This Story Encapsulates A Lot Of What's Wrong With The United States

 From an LA Times article:

McDonald’s has sued former Chief Executive Steve Easterbrook, alleging that he fraudulently hid details of three sexual relationships with employees when the board fired him in November over a separate relationship with a subordinate.

In a securities filing and a document lodged with the Delaware Chancery Court, the fast-food chain said it was seeking to recover the compensation and severance payments it allowed Easterbrook to leave with. Equilar, the executive-pay consultancy, reported at the time that his severance deal was worth about $40 million .

McDonald’s would not have approved the separation agreement had it known the extent of his “inappropriate personal behavior,” the company said, but would instead have terminated him for cause.

" the board fired him in November over a separate relationship with a subordinate."

1. He was fired for cause, yet got to take home $40 million!!
2. Severance pay of $40 million (for just one employee!) for a company (McDonald's) that pays so little that its workers qualify for food stamps.

My theory incorporates two key components:  

1. How corporate boards, made up of other corporate executives, all benefit when an executive gets the highest possible compensation package, because that sets the standards for their own boards to set their own compensation.  
2. "Temporary" tax cuts on the wealthy, gave boards more incentive to raise compensation to make as much money as possible while the taxes were lower.  

Steve Clifford outlines the argument for point 1 in The Atlantic article:

How Companies Actually Decide What to Pay CEOs:     

I know—for over 20 years, I helped craft some extremely generous executive-compensation packages.

He talks about the shift from using internal equity as the model (keeping the ratio between the highest paid and the average worker pay reasonable) to the external equity model where the compensation of the top executives in a corporation should be competitive with other top executives.  This meant, he writes, internal equity went from 20:1 or 30:1 in the 70s, to the situation in 2014 where 

500 of the highest-paid senior executives at U.S. companies made nearly 1,000 times as much money as the average American worker, after taking into account salary, bonuses, and stock-based compensation.

The article explains exactly how compensation committees on Boards of Directors actually set executive pay and why it spirals higher and higher.  

The second point is harder to definitively prove, but Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 along with cuts to inheritance taxes means that the wealthy get wealthier much faster and the gap between the rich and the poor gets wider and wider.  Here are a couple of articles that go into more detail:

• The Legacy of the 2001 and 2003 “Bush” Tax Cuts
• Wikipedia entry on Bush Tax Cuts

I believe that a large inequality gap has lots of harmful consequences to democracy:

• The wealthy have an outsized influence on elections through unlimited campaign contributions and ability to lobby federal, state, and local, legislators
• Employers have far more power over employee wages and working conditions through their ability to get Congress to weaken union power
• More people are living from pay-check to pay-check and thus their employers have more leverage over them for a variety of issues - forced overtime, less time with their families, forced arbitration for disputes, etc. 

But proving these things is complicated. 

As you might imagine, Heritage Foundation scholars argue that there is no evidence the inequality endangers democracy.  

But all this hinges on a number of assumption about morality.  While the Christian bible talks endlessly about charity and helping the poor, our basic philosophy about work - The Protestant [Work] Ethic - assumes that those who are poor have themselves to blame.   It ignores the elaborate rules and procedures that are devised to justify a $40 million severance package for someone who had an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate in a company where most of the employees are for working minimum wage.  

And in our increasingly technological work places, where machines are rapidly replacing workers, we need a different mechanism than work for the basic distribution of wealth.  And in a world where the imperative of the market ignores the environmental and human damage of corporate externalities, we need to find an sustainable economic system more in balance with the natural world.

Government Censorship And Persistent Journalists

Governments suppressing stories that make them look bad are not new.  When my son taught in China he mentioned one day that the Chinese have a better sense of the news than Americans because the Chinese KNOW that what they read is not true.  Here's a story from the Washington Post about writer John Hersey going to Hiroshima in 1946 to tell the, up to then, suppressed story of the human suffering caused by the atomic bomb.  

The U.S. hid Hiroshima’s human suffering. Then John Hersey went to Japan.

"Hersey and [his editor] Shawn suspected that the U.S. government’s wartime propaganda machine had covered up the human suffering of the atomic bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago this month. Pictures from Japan showed destroyed buildings and decimated neighborhoods, but little was known about the human toll, especially from radiation.

The U.S. government controlled access to the bomb sites. The War Department quietly asked American news outlets to limit information about nuclear aspects of the attacks. When reports of widespread suffering from radiation began to emerge from international journalists and Japanese officials, the American government downplayed it all as propaganda. One general even told Congress that dying from radiation was, in fact, “a very pleasant way to die.”

It was time, Hersey and Shawn decided, to find out the truth."

 Hersey lived in China until he was ten (The Call is his novel about a missionary family in China) and I suspect that helped him see the world from a different perspective than most other American journalists of his time.  

Today our president stymies journalism by lies, by walking out when the questions are too exacting, through misinformation, and just by creating so many incidents that the press has trouble sorting the important from the unimportant.  

The key story, I'm my mind is the Senate.  Reporters should be holding Republican Senators accountable for their abdication of their responsibility to hold the president accountable.  They should be as much of the news as the president is.  

Get Out Your Brooms And Caring

From Nabih Bulos, a reporter in Beirut, published in the LA Times and other places.  He was near the blast and still can't account for two hours right after the blast, nor can he recognize the photos on his phone.  He woke up on the ground with an eye swollen shut and cuts on his arms.  I've picked out the hopeful part, the part that I think most Alaskans, masked or not, would do in an emergency:

"Nevertheless, a picture emerges of two things. One is that I was extremely lucky. The other — and this is a surprise for a card-carrying misanthrope like myself — is that people can be incredibly, almost irrationally kind in times of crisis.

One friend offered his car. Another drove my fiancee and me more than an hour outside Beirut to find a hospital that wasn’t inundated with casualties. A friend of my brother’s — whom I had never laid eyes on before — arranged for his neurosurgeon buddy to set up a CT scan appointment and eye examination, and chauffeured me from hospital to hotel to clinic. Everyone helped — no hesitation, no questions asked.

That generosity seems everywhere. In my neighborhood, roving bands of broomstick-toting volunteers walk around battered streets and apartments, sweeping away blood-soaked glass shards, pulverized furniture and the other detritus of lives shattered. Others grab tools, salvaging what materials they can to board up entrances and restore some semblance of normalcy for shell-shocked residents. Dozens of charitable groups and mutual aid organizations have reoriented themselves to dealing with the tragedy. All this is done in the almost complete absence of the state, whose carelessness appears to have caused the cataclysm in the first place."

Actually, we're in the middle of a slow motion emergency.  Let's get out those brooms and start sweeping away the epithets, the demands for trivial rights, and pick up our responsibilities to each other and to our democracy.  

"Musk then wrote: 'We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.'”

 A friend alerted me to this article in Counterpunch. It begins like this:

"On July 24, 2020, Tesla’s Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that a second U.S. “government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people.” Someone responded to Musk soon after, “You know what wasn’t in the best interest of people? The U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.” Musk then wrote: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

Musk refers here to the coup against President Evo Morales Ayma, who was removed illegally from his office in November 2019. Morales had just won an election for a term that was to have begun in January 2020. Even if there was a challenge against that election, Morales’ term should rightfully have continued through November and December of 2019. Instead, the Bolivian military, at the behest of Bolivia’s far right and the United States government, threatened Morales; Morales went into exile in Mexico and is now in Argentina."

With all the crap going in within our borders I was only vaguely aware of the Bolivian coup, and not of the details.  Billionaires who are smart and ambitious think they know what is best for the world.  I guess the 2020 version of the General Motors old slogan is What's good for Elon Musk is good for the country.*  

But it looks like we're still in the US imperialism era that saw us bring Pinochet to Chile and the Iran/Contra deal in Central America.  But how could that be a surprise given that Elliott Abrams, who was convicted of lying to Congress (and then pardoned by the 'good' Bush) over the Iran Contra affair is Ambassador to Venezuela and now also the envoy to Iran.

US citizens - this is all being done in our name.  Though if we don't vote hard in November, we won't live in a democracy much longer and so won't be responsible any more.  

*Actually, Wikipedia says that Charles Wilson, the head of General Motors, in Senate confirmation hearings to be Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense, actually said it the other way around.  

"Wilson's nomination sparked a controversy that erupted during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, based on his large stockholdings in General Motors. Reluctant to sell the stock, valued at the time at more than $2.5 million (or about $24 million in 2018), Wilson agreed to do so under committee pressure. During the hearings, when asked if he could make a decision as Secretary of Defense that would be adverse to the interests of General Motors, Wilson answered affirmatively. But he added that he could not conceive of such a situation "because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa." That statement has frequently been misquoted as "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." Although Wilson tried for years to correct the misquote, he was reported, at the time of his retirement in 1957, to have accepted the popular impression." [Emphasis added]

I'd note that Truth or Fiction says the Musk tweet was true and shows a copy of the Tweet.  I found the original Musk tweet about the stimulus and the tweet that raised the Bolivian coup.  There are lots of comments but I couldn't find the one from Musk saying "We will coup whoever we want"  but there is one that has been removed followed by a Musk tweet saying they get lithium from Australia.  

Mailed In Our Alaska Primary Ballots

University of Alaska New President Virtual Meet & Greet Today, 2:00pm

The appointment of the current interim president of the University of Alaska happened without my paying much attention.  There are just too many things going on in the world.  I did notice a number of hits on some of my older posts on University of Alaska president and chancellor searches, particularly one: Search Committee History 1990, 1998, 2010, 2015 - From Open To Closed
There's also one that looks at the change from academic to business culture:  University of Alaska President Search Part 1: The Cultural Conflict

On paper, or pixels, it would appear that this search continued those trends.  This appears to have been carried out solely by the Board of Regents with some interviews with selected folks around the university and the state.   The new interim president's background isn't easy to review on line - because there isn't much there.  Here's pretty much what I could find - her bio on the university of Alaska president's pages.

Interim President Pat Pitney

"Pat Pitney

The University of Alaska Board of Regents selected Pat Pitney to serve as the university’s interim president beginning on Aug.1, 2020.

Previously Pitney served as the state’s Director of the Division of Legislative Finance. She was the former Vice Chancellor of Administration, University of Alaska Fairbanks and worked at UA Statewide for 17 years. In all, Pitney spent 23 years with the University of Alaska before leaving to serve as the State Budget Director in the administration of former Governor Bill Walker. 

Pitney is expected to serve as interim president for a minimum of a year or up to 18 months or until the appointment of a president, whichever comes first.

Pitney moved to Fairbanks in 1987 from Billings, Montana. She earned her MBA from UAF and an engineering physics degree from Murray State University (Kentucky). She has three adult children and two grandchildren. All three of her children are UA graduates, with degrees from UAF, UAA and UAS.

Before moving to Alaska, she was a member of the 1984 U.S. Olympic Team and won a gold medal in women’s air rifle."

I've never met her or recall seeing her, though she may have been at a Board Meeting I tended, but who knows?  What I'd note here is that it's clear the preponderance of Regents from business is once again reflected here.  We seem to have a President without of terminal degree: the highest degree is an MBA, yes, business.  Nothing mentions her ever teaching at any level or doing research.  

This reflects a national trend to corporatize universities.  I do believe that universities should be run efficiently and effectively, but business tends to emphasize the efficient part.  Universities have traditionally seen their jobs as to educate human beings.  That's hard to measure quickly and quantitatively.  But there seems to be an emphasis of metrics around productivity - number of students per faculty, number of students graduating in four years.  But little concern about what they learn, particularly as human beings and citizens.  Today their job is seen more as producing workers for American corporations.  

But often people have unique qualities that rise above the traditional qualifications of a job.  We are at a time where budgets are a major concern and Pat Pitney has experience there.  And as the former state budget director she has connections with the administration that are potentially helpful in advocating for the University.  And she has an Olympic Gold Medal which means that at one time in her life, if not still now, she could be highly focused on her goal.   But such focus often comes with the necessity to shut out everything else that is happening, such as other important values that a university should strive to  uphold.  

Not having any teaching experience (I'm assuming if she had it her official bio would mention it) is troubling.  University presidents have traditionally risen from the ranks of academics.  I can't imagine the military hiring a general who hadn't risen through the ranks.  Nor are there many, or any, examples of corporate CEOs who have been plucked from a life without lots of business experience.  But nowadays, corporate heavy boards of regents, seem to believe non academics are well qualified to run universities.  Just as Republican voters thought that a business man with no previous government position, would make a good president.  

But this afternoon, the University is offering a chance to see Pat Pitney in the COVID-19 equivalent of 'in person."  

Here's the link to this afternoon's online meet and greet.    

I'd note it is scheduled for 30 minutes - from 2pm to 2:30pm.  So even though you can submit questions, obviously the answers won't be very detailed.  As I think about this, really, a half an hour is a joke.  This is a quick show and tell, and just like I can't find a real, serious resume up for her online, this meeting will just allow us to hear her voice, see what she looks like, but not get serious.  

Garden Edibles

We haven't planted many veggies in the garden for a while.  We have a lot more shade than we used to have and all the farmers markets have much more variety than we could ever grow.  But with the virus coming on, we got a few seeds and we're starting to see the results.  Not a lot, but it feels good to see food grow so relatively easily.   

The beginnings of a broccoli stalk.

The most advanced of the snap peas.

And I like the sharp flavor of the nasturtium leaves in the salad.

And the raspberries, well I just have to cut off the old stalks at the end of the year and they come back and gives us raspberries without us having to do much except pick them.

And I'm just adding in the begonia flower because I like it so much.  But, no, I don't eat them.  

Highly Recommend Watching Stateless On Netflix

Stateless is an Australian TV series about an immigration detention camp, "based on true events".  The key event is an Australian woman who ends up in the camp.    

 

An Afghan family on the run to Australia.  

Two of the guards.  We see how the life of the one on the left deteriorates because of what he has to do in the detention center.  But his life is further complicated because his sister is a fervent immigrants rights activist.  

Tamil refugees who confine themselves to the roof and put razors to their throats when officials try to get them down.  There was no explanation of how they ate or took care of other needs, or why they couldn't be gotten when they were asleep.  But they did like to send these messages to media in helicopters.

The series was released on Australian television in March this year and on Netflix in July.  

Compared to the views we've gotten of kids in cages and refugees packed into much too small areas in the US, this camp looks pretty good.  But these detention centers in Australia were shut down in 2013.  Now refugees are detained offshore.  From Human Rights Watch:

"Since July 2013, Australia has forcibly transferred more than 3,000 asylum seekers who traveled there by boat to camps on Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

This experiment in human suffering as a deterrent has not worked. Seven years on, more than 370 people still choose to endure horrific hardship in Papua New Guinea and Nauru rather than return to conflict and persecution in their home countries. They languish in limbo, separated from families, futures uncertain. The United States has taken more than 700 people in a resettlement arrangement with Australia, and over the years the Australian government reluctantly transferred more than 1,200 asylum seekers and refugees back to Australia for medical treatment. Some of those in Australia live in uncertainty in the community on temporary bridging visas, but more than 200 are detained in centers or hotels."

I'm posting this  because the story is well told from different perspectives and reminds us that there are lots of desperate human beings who have displaced for various reasons who face persecution at home.  And with climate change, more and more people are going to be displaced.  

The US has not just wasted four years, but put tens of thousands of these fragile people under increased stress because we have a president whose longest lasting close advisors include hateful people like Stephen Miller.

This show is a reminder of why immigrants come, that they are intelligent human beings, and that we're contributing to the wretched conditions of their lives.  

Will it help convince anyone if I mention that Cate Blanchett has a supporting role in the series?

Living In A Pandemic Is A Little Like Living Abroad

When you live in a different country you have to adjust to different ways of doing things.  I don't mean a two week vacation and staying in hotels, I mean spending a much longer period, say a year or more in a different culture.  Learning the local language and living and working with people of that country.  Of course, some of these issues arise on a shorter visit, like how do you get food?  How does the money relate to your home currency?  

Since March, we had to start to figure out what restaurants and stores were open and how to get food safely.  It didn't take too long to find restaurants that delivered or how to order groceries online for delivery or pickup.  But shopping on the grocery apps is a lot different from pushing a cart through the store.    

How are the rules different from where you came from?  We're still working on this.  Masks?  Well, sure of course.  But where are masks enforced?  Biking, I tend to be the only one who has a mask ready to pull up when someone is approaching.  And some people forget to keep their distance.   For those still flying, there are all sorts of changes.  What about money?  Do you want to exchange cash?  And I've never washed my hands this much.  

Finding compatible friends is another tricky thing.  How strict are your family and friends about masks and distancing and attending events?  Which friends might expose you to the virus?  There's the awkward discussions as you start discovering which of your friends practice the same level of safety that you do.  And your friends can surprise you by taking more risks or being much more careful than you expected.  

After the first month or so the initial shock wears off a bit, but what you thought you knew may change and you have to adjust.  What good are masks?  Well it appears the early advice was intended to keep people from buying masks that medical workers needed, and no one really knew enough to know if they also protected the wearer or just those around the wearer.  The way health experts are learning about the virus - how it travels, who it impacts, how to treat it - that's what happens to expats living abroad.  Some things you learn are helpful, some things you learn turn out to be wrong.  

Language hasn't been an issue.  More like going to another (in my case) English speaking country.  Some words have different meanings, others are new ones you need to learn, but most of the basics are the same.  

One of the most important benefits of living abroad is the perspective you get as you compare what you're experiencing to what things were like back home.  At first there's a tendency to find the differences annoying, but after a while, you start to see that back home doesn't always do things as well as you thought.  The forced changes make you appreciate what the new country has that you don't have back home, or you learn that some things are actually easier, or people friendlier, or have more leisure than people back home.  

In the US, the worst president ever happened to be in office when the pandemic arrived and that made things far worse than they had to be.  The lies and misinformation, as time passed, made the pandemic worse and I believe the pandemic should get credit for the crowds who have been out protesting for Black Lives.  Many people had been stuck at home for a month when George Floyd was killed, and many were out of work or out of school, so they had the time to demonstrate and the need to get out and voice their frustration.  

So people are also discovering that government services like public health, need to be based on scientists and the politicians have to defer to the experts.  We're seeing in the US what happens when the federal government fails miserably.  For hundreds of thousands of people, that lesson will come too late, because they have been extremely ill or have buried loved ones. Or were buried.  How many will learn that there is a big difference between the politicians and the career civil servants?  

In the field of public administration we often say that no one notices government until things go wrong.  Those things that government provides, that people take for granted, tend to be invisible until the system is broken - public health, for instance.  Experts tend to agree that public health projects like clean water systems and sanitary sewage systems have saved far more lives than all the miracle drugs and glitzy modern surgeries.   

The failure of the Trump administration to see the danger and take appropriate action has proven that point.  People have begun to appreciate the expertise of public health officials and the importance of basing decisions on science rather than perceived political impacts.  

But bad government has also been exposed by George Floyd's death - on top of all the other blacks killed by police and shared on social media.  In this case the pandemic has also helped white US see the problems with police that people of color have known all along. 

One thing that's different between the pandemic and travel abroad, is that when you are living in other cultures you generally have a good idea of how long the adventure will be.  Not so with this pandemic.  At first people were saying the pandemic would be a couple of months, but now it's clearly going to continue well into next year.  So we'll have plenty of time to ponder what parts of normal we want to return to and what new normals we want to create.

Another big difference is that when you live abroad, you experience all the newness and the mental adjustments as an individual.   When you get back your family and friends have no clue that your head has changed dramatically.  For vets this is often a very traumatic experience.  People don't get it and often they can't or won't try to explain it.   

This pandemic is something people are experiencing simultaneously around the world.  We're all going through this.  I'm hoping that that will make it easier to start making 'normal' more equitable, more sustainable,  kinder, and livable.    

"You cannot imagine the guilt I feel, knowing that I hosted the gathering that led to so much suffering. " Updated

This Dallas Voice article raises a number of issues.  Here are two excerpts, but the whole article is harrowing:

"Full disclosure: I am a gay conservative, someone that often juggles persecution for my sexuality while being true to my values. Such a combination requires a lot of tenacity to earn respect from either group.
I admit I voted for Donald Trump in 2016. I admit traveling deep into the conspiracy trap over COVID-19. All the defiant behavior of Trump’s more radical and rowdy cult followers, I participated in it. I was a hard-ass that stood up for my “God-given rights.”
In great haste, I began prognosticating the alphabet soup about this “scamdemic.” I believed the virus to be a hoax. I believed the mainstream media and the Democrats were using it to create panic, crash the economy and destroy Trump’s chances at re-election."

What kind of person can believe the Democrats would set up a hoax to create a panic and crash the economy?  Really!!!???
To test questions like that I try to turn them around and see if I can conceive the same kind of accusation against Trump and the Republicans.  I can't believe Republicans in general would crash the economy to hurt the Democrats. That they would do lesser damage to win, yeah, that I can believe.
Trump, well I'm not so sure.  He is sooooo self centered that he only does things that he perceives to help himself and his family.  We do know that he has supported all sorts of hoaxes - such as the birther movement.  And I think the evidence is clear that he knew it wasn't true, but he clearly didn't like Obama and wanted to hurt him as much as he could.  So he is capable of supporting hoaxes, even creating them to help himself or hurt his perceived enemies.
Could his total failure in dealing with COVID-19 be intentional and not just incompetence?  I think not.  He sees the economy as a poll of how he's doing.  Rising stock market prices prove he's improving the economy in his mind.
The only way I can imagine him intentionally hurting the country is if the Russians and others have significant leverage on him that he does their bidding lest they expose whatever they know and it would hurt his finances, election chances, or his ego.  That, I can imagine fairly easily.  Certainly he's done plenty to hurt US interests at home and abroad that makes no sense to rational people, except that those things are all in Putin's best interest.  And since Trump refuses to let us know what he talks to Putin about, there's plenty of circumstantial evidence, including that refusal.
We know that he desperately doesn't want his taxes made available to the Congress, the Grand Jury (another appeal today), or the American people.  If the taxes would make him look like a powerful multi-billionaire, he would let them be public.  There's clearly some dark secrets he doesn't want exposed.

I think it's easier to believe something about someone else, if it's something you would do yourself.  So liars believe that everyone lies, but honest people often believe liars because they can't imagine someone telling such lies.  So, while I don't know that Tony Green would try to  tank the economy in general, I believe he might go to extremes to hurt his enemies, which is the basis of his belief - that the Democrats would do this to hurt Trump's reelection.  And we can see that Trump does this regularly - spread hate and discord - to hurt the Democrats and stir his base.
What's so confusing here is this:  if he's gay, he must know some liberal folks, so I'd think he'd be a little bit more immune to the far right conspiracy theorists.

"You cannot imagine the guilt I feel, knowing that I hosted the gathering that led to so much suffering. You cannot imagine my guilt at having been a denier, carelessly shuffling through this pandemic, making fun of those wearing masks and social distancing. You cannot imagine my guilt at knowing that my actions convinced both our families it was safe when it wasn’t.
For those who deny the virus exists or who downplay its severity, let me assure you: The coronavirus is very real and extremely contagious. Before you even know you have it, you’ve passed it along to your friends, family, coworkers and neighbors."

The article chronicles not only Green's own harrowing health problems with COVID-19, but the story includes all the friends and relatives who got serious COVID-19 infections - including a death - because they came to a party that he gave after assuring them that it was safe.

I also think - wow - this story is the perfect story line that liberals want to hear.  "I didn't believe in the virus.  I got really sick and infected many friends.  I was so wrong and I'm so sorry."   Is this story real?  There was nothing up about it on Snopes and I've sent an email to the managing editor of the Dallas Voice.  I'll get back to you when she confirms it's a legit story.
[Updated July 27, 2020 9pm:  I got an email back from Tammye Nash of the Dallas Voice.  She wrote:

"I do not know the guy personally, but some other folks do."]