Greytops™: What To Do With Us?

I.B.M. has just named Virginia M. Rometty, 54,  to be their next CEO. No argument there; we need more women in the CEO ranks. But, listen to what else the Times had to say: "A leading rival to succeed Mr. Palmisano..., was Steven A. Mills...But his age, analysts note, was probably an obstacle. Mr. Mills just turned 60, the traditional retirement age for I.B.M."

Are we to understand that Mr. Mills had lost a certain edge or, perhaps knowledge of some kind, while aging from 54 to 60 at the company? Are we too understand that Ms. Rometty has only six great years in her and then, Bye-Bye?

Is this the message that one of America's iconic companies wants to send to millions of Boomers? Should we, at 60, just go take a seat in the waiting room at Frank E. Campbell's Funeral Chapel on Madison Avenue?

The New 30

All across the country, people approaching or past 60 are looking to extend their jobs, have lost their jobs, been early-retired, or, as some bureaucrats might say been "displaced." They are meeting in schools, church halls, and Starbuck's networking among themselves, in order to get back in the game, back in regular jobs, with regular pay and benefits. Some days, it's hard to keep hope alive, but they do, day by day.

Many of them, perhaps most, have replaced "job" with work, and plenty of it: they do projects, the chair volunteer committees, they hold one or more part-time jobs, they conduct a search for full-time work, and, yes, they write blogs and books. There is no time for whining about stupid banks, ranting over 15-month long political campaigns in which nothing of substance is ever said, or complaining about QE2 or 3 or 4. We're too damn busy.

Here's some news: Yesterday I called on two potential customers on behalf of a technology product I sell on commission. I am 63; the two clients were approximately 60 and 57; my boss is...74.

Should we all just crawl into a hole, I.B.M.?

going out to pasture

Obviously, I.B.M. meant no offense. But, that's the point; our culture has it stuck in its collective head that we should begin our working lives with one goal...to retire as soon as possible and not have to work anymore, which pre-supposes that we won't like our work much, which just might explain how so many companies seem to be run by less than brilliant execs, instead of high-quality people like Ms. Rometty or Steve Jobs.

Wouldn't it be nice one day for a business or political leader to just acknowledge how great it is that millions of people at, around or beyond 60 are vibrant, healthy, active, smart, wise, strong, nurturing, creative, attentive, compassionate, honest, and still worthy of regular compensation and more than legally token consideration for real jobs?

Well, there it is and you know what...typing that didn't make me go all weak at the knees or faint in the head and in need of a nap; there's a lot more where that came from, I.B.M.

©TWMcDermott2011

At Last, A Solution: Fewer Millionaires

Millionaire

Whoa, something must have happened while we were on a small island and missed the paper. All of a sudden we're at war again...against those heinous foes...Millionaires!

The President, in particular, is out to get Millionaires. We can tell, because he calls them "people" and not "folks." Folks are "ordinary Americans," who are a lot of things (overweight, poor students, credit-liars, tax-evaders), but they are simple folks, who are constantly screwed by the kind of people we call...people. Especially Millionaires.

Around election time, which begins the day after any election, there are suddenly a lot more folks than people out there in election land for Democrats to praise. Republicans can't seem to find anyone to praise, who isn't currently living in some asylum or will soon be in one.

Golly, maybe some of the Millionaire parents in O's daughters' exclusive private school did something particularly bad, like make gauche donations to the scholarship fund?

The real answer seems to lie with Warren Buffet, who is not even a Millionaire; he is a Billionaire and, apparently, that is an okay thing to be, particularly if you happen to be a Democratic Billionaire. Why, everyone knows that Uncle Warren is "just folks." He is beloved because he found a way to make money blackmailing banks like Goldman Sachs and Salomon Bros. Who wouldn't love that? We even love that little gecko, who works for Geico, one of Warren's many companies.

A few weeks ago, after Buffet got finished blackmailing Bank of America into giving him a sweetheart deal, he must have felt remorse. He woke one day complaining how absurd it was that he was paying an effective tax rate that was lower than the one most of his employees pay. Rather than give them all a whopping raise, he proposed ways to make him pay higher than 17%.

Could it be that Warren Buffet, The Sage Of Omaha, does not know that he could pick up the phone on his NetJets' jet (he owns this company which allows Millionaires who can't afford their own jet to share, plus he is cheap as all get out) and call his lawyer and accountant and simply instruct them to not take certain deductions, so that he could pay higher taxes? One would think that most folks know this can be done.

Apparently he doesn't know this. The President does not seem prepared to tell him this. The Times and MSNBC, desperate to prop up President O and always eager to annihilate unsuspecting Millionaires, who do not live in Tribeca,  have jumped on this band wagon. Is it too early or too outrageous to think that we might soon be erecting Millionaire Internment Camps as the best solution to the nation's many problems?

Camp Millionaire, Nebraska

This must be very confusing to recent immigrants to this country from China, Mexico, Hungary, Bulgaria, or Ecuador. These folks have a dream of becoming Millionaires, and this dream is partially what drives them to come here, work two jobs, educate their children, eventually become citizens and, yes, even pay some taxes.

What Mr. Buffet and the President and their cohorts seem to be missing is that what they have to say about Millionaires paying more taxes and the way they say it, is a very, very good argument for something they consider to be abhorrent...a flat tax of...17%*.

You see, Uncle Warren, that if you paid a flat 17% income/capital gains tax on everything you made,  with only one deduction of $8-10,000 per dependent, you would effectively pay a whole lot more money in taxes, as would every despicable Millionaire in the country. Plus, your company, Berkshire Hathaway, would also pay a flat 17% on earnings.

You see, Uncle Warren, unlike your friends in Washington, real people pay their bills with money, not ideas.

They like the possibility of doing their taxes on a postal card and knowing that Millionaires and Billionaires are paying a lot more money, even though they are paying the same rate. Real people like simple, practical things like EZ Pass, itunes, etc.

Is that too hard for some folks to understand? Yes, because they are caught up in their feelings, rather than in finding a rational solution to our problems.

Grow up.

* Here is a list of grown up countries, run by adults, with adult electorates, who use a simple flat tax:
http://flattaxes.blogspot.com/2010/09/flat-tax-countries-and-jurisdictions.html

This Little Piggy...

Piggy Bank

1) For many of us, the little piggy shown here was our first bank. We all learned the fundamentals of saving by putting our spare coins into the slot. Later, when certain adults made a point of trying to impress us by giving us a dollar, or, in the rarest of rare cases five dollars, we learned to pull little piggy apart, or remove the cork from underneath and insert the paper bill.

This latter move, of course, also taught us about something called borrowing; once we had the knack for breaking into piggy, we had a little taste of credit.

Sadly, we outgrew our piggy banks and graduated to small savings accounts in big bank buildings, many made of brick or granite, supported by huge columns. The bulk was to make us all feel secure about putting our money inside a place too big for a thief to carry around. These banks had names like First National City Bank, Chase Manhattan, or even Chemical Corn Exchange and each one had its own armed guard inside.

Who would have thought that, after all these years, little piggy would once again prove to be a very sound alternative to those same big bulky stone banks...

Bank Piggy/DSK

2) The French banker, Christine Lagarde, is the head of the IMF, a kind of bank of banks. She recently replaced another French banker who is so famous he is known only by his initials, DSK, who resigned after having an unseemly, at best, liaison with a maid in his New York hotel (naturally, he blames the maid, puritanical Americans, and a conspiracy for his troubles).

Ms. Lagarde has been chiding her Euro partners to get going on baling out Greece and other countries, which cannot pay their debts and are in danger of default. Collectively, these countries are rather conveniently known as PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain). Not making it up.

In case you have not been paying attention, Greece sold many $billions of bonds to banks in France, Germany and other countries, so that Greeks could continue to provide a swell vacation spot for other euros without having to pay taxes. Then the banks bought insurance in case these bonds went bust, which they assuredly will if the same banks don't lend Greece more money.

If this sounds familiar to an American audience, especially if you are unemployed, have had your home foreclosed upon, or can no longer afford health insurance, it should. Greece is playing the role of home buyers who got mortgages they could not possibly repay from banks like Countrywide, who then sold a piece of the mortgage to other suckers, who then insured the worthless stuff with the same insurer, AIG. You know the rest.

Questions: why are there so many French bankers? Why don't they teach bankers that it is not a good idea to buy bonds from Greece, instead of sound investments like ouzo or feta cheese? Why don't we let children run the banks and the IMF: even they know not to buy from Greeks bearing bonds!

3) For some years we have had an account at a certain Swiss bank. In 2008, while said bank was losing about $38Billion, we actually made more money than they did. Considering that we were unemployed at the time, this was quite a feat and made us wonder why the bank did not hire us to manage them.

This week, the banking world was shocked...truly shocked ...again to find out that a lone trader at the same bank had run up losses of $2.3Billion (so far) without the loss being detected. These kinds of traders are always called "rogues," which is a way of banks saying that all is okey-dokey because there was only one. They think this makes clients feel a lot safer.

The bank has said,"The true magnitude of the risk exposure was distorted because the positions had been offset in our system with fictitious ...positions..." In other words, we can't be blamed or fired for not knowing since the guy made up stories to cover the bad stuff and our system can only find the bad stuff, not made up stuff.

Well, okay, we feel much better about our account now; and, this also explains why there is no minus sign on the Swiss flag; always accentuate the positive.


4) At least that "rogue" trader will go to prison; we can be assured of that. But, what about all of these other jamokes, who pompously, arrogantly, deceitfully, dishonestly, stupidly and, yes, piggishly baled out their pals at our expense?  The Taliban would be too good for them.

It turns out that the little piggy bank was a very good idea after all. Oink.

Bon Courage

51 Stars

The current 50-Star US flag was designed by a seventeen year old high school student Robert Heft as part of a class project in 1958. He got a B-, until the design was accepted by the nation to be its new flag; then, his teacher gave him an A. Talk about tough markers!

Heft was a young man who thought ahead, a kind of Steve Jobs of flags, and so he also designed a 51-Star flag, shown above, at the same time, and didn't stop until he hit a 60-Star model.

In October 2001, I tried to contact Mr. Heft to ask his permission to use the 51-Star flag for a project. At the time, I thought of the extra star as a potential healing and unifying symbol, a point of reference for a wounded city and nation.

For a number of reasons that project never took flight, and I did not have the opportunity to connect with Mr. Heft, who died in 2009.

But, today, I am thinking again about that 51st-Star, and thinking that now, perhaps more than ever, the country might benefit from having a new reference point, a unifying light, a visible and symbolic source of energy, imagination and courage.

I am also thinking about all those 17-year-old young men and women out there today, and their futures. I would say to them: now is the time to be bold, to seize the moment, rise above our profound sense of grief and loss; rise too above the current national malaise and all the jibber-jabber.

Now might be an even better time to take inspiration from the Star and the imagination and confidence of that 

17-year-old boy back in 1958, to begin to re-design...everything around us that requires re-designing... which is quite a lot; 

and to not look back or listen to those who say you cannot do it. Bon Courage.

This One's For You

Stephen King At The New DMV

1) Did CT's new Governor ask Stephan King to design the new DMV? We spent 3 hrs. yesterday at the DMV in Bridgeport, CT attempting to obtain a CT driver's license in exchange for one from New York State. This was not enough time.

Recent public employee lay-offs, have caused major setbacks at CT-DMV offices. Some of the processes that citizens were able to accomplish at the Norwalk office, for example, like exchanging an out of state license, must now be done in Bridgeport or another office.

At the 3 hr. mark, having not yet even gotten to the first window to present the paperwork, we realized that we better check on the next part of the process, the eye test. The test room was filled with people and the wait was 1.5-2hrs. At that point, we threw in the towel. The nice family sitting behind us had already been there for 5 hrs, and the daughter had just been called to wait again for a test.

We have seen a bit of the cut-back future, and it is not working well. Throughout the entire experience, we can say that the DMV employees were courteous, respectful, knowledgable....and just as baffled as regular citizen- motorists about the whole ordeal.

DMV Drive-Thru

We exchanged messages with Governor Malloy's office this morning (yes, they responded immediately and the trick is to have a positive headline and to offer solutions). We made the following suggestions:

• Post wait times by the Customer Service line up front or outside the front doors. Not all processes have the same wait times, but that's a detail. Right now, the only way to know there is a 3hr wait...is to wait 3hrs. This is only a temporary fix, but why make everyone waste an entire day?
• Consider an emergency extension of licenses and registrations, perhaps 3 mos. This would allow for some planning, and a blanket extension could be honored by insurance companies.
• Create a contest for CT students, challenging them to re-design the current DMV website, which currently creates more problems than it solves and is too complicated. Today's tech-students could probably re-do the entire thing in a few weeks at a relatively low cost. Reward them with generous scholarships.

Greenwich, where we now reside, Bridgeport, and Norwalk are all in Fairfield County. In 2011, Fairfield had the sixth highest per capita income in the US. The latest national median income figures for 2009, ranked CT number one in the US. And yet, the State is currently incapable of properly and simply processing drivers' licenses and vehicle registrations.

The Governor's Office said they would discuss our proposals with the DMV, if they can get to a window.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/nyregion/connecticut-workers-approve-contract-they-had-rejected.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Little Tuk That Could

2) We took a ride in our friends new tuk-tuk the other night, a bright red-one with a white vinyl top and sides. This one had a little gas engine, but newly built US models all have electric engines, which provide about 250 miles per charge. You may have become familiar with these three-wheeled vehicles by way of harrowing rides around Delhi, Bangkok, or other Asian cities.

These US cousins are classified by DOT as motorbikes for licensing and insurance purposes and are legal in all fifty states; however, for CT residents, we recommend waiting to get one, as you might be able to drive one of these to CA and back before being able to register one in CT.

http://www.tuktuktransport.com/

Yabba-Dabba-Doo-Doo

Are we having fun yet?

It must have been a lot like this just before our distant ancestors came up with the design for the round wheel. Imagine Fred & Wilma trying to sleep at night, worried tomorrow would bring another day of commuting on square rocks and that the quarry might run out of coin-stones.

Here's some good news: future ages will be studying our era as if it were another Stone Age, and we're not talking Keith & Mick, we're really talking Fred & Barney. Imagine the opportunities!

I have to think that our stoney pals spent a lot of time bopping each other on the head with stone before they figured out that wheel thing. And, sad to say, Boys, but I also have to think that it was probably Wilma or one of her friends, who pointed out the advantages of roundness. So annoying when they insist on stopping to ask for directions!

It feels a lot like we're still in the bopping on the head stage.

Funny, how history repeats itself. When you look at corporate America, especially those banks (Chariots of Fired!), you really don't see too many women drivers or bright headlights either. Same for that distant planet called Washington DC.

Barney's boss, Mr. Slate

We've asked this before: would you have asked the guys at Verizon and AT&T to design an iphone? Would the brighter-than-bright boys at Encyclopedia Britannica have come up with Google? Would trade publishers been able to skip a few author's lunches to design Amazon? Please. Did the Bridge & Tunnel Authority come up with EZ Pass?

Then, why are we waiting for so many Mr. Dulls to re-invent the tax code, re-finance the deficit, figure out why we even have Greek bonds in the first place? Greek Diners, yes, but buying debt from people who think Taxes is just where the Dallas Cowboys call home? No surprise that France loved those Greek bonds; they think Jerry Lewis is a genius too.

Ah, but  we did promise good news, didn't we?

We will have to re-design everything and we will need to do it ourselves: government, education, healthcare, investing/saving, business organization, etc. No matter whether you are twenty-four or sixty-four, the good news is that everything works like a square wheel right now and Barney's boss, Mr. Slate, seems to be in charge of it all.

Apple's Steves, Jobs & Wozniak

If we can come up with a small tablet (!), with which we can see and know every star in the sky, watch every movie ever made, listen to any song ever sung, teach every course brilliantly, and on which Betty can catch-up on a video chat from Beijing with her old friend Wilma back home for free, we can fix this other stuff.

Let's Yabba-Dabba-Do It.

Fast.

Don't Call Me Ishmael

©TWMcDermott2011               (this post runs concurrently in The Rye (NY) Record)

Don’t call me Ishmael, please.

But, I have been to the great whaling island, where I’m told harpoons and surf rods have been replaced by bespoke scrimshawed golf clubs, wielded by captains of what used to be called industry. I get the news second-hand, since I left that place nearly twenty years ago.  I was somewhat frightened by the experience of bumping into too many friends from home at the Portuguese bakery, and terrified by whale-sized “jeeps” racing along the beach, where we sat, bundled, even on foggy days.

Thereafter, we installed our young ones in summer camps far enough up in Maine that only a very brave few would be tempted to visit even one weekend; and that was mandatory, in case the camp managers needed to place your rebellious child in the car for the return trip on which you might cry wee, wee, wee and much worse all the way home.

Fortunately for us, this never happened, and so we were able to discover the excellent joys of summering at home. This had the added benefit of allowing us to take our island vacation in late winter at a different well-hidden place requiring several modes of transport to reach and either an airplane or what locals euphemistically call a Fast Ferry in order to golf.

And what could one do at home, while other brethren flocked in summer to the same island on the same ferry in their vehicles bigger than many summer cottages? Well, it turns out that one can do much of what you might have done far away, and even more:

• You can find a free parking space in town on the street even on Friday afternoons. Especially on Friday afternoons!

• The only line in town is at the little ice cream store, but it is worth the wait. On a day when things are not going your way, an ice cream cone soothes many ills, and you can always walk or swim it off later. Nobody can lick an ice cream cone and not feel like a kid again, and those problems look much smaller as the cone slowly disappears.

Did someone say swim! Rye Golf Club, Playland, the Y; Apawamis, WCC, AYC, etc. Or, throw a stone from your house and it will land in your neighbor's pool, or maybe your own. The Sound itself is best of all and you can see the ladies in their white bathing caps at Manursing in the evening as they rise and fall in the swells.

You can actually park right in front of the post office to mail a card to your friend on the whaling island, who may already be suffocating from the traffic, de rigeur cocktail parties given by friends from home, and the long lines at the Portuguese bakery.

• You sit  on the open porch under the awning in the evening before dinner, feeling the breeze rise in the west. There is much less traffic on the roads and lanes and it is quiet until August, when the cicadas begin their festival.

• Some Fridays and Saturdays, you just feel like having dinner in the city. So, you get in the car and in about 30 minutes you are at a favorite uptown place, or a little longer, and you can be downtown, where all the locals have vacated and you beat the European tourists, who eat late, as they do at home. Then breeze home again, feeling much better for having the little adventure.

• Other nights, you rest the Weber, and go over to Port Chester, crossroads of the world, or at least the Americas. Indian, Italian, barbecue, tacos, fish tacos, bar taco! Brazilian? Marvel at the current balance between gentrification and true grit, and wonder if the grit will be all gone with the rising of the luxury lofts a la Soho. 

• Saturday morning at the Farmers' Markets with your basket and finally there is good corn. You buy radishes and other things you seldom buy, just because it makes you feel good to do so. You indulge your secret craving for those damn cider donuts and that special goat cheese that tastes like a mild blue. 

• There's something especially wonderful about Sunday mornings at home in church. Well, so I am told; I am not expert on this, but aren't the odds in your favor with all that extra space between fellow petitioners? 

• An evening picnic by the water on benches beside all manner of charcoal grills: the secret marinades, sauces, dressings: the multiple recipes for potato salad: real tomatoes from the garden and real corn.

• Milton Point, looking south to the city and the bridges and east over to Long Island. You might almost be in Hong Kong, except that it's prettier and the waters are less crowded. If you're lucky, you will see the moon, huge and slightly yellow, as it peeks over the tree line in the east.