Profits Over People?

Profits Over People?
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
April 24, 2020

Angry, with good reason, yet peaceful, protests are growing and taking place in a greater number of states as a greater number of people have come to realize their states’ governors are treating their constituents like subjects and children.

They simply want to return to work and some semblance of a life, albeit an altered life.

These people are being called selfish, inconsiderate, and greedy by people who, themselves, are selfish, inconsiderate, and greedy. My youngest daughter, a college student, which explains quite a bit, has a go to mantra, “Are you putting profits over people?”

The answer is certainly not. More than 20 million people have lost jobs during this siege, and putting them back to work is not about profit, but preservation. This is survival over suicide, and that is not hyperbole, as suicide rates are sharply on the rise. Poverty will kill more people than the Coronavirus. “To burn down the village to save it is foolish,” said Senator John Kennedy (R-LA).

Mom and pop shops, single proprietorships, small businesses with fewer than a couple hundred people have closed their doors because their government asked them to. They are without income, and unable to pay salaries and furloughed staff. They are without income, and unable to pay rents or mortgages and utilities. All of these affected people are struggling to put food on their tables, pay their own rent or mortgages, make car payments, running higher credit card debts, and are hemorrhaging money to the point of bankruptcy and the loss of their businesses, their savings, and possibly their homes and or cars.

Local restaurants, those that are able to remain open are limited to take out and delivery service, and are also losing money. Many more are closed, and perhaps permanently. Should the owners lose their life’s work, their livelihood, and not have the ability to start over? What about losing their life savings? How is anyone supposed to actually live when they literally have nothing? Will restaurants even be able to survive a “new normal,” whatever the hell that is going to be? Can a 100 seat restaurant survive with only 50 seats? Will people be able to afford to eat out? Will they even want to?

Not a fan of priming the pump to begin with, there’s only so far government can go in what it is doing to help people and businesses. And as is becoming more evident, the government plans are running awry. When a Harvard University or a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse are benefiting from government largesse, that is wrong. Harvard has an endowment of more than $41 billion, and Ruth’s Chris is a chain of more than 100 restaurants. The country can’t keep printing money, for it will eventually be worthless and people will have to carry boxes of paper with numbers printed on them to buy a simple loaf of bread. Inflation will double and triple every other month, then week, then day, as the economy becomes worse than the Great Depression in the United States and Germany during that same time. Look at how inflation destroyed the economy of Venezuela.

It is not selfish, inconsiderate, or greedy for people to want to get back to work and save their family, save their family business, save the health - mental and physical of their loved ones. Eventually the protests will turn ugly - it’s human nature. Profits? No; preservation. As of Friday, April 24, the overwhelming majority of those reporting back to work are lower income workers, not the “swells” who can afford to sit on the sidelines and point fingers. “The economy has been waterboarded,” said Sen. Kennedy, adding, “lives and livelihoods are important.”

What is selfish and inconsiderate? Think about all the people risking their lives to keep you alive - truckers bring you your food, supermarket workers, restaurant workers, food delivery people, trash collectors, mailmen, bank tellers, fire fighters, doctors and nurses, our troops - many of whom are working for low wages, while so many are hunkering down feeling entitled.

Why else do people need to return to work? Because $1,200 doesn’t go very far, and the government cannot take care of the American people like they are children. The longer people are not working, the longer they are not producing revenue for the government - taxes that are deducted from people’s pay. No pay, no tax revenue. Remember, there is no such thing as government money. And in this case, socialism isn’t about running out of other people’s money, it’s about running out of our own money - first that which is in our bank accounts, and second, that which the government uses.

This virus, courtesy of the Communist Chinese Party, has demonstrated the fragility of the economy, not just that of the United States, but the rest of the world. For as the US falls, so too does the rest of the globe. As anyone who has taken Economics 101 knows, additional printing of money will ultimately do much more harm than good. Money should be reappropriated from every department and from that which is designated for foreign aid. After all, if the government can require what they consider “non-essential” employees to stay at home and lose thousands upon thousands of dollars, certainly the government can use money more wisely, for essential expenses only.

Stop borrowing from the Chinese. Stop doing business with the Chinese. The Chinese, for their lies and deceptions must be made to pay. The state of Missouri is already filing a lawsuit against China. Perhaps the remaining 49 states will do likewise. The federal government should withhold payment to China of any debt owed to that tyrannical regime, as should all other nations in debt to China. Remember, the goal of the Communist Chinese Party is to protect the top first and to protect the collective. This is just one reason the Chinese lied about the severity of the virus that came from the Wuhan Province. There is little question the Chinese also lied about the enormous number of fatalities to their own people. Additionally, the World Health Organization is complicit in this crime against humanity - for defending China, for believing China blindly, and for harming Taiwan.

Support local businesses. If it doesn’t have to be bought right now, hold off until neighborhood shops are reopened. Avoid chain stores and if at all possible, do not purchase Chinese made goods. If ordering something online and are not sure of its origin, ask before buying. All businesses are essential to those who own them and rely upon them for their livelihood as well as the livelihoods of those they employ.

One of the most important things the United States absolutely must do as soon as humanly possible - bring our antibiotics home. About 97 percent of American antibiotics are made in China. That is an obscenity. No one foreign power should have that much control over another. The United States has the capability to produce its own drugs and it is imperative to do so. Contact your member of Congress and demand they stop doing business with China and that antibiotics being produced in the United States is a top priority. More drug production at home, more jobs created.

And on the subject of drugs, the Coronavirus has demonstrated yet another reason why a single payer system and mandatory medicare for all as healthcare in the United States would be a dismal failure. Government alone is not able to fight this virus. Corporate America has been enlisted in this important battle. Consider the myriad companies that have repurposed themselves to provide ventilators and other necessary materials as deemed essential.

Congress must behave responsibly - an enormous expectation, so don’t hold your breath. Bills designed for relief or stimulus should be limited to just those proponents and nothing more. No special projects the House Democrats are trying to sneak in the back door; no election reform, no “larding” up the bill as the expression goes. After all, lard isn’t kosher. They sit up there in their ivory towers playing politics with people’s lives and livelihoods.

So while many of the entitled masses are sitting home so superiorly and smugly, and others are risking their lives to give those at home a life, the suffering is more than the Coronavirus. It’s the jobless millions who simply want to go back to work and support their families before there is nothing left with which to support them. Profits over people? No. More like cutting loses; maybe breaking even, but probably not for a while still. Survival over suicide - economically or physically.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.

From $15 an Hour to Unemployment

From $15 an Hour to Unemployment

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn

September 22, 2014

Aspiring to a $15 an hour fast food wage? Stop reading now. Just stop reading and go back to work mindlessly cleaning grease traps.

I’m not casting aspersions on grease traps, just those who see $15 as an end, not an illogical beginning. Stop reading because the following economics and history lessons will fall upon blind eyes and make too much sense to maintain your current way of myopic thinking.

The Federal minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 an hour and fast food workers are demanding a 207 percent wage increase. Imagine how that will affect the bottom line of any franchise surrendering to those demands.

Gone will be the dollar and budget menus that entice many who ultimately spend more. Gone will be sensible pricings that allow folks of modest means to patronize establishments from Arby’s to Wendy’s. When prices rise exponentially to cover the cost of increased wages, sales will decrease concomitantly, thus causing large scale layoffs to occur. Those making the $15 per hour wage will find themselves on the unemployment line. Ultimately entire businesses will be shuttered creating greater joblessness and dependency upon government.

An alternative plan, although less feasible, is to gather the workers together, tell them that half of them will need to be dismissed from their jobs in order to afford to pay the remaining half the 207 percent wage increase. Then, let them swing their own axes. Let the workers determine who should stay and who should go. With the decision making process on the workers’ shoulders, they will know they had an impact on whose jobs were lost and whose were salvaged first hand.

What these workers seem to have either forgotten or never learned, is that if they only aspire to a $15 an hour job, that is where they will remain – mired at the bottom of the economic food chain. By understanding that a minimum is simply that, a point from which to grow with learning and hard work, the employee will eventually climb the ladder toward real success.

Case in point, Jeff Stratton, who recently retired after 41 years with McDonald’s. Having started with the company at age 17, Stratton leaves having risen to the position of McDonald’s US president. Was Stratton handed the position of president? Of course not. He rose  through the ranks, no doubt having learned the business from the bottom up – sweeping, cleaning, frying, selling, supervising a shift, writing a schedule for the establishment, training new employees, learning purchasing and payroll procedures for one restaurant, then a region, and beyond, all the while learning the process for the next steps up the corporate ladder.

Learning both on the job and in school is also a key to success. Employers see success in the classroom as demonstrative of a person who can learn and be trained in the corporate setting, thus making those people valuable employees. These are employees who will understand the economics as discussed above and not just work hard to get ahead, but actually get ahead.

And, by the way, at $15 an hour, these unskilled, largely uneducated, transposable workers would surpass, in hourly earnings, substitute teachers, adjunct professors, and the average man and woman serving their country in the Armed Forces. Disgraceful the aforementioned do not earn more, but should also put into perspective the outlandish demands of fast food workers.

Instead of making such unreasonable demands as an employee easily replaceable, listen, ask questions, show up to work on time, work holidays and weekends when no one else wants to and make your own future. If not in the fast food business, the skills learned could be transferred elsewhere, but if not the skills, certainly the work ethic that will make you more valuable. Be the next Jeff Stratton by striving for personal betterment through personal responsibility.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.

Crying Fowl over Free Speech

Crying Fowl over Free Speech
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
August 4, 2012

It’s not about Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A is merely the conduit to a larger dust-up – that of the First Amendment right of free speech and the denial by fascist mayors of legal institutions to conduct business in “their” cities.

The backstory is about Chick-fil-A and its president, Dan Cathy, expressing an opinion early in July that marriage is a Biblically-based institution and his commitment to marriage being a man-woman union sanctified by G-d.

“We are very much supportive of the family – the Biblical definition of the family unit,” said Cathy in an interview with the Baptist Press, according to commentator Cal Thomas in his July 29 editorial “Chickening out on free speech.”

That quote was widely unnoticed for several weeks until it was “discovered” that Cathy and Chick-fil-A contributes financially to conservative organizations such as the Family Research Council. As if Chick-fil-A’s conservative credentials were ever in question. After all, the 1,615-plus-restaurant chain, headquartered in Atlanta, and spread liberally throughout the Bible Belt has been closed on Sundays since its inception in 1967.

However, once the homosexual lobby and liberal media determined that Cathy shouldn’t contribute money his company earned to organizations of his choosing, the culture war entered yet another front.

The liberal mayors of liberal cities Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, DC – yes, that’s two liberals in the same sentence, three if you count this one, but those mayors and cities are just that far to the left, have vowed to keep Chick-fil-A out of “their” cities.

“Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values,” said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, in support of a city alderman who declared he will block any proposed Chick-fil-A in his district.

Yes, Chicago values include murders on an almost daily basis, illegal drugs as available as aspirin, out of wedlock birth reaching epidemic proportions and a public school system on the verge of imploding.

“There is no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it,” wrote Boston Mayor Thomas Menino to Cathy.

Chick-fil-A is not discriminating against any group. All paying customers are welcome – gay, straight, black, white, yellow, brown.

Additionally, in what could be viewed as a threatening tweet, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee wrote that “the closest Chick-fil-A to San Francisco is 40 miles away, and I strongly recommend that they not try to come any closer.”

The words of those mayors smacks of fascism. Yes, fascism, because they are single-handedly attempting to thwart potential efforts of a legal enterprise to conduct business in cities where all they need do is apply for the proper permits through the city departments that handle such applications. As in most typical American cities, mayors serve alongside a city council and all members have but a single vote.

In the case of Emanuel, his brand of hypocrisy goes pretty deep. As chief of staff under the Barack Obama administration that was opposed to gay marriage, Emanuel did not stand on principles and resign his position.

Now that Emanuel has come out of the closet in favor of gay marriage, is it only restaurants he opposes? Why has he not spoken out against the virulently anti-Semitic and anti-gay Louis Farrakhan who is negotiating with the city to help reduce the out of control homicide rate? Farrakhan is OK, but Cathy is not?

Reverend William Owens of the Coalition of African-American Pastors declared his own and his organization’s fervent support of the Biblical definition of marriage a la Dan Cathy and there has not been a single word of protest against the Pastors group. They have as much right to opine on this or any other issue as does Cathy without recrimination, threats of boycotts or threats of being barred from an entire city.

Are the economies in the cities of Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, DC thriving to such an extent that their mayors can afford to turn away business? And steady, stable, popular business at that. In fact, franchisees are local owners, not a corporate executive. Chick-fil-A hires thousands and thousands of people, serves thousands and thousands of people regardless of race, creed, or religious affiliation.

This is not about chicken, but about standing up for one’s rights as people of faith. Recently, Catholics came under fire over the issue of free contraceptives being mandated by Obamacare. Now Christians are being harassed and bullied by so-called tolerant liberals – tolerant, of course only to their own opinions. And this is not just a Christian issue. Observant Jews also subscribe to the Biblical view and definition of marriage.

This is an issue of freedom of speech, something guaranteed in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Cathy has the right to opine on his belief of the definition of marriage. The mayors of the aforementioned cities have their rights of free speech as well, but they do not have the right to deny commerce opportunities to businesses with whose owners they disagree politically and religiously.

There is a fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives. When liberals don’t agree with a business or television or radio program, they call for it to be shut down or cancelled so no one has access to it. When conservatives do not like a business or media program, they simply patronize another business or change the channel. They believe in the rights of businesses to conduct business and for people to enjoy their First Amendment rights.

No one seems to be calling for the elimination of Starbucks, Apple, or Amazon – all of whose owners contribute substantially to gay causes. If someone finds Howard Schultz’s contributions to gay causes offensive, they are welcome to not patronize Starbucks.

Don’t agree with Cathy, don’t go to Chick-fil-A – it’s that simple, but you have no right to demand the business cease to exist. Go patronize a business with whom you do agree and contribute to their causes, or those of your own beliefs. Build up your causes, don’t tear down others’ causes.

But, if a statement is to be made to the mayors seeking to bar Chick-fil-A from their cities, how would they feel if conventions suddenly shifted from Chicago to Indianapolis, from Boston to Providence, and from San Francisco to Sacramento? What if people from all across the United States who shared Chick-fil-A values suddenly decided to take their vacation dollars away from the cities whose mayors said Chick-fil-A values are not Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, or Washington, DC values? Surely those cities would feel the bite and all the mayors would be left holding is an empty bag and ousting on Election Day.

As Chick-fil-A goes, so goes the nation. The company had its best single day in history on Wednesday, August 1, thanks to former Arkansas Governor and current Fox News Channel host Mike Huckabee, who called for that day to be Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. Restaurants were filled with patrons lined up around blocks, corners, stores, waiting to support a business with which they share values or simply support the right of free speech, even when they may disagree with the values.

As a response, a “kiss-in” was held two days later. This was a plan for members of the homosexual community to arrive en masse at Chick-fil-As and demonstrate their objections to Cathy and his beliefs by kissing at the restaurants. Thousands were expected, yet mere dozens showed up, turning the kiss-in into a kiss-off.

Noting the huge turnout at Chick-fil-A, perhaps to ensure victory in November, Chick-fil-A should begin applying for permits to sell sandwiches at the polling places – of course provided they are the requisite distance from the entrance so as not to be accused of influencing voters. They make money and the voters have a snack while waiting to oust Obama. It's a brilliant combination of democracy and capitalism in action. Oh, and have an iced tea as well.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.

Flag Flap Finishes Flawlessly

You're a Grand Old Flag By George M. Cohan   You're a grand old flag, You're a high flying flag And forever in peace may you wave. You're the emblem of The land I love. The home of the free and the brave. Ev'ry heart beats true 'neath the Red, White and Blue, Where there's never a boast or brag. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, Keep your eye on the grand old flag.

Flag Flap Finishes Flawlessly

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
August 1, 2012

Spoiler alert: this story has a happy ending.

And yet, it needs telling to avoid being repeated through the part where the story had not yet turned happy.

The Clackamas Town Center, a mall in Clackamas, OR earned the kind of attention no business desires – negative attention of the patriotic stripe. During the last week of July, Thomas Phelps, a children’s train ride manager, was threatened with the loss of his job for the parading of what mall management called “an approved visual.”

The dastardly, villainous visual? The American flag. Yes, the American flag garnered negative attention in an American shopping mall – a place where Americans spend their hard earned money.

The flag “is dedicated to veterans and military, police, firefighters, EMTs – all those people that daily put their lives on the line for us,” said Phelps, himself a veteran. “I may be fired, I may be thrown out of the mall, but I am not taking it down,” he continued. (www.katu.com)

Upon hearing of the potentiality for Phelps to lose his job over defending the displaying of the American flag, numerous mall patrons came to his defense demanding the flag be allowed to remain in place. Even the mall admitted there had been no complaints from shoppers.

Bottom line: the flag stays and Phelps remains on the job.

The Clackamas Town Center issued the following statement:

"We honor, support and respect what the United States flag represents. The actions and letter that were communicated certainly did not convey that. And for this, we apologize. We can see how many were offended. It was never the intent to offend or show any disrespect. The U.S. flag will remain displayed at the kiddie train and in other locations within the mall. We wholeheartedly support those who fight to allow us and everyone else to display the flag. Clackamas Town Center hosts and sponsors events every year that recognize and honor these and other heroes and will continue to do so." (www.katu.com)

While this story has a happy ending, it should never have been a story in the first place. Why are more and more businesses afraid to hang the American flag? Why are more people giving in to the wishes of foreigners who say the American flag offends them while they are on American soil? Why are more and more immigrants to the United States – legal and illegal alike, still clinging to the flag of their country of origin?

If immigrants to the United States are not prepared to drape the American flag around their shoulders, they should not be here. Being an immigrant to the United States is a privilege, which is a major reason so much is made over illegal immigration.

If a business in this country is unwilling to display the American flag or allow its employees to wear a flag pin on their lapel or hang one in their office/cubicle that may be a company with which I do not wish to conduct business.

It IS a grand old flag, and not merely hyperbole. A flag under which hundreds of thousands of Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice. For them it proudly waves.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.