revision99

This weekend the new band travels to sunny San Diego to play its first gig.

The occasion is a party for a couple of hundred attorneys. I think we’ll open with “I Fought The Law.”

I was not aware that Vice President Cheney has recently been slandering former Senator George McGovern,

…but today in the Los Angeles Times I saw a rebuttal of sorts from McGovern. Actually, it’s more like an ass-kicking, something that I think the old Senator might still be capable of in person if Cheney ever dares show his face when George is around.

I’m not going to analyze the story. You can read it here, and you’d better hop to it before it disappears behind the news-for-money firewall at The Times.

But for younger readers. let me just say that George McGovern was the Democratic presidential candidate who lost the 1972 election in a landslide to the corrupt, unbalanced Republican incumbent Richard Nixon. It was an era of civil unrest, anger and alienation. Then as now, our government was involved in a war overseas with a small sovereign nation (Vietnam) which had not threatened the U.S. Like our current Iraq adventure, we were there on false pretenses fabricated by powerful corporate interests who are always the ones to profit from the slaughter. It seemed that the war would never end, and anyone who said it should was labeled a traitor or a defeatist. Sound familiar?

McGovern was not the first national figure to speak out against the war, but he was the one who mounted a real challenge to the snake-pit in the Pentagon and the White House, and he captured the imagination and the loyalty of a generation of disaffected youth, not to mention all the leftover pacifists from the fifties and the sixties.

Of course he had to be crushed, and the Nixon stink machine raised dirty campaigning to a new and slimy art form. McGovern’s defeat that year was a heartbreak that I still haven’t gotten over, and to think that the certifiably evil Dick Cheney (I certify it myself!) has now reached back into history to vilify this honorable man…

just

makes

me

SPIT!!

Go read the article. If you’re already in the choir, you’ll enjoy singing along. If you’re not, how do you sleep?

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

November 11, 1922 — April 11, 2007

Somebody poke a hole in this.

It’s my new* theory about how businesses should pay workers. I just thought of it in the shower this morning, so it’s probably a little flaky.

First, we stipulate that the best way to hire workers is that you find the smartest, most competent and trustworthy candidates. All other things being equal, this should give you an edge against your competition in the marketplace. (If you happen also to have a great idea, or the best technology, or a huge head start, all the better.)

Once you’ve got your smart, competent staff that you trust, how do you determine salary structure? I suggest that you pay your people the most you can afford. You should run the numbers, find out what your revenue is and what part of that is profit, and allocate as much as possible of it to your labor force. The process should be as transparent as possible, so that the workers can be assured that they are, indeed, participating to the fullest extent in the wealth that they are, after all, helping to create.

As the owner, you should resist the temptation to pay yourself or your executives a hugely disproportionate piece of the available cash. You deserve something extra for taking a chance with your money, and the managers do, too, responsible as they are for making groups work together efficiently. But you must not go overboard, or you’ll lose the trust and respect of your employees. (For example, I would have to work almost 200 years with no vacations in order to make what the CEO of “my” company made last year. And I wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire, much less contribute more than the bare minimum of my abilities to his bottom line You see how that works?)

In this way, you’ll find yourself with a happy, highly motivated staff who will do their best to make things better at your company. And qualified candidates from around the country will flock to your recruiting office to join your organization. Because let’s face it, when it comes to work, we’re in it for the money.

Supply-siders and free marketeers and “invisible handers” will argue that No, you should cut costs as much as possible to maximize profit, and you should try to “win” in your negotiations with labor by getting them to settle for less than they’re worth. Salaries are costs, after all, and should be pushed as low as possible. This is the perennial mistake that Capital makes. In fact, it seems to me that survival in the marketplace is much more likely when you’ve got the best people on your team. The focus should be not on reducing compensation, but on paying well and getting the most for your money: The most talent, the most loyalty, the most productivity and stability.

But then I’m working class, so I’m probably wrong.

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* I confess I have not read the classic works of communism and socialism, but I’m guessing this is more or less what they say. If you’re a baby boomer, as I am, think about it: The most horrible monster in the universe, the thing to be feared, fought and avoided at all costs throughout most of your lives, was communism, a way for people to get what they deserve in exchange for honest work. To save ourselves from this scourge, we have built 10,000 hydrogen bombs and lived in fear and isolation for generations.

You may have found yourself living in a mansion, depressed, confused or alienated.

You may not know how you came to be living in a mansion, and you may fear that you will be trapped forever in a gigantic house or estate, surrounded by other gigantic houses. You need to stop and take hold of yourself, pull yourself together and start living on a human scale, in a normal size house.

How do you know if you are living in a mansion? Often, the person living in a mansion is the last person to know. Here are some warning signs. You may be living in a mansion…

• …if it is more than four hundred feet from your front door to the street.
• …if you occasionally wake up in rooms you didn’t know you had.
• …if there is an intercom near your toilet.
• …if you are paying Social Security tax on the person who brings you your coffee in the morning.
• …If there are golf carts parked in your family room.

That’s all well and good, but I don’t live in a mansion. Denial is a common symptom in the early advanced stages of living in a mansion. Sadly, the healing cannot begin until you admit that you have a problem with living in a mansion, and prepare to confront it.

A lot of people live in mansions. What’s the big deal? If you live in a mansion, chances are you are surrounded by other mansions in your neighborhood, and it may, indeed, seem to you that “a lot of people” live in mansions. However, statistics do not bear this out. In fact, less than two percent of all Americans live in mansions. Worldwide, the proportion is even smaller.

So what if I do live in a mansion? People who live in mansions may develop a tolerance, and find that they are spending too much time in search of ever larger rooms, longer hallways, more grandiose staircases, and so on. Living in a mansion affects the central nervous system, resulting in a decrease of activity, anxiety, tension, and inhibitions. Even a medium size house can result in a decrease in the ability to think clearly. Concentration and judgment become impaired.

OK, but I can move out any time. Once you have grown dependent on living in a mansion, you may experience painful withdrawal symptoms. When the great big ol’ house is taken away, symptoms of withdrawal may include elevated temperature, increased blood pressure, rapid heart rate, restlessness, anxiety, psychosis, seizures, and rarely even death.

Maybe I do have a problem, but how can I tell? Ask yourself these questions:

• Have you ever felt that your house is unmanageable?
• Is someone in your family concerned about the size of your house?
• Have you ever been absent from work or lost a job because of the size of your house?
• Do you find that you “need” a bigger home than before to achieve the desired effect?
• When everyone else has left, is it “OK” with you to just stay in your mansion, alone?
• Do you try to hide your mansion from others?

Many people who live in mansions don’t recognize when their houses have gotten out of hand. In the past, treatment providers believed that mansion-dwellers should be confronted about denial of their problems, but now research has shown that compassionate and empathetic counseling is more effective.

If you’ve been living in a mansion, don’t despair. You’re not alone. There is help. Living in a mansion doesn’t make you a bad person. You might want to join a support group, seek therapy from a psychiatric professional, or even enter a rehabilitation clinic.

But please, do something.

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(This public service announcement brought to you by revision99, the Ad Council and Americans Who Can’t Afford to Live in Mansions.)