Monthly Archives: November 2019

11/22/19

The Fredo 2019

Big Red Car today announces a new award, The Fredo.

The Fredo is awarded annually to the individual who best exemplifies the character of Frederico “Fredo” Corleone in Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather.

In case you have been overseas for a long time (maybe living in Ukraine working for Burisma) or residing in a cave, Fredo was the older brother of Michael Corleone (the smart one played against type by Robert De Niro). Fredo was played by John Cazale in the Francis Ford Coppola adaption of Puzo’s book.

In particular, Fredo appeared in Godfather Part II.

Fredo, Sonny (got whacked early), Pop, and Michael home from the Marines in WWII

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11/22/19

Hunter Biden — Exclusive Interview

I was sitting here minding my own business — contemplating a new paint job — when my cell phone rang.

“Hello, Big Red Car, this is Hunter Biden. Heard you’ve been talking shit about me.” I could tell he was juiced up and nervous, had an edge to his voice.

I laughed as, in fact, I had not been talking about Hunter Biden. I noted a blog post I had posted back in October and directed him to  take a look at it.

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11/20/19

Mussolini Made The Websites Work?

Amongst the few redeeming elements of Fascist Mussolini was the notion that he made the trains run on time.

In the eCommerce business, the tech equivalent is the efficacy of websites. You will remember that Obamacare, famously, had a huge fail on its website construction. This was the Mother of All Website Fails.

From an initial estimate of $93.7MM, the cost to complete ballooned to $292MM and was finally turned in for $1,700,000,000. HELLO, AMERICA!

These numbers come from an Office of the Inspector General investigation of HealthCare.gov. It is hard to believe this could possibly be true (Should we let these guys run a government run health care system?)

It is worth noting that the company who was contracted to do the work — Canadian firm CGI — had previously managed to run a $2MM contract for the Canadian Firearms Registry up to $2,000,000,000.

This, of course, raises the question  — what genius hired these guys? Hint: It was not Mussolini.

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11/12/19

Hanlon’s Razor and Other Adages

I am in New York City freezing my ass off. I come every year to see the Veterans Day Parade (which was a huge disappointment this year). I hate cold weather, but I voluntarily came to NYC, so who can I blame?

I can only blame myself which brings me to my thought for today. We often look for difficult explanations to simple things.

Case in point is something called Hanlon’s Razor. Hanlon’s Razor (like Murphy’s Law and Occam’s Razor) provides us with wisdom when we are looking to explain something we believe to be complicated and transcendental.

Hanlon’s Razor goes something like this:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

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11/9/19

Texas Income Tax Constitutional Amendment Passes Again

Texas has no personal income tax (one of only seven States to have this provision) and it is likely to stay that way based upon the results of Proposition Four on the recent Texas ballot.

Proposition Four, which erects an almost impossible hurdle to the enactment of a state income tax, was adopted by a  74% to 26% margin. [We have had a lot of Californians move to Texas, but 26% in favor of an income tax?] It is worth noting that a total of $3,000 was spent to support the passage of Prop 4.

What is really interesting is to see the opposition to Prop 4: The Austin American Statesman (the local mast of the Texas Communist Party), the Austin Chronicle (the mouthpiece of the Austin Socialist Party, founded in 1981, a year after I moved to ATX, by Louis Black one of the founders of SXSW), the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the Dallas Morning News,  the Eagle, the Houston Chronicle, the Longview News-Journal,  the San Antonio Express-News, and the Waco Tribute-Herald.

The actual vote was 1,467,994 in favor of Prop 4 and 504,848 against — this in a state with 16MM registered voters shows how tenuous the electorate’s grasp is on things. 

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11/7/19

Values >> Culture >> Reputation >> History

In the life-cycle of a company — be it a high tech startup or a paint manufacturer — the initial culture of the company is grown from the seed corn of the founders’ values.

The first challenge for any founder is to codify his/her values while recognizing that she/he owns the culture when the ink is still wet on the founding documents.

The culture is a living organism in much the same way that yeast provides life to dough and water to somehow magically become bread when presented to fire.

It is important to think about culture, but it will happen whether you think about it or not.

If you fail to think about and nurture your culture, then it will become whatever organism is blowing through the air. [The air is different in Silicon Valley than it is in, say, Austin By God Texas. Know this.]

In thinking about culture, go here: The Company Culture Series — a collection of 14 blog posts on the subject of culture.

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11/6/19

The Southern Baby

There is a difference between the North and the South. One of the differences is the lullabies that Southern babies hear when they are rocked and sung to sleep.

This is on my mind because I have a Southern baby grandchild named Tempe (Faith, Hope, Charity, Temperance — shortened to Tempe and graced on many girls in my wife’s family. My wife is also named Tempe.).

Every Southern baby has had their grandmother (and momma) sing Summertime to them. It is a “spiritual” in the genre of the American Southern African American experience, but it was written for the folk opera Porgie & Bess by the Gershwins.

The story is set in the slums of Charleston, South Carolina — a city with which all Southerners have a love affair — and revolves around a street person named Porgy (black, disabled street beggar) who attempts to rescue Bess from the abuse of her violent, possessive lover (Crown) while simultaneously trying to part her from her drug dealer, Sportin’ Life.

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11/6/19

Beyond Meat and Beyond

The stock markets are tired of unicorns. They are punishing them. The only bright spot is Beyond Meat (BYND) which has also taken a beating.

Here is what a stock that came out at $25/sh and immediately traded up from an indicated market cap of $1.3B to a cap of $13B ($234.90 on 7-26-2019) looks like. That’s a 859% run up.

Since then the stock price has settled to a level of $81.18 — still a nice premium from the IPO price, but a return of more than 2/3rd of its initial run up.

The fate of stocks like Uber and Lyft — the “no profit unicorns” has been even more bloody with values below the IPO price.

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