For everyone out there supporting the #Occupy Movement, who calls themselves part of “the 99%”, identifies with their alleged struggle, and supports their strategies and tactics, you may want to think twice.   History has taught that when the Left uncorks the radical movement, change comes swiftly…to the Right.

If one hops into the Way-Back Machine and plops down in late 18^th century France, one is apt to re-discover that fixture of high school European history known as The French Revolution.  Few would argue that French monarchy was a system worth endorsing.  But how quickly we forget what replaced it – a radical left-wing action that resulted in a secular Democratic republic that was a wee bit authoritarian.  Actually, if memory serves, there was this thing called The Committee of Public Safety – a virtual dictatorship run by crazy Robespierre that resulted in the Reign of Terror.

There’s a great quote from Robespierre to justify the use of violent repression, “Terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible”.   Hmmmm.  Terror = Justice.  Now just slip the word “Social” in there before “Justice” and you can see where I’m headed.  But just so I can complete this parallel, Robespierre arranged to have even his allies executed so he could run the show himself, with his power assisted throughout the countryside by the Jacobin Club aka Popular Societies aka ACORN.

While the MSM spins about the “non-violent, non-Anti-Semitic non-racist #Occupy Movement”, your intrepid journalists here at The Bigs have uncovered tons of evidence that demonstrate just the opposite. Indeed, plans are in the works to….what’s the word?….terrorize the opponents of the People’s Revolution aka Obama’s #Occupy Movement. The result of all this violence was The Thermidorian Reaction – a swing back to the Right following the revolution.   I repeat, to the Right.

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SAFE. End of story.

Please read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 [Editor: Please link to each]

Contrary to recent media reports, the Brazilian Blowout hair treatment is safe for use.  Here is a review of all the studies done on Brazilian Blowout.

Oregon OSHA:  Pass

Federal OSHA:  Pass

Health Sciences Associates:  Pass

Dr. James Haw – USC: Pass

FDA:  Conducted no studies

ChemRisk: Too much product used = faulty study

Brazilian Blowout passed every single properly performed study for both state and federal short-term and long-term exposure limits, known as the Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL – an 8-hour time-weighted average) and Short-Term Exposure Limit (STEL – a 15 minute exposure measurement).

So why the witch hunt on Brazilian Blowout?  The answers are simple:

1) Government Bias

As described in Part 1 [Editor: Please link], Oregon OSHA is guilty of :

• Equating methylene glycol with formaldehyde in contradiction of all accepted scientific nomenclature methods.  Doing so allowed them to…
• Claim extremely high levels of formaldehyde in the product.
• Ideological bias, as at least one scientist who authored the study aligns himself with a hardcore Liberal Senator known as an environmental activist.
• Editorializing what should be a neutral scientific report, thus demonstrating its own bias.
• Deliberately taking samples longer than 15 minutes and applying those results to 15 minute periods.
• Issuing a false and misleading press release that did not report the product actually passed the PEL and STEL tests.

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Please read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

Contrary to recent media reports, the Brazilian Blowout hair treatment is safe for use.

Today I’ll present contrasting studies on the product, to show the difference between a properly performed study and a botched one — and how the media reports on each.   A reminder on what we’re looking at: The controversy regarding Brazilian Blowout centers around the amount of formaldehyde allegedly released during a treatment.  A harmless alcohol known as methylene glycol is in every bottle of Brazilian Blowout solution.  During a treatment, methylene glycol can be converted to formaldehyde in tiny amounts when it reacts with water.

OSHA has two important safety limits: The Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL – an 8-hour time-weighted average) and Short-Term Exposure Limit (STEL – a 15 minute exposure measurement).  Both are measured in parts per million (ppm).

First, we look at the correctly performed study, and the media’s coverage of it.

Do It Right

Dr. James Haw is the director of Environmental Studies Program and the Ray R. Irani, Chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp., Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southern California. His work has been published 170 times in peer-reviewed journals.  he’s been lecturing all over the world for 30 years.  He’s been the recipient of 45 grants over the same time period, including one from the E.P.A.  His credentials are impeccable.

He recently visited two Los Angeles salons and conducted fully documented, rigorous scientific testing using the same methodology as OSHA.  The results of the study yielded formaldehyde exposure levels to be almost non-existent.

“The least advantageous way to use my data to estimate the stylist’s 15 min STEL is to imagine that the entire dose of formaldehyde measured over 35 min. was actually delivered in a single15-minute exposure.  This worst-case interpretation results in a value of 0.054 ppm, well below the OSHA limit of 2 ppm.  …The worst possible 8 hour time-weighted average exposure from these data…leads to an 8-hr. time-weighted exposure value of 0.026 ppm , well below the OSHA PEL of 0.75 ppm”.

For the second salon, the STEL was measured at 0.160ppm, well below OSHA’s limit of 2 ppm.  The PEL was measured at 0.052 ppm, well below the OSHA limit of 0.75ppm.  The entire study has been posted on the company’s website.

Here’s the media coverage of Dr. Haw’s study:

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Please read Part 1 and Part 2.

Contrary to recent media reports, the Brazilian Blowout hair treatment is safe for use.

Oregon OSHA and Federal OSHA had already attacked Brazilian Blowout’s product, steering the media to focus on faulty aspects of their respective studies, and burying the truth  –  that the product does not release formaldehyde in amounts that exceed state or federal short-term or long-term exposure limits.

Enter Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D – 3 – OR).  Ontheissues.org labels him a “hard-core Liberal”, and you know what that means when it comes to anything involving chemicals or the environment.   Rep. Blumenauer sponsored nonsensical bills like HR 3311 that taxes drivers based on miles driven; a ludicrous bill to jump-start the funding of streetcars; a bill to establish under-the-radar death panels; a bill providing environmental education grants for outdoor experiences (huh?); and even one quashing free speech by attempting to ban a website promoting the perfectly safe Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.

So Rep. Blumenauer reads about OSHA’s nonsense in the media and, because he’s a politician, doesn’t do his research, either.  Nor does he bother contacting the company to get their side of the story.   Instead, he grandstands by penning a letter to the Food and Drug Administration asking that they recall the product — a product already proven to meet OSHA standards!

I asked Rep. Blumenauer’s press secretary, Derek Schlickeisen, about this approach to policy.  His assertion was that politicians “can’t have a chemist on staff”, and thus rely on OSHA’s scientists to bring incidents like this to light.  When I mentioned that the company-funded study by Health Science Associates showed formaldehyde levels below OSHA standards, he inferred that the study held little weight because it was company funded.

Yet why is it that OSHA’s results are given any more credibility, especially when OSHA caused a panic based entirely on a faulty sample?  Are we to believe that OSHA scientists are somehow free of ideological bias?  Kermit McCarthy, one of the authors of the Oregon OSHA study, “likes” hard-core Liberal Sen. Ron Wyden according to his Facebook page.  Why isn’t his bias questioned?  If anything, a government worker is likely more biased than a private company to insert bias, because his very job depends on his work generating a result that permits the government to do something.  Otherwise, the agency’s existence, and the employee’s, have no purpose.

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Contrary to recent media reports, the Brazilian Blowout hair treatment is safe for use.

You’d never know it, though, because the mainstream media has been perpetuating one myth after another about Brazilian Blowout while ignoring the facts.   Last time, I wrote about a hatchet job made to appear as a legitimate study by Oregon OSHA [Note to Editor: Please link to Part 1] that was covered ad-nauseum by the media.

Yet, when a respected scientific association issued a balanced statement regarding Brazilian Blowout, the media spun it to make it appear that the company was fighting regulatory sampling of the product.  To wit: The American Chemistry Council, which actually manufactures formaldehyde, released a statement ten days before Oregon OSHA unveiled its biased “report”.

“We encourage the company that makes the Brazilian Blowout to cooperate fully with government officials to ensure that the product meets federal and state standards for formaldehyde use”.

Brazilian Blowout fully cooperated and, as thanks, was subjected to a biased and editorialized government report from Liberal environmentalists at Oregon OSHA.  Yet Time Magazine would have you believe that “The chemical industry is actually sort of coming down on the side of regulators and activist groups on the issue”, while quoting hack anti-capitalist enviro-wackos like Siobhan O’Connor.  The company’s side of the story, however, was omitted.

So, with the house already stacking the odds against Brazilian Blowout, Federal OSHA entered the fray.

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Contrary to ongoing media reports, the Brazilian Blowout hair treatment is safe for use.

The company is caught in a perfect storm of faulty private and government studies, absurd regulatory definitions, environmentalist hoopla, Liberal politics, and verifiable governmental incompetence.  Add in the tsunami of a mainstream media eager to fearmonger and water-carry for anti-capitalist environmentalists, and Franz Kafka would’ve been proud.

Brazilian Blowout Passes All Air Sampling Tests

The controversy surrounds the allegedly dangerous levels of formaldehyde that are released during a Brazilian Blowout treatment — allegations for which there remain no scientific basis.  In fact, every single correctly performed test has fully acquitted the company and its product.

The first study was conducted jointly by the Center for Research on Occupational and Environmental Toxicology (CROET), Oregon Health & Science University, and Oregon OSHA.  In what appears to this reporter as a blatant attempt to manufacture results unfavorable to Brazilian Blowout, air monitoring sample tests were carried out in time periods that vastly exceeded federal OSHA short-term exposure testing protocols of 15 minutes.  Instead, Oregon OSHA took samples of 26, 20, and 19 minutes.

Despite the apparent rigging of the experiment, the results still acquitted Brazilian Blowout regarding formaldehyde released during treatments.

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The #OccupyWhatever protest has an eerie feeling of déjà vu surrounding it.  Back in 1985, when I was attending Cornell University, the movement du jour was encouraging universities to divest from companies that did business in then-apartheid South Africa.  At the time, my addled mind convinced me this was a great idea — despite the logical arguments from my Texan Conservative floormates that this would have zero impact on changing the government there.  It did, however, give me my first opportunity to try my hand at photojournalism — as all the accompanying photos demonstrate.

For several weeks, the university was littered in red ribbons and armbands, signifying support for divestment.

Eventually, a shantytown appeared directly behind the administration building of Day Hall,  conveniently placed in a location surrounded by structures, making it relatively easy for tours to pass by without horrified parents seeing what was going on.  The center of the protests, where one could pick up literature about divestment, eventually became capitalized — Shantytown — and an easily recognizable landmark where one could meet a fellow student.

The protests led to sit-ins inside Day Hall, and all it accomplished was to irritate other students who had to conduct business there.

Eventually, the protesters refused to leave the building at the 5 PM closing time. Students were warned to do so or risk arrest, some left and some didn’t. Those who didn’t were arrested.  They were carted downtown but were not prosecuted.

It soon became apparent that many of those involved had no clue what was being protested but simply wanted to belong.  This included a friend, who said exactly that to me, and was closely involved with the protest. He said the administration was pissed, but tolerant.  They didn’t want to look like they were shutting down free speech.  Then two things happened that chopped away at that patience:

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I had lost touch with my friend and businessman Domingo Bernardo many years ago, and he finally turned up on Facebook.  Domingo’s story is an incredible one:

My father “earned” his way out of Cuba by working essentially as a slave on the sugar cane fields for 2 years, where more than 25% of the people died within a year from malaria, as a punishment for asking for an exit visa.  We went back to Spain with the clothes on our backs (I was a toddler).  When Franco died, many Spaniards (my whole family is from Spain, my parents were in Cuba for only a few years), figured Socialism would come in, so many (like us) left, running from socialism to a country where we knew no one, had no jobs, and didn’t understand the culture or the language.  Socialism always does that — creates an incentive for the bright, the educated, the entrepreneurs and the wealthy to leave, leaving the country with what?  So we came to the U.S.

I learned English at 14, worked hard to get out of the ghetto, got into Cornell with a special language waiver, managed to get a Cornell engineering degree, then joined the Navy. Part of the reason I served was that I felt like I owed the country something for taking us in. I got hurt in Bosnia,came home, worked hard to establish a business, and now I’ve left my country, because I can’t take the Socialist slant anymore, and I am so tired of the regulations that make it almost impossible to do business in the U.S.  When I closed my home theatre installation business, I was not an engineer; I was a paper-filler-outer.  I have ZERO incentive to start my business in the USA between the taxes and the regulations.  The last straw was this summer; there are now over 6,000 lamps I can no longer use in jobs.  If I do, there is a fine of $5000 PER LAMP all for some hoax called Global Warming.  By the way, the new “better” lamps are from 4x to 10x costlier, and the “environment-killing” lamps are being used in every other non-EU country.

You need to understand Domingo as I did.  We were on the same dorm floor freshman year.  All he did was study.  He busted his ass, and every other day he talked about how grateful he was to the U.S.  He always intended to join the Navy, despite us (at the time, foolish liberals) trying to talk him out of it.  For this man to do all he has done, then leave of his own free will?  Wow. (more…)

Time, experience, and maturity have led me to conclude that it is better to be in control of your own destiny than to have it dictated to you.  If you control your own destiny, then you reap the rewards of your hard work and of your mistakes.

But what if you are afraid to control your own destiny?  What if you have such low self-confidence that you believe it isn’t worth it to even try, that a Steve Jobs is the exception rather than the rule?

The Creation of The Liberal

Think about the people you know who have low self-esteem.  We’ll call that person The Patient. The Patient does not see value in himself.  He does not consider himself worthy of advancement, of self-transcendence, or self-actualization.  Instead, The Patient believes he is a bad person, undeserving of success, love, wealth, or happiness.  He comes to believe, therefore, that any effort he exerts on his own behalf is doomed to fail because he is such a bad person and does not deserve any success.

But there is this tiny little voice — the ego — that just won’t stand for this self-flagellation.  So the ego projects The Patient’s self-hate onto The Other as a defense mechanism.  They project the self-hate onto the person who is happy, wealthy, successful, and loved.  Now, it is The Other who becomes the object of hate.  “Why should he have everything?  What has he done to deserve all this?  I’m not the bad person, he is.”   As a friend’s Facebook quote said just today, “Haters don’t really hate you, they hate themselves because you are a reflection of what they wish to be.” (more…)

This administration really does not want small business to succeed.

In my last article, I wrote a personal story of how government regulation was directly killing jobs.  I received a lot of support from the BIG community on in both the comments section and via Email.  I even got offers from private capital who offered to have a look at the deals that were destroyed by Obama’s Job-Killing Regulatory Beast.  If there’s one thing I love about Americans, it’s how many of them step up to help out, even when they haven’t been asked.  So, a big thank you to all!

Today’s news came as no surprise to me.  Apparently, the Small Business Lending Fund (SBLF), which was created as part of the “Small Business Jobs Act of 2010″, has just closed.  It distributed only $4 billion of the $30 billion authorized.  The only thing that did actually surprise me was that the government did not actually spend all the money it was authorized to.  This is considered, in some circles, a miracle.

On the other hand, the one place where this money should have been fully distributed was within this very program, once again lending credence to the theory that government can always be relied upon to do the exact opposite of what needs to be done.

The Fund was supposed to provide capital to small community banks that would then lend to small businesses.  However, 40% of applicants did not meet minimum requirements.  Now, think about this.  The government would not lend to these banks because they didn’t meet requirements, which include paying dividends back to the SBLF.

But the government didn’t think twice about guaranteeing a $570 million loan to Solyndra, despite repeated internal warnings that the business was in trouble.

Again, why am I not surprised?

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I occasionally broker commercial loans between finance companies and small businesses.  It gives me a lot of pride when I bring together an American entrepreneur who is ready to risk all his assets on his own business, with a finance company that sees a way to help that businessman and make a profit himself.

For the past month, I’ve been working with a financier to bring funding to 30 entrepreneurs, eager and ready to start up their businesses.  Yesterday I had the most dis-spiriting conversation of my professional career with my financier, whom I’ll call “Joe”.

Joe has a credit line with a Gigantic American Bank.  The Federal Reserve has slapped the Bank, and all other banks big and small, with new regulations regarding how they loan their money, who they loan it to, and issued a mountain of compliance rules.  The Bank cannot rely on their internal compliance auditors any longer, either.  They must use independent auditors.

The Bank, in order to remain in compliance, must shove all these same regulations and compliance rules onto whomever they loan money to, including Joe, who also must engage an independent compliance auditor.  Joe must shove all these same regulations and compliance rules onto whomever he loans money to, including these entrepreneurs, who also must engage an independent compliance auditor.

The cost of all these regulations and compliance audits, at the entrepreneur level alone, is $30,000.   It costs a heck of a lot more as you move up the chain.

The entrepreneurs cannot afford this.

As a result, the entrepreneurs’ dreams of starting their own businesses die on the vine.  They now must go back into the depressed job market to (not) find a job.

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“There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.” – Linus van Pelt in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”

Facebook has been great for me.  I’ve reconnected with many people I haven’t seen in years, made many new friends, and have found yet another method of procrastination.  The downside — or maybe it’s an upside — is that it’s revealed some very troubling things about the social media platform, and personal relationships.

I refer to the not-yet-codified protocol for political posts.

If a friend posts something political, you might reasonably assume that (absent prior agreements not to discuss politics), that dissenting views are welcome.  After all, this is your friend.  Friends can, and often do, disagree.  If your friend only wanted to hear views that concur with her own, then one might reasonably assume that she would announce this.

So imagine my surprise, and subsequent disappointment, that twelve Facebook friends have de-friended me because I dared disagree with their posts.  Now, in real-life, when I have disagreements with friends on matters of politics, we may yell and scream and jump up and down, but when all is said and done, we pat each other on the back and say, “I don’t agree with you, but I love you.  Let’s not discuss politics anymore”, and we have a beer.

But in cyberspace, there is a dual sociological phenomenon at work.  The first was posited by Dr. Stanley Milgram in his famous obedience experiment, which effectively showed that one is able to do something they might not normally do if they can do it anonymously.  While de-friending is not exactly an anonymous act, the fact that it can be done remotely, without warning, without hearing an appeal, demonstrates how cyberspace contributes to the dehumanization of mankind.   A de-friended friend is not a person.  They are nothing more than a button that can be pressed and — POOF — they’re gone.

Can you imagine a more cowardly act?  Before Facebook, before Email, if you got angry with a friend, you would actually have to have a conversation with them.

But now?  Poof!

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We all have fears.  They rise up out of the muck of our subconscious and exert extraordinary power over us.  Some fears are perfectly rational, others are strictly irrational.  Irrational fear arises out of 1) deep-seated knowledge that the other side is right (the ego perceives a threat to a well-entrenched belief), 2) a projection of one’s more unpleasant qualities onto the “Other” (the Jungian Shadow), or 3) Plain old-fashioned ignorance.

I’ve noticed that many of my Liberal friends constantly harped on George W. Bush’s faith in Jesus.  They wrung their hands in terror that something would be implemented that would…be really bad.  Ultimately, they just didn’t like his religion being foisted on them, although when pressed, they had trouble specifying exactly what would result from the President’s faith.

Now, we’re seeing the same fears being sounded over Gov. Perry’s faith. The message is that Liberals don’t want to be forced into believing something they don’t want to believe in, or that some religiously-driven policy will be enacted against their own interest, or that it will somehow restrict their personal freedom.

That is perfectly reasonable, and I agree with them completely.

The irony is that the Liberal approach to policy in general is cloaked behind its own ideological philosophy.  It may not be an established religion, but Conservatives and Libertarians are equally opposed to some policy being put in place that restricts freedom, that forces them to believe something they don’t want to believe in, or that is against their own interest.

And I naturally agree with them, as well.

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I get tired constantly repeating myself to my fine friends who are on the Left side of the political spectrum when it comes to economic, fiscal, and business realities.  It’s not their fault.  I used to be the same way.  However, following up on a good article about economics for dummies, I thought I’d add some basic concepts that everyone should understand — regardless of political beliefs.

This stuff isn’t that hard to understand.  My old high school math teacher would just drill me over and over on something until I got it.

Risk, Reward, and Investment

A rich person makes all his income, more than $250,000 each year, from investment income only.

Investment involves taking a risk.  In exchange for that risk, an investor is rewarded.  The greater the risk, the greater the reward.

Imagine two cups.  Under one is a dollar.  You bet one dollar and choose one cup.   The odds of picking the right cup are 1-1.  If you are right, you win one dollar.

Imagine ten cups.  Under one cup is ten dollars.  You bet one dollar but choose only one cup.  The risk of choosing the right cup has gone up to 9-1 against you.   Don’t you think you deserve a higher reward for choosing that one right cup?

If you don’t think so, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.

Investment works the same way.

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A wealth manager, appropriately enough, once told me that when it came to life, information came in three categories:  What you know, what you don’t know, and what you don’t know that you don’t know.  It is the last category that is the most dangerous.

In following David Mamet’s public journey towards an alteration of his political philosophy, I recalled my own transformation.  How was it that I was a die-hard Liberal Democrat until the mid-1990’s, spent a decade in political exile, before emerging with an “Indepentarian” philosophy?

I realized it was because I started using my mind, in the manner a high school math teacher had taught me.  I used reason.

Join me as I go back in time and recount my journey.

1984

I went to a high school where the population was decidedly Liberal.  Consequently, upon arriving at Cornell University, I expected to find the same.  For the most part, I wasn’t disappointed.  Still, I found myself in the presence of a far greater number of Conservatives than I’d ever encountered before and, even worse, they were my intellectual superiors.  With the opportunity to vote in my first Presidential election approaching, and a palpable hatred for Reagan, I eagerly sought out discussion with other like-minded individuals (notice how I only sought the echo chamber).  When confronted with the boisterous Texans down the hall, who challenged my every assertion, I quickly turned away.

“Dave,” I asked the the short, nebbishy kid who lived in the adjacent dorm room, “you don’t believe any of that garbage, do you?”  I was totally confident that Dave would be an ally.

Wrong.  Dave was one of them.

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Anytime I see a video show up on Facebook three times, there’s a pretty good chance I better write an article about it because more often than not they contain a lot of misinformation or oversimplification. In the case of the Robert Reich video, “What’s Wrong With The Economy”, it contains both.  This should not come as a surprise.  He makes a big deal about explaining how simple it all is and doing it in two and quarter minutes.

Folks, the economy cannot be explained in two and a quarter minutes.

However, the good people at the George-Soros funded MoveOn.Org, which commissioned the video, sure would like you to believe it can.  They specialize in spoon-feeding pabulum to Liberals who don’t know what they don’t know, all the better to keep them ignorant.  If you think George Soros and MoveOn don’t have an agenda, then you’ve been living under a rock.

This is not to say that Mr. Reich is 100% wrong.  He may have a few things right.  The problem is he oversimplifies things and deliberately misleads his audience.  (How do I know it’s deliberate?  It’s for MoveOn.org).  The key is to examine each statement made — but not only the text.  You must look at the subtext, context, and omissions to get a complete understanding.

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Seriously, I’m getting really tired of all the comments accusing my articles of being satirical.  Cut it out.  It’s not funny and you cannot defend the indefensible.   I’m pressing on anyway with my plan for fixing America.

Foreclosures

The housing crisis is completely and entirely the fault of the banks.  I reject the notion that borrowers had any culpability whatsoever.  All those rules and regulations made it necessary to have a Ph.D. to understand all those mortgage documents.  There was too much paperwork for any borrower to actually wade through and read.  And don’t give me the excuse that all that paperwork was the result of government regulation.  We needed all that paperwork so that banks wouldn’t take advantage of borrowers.  And even though we had all that paperwork, they still took advantage of borrowers.  Everybody knows that nobody reads contracts, so saying that it was the borrower’s fault for signing something they didn’t understand makes no sense.  The borrowers were all duped into signing all that mortgage paperwork and didn’t understand that mortgage rates would reset and that they couldn’t afford to own the home.  Besides, the housing bubble was so out of control that who could blame a borrower for wanting to cash in?  Everybody else was!

So I say that anybody who can’t pay their mortgage should not have to pay their mortgage.  Banks should be forced to modify any loan that any borrower has fallen behind on.  They should modify it so that the borrower can live in the house for as long as they want as long as they can’t pay the mortgage.  The bank never should have approved the loan in the first place, even though the loan documents weren’t necessarily truthful.  The banks should be able to read people’s mind, and since they can’t, they should pay the price.

For everyone who has paid their mortgage on time, why should you get a break for being responsible?

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There is a missing element in the analysis of the situation regarding Boeing.  Simply put, nobody seems to be asking how we got here.

The answer lies in teachings I picked up at a lecture by His Holiness XIV Dalai Lama.  The Middle Way of the Buddhists is directly applicable to labor relations, yet few corporations recognize the merits of this approach.  One only need look at Southwest Airlines to see a nearly perfect relationship between management and labor.  A quote from the linked article points out:

87 percent of its employees belong to a union. Southwest has never had a strike, and now that the network carriers have whacked away at salaries and benefits, Southwest staffers are generally the highest paid in the industry. But since Southwest has about 30 percent fewer employees per aircraft than its network competitors, it has the lowest non-fuel C.A.S.M. (cost per available seat mile) of any of the major carriers.

Southwest has never had a strike.  It isn’t just because its staffers are the highest paid in the industry.  That’s too facile an answer.  No, the real reason there has never been a strike is because of the corporate culture that Southwest has created.  Southwest’s management has always made a point of making employees feel like partners.  It’s as simple as the airline referring to its employees not as “employees” but as “people” — in other words, humanizing them.  The airline sells its service, and its people, on “freedom”.  Internally, Southwest is about “the freedom to work hard and have fun”.

Have a look at its careers webpage.  It almost makes me want to fill out an application.  A 10% discount on buying company stock?  Comprehensive health benefits?  Annual chili cook-off?  I’m in.

And wouldn’t you know it?  Southwest has been the most profitable airline for years.

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Because of the overwhelmingly positive response to my initial manifesto from my fellow Liberals, I’ve decided to expand it.  In addition, it appears my first article was mistaken for satire of some kind.  I can assure readers I am quite serious.  I am a reborn Liberal and these are my solutions for fixing everything.

Global Warming

The science is settled.  Mankind is indeed killing itself, just as I knew would happen when I voted for Mondale in 1984.  Admittedly, I thought the apocalypse would result from a nuclear war back then.  I was close.  Things would indeed get really hot, but strictly from greenhouse gas emissions, not from thousands of nukes going off all at once.  According to the totally balanced summary provided by Wikipedia, carbon dioxide causes 9% – 26% of the greenhouse effect.  The way I see it, if we can wipe out just this portion of the greenhouse emissions alone, we can make a serious dent in the warming trend.

Now, follow me on this next part — every time a human being exhales, he emits carbon dioxide.

The solution is obvious — we need to mandate less exhaling.  So, five times a day, every day, at the exact same time that Muslims stop for their prayers, everyone around the world should hold their breath for a good 90 seconds or so.  If you own a corporation, you have to hold your breath twice as long.   I think even Conservatives will get on board with this because it gives lip service to that whole personal responsibility garbage they buy into.

Additionally, it appears that methane accounts for 4% – 9% of greenhouse emissions.   The solution here is so simple I’m shocked that my fellow global warming alarmists have not figured it out already.

We need less farting.

I know everyone’s primary concern is about diet, but nobody has to give up beans. The farmers shouldn’t suffer just because people need to toot less.  We can have the USDA issue “fanny corks” to every American, free of charge.  Enforcement is easy.  The TSA already has experience inspecting private areas, so Janet Napolitano can just issue a decree expanding their powers.  It will also help with job growth, because we’ll need an army of TSA employees to check fanny corks, particularly in heavily populated urban areas.

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