NOte to classes, I see that sociology is the most popular major here at UNT Dallas, in respect to that I am posting one column that has zip zero nada to do with accounting.  Okay, so maybe I have posted some others but, just to keep things interesting, whaddya all think?

Ugly Betty, A Different Agenda

Jim Bowie, a Bold Adventurin’ Man!
Lead in to the TV Series Jim Bowie starring Scott Forbes, 1950s

Other than Jack Bauer, you may have noticed television is pretty short of  bold adventurin’ men these days. It wasn’t that way when I was watching as a kid.  Cowboys held sway back then, good guys wore white hats and the bad guys in black hats got shot, period, end of story.  But now the media seems intent on portraying men as villains, and frankly, some of the women aren’t looking too good either.

The current case in point is ABC’s Ugy Betty.  On the surface it’s a twist on the ugly duckling turns into a swan, Cinderella finds her man, Radar O’Reilley is really in charge here theme.  But look a bit deeper, like trying to find a male character to emulate, and you will be pressed for answers.

Betty Suarez gets a job at hip Mode magazine.  To counter the philandering ways of son Daniel Meade, dad Bradford Meade picks the homeliest gal in the building (Betty) as Dan’s new assistant.  While Dad looks the Ivy League type, we find that Daniel has inherited his philandering from Dad.  (Note to researchers, find that philandering gene!)  Indeed Dad has alcoholic Mom committed to rehab and no one has seen  Dad’s girlfriend for years. 

Indeed, Dan couples with a different girl every evening.  In case we missed the point, Dan even has Betty knocking on doors of various paramours trying to find his watch, lost in a tryst.  Ah but Betty is bringing Dan around to his true calling, being a responsible heir to run Mode magazine.

Meanwhile Vanessa Williams has created her best role yet in Wilhemina Slater (think Joan Collins as Alexis in Dynasty).  She is determined to take over the magazine. Her aid decamp is of course openly gay Marc.  And there is a mysterious character, whose identity is finally revealed this week, scheming to help Slater achieve her goal. 

In true soap opera fashion, Dan’s brother Alex has been missing for two years.  But alas, the new fashion model on the runway is revealed to be-you guessed it, Alexis!  Yep, Alex has become a gal, and of course since this is television, a great looking one, unlike most of the transvestite conversions in real life.  And not to be content with Dan’s conversion to a bit less fooling around, we have an old college buddy appear who counts conquests like a contest, even daring Dan to better his count!

The only sympathetic male figure is, oh come on, someone told you-Betty’s father, Ignacio.  We see Ignacio as the stay at home Mom and Dad, always keeping house for Betty, her sister Hilda and brother Justin. Note there are no complete Mom and Dad homes in the series.   But it turns out the reason for the stay at home Dad role is, yep, Ignacio is an illegal, er undocumented, alien.  But, when the Immigration worker finds him out, she starts falling for Ignacio and comes over to fix him supper.  Just to keep things interesting, two guys are pursuing Betty, but there is not enough testosterone between the two to make even one Eddie Haskell (okay so I dated myself with that one). 

So there you have it.  Philandering Dad, confused sons, scheming women, alcoholic Mom, a bevy of women with their own agendas at Mode-Betty has her hands full.    My point is that this series is one big but  not so subliminal message.  Men are bad, women are scheming, Dads don’t father, and the man that does is pursued by the law.

So, is television reflecting modern life, or shaping it-I report, you decide…..

Jason asked my opinion about the decline of the Big 3 automakers. Good question, but before I launch right into that it is necessary that you ramp up your knowledge of open shop, closed shop,  union shop versus right to work laws and particularly right to work states.

Take a look at the UAW web site. Go there and click on UAW history, skip intro, then click on the Fight for Ford 1937-1941. Read the story and see the pictures of workers beaten up by yes Henry Ford’s thugs, discouraging shall we say, union organizing efforts.  This ended in a strike by 50,000 workers.  IN ten days Ford capitulated and the Unions got everything they wanted including dues checkoff, right to organize and the same wages as Gm and Chrysler.  The thing to grasp is that spirit of us versus them still reigns at the UAW.  Consider Local 249 that built my Escape in St Louis, the fight for Ford was prominent on their site.  Everything is for the union worker to the exclusion of the globalization and movement of capital and now plants to right to work states. OK some definitions are in order.

A closed shop is a workplace in which one must join the union as a condition of employment, period.

A union shop is a workplace in which one must join wthin 30 days.

An agency shop is a work place in which one has to pay the dues but does not have to join the union, no I am not kidding, there is an effort in Iowa toward this very thing.

An open shop is a workplace in which one does not have to join the union.

A right to work law prohibits compulsory union membership.  One does not have to join the union to work there. Needless to say, unions hate this set up, they want everyone in so they have your union dues whether you want to contribute or not.  And they can force you to go on strike regardless of your wishes.  Learn more at National Right to Work Committee Site

So how do I know all this?  In high school we debated the proposition of a national right to work law.  In the process we won a lot of debates and learned a lot about this.  Such was the temper of the country in 1965-66 that this was a serious topic. 

I would say that unions overplayed their hand in the New York City shutdown during Gerald Ford’s short presidency.  AT the time the Mayor of New York was John Lindsay. Lindsay was saying that job was the second toughest in the nation after the president. What he really meant was that he could not deal with the ruinous union contracts that had been negotiated.  Garbage workers were making $40,000  and still going on strike.  NYC finally asked for a federal bailout and kinda sorta got it.  Which is to say they avoided bankruptcy. Read about it at NYC Drop Dead

At virtually the same time, the DFW airport was open for business.  And this proved to be an incredibly fortuitous circumstance. Go back and watch the original Dirty Harry movie as to where law and order, or what was left of it, was in that era.  Corporations started realizing, that with direct air travel via jet to Dallas, there were other alternatives, particularly in Right to Work States.  That started the migration and along the way coined the term Sun Belt as opposed to Rust Belt states.  J C Penny and others moved their headquarters to DFW.

When we were debating the National  R to W law, it was typical to see union leaders on the sunday talk shows. Now there is probably not a student in class that can name a union leader.  But then George Meany would sally forth and declare that if the unions demands were not met in whatever industry, they would shut down the industry. IF they did strike it was a battle as to whether the company had enough inventory and the strikers had enough in the strike fund as to who blinked first. But I don’t remember the companies ever  winning the day.  Read about George Meany, architect of the modern AFL CIO here. The trend these days of course is to hire a gorgeous near fashion model perfect woman to be your company spokesperson.  This was something Meany did not understand. He was short, bald, wore big framed glasses and constantly smoked a cigar, not a pretty picture. And frankly all those threats may have sounded great in the union hall but not in corporate America. But they were a beckoning sound to the south.

Virtually all of the plants were in unionized states and even here in Texas the union held sway through their power in those states.  Today Minnesota has hired actor Jeff Daniels, a MN native, as a public spokesperson asking companies to re locate to MN.  MN has had a net outflow of population and business as everyone continues to head south.  Today my understanding is that union auto workers make about $20-24r hour plus wonderful health benefits, while southern auto workers are making about $16. The difference is that Ford GM and Chrysler have tens of thousands of retired workers still living under the most generous health benefits imaginable.  They experience literally a legacy cost of $1500 a car that the foreign makers locating here do not. 

The result has been the re location of the new factories to right to work states.  A belt of plants and suppliers sweeps from the Carolinas down to now Alabama where the new Hyundai plant is located.  On my last trip to Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, there were signs in the airport boasting of the new VW and Nissan plants coming or already in MS.  Gee times have changed.

Click on Hyundai Community Relations to see what I mean.

So that was  short history of unions and the UAW. The unions have never won a certifying election at the Ohio Honda plant. This is a result I think of enlightened labor practices in modern day America, and frankly the past reputation on national television of unions going on strike. I recall an interview with single mom in Tennessee. She said she could support herself and the children on what she made at the plant, but that she absolutely positively could not afford a strike.  And that has been the turning point for unions.

And it just gets worse. Realizing how many jobs a plant like Hyundai can create, southern states have upped the ante often beyond what the plant really offers.  Consider that in San Antonio, the city and Texas have fallen all over themselves to do any and everything for Toyota, tax breaks, now roads, you name it. Meanwhile over in Arlington GM gets zip nada since it is not creating any new jobs, only companies doing that get new tax breaks. So not only is GM saddled with legacy costs, Toyota, making billions while GM loses billions, gets tax breaks and incentives to boot! When it rains it pours.

Coming, the Hubris of the Big Three

DLE 

NO honest, that’s what the ad says!  Check out Invest In Macedonia.   This is one of the oldest civilized areas of Europe, conquered by Alexander the Great.  CHekc out hte advantages, the stock exchanges, the flat tax on profits, why can’t our Congress figure that out. The race to attract business is on with Ireland and Eastern Europe quickly displacing Western Europe with its double digit unemployment.

Again you can get a much better persepective reading abroad about the world.

DLE

On page A4 of the Monday January 29, 2007 WSJ are a couple of interesting items.  GMAC is still trying to get the accounting right of its sale of 51% of GMAC to Cerberus Capital.  Meanwhile at Porsche which has stayed in the car business, first half net rocket to 1.05 billion Euros.  IT now expect a 2.1 B profit for the year, and this on sales of only 39,750 cars. But then Porsche is using the equity method to account for its 27.4% stake in VW, which brought in another 520 M euros!. And then there was the successful stock hedging which we are now discussing before class in Intermed II. 

All of which goes to show that tending to one’s knitting and having a long term vision, Porsche, there is no substitute, can pay off. Just fifteen years ago, Porsche had to re engineer the way it built cars learning from the Japanese. It has paid off amid continued rave reviews for the Boxster and the new Cayman.

But stop and think about this.  We have discussed the woes of GM and Ford ad infinitum.  Those companies sell MILLIONS of vehicles per year and are losing billions of dollars.  Here is a tiny company selling less than 40,000 units per year and making over a billion euros profit.  To put that in further perspective, GM sells about that many Corvettes in a year.  BMW sells about 550,000 cars  year.  Mazda sells about 15,000 miatas a year.  This should give you an idea of just how far awry things have gotten in Detroit!

I will address Jason’s question shortly , how did the Big Three get in this shape, by couching the answer in Deming’s TQM points that we will be discussing in the grad class Sat morning.

DLE

Santa Clara University,  a Jesuit institution, received a $20 M gift for a new library. The donors, the Sobratos, were grateful for an eductatin grounded in ethics.  A tip of the hat to our Librarian, Leora Kemp, for bringing this to my attention.  Click here to read the donor’s comments. He states outright that a lot of the current lapses in ethics would not be happening if more folks had attended Santa Clara instead of ‘party schools’ like Berkely.

This is an interesting article given our discussion about the ethics situation at DISD.

DLE

B/W reports that the Inspector General for the Defense Dept.  has found a lack of internal control and insufficient equipment to do the job the military was asked to do. A staple of the long running tv show MASH was Radar on the phone trying to swap this for that and obtain some needed equipment.  Apparently nothing has changed.   I am not trying to drag us into a political discussion about the war as such in Iraq.  My points are this.

Auditing is continuing to take on whole new dimensions way beyond, is the balance sheet right?  Auditing often is now activity based as we discuss in managerial accounting.  Auditing is seeking to assure that best practices are followed, here the example is Supply Chain of Equipment.  And frankly we should all hold both Republicans and Democrats liable for the this pathetic report. How long has the army been in business and we still can’t get guns and ammo to the front lines?  I rather imagine the officer clubs here in the USA don’t have any shortages at lunch or during happy hour so to speak!
While control of the Oval Office changes, the rest of us would hope that some governance standard exists, you can see in my managerial course that I cite some Dept of Defense sites about TQM and budgeting objectives. 

An old adage has it that when it is everybody’s money it is nobody’s money. Another criticism of military is way too much obsession with exotic expensive hardware like stealth fighters. I have seen numerous ‘e mails’ from soldiers about poor performing rifles and pistols, the latest being that WW II weapons are being re issued. 

And so now we have a purchasing scandal at DISD and a Supply Chain Scandal at DOD. 

There is no shortage of jobs for auditors of all kinds and types.

DLE

Class

I am late getting this to you but probably not that many of you have attempted the homework yet.

YOu will note that prolbems 30,31,38,29,42,50 in chapters 1-3 are in homework manager

Also problems for chapter 16 including 43 49 28

You can log into homework manager at

http://mh9.borwnstone.net/modules/.configure.test.login

or Homework Manger

And complete the problems on assignment sheet.

DLE

Here is a great column about MSFT’s VISTA . It has taken five years to produce this product, and Ballmer swears that won’t happen again.  Frankly I agree with the author.  It would have been far better to make small changes in XP, but was a change really needed?  I have yet to sit down and go thru the whole on line tutor for XP. I have read Walt Mossberg’s review of VISTA in the WSJ, it does away with icons and replaces the toolbar with a ribbon,  Heck I can’t figure out my new cell phone.  I vote no thanks, I don’t need to struggle with learning new software.  Indeed the article quotes one MSFT staffer saying he would buy a MAC, egads.  It may be this is the last big MSFT product. Jim Rogers has predicted the Chinese will come up with another Linus based product as everyone is tired or paying MSFT often in fact for what should have been a fix on their last half baked effort.

What say you, anyone buying VISTA, and I understand there is not complete compatibility and yes you may need more computer.

DLE

We were discussing futures contracts and the wisdom of using  currency manipulation to try and improve the market for a country’s goods before the intermediate class Monday.  Here is an article from the CATO Institute  which finds no evidence that Japan has manipulated its currency.  Indeed Japanese imports are down from 2001.  But production is up in America by foreign owners producing cars here. It is simply not going to be possible for the Big Three go pay legacy costs and make the money the foreign owners do.  Last night ABC broadcast from a Ford plant and will look at the Big Three on subsequent broadcasts this week.  AS the article says with Michigan’s Dingell chairing the Commerce Committee will Congress try to ‘help.’  Stay tuned.

Speaking of currencies and interest rates, here is an interesting article about Iran  and how Ahamdinejad has mucked up the Iranian economy.  Gee, interest rates and currencies matter in those economies too.  Quick what is the name of the Iranian currency?  Read the article and find out.

I urge you to read comments and thoughts written by folks outside the USA, it brings a different perspective.  Here are some thoughts on the latest Economic Forum at Davos SW   The writer suspects that the decline of Britains and  the USA as ‘world managers’ is leaving a void in leadership with no one willing to step up to the plate.  As he says, be careful what you wish for.

Indeed he remarks that all the USA and Bush bashing seems to have accomplished its purpose, but to what end?  An interesting read.  Who is to tell China and India with their outsized populations that too much pollution per capita is too much?  Will dictators fear anyone when they march across borders to impose their will?  Good questions all, perhaps students that have lived abroad will have some thoughts on this.

DLE