Money Porn

Enjoying my winter break with a couple movies.  Saw "The Wolf of Wall Street" this afternoon.  While I was hoping to see a movie on the evils of Wall Street excesses, equating bad boy stockbrokers to the mafia thugs that Scorsese normally portrays, I think I may have wandered into a soft-core porn screening.  At no point did I find any of these characters compelling or likeable, but I feel that the treatment of the subjects was stilted... like they were holding back from showing these people as they deserved to be treated.  I can only think that the protagonist being the writer of the story clouded the way in which he was portrayed - as if that last knock-out punch was withheld.

There's a moment when you meet someone, and your spidey-sense starts tingling that this person is bringing trouble and misery into the world.  It makes you skeptical of what that person says, and puts you on guard for the future.  It's a very handy voice to have in your head when you sit through a time-share pitch in exchange for attraction tickets.  The movie spends three hours looking at those who would take advantage of those who do not have this voice guiding them through financial decisions.  In short, it's exploiting a market failure of two parties with equal information making a market transaction that is advantageous to both, and replacing it with a system that destroys American Capitalism.  It's abhorrent.  The glorification of sex, and drugs, and money (seriously, does anyone go around talking about how much their suits cost?  How gauche!) leaves one thinking that Wall Street may be a pretty nifty place - martinis with Matthew McConnaghey, hookers on the office expense account, fast cars and yachts - no talk about the people who are losing everything.  Instead, because postmen and garbage collectors want to make money in the stock market, they deserve to be taken advantage of.  Their greed gives Stratton Oakmount the ethical right to take all of their money.  Pushing penny stocks off pink sheets might be one issue, but the full-out stock price manipulation that undoes the firm is pushed to the side and not treated with the same amount of time as the "Look at these poor people who want to be rich, the shmucks!" story-line.  It trivializes their pain in order to tell the story of money laundering and Quaaludes.

But, this is something to consider - why DOESN'T Hollywood look at the way that the middle income household is impacted by such things?  Why do you only see the 1% on screen?  Or, if it is a "middle class" family, then the top 15%?  I'd love to see a serious turn towards showing families who earn ~ $52,000 per year in the U.S.  It would be a jar to see how the median household actually lives, and more pressing to see how such families are impacted by asshats like Jordan Balfort.

Convenient Scapegoats

The 2012 Midwestern Granola Douche Canoe Award seldom has to look long and hard to find suitable candidates to earn the award.  This week, Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, submitted an application packet so thorough that I doubt we will find a more deserving recipient of the Douche Canoe this year.  He appears to have mastered being a douche canoe in the fields of campaign finance, labor relations, business ethics, and employment regulations, all while cloaking this in religious rhetoric.  Really.  Brilliant and thorough.

This week, you may have seen news coverage of Murray's press conference in which he fired 158 workers because Obama won the election.  If you had not been paying attention to the exploits of Robert Murray, then you really need to read these.  If you are thinking that the name sounds familiar, then, yeah... he's the guy who has those mines in Appalachia and Utah that occasionally collapse.  As a former miner whose father was injured in an accident, I don't want to believe that he really wants these things to happen in his mines, but his actions do not indicate that he is doing everything in his power to prevent deaths and hazardous working conditions. 

This year, the highlights of Murray Energy's policies have been:

• Closing a mine in Ohio for a day so miners could attend a mandatory Romney campaign event, but not paying the workers for this mandatory event (I see a DoL Wage and Hour Division complaint here...)
• Tied bonuses and promotions of executives to their campaign donations to Republican candidates.
• Required executives and engineers to attend Republican fundraisers on their own dime.
• Created the Murray Energy PAC to funnel money to Republican candidates... while PACs are supposed to create an air that campaigns and PACs cannot coordinate, let's face it, when you see an ad funded by Murray Energy PAC attacking your opponent, you know who's behind it.

Add this to his campaign to loosen government regulations of coal mines, physically assaulting environmentalists, and generally being a curmudgeon, his actions on Wednesday were truly epic.

On Wednesday, he led his workforce in prayer, asking God to forgive the horrible thing he was about to do, then went ahead and told 158 people that they were to lose their jobs because Obama won.  Matthew 6:5 aside, there are fundamental problems with this statement.  Mainly, that it is a giant crock of bullshit.

Let's get this clear: electing Obama had nothing to do with the firings.  Instead, there's a simple business reason: Murray Energy competes on cost in an industry where prices are set by the commodity market.  There's a lot of coal in Wyoming that's easy to get to.  There's less in Galatia, Illinois, and Utah, it's harder to get to, more dangerous to mine, and higher in sulfur than other sources.  If your plan is to buy the cheapest coal mines, the ones with the high sulfur coal, then try to sell them for prices near that of higher quality coal, you are going to fail.  If the government tries to internalize the externalities associated with the burning of fossil fuels, especially by regulating the pollution caused by the sulfur content of your product, then your business fails.  Most businesses do fail.  Add to this a substitute good, natural gas, which is now so cheap you could basically give this away, and even without the EPA, the invisible hand of the market is going to smack you upside the head, and you are going to fail.  Not letting Murray Energy fail?  Well... where's the moral hazard in all of this? 

Instead of blaming Obama, Murray needed to face facts: Coal is a mature industry.  The only way to stay competitive in this industry is consolidation and maybe some favorable treatment by the government.  He has a pretty good idea where Obama sits on this - he's not going to destroy the coal industry, but he's not going to help it become more profitable than it already is... and he's going to regulate the shit out of it.  However, Murray was banking on Romney being more generous.  He backed the wrong horse, so now he's having to face the problems associated for his own poor business strategy without a bailout by the Romney Administration.  If anything, he should have just kept all his money, and prepared for the slow decline of his company.  That would have been in his economic self-interest no matter who would have won.

Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearing, 20 Years Later

"You are ruining the country.  If you do this to me, you can do this to anyone."

- Clarence Thomas, October 1991

Next week marks the 20th Anniversary of the Confirmation Hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas.  While working for the Department of Education and the (no, seriously) Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Mr. Thomas did things to Ms. Hill that frat boys would do to each other: putting public hairs on Coke cans, talking about bestiality, graphically describing porn, and bragging about the women they've been banging.  Does frat house behavior belong in the workplace?  I'd say no, but that's the standard for 2011.  In 1991, the public figured that boys will be boys, and women in a man's world should expect this type of behavior.

Sitting in judgment of the accuracy of the testimony of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas was the 102nd Congress.  Notice anything?  In a case of he-said, she-said, the jury was composed of 98 men, and 2 women. Neither Nancy Landon Kassebaum nor Barbara Mikulski served on the Judiciary Committee, so neither participated in the investigation.  Watching the Senators conducting the hearing in 1991, it feels like a foregone conclusion that Thomas would be confirmed.  52 Senators (including Nancy Landon Kassebaum) thought there was no reason that a justice with allegations of sexual misconduct against him should not serve on the Supreme Court.  The pervasive mood of the hearing was that men control the workplace, women are merely visitors, and if they do not like their treatment (at, yes, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), then they should quit, even though it means derailing their careers and taking a pay cut.  Suck it, ladies, but it's grown up time, and if you don't like discussions of the films of Long Dong Silver in this government workplace, then you need to find another job.

Being a woman who grew up in the aftermath of the Thomas Hearings, I'm somewhat heartened that this kind of circus would not happen again - because there is no way that the Senate would allow an all male Judiciary Committee to investigate.  The bar would be lowered for Anita Hill.  She wouldn't be expected to produce a video tape of Thomas talking about his member, like it appears in 1991.  It would be more likely that co-workers would be willing to come forward and say that Thomas could be an ass from time to time without fear of reprisal.  The economic impact of leaving one's job in the second most expensive city in the country would have been discussed as a reason that someone would have to endure a monthly (or however sporadic) moment of shit, instead of Orrin Hatch yelling that no one would put themselves through this, dammit, Anita, what's wrong with you, you who belong in a mental institution?  

Today, these types of allegations today results with an immediate suspension, followed by an investigation, during which the douche canoe resigns in order to become a commentator on Fox News.  Think about how fast Anthony Weiner left office after the penis pictures emerged, and you have to have some hope that a fundamental shift has occurred in society over the past 20 years.  And for that, I would like to thank everyone involved for ruining the country.

On Wisconsin, Twitter, and One DoucheCanoe

I want to make it abundantly clear:
I believe that Jeff Cox is a DoucheCanoe.

We all have DoucheCanoes in our lives.  They are that neighbor from the next building over, the guy with the cubicle next to the breakroom at work, the wife of your Sunday School teacher, the woman who gave birth to you (not mine, but, you know...).  They walk around us as seemingly normal members of society.  They wave when you pass on the street.  They make excellent lemon bars.  But, one day, you had to make an opening in a conversation where you learned their hatred for gays, whites, blacks, Finns, Korean-made shoes, Weimeraner owners, single men with cats, or some other group in such an offensive and irrational manner that you KNOW that no about of conversation and discussion will convince them that their argument is bordering on the insane.  The problem intensifies when you figure that speaking with them on any topic besides safely trodden roads may reveal other deeply held crazy beliefs.  And, you still see them - they live next door, they're at work, at church, at Thanksgiving Dinner, so you try to remain as civil as you can, but all the time knowing that the receptionist thinks that the Finns cannot be trusted as a race that spends half the year without daylight.  She is a DoucheCanoe.  You tolerate the DoucheCanoe because you need your mail and phone calls, and she makes excellent lemon bars, and if you confront her, your Norwegian ancestry may cause these three critical items to never grace your workspace again.  Such is the problem with DoucheCanoes.

Jeff Cox is a DoucheCanoe.  I'm pretty sure he's been to a number of parties where newcomers were warned, "That's Jeff - be careful, don't bring up your UAW membership, because Jeff is a DoucheCanoe."  Jeff has a nasty habit of posting hateful things on Twitter using his own name.  The Mother Jones article has cherry picked some items from his Twitter feed and (now defunct) blog.  It confirms what you'd suspect from a guy who Tweeted that riot police should use live ammunition on protesters in Wisconsin: He's a DoucheCanoe.  This is a guy who on nights and weekends (from the blog timestamps), writes dumb things on his blog figuring no one's really every going to read them.  Jeff Cox, the man, is a DoucheCanoe.

However, does being a DoucheCanoe in your time off mean that Jeff Cox, Deputy Attorney General of the State of Indiana, deserves to be fired?  In my mind, no.  If as an attorney, his conduct violated ethical standards, then there exists a process to determine whether a punishment should be meted out.  If he had tried to use public resources to advance his personal political beliefs, then yes, he should be trotted out in front of an Ethics panel.  However, it seems like he was like me - writing down his thoughts on his own computer at the end of the day, on his own time.  It wasn't until Mother Jones used his state-issued email address to contact him that it looked like he was starting to get himself into trouble.  Never respond to press on your work email.  Copy.  Paste.  Reply at 10pm.

In closing, I want to show you that Jeff Cox is not a lunatic.  In a Google Cache of his last posting to ProCynic on Blogger, he writes the following:

Most unions, in fact, serve as an essential counterbalance to management, who in the absence of unions and other worker protections can get all too abusive. So, if you want to talk about the conflict of interest presented by public employee unions, I hear you. ...But don't question the need for unions and collective bargaining in general. In this age of ruthless corporate penny-pinching, they may be needed now more than ever.

Sadly, for Jeff Cox, a Union IS often the best mediator between management and workers. They provide clear rubrics for compensation to help deter gender wage discrimination by managers, setting rules to prevent the abuse of overtime rules, and set forth clear guidelines as to the employee's responsibilities for interacting with their management.  I do have a sad footnote to Cox's comment.  Rather than present a conflict of interest, public employee unions protect non-elected government employees from being the subject of arbitrary political retaliation by setting forth termination procedures agreed to during collective bargaining.  Such a public employee union would have acted on your behalf, Jeff Cox, in presenting a wrongful termination  proceeding against Greg Zoeller.  They'd be the ones protecting your right to be a DoucheCanoe.  THAT's what Wisconsin is demonstrating for:  So that THEIR DoucheCanoes can continue to be DoucheCanoes without fear of retaliation by elected politicians fearing a PR nightmare.