Random thoughts

There have been times when I despair that businesses are run by exclusively "Type A" (aggressive, somewhat blind, very insensitive, very self centred, rigid [small] minded) people, who assume everyone else in their business has the same personality and obsession with meeting the goals of the initial Type A person (I can't really call it a personality ... its more a set of pathologies), and all their customers are mindless dupes deserving nothing more than to be ordered what to buy in order to support the goals of the initial Type A person. 

There have been those times ... but change is underway, pushing those Type A "people" out, and they were never exclusively in possession of companies any way - which is shown by my current managers, Robert  Greenleaf, a female led "activist" investor group, and, as of last night, an anecdote in Barack  Obama’s “A Promised Land”, which I am currently reading, about Warren Buffett. 

The anecdote is that Mr Buffett once commented that he paid less tax than his secretary, because of Bush  the  Lesser's zombie "thinking" on tax  cuts. 

And to think that when I started working, the first year I did a full tax return (when I was 22 or so - previous years I hadn't been over the threshold), knowing that taxes paid for roads and schools and hospitals, I proudly declared cash payments and declined rebates for the remote area I was living in so that I could contribute more to the society I lived in ... and wound up with a tax bill I couldn't afford. I then went to a tax accountant, who resubmitted a less generous tax return. Sigh. 

Since then, I have found every single idiot who claims it is a person's duty to pay the least amount of tax they have to morally repugnant and utterly contemptible as a person. 

If they also make donations to charity, they are, additionally, hypocrites. 

Having got that off my chest, I'd like to turn to some recent article: 

• a re-print of an article from a few months ago, titled "What President-Elect Biden Needs To Know About China", with the following sub-title comment: "Amid the frenzy of the final stages of the U.S. presidential campaign, the fifth plenum of the 19th Chinese Communist Party National Congress was held on October 26-29.  At this event, China’s leaders gathered to plan the country’s future"; 
•  a disturbing assessment of the possibility that #45 (or Israel) is going to try to force a military confrontation with Iran in order to hamstring (incoming) President-elect Biden; 
• seven major problems in the USA shown by 2020, and many made worse by #45;
• a criticism of "cancel culture" (while it is possible that "cancel culture" can be excessive, it is important, IMO, to keep in mind that some ideas are so morally repugnant they must NEVER be tolerated - genocide is one, child abuse is another. There is also the problem of those who are losing some of their privilege feeling like they are being discriminated against when they are just experiencing a restoration of fairness to everyone - away from their unearned advantage); 
• an excellent point by point rebuttal of #45's election conspiracy fantasies (has #45 become completely unhinged by having to admit to being a loser, or are the comments that he is terrified of having to meet financial debts in a few years true? His "thinking" in recent recorded conversations is like a two year old child!). The comments (elsewhere) about the illegality of #45's actions in a recent phone call are also important; 
• an utterly appalling, demeaning, dehumanising request by the lawyers for two white man in the USA charged with murder of a black man. This sort of behaviour occurs in the early stages of genocide, and whether the white supremacist lawyers like it or not, there is a victim - whether their clients are found guilt of the crime or not, someone HAS been killed; 
• an expose of the made up conspiracy deceptions by lyin'45 and the lyin'45ettes:
  "They are using a classic propaganda tactic that might be called “conspiracy bootstrapping.” First, you introduce a false idea, spreading it by every available means. Then, once people are talking about it, and some believe it, you cite its prevalence as evidence that it might be true—an epistemic sleight-of-hand by which propaganda validates itself."
  

PS - I know there's only a few weeks to go, but could it be worth the US republicans biting the bullet and invoking the US 25th amendment to see these last few weeks out under someone who, while a shocking bigot, has a modicum of respect for correct political process? They'd not only be doing themselves a favour, they'd be limiting the harm being done to the USA's standing in the world.