New York runs Amazon out of town .... what bugs me!

What bugs me about NYC running Amazon out of town... Let me tell you what I know as an ex-New Yorker. New York is full of loud mouth, know-it-all types... until, like with the Amazon screw-up, results prove maybe they were wrong all along. 

AOC, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, looked very sheepish when reporters stopped her in the halls of Congress with Amazon questions. She called it a victory for "every day people" against Jeff Bezos. She affirmed that the stood up to the richest man in the world. 

Stood up to Bezos? Bezos took his ball and moved the game to Nashville, TN and Arlington, Virginia. He walked away from the deal when it looked like New York politicians, etc.,, prepared themselves to rake him over the coals. Now they can fight and curse among themselves and put up billboards in Times Square attacking possibly the stupidest political decision ever made.

Giving up 25,000 jobs and $27 billion in projected income does not sound like a victory. Smells more like regret. New York governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill Deblasio of NYC, more seasoned Democrats, were excited to offer Amazon a deal. They wanted to bring jobs to Queens, NY and the average salaries were said to be upwards of $150,000 per year. That wasn't good enough

I tried to delve into the protests against Amazon from the left and the roots of their discontent. Maybe it's connected to the way New York City is actually thriving these days with a combination of immigrant energy and white flight back to the city.

I wondered if a weird nostalgia for the old New York can be the cause for leftist confusion. In the 50s, when I was a kid in Manhattan, the city felt polluted with smokestack industry, along with crowded streets and noisy traffic. My family was part of the white flight to the suburbs. The city became increasingly dangerous and unappealing through the 60s and 70s.

Now gentrification has flip-flopped the equation and maybe that helps explain people like AOC. They may feel things are too good-- too many rich people and young, educated types moving into the city and crowding the subways.

Amazon may symbolize more prosperous folks sipping lattes and crowding the subways. But Amazon jobs had potential for low-skill and high-skill employment-- and that's what bugs me!

You would have had construction jobs and low skill jobs available to the many people. Amazon wanted to assist with New York's infrastructure, including education. Some of those Queens College students would have had opportunities to put new found programming skills to use-- and raise themselves economically.

The deed is done. New Yorkers of various political persuasions have only to dry their eyes and point the fingers at each other to determine where the fault resides. 

I call it "being too smart for your own good."

New York City will go on and continue to prosper on its upward trajectory. 

Meanwhile we've got a New Yorker running the country. Trump did not win his own NY state but he looks formidable as a 2020 candidate. And the Democrats must evaluate their platform and decide if job creation is a plan they can support.

Trump: rain-maker or hatchet man?

Hatchet Man--  definition

• a person employed to carry out controversial or disagreeable tasks, such as the   dismissal of a number of people from employment.
• person who writes fierce attacks on others or their work.

Donald Trump has roared into power like an unknown racehorse storming to the front of the pack and crossing the finish line before the competition. Rather than sit on his laurels and savor his victory with a cigar and glass of champagne, he seems more fired up than ever. What does this intensity mean?

Trump's critics perceive a scary future in the whirlwind of tweets and attacks he has leveled in almost every direction. What should we expect from The Donald? Take a look at a few things we have learned.

Donald Trump loves the states and the voters that voted for him-- especially the states not expected to go his way, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He loves Ivanka, his attractive daughter. Jared Kushner, Ivanka's husband and Donald's son-in-law, has a talent for strategy. Jared played a key role in engineering Donald Trump's campaign and unexpected rise to the front of the pack. Jared Kushner has risen to the top of Donald's inner circle. He may have helped with Donald Trump's understanding of the effective use of electronic media.

Donald is fond of Twitter. He tweets the electronic environment as a means of bypassing committees, bureaucrats, enemies, fellow Republicans, and the mainstream media. Donald's inflammatory tweets propel him to the front of the mainstream media-- cable TV news shows, etc., and he becomes mainstream media.

Donald portrays himself as a master dealmaker, presumably a peerless negotiator. Donald Trump is in an enviable position for expanding his own wealth. The accumulation of personal riches has been a life-long goal. He is having trouble separating himself from this commitment to his own wealth. He claims to have switched his hierarchy of goals. Now he wants to do great things for America. Does he know how to do this? What does this look like for America? He plans to win many jobs for Americans. 

Donald likes to play hardball. His deal-making style is to keep the other guy off balance. Does this aggressive style work on the world stage? The stock market does not like off-balance. Parents like their children to feel the world is a peaceful place. Trump enjoys keeping everybody on edge and himself firmly planted on center stage, the only man who can pull us from the fire, the skilled super-hero able to grab victory from the jaws of defeat.

We will learn if Donald Trump truly has any talent for making other people richer-- the great expanse of humanity, the American citizenry feeling the most pain. Most rich people devote themselves to their own riches. Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, and a billionaire like Trump, showed an interest in the day-to-day operations and details of running of the city. Bloomberg never employed braggadoccio or threats. He had a talent for steering New York City down a path to success.

Donald Trump reminds me of a hatchet man (see above). A hatchet man arrived at my place of employment, an office where I worked about fifteen years ago. He had a confrontational style which ran totally contrary to the bureaucratic environment. People shook in their boots-- wondering if their job was in jeopardy. The guy's name was Sean. He brimmed with confidence and was not afraid to seem a bit eccentric. Sean broke the mold. I left that office for reasons not related to Sean's arrival. I later heard he left under a cloud of controversy. Turns out Sean had skeletons in his closet, had committed acts of bad judgment, far worse than anything he had accused of others. Sean shook things up-- changes were made that only he had the courage to act upon, but his demise came quickly. 

The question will be answered in the coming weeks, months and years. We will learn. Donald Trump may be a rain-maker, the greatest job producer every place by God on this green earth... or maybe he is just a hatchet man, acting on society's impulses, and forcing change upon us all.

Looking for a Christmas Story

Went to New York City a few weeks ago and the temperatures were in the mid-60s. Hard to think of Christmas with spring like weather, but I wanted to find a Christmas story. My favorite A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was published way back in 1843. You remember, Scrooge gets visited by some ghosts and finds his way from being a cheapskate egomaniac to a new life embodying the Christmas spirit of giving. Could I find a story to rival the Dickens' masterpiece in some corner of Gotham, home of Wall Street bankers and subway strap-hangers?

Guess what? I found a story and it did take place in New York City. Remember Insanity? That two week period in Jan- Feb 2012 when Jeremy Lin, an Asian-American basketball player, sparked the New York Knicks to an amazing run of victories. Lin's name blazed around the world as he didn't fit the expectations of a NBA superstar. He rose from anonymity to super stardom in two weeks-- something never done before or since by anybody in a NBA uniform. Jeremy Lin has continued as an NBA player. He's having a great season with the Charlotte Hornets this year.

I watched the Netflix documentary entitled Linsanity produced by Evan Jackson Leong. The movie entertains with the life story of Jeremy Lin, the middle son of a Chinese-American family living in Palo Alto, California. My pleasant surprise, my Christmas story, happened around a minor character in the film, a fellow Knick player named Landry Fields.

Landry Fields made room in his apartment when Lin arrived in New York. Jeremy Lin, slept on a couch in Landry's place, a couch not quite long enough to contain Lin's 6' 3" frame. Coincidentally it was Landry Fields who the Knicks drafted with the 39th draft choice in Round 2, a spot Lin had high hopes of obtaining. Lin did not get drafted. Landry played at Stanford. Lin wanted to play basketball at Stanford but the coach showed no interest in giving Jeremy Lin a scholarship. Lin played at Harvard and surprised the skeptics. Lin bounced around the pros, showed some potential and found his way to the same team as Landry Fields. The two became teammates and temporary roomies.

Landry Fields impressed me in the margins of the Linsanity film. Most viewers will hardly notice him. I perceived something special in Fields' excitement and enthusiasm for Jeremy's history-making run of basketball stardom. Fields would congratulate Jeremy with chest bumps and genuine joy as Lin's last-second shots fell through the hoop. Landry's enthusiasm defied the competitive world of professional sports. For Landry there was no jealousy, no sign of holding back in the way Landry Fields shared those celebrations with Jeremy Lin.

I checked out Landry Fields on Wikipedia and noticed he has suffered injuries since his Knick days. The NBA is a tough, heartless business. You stay on the roster only if the team benefits. Your career ends when your skills diminish or you no longer serve the team's success. Landry Fields has struggled in recent years. Landry Fields does not show up on a NBA roster this year. But Landry showed the true spirit of giving in his friendship and appreciation of Jeremy Lin's meteoric rise. Landry Fields is my Christmas story

70 degrees on Nov 6 in NYC at 10 PM!

"What's it gonna take?" The talking heads said that and marveled at the "unseasonably warm" New York City temperatures. November 6 at 10:00 PM --and it is 70 degrees in New York City.

Historically speaking, 56 degrees is an average high in NYC for November 6.

One of the Weather Channel experts smiled and wondered aloud "What if an 80 degree day came along in the middle of December in New York City. Would that shock people enough?"

Enough to do what-- get scared maybe...?

The weather guy smiled the whole time, but a nervous smile-- reminiscent of a gallows humor response. (Gallows humor--see Wikipedia below)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallows_humor
Gallows humor is humor about very unpleasant, serious, or painful circumstances. Any humor that treats serious matters, such as death, war and crime, in a light, silly or satirical fashion is considered gallows humor.Gallows humor has been described as a witticism in response to a hopeless situation. It arises from stressful, traumatic, or life-threatening situations, often in circumstances such that death is perceived as impending and unavoidable.

The increasing temperatures are too foreboding to consider. We use denial and rationalization. Push the problems out of mind. Crops? Warmer ocean waters? What will happen to us? We take the easy way out. We deny the facts, rationalize them, or better yet, ignore them completely.

More fun to think about Donald Trump hosting Saturday Night Live tomorrow night.

The young people of today never experienced the "old normal." My growing up years in New York had a rhythm to the seasons, a consistent pattern. September meant needing a sweater and a jacket. November and December arrived and a warm coat was needed for winter.

We have upset those rhythms of nature-- and nobody knows the price to be paid.

Instead we smile nervously about the fun of wearing short sleeves on a November night in New York City. We know better. And keep our fingers crossed.

Income Inequality-- real or imagined?

Listened to Sirius radio today as I drove around my hometown of Austin, Texas. Caught a public radio discussion from New York City on the election of Bill de Blasio, the new mayor of New York.  Mr. de Blasio wants to get free pre-school education for all New Yorkers in an effort to level the playing field as regards income and opportunity inequality. He's concerned about affordable housing. Only the rich can afford to live in Manhattan these days. But he's careful not to hurl invective at Wall Street, the place oozing money and wealth and a big source of the city's economy.

Income inequality has been with us forever. Is it really that different than it has ever been before? Everybody will scream in response-- yes, the numbers indicate clearly all the gains in wealth have been made at the top of the pyramid, the "top 1%," a group nobody claims to be part of. The oft-repeated truism states all societal gains have fallen into the laps of the very rich. But, as my hero Marshall McLuhan, the media philosph, states-- "it is wealth that creates poverty."  That's not a direct quote despite the quotation marks. The level of wealth has become more visible thanks to the power of modern communications and we do not like seeing how poor we are by comparison!

The perspective of a 19th or 20th century analysis does not suffice. The digital revolution has changed the world. The Arab Spring occurred because the Middle East could see their plight more clearly and didn't like what appeared before their eyes. The dictators shivered as the citizens tweeted out their feelings and societies went up in flames. The situation is messy and painful, no doubt, but the revolution has begun. Not only is the revolution being televised... it's being streamed or tweeted or whatever.

Meanwhile back in the United States... every kid has a cellphone and doesn't want to lose that connectivity. Hence, crime rates are way down because nobody can abide by the thought of going without a cellphone in a prison cell-- no matter how great the police departments think they are doing.

The next chapter is mysterious no doubt. One expert on employment stated there are two distinct economies and employment pictures--1)  the high tech economy, where things are humming and companies need more workers, and 2) the rest of the economy, with high unemployment and people looking for work.

New York City may or may not reflect an American reality or even a global reality. Wealth will follow on the heels of knowledge and education and eventually get distributed more evenly. The extreme productivity and wealth of our society has to go somewhere. Nature abhors a vacuum. Dealing with wild amounts of accumulated riches is a problem we can solve. Other, very real problems like climate change threaten all of humanity. The climate problems demands unprecedented levels of global cooperation-- a challenge posing risks more precipitous than anything previously experienced in human history.