Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz – The Crack Epidemic and America’s Tragically-Wrong Response


Question 1

Should the Crack Cocaine Epidemic be the “star attraction” (or Exhibit A) of any book entitled “The Age of Addiction: HOW BAD HABITS BECAME BIG BUSINESS”???

Answer 1

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 2

Has cocaine been obtained for thousands of years from coca leaves with the “purified chemical” (commonly called “powder cocaine”) being identified as “cocaine hydrochloride” whose chemical formula is C17-H22-Cl-N-O4?

Answer 2

Yes -- per the US Government’s National Institute of Health.

Question 3

Is crack cocaine created by processing the drug with ammonia or sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and water, then heating it to remove the hydrochloride to produce a smokable substance? Is it called “crack” because of the crackling sound when it is smoked?

Answer 3

Yes -- per the US Government’s National Institute of Health.

Question 4

Do users inject or snort the “powder cocaine” (cocaine hydrochloride) which is water-soluble enabling it to enter the blood stream directly through nasal membranes or by being mixed with water and injected directly into blood vessels?

Answer 4

Yes -- per the US Government’s National Institute of Health.

Question 5

Do users smoke “crack cocaine” which is water-insoluble?

Answer 5

Yes -- per the US Government’s National Institute of Health.

Question 6

Has “powder cocaine” been big business for more than a century?

Answer 6

Yes -- per the US Government’s National Institute of Health.

Question 7

By the 1970’s and early 1980’s, had Miami become the location of drug cartels controlling 70% of the nation’s cocaine supply (most of which was sourced to Colombia)?

Answer 7

Yes.

Question 8

And were these drug cartels at war with each other because (like OPEC’s perennial problem of trying to maintain oil prices without curtailing oil production whose production costs were a small fraction of the sales price), they were fighting over market share with “guns blazing” -- literally???

Answer 8

Yes.

Question 9

Was the real economic solution for the cartels to bifurcate the market, maintaining the high retail price for powder cocaine sold primarily to long-standing affluent customers? While beginning to manufacture crack cocaine which could be sold at a “bargain basement” price that was still profitable because of the low production costs for cocaine, whether powder or crack -- IN MASSIVE QUANTITIES TO SOAK UP THE EXTRA PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY (“massive” because of the “bargain basement” price) to the poor inhabitants of our inner cities???

Answer 9

Yes - Yes.

Question 10

Did the resulting “crack epidemic” produce the national Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that called for a 100:1 criminal sentencing disparity for trafficking crack cocaine vs. trafficking powder cocaine?

Answer 10

Yes.

Question 11

And was there extensive “piling on” in the national Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 which, for example, funded 100,000 new police officers, provided $9.7 billion for new prisons, even stooped to denying Pell Grants (for taking college courses) for prisoners, etc., etc., AND PERHAPS MOST IMPORTANTLY, in its Sec. 70001, provided a notorious “three strikes and you’re out” requirement of a MANDATORY LIFE SENTENCE if --

“a person is convicted in a court of the United States of a serious violent felony… [and] the person has been convicted in a court of the United States OR OF A STATE of (i) 2 or more serious violent felonies; or (ii) one or more serious violent felonies and one or more serious DRUG OFFENSES…..”

Answer 11

Yes.

Question 12

And re the “three strikes and you’re out” rule, did the 1994 Act define “serious violent felony” as including any criminal offense that involves physical force (the “stock in trade” of every drug dealer) punishable by as much as 10 years of imprisonment?

Answer 12

Yes.

Question 13

And re the “three strikes and you’re out” rule, did the 1994 Act define “serious drug offense” as including a criminal offense involving 5 kilograms (11.023 pounds) of any mixture containing powder cocaine OR INVOLVING ONLY 280 GRAMS (ONLY 0.617 POUNDS) OF ANY MIXTURE CONTAINING CRACK COCAINE?

Answer 13

Yes.

Question 14

Did 28 states “take their cue” from the national Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to enact their own “three strikes and you’re out” laws?

Answer 14

Yes.

Question 15

Have the anti-drug laws and “three strikes and you’re out” laws destroyed a high percentage of inner-city families by incarcerating their husbands/fathers?

Answer 15

Yes.

Question 16

After all, didn’t we study for our last meeting June 3 that during the 1990’s, inner-city children knew by age 5 that they were INELIGIBLE for their dreams and that their only realistic career objectives were pusher or pimp, or girl friend of a pusher or pimp graduating to whore?

Answer 16

Yes.

Please see Q&A-5 through Q&A-13 of the Suggested Answers to the Third Short Quiz for our 6/3/2020 meeting which are available at viewtopic.php?f=587&t=1915&p=2623&hilit ... 2f66#p2623.

Question 17

Which, of course, do NOT require much education?

Answer 17

No, those professions do NOT require much education.

Question 18

And that the typical conditions in the 1990’s facing the “Dreamers” (third graders through high school graduation) in the 178 “I Have A Dream”® Programs in 51 American cities were -- (A) 99% of Dreamers living in single-adult households; (B) 95% of total Dreamer households headed by a druggie; AND (C) 75%-80% of total Dreamer households headed by a single-adult druggie who turned over any receipts to the pusher so the kids had to steal just in order to eat?

Answer 18

Yes.

Question 19

Wasn’t the “right” response to America’s “cocaine epidemic” the “I Have A Dream”® model that adopted an entire third-grade class of an inner-city school (or entire third-grade cohort in a public housing project) and provided each of them with a tutor and mentor through high school graduation with a guarantee of college tuition?

Answer 19

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 20

After all, didn’t the IHAD model enclose the Dreamers in a “cocoon” with de facto surrogate parents (the tutors and mentors) in which “cocoon” education was worshipped rather than derogated?

Answer 20

Yes.

Question 21

And didn’t that result for the later IHAD programs in the 1990’s in 90% high school graduation - college matriculation rates despite the class just ahead and the class just behind each Dreamer class typically having SINGLE DIGIT high school graduation rates?

Answer 21

Yes.

The early IHAD programs in the 1990’s typically replicated Eugene Lang’s results with 60% - 65% high school graduation - college matriculation rates.

However, Yours Truly (who served as volunteer treasurer of the “I Have A Dream”® in the 1990’s which oversaw the 178 programs in 51 American cities -- including his own which served 200 children in public-housing projects) -- noticed that 50% of the female dreamers in the early programs were becoming pregnant and the typical 60% - 65% rate was a combination of a 90% rate for males and 45% for females.

He requested the sponsors of those early programs to ask their female “dreamers” who had NOT become pregnant why they hadn’t. The nearly unanimous response was that one of our volunteer tutors or mentors had become a de facto surrogate parent AND HAD TOLD THE “DREAMER” THAT SHE COULD MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF HERSELF WITH THE IHAD PROGRAM AND IT WOULD “BREAK THE HEART” OF THE TUTOR/MENTOR IF THE “DREAMER” DIDN’T!!!

Accordingly, Yours Truly asked the sponsors of the later IHAD programs in the 1990’s to ask all of their tutors/mentors to express their own dreams for their “Dreamer” EARLY AND OFTEN, and the typical success rate shot over 90%.

Question 22

BTW, was $84 billion of private funding available to provide IHAD- or IHAD-style programs for 10 million inner-city children -- and during litigation 2009-2011 against 15 of the world’s largest financial institutions for the $84 billion that they owed Yours Truly which he had long-since pledged in legally-binding fashion, did 21 of the nation’s highest political leaders refuse to file Amicus Curiae briefs and 43 of the nation’s top news-media superstars refuse to “shine a light” on the litigation?

Answer 22

Yes.

Please see the zillions of legal documents and other materials posted in Sections 4 and 5 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org entitled “Inner-City Holocaust and America’s “Apartheid” Justice System (In Honor of Jonathan Kozol and In Memory of John Howard Griffin).”

BTW, it would appear that the term “Holocaust” is justified since the World War II “Holocaust” killed only 6 million Jews -- whereas the tragic behavior of our judicial system, our top politicians and 43 news-media superstars condemned 10 MILLION inner-city children to A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH comprising a lifetime of poverty and drug addiction.

Question 23

DESPITE THREE LETTERS TO EACH OF THEM OVER THE THREE YEARS IMPLORING EACH OF THEM TO “LIFT A FINGER”???

Answer 23

TRAGICALLY!!!

Question 24

While each of the 21 political leaders and each of the 43 news-media superstars knew that ONLY ONE OF THEM “lifting a finger” might have been sufficient to save 10 million inner-city children from “a fate worse than death”???

Answer 24

TRAGICALLY!!!

Question 25

Would the 51 inner-city clergy who were supporting that litigation have been able, presumably, to provide the tutors and mentors from their congregations for at least 51 such programs “right off the bat”?

Answer 25

Presumably.

After all, Yours Truly obtained virtually all of the tutors/mentors for his own IHAD program that served 200 housing-project children by appealing to the congregants of local churches and synagogues, many of whose clergy served on his Advisory Board.

Question 26

And had Yours Truly already devised the concept of “Magnet Schools” that required affluent students and their families to tutor and mentor the minority students -- in order to “take to scale” the IHAD model for 10 million inner-city children?

Answer 26

Yes.

Please see the 17th posting in our website’s Sec. 4 entitled “Inner-City Holocaust and America’s “Apartheid” Justice System.”

The 17th posting is entitled “Ref J: Offer to the National “I Have A Dream”® Foundation” and is available at viewtopic.php?f=211&t=754&sid=8da7ef789 ... e133332f66.

It is a 3/22/2010 e-mail to an old friend, Peter Fishbein, who served as the volunteer General Counsel of IHAD-National in the 1990’s when Yours Truly served as the volunteer Treasurer.

At the time of the 3/22/2010 e-mail, Peter was still serving as the volunteer General Counsel of IHAD-National but had also become one of two Co-Chairs of the IHAD-National Board.

The e-mail documents, for the sake of good order, that I had offered to assign to IHAD-National all of my rights in the litigation against 15 of the world’s largest financial institution, but that IHAD-National did not have the resources to accept the assignments.

[NB: I could continue to represent myself “pro se” but assignment to a juridical entity such as a foundation would have required legal counsel admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court -- Peter Fishbein, both during the 1990’s when I served as volunteer Treasurer of IHAD-National and he served as volunteer General Counsel of IHAD-National, and at the time of the 3/22/2010 e-mail, was ADMITTED TO PRACTICE BEFORE THE U.S. SUPREME COURT and he was a senior partner in Kaye Scholer, one of NYC’s most prestigious law firms (Kaye Scholer subsequently merged with Arnold and Porter, one of Washington DC’s most prestigious law firms).]

Sorry for the long explanation.

But you will see that the penultimate paragraph of the e-mail to Peter and the 759-word “White Paper” attached thereto, spelled out the concept of Magnet Schools with the affluent students and their families tutoring and mentoring the inner-city children.

The purpose of calling the concept to Peter’s attention was to obtain his agreement that the concept comported with IHAD standards -- that such Magnet Schools would indeed be acceptable IHAD projects.

Peter agreed.

Question 27

BTW, is this the same “Magnet School” model that was the subject of our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaigns following our recent June 3 meeting?

Answer 27

Yes.

Though no reference was made to the history of the idea.

Question 28

In considering the “right” and “wrong” response to America’s “cocaine epidemic,” is it helpful to re-consider the Suggested Answers to the First Short Quiz?

Answer 28

Please read on.

Question 29

Didn’t Q&A-2 report that most drugs have been used historically by governments in order to maintain order or social control -- for example (A) opium to numb Chinese coolies, (B) wine to numb Roman soldiers, (C) gin to numb the English working class after the advent of the industrial revolution, (D) cigarettes included with the K-rations of World War II U.S. soldiers, and (E) alcohol in India causing Gandhi to campaign against it?

Answer 29

Yes.

Question 30

So, similarly, did American plantation owners prior to the Civil War provide their slaves with alcohol to cushion their misery? Or were the plantation owners, in terms of the proverbial “carrot and stick,” primarily practitioners of “the whip”?

Answer 30

There is some anecdotal evidence that some planation owners did provide their slaves with whisky, particularly during certain holidays.

However, Yours Truly was not able to find a definitive history of the extent to which American slave owners did so during the 250 years that slavery in America was legal.

[Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) succeeded in 1838 with his second attempt to escape slavery from a plantation in Maryland, one of the 17 “slave states” at the time of the Civil War – 11 of which joined the Confederacy and 6 of which were persuaded by Lincoln to remain in the union by claiming that the Civil War was “to preserve the union” and NOT to free the slaves; Frederick Douglass spent the remaining 57 years of his life as a famous social reformer, abolitionist, orator, author and statesman; his various writings include anecdotes about his knowledge/experience with whiskey being given to slaves by their owners and these anecdotes were picked up by, inter alia, William White (1947 - present), a famous author on drug addiction, and by Black Voice News, the first Black on-line news publication on the West Coast and founded in 1972 as a newspaper.]

Question 31

Whichever their proclivity, would a plantation owner have benefitted from providing her/his slaves with incredibly-cheap crack cocaine if it had been available before the Civil War???

Answer 31

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 32

And would any plantation owner have been SO INSANE as to throw in jail any of her/his slaves who were “drowning their sorrows” with the crack cocaine that the plantation owner had so humanely provided???

Answer 32

Of course not!!!

Question 33

So why did the U.S. government do exactly that to its Permanent 30% Under-Caste???

Answer 33

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 34

Why not, instead, try to solve the problem of America's Permanent 30% Under-Caste by providing a decent education for its children???

Answer 34

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 35

And why not, instead, try to provide decent jobs for American workers rather than exporting their jobs 1993-2016 to China, et al., via so-called “free trade” agreements???

Answer 35

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 36

And why not refrain from destroying inner-city families by incarcerating their males for the only two professions that they were effectively permitted to enter (pusher or pimp)???

Answer 36

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

[Pat]

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---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Your Q&A-26 of the Second Short Quiz
From: Pat
Date: Wed, June 24, 2020 3:12 pm MDT
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Attachment:
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Dear John,

Sorry to bother you on a relatively-minor point, but your Q&A-26 (“Offer to the National “I Have A Dream”® Foundation”) cross-links to a posting in Sec. 4 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org entitled “Inner-City Holocaust and America’s “Apartheid” Justice System.”

That posting memorializes your offer to assign to IHAD-National gratis your rights in the lawsuits against 15 of the nation’s largest financial institutions for the $84 billion that they owed you and that you had long-since pledged in legally-binding fashion to provide IHAD- or IHAD-style programs for 10 million inner-city children.

However, it also happens to mention regarding an unrelated matter that had been broached by IHAD-National’s General Counsel in a telephone conversation earlier that morning that your own IHAD-Stamford project that provided tutoring/mentoring and a college-tuition guarantee for 200 children in public-housing projects, had a “board that comprised some of my large contributors (I had only funded personally about 50% of the required scholarship-endowment funds and had raised the remainder from others).”

Yet, in the immediately-preceding Q&A-25 of the Second Short Quiz when you were talking about the 51 inner-city clergy who were supporting the lawsuits against the 15 financial institutions, you said you had “obtained virtually all of the tutors/mentors for [your] own IHAD program that served 200 housing-project children by appealing to the congregants of local churches and synagogues, many of whose clergy served on [your] Advisory Board.”

So how do you explain the apparent discrepancy?

Regards,

Pat


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Re: Your Q&A-26 of the Second Short Quiz
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Wed, June 24, 2020 9:08 pm MDT
To: Pat
Attachment:
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Dear Pat,

Thank you very much for your e-mail.

And please don’t apologize for “keeping me on my toes” vis-à-vis the accuracy of what we post on our website.

It is quite common for foundations to have both an “Advisory Board” and a “Board of Directors.”

The “Board of Directors” is typically the large donors and the pivotal players who devote a tremendous amount of their time.

The “Advisory Board” is typically a group of well-known people who agree with the objectives of the foundation but have no time to give to the enterprise.

When foundations have two such groups, the members of the “Advisory Board” are usually listed prominently on the foundation’s stationery and other publications because they are well known.

When foundations have both a Board of Directors and an Advisory Board, the relationship between the two (if any) can vary considerably.

In the case of IHAD-Stamford, each member of the Advisory Board was also a full-fledged member of the Board of Directors even though s/he typically did not have any time to give IHAD-Stamford. Accordingly, the quorum for Board of Directors meetings was a majority of “regular” Board members. And I do not recall any of our Advisory Board members ever taking the time to attend a Board of Directors meeting.


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An Amusing Example

You may recall that since age 7 or 8, I tossed more than 3,000 bouquets to opera stars and ballerinas, mostly in Europe but some in NYC.

Ariel Bybee sang more than 460 mezzo performances for the Metropolitan Opera over 18 seasons, 1977-1995. [She did not receive any bouquet tosses from me, but she certainly knew who I was from seeing bouquets tossed to many of the sopranos with whom she performed.]

Following her retirement, she re-married -- this time to her childhood sweetheart (James Ford) who had served for many decades as an English Professor at the U/Nebraska and who had followed her career from afar and whose first wife had passed away.

About 12 years ago, they moved from Lincoln NB to SLC and, because of her prominence with the Metropolitan Opera, Ariel was immediately asked by Utah Opera to join their “Advisory Board” (the Utah Opera and the Utah Symphony are part of the same organization which is governed by a joint “US/UO Board of Directors”).

So why is this example so amusing???

Ariel thought that being asked to join their “Advisory Board” meant that the Utah Opera actually wanted her advice!!!

So she immediately recommended that Utah Opera stop hiring singers who normally perform at “regional” opera houses, such as Utah Opera, and start hiring recent winners of the Metropolitan Opera’s annual national council auditions!!!

Because the recent winners are tomorrow’s superstars but their fees would still be affordable by Utah Opera because they are still “on their way up.”

She was surprised that Utah Opera was NOT interested in her idea!!! [I thought her idea was outstanding!!!]


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Hillary Clinton

Another good example of an Advisory Board was IHAD-National itself.

From its creation in the mid-1980’s until the 2008-cycle Iowa caucuses, Hillary Clinton served on IHAD-National’s Advisory Board.

However, I never encountered Hillary Clinton at any IHAD function, even during the 1990’s when I served as the IHAD-National Treasurer for nearly a decade.

However, I did meet her once.

During their first year in the White House, Bill and Hillary were such Washington “newbies” that they did NOT know that Congress always recesses for the entire month of August.

So the newspapers were filled with stories about how they had no idea what to do with themselves during the recess.

Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are islands just south of Cape Cod peninsula.

Martha’s Vineyard has always been a playground for the “rich and famous” of the Democratic Party (think Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick) and Nantucket has always been a playground for the “rich and famous” of the Republican Party.

One of the massive estates on Martha’s Vineyard was owned by Robert McNamara, one of the famous Harvard Business School “whiz kids” who rose to become the first non-member of the Ford Family to become President of Ford Motors -- which he accomplished in his early 40’s before becoming President Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense (he stayed through President Johnson’s term and caused the famous “Pentagon Papers” to be created and/or assembled in order to document all of the lies that he thought Kennedy/Johnson had fed to the American people about the Vietnam War).

But back to August 1993.

McNamara had planned to be elsewhere in the world that month so the newspapers were full of stories about now McNamara had made a “last minute” offer to Bill and Hillary to enjoy his estate for August 1993.

All of this happened in the last few days before their arrival.

My family and I were already vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard when the news broke.

After their arrival, the local newspapers were full of stories about how they were eating in public restaurants every evening, even though McNamara’s staff was standing by ready to wait on them “hand and foot.”

So since we were also eating in public restaurants (though because we had no staff), we tried to bump into them.

Right restaurants but wrong evenings.

Finally they were scheduled to leave Martha’s Vineyard on a Sunday afternoon and we dropped into bed Saturday evening disappointed that we had guessed wrong upteen times in a row!!!

But at the crack of dawn, I had an epiphany!!!

Excitedly, I shook my wife awake and exclaimed “They’re going to go to church because their PR people will tell them it doesn’t look good to skip just because they’re on vacation.”

After all our disappointments, my wife just rolled over but I was already “on a tear”!!!

I exclaimed “They’re going to go to Oak Bluffs” – a community on Martha’s Vineyard that had a long-history as an African-American Religious-Campground Community.

So I was already looking through a Yellow Pages for an Oak Bluffs Baptist Church (Bill was Baptist) or an Oak Bluffs Methodist Church (Hillary was Methodist) -- and spotted “Oak Bluffs INTER-DENOMINATIONAL Campground Tabernacle”!!!

THAT’S IT!!!

But my wife rolled over after saying that Oak Bluffs was on the other side of the island and their scheduled service would be over before we could get there.

My daughter Hilary rolled over also, but my son Michael came along as we raced across the island.

And sure enough, there was a make-shift barrier circling the Oak Bluffs Inter-Denominational Campground Tabernacle to create a 20-foot “no man’s land” completely encircling the Tabernacle with “airport metal detectors” in front of the rear entrance to the Tabernacle.

They were singing the closing hymn as we arrived, but we quickly slipped down the far-left aisle next to the wall (which was really only thick dark-green plastic sheets stretched between the I-beams supporting the roof) to get to the front, and we were the closest civilians to Bill and Hillary when the benediction was completed.

They came right over to shake our hands!!!

Dumb Old Me, I blurted out to Hillary two facts that were true -- that my wife was President of the Wellesley Club of Fairfield County Connecticut and that our daughter was named Hilary and wanted to go to Wellesley.

Bill had moved on and Hillary was reacting like “I hear this a zillion times a day”!!!

When on sudden inspiration, I remembered that Hillary was on the IHAD-National Advisory Board so I blurted out that I was the volunteer treasurer of IHAD-National and that my own IHAD-Stamford project served 200 children in public-housing projects.

It was as if “the sun suddenly came out”!!!

Hillary smiled a gorgeous smile and, for more than 10 minutes, she couldn’t stop talking about IHAD and inner-city children!!!

While Bill kept looking back apparently wondering whether I was some old boy friend that he had failed to recognize or didn’t know about.

As Michael and I were about to exit back through the “airport metal detector,” a woman suddenly leapt over the barricade about 30 feet to our right, sped across the 20-foot “no man’s land” and slithered under the green-plastic “wall” and began running down toward the Clintons holding a camera!!!

I had seen enough James Bond movies that I immediately “knew” that the camera had to be a disguised gun.

After all, people were still being admitted through the airport metal detectors so why else would anyone risk being “blown to kingdom come” by the Secret Service Officers who were stationed along the barricade at 15-20 foot intervals brandishing automatic weapons???

Michael, who was only 13, began to wail as if he thought he was being abandoned and would never see me again.

But I yelled over my shoulder “emergency, emergency, follow me” but didn’t hesitate a second to look back to see whether he was actually doing so.

I caught up to the female interloper just as she reached the group of people still circling the Clintons, three deep.

She reached up her “camera” over the crowd and aimed it at the President!!!

I purposely bumped into her, causing her aim to jerk upwards toward the ceiling!!!

She took aim again, and I bumped into her again!!!

But both times there was no loud noise and no splinters falling from the ceiling!!!

HOWEVER, she could have been a real assassin!!!

It just goes to show how vulnerable a President and First Lady are, despite all the hype about what a great job the Secret Service does!!!

Anybody could have figured out, just like I did, where Bill and Hillary were going to be!!!

And the Secret Service “BEING ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH” was just another example of what we used to call “The Aramco Syndrome”!!!

When I served as Senior Tax Counsel and Director of Worldwide Tax Planning of Texaco Inc in the 1970’s when it was still a Fortune-Ten company, every drop of oil in Saudi Arabia on-shore or off, was owned by Aramco, a Delaware company 100% owned by Chevron, Texaco, Exxon and Mobil.

And every step that was taken in the slow-motion take-over of Aramco by the Saudi Government (which took more than 10 years) was reviewed by Aramco and each of its 4 shareholders.

One would think that with 5 sets of eyes looking at everything, nothing could escape notice.

Not so!!!

Many is the time that one or more “sets of eyes” did what we used to call “gun decking” when I was a U.S. Naval Officer for 3 years in the late 1960’s.

“Gun decking” is someone failing to do something while claiming that s/he had done it.

And for many of those “sets of eyes,” it proved tempting to “gun deck” on the assumption that there were other “sets of eyes” that would see whatever needed to be caught.

So -- the U.S. Secret Service “gun decking”???

The only explanation I could conjure for their failure to act was that a barrier and 20-foot wide no man’s land ringing the tabernacle with a Secret Service member stationed every 15-20 feet with an automatic weapon should have been an intimidating-enough sight to make any potential assassin “know for certain” that s/he would be “blown to kingdom come” if s/he tried to breach the barrier.

So just like you would often catch other Aramco shareholder representatives “asleep at the switch” because other colleagues will be awake, the Secret Service members on either side of where the putative assassin breached the barrier were “asleep” because they couldn’t imagine that anyone would be “stupid” enough to try anything.

Would I do it again today, knowing that a real assassin would probably shoot me in order to become freed up to complete the assassination???

Of course!!! No matter what one might think of Bill or Hillary!!!

Because Hillary’s “heart is in the right place” when it comes to inner-city children!!!


**********
Sorry to “run off at the mouth” as usual.

But you know me.

And if you have read this far, you deserve a Gold Medal!!!

Your friend,

John K.