Finding Harbour – 300 words at a time

How far mighty RIM has fallen. Can you remember what things looked like for Research In Motion 3 years ago? Well, basically, it was the proverbial 800 lb. gorilla in the room. It was riding high and could (supposedly) feel rather bulletproof from the challenges to its brand, its technology and its market share.

Heck, even a year ago, things still looked reasonably rosy for the Canadian tech giant. Since then, a trap door opened; the stock has fallen 75%, the Co-CEO’s have both been displaced, their ‘Playbook’ tablet flopped horribly and their market share in important markets has departed for Antarctica. As perhaps the final indignity, it announced today it had retained counsel to “explore options” to kick-start revenue growth. (I suspect that’s really business code for finding a way to be bought as painlessly as possible, but we’ll see.)

What’s the lesson here? Was it hubris? Will classrooms full of future MBA’s spend the next few years applying case study analytics to real or imagined management missteps? Was it a “black swan” event?

I don’t pretend to know. But one thing seems clear: RIM got steamrolled by change. Change of an amplitude, intensity and speed that makes the head spin. You can, literally, be ‘on top of the world’ one minute, then just another piece of the detritus of history the next. In the Canadian context, another famous former 800 pounder comes to mind – Nortel Networks, now just a bankruptcy court file waiting to be tidied up.

Apple now rules the world. It looks bulletproof. It’s now the proverbial “most valuable company in the world”. Is it safe? Maybe. But GM, IBM, Toyota and that army of financial snake oil peddlars might have a sobering caution for #1. One thing’s (almost) for sure: Just when all the smart guys in the room decide they’re sure where things are headed, circumstances of all kinds conspire to make them wrong.

The Tori Stafford murder trial has turned a crucial corner; we now know the landscape of the issues. The pathologist has provided the gruesome details of horrific injuries sustained by Tori; ones that even reading about, cause me to cringe. But, for Mr. Rafferty, a gigantic sigh of relief ensues because there’s no surviving physical evidence of sexual assault – the remains were too badly decomposed.

That leaves the charge of sexual assault and, perhaps, the murder charge he’s facing, in a potentially precarious position, predicated as both now are on the sole evidence of  Terri-Lynne McLintic.

I don’t envy the jurors their task in deciding whether this was a joint enterprise or, as Michael Rafferty’s defense counsel will argue, a psychotic acting out by McClintic, who, by her testimony, implicates Rafferty as the moving force for the abduction, intending to satisfy his perverse desire for sex with a young child.

She’s changed her story (radically) several times, originally pointing the finger at Rafferty alone, then later testifying as to her own responsibility for the actual killing. Everything rides on whether any, or how much, credibility is given to her account, particularly as it relates to the “logic” of the abduction.

This is a woman who has admitted under cross-examination to microwaving a helpless puppy, gratuitous attacks on others both before and after killing Tori Stafford, and can only ber seen as the lowest form of life imaginable. Relying on anything she says would have to be mixed with a large grain of salt.

Mr. Rafferty is almost undoubtedly going to have to account for himself by testifying. He’ll be meticulous in skirting any culpability by some combination of shock, bewilderment and helplessness regarding McClintic’s actions. But, whether or not he’s believed, the entire prosecution rests on the jury believing a substantial portion the testimony of a truly revolting excuse for a human being.

A couple of notorious recent murder trials have me thinking that prosecutors and their investigators have gotten a taste of the spotlight created by intense media coverage and have gotten to like it just a little too much.

(First) case in point: The Russell Williams case. This guy pleaded guilty to the charges, which essentially meant that all that was necessary was to read in an agreed statement of facts to support the conviction, impose the statutorily-mandated sentence and send Mr. Williams off to rot.

But that wasn’t what happened. The prosecution strung out its presentation for days and days – trotting out a veritable dog and pony show of perversion – displaying in the most disgusting, lurid details about Williams’ acting out on his sickness. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of anything that might qualify as a “public purpose” for the spectacle. If anything, it must have been pure torture for the families of the victims.

With the Tori Stafford murder trial, we have a somewhat different situation. There’s actually an issue to be decided by the triers of fact, but the dynamics seem to be very similar.

The Crown’s star witness is a psychopath. They had to tread gingerly presenting her evidence to the jury, requiring, understandably perhaps, an overly solicitous approach to Ms. Psycho’s ‘troubled’ background.

But now that we’re beyond the crucial testimony of the actual witness to the events, lesser lights are getting their turn on stage. Case in point: The investigator who found Tori Stafford’s remains.

It would have been (legally) sufficient for him to describe the location, what he found, and when. Instead, we’re treated to what he thought, how he felt and a plethora of other ‘personal’ information that has no relevance whatsoever for the case. This was backstopped further by a visit to the actual site where the body was found. Can you imagine anything less germane to the question of who did what?

The only explanation I can find is that prosecutors (and police) enjoy their time in the limelight, showing off all the good work they do to protect the public. I’m not sure it’s a healthy development.

Customer service horror stories are legion; everyone has a seemingly endless supply of them. Even worse, the telling of one such story almost inevitably inspires a “Oh yeah, listen what happened to me,….,” upping of the ante. MY recent experience is of the infinitely scarcer variety; a happy ending.

I’m an avid reader and recently was given a Kindle eReader as a gift. It was love at first [power-up] sight. Sadly, couple of days ago, it slipped out of my binder and fell to a concrete floor with a resounding crash. When I powered up, I found the screen only half-functional. My bad.

I got up early the next morning and, while puddling around online, decided to order a new Kindle, which I did. Then, it occurred to me that I might have trouble “replacing” all the digital content I’d purchased for it, so I sent an email to their customer service department, asking if/how I could replenish my content. I noted in the email that I ’broke’ the machine.

Not more that 3 minutes after I sent the email, a reply came, telling me that the content would be replenished without any additional cost. It also ’recommended’ I contact them by telephone to deal with my “equipment problem”. I submitted a call-back number on line and not more than a further 2 minutes, I was talking to a nice young man from Amazon.

I reiterated that the damaged machine wasn’t a warranty claim, or anything else, as the damage was entirely my fault. “No matter,” he said, they’d replace my Kindle device for free. The replacement I’d just ordered? No problem; he cancelled the order on the spot.

How much better could it get? Well, an email provided a printout of a mailing label and everything I needed to enclose for the return of the item; a new Kindle arrived two days later and when I submitted my (damaged) Kindle for return at UPS, I found that the return shipping was pre-paid.

I’m sort of tempted to see if anyone can top that kind of effort to create a satisfied (and durably loyal) customer. Amazon, you ROCK!

Tori Stafford was a horrifically undeserving victim of the murderous attentions of a pair of loathsome miscreants out for their own purposes; one to have sex with a defenseless child, the other to secure the romantic attentions of the first-mentioned sex pervert (ostensibly, by “giving him what he wanted”). To even sketch out their ‘motivations’ in this way makes the skin crawl, but such is the explanatory arch of the star witness’s testimony.

As Terri-Lynne McClintic unpacks her sordid story for the jury, a creepy, festering idea’s been tugging at me: McClintic is a poster child for ‘victim’ status herself. Why, with the dysfunctional upbringing (by an “exotic dancer”) through the abuse (physical and sexual) and the ongoing drug (and alcohol) dependencies, she just oozes potential for sympathetic post-modern interpretation as an unfortunate with few ways to turn other than exactly where she did.

So far, though, I haven’t heard a soul take a stab at it, and I doubt I will. Interesting though, that you can find Canadians to readily come to the moral defense of Hezbollah homicide bombers through the relativism prism, but not for Terri-Lynne McClintic. Maybe her ‘motives’ are considered suspect; after all, she was doing it as supplication for the “needs” of what she describes as “a good man” (!). Ultimately, her (self-described) self-loathing “caused” (permitted? inspired?) her to bash in the brains of a helpless child.

Pity Terri-Lynne didn’t take out her rage on the MOST appropriate target – herself. The world would have been left the better for it; one less drug-addled social burden seeking the attentions of like-minded cretins for validation of their pathetic lives.

To those deluded souls who believe no one is “beyond redemption” there will forever be a short and pithy rebuttal to their bleating: Terri-Lynne McClintic. Tori, it’s so sad that your short life and tragic death will be associated with that dredge of humanity.

That “infrastructure stimulus” spending is still going on like gangbusters. Everywhere I drive, I’m getting stopped for single-lane traffic delays. I’d gotten used to it on busy main roads like Hwy. 26 between Owen Sound and Wasaga Beach, but the other day, I got dinged on a back road I use to avoid the slowdowns on 26.

The (back) road they were “fixing” was already one of the best stretches of pavement you could find in Grey County. I regularly used it as a motorcycle touring road, both for the scenery and the excellent pavement. So, it was with a little puzzlement I noted they had ripped up a long section, returning it to gravel road status (I assume they’re going to re-pave it as part of this project).  But the conclusion that they were fixing something that wasn’t ‘broke’ is inescapable (in fact, they were “breaking” it before they fixed it, come to think of it).

Another thing I’ve noticed about road work is the composition of road crews: They consist of an enormous proportion of young, blonde women acting as flag-persons. In one traffic interruption, I counted about 30 “workers”, approximately half of whom were blonde women, all of whom except one, were just standing around talking, interacting with their devices and just doing their best to pass the time. (The one guy “working” was driving one of those sweeping devices.) How do these roads actually get built?

I suppose it’s to be expected that governments spend money to justify the illusion they’re doing something productive about a problem. What scares me is the thought just how much of the “work” is of the “make” kind with little or no enduring benefit. In these times of belt-tightening, it might become necessary to give some thought to ‘benefit’ side of the cost/benefit equation.

The global economic meltdown caused a lot of anguished analysis sometimes going so far as to suggest the merits of scrapping capitalism itself as the organizing economic system. Some of the extreme excesses and abuses that came to light seem to make the argument compelling, at the very least on an emotional level.

I’m not persuaded the baby and the bathwater both have to go but I have come to re-think a number of the previously “accepted” orthodoxies of laissez-faire capitalism, in particular, the lauded benefits of deregulation.

Free market economies, as distinct from centrally-planned ones, are not only clearly superior in efficient resource utilization but are enormous drivers of social progress (if you doubt this, read Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist). Nonetheless, there is clearly a point where a “good thing” in excess, is toxic. I think that’s where we’ve gotten to now.

There’s now plenty of evidence around that (otherwise) law-abiding citizens will not just push the envelope of propriety, but blow it up, if it means scoring a few more digits in their bank account, whether or not it’s already full-to-bursting. Unrestrained and non-tempered greed gets the best of  ’em when “anything goes”.

In reading Satyajit Das’ book, Extreme Money, I was astonished to find that, at the extreme margins of the run-up to the financial crisis, ‘SIV’s’ (Structured Investment Vehicles) were being created, entirely off the books of “legitimate” financial institutions, whereby $1 of real capital ended up ‘supporting’ between $20 and $30 worth of loans. When, inevitably, the piper called, it was the taxpayer who ended up settling the state of accounts for the so-called masters of the universe.

Although I’m seldom in favour of knee-jerk legislation, apart from re-instituting Glass-Stiegel, tightening up capital reserve requirements and limiting the use of “off the books” investment vehicles, we should be giving some thought to whether specific examples of rapacious greed, coupled with indifference to risk and the off-loading of financial consequences, shouldn’t be “structured” as a capital crime.

I heard this (quasi-)syllogism a long time ago: 1) The government spends too MUCH (overall); And: 2) The government spends too LITTLE on: [the speaker's] particular area of interest.

The jury’s definitely in on proposition #1; even John Maynard Keynes couldn’t mount a credible argument against it. But in Ontario, we’ll be hearing impassioned pleas on #2 for some considerable time to come.

The trick with dealing with “#2″ arguments (other than labeling them as “#2″) is calling them for what they are: Wishes, wants, preferences, luxuries and the like, NOT “needs”.  The piper’s demand letter has just arrived; it’ll put a damper on all the ‘feel good’ spending Ontarians have come to expect.

Thoreau suggested that one of the keys to maintaining a sense of well-being was the ability to distinguish wants from needs. It’s a talent for discrimination that’s seemingly lost on all those folks lining up in front of legislatures and attending town counsel meetings to decry the lack of money for stuff like (free) drama lessons for seniors and equine therapy (for non-equines).

In my community, time and time again, I’ve seen town council fold like a cheap suit to persistent and vocal demands for all kinds of non-essential spending, usually supported by the flimsiest of benefit arguments, apart from the mushy feelgood aspect, of course.

I think even the dumbest of spendthrifts is probably starting to realize the future was mortgaged some time ago and it’s only a question of which succeeding generation non-essential spending is being passed on to. All kinds of stuff is going to have to be subjected to the cold glare of the need/want filter.

The starting point for ‘need assessment’ is in your own pocket – if someone else doesn’t pay for it, will you be required to and actually reach into your own pocket for it? If not, don’t bother asking.

Donald Drummond actually started pulling the veil off this con job even before the last election. What was sort of incongruous was that he was the premier’s “hired gun” to help the government “deal with” the fiscal situation. This should have been a warning beacon so obvious to everyone as to not need elaboration.

But while Drummond was already speaking very bluntly that the situation was far from pretty, almost as if in some bizarre parallel universe, the election was going on, with all parties, while giving sanctimonious lip service to fiscal responsibility, busy promising all kinds of electoral baubles and beads. McGuinty proudly trumpeted his government’s spending to date almost as if it was a badge of honour, despite the already unprecedented level of debt and projected deficits stretching out as far as the eye could see.

The Drummond report is now before us. To say it ain’t pretty is about as “under” as a statement gets. To put things into a perspective of sorts, Mike Harris’ spending cuts, that (supposedly) decimated the province amounted to just short of 4%. The “required” spending cuts in Drummond’s report are more than four times that.

More importantly, it makes clear just how shamelessly dishonest the government’s predictions, projections and accounting have been in the prelude to this analysis. A CEO of a public company would be looking at a very significant jail term if he’d misled his shareholders as blatantly as McGuinty has, knowing full well the true state of affairs. The only remaining question mark is how he’s going to smile and dance around the required dose of fiscal medicine.

With all this fiscal carnage on display, there IS one fellow trying hard to suppress a smile – Bob Rae; he knows he’s now forever been displaced as the head of the most profligate government in Ontario history.

I’m not a parent. I’m mostly thankful for that. I know that parenting is often a thankless task, made harder by the discipline it takes to say ‘no’ for the seemingly endless impulsive wantings of offspring from infants to adolescents.

Unfortunately, the same sort of dynamics have taken a powerful hold on electoral politics. No politician dares so much as hint that program, budget or entitlement cuts are contingent upon their election – to the contrary, there will be more of everything, for everyone – but with absolutely no tax increases.

It doesn’t take a degree in economics or finance (actually, one in sociology might hinder understanding) to figure out that endlessly more of everything is “unsustainable” (a currently fashionable word) and that something’s got to “give”, bottom-line wise, eventually.

No matter, say the politicians, and apparently the electorate, let’s just keep promising stuff, all the while ignoring the price tag, because, in most cases, it’ll be paid by future generations. Business and political columist, Kelly McParland put it this way:

“In the history of really bad economics, I doubt there’s ever been one generation that lived so high off the hog while letting the bills pile up for payment by a subsequent set of grandchildren. We justified it to ourselves (or some of us did) by pretending it was out of concern for the less fortunate. We needed baby bonuses, pension schemes, retirement supplements, housing assistance, medical coverage and poverty alleviation programs because we were progressive, open-minded people in favour of social justice. Except we weren’t really willing to pay for it. Not with our own money, anyway.”

A number of economies have hit the wall of “no” much in the same manner that motor vehicles unintentionally hit abutments. It seems to me the way to avoid the collision is to apply the brakes in advance; learn to say ‘no’ to yourself and the politicians that are spending your grandchildren’s money while pandering for your vote.