What's In It For Me?

Most every financial company wants me to switch to "e-delivery" these days.   Actually the campaign to wean me from paper statements has been going on for some time, but I've mostly ignored it.   

When banks and such started making it possible to download statements, I began doing so, mostly because it's a lot easier to store and find PDF files than paper ones.   At least for me, I can locate a particular document much more easily if it's on my computer than if it's in a file cabinet someplace in the house.   And of course, it takes next to no space to save PDF files vs. paper.  However, I still find it easier to peruse a paper statement to see if anything unusual appears.  

Now banks and stock shareholder agents (e.g., Computershare.com) are getting more forceful in their efforts; more and more I'm finding I no longer have access to the downloadable statements unless I agree to forgo the paper version.

What really frosts me, are the reasons they give to convince me to "go green."   Do you see what is missing from this example?  These are largely bogus reasons:  I can retrieve documents 24/7 from these company websites, I don't have to print anything when they send me paper documents, and I can already save documents to my computer if they allow me to download them.  Nothing is said about the benefits to the company: they save postage involved in mailing statements to me and they save the cost of paper.  These are significant economic reasons for the company to want me to switch, much greater than the lame benefits to me if I "Sign up for eDelivery."  

How about if they give me a nominal fee, like $5 per quarter to forgo the paper statements?   Fat chance.  Another example of big business thinking we're all idiots.

A Million Petitions

It seems like as Americans become more and more estranged from their governments at all levels (municipal, State, Federal), an awful lot of them spend a lot of time petitioning for one thing or another.   I'm not talking about people going around knocking on doors to invite me to join them in their effort to get some level of government to either stop doing something or start doing something else.  I'm talking about online petitions and they're all over the place these days.  These email invitations are different than the ones that result in sending an email or fax to my specific elected representatives.   Rather, these are efforts to accumulate thousands of "signatures" on a petition to be delivered to decision makers on a particular topic.


A sampling:  

• "End Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DemocracyForAmerica)
• "Send a Video Message to the President to "say no to a millionaire bailout" (MoveOn.org) (not strictly a petition, but similar enough)
• "Extend Emergency Unemployment Insurance" (AFL/CIO) 
• "Fully Fund NPR (Stand Up To Sarah Palin)" (Credoaction.com)
• "Join the fight against the Republican repeal hypocrisy" (healthcareforamericanow.org)

I have to wonder if most of these petition efforts are more about collecting email and street addresses of people that can be solicited for donations later, than about really effecting change.   

I mean, did Target Corporation really care about the petitions protesting the company's political contributions to right-wing candidates in Minnesota?   I doubt it, and I certainly didn't hear any company reaction to the protests.  The effort to boycott Target didn't seem to have any noticeable effect at my local Target; the parking lot is always filled just as it was before the political donation.  I'm afraid most Americans just don't care if corporations are funneling money into political campaigns, even if the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates to such corporate intrusion into the political system.  Most Americans have been successfully indoctrinated in consumerism, and tend to focus on "Expect More, Spend Less" rather than on how their democracy is being stolen from them.

Is President Obama really going to sit down and watch a few thousand video messages asking him to oppose extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy?   I hope he has a lot more important things to do than waste a week or so doing something like that.  Is this MoveOn.org effort just to make people feel like they're doing something productive, when in reality, they are anything but?

I think that's the core of the issue: making people feel like they are empowered, when in reality, they are definitely not.   I can't believe that anyone in Congress is impressed when presented with electronic petitions bearing tens of thousands of names, especially when there seems to be an epidemic of petitions.   As a decision maker, if you see one or two during the course of a year, you've got to be more impressed than if you're presented with dozens, or hundreds, of petitions.  

As someone who has been elected to our school board several times, I know what is involved in getting actual signatures on an actual nominating petition.   And how difficult it can be to actually get people to sign their name to a piece of paper.  Electronic petitions take no effort and carry corresponding impact.   Little or none.

Quantitative Easing Explained

You may not know whether to laugh or cry when you watch and hear this video. Gotta love a computer voice saying things like "shit hit the fan."  

This video covers a lot of territory about what the Federal Reserve is up to and why.  And who benefits most.   Clue: it's not you and me.

Here's the video.

A Philosophy of Life

The comic strip "Pickles," by Brian Crane, is one of my favorite ways to start the day.   Besides being a curmudgeon, Earl Pickles has a very close relationship with his grandson, who lives next door.   Earl wastes no opportunity to explain to Nelson how things work and how things should be.  These strips embody both Earl's and my own "philosophy" of life.

 

Org Chart of Heaven

I mentioned in my 10/24/10 post "Organization Chart" that I once had an organization chart of heaven.  Thanks to the fact that I had digitized it at one time, I'm posting it here.   If I'd had to find it in paper form, I'd still be looking for it a couple years from now.....

I have no idea who the author is; I picked this up a couple decades ago during my work life.   The original is a full page and was produced on a typewriter (remember them?).

The Mob Mentality

I recently came across an essay broadcast on the Bob Edwards week-end radio program.   It is part of his "This I Believe" series and it put my thoughts into words very nicely.   The essay is about why the author doesn't participate in demonstrations and marches - mostly because she doesn't feel her opinions are more valid than anyone else's opinions.   I've blogged about this a bit (10/17/10, 8/24/10) regarding the flood of solicitations I received for political donations for far-away elections.  I said I was uncomfortable with the notion that "people around the country think they know what's best for other people around the country."  This discomfort is present even if I happen to agree with the candidate or group.

The author starts off by describing how she is uncomfortable about participating in a peace march in Washington, D.C.:

But the thing that made me uneasy wasn’t just the number of people gathered there. It was the mob mentality of a large group of people who feel they are right, even if I agree with them. It was the absolutism lurking in the liberal ideals. To me it felt just as scary as any other kind of intolerance

Anyway, the essay can be found here and it's worth reading or listening to the podcast.