Business | Bob Schwartz

April 26, 2017

Sometimes I Think I Must Go Mad: ‘Much-loved’ giant rabbit found dead after United flight to O’Hare

Oh, sometimes I think I must go mad. Where will it all end?
Groucho Marx as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff in Horse Feathers (1932)

Here is the story in today’s Washington Post.

Here is the summary: A woman in the UK raises giant rabbits. Darius is 4 feet, 4 inches long, a Guinness World Record (see photo above). His 10-month-old son Simon is already 3 feet 5 inches long. Simon was sold to a buyer in Chicago and shipped via United Airlines. Simon died sometime during the trip.

Not a day goes by that doesn’t hint at some degree of craziness, or scream about it. Maybe it is always like this or maybe we are now more sensitized to it from frequent exposure.

Where will it all end?

Minister of Finance: Here is the Treasury Department’s report, sir. I hope you’ll find it clear.
Rufus T. Firefly, President of Freedonia (Groucho Marx): Clear? Huh. Why a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can’t make head or tail of it.
Duck Soup (1933)

January 22, 2017

What If We Took on the Character of the Places Our Clothes Are Made?

pyramids

I try to buy clothing made in America, but as a practical matter that’s very hard. Most of the basic, reasonably-priced items are made globally. Maybe that will change sometime, but it has been the trend for decades.

One thing I do, however, is look at the labels of the global clothes I wear. As I looked today I wondered: what if, in some of kind of magic, the clothes imparted the wearer with some of the character of the places they began?

Here is today’s lineup:

Shirt: Egypt
Jeans: Mexico
Briefs: Nicaragua

That itinerary does change from day to day, and includes Vietnam, Bangladesh, China, Honduras and other ports of call.

Is the spirit of Egypt in my shirt, and does it pass through my skin? How about my Mexican jeans? And what about Nicaragua, so very close to my very important parts?

Something to think about as we wrestle with the impact of globalism.

November 18, 2016

Democratic Millionaires and Billionaires To Meet in Palm Beach to Plan the Future of the Party of the People

For a while today, I thought that Kanye West announcing he would have voted for Trump—if he had voted—was the most interesting bit of news.

But this from Politico is much better:

David Brock on Thursday night emailed more than 200 of the biggest donors on the left — including finance titans George Soros, Tom Steyer and Donald Sussman — inviting them to a retreat in Palm Beach over inauguration weekend to assess what Democrats did wrong in 2016, figure out how to correct it and raise cash for those initiatives.

For the Democratic establishment, it is not just that they are pretending that Bernie Sanders never happened. They are pretending that the election never happened, or that what did happen had nothing to do with the party being hopelessly and cluelessly out of touch with the constituencies it needs to win elections.

Thomas Frank wrote about this in his recent book Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? It is an insightful work, and one that presages and sort of predicts the results of this presidential election. It deserves a complete reading, and his multi-faceted analysis is not quickly summarized. But here is one aspect:

ON THE LIBERALISM OF THE RICH

I am pressing on a sensitive point here. Democrats cherish their identification as the Party of the People, and they find it unpleasant to be reminded that affluent professionals are today among their most dedicated supporters. Democrats’ close relationship with the successful is not something they advertise or even discuss openly.

Exceptions to this rule are rare. One of the few works I know of that seems to approve, albeit with reservations, of liberalism’s alliance with a segment of the upper crust is the 2010 book Fortunes of Change, written by the philanthropy journalist David Callahan. The premise of his argument is that our new, liberal plutocracy is different from plutocracies of the past because rich people today are sometimes very capable. “Those who get rich in a knowledge economy,” the journalist tells us, are well-schooled; they often come from the ranks of “highly educated professionals” and consequently they support Democrats, the party that cares about schools, science, the environment, and federal spending for research…

There’s a simple reason that financial firms rallied to the Democrat [Barack Obama] on that occasion, Callahan suggests: because people on Wall Street, being very smart and very well-educated, are natural liberals….

To this honor roll of intellectual and financial achievement, Callahan appends the following observation: “This is definitely not the Sarah Palin demographic.”

No. But neither is it a demographic with any particular concern for the fate of working people.

In addition to Frank’s book, also recommended is the new book from Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In. I don’t think Bernie’s going to be invited to the Palm Beach gathering, but boy howdy, that would be something.