You're safe, now

I work for a nonprofit mental health/drug & alcohol treatment center. We employ doctors, so drug reps do call on us. Their ranks have been thinning as pharmaceutical companies have hit a rough patch. This might come as a surprise to those who swallowed the dramatized reports that drug companies print money.

In fact, as of the first of the year, they will no longer be giving us the handful of pens and post-it notepads that I look at as helping to defray some office supply expense. Or, as I also look at it, free up some dollars to treat the indigent in need.

That's right, we were on the take. All the treatment facilities are in on it. For a few plastic pens, we were hooking tens of thousands of people on unnecessary psychotropic drugs. Biggest thing since the Medellin Cartel.

But, the flow of cheap pens is coming to a close. The war on legal drugs and pharmaceutical companies can be declared a victory. You're all safe, now.

The art of the deal

I’m always a little amazed when reminded of some of the practical things we don’t teach in schools. A neighbor was just telling me he got a quote from a roofing company and accepted it.

I was also surprised because I had been thinking of roof replacement and had proposed to him that we negotiate a two-for deal, pooling our bargaining power. “Yeah, but this guy said his price was good for only that day, so I had to take it.” The hot box sell.

Most things are negotiable, especially in home improvement. If the vendor tries to dictate the rules, you can always walk.

For instance, a few weeks ago, I had a furnace repaired. The serviceman advised me that it was a very old unit (I knew that) and had reached the point of being dangerous. I asked him for specifics. Another company had told me the same thing a couple years ago and their explanation didn’t wash. I checked his out, and it did.

So, a salesman from the firm contacted me and came over. He led off with some small talk to get a feel for me. That’s good, because it afforded me the same opportunity. He’d been selling HVAC for over twenty years, so I knew what league we were playing in.

He wrote up three alternatives, recommending the best one, of course. I asked him to deduct the cost of the service call. It wouldn’t make sense to pay them to fix the furnace and turn around and have them sell me a new one. He grumbled, but did it. There was air in the price, as I suspected. But, how much?

He tried to close the sale, but I said I needed to do some comparison shopping. I would call him next week. He wasn’t wild about that, but relented.

I did do some comparing, but really wanted to see how hungry he was. I didn’t call all week, and neither did he. Not a good sign.

To keep my word, I called late Friday when I was pretty sure he’d be out of the office. I left a message that I had a question.

He called three times over the weekend, leaving his personal cell number. That’s more like it.

I returned the call on Monday, so I wouldn’t appear too eager, and told him I was narrowing down the choices. But, I needed his bottom line figure, not the proposal number. He knocked off 10% and attempted to close. I wasn’t certain that was the floor, so I said I’d call back in a couple days.

I did and gave him a number that would seal the deal. You’d think I had slapped him, but he’s a big boy. He came down a couple bucks, but said he couldn’t meet my price. That’s okay, I was now sure we had boiled all the fat out. A little bit of work, but taking out the service call and discounting was worth over a grand. Not a bad return.

He asked for a rather substantial deposit, I countered with a smaller one and said he’d get the rest when I was satisfied with the installation. Once they have the money, you lose your leverage.

Just a few simple things that people should know to manage their lives. We teach health (or whatever it’s called, now). Why not financial health?

What financial crisis?

When people are buying customizing decals for riding mowers, they have too much money, not too little: http://www.vinzdecals.com/ridingmower.html

On a positive note

As a youngster, I would bring in the newspaper and give my mother the sections she had first dibs on while I’d pore over the rest. I would kid her about reading the obituaries. “You’ll see,” she replied.

My mom’s math was to compute the difference between the deceased’s age and hers. I didn’t think it was either relevant or uplifting. I prefer positive role models.

A friend of mine died this week. He ran the airport well and was a great guy. I caught myself noticing he was eight years older than me. Not a point to focus upon.

“You must have a thing for me,” Liz kidded me this morning at the pool. She was alluding to the fact that I had shifted swimming laps with my usual cronies to her schedule.

The change was intentional. The people I was swimming with made me feel fast. Liz kicks my butt. It’s a better gauge for knowing how much work I need to do.

I’m not young, but Liz is 10 years older and in great shape. That’s something to shoot for.

Depraved new world

One of my employees (not in the business end of the organization) asked me why the stock market dove in spite of the EESA (bailout legislation). Simple. The market plunged because of the EESA, not in spite of it.

Investors recognize it as a placebo in a barrel of pork. In this economic crisis, using this emergency measure to pork up wooden arrows, rum, etc. is akin to EMTs arriving at a disaster site and stealing the wallets of the victims.

Where were the draconian cuts in wasteful government spending, duplication and overemployment? Just more pork. Yeah, that'll help us out of the hole.

The "bailout" will be financed by printing more money and your taxes. Inflation and sapping purchasing power. Effective plan.

Even more relevant is the investors discern the fundamental and momentous shift in the fabric of our capitalistic system. The feds took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (stupendous failures that they helped craft) and the EESA imbues the Treasury, FDIC and Federal Reserve with super powers and arbitrary control. The same outfit that mucked up Social Security, Sallie Mae and a legion of other programs – what could go wrong here?

The powers are in place and the overt socialists are about to assume control of the executive branch with promises to kill the geese that are laying our golden eggs, with the exception of their Hollywood friends (see: EESA/pork). Worked out great for the Russians, et al.

The investors see it coming and aren’t fooled by the crap sandwich that the EESA is. They’re not the idiots with their noses stuck against a computer screen eight hours a day. They’re reading the entrails. It’s now a whole new country, and not one that will be good for business.

Weighty issues

Part of the check-in procedure at the clinic I run is the measurement of height, weight, temperature and blood pressure. I’m intrigued by the number of people I see kick off their shoe before getting onto the scale. If you suffer a mental illness or substance dependency, the least of your problems is knocking a couple pounds off your chart weight.

I have an employee who uses the office scale to weight herself about every hour. What makes this seem even more quirky is that she could probably use the postage scale. Obviously some issues at work, here.

I mused about this to a friend, who didn’t find it odd at all. She told me she has about a dozen weights; with shoes, without shoes, first-thing-in-the-morning, before period, after period, right after a dump, etc.

I was thinking of this because I moved past my break point last week, which reminds me of a philosophical discussion I’ve had with someone I’ll see tonight. I’m not anxious to have it again.

I have a fairly rigorous adventure coming up toward the end of the year. So, I stepped up my usual conditioning. This results in better muscle tone, weight loss, etc. Somewhere, south of the mid-180s, I move from my normal wardrobe to smaller sizes.

Another friend of mine maintains a vigorous daily workout routine continuously. A couple years ago, due to significantly increased hours and travel on the job, she crept above her break point, which is about 110. I slipped and said aging might have something to do with it. That was out of my mouth before I could stop it and was pretty costly.

She had added “more comfortable” attire to her collection before drawing the line and burning off the weight. She immediately disposed of the new clothing. The Cortez approach.

When Cortez landed at Vera Cruz, he ordered his men to burn the 11 ships. He did this to ensure commitment to the mission.

I’m not about to burn the ships. Aside from the fact that I don’t think this is a realistic level of training to carry on after the event, I’d rather do something on the strength of my will as opposed to an artificial boundary. That also assumes it’s something I want to do, and I feel no need to push it.

Beyond an acceptable level of health, this creeps into the province of courting the favor of others. That’s never a good recipe for balance or happiness.

A ray of hope

Addicts of various stripe are usually in denial, which makes it impossible for them to dig out. If you refuse to recognize the problem and take responsibility, you won’t address it.

It usually takes some catastrophic event for one to face the music. They have to hit the wall. It isn’t all bad if it results in a turnaround.

I belong to a small club that meets monthly for dinner, as it has for almost a century. We take turns presenting papers on controversial subjects and then debate them. The deliberations are invariably spirited, but intelligent and not without wit.

It was my turn to present the paper. The theme I chose was that the “loan meltdown” was a symptom of a larger issue, not the problem. That problem is the “entitlement meltdown.”

During my formative years, I learned that you didn’t get accepted to college unless you qualified. You didn’t get a loan unless you could demonstrate the ability to pay it off. You weren’t hired unless you had the credentials.

Somewhere along the way, we veered off the road. We graduated some kids from high school who were barely literate and compelled colleges to accept them and green-light them through. Then, we forced businesses and colleges to hire them. We pressured banks to lend money to those who had little prospect of carrying the debt load. We allowed prodigious illegal immigration and diverted tax-financed services calculated to serve the citizens to be sopped up by illegals who were not contributing to the tax base. If you objected to any of this insanity, you were labeled and blacklisted. Political correctness usually damns those who describe things as they are. Euphemizers are free to spin things away from reality with indemnification.

When you mandate the employment of the unqualified into business and government positions, what outcome did you expect, other than billions in squandered salary dollars and even more in the cost of mismanagement? When you legislate lending to the financially weak, what did you foresee, other than defaults and losses? When you condition people to expect a free ride at someone else’s expense, what level of effort and responsibility did you expect? When you made it more lucrative not to work did you expect people to look for jobs?

It is in everyone’s interest to promote the general welfare. But, you do that by helping people attain literacy, productivity, responsibility and self-respect, not by lowering the bar.

Joe Paterno is the long-time and highly successful football coach of Penn State University. He’s also a champion of minorities. Yet, he strenuously objected to the overturning of Proposition 16.

That was the standard that required a meager 2.0 high school average and paltry 820 SAT score for a high school athlete to move up to the college level. Coach Paterno said that you were doing the kids harm by lowering the standard, not helping them. Meeting a standard to be admitted into college gave them motivation to achieve in high school and acquire an education. Lowering the bar took it away. And, to say that one or more ethnic groups were less capable of attaining a standard was de facto racism.

Coach Paterno maintained his standards and the minority composition of his team still increased. He maintains one of the highest percentages of graduation and average IQ among major teams. Point made.

The majority of the group I presented the paper to is liberal, so I expected my position to be lambasted. It wasn’t. They’ve now experienced the pain that makes you rethink your position. They’ve finally hit the wall. Hopefully, many have and we’ll begin to turn the corner without much further damage.

That’s not all bad.