Our advertizing industry creates thousands of multi-millionaires. Corporations, all other business & most politicians depend on clever challenging & crooked acts. So do all publications & radio, Television & other communications in particular. Producers just add those enormous amounts spent on advertizing their trash to the price of their products; and the necessities for survival are always the first to be inflated even if they don't have to be advertized.
Since Ralphi Nader started co-vandalizing democratic government, we haven't heard much from the once so active & beneficient consumer advocate. If he really had a conscience, he should organize mass boycotts of overpriced consumer goods. We heard no peep from his mouth when the cereal industry quadrupled prices of all cereals a quarter century ago.
While hippie hand-to-mouth feeding made pigfood a human condition, Minneapolis smarties doubled their prices & almost abolished the 16 or 32 oz packages. They invented the 7 ½ oz, or more generously, 11 ¾ packs. The soupy producers Campbelled-dripled 10.7 oz into small tincans & picture-advertized them as filling up huge bowls of big-eating little kids. 90% fell for these tricks, paid the enormous price for common fraud & shut up. Andy Rooney was the only one to accuse our feeder industry of falsehood & criminal advertizing while exploiting kids and other true believers in long-lost American innocence.
At least, the 3 main T.V. networks have had for many years investigatory programs which proved torts, deliberate false advertizing, neglect of quality, of truth in repairing & wholesale fraud all over their well-advertized shops or chains of them. Their tiny successes in a few cases lulled to sleep government supervision, legal control & court action. Rare are the few cases of famous trial lawyers who made a few judges & some juries enforce fines & damage controls on dishonest business practice. But under the guidance of Bush, Cheney & De Lay, Republican thieves have begun legislative protection for business hoodlums, especially the mighty-big corporations that fill their reelection cash register.
Let me mention how some well-connected brokers cheat very sick, very aged & very trusting invalids & get away with it: When McSomething, a former Vice-President of Merrill-Lynch in Hilo, put over on the 80-year-old cancer patient their expensive Hawai'i Trust as tax-exempt bonds, & I lost $1500 on those mutuals, no govt. agency supported me.
Bobko, Vice-President of Dean Witter & then chairman of our YMCA, swore he would never do that to me. Some 5 years later, he did just that, too, when I was too sick to realize that he got me their mutuals & fraudulent tricks at the highest price they ever had. By the time I got confirmation that that crook had sold me their tricky junk no-bonds, actually hidden mutuals, he was in France with his Hillinaire spouse whose name he had added to his to confuse courts. The SEC advised me to take a lawyer & accept mediation instead of forcing the terrorist to get me my tax-exempt Hawaiian bond.
A more honest Security & Exchange Commission should have outlawed the use of "Hawaiian Trust" for their manipulated company mutuals which require to report a gain to the IRS. But since all government -appointed SEC ranking officers had been among the biggies of big brokerage firms & will always be welcomed back to them at highter salaries as soon as they have nixed many clauses of protective laws for clients, the SEC protects big crooks.
Last April, I accepted $10,000, so I could buy a tax-exempt bond with Edward Jones whose office I always passed twice on my way to & from our post office. The friendly manager, Manuel Roberto, listened when I explained that I prefer buying a good tax-free bond at a discount. Sometime later, he showed me on his computer screen a Port Tacoma tax-exempt bond at less than $9450. I agreed to buy that one.
Not quite understanding the paper or document, his head office sent me, I returned to "my" broker. He explained that he had to charge my full deposit of $10,000 for that cheaper bond. My request to be charged the price he had shown me (or my money back) plus a $5 commission, he refused. His fraudulent action made me call him a thief. Other brokers called him a usurer.
My appeals to Hawaiian supervisors over torts & extortion were fruitless. My subsequent request, thereafter, to the SEC, Securities & Exchange Commission, was answered months too late. But now I can obtain the help of a good trial lawyer or two. Meanwhile my educational & senior-citizens organizations start working on a boycott of all Edward Jones branches. They will begin with wheel-chair obstructors & sign carriers. Perhaps I should limp around in front of Manuel Robber with a few other oldsters. These brokers want to make the oldest broke & broker. They don't deserve any clemency. Can my trial lawyers also exact a huge fine for the benefit of some charities from the criminal behavior & non-action of the SEC which suggest mediation & talk beyond my grave by their Republican lawyers?
If a fairly well-educated oldster was often exposed to the criminal greed of professional brokers, could millions of carefree & younger working stiffs fare much better if they are urged by jail or Yale M.B.A.s to invest some of their own S.S. dues on their own responsibility?
Even assuming that the Republican pros learn to become honest, they are parts & benefactors of the world's largest legalized gambling associations which make their billions, if not trillions, from their daily manipulations of trillions of dollars of pension funds of labor unions, business corporations, federal, state & local employees. What Enron did to many of those wholesale, will be more smartly but also more diligently committed when individuals have to trust their investment managers.
The mere chance that millions of handlers of their "own" privatized S.S. funds can get swindled out of part of their old-age security, should burden the conscience of a "compassionate Republican" idolists. Bush is right though in finding that the present system needs reform but more complete surety that more funds will be available to the pensioners of the future. Here is one assured way:
Invest all S.S. payments in the safest tax-exempt bonds with a new-law proviso that these safe bonds are stored at Fort Knox until maturity. The same equal interest will automatically be added semi-annually and always capable of checks & rechecks by safeguarded computers. That method would fire (make unnecessary) well-paid fund-supervisors & all the ten thousands of related fund employees. These great savings would balloon all pension funds. Above all, no hungry broker-speculators would be able to amass their daily commissions from marketing through the too-generous stock exchanges their almost daily offers & requests which rob our national wealth, general welfare & homeland security. Trading in pension funds is re-Publican thievery from all who need old-age safety from those evil terrorists who target the frailest & most vulnerable aged. Say yes to such reform.
After the Hoover Depression & guilty-conscience Republicans, underwriters & other brokers vouched temporary good citizenship by marketing public bonds without charging buyers or sellers. Now, following Precedent Bush & Vice Cheney in privateering, the self-judging & policing monsters like UBS feature service charges, account maintenance & security charges of $75 3 times in 2 months before opening up to terminal ill, over-aged small investors with true blackmail unless their acct generates "commissions, wrap fees or margin interest for resource management." No other way to avoid a steady policing fine of $75 payable to UPS (Paine Webber). Having charged it just like Prudential (Wachovia) for some time, this Bushy threat remains the goal of thier reelection campaign.
Wondering how long it will take big brokers to transfer every bit of American wealth to the uppermost & already richest Bushits as desired by our ruling privateers, I must also praise the only honest & loyal consultant I learned to esteem, Jon l'Orange of Smith Barney. May he prosper along with all his savers-investors who value minor earnings & old-fashion decency in the business of surviving.
Week 59- November 3, 2004 - Two Decent Courtiers