Remember years ago when there was this commercial that kept buzzing in our ears; "When EF Hutton talks, everyone listens". It was for a fund investment company, intimating that they had all the answers and we should pay attention. Well today it's not EF Hutton we are listening to, it's the Dalai Lama, and I for one listen when he speaks.
Recently he was interviewed for Ode magazine about his up-coming documentary that will be released in October. 10 Questions For the Dalai Lama. Against the backdrop of an exotic land, a lone filmmaker is granted one hour to ask ten questions of the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. Containing rare historical footage as well as footage taken inside Tibet, a story is woven between a journeyman's personal observations, the troubled history of a government-in-exile, and the life and wisdom of one of the premiere spiritual leaders of our time.
The Dalai Lama shines as a universal symbol of peace and unity, promoting a greater understanding of philosophy and cultures. Inspired by the man himself and its film 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama monterey media has invigorated hundreds of community organizations, churches, and national groups to join in a national effort to "put the Unity back in their Community" by creating the national “Weekend of Unity & Peace”.
October 19 - 21, 2007 has been designated as this weekend of individual events designed to bring our communities together in a celebration of understanding, unity, tolerance, peace, and oneness. This enlivening event occurs while His Holiness is in the U.S. touring and just prior to the highly anticipated DVD release of the film Tuesday, October 23rd, which enjoyed a critically acclaimed national theatrical release this summer. www.thedalailamamovie.com
The world's first Executive Zentreat sponsored by the Centre for Zentrepreneurism will take place on that weekend to mark the event on Galiano Island. For more info go to www.zentrepreneurism.com
In an era when many religious and political leaders are viewed with suspicion, and when cynical agendas rule both government and clergy, the Dalai Lama is undeniably authentic. Along with Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Jesus, this great leader inspires millions and has influenced the world in so many ways. This is his story, as told and filmed by Rick Ray during a private visit to his monastery in Dharamsala, India over the course of several months. Also included is rare historical footage as well as footage supplied by individuals who at great personal risk, filmed with hidden cameras within Tibet. Part biography, part philosophy, part adventure and part politics, "10 Questions for the Dalai Lama" conveys more than history and more than answers--it opens a window into the heart of a great man.
Here are some excerpts:
"Everything is interdependent. Everything is interconnected. So my interest is very much linked to everyone's interests. Our survival and our future are very much linked to one another. Therefore the destruction of your so-called enemy is actually the destruction of your self. The concept of war-"destroy your enemy"-is old fashioned. It is out of date. "To use the power of the gun is a sign of weakness. The power of the gun is short-term. Very decisive, very powerful, but in the long run, the power of the gun cannot remain. This violence it won't work.:
There is too much greed , a limitless sort of desire. This is a source of problems, a source of suffering. If you always keep the feeling "oner more, one more, one more." until the last day, you are never satisfied. Mentally, you are a very poor person, always hungry. If desires are without self-discipline you want to kill someone, you want to tell lies, you want to take alcohol or drugs. That's self-destruction, in order to be safe from self-destruction, you need some self-discipline. Not some order from outside, but you have to analyze the value, the consequences.
Use your intelligence."There is too much emotion, too much negative emotion: frustration, hatred, anger." I think that's the greatest obstacle. So I think as a first step this should be cooled down. Reduced. Forget these things. And I think for the time being, we need more festivals, more picnics. Let us forget these difficult things, these emotions, and make personal friends. Then we can start to talk about these serious matters."
believe nothing,
no matter where you read it
or who said it,
not even if I have said it,
unless it agrees with your own reason
and your own common sense.
- buddha
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
GREEN -WASHING
Is it really green?
An IpsosoReid survey in Canada released yesterday says 63 per cent of people suspect goods marked as environmentally friendly are designed to sell the product. The tactic, called “green-washing”, is increasingly popular with marketers vying for shopping dollars. People suspect certain goods are labeled environmentally friendly as part of a tactic to sell the product rather than save the earth. UBC marketing professor Dan Putler said “such image overhauls don’t dupe shoppers easily”. “People have an understanding that companies want to look good even when they’re not doing good.” The results from the survey of 1,285 Canadian homeowners showed shopper’s doubt marketers intentions when it comes to the environment: Here are some results:
An IpsosoReid survey in Canada released yesterday says 63 per cent of people suspect goods marked as environmentally friendly are designed to sell the product. The tactic, called “green-washing”, is increasingly popular with marketers vying for shopping dollars. People suspect certain goods are labeled environmentally friendly as part of a tactic to sell the product rather than save the earth. UBC marketing professor Dan Putler said “such image overhauls don’t dupe shoppers easily”. “People have an understanding that companies want to look good even when they’re not doing good.” The results from the survey of 1,285 Canadian homeowners showed shopper’s doubt marketers intentions when it comes to the environment: Here are some results:
- 56 per cent of people who consider themselves green savvy consider some products sold as green to be a marketing tactic.
- 63 per cent of the total people surveyed consider some products sold as green to be a marketing tactic.
- 40% of people would not be willing to pay more up front for items such as green building products.
- 31 percent of people admit to not knowing much about environmental issues.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Breach of Trust
It smacked me right in the face, a headline in today's Vancouver Sun. "High Flying Canadian conman lands in U.S. jail.http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=a7d5ea5b-b84d-4c84-8e92-82a537c37c64 "He was a Canadian, the article said, who seemed to be living the American dream on the sunny California coast- a yacht and a 2006 Ferrari, country club and golf memberships, and a sprawling, multi-million dollar mansion in a wealthy enclave at seaside Monterey. His wife sported a $50,000 diamond ring and his four children attended private schools. He spent time collecting expensive works of art and rare sports memorabilia."
To dozens of his friends and clients, Jay Zubick was a popular and trusted investment adviser from Toronto, who had made a great life for himself and his family in his U.S. home -- all the while pursuing his passion for athletics at Ironman competitions across North America.It turns out, however, that the 42-year-old business whiz was, in fact, an English literature grad from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., who was running a marathon investment swindle. The scam lasted seven years and drained some $16 million US from the savings of 29 victims in the U.S. and Canada.
At a California court this week, a "truly sorry" Zubick claimed to been "saved by Jesus" following his arrest earlier this year on 71 counts of fraud, money laundering and forgery. But a parade of embittered victims told a sentencing judge they felt cheated by their "best friend" who, in one woman's words, had left her "financially raped."
So what are the lessons to be learned here. First of all you never do business with your friends. Friends are just that "friends". Here's Webster's definition of friendship. The state of being friends; friendly relation, or attachment, to a person, or between persons; affection arising from mutual esteem and good will; friendliness; amity; good will. I don't see anywhere in there; "and thou shalt do business with a friend, thou shalt borrow money from a friend, and thou shalt trust thy friend with your entire life savings. You see I have only recently learned through my own life's experience, that the only person who really should be trusted with his/her money is the person who earned the money, namely yourself. If you don't trust yourself with money why should you trust others.
The article opened, he was Canadian who seemed to be living the American dream. If I hear those two words again I'm going to stand on the top of the New York Stock Exchange building and holler, "I' m tired- and I can' take it anymore. Stop selling the American Dream". The American dream has become it's worst nightmare, and why any self respecting Canadian would want to pursue it is beyond me.
Try this for a while, be a soft spoken, respected, ethical, and authentic Canadian, and begin to pursue your own personal dream of compassion, gratitude, and have a life of purpose and passion for what you love to do, not about what you don't have and need to get, because trust me their are more Americans who would love to be here rather than there.
Stop apologizing when people bump into you, stop apologizing for being slow to sign deals, stop apologizing for not being as hot a celebrity , stop apologizing for playing in the CFL instead of the NFL, and above all stop apologizing because you haven't quite fulfilled your American Dream. Pick door number two and be happy with your choice.
And please stop watching Howie Mandell's perpetuation of the myth that people will never be happy unless they have it all, "Deal or No Deal" has become Greed or no Greed". I don';t know about you but aren't you a little tired of all the Canadians who travel off to the U.S., to pursue "the dream" and always come home for a visit with the same quote; "Canada will always be my home". Okay here's a concept; have less, make less, and make Canada your home. Live here and enrich our lives instead of selling out.
We are too gracious to those movie or music stars who take flight and then know that we will always welcome them back with open arms.. "it's like bowing and flapping our arms downward in a simultaneous whoosh of "We're not worthy..we're not worthy. And finally, just as Jay Zubick, claims to have found Jesus, maybe it's time we find our Canadian "souls " again. It's as simple as this....sit down with a pen in hand and write down everything that you feel grateful for about being Canadian. It took me a lifetime to finally appreciate my birthplace, I hope it doesn't take you that long. Oh yeah about that breach of trust thing, Buddha says to forgive your enemies, but not forget them.
And one final peice of advice, when your best friend says he would like to offer you a spot in an "exclusive limited partnership, that is "very special", something just for my closest friends". You say...repeat after me, "that's nice except I'm not your friend", close the door and never look back. As in business and in life, you need only ask one question of anyone; so what part of this is a lie?
To dozens of his friends and clients, Jay Zubick was a popular and trusted investment adviser from Toronto, who had made a great life for himself and his family in his U.S. home -- all the while pursuing his passion for athletics at Ironman competitions across North America.It turns out, however, that the 42-year-old business whiz was, in fact, an English literature grad from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., who was running a marathon investment swindle. The scam lasted seven years and drained some $16 million US from the savings of 29 victims in the U.S. and Canada.
At a California court this week, a "truly sorry" Zubick claimed to been "saved by Jesus" following his arrest earlier this year on 71 counts of fraud, money laundering and forgery. But a parade of embittered victims told a sentencing judge they felt cheated by their "best friend" who, in one woman's words, had left her "financially raped."
So what are the lessons to be learned here. First of all you never do business with your friends. Friends are just that "friends". Here's Webster's definition of friendship. The state of being friends; friendly relation, or attachment, to a person, or between persons; affection arising from mutual esteem and good will; friendliness; amity; good will. I don't see anywhere in there; "and thou shalt do business with a friend, thou shalt borrow money from a friend, and thou shalt trust thy friend with your entire life savings. You see I have only recently learned through my own life's experience, that the only person who really should be trusted with his/her money is the person who earned the money, namely yourself. If you don't trust yourself with money why should you trust others.
The article opened, he was Canadian who seemed to be living the American dream. If I hear those two words again I'm going to stand on the top of the New York Stock Exchange building and holler, "I' m tired- and I can' take it anymore. Stop selling the American Dream". The American dream has become it's worst nightmare, and why any self respecting Canadian would want to pursue it is beyond me.
Try this for a while, be a soft spoken, respected, ethical, and authentic Canadian, and begin to pursue your own personal dream of compassion, gratitude, and have a life of purpose and passion for what you love to do, not about what you don't have and need to get, because trust me their are more Americans who would love to be here rather than there.
Stop apologizing when people bump into you, stop apologizing for being slow to sign deals, stop apologizing for not being as hot a celebrity , stop apologizing for playing in the CFL instead of the NFL, and above all stop apologizing because you haven't quite fulfilled your American Dream. Pick door number two and be happy with your choice.
And please stop watching Howie Mandell's perpetuation of the myth that people will never be happy unless they have it all, "Deal or No Deal" has become Greed or no Greed". I don';t know about you but aren't you a little tired of all the Canadians who travel off to the U.S., to pursue "the dream" and always come home for a visit with the same quote; "Canada will always be my home". Okay here's a concept; have less, make less, and make Canada your home. Live here and enrich our lives instead of selling out.
We are too gracious to those movie or music stars who take flight and then know that we will always welcome them back with open arms.. "it's like bowing and flapping our arms downward in a simultaneous whoosh of "We're not worthy..we're not worthy. And finally, just as Jay Zubick, claims to have found Jesus, maybe it's time we find our Canadian "souls " again. It's as simple as this....sit down with a pen in hand and write down everything that you feel grateful for about being Canadian. It took me a lifetime to finally appreciate my birthplace, I hope it doesn't take you that long. Oh yeah about that breach of trust thing, Buddha says to forgive your enemies, but not forget them.
And one final peice of advice, when your best friend says he would like to offer you a spot in an "exclusive limited partnership, that is "very special", something just for my closest friends". You say...repeat after me, "that's nice except I'm not your friend", close the door and never look back. As in business and in life, you need only ask one question of anyone; so what part of this is a lie?
Monday, September 03, 2007
Going Green for Good or Greed?
Recently I received my complimentary copy of a new Vancouver magazine on sustainable living, called GRANVILLE http://www.granvilleonline.ca/ It occurred to me as I leafed through the ads, and tried to find some articles of substance, that indeed the "Green Ad Revolution" has begun. First of all, you'll wonder why I got a copy and you didn't. Well, I just happen to live on the edge of Kerrisdale and Shaugnessy, two of the wealthiest areas in the Lower Mainland. So what does a magazine that caters to the wealthy look like. Well, this one kind of resembles a "Green" GQ, but instead of advertising Rolex watches and Armani suits, all of the purveyors of fine clothes, food, high end spas/resorts, and gourmet dining are cleverly incorporating the "green" word within their new re-designed logos.
Now given that Madison Avenue always smells money before the small do-gooding little organizations in any small town America or Canada, it's no wonder that Vancouver, who always likes to thumb their nose at the rest of Canada for being small town and well, just not hip, would want to capitalize on the "Green Revolution".
On a typical day in a downtown ad agency in Vancouver, if an associate gets a message to call either someone in Regina or LA, guess which one they return the call to . So in Vancouver's race to be LA North and be "cool", if they see that Madison Avenue has told Corporate America that it makes good money sense to stamp "Green" on everything, then you follow the American need for greed and start your own "Green " Magazine.
Fighting global warming has suddenly become big business., and America's addiction to celebrities, has now come together for one huge marketing machine that is now unstoppable. Forget the fear of terrorism, that's yesterday's news, and besides the defence industry has made enough money out of that. So I present to you the new buzz word and mantra on Wall Street, "Sustainability".
Given that America is now convinced that they need to be afraid of two things Terrorism and Global Warming, Madison Avenue has decided that this has created the "Perfect Storm" for a marketing windfall. Let's get back to Granville Magazine for a moment . I called the Editor, David Jordan and offered to submit a "free" article on excerpts of my book that deal with "ethics" and creating "values based" businesses, in other words creating profits with integrity. His response was interesting and surprising to say the least. "Thanks but no thanks, that's not our mandate." In other words as long as you talk about sustainable living or advertise about sustainable living you can be in the magazine.
So here's my question, if you hang a sign "We're Green" on the front door of your business establishment, does that immediately qualify you as a business I can trust to be; honest, fair to your employees, committed to improving the quality of life in your community, sympathetic to fair trade, and compassionate about the people you do business with and who buy from you. In other words a "Value Based Business". Now not only can I trust you but I can now also believe that you must have the best interest of me and the planet at heart because you paid between $1,500 to $6,000 for an ad in a magazine.
First of all if I lived in the East End of town, was on a low income, a student, homeless, or lived in Regina I'm not even going to get a comp. copy. For obvious reasons, I won't be able to buy the latest dress made out of soy for my wife for $2,500, or the latest hybrid car for $42,000, or have an organic gourmet dinner for $200 at a local fine dining eatery. How about those face treatments and massages with the finest in organic "save the planet' oils. You see where I'm going with this .
Leaving your eco-footprint is one thing, capitalizing on the latest 'Green" trend without any need for accountability for "telling the truth" perpetuates the endless parade of "get rich quick schemes that inundate the t.v. air waves between 2-4 a.m. This new upscale magazine waving the "green " flag is just another in the long line of Madison Avenue tricks to exploit your hard earned dollar. But hey, if Leonard DiCaprio says the planet needs saving, it must be so, because after all when Al Gore said it, he was just a loser politician that was trying to make a comeback.
Here's' a concept, Al Gore has been fighting to get peoples' attention on global warming since he was a young congressman with noble intentions. He never built a business around saving the planet. Remember if you combine America's addiction to celebrities and harness the power of Madison Avenue, you have hit the mother lode. The Dalai Lama has said we need to save humanity and teach compassion, one person at a time. "We must stop war, famine, and man's injustice to man." At no time did he say " Oh yes and on the subject of global warming you must capitalize on this fear, use it, go forth and make lot's of money"! And so I ask you the question, Is Going Green for Good or Greed?
Now given that Madison Avenue always smells money before the small do-gooding little organizations in any small town America or Canada, it's no wonder that Vancouver, who always likes to thumb their nose at the rest of Canada for being small town and well, just not hip, would want to capitalize on the "Green Revolution".
On a typical day in a downtown ad agency in Vancouver, if an associate gets a message to call either someone in Regina or LA, guess which one they return the call to . So in Vancouver's race to be LA North and be "cool", if they see that Madison Avenue has told Corporate America that it makes good money sense to stamp "Green" on everything, then you follow the American need for greed and start your own "Green " Magazine.
Fighting global warming has suddenly become big business., and America's addiction to celebrities, has now come together for one huge marketing machine that is now unstoppable. Forget the fear of terrorism, that's yesterday's news, and besides the defence industry has made enough money out of that. So I present to you the new buzz word and mantra on Wall Street, "Sustainability".
Given that America is now convinced that they need to be afraid of two things Terrorism and Global Warming, Madison Avenue has decided that this has created the "Perfect Storm" for a marketing windfall. Let's get back to Granville Magazine for a moment . I called the Editor, David Jordan and offered to submit a "free" article on excerpts of my book that deal with "ethics" and creating "values based" businesses, in other words creating profits with integrity. His response was interesting and surprising to say the least. "Thanks but no thanks, that's not our mandate." In other words as long as you talk about sustainable living or advertise about sustainable living you can be in the magazine.
So here's my question, if you hang a sign "We're Green" on the front door of your business establishment, does that immediately qualify you as a business I can trust to be; honest, fair to your employees, committed to improving the quality of life in your community, sympathetic to fair trade, and compassionate about the people you do business with and who buy from you. In other words a "Value Based Business". Now not only can I trust you but I can now also believe that you must have the best interest of me and the planet at heart because you paid between $1,500 to $6,000 for an ad in a magazine.
First of all if I lived in the East End of town, was on a low income, a student, homeless, or lived in Regina I'm not even going to get a comp. copy. For obvious reasons, I won't be able to buy the latest dress made out of soy for my wife for $2,500, or the latest hybrid car for $42,000, or have an organic gourmet dinner for $200 at a local fine dining eatery. How about those face treatments and massages with the finest in organic "save the planet' oils. You see where I'm going with this .
Leaving your eco-footprint is one thing, capitalizing on the latest 'Green" trend without any need for accountability for "telling the truth" perpetuates the endless parade of "get rich quick schemes that inundate the t.v. air waves between 2-4 a.m. This new upscale magazine waving the "green " flag is just another in the long line of Madison Avenue tricks to exploit your hard earned dollar. But hey, if Leonard DiCaprio says the planet needs saving, it must be so, because after all when Al Gore said it, he was just a loser politician that was trying to make a comeback.
Here's' a concept, Al Gore has been fighting to get peoples' attention on global warming since he was a young congressman with noble intentions. He never built a business around saving the planet. Remember if you combine America's addiction to celebrities and harness the power of Madison Avenue, you have hit the mother lode. The Dalai Lama has said we need to save humanity and teach compassion, one person at a time. "We must stop war, famine, and man's injustice to man." At no time did he say " Oh yes and on the subject of global warming you must capitalize on this fear, use it, go forth and make lot's of money"! And so I ask you the question, Is Going Green for Good or Greed?
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Vancouver Has Lost It's Soul !
It's been a steady decay, not one that happened overnight. But clearly Vancouver has lost it's soul. Not that it really ever had one, in this city of narcissists and "do your own thing" lifestyles. Hedonism is alive in this corner of the world. Don't let the mountains and the ocean fool you. I've been here for over forty years now and never really called Vancouver home. My birthplace is Edmonton, Alberta, and have lived with the constant teasing from the locals as to why anyone would want to be proud of coming from the prairies. I am, and can still have a warm and fuzzy feeling whenever I re-visit my home at 133rd St. and 107 A. Avenue
The smugness and arrogance of locally born Vancouverites has given way to a feeling of "what's happened to our city"?. The answer is simple, if you never build a sense of community from within, you have a city with no heart, no soul. If the sole motivation of your move to another country is to buy yourself in--you bring with you an attitude, not of greatfulness, but of entitlement. The price of homes become inflated, neighbourhoods become ghettos and entire communities turn into that countries territory , rather than becoming part of the local fabric. Vancouver is no longer multi- cultural, it has become bi-racial, Caucasion and Asian.
Vancouver is now a global city that is one stop within the Pacific world. Two thirds of male Canadians of Hong Kong origin between the ages of 25 and 40 live and work outside Canada. Large numbers of Vancouver residents have multiple homes throughout the world, creating great demand for real estate in Vancouver, but also leaving many condominiums unused for portions of the year. Like Switzerland for Europe, Vancouver is considered a safe place for storing money (not in banks, but in real estate) and a good place to send children to school.
In his article of June 30, 2007, "Chinese Vancouver: A decade of change- How the Lower Mainland became the leading Asian metropolis on the continent", Miro Cernetig of the Vancouver Sun writes;
" Remember "Hongcouver?" You don't hear that word much anymore in the polite society of Vancouver, a city that has grown into Canada's - and North America's - most effortlessly Asian metropolis.But a decade or so, ago you could hear the term "Hongcouver" everywhere.
It was an era's impolitic catch-phrase for the xenophobia and palpable occidental unease in Vancouver at the prospect of a profound upheaval in society. A sleepy city had suddenly found itself a magnet for one of the most significant - and wealthiest - immigration waves to ever hit Canada: the Hong Kong Chinese, who sought out Vancouver as a safe haven for their money.
"The Hong Kong immigrants were really a new kind of Canadian," said Henry Yu, a history professor at the University of British Columbia. "They were educated, spoke English and middle class or wealthy. They weren't going to start out as pizza delivery men and working in Chinese laundries."They expected to be first-class citizens, they wanted to live in the best neighborhoods, wanted the best schools for their kids.
Recall the words and debates - now rarely worth a headline - that polarized the city a decade or more ago, when Hong Kong's human tsunami began hitting Vancouver in the mid-'80s and late '90s.There was the volatile debate over "monster houses" - the name for the large homes many Hong Kong immigrants built in such rarefied and resolutely anglo enclaves as Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale, often knocking down trees and old-style houses to do so. Non-Chinese tended to see the word monster as an apt adjective for the grand size of the new homes they thought ugly and out of place; Chinese saw the word as a racist put-down, suggesting that "monsters" lived in such new homes designed to hold multiple generations.
Then there was the "University of a Billion Chinese" as the University of British Columbia was sometimes dubbed. The number of Chinese-Canadians students was soaring at the university, thanks in large part to the new Hong Kong immigrants who brought with them a diligence that made them academic stars and made it harder for the less competitive to gain entry to UBC.Many non-Chinese parents, as University of Washington academic and Vancouver native Katharyne Mitchell chronicled in a paper about the Hong Kong immigration wave, complained the new arrivals were "too competitive" or "too one-track-minded" compared to their own "more balanced" children.
And don't forget the simmering tensions in Richmond, where many of the Hong Kong immigrants first gravitated, radically changing the racial mix of the community in a few short years -- not to mention its shopping habits. Malls opened up full of Chinese stores, in effect creating a new, well-heeled and modern Chinatown on Vancouver's outskirts. On hot summer nights, you could hear the exotic clicking off mah-jong tiles on Richmond's quiet streets, where half the residents were suddenly Chinese.
Then there was, of course, the unforgettable Hong-Kong effect on the local real estate market.Billionaire Li Ka Shing started it by buying the Expo 86 lands and transformed them into a miniature version of the towering condos of his hometown Hong Kong. That accelerated a radical change to the city's skyline, with the luxury condos of Coal Harbour following, along with a profusion of downtown condo towers that have densified and energized the city's core, and made it more congested.
Predictably, real estate prices skyrocketed as the Hong Kong arrivals put their money into city property, new and old, often astounded at the houses they could get on the West Coast for the price of a two-bedroom apartment in Hong Kong.
Old-time Vancouverites who owned homes generally liked that consequence of the new Asian money. But even here there was a new angst that lingers on: those who didn't own property suddenly wondered how they could ever keep up with this new monied slice of Canadian society from across the Pacific."
The whispers at cocktail parties and behind closed office doors today is "how come I feel like a visitor in my own city". Not all immigrants who come to Canada or Vancouver for that matter have the kind of money brought by wealthy Asians, nor do they have the same sense of entitlement . My parents were poor Jewish immigrants who came with nothing and were just happy to have survived the Nazi concentration camps. They were so grateful to Canada that they made every effort to assimilate. What happens is that when you come here with an attitude of entitlement and there is no demand on you to assimilate and you are given the same privileges and access as others who have worked their whole life to value, then its no wonder that local Vancouverites will feel resentment, threatened and angry.
Add this to the Olympic nightmare, cost overruns, broken government promises, no help or compassion for the suffering of the merchants on the Canada line corridor, huge traffic jams, construction delays at every corner with every new development, no solution to massive homelessness, warring gangs, fueding drug lords, and epidemic breaking and entering of cars and homes, and you have "sin city", not the jewel of the Pacific. But don't bother calling 911, they'll just add you to the list of complaints that gets as much attention as committing jaywalking.
Here is the reality; we have a police force that is severly under manned and underfunded, with a mayor that can't organize a parade with one car., a mayor who is single handidly responsible for a 6 week garbage strike. Don't ever question the huge social benefits of the 17 day pep rally in 2010 in this town or you'll get a slap in the face from the Campbell Gestapo. Vancouver has sold whatever was left of it's soul to the people who care little for the soul of others. If you can buy a home in Kerrisdale, have a charge card at Tiffany's, own a BMW, lavish yourself and your children with clothes from Holt Renfrew, than you can have the "Vancouver dream", and enjoy the good life without feeling any guilt or remorse for anyone you might hurt. You've made it, heck you'll even get written up in Malcom Perry's column of the rich and famous. You won't however find any columnist covering the poor and ugly.
It is this attitude that has spilled over on to the streets of Vancouver. There is a simmering anger and distrust from people, who instead of talking openly about how they feel, swear at you and give you the finger in traffic, and murder each other at the slightest provocation. This is a city rotting from within it's core, and nothing can stop the juggernaut. Even a dose of "Zen" will cost you, they're called Spa Salons and Resorts, a refuge from reality. Maybe the Dalai Lama had a reason for wanting to have the worlds' first Centre for Peace here in Vancouver, he intuitively knows something we are not admitting, that Vancouver has lost it's soul!
The smugness and arrogance of locally born Vancouverites has given way to a feeling of "what's happened to our city"?. The answer is simple, if you never build a sense of community from within, you have a city with no heart, no soul. If the sole motivation of your move to another country is to buy yourself in--you bring with you an attitude, not of greatfulness, but of entitlement. The price of homes become inflated, neighbourhoods become ghettos and entire communities turn into that countries territory , rather than becoming part of the local fabric. Vancouver is no longer multi- cultural, it has become bi-racial, Caucasion and Asian.
Vancouver is now a global city that is one stop within the Pacific world. Two thirds of male Canadians of Hong Kong origin between the ages of 25 and 40 live and work outside Canada. Large numbers of Vancouver residents have multiple homes throughout the world, creating great demand for real estate in Vancouver, but also leaving many condominiums unused for portions of the year. Like Switzerland for Europe, Vancouver is considered a safe place for storing money (not in banks, but in real estate) and a good place to send children to school.
In his article of June 30, 2007, "Chinese Vancouver: A decade of change- How the Lower Mainland became the leading Asian metropolis on the continent", Miro Cernetig of the Vancouver Sun writes;
" Remember "Hongcouver?" You don't hear that word much anymore in the polite society of Vancouver, a city that has grown into Canada's - and North America's - most effortlessly Asian metropolis.But a decade or so, ago you could hear the term "Hongcouver" everywhere.
It was an era's impolitic catch-phrase for the xenophobia and palpable occidental unease in Vancouver at the prospect of a profound upheaval in society. A sleepy city had suddenly found itself a magnet for one of the most significant - and wealthiest - immigration waves to ever hit Canada: the Hong Kong Chinese, who sought out Vancouver as a safe haven for their money.
"The Hong Kong immigrants were really a new kind of Canadian," said Henry Yu, a history professor at the University of British Columbia. "They were educated, spoke English and middle class or wealthy. They weren't going to start out as pizza delivery men and working in Chinese laundries."They expected to be first-class citizens, they wanted to live in the best neighborhoods, wanted the best schools for their kids.
Recall the words and debates - now rarely worth a headline - that polarized the city a decade or more ago, when Hong Kong's human tsunami began hitting Vancouver in the mid-'80s and late '90s.There was the volatile debate over "monster houses" - the name for the large homes many Hong Kong immigrants built in such rarefied and resolutely anglo enclaves as Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale, often knocking down trees and old-style houses to do so. Non-Chinese tended to see the word monster as an apt adjective for the grand size of the new homes they thought ugly and out of place; Chinese saw the word as a racist put-down, suggesting that "monsters" lived in such new homes designed to hold multiple generations.
Then there was the "University of a Billion Chinese" as the University of British Columbia was sometimes dubbed. The number of Chinese-Canadians students was soaring at the university, thanks in large part to the new Hong Kong immigrants who brought with them a diligence that made them academic stars and made it harder for the less competitive to gain entry to UBC.Many non-Chinese parents, as University of Washington academic and Vancouver native Katharyne Mitchell chronicled in a paper about the Hong Kong immigration wave, complained the new arrivals were "too competitive" or "too one-track-minded" compared to their own "more balanced" children.
And don't forget the simmering tensions in Richmond, where many of the Hong Kong immigrants first gravitated, radically changing the racial mix of the community in a few short years -- not to mention its shopping habits. Malls opened up full of Chinese stores, in effect creating a new, well-heeled and modern Chinatown on Vancouver's outskirts. On hot summer nights, you could hear the exotic clicking off mah-jong tiles on Richmond's quiet streets, where half the residents were suddenly Chinese.
Then there was, of course, the unforgettable Hong-Kong effect on the local real estate market.Billionaire Li Ka Shing started it by buying the Expo 86 lands and transformed them into a miniature version of the towering condos of his hometown Hong Kong. That accelerated a radical change to the city's skyline, with the luxury condos of Coal Harbour following, along with a profusion of downtown condo towers that have densified and energized the city's core, and made it more congested.
Predictably, real estate prices skyrocketed as the Hong Kong arrivals put their money into city property, new and old, often astounded at the houses they could get on the West Coast for the price of a two-bedroom apartment in Hong Kong.
Old-time Vancouverites who owned homes generally liked that consequence of the new Asian money. But even here there was a new angst that lingers on: those who didn't own property suddenly wondered how they could ever keep up with this new monied slice of Canadian society from across the Pacific."
The whispers at cocktail parties and behind closed office doors today is "how come I feel like a visitor in my own city". Not all immigrants who come to Canada or Vancouver for that matter have the kind of money brought by wealthy Asians, nor do they have the same sense of entitlement . My parents were poor Jewish immigrants who came with nothing and were just happy to have survived the Nazi concentration camps. They were so grateful to Canada that they made every effort to assimilate. What happens is that when you come here with an attitude of entitlement and there is no demand on you to assimilate and you are given the same privileges and access as others who have worked their whole life to value, then its no wonder that local Vancouverites will feel resentment, threatened and angry.
Add this to the Olympic nightmare, cost overruns, broken government promises, no help or compassion for the suffering of the merchants on the Canada line corridor, huge traffic jams, construction delays at every corner with every new development, no solution to massive homelessness, warring gangs, fueding drug lords, and epidemic breaking and entering of cars and homes, and you have "sin city", not the jewel of the Pacific. But don't bother calling 911, they'll just add you to the list of complaints that gets as much attention as committing jaywalking.
Here is the reality; we have a police force that is severly under manned and underfunded, with a mayor that can't organize a parade with one car., a mayor who is single handidly responsible for a 6 week garbage strike. Don't ever question the huge social benefits of the 17 day pep rally in 2010 in this town or you'll get a slap in the face from the Campbell Gestapo. Vancouver has sold whatever was left of it's soul to the people who care little for the soul of others. If you can buy a home in Kerrisdale, have a charge card at Tiffany's, own a BMW, lavish yourself and your children with clothes from Holt Renfrew, than you can have the "Vancouver dream", and enjoy the good life without feeling any guilt or remorse for anyone you might hurt. You've made it, heck you'll even get written up in Malcom Perry's column of the rich and famous. You won't however find any columnist covering the poor and ugly.
It is this attitude that has spilled over on to the streets of Vancouver. There is a simmering anger and distrust from people, who instead of talking openly about how they feel, swear at you and give you the finger in traffic, and murder each other at the slightest provocation. This is a city rotting from within it's core, and nothing can stop the juggernaut. Even a dose of "Zen" will cost you, they're called Spa Salons and Resorts, a refuge from reality. Maybe the Dalai Lama had a reason for wanting to have the worlds' first Centre for Peace here in Vancouver, he intuitively knows something we are not admitting, that Vancouver has lost it's soul!
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Can Ethics Be Taught
The jury is still out. I however believe it's in your DNA. You either are or aren't an ethical person. The events over the past summer have convinced me that people will do anything to justify their actions. When I ran for school board over 30 years ago I asked my campaign manager what to tell my constituents. He shared with me the politicians credo; "Tell them what they want to hear", "that way you neither lie or tell the truth".
It's interesting that since that time---lying has become the official language of the White House. Whether it's Bush, Rove, Cheney or Rumsfeld when he was there, or whether it's your boss, girlfriend, wife, or husband, we have all learned how to lie from our parents. They were the first people we observed, so it's learned behaviour. My father was a master manipulator---he was able to make everybody wrong and make himself right on just about everything.---even if it really wasn't the truth. I learned from the Master, and until I got help to realize I was doing it, I honestly believed I was doing nothing wrong.
Here's my theory; If it's in the DNA, then George Snr. passed it on to George Jnr., Cheney Snr. passed it on to Cheney Jnr. , and so on and so on. By the way, after years of driving my Mother and I to psychiatrists, he himself was diagnosed as a clinical sociopath. Here are the characteristics of a sociopath; People with anti-social personality disorder, also called psychopaths, can do much more harm if they are in positions where they have power and authority, they may ruin the lives of lots of people. They are often very convincing and are very good at getting what they want. Sometimes the best way to deal with this kind of people, is to avoid all contact and cooperation with them.
In general, it is difficult to treat a person with anti-social personality disorder. To try to get them to understand that they are hurting other persons are often difficult, because they don't have any conscience, and it is hard to help them get one. It may have some effect to convince them that it is in their own interest to change, because their behaviour are hurting themselves in the long run. If that isn't bad enough, most people who show sociopath behavior aren't just sociopaths. They often also have narcissistic tendencies, sometimes intensely angered by anything that seems to suggest that he or she might have a flaw. In this mode, they will do anything, including brutalizing their own family, to maintain their own feeling that others see them as without any flaws. The combination is terribly painful to live with. Does this sound like someone you know...intimately?
This past summer I met with the founder and leader of a small independent, and as yet unaccredited, educational institution. That should have been my first clue. When I visited their campus. I discovered it really wasn't their campus. but someone else's they were running. It's amazing that we continue to trust or believe in our fellow man, despite the fact that they continue to let us down.
Somewhere deep inside I think we really want to trust someone...anyone. Despite that we are at the lowest level of trust of government and companies since the 1930's. I grew up in the 40's and 50's when there was an unwritten code of ethics, that if you shook hands with someone it was a deal. "You have my word on it"..meant something! Sadly it doesn't work that way anymore. Today a handshake is even toxic thanks to Howie Mandell's paranoia fear of germs causing imminent death.
Not only is a handshake toxic but so is a verbal commitment. That doesn't work either anymore as I found out. This is a rude awakening for an author who just wrote a book on ethics and right action. Here's the irony by the way, the Institute I speak of offers MBA's in sustainable business. Here's the glaring contradiction, let's tell others how to run an ethical business but let's not run one ourselves.
Teaching ethics is easy, teaching people about sustainability is easy too. Living and practicing an ethical life is a lot different. There are plenty of sociopath vegetarians leaving their eco-footprint I met one. Having worked at Universities I can tell you that it's particularly easy for academics to hide behind their course syllabus or intellectual jargon, which soon becomes, "verbal diarrhea". Just as politicians dance as fast as they can, so do academics.
In the 50;s and 60;s people were expected to always tell the truth. Today we are overwhelmed by anyone who has the slightest hint of integrity. Back to the DNA theory----if you were taught by your parents to always tell the truth, how honest do you think you would be with people. I would suspect that given your DNA, your chances are pretty good. If for example, you interview someone for a job and told them you were interested in them and then changed your mind and decided you weren't ...what part of that is a lie. We do it all the time, except we cover it, by saying my CFO told me I can't hire you., which means I'm lying but not really because to tell you the truth would make me wrong, and sociopaths don't like to be wrong. I think these examples are merely the tip of the iceberg. 90% of all people are dysfunctional in some way, and if you assessed CEO;s employers and employees, senior management, middle management, receptionists, it wouldn't matter, you will find a virtual tsunami fallout of untreated mental disorders affecting the way we do business and run our lives in North America.
Instead of references and CV's we should be giving everyone a personality assessment by qualified psychologists. Sociopaths are clever and can make it through the interview process, but they can't lie on a psychological assessment. I would suspect half the CEO's in this country would not be hired. Sociopaths who never get help, never like to admit they are wrong. As we said, Narcissism is the Sociopaths best friend...what a deadly combination. If you know someone like this...avoid contact at all cost.
I open the floor for debate, what's been your experience with truth and ethics, can it be taught or is in your DNA, and are you working for or living with a narssistic sociopath ?
N.B. By the way, e-mails are a great way to hide the truth. You can't see their eyes, hear the tonality in their voice or see their body language. I'll leave you with my favorite line; "I don't trust anyone except you and I---and I'm a little concerned about you".
It's interesting that since that time---lying has become the official language of the White House. Whether it's Bush, Rove, Cheney or Rumsfeld when he was there, or whether it's your boss, girlfriend, wife, or husband, we have all learned how to lie from our parents. They were the first people we observed, so it's learned behaviour. My father was a master manipulator---he was able to make everybody wrong and make himself right on just about everything.---even if it really wasn't the truth. I learned from the Master, and until I got help to realize I was doing it, I honestly believed I was doing nothing wrong.
Here's my theory; If it's in the DNA, then George Snr. passed it on to George Jnr., Cheney Snr. passed it on to Cheney Jnr. , and so on and so on. By the way, after years of driving my Mother and I to psychiatrists, he himself was diagnosed as a clinical sociopath. Here are the characteristics of a sociopath; People with anti-social personality disorder, also called psychopaths, can do much more harm if they are in positions where they have power and authority, they may ruin the lives of lots of people. They are often very convincing and are very good at getting what they want. Sometimes the best way to deal with this kind of people, is to avoid all contact and cooperation with them.
In general, it is difficult to treat a person with anti-social personality disorder. To try to get them to understand that they are hurting other persons are often difficult, because they don't have any conscience, and it is hard to help them get one. It may have some effect to convince them that it is in their own interest to change, because their behaviour are hurting themselves in the long run. If that isn't bad enough, most people who show sociopath behavior aren't just sociopaths. They often also have narcissistic tendencies, sometimes intensely angered by anything that seems to suggest that he or she might have a flaw. In this mode, they will do anything, including brutalizing their own family, to maintain their own feeling that others see them as without any flaws. The combination is terribly painful to live with. Does this sound like someone you know...intimately?
This past summer I met with the founder and leader of a small independent, and as yet unaccredited, educational institution. That should have been my first clue. When I visited their campus. I discovered it really wasn't their campus. but someone else's they were running. It's amazing that we continue to trust or believe in our fellow man, despite the fact that they continue to let us down.
Somewhere deep inside I think we really want to trust someone...anyone. Despite that we are at the lowest level of trust of government and companies since the 1930's. I grew up in the 40's and 50's when there was an unwritten code of ethics, that if you shook hands with someone it was a deal. "You have my word on it"..meant something! Sadly it doesn't work that way anymore. Today a handshake is even toxic thanks to Howie Mandell's paranoia fear of germs causing imminent death.
Not only is a handshake toxic but so is a verbal commitment. That doesn't work either anymore as I found out. This is a rude awakening for an author who just wrote a book on ethics and right action. Here's the irony by the way, the Institute I speak of offers MBA's in sustainable business. Here's the glaring contradiction, let's tell others how to run an ethical business but let's not run one ourselves.
Teaching ethics is easy, teaching people about sustainability is easy too. Living and practicing an ethical life is a lot different. There are plenty of sociopath vegetarians leaving their eco-footprint I met one. Having worked at Universities I can tell you that it's particularly easy for academics to hide behind their course syllabus or intellectual jargon, which soon becomes, "verbal diarrhea". Just as politicians dance as fast as they can, so do academics.
In the 50;s and 60;s people were expected to always tell the truth. Today we are overwhelmed by anyone who has the slightest hint of integrity. Back to the DNA theory----if you were taught by your parents to always tell the truth, how honest do you think you would be with people. I would suspect that given your DNA, your chances are pretty good. If for example, you interview someone for a job and told them you were interested in them and then changed your mind and decided you weren't ...what part of that is a lie. We do it all the time, except we cover it, by saying my CFO told me I can't hire you., which means I'm lying but not really because to tell you the truth would make me wrong, and sociopaths don't like to be wrong. I think these examples are merely the tip of the iceberg. 90% of all people are dysfunctional in some way, and if you assessed CEO;s employers and employees, senior management, middle management, receptionists, it wouldn't matter, you will find a virtual tsunami fallout of untreated mental disorders affecting the way we do business and run our lives in North America.
Instead of references and CV's we should be giving everyone a personality assessment by qualified psychologists. Sociopaths are clever and can make it through the interview process, but they can't lie on a psychological assessment. I would suspect half the CEO's in this country would not be hired. Sociopaths who never get help, never like to admit they are wrong. As we said, Narcissism is the Sociopaths best friend...what a deadly combination. If you know someone like this...avoid contact at all cost.
I open the floor for debate, what's been your experience with truth and ethics, can it be taught or is in your DNA, and are you working for or living with a narssistic sociopath ?
N.B. By the way, e-mails are a great way to hide the truth. You can't see their eyes, hear the tonality in their voice or see their body language. I'll leave you with my favorite line; "I don't trust anyone except you and I---and I'm a little concerned about you".
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION: SOME GOOD
By Corinne Asturias , VP, Consumer Strategist, Boomers and Sustainable Living
Ah, summer. The time of year you either start counting down the days to a vacation or start realizing that you've blown it by not planning one. And while the do-nothing allure of lollygagging on a chaise endures, we're finding that a hot ticket for growing numbers of travelers is going somewhere to do some good. We're not talking hard labor at the ends of the earth.
Today's giving adventures strike a happy balance between work and play. Volunteer vacations by the Sierra Club reward those who restore Native American ruins with chef-prepared meals and "secret" hikes. CharityGuide.org links volunteers to beautiful places: saving Manatees in Honduras, caring for elephants in Thailand or building a school in Tanzania. The appeal is native for gap-year Millennials and high schoolers looking for service credit. But don't underestimate the draw for seasoned Xer, Boomer and Mature travelers: They've glimpsed reality before boarding their planes home, and they want to preserve the specialness of the places they've loved.
How much lounging by a pool does a person really need, anyway?So if you're going snorkeling in Belize, why not spend a few days helping to count bottlenose dolphins? If Africa has always beckoned, why not work on a black rhino conservancy in Zimbabwe? Trip costs aren't cheap, but they usually include lodging, meals and guides, not to mention a cushion of safety and structure. But the real value for Gross National HappinessSM seekers? They take home a souvenir for their soul, instead of for the shelf, and how can you put a price on that?
Ah, summer. The time of year you either start counting down the days to a vacation or start realizing that you've blown it by not planning one. And while the do-nothing allure of lollygagging on a chaise endures, we're finding that a hot ticket for growing numbers of travelers is going somewhere to do some good. We're not talking hard labor at the ends of the earth.
Today's giving adventures strike a happy balance between work and play. Volunteer vacations by the Sierra Club reward those who restore Native American ruins with chef-prepared meals and "secret" hikes. CharityGuide.org links volunteers to beautiful places: saving Manatees in Honduras, caring for elephants in Thailand or building a school in Tanzania. The appeal is native for gap-year Millennials and high schoolers looking for service credit. But don't underestimate the draw for seasoned Xer, Boomer and Mature travelers: They've glimpsed reality before boarding their planes home, and they want to preserve the specialness of the places they've loved.
How much lounging by a pool does a person really need, anyway?So if you're going snorkeling in Belize, why not spend a few days helping to count bottlenose dolphins? If Africa has always beckoned, why not work on a black rhino conservancy in Zimbabwe? Trip costs aren't cheap, but they usually include lodging, meals and guides, not to mention a cushion of safety and structure. But the real value for Gross National HappinessSM seekers? They take home a souvenir for their soul, instead of for the shelf, and how can you put a price on that?
Thursday, May 03, 2007
What's Wrong with America?
What's wrong with America? It's a pretty loaded question with an equally set of loaded answers.
In my book, "Zentrepreneurism", I talk about the fact that America's drugs are "Celebrities", and the "Relentless Pursuit of Success". If success is equated with the pursuit of the American Dream, whatever that is, the subsequent rewards follow. However, it should not be surprising to know that to fail in one's pursuit has an equally harmful effect. There are more Americans today failing in their pursuit of the American dream than ever before. If, the message given to all new arrivals, is that America is a country where everything is possible, and nothing is impossible. To fail then in business or in life, is the ultimate loss of all dignity and self respect.
Whether it's the killer at Virginia Tech or the killers at Columbine, they all weave a common thread, and that thread is one of perceiving to fail at life, especially life in America. Their profiles have an eery similarity, and it's one of absolute anger towards the rich and successful.
So how does one change a belief system that has been ingrained in the minds of it's citizens since the first immigrants came to Ellis Island. Well, you can't , you can only hope that this new generation, the ones that are not accepting the way things used to be and are, but are believing in a new set of values, where it's more important to climb the "consciousness ladder" rather than the corporate ladder. Where wealth of an individual is not measured by money, success and power, but what they contribute to the good of mankind.
Compassion and "telling the truth" have become more important than pay cheques to employees. Holding employers, government, your loved ones, and the people you do business with accountable is quickly becoming the only way to survive. Americans are hungry for the truth, they are hungry for answers, and they are hungry for hope. Whether they know it or not, the killers have become the "wake up" call for America to look at it's ugly underbelly and the failure of an entire system that has gone terribly wrong. Drugs, Violence, Gangs, Guns and Crime is the guaranteed hangover of anger, frustration, depression, and rejection.
So what can you do, well start by believing in something else. First of all know that it is government that should be afraid of us, not us afraid of the government . Start by not accepting that lying everyday is okay, whether it's the President or your spouse. Start believing in something other than celebrities and sports figures. Start believing in just YOU.
Stop comparing yourself to everyone on television or magazines, including Jenny Craig, Donald Trump or Martha Stewart. They are only people who have gotten you to believe that without them you can't quite measure up to losing weight, making money or even cooking. Stop "feeding" their dream. By fulfilling their dreams and ego driven motives, you actually "short change" yourself, because you will never quite be like them. But hey, why would you want to be any way.
Just be YOU for a while, hang out with yourself, turn off Dr. Phil and Oprah, meditate, start a movement , the YOU movement, BE YOU , and just so you know.. there is only YOU, God had a reason for making us each the way we are. Stop listening to other people's success stories, they either make you feel awful because you have'nt made it , or you feel so motivated that you will do anything to be just like them, and after all if they made it why can't you. Here's a clue, you can't be like them, because they are THEM, and YOU ARE YOU. Have you got it...good.. now go out and tell everyone you meet that you accept them for exactly who they are . Let's try that for a while and see if it works, if not it simply means that America hasn't learned it's lesson yet. God knows what's next! Well actually, he or she does!
A blatant plug: Zentrepreneurism can be purchased at www.zentrepreneurism.com
In my book, "Zentrepreneurism", I talk about the fact that America's drugs are "Celebrities", and the "Relentless Pursuit of Success". If success is equated with the pursuit of the American Dream, whatever that is, the subsequent rewards follow. However, it should not be surprising to know that to fail in one's pursuit has an equally harmful effect. There are more Americans today failing in their pursuit of the American dream than ever before. If, the message given to all new arrivals, is that America is a country where everything is possible, and nothing is impossible. To fail then in business or in life, is the ultimate loss of all dignity and self respect.
Whether it's the killer at Virginia Tech or the killers at Columbine, they all weave a common thread, and that thread is one of perceiving to fail at life, especially life in America. Their profiles have an eery similarity, and it's one of absolute anger towards the rich and successful.
So how does one change a belief system that has been ingrained in the minds of it's citizens since the first immigrants came to Ellis Island. Well, you can't , you can only hope that this new generation, the ones that are not accepting the way things used to be and are, but are believing in a new set of values, where it's more important to climb the "consciousness ladder" rather than the corporate ladder. Where wealth of an individual is not measured by money, success and power, but what they contribute to the good of mankind.
Compassion and "telling the truth" have become more important than pay cheques to employees. Holding employers, government, your loved ones, and the people you do business with accountable is quickly becoming the only way to survive. Americans are hungry for the truth, they are hungry for answers, and they are hungry for hope. Whether they know it or not, the killers have become the "wake up" call for America to look at it's ugly underbelly and the failure of an entire system that has gone terribly wrong. Drugs, Violence, Gangs, Guns and Crime is the guaranteed hangover of anger, frustration, depression, and rejection.
So what can you do, well start by believing in something else. First of all know that it is government that should be afraid of us, not us afraid of the government . Start by not accepting that lying everyday is okay, whether it's the President or your spouse. Start believing in something other than celebrities and sports figures. Start believing in just YOU.
Stop comparing yourself to everyone on television or magazines, including Jenny Craig, Donald Trump or Martha Stewart. They are only people who have gotten you to believe that without them you can't quite measure up to losing weight, making money or even cooking. Stop "feeding" their dream. By fulfilling their dreams and ego driven motives, you actually "short change" yourself, because you will never quite be like them. But hey, why would you want to be any way.
Just be YOU for a while, hang out with yourself, turn off Dr. Phil and Oprah, meditate, start a movement , the YOU movement, BE YOU , and just so you know.. there is only YOU, God had a reason for making us each the way we are. Stop listening to other people's success stories, they either make you feel awful because you have'nt made it , or you feel so motivated that you will do anything to be just like them, and after all if they made it why can't you. Here's a clue, you can't be like them, because they are THEM, and YOU ARE YOU. Have you got it...good.. now go out and tell everyone you meet that you accept them for exactly who they are . Let's try that for a while and see if it works, if not it simply means that America hasn't learned it's lesson yet. God knows what's next! Well actually, he or she does!
A blatant plug: Zentrepreneurism can be purchased at www.zentrepreneurism.com
Virginia Tech- A Different Perspective
FROM THE EDITORS
SOMOS HOKIES
By Abelardo de la Peña, VP, Consumer Strategist, Latino Markets
The effects of last week's Virginia Tech massacre continue to reverberate, with issues of school security, mental health, videogame violence and more being discussed and debated. It's become an international tragedy, not only because of the sheer magnitude of the atrocity, but also because of the diverse range of nationalities of the victims — Americans, Indonesians, Romanians, Canadians, Vietnamese and Indians.
Spanish-language media — Univisión, Telemundo, daily newspapers and websites — are extensively following the calamity and ongoing developments, with special emphasis on the victims of Latin American ancestry. Their coverage also brings focus to the many manifestations of fear, safety, compassion, spirituality, empowerment and community, universal values brought to a fever pitch by the terrible event.
Although Virginia Tech's Latino student population is relatively small — 503 undergraduates out of 21,937 (VT.edu 4.07) — campus organizations including Circulo Hispano , Latino Link and Lambda Sigma Upsilon provide Latino students opportunities to socialize, network, and make the most of the school’s academic excellence, lively campus life and diverse but close-knit student body.
It's impossible to know whether the gunman drew any distinction between the victim's cultural backgrounds. It's doubtful he did. Paradoxically, neither have the grieving students, families, residents of Blackburg, VA, or global sympathizers. In their sorrow and struggle for normalcy, they are all Hokies.
SOMOS HOKIES
By Abelardo de la Peña, VP, Consumer Strategist, Latino Markets
The effects of last week's Virginia Tech massacre continue to reverberate, with issues of school security, mental health, videogame violence and more being discussed and debated. It's become an international tragedy, not only because of the sheer magnitude of the atrocity, but also because of the diverse range of nationalities of the victims — Americans, Indonesians, Romanians, Canadians, Vietnamese and Indians.
Spanish-language media — Univisión, Telemundo, daily newspapers and websites — are extensively following the calamity and ongoing developments, with special emphasis on the victims of Latin American ancestry. Their coverage also brings focus to the many manifestations of fear, safety, compassion, spirituality, empowerment and community, universal values brought to a fever pitch by the terrible event.
Although Virginia Tech's Latino student population is relatively small — 503 undergraduates out of 21,937 (VT.edu 4.07) — campus organizations including Circulo Hispano , Latino Link and Lambda Sigma Upsilon provide Latino students opportunities to socialize, network, and make the most of the school’s academic excellence, lively campus life and diverse but close-knit student body.
It's impossible to know whether the gunman drew any distinction between the victim's cultural backgrounds. It's doubtful he did. Paradoxically, neither have the grieving students, families, residents of Blackburg, VA, or global sympathizers. In their sorrow and struggle for normalcy, they are all Hokies.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Taking Care of Business
Taking Care of Business
A five-step plan to building a customer driven company:
1. Identify and study lead customers. Harness the creativity and inventiveness of your smartest customers--the ones who are the most knowlegeable and passionate about your field.
2. Provide customers with tools to help them design the products and services they'd like to see. Be part of the customer's creative processes. Watch closely what they do.
3. Nurture customer communities. Make sure executives and employees hang out with customers in these communities, both on-line and face-to-face.
4. Empower customers to strut their stuff. Reward customers for contributing ideas and designs, providing tips and techniques, spotting new products and trends.
5. Open up your products and engage customers in peer production. Invite customers to roll up their sleeves and "mess" with your product, modifying and customizing it. Set up a good governance structure. Be authoritative.
Adapted from Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company's Future (Harper Collins., ISBN 9780061135903) by Patricia Seybold
A five-step plan to building a customer driven company:
1. Identify and study lead customers. Harness the creativity and inventiveness of your smartest customers--the ones who are the most knowlegeable and passionate about your field.
2. Provide customers with tools to help them design the products and services they'd like to see. Be part of the customer's creative processes. Watch closely what they do.
3. Nurture customer communities. Make sure executives and employees hang out with customers in these communities, both on-line and face-to-face.
4. Empower customers to strut their stuff. Reward customers for contributing ideas and designs, providing tips and techniques, spotting new products and trends.
5. Open up your products and engage customers in peer production. Invite customers to roll up their sleeves and "mess" with your product, modifying and customizing it. Set up a good governance structure. Be authoritative.
Adapted from Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company's Future (Harper Collins., ISBN 9780061135903) by Patricia Seybold
Monday, April 09, 2007
Can the White House be bought?
Okay where do I start. It's been a week or longer, since I've sat at the keyboard to punch out my latest musings. Well, it's given me a chance to reflect on not just my world , but everybody elses world. Well, the jury is back and the conclusion is we need to really get our act together and soon. The concern I have is the sense of powerlesness people are feeling. I don't know if we have just become immune, shell shocked, bored, apathetic, or just plain comotose. I mean here's some of the stuff that's been in the news lately, and I think it's just passing over everyone like a cumulus nimbus cloud.,
It was announced last week that between all of the candidates running for the office of President a total of $130 million dollars will have been raised for their respective campaigns. With great pride Barak Obama announced that he has raised $25 milllion, which put him into second place behind Hillary at 26 milllion. What's more shocking than that is that some Washington political pundits on CNN said that Obama was now a serious contender. Just because he has almost as much money as Hillary.
This speaks volumes about the continuing American disease of equating money to success and power. It's not enough that the media has saturated the airwaves with shows like; The Great American Dream Vote Off, Deal or no Deal or "Greed or no Greed". Let's see how greedy people are who are not happy with having $10,000 given to them gratis . Instead of taking the money they never had in the first place, they are encouraged to go for a higher amount and risk losing it all depending on the opening of a suitcase.
Televison has become the Great American Escape. The war in Iraq, the threat of a confrontation in Iran, the continuing sruggle in Afganhistan the downturn of the economy, cities like Detroit facing huge layoffs and unemployment, poverty, floods, plagues, locust, global warming, no health care, a $65 billion drug trade, homelessness, and urban violence, oh well there's always American Idol and baseball. Win fame and glory...fulfill the American dream that all things are possible, just don't tell anyone that your chances are about the same as winning the lottery,
Okay that's enough bashing of our neighbours to the south, how about some solutions. By the way, here's a nice one to think about over your double latte, if you live in Canada or in Vancouver for example. NBC is reported to have paid $820 million for the rights to televise the 2010 Winter Games. and CTV/TSN $90 million., now they are expecting 3.8 billion in revenue for that. So where is this money going? Well, just by coincidence, the only people who can afford to advertise on these telecasts are the large mega corps.,
In order to sell the Olympics to tax weary Vancouverites CEO John Furlong of VANOC , told the general public that everyone would benefit including small business..hmmm. can you say; "We gottcha". Pan handling in Vancouver is epidemic, but we are told that we'll have extra police on the streets for two weeks. during the Olympics so we'll look good and so turistas are'nt hassled. We'll hide the problems till after the Olympics, and then let them come back after so they can continue to hassle the local residents.
And so the insanity continues, $17 million dollars for a snow machine at Whistler, just in case it doesn't snow. In what can only be called the most bizarre court cases in BC's history, the organising committee for the 2010 Olympics has taken a Prince George based Eco Toursim company to court over the use of the number "2010".
The Eco Tourism 2010 Society [claimant] and VANOC met in court on January 28 in Prince George to contest the use of the number 2010. The claimant had been unable to register the name of his company with the provincial registrar due an order by VANOC. VANOC had ordered the registrar not to allow any non-profits to register any name that included the number "2010".
A construction boom in western Canada has sharply pushed up the cost of preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, forcing organisers to ask for a 23 per cent increase in financial support from federal and provincial governments.
The organising committee said that it now estimated the construction budget at C$580m ($505m), up from its 2002 estimate of C$470m. Some of the Olympic venues are located in Vancouver and others in the ski resort of Whistler, a two-and-a-half hour drive to the north.
Can the White House be bought- you bet, can the Olympics be sold to the highest bidder..you bet. I am a huge fan of the Commonwealth Games, because it brings countries together for comaradrie, goodwill and the fun of sport. The Olympics, with all of it's bribes, financial discrepancies, and drugs has become like big business, the NFL or the NBA of amateur sport. The Olympics does nothing to stop wars, prevent famine, erradicate poverty, stop global warming, educate poor people, find homes for orphaned children, provide water anf food for starving nations. Nor does it offer it's profits to the cities or countries that host , as a legacy of goodwill and compassion. The Olympic mandate is not about compassion, nor is it pure of intention, it's about corporate greed, elitism and medals, pure and simple. How many gold, how many silver and how many bronze will your country bring home.
Now it's time to end with a ray of hope, of a billionaires' story of compassion and "pay it forward:. A Japanese real estate mogul inn Hawaii handed over eight of his multi million dollar homes to low-income native Hawaiin families. Now that's compassion!!
Buddha says; A wrong action may not bring it's reaction at once, even as fresh milk turns not sour at once: like a smoldering fire concealed under ashes it consumes the wrong doer, the fool.
It was announced last week that between all of the candidates running for the office of President a total of $130 million dollars will have been raised for their respective campaigns. With great pride Barak Obama announced that he has raised $25 milllion, which put him into second place behind Hillary at 26 milllion. What's more shocking than that is that some Washington political pundits on CNN said that Obama was now a serious contender. Just because he has almost as much money as Hillary.
This speaks volumes about the continuing American disease of equating money to success and power. It's not enough that the media has saturated the airwaves with shows like; The Great American Dream Vote Off, Deal or no Deal or "Greed or no Greed". Let's see how greedy people are who are not happy with having $10,000 given to them gratis . Instead of taking the money they never had in the first place, they are encouraged to go for a higher amount and risk losing it all depending on the opening of a suitcase.
Televison has become the Great American Escape. The war in Iraq, the threat of a confrontation in Iran, the continuing sruggle in Afganhistan the downturn of the economy, cities like Detroit facing huge layoffs and unemployment, poverty, floods, plagues, locust, global warming, no health care, a $65 billion drug trade, homelessness, and urban violence, oh well there's always American Idol and baseball. Win fame and glory...fulfill the American dream that all things are possible, just don't tell anyone that your chances are about the same as winning the lottery,
Okay that's enough bashing of our neighbours to the south, how about some solutions. By the way, here's a nice one to think about over your double latte, if you live in Canada or in Vancouver for example. NBC is reported to have paid $820 million for the rights to televise the 2010 Winter Games. and CTV/TSN $90 million., now they are expecting 3.8 billion in revenue for that. So where is this money going? Well, just by coincidence, the only people who can afford to advertise on these telecasts are the large mega corps.,
In order to sell the Olympics to tax weary Vancouverites CEO John Furlong of VANOC , told the general public that everyone would benefit including small business..hmmm. can you say; "We gottcha". Pan handling in Vancouver is epidemic, but we are told that we'll have extra police on the streets for two weeks. during the Olympics so we'll look good and so turistas are'nt hassled. We'll hide the problems till after the Olympics, and then let them come back after so they can continue to hassle the local residents.
And so the insanity continues, $17 million dollars for a snow machine at Whistler, just in case it doesn't snow. In what can only be called the most bizarre court cases in BC's history, the organising committee for the 2010 Olympics has taken a Prince George based Eco Toursim company to court over the use of the number "2010".
The Eco Tourism 2010 Society [claimant] and VANOC met in court on January 28 in Prince George to contest the use of the number 2010. The claimant had been unable to register the name of his company with the provincial registrar due an order by VANOC. VANOC had ordered the registrar not to allow any non-profits to register any name that included the number "2010".
A construction boom in western Canada has sharply pushed up the cost of preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, forcing organisers to ask for a 23 per cent increase in financial support from federal and provincial governments.
The organising committee said that it now estimated the construction budget at C$580m ($505m), up from its 2002 estimate of C$470m. Some of the Olympic venues are located in Vancouver and others in the ski resort of Whistler, a two-and-a-half hour drive to the north.
Can the White House be bought- you bet, can the Olympics be sold to the highest bidder..you bet. I am a huge fan of the Commonwealth Games, because it brings countries together for comaradrie, goodwill and the fun of sport. The Olympics, with all of it's bribes, financial discrepancies, and drugs has become like big business, the NFL or the NBA of amateur sport. The Olympics does nothing to stop wars, prevent famine, erradicate poverty, stop global warming, educate poor people, find homes for orphaned children, provide water anf food for starving nations. Nor does it offer it's profits to the cities or countries that host , as a legacy of goodwill and compassion. The Olympic mandate is not about compassion, nor is it pure of intention, it's about corporate greed, elitism and medals, pure and simple. How many gold, how many silver and how many bronze will your country bring home.
Now it's time to end with a ray of hope, of a billionaires' story of compassion and "pay it forward:. A Japanese real estate mogul inn Hawaii handed over eight of his multi million dollar homes to low-income native Hawaiin families. Now that's compassion!!
Buddha says; A wrong action may not bring it's reaction at once, even as fresh milk turns not sour at once: like a smoldering fire concealed under ashes it consumes the wrong doer, the fool.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Life's Harder in Seattle
Life's Harder in Seattle
Book Review by Crawford Kilian in the on-line e-magazine TheTyee.ca
February 13, 2007
We like to pay lip service to our healthcare and social programs, without really knowing much about them. They distinguish us from our American cousins, and give us something to argue about.
But how much difference do those programs actually make in our lives? Middle-class American life looks a lot like ours. Our right wing tends to scorn our social safety net and the long wait times for medical care. Our left tends to defend them -- but in emotional and nationalist terms, not in the bottom-line terms that the right understands.
Now Dan Zuberi, a UBC sociology professor, has made a meticulous comparison of social policies in two similar cities -- Vancouver and Seattle. He's published his findings as Differences That Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada. Those findings are astonishing: for the working poor, and for others, Vancouver is a far, far better place than its sister city.and they share a region. The hospitality industry is typical of the new service economy that's replaced manufacturing in the past 30 or 40 years. So he studied workers in four hotels run by the same two multi-national corporations in both countries. One hotel in each city has unionized workers; one does not.Similar cities, different conditions.
By interviewing management and staff in the four hotels, Zuberi learned a great deal about working and living conditions for the people who change the sheets and wipe the hairs off the toilets. If you think those conditions are pretty much the same everywhere in the global economy, you're wrong.
Unionization was surprisingly different. While union memberships in Canada and the U.S. were roughly the same in the 1970s, membership has fallen sharply in the U.S. while holding its own here in Canada. Zuberi traces that to Reagan's destruction of the air traffic controllers in the early '80s. American unions never recovered. Canadian unions, however, continued to flourish.
So relatively few hotel workers in Seattle work under collective agreements. The union there has to hammer out individual contracts with each hotel, in a long and awkward process. In Vancouver, most hotels operate under a single collective agreement. Choosing to unionize is much easier here.
This doesn't mean non-union hotel workers earn less. Zuberi found that non-union hotels must match union pay scales just to stay competitive. But unionized hotels hold on to their workers, while the non-unionized endure rapid employee turnover.
Vancouver hotels therefore have more experienced and professional employees, needing little training and inspection. Whether their workers are locals or recent immigrants, they settle in quickly and are rarely off the job. In the winter they can take their legally mandated paid vacation time instead of being laid off. If they do lose their jobs, they can get training while out of work. They like the neighbourhoods they live in, which have little crime, good access to transit, and plenty of amenities like parks and community centres.
A host of problems:
In Seattle, by contrast, hotel workers struggle with a host of problems. Public transit isn't as good, so they have to cluster in high-crime neighbourhoods that at least have some kind of bus service to their downtown workplaces. In the slow winter season they scramble for alternative jobs, or borrow from relatives. Seattle has far fewer community resources to help workers to ride out a spell of unemployment.
Health care is critical. Zuberi's Vancouver interviewees reported plenty of ailments, but routinely saw their doctors without worrying about financial consequences—even when they were laid off.
In Seattle, hotels offer health insurance plans once workers complete their probationary period. With so much turnover, many workers never get the insurance. Those who do may still face disaster: one worker kept changing credit cards to cover $2,500 in monthly medical payments on a $2,600 monthly wage. Few workers see their doctors until they absolutely have to, which may be too late for timely intervention.
In Vancouver, 100 per cent of the workers' children had regular doctors; in Seattle, only 56 per cent did. Workers' compensation scarcely exists in Seattle, while it saves injured Vancouver workers from disaster.
So life for the working poor in Seattle is strikingly harder and more stressful than for their neighbours here in Vancouver. It's not because folks in Seattle are lazier or dumber than folks in Vancouver. It's because laws have created wildly different environments in the two cities and the two nations.
Taken for granted?
Zuberi's well-written book offers plenty of food for thought. As one who rarely travels to the U.S., I take Vancouver for granted. Of course we've got parks and community centres and medicare. Of course our schools are good on both sides of town. Of course you go to your doctor, or a walk-in clinic, as soon as you feel bad. Doesn't everyone in the industrial world?
Evidently not. And having read Zuberi's account, I feel unexpected gratitude to our politicians. The NDP made unionization easy. Bill Bennett's Socreds equalized school funding. If Campbell's Liberals have made life tougher for the working poor, at least they haven't dragged us down to Seattle's level.
Differences That Matter deserves careful reading by everyone in the province. Business managers will realize how costly it would be to follow the American model. Young people will be grateful that their entry-level jobs aren't as crappy as those in the U.S. Even those who damn and blast government on general principles will see that political decisions really do make a difference, and a big one.
Zuberi teaches us that we've made a lot of good decisions. This is no time to start making bad ones just because the Americans have.and they share a region. The hospitality industry is typical of the new service economy that's replaced manufacturing in the past 30 or 40 years. So he studied workers in four hotels run by the same two multi-national corporations in both countries. One hotel in each city has unionized workers; one does not.
Similar cities, different conditions
By interviewing management and staff in the four hotels, Zuberi learned a great deal about working and living conditions for the people who change the sheets and wipe the hairs off the toilets. If you think those conditions are pretty much the same everywhere in the global economy, you're wrong.
Unionization was surprisingly different. While union memberships in Canada and the U.S. were roughly the same in the 1970s, membership has fallen sharply in the U.S. while holding its own here in Canada. Zuberi traces that to Reagan's destruction of the air traffic controllers in the early '80s. American unions never recovered. Canadian unions, however, continued to flourish.
So relatively few hotel workers in Seattle work under collective agreements. The union there has to hammer out individual contracts with each hotel, in a long and awkward process. In Vancouver, most hotels operate under a single collective agreement. Choosing to unionize is much easier here.
This doesn't mean non-union hotel workers earn less. Zuberi found that non-union hotels must match union pay scales just to stay competitive. But unionized hotels hold on to their workers, while the non-unionized endure rapid employee turnover.
Vancouver hotels therefore have more experienced and professional employees, needing little training and inspection. Whether their workers are locals or recent immigrants, they settle in quickly and are rarely off the job. In the winter they can take their legally mandated paid vacation time instead of being laid off. If they do lose their jobs, they can get training while out of work. They like the neighbourhoods they live in, which have little crime, good access to transit, and plenty of amenities like parks and community centres.
A host of problems
In Seattle, by contrast, hotel workers struggle with a host of problems. Public transit isn't as good, so they have to cluster in high-crime neighbourhoods that at least have some kind of bus service to their downtown workplaces. In the slow winter season they scramble for alternative jobs, or borrow from relatives. Seattle has far fewer community resources to help workers to ride out a spell of unemployment.
Health care is critical. Zuberi's Vancouver interviewees reported plenty of ailments, but routinely saw their doctors without worrying about financial consequences—even when they were laid off.
In Seattle, hotels offer health insurance plans once workers complete their probationary period. With so much turnover, many workers never get the insurance. Those who do may still face disaster: one worker kept changing credit cards to cover $2,500 in monthly medical payments on a $2,600 monthly wage. Few workers see their doctors until they absolutely have to, which may be too late for timely intervention.
In Vancouver, 100 per cent of the workers' children had regular doctors; in Seattle, only 56 per cent did. Workers' compensation scarcely exists in Seattle, while it saves injured Vancouver workers from disaster.
So life for the working poor in Seattle is strikingly harder and more stressful than for their neighbours here in Vancouver. It's not because folks in Seattle are lazier or dumber than folks in Vancouver. It's because laws have created wildly different environments in the two cities and the two nations.
Taken for granted?
Zuberi's well-written book offers plenty of food for thought. As one who rarely travels to the U.S., I take Vancouver for granted. Of course we've got parks and community centres and medicare. Of course our schools are good on both sides of town. Of course you go to your doctor, or a walk-in clinic, as soon as you feel bad. Doesn't everyone in the industrial world?
Evidently not. And having read Zuberi's account, I feel unexpected gratitude to our politicians. The NDP made unionization easy. Bill Bennett's Socreds equalized school funding. If Campbell's Liberals have made life tougher for the working poor, at least they haven't dragged us down to Seattle's level.
Differences That Matter deserves careful reading by everyone in the province. Business managers will realize how costly it would be to follow the American model. Young people will be grateful that their entry-level jobs aren't as crappy as those in the U.S. Even those who damn and blast government on general principles will see that political decisions really do make a difference, and a big one.
Zuberi teaches us that we've made a lot of good decisions. This is no time to start making bad ones just because the Americans have.
Book Review by Crawford Kilian in the on-line e-magazine TheTyee.ca
February 13, 2007
We like to pay lip service to our healthcare and social programs, without really knowing much about them. They distinguish us from our American cousins, and give us something to argue about.
But how much difference do those programs actually make in our lives? Middle-class American life looks a lot like ours. Our right wing tends to scorn our social safety net and the long wait times for medical care. Our left tends to defend them -- but in emotional and nationalist terms, not in the bottom-line terms that the right understands.
Now Dan Zuberi, a UBC sociology professor, has made a meticulous comparison of social policies in two similar cities -- Vancouver and Seattle. He's published his findings as Differences That Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada. Those findings are astonishing: for the working poor, and for others, Vancouver is a far, far better place than its sister city.and they share a region. The hospitality industry is typical of the new service economy that's replaced manufacturing in the past 30 or 40 years. So he studied workers in four hotels run by the same two multi-national corporations in both countries. One hotel in each city has unionized workers; one does not.Similar cities, different conditions.
By interviewing management and staff in the four hotels, Zuberi learned a great deal about working and living conditions for the people who change the sheets and wipe the hairs off the toilets. If you think those conditions are pretty much the same everywhere in the global economy, you're wrong.
Unionization was surprisingly different. While union memberships in Canada and the U.S. were roughly the same in the 1970s, membership has fallen sharply in the U.S. while holding its own here in Canada. Zuberi traces that to Reagan's destruction of the air traffic controllers in the early '80s. American unions never recovered. Canadian unions, however, continued to flourish.
So relatively few hotel workers in Seattle work under collective agreements. The union there has to hammer out individual contracts with each hotel, in a long and awkward process. In Vancouver, most hotels operate under a single collective agreement. Choosing to unionize is much easier here.
This doesn't mean non-union hotel workers earn less. Zuberi found that non-union hotels must match union pay scales just to stay competitive. But unionized hotels hold on to their workers, while the non-unionized endure rapid employee turnover.
Vancouver hotels therefore have more experienced and professional employees, needing little training and inspection. Whether their workers are locals or recent immigrants, they settle in quickly and are rarely off the job. In the winter they can take their legally mandated paid vacation time instead of being laid off. If they do lose their jobs, they can get training while out of work. They like the neighbourhoods they live in, which have little crime, good access to transit, and plenty of amenities like parks and community centres.
A host of problems:
In Seattle, by contrast, hotel workers struggle with a host of problems. Public transit isn't as good, so they have to cluster in high-crime neighbourhoods that at least have some kind of bus service to their downtown workplaces. In the slow winter season they scramble for alternative jobs, or borrow from relatives. Seattle has far fewer community resources to help workers to ride out a spell of unemployment.
Health care is critical. Zuberi's Vancouver interviewees reported plenty of ailments, but routinely saw their doctors without worrying about financial consequences—even when they were laid off.
In Seattle, hotels offer health insurance plans once workers complete their probationary period. With so much turnover, many workers never get the insurance. Those who do may still face disaster: one worker kept changing credit cards to cover $2,500 in monthly medical payments on a $2,600 monthly wage. Few workers see their doctors until they absolutely have to, which may be too late for timely intervention.
In Vancouver, 100 per cent of the workers' children had regular doctors; in Seattle, only 56 per cent did. Workers' compensation scarcely exists in Seattle, while it saves injured Vancouver workers from disaster.
So life for the working poor in Seattle is strikingly harder and more stressful than for their neighbours here in Vancouver. It's not because folks in Seattle are lazier or dumber than folks in Vancouver. It's because laws have created wildly different environments in the two cities and the two nations.
Taken for granted?
Zuberi's well-written book offers plenty of food for thought. As one who rarely travels to the U.S., I take Vancouver for granted. Of course we've got parks and community centres and medicare. Of course our schools are good on both sides of town. Of course you go to your doctor, or a walk-in clinic, as soon as you feel bad. Doesn't everyone in the industrial world?
Evidently not. And having read Zuberi's account, I feel unexpected gratitude to our politicians. The NDP made unionization easy. Bill Bennett's Socreds equalized school funding. If Campbell's Liberals have made life tougher for the working poor, at least they haven't dragged us down to Seattle's level.
Differences That Matter deserves careful reading by everyone in the province. Business managers will realize how costly it would be to follow the American model. Young people will be grateful that their entry-level jobs aren't as crappy as those in the U.S. Even those who damn and blast government on general principles will see that political decisions really do make a difference, and a big one.
Zuberi teaches us that we've made a lot of good decisions. This is no time to start making bad ones just because the Americans have.and they share a region. The hospitality industry is typical of the new service economy that's replaced manufacturing in the past 30 or 40 years. So he studied workers in four hotels run by the same two multi-national corporations in both countries. One hotel in each city has unionized workers; one does not.
Similar cities, different conditions
By interviewing management and staff in the four hotels, Zuberi learned a great deal about working and living conditions for the people who change the sheets and wipe the hairs off the toilets. If you think those conditions are pretty much the same everywhere in the global economy, you're wrong.
Unionization was surprisingly different. While union memberships in Canada and the U.S. were roughly the same in the 1970s, membership has fallen sharply in the U.S. while holding its own here in Canada. Zuberi traces that to Reagan's destruction of the air traffic controllers in the early '80s. American unions never recovered. Canadian unions, however, continued to flourish.
So relatively few hotel workers in Seattle work under collective agreements. The union there has to hammer out individual contracts with each hotel, in a long and awkward process. In Vancouver, most hotels operate under a single collective agreement. Choosing to unionize is much easier here.
This doesn't mean non-union hotel workers earn less. Zuberi found that non-union hotels must match union pay scales just to stay competitive. But unionized hotels hold on to their workers, while the non-unionized endure rapid employee turnover.
Vancouver hotels therefore have more experienced and professional employees, needing little training and inspection. Whether their workers are locals or recent immigrants, they settle in quickly and are rarely off the job. In the winter they can take their legally mandated paid vacation time instead of being laid off. If they do lose their jobs, they can get training while out of work. They like the neighbourhoods they live in, which have little crime, good access to transit, and plenty of amenities like parks and community centres.
A host of problems
In Seattle, by contrast, hotel workers struggle with a host of problems. Public transit isn't as good, so they have to cluster in high-crime neighbourhoods that at least have some kind of bus service to their downtown workplaces. In the slow winter season they scramble for alternative jobs, or borrow from relatives. Seattle has far fewer community resources to help workers to ride out a spell of unemployment.
Health care is critical. Zuberi's Vancouver interviewees reported plenty of ailments, but routinely saw their doctors without worrying about financial consequences—even when they were laid off.
In Seattle, hotels offer health insurance plans once workers complete their probationary period. With so much turnover, many workers never get the insurance. Those who do may still face disaster: one worker kept changing credit cards to cover $2,500 in monthly medical payments on a $2,600 monthly wage. Few workers see their doctors until they absolutely have to, which may be too late for timely intervention.
In Vancouver, 100 per cent of the workers' children had regular doctors; in Seattle, only 56 per cent did. Workers' compensation scarcely exists in Seattle, while it saves injured Vancouver workers from disaster.
So life for the working poor in Seattle is strikingly harder and more stressful than for their neighbours here in Vancouver. It's not because folks in Seattle are lazier or dumber than folks in Vancouver. It's because laws have created wildly different environments in the two cities and the two nations.
Taken for granted?
Zuberi's well-written book offers plenty of food for thought. As one who rarely travels to the U.S., I take Vancouver for granted. Of course we've got parks and community centres and medicare. Of course our schools are good on both sides of town. Of course you go to your doctor, or a walk-in clinic, as soon as you feel bad. Doesn't everyone in the industrial world?
Evidently not. And having read Zuberi's account, I feel unexpected gratitude to our politicians. The NDP made unionization easy. Bill Bennett's Socreds equalized school funding. If Campbell's Liberals have made life tougher for the working poor, at least they haven't dragged us down to Seattle's level.
Differences That Matter deserves careful reading by everyone in the province. Business managers will realize how costly it would be to follow the American model. Young people will be grateful that their entry-level jobs aren't as crappy as those in the U.S. Even those who damn and blast government on general principles will see that political decisions really do make a difference, and a big one.
Zuberi teaches us that we've made a lot of good decisions. This is no time to start making bad ones just because the Americans have.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Gen X Will Change Work Culture
Baby Boomers will leave major gaps in job market.
RAY WILLIAMS, Financial Post
Published: Wednesday, February 21, 2007
A massive number of managers and executives, members of the Baby Boom generation, will retire in the next five years. This promises to leave a huge vacuum in leadership, particularly for companies without succession plans. Generation Xers are poised to take their place. A key question for senior executives to consider is whether the leadership style and values of Generation Xers are the same as those of the Baby Boomers.
Baby Boomers, born between 1945 and l960, grew up watching the Ed Sullivan show, ate TV dinners and gave the peace sign. The Baby Boom generation has dominated the economy, our lifestyles and leadership styles. Leadership for them has been characterized by workaholic tendencies and materialism. Baby Boomers have had a minimum number of careers or a single career path, are impressed by authority, are optimistic and are driven to achieve.
Generation X, born between l960 and l980, grew up with pet rocks, platform shoes and watched The Simpsons. They question authority, seek bigger meaning in life and work, are technologically savvy, live in the present, are skeptical, see career as a key to happiness, are open to multi-careers, consider challenge and variety as being more important than job security and constantly aim to achieve work-life balance.
RAY WILLIAMS, Financial Post
Published: Wednesday, February 21, 2007
A massive number of managers and executives, members of the Baby Boom generation, will retire in the next five years. This promises to leave a huge vacuum in leadership, particularly for companies without succession plans. Generation Xers are poised to take their place. A key question for senior executives to consider is whether the leadership style and values of Generation Xers are the same as those of the Baby Boomers.
Baby Boomers, born between 1945 and l960, grew up watching the Ed Sullivan show, ate TV dinners and gave the peace sign. The Baby Boom generation has dominated the economy, our lifestyles and leadership styles. Leadership for them has been characterized by workaholic tendencies and materialism. Baby Boomers have had a minimum number of careers or a single career path, are impressed by authority, are optimistic and are driven to achieve.
Generation X, born between l960 and l980, grew up with pet rocks, platform shoes and watched The Simpsons. They question authority, seek bigger meaning in life and work, are technologically savvy, live in the present, are skeptical, see career as a key to happiness, are open to multi-careers, consider challenge and variety as being more important than job security and constantly aim to achieve work-life balance.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Obamarama & the Regular folks.
by David Sirota
Obama asks regular folks to buy into his campaign; D.C. calls it a scandal.
The Hotline, the uber-insider journal of Beltway conventional thought, claims today to have a scandalous scoop of "opposition" research on Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D). Are you ready for this? There's a YouTube video of Obama asking a working class crowd in Cleveland for - gasp! - small campaign contributions. Obama, the Hotline breathlessly recounts, dares to ask "everybody here to pony up five dollars, ten dollars for this campaign. I don't care how poor you are, you've got five dollars."
The real scandal, of course, is the shock that emanates from the Beltway when a major political candidate has the audacity to ask regular people to be a big part of a presidential campaign. Washington would like us to believe that there is only one way to run campaigns these days: by getting a bunch of corporate lobbyists from D.C. and a few super-rich people from New York and Hollywood into a few ballrooms to bundle tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions.
It's government of, by and for Big Money - a Smokybackroom-ocracy - and any other model is seen as a big scandal. If you are wondering why so many politicians sound like Halliburton press flacks or ExxonMobil PR representatives, and why the entire political debate could be dominated by the comments of a Hollywood billionaire to the New York Times' glorified gossip columnist, look no further: it's because of this innately corrupt model, and the media's glorification of it.
But there is another model that very few people talk about - the one where lots of working people give lots of small dollar contributions. People like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) have been doing this for years. Howard Dean did it in his presidential primary run. It's a much harder path, of course, because it's much harder to organize lots of people than it is to organize a few wealthy fat cats. But in the absence of public financing of elections, campaigns that try to rely on lots of little contributions are the next closest thing to a small-d democratic election system.
Let me excerpt from the end of my book Hostile Takeover to expand on this point:
"After getting through a book that details and decries the financial pressures ordinary Americans are under, you may be wondering: 'How am I now reading a call for ordinary Americans to shell out money to politicians?' The answer is pretty simple: until we get publicly financed elections, money will play a big role in politics, and that means ordinary Americans have one of two choices: we can continue to not contribute anything to political candidates, essentially walking off the field and forefeiting. Or, we can hold our nose and play in an albeit unfair game. The latter is clearly the better choice – at least then we have a chance to win a victory here and there, and make our presence felt, especially if we are smart about where we spend limited resources. There is no rule that says politics, even in our corrupt system, has to be so thoroughly dominated by a few very large contributors (though those large contributors will always be somewhat powerful). Groups like Moveon.org are flipping this smoky backroom model on its head, gathering a very large group of contributors who each give just a little bit. Such a model doesn't require regular folks to cough up hundreds of dollars. On the contrary, if millions of people kicked in $5 or $10 we might have a whole different country. Getting more people to contribute small sums of money to political causes will require a change in mindset. As political fundraiser Chris Gruwell says, we need to look at political giving in the same way we look at the basket that comes around at our place of worship. We chip in what we can, no matter how modest, because we believe in the charity work that our money funds. That is the way we need to think about supporting good people running for office, because government can have as big if not bigger effects on society than almost any other institution."
Let's be clear - big donors and philanthropists will always play a role in politics - and some of them play an extremely constructive role (personal example: the Progressive States Network could never have gotten off the ground without generous support from some visionary philanthropists). But the idea that its somehow scandalous for candidates or organizations to ask regular working stiffs to ALSO financially buy into a movement is a false construct designed to rationalize plutocracy.
Though Obama certainly has his share of Big Money interests funneling money to his operation, I'm thrilled to see that he's drawing on his community organizing roots to - at least in public appeals - try to bring working people into the part of presidential campaigns too often left exclusively to the fat cats. That folks in the Beltway see this as "controversial" is only a commentary on how many in the nation's capital truly believe politics should be the exclusive gated community of the rich and famous.
Obama asks regular folks to buy into his campaign; D.C. calls it a scandal.
The Hotline, the uber-insider journal of Beltway conventional thought, claims today to have a scandalous scoop of "opposition" research on Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D). Are you ready for this? There's a YouTube video of Obama asking a working class crowd in Cleveland for - gasp! - small campaign contributions. Obama, the Hotline breathlessly recounts, dares to ask "everybody here to pony up five dollars, ten dollars for this campaign. I don't care how poor you are, you've got five dollars."
The real scandal, of course, is the shock that emanates from the Beltway when a major political candidate has the audacity to ask regular people to be a big part of a presidential campaign. Washington would like us to believe that there is only one way to run campaigns these days: by getting a bunch of corporate lobbyists from D.C. and a few super-rich people from New York and Hollywood into a few ballrooms to bundle tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions.
It's government of, by and for Big Money - a Smokybackroom-ocracy - and any other model is seen as a big scandal. If you are wondering why so many politicians sound like Halliburton press flacks or ExxonMobil PR representatives, and why the entire political debate could be dominated by the comments of a Hollywood billionaire to the New York Times' glorified gossip columnist, look no further: it's because of this innately corrupt model, and the media's glorification of it.
But there is another model that very few people talk about - the one where lots of working people give lots of small dollar contributions. People like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) have been doing this for years. Howard Dean did it in his presidential primary run. It's a much harder path, of course, because it's much harder to organize lots of people than it is to organize a few wealthy fat cats. But in the absence of public financing of elections, campaigns that try to rely on lots of little contributions are the next closest thing to a small-d democratic election system.
Let me excerpt from the end of my book Hostile Takeover to expand on this point:
"After getting through a book that details and decries the financial pressures ordinary Americans are under, you may be wondering: 'How am I now reading a call for ordinary Americans to shell out money to politicians?' The answer is pretty simple: until we get publicly financed elections, money will play a big role in politics, and that means ordinary Americans have one of two choices: we can continue to not contribute anything to political candidates, essentially walking off the field and forefeiting. Or, we can hold our nose and play in an albeit unfair game. The latter is clearly the better choice – at least then we have a chance to win a victory here and there, and make our presence felt, especially if we are smart about where we spend limited resources. There is no rule that says politics, even in our corrupt system, has to be so thoroughly dominated by a few very large contributors (though those large contributors will always be somewhat powerful). Groups like Moveon.org are flipping this smoky backroom model on its head, gathering a very large group of contributors who each give just a little bit. Such a model doesn't require regular folks to cough up hundreds of dollars. On the contrary, if millions of people kicked in $5 or $10 we might have a whole different country. Getting more people to contribute small sums of money to political causes will require a change in mindset. As political fundraiser Chris Gruwell says, we need to look at political giving in the same way we look at the basket that comes around at our place of worship. We chip in what we can, no matter how modest, because we believe in the charity work that our money funds. That is the way we need to think about supporting good people running for office, because government can have as big if not bigger effects on society than almost any other institution."
Let's be clear - big donors and philanthropists will always play a role in politics - and some of them play an extremely constructive role (personal example: the Progressive States Network could never have gotten off the ground without generous support from some visionary philanthropists). But the idea that its somehow scandalous for candidates or organizations to ask regular working stiffs to ALSO financially buy into a movement is a false construct designed to rationalize plutocracy.
Though Obama certainly has his share of Big Money interests funneling money to his operation, I'm thrilled to see that he's drawing on his community organizing roots to - at least in public appeals - try to bring working people into the part of presidential campaigns too often left exclusively to the fat cats. That folks in the Beltway see this as "controversial" is only a commentary on how many in the nation's capital truly believe politics should be the exclusive gated community of the rich and famous.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
News from Zentropolis (c)
News from Zentropolis (c)
This column is reserved for a make believe, but yet real place. A place where all things are possible. And contrary to the movie Sin City, where everything bad happens, this is Zentropolis where everything good happens.
This city has its own free speech television network, and rather than Sin City's version of CNN, where all reports are focused on lying, cheating, fraud, embezzlement, killing , wars, environmental crimes, and man's inhumanity towards man, GNN has it's has it's own reports of truth, integrity, honesty, peace, harmony, compassion , nurturing , and caring for all on GNN (The Good News Network).
I make reference a lot in my book, Zentrepreneurism www.zentrepreneurism.com to the good citizens of Zentropolis, and their good deeds. Here are some of the stories we are covering this month in Zentropolis.
Ervin Laszlo in an article in Ode Magazine writes about what Zentropolis might look like;
Let me offer one example of how such a breakthrough might look: Faced with growing problems and shared threats, citizens across the planet pull together to form associations and networks to pursue their dreams of peace and environmental sustainability.Business leaders and entrepreneurs recognize the importance of these aspirations and respond with new goods and services that help make them a reality. Soon, global news and entertainment media commit themselves to chronicling emerging social and cultural innovations.
On the Internet and through other grassroots communication networks, people everywhere begin exploring new visions of the natural world, the global community and human existence itself.Out of all this comes a new culture of solidarity and social responsibility across the planet.
Public support mounts for government policies that institute social and ecological repairs. Money is diverted from the military and defence industries to the needs of people. New measures are implemented to develop sustainable energy, transportation, industrial, technological and agricultural systems. Huge numbers of people around the world get better access to food, jobs, and education.
As a result of these developments, international mistrust, ethnic conflict, racial oppression, economic inequity, and gender inequality give way to new traditions of mutual respect. Rather than breaking down in conflict and war, humanity breaks through to a sustainable world of self-reliant butco-operating communities, enterprises, countries and regions.At this point in our history, human beings have accumulated unprecedented power hence responsibility to decide our destiny. Although the prospect of global breakdown stares us in the face, it is by no means inevitable.
We also have the unprecedented option of choosing a brighter tomorrow. Nothing prevents us from shifting our evolutionary path toward a peaceful and sustainable civilization, nothing except our own patterns of thinking and action. The leaders now in power and the mainstream society they represent have not yet glimpsed a different future for our civilization. Yet many other people are inspired by visions of a global breakthrough that are already emerging at the creative frontiers of our society.
Societies are seldom culturally monolithic in their thinking. This is especially true in eras of innovation and ferment. Those periods spawn a large number of subcultures, or alternative cultures, that spring up alongside the prevailing power structure.This is what we see happening today, with some of these alternative cultures devoting themselves to imaginatively rethinking the priorities, values, and behaviours of society, giving particular attention to how we can improve environmental sustainability and human ethics.
This sort of fundamental reassessment of how we live, even if overlooked or ignored by those in power, can spark rapid and revolutionary change. While barely visible in the major media, a number of grassroots movements, from global justice to holistic health to spiritual exploration, are already blazing the trail away from the usual assumptions of mainstream culture. Even the people involved with these movements underestimate their own numbers, in part because most of them go about their business without trying to convert others and because they lack social and political cohesion. Yet the more serious and sincere of these alternative cultures show promise as catalysts of a social breakthrough. Unlike many subcultures and sects, these people do not relish taking antisocial stances or want to hide away from everyone else. Rather, they are quietly but profoundly engaged in the world, as they challenge accepted beliefs and pursue new avenues of personal and social commitment.
This then is Zentropolis, the title of my new book.
This column is reserved for a make believe, but yet real place. A place where all things are possible. And contrary to the movie Sin City, where everything bad happens, this is Zentropolis where everything good happens.
This city has its own free speech television network, and rather than Sin City's version of CNN, where all reports are focused on lying, cheating, fraud, embezzlement, killing , wars, environmental crimes, and man's inhumanity towards man, GNN has it's has it's own reports of truth, integrity, honesty, peace, harmony, compassion , nurturing , and caring for all on GNN (The Good News Network).
I make reference a lot in my book, Zentrepreneurism www.zentrepreneurism.com to the good citizens of Zentropolis, and their good deeds. Here are some of the stories we are covering this month in Zentropolis.
Ervin Laszlo in an article in Ode Magazine writes about what Zentropolis might look like;
Let me offer one example of how such a breakthrough might look: Faced with growing problems and shared threats, citizens across the planet pull together to form associations and networks to pursue their dreams of peace and environmental sustainability.Business leaders and entrepreneurs recognize the importance of these aspirations and respond with new goods and services that help make them a reality. Soon, global news and entertainment media commit themselves to chronicling emerging social and cultural innovations.
On the Internet and through other grassroots communication networks, people everywhere begin exploring new visions of the natural world, the global community and human existence itself.Out of all this comes a new culture of solidarity and social responsibility across the planet.
Public support mounts for government policies that institute social and ecological repairs. Money is diverted from the military and defence industries to the needs of people. New measures are implemented to develop sustainable energy, transportation, industrial, technological and agricultural systems. Huge numbers of people around the world get better access to food, jobs, and education.
As a result of these developments, international mistrust, ethnic conflict, racial oppression, economic inequity, and gender inequality give way to new traditions of mutual respect. Rather than breaking down in conflict and war, humanity breaks through to a sustainable world of self-reliant butco-operating communities, enterprises, countries and regions.At this point in our history, human beings have accumulated unprecedented power hence responsibility to decide our destiny. Although the prospect of global breakdown stares us in the face, it is by no means inevitable.
We also have the unprecedented option of choosing a brighter tomorrow. Nothing prevents us from shifting our evolutionary path toward a peaceful and sustainable civilization, nothing except our own patterns of thinking and action. The leaders now in power and the mainstream society they represent have not yet glimpsed a different future for our civilization. Yet many other people are inspired by visions of a global breakthrough that are already emerging at the creative frontiers of our society.
Societies are seldom culturally monolithic in their thinking. This is especially true in eras of innovation and ferment. Those periods spawn a large number of subcultures, or alternative cultures, that spring up alongside the prevailing power structure.This is what we see happening today, with some of these alternative cultures devoting themselves to imaginatively rethinking the priorities, values, and behaviours of society, giving particular attention to how we can improve environmental sustainability and human ethics.
This sort of fundamental reassessment of how we live, even if overlooked or ignored by those in power, can spark rapid and revolutionary change. While barely visible in the major media, a number of grassroots movements, from global justice to holistic health to spiritual exploration, are already blazing the trail away from the usual assumptions of mainstream culture. Even the people involved with these movements underestimate their own numbers, in part because most of them go about their business without trying to convert others and because they lack social and political cohesion. Yet the more serious and sincere of these alternative cultures show promise as catalysts of a social breakthrough. Unlike many subcultures and sects, these people do not relish taking antisocial stances or want to hide away from everyone else. Rather, they are quietly but profoundly engaged in the world, as they challenge accepted beliefs and pursue new avenues of personal and social commitment.
This then is Zentropolis, the title of my new book.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The Fallout of Corporate Greed in America
US severe poverty reached 32-year high: 16 million people
The gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” in United States keeps widening and the percentage of US citizens who are living in deep or severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, 16 million, according to a report from McClatchy Newspapers.
A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of the 2005 census figures, the latest available, reached that conclusion, defining a family of four with two children and an annual income of less than 9.903 US dollars, half the US federal poverty line, as severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than 5.080 US dollars a year.The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26% from 2000 to 2005 which is 56% faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period.
McClatchy’s review found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn’t confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion.
US worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income for working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.These and other factors have helped push 43% of the nation’s 37 million poor people into deep poverty, the highest rate since at least 1975.
The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown “more than any other segment of the population,” according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.“That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began” said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, who co-authored the study. “We’re not seeing as much moderate poverty as a proportion of the population. What we’re seeing is a dramatic growth of severe poverty.”
The growth, which leveled off in 2005, in part reflects how hard it is for low-skilled workers to earn their way out of poverty in an unstable job market that favors skilled and educated workers. It also suggests that social programs aren’t as effective as they once were at catching those who fall into economic despair.According to census data, nearly two of three people in severe poverty are white (10.3 million) and 6.9 million are non-Hispanic whites. Severely poor blacks (4.3 million) are more than three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be in deep poverty, while extremely poor Hispanics of any race (3.7 million) are over twice as likely.
The McClatchy Newspapers underlines that severe poverty is most pronounced near the Mexican border and in some areas of the South, where 6.5 million severely poor residents are struggling to find work as manufacturing jobs in the textile, apparel and furniture-making industries disappear. The Midwestern Rust Belt and areas of the Northeast also have been hard hit as economic restructuring and foreign competition has forced numerous plant closings
The gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” in United States keeps widening and the percentage of US citizens who are living in deep or severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, 16 million, according to a report from McClatchy Newspapers.
A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of the 2005 census figures, the latest available, reached that conclusion, defining a family of four with two children and an annual income of less than 9.903 US dollars, half the US federal poverty line, as severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than 5.080 US dollars a year.The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26% from 2000 to 2005 which is 56% faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period.
McClatchy’s review found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn’t confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion.
US worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income for working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.These and other factors have helped push 43% of the nation’s 37 million poor people into deep poverty, the highest rate since at least 1975.
The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown “more than any other segment of the population,” according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.“That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began” said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, who co-authored the study. “We’re not seeing as much moderate poverty as a proportion of the population. What we’re seeing is a dramatic growth of severe poverty.”
The growth, which leveled off in 2005, in part reflects how hard it is for low-skilled workers to earn their way out of poverty in an unstable job market that favors skilled and educated workers. It also suggests that social programs aren’t as effective as they once were at catching those who fall into economic despair.According to census data, nearly two of three people in severe poverty are white (10.3 million) and 6.9 million are non-Hispanic whites. Severely poor blacks (4.3 million) are more than three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be in deep poverty, while extremely poor Hispanics of any race (3.7 million) are over twice as likely.
The McClatchy Newspapers underlines that severe poverty is most pronounced near the Mexican border and in some areas of the South, where 6.5 million severely poor residents are struggling to find work as manufacturing jobs in the textile, apparel and furniture-making industries disappear. The Midwestern Rust Belt and areas of the Northeast also have been hard hit as economic restructuring and foreign competition has forced numerous plant closings
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
I No Longer Want to Work for Money
An open letter from the Founder of Whole Foods
(From Fast Company Magazine, Feb, 2007)
Dear Team;
I want to announce a couple of significant changes regarding compensation at Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ:WFMI).
First, as you know, we have a salary-cap policy, which limits the total cash compensation that can be paid to any team member. The board of directors has voted to raise the salary cap from 14 times the average pay to 19 times the average pay, effective immediately.... We are raising the salary cap for one reason only--to make the compensation to our executives more competitive in the marketplace.... Everyone on the Whole Foods leadership team (except for me) has been approached multiple times by "headhunters" with job offers to leave Whole Foods and go to work for our competitors. Raising the salary cap has become necessary to help ensure the retention of our key leadership.... This increase to 19 times the average pay remains far, far below what the typical Fortune 500 company pays its executives.... The average CEO received 431 times as much as their average employee received in 2004, while Whole Foods' CEO (me) received only 14 times the average employee pay in cash compensation.
Most large companies also pay their executives large amounts of stock options in addition to large salaries and cash bonuses. The average corporation in the United States distributes 75% of their total stock options to only 5 top executives.... At Whole Foods, the exact opposite is true: The top 16 executives have received 7% of all the options granted while the other 93% of the options have been distributed throughout the entire company.
The second part of today's announcement has to do with my own compensation.... The tremendous success of Whole Foods Market has provided me with far more money than I ever dreamed I'd have and far more than is necessary for either my financial security or personal happiness.... I am now 53 years old and I have reached a place in my life where I no longer want to work for money, but simply for the joy of the work itself and to better answer the call to service that I feel so clearly in my own heart. Beginning on January 1, 2007, my salary will be reduced to $1, and I will no longer take any other cash compensation.... The intention of the board of directors is for Whole Foods Market to donate all of the future stock options I would be eligible to receive to our two company foundations.
One other important item to communicate to you is, in light of my decision to forego any future [pay], our board of directors has decided that Whole Foods Market will contribute $100,000 annually to a new Global Team Member Emergency Fund. This money will be distributed to team members throughout the company based on need.... The first $100,000 will be deposited on January 1, 2007, and requests will be considered after that date.
With much love,
John Mackey
(From Fast Company Magazine, Feb, 2007)
Dear Team;
I want to announce a couple of significant changes regarding compensation at Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ:WFMI).
First, as you know, we have a salary-cap policy, which limits the total cash compensation that can be paid to any team member. The board of directors has voted to raise the salary cap from 14 times the average pay to 19 times the average pay, effective immediately.... We are raising the salary cap for one reason only--to make the compensation to our executives more competitive in the marketplace.... Everyone on the Whole Foods leadership team (except for me) has been approached multiple times by "headhunters" with job offers to leave Whole Foods and go to work for our competitors. Raising the salary cap has become necessary to help ensure the retention of our key leadership.... This increase to 19 times the average pay remains far, far below what the typical Fortune 500 company pays its executives.... The average CEO received 431 times as much as their average employee received in 2004, while Whole Foods' CEO (me) received only 14 times the average employee pay in cash compensation.
Most large companies also pay their executives large amounts of stock options in addition to large salaries and cash bonuses. The average corporation in the United States distributes 75% of their total stock options to only 5 top executives.... At Whole Foods, the exact opposite is true: The top 16 executives have received 7% of all the options granted while the other 93% of the options have been distributed throughout the entire company.
The second part of today's announcement has to do with my own compensation.... The tremendous success of Whole Foods Market has provided me with far more money than I ever dreamed I'd have and far more than is necessary for either my financial security or personal happiness.... I am now 53 years old and I have reached a place in my life where I no longer want to work for money, but simply for the joy of the work itself and to better answer the call to service that I feel so clearly in my own heart. Beginning on January 1, 2007, my salary will be reduced to $1, and I will no longer take any other cash compensation.... The intention of the board of directors is for Whole Foods Market to donate all of the future stock options I would be eligible to receive to our two company foundations.
One other important item to communicate to you is, in light of my decision to forego any future [pay], our board of directors has decided that Whole Foods Market will contribute $100,000 annually to a new Global Team Member Emergency Fund. This money will be distributed to team members throughout the company based on need.... The first $100,000 will be deposited on January 1, 2007, and requests will be considered after that date.
With much love,
John Mackey
Monday, February 12, 2007
The Boss Who Breaks All the Rules
by Dominique Haijtema
This article appeared in Ode Magazine issue: 40
Ricardo Semler’s employees set their hours, determine their salaries and choose their bosses. Meet the Brazilian businessman who does everything differently.
His favourite questions start with “why.” Why should employees feel compelled to read their emails on Sunday evening, but can’t go to the movies on Monday afternoon? Why should they take work home, but can’t bring their kids to the office? Why should they have to sit for hours in traffic getting to the head office? Brazilian businessman Ricardo Semler loves to question everything. His guiding principle? If you want creative employees, don’t smother them with ridiculous rules.
For 25 years, Semler has been putting into practise what increasing numbers of modern management gurus are now preaching. He heads a democratic company, Semco, where employees set their hours, determine their salaries and choose their bosses. Managers don’t have secretaries, reserved parking spaces or even desks. There is minimal bureaucracy. No IT or human-resources departments. No mission statement, no five-year plan. Meetings are voluntary and every employee has a say in everything.
Once, when Semler organized a meeting to discuss developing a speedier dishwasher for the consumer market, no one showed up. And the idea was shelved.Semco was a traditionally managed engineering company when the young Ricardo Semler took over from his father. He was just 22 and had brought philosophical conflicts with his father to a climax: The son demanded that Semco steer away from its activities as a shipbuilding supplier and abandon autocratic management in favour of decentralization. He threatened to leave the company, so his father gave him a free hand. On his first day as director, Ricardo Semler fired 60 percent of senior management and began laying the foundation for a democratic organization. Semco has long since abandoned its engineering activities. The company now develops software, is building a hotel and ecological resort and is involved with hospital and airport projects. Semler himself can’t even list all his company’s activities; he leaves that to his employees.
Semco now has 3,000 staffers (with very little turnover) and is growing 20 to 30 percent a year, with annual sales of $212 million U.S. [190 million euros] in 2003. Semco’s radical policies do have a downside. Demand from outsiders wanting to visit its offices is so heavy that employees have complained of feeling like exotic attractions at a zoo. But that seems a small price to pay for such runaway success.
Semler has written two international bestsellers about his unusual management method and has taught at renowned business schools, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard in the U.S. And he spends two months a year doing whatever he feels like doing. Last March, while vacationing with his family in Switzerland, he agreed to meet me in a hotel bar before hitting the slopes, to discuss his groundbreaking management ideas. For a corporate executive, he seemed unusually cheerful and relaxed. Semler told me he had all the time in the world—confessing that he hadn’t worn a watch in years, and that suited him just fine.
Why are so few companies in the world run like Semco?Ricardo Semler: “Because managers are afraid to lose power and control.”
What can managers do differently?“In order to do things differently, you have to relearn how to think and have the courage to let go. Managers can learn to have more faith in their employees. That’s difficult in an environment where nearly everything is based on mistrust and control. But it’s not human nature to question who you should send which email to and whose permission you should ask. Absurd! If people behave like animals in a cage, I don’t think it’s because of the people but the cage. This faulty conditioning starts at school. That’s the foundation of conformity and submission to silly rules. Small start-ups often begin in an atmosphere of excitement in someone’s garage, but as soon as they grow, all the pleasure disappears with organization. Anyone with a little talent who can think won’t work for that kind of company, right?”
Doesn’t a major corporation with thousands of employees require a different style of management than a company with 10 staff members? “Why? We were a small company and now we have 3,000 employees. Nothing has changed in the way we work. “I often hear that my management style only works in small unlisted companies and probably only in Brazil. That’s a typical argument to rationalize not changing yourself. And it’s not easy. A democratic organization isn’t something you decide on and arrange from one day to the next. We’ve been doing this for a quarter century and are still learning every day. It’s a lengthy process because people’s conditioning is very strong.”
How can an organization become more democratic?“By questioning all kinds of things. For example, we examined how much time our employees spend sitting in traffic. We figured out that they spend a million hours a year getting to and from work. We wanted to cut that down, which means you have to take drastic measures. We decided to close down our head office and start working in small units. In the 21st century, it makes no sense to get people to come to your head office from all over the country—because even if they physically all get together, they’ll still send an email to a colleague sitting two metres away. “Added to this, if you wake up in a bad mood on Monday morning, you don’t have to come to work. We don’t even want you to come because you simply don’t feel like it and will therefore not make a contribution. We want employees who are ready and willing to work. If that means they only come twice a week, that’s okay. It’s about results.”
It’s striking that your books never mention the word “leader.”“Leadership is way overrated. In fact I don’t call the courses I teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology “leadership courses.” I think the idea is outdated that leadership is only relegated to a few and that it can be planned, structured and developed.”
What’s wrong with cultivating leaders?“The whole idea of leaders implies that only a few are capable of pointing us in the right direction. I’m more interested in the structures or the architecture of organizations that enable the company to survive in the future, independent of the leaders.“An important facet of leadership is succession. Succession of managers is often arranged in a dramatic and hectic way.
Take Louis Gerstner, who was taken on as an outsider at IBM, where there are thousands of people with management or business-economics degrees. Was there truly no one in the company capable of taking the lead? That’s pretty weak.”
But an outsider could have a more objective view of the company?“Maybe. But in saying that you’re actually implying that a company can’t innovate or change without hiring outsiders. That’s a scary thought. I would consider it disappointing if an organization can’t produce any leadership talent capable of looking at the company objectively. Take [former General Electric CEO] Jack Welch. When someone puts such a strong mark on a company, as Welch did, it’s often difficult for his successor. Many strong leaders have left weak organizations in their wake. There’s a good reason why many companies—including General Electric—need major reorganizations right after those strong leaders leave.”
Have you arranged your own succession?“Oh, I’ve been working on it for some 15 years. Sixty percent of the business is now comprised of initiatives I have absolutely nothing to do with. The company is doing very well without me. That was also the case when I had a car accident last year and spent a couple of months in intensive care. And a couple of weeks each year I’m travelling and not reachable. Everything runs smoothly.”
How do you develop managers at Semco? Do you send them to business schools?“We never send anyone anywhere. Everyone is responsible for their own career and training. All the employees have a budget to do with as they see fit. We don’t say a word about the choice of courses. We’ve never had a shortage of people interested in taking on management duties, coordinating or guiding others. In our system, managers are anonymously evaluated every six months by their subordinates. If they don’t measure up, they’re no longer allowed to fulfill a leadership role. It’s as simple as that. At our company, you’re a manager as long as your staff approves.”
Do you see it as your mission to inspire entrepreneurs and managers?“Not at all. I don’t see my methods as a gift to humanity. I don’t do it to teach others; I do it for myself. I simply wanted to create an organization where I wanted to work myself. It’s actually quite egotistical.”
Taken with kind permission from the Dutch book De essentie van leiderschap (“The essence of leadership”) by Dominique Haijtema (Business-Contact, ISBN 9047001826), a collection of interviews with Madeleine Albright, Deepak Chopra, Jack Welch and Muhammad Yunus, among others. Most of the interviews were previously published in the Dutch business magazine Management Team. Haijtema is a journalist with the Dutch business daily Het Financieele Dagblad Entrepreneur of the year Ricardo Semler, born in 1959 in São Paulo, became the director of Semco—his father’s company—in 1982. He helped take it from an ailing industrial enterprise with annual sales of $4 million U.S. [2.3 million euros] to a dynamic, fast-growing company active in numerous sectors, from air coolers to consultancy, with annual sales of $212 million U.S. [190 million euros] in 2003. Moreover, Semco is enjoys a reputation worldwide as the example of a “democratic organization” (http://www.semco.com.br/). In 1990 and 1992, Semler was named Brazilian businessman of the year. His first book, published in 1993, was Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace; ten years later, he published The Seven Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works. In 2003, he founded Lumiar, a democratic school in São Paulo, where children between the ages of 2 and 10 are encouraged to learn whatever they consider interesting (www.lumiar.org.br).
Ricardo Semler’s tips for democratic management• Do away with bureaucracy, which creates a sense of false security.• Let employees determine everything themselves: their salaries, their working hours, their managers. • Let go of control to stimulate creativity. • Strip away special treatment for managers—no parking space or secretary, not even their own desk. • Continually question whether what appears to be self-evident is actually good for the company. • Regularly take a break from work when you are unreachable for a period of time. • Read classic literature instead of management books. • Remember that leadership has nothing to do with hierarchy, because everyone can develop leadership skills.
This article appeared in Ode Magazine issue: 40
Ricardo Semler’s employees set their hours, determine their salaries and choose their bosses. Meet the Brazilian businessman who does everything differently.
His favourite questions start with “why.” Why should employees feel compelled to read their emails on Sunday evening, but can’t go to the movies on Monday afternoon? Why should they take work home, but can’t bring their kids to the office? Why should they have to sit for hours in traffic getting to the head office? Brazilian businessman Ricardo Semler loves to question everything. His guiding principle? If you want creative employees, don’t smother them with ridiculous rules.
For 25 years, Semler has been putting into practise what increasing numbers of modern management gurus are now preaching. He heads a democratic company, Semco, where employees set their hours, determine their salaries and choose their bosses. Managers don’t have secretaries, reserved parking spaces or even desks. There is minimal bureaucracy. No IT or human-resources departments. No mission statement, no five-year plan. Meetings are voluntary and every employee has a say in everything.
Once, when Semler organized a meeting to discuss developing a speedier dishwasher for the consumer market, no one showed up. And the idea was shelved.Semco was a traditionally managed engineering company when the young Ricardo Semler took over from his father. He was just 22 and had brought philosophical conflicts with his father to a climax: The son demanded that Semco steer away from its activities as a shipbuilding supplier and abandon autocratic management in favour of decentralization. He threatened to leave the company, so his father gave him a free hand. On his first day as director, Ricardo Semler fired 60 percent of senior management and began laying the foundation for a democratic organization. Semco has long since abandoned its engineering activities. The company now develops software, is building a hotel and ecological resort and is involved with hospital and airport projects. Semler himself can’t even list all his company’s activities; he leaves that to his employees.
Semco now has 3,000 staffers (with very little turnover) and is growing 20 to 30 percent a year, with annual sales of $212 million U.S. [190 million euros] in 2003. Semco’s radical policies do have a downside. Demand from outsiders wanting to visit its offices is so heavy that employees have complained of feeling like exotic attractions at a zoo. But that seems a small price to pay for such runaway success.
Semler has written two international bestsellers about his unusual management method and has taught at renowned business schools, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard in the U.S. And he spends two months a year doing whatever he feels like doing. Last March, while vacationing with his family in Switzerland, he agreed to meet me in a hotel bar before hitting the slopes, to discuss his groundbreaking management ideas. For a corporate executive, he seemed unusually cheerful and relaxed. Semler told me he had all the time in the world—confessing that he hadn’t worn a watch in years, and that suited him just fine.
Why are so few companies in the world run like Semco?Ricardo Semler: “Because managers are afraid to lose power and control.”
What can managers do differently?“In order to do things differently, you have to relearn how to think and have the courage to let go. Managers can learn to have more faith in their employees. That’s difficult in an environment where nearly everything is based on mistrust and control. But it’s not human nature to question who you should send which email to and whose permission you should ask. Absurd! If people behave like animals in a cage, I don’t think it’s because of the people but the cage. This faulty conditioning starts at school. That’s the foundation of conformity and submission to silly rules. Small start-ups often begin in an atmosphere of excitement in someone’s garage, but as soon as they grow, all the pleasure disappears with organization. Anyone with a little talent who can think won’t work for that kind of company, right?”
Doesn’t a major corporation with thousands of employees require a different style of management than a company with 10 staff members? “Why? We were a small company and now we have 3,000 employees. Nothing has changed in the way we work. “I often hear that my management style only works in small unlisted companies and probably only in Brazil. That’s a typical argument to rationalize not changing yourself. And it’s not easy. A democratic organization isn’t something you decide on and arrange from one day to the next. We’ve been doing this for a quarter century and are still learning every day. It’s a lengthy process because people’s conditioning is very strong.”
How can an organization become more democratic?“By questioning all kinds of things. For example, we examined how much time our employees spend sitting in traffic. We figured out that they spend a million hours a year getting to and from work. We wanted to cut that down, which means you have to take drastic measures. We decided to close down our head office and start working in small units. In the 21st century, it makes no sense to get people to come to your head office from all over the country—because even if they physically all get together, they’ll still send an email to a colleague sitting two metres away. “Added to this, if you wake up in a bad mood on Monday morning, you don’t have to come to work. We don’t even want you to come because you simply don’t feel like it and will therefore not make a contribution. We want employees who are ready and willing to work. If that means they only come twice a week, that’s okay. It’s about results.”
It’s striking that your books never mention the word “leader.”“Leadership is way overrated. In fact I don’t call the courses I teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology “leadership courses.” I think the idea is outdated that leadership is only relegated to a few and that it can be planned, structured and developed.”
What’s wrong with cultivating leaders?“The whole idea of leaders implies that only a few are capable of pointing us in the right direction. I’m more interested in the structures or the architecture of organizations that enable the company to survive in the future, independent of the leaders.“An important facet of leadership is succession. Succession of managers is often arranged in a dramatic and hectic way.
Take Louis Gerstner, who was taken on as an outsider at IBM, where there are thousands of people with management or business-economics degrees. Was there truly no one in the company capable of taking the lead? That’s pretty weak.”
But an outsider could have a more objective view of the company?“Maybe. But in saying that you’re actually implying that a company can’t innovate or change without hiring outsiders. That’s a scary thought. I would consider it disappointing if an organization can’t produce any leadership talent capable of looking at the company objectively. Take [former General Electric CEO] Jack Welch. When someone puts such a strong mark on a company, as Welch did, it’s often difficult for his successor. Many strong leaders have left weak organizations in their wake. There’s a good reason why many companies—including General Electric—need major reorganizations right after those strong leaders leave.”
Have you arranged your own succession?“Oh, I’ve been working on it for some 15 years. Sixty percent of the business is now comprised of initiatives I have absolutely nothing to do with. The company is doing very well without me. That was also the case when I had a car accident last year and spent a couple of months in intensive care. And a couple of weeks each year I’m travelling and not reachable. Everything runs smoothly.”
How do you develop managers at Semco? Do you send them to business schools?“We never send anyone anywhere. Everyone is responsible for their own career and training. All the employees have a budget to do with as they see fit. We don’t say a word about the choice of courses. We’ve never had a shortage of people interested in taking on management duties, coordinating or guiding others. In our system, managers are anonymously evaluated every six months by their subordinates. If they don’t measure up, they’re no longer allowed to fulfill a leadership role. It’s as simple as that. At our company, you’re a manager as long as your staff approves.”
Do you see it as your mission to inspire entrepreneurs and managers?“Not at all. I don’t see my methods as a gift to humanity. I don’t do it to teach others; I do it for myself. I simply wanted to create an organization where I wanted to work myself. It’s actually quite egotistical.”
Taken with kind permission from the Dutch book De essentie van leiderschap (“The essence of leadership”) by Dominique Haijtema (Business-Contact, ISBN 9047001826), a collection of interviews with Madeleine Albright, Deepak Chopra, Jack Welch and Muhammad Yunus, among others. Most of the interviews were previously published in the Dutch business magazine Management Team. Haijtema is a journalist with the Dutch business daily Het Financieele Dagblad Entrepreneur of the year Ricardo Semler, born in 1959 in São Paulo, became the director of Semco—his father’s company—in 1982. He helped take it from an ailing industrial enterprise with annual sales of $4 million U.S. [2.3 million euros] to a dynamic, fast-growing company active in numerous sectors, from air coolers to consultancy, with annual sales of $212 million U.S. [190 million euros] in 2003. Moreover, Semco is enjoys a reputation worldwide as the example of a “democratic organization” (http://www.semco.com.br/). In 1990 and 1992, Semler was named Brazilian businessman of the year. His first book, published in 1993, was Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace; ten years later, he published The Seven Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works. In 2003, he founded Lumiar, a democratic school in São Paulo, where children between the ages of 2 and 10 are encouraged to learn whatever they consider interesting (www.lumiar.org.br).
Ricardo Semler’s tips for democratic management• Do away with bureaucracy, which creates a sense of false security.• Let employees determine everything themselves: their salaries, their working hours, their managers. • Let go of control to stimulate creativity. • Strip away special treatment for managers—no parking space or secretary, not even their own desk. • Continually question whether what appears to be self-evident is actually good for the company. • Regularly take a break from work when you are unreachable for a period of time. • Read classic literature instead of management books. • Remember that leadership has nothing to do with hierarchy, because everyone can develop leadership skills.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Obama & Oprah- What a Ticket!
Obama & Oprah what a ticket--Entertainment Tonight would love it!
As an American living in a Canadian body, I have a slightly different perspective on the issues surrounding the election of a President in 2008, especially the election of Obama. I think he is the great "Black" hope America is looking for. Particularly the majority of Blacks who represent the 30 million US citizens who make a minimal wage of $5.15 an hour, America's working poor.
The "system" has and always will be controlled by white elitists who only recognize the achievement of blacks through sports and entertainment. White basketball and football owners are pre-disposed to dump millions of dollars on black pro athletes for the entertainment of wealthy whites who can afford seasons tickets. Oprah has been "playing white" since her show was launched. Look at her audience...primarily white middle class. Oprah loves Obama, not because he will save America, but because he is an attractive, charismatic man whom she can identify with that has the look and feel of a celebrity.
America has and always will be totally pre-occupied with celebrities as heroes. If you lose the Super Bowl by one point nobody calls the next day and asks you to be on their late night TV show. This pre-occupation with winning is resulting in the innocent death of young soldiers and civilians alike in Iraq. George W. Bush, the troubled young son of a demanding father and controlling Mother, is possessed with "winning" the war in Iraq even if he takes another 22,000 troops into certain death. "I'll show Dad I can win at something". This is not the rhetoric of a rational human being , this is a "madman'. It is always said you generally hate the people who remind you most of yourself...hence Curious George and his father's hatred of Saddam Hussein.
There is a major crises in America, that goes beyond Barack Obama as the "hope". Democrats and Republicans are cut from the same cloth. Wall Street owns the White House and the way the American system is set up, you have Hillary raising $15 million dollars to buy votes, so she can have the same corporate sector, the Republicans have been beholding to if and when she gets elected. Over 98% of the money raised in the U.S. for political campaigns comes from the corporate sector. This is insane. We have a system in Canada that does not permit a politician to raise more than $1,000 for her or his campaign. We have a fundamental three party system, but with plenty of room for independants. We have a free and democratic society that allows for the free will of the people to speak with their votes.
I have studied and lived in the U.S. and I can tell you that the prevailing attitude of Americans I knew was that America has the most democratic and free society in the world. The envy of the free world. Not any more, the U.S., with homeland security, fear, paranoia , illegal wars and occupation of countries, corrupt corporate leaders ,and a "liar" in the White House, no longer is the envy of the free world, and in fact in many countries it has become the most hated. Electing a black Kennedy is not going to solve anything. And even Kennedy with all his charisma, that Americans so cherish, had his own connections with the Mafia, and sinister corporate magnets.
Until America shifts away from a culture that associates money with power and power with success, you will continue to elect public officials who honestly believe that most Americans are "stupid". "They need us...that without our governance and protection, the U.S. would be invaded by everybody from aliens to Celine Dion."The American Dream has become it's worst nightmare. Wake up, or just like global warming , it will be too late to do anything except build an arc and pray for Gore. If I had a vote that's where I'd put my X.
Your thoughts are welcome...please comment.
As an American living in a Canadian body, I have a slightly different perspective on the issues surrounding the election of a President in 2008, especially the election of Obama. I think he is the great "Black" hope America is looking for. Particularly the majority of Blacks who represent the 30 million US citizens who make a minimal wage of $5.15 an hour, America's working poor.
The "system" has and always will be controlled by white elitists who only recognize the achievement of blacks through sports and entertainment. White basketball and football owners are pre-disposed to dump millions of dollars on black pro athletes for the entertainment of wealthy whites who can afford seasons tickets. Oprah has been "playing white" since her show was launched. Look at her audience...primarily white middle class. Oprah loves Obama, not because he will save America, but because he is an attractive, charismatic man whom she can identify with that has the look and feel of a celebrity.
America has and always will be totally pre-occupied with celebrities as heroes. If you lose the Super Bowl by one point nobody calls the next day and asks you to be on their late night TV show. This pre-occupation with winning is resulting in the innocent death of young soldiers and civilians alike in Iraq. George W. Bush, the troubled young son of a demanding father and controlling Mother, is possessed with "winning" the war in Iraq even if he takes another 22,000 troops into certain death. "I'll show Dad I can win at something". This is not the rhetoric of a rational human being , this is a "madman'. It is always said you generally hate the people who remind you most of yourself...hence Curious George and his father's hatred of Saddam Hussein.
There is a major crises in America, that goes beyond Barack Obama as the "hope". Democrats and Republicans are cut from the same cloth. Wall Street owns the White House and the way the American system is set up, you have Hillary raising $15 million dollars to buy votes, so she can have the same corporate sector, the Republicans have been beholding to if and when she gets elected. Over 98% of the money raised in the U.S. for political campaigns comes from the corporate sector. This is insane. We have a system in Canada that does not permit a politician to raise more than $1,000 for her or his campaign. We have a fundamental three party system, but with plenty of room for independants. We have a free and democratic society that allows for the free will of the people to speak with their votes.
I have studied and lived in the U.S. and I can tell you that the prevailing attitude of Americans I knew was that America has the most democratic and free society in the world. The envy of the free world. Not any more, the U.S., with homeland security, fear, paranoia , illegal wars and occupation of countries, corrupt corporate leaders ,and a "liar" in the White House, no longer is the envy of the free world, and in fact in many countries it has become the most hated. Electing a black Kennedy is not going to solve anything. And even Kennedy with all his charisma, that Americans so cherish, had his own connections with the Mafia, and sinister corporate magnets.
Until America shifts away from a culture that associates money with power and power with success, you will continue to elect public officials who honestly believe that most Americans are "stupid". "They need us...that without our governance and protection, the U.S. would be invaded by everybody from aliens to Celine Dion."The American Dream has become it's worst nightmare. Wake up, or just like global warming , it will be too late to do anything except build an arc and pray for Gore. If I had a vote that's where I'd put my X.
Your thoughts are welcome...please comment.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
BoomerBiz
BoomerBiz
This is the ultimate resource center for 50 plus boomers who want to start their own business. In the weeks to come you can read about my own personal journey in meeting the challenges of continuing to grow and enrich my life at the age of 65 and beyond. As I enter the autumn of my life I feel the need to keep on expanding my horizons. I hope you will share your comments as well. In an effort to expand our mutual knowledge I will attempt to bring empowering stories to your attention that help you grow your business ethically and create profits with integrity. Till the next time, I remain ..
Your humble Biz Boomer
This is the ultimate resource center for 50 plus boomers who want to start their own business. In the weeks to come you can read about my own personal journey in meeting the challenges of continuing to grow and enrich my life at the age of 65 and beyond. As I enter the autumn of my life I feel the need to keep on expanding my horizons. I hope you will share your comments as well. In an effort to expand our mutual knowledge I will attempt to bring empowering stories to your attention that help you grow your business ethically and create profits with integrity. Till the next time, I remain ..
Your humble Biz Boomer
War Games
Today I opened my newspaper to find an awards ceremony taking place that I had never heard of before; "The Interactive Achievement Awards", administered by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a non-profit group made up of some 9,000 members of the entertainment software industry. Take a look at the titles and descriptions of some of the nominees; Gears of War, a dark futuristic action-horror video game. Gears is the brainchild of creative director Cliff Bleszinski, but the Epic team from Cary, North Carolina, had plenty of Canadian content. Epic VP Mark Rein is from Toronto and four other Canadians worked on the project. How wonderful, a hands across the border project totally consumed with violence and war.
Then there's Scarface, a violent mobster interactive game from Radical Entertainment in Vancouver, Bully from Rockstar Games also from Vancouver, sending another message of violent retribution. Relic , the video game company from Canada contributing the most to world peace with titles like; Impossible Creatures, Warhammer 40,000, and Dawn of War released this statement; "So far we've been nominated for over 60 awards that I'm aware of,: producer John Johnson said proudly from Vancouver, "We've pulled in (won) over 40 of those". Johnson said Relic knew the Second World War field was getting a little stale, but was confident it could take the genre forward to the next step. "Key features included creating a "living battlefield," where gamers could interact with their environment. "For me that's the biggest feature, because the game play suddenly becomes different every time you play it," said Johnson. Wow what a concept, how to kill people in different ways, based on your "killing mood".,and what a genius creative business mind to recognize that this "second world war" stuff was getting stale. A final footnote, the awards take place at the HardRock Casino and Club in Las Vegas (Sin City), how appropriate.
It's been surmised that none of the above companies have been nominated for a Corporate Ethics, Sustainabliity, or "Zentrepreneur of the Year Award.
Okay here goes my rant and disbelief at the same time. The fact that we have reached a point in our society that we are permitting legalized war games to infiltrate the very people that we will be entrusting our world to, the younger generation, is beyond belief. Have we become so immune to the world outside that the very mention of war to someone today is treated much like the daily weather forecast. You want to hear about it , but you are powerless to change it. Where is the fine line between madness and civility.
Zentrepreneurism is about creating purpose and profits with integrity. The inconvenient truth about global warming has finally reached the ears of government and now the general public. It took Al Gore years to get peoples attention. What will it take to get the business world to "wake up" to it's own Inconvenient Truth.
Whether its pollution of the atmosphere or pollution of the mind., the two are equal culprits and each has it's own responsibility to act in a way that strenghtens our moral and ethical fibre. The cigarette companies are now targetting the most vulnerable of our ciitzens, our youth, becasue they know that they are the ones most confused and feeling disenfranchised. Too young to make clear descisions on what's good or bad and too old to be turned away at the corner grocery store. These same vulnerable, disenfranchised, and misguided youth are walking into Best Buy and laying down their last few dollars to have an opportunity to "play war". Killing people off is no big deal, heck you can watch CNN every night and get your dose of war and casualty counts much like to the ticker tape from Wall Street.
These same kids are in a fog, they have become immune to the graphics and they do not place a high value on themselves or the world around them. The next step is the local gun store and then it's off to the nearest high school or college to blow away people who looked funny at them, ignored them, bullied them, or talked about them. And then you can "waste yourself", the ulitmate suicide, no "guts no glory". You see the pattern here. It's a pattern repeated thousands of times a day in virtually every city in North America. At one point does business and the corporate world step up to the plate and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. We will no longer sacrifice integrity for profits. We will do the right thing to stop glorifying violence and war.
We will make a commitment to promote peace and wellness in our community. And if this inconvenient truth is too much for them to handle and they refuse to act responsibly, then you have no other choice, just say "Hell No we won't Buy" . The quiet revolution of the conscious consumer has already begun with the oil companies, the cigarette companies, the drug companies, the anti-war movement and now it's time for us to meet head on the irresponsible antics of the video game industry. War ,poverty, pollution, hunger and polluted profits have no place in a peaceful compassionate world. It may not appear in your daily newspaper, but the people have spoken, even if they are under ground.
Then there's Scarface, a violent mobster interactive game from Radical Entertainment in Vancouver, Bully from Rockstar Games also from Vancouver, sending another message of violent retribution. Relic , the video game company from Canada contributing the most to world peace with titles like; Impossible Creatures, Warhammer 40,000, and Dawn of War released this statement; "So far we've been nominated for over 60 awards that I'm aware of,: producer John Johnson said proudly from Vancouver, "We've pulled in (won) over 40 of those". Johnson said Relic knew the Second World War field was getting a little stale, but was confident it could take the genre forward to the next step. "Key features included creating a "living battlefield," where gamers could interact with their environment. "For me that's the biggest feature, because the game play suddenly becomes different every time you play it," said Johnson. Wow what a concept, how to kill people in different ways, based on your "killing mood".,and what a genius creative business mind to recognize that this "second world war" stuff was getting stale. A final footnote, the awards take place at the HardRock Casino and Club in Las Vegas (Sin City), how appropriate.
It's been surmised that none of the above companies have been nominated for a Corporate Ethics, Sustainabliity, or "Zentrepreneur of the Year Award.
Okay here goes my rant and disbelief at the same time. The fact that we have reached a point in our society that we are permitting legalized war games to infiltrate the very people that we will be entrusting our world to, the younger generation, is beyond belief. Have we become so immune to the world outside that the very mention of war to someone today is treated much like the daily weather forecast. You want to hear about it , but you are powerless to change it. Where is the fine line between madness and civility.
Zentrepreneurism is about creating purpose and profits with integrity. The inconvenient truth about global warming has finally reached the ears of government and now the general public. It took Al Gore years to get peoples attention. What will it take to get the business world to "wake up" to it's own Inconvenient Truth.
Whether its pollution of the atmosphere or pollution of the mind., the two are equal culprits and each has it's own responsibility to act in a way that strenghtens our moral and ethical fibre. The cigarette companies are now targetting the most vulnerable of our ciitzens, our youth, becasue they know that they are the ones most confused and feeling disenfranchised. Too young to make clear descisions on what's good or bad and too old to be turned away at the corner grocery store. These same vulnerable, disenfranchised, and misguided youth are walking into Best Buy and laying down their last few dollars to have an opportunity to "play war". Killing people off is no big deal, heck you can watch CNN every night and get your dose of war and casualty counts much like to the ticker tape from Wall Street.
These same kids are in a fog, they have become immune to the graphics and they do not place a high value on themselves or the world around them. The next step is the local gun store and then it's off to the nearest high school or college to blow away people who looked funny at them, ignored them, bullied them, or talked about them. And then you can "waste yourself", the ulitmate suicide, no "guts no glory". You see the pattern here. It's a pattern repeated thousands of times a day in virtually every city in North America. At one point does business and the corporate world step up to the plate and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. We will no longer sacrifice integrity for profits. We will do the right thing to stop glorifying violence and war.
We will make a commitment to promote peace and wellness in our community. And if this inconvenient truth is too much for them to handle and they refuse to act responsibly, then you have no other choice, just say "Hell No we won't Buy" . The quiet revolution of the conscious consumer has already begun with the oil companies, the cigarette companies, the drug companies, the anti-war movement and now it's time for us to meet head on the irresponsible antics of the video game industry. War ,poverty, pollution, hunger and polluted profits have no place in a peaceful compassionate world. It may not appear in your daily newspaper, but the people have spoken, even if they are under ground.
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