Let’s Hire a Successful Businessman.

If you’re happy with Trump and his “turbo speed” vaccine, because it’ll save us time, and cure the disease and that awful “government bureaucratic waste” thing, and it will get here quicker and better because Trump is a “successful business man”.  Well great!  Successful has a very simple definition, right?

Please, just try to remember Martin Shkreli, (former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals).  He’s the successful business man who succeeded in buying a company that had a patent on a life and death cure for a deadly disease.  After he bought the company (with money he made in a totally different, not in anyway related, business), he immediately raised the price of this drug by 5,000%.  If this drug had been costing you $13.50 a week; he raised it to $750 a week.   Martin “successfully” purchased the company; it cost you, his customer, everything.  You see, he successfully collected lots more money for something that was already available.  A great success!   He succeeded in telling you: “Your money or your life.”   He was a very “successful businessman”.

Now, please ask yourself who is going to get the life saving Covid19 vaccine and how much is it going to cost.  Please, someone ask this question.  Given the record of Big Pharma and Martin, I think I know the answer.  

By the way, Martin Shkreli went to jail, not for LEGALLY extorting dying people of their money.  He’s in jail for cheating his investors.  Now THAT cannot be conscienced!  Stealing from the dying maybe OK, but stealing from rich investors?  WELL, we know what to do about that!

Now, how much money do you think those first anti Covid19 vaccines are going to cost?   Who do you think will get them?  If Trump is taking credit for them, then where do you think the money will go?

When someone tells you someone is a “successful businessman” ask yourself to whom the success accrues.   

You see, it’s never enough for those who have (always had) too much.  

YOU know what he meant to say

Some folks will recall that recently in the Washington Post News Paper, I took Kathleen Parker to task for suggesting that we should all (media people included) translate Trump’s words into something decipherable.   (You know; YOU know what he meant to say….). 

                       I disagree. 

Maya Angelou said: “When someone tells you who they are, believe them the FIRST TIME.”  (Emphasis added). 

Donald Trump tells us all who he is, every day, sometimes several times a day.

It may be the job of indulgent parents, elementary school teachers, and therapists to stretch what they heard someone say into something acceptable; but that’s not the job of the American people (much, much less the media reporters).  It's not your job when listening to the president as he is making official statements of policy, his intentions, and his vision of what American is all about to translate him into cogent truthfulness.  He’s the president; he’s speaking; what more are our responsibilities above listening?

Why should we listen at all if we have to translate what he’s said into what we HOPE he meant to say?  We might as well elect an 8 Ball!  (Younger folks might have to look that one up).

I’ve given up on trying to communicate on Twitter, but I do believe that

#rightwordsmatter   If you say it; own it, or apologize if it’s shown to be wrong.  

Don’t expect anybody to clean up your mess just because you’re Trump, or one of his supporters.

Trump is insane; what's your excuse for accepting what he says?

More Floating Boats A "Bonu$" Sequel

 

I expect that all you honest,

“Rising tides lift all boats, ‘the genius invisible hand of the market’ people”,

(you, you bottom line; PROFIT is GOD and efficiency is defined as:  MY PROFIT MARGIN)      economists and rabid capitalists…  You know who you are.

 

You will forthrightly acknowledge the fact that all insurance companies pay a hefty bonus to their workers that have an amazing talent.  The talent is to DENY perfectly reputable claims; the bigger the claim; the better the bonu$ for the denier.  That’s a big plus for the bottom line: the company profit margin.  They’ll even argue that if they don’t make a profit, they can’t offer you “insurance”.  Then their CEOs go home with 7 figure bonuse$ of their own; sometimes even when they’ve been fired for not delivering big profits for the investors.

 

The other side of this ridiculous coin is the business model that doesn’t recognize cost benefit analyses, much less common sense and simple decency.

 

I just spent an hour on the phone with a “very nice” representative of a company that I had a very reasonable, reputable claim about their refusal to honor their responsibility to me.  The hour went away.  This “very nice person” was paid an hourly wage that was…    wait for it:

 

an order of magnitude greater than my reasonable request.

 

I guess they made a statement.  I guess they made an “example” of me.  By throwing their own money away by spending more effort assuming that I was the crook, they proved that they are the crooks.