Con-Artist Conservatives and The Great Hoodwinking of America 2/3

by Nomad

In Part One we looked at how, despite the evidence, Americans by and large still believe in socio-economic mobility. At the same time, even while conservatives are reducing opportunities for the middle class, they are still promoting the American Dream.

In Part Two we turn to the parallels between the worlds of conservative politics and the world of professional fraud.

When you look over the profile of your average con artist, you'd be forgiven for thinking he could do well in the field of politics. In a perfect world, swindlers and politicians would be absolute opposites.

Politicians, Con Artists and Personality Disorders

Generally speaking, like politicians, swindlers are experts at gaining the trust of their victims and can also be extremely intelligent and highly creative. Their sense of understanding of human nature exceeds the rest of the population. They can even be considered charming. Whereas these would be admirable characteristics typically, such qualities are dangerous.

Of all of these traits, one stand out as being a political advantage. Con artists "thrive on the knowledge that people tend to believe only what they want to believe." 
Anybody who has spent any time attempting to disprove all of the nonsensical disinformation discriminated by Fox News or the other propaganda machines of the Far Right knows how futile it can be.

Are there other similarities between swindlers and conservative politicians? 

Psychologists tells us that many con-artists suffer from a condition called Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Such people tend to be excessively preoccupied with personal adequacy, with power, and the prestige that go with power. The behavior is ruled by an exaggerated feelings of self-importance.

Being  exploitative by nature, they tend to see the world in terms of their own egoes and are mentally unable to see the destructive damage they are causing.  

The Call for Non-Violence: A Night and a Day with RFK

by Nomad

We look back at two particular days in April 1968 and two speeches by Senator Robert Kennedy following the traumatic murder of Martin Luther King in Memphis. The subject: whether senseless violence would triumph over peaceful change.

An Act of Blind Violence

Two days in early April forty-six years ago could perhaps be considered one of the darkest moments in the history of the United States. On April 4th, 39-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, shot down by a person or persons unknown. 

And for a moment, the Civil Rights Movement hung in the balance.

Would King's assassination in Memphis spell the end of the hopes of millions of black Americans? The question on many minds was whether they would now choose to forsake the non-violence King had advocated and match violence with violence and thereby destroy all of his efforts? 

On the evening of the assassination, President Johnson had issued a statement in which he asked every American to "reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who lived by nonviolence."

We can achieve nothing by lawlessness and divisiveness among the American people. It is only by joining together and only by working together that we can continue to move toward equality and fulfillment for all of our people.

In an effort to head off expected rioting, the president contacted and advised a host of mayors and governors. He urged them not overreact and not to use any more force than necessary to keep the peace. Johnson was not impressed with the general atmosphere of fatalism.

"I'm not getting through. They're all holing up like generals in a dugout getting ready to watch a war."

Throughout the nation, there was a deep sense of foreboding. The nation held its breath.

Tomorrow's Headlines: Climate-Change Denying GOP House to Vote to Ban Law of Gravity

by Nomad

In honor of today's date, I present a sneak peek at tomorrow's headline. 

Later this month, the House of Representatives will be voting on controversial draft legislation which will deny the existence of gravity The Republican-led Congress expects little resistance to the proposed law in the upcoming vote.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), famous for his courageous stand on climate change.
In a press briefing on the Capitol steps, Inhofe said

"It's a win-win situation for the American tax-payers. For now on, we will not be held hostage by secular scientists. No offense, they were smart guys, but they are certainly not experts in Scripture. They shouldn't be able to go around trying to force their ideas on the rest of the nation. I still haven't seen any proof for the existence of gravity. After all, there's a reason why they call it a 'theory.' It makes about as much sense to me as the 'theory' of evolution."

According to the draft bill, from now on, all proposed federally-funded projects will be rejected automatically unless all participants sign an affidavit denying the existence of gravity "or any science supporting that theory."

Con-Artist Conservatives and The Great Hoodwinking of America 1/3

by Nomad

When can having a positive attitude be a negative thing? What happens when voters prefer to ignore the evidence and continue to vote for the same party despite false promises? It seems as if Americans prefer to be victims of a party of professional grifters.

The idea that opportunity to succeed is open to all of us goes back deep in American history and deep into the soul of the average American. It is one thing that makes the struggle worth it all. Knowing that things will improve has always been a mainstay of life in the US. 

The Faith and the Evidence

One recent study suggests that American economic mobility is something most of us still believe in. The problem is, according to the evidence, that belief system is largely contradicted by the evidence.

The Cornell study polled more than 3,300 Americans in all economic quintiles (20 percent income increments), from the poorest to the richest, and reached a few interesting conclusions:

• People believe there is more upward mobility than downward mobility. 
• Americans overestimate the amount of upward mobility and underestimate the amount of downward mobility. 
• Poorer individuals believe there is more mobility than richer individuals do. 
• Political affiliation influences perceptions of economic mobility, with conservatives believing that the economic system is dynamic – with more people moving both up and down.

The harsh reality is that while the real income of the top 1% of the population has soared a staggering 86% over the last twenty years, for the rest of us, it has increased by a mere 6.6 %. Those are the figures cited in the report.

According to the source:

"This rise in inequality has been accompanied by increasing hardship among those at the bottom," they write, noting that in 2010 the United States had almost 650,000 homeless people. And an additional 9.5 million families (46 million people) lived below the poverty line, a 50 percent increase since 1980.

The implications of the study are fascinating. American by and large simply haven't woken up to the fact that decades of failed policies have made matters worse of the shrinking middle-class. They should be angry- furious, in fact- but they are not.

The Iraq War and The Fine Art of Republican Revisionism

by Nomad

No matter how intense the barrage of propaganda and how constant the lies, Americans owe it to the 4,486 U.S. soldiers that died in Iraq to remember. Remembering the lessons of the war might just prevent the nation from making the same disastrous mistakes.

Margaret Meiers, in an op-ed piece for the Pittsburgh Post-gazette, asks how Americans can possible be so forgetful of recent events. 

Responding to an earlier newspaper opinion post, she states:

While Fox News and Bush administration officials try to rewrite history, it is known that faulty intelligence was drummed up and cherry-picked to be used to convince the people of the United States, Congress and the United Nations into supporting war.

Intelligence and Something Else

In case,  you need some reminders, Meiers provides us with a short list.

Remember Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame? Judith Miller’s reporting in The New York Times about aluminum tubes? Colin Powell’s address to the United Nations based on lies? The Downing Street memo? Remember “mushroom clouds,” duct tape and Curveball? And let’s not forget the Project for a New American Century, which openly pushed for war against Iraq before 9/​11 (the architects of whom are now Jeb Bush’s election campaign committee to keep him informed on foreign policy). Great.

Ignorance of events that happened, say in your grandfather's time may be forgiven but these things happened in 2003. We have a duty to those who died not to allow lies to mask the truth. We owe them that much at least.

Unitary Executive Theory: How the GOP in Congress is Destroying Cheney's Life Work

 by Nomad

Former vice president Cheney must be watching in dismay as the Republicans in Congress are tearing apart a doctrine that he has spent his whole life promoting.

The now-infamous letter of the 47 Senators  may not be treasonous although some on the Left may think so. The  unsolicited advice to the Iranians may not be a violation of the Logan Act and some lawyers might disagreed.

Nevertheless, in one aspect, there is something distinctly peculiar about what Congress did and has been doing since President Obama took office.

This new activism is a reversal of policy that has been the long standing hallmark of conservative principles. That principle is known as the Unitary Executive Theory and one of its chief promoters has always been former Vice president Dick Cheney.

According to this doctrine, all executive authority must be in the President’s hands, "without exception." The President and other members of the executive branch have special rights and privileges that come with the office. And the legislative branch, according to the proponents, has no authority to question presidential power. The president as the head of state and  that preeminence required Congress to recognize its lesser position.

Monstrous Ideas: How Ayn Rand's Pernicious Philosophy Allowed Conservatives to Destroy the US

by Nomad

No philosopher stirs the conservative heart like Ayn Rand. Yet, her warped philosophy of selfishness and the glorification of greed is today a major cause of the American malaise.

Back in 1979, Phil Donahue interviewed Ayn Rand, a person who was later to become "a major inspiration for the Tea Party movement."
If, for that reason alone, the oft-quoted Rand deserves a little of our attention. The interview came at a key moment in American political history, It was when the American voter rejected Carter and instead chose the conservative Ronald Reagan to lead us on a new path. 

In 1966, Ronald Reagan was, in fact, a fan and had written in a personal letter, "Am an admirer of Ayn Rand."

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum was a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and a philosopher beloved by the free-market conservatives. Her brand of philosopher was called Objectivism. Among its other tenets. this philosophic system supports the idea that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (rational self-interest).  Thinking of others is something that should be avoided. It is, she said, a dangerous thing to do.

No wonder it became a founding principle of the conservative movement. 

Canadian Asks: Why are So Many American Voters Ungrateful for Obama?

 by Nomad

Why Being an Atheist in Egypt Can be Dangerous for your Health

 by Nomad

Egypt provides us with an example of why blasphemy laws make a mockery of the war on terrorism and extremist ideologies. 

The right to question authority, in the Western-styled liberal democracies,to challenge the established view or to reject religious dogma is just something we all take for granted.

It comes with living in a free society. It's a fundamental liberty for all human beings that, when it comes for example to religious beliefs we are free to obey the dictates of our own consciences.

In Egypt, however, those who dare to openly express doubts about their faith risk  the threat of state-approved violence and legal prosecution.

The Gaber Case

If the reports are true, then the October 2013 arrest of Sherif Gaber, a student at Suez Canal University in the northeastern city of Ismailiya, was utterly surreal. 

It involved armored cars surrounding his home in the middle of the night. Was he, you might ask, some kind of religious extremist plotting an attack? Was he a jihadist ready to blow himself up for a distort interpretation of his faith?

No. 

His crime was only that he was a non-believer, an atheist. For expressing his skepticism, he was charged "for insulting Islam and promoting atheism."

Is This the Republican Idea of the American Dream?

  by Nomad

Why Iran's Internal Politics May Soon Make Nuclear Negotiations Impossible

by Nomad

The hopes for some kind of equitable resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue are further complicated by the declining health of the Iranian Supreme Leader, Khamenei. We examine how his death could make any kind of breakthrough next to impossible.

Death as a Catalyst for Change

There's no question about it. Time is running out.
If reports are true, the health of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is in decline. Western intelligence, as reported by the French paper Le Figaro, says that the 76-year-old has been diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer which has spread to other parts of his body. At most, he has two more years. 

 As Al Jezeera reported last September:

The image of the aging Khamenei recuperating in a hospital bed and being kissed by President Hassan Rouhani has led to speculation about janesheen, or succession, by Iran observers and probably by people at the higher echelons of Iranian politics.

This news is not such a well-kept secret. Concerns about the Supreme Leader's health- as well as, who his successor might be- have been the source of much speculation for the last few years. For all parties concerned, the timing could not possibly be any worse. 

Molly Ivins: War-Mongering is Not an American Tradition

 by Nomad

On the Passing of Albert Maysles

by Nomad

Filmmaker Albert Maysles died the other day at the age of 88. You may not have heard of him. I know I hadn't until- thanks to the Internet- I finally stumbled across one of his films.

Albert and his brother, David, became famous in the art house circles for making slightly unconventional (at that time) documentaries.

The jarring film, Gimme Shelter (1970) was one of their most famous films.The subject was the final leg of t The Rolling Stones' 1969 US tour and culminated in the disastrous Altamont Free Concert, in which a member of the audience was murdered. Although the film has been deemed "the greatest rock film ever made," some also have seen the film as an indictment of the hippie culture and the chaos of a world without rules or, as one reviewer said,  a snapshot of a "counterculture experience in its decline."

Unintended Pregnancies, Contraception and The High Cost of Right Wing Ignorance

 by Nomad

The Republican Congress may be hell-bent on restricting abortive services for women but in the end, all of their misguided efforts are going to end up. in real terms, costing the nation a lot more.

The Washington Post recently reported on the taxpayer costs  of blindly following Republican policies when it comes to women's health and sex education.  

According to a new analysis released by the Guttmacher Institute, unintended  pregnancies cost American taxpayers $21 billion each year.

That averages out to a cost of about $366 per every woman of childbearing age in the U.S. Overall, more than half of U.S. pregnancies are unintended, and roughly 1-in-20 American women of reproductive age have an unplanned pregnancy each year.

A full 68 percent of the million unplanned births are paid for by public insurance programs like Medicaid.  

These costs cover prenatal care, labor, delivery post-partum care and infant care for the first year. All those medical costs can quickly add up to something in the range of $21,000 per child. 

How many of those children end up in foster homes- costing the state even more- or are raised in households requiring government assistance is yet another problem without a solution. 

A Southern Problem

And there is a real North-South divide between the states when it comes to unplanned births. 

The lowest rates could be found in New England and the West, while the highest rates of unplanned pregnancy were found in Southern States. More than half of all births in Mississippi (56%) were unplanned.

Tomorrow's Headlines? Congressional Investigation Panel Demands Hillary's Letters to Grandmother

 by Nomad

Sometimes the real news needs no parody, but that didn't stop me for posting this.

Okay so this isn't real news but would you really be shocked if you heard this on the news tomorrow?

Here's Why Scott Walker's Lack of a College Degree Really is a Big Deal

by Nomad

Ever since Wisconsin governor Scott Walker hinted that he might be interested in running for president in 2016, his critics have questioned his qualifications.
One point that keeps coming up is Scott's lack of a college degree. Is this such a big deal? You can decide.

Walker Running

Back in January, Walker made it clear that he was interested in running for president.

“We need someone who hopefully has the backing and the track record of success, of showing that common sense conservative reforms can work not just in Wisconsin, but they can work all across America.”

His critics at a local level point out however,

The results have been lackluster at best. Wisconsin job growth has ranked at or near the bottom of the Midwest, personal income growth has been last in the Midwest and 44th nationally, and the budget is in shambles.

A measure of Walker's failure becomes apparent when one compare Wisconsin to its neighbor, Minnesota. That state did not install those common sense reforms that Walker mentioned and what was the result? 

Disaster? 

Well, only if you listen to conservatives. 

The truth is that by raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing spending, boosting the minimum wage, and implementing Obamacare, Minnesota has, as one writer puts it, "blown Wisconsin out of the water" when it comes to job growth and budget balancing. In fact, the law of Land of 10,000 Lakes ended up with a $1.2 billion surplus.

Walker's reforms have left his own state with a budget deficit in the billions. Today Wisconsin reportedly trails behind Minnesota in job growth, unemployment, and wages. Not very impressive.

JFK's Reply to Netanyahu: War Need Not Be Inevitable

by Nomad

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will today address the US Congress in an attempt to influence foreign policy with regards to ongoing Iranian nuclear negotiations.

The search for a lasting peace in the Middle East sometimes seems a waste of time. Perhaps, as Kennedy once said, we need to define what we really mean when we think of peace.

In June 1963, President Kennedy gave one of his finest speeches of his presidency. It is known as his American University speech. 

Set against the most dangerous era of the Cold War when the Far Right demanded a tough line against the Communists, Kennedy chose to talk about the path to a lasting peace. At that time, it seemed so far-fetched.

Yet that fact did not stop the president from presenting his thoughts about peace with the Soviet Union: what it entailed, how it could be achieved and why it was a worthy and realistic goal to pursue.

The Story of Cass: When Homeless isn't Helpless

 by Nomad

Homeless Anthony Castelow defied the odds and turned his life around.  Once he had changed his life, he committed himself to helping others get the help they needed. 

Last Sunday a man you've probably never heard of died of a heart attack in his own home in Redford Michigan. I stresss the words "in his own home." As Detroit Free Press' Mitch Albom explains, a place called home, a place in which to live and to die was not something 55-year-old Anthony Castelow took for granted.
 On his final day, writes Albom, Castelow preached at the church, the subject of that last sermon was about "new beginnings."

Segregation and Dot Counts: What History Tells Us about Resistance to Progress

by Nomad

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the story behind this photograph? The young woman's name is Dorothy Counts.

We tend to think of the 1960s as the Era of the Social Movement but in fact, the great sweeps of reform began a decade earlier. The movement. it's true, reached its zenith during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. However, the impetus for social change began as a result of a constitutional challenge mostly that eventually made its way to the high court. 

It was the culmination of a campaign by The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and its legal offspring, the Legal Defense and Educational Fund, against the doctrine of “separate but equal.” 

A Quote about Income Equality...from 1908

by Nomad

The book, Labor and Neighbor: An Appeal to First Principles, was publish in 1908, one year following the untimely death of its author, Ernest Crosby.

Texas Draft Law Forces Legally-Dead Pregnant Women to Deliver Unwanted Babies

by Nomad

One Texas legislator seems determined to stop at nothing to protect the life of the unborn. Even if it means keeping a clinically-dead mother alive long enough for the baby to be born. 

Fort Worth boasts one of the most conservative legislators that Texas has produced. Republican Rep. Matt Krause is the son of a Tyler, Texas pastor for- I kid you not- at Green Acres Baptist Church. 

Before entering politics, Krause was a intern and then Texas director of Liberty Counsel which is a non-profit legal and educational organization that, according to its mission statement, is committed to “restoring the culture one case at a time by defending the sanctity of human life, the traditional family, and religious liberties.”

His background therefore undoubtedly played a part in his decision to draft legislation that would open up a lot of complicated questions about patient and family rights versus the rights of the unborn. 

Molly Ivins on America's Long Struggle

by Nomad

American Enough: The Surprising Genealogical Trail of President Barack Obama

 by Nomad

Looking into the President's family history is like looking at a snapshot of American history, as far back as the first decades of its colonial period when the disgraceful practice of slavery was being rationalized and legalized.

Back in 2012, several news outlets, including the New York Times, mentioned one interesting side-note about the Barack Obama story. Since his father was Kenyan and his mother was white, it had been long assumed that Obama had, unlike most African Americans no connection to the dark history of slavery. Apparently, this was not the case. 

At least not, however, on his father's side, but on his mother's, it's another story.

The Anti-Vaccination Controversy: What the Amish and the Romans Have to Teach Us

 by Nomad

The question is pretty basic when it comes to the controversy about vaccinations. Are we really committed to progress or will be surrender to an illusion of past stability and simplicity?

The anti-vaccination movement is a good reminder that progress is not a steadily upward climb. It's something we tend to forget sometimes. This safe and convenient means of prevention to a disease that has ravaged civilization should, according to common sense, be hailed as a victory of humanity.
Instead it is viewed with superstitious suspicious and ignorance. 

In fact, the whole idea of progress is actually a quite recent phenomena and shouldn't be taken for granted.

Future Tense: Between Huxley or Orwell

 by Nomad

Originally posted on RecombinantRecords.net

The question is: Which of these visions of the future are we closer to?

Barbara Jordan Remembered

by Nomad

Today, February 21, marks the birthday of Texas Congresswoman Barbara Charline Jordan, arguably one of the most influential black women in American political history.

Representative Jordan from Texas was the first in many categories: the first African American to serve in the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, the first black woman elected to Congress from the South. Additionally, in, July 1976, she became the first African American woman to deliver a keynote speech at a Democratic National Convention.

In fact, on an individual level, it's hard to find, in one person of this period who symbolized the breadth of American diversity. She was an African American, she was a woman and, although it was an aspect of her life she preferred to remain undisclosed, she was most likely a lesbian.

On that basis alone, she had a right to speak on behalf of many people. She once said of the first words of the preamble of the Constitution:

It is a very eloquent beginning. But when the document was completed on the seventeenth of September 1787 I was not included in that “We, the people.” I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included in “We, the people.”:

This Day in History: When Bankers and Big Business Betrayed a Nation

 by Nomad

When we look back at this date- February 20- we see it was a critical day in modern history. Eighty-two years ago today,  Hitler made his pitch for campaign financing to the leaders of banking and industry. It turned out to be a smashing success.

On this day in 1933, the Nazi party arranged a secret meeting between Adolf Hitler and 20 to 25 industrialists at the official residence of Hermann Wilhelm Göring, the minister of the interior in Hitler's government, 

The aim of this secret meeting was to allocate campaign financing for the Nazi party in the crucial upcoming elections. 

A German economist, banker, liberal politician Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht acted as a liaison/host for the event. As a fierce critic of his country's post-World War I reparation obligations, Schacht became a supporter of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. He served in Hitler's government as President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics. 

Until his fall from grace in 1937, Schacht proved to be a useful tool for the regime and its rise to absolute power.

Gay Cure Therapy and How the GOP in Texas Officially Endorses Consumer Fraud

by Nomad

Try to picture this. The official party platform of a key state giving its stamp of approval for consumer fraud, namely a kind of therapy which has been thoroughly discredited by professionals and is possibly dangerous.

What does this say about the ethics of that party?

Quackery Therapy

This week, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Peter F. BarsioJr. ruled  against the gay conversion therapy provider Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH). His official ruling in the case filed by Southern Poverty Law Center against the company states:

It is a misrepresentation in violation of [New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act], in advertising or selling conversion therapy services, to describe homosexuality, not as being a normal variation of human sexuality, but as being a mental illness, disease, disorder, or equivalent thereof.

David Dinielli, SPLC deputy legal director, commenting on the court decision,

“For the first time, a court has ruled that it is fraudulent as a matter of law for conversion therapists to tell clients that they have a mental disorder that can be cured. This is the principal lie the conversion therapy industry uses throughout the country to peddle its quackery to vulnerable clients. Gay people don’t need to be cured, and we are thrilled that the court has recognized this.”

Over the years, organizations, mostly religion-based, were set up  to push  conversion therapy. The idea was that homosexuality was something that could, or needed to be fixed. 

Texas Religious Leader Says Watching "Fifty Shades of Grey" is a Sin

 by Nomad

Nomad takes a look at the  rather ridiculous hysteria  surrounding a recent film, dealing with S&M and sexual submission.

It was pretty predictable that some heads would explode as soon as British author E. L. James' 2011 erotic romance novel came out as a film. The subject matter was just a little too hot for some people. 

A thoughtful depiction of a consensual S&M relationship was, for many tightly wound conservatives apparently pushing the envelop too far.  

It was just a matter of good taste either. 

Sin with a Mainstream Appeal

According to the Catholic Dioceseof El Paso, Texas, it's is a sin to watch the film "Fifty Shades of Grey." At least, that's what  El Paso Catholic Bishop Mark Seitz has written on in a post in his website.

"I’m not going to tell you that you may not go to see the movie, Fifty Shades of Grey. I’m just going to tell you to do so would be a sin."

Seitz says he considers the film to be little more than "pornography with a dangerous and degrading mainstream appeal." That hasn't stopped the newly-debuted film from having a phenomenal opening weekend. In fact, with a heap of juicy publicity like that Sietz should be on somebody's payroll. 

The bishop takes the long standing view that there can be no passive participation in pornography. Just being a viewer is an act of endorsement and form of approval. 

That right there is a sin.

John Adams vs. America's Encroaching Oligarchy

 by Nomad

John Adams, second president of the United States, well understood the dangers of people like the Koch Brothers and the judges. legislators, educators, and members of Congress that worship at their feet.

Tim's Place: Where Dreams Come True and Hugs are Free

 by Nomad

As owner of the "World's Friendliest Restaurant," Tim Harris offers a free hug and an example of his positive attitude to his customers.

When Tim Harris opened his Albuquerque, New Mexico restaurant in 2010, one of his goals was to create the "World's Friendliest Restaurant."

In addition to diner favorites, which includes delicious home-style Southwestern/American dishes. Tim's Place also serves up something else: a personal hug to every customer. 

That special attention is guaranteed to, as he puts it, “improve your lease on life.” Harris has, by his reckoning, served more than 32,400 hugs and he is only getting started.

He told one reporter:

“I love giving all the customers a hug because I want them to feel comfortable and connected and being around friends.” 

The Search for Christian Converts

by Nomad

The Browder Affair and the Death of Russian Economic Reform 3/3

by Nomad

Part One
Part Two

In this final installment of the series, we examine how foreign investor Browder was about to find out that Russia could be a very dangerous place to do business. In many ways, it was, for opportunity hunters of the West, to be the end of the fantasy of Russian reform.

By November 2005, Russian official had just about had enough of William Browder's crusade to clean up corruption. Officials in Moscow decided to demonstrate to this upstart from the West, this shareholder activist, who held all of the cards.

End Game

Returning from a business trip, Browder was denied re-entry at the Moscow airport. He suddenly found himself in the ridiculous position of having to do business in Russia as an exile. It was the beginning of the end with his love affair with Russia and his admiration for Putin.

After a decade of successful investments in Russia, Browder was blacklisted by the government and was officially listed as a "threat to national security." The reason for this, The Economist wrote, was actually because Hermitage had interfered with the flow of cash to "corrupt bureaucrats and their businessmen accomplices".

Browder exiled himself to London and was forced to pay $230 million tax bill.

In June 2007, the endgame began. As the head of the law firm representing Hermitage, Jamison Firestone later told reporters, dozens of police officers "swooped down on the Moscow offices of Hermitage and its law firm.

In the Ranks of the Insane

by Nomad

The Bottom Line: A New Reason Why it Pays Corporations to be Socially Responsible

  by Nomad

A recent study suggests that corporations that take an active interest in social cause may increase the work performance of the employees.

Some economists are still asking whether corporations should be getting themselves involved in social issues at all.

Albert Einstein once said that it was "every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it."

Duty and obligations aside, a new study by the University of Southampton, may give business owners an even more practical reason to work on social causes. It can increase productivity by up to 30 per cent.

The Selfish Benefits of Giving

Dr Mirco Tonin, the lead author of the study, said that  while the use of bonus and stock options have long been used as an incentive to improve worker performance, there's another lesser-known motivating factor.When workers are given a social incentive such as a charitable donation linked to their job, says, Tonin,  performance increases by an average of 13 percent, rising to 30 per cent among those who are initially the least productive.

"Our results provide empirical support for the growing recognition that some workers are also motivated by advancing social causes through their efforts."

The study also found that  performance was enhanced to a greater degree when workers could decide how much of their wages they wished to contribute.   More than half of the study participants chose to give a proportion of their pay to the charity they choose when the donation were optional.

"We find that offering subjects some discretion in choosing their own payment scheme leads to a substantial improvement in performance," says Dr Tonin. "This suggests that firms willing to introduce corporate giving programs may want to consider giving employees the opportunity to 'opt in.'"

The study Corporate Philanthropy and Productivity: Evidence from an Online Real Effort Experiment will be published in the forthcoming edition of Management Science.

The Little Spark of Celestial Fire

  by Nomad

The Browder Affair and the Death of Russian Economic Reform 2/3

 by Nomad

Part One of this series

In Part two, we pick up the story of the crusader investor, William Browder. As an activist shareholder whose business model was based on exposing corruption, Browder was about to meet his Waterloo with the Russian global energy giant, Gazprom.

The Payoff and the Payout

William Browder's mission to expose and clean up corruption within Russian corporations was not based on any altruistic motives. On the contrary, it was an application of basic capitalist principles. simply a way of increasing the value of the companies in which he owned stock.

A corporation cleared of corruption was bound to be more efficient and in practical terms, more accountable to its shareholders. Furthermore, it was bound to be more profitable.

However when it came to Gazprom, Russia's oil giant, that practical idea was to hit a snag. When Browder's investment fund  Hermitage Capital Management (along with other minority shareholders) launched its anti-corruption campaign, it would turn out to be, in fact, an indictment against the whole Russian way of doing business.

A Washington Post article in December 2000 reports the growing concern by foreign shareholders. Accountability was, they discovered, an illusion.

The huge natural gas monopoly Gazprom, one of Russia's largest enterprises, has transferred hundreds of millions of dollars in assets outside the company in recent years while signing lucrative deals with a firm largely owned by Gazprom's current and former directors, executives and their relatives, documents show.

(The article- though predictably complex- lays out a pretty good case for widespread corporate abuse that would have made Enron executives blush.)

Destiny in the Making: President Obama Made History 25 years Ago Today

by Nomad

A quarter of a century ago, one soft-spoken student with a sense of destiny took his first steps into the public spotlight. His name was Barack Obama. 

Twenty five years ago, Barack Obama was elected the Harvard Law Review's first black president. Here is the New York Times announcement.

(Hat-tip to my long lost cousin, Angel.)