I’ve spent the majority of my career in the employ of Fortune 500 corporations, including my current employer. In the early years, those companies would sometimes make a show of their social goodness but they weren’t particularly wedded to a lefty agenda. That’s changed in the last 10-15 years, but recent events have some C-suite grandees thinking twice:
The fallout from the recent political spat between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has alarmed leaders across the corporate sphere, according to executives and their advisers, and heightened the challenges for chief executive officers navigating charged topics. At many companies, vocal employees have in recent years pushed bosses to take public stands on social and political issues. Florida’s pushback against Disney has raised the stakes.
Yeah, it certainly has. You have to wonder why a company would choose to make their appeal, ahem, more selective, but the instinct is strong:
“The No. 1 concern CEOs have is, ‘When should I speak out on public issues?’ ” said Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic PLC and now a senior fellow at Harvard Business School. “As one CEO said to me, ‘I want to speak out on social issues, but I don’t want to get involved in politics.’ Which I said under my breath, ‘That’s not possible.’ ”
It’s not possible. Put more simply, it’s dumb. A CEO who spends more than a passing moment thinking about social issues isn’t paying attention to what really matters. Younger employees, who have gone from participation trophies to believing their opinions are probative without much active contradiction, are difficult to manage, so the urge to mollify them is strong.
My current company has a full range of employee groups that cater to the constellation of grievances of the modern Left. These groups regularly get a moment to hold forth in the latest Zoom Town Hall or on the company intranet page. There’s not a lot of evidence these groups actually improve the conditions they decry, but never mind that. It’s a chance to wave the freak flag, and as an overall strategy it makes sense:
Some executives say they have learned to monitor issues that could consume public attention and increase pressure for some response. Some use employee affinity groups to help flag potentially troublesome issues. “You make it a safe forum where people feel comfortable talking about concerns or whatever, and out of that, there’s really a kind of responsibility on our part to pick up on things that really do demand some attention,” said Nancy Langer, CEO of Transact Campus Inc., a financial- technology company based near Phoenix. “I look at that as a feedback loop for us.”
The challenge, as always, is to ensure the loop doesn’t become a noose.
Lesko Brandon’s domestic oil policies spiked gas prices so he released a million barrels per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help consumers at the pump.
You paid for that oil. He gave it away. Track its progress here.
Joe Doakes
So let’s get Brandon’s energy policy summed up: oil that Americans aren’t allowed to drill but must be imported from nations that hate or are actively planning war against us, can be given away to “allies” who’ve spent the past three decades actively making themselves dependent on our (and, unbeknownst to them, their) enemies, that being preferable to America drilling its own oil (forget about building more nukes).
An individual who kills an eagle can be fined $100,000 and sentenced to a year in jail. An organization, $200,000. Penalties increase for subsequent offenses.
But a windmill energy company will be paying less than $30,000 each for dead eagles, with no jail at all.
Quite a deal: a bulk discount on dead birds and immunity from imprisonment. I guess that’s the price Mother Nature pays for saving the planet from global warming.
Joe Doakes
I’m imagining people working on wind farms playing games with “perverse incentives”, trying to maneuver the windmills to knock off eagles on the cheap.
I start from the assumption that home buyers have an upper limit to their monthly payment, let’s say $1,000 for principal and interest (not counting taxes and insurance).
$1,000 per month P/I on a 3% mortgage gets you a $235,000 house.
$1,000 per month P/I on a 5% mortgage means you can only afford $185,000 house.
The seller must cut her asking price $50,000 to meet your budget. That’s a big chunk of her retirement fund, gone.
I’m sure Lesko Brandon will blame it on Putin’s invasion, or Donald Trump, or climate change, but let’s not kid ourselves. This financial disaster has the same cause as gas prices at the pump: He did that.
Heckova job, Democrats and Never-Trumpers. But hey, no mean tweets!
Joe Doakes
Rama Emanuels injunction to “never waste a crisis”is useful in the defensive as well as on the attack.
CEO: “Alright everybody, settle down. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. First up, the White House proposes a tax on oil company profits as a way to stop . . . let me quote . . . “despicable price gouging and exploitation.” Any suggestions?”
VP Sales: “Sir, I don’t understand. How does raising taxes on our company help consumers at the pump?”
VP Diversity: “Higher taxes raise money to give to women, trans, and persons of color.”
VP Human Resources: “We could cut employees’ salaries, bring down our cost, reduce the price of gas at the pump?”
VP Finance: “Wouldn’t help. ‘Profits’ are what’s leftover after paying salaries, we’d still be taxed.”
VP Labor Relations: “The union wants wage increases. That would reduce our profits, right? Pay less taxes?”
VP Finance: “Yes, but profits are how we pay dividends to stockholders. Eliminate the profits and our stock price falls, including the value of all our stock options.”
-silence-
CEO: “We can’t cut costs, we can’t increase costs, we need a creative solution. Think people, think. Say, is there any more coffee? You there, I’m afraid I don’t know your name. More coffee?”
New Hire Secretary: “Yessir, right away. Um, sir?”
CEO: “Yes?”
New Hire Secretary: “Couldn’t you just pass along the new taxes to the customer? I mean, so the price of gas goes up, so what? What are people going to do, sell their cars and buy electric?”
CEO: “Meeting adjourned. You, miss, come with me. And bring that coffee, we have a lot to talk about.”
Joe Doakes
Not quite “ripped from the headlines “. Or… Is it?
Three years ago, an employee who wanted to work remotely was routinely denied. All employees must come to the office. For the last two years, an employee who wanted to come to the office was routinely denied. All employees must work remotely. Today, the business magazines are full of articles on The Lessons of Covid. How can remote work increase employee satisfaction while trimming business cost? What has management learned?
Nothing. Management has decided all employees in our office are “hybrid” employees meaning we must come into the office AND we must work from home. Why? It’s the worst of both worlds. I waste expensive gas and contribute to global warming while commuting plus I maintain a home office at my expense to subsidize my employer’s operations. Why not one or the other?
Ahhhh, the true answer is revealed by the survey asking how many days per week I want to commute. The true answer is some people might be working remotely from Florida and allowing them to work remotely from out-of-state wouldn’t be fair. Oh? What about employees who live in Hudson? Prescott? Mason City? Where’s the cut-off line? There is no cut-off line. You just have to come in two days per week, which makes it uncomfortable enough to work from far away.
It’s not about productivity, morale, efficiency, or customer service. It’s about waaaaah, it’s not Fair, I don’t Get To, waaaaah! Lessons of Covid? We don’t need no stinking lessons, we’re management. We do what we want.
Joe Doakes
Some companies have painted themselves into corners; unable to find employees locally to replace people lost “the great resignation “, they recruited remotely, far and wide.
Last year, I was admonished to “Fight for Fifteen.” Okay, but inflation is running around 10%. Fifteen doesn’t buy what it used to. Shouldn’t we update the slogan?
“Fight for Sixteen-and-a-half” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Maybe round it up a bit, get ahead of the game in case Lesko Brandon’s anti-inflation program takes a while to kick in?
“Seventeen or Fight!”
“Aching for Eighteen!”
“Nineteen or Nothing!”
“Give me Twenty or Give me Death!”
Joe Doakes
I mean, after a year of 8% inflation, 15 is suddenly worth about 13…
I’m not sure that the Biden administration, like the Obama administration before it, is undertaking multigenerational effort to destroy this nations “red” heartland.
But if they were, I wonder what they would be doing differently?
Suppose you build a better mousetrap and the world beats a path to your door. That’s a good thing, right? Creativity? Progress? Jobs?
No, it’s a public nuisance, all those people driving their cars to your store, tying up traffic, idling engines (which cause global climate change). Cars backed up in the turning lane interfere with bicycles, the ne plus ultra of moral superiority and the highest form of virtue signaling there is.
I’ve had my complaints about Amazon; and I recognize the social and economic threat posed by a single vendor running everybody else out of business; but consider:
I’ve been reading SciFi/Fantasy books my whole life. I just ran across a recommendation for The Chronicles of Prydain, which I’d never heard of. Placed my order for the five-book boxed set ($33) and it’ll be here tomorrow. Wait, what? I stumble across some random collection of young adult books and they’ve got it sitting in the warehouse in Shakopee? How big is that place?
On Friday, I tried out my new Beofung UV-5R handheld ham radio ($25 and yes, I hold a Technician license so it’s legal for me to talk on it). The ham I was chatting with said he could hardly hear me over the background noise. Might be a bad unit, Chinese junk, it happens. I went to Amazon to order a second unit – keep the one that works, return the other. Okay, it’ll be there in five hours. Wait, what? I realize it’s the most popular ham radio in the world so of course they have it in the warehouse, but if I order in the next 20 minutes it’ll be delivered to my doorstep tonight? For free? How many delivery drivers does Amazon have?
I saved a trip to Barnes and Noble (which probably would have been wasted because their SF/F section is only five shelves out of the entire store), and saved a trip to the Ham Radio Outlet in Milwaukee (last Twin Cities store closed two years ago), paid the same prices as I’d have paid brick-and-mortar stores and got free delivery to my doorstep faster than I could have driven to the store and back.
Retail has changed over time. The pioneers bought whatever limited selection of goods was stocked in the local General Store because they had no choice. Later, they ordered from the Sears catalogue for greater selection and department stores drove the mom-and-pop stores out of business. Now Amazon’s wider selection and faster delivery has driven Sears out of business. There’s a reason Amazon is taking over the retail world. And you know what? I’m surprisingly okay with it. What I want to know is . . . what’s next?
There is a massive effort by the Lesko Brandon administration to paint the situation in Ukraine as black-and-white, endlessly trumpeted in the mainstream media and vigorously enforced by suppressing opposing viewpoints on social media (while selectively suspending their own rules against ‘violence’ to promote ‘Kill Putin’ posts). There’s never a measured analysis, a weighing of costs versus benefits, an explanation of Why and How which rational minds could use to decide Why Not and How Not.
I reminds me of the massive effort by the Democrats to paint the Afghan retreat as black-and-white; the vaccine situation as black-and-white; the Covid virus as black-and-white; St. George of Fentanyl as black-and-white (okay, that one actually was black-and-white, but not in the way I mean). Every Democrat disaster is a morality play with Democrats as Good and everyone else as Evil and no middle ground for compromise.
But real life is rarely black-and-white. Eventually, the truth leaks out. There is significant evidence Covid was simply a bad flu made deadly not but nature, but by the political response. There is significant evidence the election was not fortified against being stolen, it was stolen and the evidence fortified against being found. There is significant evidence the vaccine is not without risk, Ukraine is not without fault, the Afghan bug-out was not without consequence. Eventually, people figure out they’ve been lied to, by politicians of course (which we expect) but also by media talking heads (which we expect on THOSE channels but not on ours) and even by our own doctors (which we did not expect at all).
So why do they do it?
Do they seriously think we’re going to believe the price of gas is due to Putin’s acts in February, when the price of gas has been going up for months?
Do they seriously think we’re going to believe more dollars chasing fewer goods hasn’t caused inflation, when we’ve been seeing grocery prices rise all year?
Do they seriously think we’re going to believe de-funding the police had nothing to do with rampaging carjackers and record-breaking shootings?
How stupid do they think we are?
Joe Doakes
As I’ve been maintaining for years: it’s not how stupid they think we are, it’s how stupid they are counting on us being.
Building permits in Saint Paul are off 80% since “rent control” passed:
The rent control ordinance passed in St. Paul last November is having exactly the consequences that were predicted before it was passed. If you set a price below a market price, you increase demand relative to supply, worsening the very shortages the price control was meant to fix.
With three months of data on the books since the passage of the rent control measure in November, results are rather grim for anyone hoping for new apartment buildings in St. Paul. Compared to the same period during the previous year, multifamily building permits are down over 80 percent. Meanwhile, in Minneapolis overall construction is up as the economy has rebounded.
And it’s worse than that. Landlords are jacking up rents, fast, because they know that with inflation gutting the rest of their budgets, they’re not going to get another chance.
And yet the rent control advocates – highly schooled but uneducated drones that they are – still say this is about making housing affordable.
The price of oil is skyrocketing – It’s been rising since long before the war in Ukraine, although the war has certainly accelerated things (counter to Democrat propaganda):
We could fix this, by moving the permitting process along to allow more wells in the United States to start drilling.
But the environmentalist that help control the Democrat Party won’t have that; more expensive gas drives down the price of driving, and forces people into electric cars, A long-term goal of bagel left.
The CVS store that has served for the past few decades as one of the anchors of the MIdway’s “main street”, at Snelling and University (but for seven months after the George Floyd riots, of course, where it stood boarded up, a monument to the perfidy of the metro DFL) is closing in a couple of weeks.
A friend of the blog emails:
CVS is keeping the store in a residential neighborhood on Fairview open, but not the one on a busy urban corner next to transit and a “world class” soccer stadium? Why would they ever not want to do business there? We’ve been told over and over again how precious that real estate is, how the train and the stadium were going to be a boon. http://www.twincities.com/2022/03/09/longstanding-st-paul-cvs-at-snelling-and-university-to-close-at-the-end-of-the-month/
Perhaps boon is in the eye of the beholder- it certainly has been a boon for vagrancy, crime, and vacant lots. I shouldn’t assume that that wasn’t the goal.
Expect apologists for the Carter, Walz and Biden administrations to claim “It’s not our fault! Look at this:”.
In mid-November, the Rhode Island-based pharmacy chain announced a major realignment of its national retail footprint, with a heavy focus on consolidating retail locations operating in close proximity to each other. The closures amount to 300 stores per year for the next three years.
Of course, the fact that that location is in an increasingly crime-ridden area, and has a record of being looted from wall to wall, couldn’t have possibly.affected the decision to close this store, rather than the one in Mac-Groveland, Crocus Hill, the Target on Uni, or the two at the University of Minnesota, nosirreebob.
During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Biden said the key to controlling inflation is for businesses to “control costshttps://”:for businesses to “control costs”
“We have a choice. One way to fight inflation is to drive down wages and make Americans poorer. I think I have a better idea to fight inflation: Lower your costs, not your wages. Make more cars and semiconductors in America. More infrastructure and innovation in America.”
No word if the department of labor has reclassified “wages“ as “not a cost“ yet.
I will await Paul Krugman‘s word on the costs thst can be lowered by CEO degree.
One minor shout-out to former Minnesapolis mayor R.T. Rybak; to date, he is the only DFL politician to come on the Northern Alliance. We had a great discussion. You don’t have to throw plates at each other to have a good debate.
But you can sure throw facts at each other:
With downtown Minneapolis office workers coming back faster than restaurants are reopening, lunchtime lines form outside most popular. Hey restaurants: Time to reopen…customers are waiting
I mean, if one has never worked in the private sector, one might think re-opening a long-closed restaurant is a matter of unlocking the doors, logging into the stove and getting avocado onto toast.
Not about getting food in stock, even without supply chain problems, or getting staff to come to a downtown that’s gotten very human-unfriendly, on top of expensive to park in and tangibly less pleasant to take the bus or train to, when employment options in much more amenable, affordable places are also available.
And there’s a real sense – at least, among people who pay attention to the DFL – that the current relaxation of Covid hypochondria is tied mostly to mid-term polling ,and when the “gnu” or “omega” variants come out in mid-November everything will get shut down in yet another frothing, unproductive, business-shredding panic, leaving those “Re-opened” restaurants giving their food away so it doesn’t rot in the freezer. Again.
Remember my picture from two months ago, complaining the price which had been 2 for $6, had jumped to 2 for $8? It’s up again. Two for $9. But don’t worry, the Lesko Brandon Administration has assured me there is no inflation.
I know what you’re thinking, the earlier picture was from Cub and this one is from HyVee. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. Correct. Because HyVee has it, but Cub does not. Cub has been out of stock for weeks. Which is not a supply chain issue; the Lesko Brandon Administration assures me there are no ships waiting to unload in port, the supply chain problems have been solved. There can be only one explanation: this is obvious price gouging by greedy corporations in the lucrative retail grocery industry. Senator Warren, are you listening? Joe Doakes
Somewhere in the Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia, Gus Tostito is rolling in ill-gotten gains, lighting his cigars with $100 bills.
Americans are the world’s greatest innovators, right? We come up with all the clever new ideas, then other nations copy us.
Except . . . not lately. Remember the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973? The price of gas doubled, if you could even buy it (purchases were rationed). American carmakers were building V-8 Impalas and Chargers when consumers wanted 4-cylinder Civics and Corollas. And nobody wanted a Nova, Pinto, or Pacer, ever. At one point, it was cheaper to dig iron ore from Minnesota, ship it through the Great Lakes to the Atlantic, then through the Panama Canal to Japan to be made into steel which was turned into an automobile to be sent by ship back to the US and carried by rail to Minnesota for sale . . . cheaper than a car built right here in America. American car makers got hit so hard President Reagan had to impose ‘voluntary” import quotas to save the industry. The innovation in automotive design and manufacturing came from abroad, not from at home.
I enjoy flying very small airplanes (Light Sport category, total aircraft weight under 650 lbs, smaller than a Cessna 152). I’d love to have one but surveying the used airplane market is eye-opening, and not just in price. The 162 Skycatcher never caught on and is all but orphaned now, they’re practically giving them away and for good reason – nobody wants one. The real innovations in light sport aircraft are coming from Europe: Germany (Remos and Flight Design), the Czech Republic (Aerotrek, Aeroprakt, Bristell, Evektor, Czech Sport), Slovenia (Pipistril), and Italy (Tecnam). My last airplane had an Ivo prop (go read his life story on the company website, it’s amazing). Even South Africa (Sling) and Australia (Jabiru) are in the game. Sure, there are American light sport airplane makers but the big names aren’t ours, the big sales aren’t ours, the innovation and enthusiasm aren’t ours. Why not?
Some people argue it’s because the FAA regulations are stupid (they are, but that’s nothing new). I wonder if there’s something else going on. Why has America lost the innovation lead? What happened to our entrepreneurs? Was President Obama correct to say, “You didn’t build that?” What happened to us?
Joe Doakes
Possible guesses:
Americans are too addicted to entertainment to innvovate
Regulations – FAA or whatever – really are stifling innovation
Democrats have succeeded in raising a generation with no ambition whatsoever.
One of the brilliant concepts of federalism as envisioned by the Founders, was the notion that various states could experiment with local solutions to local problems. The federal government would get involved only when necessary to mediate between the states.
People are still taking off their shoes and belts to go through the scanner at the airport. Why? Is there seriously a grave risk to air safety posed by shoe bombers and belt buckle assailants? Why not try an experiment?
Airline A will revert back to the security measures in effect in 2000. Passengers must sign a security waiver to fly, but their tickets are $10 cheaper and they bypass the security line so they can arrive at the airport 10 minutes before boarding instead of 2-3 hours early.
How many people will choose Airline A? How many air disasters will Airline A suffer? How long before Airlines B, C, D all clamor to be part of the plan?
Joe Doakes
It’s a trick question.
All questions involving the expansion of liberty wind up being trick questions, these days.
The article implies the reason for the nursing shortage is that American nurses are tired from working so hard taking care of Covid patients. They’re quitting in exhaustion. Apparently, they will never recover, never return to work, therefore we must replace them with nurses brought in from overseas. Foreign nurses are much more durable, more resilient, I guess. They aren’t quitters. They’re willing to work.
Who believes this rot?
If we’re worried about a nurse staffing shortage, maybe we shouldn’t be firing nurses during a pandemic for violating a vaccine mandate? Particularly not over a vaccine which doesn’t prevent the spread of an illness which is basically just a bad flu. Another example of the endless lack of Second Order Thinking in the Brandon administration.
Joe Doakes
Why, yes – it does seem a little bit like the right hand doesn’t know what stories the left-hand is telling.
This is the first worthwhile analysis of supply chain disruptions I’ve found. It’s worthwhile because it doesn’t focus on one tree (ships in port) but on the whole forest of supply chain issues, particularly the consequences of the abrupt shift in consumption due to Covid regulations. It’s another example of Second Order thinking.
Remember last year when Cub had no toilet paper? That’s because toilet paper in the office restroom is single-ply industrial grade on a huge roll, but toilet paper at home is two-ply softer grade. Toilet paper manufacturers know the normal office-versus-at-home percentages but when everybody shifted from working at the office to working at home, manufacturers weren’t prepared to instantly shift percentages and weren’t thrilled at incurring the expense because nobody knew how long lockdowns would last so they couldn’t calculate whether the shift would be worth the cost. It took months for the industry to catch up.
Everything in the supply chain works that way, including food. The author claims that pre-pandemic, 60% of all food in the US was eaten outside the home, at school and restaurants. How much during the lockdowns? Consider the consequence of shifting tomato sauce from Costco sized cans into Cub sized jars, if you can even obtain that many Cub sized jars because they’re made in Mexico where workers are quarantined for their own government’s lockdowns and the few jars they do make are shipped on boats sitting in ports waiting to unload containers.
The people who thought they could lock down the economy without consequences are the same people who figure they can shut down electric generating plants without consequences. There will always be toilet paper on the shelves and the lights will always come on when you flip the switch, right? They never seriously ask, “What could go wrong?” because they are too busy signaling their virtue to engage in second order thinking.
Joe Doakes
In the “progressive“ world, everything but political science is, in a practical sense, hypothetical.
It exhibits exactly pretty much what you think it well:
With a unique insight into the risky business of innovation, the ‘Museum of Failure’ aims to inspire and stimulate productive discussion about learning through our blunders. Everyone falls, but what’s most important is knowing how to get back up!
If it doesn’t have three generations of attempt to sell purses and skirts to men – which pops up every 15 years or so – a question the curators commitment to the subject.
Apologists for the Lesko Brandon administration insist inflation is mild and getting better. Except I know for a fact these jars were 2 for $6 last Summer, I buy it all the time, it’s a family favorite. I noticed when the price went to 2 for $7 (if you could find them on the shelf at all) and now it’s jumped again.
That’s a 25% price hike in six months. Okay, chip dip is not a necessity, I could lower my standard of living to get by without it. But it’s pretty good anecdotal evidence that the state of the economy is not what Progressives claim it is. And this is the kind of evidence ordinary people pay attention to. It’s going to be an issue for the election. Democrats are going to need a LOT more fake ballots to maintain control.
I’ll know Democrats are truly in a panic when Senator Warren pivots from breaking up the Big Meat monopoly to the Big Snack monopoly. Frito-Lay, your days are numbered.
