Gone Fishing

It's time for a break. It's not you... it's me. I mean, you've been great. But sometimes people change and their interests diverge and their lives don't blend like they did before. And even though I still love you and want us to be friends, like, forever, no matter what, I just really think I need a break right now. Let's touch base again in a few months and see what happens.

Think, Dammit! is going on hiatus for the summer.

As much as I enjoy all of the hours I spend linking through countless news articles, reading the infinite range of viewpoints regarding said news articles, and then spewing forth my own haphazard thoughts here on this blog, I really need to start spending more time offline. For one thing, my ass is getting huge. I mean, really, it's just huge. It needs to be exercised more often. And for another thing, my house and kids are showing signs of neglect. Last night my nine year old had to be directed back to the shower three times to remove the dirt that's been accumulating around his neck. Also, I realized that I've read only two books in the past year. I used to read a book a week... now I am consumed by what I read on the intertubes. It's not that I plan to return to my pre-1997 sheeple status, but I do need to make different use of my time. At least until the weather puts me back into cocoon mode.

Mom, thanks for being the most loyal of readers. I see many deck parties in our future this summer so I know we'll still have lots to talk about. :-)

Aunt T, still have that case of beer to deliver to Clifton's liberal media elite. Hope to see you soon... glad to hear B's surgery went well, we were worried. Give her many xoxoxo from me.

Cousin Matthew, in case you see this... where the hell did you go? I miss your presence, even if I had to google some of your brilliantly obscure cultural references. My mind has felt a little more closed w/o your commentary.

And to the occasional passers by... see you in September.

Are We Fucking Stupid?

I read things like this Chinese plan to buy into the private equity firm, Blackstone, and I have to wonder what the hell is wrong with us.

Now that private equity buyouts of publicly held companies is all the rage, China is ready to buy their piece of the corporate American dream. That's right: No longer is China content with being our banker... now they want to be our boss, too. And since they're willing to fork over $3B, the Wall Street folks are (naturally) willing to behave like the good little capitalist whores they are.

Sure, China is buying non-voting shares in order to fly under the radar (for now). But we all know that the people who have the most money in this country are only motivated to make more money. All they need to do is wait for the sheeple to go back to watching the next season of "The Bachelor" and they'll have this country sold faster than a rhinestone studded toaster cozy on the Home Shopping Network.

Think of the synergy that could be achieved with Communist China providing the cheap labor that equity firms like to leverage for maximum return on their investment. Pretty cool, eh?

Just try not to think about what will happen when global capitalism and national security collide. Not thinking about it is what the corporatists are counting on.

UPDATE:
Another take on it (with more technical analysis and less swearing).

And here's someone who says my view is mere fear mongering even while his own views are shallow, pure, economics (without much concern with national fallout from such economic policies). I don't put much faith in economic purists, as they're the type who look at the stock market as the sole indicator of economic policy success. I would much rather have someone looking at other indicators to better understand economic policy benefit. Those people used to be called Democrats. I'm anxious to see if they still exist in any form.

Here's a little something I stumbled onto... Bush and Blackstone founder spent a little quality fundraising time together just last month.

Immigration Proposal

I finally got around to reading the details on the new immigration proposal everyone is so worked up over. The United States has extremely generous immigration policies (compared to other countries) so I suppose any attempt to tighten is going to seem extreme. That said, I'm pondering a few of the details.

1. The point system is weighted heavily on skills and education - 75%. That's an interesting requirement given that we've been told for years that these folks are necessary to "do the jobs Americans won't do." Surely someone skilled and educated isn't going to be interested in working in a meat packing plant or washing dishes in a restaurant.
2. The $5000 dollar fine is pretty steep for someone washing dishes or working in a meat packing plant. There was a long stretch of time where I couldn't have scraped up $5000 with a shovel. I suppose it's not a bad thing to 'punish' illegals who have been knowingly breaking the law, and I suppose it's not a bad thing to 'means test' immigration applicants. I just hate seeing yet another policy that favors people who have money over people who are trying to earn some.
   

For Brendan

This is what I was telling you about last night...



...although I think I like this version better:

Conspiracy Theory

I'm not really one for conspiracy theories but I thought this Kennedy assassination bullet study was interesting.

Regarding the assassination conspiracy theory, the two questions I would apply are "Is it possible?" and "Is it probable?" It always struck me as amazing that some poor schmuck like Oswald would be able to pull off an assassination like that and then immediately become the victim of one (conveniently before he could make any public statements). Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? I wouldn't think so.

It will probably remain one of history's maddening mysteries.

McCain Just Says No To Torture

I missed another debate last night (Republicans in South Carolina) but I did read that, once again, McCain stood alone.

Mr. McCain, who was tortured for years as a Vietnam prisoner of war, reiterated the anti-torture position he prominently took in Senate debate over a detainee-treatment law -- and which, he noted, was supported by senior military officials. By torture, the nation would "never gain as much as we'd lose in world opinion," he said, and "the more physical pain you inflict…the more they're going to tell you what they think you want to hear."

But Mr. McCain was alone, as the other candidates took hardline positions that pleased the conservative crowd. Mr. Giuliani said he would tell interrogators "they should use every method they could think of." Mr. Romney said "we should double Guantanamo" to hold more detainees -- far away from access to U.S. lawyers. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback retorted, "Is it about U.S. lives, or how you're going to be perceived in the world?" Mr. Tancredo quipped that faced with suspects who might have information about an attack, "I'm looking for Jack Bauer at that time" -- a reference to the star character in the hit Fox TV drama "24" who often tortures suspects for information.

Can you imagine being a Vietnam POW, tortured for years, clinging desperately to the belief that your morality and humanity set you apart from your enemy captors? Now imagine that you've returned to see, some years later, your party's players tripping over each other to be seen as the most pro-torture candidate.

Torture is only effective if you're on an episode of "24" and your name is Jack Bauer. People want to believe it's a real option because it makes them feel less helpless than they really are. That's an emotional response, and not a particularly helpful one. Even our new national hero, General Petraeus, has acknowledged that torture is not a practical solution... especially in the context of nation building.

Going For The Quick Fix

This depresses me:

U.S. firms could build plants here, but fewer are doing so because it's cheaper to make goods elsewhere.

That's had a particularly negative effect on U.S. productivity, van Dijk said. "We're starting to see a sharp decline in productivity. Spending on equipment and software is growing, but nowhere near the rate you'd normally expect at this stage of the economic cycle."

His fears are shared by Stephen Biggar, director of U.S. equity research at S&P. "Companies are limiting expenses, but they're also limiting growth opportunities down the road. At some point it'll catch up to them," Biggar said.

Productivity growth, which easily topped 2% or 3% for much of the past decade, slowed to 1.1% in the first quarter vs. a year earlier.

Maybe I worry too much. Maybe it's just another business cycle. Maybe there's some master pan-corporate plan. I don't think so, tho. I think this kind of short term thinking is going to stay in vogue as long as big biz sets themselves up as bankers instead of producers of goods and services.

Anyway, read the whole thing.

Around The Intertubes

• Bush has appointed a War Czar. Didn't that job used to be called 'Commander and Chief'? I don't get it.
  

• Jerry Falwell is dead. I've never been a big Falwell fan so I'll just say this: He lived a long, full life and may we all be that lucky.

• Wolfowitz behaved with impropriety on the job and now it's time for him to go. As much as I have enjoyed watching Bush dig his heels in like a spoiled four year old (without the slightest pretense of mental maturity), and as much as I'm saddened that the US is involved in yet another institutional scandal, I think it's stupid for him to keep fighting this one.

• Do people understand that Bush sees himself as above the law and, furthermore, chooses to surround himself only with others who will support that view?

• Firedoglake has a good post on Feingold-Reid. It's a lot of posturing, of course, but the fact is that the Dems don't have the votes to force a troop withdrawal while, on the other hand, have a constituency that is demanding it. Interestingly, Republicans are starting to warm up to the idea of enforced benchmarks. I say 'enforced' because Bush has long claimed to support benchmarks without ever actually holding the Iraqis to any of them. Meanwhile, the Iraqi parliament is still scheduled for their two month vacation.
  

• US Attorney scandal tied to bogus voter fraud accusations? Sure looks that way.
  

• The Washington Note thinks Bush has got it right on The Law of the Sea. First I've heard of it!

• University professors are endangered in Iraq. I wouldn't be so melodramatic as to claim a linear similarity between the US and Iraq on this matter but I don't mind doing so in the abstract: There is something very unsettling about the open, educated mind to authoritarian types. While US professors are only rhetorically under fire for their 'liberal' minds, Iraqi professors face the threat of death for theirs. The dynamic is the same, it's only different by degree (pun intended!).
  

• Good news in Iraq. Ultimately paving the way for some sort of peacenik Iraq state? I don't think so. As much as I'm happy to think that the militias recognize that they've lost control, they've still... well, lost control.

• Americans like the IRS better than the airlines. I would probably say the same although I think what I really hate most is the process of flying. I fly American whenever I can since I've never had anything horrible happen with them (my worst experiences by far have been with Delta and United). But the process of flying is always 'hurry up and wait' all the while shuffling along like cattle through a chute. I have to work myself into some kind of zen-like state just to get through it with my sanity intact.
  

Happy Mothers Day

I know... I'm a slacker. Better late than never, right?

I was reminded of this Mother's Day gem when Andrew Sullivan reposted it this year. An oldie but a goodie!

Chevron and Oil For Food

It seems like just yesterday that Bush was trying cajole our allies into joining the great Iraq Invasion. Unfortunately for him, France, Germany, and Russia weren't just not onboard; they were kind of being assholes about not being onboard. This posed a bit of an issue for Bush, who was simultaneously trying to convince the American people that the great Iraq Invasion was in their best interest. Hesitation from the allies cast a pallor of doubt on his scheme.

What to do, what to do.

If you're Bush, you simply find a way to discredit your detractors. And so, in early 2004, amidst a backdrop of lingering Bush pissyness toward our allies, Fox News broke the story of the UN Oil for Food scandal. Or selectively broke it, as the case may be. Although the dirty deed had been going on for quite some time with the full knowledge and complicit silence of the UN (of which the US is a ranking member), the scandal presented Bush with a timely opportunity to make our allies look like allies we could do without. And so it was that Fox News flashed us tantalizing and infuriating pieces of carefully wrapped scandal tidbits. Quite coincidentally, of course, France, Germany, and Russia were revealed to be greedy and slimy by virtue of harboring greedy and slimy corporations. Conveniently, we didn't get to see the "full list" of greedy and slimy corporations because of "pending US investigations". But we saw what we were meant to see and in this way the scandal reveal served its purpose.

Flash forward to this (sorry it's not the original news link... damn the subscription wall!):

Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, is preparing to acknowledge that it should have known kickbacks were being paid to Saddam Hussein on oil it bought from Iraq as part of a defunct United Nations program, according to investigators.

The admission is part of a settlement being negotiated with United States prosecutors and includes fines totaling $25 million to $30 million, according to the investigators, who declined to be identified because the settlement was not yet public.

The penalty, which is still being negotiated, would be the largest so far in the United States in connection with investigations of companies involved in the oil-for-food scandal.

***

According to the Volcker report, surcharges on Iraqi oil exports were introduced in August 2000 by the Iraqi state oil company, the State Oil Marketing Organization. At the time, Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state, was a member of Chevron’s board and led its public policy committee, which oversaw areas of potential political concerns for the company.

Ms. Rice resigned from Chevron’s board on Jan. 16, 2001, after being named national security advisor by President Bush.

Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, referred inquires to Chevron.

Ooooops.

Fox News, so triumphant in their role as muckraker lo those many years ago, has remained conspicuously silent on this latest bit of news. I stopped over for some of that famous O'Reilly outrage and maybe a boycott or two but sadly, no. Not even an honorable mention in the teeny tiny space Fox reserves for actual news headlines.

This And That

• Kirsten took 2nd place in the school's annual poetry slam tonight. For those keeping track (hi Mom!), this is her third year competing and the third year she's placed. Sophomore year she got 3rd, Junior year she got 1st. Go Kirsten!!! Whoot whoot!

• Obama has had a rough month. I was at an actual out-of-the-house social event on the night of the first Dem primary debate so I didn't get to watch it but I did hear he wasn't at peak. And now he's overstated the recent Kansas tornado death toll. *sigh

• Cheney is off to Iraq to reprimand the Iraqi government as they prepare to take a two month vacation. Good. Per Drudge:

  One congressman said, "How can our daughters and sons spill their blood while the Iraqi parliament goes on vacation? The president responded, "The Vice President is over there to tell them, 'Do not go on vacation.'"

  
  

From Red To Blue

An interesting (and frequently amusing) story about one man's journey from the dark side.

Asking Questions

I've written before about the possibility of Saudi Arabia funding the Iraq insurgency. Doesn't that seem like a far more likely (if not obvious) source of support than Iran? At least someone else is starting to ask the question.

Oh.My.Gawd.

I needed a laugh.

Why I'll Never Be A True Libertarian

UPDATE: The timing of the story, below, is interesting when you consider the timing of this vote. I wonder if they're related or if I'm just being paranoid. I still think regulation of the food and drug industry is critical (life and death critical) but I don't like being played.

*****

Because I don't believe all government regulation is evil.

I've downed a full bottle of cough syrup this week (I've been rather sick) so imagine my delight in reading this:

Some Chinese suppliers have used poisonous diethyline glycol, or DEG, as a substitute for glycerin, a more expensive sweet syrup, in cough medicine, fever medication and injectable drugs, the New York Times reported today. Researchers estimate that thousands of deaths worldwide have been caused by drugs contaminated by DEG, an industrial solvent and an ingredient in some antifreeze, the newspaper said.

The FDA ``is emphasizing the importance of testing glycerin for DEG due to the serious nature of this potentially fatal problem in combination with the global nature of the pharmaceutical supply chain and problems that continue to occur,'' the agency said in the statement released May 4.

This kind of bad shit is almost entirely preventable. Consumer deaths should not be the canary in the coal mine of product safety, and it is not enough to let the market decide that companies selling poison should go out of business.

Food and drugs that are not grown or manufactured in the US (under US regulatory oversight) should be subject to rigorous testing before we allow them to be imported without so much as caveat emptor on the label. Doesn't that seem like, ohhhhhh I don't know... common sense?

How about this: I nominate the next politician who touts the benefits of free trade in agriculture (because it's oh-so-much-cheaper) to be our national taste tester.

True Story

This is a true story.

My company is in the process of sending all US services jobs offshore -- yes, probably including mine, eventually. Before they can fully achieve that goal, they have to change our infrastructure around to enable it, streamlining processes and stuff like that. This has required some degree of planning, so there have been meetings set up at various locations in the US.

One of those meetings took place in Atlanta a few weeks ago, during which one poor bastard suffered a massive heart attack and died right there in the meeting room. I didn't know the guy (it's a huge company) but I'm told he was remarkably fit and healthy. Could be that he was under as much stress as the rest of us and just... broke.

Anyway, word spread pretty quickly and now the event is common knowledge. What I hadn't thought about until last night, was that after they hauled the guy's dead body out of the meeting room, they went on with the meeting. Some poor guy dying in the middle of a meeting was not enough to halt the meeting. How horrific is that? And I suppose what's even more horrific is that it didn't even occur to me, really, that it would happen any other way. I seriously didn't think twice about it until someone else brought it up.

Me and all of my peers, running around like hamsters in a wheel, for what? What have we become that when one of us dies -- in a room with us! -- we just clear the body away and carry on with a meeting.

Maybe it's only a continuation of my mid-life crisis but, Jesus... something here just ain't right.

Anatomy Of A Death Spiral (Part 3)

Offshoring (or "global resourcing", if you're an upwardly mobile corporate executive) became a growing interest in my part of the company around 2003. Undaunted by the failure of Canadialand to fatten the corporate coffers, my company decided that paying American wages was just plain silly in a global economy. And so, without any overseas infrastructure or processes or analysis or strategy, we began dumping American jobs. It started in pockets at first... a service here, a department there. Our customers didn't exactly embrace the concept so the focus was aimed on back office work. These were generally lower skilled, lower paying jobs. Embolded by the cost savings achieved on these little ventures, our executives set their sights a little higher. Skilled positions began to move. Will the customer notice? IF "no" then goto India. Eventually even customer objections were discounted and now it's a free fall free-for-all. If it doesn't have an executive title, it will move to India, Brazil, Argentina, or -- I kid you not --Kuala Lumpur. There is a plan and American workers are simply not a part of it.

Even if one were to accept offshoring as an inevitable part of doing business in the global economy, the crazy risks my company is taking with CTO, with only the tiniest pretense of regard for the customer, is entirely unnerving. They haven't just lost their respect for the American worker; they've lost respect for their American customers, too. Like some kind of parasitic organism, it sucked what it could out of America and now it's ready to move on to its next meal. The cuts now have a customer impact that seems almost punitive.

The claim is that the offshoring/CTO activities are necessary to stay competitive, and every company blames its competitors for the trend. "We have to do this to stay in business." It's a downward spiral that our shortsighted business leaders have created for themselves. We need to increase profit, so we cut costs. Cutting costs ruins service so existing customers don't want to buy from us anymore. So we cut more costs to make up for it and customers leave so we cut more costs and service is in the toilet so we don't get new customers. Declare the US market dead and haul ass to India.

On some days, those evil twins - cynicism and contempt - are like knives at the base of my skull. It would be easier to ignore what's going on. I've been good to my company and, for the most part, my company has been good to me. My job isn't gone... yet. I could probably squeak out a few more years here, and maybe I will. Who knows what will happen after that.

The crazy thing is that people don't see this as a problem because it isn't yet a problem for them. They probably see IT jobs going offshore the same way I saw manufacturing jobs going offshore: sad for the people affected but relieved that it isn't them. The reality of it is, if you're not a plumber or a surgeon or a waitress, or perform some other 'hands on' activity, your job could probably be done offshore for a fraction of your current wage. The results from my husband's MRI were shipped to India for a radiologist to read. Accountants, telemarketers, travel agents, researchers, writers... you'd be surprised what can be done offshore for $5 a day. One interesting little note: it takes 1.5 to 2 offshore workers to replace every US worker, at least in my industry (we're apparently a bunch of workaholic freaks). But at $5.00 a day, who cares?

Somewhere along the way our democracy has morphed into a corporocracy. The symbiotic nature of shared success, where workers enabled profits and profits enabled workers, is gone. The healthy check and balance that once existed between labor and business has vanished, as has the relationship between community and industry. What do we have instead? Soulless corporate entities that are consumed with exploiting the enormous divide between the global haves and have nots. Why aren't US workers entitled to some safegards? Why does everyone scream and rant about people receiving "entitlements"? In 200 years we made this country into the kind of success that India hasn't been able to achieve in 2000 years. We are entitled to our entitlements. We are entitled to some labor protections. Maybe the trade genie can't go back into the bottle but neither do we have to let him ravage the countryside. Other countries are faring just fine with their trade and labor protections. Maybe their businesses don't get the full market benefit of unfettered trade but, conversely, their workers haven't entirely gotten the shaft. There is a balance that can be achieved here. Only in a corporocracy does it have to be all or nothing.

Anatomy Of A Death Spiral (Part 2)

I was recruited to my current company in 1999 at the height of the tech bubble. This wasn't just any tech company, it was one of the original tech companies. Its history was legendary. Our customers were leaders in their own industries. The name was recognizable to everyone over the age of three. It was prestigious, it was exciting, and I felt good about the work. The company's stock was soaring. Our CEO was worshipped by Wall Street. I counted myself among the extremely fortunate. My local office was something of a bastard group, having been only recently acquired, but we were still highly profitable, the team was tight, and the management was competent. It stayed like that for precisely one year.

After the tech bubble burst, my company seemed like a safe harbor against the storm. Our business model was solid and our revenue was real. My division was a solid money maker with long term, profitable contracts. Unfortunately, the financial market was shaken to the core and people with money to invest were afraid to go back to tech (this mindset eventually gave birth to the real estate bubble, but I digress...). Panic set in among the officers of my company and they began their obsession with recapturing the interest of the investing class. At first this manifested in an unlikely pairing of delivery centers as our executives lustily eyed the Canadian labor rate differential. We were joined with our brothers in Canadialand and the favored buzzwords became "synergy" and "leverage". We later understood these terms to be euphemisms for "move work to Canada." A good portion of work did move but it wasn't easy and it wasn't as financially rewarding as our hyperventilating executives had hoped. Canada has its own set of labor laws, and where Americans can work an endless number of hours ("there are 24 hours in a day, feel free to use them all" was a favorite saying of one manager), Canadians have certain restrictions. And, as we discovered, a fabulous array of holidays. And issues with their bi-lingual nature. Canadialand was not the panacea of cost savings that everyone had hoped for.

This disappointment set the stage for our first round of cost cutting, aka Cost Take Out, aka CTO. It was an upsetting concept at first, as we delivery managers were given CTO targets and advised to document what work we'd stop doing for our customers. Stop doing work for our customers? We prided ourselves in our ability to deliver customer service... to put those customer relationships at risk was a bizarre consideration. We made it through that first round of CTO, but with the next quarter came another round. And then another round. In fact, every quarter brought with it a new "cost challenge." Every three months we did less for our customers.

This was my first real awareness that there was something horribly wrong with the way big business did business. It was not enough to make a profit. It was not enough to be highly profitable. It was not enough to have a good product and happy customers. All that mattered now was Wall Street's perception of your numbers, and whether or not their rating was enough to send investors into a stampede.

Outsourcing of IT services is an interesting business. Our customers sign on because they trust that we'll bring more expertise to the table than they can develop in-house, and they trust that we can deliver it more cheaply since we're doing it on a larger scale. In the case of my company, customers also assume we can do it more cheaply because, hell... we are in the business of hardware and software! So for these reasons, a company agrees to give up a certain amount of control in how their IT services are managed. Some companies are only partially able to divorce themselves from the IT management concept and still remain deeply involved in all of our day to day activities. Other companies want a turn-key service and happily distance themselves from all the details. But in the end, every single customer wants to know they've received the best value for their money. Regardless of how much or how little they've paid, if they don't feel like there's value in our service, they're not going to be happy. And when they're not happy with our service, they don't buy more services. Those are the customers who leave. And since exiting customers tend not to leave you with a fabulous reference, new customers become more scarce.

Now to be fair, the technology market has changed dramatically over the past 10 years or so. The complex, sophisticated machines that used to drive technology are still available but now there are alternatives that include machines no bigger or difficult to manage than your laptop. There's also more competition for our customers, and customers are more fickle. Fortunately, my company is an innovator... its success is rooted in R&D. We develop products that people need and then provide them with first rate support for those products. Right?

Not exactly. R&D is a long term investment and it's not risk free so, while we haven't abandoned it entirely, we no longer rely on it. It's easier to buy the product of someone else's R&D. And, while our reputation was built on delivering first rate service, service delivery is now merely a cost lever. Need to save a few bucks to make the quarterly numbers look more appealing? Take it out of service delivery.

The problem with perpetual, mindless CTO, as any delivery grunt can tell you, is that eventually you're going to break your service. It may not happen right away, and maybe you can cover up the impacts for a while, but eventually the breakage is going to be noticed. The decrease in service will be exposed to the customer or, worse, the service impact will disrupt your customer's business. And that's about the worst possible customer relationship scenario I can think of: When he's paid for $10 service and realizes he's only getting $6 service.

To be continued...

Anatomy Of A Death Spiral

I live in a town that once had a large industrial base. Manufacturing and machining were our economic mainstay, with factories and machine shops staggered along the river, south to north. Our industries also provided our social hierarchy; a true "ownership society", if you will, where businesses bore the name of the families who owned them and those families accepted their place as the caretakers of the community they employed, dutifully gracing us with parks and hospital wings and other random acts of philanthropy. You could be employed for life at one of those places if you were willing, with wages that would support a modest, traditional lifestyle.

My first real job in IT was for a local insurance company, a fairly good sized employer in our city. It was still a privately held company when I was hired, run by the founder's grandson who was assigned a "III" after his surname. The company held three buildings downtown, the oldest of which was a big marble encased symbol of its former boomtown glory. The craftsmanship of its domed interior ceiling was breathtaking although the building itself was in a state of general disrepair and used only for storage. The second building was younger and more practical but endowed with a misleadingly grand lobby. An oil painting of the company's deceased founder was hung in the stairwell. The third building was a more recent tribute to the III's dreams of something bigger; a poor man's skyscraper standing a full 10 stories over the river. At night the blue neon sign bearing the company's initials reflected down into the water. Yearning to move to a bigger pond, the III took the company public in 1995 and later added a fourth building to his real estate portfolio: An impressive glass and steel structure in an executive office park in a western suburb of Chicago.

I had worked at that company for seven years when the III finally declared his ambition to the world and offered his company up to Conseco, which was trading at exactly $42 a share. Rumor has it that the III imagined himself on the brink of corporate greatness when he was unceremoniously booted a few months after the merger (one too many CEOs, apparently). After that, he ran off to reinvent himself in Nebraska. Ironically, Conseco itself finally ate an indigestible bit of grist when it bought Greentree in 1998. It traded as a penny stock for years after until it divested itself of Greentree in 2003 and then it, too, went off into the corporate wilderness to reinvent itself.

After the III was finished destroying his grandfather's legacy, I went to work for a manufacturing company in the small neighboring town of Freeport. The masters of this company had all of the III's ambition but none of his pretense. Housed in an ancient, boxy, red brick building, the company had only just stretched itself out a bit to add a non-descript, one storied, white building a block up the street for its growing IT department. The company was now publicly traded but still retained a board member or two who shared the company's name. The business had been growing rapidly through a formula of acquisition and integration. They were good at this process and they repeated it over and over, resulting in the ownership of many small manufacturing plants all over the country.

Offshoring had picked up steam since the 80's and my new company embraced the trend. It was popular at the time to excuse the job bleed by blaming lazy American workers who demanded inflated union wages to produce inferior quality products. That lie was apparent to anyone who spent any time in one of those heartland manufacturing towns. My coworkers were just hardworking folks trying to make a steady, honest (and non-unionized) wage. It was painful to watch their jobs vanish offshore. I felt a sense of impending doom but tried to believe that the jobs were being replaced by higher paying tech industry jobs, as everyone said, and I was grateful to have already jumped on that wagon.

Despite its national holdings, mine was a company that took pride in its small town - big dreams heritage, and it kept its headquarters in the tiny town of Freeport until after I left. In the end, my old company entered a marriage of convenience with a bigger, better known company, shuffled around the company officers, and dropped its emotional ties to Freeport in favor of Atlanta. They've retained a small presence in Freeport, for now, but the separation is almost final and whatever responsibility the company felt toward Freeport, and whatever Freeport felt towards it, are just symbols of another era.


To be continued...