Month: October 2017

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Bill Koch, third and, I believe, poorest Koch brother, has a serious problem with wine counterfeiting. You see he buys vintage wine. You are unfamiliar with this problem? So was I. When I purchase wine, I am inclined to choose volume over quality. I would rather buy 4 OK bottles of wine for $20 then spend $20 for one good bottle. However Bill Koch is different. Way different. I mean way way way different. He prowls the auction houses looking for really good deals on vintage wine. He will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for a bottle of wine.

Koch once bought 4 bottles of wine that were purported to come from Thomas Jefferson’s vineyards. He paid $400,000 for the 4, yes you figured it correctly $100,000 a piece for a bottle of wine. Unfortunately, the gullible billionaire discovered after purchasing the wine that the bottles were fake. Which is a little irritating because the only advantage, at least as far as I can see, from owning a bottle of vintage wine is, in fact, owning it. If it isn’t authentic, the taste of the wine hardly matters. Who wants to pay $100,000 for repackaged French table wine?

Well Bill Koch was, to say the least, angry and wanted to put a stop to these swindlers. Being a billionaire, he also had the resources to fight this important battle. He spent nearly $35,000,000 trying to stop these counterfeiters from continuing their fraudulent activities. He met with some success and now the FBI and the courts are bring these people to justice. Hurrah.

So if Bill Koch is using his own money to buy vintage wine and fight his defrauders. What business is of mine? Let me tell you.

There are people who believe that taking money away from the rich is preventing the rich from investing their money in things that will ultimately bring wealth to the whole society and lift poor people out of their poverty. If you tax this money then you are preventing these people from investing these poverty reducing business ventures.

I think Koch’s experience provides evidence that proves this thesis wrong.

Let’s start with purchasing the bottles of wine. The bottles were fake so the trickle down theory hardly is relevant here. There are no poor grape picker or winery workers involved in this story. There are some swindlers and some suckers but no one that is going to advance the cause of commerce.

Even if the bottles were authentic, taxing Koch and extra say 25 percent per bottle would not have prevented him from buying the wine. He still would have plenty of cash to spare on his vintage wine. The worst-case scenario is he might have to shave a bottle or two off the purchase but he can still afford to spend $100,000 on a bottle if he so desired. Again as these are vintage bottles, the grape picker and winery worker are long dead, so no real innovative ideas are thwarted here. If you want to shed a tear, it would be for the poor wretches who work at Sotheby’s.

Koch spends $35,000,000 dollars trying to find and prosecute these counterfeiters. Agreed that these are people engaged in a criminal activity and should be stopped. However the people who gain anything by stopping the counterfeiters are pretty much limited to private investigators and billionaires. This isn’t investment money for the development of commerce and industry. This is pure revenge on Koch’s part. He doesn’t like being swindled.

If, instead, the $35,000,000 were given to the worst welfare frauds in the country, the money would still be better spent. More electrical appliances, new cars, and new houses would be bought. More money would be put into the hands of people who would use it buying things that might stimulate the economy than, let’s say, a billionaire interested in vintage wine.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt1Pwfnh5pc

 

Today, I was trying to find new music. So, I googled top ten lists and I stumbled upon this song from Johnny Cash called “Hurt.”  I had heard Cash’s version of “Hurt” before and I knew I liked it. I can’t remember why I didn’t buy it back then. The song is an odd choice for Cash because Trent Reznor, lead singer for Nine Inch Nails, wrote the song. NIN is, for lack of a better categorization, a metal band and Johnny Cash is traditional country.  Cash, however, found the perfect song. It is brutal and haunting.  Cash’s voice, rough, deep and resonant, cracks with emotion.  Cash gives Reznor’s words a deeper meaning as it is coming from an older man who has experienced a world of hurt and personal mistakes. Now he is looking at his pain and the pain he caused with pitiless eyes.   It’s a great rendition of the song but it hurts.  It really hurts. I think these type of emotional wallops should be taken in small doses. Which is probably why I didn’t buy it the first time.  But, God, you should give it a listen.

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One day my mother and I were watching football on TV. She asked me if I knew that Joe Montana, the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers at the time, was born in the same year as me. Joe and I were in our late 20’s then so it wasn’t all that surprising. Most professional athletes are somewhere in their 20’s or early 30’s. My mother had something and I only had to wait a few seconds for the real reason that Mom brought up is age. “He just bought his parents a new house.”

Ba-da-bing. My first instinct was to tell Mom that Elizabeth Taylor was a few years younger than her and she let her children lead a life of leisure and luxury. I restrained myself. In the mean time, Mom hit her intended target – reminding me of my seeming lack of direction or ambition. I gave her the benefit of the doubt that she wanted me to work harder on my life, so I too could someday buy my parents a new house. However the result was something far different. I felt bad about myself.

This story came to mind the other day after I read some inspirational story that just pissed me off. This man became blind due to an accident when he was a teen-ager. Instead of letting the accident destroy his life, he went on to an Ivy League college, became an investment banker and now is a millionaire. The author’s intended message, I’m sure, was to inspire his readers to greater things. Unfortunately, there is also a barely hidden secondary message about all these whiners out there complaining about their hard lives when this guy was blind. If they think they have had hard knocks with racism or fatherless families or poverty, try being blind. There is someone who can complain about his lot in life but oh no he decided to become a millionaire instead.

I was uninspired to say the least.

I am getting this way with LinkedIn testimonies from the rich and famous. They have almost the opposite effect on me. These inspirational messages seem appropriate for a very narrow range of people, those with a driving entrepreneurial spirit and the money to support it.

Do something that you are passionate about.

You can be anything you want to be.

Know your value; don’t settle for less than that.

Don’t take no for an answer.

All, I am sure, very good advice, all not so relevant when you have bills to pay, food to buy and need to put a roof over your head. Those needs might require me to take a job I am far from passionate about or work a job that I would rather not do.  Asking millionaires and wildly successful people for their advise seems like a good idea on paper, in reality, their inspirational stories don’t match most people’s present circumstances or personality. It’s a one size fits all inspiration. When I read about the tech wizards like Jobs, or Gates or Zuckerberg, not their noble deeds now but how they got to where they got, I think these people are assholes, who wants to be an asshole. The spirit of work is not just entrepreneurial.

Perhaps this means I won’t be a billionaire who runs a tech company. And that is precisely the point. There are billions of people who probably won’t make that goal. There are billions of people who would very much like to work and do a great job. And, I am only speaking for myself and not the billions of other people, I just don’t think I can work up much passion for it. I will do a damn good job though.

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Psychiatrists have an obligation to break their patient/doctor confidentiality if they believe their patient is a danger to themselves or to someone else. For some reason, I thought that lawyers would have the same obligation. It only makes sense that lawyers are ethically responsible, if they can, to stop their clients from hurting anyone. After reading about Harvey Weinstein, I realize I am woefully ignorant of legal ethics.

There are 8 known agreements between Weinstein and the women he has harassed and/or raped.  He paid his victims cash for their silence. All tied in a nice legal bow. Lawyers needed to tie this bow. Maybe, just maybe, you could justify a lawyer working with Weinstein once or twice. You could argue that there was some misunderstanding and that this is best settled out of court. Let’s give a two-time litigant the benefit of the doubt.

The problem, at least it is a problem for me, is there was a forth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth case. If it were me, I would begin to think Harvey has a problem here and that the women involved aren’t misunderstanding crazy Harvey’s intentions but, rather crazy Harvey might just be a sexual predator. What then is the lawyer’s responsibility in situation like these? Sexual Harassment is against the law. Rape is against the law. At the bare minimum, Weinstein is breaking the laws regarding sexual harassment but also might be breaking much more serious laws regarding rape. At some point, isn’t a lawyer required to say I can’t continue as your lawyer any more, I believe you are guilty and I can’t in good conscious represent you. To continue representing Weinstein would seem like an egregious breech of ethics on a lawyer’s part.

Don’t lawyers have an obligation to protect society at large? You have represented Weinstein several times regarding women bringing sexual harassment accusations against him. You see Weinstein continues to come to you with the same problem. You might argue that you don’t know that someone is going to continue harassing and raping women. You don’t know all the facts as no court has made a decision regarding the guilt of Weinstein. Besides it isn’t imminent harm and you don’t know who his next victim will be. Which I get and I realize it is a difficult issue. You should only break lawyer/client confidentiality if it is genuinely imminent and there is a known victim in danger.

And yet. And yet, from my understanding, Weinstein’s contract with his production company had a clause that states the company couldn’t fire him from sexual harassment suits as long as Weinstein took care of the payment himself and did not involve the company. Who puts that in an employment contract? Why would you put this in your contract if you were intending to change your ways? He obviously had no intention of stopping. What ethical lawyer would write a contract with such a clause in it? Is that even legal? Can you actually write a contract protecting someone from termination even when the person is committing a crime? So sadly, we know. The lawyers knew what Harvey was and, more importantly, they knew that Harvey planned on continuing harassing women. Isn’t this the point you get off the merry-go-round? I hope someone goes after Weinstein’s lawyers. Make them spend some of the dirty money they earned protecting Weinstein. Now that would be justice.

Finally, for anyone who doubts it exists, this is what privilege is. Justice, or rather injustice, can be bought. Rich people can buy themselves out of a whole lot of jams and, if their victims are poor, the victims will keep their mouths shut because they need the money more than the justice. How much better would life be if Weinstein faced justice when the first woman complained? Seven other women would have been saved their dreadful experience. Who knows, maybe even Harvey Weinstein could have been salvaged, learned his lesson, and moved on to still make great movies. We will never know now.

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I don’t know Harvey Weinstein. I don’t know anyone who knows Harvey Weinstein. I am not privy to Hollywood gossip. Yet, somehow, I knew that Harvey Weinstein was a sexual predator. I don’t know why I knew, but I did know. Maybe I had read it somewhere or seen it somewhere, maybe it was in the atmosphere. I am sorry I can’t pin it down, I wish I could. It’s all very vague but I knew before the news broke recently that he had a reputation as a sexual predator.

Now, if I, someone who has no connections to show business or to the people in the business, knows this, I am surprised to learn about all the surprise that Harvey Weinstein was a sexual predator. I thought this was common knowledge because, surely if this information had drifted down to me, this information was readily available to anyone he worked with. So I am surprised by all the surprise.

I think the surprise may stem from the extent of his crimes and not so much the predatory aspect. Everyone knew he tricked beautiful actresses into coming to his hotel room and he made inappropriate advances on them, but, most certainly, didn’t know that he raped women.

A willful stifling of the imagination is taking place here. In their minds, they heard that Weinstein used his power and his position to get laid, now this is inappropriate but not such a big deal and I never dreamed he would take it any further than that. Unfortunately for Hollywood, the ideas regarding sexual harassment are changing and tolerating sexual harassment in any form is frowned upon. The Hollywood crowd were perfectly happy imagining that Weinstein was a perfect gentleman to the women he tricked into his hotel room once his advances were refused. This was sufficient for a long time but now it’s not. It’s all very confusing.

And what exactly should they do? They probably didn’t see Weinstein harass someone, they heard about it second hand. Should they call the police based on this information? Turn him into HR? What if it is just a rumor? Should I ruin my career based on a rumor? It’s really hard to be brave when you know you are correct, you have all the facts in your hand and they are irrefutable. It is nearly impossible to be brave if it is just a suspicion.

Or worse still, what if you are one of the actresses that acquiesced to Weinstein? Didn’t put up a fight, didn’t say no, weighed the options and decided that a one night stand with a creepy producer is worth the shot at becoming a movie star. What should she do now?  And how would this actress be treated if the world learned how she got her big break? Would this admission wipe out every good thing she had done? I am betting she would get destroyed.

Harvey Weinstein is a powerful man and powerful men are difficult to take down. People are rightfully scared and don’t know what to do. What we do know is that Weinstein has a lot of money and lawyers to help him cover up his messes. His victims and the people who may have known about Harvey may not have these same resources to fight back. Imagine if your choice was spend every penny you have to fight a man who can keep you in the courts for years, in the process destroying any chance you have of making it in a extremely competitive industry and taking every last dime you have in the fight in the process or you can take $100,000, keep your mouth shut and he will let you ply your trade?

And what, my friends, happens to whistle-blowers? From my observation, they get canned, and then shunned, and then spend years of their life in the wilderness, looking like a mad man, fighting Don Quixote’s battle, trying to get someone, anyone, to listen to them. The rich powerful man goes on as before as if nothing changed, or, at worst, glides to an early retirement with his golden parachute.

If I had only known what Harvey Weinstein was doing, I would have done something.

What would I have done given the same set of circumstances? I hate to admit it, because it shows I am not brave, but I don’t think I would have done anything. Particularly if all I had was hearsay evidence.

And, if I somehow mustered the courage to fight Weinstein, what could I have affectively done. The best I could come up with is that I would stop working with him. Except. Except, there are thousands of other people in Hollywood who will work with him particularly because he works on a lot of interesting projects. I doubt very much that my absence from his projects would be noticed, or, if noticed, cared about enough for him to change his ways. All for a rumor? All for a woman who doesn’t want me to bring this to anyone’s attention in the first place because she believes her life will be ruined? Why would I make her life and my life miserable if nothing is going to happen to the predator any way? He is, after all, the boss. He makes the company money. He is a success, who am I to get in his way? Do I really want to sacrifice my comfortable life to fight a losing battle?

What exactly do we want people to do?

Well, of course, the right thing. But, right for me? Or right for a much grander cause?

True bravery usually carries a terrible price. Everyone knows it. It is much easier to claim ignorance. Claim that I would have done something if I only knew. Really, I would.

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Is it my imagination or has American Customs and Immigration become needlessly slow with long lines, redundant tasks, and baffling processes that seems to have no benefit, certainly for the traveller, but also to the agencies gathering the information.

Here is my recent experience.

Bob and I land in Atlanta at 2:30PM. Our flight to San Diego leaves at 6:10. This leaves a comfortable three and half hours layover at Hartsfield. We even joke about having too much time for a layover.

Our gate is approximately a ten minute walk to the Immigration line entrance. Not a bad idea after being on a plane for 9 hours and restrooms at nice intervals. So far so good.

We read the entrance to line. There is a very sensible division American/Canadian/Green card holders/ Visa holders go to the right and all other passport holders go to the left. I understand perfectly. Or do I? I move to the right where a woman in uniform tells me I need to go to the left. I explain that I am an American and point to the sign. She gives me the tired and frustrated look of an overworked bureaucrat who has been asked the same question all day is extremely irritated to have to reply for the thousandth time. “And I am telling you today you need to go to the left.” She didn’t look like someone in the mood for a follow up question; we moved to the line on the left.

It is 2:45PM

I am worried because I can see passport holder on the right with theirAmerican passports. On the plus side, the line is moving reasonably fast, and we spy another Customs official at the front of this line who seems to be giving instructions to people when they reach him. We have plenty of time and can afford a few minutes in the wrong line and he will move us to correct line and all will be well.

The line snakes through like an amusement park line with cut backs at a rapid enough clip to maintain my confidence that this will all be over soon. We finally reach the front of the line where I explain we are Americans. The man tells me to get into the line on the right. I stifle an urge to ask why the other Customs official told us to get into the line on the left as we have spent the last 15 minutes in the wrong line, only be told now to join the correct line for American passport holders. However I confused I am, I know enough not to challenge a bureaucrat under stress. This could put me in a very long line to nowhere. More importantly, I am confident that we are now in the correct line.

It is 3:00PM

The line slows significantly with short spurts of movement interspersed with long spans of gridlock. Still, with two hours to go, confident that we have plenty of time. While snaking through the line, I reach the point where I would have entered the line 15 minutes earlier. I overhear a young immigration employee asks the uniformed woman who directed everyone to the left “why don’t we just direct American passport holders to the right, why are we telling them to go to the left? This doesn’t make any sense.” YES. I wholeheartedly agree. My ears perk up because, if nothing else, I might get an explanation for this misrouting. Unfortunately, she responds to him in a muted supervisory tone why. I unfortunately am unable to hear her reply. I do, however, feel my sanity is confirmed when the young man, who speaks in much more clearer and louder tone to assist with my eavesdropping, remains unconvinced by her explanation, “ I still don’t understand but whatever you say, you are the boss.”

It is 3:15PM

The line moves forward in fits and starts. A very happy immigration official keeps us entertained by loudly directing us with snappy inspirational instructions and song. He sings, “Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.” He gives jovial instructions and tries to engage us in conversation, “This line is for American passport holders with a Delta connection, tell me what is a Delta connection?” No one responds. “I can’t hear you,” he yells enthusiastically. A few passengers weakly reply not in unison and not very loudly so I am not sure what they say but it seems to satisfy him as he bellows, “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. You flew in on a Delta flight and you are flying out on a Delta flight. I don’t think anyone actually said this but then I couldn’t hear anything. Everyone in this part of the line seems amused with him though as he is trying to lighten the drudgery of standing in a long line for a long time with song, with light hearted questions. I wonder why every customs office doesn’t have such a happy worker greeting incoming passengers.

It is 3:30PM.

We are about six feet from the happy immigration man, I now want to gag him. Or anything that would shut him up. His mouth moves incessantly. An endless flood of words. His ever evolving routine is now about how great Atlanta is and how lucky you are to be in the greatest city in the whole wide world with occasional outbursts of “Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.” His song is like a knife through my tired skull. I, however stifle my irritation, because I am almost to the front of the line. The end is near.

It is 3:45PM.

When I reach the front of the line, I am directed to one of the hundreds of computer terminals. As I don’t travel internationally much, I am unsure what to do. The instructions on the terminal say to insert my passport into a slot to start the process. After several mistakes I manage to get the passport properly slotted and I successfully complete the on line customs form. I am on a roll until the terminal instructs me to use the terminal to take a picture of myself. The instructions are clear. The picture must have my full face with my eyes open looking into the screen. The camera is far from intuitive. In the first picture my forehead is missing. I retake but this time my chin missing. I try again but this one my eyes are closed. I keep taking pictures and discarding, hoping for a full face with my eyes open. Bob comes by to see what is taking me so long. I show him my latest photograph. He says that immigration official told him not to worry about the picture. Just take what I have and get into the next line where an immigration will collect my picture and custom form. I print my picture with my forehead missing and my eyes firmly closed and join yet another line.

It is 4:00PM.

The immigration official doesn’t even look at my photograph. He eyeballs me and then my passport. He decided I matched my passport photo. Now I can’t understand why I took the trouble and time to take a picture in the first place if he wasn’t going to bother to look at. I thought this was the whole point. That there was some computer program that matches this photograph with my immigration photo and determine if they match. I was kind of impressed with all of up-to-date technology made to catch the ne’re-do-wells of the world. But no, I was wrong, it all boiled down to the immigration officials eyeballs. Why did I spend the last 10 minutes taking the picture if it was all up to him in the first place? Time is slipping away so I again skip questioning him about it. We run to collect our baggage which has been on the luggage carousel long enough to gather dust. I pick it up and run a few feet to chuck it onto a conveyer belt in front of about ten customs official who all look like they would rather be having a cigarette. They point me to another line.

It is 4:15PM.

Yes, you heard correctly, another line. Why? I can’t understand. I gave immigration my customs documents and he looked at my passport over and custom guys missed their opportunity to search my luggage as I already sent the luggage back to Delta. Can’t I just run frantically to my gate? What else needs to be done? Bob tells me that we are going through security. Which baffles me. I just got off of a plane which was secure, why do I need to go through security yet again. Because once I left the plane and went to Customs and Immigration, I left a secure environment and entered into an unsecure environment.

Which seems a rather unnecessary step to add to passengers who, after all, are trying to catch a connecting flight. Doesn’t it make more sense to have the hundred or so Immigration and Customs employees go through security when they come to work and just make the Immigration and Customs section of the airport secure? Instead of requiring thousands of already vetted passengers at the nations busiest airport go through security yet again when they are under a looming time crunch to meet their connecting flights? I yell into the abyss and, of course, join the security line.

It is 4:30PM.

I am now getting really worried that we will miss our connecting flight. Other passengers obviously have the same worry, so several passengers take turns going to the TSA official and explaining their concerns. She, after several such encounters, yells out to everyone in the security line that getting out of line and asking her about your looming connecting flight won’t make the line move any faster, just stay in line and TSA will get you through as quickly as possible. I hate to call someone a liar but I will. She is a liar. We could plainly see that, on a rare occasion, someone would come up to her and after irritatingly listening to their query she directs them out of the line into another line which, to my untrained eyes, seems to be moving faster. I wonder what the time threshold for joining the faster line is because very few people are invited in. As we are still over an hour before we need to be at the gate, Bob and I opt to stay in line and keep our fingers crossed. The line moves reasonably fast and we make it through security at 4:45PM where we frantically run to our gate. The good news is I had roughly 10 minutes to toss down a martini before our plane boarded.

Two hours and fifteen minutes.