Category: Quick Hits

Last week I pointed out that Caterpillar is laying off thousands of workers, many of them from its central Illinois operations. But don't worry because alternative employment is on the way: the local paper notes that franchise restaurants are blowing up here. Not literally blowing up, but as the kids say. Let no one ever again question the munificence of the free market!

In a happy coincidence, the property developer that provides a home to these various franchised gristle huts is run by the wife of the Caterpillar CEO, so I imagine they can sort out how many people making decent money to fire based on the needs of the menial service industry over a light dinner every now and again.

Oh, and since I can't think of new things to say ever ten days when there's a noteworthy mass shooting – we have to separate them now into normal background static mass shootings and ones that are actually shocking enough to merit attention for a day or two – I'm just going to repost Bill Bonds now that I've already taken the time to type up the transcript.

Donald Trump says that if he is president, all of the Syrian refugees accepted by the United States "are going back."

If the Cardinals start me at quarterback this week, I want to start out by establishing the ground game. I really feel like we need to get David Johnson more involved in the offense, and the tight end position has been under-utilized in the passing game.
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Moving Larry Fitzgerald to the slot has worked out brilliantly so I don't see a need to make changes there.
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At least once I want to take some deep shots at Michael Floyd, and of course you have to throw the occasional post corner to Smokey Brown to keep the safeties honest over the top.

Oh, sorry. I thought we were playing "fantasy scenarios" and I wanted to use one that's equally likely to happen.

By now even people who don't follow automotive news have heard that Volkswagen has been caught red-handed pulling a scam on US and EU regulatory agencies. By submitting cars with altered software for testing – allowing its diesel models to appear to produce considerably less pollution than they do in reality – the company effectively defrauded consumers, government regulators, their own dealer network, and, you know, the planet.

Even before lawsuits and criminal penalties are handed down, the scandal figures to cost the company at least the billion it has set aside for the cost of updating consumers' cars to meet the stated pollution standards.

For the unfamiliar, diesels achieve excellent fuel economy and tend to be more durable in the long term with the downside that they are very dirty in terms of emissions. For years the promise of "clean diesel" seemed too good to be true. Turns out it is.

This is no accident, of course. The deception was premeditated, cleverly planned, and flawlessly executed.

Whenever corporate America is caught in a scandal like this I am left scratching my head at their logic. In this instance it was, from the very inception, only a matter of time until the truth was uncovered. Some car magazine or consumers' group would conduct a test using their own equipment and find exhaust emissions far dirtier than the company stated (and EPA certified) figures. How does the company simply plow ahead in this situation? Do they start down the path of trying to cheat and then, finding themselves in too deep to back out, go for the gusto?

Do they delude themselves into thinking that they are so brilliant that they will fool everybody? Do they believe that they will be caught but that no one will dare prosecute them? Did they cynically decide that they would make more money off of the deception than getting caught would cost them in the long run? Or do a handful of people within the company decide that since they are highly unlikely to be held legally responsible personally, they will benefit from the deception handsomely and then live off the proceeds after they're eventually discovered (and probably fired)?

It's hard to conceive of any situation in which this wouldn't end badly for the company. If anyone could come up with a suitably grand delusion, though, it's the kind of people one finds in corporate boardrooms and office complexes these days.

A friend posted a notice for this job on social media. To be clear, there's nothing remotely wrong with the job itself.
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It looks like a good one, in a good location, for a good organization, and likely at non-poverty compensation levels. By the time I reached the end – "Requirements" – I thought immediately of yesterday's post about online / for-profit universities peddling useless paper while Americans rack up billions in student loan debt. I'm not going to parse the entire job posting, but here are the major functions of the person who holds the position:

Primary Purpose: To enter and acknowledge gifts and accurately maintain data for Minnesota Orchestra donors, updating records in a timely manner according to standard business and accounting procedures.

MAJOR JOB FUNCTIONS
Gift Processing
· Enter gifts received by check, lockbox, telefunding, internet and other sources
· Ensure accurate and efficient entry of all gift and patron information
· Troubleshoot questions about gifts with appropriate fundraisers as they arise
· Review and balance gift entry totals against deposits and/or reports

Acknowledgement Processing
· Generate acknowledgements through database and mail merge for all gifts following internal business practices
· Edit, print and distribute letters to appropriate fundraisers for signature
· Maintain accurate tracking system to ensure all letters are mailed in timely manner

Communication (Internal/External)
· Generate daily email to department with lockbox and check details
Complete and send corporate matching forms
Follow up with patrons with expired, expiring or declined credit cards
Assist Manager of Development Operations and other staff as needed

Database Integrity
· Update donor information based on gift entry forms and other communications
· Update demographic information received in daily reports from Ruffalo Noel Levitz
· Research returned mail for current addresses and update database accordingly
· Other duties as assigned

Pretty basic, right?

The first requirement is "Four-year college degree."

Can anyone explain to me why a Bachelor's Degree is necessary to do any aspect of this job? No offense intended, but this is essentially a secretarial / data entry position. If you can work an Excel spreadsheet (as a lot of high school graduates or 2-year degree holders can no doubt do competently) there is nothing here that you can't do. Most of it amounts to data entry, sending emails, compiling summaries of data on donations, and so on.

One of the stated primary responsibilities is mailing letters. And a four-year college degree is the first requirement listed.

We talk a lot about the problem of creeping credentialism – the insistence by employers that basically any position that does not involve french fries or a mop be restricted to college graduates – and this example belongs in the Hall of Fame.
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People are rational. Maybe not smart, wise, curious, or reasonable, but they are rational in that they respond to incentives. If you tell people that they can't get a job unless they raise two goats and a palm tree, the majority of people are going to respond by becoming impromptu goat / palm tenders.

By all means, apply. Looks like a decent job. What it doesn't look like is a job that requires a $100,000 degree to do competently. People will continue to throw money at diploma mills in direct proportion to the share of entry-level positions restricted to the most over-credentialed applicants.

I intended to write a good old fashioned chest-clutcher about the European immigration "crisis" but unfortunately yesterday I was far too busy winning the internet on the social medias. As a bonus feature I get called a lot of names in the comment sections. But even though I have fun with it, not all of this stuff is funny. In fact some of it is downright sad.

Previously I considered social media accounts no more than a diversion. Now I feel like they're taking on a life of their own, and that I'm getting not-bad at the format.

I am a small and petty man, and that is why I am just about ready to drop to my knees, rediscover religion, and pray to an assortment of deities for the nomination of Donald Trump. Lindsey Graham – Lindsey fucking Graham! – is right: if Trump wins, "That's the end of the Republican Party." That is not hyperbole. If he is the nominee, the presidential race will turn into the kind of one-sided ass kicking that we haven't properly seen since 1984, 1972, and and the FDR years.

In modern elections there are groups of states that Republicans and Democrats simply can't lose. Anyone running with the "D" after their name is going to win California, and any Republican who isn't literally frothing at the mouth will win the Deep South.

Trump is so bad he could lose states Republicans never lose.
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States Republicans would practically have to try to lose.
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Hell, Texas will be in play.

Gallup released some startling numbers recently about Hispanics' views on the GOP clown car of candidates. Turns out Hispanics don't like Donald Trump. Hispanics really, really, really hate Donald Trump.

Translation: "We're pretty meh on most of these people, except for this guy. Fuck this guy." Not like it matters though. There aren't a lot of Hispanic voters in the U.S. anyway, right?

Bonus amusement comes from the fact that Ted Cruz appears to be the least popular of the non-Donald candidates, along with fellow Texan Rick Perry. Perry's stillborn campaign may be the first one to commit seppuku, if the whispers are to be believed. We'll, uh, miss him. He was really…present. For some of this.

Everyone pray with me on this one. I haven't wanted something to happen this much since I wanted someone to tackle James Harrison.

Came up with a fun idea over on the Facebook page today. If you're not inclined to use that omniscient data mining platform feel free to sound off in the comment section here.

If you went to college, post the years you attended what one year of tuition (independent of scholarships, grants, room & board, etc) cost during your tenure. Then look up what one year of tuition costs today and report the difference. I'll go first.

1997-1999 University of Wisconsin: $12,000 (one year out of state rate)
2015 University of Wisconsin: $26,660

That's a solid 125% increase in 16 years. It's ok though. I think wages and inflation went up about that much in the same timeframe.

The first time I heard of Samuel DuBose, recently shot in the head by a University of Cincinnati police officer, was in a CNN story.

None of the details in the case – the release of the video or the indictment of the officer – were yet known. And the second paragraph, which in CNN Style is also the second sentence, pretty well summarizes how these stories are reported until the evidence of wrongdoing by law enforcement is so overwhelming that a standard victim-blame paradigm falls apart:

It's cute how they try to portray themselves as real journalists bringing much needed news to the outraged community when at the earliest opportunity to report the story they fulfilled their role as establishment bag men with a flourish. Reporting on the dead unarmed black guy's arrest record is par for the course; pointing out how many children he fathered shows real commitment to the Good Riddance narrative.

I hadn't a clue that performing in blackface was still a thing, but some part of me knew that if anyone in the United States still performed in this shall we say "controversial" medium it would probably be a cop. Now the whole country knows that, yes, blackface is still a thing some people do and yes, the master of the art form is an ex-cop who was fired from the Baltimore PD for being too racist. Pause for a moment to consider how racist you have to be in order to be ruled Too Racist to be a Baltimore police officer.

Assuming you are not performing in a film or play in which re-creating the late 19th or early 20th Centuries involves the realistic depiction of a minstrel show, it is not complicated to determine whether or not donning blackface is a good idea.

For anyone who might be confused I have assembled a handy flowchart. Consult it as often as necessary.

The academic part of me thinks I understand, or am capable of understanding, why people behave the way they do.

I'm no sociologist or psychologist, but it doesn't take much to come up with a persuasive explanation of why people think this sort of thing is OK. At the most basic level, though, I have a difficult time fathoming how an adult human being would need to have it explained to him – in 2015 – that performing in blackface maybe isn't a great idea in the midst of a racially charged series of events involving the deaths of black men at the hands of cops.

Can anyone's lack of self-awareness be that complete? Or does he know but simply loves to troll?

Given that the stated purpose of the event was to raise money for the indicted cops, trolling seems unlikely.

That only leaves one option.