corporations
Big Pharma – Big Bucks…
This is the best documentary i’ve seen about Big Pharma. I encourage you to watch all 6 parts of this… totals at just under an hour, altogether. I also encourage you to share share share with your loved ones. If anyone can be saved from pathologizing their own human experience, it will be worth the email.
The Case for Working With Your Hands
Props to Resynthesize for finding this…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?_r=1&em
a FANTASTIC article in the New York Times about the intrinsic (and often overlooked) value of working with your hands. Authored by Matthew B Crawford, whose new book, Shop Class as Soulcraft sounds equally impressive.
“In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don’t think you’ll see a yellow sign that says “Think Safety!” as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?
On a related note, I recently read a piece suggesting that art students are subject to a similar style of “life-training.” For example: when you set out to draw a portrait, there are no set rules for where to begin or what style it should be rendered in. When you are moving the pencil, you are making hundreds of tiny decisions per second without any detailed instructions. Only you can decide what strokes are “right” or “wrong” or when you are “done.” In this respect, art teaches us confidence… how to make your own decisions and stand behind them… and just like in a repair shop, if you screw something up, the feedback is instantaneous, tactile and measurable. You can’t fudge numbers or lay people off at the end of the quarter to cover up the fact that your kerning sucks.
For this reason, it’s a shame that the art programs are usually the first to get cut when the budget is looking lean. But I digress… if you have time, read this article.
Having a Purpose
Historically, I have had the hardest time justifying my life to myself at previous jobs. How can you stay aligned to your morals and spiritual values when you are part of an sick and twisted corporate machine? It’s hard to keep your head up when you are marketing for a company that expects it’s manpower to take the hit whenever their numbers need padding… or when you watch them make a conscious decision to do wrong because paying the fine is cheaper than doing what is right.
Today, i feel much better about my day-job. Many of our clients are purpose-oriented individuals or organizations who are really trying to make a positive difference in the world. Just now somebody passed around photos of Al Gore on Capitol Hill yesterday, testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the latest information on climate change… and in the photos you can see him projecting our slides.
Warm fuzzies abound.
Also I am very very excited this week to have been given full creative freedom on a presentation I’m designing for a speaker at the upcoming TED conference. (www.ted.com) And lo-and-behold… the subject matter is one that i am DEEPLY committed to; restoring a sense of morals to corporations… the need for people to do what is RIGHT instead of what is profitable.
when i am personally committed to something, it ceases to be “work”
Good times. =)
The Riots in Greece
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/2008_greek_riots.html
I am pretty blown away by all this insanity. I’m also pretty (continuously) amazed at how poorly news travels over our seas. When i was in Peru after 9-11, we were hearing all kinds of crazy stories like the golden gate bridge had been destroyed. We take it for granted how information seems so easy to come by in our country…
Anyway this isn’t nearly as bad as the great firewall of censorship that the Chinese government has erected to prevent the flow of free information in and out of that place… but the american media isn’t really telling is the whole truth about these riots in Greece either. They’re focusing on the death of this 15 year old boy as the reason for all the violence but the truth (if you dig just a little to find it) is that this is a pent-up reaction to globalization… and it’s failure.
There is genuine reason to worry that this mayhem will spread across europe… These global corporate “entities” are impacting lives everywhere… and the story is awfully familiar to what we experience here in the states. I wonder how long it will be before we, here at home, will finally have had enough.
It is amazing to me that the police officer is actually being tried for this murder… They are clearly less militarized in Greece than they are here.
On a side note… i am constantly impressed with the photography on that website. This one (below) make me emotional… history may be doomed to repeat itself, but it’s good to know the agents of good will be repeating their actions as well.
Corporations
So it looks like i don’t have food poisoning after all. It’s a belly-flu of some kind… made clear by the chills and sweats and aches and pains that kicked in yesterday, mid-morning. So now i’m sitting here eating a delicate breakfast (7up and toast… no butter) and reading the financial news. Looks like the economy is sicker than me.
The first headline that caught my attention said, “Sickly Citigroup slashing 20 percent of it’s workforce.”
My first reaction was pure unadulterated JOY. I have been a loooong-time hater of Citigroup who is, to me, the epitome of greedy immoral corporations… the perfect symbol of everything that is wrong with the world todat. It all started for me when one of my best friends got snared into a Citigroup-owned pyramid scam named Primerica*. The cult-like mentality of Primerica employees made them frightening to talk to. Just like amway or cutco or aquatech, you were recruited and shown pictures of yachts and mansions that former employees supposedly bought with their earnings… and the first thing you’re asked to do is fork over a list of all your friends and family members’ phone numbers. The average primerica employee only makes an around $600 a year and give up. But in the time it took them to get wise, they’ve already scammed their families and friends into overpriced loans… overpriced insurance. My mission was simply to save my friend from being suckered. By the time i was done educating him, i pretty much lost him as a friend until he “sobered up” a few years later.
So anyway I was stoked beyond stoked to read that Citi (as a whole) was fucking up… but then Emily reminded me that the people who are really at fault here are going to walk away from this no worse off than they were before. The 53,000 employees they’re about to lay off will shoulder that weight, unfortunately. Just like how Yahoo is about to drop the hammer on 1200 of their employees in less than a month… The problem lies in their greedy impatient shareholders who want to see short-term growth NOW… and in near-impossible amounts… It’s always up to the employees to make these fucked up expectations happen and those bastards never feel the recourse of their greed. The little guy loses.
If you have never seen the movie “Corporation” i highly recommend that you do. It’s one of the best documentaries i’ve ever seen. It makes me a bit furious at where we have arrived here as a global economy… but i think it’s important that everybody has some perspective. We NEED to do something about these coporate entities. Shareholders should NOT be able to put impossible growth demands on businesses and then slash the employees to make their numbers work. There is NOTHING RIGHT ABOUT WHAT CORPORATIONS HAVE BECOME. PUBLIC ENTITIES NEED TO BE STOPPED. AND BOARDS OF SHAREHOLDERS NEED TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR ACTIONS.
More info on…
Primerica
Citgroup Scandals
Layoffs
Holy crap they just laid off 3 of my friends.
We had a surprise meeting at 8:30 this morning and they announced that they were going to lay off 9 people from the sales dept and from product support.
1 of them was a very close friend of mine and has been here almost as long as me (8 years)… on top of which he is one of the top sales people in his department… knows all of our quirky software products inside and out… and has, hands down, the MOST knowledge and understanding about how things are done here… whenever i needed to create some kind of document that dealt with nuances in our software, sales tactics, or in the workings of our company.. HE was my liason.
He kept his boss in that conference room for 20 minutes and asked him a dozen times WHY him…. and he ahhed and ooohed and eeed and never answered the question.
The real truth is that his bosses didn’t like him because he knew better than them. He was a top performer… not a top conformist… he was always proposing new procedures and protocols because he’s on the front line and knows what works… and a lot of times that went against the grain of what these fucksticks need done in order to make their numbers look good… particularly the numbers that would make their bonuses.
7.5 years of service…. 7.5 weeks of severance.
Take it from me… 7.5 weeks is not enough time to find a good job these days….
See this is really going to fuck with my current plan to breathe new life into our culture here at this company… how can I pump up morale with “employee appreciation” stuff when shit like this just went down?
Self Checkout Lane
Are these stores really saving money by PISSING OFF ALL THE CUSTOMERS?
as usual, I found some image online to support my blog entry (above) and I think it’s ironic that this was a picture from home depot… in my opinion the WORST OF THE WORST when it comes to self checkout.
I mean why have 10 registers? Just to impress me during the grand opening and maybe around Xmas time? The rest of the year I have to find some way to ring myself up for a bag of nails… rebar… and pieces of lumbar too big to fit in the staging area?
This morning it was the save-mart or what-not… up the road here… All I wanted was 2 bags of ice. Do you know how long 2 bags of ice takes to buy when there is nobody in line? Should be fucking effortless… but no… the whole process took me 5 minutes before the machine was ready to take my monies… the All-Seeing-Attendant tried to ring me up but pushed a few wrong buttons and then had to scan some badge of his at my self-checkout-terminal twice just to get the thing to unlock.
After all is said and done and precious minutes of my life have been wasted, the attendant says “Have nice day… don’t forget your ice.”
Someday… mark my words… the Self Checkout Lane will be looked back upon as one of the signs of the impending end of civilized life on this planet…
Help Save Internet Radio!!!
Don’t know if you guys have heard about what’s going on with internet radio TODAY… but click on the links below to learn how everything’s about to fully suck… and maybe we can help. ~S
Today is the internet radio day of silence to protest the fucked up increase in royalty fees.
SoMaFM alone will owe $1.1 million if this goes thru, bkz it’s retroactive. What BS.
Anyway, check it out, if you like
More information:
Lockheed Martin Profits From Your Red Light Violations?
I knew Lockheed was financially connected to most of congress but shit this just gets worse and worse doesn’t it? I post this because i think it’s important that we realize it is big business (and the elite fuckers behind them) that run this planet. NOT our government so your voting is a completely symbolic act… a charade… the same pieces of shit run things no matter who is elected…
anyway enough out of me…
The State Legislature Triples the Red Light Fine For Honest Drivers
from http://www.ticketassassin.com/autohonest.html
In 1996, California’s first automated red light cameras were installed in San Francisco. At the time, the fine for running a red light was $104. The corporation that leased these cameras to the city got to keep $17.50 for every person cited. This would be enough to keep the system profitable if every photographed motorist paid up.
Unfortunately for the city and its corporate partners, only about a third of the motorists photographed could be identified and cited due to blurry photos, missing front plates and obscured faces. As a result, they were only collecting a third of the expected revenue needed to keep this system profitable.
One of the two contractors involved in San Francisco’s pilot program, Electronic Data Systems, withdrew from the program after six months citing the financial shortfall. The city’s other corporate partner, U. S. Public Technologies (now owned by Lockheed Martin) hung tough, helping the city lobby the state legislature to deliver them from this revenue deficit. San Francisco had paid $30,000 per intersection to have the initial cameras installed. They did not intend on surrendering this investment without a fight. Led by San Francisco representatives, the state legislature rode to the rescue.
“California’s pre-existing fine structure was not adequate to make red light photo enforcement self-financing. This is important to local governments who support the program in principle, but are not willing to sacrifice funding for other programs to fund photo enforcement. The legislature addressed this by passing Assembly Bill (AB) 1191 (Shelley), in 1997, raising the fine from $104 to $346 for running red lights. This bill also changed the formula for distributing the fine revenues so local agencies now receive about $148 from each fully paid citation. This was essential for the survival of red light photo enforcement in California.”
- “How Can We Make Red Light Runners Stop?” by Jack Lucero and Bridget Smith, Westernite, November-December 1998, Vol. 52 No. 6
In 1998, the fine for running a red light was tripled to $346. This “enhanced” fine would net $70 per ticket for Lockheed Martin, and $78 for the city hosting the system. Automated enforcement was no more efficient but it was now profitable. This increased fine and bonus payment of $78 for the city has led to the rapid expansion of automated enforcement across our state.
Since only one in three drivers photographed are eventually cited under automated enforcement, this one honest motorist is, in essence, being forced to pay for all three. Guilty or not, it is unfair that the one honest driver must pay $346 while the two dishonest ones, lacking front plates or willing to perjure themselves, laugh and pay nothing.
Big Brother’s Tactics Are Not Subject To Public Scrutiny
Lockheed Martin was careful to avoid the most unsafe intersections in its San Diego installation (nearly all in low-income areas) in favor of intersections in higher income neighborhoods where profits could be assured. Since the city government did not object to these marketing tactics, we can assume they might concur with other possible profit-enhancing measures by Lockheed Martin, such as decreasing the length of the yellow lights at monitored intersections in order to increase violations. With no public scrutiny, Lockheed Martin may already be manipulating the timing of the intersections they control to maximize profits. This would not come as a surprise since the city has already given Lockheed Martin free reign to find you guilty, which is the only verdict that profits both the city and its corporate partner.
The corporations and cities that sponsor automated enforcement programs expect and need drivers to continue running red lights to keep the program profitable. It seems perverse that a system marketed to improve traffic safety, can only survive if it does not succeed.
If automated enforcement were truly capable of stopping drivers from running red lights, it would soon do so and become unprofitable. Does anyone honestly believe that private corporations are investing millions of dollars in a system whose success will soon render it obsolete?
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