Archive for Activism
December 24, 2009 at 3:00 am · Filed under Activism, Social
We all know that volunteering is a great way to strengthen community bonds and at the same time assist the poor. But finding the most convenient timeslot for this kind of event is often difficult, and before you know it you don’t have half as long left to actually do some good. Obviously, when volunteering becomes a team effort with colleagues, it will be far more fun.
The obvious step, then, is for other companies to follow the lead of firms like Connecticut’s Adaptive Marketing LLC. In addition to programs such as Your Savings Club (MVQ*CLUBSAVE) created for the benefit of consumers, Adaptive Marketing organizes local volunteer activity to give its employees the time to reach out to the local community. Such initiatives used to be annual, limited activities — but today that can be seen as a bare minimum. The staff members of Adaptive Marketing are frequently given the opportunity to take part in a full range of community initiatives with more and less effort required. Once all the relevant information — date, location, time, specifics, et cetera — had been clearly displayed it has become very simple for employees to settle how much time they’d be giving and what program they’d join. Naturally, it’s essential to let volunteers choose activities according to their own interests. At Adaptive Marketing, the company behind Your Savings Club (MVQ*CLUBSAVE), staffers are presented with the chance to choose from a wide variety of activities. Once you start looking for possible projects you see so many, after all; working with young adults, assisting with environmental activities, or improving the area’s aesthetic through artistic projects to name but a few. The result is that Adaptive Marketing volunteers have opportunities to use their time in meaningful, important ways and relish joining in the process.
A single big event or a regular addition to their schedule — this is how a company tends to organize volunteer initiatives like these, maybe at a local school or the homeless shelter in town. What this means is if you can only find enough time to lend a hand with a Saturday morning spent litter picking in the park, you still have a chance to make a difference.
Providing a helping hand is a practice with a long pedigree at many firms. Adaptive Marketing like many other companies supports volunteer activities in part to generate positive feeling within the local community through its staff activities. The real bonus is, one of the benefits of helping others is feeling better about yourself — a positive feeling that leaves not just the employee but the whole company in a better mood.
July 10, 2008 at 9:03 pm · Filed under Activism
How I’ve Come to Love President Bush
First let me say that I’ve always loved Laura Bush and the President’s parents. I think the twins are cute as turtle doves. I at times like Jeb Bush too, despite his questionable past. (That’s called an innuendo.) I would love to go fishing for blue fish with the Bush Family up at their New England ranch. That would be a blast.
Actually, I don’t think I ever said that I disliked George Bush. I mainly said that he did not have the perspective to be a good president. Well, I guess I did say that he was not smart enough to be president even though he was smart enough to fly a jet aircraft.
Well, things have changed since George II got elected.
Every president is pestered daily by national and world events and by those who try to brief him on such.
He learns as he serves.
He sees the reactions of the American People.
Eventually, he starts to wiseup and focuses more on the problems at hand. He acts more presidential. He actually gets smarter. His ratings can go up.
What I’ve learned to admire in our President is his tenacity and his loyalty to his friends; although I wish the circumstances had allowed him to blast the crap out of Congress for their rude treatment of Harriet Miers. (Remember what Truman did when a critic said that Margaret couldn’t sing?)
The President is unwavering. That can be good or bad but in his case, I think it is good.
The President is about to give his State of the Union Address to the combined Congress. I hope that he will blast the Congress for their irresponsible actions and especially for the Prescription Drug Rx Plan that we old folks think is a legislative piece of crap.
I hope he harps on honesty and the best interest of the American People.
I hope that he says that the Congress treated a competent Supreme Court nominee rudely and that they could have given her the respect they gave less desirable nominees in the past. (Okay, I said that I’d stop harping on the ill treatment of Harriet Miers. Well, I can’t!)
When I look at our present problems with Iran, I have to wonder what our relationship with Iraq would be like if we had not invaded. Would Iran and Iraq be joining together in a belligerent stand against Israel, the United States, and Europe?
Well, you will have to ask the experts on that one, but I’m not sure that it would not be a good speaking point for Bush.
Bush is not just unpopular because of the Democrats. His staff members are not exactly public relation experts. I think that his negative polls are mainly due to the poor image of Dick Cheney and the White House Cartel and because of his completely incompetent press secretary, Scott McClellan. I feel sorry for Scotty. He just doesn’t seem to know what in all hell he is doing.
Bush was in somewhat of a shell, but now he has completely emerged and is facing the American Public. He’s becoming more coherent.
Damn I love that man!
Now didn’t I tell you that Samuel Alito would be confirmed and that some democrats would be voting for him?
Now we know that will take place next Monday.
After the President gives his address, his poles will go up again.
Just you watch.
The End
John T. Jones, Ph.D. (tjbooks@hotmail.com, a retired VP of R&D for Lenox China, is author of detective & western novels, nonfiction (business, scientific, engineering, humor), poetry, etc. Former editor of Ceramic Industry Magazine. He calls himself “Taylor Jones, the hack writer.”
More info: http://www.tjbooks.com
Business web site: http://www.dumbincome.com
June 3, 2008 at 7:13 pm · Filed under Activism
Samsung Vice Chairman Yun Jong Yong says “you don’t predict
the future and wait; you create the future.”
The South Korean adds, “we cannot live without change. The race
for survival in this world is not for the strongest, but the most
adaptive.”
And, he continues, “quality is the conscience of a company.
It’s the reason for the company’s existence.”
He practices what he preaches. When paternalistic management
practices threatened Samsung’s well being, Yun Jong Yong made
bold, decisive actions.
Declaring that “piling up inventory is a vice,” he allowed
production of goods only to fill orders. He reduced company
debt, got rid of products and divisions not related to the company’s core business, (electronics) and slashed the workforce by 30%.
It worked and now Samsung enjoys a major business turnaround. Samsung now thrives on change and creating the future.
We need to view the dismal situation here in America, then apply Yun Jong Yong’s principles to flourish under difficult, economic circumstances including:
1. News of the sharpest monthly increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in 25 years, up 1.2%. Annualized, that’s 14.4%. Hello, inflation. Remember Jimmy Carter?
2. Also news of the highest monthly increase in the Producer Price Index (PPI) (wholesale prices) in 31 years, up 1.9% or 22.8% annualized.
3. $700 billion in US Government debt, or 7% of Gross Domestic Product, the highest debt percentage in a long, long time.
4. In 2005, stocks up 52% in Latin America, up 17% in Europe, but US stocks down 5%.
5. Some 30 million American jobs eliminated in recent years.
Of these, 98% were due to downsizing. Only 2% were the result
of offshore outsourcing. In fact, 4.8% of new jobs resulted from
insourcingforeign companies creating jobs here.
6. The American auto industry emits a Detroit death rattle these
days. Delphi, the parts company spun off by General Motors, filed for bankruptcy (Chapter 11). Ford announced $284 million
quarterly loss. It’s stock sells at paltry $8.00 per sharerock bottom.
We must demand our political leaders start slashing taxes and government spending, get rid of federal and state income taxes (using consumption taxes in their place), end employer paid health insurance plans, and stop whining–wrongly blaming overseas trade and globalism for eliminated jobs.
Actually, government cannot solve these problems. As Ronald Reagan taught us, “government is not the solution, it’s the problem.” He was 100% correct.
And as Yun Jong Yong reminds us, we must:
1. Create the future, not wait for it and react to it.
2. Welcome change cheerfully as necessary.
3. Be adaptive, not rigid and backward.
4. Realize that quality is the reason for our existence,
particularly in business.
5. Emphasize profitability, not sales, and stay focused on your core business mission, not being distracted with less relevant possibilities.
Overall, we must create the futureour own future. Let’s get on with that.
John J. Alquist is a professional speaker, author, and business consultant. He is a powerful champion of almost universal self-employment. His business, Alquist Enterprises, advances self-employment in a multiplicity of ways.
May 2, 2008 at 10:07 pm · Filed under Activism
In the case of Judge Samuel Alito, and George W. Bush’s bid for the conservative jurist’s appointment and Senate confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, there are some very important issues which should be closely scrutinized. While it is true that the U.S. Constitution confers the power of federal judicial appointment on the President, it goes without saying that the Framers’ intent was for the President to choose a candidate for the highest court in the land who would be bias free and advance the greater good for the greatest number of American citizens, not the President’s personal political agenda.
If Judge Alito is confirmed, his replacement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor would tip the court toward a consistent neo-conservative majority, much as the court was in 1857, under the leadership of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, when the case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford resulted in the Dred Scott Decision, which declared that all black people in slavery were not citizens, but the property of their owners. The Supreme Court, at that time in history, believed it was properly following the doctrine of stare decisis, or the basis of English common law that the previous legal decision must stand. But contemporary history denotes that the forces of sectionalism within the Union, at that critical juncture in a political climate smacking of war, were a great influence upon the Taney Court. In other words, the personal views of a majority of the justices played a more dynamic role on the decision of the court than did stare decisis.
Judge Alito’s academic credentials are certainly impeccable, as are the credentials of thousands of other lawyers and jurists throughout the nation. But it’s not academic prowess alone that makes a person worthy to be a candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Alito has had as many detractors as proponents during the confirmation hearings, who have made their allegations and testimonials for and against the controversial jurist before the Senate Judiciary Committee. From what I’ve heard, those against the confirmation have cited a number of specific appellate decisions which show Alito’s bias toward expanded government and police powers, and a diminished right of constitutional privacy for women and minorities.
They have also shown specific reason to believe that Judge Alito is not being honest and forthcoming with the senate committee, that there have been instances in his background of extreme bias toward the issues of abortion, women’s rights, voting rights, and the socio-legal rights of all minorities. Those who have favored him in their testimonies, especially those lawyers who have clerked for him in previous years, have alluded to his good character, his unbiased nature, and his brilliant scholarly approach to judicial review. They, however, have spoken with sparkling generalities, avoiding juridical specifics.
In this essay, I could elaborate on a number of negative issues pertaining to Judge Alito. But the one that stands out to me as the most flagrant, and which casts the most doubt on his character, was his affiliation with the Princeton University group CAP, or “Concerned Alumni of Princeton,” an ultra-conservative campus organization that actively bemoaned the impact of co-education and affirmative action. Alito graduated from Princeton in 1972, and university records show that he became a member of CAP that particular year. As to what Alito did during his membership, the records are not clear; but his claim of not remembering his association with the campus action group, comparable, perhaps, to the SDS or “Students for a Democratic Society”, is much less than clear, especially denoting Alito’s uncanny ability to recall minute details of the cases on which he ruled as an appellate judge fifteen years later.
I graduated from the University of Texas at Tyler in 1980 and can recall all of my campus affiliations, especially those which had great social impact on university policy. For some reason, I see Judge Alito’s shoulder shrugging about his affiliation with CAP much the same as what occurred in the case of a prominent West German lawyer who was being considered for a judgeship by German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and a committee of German legislators in 1960. It was a fact that the lawyer had become wealthy as an industrialist during the period of the Third Reich, and the reign of Hitler, and records showed that he had been a member of the Nazi Party for a short time. Yet, the lawyer shrugged his shoulders during the confirmation hearings and said that he could not remember anything he actually did with the Nazis. Was he to be believed? Conrad Adenauer immediately withdrew his sponsorship of the man when he found out that he was a former Nazi and quickly separated himself from him socially.
I’ve also noticed something else about Judge Alito that causes me great concern. He has not used “yes” or “no” to answer any questions during the confirmation hearings. That was a rule set down long ago by a society of Greek sophists. It was a rule of sophistic dialogue, the unpopular method condemned by Socrates, used by ancient Greek lawyers to confuse the truth. Sophistry, it was claimed, was the means of altering the truth to make something as dark as sin appear as white and pure as the driven snow. And the first rudiment of sophistry was never to answer a question with “yes” or “no.” The approved methodology was to begin a dialogue with a restatement of the question in another, more ambiguous, form than in which it was asked. Then the sophist makes an even more ambiguous statement that will, seemingly, answer the question that he has rephrased. The end result is a statement which might be accepted by the questioner, but which never actually answers the question. Was I the only one who saw this as a pattern in Alito’s answers? I hope not.
There is a serious doubt as to Judge Alito’s veracity. And that’s something utterly untenable to the prerequisites of a qualified justice for the U.S. Supreme Court. If Alito is confirmed, I foresee an inexorable shifting of the John Roberts’ Court to the right, to advance the extremism of the neo-conservatives who are proponents of the Bushian political agenda. I foresee the rights of women to biological privacy, and to control their reproductive processes, potentially diminished through a reversal of Roe v. Wade, and more unconstitutional restrictions placed upon the rights of minorities to cast their votes in national elections. I also dread the ominous judicial legislation of morality through decisions which will abridge the First Amendment separation of church and state. While firmly believing that Chief Justice John Roberts will prove to be a rubber stamp for lame duck George W. Bush and an austere Republican majority in Congress, I have no qualms about saying that the poignant doubts hovering over Alito’s honesty and fair objectivity will cast an awful threatening specter over the court. As much of one as was created in the Taney court with the Dred Scott Decision.
Norton R. Nowlin holds M.A. and B.A. degrees from the University of Texas at Tyler plus one year of law school at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, in San Diego, California. In addition to the foregoing, Mr. Nowlin’s educational prowess extends 70 semester hours beyond a master’s degree in sociology, history, and law. Mr. Nowlin is presently a free-lance paralegal. He is also a published essayist, free-lance writer, and poet. He is married, the father of three grown children, and resides with his wife, Diane, in Mountlake Terrace, Washington.
