“I think unfortunately the President was getting bad advice from people who had articulated that the Vice President would have some extraordinary powers that had never been used before .. during certification by Congress” of electoral results, Marc Short tells @PamelaBrownCNN A Tweet by Manu Raju @mkraju Chief Congressional Correspondent, @CNN. Roaming the Capitol halls, covering the Hill and politics. Die-hard Chicago sports fan. Wisconsin Badger for life.
The Tsar just has bad advisers you see A Tweet by Tom Nichols commenting on the RajuTweet @RadioFreeTom Professor, author of “Our Own Worst Enemy.” Curmudgeon. Cat guy. Democracy enthusiast. Board of Contributors, @USAToday, Contributing Writer, @TheAtlantic. commenting on the above Tweet
A million years ago I worked for Enron and I tried to explain the business model to my dad and when I was done he said “that sounds like check-kiting” and I rolled my eyes because DADS and I figured I hadn’t explained it correctly but it turns out I nailed it. A Tweet by Deborah Scaramastra PhD @discoveredpathI ensure orgs hit critical objectives by developing strong leaders, building high performing teams, and augmenting staff when needed.
Historically, maybe not historically, maybe just in our collective imagination, maybe just in the Fairy Tales we are told as children, the King is kind and gentle and he wants only what is best for the country but he is out of touch. The taxes, war, bad roads, you name it, are the fault of the Prime Minister who is cunning and uncaring. I don’t think this is just an artifact of the feudal system, I saw it in the Army with generals and lower leaders, I’ve seen it in companies. I don’t know why we want the king to be good or why we hold these beliefs, it is some unknown algorithm buried deep in our ancestral past, but it is pretty universal. But, the opposite is usually true; it is usually the King who wants more and it is up to the Prime Minister to screw it out of the people.
It seems to me that corporations – and now Limited Liability Companies – are like the prime minister in feudal times. They are the fall guy for the rich owners. We read about bad things that corporations are doing as if they were independent operators, but they aren’t they are agents of their owners, well, owner/CEOs. We read about something bad that Exxon did, not something bad that Darren Woods, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Exxon, did. But Exxon did it because Woods, and probably the rest of the Board, wanted Exxon to do it.
There are exceptions – Zuckerberg comes to mind – but, when we get pissed at the massive amount of profit that Johnson & Johnson makes, $17.3 billion even while they are being sued because of asbestos in their baby powder, we don’t get pissed at the CEO, Alex Gorsky, who made $19,590,777 last year telling Johnson & Johnson to do the things that piss us off. Like the old feudal kings, our new royalty manages to protect themselves.
A couple of days ago, Michele and I were walking and we passed a woman with an extremely happy Dachshund, Michele turned to me and said “I love Dachshunds, they are always so happy.” It got us talking about different breed dogs and their personalities, for lack of a better word, and how much they differ in shape, size, and how that has affected their personalities. Domestic dogs are really a variable species, especially compared to cats or humans, or cows or horses for that matter, and all this variation has come pretty quickly. Something like 15,000 years ago our dogs were still wolves, Canis lupus, that’s somewhere between 5,000 to 7,500 generations. That does not seem like many generations to go from a wolf to a Dachshund (and an Old English Sheepdog in the other direction).
Humans, however, have changed very little in the last 7,500 generations. Yeah, we now come in different colors and hair textures but, compared to the Dachshund versus the Old English Sheepdog, we are pretty much the same. And so are our personalities. Even though we overfocus on different skin tones or nose shapes, we are not really a very malleable species.
Interesting concepts, thank you, Steve, and pat phrases come to mind, Nature v. Nurture the most obvious. It’s also poor taste these days to make anything of ‘malleability’. Think of what National Geographic used to be but how how impolitic it has become to make anything of skin colour or noses. As to the right of kings, wolves and other species function successfully where an alpha is strong, and one might consider how this applies to us as in, say, the appeal to so many people of the awful Former Guy.