TRD101: Existential Angst

TRD101: Existential Angst

by Michael Maynard

July 7, 2006

After the role of God in human life and the detailed analysis of the leitmotifs used throughout the collected works of Britney Spears, the subject most discussed, debated and chronicled throughout time has been the questionnig of human existence.

How did the human species develop to populate this planet?

Are humans the only sentient life form on this planet? In the universe?

Does every life have a specific purpose, i.e. meaning, in its creation?

How do we know what our own specific purpose is?

If we do know what that specific purpose is, how do we know whether we fulfilled it?

Is there life after death and what criteria is used to judge what happens to us after our life ends?

Today, you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. You may find yourself living in another part of the world. You may find your self listening to the Talking Heads instead listening to a talking head.

And you may be asking yourself the age-old question about your angst concerning all of the above, “Well, how did I get here?”

Yes, one of my majors in college was philosophy. My final philosophy class in my final semester concerned the works of the major German philosophers: Kant, Witgenstein, Hegel, Heidegger, etc. I spent 6 months reading Heidegger’s “Being and Time”, in the original German, as the final work of this class. If you ever need to start questioning why you exist, or would want to, spend 6 months reading any work of Heidegger. Heidegger makes rolling the rock back up the hill, only to see it roll back down again, a mirthful diversion.

One of the funniest lines I heard on this topic came from the senior aide to one of the most senior and powerful U.S. Senators. I had asked him about why Senators tend to be “long-winded” and cannot answer a simple question with a short direct answer. His response, “You have 99 people who believe they deserve to be members of the most exclusive and powerful club in the world and love to hear the sound of their own voice., and then you have Lincoln Chaffee who suffers from existential angst.”

Even though he’s a Republican, I immediately liked Lincoln Chaffee and was glad he was a Senator. Anyone who finds themself in the great deliberative political body, and actually deliberates about why and what is his purpose in being a Senator deserves to be there. Sure, Chaffee has to play the game in order to get some of his legislation passed and to be taken seriously by the senior senators, but he has frequently bucked the wrong-headed policies of the Bush Administration and the Republican Senate Leadership.

It is very unfortunate that his other 99 colleagues do not share his contemplative nature, because the Senate has increasingly become an irrelevant laughing stock. There is the foreign policy and financial sink hole that has become the Iraq war. The Bush Administration has broken laws in domestic spying and financial data gathering and analysis, and continue to act unchecked as if the Constitution and separation of powers do not matter.

The US economy is dramatically slowing. Interest rates are creeping higher and correspondingly, speculative real estate prices are dropping and credit-card fueled consumer spending is slowing. Gasoline prices remain at $3.00 per gallon and no program to reduce the dependence upon fossil fuels is in place.

Don’t go by the economic forecasts and pronouncements from this administration or as Lucy tells Charlie Brown, “Tell your statistics to shut up”. The unemployment rate is meaningless, since people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits stop being counted. Those who have taken lower-paying, often significantly lower paying jobs stop being counted, so there is no underemployment figures. Those who are working two and three jobs and are just getting by stop being counted so there are no economic hardship figures.

The real economic status figures to watch are the number of manufacturing jobs being created or lost and the inflation-adjusted real wage figures. Another 300,000+ manufacturing jobs were lost last year. Today’s news stated that service-sector employment, which had been growing at double digit rates, is also slowing. Construction spending had a major decline in May, so more decent paying jobs are going to be lost in the next few months.

So what issues are the Senators focusing upon? Passing flag-burning crime and banning gay marriage legislation that, if passed, would go through the process of becoming constitutional amendments.The national polls show the plurality of Americans against passing both pieces of legislation. The other major issue? Repealing the “death tax” - the taxes paid upon receipt of assets from someone else’s estate. This legislation affects only 300,000 of the already wealthy, who can afford high-priced estate attorneys and tax accountants who already devise new and unique ways to avoid the “death tax”. The country can’t afford to invest in industries to create new jobs or provide employment by repairing crumbling roads and building needed new interstate roads. But, according to the Senate, it can afford to let the wealthy become wealthier and still keep pouring more money into the sinkhole.

It’s time for the other 99 senators to have some existential angst, especially the senior Senator from Connecticut. Joe Lieberman announced today that if he’s defeated in the upcoming primary by his challenger, Ned Lamont, Lieberman will run for Senator as an independent party candidate. Lieberman is substantially behind Lamont in the latest polls. Given how little Lieberman has accomplished in the Senate, despite his seniority, and his continued, unblinking support for the Bush Administration’s actions in conducting the Iraq War, he should be feeling at least a little angst. Nor has Lieberman publically protested or challenged the latest round of right-wingnut legislative grandstanding. You’d think he’d understand why the voters from his state don’t support him.

But, no, that would mean he’d have to question why he’s been voted into office. After all, he’s a failed Vice Presidential candidate and then failed in the Democratic primaries to be nominated as the presidential candidate. Therefore, he belongs in the Senate because he’s one of the elite in the club.

Joe, go push your rock up a different hill. That’s where you belong.

TRD101 knows this: Once you start having a sense of entitlement to hold any position you have, especially a public position, you stop representing the interests of those you’re supposed to be serving, and just serving your own. Your existence is not a guaranteed lifetime contract.

And that is The Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.
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Send your comments and questions or to be added to or removed from TRD101's distribution list to: mikemaynard@mindspring.com

You can read TRD101's work and participate in a group discussion at: www.blogger.com and enter TRD101, where it asks for blog search. Please feel free to forward this column to your clear-thinking (as opposed to right-thinking) friends, relatives, and colleagues, as appropriate. Please have them contact me if they have comments or want to receive columns via e-mail in the future.

© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, July 2006.

Management by Pathology

TRD101: Management by Pathology

by Michael Maynard

June 19, 2006



To be a successful management consultant and interim senior manager, you have to have a pretty high opinion of yourself and your capabilities. Over the course of 20 years, my partners and I developed a running joke. The good news about consulting is that you see a lot of companies. The bad news is that you see A LOT of companies. Approximately 10% of the time, you’re being hired because the company is doing well and management wants the company to keep doing well and to do better. Those consulting assignments are fun.

The other 90% of the time, you know that you’re being hired because of bad managerial decisions and you’re there to get the company out of trouble. To take on the troubled company’s assignment, you implicitly assume that you’re better than the existing management. And 99% of that 90% of the time, the assumption is accurate.

Of course, every company’s management has its typical proportional share of idiots, petty tyrants, arrogant SOB’s and fools. Really troubled corporations have more than their share of morons, psychopaths and mental defective in management because who else would work in this cuckoo’s nest. Scott Adams’ “Dilbert” comic strip has done a valuable service in accurately describing the inner workings of most corporations. While Murphy’s Law applies to the rest of bad managers, from my experience, I’ve noticed that the really bad ones fall into certain abnormal personality types.

Self-Promoter: The Self- Promoter loves to get his/her name in the media and the amount of publicity they get is in inverse proportion to their ability. One of my clients had a very good and stable mailing list business. The company’s mailing list business could be expanded by drawing upon their existing competency and provide this product for other niche markets. No, that wasn’t sexy enough for this Self-Promoter, who wanted to be known as the next high-tech managerial legend. He drained the money from the existing business, which started to slip, and used it to create a number of internal “start-up” companies that would expand the company so much and rapidly that he was already planning for the stock exchange listing. The parent company had no experience in any of these start-up areas and no managerial expertise in starting up new companies. At the same time, the SP kept giving talks to industry groups, colleges, trade shows, wherever the press would show up.

The press bought into the idea that he was one of the top high tech executives in the world. The company did go public and the stock valuation was high due to speculation and expectations. Two years later, none of the start up succeeded, the core business declined and the stock was being traded for pennies.


Schmoozer: The Schmoozer is great on the golf course with clients or in front of a group of financial analysts because he oozes insincere charm and flattery. .He’s made it along the way because everyone thinks he’s a great guy. He/she can hide his lack of detailed knowledge once he reaches mid-level management level because he doesn’t have to do anything or make any decisions, just shuffle papers. As long as The Schmoozer scripted or isn’t pressed for details on how his business is doing, he’s great. When it comes times to make a decision on an important operating issue, he’s off working on his putting stroke instead. In the Fortune 100, the Smoozers are usually well-connected politically.

I worked for a Schmoozer. I was one of the first hires for what was going to be the next Digital Equipment or Wang Laboratories. My role was “minister without portfolio” which meant I worked on marketing issues one day, manufacturing issues the next and accounting operations the next. I had great fun and it was this experience that led me to become a consultant. I had been in a number of meetings with the Schmoozer over 2 years about strategic issues and developing the company’s financing business plan. He stopped me in the hall after one of the financing business meetings and asked why I, who he thought worked for one of the company’s vendors, was in this meeting. His secretary had to intercede toe explain who I was and that he helped hire me 2 years prior, or else he was all set to fire me.

Sharpie: No, not the Terrell Owens type of Sharpie, but the type who is always looking for a shortcut or a way to get ahead, whether legally or illegally, and always at someone else’s expense.

A former multi-millionaire “friend” asked my company to do an analysis of a company he was trying to acquire through receipt of a US government backed loan. What he wanted was my partners and I to produce a glowing report to the agency as the final step to obtain the loan. What the agency got as a thorough analysis of a good little company with nice, hard working people in it, but even with a dramatic turnaround could not support repayment of the loan. At the agency’s suggestion, we then checked into his other financing that would back the loan, and found some curious transactions involving non-existent offshore banks.

When we delivered to the report to the agency, my so-called friend went linear, accusing me of stabbing him in the back. What he wanted was for us to do something illegal, which involved fines and jail time, for filing a knowingly inaccurate (a/k/a lying) report to a federal government agency for use in securing a loan.

There were other and legal alternatives to acquiring this company, which could have done pretty well, though would never be a spectacular success. These alternatives involved investing his own money and securing any loan with personal assets. No, he had a scam going and didn’t really didn’t need to have one.

Whackball: Not just your typical managerial moron, psychopath or mental defective, the whackball’s personality is erratic and toxic which makes life hell for his employees. I’ve worked for two whackballs.

The first was a really a salesman, and his demeanor or skills weren’t compatible for being a senior manager. Out of the blue, for no reason at all, he would scream at any of his reports for non-existent transgressions, like not giving him a monthly report he wanted. Explaining to him that it was only mid-month and the report wasn’t produced to the end of the month only made the screaming worse. Then twenty minutes later, he would come up to you in private, put his arm around you and tell you what a great job you were doing. I, like his other managers, tried to stay as far out of his way as possible. To fortify myself for another day of his craziness, I used to drink a six-pack of Tab and eat three large candy bars on my way to work. I was making myself so wired that anything this guy would do would just bounce off the buzz armor.

The second was a software engineer who had started a software development consulting company. He called for help because there was a pattern of half of his employees leaving every three months. For the uninitiated, software engineers are a mutant species. Three generations of software engineers absorbing radiation from hours on end programming right in front of computers have altered their genetic structure. The mutants have bulging eyes, pale complexions, long curved necks and fingers, ability to stay up for days on end, and devoid of social skills.

This software entrepreneur viewed himself as the second coming of Bill Gates and couldn’t understand why those who left didn’t want to be help him develop the new Microsoft. Bill Gates has billions of dollars, so people will tolerate him being completely narcissistic. If you don’t have billions of dollars, then having staff meetings at 3 AM, calling people at home at all hours about how miserable you are, and then ignoring them for days when together in person doesn't endear yourself to anyone. He tried the 3 AM telephone call with me once. I left the phone off the hook and he was still talking when I awoke 3 hours later.

What all five of these personality types have in common is that because of their pathology, they put their own needs ahead of those of the company they are encharged to lead and steward. Individually, these managerial types can cause damage, but the employees find ways to work around them. It’s when you get two or more of them together is when there is real trouble.

Various people have asked me how an Enron can happen. Enron had the combination of the Schmoozer President, Ken Lay, and the Sharpie, Jeff Skilling. They were a perversely symbiotic pair, Lay needed Skilling to run the company, and Skilling needed Lay to present the smooth public presence to provide cover for what Skilling was doing. There’s no way that Ken Lay could come up with Raptors subsidiaries or deevloping derivative markets for the weather and network bandwidth. The culture the two created facilitated middle-level managers to come up with schemes to reallocate electricity from California and then sell the electricity back to the state at much higher prices.

What Lay liked was all the attention his company was getting and his picture on the cover of Business Week and Fortune. Even the recent trial didn’t completely settle the question of how much he really knew. As President of Enron, he was supposed to know and should have known. As a Smchoozer, more interested in sleeping in the White House Lincoln Room, he attended the board meetings (which leaves the question of why the members of the Enron board were not tried for negligence and conspiracy) and as long as the company kept growing rapidly, he left Skilling to his own devices.

For Skilling, ex-large management consulting firm employee, Lay’s noninvolvement allowed him to really be running the company. Someone as driven as Skilling to prove that he could create the largest company in the world, any means that would facilitate that goal, was fine. He and the CEO, Andrew Fastow, probably had great fun cooking up all these innovative schemes, until they got caught, by someone who asked why the numbers on the financial statements didn’t add up, a question Lay should have asked many times before.

Put two pathological executives together and what happens is an outlaw company (Microsoft gets spared this time). Employees lose their jobs and pensions, and individual investors lose their life savings. All because one wanted to be famous and the other wanted to be an industry giant. A sad end for two very sad people and all those they defrauded.

TRD101 knows this: Failed companies just don’t happen, it takes a combination of pathological managers' efforts. Enron wasn’t the first example of this, but it may remain the largest and most pathological failure ever. Enron was breathtaking in how quickly and how extensively the pathologies of two men caused this company to rise and collapse, falling heavily down upon all innocents unlucky to have had any involvement with it.

And that is The Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.
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Send your comments and questions or to be added to or removed from TRD101's distribution list to: mikemaynard@mindspring.com

You can read TRD101's work and participate in a group discussion at: www.blogger.com and enter TRD101, where it asks for blog search. Please feel free to forward this column to your friends, romans and countrymen, as appropriate, and have them contact me if they have comments or want to receive columns via e-mail in the future.

© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, June 2006.

Secrets and Lies

TRD101: Secrets and Lies

by Michael Maynard

June 9, 2006



I love those conservatives who insist that the United States Constitution should be interpreted strictly with the intent of the Founding Fathers, or that each amendment should be interpreted exactly word by word. Usually these types insist that the Second Amendment means being able to carrying a gun. It does, but there is the first clause, which they conveniently overlook, about having a gun in order to keep a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state. Remember the time in which this was drafted, they had just won independence from the British, so the fear that the British or other countries might invade was very present in their minds. Reading the Federalist Papers is a wonderful experience because you get a real sense of how much Jefferson, Hamilton, and the others had thought about these issues, but also how they would work in a newly democratic society.

For you gun lovers out there, I’m sorry, you are not part of a well regulated militia, unless you consider yourself a one-man vigilante squad ( or an illegal vigilante squad operating on the Mexican border). Even if, I would concede to you that in certain circumstances, like living in an area of high crime, it is prudent to carry a gun in order to protect yourself, then please explain to me why you need to be able to carry a concealed weapon into a church, hospital or amusement park? I’d be concerned that post-traumatic syndrome of having a bad experience with a clown might trigger you to believe you need to defend yourself.

It was an agrarian economy then and the need for a rifle to scare away a wolf attacking the chickens or the cows is more like their intent. Like the Minutemen and the other colonial forces, they needed to assemble quickly to protect against the French invading from the north That’s not the same as needing to carry a snub-nose 38 in your belt in order to pray, unless you’re Muslim these days.

Then there is that darn pesky Fourth Amendment, the one that the “strict constructionists” use to state there is no guaranteed right to privacy.

You have the right to be secure in your person, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. This shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath of Affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I think it’s reasonable that the right to be secure in your person, house, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures could be interpreted as a right to protect your private business and affairs, i.e., a right to privacy, from unwarranted government action. Of course, the founding fathers could not project 200-plus years out and foresee the telephone, the wireless telephone, and the Internet. But aren’t your phone calls like having a face to face conversation, so you’re guaranteed the right to be secure in your person? Isn’t an e-mail message an electronic piece of paper or personal effect? I could also start quoting from the 14th Amendment, but you get the point. It was clear that the Founding Fathers were concerned that an imperial government, like the one they just fought against so long and valiantly, would trample all over the rights of individuals for the sake of protecting the government’s own interests to rule as the government so pleased.

The Bush Administration, with its view of the “Unitary Esecutive Theory”, in essence, that the President of the United States, especially in a time of war, can choose to follow or not follow the laws set by the other two branches of government. This theory, originally develop by Samuel Alito in the Reagan Administration’s Department of Justice, is that the President is the CEO of all departments under the executive branch and can run them as he sees fit. The President can overrule laws developed by Congress and signed by previous Presidents and the rulings of the judicial branch, including the Supreme Court. Bush uses this power in combination with “signing statements” on legislation awaiting his signature. These signing statements, in effect, state “I don’t care what your legislation says and what I just signed,, this is how I interpret the law as it affects the Executive Branch and this is what I’m going to do, even if it’s the opposite of what you passed and I signed.”

The Vice President had his right-hand man, David Addington, go through every line of legislation for perceived intrusion or infringement on the Bush White House’s perception of the powers of the Executive Branch. There is a very interesting profile on Dick Cheney in the June 2006 edition of Vanity Fair. Cheney developed a hatred for Congress and belief that it was stepping on the powers of the President while he was still a Congressman. He is a member of the Federal Government who hates how the Federal Government, as designed in the Constitution, is supposed to operate. It is increasingly clear that the Bush Administration came into office with a hidden agenda which included invading Iraq, outsourcing many functions of the government to contractors, and expanding the powers of the Executive Branch. While this is horrible to state, the Bush Administration has skillfully used 9-11-2001 to implement this hidden agenda.

The Boston Globe reported on April 30, that Bush had claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws. Who does he think he is? CEO of Enron? There are none of those 750 laws he claims to be able to disobey more important than the claim his Administration can listen in on phone calls and read e-mails of private citizens, without a warrant or probable cause. Often, Congress didn’t know that Bush had changed the laws he had just signed until after Congress tried to have them enforced. The claim that all this information is needed to be able to “analyze patterns of potential terrorist cell activity” is a lie. This “intelligence gathering” already been used to listen in on the cell phone conversations of TV and newspaper reporters that the Bush Administration suspects (meaning nearly all White House reporters) is receiving leaked information from government whistle-blowers. The White House has refused to turn over information regarding the scope of this NSA domestic spying program stating that to do so would compromise national security. If you think that the NSA was not listening in to the phone calls or reading the e-mails of private citizens, especially those of perceived enemies of this Administration, you’re naive.

We are close, very close, to having a totalitarian Executive Branch, supported by a capitulating Surpeme Court and Congress. Congressional oversight committees request for information are ignored or denied on national security grounds. The Supreme Court just ruled that a federal employee who discloses information about government wrong doing, i.e. a whistle blower, can be fired with impunity. We’ve gone though this widespread Executive Branch paranoia before, just not as widespread and in some respect, not as serious. Even the Nixon Administration didn’t view itself as the sole power of government.

The Bush Administration has set itself up to be unaccountable for any secretive law breaking, or lies told us, Congress, and the rest of the world. Without congressional oversight or challenge by the Supreme Court, we don’t know what we don’t know until later when we find out after some wrongdoing or disaster has been done.

Secrets and lies. Secrets and lies. All of the deliberation, forethought and work of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson and the other drafters of the Constitution are being undone by the work of men who hate the government offices they have been chosen to serve and protect. They believe because of their position, they are above the laws.This is a far cry from the gentlemen-politician that our Founding Fathers believed would best serve the interests of the citizens of this country.

TRD101 knows this: Lies and secrets, secrets and lies are the work of those with something to hide. Lies and secrets, secrets and lies, are the defense of those who cannot laws abide.

And that is The Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.
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Send your comments and questions or to be added to or removed from TRD101's distribution list to: mikemaynard@mindspring.com

You can read TRD101's work and participate in a group discussion at: www.blogger.com and enter TRD101, where it asks for which blog you want. Please feel free to forward this column to your friends, romans and countrymen, as appropriate, and have them contact me if they have comments or want to receive columns via e-mail in the future.

© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, June 2006.

In Memory

TRD101: In Memory

by Michael Maynard

May 24, 2006


I just received an advertisement e-mail from J.C. Penney with this heading: “Celebrate Memorial Day with Free Shipping”. This is almost as obscene as George Bush’s statement on how to give tribute to those who lost their lives on 9/11/2001: “Fly to the destination spots of this country”. Let’s honor the lives of those who lives were lost by a terrorist attack which could have been prevented, except for a series of blunders and inaction, by the various levels of those who receive a paycheck from the federal government, including the President and Vice President, by going to Disney World.

That’s what the United States has become: a big credit card. Let’s give respect to the birth of Jesus by promoting toys weeks before the day of his birth. Let's celebrate the founding of our country by buying foreign-made automobiles. Let’s honor those who have died in combat, serving to preserve and protect the honor and security of this country and our allies, by buying some furniture because it will be shipped free of charge to our homes. Let’s honor those who have died in combat to make sure their sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, live in a free country, by selling them cheap imported goods, purchased in debt, that our sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters will have to pay through higher taxes or further reductions in government services.

My father is one of those who should be honored this weekend. His Army battalion was the first to reach the shore at Anzio, despite the heavy fire from Mussolini’s troops. He was a gentle man, who spent hours with me in his hopes that I could become a professional baseball player. My uncles delighted in telling the story about when he went hunting and stopped to pet one of my great-uncle's mangy dogs. As he bent down, a huge deer buck raced past him, nearly decapitating my father with his antlers. My father went hunting for the exercise and being out with the guys. He could no more shoot a deer than his son can today.

From his military service, my father lost some of hearing and had shrapnel embedded in his leg. He also suffered from what we now would call PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He suffered from debilitating headaches. He had dreams, flashbacks, where he relived Anzio and saw his Army buddies get shot around him and woke up screaming and in a sweat. A few times, when he was having one of his headaches, he would become angry and violent. He never received treatment for his PTSD, at the time, not only wasn’t this condition known, it was considered to be part of what happened to you when you returned from battle.

I was lucky. I didn’t want to serve in Vietnam and I just below the cutoff lottery number twice. But they were anxious years because I was on the potential call up list. While I was in college, Vietnam veterans returned to my school. Many were burned out cases with hollowed eyes, smoking joint after joint in the hope the buzz would help alleviate the pain from the memories of the horrors they had lived through. Those vets who were my friends told me stories of what happened to them. I understood what they were saying, but could never comprehend what they experienced. A recent study stated that 98% of those who fired weapons during the Vietnam War suffer from PTSD. Given the similarities in theatre environment between Vietnam and Iraq: the horrors of guerilla warfare, uncertainty to discern the enemy easily, hostile environmental conditions and overextended tours of duty, there is no reason to expect the percentage to be lower.

The US is now getting the first wave of soldiers who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many suffer from PTSD, as well as other physical and mental maladies. The WWII soldiers came back as heroes and the US Government rewarded with them with free college tuition and low-interest loans. The Vietnam soldiers came back in the midst of a major societal change and were considered as heroes/anti-heroes, unfortunates caught up in the midst of geopolitical gamesmanship being done by proxy intervening in a foreign civil war. The Vietnam soldiers did come back to free college tuition and an improved Veterans Administration hospital system to care for them. The soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan are coming back as heroes, but in a country that’s honoring them with a stripped to the bone Veteran Administration hospital system, greatly reduced government social services programs to help them in their reentry, and in some cases, having lost their jobs, though these jobs are supposed to be theirs upon return. The jobs that are available are usually minimum wage service industry jobs, since the combination of government disinvestment and outsourcing of manufacturing and high-tech jobs off-shore has made finding good jobs at good wages difficult, at best.

The Rumsfeld Department of Defense, to no surprise, has not budgeted for the number of Iraq/Afghanistan veterans requiring mental health services, the type of personnel needed to handle PTSD cases or the facilities it will need to build or reopen to handle the rapidly growing number of servicemen and servicewomen needing treatment. So it will be left to the municipalities and states to handle the medical overload, and the cases of suicide, homicide and domestic violence that will inevitably occur. Of course, those people who lose their lives as a result of this gross mis-planning by the DOD will not be added to the daily number of deaths reported by the DOD. They will be casualties of war as much as those who died on the battlefield.

I still have my father’s duffel bag and helmet. He resides in me, my heart and my memory forever. That he suffered from his service to his country was unfortunate, but his government cared about and planned for his return to civilian life. That the current servicepeople don’t have to suffer the way he did, but their government has turned their backs on them for “budgetary reasons”, is heartless and despicable.

TRD101 knows this: With all the advances in modern day psychopharmacology and psychotherapy, it is possible to proactively treat those returning for PTSD. However, despite all those advances, no one can change what is in the memory of those who served in combat nor those who loved ones died as result. We can do nothing for the dead but pay them honor, but we disrespect their service to our country by the way their modern brethren are being mistreated.

And that is The Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.
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Send your comments and questions or to be added to TRD101's distribution list to: mikemaynard@mindspring.com

You can read TRD101's work and participate in a group discussion at: www.blogger.com and enter TRD101, where it asks for which blog you want. Please feel free to forward this column to your friends, romans and countrymen, as appropriate, and have them contact me if they have comments or want to receive columns via e-mail in the future.

© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, May 2006.

Immigrant Nation

TRD101: Immigration Nation

by Michael Maynard

May 18, 2006

My grandfather, Michael Anthony Urbano, for whom I am named, came to the United States from Sicily not knowing a word of English. He, like countless others, heard that the streets were paved with gold and that anyone could become successful if they worked hard enough and took advantage of the opportunities. He arrived in North Adams, Massachusetts, with a few dollars in his pocket, no job prospects, but a strong back and a willingness to work hard in the textile mills that abutted the Hoosac River. At the turn of the century, North Adams was the largest town in the US.

By the time I was born, my grandfather had opened a successful barber shop which doubled as a “men’s emporium”. He was successful enough to feed and support a large family, as was typical at that time. When my mother went back to work, my grandfather and his cronies took care of me during the day. I learned some valuable social skills at a very early age, such as shooting pool, rolling bocci and bowling balls and playing poker. My uncles and aunts have told me stories about how much money my grandfather won on that “toddler in the corner” beating some newcomer in pool, while I was standing on a wooden crate to reach the table. There were probably other activities going on there, but I was too young to know or understand them. I loved every minute I was there. I can still smell the stale cigars and strong after shave that permeated the place.

My grandfather was a member of the “Family”, but not the family of Mario Puzo fame. It was the Italian males bonding together to protect themselves from attack by the Irish, Poles and the Germans, who resented the newcomers coming in and “stealing their jobs”. Sure, they did book making and had a numbers racket, it was done more as a community bonding than an operation of crooks. Say what you will about my grandfather’s background, he led the effort to build the first Italian church in the Berkshires, which is still standing today, opposite the MassMOCA modern art museum. He went to church each Sunday, dressed in his finest, including his boater in summer, and sat in the front rows. I was told he was good friends with the parish priests, who came to his establishment for haircuts and “other activities” frequently.

As much as we kid or romanticize the activities of “the Family”, during my grandfather’s day, it was a necessity. The dark-skinned “guineas, dagos, wops, etc.” were easy prey for the lighter skinned ethnic groups already established, so they formed a group to protect themselves and their families. This type of race bashing has been the history of the United States. The newest ethnic group or groups become targets of prejudicial hostilities because they “are different” or “they’re taking our jobs” They speak a different language, they have different values and they smell different. We speak a different language, have different values and smell different to them, as well.
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I remember stories about resentment of the Vietnamese immigrants by some people in Lowell, Massachusetts, even though Lowell was in the midst of the high tech boom Many of the Vietnamese were working 3 jobs and saving the money to open their own business. That is what America is supposedly about, taking advantage of the opportunities available to you.

From the beginning of this country, we have been a nation of immigrants, except for the Native Americans, whom we have brutalized, stole from and then ignored. This is also a pernicious tradition throughout the history of the US, xenophobia, both internal and external to our borders. Whether it’s Joe McCarthy’s Red baiting, Bull Connor’s attack dogs, to the post 9-11 terrorizing of Arab-Americans, a country that prides itself on tolerance and diversity, has often shown little of either. Of course, the Jews have always been and continue to be convenient targets for many. There is still a large number of Americans who still believe the Jews control the American economy through ownership of all the banks, financial institutions and large corporations.

Today’s xenophobia involves the ruination of modern society and morals by allowing gays to marry and the increase in immigration of Hispanics, especially those crossing the border from Mexico or risking their lives by sailing on ramshackle boats from Cuba and Haiti. The dreams and aspirations of these people is no different than those of my grandfather’s or your ancestors, to build a better life for themselves, their families and their future generations.

Leave it to the ham-handed and limited focused Bush Administration to come up with a horrible approach to dealing with these immigration issues. Sending 6,000 National Guardsman to patrol the border of Mexico to stop illegal immigration is as dumb as having 140,0000 troops patrol post-war Iraq to “keep the peace”. All that’s being done is putting these patriotic, heroic men and women in harms way who will have little or no effectiveness in their stated mission. What the Bush Administration is trying to do is combine two separate issues and provide a solution to neither: protecting homeland security by catching terrorists at the borders and reduce the flood of immigrants to the American Southwest and South. The Bush Administration is very good at taking every issue and saying that 9/11/2001 changed how the US should approach it and then provide policy approaches that benefit big business and do the opposite of what any form of rational policy for the issue should be.

Let’s get real, real fast. Many of the immigrants are doing jobs that most Americans don’t want to do, manual labor such as landscaping, construction, security and cleaning. Working at Starbucks and McDonalds is preferable to these forms of work for many young workers. The US economy benefits by the immigrant's services, because they do their jobs “more efficiently”, to use the asinine standards of the US Department of Labor in defining worker productivity. Since most of these workers are here illegally, they get paid under the table, so no employer share of Social Security is paid, and no other benefits are paid, so the productivity (worked performed divided by cost per hour) is greatly increased. These workers are not just hired by small businesses, either. Look at who is cleaning the floors at night in the buildings of large corporations. Latinos will soon become the largest ethnic group in the US and either the rest of us accept that and adjust or run the risk out being treated as a minority. Canada isn’t willing to import that many more Americans.

What makes sense is to declare a worker’s amnesty and issue guest workers cards to those who are working hard and just getting by. Let having a guest worker card allow them to apply for drivers licenses.They have to get to work in the suburbs, too. The bigger challenge will be to increase the number of teachers of Spanish and for corporations to provide Spanish speaking courses for their American workers and ESL classes for their immigrant guest workers. What also makes sense is to increase investment in Mexican industry under the Maquiladora program of NAFTA and increase foreign aid to Mexico and other South American countries to boost their economies. This serves a dual purpose: help them provide jobs so that their people don’t need or want to come to America and increases the market for US goods and services - sort of a South American Marshall Plan.

However, the long-standing paranoid strain in American politics, continued to be exploited by the Bush Leaguers, will prevent such a plan from being considered at this time, let alone being enacted into law and put into action. It would require sacrifice from the rich. It’s easier to force more sacrifice from our soldiers as the poor substitute.

TRD101 knows this: Each new generation of immigrants has enriched and strengthened the American economy, but also the American society by reminding us of what the real basic values this country was based. They are to be embraced and assimilated, not forced to work in fear and shame. It’s to all our benefit. Our forefathers and ancestors would expect no less from us. So would my grandfather, rascal that he was.

And that is The Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.
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Send your comments and questions or to be added to TRD101's distribution list to: mikemaynard@mindspring.com

You can read TRD101's work and participate in a group discussion at: www.blogger.com and enter TRD101, where it asks for which blog you want. Please feel free to forward this column to your friends, romans and countrymen, as appropriate.

© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, May 2006.

Staring at Goat

TRD101: Staring at Goat

by Michael Maynard

May 2, 2006

There is a not widely known, but greatly entertaining book Jon Ronson’s “The Men Who Stare at Goats”. Well, three-quarters of the book is entering, the last one-quarter is chilling. In this book, there are men who are getting paid to stare at goats from long range in order to change their behavior. Others toss themselves at walls because they believe they will be able to pass through them, regardless of the earthly physics involved. And it gets weirder, with references to Marshall Applewhite and the Heaven’s Gate tragedy and other peculiar phenomenon.

Welcome to your Department of Defense in action. The long-distance staring at goats is part of overall psychological military operations, a/k/a. “Psy-Ops”to be able to teach soldiers to kill the enemy through mental telepathy. The goals of Psy-Ops are to create “Warrior Monks”, like a group of David Carradines of “Kung Fu”, and develop the mental techniques to liberate the world through them to reach enlightenment via truth, justice and the American way.

There is some justifiable rationale for this, even if the ideas behind it are whacked. Studies of Vietnam veterans showed that 98% of combat soldiers who fired their gun and killed an enemy suffered from some degree of post traumatic stress disorder. War is hell. If techniques can be developed to stop warfare and disarm an enemy with minimal human damage, then these techniques are just and humane. Psy-Ops operations, like constant bombardment with repetitive loud rock’n’roll music, have been credited by the DOD (whether accurate, effective or not) in capturing the strong arm dictators, Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein. However, as the book goes on to show, the degree of interest, the monies spent and the relative sanity of those in charge are questionable.

In the article “War-Mart” in the New Republic On-Line on March 3rd, (Print 04-03-2006 edition), Clay Risen makes references to speech given on 9/10/2001 (yes, one day before 9/11/2001). Here are excerpts from this speech:

“An adversary poses a threat, serious threat, to the security of the United States of America” - one that “attempts to impose its demands across time zones, continents, oceans and beyond. With brutal consistency, it stifles free thought and crushes new ideas. It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk.” The speaker - Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld Was he referring to Al Qaeda or even Saddam Hussein and Iraq? No.

The enemy he was referring to was his own Department of Defense.

Upon reading Ronson’s book, you’d tend to give Rumsfeld’s ideas serious thought. However, while Psy-Ops programs started way before Rumsfeld became Secretary of Defense, the scope and funding of Psy-Ops, including the use of Psy-Ops in torture techniques, has expanded greatly. So Rumsfeld wasn’t railing against his department being out-of-control and spending money foolishly.

No, what Rumsfeld’s intent was to introduce “modern management” techniques into the DOD, including making the Pentagon act more likely modern boardrooms. Given my years of business consulting experience, including with DOD contractors, the idea of introduce “modern management” techniques was a non-starter.

If you review Rumsfeld’s track record as a CEO at GD Searle and General Instrument, his own modern management skills are questionable. His “success” at Searle relied upon pushing the introduction of Nutrasweet, which had questions then about being a carcinogenm and is now strongly suspected now to be one, quickly through the Federal Drug Agency review process. The FDA review was not as thorough as it should have been nor as long as it usually was for other similar products; i.e. political pressure was put to approve it. At General Instrument, he used the standard “slash and burn” management tactics, made popular at the time by “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap. There is controversy whether GI’s success in the television cable industry is due to Rumsfeld’s direction while CEO, occurred in spite of Rumsfeld's direction, or occurred after Rumsfeld’s tenure.

This Pentagon full of CEO’s program is part of Rumsfeld’s overall strategy of military transformation. Rumsfeld’s idea of military transformation are based upon two ideas: the US military has an continued and significant advantage in high technology weaponry, as a result troop manpower number can be greatly reduced. Both of these ideas are highly dubious in concept, as we have seen in action. That he had these ideas that he was going to implement before he was in office despite whether real world situations, such as what happened on 9/11/2001, require that he modify or scrap them is all too typical of what has happened throughout the Bush Administration. Ideology has consistently trumped reality, so the Bush-Leaguers have continued to try to spin the reality to be consistent with their ideology. That Rumsfeld has also illegally used intelligence resources to investigate, infiltrate and harass domestic peace activist groups is also all too typical what’s happened the past 6 years.

Rumsfeld’s military transformation has four major flaws in it.

1. It assumes that the US will always have a significant military high technology advantage. Given the amount of outsourcing of high tech jobs and the rise of quality international engineering colleges, that assumption is not a given and may be proven wrong sooner than we think.

2. What cost will it take to maintain this high tech weaponry advantage. Consider the billions of dollars dumped into the Strategic Defense Initiative, which despite being officially “deployed”, still doesn’t work and is 99.99% likely will never work effectively.

3. The wars of the future will be low tech, and will not be resolved with high tech weaponry. Iraq is a low tech war and it is a quagmire because the US military has continued to be undermanned, despite all the high-tech weaponry at its disposal. The wars of the future will be like Darfur and Kosovo, wars and genocides of generations of racial animus. What’s needed in Darfur are peacekeepers, boots on the ground, to separate the factions, provide the needed humanitarian aid, and do nation building and rebuilding. The pulling of troops from Afghanistan to Iraq has proven to be a major strategic mistake as Al Qaeda and the Taliban have returned, the warlords are in control of the majority of the country, and the opium trade has comeback with a vengeance. The Bush Administration’s hatred of the Clintonistas have led to its out-of-hand disregard for the real military strategy of the future, the strategy of the past: strength in numbers, humanitarian aid and nation build. If this strategy was followed in Iraq, and Donald Rumsfeld followed General Eric Shinnseki’s strategy and manpower estimations of a minimum of 440,000 troops, based upon historical analysis of effective post war operations, the US would not be bogged down in an unwinnable war that is rapidly descending into large-scale civil warfare.

The end of Ronson’s book discusses the chilling and sad case of Frank Olsen, the CIA agent who died by falling out of a New York apartment building after being secretly being given LSD.T his was one of the “Psy-Ops” programs - to study the effects of psychotropic drugs effect on behavior, so that they could be used for enemy interrogation or possibly disable enemy troop son the battlefield. There is no difference morally between slipping LSD into someone’s drink as part of an experiment and waterboarding a suspected, but not verified, Iraqi insurgent. In both cases, the end result was the same.

The goat who approved the all of the failed military strategies and policies in Iraq and Afghanistan? Donald Rumsfeld. Heaven help us all that the CEO generals of the Pentagon prevent the suicidal attack of Iran.

TRD101 knows this: There’s a reason old goats are put out to pasture, so that people driving by care stare at them in their dotage. There’s also a reason why these old goats should not put back in service.

And that is The Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.
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Send your comments and questions or to be added to TRD101's distribution list to: mikemaynard@mindspring.com

You can read TRD101's work and participate in a group discussion at: www.blogger.com and enter TRD101, where it asks for which blog you want. Please feel free to forward this column to your friends, romans and countrymen, as appropriate.

© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, March 2006.

Chronic

TRD101: Chronic

by Michael Maynard

May 1, 2006

No, I’m not talking about Dr. Dre’. “The Chronic”, let he and Snoop Dogg discuss the virtues of top quality marijuana. I know nothing about that subject. What I do want to discuss is word chronic, defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “having long had a disease”.

I have two chronic immune system illnesses: chronic fatigue syndrome and Celiac’s disease. I have had extensive, sophisticated blood and other tests for both diseases, and have tested positive. Immune system illnesses, which include HIV, multiple sclerosis, lupus, lyme’s disease, fibromyalgia and many others, can take a long time to develop. You can first become infected as a child and not develop full blown symptoms until you’re an adult. Many of these illnesses have similar symptoms: deep fatigue, joint pain, dizziness, “brain fog”; or are confused with other non-immune system illnesses. The probability of being misdiagnosed is very high and the likelihood of not being correctly diagnosed for many, many years is even higher. 97% of people with Celiac’s disease, which is 1% of the population, are never diagnosed properly and the fortunate 3% that are, on average, take 9 years before being diagnosed. (Source - “Celiac Disease: A Hidden Epidemic co-authored by Dr. Peter H.R. Green, the director of the Celiac’s Disease Center at Columbia University, and Rory Jones.)

Fortunately, I’ve responded well to following the gluten-free diet. It’s really not that much of a sacrifice. There are plenty of good gluten-free breads, pastas, and cookies. I do have read the labels on foods, since most processed foods contain some type of gluten product as a preservative, and my menu choices when dining out are limited. Chicken caesar salads without the croutons or other types of salads have become the primary options. If you are experiencing any of the symptoms I’ve described above, I cannot stress too strongly to you to have your doctor order a Celiac blood test for you and to have an gastroenterologist perform an endoscopy to test you for Celiac’s disease. Or you can try a gluten-free diet for 3 months to see how you react, as long as you understand that beyond the diet will alter the results of subsequent medical tests for Celiac's disease.

But the toll of having chronic disease is extensive. I seldom look “sick” so many people wonder if I’m faking the illness or have other problems. Since I often never know how I’m going to feel from day to day, and sometimes hour to hour, it makes my reliability, which is highly important to me, sometimes questionable. And having a silent, non-apparent chronic illness takes a toll on those around you as well. They want to help, but there’s nothing they can really do and they become tired and frustrated. They see a healthy looking person, but one who is constantly physically and mentally tired. A promising career is stalled, a public life put on hold, a long-term relationship left hanging by a tenuous thread. Consider the lost productive hours, the talents unable to be used, the stresses on families, the lives in desperation of all of those who have chronic illnesses - the societal devastation is beyond comprehension.

One of the hidden results of chronic illness is how it drains you of emotional content. You’re just too tired and too self-absorbed with being sick to interact with others in a normal and usual manner. You’re too tired to think at times, and have to rely on others to do your thinking for you.

Being constantly tired also makes you fearful. It was legendary NFL Green Bay Packer coach Vince Lombardi who said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”

Webster’s has another definition of the word chronic that is even more significant and devastating: chronic - “continuing a long time or recurring frequently - a chronic state of war”. Throughout our history and especially in the 20th century, the United States has been in a chronic state of war. Is it just because of geopolitical realities or is it a permanent mind set of the American people due to collective fatigue because of chronic warfare?

One of my favorite socio-political writers is Douglas Hofsadler, especially his “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”. Hofstadler wrote:

"simply because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.

It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.

The paranoid style ... is, above all, a way of seeing the world and of expressing oneself. ... In the paranoid style, as I conceive it, the feeling of persecution is central, and it is indeed systematized in grandiose theories of conspiracy. But there is a vital difference between the paranoid spokesman in politics and the clinical paranoic: although they both tend to be overheated, oversuspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and apocalyptic in expression, the clinical paranoid sees the hostile and conspiratorial world in which he feels himself to be living as directed specifically against him; whereas the spokesman of the paranoid style finds it directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but millions of others. Insofar as he does not usually see himself singled out as the individual victim of a personal conspiracy, he is somewhat more rational and much more disinterested. His sense that his political passions are unselfish and patriotic, in fact goes far to intensify his feeling of righteousness and his moral indignation.”

Sound familiar?

It has been primarily the recent Republican leaders of our country who have exploited the collective fatigue and fear to use to their own advantage. Perversely, they have managed to make the majority of the populace believe that their cowardice is a form of patriotic bravery.

Ronald Reagan had the boogeyman of the Soviet Union to scare us in to submission. The Soviet Union was never the threat to the US that Reagan made it out to be and his State Department and CIA knew this. For those of you who want to credit Reagan and the US military arms build up, Wojtyla and others for the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet economy had been in collapse for decades. It was the political changes made by Mikhail Gorbachev that led to the modern Russia and all the “stan” states. And look what this “collapse” has wrought, a metrosexual Breshnev. Be careful what you wish for wingnuts. With one or two exceptions, the new states are as repressive and militaristic as the USSR.

Richard Nixon had the domino effect and used the patriotism card about Vietnam to try to stifle dissent and create a quasi-police state. The Nixon Administration’s breaking of laws that led to Watergate and impeachment are piddly compared to what has been done the past 6 years.

I think the small-minded George Bush genuinely panicked on 9/11/2001 and has remained panicked and paranoid about another terrorist attack ever since. However, the disciples of Nixon and Reagan, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (and their disciples within the Bush League administration) have reprised and expanded upon the past very effectively. We have a greater quasi-police state with the same Nixonesque stifling of dissent by using patriotism and homeland security as the excuse, same total disregard for the Congress and the law, wire tapping on political rivals and federal government infiltration of legitimate political policy adversarial groups, and the same failed military tactics, such as carpet bombing, to conduct an unjustifiable and unwinnable invasion.

That we as a nation have not reacted with the same or greater outrage to all of the illegal and immoral police-state activities of the Bush Administration should lead us all to ask about the real emotional character of this country. It is those of us, in spite of the continued and increased crackdowns and threats from the Bush-Leaguers, who have stood up in opposition to these horrific and wrongheaded policies who are the brave, as are the soldiers who have and are sacrificing their lives to carry out these policies. The rest of us, who have hunkered down into our homes, tuning out what we don’t want to hear or know, who have become cowards due to fatigue.

Now is the time for us to question what is the real political psychological state of our country.

Are we, as a nation,

suffering from chronic fatigue due to chronic war?

suffering from chronic war due to chronic fatigue?

or inevitably drawn by collective tiredness and fear to period to suffer both chronic fatigue and chronic war?

TRD101 knows this: Chronic illness undermines the lives of those infected. Chromic warfare undermines the political structures and the political will of this country.

And that is The Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.
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Send your comments and questions or to be added to TRD101's distribution list to: mikemaynard@mindspring.com

You can read TRD101's work and participate in a group discussion at: www.blogger.com and enter TRD101, where it asks for which blog you want. Please feel free to forward this column to your friends, romans and countrymen, as appropriate.

© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, March 2006.

Mike Maynard's picture.

The Which Blair Project

TRD101:The Which Blair Project

by Michael Maynard

April 13, 2006

There are a lot of mysteries concerning the information gathering and decision making processes involving the run up to the invasion of Iraq. The US media and a significant portion of the US populace wants to believe there was and find out what the single reason the Bush Administration decided to invade Iraq. We do know, from former Treasury Secretary’s Paul O’Neill’s book, that this decision was made just as or before (as I believe) they took office. I don’t believe there was one single reason or motivation amongst the various Bush Leaguers:

President George W. Bush wanted revenge for Saddam’s attempt to kill his father. It has been reported many times, the latest in the Scooter Libby-Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame imbroglio, that FUBAR is a small minded, mean, vindictive man.

Vice President Dick Cheney wanted greater US control over the oil supplies of the Middle East, so that his corporate friends, such as Halliburton, would benefit. It has been reported many times, including Cheney’s still benefitting from his tenure as CEO at Halliburton, that Cheney is a venal, corrupt man.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted to prove his ideas about transforming the military into a modern lean, high-tech, not manpower, dependent group would work. It has been reported many times, and we all see the results daily, of Rummy’s being an egotistical, vainglorious, reality denying man.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowicz, IMNSHO, is the tragic figure in this fiasco. I believe he had noble reasons behind his beliefs about what would occur after Iraq was successfully invaded and conquered. He believed that the political landscape of the Middle East would gradually be transformed from the brutal, dictatorial regimes in place, to modern Western style democracies. As a results, the security of Israel would be increased and the United States’ ability to solve the Israel-Palestine situation/problem would be greatly enhanced. Wolife, and the others, forgot a key point, it takes a long time and a lot of manpower to provide security and money to build infrastructure to establish democracies in countries that have not had democratic institutions previously.

Secretary of State Colin Powell was the lone rational figure in this whole process. He tried to stop the invasion or at worst, slow down the process so the planning about what would happen and what to do after the invasion would be sound. The State Departments “Future of Iraq” projet reports correctly predicted everything that was going to happen once the invasion started. Colin Powell got steam rolled in the process.

It’s a mystery to me is what Colin Powell did after the decision was made to invade Iraq and it makes me question his character. His oath is to serve the country, and not the President. As he stated recently, if he knew the intelligence was false and he had concerns about how the invasion was going to be conducted, then he should have either spoken up to the press and/or resigned. His silence and capitulation in making the presentation to the UN makes his later statements seem self-serving and pussilanimous.


Assistant Secretary of Defense, Donald Feith, and National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, were looking for holes in the wall to use as comparisons.

The biggest mystery to me is what The U.K Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was thinking when he signed on to back the Iraq invasion. He wasn’t new to his office, like the Bush Leaguers. He was a FOB (Friend of Bubba - Bill Clinton) and considered to be an international statesman, in his own right. His actions and leadership this year on how to help Africa develop show his international presence and knowledge. So what was he doing backing the Iraqi war?

The leaked Downing Street Memos (www.downingstreetmemo.com) show that his Foreign Ministrer, Jack Straw, and various others of his cabinet members were greatly opposed to the invasion. He should have known the information he had from his intelligence services on Iraq was “dodgy”. The intelligence included a term paper from a college student. He should have known that the US intelligence, because of lack of direct evidence from Iraq and reliance on
expatriates like Ahmed Chalabi for information, was equally dodgy. He particularly should have known after meeting with Bush on his ranch, that Blair was not dealing with an equal in terms of knowledge and experience in foreign affairs and policy.

And he particularly should have known the dangers of pulling resources out of Afghanistan when Al Qaeda and the Taliban were still viable entities. He should have known that good man, Hamid Karzai, needed the long-term military and rebuilding support from the allied forces in order to help establish a viable democratic country. Pulling the military forces too early allowed the regional warlords to regain control of their areas. Pulling the military and rebuilding support forces too early would lead to the redevelopment of the opium farmers and dealers. Great Britain now faces a major crisis as cheap heroin is flooding the country. Blair should have known this would happen, his advisors told him what would happen. So there will be countless lives wasted because Tony Blair’s actions and lack thereof.

So which Tony Blair he projects should we believe: the FOB international statesman, or the poodle willingly sitting on the lap of the Bush Administration? The hundred of thousands of lives taken in Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts or destroyed through drug abuse is most telling about which Blair projects.

TRD101 knows this: There’s no such thing as magic in the universe. When your senior experts present accurate and detailed scenarios about the damage will happen on taking certain actions, then you need to believe them. You don’t change the information to fit your preconceived ideas. That never works.

And that is The Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.

Send your comments and questions or to be added to TRD101's distribution list to:
mikemaynard@mindspring.com

You can read TRD101's work and participate in a group discussion at
www.blogger.com and enter TRD101, where it asks for what blog you want. Please feel forward to forward this along to others, as appropriate.

© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, March 2006.

The Abused

TRD101:The Abused

by Michael Maynard

April 6, 2006

Finally, some good news from Iraq: Jill Carroll was released from captivity. The full story of her ordeal will come out over the weeks, months and years to come as she heals emotionally and psychologically so that she will be able to recall and recount what happened to her. I was particularly saddened and sickened by the immediate response of her release by the right wingnuts who called her a traitor and other vile terms because of what she said in the last two video tapes of her released by her captors. That it has sunk that low to attack the integrity of a 28 year old female freelance journalist who was just held hostage by Iraqi insurgents for 82 days under extreme duress and other possible horrors is symptomatic of the scum involved in today’s partisan politics. To attack the integrity of a young woman who saw her translator killed immediately after her abduction is pathetic.

I greatly appreciated Senator John McCain coming to Ms. Carroll’s defense. There are those who still question McCain’s “loyalty” and courage even after hearing the accounts of the torture and treatment the Senator received in Vietnam. I can understand those who were detained with McCain having some resentment. However, I suggest that even they should know that, even with the best capture and torture training, everyone has their own unique breaking point, and they should be sympathetic knowing that McCain has to live with what he did after reaching his breaking point for the rest of his life.

Jill Carroll was not trained nor as prepared for being captured. We don’t know what was done to her at this time, but living in fear of being killed, raped and/or tortured for 82 days is horrific. Like McCain, she is going to have to live with the anguish about the videos she made for the rest of her life. Even if she wasn’t harmed physically and no form of psychological torture was used on her, she was still emotionally harmed. She was abused, a pawn of the Great Game of the politics of the Middle East.

She was abused and the memories of what happened to her in captivity will be with her for the rest of her life. In other forums, I have discussed my own dealing with abuse, and while it doesn’t compare with what Ms. Carroll went through, I still have to deal with effects of it every day. Unless you’ve been abused, in whatever form, you have no idea of its effects. We all have our own unique breaking points.

As someone who once considered (albeit very briefly) becoming a priest and previously being a devout Catholic, I have been particularly nauseated at the way the “one holy and apostolic church” has dealt with this abuse scandal. From my years of experience as a management consultant, I know that what you’re able to discover when you find illegal or fraudulent activities going on in any organization, let alone one the global size of the Catholic Church, never is able to go deep enough to uncover the full extent what happened. We will never know the extent that the Vatican and US bishops played three-priest monte to try to avoid detection of the scope of the abuse.

The Boston Globe reported, on March 31, that the Catholic Church spent $467 million in settlements, legal fees, therapy and training in 2005 in handling the ramifications from the previous abuse. The Globe article stated there were still 783 credible claims of abuse in the US in 2005 and 12,000 claims since 1950. Multiply those figures worldwide and you have an epidemic that’s not going to go away..

The Catholic Church’s response to this world-wide abuse problem under both Wojtyla and Ratzinger has been to blame the victims, cover up the Vatican’s involvement and cry poor mouth. The Catholic Church, as based in Rome, is in no danger of bankruptcy by any means. But, by law in the US, each archdiocese is legally considered a separate entity, like a foreign holding company in business. I’m not saying that the Church set up this structure deliberately, in Massachusetts, this is based on laws going back to our state’s original charter. But this structure has been awfully convenient legally for the Vatican for it to escape legal and financial culpability. To claim that the Pope didn’t know about the abuse, when the panicked Cardinal Bernard Law, then of the Boston Archdiocese, was making frequent trips to Rome for meetings is completely disingenuous. At best, if the Popes didn’t know, given the massive scale of the problem, then their executive management and moral leadership should be questioned.

The Catholic Church’s latest means of dealing with the issue, blaming gays, is as pathetic as the wingnuts questioning Jill Carroll’s character. It’s not being gay that led to the extent of the sexual abuse throughout the Catholic Church, gay men are, at worst, no more likely than heterosexual men to abuse children. There have been studies that have shown that gay men are actually less likely to be pedophiles. Meanwhile, there has been little done to show compassion for those abused, other than continuing to make them go through legal hoops and hurdles. The abused have been pushed aside as unfortunate, but necessary collateral damage, just as Jill Carroll will be.

It is the unwillingness of those in power in Washington and in Rome to recognize and deal with the reality of the problems, mostly cultural in nature, that means the abuse will continue and the future abused will suffer. Don’t blame Jill Carroll for the wrongheaded manner in which the invasion of Iraq occurred and continues to be conducted, so that she gets abducted as a political statement. Don’t blame those who have challenged the perverted and perverse culture of the Catholic hierarchy and priesthood for wanting recompense and needing closure.

Don’t blame the abused. They’ve survived. Blame the abusers.

TRD101 knows this: Wide spread organizational abuse , whether it’s abuse of power or abuse of people is directly attributable to management and the organizational culture it promotes. You don’t change the culture without changing the management.

And that is the Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.

Send your comments and questions or to be added to TRD101's distribution list to:
mikemaynard@mindspring.com

You can read TRD101's work and participate in a group discussion at
www.blogger.com and inquire for TRD101 and the blog IMMNSHO. Please feel forward to forward this along to other.

© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, March 2006.

Fear Itself

TRD101: Fear Itself

by Michael Maynard

March 27, 2006

There are days where I don’t want to read the newspapers or watch the TV news. I force myself to do so because it my job to be informed on current events. But I’m tired of reading a new outrage every day and see nothing being done about it. I can write, I’m trying to develop a forum for myself and others to express their views, but I feel as helpless as you do. Helplessness leads to apathy and depression when you’re trapped in a situation you can’t do a damn thing about.

Today’s outrage is the Bush Administration’s refusal to comply with congressional oversight requirements from the reenacted USA Patriot Act. It’s obvious the contempt in which the Bush Administration holds Congress, especially the Senate. What’s equally obvious is the spinelessness of the Congress, especially the Senators, to do anything about this contempt of them and contempt and blatant breaking of laws.

Back when I was covering the Year 2000 Bug situation (Y2K), I had some access to the federal reports on terrorist threats pertaining to Y2K. There were dozens of very real threats involving blowing up of power grids and other acts to use the alleged results of Y2K. The public only found out about them because the situations were handled legally and quietly. As my friend, Russ Kelly and I said at the time, the biggest Y2K was terrorist attack, not what was going to happen to the computers.

These terrorist events were handled quietly and legally, the perpetrators brought to justice.

But what the many of the “Y2K experts” did was exploit the public’s fear and lack of knowledge of technology and combine it with the basic societal fear of lawlessness and disorder. Many made a lot of money in doing so, and they weren’t the first, nor will ever be the last to make a buck exploiting the fears of others. But it’s different when the President and his administration exploit the fears of the public for their own political and personal gains.

We are not a nation at war, no matter how many times Bush says so. A nation at war unites and makes collective sacrifices to support the war effort. Spending tax cuts is not making a collective sacrifice. What we are is a nation at fear.

Yes, 9/11/2001 changed everything because it meant our country was attacked by non-state actors, i.e. Al Qaeda. That Al-Qaeda are non-state actors makes their fear factor all the greater because they can’t be pinned down to one location which gives the impression “they’re everywhere”. In one sense, this is no different than the Red Scare of the Joseph McCarthy, finding cells of communists trying to bring down the government in government agencies, the artistic community and so on.

We are a nation at fear. Whenever this happens, the executive branch moves to restrict the freedoms that our forefathers sagely decided in the Constitution. These restrictions add to the fear. Your phone calls are wiretapped. Your e-mails are being read. Your ability to meet collectively is infiltrated. Your ability to protest leads to harassment and possible arrest. You're pulled aside at an airport, as I was, just because you’re wearing an all black outfit.

Each incident adds to the fears: I could be killed next. I could be pulled over and held indefintely for a crime I didn't commit. I could be the one accused of supporting terrorism. I could be the one ensconced in this Kafkaesque world.

But what if you’re innocent? You find yourself in an unknown detention center, not allowed to be represented by a lawyer. You’re labeled a terrorist, a threat to society, because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. You gave money to a charity whose relief efforts support the suffering in countries that have been deemed enemies. You have a foreign sounding last name. You teach international politics or religion subjects in college and take non-politically correct views of the current war. Most recently, you paid off your credit card bill in full. And you become a suspect.

If you’re a baby boomer, like I am, this should be deja vu all over again - Vietnam and Watergate. Many of the same players involved in both are in greater positions of authority today and are bound and determined to repeat the past.

We are a nation at fear. Whenever the Bush Administration finds itself in hot water, Karl Rove sends out the message to the right-wing minions, play the fear card. The public responds by crawling meekly in their SUV’s to the mall to buy a new foreign-made TV so that they feel safe again.

TRD101 knows this: It’s not there is nothing to fear but fear itself, its when you let those trying to exploit your fear do so without putting up a fight. When you don’t, they’ll push your fear a little farther and a little farther until you’re finally give in to what they want. We're the frogs being dipped little by little into the boiling water.

And that is the Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.

Send your comments and questions or to be added to TRD101's distribution list to:
mikemaynard@mindspring.com Please forward th

You can read TRD101's work and participate in a group discussion at
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© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, March 2006.

The Heart Gets Harder

TRD101: The Heart Gets Harder

by Michael Maynard

March 21, 2006


One of the vagaries of the intellectual property laws is that I can quote freely, with proper attribution, from books and poems, but I cannot quote lyrics from songs without prior permission from the music publishing service. These are also the same intellectual property laws that won’t let me use my public relation pictures, which I paid for, without prior approval of the photographer. The photographer owns the rights to the likeness, even though without me paying him, he would have never have obtained the likeness. The IP laws are whacked.

If you listen to the late Warren Zevon’s album “A Quiet Normal Life” or go to this WWW site:

http://www.elyricsworld.com/go/w/Warren-Zevon-lyrics/Accidentally-Like-A-Martyr-lyrics.html

you’ll understand the reference of the title.

While I followed the career of Warren Zevon and was a fan, I was not as avid a fan as many were. His death affected me a lot more than I expected. The death of Johnny Cash made me sad because of the loss of the man of decency and social conscience. The death of John Lennon affected me, but may be because of my age at that time, it didn’t have as great an impact. Warren Zevon handled his death from cancer publically, but in a very gracious and peaceful manner.

Maybe it’s due to my being of boomer age. His death was a reminder that my own can occur at any time. Maybe it was due to the way he lived his life to the fullest possible until the end. If I remember correctly, Zevon appeared on the David Letterman show shortly before his death. In watching him, I didn’t see a man who knew his time remaining was running out. Or maybe his death served as a wake up call to me that many others are dying, not as gracefully and under much less peaceful circumstances. What Warren Zevon left behind was a great body of musical work and millions of loyal fans who miss him. I hope he is resting in peace. I think he is.

But what of those who lose loved ones under much less fortunate circumstances. You’re Cindy Sheehan and you learn your son Casey has been killed in Iraq. You knew that when he reenlisted that the possibility he would be killed in action existed, but each day was one day closer to when he was going to return home. Your heart is broken, but you live with the knowledge that he was serving his country and doing what he loved.

Then you along with other parents and spouses are invited to the White House for a ceremony to honor those killed in action. The man most responsible for your son being in Iraq treats you dismissively and doesn’t credit your son properly by his name. You begin to feel your son’s life and death didn’t really mean anything to this man. Your hurt gets worse and your heart gets harder.

So you take the hurt and anger and use it to state your opposition to the Iraqi war. You try to confront the man most responsible, but he refuses to see you. You use your energies to help convince and organize others to protest this war to try to stop the killing of other boys, like Casey. You become a media cause celebre and have an international forum to state your views. You have a means to channel the hurt into ways to help others.

But what of all the other parents, relatives, husband, wives and children who don’t have access to the forums that Cindy Sheehan has? Their hurt continues gets worse and their hearts have become harder because of their loss and their seeing losses of others.

We’ve only discussed the Americans. What about the love ones in the UK or Italy or any of the other coalition forces countries? What about the love ones of the Kurd, Sunni or Shiite son or daughter? What if their love ones weren’t killed participating in military action, but being a casualty just be being in the wrong place at the wrong time? What forum do they have? Their hurts get worse and their hearts get harder as they see the losses of others. We don’t see or hear from them on TV, but their loss and pain is just as real.

Over the past 2 years, I’ve been researching two profound questions: When is conducting war legal? When is conducting war just? In the future, I'll share what I've learned.

I’ve reached the conclusion that the Iraq war is neither legal or just. While the Afghan war is legal, how it has been conducted since the formal end of the military battle makes its justness increasingly questionable. I think it’s unfortunate that we’ve become inured from the daily individual tragedies that occur in both countries, so they don’t hurt us or affect our hearts the way that they should. Our hearts maybe harder, but to not let the pain of others in.

TRD101 knows this: When the shell we carry around our hearts becomes a bunker, we not only lost caring, we’ve lost a large part of our humanity as well. Warren Zevon, Casey Sheehan, and the five year old caught in the explosion of an IED have reached the same final conclusion. What differs is the number of people who remember what they’ve left behind.

And that is the Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.

Send your comments and questions or to be added to TRD101's distribution list to:
mikemaynard@mindspring.com

You can read TRD101's work and participate in a group discussion at
www.blogger.com and inquire for TRD101 and the blog IMMNSHO. Please feel free to forward this along to other.

© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, March 2006.

The One

TRD101: The One

by Michael Maynard

March 15, 2006


Now that the Oscars are over, and as of tomorrow morning, you’ll have turned in your “for entertainment purposes only” NCAA college basketball March Madness brackets picks, the collective odds-making punditry will turn its “six will get you five” focus to the quadrennial beauty pageant known as the Presidential elections. We’ve already begun to see the before-conception poll results matching those whom the “Inside the Beltway”self anointed political elite think will be the candidates. The top two names being bandied around and test against each other in the polls are Senators John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Neither will win their party’s nomination, let alone the Presidential election. But, as usual, I’m ahead of myself, so let’s not discuss who will be the candidates at this time, but what is needed in a candidate to be successful in 2008 and in his or her one or two terms in office.

Would I like to be President? Of course! As modest, calm and diplomatic as I am, I’d make a great President and would have wiped out at least 5 countries by this time in the second term. The annexation of Canada and Mexico would be nearing completion. My Vice (ahem) President, Catherine Zeta-Jones-Douglas-Maynard, would have been put in charge of that program to take her mind off of the unfortunate hunting accident loss of her late husband. The House of Representatives, if ever let back in session, would start running smoothly under the direction of
Speaker for Life, William Belichick.

No, I would not like to be President of the United States under any circumstances. It is the ultimate in high responsibility, low direct authority stress-laden job. You don’t have direct control over the purse strings. You can attempt to develop a strategic plan and direction, but have to get two boards of directors totaling 535 members to sign off on it. Forget planagement because by the time the implementation has gone through all the levels of bureaucracy and agencies involved, you probably won’t remember what you wanted to have done. There’s no direct bottom line and you’re accountable to billions of shareholders.

And that’s the easy part of the job. What would drive me most crazy is the 3 years I would have had to spend on the road giving the same stump speech, hitting up people for money and smiling at some lame joke being made by a local factotum in East Podunk after an already 18 hour day. Then there is the 24 hour news organizations who are sitting on every word you say, waiting for you to screw up or say something controversial so you hear it in an endless 72 hour feedback cycle. No, I wouldn’t want to be President that much to go through this process. The joke about anyone wanting to run for President being disqualified for being crazy appears to me to be prima facie accurate.

Who would want to be President of the United States in 2008? The war in Iraq will likely still be in a deadly stalemate. The US economy will be in the dumper because of the disastrous fiscal and monetary policies of the previous administration. The healthcare crisis will remain unsolved and unchecked. Action on global warming will need to be taken immediately and the list of problems and issues is endless. Global relationships will be at an all time low. The red-state/blue-state culture wars will be in full rampage after the election. You face all of this after being elected with no more than 52% of the 40% of those who could have voted and probably facing a split or dual opposition Congress.

Why would anyone want this job now?

Senators Clinton and McCain are very bright and very capable people. Both might be excellent Presidents under different circumstances. Right now, both are so polarizing because of their legislative and personal views and histories, I doubt either would go far in their party’s primaries. Mrs. Clinton, through little fault of her own, is anathema to the Middle American male voter and Mr. McCain, because of his personal believes, is anathema to a majority of women voters.

What is needed now is a healer, a person of charisma, dignity, intelligence, modesty and humor who can start the slow uniting and refocusing of all the country, especially after an unpopular and costly war. Neither Senator McCain nor Senator Clinton are healers. Neither are Senator Kerry nor Senator Biden, good men as they are. Perhaps Senator Hagel is, but his views on social issues will cause many on the left to tune him out completely. Senator Feingold lost me when he didn’t put up a stronger fight against Supreme Court Judge Samuel Alito’s nomination. Now pushing for the censuring of President Bush strikes me very strongly of grandstanding. What does censuring George Bush now do to change the direction of this country and the world? At best, nothing and more likely, nothing good.

Forget Mitt Romney. Perhaps Governor Warner, Kaine of Vilsack will grow on me, but thus far, they appear to be in critical need of personality implants.

Think back to the person who galvanized the 2004 Democratic convention with his speech and subsequent interviews. He’s the one, he’s the healer - Barack Obama.

TRD101 knows this: I’ve worked with top executives. I’ve run companies. You can’t compare being President of the United States with any CEO position because it’s unlike any other job in the world. You have to be destined, you have to be the one to be an excellent President. Very few of us are so destined and fewer of them can do that job well. Only one can at a time.

And that is the Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.

Send your comments and questions or to be added to TRD101's distribution list to:
mikemaynard@mindspring.com

© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, March 2006.

Damage Done

TRD101: Damage Done

by Michael Maynard

March 6, 2006

“We all damaged”. That line was spoken by The West Wing’s Jimmy Smits’ character, Representative Matthew Santos, in the speech Santos gave at the fictional Democratic convention, to win the Presidential nomination. That line hit home with me because it was unexpected that a politician, even a fictional one, would make that remark.

We are all damaged in varying degrees at various times throughout our lives. We are all damaged. Whether by infirmity, age, genetics, personal misfortune, vagaries and vicissitudes of weather or life, social strata, lack of opportunity due to geographic location, heartbreak, poor judgement, whatever, no one of us is perfect. No one of us is perfect

You may think your invincible. You’re not. You lose your job unexpectedly. Your spouse or child becomes gravely ill. Your parent needs to be placed in a retirement facility. A car runs a red light at an intersection and smashes into you. Your child gets caught with drugs. You become damaged and that damage stays with you the rest of your life.

When one of us is damaged so that their life is endangered or lost, by other than by the grace of God, we are all damaged. We are all damaged. Amongst us, somewhere in the world, could be the next Einstein, the next Pasteur, the next Galileo, the next Mozart, the next Rembrandt. If that person is born in Brookline, Massachusetts, they have a good possibility of reaching that potential. If that person is born in Darfur, they have virtually none.

We are all damaged. In the US, our forefathers ventured forth from across the sea, to free themselves from governmental tyranny, so that they, could reach our potential for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which they stated were unalienable rights. We band together as a community, as a state, as a region, as a nation, because together we are stronger and more capable of fulfilling that potential of those rights, than we would individually. We band together because we are all damaged individually and joined together collectively, we become whole.

What the character Matt Santos said was a brilliant statement because not only does it show the humanity of the man, and it reminds us of the humanity in all of us. It also brings into the question the philosophy of the roles of all levels of government in our lives. What are the individual and joint responsibilities of the federal government, the state government, the local government, and ourselves as individuals? In modern times, we have gone from the New Deal era of Franklin Roosevelt, to the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson, to slow dismantling of the New Deal and Great Society programs by the Ownership Society of Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Should the social safety net held under us from protection against loss of job, loss of health, low income and aging be pulled out completely or only piece by piece, until so many fall through cracks that the net might as well not be in place at all?

The Democrats, in their infinite disarray and befuddlement, still have an opportunity to engage the debate about the role of government in our lives. What the polls do not show is that the real solid base issue holding up George Bush, IMNSHO, is not terrorism, it’s not directly social issues, it’s taxes. In what has become political policy development these days, right-wing (strategist?, crank? wingnut? all of the above?) Grover Norquist has defined the political debate at every level, but especially national - starve the beast. It is Norquist’s goal to cut the federal government out of all programs, except the most fundamental: national security and military spending. While Norquist thinks he is being smart, what he proposes is really class warfare at its worst and it is hateful.

How the math works is easy. There is X dollars needed top ay for all of the government services the country requires, widely ranging from the local filling pot holes in the road to developing the next generation anti-tank warfare system. What the Republicans have done for political, not public policy reasons, is push the tax base from the greatest tax base, the national income tax system, to the state and then down to smallest tax base, the local, resulting in rapidly increasing property and excises taxes and an expanding variety of service use fees. Ask Governor Mike Riley of Alabama how popular support is for raising the state income tax to provide services to those of us most damaged: the sick, the elderly, the needy, the poor. Ask the victims of Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi who are falsely being told there isn’t enough money available to help them rebuild their lives.

The corollary arguments to the ownership society are that what is lost in taxes will be made up by private generosity through non-profit organizations and that by outsourcing public services to the private sector, those services will be done more efficiently and more cost effectively. Both arguments are prima facie absurd. Those with the mean-spirited, gimme first attitude that begrudges every dollar paid in taxes are not about to turn around and give the same tax-relief amount to charity. There have been many studies, including recent ones on garbage collection and prison management, that have shown private sector service providers are no more, and often less, efficient and cost effective than public sector providers. When these private sector companies are faced with reducing profits or cutting services, they usually choose cutting services, even if the public’s welfare is endangered. I’ve worked and consulted in the private sector way too long to buy into the myth of the superior efficiency of the private sector. Halliburton, anyone?

We are damaged, as a people, as of today. We no longer band together because mindless listening to those who profit from our separation have made us forget that our forefathers came to this nation to get away from those who separated them for craven, power-mad reasons. We no longer band together because of silly political ideological and geographic reasons, using those reasons as false shields to protect our damaged underbellies from exposure to the truth. We no longer band together because we hide in our mini-fortresses, bored with life, but unwilling to engage the world outside. We are damaged because no longer recognize the hand being held out to be helped pulled up is not the one being asked for a hand out. Nor do we recognize it as someday being our own hand.

TRD101's basics know this: Until there is national dialogue about who we are as a people, and what services we want from our governments, gaining control of the damage cannot be done. The question is whether too much damage has been done for that control to be reclaimed.

And that, unfortunately, is the Real Deal 101 for today, like it or not.

Send your comments and questions or to be added to TRD101's distribution list to:
mikemaynard@mindspring.com

© Copyright Michael Maynard, TRD101, March 2006.