Dishonest Democrat Narrative – Granholm

May 18, 2012 – 3:07 pm

This article was published in American Thinker on May 17, 2012. The thesis is that Democrats are systematically dishonest when trying to explain their policies to an increasingly skeptical electorate.

May 17, 2012

The Dishonest Democrat Narrative: Jennifer Granholm

By James G. Long

Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm was recently on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, spouting the usual left-wing nonsense as a counterpoint against California Republican and former Senate candidate Carly Fiorina. Granholm typified the Democrats’ pervasive failure to understand that taking money from productive people to give to the unproductive destroys investment and productivity — but her comments about the government bailout of General Motors must be addressed. After all, we cannot have Democrats in high places misleading their constituents, thereby getting the green light to continue to wreak havoc on America’s most crucial industries.

Sunday Sound: Heard on This Week with George Stephanopoulos - April 29, 2012

FIORINA: So let’s just stipulate that everybody at this table, and the vast majority of politicians, are interested in creating as many jobs as possible and raising as many people out of poverty as possible. The data from the real world is crystal clear and all you have to do is go to our home state of California. California used to be the most vibrant economy in the world. And what is it today? It is an economy with yawning budget deficits, deteriorating public services, double digit unemployment. And what’s happening in California? People are leaving.

GRANHOLM: Let me put Michigan on the table as a counter example. Michigan had the toughest economy in the nation for the first decade of this past year (sic) because of the loss of automotive and manufacturing jobs. There was a decision by the Obama administration to intervene. At that point, we had hit bottom. Our unemployment rate was 14.5 percent. It’s now 8.4. It’s the second quickest — the second fastest drop of any state in the country. But the reason is, because there was a decision made to intervene (i.e., Government Motors) to save that industry, put it on solid ground. They had great management. There was a decision made to intervene to allow us to diversify the economy. And as a result, Michigan is now seeing a recovery. The hands-off strategy would not be working.

Fiorina’s characterization of California is exactly right. Governor Granholm’s characterization of Michigan is right only to the extent that the official unemployment rate in Michigan has improved, if only marginally.

“Pravda” is a Russian term usually translated as “truth,” but as the Russian people use the term, “pravda” would be more correctly rendered as “the official word.” The official word in Michigan, as spoken by ex-Governor Granholm, is dishonest nonsense, just as it was in Soviet Russia.

For starters, General Motors and Chrysler priced themselves out of the market by giving unsustainable benefits to union members. When the Democrats’ Unaffordable Housing Project Bubble crashed in 2008, it hurt all states, and most particularly the ones that were overextended. There are bankruptcy laws to deal with this type of situation, and these bankruptcy laws have worked well when they have been applied even to large organizations, such as the multiple airlines that have gone bankrupt, reorganized, and continued operation.

When a company is overextended and goes into bankruptcy, there is a certain amount of disruption, but nothing is lost, with the probable exception of the managers who created the unsustainable business environment. When an airline company goes bankrupt, aircraft are not destroyed, maintenance personnel do not lose their skills or their tools, pilots do not lose their pilots’ licenses, and there is a continuing need for passengers to get from one point to another. After a reorganization, the situation re-establishes itself, probably with a more efficient and competitive edge, and the formerly bankrupt airline continues to operate, paying taxes to help support the government. By law, this is what should have happened to Government Motors.

GM was treated quite differently by Obama, with quite different results. Ignoring the law and following Item 7 in The Communist Manifesto, Obama seized GM from the rightful owners and turned much of it over to his union supporters in the UAW, whose pay and pensions helped drive GM into bankruptcy in the first place. And Granholm’s take on what happened to the Michigan economy is somewhere between dishonesty and lunacy.

Michigan lost 857,000 jobs from April 2000, when the dot-com bubble cracked during the Clinton administration, until 2010. It is true that Michigan has recovered some jobs since 2010 and that the official (pravda) unemployment rate is better than it was, but there are still some 700,000 missing jobs in Michigan. Some of those jobs moved to other states, and many represent discouraged workers who have stopped looking for work. Regardless, there are now 700,000 fewer jobs in Michigan; these missing jobs take with them the taxes missing workers would have paid, and the missing taxes do not contribute to the upkeep of the state, its schools, and its institutions.

Contrary to what Granholm says, General Motors is not on “solid ground.” The bailout money that GM received under TARP has not been repaid, to the tune of some forty billion dollars, including $14.5 billion owed by Ally Financial (formerly GMAC). Moreover, TARP funds were placed in an escrow account for GM, and GM used $6.7 billion of those taxpayer dollars to repay the money owed to the taxpayers. Neat accounting trick if you do not get caught. So at least some $46 billion of taxpayer funds went to benefit union workers and to help put the Michigan state financial house in order. Yes, if you can steal $46 billion from someone else, you can pretend that you have “great management” and that you are on “solid ground.” But it is still nonsense.

Governor Granholm has become a star of the Democratic Party and of the Obama administration, with only a pretty face, a Socialist ideology, and repeated failures to recommend her. Granholm’s popularity rating in Michigan fell to 32% in 2007, among the very lowest ratings among sitting governors. In one of life’s little ironies, Governor Palin’s popularity in Alaska was 90%, the very highest among governors. So it was only logical that in 2008, VP Candidate Biden held practice debates with Granholm playing the role of Palin, while the mainstream and Hollywood media repeatedly assailed Governor Palin.

From Fiorina’s and Granholm’s original statements, it is obvious that whatever Michigan gained from the Government Motors bailout, the rest of the country lost and must repay, plus the cost of the bloated federal bureaucracy required to administer this farce. But the greatest cost is borne by those who are least able to pay it. Detroit is one of those Democratic Party ghetto cities, where Democratic Party policies have kept the poor mired in poverty, drugs, and crime for decades. Blacks and particularly black teenagers have been disproportionately hit by the Great Recession. When blacks realize what the Democrats have done to them, a ferocious backlash will be entirely appropriate.

No wonder Michiganders elected a Republican to replace the incompetent, irrational Ms. Granholm. Meanwhile, in the absence of a Senator Fiorina, California’s budget shortfall has increased by over $6 billion in four months under the incompetent, irrational Governor Brown.

James G. Long has been an army captain, a professional engineer, an author, and a blogger, with a lifelong interest in organizational management problems related to psychopathy. http://mandynamerica.com/blog

By Administrator | Posted in DDN | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Karl Marx Was a Psychopath

March 8, 2012 – 12:17 am

World opinion is sharply divided concerning Marxists and non-Marxists. You could almost say that Marxists and non-Marxists are two very different kinds of beings.

The common perception of the term “psychopath” is the criminal psychopath, such as John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy. But there is a growing awareness that the distinguishing factor in the psychopathic condition is the absence of emotional connection — no sympathy, no empathy, no conscience, no remorse, no guilt — whether the psychopath is chopping up human bodies or defrauding investors of billions of dollars. Identified sub-types include Political Psychopaths, Corporate Psychopaths, and Military Psychopaths, in addition to mass murderers.

Professor Robert Hare is a leading expert on Psychopathy, having co-written the excellent book, Snakes in Suits, and having devised the Hare Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (PCL-R). The Hare Checklist is a tool for professional use, by trained professionals. From the Hare Checklist (see below), many particular traits may be associated with psychopathic behavior, and only a trained professional is capable of making a definitive judgment. Most psychopaths do not display all traits, nor to the same degree. Karl Marx loved his children but provided for them very poorly, Casey Anthony would rather not have had a child, preferring to party. Casey Anthony exhibited psychopathic behavior patterns, and in her trial, the prosecutor specifically compared Anthony’s behavior to the traits listed in the Hare Checklist. The Hare Checklist grades each of twenty items, looking for a total score to determine the degree of dysfunction. Karl Marx can be speculatively scored against the Hare PCL-R insofar as we have a track of his behavior from his family history, from his letters and writings, and from his contemporary associates (radicals all) as indicated by the numbered checklist items below.

THE HARE PSYCHOPATHY CHECK LIST Revised (PCL-R)

Factor 1 Aggressive narcissism (malignant narcissism)

1. Glibness/superficial charm
2. Grandiose sense of self-worth
3. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
4. Pathological lying
5. Cunning/manipulative
6. Lack of remorse or guilt
7. Shallow affect [i.e. superficial experience and expression of emotions]
8. Callous/lack of empathy

Factor 2 – Socially deviant lifestyle

9. Parasitic lifestyle
10. Poor behavioural controls
11. Promiscuous sexual behaviour
12. Early behaviour problems
13. Lack of realistic long-term goals
14. Impulsivity
15. Irresponsibility
16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
17. Many short term marital relationships
18. Juvenile delinquency
19. Revocation of conditional release
20. Criminal versatility

Karl Marx was the original hippie, dirty, smelly, and shiftless (10, 14, 15, 16). His personal hygiene was so bad he suffered extensively from boils and skin eruptions all his life. Newt Gingrich’s advice to the Occupy crowd would have served well for Marx: “Go get a job right after you take a bath.”

Marx’s family on both sides was descended from a long line of Jewish rabbis, but his parents converted to Lutheranism for business and political reasons. Marx repudiated his family values and all Judeo-Christian values. Marx was something of a juvenile delinquent (12, 18), and wasted a year at Bonn University partying and drinking and going into debt (6, 12, 14, 15, 16). His father had to pay his son’s debts and he then sent young Marx to the University of Berlin where Marx soon joined radical groups (3), and the course of his life was settled.

Marx was incapable of holding a steady job (15), and lived precariously on intermittent low-paying work as a journalist, supplemented by several inheritances from his family and his wife’s family (Marx eagerly awaited the death of an elderly relative from whom he expected an inheritance). Other resources were mainly derived from “borrowing” money from fellow radicals (6, 9), and Friedrich Engels helped support the Marx family for years. His wife was totally loyal to him, but they lived in extreme poverty and several of their children died of malnutrition and illness (15). The evidence indicates that Marx had an illegitimate son (11) by the family housekeeper, Helen Demuth. Back when such things mattered to socialists and communists, Marx and his followers tried to conceal the existence of Marx’s illegitimate son. Demuth was a wedding gift from Marx’s wife’s family and lived with the Marx family until Karl died, receiving only room and board; in other words, Demuth’s status was identical to that of a household slave.

From the Gale Encyclopedia of Biography as quoted in answers.com:

“A man of immense learning and sharp intellectual power, Marx, often impatient and irascible antagonized people by his sardonic wit, bluntness, and dogmatism, which bordered on arrogance. His enemies were legion.”

From which we can infer that Marx had a grandiose sense of self-worth (2), was cunning/manipulative (5), was callous/lack(ing) of empathy (8), had poor behavioural controls (10), and had a lack of realistic long-term goals (15). So, Marx would appear to have many traits associated with psychopathy.

For a person who claimed to champion the working man, Marx was remarkably indifferent toward actual working people and certainly did not get his own hands dirty, not from work at any rate. Marx died in London in 1883, unnoted and unremarked. There were eleven people at his funeral, all family and/or politically radical associates. Marx left no legacy but his writings and a network of fellow psychopaths, the most influential being Vladimir Lenin, followed by a long string of would-be revolutionaries and criminal psychopaths: Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Kim Il-Sung, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, and their ilk. Political and military psychopaths unanimously morph into violent criminal psychopaths when they gain sufficient power, with lawyers (Lenin, Castro) and warlords (Mao, Kim Il-Sung) predominating. The enduring appeal of Marxism is precisely among those influential few who share Marx’s psychopathic outlook, and those who can be bought or brainwashed into supporting Marxist goals.

Marx is reputed to be one of the greatest among economic and social thinkers, but this opinion is held primarily among his muddled followers who have their own psychopathic tendencies: wannabe revolutionaries, dotty Marxist professors (Bill Ayers, Clower and Piven, etc.), and their students in journalism and law. These are areas where good little Marxists can accumulate and exercise influence, and confirm their identities within a cause greater than themselves. Without such a cause, run-of-the-mill Marxists in academia, journalism, and law would be moderately intelligent nobodies with deficient egos. Regardless of the quality of Marx’s cogitations, application of his principles to actual governance in Marxist states has an unrelenting history of destruction, disaster, and death, a record that leftists with psychopathic tendencies find quite attractive. But Hitler was at least equally psychopathic and achieved similar results on a much smaller scale, and International Socialists hate National Socialists at least as much as they hate stone cold sober productive Conservatives, also known as Classical Liberals, such as Thomas Jefferson.

Every “classless” Marxist society that ever existed has soon dissolved into a savage dictatorship with three classes of citizens: the nomenclatura, the worker drones, and the kulaks and useless idiots who are executed or starved as an example to everyone else. There have been many attempts to implement Marxist-model systems: all have failed, just as you might expect of a system devised by a psychopath and implemented by psychopaths. Hard Marxist regimes fail, soft Marxist Social-Democratic Europe is failing now, and the hybrid Chinese bubble is threatening collapse. If the Soviets and other Marxist regimes ever had a real interest in Marxist philosophy, it was soon abandoned in favor of brute power for the elite nomenclatura.

America is declining to the degree we have embraced statist, collectivist visions during the last eighty years. Psychopathic tendencies are common throughout the world and throughout history, but modern communications technology has made psychopathy a worldwide threat beginning in the Twentieth Century. Marxists are discredited by their own flawed philosophy, and even more by their own incompetence and corruption. Marx’s economic theories are the worst nonsense, and have never worked in practice. The attraction of Marxism is not that it will eventually create a perfect system — that is propaganda for useless idiots. The attraction of Marxism is that it gives psychopaths power now, and Marxists will destroy anyone who stands in their way.

The founders of the American Republic introduced a new concept of freedom and self governance and it has achieved unparalleled success, which drives totalitarians of every stripe to distraction. Our Republic is now under threat from Corporate and Political Psychopaths who have no empathy, no conscience, no remorse, no guilt, and who are “insane without delirium,” as psychopathy was once defined. Actual working people almost unanimously reject Marxism unless bought off with unearned “entitlements” or coerced as were the kulaks, five million of whom died from Soviet coercion.

Do you wonder that Marxist politicians and their allies and associates are corrupt and dishonest and keep getting richer, while the Republic and its citizens, including the poor, are getting poorer? It is because Marxist politicians and their associates are psychopaths.

By Administrator | Posted in Corporate Psychopath | Tagged , , | Comments (3)

What’s the Matter With the Democratic Party?

February 14, 2012 – 4:47 am

This article was published in American Thinker on January 21, 2012. The thesis is that Corporate Psychopaths and Political Psychopaths are a major factor in the recent personal and national debts within the United States, and in the disintegrating social fabric of our Republic. Corporate and political leaders enriched themselves while hard working Americans were substantially impoverished and were left with huge debts.

What’s the Matter With the Democratic Party?

Can you name a Democratic Party member who exhibits the following characteristics?

• Glibness/superficial charm
• Grandiose sense of self-worth
• Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
• Pathological lying
• Cunning/manipulative
• Lack of remorse or guilt
• Shallow affect [i.e. superficial experience and expression of emotions]
• Callous/lack of empathy
• Skillful use of teleprompter

OK, that last item doesn’t belong on this list, but you can probably name at least one such person, and maybe several, who fit this description. According to Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s closest aides, “[Obama has] been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do. He would never be satisfied with what other people do.” (Item 3 above.)

The take-away from this little exercise is that these eight items are the first eight (of twenty) on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (PCL-R). The items above are classified as Aggressive Narcissism, sometimes known as malignant narcissism. The last twelve items on the list are classified as Socially Deviant Lifestyle. Narcissistic psychopaths tend to be smooth, soulless operators pursuing power, position, and money, and deviant psychopaths tend more toward violent criminal psychopathy, with Hannibal Lecter as an extreme example. Most psychopaths exhibit some combination of both narcissistic and deviant traits.

Not all psychopaths exhibit all behaviors on the checklist, and the checklist is a professional tool for professional psychological use, but it is useful in revealing an increasingly aggressive and destructive political movement within our Republic. It has been difficult to get an accurate diagnosis, or reading, of psychopathy because different psychopaths exhibit radically different behaviors, but the constant among different psychopaths is an absence of human feeling (and boredom). It is only in the last few years that the Corporate Psychopath has been identified.

Psychopathy is a pathological condition appearing to have genetic roots, possibly caused by electrochemical malfunctions in the nerve systems of the brain. The psychopath is marked by a lack of feeling (no empathy, no conscience, no remorse, no guilt) that leads him (less frequently her) into dishonest, deceptive, and criminal behaviors. Other than that, a psychopath may be well-educated and may have sterling job qualifications. A psychopath is quite capable of reflecting on how better to deceive people while being totally oblivious to why he should not do so. More intelligent psychopaths tend to be the smooth operators, concealing their worst impulses and worming their way into positions of power, wealth, and influence. There is a difference between Ted Bundy and a “Corporate Psychopath,” but both display the same lack of feeling typical of the worst criminal psychopaths.

Clive Boddy has a short summary of the problems that Corporate Psychopaths can create in his article, “The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis.” Boddy asserts that Corporate Psychopaths are ambitious; lack empathy, conscience, and remorse; and feel no guilt in taking what they want. According to Boddy, Corporate Psychopaths played a major role in the 2008 financial meltdown — $40 trillion worldwide — and these same psychopaths are now in charge of solving the problems they created. Psychopaths are capable of concerted action to achieve their nefarious goals, and we find politicians, regulators, lobbyists, and corporate executives cooperating and rotating in and out of their powerful positions and increasing their wealth and influence while — so sad! — the wealth of the Republic and of the citizens that created that wealth are destroyed. It is as if the world went from dictatorships to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to the Dictatorship of the Psychopaths, but these may all be manifestations of the same parasitic phenomenon.

For example, Rahm Emanuel was an unprincipled principal in the failed HillaryCare program, from which he went, or was pushed, to the board of directors of Freddie Mac, where he failed to note and did not try to correct the campaign donation scandal (chief recipients: Chris Dodd, Obama, and Barney Frank) and the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac $10-billion accounting fraud. Emanuel subsequently became chief of staff in the Obama White House, where he was in charge of all the failed programs in the early years of the Obama administration: the billion-dollar stimulus package that did not stimulate anything but the national debt, Government Motors, Cap-and-Trade, Solyndra, etc., etc. In less than two years, the Obama programs were falling apart and unpopular, and Emanuel fled to Chicago to run for mayor — to become the big fish in a little pond instead of a big fish in the world’s biggest ocean. Why would Emanuel do that besides from the need to get out of the White House while the getting was good? And maybe the opportunity to participate in Chicago’s famous corruption was an added attraction?

Meanwhile, Dodd and Frank had encouraged government programs that helped citizens to take out mortgages that they could not afford. Dodd and Frank insisted that there was no problem with the subprime mortgages until the day the housing bubble came crashing down in 2008. Dodd was a prime recipient of financial favors from Countrywide and its CEO Angelo Mozillo, along with other political luminaries such as Senator Kent Conrad, Nancy Pelosi’s son Paul, Representative Barbara Boxer, Representative James Clyburn, and Donna Shalala — all Democrats, all FOA (Friends of Angelo). Very few Republicans have been identified as FOA. The excesses and corruption of Countrywide and of Merrill Lynch created untenable financial positions, and the Obama administration forced Bank of America to take over Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. Now Bank of America is in trouble and is laying off tens of thousands of people, and it may have to sell part of its locations to avert bankruptcy. And on and on and on. Democrats are like the forty thieves in the tale of Ali Baba, only there are millions of them — not all psychopaths, but they corruptly waste your tax dollars regardless.

British, Canadian, and Australian psychologists are prominent in defining the Corporate Psychopath, and knowledge of what our Anglo cousins are doing is limited in the USA. Besides the Hare Psychopathy Checklist — Revised, Professor Robert Hare, a Canadian, is a co-author of the book Snakes in Suits, which has attracted some notice, but the scope of the problem is so big that it deserves much more attention. Boddy, an Australian, makes a strong case that the 2008 financial meltdown, which has added $5 trillion and counting to the national debt, was created by Corporate Psychopaths, and that is where your money went.

There is nothing the matter with Kansas; the rot and corruption are in national politics. The poor are poorer than at any time recently, workers are unemployed at the highest rate since the Great Depression, retirees have lost their savings, and the entire nation is substantially impoverished. Almost the only demographics that have benefited are illegal immigrants and Corporate and Political Psychopaths.

By Administrator | Posted in Corporate Psychopath | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)

The Corporate Psychopaths Among Us

January 12, 2012 – 3:34 am

This article was published in American Thinker on December 18, 2011. The thesis is that Corporate Psychopaths were a major factor in the recent financial meltdown. Corporate and political leaders enriched themselves while hard working Americans were substantially impoverished and were left with huge debts.

The Corporate Psychopaths Among Us

Hannibal Lecter was a fictional psychopath, but there are much worse psychopaths active in American politics and business today. “Psychopath” and “sociopath” are each defined as a personality disorder marked by lack of empathy or remorse; the two terms are closely related and are sometimes used interchangeably.

Conservatives have long had a problem with the direction of the American Republic and the American economy. Now there are recent psychological studies of the role of psychopaths in the broader economy, and specifically in the recent and ongoing global financial meltdown. Clive R. Boddy is one of several psychologists doing research in this problem area, including Board and Fritzon, who speak of successful psychopaths at the head of large corporations and unsuccessful psychopaths who are in prison. Rod Blagojevich was successful before he recently became unsuccessful. Boddy’s preliminary findings are contained in The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis. Most analyses of the 2008 financial meltdown concentrated on nuts and bolts data such as mortgage policies, interest rates, rating agencies, and derivatives. The media certainly did not focus on the hazard of electing a left-wing non-entity and his psychopathic baggage to the White House. Boddy offers welcome insight to our ongoing problems.

Briefly, Boddy describes the role of corporate psychopaths in the recent “corporate collapses” that we have experienced. Enron, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Solyndra, MF Global, and various banks and other financial institutions come to mind as possible examples. Boddy states that “Psychopaths are the 1% of people who have no conscience or empathy and who do not care for anyone other than themselves,” a statement that would seem to fit the overpaid and otherwise overly-remunerated business, banking, and political personalities we have seen in the news recently, e.g., Rahm Emanuel as a member of the Freddie Mac board of directors during the Democratic Party campaign finance scandals and the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac $10 billion accounting fraud that he, in his official capacity, ignored.

Boddy suggests that malfunctions in the amygdala and the frontal cortex of the brain, and perhaps defective nervous system wiring and faulty chemical and electrical impulses, are the causes of corporate psychopathic behavior. He further suggests ways of identifying the potential for psychopathic behavior before it becomes a problem. Such defects help create “smooth, charming, sophisticated, and successful” (and self-serving) images for corporate psychopaths “who have no conscience or empathy.” He further states that “Psychologists have argued that Corporate Psychopaths within organizations may be singled out for rapid promotion because of their polish, charm, and cool decisiveness.” Boddy argues that Corporate Psychopaths are attracted to positions of power and wealth: politics, banking, and finance, for examples, thus creating potential scenarios for disaster.

The corporate world is changing and is less stable than it was just a few years ago. These changes leave openings for Corporate Psychopaths, and help to confuse the issue when things go wrong. Takeovers and buyouts involve rapid actions and lots of cash, and opportunities for Corporate Psychopaths to get in and get out before routines are settled and accountability is established.

An excellent example was seen when Rahm Emanuel successfully promoted the Democratic Party congressional candidates to victory in the 2008 elections. Less than two years later, as White House Chief-of-Staff, Emanuel was a principal in every one of the failed, wasteful, and unpopular programs of the first two years of the Obama Administration: ObamaCare, Government Motors, cap-and-trade, energy subsidies, etc. Before the Obama Administration disaster was fully obvious, Emanuel bailed, just as he had bailed (or was pushed) after his unsuccessful participations in Hillarycare and, later, from Freddie Mac. Boddy could have been describing Emanuel when he says, “Failures were not noticed until too late and the offending managers had already moved on to better positions elsewhere,” if mayor of Chicago is considered a better position.

Boddy also points out that in these high-stakes actions, Corporate Psychopaths richly reward themselves and their political contacts as the economy is destroyed and more normal productive citizens lose their share of the American dream. Few begrudge Bill Gates, for example, his success because Gates has enriched millions of lives and pocketbooks. But Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Countrywide were corrupt and corrupting, and destroyed rather than built.

So, we have a narrow 1% of the population that is highly intelligent, very ambitious, and devoid of moral values operating in a political environment where money flows like water with no accountability. This is the environment in which the national debt has gone from essentially nowhere to over $15 trillion in less than fifty years, since the start of the Great(?) Society programs.

Early in his article, Boddy states that “Capitalism also loses some of its credibility” when Corporate Psychopaths create trillion-dollar messes. When the Democrats’ Housing Bubble cracked there were many comments on the “failure of capitalism,” but political and Corporate Psychopaths are not the measure of capitalism. Capitalism has been the greatest engine for growth and job creation in the history of the world, and blaming capitalism for the actions of a bunch of psychopaths does not make sense. It is an argument that only a psychopath could make.

Boddy presents a radically different and utterly plausible view of the recent worldwide financial difficulties, but I wish to clarify his statement that, “Expert commentators on the rise of Corporate Psychopaths within modern corporations have also hypothesized that they are more likely to be found at the top of current organisations (sic) than at the bottom.” This may be true of large financial institutions, Boddy’s area of focus, but previous experience with the SOB personality indicates that the SOB psychopath falls across a wider range of organizations and involves many middle managers as well as top managers. There is a further objection to Boddy’s use of the term “social justice.” Justice is justice. “Social justice” may be politically correct, but that is just a cover for class warfare injustice, credit to Dennis Prager.

Boddy suggests that personality screens and further physiological research could help identify Corporate Psychopaths before they are in a position to do so much damage. This is possibly true, but there are other more immediate tools available, and education is one such tool. SOB managers have been abruptly terminated when upper management suddenly realized the damages these SOBs were doing within their organizations. It just took an abnormally long time for upper management to realize what harm these otherwise well-qualified SOBs were doing. Awareness of Corporate Psychopaths, including SOB managers, and the warning signs of such behavior should be widely disseminated. Deferred compensation might be used in some circumstances; long, successful service might be rewarded rather than the “pump-and-dump” model we have seen in some financial companies.

A return to a culture of corporate stability and long term employment would help. We certainly cannot continue in the direction the Democratic Party is taking us without becoming as broke as Greece, or the Soviet Union. All tools, including the ballot box, should be used to correct the financial disaster that threatens.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/the_corporate_psychopaths_among_us.html#ixzz1jD2XMlWW

By Administrator | Posted in Corporate Psychopath, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Rahm Emanuel and the “Tough SOB” Pathology

October 29, 2011 – 4:30 am

Thanks to americanthinker.com, I have an article dated 26 October 2011 posted on the AT website. For all of Rahm Emanuel’s dubious and abusive behavior, he has lasted a remarkably long time. Emanuel received much credit for his efforts in the 2008 congressional races, and became Chief of Staff in Obama’s White House. But the Obama Administration promptly got into deep kimchi, and Emanuel bailed from one of the most powerful positions in the world rather than face the serial disasters he was principally responsible for creating; Obamacare, cap and trade, Governent Motors, Solendra, etc.

There is seldom a record of such futility in White House annals. Emanual got out just in time to avoid blame, just as he got out of the Clinton White House and Freddie Mac before the scandals in those august institutions. Poor Chicago.

Here is the complete article:

Think of the worst boss for whom you have ever worked. Was he (or she) irrational, erratic, destructive to organizational goals, and perhaps corrupt? Was this boss two-faced, showing his best behavior to superiors and treating subordinates with contempt, demonstrating dishonesty and temper tantrums toward lower-ranking personnel and threatening violence? Did this boss ever describe himself specifically as a “tough SOB,” or at least as something similar? Does this pattern of behavior fall within the description of a “personality disorder”?

Meet Rahm Emanuel.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was on his best behavior on Meet the Press with David Gregory on 9 October 2011. During the interview, Emanuel showed due concern for the economy and the financial crisis, and specifically for Chicago and its citizens. Not shown on Meet the Press were Emanuel’s multiple contributions to the financial crisis, his incompetent and corrupt operational policies, his threatening behavior toward subordinates, and his celebration of his reputation as a “tough SOB.” Emanuel received great credit for his political savvy in guiding the Democratic congressional wins during the 2008 elections, but he was smart enough to bail early before the 2010 elections, when everything was rapidly unraveling for Democrats.

In fact, Emanuel left the White House early during both the Clinton administration and the Obama administration. In my experience with personalities similar to Emanuel, their qualifications are good, they are typically very competent within narrow fields, and they use intimidation to achieve goals outside their core competencies. At some point, the cost of dealing with such personalities becomes too great, and they may be fired, transferred, or even promoted in order to be gotten rid of. That is almost certainly what happened when Clinton sent Emanuel to the Freddie Mac board of directors.

Despite his political successes, Emanuel has been a complete bust as a leader in an operational environment. Emanuel was a principal in the failed Hillarycare effort early in the Clinton administration. On the board of directors at Freddie Mac, Emanuel should have maintained, as a priority, the integrity of the mortgage lending process. But the Democratic campaign contributions scandal and the $10-billion accounting fraud at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae occurred on Emanuel’s watch. And of course, Freddy Mac was a major factor in the housing bubble collapse. These criminal incidents were never investigated, as Obama sealed the board’s records. The housing bust was solely the creation of Democrats and led directly to the 2008 worldwide financial meltdown, for which Democrats are happy to blame George Bush.

As White House chief of staff under Obama, Emanuel was directly involved in and responsible for the unpopular and dubious Obamacare; the latter stages of the financial crisis, which was supposed to be solved by the injection of trillions of dollars of “stimulus”; the global warming fraud; the energy cap-and-trade failure; the theft of Government Motors for Obama’s union thug supporters; the green industry subsidies for companies like Solyndra, which is now failing while destroying jobs at great cost to taxpayers; and other ongoing troubled areas. Emanuel appears to have illegally interfered in federal elections in the Colorado (Romanoff) and Pennsylvania (Sestak) senate races in 2010.

Few high-ranking persons similar to Emanuel survive in office for as long as Emanuel has. Similar abusive persons of high rank have come to grief. The late Senator Ted Stevens (the Bridge to Nowhere, corruption charges) had a “fierce temper” and publicly referred to himself as a “mean, miserable son-of-a-bitch.” Governor Rod Blagojevich (criminal conviction) is foul-mouthed and has been medically alleged to have a personality disorder (narcissism). Captain Holly Graf, USN (highest-ranking female ship captain, subsequently relieved from duty) was foul-mouthed as well and threw objects, including ceramic coffee cups and heavy binders containing paperwork files, at the heads of subordinates. Each of these characters displayed very similar words and actions, typically including corruption, inefficiency, high personnel turnover, and waste of much effort and resources, plus self-identification and/or a reputation as a “tough SOB” or some similar descriptive wording.

Board and Fritzon have described personality disorders among high-ranking personnel in the workplace and have identified such personnel as “successful psychopaths,” as opposed to “unsuccessful psychopaths,” who may be institutionalized or in prison (Blagojevich was successful before he became unsuccessful). It is my experience and belief that there are thousands of successful psychopaths in middle management. Early in my career, I had the extreme good fortune to work for four successful psychopaths, two of whom became unsuccessful while I knew them. Being a successful psychopath is hazardous to your career and is often hazardous to the health and careers of anyone who works for the psychopath. Captain Queeg in the famous WWII novel, The Caine Mutiny, was a Naval Academy graduate and a petty, destructive, cowardly successful psychopath — until he became unsuccessful, was relieved of duty, and was assigned to a minor naval logistics post far from the water.

Human Resources tells us that somewhere near half of all workers will have contact with an abusive boss, or “bully boss” in HR terminology, during their careers. Half of all workers is somewhere near 65 million people. The half of all workers that experience an abusive boss are subject to abnormal rates of stress-induced illnesses, personnel turnover, waste, inefficiency, and corruption at a cost in the billions of dollars. But that leaves the other half of all workers oblivious to the presence of the pathology within the ranks. These “lucky” people have no experience or strong identification with the turmoil that abusive bosses create. Abusive bosses are a popular topic in the news and in business publications, but such reports are invariably anecdotal, not analytical. Upper management is strictly disinclined to hear criticism of its middle managers. Consequently, there is no systematic effort to identify and correct the abusive boss problem — unlike, for example, the substance abuse problem. Think Exxon-Valdez — i.e., the Exxon Valdez incident set off a furious legal battle over safety and employees’ rights in regards to substance abuse, and rules were tightened.

I have identified the “SOB Syndrome” as a more complete description of the abusive boss personality, with the added advantage of verbal and action-based markers that accurately tag the SOB Syndrome, just as substance abusers are tagged by chemical markers. No one appears to self-identify as a “tough SOB” in polite and casual conversation. The use of the “tough SOB” terminology and/or violence is fundamental to the SOB’s personality disorder, and it is furthermore self-derogatory, self-contradictory, and inaccurate; “tough SOBs” never get tough, productive operational results.

When upper management realizes that the abusive boss has a problem, perhaps a solution to the problem can follow.

By Administrator | Posted in SOB Personalities | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

The SOB Syndrome

August 27, 2011 – 3:37 am

Your boss is not crazy, it’s worse than that.

The “bully boss” is the accepted Human Resources term for abusive managers, of which there are many. Various HR studies tell us that up to half of all workers may be subject to an abusive boss at some point in their working lives. Half of all workers in the USA is in the neighborhood of 65 million workers, with identified costs for inefficiency, conflict, and personnel turnover in the billions of dollars.

In studying this mystery, I came to realize that SOB managers are psychologically dysfunctional. Board and Fritzon have studied personality disorders (PD) among ranking business managers and found examples of “successful” psychopaths in managerial ranks. (Unsuccessful psychopaths are in institutions or in prisons.) Dysfunctional behaviors among abusive bosses have been identified as histrionic, narcissistic, and obsessive-compulsive, to put it formally. Less formally, SOBs routinely throw temper tantrums, lie, and manipulate, but usually do not throw temper tantrums in the presence of upper management. Summarizing, these self-identified SOBs shared certain unique pathological characteristics which I term the SOB Syndrome.

Basic elements in the SOB Syndrome include:

1. The SOB always has a defining signature statement, typically, “I am a tough son-of-a-bitch.” This is a statement of a very negative self-image and is disrespectful of the SOB’s own parents and, by extension, parental figures generally. The signature statement may be complemented or replaced by threats of violence or actual violence.

2. The SOB has well-concealed contempt for his organization’s upper management (parental figures), expressed indirectly by creating repeated troubles within the organization.

3. SOBs never get tough, productive operational results.

4. The SOB’s signature statement is a positive marker for a destructive SOB personality, just as drugs and alcohol are positive chemical markers for substance abusers. High rates of personnel unrest and turnover in the organization confirm the presence of an SOB in a supervisory position.

5. Besides these basic elements of the SOB Syndrome, SOBs invariably engage, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the particular SOB, in behaviors that are typical of personality disorders, including lack of emotional control, manipulation, making excuses and blaming others for their own mistakes, and pathological dishonesty.

6. Only within the last few years have psychologists realized that the “successful psychopath” exists. These characters are commonly identified as “Corporate Psychopaths” as described in an article by Dr. Clive Boddy of Australia. By extension, there are Political Psychopaths, Military Psychopaths (such as the two I worked for), and Academic Psychopaths.

Discussing the SOB Syndrome is problematic. A person who has no experience with an SOB Personality finds the whole subject incomprehensible. Workers who have been in a position to observe an SOB Personality are more interested and more comprehending. Workers who have been abused by an SOB Personality are overwhelmingly accepting of any coherent explanation for their experience with the SOB, and often become quite emotional when they are absolved of blame for the SOB’s pathological behavior.

The SOB Syndrome is a great, imperfectly-recognized problem in organizations. On a local level, upper management recognizes that there are problems with the SOB, but the greater picture is not obvious to managers and personnel who may experience the SOB phenomenon only once in a lifetime, or not at all. I was fortunate to have worked for four SOBs early in my career, and that put me on a lifelong quest to understand this bizarre phenomenon. Ultimately, upper management must recognize the SOB Syndrome as the destructive psychological phenomenon that it is, and deal with it. Everything else is window dressing, and the costs and conflicts continue.

The SOB Personality is more widely described and analyzed in my book, The S.O.B. and Business: Destruction Dynamics in Organizations. If you have personal knowledge of an SOB Personality, you are invited to share your information in an SOB Personality Profile. A description of the SOBs I worked for and other notable SOB Personalities are contained in Memorable SOBs in Inaction.

By Administrator | Posted in SOB Personalities | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (11)

Storm Warnings Ignored – National Debt

August 18, 2011 – 7:07 pm

In a period of less than two weeks, Obama was nominated for president
on August 27, 2008, and the Housing Bubble began to seriously crack on September 9, 2008. The Housing Bubble had been in a slow-motion decline since October 2007, and suddenly accelerated downward. The downward move was nominally due to the increasing prospects of bank failures, marked by Lehman Brothers 45% stock price crash.

Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act 1977 had forced banks to make loans to qualified buyers (no problem), but early in the Clinton administration Democrats in congress set quotas for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make loans to patently unqualified borrowers (problem). The Clinton Administration formalized this arrangement by adopting an FRB Boston guideline called Closing the Gap, with an alternate title of Mortgage Fraud for Dummies.

These two huge events happened virtually simultaneously, both received much attention, and almost no consideration has been given to the interaction between nominating a Marxist for president of the United States and the largest markets meltdown in world history. Marxist economies always melt down, but usually not this rapidly.

The crash of the Democrats’ Unaffordable Housing Project cannot be explained by the raw numbers. It would have taken about $4 trillion to buy up all the sub-prime mortgages, but the total worldwide markets meltdown touched about $40 trillion in losses, before an anemic and increasingly dubious recovery.

The Democrats’ growing federal debt was an increasing concern, but the big concern to most investors was the prospect of a Marxist president who might expropriate their property through theft (Government Motors), waste (non-stimulating stimuli), or inflation (QE I, QE II.) Obama announced before his election that his policy was to redistribute wealth by taxation (confiscation) rather than job creation, so now no one wants to risk capital that Marxists will just waste, mostly by buying votes and vacations for the first family and other Marxist parasites.

Note that “capitalist” economic cycles before WWII were boom and bust, while Marxist economic cycles have always been recessions alternating with depressions, as in the old Soviet Union, or permanent stagnation as in the EU, or permanent catastrophe as in NorK and Cuba. Enron advisor Paul Krugman actively promotes the idea that the USA should be more like Europe, which appears to be in the middle of a very big economic collapse.

After WWII, LBJ created seventeen years of semi-permanent stagnation (1965-1982) with three recessions before Reagan revived the economy. Then Clinton foolishly allowed the third largest economic bubble (dot.com) in history to develop, followed by the predictable recession. Bush revived the economy much as Reagan had done, resulting in new highs in employment, growth, government revenues, and new market highs in the period 2003-2007.

Every serious economic slowdown since WWII has followed Democratic Party interference in the economy: LBJ’s waste of $6.6 trillion on the war on Poverty, Clinton’s malfeasance in allowing the Dot.com Bubble to develop, and the Democrats’ Unaffordable Housing Project. Booms belong to Reagan and WBush, busts belong to LBJ, Carter, Clinton, and Obama.

The American people have finally recognized the Marxists’ game, and are reacting as a free people might be expected to react.

By Administrator | Posted in Political | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

On, Wisconsin!

August 10, 2011 – 1:33 pm

Under a Republican governor and a Republican legislature, Wisconsin created over half the jobs created within the USA during the month of June 2011. Wisconsin also recently pulled the plug on a teachers’ union insurance scam, and saved millions of dollars across the state. One single Wisconsin school district saved $690,000 in one single school year by ending the teachers’ union self-dealing insurance program and getting competitive prices for insurance.

Democrats and union supporters attempted to recall Republican legislators in order to regain the Wisconsin statehouse, and failed. Gee, I wonder if there could be some connection?

By Administrator | Posted in Political | Tagged , | Comments (1)

Chinese Bubble

August 9, 2011 – 8:50 pm

China is threatening to discard the dollar. Whoop-de-do. China is by far the least stable of the major economies, dragging multiple anchors behind their ship of state: a totalitarian political system, ethnic conflicts, a radically unbalanced industrial base geared primarily to exports, military and civilian, both of which are threatened by the Chinese threats against the dollar, a minimal domestic economy, the fear and enmity of neighboring states, a radically unbalanced demography with 500 million too many people in abject poverty, a rapidly growing and destabilizing sex ratio (too many men, female fetuses are aborted), massive pollution, massive corruption, and an unstable banking system.

China’s one strong point is its huge export base, wholly developed within the last thirty years with American encouragement, which will come crashing down if its Western markets cease to exist and its somewhat inferior military goods are overpriced by the rise of the renminbi. China is paying out massive amounts of capital for commodities and for access to commodities. Commodities are at record highs and are extremely volatile in times of unrest. China is in an economic bubble, and we should be able to recognize an economic bubble after the Japanese Bubble of 1991, the Dot.com Bubble that rose and started massively downward while Clinton was still in office, and the Democrats’ Unaffordable Housing Program Bubble that nearly triggered the collapse of the world economy, and has not yet run its course. China is totally unstable, like a massive economy balanced uncertainly on a teetering straw.

China’s best hope to salvage their economy is a rapid transition to a consumer-based economy, but that is a dubious proposition. The Chinese middle-class is quite large, roughly comparable to the American middle-class in size and buying power, but they do not buy anything. The Chinese saving rate is near 50%. China’s history and culture have left the people with a dread of uncertainty, so they save their money against the fluctuations of fate. The Chinese are the finest natural capitalists in the world, saddled with an authoritarian and short-sighted political system, and they do not waste money foolishly, as Democrats do.

For all the damage that Democrats have inflicted on the USA, when the shake-out comes America will remain the strongest economic and military power in the world. Europe is in worse shape than the USA, Russia will be caught in the commodities trap, and other emerging forces such as Brazil and India will not be unscathed. We will return to our Constitutional, rule-of-law, free market roots and the Marxist-model totalitarians will have no more worlds to attempt to conquer. I expect that Marxists, or socialists, or communists, or progressives (a misnomer if there ever was one), or liberals (another radical misnomer), or whatever they call themselves will go the way of the Whigs and Know-Nothings, and we can get back to the serious business of leading our own lives without government interference, as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

By Administrator | Posted in Political | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Emanuel Can’t

August 8, 2011 – 3:29 am

Memorable SOBs in Inaction.

The Memorable SOBs in Inaction series presented herein contains observed and reported descriptions of managers who act in destructive and wasteful manners, and specifically refer to themselves as a “tough son-of-a-bitch” or some very similar term. My thesis is that such a set of characteristics constitute a psychological syndrome, the SOB is a very sick personality, and that the symptoms may continue for long periods, at great cost to the organization and to the workers.

All personal and all commercial company names involving SOB personalities are false.

SOBs of whom you may have heard – Emanuel Can’t

Rahm Emanuel delights in his reputation as an SOB, and has a very nasty and threatening temper. He has organizational and financial talents in a political environment, but Emanuel has been a bust as a leader in an operational environment. Emanuel was a close advisor in the Clinton administration and was involved with the failed Hillarycare effort. President Clinton eventually appointed Emanuel to the Board of Directors at Freddie Mac – to get rid of him? Emanuel served on the Freddie Mac Board during the Democrats’ campaign contribution scandals and the $10 billion accounting fraud. From his position on the Freddie Mac Board, Emanuel and the other Board members would have responsibility, as a matter of priority, for items such as avoiding scandals and fraud, but access to the Board minutes was denied by President Obama and no investigation was completed.

As White House Chief of Staff under Obama, Emanuel was directly involved in Obamacare, the financial crisis, the global warming fraud, the energy cap-and-trade failure, and other ongoing troubled areas. Emanuel appears to have interfered in the Colorado (Romanoff) and Pennsylvania (Sestak) senate races in 2010, illegally attempting to influence a federal election. Having a dubious record of real accomplishment during two tours in the White House, Emanuel returned to Chicago just in time to avoid the results and fallout of the 2010 elections. Emanuel may be an SOB and may be operationally incompetent, but he is not stupid.

Emanuel’s career illustrates a rare instance of an SOB Personality achieving a high position. Several more such instances are listed in this series. High-ranking SOBs do not bother to conceal their claims to be “tough SOBs”, but rather celebrate the fact, secure in their ability to intimidate anyone who questions them or their decisions. Like all SOBs, those SOBs who achieve high rank show skills in a narrow area, while failing to achieve operational goals. Corruption is also typical of high-ranking SOBs, often within a network of like-minded individuals, such as in Chicago and in the US Senate.

The SOB Personality’s intimidating behavior serves to reduce scrutiny of his operational failures. It will be informative to observe Emanuel’s performance as Mayor of Chicago. After all, Emanuel came out of the corrupt Chicago environment, was involved to an unknown degree in the Freddie Mac corruption (or negligence) and other operational fiascos, and now sits as Mayor of the most corrupt large city in America. It will be interesting.

By Administrator | Posted in SOB Profiles | Tagged | Comments (1)