January 15, 2022

I often diverge from conventional opinion, and rarely see a line I am eager to get in. Whether it’s my advocacy of gold, my aversion to voting, my affinity for the Latin Mass, or my insistence that there are only two sexes, I’m used to weird glances and rolling eyes. 

That’s OK. In a free society, there’s room for the fringe. People can differ without being destroyed. There’s a reason you can buy an Islamic Koran in Kansas, but not a Roman Missal in Mecca. 

But politics corrodes this peaceful co-existence under a liberal order. Throughout this century, civility has been perverted as politics has become pervasive. As often as not, the “fringe” or “extremists” are merely derogatory references to a silent majority of millions of dissidents who think they’re alone. 

Making them feel that way is a time-tested tactic of those who wish to subjugate and oppress. To make the people feel isolated and “different” is to make them feel hopeless, and helpless.

It’s also why the ubiquitous phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” infuriates those trying to perpetuate the psychosis. That simple slogan is an obstinate signal among the opposition that they are not alone, and to the powers-that-be that they’ve been unable to insulate them.

But many divisions remain real. The quest for perspective regarding the Covid hysteria has prompted Kafkaesque levels of contempt, and novel depths of disdain. The mere attempt among some of us to acknowledge trade-offs and collateral damage associated with draconian responses to a respiratory virus has fractured friendships and severed families.

Yet for the scorched-earth true believers, it’s not enough. It’s insufficient that our self-righteous moral arbiters abandon long-standing relationships. They must also ruin those they leave behind. 

Heretics must be branded with epithets, cast from their careers, cut loose from society, and perhaps confined to quarters or hauled into camps. Despite no scientific basis for such outrages (not that any could be justified), many major cities have implemented new “Jim Crovid” laws…creating pharmaceutical castes, imposing medical apartheid, and reviving state-sponsored segregation. 

I’ve felt for many years that I’ve been running against the herd. But only in the last twenty-two months have I been sure it’s headed for an abyss…or the abattoir. I‘m just trying not to get crushed in the stampede. 

I’ve tried occasionally to raise my arms and slow the charge. But I sometimes wonder if it isn’t better to just get out of the way. 

Yesterday, I did. 

At work I failed a test for drugs…by not injecting one. Several months ago, my employer announced that employees must consume a couple doses of designated drugs if they wished to keep working for the company. Some of us found the demand a demeaning and appalling violation of our bodily integrity and natural rights. 

We considered our personal medical preferences and individual health information to be no one else’s business…and certainly not that of a bunch of science-inverting, hypochondriac shills in a C-suite. And given that the stipulated potions don’t inhibit those who take them from spreading the ailment they‘re designed to thwart (with recent data indicating the shots may make infection even more likely), the directive was also useless on its own ostensible terms.

But it’s their company and their choice. If the corporation wants to placate influential suppliers by coercing its employees to consume their products, that’s its prerogative, unethical as it may be. 

And as has been reinforced over the course of several months, I certainly don’t want to be where I’m not wanted. So yesterday, I cleaned my desk, packed my boxes, and returned my badge. I bid fond adieu to good people I’ve worked with the last couple years, and good riddance to those who impelled the separation.

I won’t miss the work. I’ve been doing some version of it for two decades. It’s become routine, uninspiring, and dull. The last couple years, the atmosphere has also become overtly political. And not just in the normal corporate sense of ambitious boot-lickers clamoring for crumbs and compliments from the corner office. 

Employees at many corporations are now expected to not only hold the culturally-approved opinions they’ve all been assigned, but to overtly advocate for them. They are implored not merely to accept perspectives they might consider abhorrent, but to explicitly espouse them. Inverting centuries of legal tradition, silence regarding even the most repugnant conventional fads is now assumed to imply not consent, but contempt. 

In fairness, that assumption is often correct. In my case, it most certainly is. But contrary opinions, even silent ones, are no longer permitted. Those who hold them must be converted…either into a zealot, or a hypocrite. Regardless, only the clichéd creed is to be chanted, and every voice must join the chorus. These are tunes I simply can’t sing.

It is no longer enough to tend our own garden. We must now fertilize all the fashionable fields, while letting those bearing traditional beliefs lie fallow.

For the last couple years…to accommodate and advocate prevailing political agendas…employers claimed they wanted employees to feel comfortable “bringing their whole selves to work.” Apparently, my whole self wasn’t enough. To be sufficient, additional ingredients and different opinions had to be injected. 

Being happy with myself the way I am, I declined the ultimatum, and was shown the door. Tho’ I work from home, have never visited a customer, and live hundreds of miles from the nearest office, my request for relief was rejected because my position “requires business travel”, and the company now prohibits that among those who they consider unclean. 

Perhaps it’s just as well. Even those granted special accommodations must consent to degrade themselves and be treated like lepers. They can’t eat with others, must keep distant in common areas, and on company property are required to indulge the ridiculous ritual of wearing a mask. 

To preserve my dignity and not accommodate anti-science stupidity, I’m not going to take a shot I don’t need or wear a disgusting fabric that doesn’t work, particularly when I’m incapable of spreading a disease I don’t have. 

And since we know neither face fabrics nor vaccine injections prevent transmission anyway, the mask charade is merely about punishing dissidents and making a point rather than “slowing spread” and protecting health. 

If an employer chooses to part ways because I refuse to make my medical records conform to their specifications, that’s their choice. Yet I didn’t quit to make my point; they let me go to make theirs.

I hope they’re happy with their decision. I know I am.

JD

December 9, 2019

Harry Truman…tired of being told that “on the one-hand” this, “but on the other hand“ that…yearned for someone to bring him a one-armed economist. This week, had he called me, he’d have had his wish.

A couple months ago…like a small trickle thru a river levee…a slight twinge began piercing my right arm whenever I crossed it over…

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November 1, 2019

Like a Mideast peace agreement, we know this won’t last. But for now, the weather in central Ohio is beautiful. The summer heat has laid down its arms, the winter chill has yet to fire a shot.

Today is All Saints Day (just noting the occasion, not soliciting gifts). Many Columbus locals have warned that after Halloween the weath…

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October 22, 2019

The very underrated Grover Cleveland left office, but returned four years later to resume his duties. 

William Howard Taft was shown the door from the White House, but eight years later walked thru that of the Supreme Court. 

John Quincy Adams condescended to serve nine terms in the House of Representatives after having spent o…

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Today, like a New England pond on a crisp fall day, we have a moment to reflect. 

Most of you, assuming you actually stoop to read this drivel…must wonder why I bother to write it.

Let’s consider potential motives. 

Perhaps as an escape from stale hotel lobbies, noisy airport lounges, or crowded flights? That I usually book th…

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“Is this your bag?”

“Yes”.

“I need to take a look inside.”

Sigh…

“Uh oh. Here it is. You can’t bring a bottle of wine thru security. You can go back and check the bag, or leave the bottle here.”

I completely forgot I had packed the cabernet gift the Ritz Carlton gave me this morning. It was accompanied by a card signed by a dozen or …

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Prior to my last email, I don’t recall (or was oblivious to) offending anyone for quite some time. At least not seriously, and certainly not intentionally.

These notes usually generate a handful of responses, letting me know they were received and (ostensibly) appreciated.

My last missive, like a vulgar comedian at a rest…

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April 26, 2018

The Cardinals are to St Louis what the “Canon in D” is to Pachabel’s oeuvre…it’s not all there is to it, but it’s the only thing anyone usually brags about.

They are the unifying force and central object around which the disparate components of this city and region revolve. 

The mid-western niceness with which they support the lo…

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April 25, 2018

The beeping sound you heard last week was us backing up the truck in reaction to the “Family and Friends” sale from Duckhorn. 

Our thanks to Brian and Ashley for letting us in on this stock, and to Rita for exercising the options. 

The investment represents a diversified portfolio, including several long-term holdings that will yield dividends for years to come…with others providing ready access to near-term liquidity.

As valuable as the wine is, however, no asset is worth more than time…
…
…OK…maybe the wine is more valuable, but still…

Time is pretty important, and investing time with the right people is better than spending time with the wrong people. 

This is the week, as much as any I work each year, when I typically invest my time with the right people.

Among the pleasures of my job is our team’s annual “summit”, during which members from around the world converge on an unsuspecting location to assess the prior year, anticipate the next, distribute time and talent among forsaken corners of the local community, and dispense lies and mischief from forbearing corners of local bars.

We come away with batteries recharged, networks re-established, (unconsumed) spirits reinvigorated, and purpose restored.
For our fourth annual rendition we descended on St Louis…the Four Seasons Hotel serving as base camp, as it often does for our corporate events. 

This is an interesting place. 

A high-end (it is, after all, a Four Seasons) crib of contemporary style, it abuts the Mississippi River and adjoins the Lumière Casino, receives the shadow of the Arch from the south, casts its own toward the Stan Musial bridge to the north, and serves as a beacon on the edge of downtown St Louis.

To the west, across the interstate that (like many such abominations constructed in the 1960s) cleaves the city from its waterfront, are the bars and restaurants within the appealing “First Chicago School” architectural edifices of Washington Street, while to the south lies the delightfully refurbished Gateway Arch Park, which bridges and buries the offending highway in an admirable effort to suture its wound and hide its scar.

The wounds and scars to the north are deeper and require more time to heal.

The “Old North” resembles many once-thriving in-town neighborhoods around the U.S. that have, since about the time the aforementioned interstate eviscerated the St Louis waterfront, devolved into previously undetected circles of Dante’s inferno. 

From the early 19th to the mid-20th century, intact families, self-reliant entrepreneurs, and a diligent proletariat sustained a dense, bustling community. 

Then, Federal “assistance” arrived…and the descent commenced. 
Of course, anyone can make a mistake. But to create a real catastrophe, you need the government.

People are neither always good nor always bad, but are always subject to influence. The federal meddlers and world-improvers certainly influenced the poor inhabitants of north St Louis. 

The “War on Drugs” stimulated gang violence, and a plethora of convoluted “War on Poverty” programs provided recruits by enticing the dissolution of the most reliable predictor of prosperity and bulwark to poverty: marriage. 

Husbands became uneconomical (and, soon, unheard of), mothers turned compliantly to AFDC/TANF, their children turned instinctively to crime, and crime inevitably crippled (licit) commerce. 

Even had it not, the minimum wage knocked the lowest rung from the ladder to any jobs that persevered, or that might otherwise have existed.

Work and family dissolved; dependency, dereliction, and drugs coalesced. 

One “benefit” most children from this area will never see is Social Security. Not because the program won’t survive, but because they won’t. 

The life expectancy of the typical child born in this neighborhood approximates that of one raised in North Korea, and lags that of a Nigerian.

To visit and teach such children was our task this afternoon. Our specified objective today was, thru Junior Achievement, to impart a semblance of Financial literacy to grade-schoolers at Confluence Academy in the Old North neighborhood. 

A tall task but, to the extent we succeeded, these kids now (actually, they probably did before) have more economic sense than the celebrated PhDs in Academia, the Press, and at the Fed who for the last century have, with the delicate touch of Harvey Weinstein at a casting call, left their fingerprints all over “the economy”.

I was impressed and charmed by the first-graders with whom I worked. In the course of three hours, a bridge spanned the chasm dividing age from youth, experience from experimentation.

Our prescribed series of lessons did not delve into the intricacies of short selling, collateralized debt obligations, or covered calls, but did enlighten our students to the distinction between wants and needs, the obligation to sometimes sacrifice the one for the other, and how entrepreneurship and win-win exchanges can over time facilitate both.

For three hours, a Chilean co-worker and I coordinated and conveyed five lesson plans and assorted activities to an assemblage of two dozen eager hyper-actives. 

After ten minutes explaining to the children that my co-workers home country is not a spicy bowl of beans and meat, we launched our lessons. 

I confess I began this day as a 14th century priest might anticipate ministering to an assemblage of plague victims. It was the right thing to do, despite the risk of bodily harm an excursion to the area entailed.

Like our medieval friar, I emerged from the experience more blessed than those I tried to help. 

The smiles, hugs, and assertions of love that these seven-year olds supplied melted my skepticism and my heart, carrying me from their school buttressed by the satisfaction only charity and gratitude can bestow. 

This afternoon, these respective blessings flowed in abundance…and in the opposite direction I had anticipated.

JD

Our flight to St Louis yesterday was delayed by an Ohio snowstorm and a broken de-icing nozzle that delayed the in-bound aircraft from Columbus.

Then, at the gate in Atlanta, fueling equipment needed to be replaced and an intoxicated couple, whose breath would have answered the purpose, needed to be removed from our 8am flight…

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