Bio – Subject Was Originally from America – education and deconstruction.com

The Snowball

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “The Snowball, Warren Buffett and the Business of Life” by Alice Schroeder, published in 2008. This authorized biography described how one of the world’s richest men, accumulated his wealth.

Born at the end of August 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska, Buffett was obsessed with making money. He became the general partner of the eventual conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, an initially money-losing textile company.

In August 1991, a financial scandal broke at the bond brokerage, Salomon Brothers. One representative, on various occasions, had broken the law to corner a specific government-securities market in auctions. His indiscretions, about which his bosses knew and took no disciplinary action for months, cost Salomon’s competition $100 million.

Buffett was tasked with restoring Salomon’s reputation and his own, as he was a major investor in the firm. “Everything at Salomon was turned topsy-turvy as the new culture of openness went into effect.”

BUT, the late college basketball coach John Wooden always said– one should worry about one’s character, not one’s reputation. One’s character is indicated by the following cliche: “When you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.” In other words, if you associate with people of bad character– stooping to their level, your own bad character will be exhibited.

Buffett helped punish the former executives at fault, by refusing to pay their legal fees and severance pay. The main perpetrator went to arbitration to restore his severance pay. The arbitrators ruled against him; he didn’t get a penny. The book’s author commented it was unclear why he was perceived to have been punished so severely.

As securities-industry insiders, those arbitrators were wisely trying to hold up the perpetrator as an example– to deter future bad behavior. Clearly, unmitigated hubris and unconscionable greed was “in the air” and was not going to stop anytime soon.

Numerous monster-sized financial scandals caused havoc in markets worldwide from the late 1980’s onward. Countless innocent people were fired– who had nothing to do with the scandals! The author omitted the inconvenient fact that in 1993, an unsupervised, rogue bond-department trader at Kidder Peabody caused that firm to go belly-up.

Buffett was a strong believer in pay-for performance. He drastically slashed Salomon’s employee bonuses because they didn’t perform– make money for Salomon’s shareholders, who were the real owners of the firm. Unsurprisingly, the employees were mad as hell, and thought the billionaire Buffett was a hypocrite. By the mid-1990’s, prosecutors would act aggressively to indict financial law-breakers unless they showed “extreme contrition and cooperation” when caught. How times have changed.

The leadership of the United States has been reduced to a small group of alpha males with hubris syndrome and their lawyers, running the country like a corrupt Wall Street brokerage. Economic decline is inevitable, unless the next president behaves the way Buffett did– legally requiring transparency and competence rather than loyalty. He or she must bring adult supervision to the major drains on the nation’s treasury: war / military spending, tax cuts, space exploration, and in the most recent twelve years– litigation.

Anyway, read the book to learn much, much more about Buffett, his family, and his times.

The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen

The Book of the Week is “The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen, True Nature” by Lance Richardson, published in 2025.

Born in May 1927, Matthiessen was a son of white male privilege. He came of age in Connecticut, and on the eastern end of Long Island, New York State.

Matthiessen was the black sheep of the family, becoming a “bad boy” from adolescence onward; making mischief by throwing rocks at and shooting BB’s at cars. At his boarding school, he interrupted a violin quartet recital with a case of the giggles (later loosely duplicated in that episode of Seinfeld when Elaine does so at a piano recital) that became contagious. When the headmaster tried to see who started it, Matthiessen pretended to be horrified by his fellow students’ rudeness.

After his midlife crisis, in his forties, Matthiessen began to write about causes he cared about, especially environmentalism and Native Americans. In 1970, he published a nonfiction book, Sal Si Puedes. It was about environmentalism, and then-current events in America. He felt that the way people thought about nature, ran parallel to the way they thought about economic, social and political issues. “In damaged human habitat, all problems merge.”

Not everyone is intelligent enough to see how one thing leads to another; there are currently numerous Americans who– out of greed, power-hunger, jealousy of successful alpha males with hubris syndrome, or selfishness– can tolerate their own cognitive dissonance. They hold contradictory attitudes toward the different issues. The political Right constantly smears those who agree that all issues are connected– ignorantly labeling those people who believe in ethics– Liberals, Communists, and Socialists.

Mathiessen claimed he felt bad about going to live among peoples of different cultures in order to sell information about them in the books he wrote. Such exploitation has been going on for centuries among journalists and social scientists. But in some instances, the native peoples benefit when the writers publicize how the “white man” is swindling them. Pursuant to those rare political times favorable for them, the victims acquire a little bit of power and compensation for the damage done to them.

Matthiessen practiced “New Journalism” by writing a personal account of his interviews with Cesar Chavez, who advocated for the union, United Farm Workers. Chavez began a grassroots movement that tried to get Americans to value dignity and justice, amid the “worrisome national trends of materialism, poverty and ecological decline.” Good luck with that, all. That still has yet to be accomplished for the past century.

Read the book to learn everything you ever wanted to know about Matthiessen– his writings, love affairs, travels, trials and tribulations.

Nothing Random / In the Ring – BONUS POST

WARNING: VERY, VERY LONG POST

The first Bonus Book of the Week is “Nothing Random, Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built” by Gayle Feldman, published in 2026. Ironically, the writing in this tome was awkward and contained bad grammar in certain spots. Anyway, the author recounted the U.S. book industry of a bygone era– a decades-long saga typical for a business run by alpha males with clashing egos.

The reader might recall that prior to the internet, publishing a physical book required months and months of advance preparation, involving what would now be considered a bloated staff. The publishing personnel took pride in their work, and truly cared about doing quality work. It wasn’t all about the big dollar sign as it is nowadays.

In summer 1963, author Ayn Rand, on contract with publisher Random House, was writing a book of essays, one of which was super-controversial. Rand contended that JFK was fascistic, supporting her arguments by quoting the president, showing how he sounded like Hitler and Goering. She truly believed that the most prosperous nation would have purely capitalistic economics, and completely libertarian politics. She felt capitalism is a meritocratic system.

But to start with, capitalism requires a government that provides and maintains the systems of a healthy, well-educated workforce. When private entities provide essential services such as healthcare and education, there occurs corruption– because profit-seeking entities favor money over people. Therefore, the government needs to have some socialistic systems in the forms of: financial assistance for certain of its citizens, locally run public schools, public libraries and public transportation, to name a few.

Capitalism is a meritocracy only insofar as there’s no cronyism between the government and business leaders. Pure meritocracy is a fantasy. There is always a certain level of corruption in government, that waxes and wanes with the tenor of the times. This is inevitable due to the greed of human nature. Public-private partnerships are a necessary evil in a democratic society.

So arguably, Rand’s political and economic systems are a recipe for the eventual formation of an oligopolistic oligarchy, run by fighting warlords. Sounds familiar.

One bright spot in today’s sorry state of affairs in America, can be seen in today’s communications environment: This is the Golden Age of Free Speech. The internet has allowed anyone and everyone to have their say if they want to– on social media, or if they get their own website– with no censorship. And no one needs to have great wealth or power anymore, in order to do so.

Read the book to learn much, much, much more about Bennett Cerf’s life and times.

The second Bonus Book of the Week is “In the Ring, The Trials of A Washington Lawyer” by Robert S. Bennett, published in 2008. This wordy volume contained awkward phrasing and bad grammar in certain spots. But it showed how tolerance for criminality in the United States government has skyrocketed.

The huge surge in the demand for white-collar criminal-defense attorneys in recent decades, is one indication. Bennett thought the attorney’s job is to do everything possible short of illegal or unethical behavior, to help save his client’s reputation and freedom. He recounted several legal cases he handled.

One, in 1981, involved U.S. Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr., who– after indisputable evidence of corruption surfaced– was convicted in the ABSCAM scandal. The investigating committee was truly nonpartisan. After the trial, Williams’ fellow senators felt his continued presence compromised the dignity of their government body, and therefore, they were obligated to expel him. Williams eventually resigned. HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED.

Unethical behavior and criminality have reached such a screaming crescendo that this country’s TOP leader (not simply a senator!) and his cronies are staying in power. And Congress is letting them.

The Democrats are letting the GOP have their way, thinking voters will blame the GOP– as the GOP has a majority in Congress; Democrats think they will win back a lot of seats in the midterm elections. But some voters are angry at the Democrats for looking weak, and not fighting back.

The concentration of power among the billionaires has gotten so extreme, that in the near future, the United States must return to the 1950’s era mentality of: (like the healthcare company ChenMed’s culture) Americans’ expecting to be treated by medical doctors who are trusted family friends; and taxing the rich as the standard, acceptable way of life.

Or else, the United States will continue to devolve into the kleptocracy of a Third World country.

Bennett showed how, when an international incident occurs, there are complicated, incestuous global relationships that require delicate negotiations. In the case of a 1997 Soviet-Georgian diplomat’s drunken-driving accident in Washington, D.C. in which someone died, controversy ensued as to whether the diplomat should have immunity from jail-time or fining. The U.S. could have instead cut off financial aid to Soviet Georgia as punishment. However, retaliatory action could be taken against American diplomats at embassies around the world.

The author wrote, “I have always felt that there was more business for criminal lawyers representing companies when the Republicans were in power rather than the Democrats.”

Anyway, read the book to learn of several additional situations which Bennett felt he handled skillfully, despite his having to deal with alpha males with hubris syndrome, James Bond wannabes, black ops and CIA operatives.

Regarding the aforementioned issues, here’s a song that answers the question: Why are the billionaires keeping Trump in office? It’s what Trump is singing to the few people still working for him.

U.S. of A.

sung to the tune of “Y.M.C.A.” [the album version] with apologies to The Village People and to whomever else the rights may concern.

My men, there’s no need to feel shame. I say, my men, immortalize my name. I say my men, ’cause I rule this great game. There’s no need to ask, am I stopping?

My men, I love making dough. I say my men, here is where you can go. You can stay here. I’ll rule the world for all time, all on the American taxpayers’ dime.