iPandora

Two years ago my wife and I purchased an HP tx2500cto laptop. tx2500 was the HP touchscreen notebook/tablet pc, cto means I had it customized to my specifications.

Heavy and a little awkward looking, it still performed well. Microsoft’s OneNote was a real champ, accepting input when the screen was flipped and folded using the pen to write notes and then transcribe those notes into text.

Problems were than it has an AMD processor which meant lots of heat and sometimes sluggish performance despite it’s 2+ Gigahertz processor speed.

This laptop worked well enough the first year, serving my wife through her last semester of college (before pregnancy put the kibosh on that) and then serving as her workhorse and work computer.

August last year brought some odd problems. The touch interface began developing peculiarities. Odd, random, and infrequent issues. Odd, random, and infrequent spells the technologists nightmare as problems that cannot be duplicated cannot be predicted, and problems that cannot be predicted cannot be diagnosed, and problems that cannot be diagnosed cannot be resolved. Good thing we’d purchased a 3 year warranty.

Note on warranties: ain’t worth the paper their printed on for most people. If you’re good at not breaking things, laptop warranties are one of the few warranties I’ll recommend. With any desktop computer, the cost of a repair is usually a component less than $100. And most of the time it’s a lot less than $100. With laptops, you can’t get components. And even if you could, the laptop computer generally crams every last component directly on the mainboard as chips, and if you need to replace the “soundcard” on a laptop, you’ll be replacing the mainboard. If you need to repair the 56k modem that ancient historians are starting to recognize, you’ll be replacing the mainboard. If the network adapter fails or the video card, yup, you got it, you’re replacing the mainboard.

So, call HP, convince the 1st level repair person operating out of India or Bangladesh that I’ve already completed his script and that this issue takes more than his ability. Convince his manager of the same fact. And get a ticket escalated to the case managers.

At HP, the case managers control the actual repair. They’re usually US based and quite technically competent themselves. My case manager sent a box that included fast FedEx shipping to their repair center. The computer was back within 4 days working great. They’d replaced the mainboard, the screen, memory and a few other things. About the only things they hadn’t replaced was the external case of the unit.

Excellent. I was happy. The wife was happy. There’s a reason HP gets high rankings in support. This is it.

So, winter rolls around and the hard drive fails. Easy fix. I call HP, convince the first level I’ve already done his work. Convince his manager of the same. Get a replacement hard drive shipped out. Replace it, make sure it works, and ship the faulty unit back.

Fair enough. Laptop hard drives tend to be the part that fails the most frequently. A hard disk (at least the common kind) has glass or ceramic platters spinning at between 5,400 and 10,000 rpm whenever the computer is on. And over those platters, at a distance only a small fraction of the width of a human hair, are magnetic reader heads not too unlike old record players had. Except instead of diamonds running through grooves, this is a magnet reading magnetic polarity of individual bits on the disk.

A jostle or shake can cause those heads to contact the platters themselves, and when that happens, no matter how slight the touch, physical damage occurs on the hard drive.

Computer manufacturers will not fault you for physical damage on the platter, because to get at the platter they’d have to destroy the drive. Relatively few companies can actually open hard drives without damaging them. They will fault you for obvious trauma to the computer itself.

So it’s a fact that hard drives on laptops, which get carried around and generally suffer much more abuse than their desk-dwelling bigger brethren, have a relatively short lifespan.

But when the second drive failed in just a couple months, I was beginning to get concerned.

As part of that communication with HP I asked what the standards were regarding replacement of the system. They informed me that 3 repairs was the general rule and if the laptop failed again I’d be getting a replacement.

Ok, not bad, I thought.

Cue July this year. Grace mentions the laptop screen has been going blank at times and the only way to get it to come back is to turn the unit off with a hard shut off and then power it back on. Grace is no technologist, but she’s been married to me for a couple years and so she’s no slouch either.

It’s not happening when I’m around and it’s not happening frequently enough to warrant much concern. Just a fair warning to steel myself for the inevitable confrontation with HP. Though, I was a little jazzed at the opportunity to get a replacement system out of this.

We took the laptop on vacation with us, as the card reader on my 6 year old laptop hasn’t worked in eons and we’d need to empty our memory cards several times considering we shoot raw images with the camera.

Towards the end of vacation the memory card reader wasn’t working so well. It may have been software, it may have been hardware. I’ll never know. I’d planned on reinstalling Windows 7 to complete the 1st level support script and in the off chance this was all a drivers and service issue.

Meanwhile, I’d seen the black screen now a couple times and the systems also started deciding it didn’t like to power on every other time we asked it to. All the indicator lights would come up, but the screen stayed blank. Sometimes the system would shut itself off after a few seconds, sometimes it would stay in limbo like that until we shut it off.

So, we get home in late August and the next evening I back up the system and begin installing the operating system.

Or at least I tried.

The system shut itself down after ever shortening intervals of running. I’d try booting from the OS disk and installing clean, the system would shut down. I’d load into windows and initiate the install from inside windows, the computer would power itself off. I opened the BIOS and watched it, and the system shut off.

Ok, definite hardware issues here. This is something for HP, not me.

So, commence the fateful call.

1st level is convinced rather quickly that I’ve already completed his script and as he looks back at the support records for this computer, confirms they will definitely be considering replacement this time. 1st level manager does the same and attempts to connect me to the Case Managers. The call reverts back to 1st level. Woops. Another round of convincing, this time that I’d just called. But once again, he’s convinced quickly and takes initiative to find out whats going on. Oh, Case Managers work US hours and close at 10pm. It was around 10:05 when the first person tried transferring me. Frustrating but understandable. It’s bedtime anyways.

Next day I call and find my Case Manager is Oscar. He once again has me describe the issue. This is a problem but necessary when you’re dealing with technologically unsavvy 1st level. The problem descriptions can be confusing at best and one must always confirm issues and, optimally, hear from the customer’s own mouth the problem description before dispatching support.

However, Oscar says that because I’d repaired the unit myself twice (the hard drive episodes), that only counted as one actual HP repair and therefore the system didn’t qualify for replacement. Repair, yes. Replacement, no.

Oh, that got my goat! Because I’d been technically proficient and interested in getting the system done more quickly than they could, because I’d saved them time and money, I was being shunted to second-rate service. I was not going to lie down and accept that.

The next day I called back and learned it wasn’t actually because I’d done the repairs myself, it was because there had only been 2 repairs in the last year. Which is technically true. The first repair occurred around August 17th or so of 2009, and it was August 25th of 2010 when I opened this service call. Though the issues had begun well before then I wasn’t going to call while on vacation or when the issue was just the system going dark once a week or less.

But now I’d been told two different things. This was not going well and I was getting frustrated.

Oscar wasn’t budging though. Regardless of his reasoning, he wasn’t going to submit an order requesting a replacement.

I tried to pin down a policy, but Oscar said over and over there is no policy regarding replacement. There is a group that evaluates all repair orders that he has to submit the request to, and he told me they would not accept a replacement order which did not meet criteria which I could not get them to lay down.

Oscar did say that if the repair failed to resolve the issue the unit would be replaced and he was very firm in that statement. However, when I asked that he put in writing that any failure not attributable to physical damage by myself would qualify this system for replacement, he would not. He’d email me something to that affect, but nothing in writing.

I asked to speak with his managers or someone higher up the chain and he informed me he was the highest link in the chain.

So, from Oscar I learned there is no official policy regarding replacement but for sure a replacement would not be approved. I learned that it might be because I repaired the system myself and it might be because the there weren’t four failures in a single year, either way I wasn’t getting a replacement.

So I sent an email using the HP corporate contact form on their website detailing my concerns and request. Pat called me back and said they would refer me to my Case Manager who already owned the issue. Great help, Pat. If I was getting service from the Case Manager why would I try and contact you?

Friday afternoon Oscar says there’s nobody higher than him for me to talk to, but he can offer a second opinion. So he puts me on hold long enough to give the talking points to another Case Manager who I then describe the issue and my concerns to. After a bit of verbal sparring he concedes that if he told me what I informed him Oscar had told me, he’d give me a replacement. But then we end the call without my going back to Oscar. Oscar is on break. Or his shift is over. I work until 5:30pm and then take a noisy train home. A Case Manager who is only available until 6pm doesn’t work for me.

Which brings us to today. I talked with Oscar again. After informing him what the second opinion told me, he read the notes and did not see any such thing. He reiterated all his talking points a few more times, refusing to budge. Even when I asked that he simply submit the request for replacement to the people who determined those things and let the chips fall where they may. Not an option, he says.  But I can tell he’s becoming frustrated. Poor man, I’ve been hounding him for 4 days.

He puts me on hold and finds someone higher than himself for me to talk to. An Executive Case Manager who has such a bad case of the muffles that I don’t catch his name.

But that shows that Oscar was inaccurate in his statements over the previous days that there wasn’t anybody else higher up for me to talk to.

So, lets recap. Back in April a tech informed me I’d be getting replacement next service. No mention that it had to occur within a year of three other services or that my having performed the actual physical repair for the 2nd and 3rd service would cause any problems. That was apparently a misstatement.

August, it was either my having performed 2 of the actual services, or that it was just outside a year from the very 1st service, but there wasn’t an official policy, just some accounting trolls who’d burp fire in the face of any plucky Case Manager who tried getting a replacement. But it’s not official policy. Get that? It’s not written down anywhere.

Second opinions are pretty much more of the same, but what they tell you verbally and what they write down in the notes are two different things. Note to self, I need to be using this Google Voice call record system at little more.

Now, there’s nobody higher than Case Manager I can talk to. But wait, there is after all. Executive Case Manager points out the warranty I paid for is a repair warranty, not a replacement warranty and that he’s sorry I felt I’d been misinformed and he’s sorry I am not satisfied with replacement, but nothing’s written except repair and there’s nothing else to do.

So, that’s how HP lost me. Which sucks. Their hardware is right, their price is right, even their support is right, so long as you aren’t trying to get something significant out of them.

For 90% of the time, HP works. But for that 10% that really needs above and beyond service? No can do.

Seared on the minds of the American psyche like permanent light etchings on metal from the blast of an atomic bomb is the horror that was our annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an ultimately successful attempt to strike the final death-blow to the god-complex surrounding the Japanese Prime Minister necessary to end World War 2.

With these two ominous mushroom clouds forever hanging in our collective memory, it is easy to forget that is history now and Hiroshima and Nagasaki might not be what we Americans expect them to be.

And conversely, in our hotbed of industrialization and commercialization and progress, it is easy to forget that those places the government has lavished substantial attention on may not be the paradises we envision they ought to be.

First, there is the cloud we all know so well. That evidence of ultimate destruction, the mushroom cloud. But where we see this eternal spectre, the enterprising Japanese, freed from their oppressive military/industrial complex serving the whims of sycophantic minions of the Emperor-god Hirohito, have turned a thousand-year wasteland into this:

Where is that man-made desert of radioactive fallout we’d expect? Not here apparently.

Compare that thriving scene with this image that is becoming all too common in that cesspool of government largesse, Detroit:

Depressed is a charitable description.

Maybe we should drop a few more A-bombs?

Just kidding. And honestly, the Japanese government tends to be significantly more meddlesome on average and for a longer time than the US government. But when you look at the wasteland and tragedy that once was this shining city of American ability and pride, the automobile capital of the world, that is now an also-ran laughing stock for most and a hell-hole and increasingly decrepit pit for many of those unfortunate enough to live there, there really is little comparison between this place that ought to be surging and that place, which we generally write off in our mind’s eye.

This is an interesting video. It contextualizes the clips that first aired last week starting the whole hullabaloo and getting Ms. Sherrod fired. And yet the first part of the whole cut (it begins about halfway through this particular video) shows what a friend of mine calls a “racialist” perspective. Not that she is hatefully prejudiced against or for blacks, but that a large part of her perspective is defined and driven by a racial interpretation.

Being a classic WASP I very readily admit I don’t understand that the black American must encounter as a significant part of their existence. However, I’m sure the truth lies somewhere in the middle of the two extreme camps that tend to frame the issue.

I believe two things particularly relevant to this subject: One, that the right of people to peaceably assemble is a sacred right that shall not be infringed in any way, no matter if they assemble in groups based on religion, interest, status, race, or color. And two, while there ought to be no law in any way infringing the aforementioned sacred right, groups that exist for any particular group to the detriment of any other group, if any or either of those groups are defined by race or color, are racialist and do not, generally speaking, contribute to the bringing about of the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Chicago has enjoyed the dubious distinction of having one of the worst United States Postal Service systems. And you wanna know what the Postmaster General had to say about it?

US Postmaster General Jack Potter, responding in 2007 to findings that Chicago’s USPS had the worst reliability records said…

…that some managers created the problem by cutting costs.

“They obviously had expectations that were beyond what they were able to achieve and as a result we saw a decline in service performance,” Potter said.

Union leaders representing mail clerks and carriers said the cuts have created an environment in which managers put a lot of pressure on them.

This may well be an out of context quote taken by CBS2 to show their preferred view on the story. But I don’t think that is too likely.

The lack of business sense is appalling, though coming from someone who has worked in the money hole that is the USPS since the ’70′s, it’s not that surprising.

The two main points of the article are that cutting costs necessarily hurts efficiency and effectiveness and that unions and unionized employees don’t like an environment where they’re pressured to work.

Successful businesses require profitability. Profit is achieved by cutting costs, raising productivity, and otherwise adjusting the variants you have control of to maximize the return for any investment.

To dismiss, out of hand, one of the primary methods of improving profitability is to have bought into the idea that any problem can be surmounted if you simply throw enough money, real or imagined, at it. An idea all to prevalent in government.

Regarding workers experiencing a pressure to work, yes, there can be inordinate expectation to go beyond what is reasonable. Many businesses have environments that encourage, rather strongly, overtime and weekends and hours beyond the normal and already codified restrictions. But laws already exist that protect workers’ 8-hr day and 5-day work week. Reasonably safe work environments are already required and discrimination is illegal as well. So what’s this kvetching over feeling pressure to work?

Government-union collusion is one of many things that must end in order to starve and shrink the government back to reasonable and helpful levels. Unions know they’ve already extended their requests beyond the reasonable and admirable into the insane and obscene, and they know the best way to ensure their own survival is to give loads of money to people who can legislate their life-support.

Be careful, those who can legislate can also legislate. And what is given can be taken away.

Jack Potter ought to be required to work in the real world, starting with flipping burgers at McDonalds, and then being a middle manager who is required to actually show something for all his effort. Then, and only then, should he be welcome back at the head of the USPS.

And the unions? They should innovate somewhere besides DC.

Elena Kagan in concert with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists fudges the facts regarding partial birth abortion to support her employer, then President Clinton.

Climatologists fear those with differing viewpoints so much they nudge numbers and massage facts, not substantially, but just enough, and very carefully control who gets access to their data.

A study finds children raised by adults living in homosexual relationships turn out OK, and then it turns out the study was run by a militant lesbian and contained unrepresentative samples that could not be construed in any way to represent a reasonable portrait of the general population.

I think it’s about time we set the 19th century idea of scientific infallibility to rest. It’s been dead a long time and the corpse is starting to stink.

Fourteen years ago, to protect President Clinton’s position on partial-birth abortions, Elena Kagan doctored a statement by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Conservatives think this should disqualify her from the Supreme Court. They understate the scandal. It isn’t Kagan we should worry about. It’s the whole judiciary.Kagan, who was then an associate White House counsel, was doing her job: advancing the president’s interests. The real culprit was ACOG, which adopted Kagan’s spin without acknowledgment. But the larger problem is the credence subsequently given to ACOG’s statement by courts, including the Supreme Court. Judges have put too much faith in statements from scientific organizations. This credulity must stop.

The problem with science is the problem with religion is the problem with corporations is the problem with the poor: we’re all merely human. We’re incapable of unbiased action or thought, no matter how carefully we try.

As conservative talk show host Michael Medved says, he admits he’s biased and is up front about it. No one can talk with him and not be aware of where he is coming from. And it is precisely this honesty, this up-frontness about his perspective that means you can learn the truth from him. It’s not that conservatives always tell the truth and liberals always don’t, it’s that when you know someone’s perspective and know they are not trying to obfuscate, you can see how their story fits into the bigger picture of Truth.

Compare the unabashedly conservative hosts on the Fox News channel. No one expects them not to be conservative (and even the liberals there trumpet the fact) and therefore, because there is no guise of infallibility or ruse of absolute even-handedness, they are the most watched news network, and the fastest growing too.

CNN pretends to be totally unbiased, and thus tip their hand. MSNBC proves everything.

I don’t care where you come from nearly as much as I care that you’re up front about it.

Being up front about your opinion shows that you respect others to be capable of informed decisions, and it shows you’re not so conceitedly ignorant you’ve convinced yourself you’re the only one right.

Science is made of human observation.The existence of biases in each and every human being means all observations and perceptions are biased as well. To deny the bias it to enhance the bias and the resulting skew in all your resulting data. You may be able to claim the scale cannot lie but you’re still going to interpret the data the way you want.

Science is not the holy pursuit of the epitome of truth, it is the headlong search for rationalization, for proving we’re not wrong.

The sooner we accept that science is just another human endeavor and therefore subject to all the faults and failures and stunning triumphs of all other human endeavors, the sooner we can get on with this crazy little thing called life.

Speecy Spiicy, Hotsy Totsy

American parents tend to feed their children bland foods to avoid potential allergies or just because that’s what Dr Spock or the latest parenting magazine told them. Easy on the stomach, and the poop ain’t so bad.

Parents in other countries tend to feed their infants whatever they are having, and their children experience the full gamut of cultural flavors from very early ages.

And yes, I’m advocating for American parents to be more like foreign parents. Look out the windows, there be pigs in the air!

First, bland doesn’t necessary mean easier for the stomach. Take ginger, for instance. A very sharp and strong flavor, nobody would call it bland. But is the natural and effective remedy for upset stomachs? Ginger. No citations here, just try this: Purchase a bottle of Reed’s Ginger Brew. If you can handle the Extra Strength, get that. Then fast, and when your stomach is most uncomfortable, usually just after the normal time for the next meal, drink the Reed’s. Instant stomach relief.

Second, you’re limiting your child’s future ability to eat and enjoy wide varieties of food, including many foods you and I take for granted.

This article chronicles the embarrassment, the worries, the challenges of being an adult picky eater. One telling comment?

Amber Scott, of Enon, Ohio, has eaten only about 10 different foods since she was 3 years old.

Not that exposing your children, when young, to significant varieties of food will totally preclude such problems, but they would take a significant bite out of them.

The Office

Empty office space keeps rising. This is not a good sign for the economy that is on the mend, according to certain people whose grand plans are fully in swing here. Corporations are using less and less office space, which means they aren’t hiring.

The really scary part?

Job growth and office-space use are closely intertwined. While some major users of offices, such as federal regulatory agencies, have been expanding, big banks and corporations have lagged behind in increasing their real-estate footprint, according to some analysts. That is a sign that these larger companies have been slow to return to their pre-recession staffing levels, a contributing factor to the persistently high U.S. unemployment rate.

Yea, that’s a sure sign of a growing and recovering economy. Regulators are gearing up for more business. Only one problem, regulators business is to keep real businesses out of business.

My Buddy Hugo

The ones really benefiting from the drilling moratorium? National oil companies. That means President Obama’s marxist buddy Hugo Chavez is loving us right now. Was this a quid pro quo? Or was it yet another unintended consequence of a short sighted and dishonestly supported policy? I’d say the latter, but wouldn’t be too surprised at the former.

Oh, and this would be the same Venezuela that just stole oil rigs from US corporations and we heard nary a peep in protest for this thuggish thievery from the government that is supposed to be supporting US interests abroad.

Muhammed In Space

Perhaps a new round of “Let’s Draw Muhammed” is in order. It would probably improve our chances of NASA actually being less irrelevant than it already is going forward.

NASA has apparently been ordered to reach out to Muslim nations in an effort to improve goodwill. And NASA is the right agency for this why?

Former NASA director Michael Griffin says sympathetic nations will be drawn to us when NASA succeeds at great things, not when they’re given an inflatable space shuttle and commemorative plaque.

Griffin said Tuesday that collaboration with other countries, including Muslim nations, is welcome and should be encouraged — but that it would be a mistake to prioritize that over NASA’s “fundamental mission” of space exploration.

“If by doing great things, people are inspired, well then that’s wonderful,” Griffin said. “If you get it in the wrong order … it becomes an empty shell.”

Griffin added: “That is exactly what is in danger of happening.”

And the coup de’ etat?

He also said that while welcome, Muslim-nation cooperation is not vital for U.S. advancements in space exploration.

“There is no technology they have that we need,” Griffin said.

Once again, why is it NASA’s job to reach out to any nation?

I’d draw Muhammed in space alongside the Muppets.

Just A Reminder

Some people still claim that Liberals are the bigger and better givers, both of time and money. They’re wrong. Badly wrong.

People who said they were “very conservative” gave 4.5% of their income to charity, on average; “conservatives” gave 3.6%; “moderates” gave 3%; “liberals” gave 1.5%; and “very liberal” folks gave 1.2%.

And this cannot be explained by religious versus secular giving:

The 2008 data tell us that secular conservatives are now outperforming their secular liberal counterparts. Compare two people who attend religious services less than once per year (or never) and who are also identical in terms of income, education, sex, age and family status — but one is on the political right while the other is on the left. The secular liberal will give, on average, $1,100 less to charity per year than the secular conservative. The conservative charity edge cannot be explained away by gifts to churches.

Or by giving of time versus giving of money:

Q. Monetary giving doesn’t tell us much about total charity, does it? People who don’t give money probably tend to give in other ways instead, right?
A. Wrong. First of all, there is a bright line between people who give and people who don’t give. People who do give time and money tend to give a lot of it. According to the Center on Philanthropy, the percentage of givers donating less than $50 to charity in 2000 was the same as the percentage giving more than $5,000. Similarly, the same percentage of people who only volunteered once volunteered on 36 or more occasions in 2000.

Second, people who give away their time and money to established charities are far more likely than non-givers to act generously in informal ways as well. For example, one nationwide survey from 2002 tells us that monetary donors are nearly three times as likely as non-donors to give money informally to friends and strangers. People who give to charity at least once per year are twice as likely to donate blood as people who don’t give money. They are also significantly more likely to give food or money to a homeless person, or to give up their seat to someone on a bus.

And it is not offset by political giving either:

Perhaps you suspect that the vast political contributions given to the Obama campaign — $742 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, versus $367 million for the McCain campaign — were crowding out charitable giving by the left. But political donations, impressive as they were this year by historical standards, were still miniscule compared to the approximately $300 billion Americans gave charitably in 2008. Adding political and charitable gifts together would not change the overall giving patterns.

Conservatives continue giving more in economically difficult times, decreasing their giving by less than their liberal counterparts:

Economists measure the “income elasticity of giving” to predict how much people change their giving in response to a particular percentage change in their income. It turns out the response in 2008 was dramatically different for left and right. For instance, a 10% decrease in family income for a conservative was associated with a 10% decrease in giving. The same income decrease for a liberal family led to a 16% giving drop. In other words, if this relationship continues to hold, the recession will almost certainly exacerbate the giving differences between left and right.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding: Modern liberal ideas are selfish ideas.

The wife and son and I attended the Taste of Chicago on Saturday. Beautiful hot day with crowds of people and crappy food.

Yes. The Chicago, for all the great food you serve from the myriad restaurants lining your streets, your Taste was garbage.

Note to the Vendors: The purpose of the Taste-size portions is to attract people to your restaurant. You want people to want more.

I didn’t want any more of anything I tried.

The most interesting thing about the cheeseburger was the bun, it was substantial and could’ve supported quite the filling. Too bad all I got for my trouble was a pitifully thin patty and some american “cheese”. Oh, the pickles were OK too.

The Japanese dumpling’s flavors were bland, thankfully the sauce wasn’t. But it was poorly cooked and the filling was an uninteresting lump of some unrecognizable sludge.

The jerk chick with red beans and rice was watery and the flavor had been lost long ago.

I like rubbing shoulder with hot and sweaty and frustrated and happy and all the other people thronging the streets. And it’s highly unlikely anything will change because you’re making some real money at the Taste. But, if you want me to come back every year and not just the years I have someone new to show the Chicago way of doing things (poorly), I suggest you act like you care about the food you put out.

Read this short article first “Shrek and SpongeBob have superpowers over your kid’s food choices”.

Given that this article is a summary of articles in three major news outlets, and given the subject matter and tone, how long do you think it’ll be before we’ll hear cries for the regulating of food packaging a la Joe Camel?

Especially with a First Lady adopting childhood obesity as her pet project, (absolutely nothing against that) the fact that based on current trends, this First Lady’s pet project will be a bit more popular with pop culture than previous First Lady’s projects and more likely to be based on the actions of government than the actions of individuals.

It’s the parent’s responsibility to teach their children healthy eating habits and to purchase food not based what is on the label but what is inside.

It’s the parent’s responsibility that children learn self-control and not Barney-control or SpongeBob-control (perish the thought!). It’s the parent’s responsibility, and parents are entirely capable as well.

Sure, those kids seem to figure out all too quickly the exact buttons to press to get mom and dad to cave in to their whim. The hardest thing in parenting has to be the consistency, the strength to make no mean no.

You won’t damage little psyches if you don’t get them Shrek Twinkies with green filling. There will be no lasting harm from failing to buy those cookies or crackers SpongeBob vouches for. The only harm will come if you do give in and the children learn you don’t mean no when you say no and they’ll fail to learn self-control and obedience.

Allan Meltzer calls it like it is with the sub head on this article:

Why Obamanomics Has Failed
Uncertainty about future taxes and regulation is enemy No. 1 of economic growth

Let us put our minds together and imagine for a moment, a world in which we ran businesses.

We must buy and sell and add value. We must hire and employ and sometimes even fire. We must take what we have and mix all the depths of our creativity along with every ounce of our passion and most of our effort and life into the raw materials of labor and goods to develop a product. And then we must sell that product for more than it cost us to make it.

Let us say we’ve found that point at which enough people who want it can afford it. That’s something we learned in economics years ago in college when our professors went gaga for a whole semester over these two curved lines and we spent the whole semester trying to figure out where they met.

And we’ve controlled out costs until they are just below that point where the curves of cost and demand meet. That is called a profit. We’re a small outfit and don’t spend too much effort on innovation except to encourage it when and where we can. And so with our costs mostly flat, we can’t really increase the quality or complexity of the product without making it more expensive, which would take us out of that sweet spot in pricing and we’d lose customers as a result.

This is where many small businesses are. This is also where many medium and even a few large businesses are. In fact, most companies who employ most of the people and shuffle the most money around most efficiently are in this boat, right alongside us.

Most businesses don’t operate from malicious greed, despite what Hollywood and the popular culture will try to get us to believe. Most businesses operate with the understand that they can only make money so long as they are making  sufficient numbers of other people sufficiently happy.

Some people don’t get this.

Most professors outside of business school don’t get this. And many professors inside business school don’t either. It’s a curse of our amazing educational system that it has attracted and nurtured minds that are as closed to facts of life as any that walk this earth and still remain sentient.

Most people who get into politics and become successful at it are the same, though they are for a different reason.

You get what you ask for and what you deserve. And because many people in America, average Joes and Janes alike, do not get this, politicians take what is called a populist stance, and become whatever they must in order to win a few more votes.

Sock it to ‘em, the little man says on the corner. And the big Man, because he wants to keep that little man needing him and thus voting for him, echoes the cry. But when the big Man speaks, things may actually happen.

Regulation, taxation, “fair shares” and “spreading the wealth” all sound so very good to those of us living on the dole or spending too much time gazing up the tall ladder above us filled with so many other people and wishing there were an easier way than taking it one step at a time.

In hopes of making it easier to climb the ladder, and perhaps out of a little jealousy at those who have gotten higher on the ladder than you or I, we subscribe to the notion that the government ought to be the arbiter of the “fair share”, the decider of “enough”. Actually, it’s mostly out of jealousy. We don’t want to climb the ladder, we’re content in our squalor and mediocrity. We just want everybody else to roll in the same mud we are.

So there is the promise of taxation and regulation, making it harder and more expensive to make those products and to deliver those services than it was before. We hope that the extra taxes and regulation will fill the government purses and that we’ll benefit from the largesse, but we’re not expecting to buy a new house based on the unearned raise.

Or maybe we are.

The problem is, instead of helping everybody up the ladder, taxation and regulation only chop the ladder a little shorter. Sure, you’re nearer the top, but only because the top was lowered, not because you’re any higher.

So that company we’re each running in our heads right now, it has the costs balanced carefully with the price to hit that sweet spot where we can attract the most people possible. But now you have to task Sally and Harriet and Jim and Larry to filling out these forms and making sure these reports are run. Why? Because the government decided they know better how to run your company than you do. Except, instead of these forms and reports benefiting you, you’re paying 4 people just to fill out forms and run reports instead of produce goods and improve your services.

That’s dead weight.

You have to spend resources without a corresponding benefit to you. Of course you raise prices but you can’t raise the quality, but now fewer people can afford it. Or you cut quality but keep the prices level, and now fewer people buy it because it’s not as attractive.

You have to lay people off. Now you’ve sloughed off your dead weight onto the general economy. Your taxes and everybody else’s taxes are now paying for the employees you used to pay independently.

That’s the reality of taxation and regulation.

Productive businesses don’t like taxes and regulation, and they’ll seek ways to avoid and minimize their exposure to them.

Now, what about the threat of taxes and regulation?

The threat of taxation and regulation is the same effect as the fact of taxation and regulation, except magnified.

Once the taxation and regulation are in place, there is little the business can do. If it wants to survive it does the best it can to manage costs. Quality suffers, but because it suffers for most other companies too, it’s only the consumer (you and I) who lose out in the crap we pay real money for in the stores. That’s inflation. The same dollar used to by a real sweet whiz bang that is still whiz banging away 20 years later and now that dollar just buys a whiz, and a cheap one at that. But the costs have stabilized and now we just have to keep pressing ahead if we’re going to survive as a business.

When the taxation and regulation are threatened, companies go into protection mode. Any ejectable dead weight is ejected. Any loose operations are cut. Anything that can be jettisoned is jettisoned. And real people are fired. And real lives are hurt.

Just for the threat of taxation and regulation.

It’s not that the businesses are mean and vengeful. In your mind-business you know you’re a good employer. You’re caring and you’ve got a great little family growing out of all the individuals you’ve hired. But with your costs already high and threatening to go higher, you’ve got to let someone go. If you don’t let someone go, you’ll be forced to let all of them go when you’re bankrupt. You have to cut their pay or fire them, there’s no middle ground. And even though they say they understand and are glad to still have a job even if it doesn’t pay quite as many bills as it did, you know you’ve hurt them deeply and they really are upset at you.

Were you a fool for getting into business in the first place?

Those who claim to love the most and care the most and feel the most are often guided by uneducated and ignorant feelings into callous and silly actions with effects that are not silly.

Allan Meltzer has seen silly people’s desires ignored to the benefit of entire nations:

In 1980, I had the privilege of advising Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to ignore the demands of 360 British economists who made the outrageous claim that Britain would never (yes, never) recover from her decision to reduce government spending during a severe recession. They wanted more spending. She responded with a speech promising to stay with her tight budget. She kept a sustained focus on long-term problems. Expectations about the economy’s future improved, and the recovery soon began.

That’s what the U.S. needs now. Not major cuts in current spending, but a credible plan showing that authorities will not wait for a fiscal crisis but begin to act prudently and continue until deficits disappear, and the debt is below 60% of GDP. Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) offered a plan, but the administration and Congress ignored it.

We don’t need feelers and healers at the head of this nation. We need heads, brains, experienced and opinionated people with strength of character and resolve. But mostly, experienced and sound.

When there is a strong plan there is hope. Real hope, not in change, but in the future.

For just as the threat of taxation and regulation stagnate and stifle and strangle and hurt, a sure and steady plan which shows how those in authority will not abuse their power but will shrink themselves and leave to the businesses the running of those businesses and leave to the people the living of lives and leave to the churches the telling of morals and leave to the press, the real press and not these buffoons gasping for relevancy in front of their unblinking cyclopses, the telling of the truth, will result in growth as sure as if that plan were in effect.

So throw out the buffoons who don’t know the bitter end from the over priced breadstick they had on your dime at some gala affair list night. Throw out the scoundrels who’d rather take your child’s inheritance than force their own children to work honestly. Hamstring the bums who prefer the golf course to the desk, the courts to the shoreline, make then 1st term lame ducks, the whole lot of them.

After all, we’ve got businesses to run.

Amidst all the gushing and glowing reports from the various gay pride parades around the country yesterday (which was also national HIV testing day, proclaimed without a hint of irony), there was a consensus that the parades were family affairs. Hey, what’s not to like about bringing the kids out to a great happy parade?

Except that scenes like these have never been nor ever will be suitable for a family affair. This link is to the ChicagoNow blog. The first several pictures are innocuous enough, but be warned, it doesn’t stay that way.

Perhaps because I’m not a hypersexual maniac I find it difficult to understand the need to wear little or nothing and parade myself along in front of everybody while making lewd gestures. And I’ll never bring my children to such a non-family affair.