Ranting Rex

When I was growing up I was constantly hearing how educated people had no common sense.  “They have them book smarts, but them folk can’t just have no common sense!”  Then I got an education.  While I do admit that common sense is great if you limit your circle of influence to whatever fishbowl you live in, it’s pretty much worthless in the larger world.  Sure…you can wow the catfish and carp with your knowledge of the algae and slime growing at the bottom of your tank, but you have no idea how any social or political issues impact the larger world. 

The other day I was watching the news and a story came on where American Airlines kicked a guy off the plane for doing math.  That’s right…math.  He was a college professor who was working on a presentation and had a sheet of paper with a bunch of calculations on it.  Evidently the woman next to him thought those magical numbers would jump off the page and blow up the plane.  Her common sense told her that math is dangerous.  “If I don’t understand it, it must be evil.”  So…they kicked him off the plane and sent him to the FBI, where they told him that math is bad…you know…like science…and that ever pesky being for the ignorant…technology.

Here are just a few things common sense told people.  The sun and plants circled the earth.  Turns out that common sense was wrong.  When Galileo proved this by using that ever present evil of the ignorant, math and reality, he was brought before the church and ordered to denounce his findings.  After all, never let reality get in the way of someone’s agenda.  Especially one that profits on the ignorance of others.

Think common sense medical advice is something only found before the advent of modern plumbing?  Nope, common sense once told medical professionals that if you had an ulcer you should drink milk.  No one questioned it until one day someone actually used science and general observation to do a study that showed that drinking milk increases acid production in the stomach which causes ulcers.  And this was in the 1980s. 

Oh I hate to admit it when the facts fly in the face of what I believe.  So does everyone else.  However, the grownups among us are usually able to concede our opinions when we’re confronted with the facts.  This is why I have to eat some major crow when it comes to discussions I’ve had with my wife.  But let’s not get into that.  Let’s just say that I’m really not ready to hear “So I’m what?” for the countless time during our marriage.  Anyway, with that said, here we go!

Mitt Romney made a speech today about how no one should be backing Donald Trump.  I agree with his sentiments.  However, he also said that Hillary Clinton was the most dishonest person in politics.  I hear that a lot so I decided to go out to Politifact.com and do some checking.  I have been a Bernie Sanders fan throughout the election, thinking he was by far the most honest person on the campaign trail.  It turns out that I was wrong about that as well.  Either way, below is the breakdown: 

Politifact lists candidate statements that are True, Mostly True, Half True, Mostly False, False, and Pants on Fire.  For these numbers I took out the Half True, and Mostly False stats since many of those statements could go either way.  I wanted harder numbers.  It also is important to understand that out of all the candidates Bernie had 0 pants on fire and Hillary had only 2.  Rubio had 4, Cruz 7 and Donald a WHOPPING 21!  For my calculation I took out the statistics for statements that were half true, or mostly false since I wanted pretty clear numbers. 

So why do a people think Hillary is the most dishonest politician?  Because they’re sheep.  They don’t want to check the facts.  They want mommy and daddy to tell them what to think.  That’s why when they’re told over and over and over again wrong information when they see a fact they think it’s a lie.  It’s like when their parents told them for the first 3 years of their lives that Santa was real and then when they’re hit with the truth they get violent.  Think I’m kidding?  Try telling a 3 year old there’s no Santa and see what happens.  And no group is better at this than Republicans.  They do better than Joseph Goebbels when it comes to the “big lie” and their minions eat it up! 

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people without an education call someone with one an “educated idiot.”  Really?  The guy with the education is the idiot?  Right.  Sure he is.  The problem is more likely that gomer barely possesses the scholastic ability to sign his name on a voter registration card.  We require anyone coming into this country to pass a simple civics test to be a citizen.  I say we require that across the board and send the failures some desert province where they can do no harm to the existing gene pool. 

This is a little inside baseball, but even I have had to use my private computer systems when working projects for government jobs.  The reason being that the work systems were so jacked up that it made it difficult if not impossible to do my job.  Too often organizations tie up their systems in such a way to make them more secure that they render those systems useless.  They’re more secure alright!  They’re useless!  But when it gets to the media it turns into high treason.  If the Clintons were as criminal as the right says they’d have been in prison decades ago.  This isn’t about crime, it’s about getting idiots to swallow your bullshit.  No…it’s not bullshit.  It’s brown cottage cheese.  Really!  Try some!

Living for the four word soundbite just makes you a moron.  Why the public continues to do this is amazing me.  No one seems to take the time to investigate whether what they’re being told is real or bullshit.  Politicians know this.  They know that the public won’t verify what they’re being told because they’re either too lazy or more likely too stupid to do it.  This is why you end up with candidates who make ridiculous claims like they saw Muslims celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11, or that 93 million working age people are out of work, that Mexicans are all murderers and thieves or that over 50 million people are driving Mercedes Benz paid for with their welfare checks.

Rex

What Donald has been doing is nothing more than vocalizing what has been in the hearts, minds, and actions of the worst of the Republican Party.  It’s no wonder he’s been doing so well.  The attitudes and desires that were once spoken behind closed doors are now out into the open for all to see and the party doesn’t like it.  Their shtick has always been to present their ideas in private or hushed tones so they didn’t call attention to the corrosive right wing of the party.  That way they could still enter the Whitehouse doors.  Now it’s like being presented to the gates of heaven and shown all the sins that keep you from going in.  They’re frightened.

I’ll give you this, Donald knows how to play to the WWF/NASCAR crowd!  Every time he speaks it’s like watching wrestlers throwing barbs and eventually chairs at each other to the sounds of roaring fans.  The difference is, this is real.  Hulk Hogan and The Rock don’t go back into the dressing room and have a drink together.  His fans are the types that will put a bullet in you if they don’t like how you’re dressed.  If he were to be elected the first time he issued in illegal order that the government rightly refused to follow, his people would start attacking Federal establishments with all the glee of the jihadists they so claim to hate.

Can someone help me? I’m trying to find the finance class that tells you how to make a profit by removing the ability to make that thing you sell to make a profit.  Business practices today make me feel like I’m watching a production of the Producers!  Boardroom conversations about profits used to be around strategies for increased sales.  Now they appear to follow a business model orchestrated by Bialystok and Bloom.

The reason to go into business used to be because you had a good or service which the public wanted or needed. Now it appears that the only reason to go into business is to make money for your investment firm.  This is silly.  Make a quality product or service, and you will make money.  The irony here is that making a business for the sole purpose of making a profit removes your ability to sustain either.  However that still hasn’t kept the finance department from making the attempt!

Two years ago Starboard Value suggested that Olive Garden stop doling out so many breadsticks and salad to their patrons. According to them the reason Olive Garden was such a financial disaster was because the restaurant was providing too much of why people went there in the first place.  It had nothing to do with the rest of the food, or the level of service, but it was the breadsticks and salad causing the financial decline.

I have always asserted that you could open a restaurant in an outhouse and do quite well if the food is good. In fact my favorite eatery of all time is next to a packing house, and down the road from the sewage plant.  The smells outside could choke a rat.  However, once through those doors you are met with the aroma of Italian cuisine that likes of which make the Olive Garden smell like a can of SpaghettOs.  I’ve had their phone number memorized since I was 5 years old.  What makes them different?  Quality Food.  Excellent service.  Plain and simple.

What happens in a lot of companies (and not just the restaurant business) is that once they establish a foothold in their industry they look for ways to cut corners. This immediately reduces product quality.  You can only cut so many corners before all you end up with is a scrap of whatever it was you used to make on the floor with no customers to buy it.  Still, that’s what Finance and Investment teams attempt to do.  In an effort to cut costs, they destroy the product that got them there in the first place.  It’s like watching pine beetles go through a forest.  They eventually kill everything that sustained them.

What makes or breaks a business is not the cost of their good or service, but the quality. This is something that doesn’t often show up on a spreadsheet.  Investment firms are so focused on the bottom line they don’t see what was making them the money in the first place.  Too often Finance reaches into the daily operations of an organization and what you end up with are cost cutting measures that remove the reason people purchased your product in the first place.  Any idiot can create a hedge fund, but only a strong focus on quality gives you Berkshire Hathaway.

I don’t just blame Finance. Managers are fully aware that many of these decisions will destroy the business, yet they fail to speak against them.  I’ve worked for countless IT startups that failed their start because someone didn’t have the guts, or professional acumen to illustrate the stupidity of removing the most profitable product feature because “it costs the most to make.”

I’m not saying that an eye on cost is not extremely important. I myself have railed against sales people who think they can sell a product that costs 50k to develop for only 5k.  How is a company to make a profit if you sell your product for less than cost?  Quality costs money.  If all you can do is sell on price, go work at a Best Buy.  Leave the real sales to the grown-ups.  If your sales conversation starts on price then you need to change the conversation.  Give me that old school cold call salesman who could make a living knocking on doors and selling products to people, who 15 minutes earlier, didn’t know they needed what they were selling.  Those are true salespeople.  The rest are just order takers.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again businesses make unimaginable fortunes when they provide products people want to buy. Every company that sets their sites on their investors have limited vision and are only concerned with short-term financial goals.  They’re the modern version of the 1850s snake oil salesman who wants to make sure they’re far away before everyone realizes that miracle ointment they’re selling is really just some high grain alcohol mixed with bullshit.