Category Archives: Leadership

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If you gotta go…

Cushing

Today President Obama presented the Medal of Honor to the family of Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Alonzo Cushing, hero of Gettysburg. I took this shot in 2012, from his gun position. If you can imagine 15 thousand gray coats from end-to-end, you get the idea.

I grew up reading about him, knowing his name. I have no idea why. Maybe his age, 22 years old, drew me? In a weird way, I’m not so sure about the medal though. His peers lived this war, who are we to overturn their decision? Alonzo’s brothers, William and Howard, also went early via the field of battle. It was a very different time then.

We don’t get to choose how we check out, and given the chance, Cushing and anyone else would have rather wanted to go home that day. But sometimes one’s life is the pain, suffering, and honor of a single afternoon. Sometimes we simply do what we were born to do. “Faithful unto Death” is on his tombstone.

Hopefully Cushing and his brothers are boozing it up in Valhalla to celebrate. Alongside all those they fought with and against. So that we could all be free tonight.

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Speaches don’t make history like they used to

It’s probably a safe bet you’re not going to hear anything new tomorrow.  It’s not like Obama’s going to announce a paratrooper assault on Mosul has occurred, or that he’s nuked Damascus.  Although both acts might be productive. 

Whatever he says, its mostly noise.  The audience is not the world to outline a plan, but the voter to influence an election.  Which makes it essentially worthless toward the overall outcome of the crisis at hand.  Or maybe I’m just being too damn cynical, and he’s actually making a go of it.  Shit man, I sure hope so.

Hey remember when presidents used to start wars with glowing speeches that made history.  You read about them decades or hundreds of years later.  Will anybody remember what Obama says tomorrow in say, one year?  Probably not.  But don’t blame him too much.  Nobody on the other side of the political equation is saying anything relevant either.

The opposition (a term not applicable to the Republicans) is currently entertaining lunatic ideas from the likes of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.  Two guys who apparently don’t realize that the galaxy’s moved on from reasonable militant isolationist views since, oh, 1939.

I don’t envy Obama, he’s in an impossible situation.  No matter what he says, just about everybody’s going to hate him.  But nobody has a better answer than he does.  Because, I fear, there is no answer.  It’s lose, lose.

So given that, my guests and I are going to answer this tomorrow before the speech.  Because we help people with problems.  It’s what we do.  Which is bad.  Because we have a lot of problems.

Either way, here’s hoping for all our sakes that the Prez makes this one count.  We and history need a win.

desk

Temporary holder of the second hardest job on the planet after Bear Baiter (to be returned to Ukraine upon conclusion of tomorrow’s speech)

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Don’t make promises you can’t keep

It’s generally a good idea for the world’s leaders to do what they say.  I mean, since they’re in politics, they’re all liars to a certain extent.  But if you make it a point to promise death to your enemies, it’s probably best to make sure you’re serious.  Especially before you go shouting revenge in front of, oh, say the family of a man who got murdered.

Don’t get me wrong, I like what Biden’s saying.  I’m all about it.  I wish our leaders talked like this every day.  The problem is that I think he’s made a promise he can’t keep.  Following ISIS to the “gates of hell” requires a level of effort the public is not prepared to currently accept.

For example:

– Dude on Street:  I hate ISIS, let’s kill them all.

– Reality:  Doing that might require 50 thousand American troops back in Iraq, at least for a while.  Are you in?

– Dude on Street:  Whoa there, let’s not get carried away.

– Reality:  Do you want to win or not?

– Dude on Street:  Well, yeah, let’s kick ass, but like, whoa, that sounds kinda extreme.

Everybody’s favorite polished weakling in David Cameron has made similarly belligerent claims.  And yet at this point I don’t think the British military (yes, there apparently still is one) has fired a shot.

There’s a case to be made for caving in the skulls of every ISIS member.  There’s also a case for doing nothing.  There’s no case for saying you’re going to kill them all, and then effectively doing next to nothing.

They’re just spouting generalities, idle threats, or incomprehensible garbage.  No wonder nobody in the West is interested in a real war in the cause of good.  Their leaders can’t even articulate a decent plan to battle evil.

Yet, Joe just made a promise.  Sadly, if I had to bet, I figure he can’t/won’t back it up.  This doesn’t say much for the West’s credibility, again.  This is beyond a trend now, or just a recent theme.  It’s becoming a way of life.  Inaction, empty words, and irrelevance.  Don’t think ISIS hasn’t noticed.  It’s why they feel they can saw a man’s head off, and get away with it._77372315_77355933

Oh Joe, if you actually could back this up you’d be one of history’s greatest orators instead of a joke

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Don’t demand folks do stupid things just because other people are stupid

As you read modern news, more and more you’re confronted with the irrational. Things that just make no sense. Yesterday we confronted humanity’s downfall via the weirdo act of dumping liquid life over your skull. Now let’s dance the arts of demanding upon pain of torture that folks do stupid things.

So Burger King (home of the whopper) intends to buy Tim Hortons (home of the benign) for a ton of molten gold. This would create the planet’s third largest fast food giant behind Subway, McDonalds, and your local zoo’s cafeteria.

As is now common in massive mergers, the bigger company (Burger King) plans to move its combined headquarters to Canada where corporate taxes are lower. This tactic is called a number of things, but “tax inversion” seems the most common term. In other news, Burger King also announced they’d be passing their future corporate tax cost savings onto the average consumer by lowering their prices [insert appropriate laugh track].

The concept is simple. America’s corporate tax is 35%, depending on where you are in Canada, it could be almost 10% lower. So naturally Burger King wants to exist where they pay less tax. And so naturally the applicable politicians are demanding that the CEO of Burger King be strapped to a chair and fed burgers until he expires.

Fleeing your home country to pay less tax is either greedy (Democrats) or unpatriotic (Republicans). Or maybe your opinion of tax inversion depends on what you personally think of Obama or Boehner or Hollywood or falconry. Or maybe your opinion of tax inversion depends on how many episodes of Ellen you watch every week.

Now the federal government has decided that tax inversion must stop. So they’re looking at steps to end it while simultaneously demonizing the companies that engage in it. Some corporations are clearly beginning to feel the heat.

Walgreens just announced that their merger with Boots won’t involve them leaving the country for Switzerland. Probably because leaving the country for Switzerland for tax purposes is just about the worst public relations move you can make.

It’d be like broadcasting to the planet that you want to funnel your tax funds from the taxpayer and directly into some Iranian cleric’s stripper account. For a small fee, of course.

But what’s this really about? Well, like most things nowadays, you can’t talk about this issue without being labeled a Saint or Satan. So we’ll start with facts.

Facts:

– The corporate tax rate for Burger King at its Florida headquarters is 35%

– The corporate tax rate for Tim Hortons at its Ontario headquarters is 26.5%

– Both Burger King and Tim Hortons are public companies

– As public companies they have an obligation to make money for their shareholders

– Both Burger King and Tim Hortons had their stocks skyrocket yesterday upon news of the deal

– People like money

– Folks will follow the path of least resistance to acquire money

– If you try and fight the prior two bullets, expect to encounter problems

But wait, what’s this really about? Well, like most things nowadays, you can’t talk about this issue without being labeled a Saint or Satan. So we’ll also include a story:

Story:

– Like this blog’s degenerate author, you may have spent a significant portion of your childhood getting subjected to mental and physical torture by bigger or wiser kids

– You have one dollar provided to you each day

– You are a part of the hyper-nerd click

– As part of the hyper-nerd click, the bullies charge you a tax rate of 35¢ before lunch

– The boys in the uber-nerd click are charged a bully tax rate of 25¢

– You’re thinking of joining the uber-nerd click so you can keep that extra dime

– But if you do that, the hyper-nerd click will consider you greedy or a turncoat

– What do you do?

If you said you’d stay with the hyper-nerd click and pay the extra dime you’re a liar or a fool.

Oh, the hyper-nerd folks are pissed off at you? Who cares. They’re not your real friends. Why? Because if they were your real friends they’d help you gang up on the bullies to the point that your lunch tax rate was reduced to 25¢.

If they were your friends, they’d help you work the problem. They would not do nothing. And they certainly wouldn’t call you a traitor or a money hound for leaving them.

Think tax inversion is a coincidence? That corporations are just rotten? Things generally don’t just happen. Canada’s corporate tax rate was reduced 13% by Harper’s administration since it took office in 2006. This merger is exactly why they did it. To steal business and tax dollars from America.

What’s that, you think business can be tamed? That you can construct laws and enforcement mechanisms to the point that a company will willingly pay a higher tax because you made it so? Yeah, good luck with that.

Politicians have tried that since Rome. It never works. Why? See our example above. You can’t fight human nature. Folks will follow the path of least resistance to acquire money. It’s in our blood. Sorry.

America’s politicians can whine all they want. They can shout to the heavens in a cynical attempt to grab your vote in November. But the reality is that they are to blame for this. America doesn’t have a tax inversion problem. America has a leadership problem.

America’s corporate tax rate, structure, and implementation are a mess and have been for decades. This is not news to anybody with a brain in Washington. What have they done to fix it? Nothing. And now they want to demand, yes demand, that Burger King do something against its own self-interest to compensate for their failed political leadership? Apologies, I don’t buy it.

If you personally think Burger King is evil for doing this? Fine, I understand, no worries. Go protest outside your local franchise or eat only at McDonalds. That’s your right.

But don’t buy into the trash that’s spoon fed to you buy the morons who want your vote in two months. It’s their fault. 

It’s not effective leadership to demand folks do stupid things just because you’re stupid. Instead, Washington should either do its job or close its mouth. But I suspect it will continue to do neither.

Burger_King

Good morning, one safe, benign Canadian cup of coffee please. Milk and sugar, oh, no thanks, that’s too fierce for me, eh.

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The West continues to show how unreliable & uncaring it is

I want to you wander down the streets of New York or Paris or Amsterdam and ask a handful of folks whether they know or care what’s happening in Iraq. I’d reckon you’d get one of two responses:

a) An incomprehensible answer not grounded in fact

b) The person would in so many words kindly inform you that they don’t care

When the people of an entire culture aren’t interested in a problem, it creates a break in thought that is almost impossible to fix. The West must do something about ISIS because if given the chance they’d kill everybody on the planet who disagrees with them. Plus, by any reasonable standard of humanity, they’ve got to go.

However, the people of the West aren’t interested in confronting the problem and would prefer to ignore it. So the leaders of the West have to do what little they can to battle the forces of darkness, without actually saying they’re doing anything.

Thus, you get Britain (a country that used to matter) emphatically stating in the strongest possible terms that they won’t engage in combat operations to stop ISIS. That they’ll just drop humanitarian aid. Because anything more than that would cost David Cameron two percentage points in the upcoming general election.

And then we get this from Obama:

“We’re not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq,” he said. “But we can only do that if we know that we have got partners on the ground who are capable of filling the void.”

Uh, okay.

1) The only way to stop ISIS from creating a Caliphate through Syria and Iraq is to deploy Western ground troops to kill them all.

2) Since (1) won’t happen, he seems to think they can still destroy ISIS if the West has partners. By partners I suppose he means an effective multi-ethnic government in Baghdad and a non-murderous government in Damascus.

3) Since (2) is impossible, what’s he actually saying? He’s saying the United States and the West will do the bare minimum because that’s all he’s got to work with.

Don’t get me wrong on what I’m saying. There’s no right answer here. You can’t ask a democracy to go to war when something like three-quarters of the population would oppose it. On the other hand, sometimes true leaders need to tell a country exactly what they don’t want to hear. What if Cameron or Obama said something like this:

“We’re not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq. These monsters go against all our values, liberty, and morals. If necessary, hopefully without ground forces, but however it needs to happen, we’ll annihilate their evil from the planet.”

No Western leader will ever say this today. I suspect though, that fifty years ago or even thirty years ago, that they would have. In the meantime if you are a moderate Sunni, a Kurd, a displaced Iraqi Christian, or an ISIS foot soldier? What’s been said in the last three days that gives you any confidence that the West is reliable and generally does what is promises?

Instead, I suspect all of them are making their own plans, good or bad to address the situation without the West’s serious involvement. Maybe you think that’s a good thing? That they’ll figure it out on their own. And then the West can get back to the mall. But I’m certain you won’t like the result when you see it.

2

You can bet that whatever these folks are thinking, that nowhere in their brains are they counting upon the free world to save them.