It's universal that during times in my life when I planned extensively, I made the most progress. The progress wasn't always in the direction of the plan. However, without a plan, it's easy to let inertia take hold. Once you're leaving yourself to the charity of the prevailing winds, you've relenquished a lot of control in your life.
Ever since my current business got off the ground, I really have lost a lot of fire in the belly. However, I'm a bit young to be retired in place and it's time for me to set some goals so that I won't be sitting here 10 years from now, in the same shape, business-wise, that I'm in right now.
I've decided that I need some very tangible goals for the next 5 year business period. Here they are.
1. To be debt free in my Servpro business. I've made what I consider prudent use of debt in my business. We grew quickly, from revenues of over $200,000 in year one, to revenues of almost $900,000 in year 4. As much as I tried, I simply could not acquire the necessary equipment using ongoing revenue as my only source of capital. However, from here on out, my goal is to pay for everything in cash and to pay off the notes I have remaining.
Part of me doesn't think this goal is very important. My debt service isn't that substantial, really. All told, maybe $3,000 a month. But to paraphrase an old saying, a thousand here, a thousand there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. There are better things I could think of to do with $36,000 a year. Over a 5 year period, that's enough money to buy a house.
2. I just took some baby steps to establish a lawn care business unit. In 5 years, I want to make sure that thing is cash flowing enough that it would be a reasonable stand-alone business operation, even if I weren't trying to take advantage of synergies with Servpro. I have several contingencies based on how well this business unit performs, but I'll need to see what happens before I take it in any specific direction. This could just be a way to absorb overhead during down-times in my Servpro business. Or, it could take off and be something I could scale up. I won't know until I get in it, full-time.
3. Servpro has a level of operations that earns an operator a Rolex. Right now, it's given for $1.5 million in revenue in a calendar year. I suspect they'll change it (probably right before I hit $1.5 million), but sometime in the next 5 years, I want my Servpro revenues to be at whatever the prevailing Rolex level is.
4. We are currently leasing our warehouse. I love the arrangement. The rent is cheap and the warehouse meets all my needs. However, I would like to have some commercial real estate, and I think sometime in the next 5 years is a reasonable time-frame to reach that goal.
5. I want to establish an asset lease business unit that leases various vehicles (like the commercial trucks and vans we use in the business). In the next 5 years, I want to establish that as a separate business unit and include things such as aircraft leasing and disaster restoration equipment leasing under the same corporate structure.
If I can do all those things, the next 5 years will be really great. My son will also be 13 years old, then. So, the 5 year plan after this one will take up the years until his 18th birthday. Not long after that, I am looking forward to a business plan that brings him in as a partner in the business and transitions operations to him so I can retire.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
There but for the grace...
I have lived my life with very little empathy in most cases. Maybe I'm just hard hearted, but I've never been one who could look at various states of misfortune and think, "Oh, I'm lucky I'm not in those shoes..."
I mean, what are the odds that I would look at a drug-addict and think, "Wow, that could have been me!". The reality is that it couldn't have been me. I have too much respect for the rules. I have too little enthusiasm for tying one on. I don't even drink. Not that I never did, but these days, maybe once or twice a year, at best. I don't even finish all the pain meds the doctors give me. They do nothing for me. Even the ones that folks say are "the good stuff".
So, this plea has fallen flat on me for all my life. It means little to me. However, there is one exception. When I see a small businessperson fail, it tears me apart.
For some reason, seeing a business go under, and knowing the folks involved, is a hard emotional experience for me.
When I first bought my franchise, I became acutely aware of other small business owners. I struck up conversations with the guy who owned the local UPS store. I bought lunch at the local Roly Poly, not because the food was good (even though it was), but because I liked the owner who had told me a lot about his business and himself.
As I participated in various community organizations, I got to know folks who owned, say, the local car dealership.
I remember the time I talked with the guy who owned the Roly Poly and he said his store wasn't doing well. I could sense that he felt like there was a slow moving train bearing down on him. He just didn't know what to do about it. I ate there as often as I could, but it takes more than a $7 purchase to rescue a floundering restaurant. I doubt the total of the meals I bought there in a month amounted to more than 1% of his rent, alone.
I also remember the time I went there and the signs indicated that he was closed. Gone. I didn't even have a chance to say goodbye to him.
I felt so awful for him. He wasn't that different than me. He had a severance from GM and bought the restaurant with it. Now, it was all gone. A once in a lifetime windfall, gone in the blink of an eye.
That could have been me.
Back when GM was going through its bailout request and they announced that they would be cutting their dealership network, I never, ever imagined that the local Chevy dealer would be on the block. He had a large, succesful dealership, or so it appeared.
In the days after the closures were announced, he would say he was selling more cars than ever! He was upbeat and happy. I presumed he was spared the ax.
I would scan his inventory of Cadillacs and Corvettes and say to myself, "someday, when I buy one of those, I'll buy it from Tom."
With the current incentives, I figured I'd go there and get a new pickup truck and maybe an HHR for my business tpo help with my '09 tax bill. Not quite a caddy or vette, but combined, they cost about the same.
As I walked around waiting to speak to his son, the internet sales manager (who had stepped out for a moment), it became blatantly obvious that they had no new cars on the lot. Just used ones.
So, I came right out and asked what happened. He said that they were in arbitration trying to get their dealership back from GM. I'm guessing that's not going to happen, and even if it does, if enough time elapses, they'd be building their dealership up from zero.
He had a perfectly profitable business that employed his whole family. Of all the Chevy dealers to close, his seemed an unusual fit since there weren't, as far as I knew, any other Chevy dealers in Monroe, MI. I have never met a nicer person in all my life. Out of nowhere, his business is gone.
Such are the frailties of hanging out a shingle and going into business, yourself.
Once I returned from the dealership, I was so depressed I had to leave my business and go home.
It doesn't help that I'm an hour out of Detroit. California may have comparable unemployment, but hey, it's California. It'll bounce back. I just can't think of any driving force that will bring back Ohio and Michigan.
There's a feeling here like we're being picked off one by one. Even my business is having some tough times. Not so much because of the economy, but because of some extended, unusually mild weather.
It's just not much fun being in business right now. I'm just hoping that a harsh Winter can save us.
Small businesspeople are not a sympathetic lot. Half the folks think we're rich and the other half aren't aware that we exist. When times are good, we benefit disproportionately, but when times are bad, we suffer disproportionately.
Small business has been an endeavor where I can make 5 figures in a single month... and lose 5 figures in a single month just as easily.
More often than not, we finance our businesses with our life savings and the equity in our homes. Most small business people I know, myself included, financed at least part of their business with a credit card at one point in time or another. We have no financial backstop. When we run out of money, it's game over.
When we run out of money, it isn't like a person with a job who runs out of money. We don't run out of money until after we crater. When we crater, it can take a lifetime to dig out.
So, when I see a shuttered business, I see a memorial of one of my fallen brothers or sisters.
I also take a moment to say that, at least so far, I'm glad it isn't me.
I mean, what are the odds that I would look at a drug-addict and think, "Wow, that could have been me!". The reality is that it couldn't have been me. I have too much respect for the rules. I have too little enthusiasm for tying one on. I don't even drink. Not that I never did, but these days, maybe once or twice a year, at best. I don't even finish all the pain meds the doctors give me. They do nothing for me. Even the ones that folks say are "the good stuff".
So, this plea has fallen flat on me for all my life. It means little to me. However, there is one exception. When I see a small businessperson fail, it tears me apart.
For some reason, seeing a business go under, and knowing the folks involved, is a hard emotional experience for me.
When I first bought my franchise, I became acutely aware of other small business owners. I struck up conversations with the guy who owned the local UPS store. I bought lunch at the local Roly Poly, not because the food was good (even though it was), but because I liked the owner who had told me a lot about his business and himself.
As I participated in various community organizations, I got to know folks who owned, say, the local car dealership.
I remember the time I talked with the guy who owned the Roly Poly and he said his store wasn't doing well. I could sense that he felt like there was a slow moving train bearing down on him. He just didn't know what to do about it. I ate there as often as I could, but it takes more than a $7 purchase to rescue a floundering restaurant. I doubt the total of the meals I bought there in a month amounted to more than 1% of his rent, alone.
I also remember the time I went there and the signs indicated that he was closed. Gone. I didn't even have a chance to say goodbye to him.
I felt so awful for him. He wasn't that different than me. He had a severance from GM and bought the restaurant with it. Now, it was all gone. A once in a lifetime windfall, gone in the blink of an eye.
That could have been me.
Back when GM was going through its bailout request and they announced that they would be cutting their dealership network, I never, ever imagined that the local Chevy dealer would be on the block. He had a large, succesful dealership, or so it appeared.
In the days after the closures were announced, he would say he was selling more cars than ever! He was upbeat and happy. I presumed he was spared the ax.
I would scan his inventory of Cadillacs and Corvettes and say to myself, "someday, when I buy one of those, I'll buy it from Tom."
With the current incentives, I figured I'd go there and get a new pickup truck and maybe an HHR for my business tpo help with my '09 tax bill. Not quite a caddy or vette, but combined, they cost about the same.
As I walked around waiting to speak to his son, the internet sales manager (who had stepped out for a moment), it became blatantly obvious that they had no new cars on the lot. Just used ones.
So, I came right out and asked what happened. He said that they were in arbitration trying to get their dealership back from GM. I'm guessing that's not going to happen, and even if it does, if enough time elapses, they'd be building their dealership up from zero.
He had a perfectly profitable business that employed his whole family. Of all the Chevy dealers to close, his seemed an unusual fit since there weren't, as far as I knew, any other Chevy dealers in Monroe, MI. I have never met a nicer person in all my life. Out of nowhere, his business is gone.
Such are the frailties of hanging out a shingle and going into business, yourself.
Once I returned from the dealership, I was so depressed I had to leave my business and go home.
It doesn't help that I'm an hour out of Detroit. California may have comparable unemployment, but hey, it's California. It'll bounce back. I just can't think of any driving force that will bring back Ohio and Michigan.
There's a feeling here like we're being picked off one by one. Even my business is having some tough times. Not so much because of the economy, but because of some extended, unusually mild weather.
It's just not much fun being in business right now. I'm just hoping that a harsh Winter can save us.
Small businesspeople are not a sympathetic lot. Half the folks think we're rich and the other half aren't aware that we exist. When times are good, we benefit disproportionately, but when times are bad, we suffer disproportionately.
Small business has been an endeavor where I can make 5 figures in a single month... and lose 5 figures in a single month just as easily.
More often than not, we finance our businesses with our life savings and the equity in our homes. Most small business people I know, myself included, financed at least part of their business with a credit card at one point in time or another. We have no financial backstop. When we run out of money, it's game over.
When we run out of money, it isn't like a person with a job who runs out of money. We don't run out of money until after we crater. When we crater, it can take a lifetime to dig out.
So, when I see a shuttered business, I see a memorial of one of my fallen brothers or sisters.
I also take a moment to say that, at least so far, I'm glad it isn't me.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Jimmy's General State of Things 11-19-09
The biggest thing hanging over me right now is that the weather has remained phenomenally nice up here. This has pretty much been a year without bad weather. We haven't even had big rains.
Business-wise, that's been a killer. We started off the year like gangbusters, but are limping in to the end of the calendar year. Overall, we'll gross the same as we did last year. Considering the weather conditions, that's not so bad. However, we worked twice as hard for it and I ended up with about 40% less profit as a result.
I still see huge reasons for optimism, despite our losses in the 4th quarter. For one thing, we stayed steady despite the economy and lack of help from the weather.
So, when the weather breaks bad, we should do fantastic.
I finally submitted my paperwork to the State of Ohio to become a minority owned firm. It won't matter much as far as getting our disaster restoration work. However, it may come up huge when it comes to pursuing commercial cleaning and construction contracts.
One thing I'm doing to try and even out the cyclicality a bit is launching a lawn-care business in the Spring. There, the minority-owned thing may be a help when bidding on larger commercial accounts.
I'm not that convinced that it's a great idea from a stand-alone business model standpoint. However, it has nice synergies with my current business.
For instance, houses that pay to get their lawns mowed are also good candidates to have their carpets cleaned every now and then.
The main idea is to keep people on the payroll, and to engage them in something that at least covers the cost of their wages and perhaps absorbs some overhead.
We just got our brand-new John Deere 840 with the grass-catching system. The thing is a monster. It is capable of delivering a quality cut at 17 miles per hour and has a 60" mowing deck. Basically, it mows a swath that's almost as wide as I am tall, at a speed faster than I can sprint.
Like virtually all credit I get, this one came with 0% down, 0% apr, and a 42 month amortization period. It is sorta funny, when I think about all the debt I've accumulated, very little of it has been at an interest rate of over 3%.
I'm getting a little bit spoiled.
I may see about getting a pickup truck here soon so I can get the tax-writeoff. And yes, even those are coming with 0% terms. I'd really like a new Toyota Tundra extended cab, but since this will probably be used primarily for lawn-care, I'll probably be looking at something more like a Ford F-150, spartanly appointed.
For the Navy, I'm going back to Athens, GA to repeat my last 4 day midpoint worth of instructions. There are 3 food service tests. I passed one in July in Athens, but have failed the 2nd one, twice now. One more failure and I could be dismissed from the program and although that would mean no trip to the desert, it would also mean I would no longer be an officer in the Navy. Service to my country means too much to me, and serving with my fellow sailors has really been a great part of my life. I'm going to do all I can to keep up. The Navy isn't making me do this: I suggested it, myself, even if I had to go unfunded (meaning I wouldn't get paid for any of it.)
Next week, Logan and I leave for Disney so he can have some fun with all his Phoenix cousins.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Business-wise, that's been a killer. We started off the year like gangbusters, but are limping in to the end of the calendar year. Overall, we'll gross the same as we did last year. Considering the weather conditions, that's not so bad. However, we worked twice as hard for it and I ended up with about 40% less profit as a result.
I still see huge reasons for optimism, despite our losses in the 4th quarter. For one thing, we stayed steady despite the economy and lack of help from the weather.
So, when the weather breaks bad, we should do fantastic.
I finally submitted my paperwork to the State of Ohio to become a minority owned firm. It won't matter much as far as getting our disaster restoration work. However, it may come up huge when it comes to pursuing commercial cleaning and construction contracts.
One thing I'm doing to try and even out the cyclicality a bit is launching a lawn-care business in the Spring. There, the minority-owned thing may be a help when bidding on larger commercial accounts.
I'm not that convinced that it's a great idea from a stand-alone business model standpoint. However, it has nice synergies with my current business.
For instance, houses that pay to get their lawns mowed are also good candidates to have their carpets cleaned every now and then.
The main idea is to keep people on the payroll, and to engage them in something that at least covers the cost of their wages and perhaps absorbs some overhead.
We just got our brand-new John Deere 840 with the grass-catching system. The thing is a monster. It is capable of delivering a quality cut at 17 miles per hour and has a 60" mowing deck. Basically, it mows a swath that's almost as wide as I am tall, at a speed faster than I can sprint.
Like virtually all credit I get, this one came with 0% down, 0% apr, and a 42 month amortization period. It is sorta funny, when I think about all the debt I've accumulated, very little of it has been at an interest rate of over 3%.
I'm getting a little bit spoiled.
I may see about getting a pickup truck here soon so I can get the tax-writeoff. And yes, even those are coming with 0% terms. I'd really like a new Toyota Tundra extended cab, but since this will probably be used primarily for lawn-care, I'll probably be looking at something more like a Ford F-150, spartanly appointed.
For the Navy, I'm going back to Athens, GA to repeat my last 4 day midpoint worth of instructions. There are 3 food service tests. I passed one in July in Athens, but have failed the 2nd one, twice now. One more failure and I could be dismissed from the program and although that would mean no trip to the desert, it would also mean I would no longer be an officer in the Navy. Service to my country means too much to me, and serving with my fellow sailors has really been a great part of my life. I'm going to do all I can to keep up. The Navy isn't making me do this: I suggested it, myself, even if I had to go unfunded (meaning I wouldn't get paid for any of it.)
Next week, Logan and I leave for Disney so he can have some fun with all his Phoenix cousins.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Big Question on Bailouts: Why?
Why?
The government is only now starting to realize that the AIG bailout was a stupid idea, poorly executed, to the detriment of the taxpayer.
This, of course, was obvious last year to anybody who wasn't bought and paid for by special interests.
AIG should be out of business right now.
They're not.
They're rich.
You're not.
These banks? The ones complaining that they have compensation limits? The limit should be zero. Nobody in those companies should make anything because they should all be unemployed.
The banks that paid back the TARP money and are now back to giving multimillion dollar bonuses every year? They should be bankrupt, too. The AIG bailout was for their benefit.
So, I'm left to wonder, "Why?"
Why do I do it? Why do I have the sleepless nights owning my own business? Why do I stress on months when I lose money? Why do I take cash advances out on credit cards to keep this thing afloat?
It's not like rescuing the banks helped me. In fact, I'm worse off now than ever as far as the help I get from banks.
Small business lending is a joke. It's nearly non-existent and the terms are absurd. Yeah, you can sometimes get an SBA loan if you're willing to put up all your assets and the equity in your home. Seriously, giving somebody a loan at double digit interest and demanding that it be securitized at 300% of the value of the loan isn't exactly doing anybody a favor.
Our home equity loans have all dried up. That's how most business owners I know financed their businesses. No bailout for HELOCS for entrepreneurs, though.
So, why? I mean, yeah, I know the macro-level "why?". The macro-level "why?" is that Wall Streeters are rich and connected. Because of that, they own the government, and they tell the government to steal our money and give it to Wall Street.
No matter how much pain is endured on main street, Wall Street will use the government to step on our heads to make sure their party doesn't ever end.
But why? Why?
Why could nobody see that just giving money to the country's worst businessmen was a stupid idea?
Why could nobody see that it was morally wrong to give wealthy people the taxpayer dollars paid in by millions upon millions of middle class people struggling to get by?
In a country that decries partisan rancour, the only thing that both democrats and republicans could agree on was the fact that the little guy should get totally annihilated in order to benefit rich folks on Wall Street.
So, why?
I joined the military a few years ago as a reservist. I felt it was my obligation to a country that has blessed me so greatly. Now, I honestly wonder, why did I do that?
Why am I going to risk losing my life? Why would I subject myself to absence from my family?
To represent a corrupt government whose only purpose appears to be to victimize the citizenry for the benefit of the wealthy?
Why? Why pay taxes just to see the money go to Wall Street? Why support a system that has already bankrupted my son's and countless future generations in order to give millions and billions to people who were already multi-millionaires?
Why did I spend my life thinking that my government was basically good when in reality, it's just a corrupt means by which the struggling middle class is taxed to death for the benefit of the lazy and the greedy?
It is a testament to the civility of our population that we aren't taking to the streets with pitchforks right now. In any other age, these Wall Street bankers would be hunted down and beaten to death by angry mobs.
Sometimes, the modern, civilized ways aren't the best ways.
Ultimately, I'm left to wonder, why doesn't anybody, anywhere in government, care about anyone other than Wall Street bankers?
It is said that the East Germans, after the fall of communism, would say:
"Everything we were told about Communism was a lie. Everything we were told about Capitalism was true."
Recent times have borne this out.
However, this past episode was not a product of capitalism. In capitalism, those banks would have failed. Those Wall Streeters would have sufferred the financial consequences of their decisions.
If we were going to engage in socialism, why did we only do it for Wall Street bankers? For god's sake, we've got the worst of both worlds.
Where the working person suffers all the financial problems inherent in capitalism, but politically connected people are allowed to do anything and never have to suffer the consequences of their actions because the government will victimize the population in any way necessary to support the system.
Why?
The government is only now starting to realize that the AIG bailout was a stupid idea, poorly executed, to the detriment of the taxpayer.
This, of course, was obvious last year to anybody who wasn't bought and paid for by special interests.
AIG should be out of business right now.
They're not.
They're rich.
You're not.
These banks? The ones complaining that they have compensation limits? The limit should be zero. Nobody in those companies should make anything because they should all be unemployed.
The banks that paid back the TARP money and are now back to giving multimillion dollar bonuses every year? They should be bankrupt, too. The AIG bailout was for their benefit.
So, I'm left to wonder, "Why?"
Why do I do it? Why do I have the sleepless nights owning my own business? Why do I stress on months when I lose money? Why do I take cash advances out on credit cards to keep this thing afloat?
It's not like rescuing the banks helped me. In fact, I'm worse off now than ever as far as the help I get from banks.
Small business lending is a joke. It's nearly non-existent and the terms are absurd. Yeah, you can sometimes get an SBA loan if you're willing to put up all your assets and the equity in your home. Seriously, giving somebody a loan at double digit interest and demanding that it be securitized at 300% of the value of the loan isn't exactly doing anybody a favor.
Our home equity loans have all dried up. That's how most business owners I know financed their businesses. No bailout for HELOCS for entrepreneurs, though.
So, why? I mean, yeah, I know the macro-level "why?". The macro-level "why?" is that Wall Streeters are rich and connected. Because of that, they own the government, and they tell the government to steal our money and give it to Wall Street.
No matter how much pain is endured on main street, Wall Street will use the government to step on our heads to make sure their party doesn't ever end.
But why? Why?
Why could nobody see that just giving money to the country's worst businessmen was a stupid idea?
Why could nobody see that it was morally wrong to give wealthy people the taxpayer dollars paid in by millions upon millions of middle class people struggling to get by?
In a country that decries partisan rancour, the only thing that both democrats and republicans could agree on was the fact that the little guy should get totally annihilated in order to benefit rich folks on Wall Street.
So, why?
I joined the military a few years ago as a reservist. I felt it was my obligation to a country that has blessed me so greatly. Now, I honestly wonder, why did I do that?
Why am I going to risk losing my life? Why would I subject myself to absence from my family?
To represent a corrupt government whose only purpose appears to be to victimize the citizenry for the benefit of the wealthy?
Why? Why pay taxes just to see the money go to Wall Street? Why support a system that has already bankrupted my son's and countless future generations in order to give millions and billions to people who were already multi-millionaires?
Why did I spend my life thinking that my government was basically good when in reality, it's just a corrupt means by which the struggling middle class is taxed to death for the benefit of the lazy and the greedy?
It is a testament to the civility of our population that we aren't taking to the streets with pitchforks right now. In any other age, these Wall Street bankers would be hunted down and beaten to death by angry mobs.
Sometimes, the modern, civilized ways aren't the best ways.
Ultimately, I'm left to wonder, why doesn't anybody, anywhere in government, care about anyone other than Wall Street bankers?
It is said that the East Germans, after the fall of communism, would say:
"Everything we were told about Communism was a lie. Everything we were told about Capitalism was true."
Recent times have borne this out.
However, this past episode was not a product of capitalism. In capitalism, those banks would have failed. Those Wall Streeters would have sufferred the financial consequences of their decisions.
If we were going to engage in socialism, why did we only do it for Wall Street bankers? For god's sake, we've got the worst of both worlds.
Where the working person suffers all the financial problems inherent in capitalism, but politically connected people are allowed to do anything and never have to suffer the consequences of their actions because the government will victimize the population in any way necessary to support the system.
Why?
Friday, October 30, 2009
Show Biz Parenting or Lack Thereof
8 years old is proving to be a very, very interesting age. I had just gotten used to the last iteration of Logan, Logan 4.0, and now comes Logan 5.0.
He's got a crush on a little girl at school. Also, for the first time in his life, he's taken an interest in music. That is something I am excited about. However, I'm leery of smothering his interest and turning him off.
The other day he was doing some windmill air-guitar and I told him that was something Pete Townshend used to do. I was astounded when he actually showed interest as I went upstairs and got my Concert for NY DVD out and played 3 Who songs for him.
He loved it all. The angry, windmill style of Pete, the microphone swinging antics of Roger Daltrey. He had to understand the sheer reverence I had for the guys as I described their greatness. I explained the tragedy of Keith Moon and how he was a great, great musician.
He asked how he died, and I used it as an opportunity to explain how drugs ruin people.
Logan is genuinely interested in seeing "This Is It". He's been a Jackson 5 fan for as far back as I can remember. I've played "ABC", "I Want You Back" and "The Love You Save" for him since he was very, very small.
It has also given me some teaching opportunities. I've explained that Michael was performing when he was Logan's age. I've also explained that Michael was a messed up person.
And the "messed up" part is why, with all my might, I am trying not to be a show business parent.
This is the first year Logan has shown an interest in learning an instrument. He can play a few notes on guitar. He's learning to play the recorder at school. Today I'll move my keyboards down into the basement with the electronic drums so he can noodle.
Although he has the beginnings of a spark, I don't want to put it out by putting too much on him.
In the back of my mind, though, nothing could please me more than seeing him take an interest in music.
A few of his friends are forming a band of some sort. I don't want to push Logan too much. He's got access to guitars, a bass, keyboards and drums. I'll just leave them around and give him time to explore.
He finishes baseball and football this weekend. So, that will give me 2 months where he won't have any sports on the schedule.
I think the key to both happiness and success in life is to do what you love. So far, he has shown a passion for sports. Music? I hope one develops, but again, I'm trying not to push too hard.
Music is a much better fit for me to mentor him, since it's something I know a little about. I got a late start in life, trying to teach myself guitar, off and on, until I broke through with the help of the old book "the Beatles Compleat" that was given to me by Stu Kemper.
(It was an obscure book that was nonetheless the rage among the guitar players I knew in school. It actually ended up teaching a bit more than a good collection of Beatle transcriptions because about every other song was transcribed in a different key, usually meant for piano, like Eb.)
16 was too late to ever really be any good at guitar, and my lack of skills, despite years of effort, attest to that.
Logan, on the other hand, has the ability to really accomplish something if he picks it up sometime before his teen years.
Sports? I'm of much less help, other than being willing to take him to/from practice. He already has exceeded my ability to coach him in baseball, and will exceed my ability to coach him in football and basketball, probably in the next couple of years.
I am reminded of a time when he was very little and he said, "Dad, if I'm ever in a band, I'll need a better guitar".
All I could think was, "Boy, were you born in the right house, son."
So, the keyboards go up today and after this weekend, I'll see if I can spend some more time showing him a thing or two on the guitar.
If nothing else, I'd like to see him be able to play songs with me someday, for fun. Best-case, if he could be in a band in High School or College, all the better.
I'll probably see if I can show him the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan. Now that he likes girls, he might make the connection between the screams and being the guy on stage with a guitar.
He's got a crush on a little girl at school. Also, for the first time in his life, he's taken an interest in music. That is something I am excited about. However, I'm leery of smothering his interest and turning him off.
The other day he was doing some windmill air-guitar and I told him that was something Pete Townshend used to do. I was astounded when he actually showed interest as I went upstairs and got my Concert for NY DVD out and played 3 Who songs for him.
He loved it all. The angry, windmill style of Pete, the microphone swinging antics of Roger Daltrey. He had to understand the sheer reverence I had for the guys as I described their greatness. I explained the tragedy of Keith Moon and how he was a great, great musician.
He asked how he died, and I used it as an opportunity to explain how drugs ruin people.
Logan is genuinely interested in seeing "This Is It". He's been a Jackson 5 fan for as far back as I can remember. I've played "ABC", "I Want You Back" and "The Love You Save" for him since he was very, very small.
It has also given me some teaching opportunities. I've explained that Michael was performing when he was Logan's age. I've also explained that Michael was a messed up person.
And the "messed up" part is why, with all my might, I am trying not to be a show business parent.
This is the first year Logan has shown an interest in learning an instrument. He can play a few notes on guitar. He's learning to play the recorder at school. Today I'll move my keyboards down into the basement with the electronic drums so he can noodle.
Although he has the beginnings of a spark, I don't want to put it out by putting too much on him.
In the back of my mind, though, nothing could please me more than seeing him take an interest in music.
A few of his friends are forming a band of some sort. I don't want to push Logan too much. He's got access to guitars, a bass, keyboards and drums. I'll just leave them around and give him time to explore.
He finishes baseball and football this weekend. So, that will give me 2 months where he won't have any sports on the schedule.
I think the key to both happiness and success in life is to do what you love. So far, he has shown a passion for sports. Music? I hope one develops, but again, I'm trying not to push too hard.
Music is a much better fit for me to mentor him, since it's something I know a little about. I got a late start in life, trying to teach myself guitar, off and on, until I broke through with the help of the old book "the Beatles Compleat" that was given to me by Stu Kemper.
(It was an obscure book that was nonetheless the rage among the guitar players I knew in school. It actually ended up teaching a bit more than a good collection of Beatle transcriptions because about every other song was transcribed in a different key, usually meant for piano, like Eb.)
16 was too late to ever really be any good at guitar, and my lack of skills, despite years of effort, attest to that.
Logan, on the other hand, has the ability to really accomplish something if he picks it up sometime before his teen years.
Sports? I'm of much less help, other than being willing to take him to/from practice. He already has exceeded my ability to coach him in baseball, and will exceed my ability to coach him in football and basketball, probably in the next couple of years.
I am reminded of a time when he was very little and he said, "Dad, if I'm ever in a band, I'll need a better guitar".
All I could think was, "Boy, were you born in the right house, son."
So, the keyboards go up today and after this weekend, I'll see if I can spend some more time showing him a thing or two on the guitar.
If nothing else, I'd like to see him be able to play songs with me someday, for fun. Best-case, if he could be in a band in High School or College, all the better.
I'll probably see if I can show him the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan. Now that he likes girls, he might make the connection between the screams and being the guy on stage with a guitar.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Why Andrew Speaker really is a bad, bad human being... even though it's not as cut and dried as it may appear at first blush
Remember that hysteria about the jet-setting TB slip and fall shyster, Andrew Speaker back in 2007?
It got a lot of publicity. Probably because... oh... the possibility of a person flying around, after they've been told, by the CDC no to fly around, with a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis isn't something that happens every day.
He's back, now, trying to sue the CDC because he feels his privacy rights were violated when they went public about the fact that he was defying their orders and had exposed hundreds, if not thousands of people to a disease that is a global health concern.
The interesting thing about this case is that usually, the media sets up a frenzy and zooms in on a private citizen, and the private citizen doesn't really have a chance to get their story out.
The part that's unusual, here, is that the private citizen did a great job of getting his story out. It's the CDC's side that's under-reported. Partially because the CDC isn't commenting on the case. In fact, other than reporting that he was jetting around despite their request that he not, they really haven't said much, publicly about this case.
In fact, it was the media that broke the identity of this spoiled, horrible little self-absorbed shyster. It wasn't the CDC. They really were trying to protect his identity, yet also balance that against their need to protect the public health.
So, what really happened?
It would appear that Mr. Speaker was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He had several tests, and some of them came up negative, but at least one indicated that he had the disease.
He was, unfortunately, also planning on travelling to Greece to marry his Fiancee in the months following his diagnosis.
A few months after his initial diagnosis, and a few months before he is scheduled to fly, he was informed that he had MDR-TB. Multidrug resistant tuberculosis. At this point, his doctors began expressing to him that he should not travel.
This is where things get very, very cloudy. It does not appear that he was ordered by the government or a law-enforcement agency that he COULD NOT travel. He was merely told by his doctors that he SHOULD NOT travel.
Apparently, at least he and his father continued to ask questions such as, "Am I contagious?" and "Why are you saying we should not travel?" and "Is this because of some real risk, or are you just covering your butts?" (Not actual quotes. Just imagined quotes based on what I understand of the story.)
It would appear that they had already made plans for Mr. Speaker's wedding in Greece and were very, very resistant to following the doctor's request that they not travel.
There is zero doubt: the doctors were resolute throughout that Mr. Speaker should not travel.
However, the Speakers assert that they were told repeatedly that Shyster-meister Supreme, Andrew Speaker, was not contagious.
So, in asshat move #1, they decided to ingore the doctor's requests.
In fact, proving that the shyster never falls very far from the scheize, Speaker's father hid a tape recorder which they claim has a doctor saying something to the effect of, "we don't want you to travel... it's not because you're contagious, we're just covering ourselves".
Trouble is, that's just one statement, by one doctor. It hardly means that was the overall gist of what was being communicated. In fact, what was being communicated appears to have been substatial enough that Sheister Senior was going to record a conversation to try and win a game of "gotcha".
It appears at this time that the public health officials were attempting to draft documents making it explicit that they were demanding that Speaker NOT TRAVEL.
They assert that they were going to hand-deliver this letter to him.
Unfortunately, they couldn't reach him. He had changed his flight plans to travel to Greece earlier than had been planned.
Now, did he do this knowing they were going to unambiguously demand that he stay in the country? There's not, as far as I know, a way to know this from the public record. Suffice to say, he changed his travel plans at the last moment which coincided with the precise time-frame when public health officials were trying to hand-deliver a request to him NOT TO TRAVEL.
Coincidence? Maybe. However, personally, I'm skeptical.
While in Europe for his vacation, a test result comes back that indicates that Speaker may actually have XDR-TB, which is even worse than MDR-TB.
They called him in Europe. Instructed him not to fly on commercial aircraft and turn himself in to Italian health officials.
At this point, Speaker begins outright defying all requests from the CDC. He flies travels via public conveyance through several European countries, then enters the US, from Canada, by car.
He claims that he couldn't afford a hundred grand or more for a private jet to get him back to the states. He claims that the CDC said they would not pay to transport him back home.
When he went to enter the US, the border agents got a notice on their computer screen that he was a public health risk, and they deliberately ignored the notice let him into the country anyway. Literally, they had identified him as THE TB PATIENT, and decided they didn't need to do anything about it and let him in anyway. (And these asshats are supposed to protect us from terrorists? They won't even bother to protect us from tuberculoid attorneys!)
In their defense, they claimed that he "looked healthy".
Now, it turns out that Speaker didn't have XDR, "just" MDR. Personally, I think that's neither here nor there.
So, why is it that, even though it turns out that he probably wasn't contagious, that I still think he's a disgusting example of humanity?
1. If somebody told you that you have a disease that is exceptionally difficult to cure (and in the majority of cases, impossible to cure), and that you should report to health authorities, would you then expose yourself to hundreds of people on public transit?
I'm glad it turned out that this guy doesn't have XDR-TB. I'm glad his wife doesn't have it. Thing is, if there were even a CHANCE that I might have something like this, I would never do something that would endanger the public, against the advice of public health officials.
That's the main beef, here. Yeah, the diagnosis was incorrect. But it doesn't take much to see that these tests, in isolation, aren't that reliable. Near as I can figure, Speaker had as many tests tell him he DIDN'T have TB as he had tests that said he DID. This doesn't appear to be a 100% accurate and reliable science.
However, any decent human being would not have risked infecting others. Had he complied with their requests, continued testing would have shown he could travel. Instead, he took matters into his own hands.
He basically decided that he was going to do what he wanted to do to benefit himself. If he killed others, well, then that was just too bad for them.
2. How many times did we have to hear that he probably contracted TB while working with poor people in Vietnam? Gosh, the guy was practically mother theresa. How could we say he was a very, very bad man. Trouble is, that's a bit of an exaggeration. He went over there briefly as part of a Rotary club project. This isn't a guy who lived in a leper colony for 3 years as a man of medicine and compassion. This is a guy who went there for 5 weeks.
Noble? Sure. Good thing to do? Yep. A crappy deal that he may have contracted TB there? Sure was.
Get out of jail-free card for willingly throwing as many other people under the bus as you need to in order to save your own ass? Not in a million years.
This is just an attempt to wrap himself in a cloak of decency to try and mitigate the fact that he basically acted no better than a murderer during one highly publicized part of his life.
3. On his law firm's web-site, Mr. Speaker proudly points out that he attended the Naval Academy. What he omits is that he didn't graduate. I have a special disdain for people who want the kudos associated with military service, but who can't be bothered with... oh... actually performing any military service. What this guy got was a year or two of free education at taxpayer expense, after which he decided that either the school was too hard, or that he was too good to serve his country and he walked. Or maybe he was rendered unfit for military service due to some physical, psychological, or emotional problem.
No harm, no foul. The Navy doesn't want him, either. However, putting this as some sort of achievement on his resume just highlights how craven he is to try and strap-hang on the sacrifices of actual servicemembers. He didn't SERVE your country. He took advantage of a good deal, then walked when he would have had to give something back.
Like I said, no harm, no foul, but if this is an example of things he's proud of, frankly, he either has a distorted sense of pride, or he's never actually accomplished something he can be proud of.
4. After trotting around Europe following his wedding in Greece, Scummy McSleasemeister then cried poor that he couldn't afford the cost of a charter plane to get himself home.
Now, six figures is a heck of a sum of money to pay. However, I'm left to wonder two things:
First, what kind of personal injury attorney is he? Personal injury attorneys should make money. Where is his?
Second, sorry dude... wedding in greece, honeymoon in Europe? I'm not buying the "I just can't afford it" argument. In fact, in later interviews, Speaker did say something to the effect of, he could have probably found a way to come up with the money, but it would have been exceptionally difficult.
Understandable. That's a lot of money. However, what does it say about the guy that money for a wedding in Greece is perfectly okay in his value system, but money to make sure he doesn't murder a few dozen people is entirely too inconvenient?
And what about his shyster dad? Are they both crying poor? Practice of the law isn't particularly noted for low salaries. Especially when one abandons all human decency to become a slip-and-fall attorney.
5. At some point, clearly, the wedding in Greece became more important than listening to the CDC.
I can't say the exact time when it happened. However, sometime between being diagnosed with garden variety TB and the time when the CDC was trying to hand-deliver a letter, the CDC stopped merely suggesting that this guy not-travel and was clearly trying to tell him that he REALLY SHOULD NOT travel.
Speaker's argument basically boils down to: Well, they suggested it, but at no time did they tackle me and throw me in a prison.
And until they did something that legally prevented him from travelling, this guy was going to Greece. In fact, it appears that he was deliberately changing his travel plans to keep them from contacting him to keep him from going.
Again, the heart of the real problem here: he was in it for himself. Period. Didn't care what the doctors said.
He seems to think it is a defense that he didn't get quarantined by the fed. (He was, upon his return.)
Basically, he's saying that basic human decency wasn't a good enough reason.
He's saying that the way the world should work is that doctors shouldn't say things like, "don't travel". That's not enough. If they were serious, they need to do something other than say, "don't travel".
What does he think they should do? Put a gun to your head, say, "don't even f***ing move" and call in a SWAT team?
In any event, this jerk is doing exactly what you'd expect some third-rate shyster slip and fall scumbag to do. He's suing the CDC.
So, yeah, there's more to this story. There almost always is. However, none of it seems to erase the main problem that folks have with this guy: when he thought he could benefit himself at the cost of potentially killing dozens of other innocent people, he helped himself.
It would be as if somebody said, "Hey man, that machine gun you've got. It's not a toy. We think it may have live ammo in it".
Then, instead of putting the machine gun down, I say, "Well, screw it. I'll just open fire on this bunch of pre-schoolers playing soccer".
I mean, yeah, if it turns out afterwards that the machine gun was, indeed, not loaded, that's a good thing.
But it sure as hell doesn't excuse me for thinking it was okay to kill a bunch of innocent people.
Lucky for all of us that the threat wasn't as bad as the CDC thought at the time. However that doesn't excuse this guy's behavior. Are we supposed to be angry that the CDC acted in a very conservative fashion to try and ensure that this guy didn't needlessly infect untold numbers of people? I mean, yeah, they errored on the side of caution. Go figure. Avoiding the possibility of creating a mountain of corpses will make some people error on the side of caution.
I consider it a supreme injustice that this guy should enjoy any kind of life at all.
He displays the ugliest of the ugliness of human spirit and sank to depths no decent human being would ever sink to.
He represents all that is evil and wrong in humanity.
He is, simply put, a very, very bad person. No amount of PR spin will ever change that.
This is a timeline by NPR of the events of Mr. Speaker's scumminess:
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/tb/
This is an article about his current difficulty in practicing the law. He thinks it's because people are afraid of TB. I'd be more afraid that he'd throw my ass under the bus the first second he thought it would benefit him. that's sorta the way it goes: people don't want to do business with people who would kill you before they'd inconvenience themselves.
http://www.law.com/jsp/law/sfb/lawArticleSFB.jsp?id=1189587766087
This one doesn't even fall into the news category. But if you want to read about what a 3rd rate lawyer does, after essentially attempting to manslaughter a few dozen people, when he has the opportunity to sue:
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2009/04/30/2009-04-30_andrew_speaker_quarantined_for_tuberculosis.html
It got a lot of publicity. Probably because... oh... the possibility of a person flying around, after they've been told, by the CDC no to fly around, with a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis isn't something that happens every day.
He's back, now, trying to sue the CDC because he feels his privacy rights were violated when they went public about the fact that he was defying their orders and had exposed hundreds, if not thousands of people to a disease that is a global health concern.
The interesting thing about this case is that usually, the media sets up a frenzy and zooms in on a private citizen, and the private citizen doesn't really have a chance to get their story out.
The part that's unusual, here, is that the private citizen did a great job of getting his story out. It's the CDC's side that's under-reported. Partially because the CDC isn't commenting on the case. In fact, other than reporting that he was jetting around despite their request that he not, they really haven't said much, publicly about this case.
In fact, it was the media that broke the identity of this spoiled, horrible little self-absorbed shyster. It wasn't the CDC. They really were trying to protect his identity, yet also balance that against their need to protect the public health.
So, what really happened?
It would appear that Mr. Speaker was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He had several tests, and some of them came up negative, but at least one indicated that he had the disease.
He was, unfortunately, also planning on travelling to Greece to marry his Fiancee in the months following his diagnosis.
A few months after his initial diagnosis, and a few months before he is scheduled to fly, he was informed that he had MDR-TB. Multidrug resistant tuberculosis. At this point, his doctors began expressing to him that he should not travel.
This is where things get very, very cloudy. It does not appear that he was ordered by the government or a law-enforcement agency that he COULD NOT travel. He was merely told by his doctors that he SHOULD NOT travel.
Apparently, at least he and his father continued to ask questions such as, "Am I contagious?" and "Why are you saying we should not travel?" and "Is this because of some real risk, or are you just covering your butts?" (Not actual quotes. Just imagined quotes based on what I understand of the story.)
It would appear that they had already made plans for Mr. Speaker's wedding in Greece and were very, very resistant to following the doctor's request that they not travel.
There is zero doubt: the doctors were resolute throughout that Mr. Speaker should not travel.
However, the Speakers assert that they were told repeatedly that Shyster-meister Supreme, Andrew Speaker, was not contagious.
So, in asshat move #1, they decided to ingore the doctor's requests.
In fact, proving that the shyster never falls very far from the scheize, Speaker's father hid a tape recorder which they claim has a doctor saying something to the effect of, "we don't want you to travel... it's not because you're contagious, we're just covering ourselves".
Trouble is, that's just one statement, by one doctor. It hardly means that was the overall gist of what was being communicated. In fact, what was being communicated appears to have been substatial enough that Sheister Senior was going to record a conversation to try and win a game of "gotcha".
It appears at this time that the public health officials were attempting to draft documents making it explicit that they were demanding that Speaker NOT TRAVEL.
They assert that they were going to hand-deliver this letter to him.
Unfortunately, they couldn't reach him. He had changed his flight plans to travel to Greece earlier than had been planned.
Now, did he do this knowing they were going to unambiguously demand that he stay in the country? There's not, as far as I know, a way to know this from the public record. Suffice to say, he changed his travel plans at the last moment which coincided with the precise time-frame when public health officials were trying to hand-deliver a request to him NOT TO TRAVEL.
Coincidence? Maybe. However, personally, I'm skeptical.
While in Europe for his vacation, a test result comes back that indicates that Speaker may actually have XDR-TB, which is even worse than MDR-TB.
They called him in Europe. Instructed him not to fly on commercial aircraft and turn himself in to Italian health officials.
At this point, Speaker begins outright defying all requests from the CDC. He flies travels via public conveyance through several European countries, then enters the US, from Canada, by car.
He claims that he couldn't afford a hundred grand or more for a private jet to get him back to the states. He claims that the CDC said they would not pay to transport him back home.
When he went to enter the US, the border agents got a notice on their computer screen that he was a public health risk, and they deliberately ignored the notice let him into the country anyway. Literally, they had identified him as THE TB PATIENT, and decided they didn't need to do anything about it and let him in anyway. (And these asshats are supposed to protect us from terrorists? They won't even bother to protect us from tuberculoid attorneys!)
In their defense, they claimed that he "looked healthy".
Now, it turns out that Speaker didn't have XDR, "just" MDR. Personally, I think that's neither here nor there.
So, why is it that, even though it turns out that he probably wasn't contagious, that I still think he's a disgusting example of humanity?
1. If somebody told you that you have a disease that is exceptionally difficult to cure (and in the majority of cases, impossible to cure), and that you should report to health authorities, would you then expose yourself to hundreds of people on public transit?
I'm glad it turned out that this guy doesn't have XDR-TB. I'm glad his wife doesn't have it. Thing is, if there were even a CHANCE that I might have something like this, I would never do something that would endanger the public, against the advice of public health officials.
That's the main beef, here. Yeah, the diagnosis was incorrect. But it doesn't take much to see that these tests, in isolation, aren't that reliable. Near as I can figure, Speaker had as many tests tell him he DIDN'T have TB as he had tests that said he DID. This doesn't appear to be a 100% accurate and reliable science.
However, any decent human being would not have risked infecting others. Had he complied with their requests, continued testing would have shown he could travel. Instead, he took matters into his own hands.
He basically decided that he was going to do what he wanted to do to benefit himself. If he killed others, well, then that was just too bad for them.
2. How many times did we have to hear that he probably contracted TB while working with poor people in Vietnam? Gosh, the guy was practically mother theresa. How could we say he was a very, very bad man. Trouble is, that's a bit of an exaggeration. He went over there briefly as part of a Rotary club project. This isn't a guy who lived in a leper colony for 3 years as a man of medicine and compassion. This is a guy who went there for 5 weeks.
Noble? Sure. Good thing to do? Yep. A crappy deal that he may have contracted TB there? Sure was.
Get out of jail-free card for willingly throwing as many other people under the bus as you need to in order to save your own ass? Not in a million years.
This is just an attempt to wrap himself in a cloak of decency to try and mitigate the fact that he basically acted no better than a murderer during one highly publicized part of his life.
3. On his law firm's web-site, Mr. Speaker proudly points out that he attended the Naval Academy. What he omits is that he didn't graduate. I have a special disdain for people who want the kudos associated with military service, but who can't be bothered with... oh... actually performing any military service. What this guy got was a year or two of free education at taxpayer expense, after which he decided that either the school was too hard, or that he was too good to serve his country and he walked. Or maybe he was rendered unfit for military service due to some physical, psychological, or emotional problem.
No harm, no foul. The Navy doesn't want him, either. However, putting this as some sort of achievement on his resume just highlights how craven he is to try and strap-hang on the sacrifices of actual servicemembers. He didn't SERVE your country. He took advantage of a good deal, then walked when he would have had to give something back.
Like I said, no harm, no foul, but if this is an example of things he's proud of, frankly, he either has a distorted sense of pride, or he's never actually accomplished something he can be proud of.
4. After trotting around Europe following his wedding in Greece, Scummy McSleasemeister then cried poor that he couldn't afford the cost of a charter plane to get himself home.
Now, six figures is a heck of a sum of money to pay. However, I'm left to wonder two things:
First, what kind of personal injury attorney is he? Personal injury attorneys should make money. Where is his?
Second, sorry dude... wedding in greece, honeymoon in Europe? I'm not buying the "I just can't afford it" argument. In fact, in later interviews, Speaker did say something to the effect of, he could have probably found a way to come up with the money, but it would have been exceptionally difficult.
Understandable. That's a lot of money. However, what does it say about the guy that money for a wedding in Greece is perfectly okay in his value system, but money to make sure he doesn't murder a few dozen people is entirely too inconvenient?
And what about his shyster dad? Are they both crying poor? Practice of the law isn't particularly noted for low salaries. Especially when one abandons all human decency to become a slip-and-fall attorney.
5. At some point, clearly, the wedding in Greece became more important than listening to the CDC.
I can't say the exact time when it happened. However, sometime between being diagnosed with garden variety TB and the time when the CDC was trying to hand-deliver a letter, the CDC stopped merely suggesting that this guy not-travel and was clearly trying to tell him that he REALLY SHOULD NOT travel.
Speaker's argument basically boils down to: Well, they suggested it, but at no time did they tackle me and throw me in a prison.
And until they did something that legally prevented him from travelling, this guy was going to Greece. In fact, it appears that he was deliberately changing his travel plans to keep them from contacting him to keep him from going.
Again, the heart of the real problem here: he was in it for himself. Period. Didn't care what the doctors said.
He seems to think it is a defense that he didn't get quarantined by the fed. (He was, upon his return.)
Basically, he's saying that basic human decency wasn't a good enough reason.
He's saying that the way the world should work is that doctors shouldn't say things like, "don't travel". That's not enough. If they were serious, they need to do something other than say, "don't travel".
What does he think they should do? Put a gun to your head, say, "don't even f***ing move" and call in a SWAT team?
In any event, this jerk is doing exactly what you'd expect some third-rate shyster slip and fall scumbag to do. He's suing the CDC.
So, yeah, there's more to this story. There almost always is. However, none of it seems to erase the main problem that folks have with this guy: when he thought he could benefit himself at the cost of potentially killing dozens of other innocent people, he helped himself.
It would be as if somebody said, "Hey man, that machine gun you've got. It's not a toy. We think it may have live ammo in it".
Then, instead of putting the machine gun down, I say, "Well, screw it. I'll just open fire on this bunch of pre-schoolers playing soccer".
I mean, yeah, if it turns out afterwards that the machine gun was, indeed, not loaded, that's a good thing.
But it sure as hell doesn't excuse me for thinking it was okay to kill a bunch of innocent people.
Lucky for all of us that the threat wasn't as bad as the CDC thought at the time. However that doesn't excuse this guy's behavior. Are we supposed to be angry that the CDC acted in a very conservative fashion to try and ensure that this guy didn't needlessly infect untold numbers of people? I mean, yeah, they errored on the side of caution. Go figure. Avoiding the possibility of creating a mountain of corpses will make some people error on the side of caution.
I consider it a supreme injustice that this guy should enjoy any kind of life at all.
He displays the ugliest of the ugliness of human spirit and sank to depths no decent human being would ever sink to.
He represents all that is evil and wrong in humanity.
He is, simply put, a very, very bad person. No amount of PR spin will ever change that.
This is a timeline by NPR of the events of Mr. Speaker's scumminess:
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/tb/
This is an article about his current difficulty in practicing the law. He thinks it's because people are afraid of TB. I'd be more afraid that he'd throw my ass under the bus the first second he thought it would benefit him. that's sorta the way it goes: people don't want to do business with people who would kill you before they'd inconvenience themselves.
http://www.law.com/jsp/law/sfb/lawArticleSFB.jsp?id=1189587766087
This one doesn't even fall into the news category. But if you want to read about what a 3rd rate lawyer does, after essentially attempting to manslaughter a few dozen people, when he has the opportunity to sue:
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2009/04/30/2009-04-30_andrew_speaker_quarantined_for_tuberculosis.html
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Race and Perception...
Enough has been written on the issue of race that I doubt I can contribute anything substantial in the grand scheme of things.
However, an old friend from the neighborhood mentioned this special and it made me think about a lot of things:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/
Race is an issue that I almost deliberately suppress because the implications were something that caused me a lot of anxiety as a young person.
It's amazing to me how much the world has changed since my younger days. For one thing, immigration policy changed monumentally right around the time I was born.
When I attended school, until about the 3rd or 4th grade, I was literally the only minority in my elementary school, and quite possibly in my town's entire school system.
Due to the changes in immigration policy, it's very rare that you can find a school system anywhere without at least a handful of asian students.
A person might reasonably draw the conclusion that my anxiety was self-imposed and that this was an issue that dealt mostly with my feelings of isolation, etc.
Unfortunately, that's not true. I was subjected to racial taunts and slurs. I was physically attacked once in a while. During the 2nd grade, the kids made my bus ride a living hell by calling me names so vile I can barely bring myself to say the words now as an adult.
7 years old. Younger than my son is, today. And these kids were older. I just didn't stand a chance.
It shaped my life in ways I probably will never fully understand. To this day, I am a confrontational person who gets unreasonably angry when I feel I'm being cornered. I had a lot of difficulty with assimilating socially in school.
Now some might point out that others are isolated and ostracized and bullied and have difficulty assimilating in school for reasons unrelated to race. I agree and I don't mean to say that my experience was unique or that nobody else ever had it bad in school. If a thumbnail anectdotal poll of most people's friends is any indication, a whole heck of a lot of people were pretty damned glad to get out of High School with their sanity intact. I'm just saying I'm one of them and this is a large part of the reason why.
The thing that stood out to me about the documentary, though, was the premise that people have to experience something akin to racism before they can fully understand just how bad it is.
I sufferred more racism than most people. At an age that was right around the age of the kids in that documentary.
Now, I do HATE racism with a passion. I will not tolerate it from anybody. I don't believe it has any place in any aspect of civil society.
But that's not because of my experiences. That's because I'm a rational human being.
The perspective of the documentary discounts the fact that many, many fair-minded people are that way despite never having had to experience something like racism.
Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with a few friends from the past. A few that stand out are John Pander, Stu Kemper... I never did lose contact with Patrick Hoffman. At various times in my life, they were all good friends to me. If they, or their families, had a racist bone in their bodies, they all did an admirable job of hiding it.
Same for every girlfriend I've ever had. Especially true for one particularly beautiful woman who married me.
The surprise for me in life is not how much racism has hurt me: it's how truly fair and wonderful most people are.
The amazing thing to me as I've gone on through my life is not that racism exists or that it has an ugly impact on life. Hey, stupidity of all kinds exists. Some people just want to hate. If they don't hate your race, they'll hate your country or your religion or your gender or your football team.
The thing that continues to amaze me is that so many people are good and fair-minded and truly beautiful inside.
I remember getting back in touch with some of the Korean linguists who I had served with in Korea. It stood out to me that a whole heck of a lot of them had Korean wives or girlfriends today.
For the most part, these were white kids from the suburbs when they joined the Army.
Really, it makes sense, though. These were guys who respected foreign culture and language and devoted several years of their lives to living them. That's just not the background you find in a closed-minded bigot.
The other shift we're seeing is one where race isn't some sort of binary construct. It's not a "you are or you aren't" situation. I've always been completely and totally offended at having to identify my "race" on a piece of paper.
Am I Asian? I'm as white as I am Asian. I lived most of my childhood seeing about 200 white people for every Asian person I saw. I was raised by my grandparents who were Hungarian and German. We ate kielbasa and stuffed peppers in my house.
This is not to downplay my Asian ancestry, but of what possible use could it be to classify me as "Asian"?
The box that said, "other" was even more offensive.
Nowadays, those idiotic forms will let you check "all that apply". My understanding is that various minority advocacy groups are the main driver in keeping the boxes at all.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. Whereas in the past, whitey wanted to know who the brown people were to keep them down, now a bunch of poverty and race pimps want to know who the brown people are to make sure we get our quota of whatever somebody wants us to get.
We live in an age where our president is a combination of white and black. I had to chuckle at a comment about a Korean male golfer, when somebody said something to the effect of, "Wow, looks like Asians might be getting good at golf." I had to point out: Tiger Woods is Asian. In fact, racially, he's more Asian than black.
Soledad O'Brien, more than a decade ago, spoke of how she liked the fact that more and more people look like her. I liked that thought. That we were entering an age where it was okay to be a hodgepodge of ethnicity.
I don't believe you have to suffer an evil to understand it is evil. Civil right laws were written and passed by people who were almost exclusively male, white and overpriviledged. The supreme court justices who enforced those laws? The same.
Back to the documentary: maybe the kids learned something about racism. My suspicion is that instead, deep down, they were simply good and fair-minded people. That with or without the experiment, they were going to grow up to be decent folks.
I don't believe that making people experience ugliness is that valuable an exercise. There's already enough of it in the world. You don't need to contrive opportunities to make people experience it. It's just something that happens.
I also find it ironic that the teacher in the exercise appears to have been a very fair-minded person despite not having been raised with an episode like this in her childhood.
So, despite my somewhat rocky past, combined with my somewhat more positive observations later in life on the issues of race, I am still a believer in the goodness in people. At least here in the United States. Which is yet one more reason why I wouldn't live anywhere else.
However, an old friend from the neighborhood mentioned this special and it made me think about a lot of things:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/
Race is an issue that I almost deliberately suppress because the implications were something that caused me a lot of anxiety as a young person.
It's amazing to me how much the world has changed since my younger days. For one thing, immigration policy changed monumentally right around the time I was born.
When I attended school, until about the 3rd or 4th grade, I was literally the only minority in my elementary school, and quite possibly in my town's entire school system.
Due to the changes in immigration policy, it's very rare that you can find a school system anywhere without at least a handful of asian students.
A person might reasonably draw the conclusion that my anxiety was self-imposed and that this was an issue that dealt mostly with my feelings of isolation, etc.
Unfortunately, that's not true. I was subjected to racial taunts and slurs. I was physically attacked once in a while. During the 2nd grade, the kids made my bus ride a living hell by calling me names so vile I can barely bring myself to say the words now as an adult.
7 years old. Younger than my son is, today. And these kids were older. I just didn't stand a chance.
It shaped my life in ways I probably will never fully understand. To this day, I am a confrontational person who gets unreasonably angry when I feel I'm being cornered. I had a lot of difficulty with assimilating socially in school.
Now some might point out that others are isolated and ostracized and bullied and have difficulty assimilating in school for reasons unrelated to race. I agree and I don't mean to say that my experience was unique or that nobody else ever had it bad in school. If a thumbnail anectdotal poll of most people's friends is any indication, a whole heck of a lot of people were pretty damned glad to get out of High School with their sanity intact. I'm just saying I'm one of them and this is a large part of the reason why.
The thing that stood out to me about the documentary, though, was the premise that people have to experience something akin to racism before they can fully understand just how bad it is.
I sufferred more racism than most people. At an age that was right around the age of the kids in that documentary.
Now, I do HATE racism with a passion. I will not tolerate it from anybody. I don't believe it has any place in any aspect of civil society.
But that's not because of my experiences. That's because I'm a rational human being.
The perspective of the documentary discounts the fact that many, many fair-minded people are that way despite never having had to experience something like racism.
Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with a few friends from the past. A few that stand out are John Pander, Stu Kemper... I never did lose contact with Patrick Hoffman. At various times in my life, they were all good friends to me. If they, or their families, had a racist bone in their bodies, they all did an admirable job of hiding it.
Same for every girlfriend I've ever had. Especially true for one particularly beautiful woman who married me.
The surprise for me in life is not how much racism has hurt me: it's how truly fair and wonderful most people are.
The amazing thing to me as I've gone on through my life is not that racism exists or that it has an ugly impact on life. Hey, stupidity of all kinds exists. Some people just want to hate. If they don't hate your race, they'll hate your country or your religion or your gender or your football team.
The thing that continues to amaze me is that so many people are good and fair-minded and truly beautiful inside.
I remember getting back in touch with some of the Korean linguists who I had served with in Korea. It stood out to me that a whole heck of a lot of them had Korean wives or girlfriends today.
For the most part, these were white kids from the suburbs when they joined the Army.
Really, it makes sense, though. These were guys who respected foreign culture and language and devoted several years of their lives to living them. That's just not the background you find in a closed-minded bigot.
The other shift we're seeing is one where race isn't some sort of binary construct. It's not a "you are or you aren't" situation. I've always been completely and totally offended at having to identify my "race" on a piece of paper.
Am I Asian? I'm as white as I am Asian. I lived most of my childhood seeing about 200 white people for every Asian person I saw. I was raised by my grandparents who were Hungarian and German. We ate kielbasa and stuffed peppers in my house.
This is not to downplay my Asian ancestry, but of what possible use could it be to classify me as "Asian"?
The box that said, "other" was even more offensive.
Nowadays, those idiotic forms will let you check "all that apply". My understanding is that various minority advocacy groups are the main driver in keeping the boxes at all.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. Whereas in the past, whitey wanted to know who the brown people were to keep them down, now a bunch of poverty and race pimps want to know who the brown people are to make sure we get our quota of whatever somebody wants us to get.
We live in an age where our president is a combination of white and black. I had to chuckle at a comment about a Korean male golfer, when somebody said something to the effect of, "Wow, looks like Asians might be getting good at golf." I had to point out: Tiger Woods is Asian. In fact, racially, he's more Asian than black.
Soledad O'Brien, more than a decade ago, spoke of how she liked the fact that more and more people look like her. I liked that thought. That we were entering an age where it was okay to be a hodgepodge of ethnicity.
I don't believe you have to suffer an evil to understand it is evil. Civil right laws were written and passed by people who were almost exclusively male, white and overpriviledged. The supreme court justices who enforced those laws? The same.
Back to the documentary: maybe the kids learned something about racism. My suspicion is that instead, deep down, they were simply good and fair-minded people. That with or without the experiment, they were going to grow up to be decent folks.
I don't believe that making people experience ugliness is that valuable an exercise. There's already enough of it in the world. You don't need to contrive opportunities to make people experience it. It's just something that happens.
I also find it ironic that the teacher in the exercise appears to have been a very fair-minded person despite not having been raised with an episode like this in her childhood.
So, despite my somewhat rocky past, combined with my somewhat more positive observations later in life on the issues of race, I am still a believer in the goodness in people. At least here in the United States. Which is yet one more reason why I wouldn't live anywhere else.
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