
Second, there's a lot of chatter about farm-land and seizure. The government has written up a new law where farms or land can be seized, without compensation (it's been on the books for a total of four years now). The one and only case to be up at this point....involves a non-farm (it was a game preserve of a private individual). The guy put up a fence, and appears to have done some improvement to the property over the past twenty years. The local tribe did the paperwork, and the court approved their acquisition. That's the ONLY case that has occurred so far.
Third, more acquisitions likely? No one says for sure. There is this one odd factor. When you look at the map and so much open territory.....the fact is that only around 10-to-15 percent of the land is farm productive. The massive bulk of land is NOT productive....nor will ever be. When you go and chat over real productive land (worth something)....most suggest that it won't be more than three to four percent of the total land of South Africa.
Fourth, back in 2014....there was a plan established by the government to take 30-percent of productive land and hand it to 'disadvantaged' blacks. It's not exactly clear who the advantaged 'disadvantaged' blacks are, or the disadvantaged 'disadvantaged' blacks (the ones who won't get property when the big deal finally occurs). Some folks believe that insiders will manipulate the system, and friends of the big party members will walk away with big chunks of property. Earlier this year, the government wrote additional rules to the concept (making it easier to acquire the property), and to firmly say that no compensation will occur.
Fifth, adding to this whole redistribution idea.....the water supply on the western side of South Africa is in question. This is the side which produces a great deal wine which is sold around the world, and brings a neat income into South Africa. There are some predictions that long-term (suggesting fifty years)....the water supply will only get worse and worse. So taking this property might not be in anyone's interest.
Sixth, no one from either side wants a repeat of the mess in Zimbabwe. There, they broke up the large farm production centers and just about every single farm in the country became marginalized. A good example would be version one.....one white farmer running 500 acres of land, and producing a fair amount of crop. Version two....after the break-up....was two-hundred-and-fifty farmers managing two acres each. They basically produced enough for their gardens, but could not produce enough to sell.....so the one variable farm could not return anything of value.
The image in twenty years in South Africa? Unknown. They might limit themselves to the 30-percent deal going from the white farmers to the black farmers. They might go and push the number of acquisitions to 75-percent of the farm land. The drought might challenge the system and make this a non-issue.
The Trump chatter about farmers killed? There's a BBC report in 2017 that was produced and they went back to look at data over a 22-year period. There were 361,000 murdered folks in that period (a fairly healthy 'chunk'). Around 1,500 of these folks murdered....were killed on farms, and out of that....only 15-percent of them were blacks (meaning the bulk were white).
In general, crime has gone up and down (urban and rural) and there are roving gangs around South Africa which look for easy 'prey (rural farms without any nearby police protection are precisely that). If you go dig around the trend analysis business.....a lot of this crime peaked in 2001, and it's gone down drastically in the past five years.
Even if the land is turned over to black farmers, that doesn't really mean that the gang or crime issue goes away. I would suggest that the trend will likely just continue on, with more black farmers killed simply because they took over the role of wealthy farmer (probably a non-existent term, but people would think that).
There's nothing to say here....the land will be redistributed, and I would generally expect less production numbers to be seen over the next decade. The murders will continue....although they won't compare to the 2001-period. Fairness? Maybe if there was some compensation going on, it might be less of a topic, but the national government simply doesn't have the money. And in the long term, I would expect the folks who get the farms over the next ten years.....to find themselves in twenty years....forced to hand it to the next group. This will repeat over, and over. Don't expect otherwise.
So if you were looking for a fairly safe and dependable place to farm....South Africa is probably not the place for you.
First, South Africa is about the size of California, Oregon, Washington State, Nevada, and Arizona. Population? Just about 56-million. It might surprise folks.....but the bulk of the population lives on the eastern end of the nation.....go figure around two-thirds of the nation there. The western half is sparse, and less populated. You can also say that most of the population on the western end lives around five or six major urban areas.
Second, there's a lot of chatter about farm-land and seizure. The government has written up a new law where farms or land can be seized, without compensation (it's been on the books for a total of four years now). The one and only case to be up at this point....involves a non-farm (it was a game preserve of a private individual). The guy put up a fence, and appears to have done some improvement to the property over the past twenty years. The local tribe did the paperwork, and the court approved their acquisition. That's the ONLY case that has occurred so far.
Third, more acquisitions likely? No one says for sure. There is this one odd factor. When you look at the map and so much open territory.....the fact is that only around 10-to-15 percent of the land is farm productive. The massive bulk of land is NOT productive....nor will ever be. When you go and chat over real productive land (worth something)....most suggest that it won't be more than three to four percent of the total land of South Africa.
Fourth, back in 2014....there was a plan established by the government to take 30-percent of productive land and hand it to 'disadvantaged' blacks. It's not exactly clear who the advantaged 'disadvantaged' blacks are, or the disadvantaged 'disadvantaged' blacks (the ones who won't get property when the big deal finally occurs). Some folks believe that insiders will manipulate the system, and friends of the big party members will walk away with big chunks of property. Earlier this year, the government wrote additional rules to the concept (making it easier to acquire the property), and to firmly say that no compensation will occur.
Fifth, adding to this whole redistribution idea.....the water supply on the western side of South Africa is in question. This is the side which produces a great deal wine which is sold around the world, and brings a neat income into South Africa. There are some predictions that long-term (suggesting fifty years)....the water supply will only get worse and worse. So taking this property might not be in anyone's interest.
Sixth, no one from either side wants a repeat of the mess in Zimbabwe. There, they broke up the large farm production centers and just about every single farm in the country became marginalized. A good example would be version one.....one white farmer running 500 acres of land, and producing a fair amount of crop. Version two....after the break-up....was two-hundred-and-fifty farmers managing two acres each. They basically produced enough for their gardens, but could not produce enough to sell.....so the one variable farm could not return anything of value.
The image in twenty years in South Africa? Unknown. They might limit themselves to the 30-percent deal going from the white farmers to the black farmers. They might go and push the number of acquisitions to 75-percent of the farm land. The drought might challenge the system and make this a non-issue.
The Trump chatter about farmers killed? There's a BBC report in 2017 that was produced and they went back to look at data over a 22-year period. There were 361,000 murdered folks in that period (a fairly healthy 'chunk'). Around 1,500 of these folks murdered....were killed on farms, and out of that....only 15-percent of them were blacks (meaning the bulk were white).
In general, crime has gone up and down (urban and rural) and there are roving gangs around South Africa which look for easy 'prey (rural farms without any nearby police protection are precisely that). If you go dig around the trend analysis business.....a lot of this crime peaked in 2001, and it's gone down drastically in the past five years.
Even if the land is turned over to black farmers, that doesn't really mean that the gang or crime issue goes away. I would suggest that the trend will likely just continue on, with more black farmers killed simply because they took over the role of wealthy farmer (probably a non-existent term, but people would think that).
There's nothing to say here....the land will be redistributed, and I would generally expect less production numbers to be seen over the next decade. The murders will continue....although they won't compare to the 2001-period. Fairness? Maybe if there was some compensation going on, it might be less of a topic, but the national government simply doesn't have the money. And in the long term, I would expect the folks who get the farms over the next ten years.....to find themselves in twenty years....forced to hand it to the next group. This will repeat over, and over. Don't expect otherwise.
So if you were looking for a fairly safe and dependable place to farm....South Africa is probably not the place for you.
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