With all the political and economic turmoil of late, I've received a lot of email from people wanting guidance to improving both their political relations and their profits. When it comes to politicians, they want to be smart consumers. The question most often asked is:

Hey, Ron! Which is the rest route to go in seeking to subvert the law to get a better deal on my government contracts, taxes, and regulatory waivers? Should I rent, lease or just outright buy my representative in Congress?"

All types of payments have their place and their advantages, which is why I like to advise using all of them, under the right circumstances.

RENT: Renting a member of Congress is perfect for getting that one-time favor, court ruling, or any other non-recurring event. You pay an amount agreed upon between you and the politician; the politician puts the whammy on whatever threatens your interests, and buries the cash in the azaleas.

LEASE: The proper situation to lease a congressperson is when you need support for a long-term project or when you need to hire several Congress persons. The typical lease runs from six months to two years, during which you'll be expected to make several payments through the laundering process the politician prefers--campaign contribution, library donation, PAC, or free home construction.

BUY: You should buy a politician when the issue is so important that it threatens your growing profits, multi-billion government contracts, even the continued existence of your company. At this level ante up big because the stakes are big. Take the recent vote by the Senate to kill a cap on credit card interest. What percentage of the people who voted for the senators do you think would like to see the cap pass?  How about...100 percent?

Thank goodness that senators, instead of voting the desires of their constituents, vote the cash of their contributors.  In the interest cap vote, a lot of the senators who chose to preserve the right of credit card companies to charge interest rates that would get a usurer stoned in the old days--a lot of those senators were Democrats. You know, the defenders of the little guy, the sworn enemy of run-away capacious corporations.

It just goes to show that the United States has one of the finest political pay-off systems in the world. Be sure to show your gratitude. And make it out to "Cash"

 

 

A great thing about the Internet is how it puts you in contact with people and organizations around the world. Within seconds you can send a message to the CEO of the company that's screwing you around or the tech support people who can get you working again. The only trouble is, they don't want to hear from you.

I've noticed a nasty trend at Web sites to hide postal addresses and email address, phone numbers, and even the real names of people who publish under noms de Web--names like Maxthon Guy.  This is particularly true when it comes to tech support.

At a lot of organizations, time spent on a phone is considered a major expense. Solution: Eliminate incoming phone calls.

Web sites have taken that a step further by hiding email addresses. Some will accept email, but only if you send it via a special form on the site that requires you to fill out more information about yourself than you would ever learn about them. Sometimes the sheer length of information they ask before I can email them is so overwhelming, I just forget about it. Which, of course, is exactly what they were hoping I'd do.

After all, business can be so much more profitable if they don't have to spend their valuable time dealing with those pesky customers.

Happily for us, however, they can't get away with it--at least not entirely.  The U.S. goverment--the same one that some people like to complain is too big and does too much--comes to the rescue with  its Web site Consumer Action Handbook (http://www.consumeraction.gov/corpormain.shtml), which includes a huge listing of companies, their postal addresses, email addresses, and best of all, phone numbers.

If you need more detailed information--such as names and sometimes photos of top executives--do a search at The Consumerist.  The site is not exhaustive, but the information is often invaluable when you're really pissed off.  It is particularly helpful for some of  the worst offenders of consumer satisfaction, such as DirecTV and eBay and PayPal.

For tech support, check out the manufacturers lists at JR and Comp-U-Plus. I'm sure these companies, both retailers, are posting the tech support information, including phone numbers, because they're hoping you call the manufacturers instead of them the next time you have a question or complaint.  But who cares about motivations?  It's results we want, and these lists give you the ammunition to get results.

For the record you can email me at ron@maxthon.com. or ron@ronwhite.com. My phone number?  You got to be  kidding.

(A version of this blog entry  appears in the Maxthon Blog.)

 

 

That last entry--the one about sex and a headache--I really sort of regret because it relies on a cliche. It's true of almost any joke about wives, girl friends, mothers-in-law, and lawyers. And usually they're insincere, sort of "I love my wife, but, oh, you joke." And it reminds me of Ray Bradbury.

At one time I had no author I liked better than Ray Bradbury.  Dandelion Wine is still a book of poetic prose that's never been topped, and The Martian Chronicles; and The Illustrated Man are so imaginative and evoke so many emotions that they are eerie.  When I was much younger, I wrote Bradbury a note, and he answered , in his own handwriting, giving encouragement and advice to someone wanting to be one-tenth the writer he was.

Then, a while back, I saw Bradbury on some TV talk show.  His entire conversation was rife with misogynsm, and Bradbury was laughing mightily at all his own sexist jokes. He was the kind of conservative that would make Sean Hannity proud. I don't think he even realized he was talking like a prick--or if he did, he didn't care.  A man I'd admired, whose fingers were golden, had feet of Silly Putty.

You want to know the difference between men and women?  It's really very simple, and it all goes back to "Not tonight, dear. I have a headache." 

A headache.  Jeeze.

So here's the difference.  A lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhs

(Sorry. I nodded off there. Really.  Didn't sleep well last night. My brain may not be able to stay awake, but my fingers are insomniacs.)

Anyway, so here's the diffference: A woman doesn't want to have sex because she has a headache. A man figures that sex with a headache is better than a headache without sex.  Either way, you're going to have t he headache. So you might as will do something fun while you've got it.

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