Andrew Cuomo, current New York State Attorney General, just announced his candidacy for NY Governor. Mr. Cuomo, to Mr. Gripes, seems perfectly suited to take on the entrenched ossification that poses as the state legislature. Take a cursory glance at the countenance of Mr. Cuomo, and you’ll comprehend why immediately: unlike many politicians, Mr. Cuomo can barely conceal his anger and his accumulative resentments. He’ll pummel those corrupt and lily-livered legislators to a pulp.
One problem, though: with Andrew, New Yorkers are compelled to deal with Mario, his father, once again. This is a pact with the devil. The elder Cuomo, to Mr. Gripes, was an abject failure as governor of New York, and, to a dispirited liberal, a colossal disappointment. Talk, talk, talk, blah, blah, blah: big words, fine diction, and liberalism’s demise were Mr. Cuomo’s only legacies. Any substantial achievements? None. Mario Cuomo was 100% hot air, 1,000% baloney, and 2,000% old, antique politics. And, what an ego: he turns a question regarding his son’s seemingly overwhelming lead over all challengers into an prolonged explanation of how the Great Mario beat Ed Koch when no one gave him a chance.

Please, Mario, give us New Yorkers a break: yes, continue raking in those $60,000 fees for those gorgeous, polysyllabic and inconsequential speeches, but stay the hell away from Albany.
Even Bob Costas, a most articulate sports announcer, was rendered virtually speechless: “preposterous” was his one-word description of Stephen Strasburg’s pitching debut for the Washington Nationals –14 strikeouts, including seven in a row at the conclusion of his night, and the victory, with a capacity crowd of 40,000 standing and cheering with every pitch. For one evening, we were reminded again that baseball is America’s everlasting, elegant national pastime, not quite ready to be usurped by a bunch of 370-pound, steroid-bloated Popeyes crushing each other with bone-splintering force in howling, sub-zero climes.

In 2009, The Federal government allotted in its budget $ 150 billion for education. Consider this: outlays by the Federal government account for o  nly 10% of total funding for education; 90% of the monies come from state and local governments. Just extrapolate that out: in 2009, $1.5 trillion was spent on public education in America. Mr. Gripes can come to only one conclusion: we must be insane.
This country has spent many trillions of dollars on public-school education of our children over the past 50 years, and has there been a thimbleful of improvement? Nope, the system has essentially collapsed. Public schools, especially in urban areas, are a disgrace.

Mr. Gripes, in fact, would wager the equity in his coop that half of all high-school graduates in inner-city  schools don’t possess a nine-grade reading level. Oh sure, I know there’ll be a million more position papers and a million more overpaid consultants telling us taxpayers that all we need to do is throw even more money at the problem, and schools soon will be producing graduates fully capable of facing an increasingly complicated, sophisticated labor market. Yeah, and Humpty-Dumpty was put back together again, too.
One approach that’s not going to work is the now fashionable trend of tying a teacher’s performance evaluation and professional advancement to test scores of students; if my livelihood were tied to scores of my students, you can bet my only approach in the classroom would be gearing instruction directly to that test, which is probably not in the students’ best interests. How about charter schools? A fine concept, creating schools with much smaller class sizes. But, in cities with 1,000,000 or more kids attending public schools, it’s equivalent to Mrs. O’Leary throwing a pail of water on the Chicago Fire – too little, too late to make a dent in the massive problem. And, the teachers union is now a huge obstructionist element in all of this – they’re only concerned with their aging constituents’ tenure rights and spiraling pension benefits.
Mr. Gripes does offer one possible solution to this horrific and expensive situation: have every student take an aptitude-skills test as they enter seventh grade: diligent and capable children interested in college are directed one way; the others learn a trade, based on their aptitude proclivities: perhaps a career in auto mechanics, a physical trainer, a physician’s assistant, a dental hygienist, a chef, fashion design, computer repair, or any of a hundred different substantive livelihoods. Let’s be proactive, instead of making kids take irrelevant courses in algebra, earth science or the history of Mesopotamia. That’s a waste of time.
Yes, Mr. Gripes expects to be soundly criticized by Great-Society, pie-in-the-sky, arteriosclerotic liberals for selling the kids short, but, be real, Lyndon Johnson’s ridiculously grandiose plans for education were abysmal failures; let’s at least stop the hemorrhaging of cash that we’ve endured for half-a-century. All-points-bulletin to all the head-in-the-sand ostriches out there: we’re broke.
Derivatives? Mr. Gripes has for months tried to get his arms around what the hell a derivative is, and he must confess he’s still doesn’t fully grasp the concept. Yes, it’s a futures contract of some sort, but after that, I’m stumped. One fact he does know: in the mortgage-securities market, it’s fundamentally a ‘side-bet’ on whether the mortgage market will rise or fall, and a wrong bet can cause huge losses, if leverage levels are overextended. It’s very, very dangerous, as Americans found out a couple of years ago. And, a derivative is not crucial for the financial markets to function. That leads to one conclusion: let’s just ban them. I know, of course, that Wall Street loves derivatives; financial institutions made $29 billion off of them in 2009.

The argument that derivatives, of no intrinsic value in the functioning of American capital markets, should be allowed just so Wall Street traders can earn egregious fortunes, falls apart when juxtaposed against the explicit perils these instruments can pose. For a change, can the collective will of this country rise up in protest, and tell Wall Street, ‘Enough is enough. The financial health and security of the country comes first. You can take your derivatives and shove it.’ Unfortunately, a supine Congress, awash with Wall Street millions, doesn’t have the cajones or the integrity to terminate permanently the great gamble of derivatives trading.
Zenyatta – Mr. Gripes loves horseracing, and not for the reason you’d think. Sure, one of the great thrills of being on this earth is observing an intrepid steed on which you possess a $20 ticket ‘on the nose’ thunder down the stretch, gliding to an easy victory of five or six lengths. That’s undiluted elation.
But, to Mr. Gripes, and my betting acquaintances will not accept this, it’s the animal alone that’s the great allure of horse racing.

If my readers ever have the opportunity to stand near a thoroughbred racehorse, it’s a breathtaking experience: all of the animal’s extraordinary genetic gifts just jump out: beauty, sinew, willfulness, grace, pride, poise, and, above all, overwhelming strength. Other stellar qualities emerge from the races: courage, perseverance, an unquenchable desire to run faster than his competitors, and sheer athleticism.
At this moment, right under our noses, all of us may be witnessing the most spectacular racehorse of them all. I know, I know, Secretariat was magnificent, but he usually won by fifteen or 20 lengths – there was no drama. This horse wins in a breathtaking fashion.
The horse is Zenyatta. And, delightfully, Zenyatta is not one of those head-case, emotionally brittle male race horses. She’s in fact a filly, and has won each one of her 17 races. She doesn’t bore herself silly reading dreary authors like Toni Morrison and Louise May Alcott or bone up on suffrage history to give herself a confidence boost in dealing with stronger, nastier, and angrier males. With a derisive sneer, she just whooshes by them all and wins.
And, here’s what makes Zenyatta so exciting: she gives all her competitors a head start; 300 yards out of the gate, she settles invariably into last place, way, way behind, and remains there for most of the race. As the race comes out of the final turn, heading down the stretch toward the finish line, she picks up her pace and starts her kick, picking off horses as if they’re standing still. 150 yards from the finish, Zenyatta, having passed 8 or 9 horses, is now running with a champion’s confidence; she’s running effortlessly, ears up, tail straight out, beating the crap out of the rest of the field. The indomitable Zenyatta will not be denied.
In the 2009 Breeders Cup Classic last November, she ran against the best stallions in the world. Indeed, this race was a little more difficult for her, but at the end there she was, flying past champion thoroughbreds one-by-one, to win again by a neck.
The track announcer, as Zenyatta **crossed the finish line, blurted out just one word, accentuating and elongating each syllable: ‘U-N—B –E—L-I-E-V—A—B-L-E!!
May you run for 100 years, Zenyatta.
** Hyperlink of a typical Zenyatta race: Right ‘click’, then ‘open hyperlink.’
http://www.mistergripes.com
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Jim Israel

June 28, 2010

By Jim Israel

June 4, 2010

E-mail: jamesisrael77@yahoo.com

It’s Time to Go…Let’s study for a moment a film [now on DVD] that Mr. Gripes has no intention of ever viewing, but for whom one brief glance at a theatre trailer told him everything he needed to know:  that is, the movie stunk. The film is ‘Extraordinary Measures,’ starring that old, leathery stegosaurus Harrison Ford. The plot? My readers, undoubtedly observers of too many bad films themselves, have certainly seen a version of this a million times: A stylish, yuppie couple is confronted with a horrific scenario: their child, angelic in mien, comes down with a debilitating illness, and no one can furnish a diagnosis as the child’s condition worsens.

Remote, despotic doctors turn them away, telling the parents they can do nothing. The desperate parents have no place to turn to. Then, a miracle happens: they fortuitously meet our humble hero, himself long shunned by the medical establishment, who initiates a fight against a ferocious bureaucracy and heartless doctors; lo-and-behold, the child’s life is saved. It’s Hollywood tear-jerking garbage, and it’s been a theme that’s been recycled for eons. In this version, Mr. Ford is the savior, exclaiming at one point in a bellow of outrage, as he sits at his desk, “No one tells me how to run my lab!” Imagine: these words emerge from the mouth of the same person who years ago fought off a gazillion slithery snakes, rescued voluptuous damsels from the clutches of swarthy, scimitar-wielding criminals, and halted runaway vehicles while hanging on to the roof by his fingernails. Now, he’s behind a desk, running a laboratory. Whoopee.

Final worldwide box-office receipts: $11 million, which was probably a fraction of the amount of cash some poor sap-producer was compelled to folk over for Mr. Ford’s services. Stick a folk in him. Harrison, you’re done.

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Saving themselves from themselves – Let’s get something straight right off the bat: Mr. Gripes, despite his often oracular, know-it-all tone, doesn’t for one minute think he’s as smart or as shrewd as most of those top-dog chief executives we hear and read about so much. Hey, to get to be king-of-the-hill of any large institution certainly takes a lot of brains, patience, tenacity and superior social skills. But, Mr. Gripes is certain of this: almost to a man, these big shots are not only totally wrong, they’re borderline hysterical about one issue: regulation.

Lately, with great impetus from the right’s almost pathological screed about free enterprise, Big Business screams constantly that profits in their particular industry will be severely diminished and their ability to run their businesses crippled if powerful regulations are put in place.

Mr. Gripes takes an entirely different tack: he thinks an intelligent, properly managed, no-loophole regulatory climate is a boon to industry. In fact, strong oversight measures may indeed save these very institutions from destroying themselves in an orgy of greed not dissimilar to the debacle we’ve witnessed over the past few years. As history has shown repeatedly, boom times plant the seeds of institutional euphoria and amnesia, which lead to self-immolation. Regulation can act as a buffer.

Look at the awful British Petroleum oil-spill in the Gulf, for example: if the oil industry had invested just $500,000 [per rig] in a shut-down safety device, instead of going all-out to defeat a proposal that would have mandated the use of the mechanism on drilling platforms [I’m not surprised it was defeated – after all, since 2002, the oil industry has spent a mind-boggling $893 million on lobbying efforts.], this whole sordid, costly mess could possibly have been avoided. By rejecting a piece of safety equipment costing a picayune half-a-million dollars, BP will end up squandering tens of billions of its hard-earned assets.

To get this regulation defeated, the oil companies very likely lied about its efficacy as well; they persuaded Congress that the safety equipment did not work, even as European countries reported this particular gizmo in their oil fields has operated successfully and without problems for years. BP is a prime example of how a company’s insistence on short-term profits over prudent long-term management of its resources eventually causes great damage to the institution.

How about the big banks and Wall Street? Institutions such as Citicorp, in their pell-mell stampede for profits, simply lost their heads, and put their very institutions at risk with their over-leveraged loans, off-the-balance-sheet obfuscations, and a host of other barely legal stratagems. And, where did it get Citicorp in the end? When the dust cleared after the apocalypse of 2008, Citicorp had given back TEN years of profit, basically falling into insolvency. Mr. Gripes will say it again: Citicorp, and essentially every other large financial institution, in the absence of firm oversight and accountability, ran off the cliff, jeopardizing their very existence. If there had been tough regulations without exceptions in place, and competent individuals to implement them, Citicorp would still be today a sound, profitable and proud institution, instead of a shell of its former self. That’s irrefutable.

But, unfortunately, these corporations never learn. The allure of huge year-end bonuses propels senior management to game the system constantly – deception and concealment are the orders of the day still. That inevitably leads to big trouble. Just the other day, Mr. Gripes read in the Wall Street Journal that, even after all the losses and all the shame, Citicorp still creates fictitious quarterly statements; Mr. Gripes is no expert on this, but the legerdemain involved offloading some assets to create a false picture of reduced liabilities and less leverage. At its essence, it’s really a blatant manipulation of the stock price, and that’s patently dishonest. Yet they’re still doing this. Companies just cannot help themselves.

My point: Regulations, done correctly, save avaricious corporations, in their insatiable and all-consuming drive for profit now, from an ultimate demise. Never underestimate, readers, the ability of businesses to run blindly over cliffs in their maniacal push for returns. Staggering, runaway profits always bring on rampant institution-wide denial. Regulations and rules would prevent these companies from injuring themselves, or even committing suicide.