on trump

TL;DR: like it or not, the system worked, and the result is trump is president.  don't like the result, then participate.  don't like the system, then work to change it.  

 

please. my liberal friends. get past it. the electoral college works the way it should. we didn't elect a public servant this time. stop pretending he will act as such.

if you wanna play the daily news cycle "gotcha" game, president trump will give you more than you can handle, and you'll drown in it, and the right doesn't care.

here's what happened... to punish the professionally lobby-bought politician motivated by whoever lines their pockets the most, we elected a CEO. that's right--we wanted to see what happens when gov't by the people and for the people is run like a business. these first 5 months are just a taste. objectively defined ethical right and wrong are out, teamwork and loyalty are in.

of course director james comey had to go. if you pull the wagon against the president, you have to go. does that make trump a kim jong-un dictator? no. (close, but no)

look, i've been in the corporate world for almost 30 years. if you pull against the boss, you're gone, and you *should* be gone. the pro-business right wingers know this, because a lot of them are business owners who tightrope through life on nothing more than their ideas and grit and have others' livelihoods on their shoulders. they stick their necks out more than liberals do. try to understand them for a second.

but, ok, look, what we're going to learn from this presidency is that, while government can learn a lot--and i mean A LOT--from business when it comes to cost-effectiveness, what business will never understand (nor should it) is that government needs to protect the level playing field and infrastructure of our. entire. society. and act in the best interest of the PEOPLE. and this basic thought is something business is simply *not* designed to do, let alone understand.

business will NEVER act in the best interest of everyone. it ONLY acts in the best interest of the market and in trumps case, the winners. for example, if you read stories of chemical companies in west virginia dumping poison in rivers then using incorporation to shield themselves personally, going out of business to escape liability, then reforming as a NEW company with new poison to dump, you're smart enough to know that business will never act in the best interest of the environment as long as competitors are saving money by not doing so.

i don't blame trump for lying. all. the. time. i don't blame trump for saying whatever he wants to in order to gain the most in any given situation. anyone who's followed how he works knows that this is in his DNA. he has no foundational principles, no ethics, and no integrity. his objective is to win or create the perception of winning. this is what creates the highest gain for a businessman who is driven to gain the most in the shortest amount of time, for himself and investors and stockholders, then let bankruptcy laws (and the taxpayers) clean up the mess left after private profits have been captured. this is smart business, folks. this is what happens when we elect a CEO to run gov't like a business.

in 4 (or 8) years we will learn, and then of course, thankfully, the american political pendulum will swing toward a younger bernie clone. and we will remember the lessons we learn from the trump presidency for a long time. 20 years at least, until thanks to our education system we will forget history and let the pendulum have at it again.

bottom line, whether you're on the right or on the left, i'm going to do my american duty to ask you to THANK the other side for their strength. because i've spent a good amount of time in countries where ONE political party gains too much power for too many decades, and it never ends up well. (i'm lookin at you mexico).

the extreme of the left is european socialism (bad), the extreme of the right is fascist dictatorship (not good), the extreme of libertarianism is anarchism (which while attractive while pulling on a bong in a dorm, fails a few steps into the game). in the end, keep voting, keep acting, keep caring, and america will be fine.

i am a wildly social liberal, wildly fiscal conservative, and if you're like me there is no party for us. maybe time to step up(?)

on STEM versus STEAM

TL;DR: the reason why STEM education is being emphasized, and encouraged to grow, is due to us deciding that we don't have enough STEM educated productive americans.  artists seem to think that the emphasis of STEM is because it is valued more highly than the arts, and therefore more important that the arts.  i don't know where this toxic inferiority complex comes from, but it doesn't help solve the STEM problem by redefining it as STEAM.  the arts of course *are* important.  arts education is *already* successful. keep it going, and at the same time, let's work to do better than we have been with STEM.

 

artists are sneaky.

education in the STEM fields has for the past few years increased as a national priority. apparently we're not teaching enough science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in schools, from K-12, and not enough bachelors degrees in STEM fields are coming out of our universities. the problem is both the immediate needs of our job market, and the strategic long term productivity and innovation of our economy.

so... STEM gets a lot of attention. you know who that seems to bother? the artists.

are the arts important? of course they are.
when you build something, is design just as important as the engineering? of course it is.

the reason why it's STEM and not STEAM is not because the "hard" sciences are better than the arts, rather it simply comes down to supply versus demand.  the US imports a few dozen thousand foreign nationals every year, and most of them aren't artists.  they're engineers, scientists, math whizzes, and technology people.  they're not art history majors, sociologists, or those who do work in comparative literature.

• STEM is important because our country creates more B.A. graduates than it needs.

• STEM is important because jobs in the sciences and engineering should go to americans first, and there is a perennial shortage.

why do artists get butthurt when STEM initiatives don't include the "A"?

you really want to help arts education? fight for it on its own merits. everyone knows that the education that goes into what to do, why we're doing it, what it looks like, and how it functions is at least as important as the education that goes into the details of how it's built.

arts are important on their own. quit lumping it in where it doesn't belong.

on banking industry executives

TL;DR: executives in the financial sector are best described as spoiled brats, at worst described as parasites.  they've lost all sense of ethics, so much so that they don't even hide their sense of toxic entitlement anymore.

 

a long time ago i was a registered republican, because while i was always a social liberal, i continue to be a fiscal conservative. this article is the most hilarious example i can find to illustrate one of the reasons why i cannot in good conscience go back to this party that protects and rewards the most criminal of our society's leeches. 

that's how the gop rolls... the financial sector pays politicians to write laws and rules that make this kind of behavior "legal", and then republicans wave the flag, sign patriotic songs, while blaming the poor, and allowing these industries to steal billions from everyone else. 

check out this article and see how many times you bust out laughing if only to keep yourself from crying. http://fortune.com/2016/09/29/wells-fargo-john-stumpf-pay/ 

let's dissect... and let's start with the title of the article: 

Bankers are fearful of the political climate. 

political? ha! ok "title" we'll get back to you in a bit 

Wells Fargo & Co’s unprecedented move to strip Chief Executive John Stumpf of $41 million in stock awards has sent a chill through Wall Street with bankers fearful that a hardening political climate against corporate wrongdoing will encourage boards to be more aggressive about making them forfeit pay. 

a chill... because bankers are now fearful that they can't just do anything they want, good, bad, malicious, negligent, and have it not impact their own personal compensation? wow. 

A sales practices scandal at Wells Fargo, where some of its employees opened as many as 2 million accounts without customers’ knowledge to hit sales targets, could not have come at a worse time for the wider industry with politicians in Washington reviewing new rules on bank executive remuneration. 

new rules? shouldn't these have always been the rules? why is the financial sector seem to be living in a reality quite different than the rest of us? 

Bankers fear not only that the new rules on pay will be tightened as a result of the furor at Wells Fargo but also that boards will go beyond them to avoid a political backlash. 

oh, they think that these new rules are coming out of some irrational political correctness run wild? rather than what they actually are, namely, a simply logical linking of compensation with the value you bring the organization minus purposeful wrongdoing? 

The Wells Fargo board made a mistake by not recouping some of the CEO’s pay until after the firestorm developed,” said Harvard Law School professor Jesse Fried. “Other boards will learn from this mistake.” 

good. 

U.S. regulators are looking at requiring banks to defer compensation for senior officials and to allow clawbacks for misdeeds over the previous seven years. The law is meant to come into effect in 2019 and regulators are trying to get it finalized before a new president takes office in January. 

good. still amazed this wasn't always the case, but let's continue... 

Yellen also told the committee that the Fed was reviewing whether the largest U.S. lenders are complying with banking rules in the wake of what happened at Wells Fargo. 

oh silly me. i was under the impression that part of the fed's job, in addition to making rules, was to watch to ensure the rules are followed. no? ok. 

Clawback provisions were put in place or strengthened at all the top U.S. banks after the financial crisis of 2008, primarily to hold executives responsible for risk taking. 

good. but again, the fact that this is seen as something that comes out of irrational political correctness rather than coming out of what is actually the right thing to do, shows how mentally warped this industry is. 

Britain introduced laws last year that allow banks to seek recovery of bonuses from bankers deemed to have acted irresponsibly up to 10 years after they are paid out. 

sounds reasonable. 

Standard Chartered Plc has said it will try to claw back bonuses from up to 150 senior staff if they are found culpable of breaching internal rules around risk-taking during the tenure of former chief executive Peter Sands. 

it will "try"? ok so when execs are negligent or are outright malicous, they still expect bonuses? let's set aside that they don't expect to go to jail and lose their base compensation, but they actually believe they're still entitled to performance bonuses?? 

But clawing back money from people who have already left a bank can be fraught with practical and legal difficulties. 

make it part of the law that execs of banks (gov't regulated, all of them) are to be held accountable for their actions. we all kinda learned this in kindergarten, right? 

Stumpf is the first CEO of a major U.S. bank to actually have to give back significant pay or benefits as the result of a scandal. Wells Fargo’s rule is written broadly enough that Stumpf was subject to a clawback even though the bank’s $185 million fine did not force it to make a material restatement of its results. 

good. but whoa, wait a second. this fine, itself in 9 figures, let alone the sales figures that came out of millions of fraudulent accounts being created by thousands of employees didn't change one little bit the numbers that the company was required to report about its performance to stockholders? 

The rules vary from bank to bank, but they generally allow the banks to take back stock awards or pay for misconduct, taking improper risks or poor performance. Executives can also be penalized if the bank has to significantly restate results. 

they vary from bank to bank huh? interesting. 

Compensation consultants said that increased clawbacks could make it more difficult for banks to recruit and keep top talent with bonuses at investment and commercial banks down about 40 percent since the financial crisis. 

and this my friends is comedy gold. top talent huh? if you're recruiting to fill an executive position in your bank, you actually consider a "talented candidate" to be one who might not take the job if they know that they might lose their bonuses if they are found to have underperformed, been negligent in their duties, or malicious in their following of the rules, let alone being found to have broken the law? really? that's the type of "talent" that we're afraid of discouraging? 

 “Compensation is going to be a much more political process going forward. You’re going to based not only on your merits but what is politically attractive at the moment,” said Alan Johnson, managing director of compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates. 

yeah, hi, fuck you alan johnson, you're part of the problem. doing what's right, serving shareholders and customers, obeying the rules, directing a solid organization, and obeying the law are NOT simply politically attractive. this fucker is actually saying what we've all thought. that financial sector execs feel entitled to millions in compensation and bonuses regardless of how badly they fuck up, by accident or on purpose, and the only thing changing that warped reality is some "political correctness". wow. 

“Whatever progress had been made in lobbying some features now has been set back to zero,” he said. “Who is going to listen to the banking industry now?” 

he basically admits that the industry pays legislators to create (and make into actual law) these crazy ass rules that benefit those individuals and firms in the financial sector and no one else. these are not laws that serve the public. 

how about this? do your job and serve the free market that drives our country and its progress. yes, it's not just about leeching money for yourself. the financial sector is given the keys to the kingdom to work for the rest of us. words like fiduciary responsibility and professional ethics are so far in the rear view mirror for these pricks, they don't even try to hide the fact that they're completely ignorant of them. 

Still, David Knutson, head of credit research in the Americas for Schroder Investment Management, believes CEOs at other banks will be more careful with their own businesses now that they have seen what happened to Stumpf. “When you see a colleague you’ve known for years all of a sudden lose $40 million, it makes you more cautious,” he said. 

no. no. no. when the $40 million is clawed-back, that means it is ill-gotten, that means it is considered never yours to begin with. if you rob a store for $10k, and the cops catch you and take it back, you didn't "lose" $10k. due to you being convicted of theft, that $10k is legally considered not yours to begin with.

that said, it NOW makes you more cautious? the possibility of losing $40m in bonuses due to misbehavior is something that is making you START to think about being more cautious NOW? 

and finally, let's go back to the title of the article 

Bankers are fearful of the political climate. 

how about "Bankers are fearful that their misdeeds have been so criminal for so long that they finally woke up the american people and their scam is eroding."

on metric

i'm going to guess that the irony of patrick gallagher's response was not on purpose.

some background:

a petition, signed by almost 50k citizens was submitted to the whitehouse.org site asking that the administration support national adoption of metric.

the reason standards are important is simply to make it easier for us to all work together.  i'm finding it a bit funny that an institute whose mission is to find good standards and promote them, and its director (who also serves as an undersecretary of commerce) makes an argument that resistance to unifying measurement standards is an issue of individual choice and basic freedoms.

shit... really?

well, this certainly isn't the first time a govermment agency has sold their bad idea by attaching a faux attack on freedom to it.  (ie, look dude, if you want to force feed metric on us, that means you hate fraydom. besides, i read somewhere that the french use metric. the french!) :-/

and because i find it difficult to believe this response was given with a straight face, i'll take a guess that this story is a plausible rationalization painted to mask the real reason.  it could have a lot more to do with the $10s ($100s?) of billions it will cost our economy in the short run to convert. i think to many of us, this *is* a good reason to delay.  if not that, then certainly anyone can give dozens of other more pressing national needs, no doubt, i get it.  a project like this makes more sense when the country is in a period of economic prosperity and our governments are a bit more fiscally ship shape.  if so, then just say so.  no need to fire up the bullshit machine.

also funny that mr gallagher's own response seems to be at odds a bit with the stated mission of the NIST.  its national policy is to establish [metric] as the "preferred system of weights and measures" in the US, and to provide "leadership and assistance on [metric] use and conversion".  no... his response basically says that the system you use is your individual choice, none are preferred over another, which then means that the NIST's hands-off approach (other than helping if you want help) in turn provides no "leadership" in comprehensive national adoption of a unifying standard.

i don't expect a metric US in my lifetime.  but as long as my beers are measured in pints and the nfl sticks with yards, i'll deal.

- peace... jimbarry

on same sex marriage

sounds like i'm supposed to ignore some key things i've learned and lived about core conservatism and join the fight to defend society against same-sex marriage.

i'm also straight.  no dog in this hunt.  but why aren't more conservatives on the "pro" side of this?  or at least "hey man, that's your business not mine".  we're all about individual rights, especially when those rights don't inflict on anyone else's?  aren't we all about freedom to follow our chosen life path and not imposing our views on others?  

anywho...  here are 10 things the "new right" say about it.  i went and knocked some logic against all 10 and ended up with a perfect losing record of 0-10.  can you do any better? (or worse?)

1.  because The Bible says so

well...  all this tells me is that some parts of Leviticus are important and some not so much.  but no one ever says how they know which is which.  or what this means to americans who don't follow The Bible.  

2.  marriage is for breeding, so... opposite-sex couples only

true.  the biology isn't there.  then what about these?:

a.  ...a post-menopausal woman can't get married

b.  ...a man without testicles can't get married

c.  ...if a couple chooses not to breed, we take away their marriage license

these 3 points above follow the same logic and aren't opposed.

3.  gay marriage destroys the sanctity of marriage

divorce does.  infidelity does.  even if same-sex marriage did, why isn't divorce illegal?  yet again the logic is very selective.

4. if gays can marry, then the gov't will force my church to marry gays

no it won't, can't, shouldn't, never has.  nothing shows it ever would.

besides... your church already has the right to choose who it marries, doesn't marry.  no level of gov't is stopping you.  that's religious freedom.  to bring it up as resistance to same-sex marriage is a red herring.

5. if gays can marry, then our schools will have to teach homosexuality

public schools teach human sexuality as part of their health curriculum.  they're not teaching sexual preference as right or wrong.  if they were, then fight that.  until then, schools teach biology and hygiene. you as parents teach them the rest.

6.  legitimizing homosexuality will only encourage it to grow

us "straights" are born this way, and you can't convert me to be gay. same goes for gays. all i can tell you for sure is that if i were a woman, i'd be a lesbian.  it's the way i'm wired.

in fairness, if some are confused, not sure, figuring themselves out, seeking out counseling.  ok sure.  then in those cases let each individual deal with their own issues as they see fit.  but you don't solve that problem by enjoying a right and denying it to someone else. 

i mean, it almost sounds like you're trying to fix one problem by breaking something else.  careful... that's what liberals do.

7. marriage is a religious term.  same-sex couples should have a civil union with the same rights, obligations, protections, just don't call it "marriage".

you mean "separate but equal"?  we know how that turns out, right?

but ok, if you believe our secular legal system should lose the word "marriage", and replace it with "civil union" for all, then say that.  that's logical and provides equal freedom.

let's play this out.  let's separate the sacrament of marriage in the eyes of our church away from the legal contract of civil union in the eyes of our society.  if you're an opposite-sex couple of faith, get a civil union at the courthouse, and a marriage from your clergy.  atheists, you only get the civil union because you don't want the second one.

problem is, i don't hear those opposed to same-sex marriage fighting for that. instead i see folks using a personal bias to deny a legitimate right to others.  

8.  if it's legal for gays to marry, it'll teach my kids that being gay is ok

it won't teach your kids anything.  that's your job.  if you believe that homosexuality is wrong for you and your family, then let it be wrong for you and your family.  teach your kids what you think is right and wrong.  maybe at the same time teach them to not impose their beliefs on others.  especially when others exercise rights that don't impose on your rights.  

i mean... telling others what to do with their lives is un-american and un-conservative.

but ok, let's go in the other direction.  there are a lot of things that are legal that aren't ok for kids, or even ok for anyone, so even then there's no connection.  still falls flat.

9.  if gays marry, what's next?  marrying a child?  an animal?  a sandwich?

nope.  opposite-sex marriage is two consenting adults.  same-sex marriage is two consenting adults.  no slippery slope either way.  

10.  it's just not right and damages our society and our way of life

right.  how?  [crickets chirping]

so there you go.  10 of the most common objections and once you follow them two or three steps in, there's no traction.  all you're left with is inconsistency or selective logic.

how about this?  if you're against gay marriage, then don't get gay married.

and... notice that nothing in any of the 10 points above says that those of faith shouldn't believe what they want.  because they should.  and they should support their families and raise their children in the spirit of their faith.  

and if they raise their kids to believe that same-sex marriage is wrong, or homosexuality in general for that matter, that's their right too.  parental responsibility is really important to us conservatives.  personal responsibility too.  but at the same time we need to remember that deciding right-and-wrong for ourselves and pushing it onto others are two different things.

what am i missing?  i'm a conservative and because logic is stronger than creed i'm "pro" same-sex marriage!  where did i go wrong?

- jimbarry

hello prezi

bad powerpoint presentations make me bored.  but bad prezi's make me dizzy.  here is my first lame attempt of creating a prezi.  mostly because i'm testing the sharing, embedding, and export options.

in this case here on my blog, the embedding part.

so i humbly thank you, my legions of guinea pigs.

JB's first prezi on Prezi

on rutgers football

am i a rutgers football fan?  in a semi-detached way, i guess i sort of am.


for sure, i am pretty happy for the scarlet student body of the 21st century and the added dimension a strong football program brings to the college experience.  these students have a legitimate contender to cheer for, or at least a team that's at least semi-competitive against any top-ranked team, year after recent year due to greg schiano's leadership and nj-heavy recruiting.


i'm definitely a football fan in general, but for the most part the nfl, and specifically the new york giants.  and, along with my father and sister, we are season ticket holders.  which is pretty cool since he waited a few decades on the waiting list so we can't give'm up now.   


as for college football, eh, i guess i never got into it.  i mean, i went to rutgers in the 80s, and while the scarlet are the only division i-a college football team in the nyc metropolitan area, the largest media market in the usa, let's face it, if you roamed the banks of the ol' raritan in the 20th century (or even a good part of the 19th) most of us were pretty much trained to not care too much about college football.  around the time i was paying tuition, whether or not rutgers ended up with a winning or losing record in any given year pretty much came down to how many division i-aa versus i-a teams were on that year's schedule.  the less of the latter, the better they'd come out in the end.


for those who don't know, one of the things rutgers can be proud of football-wise is that what's now the college avenue campus is the birthplace of college football. i won't bore you with trivia, but it was some pickup game against some princeton students back in 1869.  

there weren't any uniforms, so the rutgers men tied red rags around their heads, which further solidified scarlet as the school color.  sure, princeton can claim part of that heritage of that first game, but let's face it, it was a home game in new brunswick and who won that game?  rutgers.  (as the story goes, there was a rematch the next week and princeton plowed the scarlet team.  


so... that one week late in 1869 was pretty much the last time rutgers was ranked #1 in the country.)
  

it's been fun to keep up with how they've been doing, and kinda cool to see a whole bunch of players are making it into the nfl every year.  but the fact is i feel pretty detached from the whole wave.  and, being a good sports fan in general, i resist the temptation to jump on bandwagons, despite the fact that in this case i might be excused for it, but mostly due to the fact that the number of games i went to while i was an undergrad i could count on one hand, with a finger or two left over to throw a dart down in the basement of the chi, which i might add is probably what i was doing on game days, most of the time blissfully unaware that a home game was actually being played across the river at the time.  hey pledge, pour me another.

the company i work for here in california contains a lot of transplants from all around the usa (and many other countries around the world), and many of those folks did go to schools with solid football programs, and as such actively supporting their school's team was a big part of their cultural experience there.  schools like penn state, wisconsin, washington, auburn, south carolina, etc., and a few years back when rutgers started doing well, it was those folks who kept me in the loop monday morning on how my own school's team fared the previous saturday.   when i didn't know how rutgers did, or if they even played, yeah, from these folks i got quite a few strange looks.


so, in the end do i support rutgers football?  it a detached way, sure.  all in all i'm pretty pumped up about it, now that it seems it wasn't just a one season flash.  in a way the scarlet are still underdogs of division i-a, but it's got to be good for the state.  


i mean, jersey has a population of about 8 million, but with two halves in the shadows of nyc and philadelphia, the team and its success has pulled the halves together, watching their red team go upstream. rah rah rutgers rah, indeed.


so it's been announced that rutgers will play iowa state in the pinstripe bowl huh?  looking forward to it.  and with the game being in the bronx, i'll expect to see the stands a sea of scarlet.