I made an investment the other day in the Mainstream Media, and I use the term "investment" advisedly. I bought a day-old copy of the Sunday Telegraph, which the clerk rang up at "ten dollars and 24 cents." Wow, I'd been thinking about two bucks fifty, which tells you how rarely I buy a newspaper.
But the investment, as it turned out was worth it. First, I got to find out something about Caroline Aherne, a British entertainer of Irish extraction who died last week at the age of 52, and who, to quote the Telegraph, "bestrode Nineties television like a colossus."
Turns out she invented a comedy series for TV-watching morons all about a family of TV-watching morons, the patriarch of which family spoke endlessly of "my arse." Given that Aherne is said to have had an IQ of 176, a level matched by no more than about one person in five million, the level of her accomplishments in the cultural sphere suggests that something has gone seriously wrong with British civilization. Which is not to deny that Caroline Aherne was genuinely funny (the joke in that clip is in the very last line), but her work, compared with that of say Shakespeare, seems disappointingly limited in range.
But what I learned from the Telegraph that was truly amazing was in the Business section, where the lead story was headed: Britain hit by Brexit negotiator crisis. "The Government," the story begins, "may have to look as far afield as India and America to find the legion of negotiators it needs for post-Brexit trade talks ..." Then under the heading "Bank of England hires legion of advisers to prepare for looming economic challenges" the Telegraph reports that the B of E "has hired more than 300 new staff as it beefed up teams including its economic forecasting unit and its bank monitoring squads in the lead up to the Brexit vote," thus raising the bank's staff to almost four thousand.
Showing posts with label bureaucrats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bureaucrats. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Friday, March 11, 2016
How Billionaire Trump Neutered the Donor Class
Why Trump Haters Really Hate Trump
Or the bad manners.
Or the “beautiful” wall he says he’ll build.
There’s a different, more subtle reason why the Republican establishment, donor class, political operatives, and the news media in general hate Donald Trump. The reason can be found in a New York Times best selling business book,Stacking The Deck, by Wharton professor David Pottruck.
Hate it with a PASSION!
That’s because when there’s a new way of doing things, a new way of solving problems, a new way of relating to everything, they feel threatened as a deep personal-loss. Change renders meaningless the value of their hard-won experience and know-how. In politics, it may means family member lose their cushy jobs and perks.
Student loans of government employees get automatically paid off by government – TAX FREE. Those in government have done things one way forever. Change is NOT FAIR to them. Everything they have done to line their pockets is threatened. The rules of the game may no longer apply. So they dig in their heels and will do whatever it takes to resist change.
They resist perpetually until forced otherwise.
They subvert any process that would lead to change.
Until they lose, it becomes open warfare against the people to sustain the establishment and its perks.
And so it is with Donald Trump.
Like him or not, he has completely rewritten the rules of Presidential politics. He bypasses the media, taking his message, raw and unfiltered, to the millions of people who follow him on Twitter.
The party establishment went from underestimating him and laughing at him to fearing him breaking out in night sweats. They fear all power and their relevance will vanish into thing air.
Donors gave Jeb Bush $120 million and he came in dead last.
The money, like Jeb, is gone and it could not save their fiefdom.
Now wealthy donors have a choice. Oppose Trump and he wins and they are out in the cold.Understand there is a change in the wind and shift sides to the people.
How ironic. It took a billionaire to neuter the billionaire donor class.
Most of the media hates Trump to the core and dislike the fact they are no longer able to play kingmaker losing their power fearing they will be irrelevant with the internet displacing them.
The political class have lost the power to rule behind the curtain from paid operatives and cronies who cannot transition to the new world where the old rules of campaigning don’t apply.
Trump has spent more on hats than he has on polls so the pollsters also have lost their importance.
Diplomats worldwide are running scared because Trump will renegotiate everything from a business standpoint that cannot be bought like Hillary & her foundation.
The handwringing, the dire predictions of doom, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth have little to do with Donald’s positions, but their loss of power.
They complain Trump is bringing in new voters who are not Republican. And this is bad?
The Trump threat isn’t to the Constitution, to America’s standing in the world, or even to Republican Congressional candidates, it is to the establishment.
If you think Trump’s supporters are angry about the way the government and the business world colluded, you are right. The establishment fails to appreciate the anger. They’re just furious. Even if Trump fails to win, there will be more in the wings. He is inspiring a change and he doesn’t even understand how profound.
It’s not the hair.
Or the bad manners.
Or the “beautiful” wall he says he’ll build.
There’s a different, more subtle reason why the Republican establishment, donor class, political operatives, and the news media in general hate Donald Trump. The reason can be found in a New York Times best selling business book,Stacking The Deck, by Wharton professor David Pottruck.
Pottruck, the Charles Schwab CEO who took the genial brokerage house online and into the big time, says that organizations hate change.
Hate it with a PASSION!
That’s because when there’s a new way of doing things, a new way of solving problems, a new way of relating to everything, they feel threatened as a deep personal-loss. Change renders meaningless the value of their hard-won experience and know-how. In politics, it may means family member lose their cushy jobs and perks.
Student loans of government employees get automatically paid off by government – TAX FREE. Those in government have done things one way forever. Change is NOT FAIR to them. Everything they have done to line their pockets is threatened. The rules of the game may no longer apply. So they dig in their heels and will do whatever it takes to resist change.
They resist perpetually until forced otherwise.
They subvert any process that would lead to change.
Until they lose, it becomes open warfare against the people to sustain the establishment and its perks.
And so it is with Donald Trump.
Like him or not, he has completely rewritten the rules of Presidential politics. He bypasses the media, taking his message, raw and unfiltered, to the millions of people who follow him on Twitter.
The party establishment went from underestimating him and laughing at him to fearing him breaking out in night sweats. They fear all power and their relevance will vanish into thing air.
Donors gave Jeb Bush $120 million and he came in dead last.
The money, like Jeb, is gone and it could not save their fiefdom.
Now wealthy donors have a choice. Oppose Trump and he wins and they are out in the cold.Understand there is a change in the wind and shift sides to the people.
How ironic. It took a billionaire to neuter the billionaire donor class.
Most of the media hates Trump to the core and dislike the fact they are no longer able to play kingmaker losing their power fearing they will be irrelevant with the internet displacing them.
The political class have lost the power to rule behind the curtain from paid operatives and cronies who cannot transition to the new world where the old rules of campaigning don’t apply.
Trump has spent more on hats than he has on polls so the pollsters also have lost their importance.
Diplomats worldwide are running scared because Trump will renegotiate everything from a business standpoint that cannot be bought like Hillary & her foundation.
The handwringing, the dire predictions of doom, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth have little to do with Donald’s positions, but their loss of power.
They complain Trump is bringing in new voters who are not Republican. And this is bad?
The Trump threat isn’t to the Constitution, to America’s standing in the world, or even to Republican Congressional candidates, it is to the establishment.
If you think Trump’s supporters are angry about the way the government and the business world colluded, you are right. The establishment fails to appreciate the anger. They’re just furious. Even if Trump fails to win, there will be more in the wings. He is inspiring a change and he doesn’t even understand how profound.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Annoying Bureaucrats No. 23: British Library Security Officials
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Former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, had a blog post yesterday relating how he had been denied access by the British Library to some obscure documents concerning a dead, white, Scotch, male imperialist.
Difficulty arose when a "half-educated low paid staff [member] steeped in the insolence of office" refused to accept as proof of identity a crumpled laundry ticket, a hand-written letter allegedly in the Uzbek language, or a press clipping of a ridiculous article about men in skirts.
But then Murray rather spoiled his own case against officialdom by saying "Karl Marx famously wrote Das Kapital in the reading room of the British Library. He would never get in now," which naturally prompts the thought that it would have been just as well for humanity if that old terrorist had been put on the No-Read List.
Come to think of it, Murray himself is something of a revolutionary, a Scotch Nationalist who wants to break up the United Kingdom, which suggests that anti-terrorism measures at the British Library are working as one would wish.
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