WHERE DO WE WANT DONALD TRUMP?

 

 

TRUMP'S LEGAL BAGGAGE

 

GREAT NEWS - TRUMP PHOTO FINALLY HUNG AT WHITE HOUSE

 

LOOP NORTH NEWS

 

Older workers need to brace for cutbacks Never mind ‘quiet quitting.’ Companies are moving toward stealth personnel reductions. Make sure your skills are up to speed. By Howard Tullman 21-Mar-23 – With all of the noise about workers’ reluctance to return to the office, the end of the five-day work week, and all the folks quietly quitting without leaving, it’s easy to overlook one huge slice of the population that has exactly the opposite problem. Not that these people don’t want to come back; it’s that they’re not wanted or needed. I call this the “don’t call us, we’ll call you” problem because employers mostly never do. Companies are taking advantage of the pandemic’s disruptions to make one-time, substantial changes – mainly reductions – in their fixed personnel costs. Millions of Americans are just waking up to the frightening reality of the new normal and the harsh hybrid world where if you’re a certain age – 50 and up is a good benchmark – and your skill set is not well-suited to the digital economy, you may simply no longer be required by your employer. Outliving your economic value has been an issue for decades as technology has kept advancing, but the acceleration of the disruption in the last five years has been even more substantial, particularly for mid-level white collar jobs. It’s especially disturbing when the morons in Congress keep yapping about raising the age for Social Security while employees just a few years from the retirement goalposts – and after a lifetime of contributions to the fund – now face being abruptly and unceremoniously unemployed. Whether you’ve been replaced by younger, cheaper folks, outmoded by automation or AI, or outsourced to the new WFH labor force willing to work from anywhere for less and with fewer benefits, your relative value, negotiating strength, and leverage have all likely diminished. Which means your continuing employment prospects aren’t looking that great. Let’s just say that the employers are “feeling their oats” these days and see the pendulum of negotiating power headed back their way. Employers in every kind of traditional industry learned two crucial lessons throughout the pandemic and the growth of the “gig” marketplace: • They could get by with a lot less of almost everything, especially people. • Having an on-demand and variable workforce instead of a locked-in, full-time, and fully funded group was an amazingly effective way to closely tie their operating costs to the real-time demand for their products and services. As a simple example, the insurance industry has determined that it no longer needs thousands of adjusters because some of the most time-consuming tasks they performed – like physical inspections of damaged property and vehicles – can now be handled directly by their insureds using mobile apps. Call centers across the country that used to be staffed full time are now largely empty due to new technology and are being replaced by foreign boiler rooms as well as by people working part time, for peanuts, at home. Unfortunately, these two lessons – fewer folks and flexible employment – really stuck, while the difficulties we all faced with just-in-time inventory strategies, supply chain collapses, and little or no system resilience or redundancy seem to have already started to fade. We’re sadly back to the “save me a dollar today and let the future take care of itself” approach as public companies concerned with quarterly results try to offset the very slow rate of returning revenues by “saving their way” to success. Especially with substantial headcount cuts, which never work in the long run. Let’s be clear as well that ageism is a serious concern and an active driver of a portion of these shifts. I’ve described some of the affirmative steps that every smart older employee should be taking to increase the likelihood that he or she will make the latest cuts. If that describes you, it’s time to recalibrate and realistically reassess where things stand for you since the game and the goals have shifted pretty dramatically in the last six months along with the balance of power between employer and employee. Here are five things to consider as you plan out your next moves. 1 The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. Everyone tells themselves, from time to time, that they’re irreplaceable. Convincing yourself is easy – the world, not so much. If you’re going to be prepared to deal successfully with the new challenges that you’re certain to face, you need to be as realistic about your shortcomings as you are proud of your skills and accomplishments. And you need to be smart enough to know when you shouldn’t trust yourself. Get a second opinion from a trusted friend before you jump off the cliff. 2 Experience matters less and less every day in tech-centric businesses. In a world where change is constant and new technologies emerge weekly, whatever got you through and made you valuable in the past is worth exponentially less today, because no one has experience doing things that have never been done before. Don’t judge yourself by your prior results; no one else will and, in fact, a fairer question is not what you did, but what you could have done with the resources and opportunities you had. In today’s business world, your history and prior behaviors may actually be impediments to progress, adaptation, and agility going forward. The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. Everyone tells themselves, from time to time, that they’re irreplaceable. Convincing yourself is easy – the world, not so much. 3 You need to leave the “rocket science” to the rookies. At best, most of us over-50s in the workforce are digital immigrants and, across the board, we’re matching skills and trying to compete in the new digital economy with millions of younger, faster, digital natives. This is simply no contest; you won’t win. Trying to explain generative AI to most grown-ups is tougher than trying to teach a fish to ride a bicycle. Stick to your knitting and don’t try to pretend you’re something you’re not. 4 It’s probably not the right time for you to start a new business. It’s never been easier to start a business or harder to build one that’s successful and sustainable. You can easily convince yourself that you have the skill set, the endurance, the passion, and the perseverance to make a go of it starting from scratch, but nine times out of ten, startups fail. Not a good bet or a good use of your savings to try. 5 You may keep your job, but the job you keep won’t be the same. If you’re lucky enough to be kept around, you should be mentally prepared to make some attitude adjustments. The job is to do what needs to get done now – not what or how things used to be done – and not how you think they should be done. In the new normal, they have to pay you, but they don’t have to thank you. And you don’t have to like what you’re doing; you just have to do it. The healthiest and happiest folks I talk to these days combine practicality with confidence. They say that there’s no task that’s beneath them and none that’s beyond them. These are the long-term keepers in every company. Howard Tullman is General Managing Partner for G2T3V, LLC – Investors in Disruptive Innovators, and for Chicago High Tech Investors, LLC. He is also the author of Words of Wisdom: A 60-year compilation.

 

Brandon Johnson on policing, circa 2020

Brandon Johnson on policing, circa 2020

BY ERIC ZORN ON MARCH 20, 2023

WGN-Ch. 9 news interviewed Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson on Aug. 11, 2020 in the wake of a resurgence of racial unrest. I had the interview transcribed so interested readers can see what Johnson said and what he didn’t say, and not rely on outtakes and audio snippets.

WGN: There was rioting and organized looting last night and you’re calling to defund the police. Explain that.

Johnson: What we’re seeing, obviously, is an outbreak of incredible frustration and anguish from communities that have been isolated through poverty over generations. And what we have is a typical, very standard, quite frankly, a very tired response to the regularly scheduled pandemic, which is structural racism. And that response has been to increase police presence that has not led to anything of substance to secure communities (or) to make communities whole. … We’re spending nearly $5 million a day just on policing while families continue to experience homelessness, unemployment and lack of access to health care and transportation. You can’t take a certain level of urgency to protect capital and the wealthy and not have that same tenacity, to provide relief for families that have been devastated through structural racism for generations.

WGN: But, Commissioner, by defunding the police department, what are you hoping to accomplish? And how can that make citizens safer? And how could that, ultimately, do you feel, stop looting?

Johnson: You have to have investments in communities. Look, one of the best things you can do to secure communities is to make sure that people have access to jobs and health care and education. … Within my generation — individuals who were born in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s — one in four of us were criminalized and sent to prison; seven and 10 of us went to prison if we did not have a high school diploma. You can’t convince me that an entire cohort of people are predisposed to criminalization.

WGN: But sir, what about this generation? And are you suggesting that the money that we put in the police department go back into the communities?

Johnson: It’s very simple. Absolutely. Right. Now, if we think about the legacy of Harold Washington — the first Black mayor — he set up a structure so that (tax-increment financing) dollars can go into communities that have been underserved. Right now we have nearly a billion dollars in our TIF districts, and the last several administrations — from this current one to the previous one and the one before that — have continued to put money into the hands of the wealthy. And so that’s why you have playgrounds being built for the wealthy in Lincoln Yards by Sterling Bay while communities are suffering Great Depression era numbers of unemployment.

That’s the level of urgency that we have to have, we have to redirect dollars away from a failed, racist system and move it into the hands of people who really are trying their very best to survive day to day. And if we can’t do that, as a government, we are failing to meet the moment that Black Lives Matter has called for. Black, white, brown intergenerational — this generation is approaching this in a very bold, dynamic way to deal with the social inequalities that have existed for for too long.

That’s the urgency of now: To continue to criminalize people and to chastise folks for being poor is tired, and it’s old. And we actually need a new direction that really calls for massive investments in neighborhoods like mine, where I’m raising my children in Austin on the west side of Chicago.

WGN: I think the mayor would say that she’s making those investments with her INVEST South/West program. But let us ask you about these stores. The CEO of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, told Crain’s Chicago business that there will be serious consequences if Chicago doesn’t get the situation under control. Do you worry about stores leaving Chicago and the county because they just don’t think it’s safe?

Johnson: What I worry about is people who don’t have jobs and access to food. Look, the fact of the matter is, these companies have insurance and assurances, and that this particular administration is doing everything it can to protect the interests of the wealthy, and (to protect) capital. You can’t keep putting profit over people.

And as far as INVEST South/West, it’s a very petite approach to a dynamic problem. You can’t have Austin and Englewood competing over a few million dollars when you’re sitting on $1 billion right now. The urgency of this moment requires something bold, progressive and audacious. You can’t continue to keep putting money into a failed system that not only criminalizes our existence, but it doesn’t keep us safe. There is no direct correlation between the amount of money we spend in policing and secure neighborhoods. We’ve got to do something different and that’s why you have a progressive response to make sure that we’re putting dollars in the neighborhood

WGN: Well you say that this generation is progressive, they’re audacious. But tonight, a Black Lives Matter peaceful protester said that looting is a form of reparations. As you said, the the stores have insurance. They say it’s okay to loot. It shows that they’re unable to eat. Is that the answer? To loot? Because it’s a form of reparations? To loot because they that’s how they can eat?.

Johnson: The question is, how do we make sure that people can eat? Look, no one is going to condone behavior that quite frankly, speaks to a level of desperation

WGN: So you’re not condoning looting?

Johnson: I’m saying that people are acting out of desperation. We don’t want a society that has economic desperation. But you have to pay attention to the cries that people had.

WGN: You’re not condoning looting?

Johnson: There’s no way to embrace that. What I’m saying is, you can’t condone the looting that corporations continue to do every single day when they take tax dollars from Black, brown and white folks all over the city of Chicago so that they can turn a profit. The fact that Jeff Bezos pays a lesser tax rate than people who are seeking unemployment? That’s a wicked system. That type of looting has to be disrupted as well. That’s what we’re calling for in this moment.

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

  

Charisma is No Substitute for Capability

In business and in politics, the cult of personality is prevailing at a time when we desperately need leaders who can perform. And Chicago is typical. 

BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN

In the endless stream of advice for entrepreneurs and the catalogue of essential leadership abilities required to succeed in the startup world, one of the most persistent and damaging myths is the vision that early success requires a fearless and charismatic leader. One who is blessed with a magnetic and abundant charm, along with powerful and persuasive speaking skills.

Character, integrity, and even competence too often take a back seat to media-friendly and easily promotable personalities, where no one's interested in looking beneath the surface until the moment when the ship is on the shoals and in danger of sinking. Then, and only then, do we discover that the latest and greatest wonder has dimmed, and the so-called savior turns out to be all sink and no plumbing. You can't build a real business on a foundation of fiction, and you can't count on a leader who's all hat and no cattle, as they say in the South.

It's always a bad long-term bet in business to try to get by on a lie, or even on a well-spun story, without the slightest underlying substance. Too often, these fairy tales and their made-up "masters of the universe" inspire all manner of devoted and cult-like followers who are so besotted with the facade and the phony factoids these phonies spew that they rarely, if ever, question the underlying realities.

For many of these folks, this is as close to a religious experience as any sales pitch by a snake oil huckster can be. Even employees who should, and often do, know better are dragged along with the crowd and end up behaving badly and being no less craven and criminal than the bogus "boss." To those sycophants who claim "they didn't know," or that they thought they could change, control, or contain the crimes and craziness, the truth is that the lies you tell yourself are always the worst of all.

Charisma is very much like technology--a powerful but incomplete tool that's only partially controllable under the best of circumstances, and morally neutral or worse. Charisma can be employed as a positive and beneficial skill to engage, excite, and encourage; or it can be abused by thieves and liars to mislead, anger, and enrage.

Chicago's current mayoral contest presents just the latest opportunity to understand how easy it is these days, especially for the media, to confuse even a modest dollop of "charisma" with the kind of character and substance required to actually be in charge of any substantial enterprise. The painful and costly risk of choosing the wrong leader is no less frightening to the city than it has been to countless new and long-standing businesses in the past.

We're watching a heated competition in Chicago between Paul Vallas, a bland but serious candidate with boatloads of relevant and compelling experience who-; much like President Biden-; offers a vision of competence, control, and stability and who speaks in facts and figures; versus Brandon Johnson, a rank but highly vocal beginner with no experience, training, or skills, who's trying to sell the same-old story of dramatic and rapid change. His campaign is all sputter and sound bites rather than any actual substance or real plans and programs. Sadly, the desperate media hacks (both locally and nationally) who are always looking for "new" and emerging saviors along with cheap sizzle are celebrating the pretender's "charisma" and ignoring his utter lack of qualifications or capacity to actually do the job.

The most observant and trenchant professionals in the city continue to try to remind the voters that this is not a popularity contest.  It's supposed to be a serious and thoughtful evaluation of whether each candidate is up to the task of running a $28 billion budget and operating one of the largest and most complex cities in the world. It's not a job for even the most excited amateurs who haven't got a clue about what it really entails.

And, in a clear sign of how empty and manipulative this current effort really is, well-known, hyper-progressive politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who clearly know nothing about this candidate or about what's actually happening in Chicago, are rushing to endorse the guy in gestures that are so superficial and inauthentic that they're ultimately just insults to voters' intelligence. Chicago certainly doesn't need the helpful input of outsiders (with their own credibility problems) who are mainly interested in stirring the pot and pushing people's buttons without offering anything in the way of actual programs, process improvements, or concrete suggestions.  

The bottom line -- although it's not necessarily exciting or likely to lead the nightly news -- is that the last thing we need in our businesses and for the leadership of our cities and country right now are new, untested and inexperienced, change agents trying to interest a tired, concerned, and fearful population of consumers, clients and voters in the idea of change for change's sake. And pushing us all to charge forward into uncertain and perilous times with no plan or strategy and no likelihood of success.

Chicago, in particular, has suffered mightily through four years of an incompetent mayor who was promoted much in the same fashion as the latest newbie is being "sold" and who ended up destroying large parts of the city's economy as well as its global reputation as a safe, smart and successful place to work and live.

It's simply the wrong time and far too dangerous a period for novices to try to learn these big and challenging jobs on the fly while cities are in crisis mode. 

LET'S GET THIS FILTHY CROOKED PIG ONCE AND FOR ALL - JAIL THE SCUMBAG

 

This is a story about serving justice and repairing our democracy. Either there’s rule of law or there’s not. Either we are defined by a system of justice that holds the guilty accountable or we aren’t. Either we have a democracy that limits the use of violence to define our public life and the rights of our citizens or we have a country devolving into authoritarianism in which a strongman leader can employ fear and intimidation to get and keep power.

After the exhausting years of Trump—including over 30,000 documented lies, dozens of discernible criminal acts, and a near-daily effort to spur a climate of chaos and a growing appetite for hatred and carnage—this is a moment to declare: We will not be held hostage once again by a tyrannical minority or its leaders that are abusing their power to undermine democracy and democratic institutions, permanently break peoples’ belief in justice and the rule of law, and drive a deeper wedge between Americans with grievance and outrage.

This is a time to celebrate that we may finally be seeing a lawless ex-president held criminally accountable.

EARLY COMMENTS AND REVIEWS - NEW BOOK BY HOWARD TULLMAN - WORDS OF WISDOM

 WORD OF WISDOM    

A 60 -YEAR COMPILATION

    This somewhat random compilation of thoughts, quotes, classics, proverbs, lies, and fairy tales started in 1963 following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy who was the most eloquent speaker in that office in my lifetime until the arrival of President Barack Obama who was at least his equal. 

    It’s been a labor of love and a constant source of inspiration, reference, advice, and encouragement throughout decades of building businesses, raising a family, teaching students of all ages, non-stop creative and academic writing, speaking to groups all around the world, and constant attempts to herd, advise, and direct other entrepreneurs and aspirants who are far more challenging than even the most wayward cats.

    In putting all this material in one format and one place, I’m hopeful that I can share the contents and pass on the collected wisdom embedded herein and live up to the simple challenge I give myself every week as I write: to write something worth reading or do something worth writing about. I hope you enjoy this book and put the material regularly to use as I have for more than sixty years. 

"There is truth in the title. It is a massive collection of words of wisdom. You can just flip through it and land at any random spot and find a small nugget of enlightenment."  S.D.

"I love your book. Every page brings with it nuggets of wisdom and a few laughs as well."  M.S.

"I am now equipped for the rest of my life to have enough Howard Tullman sayings to last every day!"   T.K.