It turns out that Pete Buttegieg is one of the lizard people. Would you buy a used car from this man?
First, a word about words:
I mentioned before that words matter, and how the media portrays us using words affects how a story is interpreted. In a story about Afghanistan, a local citizen (itself a word) is called a "villager" which is an interesting choice of words - how charming! Certainty not the kind of guy to plant a roadside IED, right?
Similarly, in a recent dustup on Joe Biden's "No Malarkey"* tour (the follow-on the John McCain's "Hey you kids, get off my lawn!" tour) a clear plant for the Republican party starts peppering Biden with crazy conspiracy theories. Biden in return calls him a liar, which was accurate.
(*Who uses the word "Malarkey" anymore, anyway? If Biden is trying to connect with the younger voters, this was a major mis-step!)
For some reason, though, the media, which likes to call us "consumers" or "motorists" or "villagers" decided to tag this guy with the moniker, "voter."
Interesting choice of words, eh?
Because we have no idea whether this guy votes, or has ever voted, and in other forums, someone standing up and asking a question is a "member of the audience" (or "audience member") or citizen or whatnot. But this guy is a voter.
Very subtle, and cute. You see, to call out some Joe Schmuck Republican plant as a "liar" is one thing, but to call out a voter? The very person he is supposed to be courting? In other words, Joe Biden is calling you a liar, because he is seeking your vote as well.
Like I said, it is subtle, but for some reason, every media outlet, in lock-step, has decided this guy is a "voter" and not a "citizen" or a "plant" or a "person".
Choice of words matters. You control the language of the debate, you control the debate.
But enough of that, today's topic is Pete Buttigieg, who turns out to be from the dark side.
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Much ado has been made of the rise of Pete Buttigeig in the polls. He is leading in Iowa and many people are excited this young new face in politics has a shot at the Presidency. Others are more skeptical that maybe America isn't ready for its first gay President. Still others point out that his experience as the mayor of a failing small town in Indiana hardly qualifies him for the Presidency. However since the election of Donald Trump, the qualifications bar has been lowered considerably.
In another article posted online recently, it was noted that Pete Buttigieg won't talk about one of his early employers, McKinsey & Company, citing confidentiality requirements from a non-disclosure agreement. Of course, non-disclosure agreements are only worth the paper they're printed on. If Buttigieg really wanted to talk about his experiences with McKinsey & Company, he could do so. The best McKinsey could do would be to sue him, which would in turn reveal more about the internal workings of that company than they would like to let on. In other words, Mayor Pete can tell us everything he knows if he just grew a pair which he seems reluctant to do - maybe for a reason.
If you read the Wikipedia entry on McKinsey & Company it gets rather scary rather quickly. Their list of clients include such odious engagements as Enron and the Saudi Arabian government. And not to help the Saudis sell oil, but to sniff out dissidents on Twitter, so they could later be arrested (according to some sources, anyway). They seem to have their sticky fingers in a number of odious pies and a lot of former McKinsey Associates end up as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. It smacks of the sort of 1%'er insider dealing things that liberals decry - like flying your private jet to Davos for a secret conference with the world's wealthiest people, or running naked through the woods in California as part of some lizard-people cult. They even refer to themselves internally as "The Firm" - much like the Tom Cruise movie of the same name - which was equally creepy sounding and weird.
McKinsey was one of the pioneers of the "up or out" technique of management, which is also used by other companies including the law firm Jones Day. As I noted in my previous posting about college education, for most of us experience is important in getting our jobs. People want us for what we can do and how productive we are. But as I noted in that posting, if you were a straight-A student at a name University such as Harvard or Yale, the world is a different place.
I stumbled into a job interview with one of those "white shoe" law firms once, and the hiring partner looked at my resume and asked me point-blank how the hell I got past the receptionist. Simply stated, firms like that hire people with straight-A averages from top tier Ivy League colleges - right out of school. They are then thrown into a maelstrom and expected to sink or swim. The best and the brightest, who are willing to stab their colleagues in the back, float to the top of the septic tank, while the others are fired after a few short years.
The theory behind this is that it cultivates talent and attracts the most talented people. But in reality what it does is it grooms the most ruthless and underhanded people imaginable. The guy who gets ahead in such a system, gets ahead by taking credit for other people's work and stabbing his best friends in the back - in order to step on their cold dead corpses to climb up one rung on the corporate ladder. Since the alternative is being fired, they don't mind doing this at all.
The best that can be said of Pete Buttigieg is that he was fired after two years. Oh, right, he claims he quit. Well, either way, it sounds like a better deal than what happened to the associates at The Firm.
Most law firms are (or were) structured this way. If you don't make partner within a few years you're asked to leave, as they don't want perpetual associates on the payroll. As a result, you have a constant influx of new blood working their way up the ladder, with the most ruthless and vicious people working their way to the top. Those who don't stick around are just worked long hours and then discarded, like a broken toy. I can tell you from experience that places like that are not pleasant to work at. Fortunately, most Patent firms have avoided that pattern, as they need actual experience and expertise to create and prosecute the patent applications and litigate. Raw ambition doesn't get the job done, in our field. You can't actually serve the needs of the clients just by stabbing your fellow Partners in the back, constantly. This is not to say some haven't tried, though!
I wrote before about management consulting companies and how you should update your resume if your company hires one. When your company hires a management consulting company it's a tacit admission that they forgot how to run their own business. Also, there's the potential for a lot of corruption and malfeasance with these consultants, who often taken huge consulting fees. Sometimes there's a little shenanigans going on in the side. A company manager hires a consulting firm, who in turn, takes the company manager out on its yacht for "consultation" after flying him to Aruba on the corporate jet. Oh, yea, and the hookers. Maybe a suitcase of money. A little cocaine? It's been known to happen. You've followed this whole Epstein, thing, right? Why do you think people paid huge consulting fees to a guy whose only experience was being a math teacher at a private school? The potential for abuse is very great, and there is damn little oversight with these kinds of companies.
Before I bash consultants more, I do have to admit that they often can help companies by seeing the obvious. The President of a company doesn't want to lay off workers, who he sees as his children, or fire managers, who he sees as his friends. He doesn't want to close down a money-losing factory that he sees as his life's work. A consultant has none of that emotional baggage, and can successfully guide a company through rough time, but often by forcing them to do unpopular things. Many on the left decry the fact that some new CEO is paid millions to lay people off and close factories. But hard decisions are hard to make, and sometimes you have to pay people a lot of money to do these odious and unpopular things.
Many companies resist such advice, which is why McKinsey had a policy of not engaging clients who would not follow their advice - and only dealing with CEOs. To be fair, I am sure McKinsey has helped some clients out. And no, not all of their client base is odious. But of course, since they are so secretive, we have no idea who their client base is, or what it is they do. And that is the point - not that McKinsey is "evil" (they could be, we simply don't know, because of the secrecy) but that it has the potential for it, and this will create poor optics for Buttigieg.
My father worked for one such consulting company, called Booz Allen Hamilton which is still in business today. After the war, the United States was helping build the Aswan high dam in Egypt, and Booz Allen was hired as a management consultant. Back then, the CIA used management consulting companies as a cover for many of their agents. And in fact, they still do this today. My Mother recounted the story where they were at a cocktail party in Egypt and she was recounting to one of my Dad's colleagues about how she wanted to write The Great American Novel - a fantasy of my Mother's that was never realized.
The man she was talking to feigned great interest in her project and encouraged her, which gave my mother considerable faith. She told my father about this exchange and he laughed at her and explained that the man he was talking to was, in fact, a CIA agent who was on the payroll but did no actual work for the company. He explained that many of the people he worked with actually didn't work on managing the dam construction project but were CIA agents that were using their cover as engineers in order to penetrate Egyptian society. A few short years later the Egyptians threw out the Americans and hired the Russians to finish the job. Apparently they got fed up with our shenanigans.
And they must have also practiced "up or out" as my Dad was out after only a few years. That happened to him a lot.
This consulting gig could be pretty lucrative. Say you're working for a management consulting company. You go off to some third-world country and interview the minister of the Interior. You explain to them, that for 190 million dollars, you can perform a study on how to improve the efficiency of their railroads. The minister explains that their railroads are running perfectly fine and efficient and that they don't need your help. But then you open a suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills and intimate to him that he could receive millions of dollars in kickbacks if you'll award this contract to your company.
I'm not saying this is what was going on at McKinsey & Company, but if you read their Wikipedia entry, they performed a lot of management consulting contracts for overseas companies that resulted in that a lot of work getting done, but oftentimes the projects failing miserably. Either way, the company ended up raking in millions and millions of dollars in fees - which illustrates the fundamental problem with consulting companies - they get paid the same amount if a company becomes a superstar success, or if they walk away from the smoking wreckage. And we all know how corrupt many of these third-world countries are.
Now, it's entirely possible that Pete Buttigieg's involvement with McKinsey & Company was perfectly innocuous. If so, why wouldn't he tell us? Was he involved in the meltdown with Enron or the assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi? I doubt either (the timing is off), but he certainly could tell us what he did do during his time there if he really chose to. Maybe he was helping African countries develop clean supplies of drinking water - you know, like Jimmy Carter does. I doubt it, though.
But the worst part of the whole situation is that ultra left-wing wacky liberals have sort of taken over the nomination process in the Democratic party. And these are the sort of folks who see an evil corporation under every rock. When it comes to evil corporations, McKinsey & Company sort of fits the profile. The only thing they're missing is an underground lair made from a hollowed-out volcano. And it's entirely possible that they do have one, but we just don't know about - yet.
Yes, I am being sarcastic - but I am trying to make a point. Appearances count in politics. And when you work for a "secret" company, even if in reality it is doing the work of Mother Theresa, it doesn't look good, on paper or on television.
The ultra left-wing liberals are not going to warm to the fact that Pete Buttigieg was working for such a company. His involvement makes Hillary's connections with Fortune 500 companies and $50,000 speeches look pretty innocuous by comparison. The fact that Buttigieg refuses to talk about his time there, even though much of their activities are documented in public forums (such as the Wikipedia entry above), makes it even all the more creepier. The fact he doesn't denounce his working for this company is even more troubling.
I think this latest revelation will force a lot of people to rethink their opinion about "Mayor Pete." And then maybe they will sit down and think that perhaps maybe America isn't ready for a gay President and that nominating Buttigieg for the Democratic ticket will only ensure another four years of Donald Trump.
The last thing we need, is another Manchurian Candidate.
