THE DALY SHOW

Russia: Six Years Ago

This is an article I wrote nearly six years ago while in Moscow. The cash flow and the national debt in Russia have certainly changed thanks to higher oil revenues. If you have been to Russia lately, tell me how it has changed from what I witnessed here.

MOSCOW, RUSSIA (October 21, 2002) — A car bomb explodes at a Moscow McDonald’s. Two days later, a regional governor is assassinated on a busy Moscow street. Four days later, Chechen extremists take theater-goers hostage leading to more than one hundred deaths.

I was there days before the week of carnage in Moscow. A potential client flew me to Russia to see if my production company would produce videos for a joint Russian-American investment fund. Daly Productions has negotiated a contract. But even if we hadn’t, I can still make the case for Russia – despite Chechen rebels, organized crime, and recent financial failures.

The main reason is the people I met. But the most important reason came from one woman’s gasp.

She is the wife of one of our Russian hosts. The gasp echoed over the twelve vodka-laced voices enjoying a feast of meats, cheese, salad, and wine. Neither Chechens nor organized crime caused the two-second jolt of terror. It was far worse. She was staring at Joseph Stalin.

The ghost was really an impersonator. He was an employee at Stalin’s Bunker, an elaborate underground hideout built for the Soviet leader in the 1930’s, now a museum and the setting for dinner.

Stalin’s double toasted us then departed to his working class family. Yet the ghost of the real Stalin lingered. Call it a frightened glance over an historical shoulder.

Alexander Nikinov, a colonel in the Russian Air Force, raised a glass to his American guests. “We are not Americans and Russians. We are people working together.”

Victor, a successful entrepreneur, also toasted: “Let us remember the times we were allies in the Great War.”

There was no talk of the Cold War or the Cuban Missile Crisis, just friendship from a distant, victorious past. Despite recent events in Moscow, most Russians are gasping in horror about the past, not the future.

Giving birth to capitalism has been a long, painful delivery for Russia. But, like parenthood, a free market society will be worthwhile eventually.

One labor pain is the lack of western-style service. At the Moscow Airport, I needed directions to baggage claim. “Excuse me,” I asked a female airport employee, “Do you speak English?” Without missing a step or an English syllable she said, “No, I do not.”

In many restaurants you cannot deviate from the menu. At the Metropol Hotel bar, I ordered a turkey sandwich. I asked for Swiss cheese on the sandwich. “It’s not possible,” the waiter said – even though Swiss cheese was on the menu with another sandwich.

That waiter was the rule; Nadia was the exception. Nadia is a waitress at a chain restaurant called Yaukey Paulkey. Victor, our translator, gave Nadia our order; she wrote it down; then she read it back to him perfectly. We complimented her for her service; then our Russian guests asked for her name and number to consider her for future work.

Another breach in the Russian economy: Bribes. Again, at the Moscow Airport, a customs guard spotted the computer boxes I was delivering. He apparently wanted dollars in return for not putting the boxes through a lengthy Russian paper shuffle. One of my client’s Russian business partners talked to the guard privately; then the computers were released.

An hour later, our Russian driver made an illegal U-turn and got pulled over by a police officer, who then escorted him inside a police van, out of sight, for ten minutes. Our driver kept his rubles, though. He had better government connections.

Even the Russian adoption agencies have joined the bribery game. An American businesswoman we met told us this story. An American couple went to Russia to adopt two children only to discover the adoption fee had doubled well into the tens of thousands. The businesswoman was summoned to Moscow to pay the added fee (bribe) before the children could be taken to the United States.

Many Russians resent the shakedowns by civil servants. They use jokes to endure it.

A man is stopped by a Moscow cop. But before the cop says anything the man tells him, “I have a political joke for you.” The cop, who is a part of the political structure, is astounded. “Why would you tell me a joke like that?” “Don’t worry,” the man says, “I will tell it to you slow and twice.”

In defense of Russian civil servants, they are paid poorly and for a good reason. Russian President Putin has delivered three consecutive balanced budgets. Any surplus pays off the country’s debt from the financial collapse of 1998 – not to salary raises. Seen this way, you realize the Russians are suffering from the pains of progress.

However, not all Russian government workers are corrupt.

Andre is a Russian sailor. He makes one hundred dollars a month to support three boys and his wife in a small apartment. To survive, he is part of the new underground Moscow economy. Two days a week, he drives around Moscow picking up people who need a ride. A traveler simply sticks out a thumb, a driver stops, you negotiate a fee, and you get to your destination. No taxi authority is necessary.

Like Andre, many Russians are learning how to work the system.

Kirill Galetski is twenty-five and Russian-born. He looks like a young Johnny Unitas with the baby face and blond crew cut. He spoke English with an All-American accent, too.

Kirill’s American-born mother and Russian-born father divorced when he was five. Kirill went to America with his mother where he eventually earned a journalism degree from Portland State University.

When I met him, he was writing for an English language newspaper while interpreting during a business seminar in Moscow.

I asked him why he returned to Russia. His answer floored me. “I want to act,” he said. Kirill was attending one of the world’s great acting schools: The Stanislavsky School of Acting.

Russian men speak with great pride about another treasure: Russian women.

Every block, a super model look-a-like walks by: tall, thin, dressed as if they strolling The Champs Elysee or Fifth Avenue; many blondes but some exotic Mediterranean beauties as well.

“Russian women are loyal and traditional,” Kirrill offered. The typical scene at a McDonald’s was of a beautiful woman, dressed in fashionable business attire, with a young child and a husband. “There’s not much of a feminist movement here,” he said.

That has led to a growth in dating or husband-finding agencies in Russia for American men. Alla, a cherubic twenty year old who translated for me one day, said many of her friends had applied at one of the agencies.

There are also plenty of corporate executives popping up in Russia as well. We met an owner of a software company; among his employees are 6 PhD’s. His software will provide immediate translations from one language to another for text and voice.

Another man, a developer, had plans for hotels and office buildings.

I spoke with a group of businessmen who obtained scientific know-how from Russian military experts to create new technology, including a way to analyze blood without having to draw it from the person.

A scientist, who had worked at Lawrence Livermore, was creating a device to detect biological and chemical agents.

Las Vegan Rex Farris, the owner of Global Express Capital Corporation, marvels at the opportunities in Russia. Rex is the client who created that half-billion dollar investment fund for Russia.

He believes Russia’s abundance of land and untapped natural resources resembles “America after World War II.”

The numbers confirm that. The IMF reports that Russian GDP will increase 4.4% for 2002 and 4.9% for 2003. The Russian stock market jumped 82% over the past two years, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Foreign investors account for 20% of the money invested in Russian stocks,” the article on November 20, 2002 states.

That’s on paper, though.

I witnessed plenty signs of a society trying to blossom. A woman stood in front of the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office holding a sign. She was accusing Moscow’s mayor of murder.

Three of Moscow’s state-run museums, dedicated to preserving the history of the Russian military, did not varnish the truth. My Russian guide showed me photos of nine Russian generals, all members of the Russian Military Council in the 1930’s. Stalin executed 77 of these men in 1936. “We lost the top people of our army,” my guide said. “The Germans knew it would be a good time to invade.”

She also guided me to displays honoring the men and women who fought in Afghanistan and Chechnya, Russia’s Vietnams.

Still, the Russians take great pride in their military victories – especially in World War II. One artifact was a jacket worn by Hitler that I actually touched. It had burn marks so it must have been worn during his final days. The inside pocket had the inscription: tailored for Adolf Hitler.

The museum also had two huge photos displayed on a huge wall. One photo was the massing of Russian soldiers in Red Square as they prepared for the Nazi assault. The other photo was the victory parade in Red Square as a staff that bore the name Adolf Hitler was carried by one of the Russians. The actual staff rests on the ground at the base of the photo.

Colonel Nikinov oversees all the military museums. He says he wants to display the museums’ exhibits throughout the world — mainly the United States.

Nikinov is a handsome man with white hair and a young face; one of those people that make the world a good place. At our final dinner, he prefaced his toast like this: “You know I don’t care about making money. I care about friendships and peace between our countries,” he said. Ironic when you consider for most of his career, he was trained to kill Americans.

Nikinov made me think of Tom Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, whose latest book, “Attitudes and Longitudes” is about the new world after September 11th.

Most of the book is about the Arab world. But Friedman writes about a trip he took to Moscow. He saw the early stages of capitalism in Russia and compared it to the Arab world.

In my final toast to our Russian friends, I paraphrased Tom Friedman. I admit to being eloquent, but the credit goes to Friedman and vodka.

“Tom Friedman says the world is no longer east versus west or free market versus communism. It is the civilized world against the uncivilized world. At the height of the Cold War, Friedman says, the Soviets still cherished life. You knew,” I said pointing to my Russian guests, “destroying us meant also destroying yourselves. Neither of us did it. We cherish life unlike the terrorists today destroying the world and themselves. What we are doing here tonight, having dinner, telling stories, making lasting friendships, that is what civilization is all about. So, a toast to civilization, my friends.”

TV Review: John Adams and Politics Today

LAS VEGAS, NV (May 26, 2008) – I finally saw the HBO mini-series John Adams. It’s fabulous. Rent it or record it. Better yet, read the book by David McCullough.

I’m fortunate to have done both. As usual, the book is better. John Adams is at the top with Doris Kearns Goodwin’s work on Lincoln called Team of Rivals.

Thanks to David McCullough I lived with John Adams in my head for two weeks after finishing the book. That’s how good it was. More importantly, McCullough’s prose offers perspective of why John Adams, though not the marquee name like Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, was so critical to our nation. A TV production has a hard time doing that, although the Broadway musical 1776 correctly portrays Adams as the main character.

However, none of this media comparison can degrade the HBO version one bit.

The direction, cinematography, along with performances by Paul Giamatti (Adams), Laura Linney (Abigail Adams), David Morse (George Washington), and Tom Wilkinson (Ben Franklin), will all get a fair share of awards for this TV season.

As usual, I looked to see if the HBO production took creative license. Were there hidden comments on today’s politics? Certainly, there were lessons for today, but there was nothing partisan. The political innuendo, if any, seemed to target both Democrats and Republicans.

Clearly, any viewer would think of the border-fence conservatives as President Adams and Vice President Jefferson argued about a law that would ban all French from the U.S. in 1800 at a time when France was hinting at going to war with us. Adams weighed the security reasons while Jefferson said such a law would be impossible to carry out while violating the Constitution and every principle fought for in the American Revolution.

As this crisis waned, you couldn’t help but think there was a message for the current White House occupant. Eventually, France, and their new Emperor, wanted a peace treaty with the U.S. which Adams wisely allowed to happen by refusing to saber-rattle or build-up troops. Clearly, the message was this: hold out for peace.

Peace was at hand for Adams and our fledgling country. But the word of the treaty and the news that there would be no war came too late for Adams: he lost re-election. Yet, the attitude of Adams was that peace was more important. Here is a swipe at all politicians who manufacture scorched-earth campaigns to win at all costs.

And there was a message for Obama and Clinton: no matter how much you fight or how dirty you fight, you can end up respected friends. Adams learns that his presidency was undermined by Jefferson who paid Adams’ critics to write about Adams. Still, Adams and Jefferson ended their feud by corresponding at great length in their old age.

If you haven’t seen it, then hold off and break it out during the Fourth of July.  It will help remind you what this country should be.

Hillary Assassination Gaffe

Hillary’s RFK statement makes me go back to a past column while re-thinking what could be a dangerous way of thinking.

LAS VEGAS, NV (May 25, 2008) – I don’t know what Senator Clinton was thinking when she referred to the assassination of RFK as a reason for staying in the race.

I’m hoping it was fatigue of campaigning; she mistakenly said something that people are thinking but would never say in company. After all, raising that issue hurts her. Does she want to become the nominee or the President at the expense of Obama’s life?

No person – politician or not – wants that on their conscience or to face the public that thinks she was an indirect cause of a rival’s death. At least on the surface.

The thought of assassination still lurks. Let me revisit a column I wrote here when I covered the Nevada Caucuses in January. I spoke with a Clinton campaign volunteer Phyllis Beecher, a black woman, who brought out the “assassination card”.

Phyllis was very complimentary about Edwards and Obama. She quickly articulated her belief in Hillary’s experience. But then she went where I never thought she would go. If Obama wins, she said, “We don’t want a repeat of the Robert Kennedy, JFK thing.”

The Robert Kennedy, JFK thing? Wow. Wait a minute. Did I hear that right? Was she talking about assassination? Was she raising the issue that most of us thought but never mentioned? She was raising the issue that the first black President would be the target of a killer?

Sure I thought about the horror of this, but I hadn’t heard anyone say it out loud in a public venue.

Later I spoke to Phyllis and she told me that’s exactly what she meant. “And Martin Luther King, too. It might happen to him,” she said of Obama whom she says she has great fondness. And in a motherly tone, “I’m afraid for him. There are unstable people in society. We don’t need that to happen.”

Phyllis, however, explained her fear of whacko white supremacists is not the main reason she’s supporting Hillary over Barack. “She’s ready to go on day one.”

I don’t want to make a mountain out of a mole hill here.  Truly, Phyllis said what most of us have hidden in the back of our minds.

However, here’s what I didn’t address. Was this a calculated Clinton attack on Obama? I don’t think so. If it was, then this sweet woman is a brilliant fox in sheep’s clothing. What an operative!

Sure, the Clinton campaign is a machine. However, could the “assassination card” be indoctrinated into the thinking of campaign workers without the media jumping all over it? I don’t think so.

As I re-read this, I’m not so certain any more.

I’m thinking that a winner-take-all attitude prevails in politics and in the Clinton campaign – as it does in too many of our businesses and endeavors. We get so involved in the specific goal we tend to miss the big picture.

The Clinton campaign, I believe, is using or allowing this subconscious idea that a black President will be gunned down to continue to seep deeper into our psyche.

This will ultimately hurt her and her chance to be on the ticket.

The End of the Whacky Right: Changes Coming?

This posting allows me to forecast the future of politics and the media from what I’m seeing and reading today.

LAS VEGAS, NV (May 11, 2008) – John McCain is in; George W. Bush is out. David Brooks is in; Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are out.

This is more than a trend. It’s a major shift in the philosophy of many Americans. As a result, you’ll see changes in the media and both political parties over the next decade.

We’re already seeing a rejection of the Neo-cons, the Religious Right, and possibly Fox News while we’re witnessing an embrace of moderate, intellectual, and business minded people with a conscience.

Why?

The first reason is the bungling of Iraq and Katrina. These disasters show the ineptitude of a low-tax, over-spending, special-interest government. This White House reduced everything to politics while abandoning sound economic theory. Read the books by Alan Greenspan and Bush’s former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill.

The second reason is our poor standing as a world leader. Mr. Bush and his minions squandered a mass of political capital and worldwide good will after 9/11. Most Americans feel alienated from the rest of the world.

I saw it in Ireland recently. The Shannon Airport has a gallery of photos of American Presidents of Irish descent. George H.W. Bush was there: not his son. Maybe I missed it, but the sentiment from Irish businessmen matched the missing photo.

The third reason is the changing world economy. Emerging markets are growing thanks to better education and lower wages. Smartly, they continue to feed our appetite for cheap goods, while foolishly we get fat and fail to see that we are educationally out of shape.

Reason four is the realization that we border on the rest of the world. To survive, we need to work with other countries. It’s interesting that we want to embargo Venezuelan oil in retaliation for Chavez’s backing of Colombian terrorists, but we’ll trigger even higher gas prices. Bringing down Chavez politically, without further damage to our economy, requires us to not go alone. In addition, solving the problems of higher food and energy prices will not be an exclusively American solution.

It’s the younger generation that has grasped this notion of a world community better than us baby-boomers. They’ve lived with the Internet and its ability to remove barriers. Not only that, many more teens and 20-somethings are either mixed race or they have friends who are mixed race. Opening our arms to the rest of the world will come easier as they age and lead us. Already, they’re affecting this presidential race by helping catapult Barack Obama toward the White House.

Reason five is the need for more education and re-training in America. We’re falling down on knowledge; this includes our children and ourselves in our jobs.

So what will this new America look like?

Politically, the Republicans will not resemble your father’s GOP. David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, had a great piece on the British Tories, England’s equivalent to the Republicans. These conservatives are making electoral gains by changing their ways.

The British conservative renovation begins with this insight: The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, “the whole way we live our lives.”

That means, first, moving beyond the Thatcherite tendency to put economics first. As Oliver Letwin, one of the leading Tory strategists put it: “Politics, once econo-centric, must now become socio-centric.” David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, makes it clear that his primary focus is sociological. Last year he declared: “The great challenge of the 1970s and 1980s was economic revival. The great challenge in this decade and the next is social revival.” In another speech, he argued: “We used to stand for the individual. We still do. But individual freedoms count for little if society is disintegrating. Now we stand for the family, for the neighborhood — in a word, for society.”

Wow. That sounds – dare I say — liberal.

In America, things will seem more liberal. We will need more government intervention into our lives. After all, government it seems has abandoned too many of us in favor of special interests. Rugged individualism seems to only work for the rugged individuals.

However, we’re not swinging back to the extremes. For instance, conservatives and evangelicals are joining forces for the environment. Although you can’t say they’ve embraced Al Gore’s theories on global warming, they’re not roundly denouncing them either.

In the upcoming presidential race, assuming it’s McCain versus Obama, I can foresee a large number of party defections to one side or the other.

John McCain, though still flexing his muscles on Iraq, has offered a more conciliatory tone in foreign policy. Good grief, he’s making a speech on the environment this week.  I still say if Mitt Romney acted like himself — the open-minded business executive and not trying to be a trumped up Ronald Reagan – he would have been the GOP nominee.

We shouldn’t be surprised. I wrote about these potential changes two and three years ago. Remember the fights in 2005 and 2006 on the immigration bill, the port security contracts, and even today on NAFTA. These issues divided politicians along the lines of free-traders and isolationists – something Tom Friedman, in his book The World Is Flat, predicted four years ago.

And have you noticed a Communist Marxist country is thriving now as it has slowly adopted capitalistic ways?

What about the media? Say what you want about the media being biased or being wagged by the politicians and special interests. There is some truth to it. But remember this. Media companies are for-profit entities. If this philosophical change becomes the rule, these media outlets will adapt.

Take Rupert Murdoch. He’s a businessman first; a political hack second. He now owns The Wall Street Journal, not the National Review.

Does this mean Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly will be gone? No. He still holds a solid audience. Granted, it’s a niche audience that is older and dwindling, but still passionate. In this niche world, O’Reilly will survive. However, he might not be the network’s standard bearer. Someone else who catches this new philosophy might be the next darling of Fox.

The same holds true for Rush Limbaugh and his radio ditto-heads. He’s not going anywhere in our Internet, Information Age. But like O’Reilly, he’s beginning to lose his political punch. If anything both of them, including people like Glen Beck and the rest of the Right Wing yakkers, they’ll be noted for their entertainment factor and not their political clout and insight.

In fact, they’ve lost most of their entertainment appeal to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and The Colbert Report, two shows that pander to a growing audience that sees the silliness of the extremists – on the left and the right.

Instead, we’re turning more to thinkers – like David Brooks – who are thoughtful, even-tempered, intellectual, honest, while lacking a monetary special interest embedded in his work.

Thankfully, Brooks seems to be everywhere. I catch him on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer and on National Public Radio in addition to his twice weekly column. There’s a reason. He’s good and his observations correctly explain this new philosophy.

Good Economic Sense That Should Hit Campaigns

This is a posting about some pearls of wisdom from a smart friend who reads and another who has been to China.

LAS VEGAS, NV (May 4, 2008) – In my book, I talk about mind filters when you consume news and information. These filters are solid ideas. When correctly embedded into your thinking, they will parcel out the garbage from the campaigns.

This was written in this week’s Kiplinger Washington Letter.

That’s why blaming trade pacts for lost jobs misses the mark. Closing trade paths won’t help. Opening routes to training will.

Special thanks to Aundrea Beach-Greco for sending this to me.

Granted, I’ve been saying this for years. Knight Kiplinger said it more gracefully and efficiently. But this is information grounded in economic fact. The more economic barriers we raise, the more layoffs and higher prices we suffer.

The only candidate who even mentioned job re-training was John McCain. But that was in Michigan where Romney beat him.

Folks, it’s all about education. I don’t mean just our kids. It’s about re-training adults for the new jobs of the new century. That’s why I launched Real Money Show to help people start online businesses. That’s why I’m also an officer for one of the top wealth management companies.

Anyone who tells you those manufacturing jobs are coming back is lying to you. I just spoke recently to Gary Murphy of Arisa Global, an outsourcing company with contacts in Asia. Gary tells me that the next China is either Vietnam or Taiwan. Notice, it’s not the United States.

Without education and re-training, the rest of the world is going to keep growing financially – without us. The Twentieth Century is gone. Sure, the American consumer has fueled the worldwide economy. And yes, the downturn is caused by our lack of spending. But in the future, the world economy won’t necessarily need us. All those other emerging market countries will have money to spend in years to come – because they have jobs and we have debt.

Check out the companies that have seen recent stock gains. They all have exposure to foreign markets.

The bottom line is this. We’ve become lazy. Maybe this isn’t germane, but I seem to notice more fat teens than before. I don’t necessarily mean the morbidly obese youngsters. No, I see kids with middle aged paunches, love handles, and cellulite.

That tells me how unhealthy we are physically and mentally. And if one of our presidential candidates doesn’t start telling the truth, we could be in for a quick fall.

By the way, John McCain might have scored economic points for mentioning re-training in Michigan. But he, along with Hillary Clinton, fell on the economic smarts scale when they both called for a gas tax holiday. Again, a lazy idea. Give us something small now – a tax break – that we’ll have to pay for later – more money to re-build crumbling roads and bridges.