A knockout of hindsight regret.

Well, it's only been about 8 years since my last post.  I've been venting my politics on Facebook and comments on NY Times, etc. 

In honor of my late father on upcoming Father's day I've been trying to find a place to post a story about his business career, and have had no luck, so hear goes, even though it is like shouting his name out at a baseball game after the home team just hit a game winning homer.

 The Curse

Somewhere in my late father's family tree I fear a terrible financial curse was unleashed against him and my grandfather. They both left their lives as they came into it without a penny on them.  My grandfather had one devastating bankruptcy that he never recovered from. And my father obviously much more determined and seasoned, had three bankruptcies in a row.  My Sicilian mother's hurtful sisters used to tease her about marrying the only Jew who lost more money then he made.

When I reflect on the financial failures in his life I can only assume it was the curse, because my father, didn't drink, didn't gamble, didn't chase skirts, And didn't take vacations.  He worked all the time. so much so that he was hardly ever around.  All he ever wanted from life was to make money.  Even after his three bankruptcies, when he was in his 60s and would come up with some million dollar idea for a new business, he would justify it to me by his favorite line "Colonel Saunders (of fried chicken fame) didn't make his first million until he was in his 60s".

My father was a gifted salesman, and an expert and innovator in the retail furniture business and credit business. I never met anyone that didn't like him.  But none of his skills could overcome that ancient curse.  My father refused to work for anybody but himself.  When he was in his 20s before televisions were invented he had seven retail radio stores lining Market Street in San Francisco. He parlayed that early success into a furniture and appliance store in Los Angeles, that he sold and then, opened two furniture, TV and appliance stores in downtown San Diego in the 1950s.

This was before credit cards were available and if someone wanted to make what was then considered a big ticket purchase on credit, buy a TV or sofa or refrigerator, they had to take out a personal loan.  And storefront finance companies such as "Household Finance" were almost as prolific in major cities as "Starbucks" is today.   You had to have significant collateral to get a personal loan from a bank, but these finance houses were more aggressive in approving loans.  My father took early note of this and used to advertise for his furniture stores asking these questions, "new in town, in the service, newly married, just out of college, need credit......come into Budget furniture and appliance", we'll take care of you".   Of course San Diego being the military and transient boom town that it was in the 50s his ads appealed to almost everyone.   His secret weapon in getting these credit risky consumers a loan to buy his furniture and appliances was finding a co-signer for their loans.   And nobody was better then him at persuading parents or grandparents that owned a house or car to help their off springs or relatives establish their own credit, by co-signing to guarantee payment of their loan.

During this time of great financial reward,  the curse was taking a nap, and we lived pretty good. He bought us a ocean front home to live in, two new cars, and we went out to dinner in La Jolla a lot.  And whenever my mother's family came to stay with us at the beach (often) he paid for everything.  Nobody was faster at grabbing the check to pay in a restaurant then my dad.  Two unexpected retail business changes around this time woke up the curse:  The first was the opening of suburban shopping centers and the second was the onslaught of seemingly easy to obtain credit cards.  My father's two stores were in dying downtown San Diego, and his business depended on his credit expertise, not credit cards.   Too add insult to these wounds, he made one very bad business decision that haunted him until he died. 

Sol Price ,  the founder of "Price Club" which led to Costco and untold riches, had gotten to know my father and his success as a furniture maven and was opening a discount cash and carry warehouse store, ( the first Price Club), and offered my father the furniture concession.  My dad turned him down because he just couldn't accept the idea that people would pay for a membership card to be able to buy from a retail warehouse that didn't even accept credit.  The curse had not only woke up, but had so with a knockout punch of hindsight regret.

After his first bankruptcy our brief affluent lifestyle went down hill fast never to return.  His second bankruptcy came when he invented, designed, and manufactured a style of beds that had storage drawers in their wooden frames.  His new company was aptly called "Small Room Furniture", and was such a big success that it quickly got knocked off and stolen by much bigger furniture manufacturers.  Since he was so undercapitalized marketing this great new bed invention he couldn't even afford to patent it and the curse struck again. 

 

After bankruptcy number three, My father in his late  60s, went to work for someone else for the first time in his life as a furniture salesman and credit manager.  The irony of his cursed business career was, although he was a pioneer and expert in consumer credit.  Because of his bankruptcies he never could qualify for a credit card for himself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I read the news today, oh boy

Well, it's almost been a year since my last post, and I've got to do my venting against Republicans and spineless Democrats on the Huffington Post via comments. I know a few people read these comments, because I sometimes get feedback. But I doubt if anybody reads this blog. But, I'm going to try again, and try to link it to my comments on Huff Post. Maybe then somebody will read it.

My last post on 5/21/07, was about another incredible act of incompetent foreign policy by the Bush administration, that was not getting much attention by the media or the cowardly Democrats in opposition. And that was the money (our tax dollars) being given to Pakistan monthly, with no strings attached, somewhere in the $80 to $90 million range, to in effect (granted not intended) finance the sheltering of the Taliban's and Osama Bin Laden's, resurgance and rebuilding in protected tribal areas of Pakistan.

Yesterday in the San Diego Union, truly a Republican rag of a newspaper, there appeared an update on this story. It seems this forgotten foreign policy blunder and waste of tax dollars is so bad, even Bush enabling dailys and editors are willing to expose it!

"6 BILLION FROM THE U.S. DOWN THE DRAIN IN PAKISTAN", is the headline over the brilliant article written by Joel Brinkley, a journalism professor at Stanford. That's right not
some syndicated political columnist from the right supposedly an expert on Bush policies such as Novak, Wills, Broder, Kristol, Brooks, Coulter, etc. or even from EJ Dione, the only liberal syndicated columnist I can think of, but from a journalism professor?

He starts his article out saying what could the we do with $6 billion, food for the impoverished, rebuild New Orleans, "or you could give all of it to the Pakistani government in the form of military aid and accomplish absolutely nothing".

This, almost $ 1 billion a year for the past 6 years and another $900 million earmarked by Bush for 08 was supposed to be used to prop up Musharraf (who is gone now) and finance counter-insurgency and anti - terrorist campaigns against Al Qeada and the Taliban in Pakistan. But instead, Musharraf signed peace treatys with the tribal leaders housing and protecting Al Qeada, and the Taliban in their areas, and nobody in Washington even refutes this, nor has a clue what the billion a year is used for?

In the meantime the 2008 National Intelligence Estimate said "Al Qaeda has regenerated it's attack capability and secured a safe haven in Pakistan"!
Mr Brinkley adds The Taliban has begun applying fundamentalist Islamic law in the tribal areas in Pakistan it now controls. It has shut down schools for girls, closed barbershops and music stores, just as it did in Afghanistan when it ruled that country. In short, seven years and $6 billion later (he forgot to add and $900 million more comming this year),the terrorist group that carried out the Sept 11, 2001 attacks has grown ever more comfortable and secure in it's new Pakistani home. There Washington fears, it's leaders including Bin Laden are planning another attack on the United States. Meanwhile, the newly elected Pakistani government is negotiating another truce with these militants and has already pulled most of it's troops from the the area!"

In the last couple of days the national media has been playing up Bush, McCain and Obama going after each other on bush's charge that Obama and the Democrats want to appease our enemies.
This Bush policy of throwing our tax dollars at Pakistan to sign peace treaties with The Taliban and Bin Laden is APPEASMENT of the highest order, maybe even treason!
I just don't get it!
WHY ISN'T THIS A BIGGER ISSUE IN THE CAMPAIGN? THE GUY THAT WE WANT TO GET FOR 9/11 IS HIDING OUT IN PAKISTAN, RE-BUILDING AND LAUNCHING ATTACKS FROM THERE, AND OUR PRESIDENT IS GIVING MONEY TO PROTECT HIM NOT GET HIM!
I expect this unprecedented lunacy and incompetence from Bush and Cheney, after all they invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, and are now losing the occupation and bankrupting our country in Iraq. But c'mon Demos, Osama, Hillary, Biden, Edwards, Kerry, Gore, why not one f...ing peep out of you guys about Bush financing the protection of public enemy number one in Pakistan??

ireadthenewstoday

Rodney Dangerfield the late great comedian once joked "you know you're ugly when you go to the proctologist and he sticks his finger in your mouth".

I need humor these days to get by. Every day there is some new revelation about either the supidity, incompetence or just plain dishonesty of the Bush administration. It seems to be pretty common knowledge and a consensus among the media that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are headquartered in Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan. There they have re-grouped and infiltrated Afghanistan again regaining power and Al Qaeda has moved into Iraq and continues to plot future attacks against the U.S. and Europe.
So over the weekend an article comes out in the NY Times and the SF Chronicle reporting that the Bush administration is continuing to pay Pakistan a billion dollars a year for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border where Al Qaeda and the Taliban are, "even though Pakistan's president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active".
So far Pakistan has received over $5.6 billion in 5 years for this so-called effort. The Pentagon has admitted that roughly $80 million a month has been paid to President Musharraf since October 2001. Musharraf who's government is shaky announced in September of last year "that under a peace agreement with local militants his regular army troops in North Waziristan, the center of Al Qaeda's operations would no longer operate checkpoints and they would stay within garrisons". In other words leave Al Qaeda alone. That's right! It gets worse, "Soon after meeting with President Bush last year, Musharraf promised that tribal leaders and local militia would handle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in tribal areas". So it's probably not to far fetched to assume some of this $80 million a month is ending up in Al Qaeda's pockets and especially getting to them in the form of guns and bombs from these tribal leaders.

Al Qaeda is our enemy. They are responsible for 9/11. Yet the commander and chief of the greatest military in the history of the world has decided to outsource to the tune of $80 million tax dollars a month the capture of our worst enemies to local tribes that think a whole lot more of Al Qaeda than they do the U.S.
"They send us a bill and we just pay it", said one senior American military official who has dealt extensively with Musharraf. "Nobody can really explain what we are even getting for this money or even where it is going".

Now couple this with the billions unaccounted for in Iraq and the billions still being spent for our military presence there on the wrong battlefield and you have a Presidential nuclear bomb of incompetence and dishonesty. Yet the opposition party, the Democrats, instead of screaming about this unprecedented incompetence and waste of tax dollars, at the top of their lungs is arguing over the details of giving the President another $120 billion to piss away in Iraq.

Here is a strategy, I guess the great "decider" never thought of: If we know North Waziristan is the center of Al Qaeda's operations along the Pakistan border, why don't we drop $80 million a month in bombs on the area instead of giving them the cash?

"Never tell your wife she's lousy in bed she'll go out and get a second opinion". Thanks, Rodney.

Ireadthenewstoday

The Republicans have broken the system. If you think Iraq is a mess "you ain't seen nothing yet". Bush and Cheney and crew have not only screwed up Iraq so that almost no solution is possible without many more lives being lost, but they have been so distracted trying to cover their political butts on their massive foreign policy incompetence, the world has gotten a lot more dangerous and anti-American.
Afghanistan is in trouble again with the Taliban making a comback. Russia is flexing it's muscles again, rich with oil dollars. North Korea is a nuclear threat. Iran has gained great influence in the new government in Iraq and is thumbing it's nose at us over it's nuclear development. Al Qeada is back after being given safe haven in Pakistan to re-group for more 9/11s. They are present in Iraq along with countless other insurgents and jihadists threatening our troops and blowing up innocents. Terrorist groups Hezbollah, and Hamas have gained politically in Lebannon and Palestine and our stronger than ever. Anti American and Anti Israel Clerics and Mullahs are training more and more future suicide bombers even in middle east countries that are supposed to be our allies, some with nuclear capability such as Pakistan. We are in hock over a trillion dollars to the Chinese, and billions to the Saudis, and Japanese. And we are more dependent on oil which finances our enemies, since this administration in 6 years has not done one thing to curb our oil use, except attack Al Gore, and let the oil companies bloat their profits with higher and higher prices at the pumps.
But there is more: How about over 40 million with no health insurance and the cost of health insurance going up and up. No fiscal solutions for the upcomming financial burdens on Social Security and medicare have come from this administration. Our education system isn't working to compete in the world. Jobs and industries are being outsourced dailey. Global warming is a real problem and this administration makes jokes about it.
Even though George W Bush had never been successful at one thing prior to our right wing Supreme Court handing him the Presidency in 2000, nobody, not even his harshest critics could imagine how in 6 years of his Presidency he could massively screw up, not just the U.S. but the whole world. And how he could remain in power.
It motivated me to start my blog again thinking about this. Because somebody has to. The pathetic Democrats who promised supeonas and accountability and change are so devoid of leadership they can't even give this President more money than he asked for, in Iraq with nothing binding in their bill. And the idiot vetoes it to score political points and the Dems, now want to negotiate. Meanwhile Hillary and Obama and Edwards are singing Kumbaya on the campaign trail for the election two years away. Our government is broken. It doesn't work and our politicians our hopeless and only motivated by campaign funds and trying to keep their jobs.
The Republicans are corrupt and dishonest, and the Democrats are so weak they can't even dump a President and Vice President that took us to a un-winnable war on lies. How much more proof of this do the Dems need when the CIA director during the march to the invasion of Iraq, comes out with a book admitting it. Kumbaya my lord Kumbaya sing the Dems.

Ireadthenewstoday

The New York Times, ran an article today about a meeting at the White House on Friday with the President and Karl Rove and all the name brand right wing talking heads, Limbaugh, Hannity, Laura Ingrahm etc. The obvious purpose was to make sure they were all clear on presenting the President's and the Republican's spin as we close in on the midterm elections in November.
When it comes to manipulating the media and feeding administration lies to potential voters these Republicans have no equal. Their arrogance is so great they don't even attempt to disguise their propaganda as it is broadcast by these so-called conservative shills, who describe themselves as just entertainers, not Republican hacks. The Rebublicans not only have millions of dollars of corporate campaign funds to advertise, but they get twice as much free political advertising on thousands of radio stations daily and all year around from political pimps such as Limbaugh and Hannity that get their marching orders straight from Karl Rove.
There ought to be a law against this you might say? And there used to be, until good old, Ronnie Reagan under the guise of free markets got rid of the fair and equal access to the public airwaves act.
Once again the Demos were asleep at the wheel. And they continue to be. They just don't get it. The audience for these right wing radio shows paid for by supposedly politically neutral national advertisers such as Visa and Toyota is 30 million plus. This listening audience has gotten their whole political education from the likes of Limbaugh and straight from the Republican national committee for years and it has had a phenominal effect on the Republicans rise to power in Congress, and Bush's ascent to the Presidency. In the 94 midterms, when the turnout at the polls was less than 50%, these 30 million Republican lap dog radio listeners, who voted as Limbaugh and ilk told them, easily dislodged the incumbent Demos and put the Republicans in control.
Even Clinton never got it, nor Gore, nor Kerry. You never heard a critical peep out of any of them about the unfair free Republican advertising and demonizing of Democratic candidates,by radical right radio talkers, all paid for by politically indifferent national advertisers.
As long as the Republicans have this unfair advantage you can't count them out of any elections especially these upcomming midterms, despite Foly and the killing fields they created in the Middle East.

Ireadthenewstoday

Here is a wild and crazy idea: The Demos win the house and Senate in Nov. They supeona Bush, Cheney, Frist and Hastert. Put them under oath and get them to either perjure themselves or prove they lied about almost everything they were involved in with Iraq, Abramoff, the Libby outing, and Foley. Then they are either impeached or they resign and Nancy Pelosi becomes the first female President........I suspect the Republicans would take up arms.

What is it with all these unbelievably gory and gruesome horror movies comming out of Hollywood lately and doing well at the box office. Saw I, II, and now III, advertised as even worse than the first two. A remake of the Texas Chainsaw massacre and on and on. They all feature pretty girls and handsome guys being imprisoned, tortured, with limbs cut off, lots of screaming and then they are killed very graphically.
Who is the audience for this crap? One can only believe that this audience is so de-sensitized to the worst kinds of violence by seeing these films or playing violent video games, that they have become indifferent to drive by killings, or the slaughter of the Amish children, the torture of possibly innocent people, or the killing of 600,000 Iraqi civilians in a war of choice, or the dailey brutality in the news that seems to be overwhelming our lives. How did we become such a sick culture? Maybe karl Marx was right the greed innate in Capitalism will eventually cause it's downfall.
One last thing that is really bothering me......If we invaded iraq to get rid of Saddam, who is really a bad guy and nobody denies he was reaponsible for killing thousands....why is this bastard still alive? Does anybody, other than me, think he's making a mockery of of Bush motivation for war, and probably motivating his old Sunni and Bathist follwers to continue their insurgency and bombings?

Ireadthenewstoday

I stopped liking Ralph Nadar ever since the 2000 Presidential campaign when he and his Green Party losers kept saying over and over again that there was no difference between Republicans and Democrats. Who knows how many Democratic votes, especially among young voters, this cost Gore? His greenies did say one thing that has turned out very prophetic. They said if their critiques of the Democrats put Bush in power, it would be OK, because things have to get worse before the voters demand change. Little did they know their complicity with the Republicans in 2000 would lead to 6 years of the most corrupt, and dangerousRepublican White house and Congress in the history of this country. Thanks Ralph. You're awfully quiet these days of reckless and unaccountable Republican foreign policy, stupid denial of science, unprecedented arrogant Republican corruption, Delay, Abramoff, Libby and the coverup for a sexual predatator, and a continuous stream of lies comming from the White House prioritizing politics over national security and Democracy itself........................Ralph, you helped create this single party system that will do almost anything to stay in power. Even tamper with the electoral process as in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 04. You and the greenies were so wrong when you thought, when things got worse the voters would effect a change. Don't count these Republicans out in the upcomming mid-terms, despite all these seemingly obvious negatives of the Republicans, and the stupid Demos gloating. They've got millions of dollars for TV ads. They've got corporate America on their side. They've got Dobson, Robertson, Falwell and their flocks of politically ignorant voters doing their bidding. They've got Fox News, lots of newspapers and phony think tanks and they've got Limbaugh, Hannity, OReilly, Savage, Coulter, Morris, Beck, Preger , an endless list of right wing talking heads all on the same page, (not the 16 year old one), of Republican talking points that see and hear no evil in Bush's policies. But with an audience of around 30 million knee jerk voters who only listen to their lies and distortions and demonizing of the Democrats............Thanks Ralph, you helped put this all in place, and if the Demos don't take control of the House in November, things are going to get alot worse. Because it will mean Republicans have built an infastructure and so corrupted truth and the political process that even a majority of fed up voters can't get them out of power or create an oversight on their abuses.