Being Accountable: the Price of Greatness

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From Lightworkers

 

The price of greatness is responsibility. – Winston Churchill

 

 

 

 

Today we learnt that a key central banker, who was directly involved with the decisions to implement enormous taxpayer funded bail outs of bankrupt banks and bankers in 2008 does not believe that the bankers were to blame for the financial crisis.

This individual believes instead that the responsibility for the behavior of bankers lies with society itself for not stopping the bankers from their excesses.

Since the person making these remarks was in charge of a central bank, which is tasked with oversight of the financial sector of one of the largest financial markets in the world,it raises some interesting questions about personal responsibility, and dare I say it accountability (if you will excuse the financial pun).

Our modern society encourages us not to believe in any form of personal responsibility for our actions.   As we have mentioned before this love of irresponsibility is extremely popular.

If we examine this central banker’s argument it leads to disturbing conclusions – if society and not the individual is responsible for an individual’s acts then people who perform criminal acts cannot be convicted.  The whole premise of the legal system falls apart if people are no longer responsible for their actions.

But let us not take this any further – it is nonsense.  Utter stupid nonsense put forward as an attempt to distract people from the truth.

The truth is that each of us is responsible for our own actions.  No one else.

This truth is the difference between adults and children.

Adults take responsibility for their actions.  Children are recognized under most legal systems as not having this right.  And it is a RIGHT to control your own destiny and to be able to take responsibility for the positive things that you bring to the organizations you serve and the society in which you live.

So, are you an adult or a child?

And why do we keep appointing the irresponsible to positions of responsibility?

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Mirror, Mirror on the Wall who is the most Dangerous of Us All?

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From Demotivators

 

 

I am, as I’ve said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary. —  Billy Joel

 

 

 

 

 

You may have spent your life thinking evil outcomes are produced by evil people.  In my experience this is seldom true.

It pains me to admit it but if I am offered the alternative of working with competent evil people or incompetent good people I will take the evil competent people every time.

You must understand that although this blog and I are dedicated to advancement and right behavior just being good or having good intentions is not enough to achieve progress.

You may need to read that again, as it is not what is usually assumed or what we are taught in school, college or university.

In order to achieve anything you have to have some degree of competence that is involved in active behavior (I add the clause active behavior because too many people today confuse clicking a “like” button with active behavior – they are not the same and only active behavior brings change).  Otherwise you are doomed to painful failure.

The problem is, you see, that incompetence attracts unintended consequences and because they are unintended it is often impossible to predict them or prevent them.  This in turn means that any plan or actions that are associated with incompetent people will  be filled with delays, diversions, errors and almost certain failure.

No matter how well meaning the incompetent person or persons are the results will always be the same.  In fact it is often worse when incompetent people are well meaning or have good intentions because it makes competent people feel sorry for them and that often means including the incompetent persons in whatever advancement is being attempted.   This is a genuine problem in an age where we are encouraged to believe that everyone should be included and be allowed to contribute to every project.

Evil competent people are of course evil, but their plans can be understood and can be countered by strategic actions or even agreements.  Such provisions are impossible when dealing with the incompetent.   All you can do is avoid them.  I know it is politically incorrect to say it but avoiding incompetent people is the only way to avoid the unintended consequences that they bring to any important project.

The only politically correct way to address incompetence is to provide incompetent people with extensive training and staff development opportunities that are rigorous enough to transform them to competence.

But to answer the question who is the most dangerous of us all?  It is the incompetent person.  They do not know what they are doing and that makes them completely unpredictable agents of chaotic change.

 

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What is Success, I mean Real Success?

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Bruce Lee from Empireonline

 

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.” –  Bruce Lee

 

 

 

I had some negative feedback based on my post where I said that hard work and self reliance were the keys to success.

They are, by the way, it is just unfashionable to admit it.

It is more fashionable to think that some piece of luck (lottery, online poker, talent show, etc) will provide the answers to all of life’s dreams.  The media encourages such a view and this will eventually lead to a lot of very disillusioned people who have been sold a dream that is as impossible as it is cruel.

Essentially the people writing to me felt that someone had a responsibility to provide them with all the things that they felt were associated with “success” but, without effort on their behalf.

As many of them put it, “they were entitled” to it.

It was interesting for me to learn what these vocal people felt was “success”.

Invariably money was involved, closely followed by fame and power over others.

But are these the Real Definitions of success?

Based on the reactions I had I doubt many people will understand or agree with any of the things I am about to say about money, fame, or power, but they are what I have learnt the hard way.

Money

I have been fortunate enough in my life to have had brief moments where I had lots of money and also more frequent moments when I did not have enough money to eat.  This has taught me that the kindness of others is worth more than money.

It is better to have money than not have money, but you only need it to fulfill your needs.  Once you try to fulfil your wants you are on an endless and pointless journey.

Money is merely a way to exchange value.  You cannot eat it, you cannot breath it, you cannot drink it and it attracts the worst kind of friends.

The more money you have the less you really value it.  And because you value it less you find yourself in a trap where you always feel you want more. And more.  And more..

Possessions end up demanding more and more of your life energies and in the end they own you.   No matter how much money you have your lifestyle will adjust to consume it.  And expensive things are more expensive to maintain than to purchase so, as you acquire more expensive things, they demand more expense just to keep them operating.

Sadly you have to actually experience this truth before you will ever believe it, and in my experience such wisdom is reserved for the latter parts of your life.

Being the richest person in the graveyard is over-rated.  The other buried dried bones surrounding you don’t care and, know this, in your final moments of existence, you would give all your money for another moment of precious existence.

Fame

I have only experienced limited fame (as a sort of national figure on a small island) and my experience was almost entirely unpleasant.  Journalists making up false stories about me to sell newspapers, radio stations editing interviews to make me appear to say things I did not say to help them get more listeners.  Members of the public interrupting my every waking moment,  stopping me in supermarkets to tell me their views, interrupting my meals in restaurants, even knocking on my front door early on Sunday mornings to tell me their views.

The ability to be alone and unknown is priceless.  Trust me.

Power

I have had some experience of power and I share the view of Thomas Jefferson that “An honest man cannot feel pleasure in having power over his fellow citizens“.   A genuine leader is too concerned about exercising power responsibly to enjoy it.

It is a genuine pleasure not to have power over other people.

So what do I think is success?

Living with real integrity to values that transcend just self gratification.

Living as a rational intelligent being with free will who takes responsibility for their own actions and the consequences of their actions on others.

To be true to yourself and live as you are and not as some puppet directed by the peer pressure of others.

To work towards advancing the organizations you serve and the greater society that supports us all.

And finally to know that the deepest contentment comes from just having what you really need and not to be distracted by insatiable desires for things you want but do not really need.

To do this of course means you must know your true self and what is more BE your true self.  In other words Live with real meaning.

That is real success and it has nothing to do with money, possessions, fame or power.

 

“Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.” —  Swami Sivananda

 

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The Real Secret to Success: Real Honest Hard Work

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from thefederalistpapers

 

“The Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success.”  Vince Lombardi

 

 

 

 

 

It is rather sad to count the number of emails I receive every week from young people who demand to know the “secret short cut” to being in a position of power and riches.

They are invariably disappointed when I talk about hard work, serving your time to learn your trade or business, and honest dealing.

In fact more than 50% of them respond to my recommendation to follow a path of hard work with accusations that I am keeping the secret to myself or within a supposed secret network of successful people.

The truth is that, although I do know of a few people who have achieved success due to special favors or even luck, the vast majority have got whatever they have achieved by hard work and sacrificing pleasures in order to achieve mastery in what they do.

The truth really is that there is no substitute for hard work and serving the time to know everything about your business.

I learnt this lesson in the mid 1980s when I was working for a major software house in London.    I was the most junior member of a team of around 10 people working on a project that was due on a specific Friday.   As the most junior member of the team I was left to do all the tasks required to finish the project and to deliver it to the client while everyone else went for an extended Friday drinking lunch.

I was struggling with these tasks (since I was only a new graduate) when into the room came a middle aged man who asked me who I was and what I was doing.  Although I did not know it at the time this was the overall owner of the business.   I did not tell him that I had been left alone to finish the task while everyone else was enjoying themselves but in hind sight someone must have told him.

I can recall him taking off his jacket, rolling up his sleeves and helping me finish off all the tasks – even balancing the budgets, editing the unfinished code, correcting errors in the software procedures.   He was still there working with me when the others came back from the drinking lunch.   I can recall him firing them all (the 1980s were much less concerned about the employment rights of incompetent workers than they are now.  I would imagine he would have to give them all a pay rise if it happened today).

But I learnt that a real boss can do everything he or she asks his employees to do, often better than the employees.   That is why they are the boss.  They know their business and they got where they are by being the best.

How do you become the best?

Honest Hard Work.

Remember that the finest steel has to pass through fire to become the best.   The modern world seems to have lost this secret and instead seeks every short cut possible to an easy life.   It is this constant quest for the easiest way that leads people to confuse mediocrity for excellence and apathy for passion.

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Case Study: Universities of the Desert Kingdom. A Pearl should never try to be a Diamond.

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Falcon from jefferypine


 

“Fashion is about dressing according to what’s fashionable. Style is more about being yourself.” — Oscar de la Renta

 

 

 

 

 

H.R.H XX is an enlightened and well educated man.   Since coming to the Royal throne he has taken great strides to advance his Nation and its people, especially in terms of educational opportunities.

He has literally spared no expense from his Nation’s oil wealth to invest in the best consultants that money could buy to help him build world class universities for his people.

H.R.H wanted the institutions to be regional flagships to show the progress of his Nation and to guarantee the future intellectual independence of his people.

Noble goals for advancement.  We applaud them.

Consultants from leading educational consulting firms and the best Universities in the West came, listened to the vision for advancement proposed by the wise and enlightened leader.   They wrote reports in which they promised H.R.H he would have institutions that would be among the best in the World, if he followed their advice, and paid their invoices.

They advised H.R.H to build enormous state of the art campuses and buildings.

H.R.H did.

They were amazing facilities and buildings.  The designers were all selected by the consultants and everyone was paid well by H.R.H.  The end result was something that would exceed anything in the Western Universities who were advising H.R.H.

The consultants advised H.R.H. to hire the best academics that money could buy.

H.R.H did.

They were the most expensive academics and administrators on earth using the most modern facilities that money could buy.

The new University started and was filled with the cream of the Nation’s youth.

Five years later imagine the disappointment of H.R.H when these institutions failed to become recognized internationally for academic excellence.  H.R.H even became aware that leading Universities (and many of his consultants) laughed about what he had tried to achieve.

H.R.H called back the consultants and they made excuses saying the local students and local staff were the problem.    The new solution proposed by the consultants was to repeat the entire exercise with new campuses and even more expensive expatriate staff.

Other consultants said the problem was the lack of X (where x was some technology or software being marketed by the consultant).

H.R.H is a patient and enlightened man, he tried again.

Again after enormous expense and another 5 years he was faced with lots of new universities that were still not internationally recognized for excellence but had cost his nation millions of oil dollars.

In desperation H.R.H contacted what he believed was the best University in the world.

Yes they said they could help by running one of their degrees in his country or setting up a distance campus.. But it would cost a small fortune.

H.R.H was now risking a loss of face with his own people, who looked to him as their guiding light towards advancement.  H.R.H agreed.

The University of X set up a branch campus or offered one of their high demand degrees (this case study could work with either option).  It made the University of X money.  The very best professors flew over for a few hours and flew back home again.  Some of the local students even managed to talk to these jet lagged professors before they flew back home.  But most of the time the jet lagged professors spent their time in their expensive hotel resort.

The local students who graduated from the branch campus in the desert kingdom felt they had been cheated of studying at the main institution.   The professors at the branch campus felt like second class professors and longed only to get to the main campus.

In short, no one was happy.   Not even the finance department at University X as they objected to every cent spent by the branch campus.

And as for our H.R.H. the branch campus did nothing to enhance the educational reputation of the desert kingdom and H.R.H. was left paying  for what was in effect a profit making franchise for a foreign university.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Analysis of the Case Study.

What went wrong?

It would be easy to blame the consultants.

But in truth consultants advise about what they know.  And educational consultants know about their own National methods.  By definition, no one knows what they do not know.

So if you ask for advice about how to set up a higher education institution or system the consultant will think about the higher education system they come from.

It is natural.

Ask any of the World’s top 10 ranked universities to help you advance and they will try and make you look and behave like them.

It is natural.

The sad truth is that institutions become great because of where they are, who attends them and the conditions and history that surrounds them.  You can think of these forces like the geological pressures that make diamonds.

You cannot become Harvard, or MIT by copying them.  No matter how much money you spend.

What is ironic about this case study is that almost every part of the old traditional aspects of the iconic western university is a copy of the original Arab universities.   The concept of a Chair of learning (professors),  the scholar’s academic gown, the scholar’s cap, and even the campus are all copies from the original Arabic seats of learning.   Where, centuries before Oxford or the Sourbonne were established, the classic works of the ancient world were taught and discussed.  The truth is that while the western world was stumbling in the Dark Ages these Arabic institutions held the seeds that would become the Renaissance.

Back to our case study:  Why spend millions trying to copy Western Universities when the truth is you already have the oldest institutions in the world?   Investing in renovating and invigorating the classic assets you already have is surely a path to greatness?

Style is who you are not who you copy.

A simple question:  Where should be the best place to study the Arabic languages and culture?  Harvard? Oxford?

Why invest in your weaknesses when you can invest in your strengths and become a Lion?

Good consultants share what they know so you can follow (copy) the success of others.

Great consultants help you recognize and empower the greatness within yourself so you move from the ordinary to extraordinary.

 

 

There is a good reason why good manners are called “Civilized Behavior”

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Good Manners from andrewcorbett.net

 

“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot…”  – Robert A. Heinlein

 

 

 

 

 

When was the last time someone was rude or inconsiderate to you?  Unfortunately I would guess that it was recently, as our modern society has adopted the belief that it is cool to be cruel to each other.

It is unfortunate because this cruelty extends everywhere and often leads the victims of such abusive interactions into a dark cycle where, when they are shown less respect, in turn they show less respect to everyone around them.

Over the past decades the popular media have concentrated on portraying heroes as being antisocial loners who bend social or civil rules and treat people and objects around them with a complete lack of respect in their quest to accumulate personal advantage over others.

The problem is that people mimic the behavior of their Heroes.   They always have.  The only difference is that in the past the Heros that were presented to people were noble, brave, ethical and moral.  Caring and supportive of the needs of the greater whole, who lacked the Hero’s special gifts.  These Heros were admired for the contributions they brought to advancing everyone, not just their own selfish interest.

In the 1960s the Media became bored with such traditional Hero role models and instead presented the anti-Hero as a new role model to follow.   As each anti-Hero needed to be more shocking than the last (in order to sell) we moved to ever ruder and more anti-social Heros.  Until now we even have serial murders as Heroes on mainstream television.

When people behave like their antisocial Heros they break an unwritten social contract that binds organizations and society into a coherent functioning whole, where people respect the RIGHT of the other to exist and the RESPONSIBILITY to recognise that RIGHT by acting with consideration to each other.

This unwritten social contract is essential for an organization or society to advance.

I know that a great many people in our modern society are advocates of removing all rules and embracing the opportunities that they believe Chaos brings.  They treat everyone and everything around them with contempt and they believe that they are beyond all rules.

But this is because they do not really understand what it means to completely remove the rules.  They have never been to a place without rules, and if I am being completely blunt, their life expectancy under such situations would be exceptionally short.  Anyone who has had the misfortune to experience real warfare, where the right to exist no longer holds, would never propose it.

There is considerable irony that, in my experience, many of the most polite and considerate people I have met have proven themselves to be exceptionally compentant in violent and dangerous environments.

I have already mentioned the unwritten social contract that supports good manners.  This is where we each acknowledge the RIGHT for the other to exist.  The RIGHT for each of us to have peaceful enjoyment of whatever pleasures may be possible for us in our very short lives on this beautiful planet.   In short, what we enjoy and call Civilization.

I am completely confident that when these people are advocating antisocial behavior and removing all social rules, what they really mean is completely removing all such rules for them but leaving all the rules in place for everyone else around them.

Because the reality is that the people who are being rude and antisocial are simply indicating their lack of understanding of why people are polite.

Polite people are not being polite because they HAVE to be polite.  It is a choice. A deliberate decision to respect others who share this existence with us.

Good manners indicate self control, respect for the rights of others and most importantly the responsibility that comes with being a rational sentient being with free will.

Respect promotes good manners from others and since it is an essential prerequisite to social collaboration it also encourages the advancement of organizations and society.

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When the relationship between Risk and Return is broken only a fool continues to play

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Blackjack from Al-forensic

 

“Oh, it’s not really gambling when you never lose.” – Jennifer Aniston

 

 

 

 

Imagine for a moment a classic card game such as Blackjack with a full set of cards and a fair dealer and everyone playing correctly.   Such a situation has set probabilities of outcomes and betting on these outcomes has known predictable risks.   It is in fact a game which has set mathematical outcomes.  This allows the players and the House to know in advance the relationship between the risk of making a bet and the likely return.

Now imagines a situation where a minority of the richest players make enormous high risk bets.  They win for a period and their winning streak makes them take ever more risky bets.  They end up making bets that are several times larger than the entire pot of money on the table and the entire casino funds.   They lose this enormous high risk bet.

However the Casino decides to guarantee all their losses.   The high losers continue to play as before because they are totally addicted to high risk stakes bets and no one can control them, not even the floor manager who looks helplessly at the casino manager.  They make ever larger losses.  The Casino continues to underwrite their losses, even though no one actually knows the full extent of the liability.   It could be as much as 7.5 times more than the entire game pot and the Casino’s gross worth (or if you prefer that is 750% of the combined world economy).

In order to continue the game the Casino has to insist that when the big losing players continue to lose they must have 60% of the winnings of the prudent players who had only been betting with low risk bets – which have lower rates of return (haircuts on savings accounts).   In fact the relationship between the level of risk and the rate of return is fundamental not just to Blackjack games, but also to the whole of Banking and Investment.

But back to our very  odd game of Blackjack.   As far as the other players are concerned the game looks and feels just like it always did in the past.   The beautiful croupier still looks as lovely as ever and the free drinks taste just as good.   Most of the players will continue to try and play using the long establish mathematical rules of risk and return.  Except those rules do not work when some of the players cannot lose.

Would you play against someone who literally could not lose?

No, neither would I.

Our stock market is controlled by complex trading systems.  These computerized trading systems are based on the rules of risk and return.  Their programming is very clever, but the programmers never included unlimited bank bail outs,  near to zero fixed bank rates or enormous quantitative easing.   Put bluntly, the relationship between risk and return is broken.   Had you noticed?

 

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Living in Interesting Times: When Governments cease to Govern and Bankers cease to Bank

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A bank run

“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of  credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most  completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a  Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” - Woodrow  Wilson

 

Since my post on the proposed raid on savers deposits to bail out the irresponsible and bankrupt bankers in Cyprus we have seen the Cypriot people protest, which is excellent as their Government is supposed to represent them.   Then we have seen the Cypriot Parliament respond to the protests of their people by rejecting the proposed raid on savers deposits (again this is excellent as it shows democracy).

And this last weekend we have been informed of a secret, behind the scenes, decision by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in Europe to arbitrarily take the savings from those who save in one bankrupt Cypriot bank, while not taking the savings from those in another bankrupt Cypriot bank, along with billions in European taxpayers’ money, all to bail out bankrupt bankers – who, 5 years after the financial crisis started, have still not changed any of their irresponsible behavior!

Further we are informed that this decision by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats  will not be given the chance to be put before the democratically elected parliament, but will instead be forced on the supposedly independent nation of Cyprus by these unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.

I know this blog is supposed to be on sound governance in organizations, but these events are such outrageous violations of sound governance principles that I feel I have to point them out.

This new development of subsidizing the bankers irresponsible behavior directly from the savings of the prudent and responsible is an abomination against natural law.   The fact that unelected and unaccountable persons can direct sovereign nations to inflict punitive measures against savers is a terrible precedent which is only equalled by the precedent that these same bureaucrats can discard the need for such measures to be approved by the democratically elected representatives of the people in a sovereign nation’s parliament.

What can be done?

We need to amend the manner in which decisions are made.  

It is unacceptable to have such measures decided by people who are neither elected or accountable.   Further, sovereign nations must always be given the right to decide what happens to their own people.

The continued bailing out of financial institutions with endless tax payer’s commitments has to stop.  Banks that are too big must be broken up into smaller units that are not too big to escape the rule of law.   None of this is difficult.  We just need someone who has the basic honesty to do what needs to be done.

 

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Rewarding the irresponsible and punishing the prudent: the way to destroy value.

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Savers Punished from http://www.odwyerpr.com

 

“Righteousness, or justice, is, undoubtedly of all the virtues, the surest foundation on which to create and establish a new state. But there are two nobler virtues, industry and frugality, which tend more to increase the wealth, power and grandeur of the community, than all the others without them.” — Benjamin Franklin

 

 

 

Today the newspapers are full of the latest bank bail outs with taxpayers hard earned money.  This time in Cyprus but with the new twist that “haircut” losses are, for the first time, being given as a punishment to savers.

This is a new dark development where the irresponsible (Banks) are rewarded for their utter disregard for due diligence, and responsible, prudent people, who have deprived themselves of other opportunities in order to save money for their own futures, are brutally punished by losing their savings.

This perverts all the laws of natural justice.  Bankrupt banks should be allowed to go bankrupt.  This is the process recognized by the free market and in this process savers lose unless their deposits are protected by some insurance (and in most places they are covered to some extent).  When savers lose their money because banks have been irresponsible the savers will demand that banks behave honestly and responsibly.  It really is that simple.

But to bail out irresponsible banks so they make no losses and to punish the savers in order to reward the banks for their irresponsibility is too perverse to comprehend!

What makes this whole dark farce worse is that this is being done on the orders of the rich investment bankers who have been appointed by weak Governments to control the financial world around us.

In fact we should stop calling them Governments, since the moment that they announced that they could no longer govern the financial institutions, then they abdicated their responsibilities to serve their people and passed over their power to the large banks.

We live in a new reality where financial institutions are beyond Government or Law and commit crimes on a scale that quite frankly is hard to comprehend.   When a bank launders money for criminals and terrorists to the scale of 200 trillion dollars we are dealing with sums that are much larger than the combined world economy.   In fact we could eradicate world poverty with that sum.   Instead what has happened to it? It has gone into the pockets of organized criminals, terrorist organizations and banks (if in fact there is a real difference between these groups any more).

What can we do?  Well a good first start is to make people aware of what is happening.

It is easy to point to the facts and let everyone understand what is happening.

If you are unhappy that your elected representatives are allowing this to happen with your implied support then let them know.  And if they do not respond do not vote for them.

Yes, it really is that simple.

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