Racial segregation. The idea sickens me. I try to imagine growing up under the horrors of segregation. I try to imagine how it must feel to not be allowed to go where others go, eat where others eat, drink from the same drinking fountains others drink from, use the bathroom that others use. I try to imagine how it could not hurt badly… how it could not scar deeply.

I close my eyes and see the face of a young boy, my age in 1968, but with skin of darker brown. I look deep into his eyes. I see him pressing his face up against the glass, looking longingly at what others have, that he does not. What he may never be allowed to have. I see him questioning… why? And I want to weep. I want to stop him from hurting. Save him from that pain.  I want to scream louder than any scream that has ever been heard… Nooooooooooo! I am ashamed of my country for its policy of racial segregation. And I am seven years old.

I didn’t see racial segregation with my own eyes. If I had, I’m quite sure that it would have burned an impression into my soul that could never have been removed. I don’t know how you grow up and make it through something like that. Do you always feel uncomfortable… always… forever? Do you look at everyone and wonder what they’re thinking about you? Will you always be angry, no matter what? Do you wake up every morning and wonder how it could be that such injustice is allowed to happen?

Today is Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

As a young boy I learned of Dr. King from my parents at home, and from teachers in school. He was fighting racial segregation… fighting for civil rights.  He was strong. Immeasurably strong. Strong like Superman was strong. He had a dream. He was right. He was a hero to so many. He was a hero to me.

Martin King would not back down from what must have seemed like insurmountable odds. Nor would he allow himself to express the rage he must have felt as much as any. He was the youngest person to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to fight discrimination and racial segregation through civil disobedience and other non-violent means. He was the greatest kind of American. Because of what he did, what he stood for, what he accomplished… because of him we are the country we are today. Without him we are nothing.

Martin King was a man of faith. Faith in the United States of America. Faith in its people. Faith in all of us. Faith in me. I wanted to be like him. I wanted to be that strong… some day.

Then he was assassinated. Shot. Killed. It was April 4th, 1968. My mother cried. My father did not want to talk about it. I could not understand how… why… I wanted to shoot the person who had shot him. I learned about death from Martin King. I learned about peace from Martin King. I learned about hope from Martin King. I learned about struggle from Martin King. I learned about my country from Martin King. I learned to love and I learned to hate hate because of Dr. King.

Yes, today is his day and he deserves this day as much if not more than any other for whom a day is named… he earned this day… gave his life for this day. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill that made today Dr. King’s day. He didn’t want to though, but he had no choice. Many others fought against this day. I’m sure now they wish they hadn’t.

I was eight years old one month after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. left this world forever. They sang happy birthday to me, and I was called Marty for the very last time. Because from that day forward… for the rest of my life… I told everyone…

My name is MARTIN.

This is a story for the ages… you want crazy, I’ve got crazy.

Remember attorney Mitchell J. Stein?  His law office was shut down along with the the law offices of Kramer & Kaslow.  Stein filed the first lawsuit against Bank of America that came to be know as a “mass joinder,” or multi-plaintiff suit… Ronald v. Bank of America.

When I first called Mitchell Stein to find out what he was up to, I discovered that coincidentally, he went to my high school.  He was two years older than me, so he didn’t remember me, but I did remember him.  And he seemed like a smart trial lawyer who certainly talked like he was dedicated to fighting for the rights of homeowners against the banks.  He said that many of his clients were pro bono and contingency cases, where the homeowners were paying nothing.  I never listed him on my “Trusted Attorneys” tab… because I just didn’t know him long enough… but I did try to keep tabs on him.

Then this past September, I believe, both he and Kramer got shut down by the State Bar and AG, the allegations being that they were “running and capping,” essentially meaning that they were paying non-lawyers sales commissions.  Kramer continues to deny that happened, and I suppose we’ll have to wait to see what evidence is presented at trial to be sure one way or the other.  Stein, on the other hand, not only denied any involvement with Kramer’s marketing, but further said that he had never received any funds from that marketing… and to-date, I haven’t seen any evidence that he did.  So, I was waiting to see how all that came out, as well.

But… never mind all that… in fact, as far as Stein is concerned, it’s pretty much mass-smash… joinder-schmoinder.

Okay, ready for this?  I wasn’t.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division announced today that attorney Mitchell J. Stein was arrested on Sunday, December 18, 2011, at Los Angeles International Airport on charges related to his alleged role in a multi-million dollar market manipulation stock fraud scheme.  Stein was arrested for his role as attorney for a South Carolina health care device company, Signalife… now known as Heart Tronics.

Huh?  Say what?

Apparently, an indictment was unsealed yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida charging attorney Mitchell J. Stein, 53, of Hidden Hills, Calif., and Boca Raton, Fla., with one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud, three counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, three counts of securities fraud, three counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.   The indictment also seeks forfeiture of the proceeds of the offenses.

Huh?  Say what?

The indictment alleges that Stein has been engaged in a scheme to pump up the stock price of Signalife Inc. by lying about the company’s sales activity.   Signalife is now known as Heart Tronics.  It was a publicly traded company that purported to sell electronic heart monitoring devices, and according to the indictment, Stein’s wife owned approximately 85 percent of the shares.

According to the indictment Stein and co-conspirators faked purchase orders from fictitious customers and then issued press releases and filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that reported the fictitious sales.   They also created the false appearance of sales activity, by shipping products to an individual who would store them even though they had not purchased any products.

The indictment also says that Stein and co-conspirators sold shares of Signalife at inflated prices, hiding the fact that they were doing so by placing shares in purportedly blind trusts.  And not only that but Stein and co-conspirators also allegedly issued additional shares to third parties so that those third parties could sell the shares and remit the proceeds of those sales to Stein and his co-conspirators.

Stein also conspired to obstruct an SEC investigation into Heart Tronics by testifying falsely and directing others to do the same.

If Stein is convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison on each count of mail fraud, wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and up to 10 years on each count of money laundering, and up to five years on the conspiracy to obstruct justice count.  And the SEC announced its filing of a civil enforcement action against Stein and others, the result of their conducting a parallel investigation.

And according to Thompson Reuters, Stein had help… and look who the help was:

“Willie Gault, a former Chicago Bears wide receiver, faces a civil lawsuit by U.S. securities regulators accusing the American football player and several others of engaging in an alleged scheme to inflate the price of stock in a heart-monitoring device company.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said in a complaint filed on Tuesday in federal court in California that the company, known as Heart Tronics, installed both Gault and a former Hollywood executive named J. Rowland Perkins as figureheads of the company to help fuel publicity and pump up investor confidence.”

Okay, so what the heck has been going on here.  I thought Stein was suing banks, but apparently he was actually a lot closer to robbing them?  It’s like finding out that you went to high school with Charles Keating.  Like… OMG.  I mean… OMG!

It’s more than strange to come to such a realization about someone who grew up in your neighborhood, someone in your age group.  Like, what the heck could have led him down the path on which he’s been traveling?  What possesses someone to do such things?

I mean… he seemed like a successful attorney… he’s been practicing law for something like 25 years and hadn’t committed any sort of crimes before… I even met his wife at  California Attorney General’s press conference on mortgage fraud, held maybe six monts ago and she seemed like a lovely woman.  Was it the money?  That would be the easy answer… he did what he did for the money.

But, the thing is… his wife is quite wealthy in her own right.  Her father was a very successful songwriter and music industry executive… I mean, very, very successful.  And Mitch, I’m sure, made a very good living for many years… someone gave me their home address and I looked at it on Google Earth and it looked like the largest home I’ve ever seen… 28,000 square feet.  And Mitch drove a Mercedes the one time I saw him in his car, but it wasn’t a new one, in fact it was maybe 10 years old.  He’s accused of illegally receiving something like $8 million.  Was that enough money to get him to be willing to break all the rules and put his freedom at risk.

Before you answer that, let me give you one more fact… Mitch has a daughter… who I’m told is 6-7 years old.  And he was arrested on Sunday, and Christmas is only days away.  Now, I understand that he was able to post bail… $300,000… so he’ll be home with her for the holidays, but what about next year?  Is he that certain that he’ll prevail?  Is he innocent of all charges, or does he believe he’s innocent of all charges?

I don’t know about about everyone in the world, it should go without saying, but I think most fathers wouldn’t risk leaving their daughters for $8 million… or $800 million, for that matter.  I wouldn’t even want to be kept away from my daughter for a week, let alone face decades in prison.  Not a chance in the world.  The only way I’d risk my life would be to save hers.  No amount of money would be in the running.

Is Mitch that much different than me?  It’s not like we’re from different planets… we grew up in the same neighborhood, for heaven’s sake.

Now, for some inside scoop…

Okay, so although I haven’t been able to reach Mitchell Stein in months, he simply stopped taking my calls after his firm was shut down… I received a call last night from someone who had been in contact with Mitchell Stein since his arrest.  And what he said, especially when combined with other facts, was alarming.

The person said that Mitch seemed to think everything was just fine.  Yes, he had been in jail, but only for one night, and he was none the worse for wear.  Not only that, but he started talking about how the U.N. had “bought” or somehow “approved” of his Heart Tronic device.  He said he had just returned from Ireland when he was arrested, but that everything was otherwise just fine… in fact, the prospects for his Heart Tronics business were quite exciting even.

Here’s a copy of the criminal indictment related to Mitchell Stein’s stock fraud allegations.  Take a look, and you tell me what you think, because I’d say things were a long way from being “fine.”  In fact, I’d say it looks like things have never been worse, and even though I understand that if the allegations are true or even close to true, then a lot of people were hurt financially… it still breaks my heart to think of any father of a 6-7 year-old daughter going away for a long time.

Mitchell Stein Criminal Indictment

But, the person who interacted with Mitch since he bailed out of jail little more than a day ago said that Mitch just kept talking about the U.N. having bought his Heart Tronics device, that according to the Department of Justice, for the most part was always pretty much a complete fraud.

Below you’ll find three links to Heart Tronics documents… press releases, for the most part… sent out recently by Heart Tronics executives… with names that don’t appear anywhere in the indictment.  There’s even one that proudly proclaims that “Heart Tronics to Participate in United Nations Health Initiative,” just as Mitch told my confidential source.

And when my source asked Mitch about being arrested and being in jail, Mitch just said, “oh yes.” How long he was asked… to which Mitch just said, “one day.”  And then he went back to talking about either Heart Tronics or the charges being brought as we speak by the California Attorney General for his alleged participation in Kramer’s alleged marketing scheme.

And, by the way, Phil Kramer is a 30 year, Martindale Hubble ‘A’ rated lawyer with a perfect State Bar record… and teenage boys at home, as well.  If you were to read Kramer’s and Stein’s resumes back to back, you’d have to come away quite impressed.  So, what the heck is going on that these two edned up where they are today.  At least Kramer is scared to death, I’m told.  From what I was told, Stein seems to be barely aware of what’s happening.

I’d be throwing up around the clock were I even in his shoes for a nano-second.  He’s still talking about Heart Tronics.  And he thinks he’s going to defeat the AG’s charges as well.  In fact, I’m told, he’s sure of it.  He’s even connected the two, telling my source that it’s because he sued Bank of America that the DOJ has come after his Heart Tronics company.  Even his wife is accused of being unduly enriched, or something like that.

And in light of all of that, he seems disconnected with reality. I have to tell you, I’ve only known him for maybe six months and only saw him in person on maybe three occasions, but for whatever reason, I’m worried about him.

And here’s another fact that gave me pause… according to published reports, Stein’s most recent message on Twitter, which was posted on the day of his arrest read:

“As long as the roots are not severed, all is well … and all will be well … In the garden.”

Well, okay then.  It’s not in my nature, but as far as this story goes,  all I can say is that I’m at a loss for words…

Mandelman out.

HeartTronics

HeartTronics to Participate in United Nations Health Initiative

HeartTronics Corporate Update

I used to read the Wall Street Journal all the time, maybe even every day for a few years, back in the days when Yuppies were king, BMWs reigned supreme, and I was still stupid enough to pay $300 a year to carry around a grey piece of plastic from America Express that I idiotically referred to as being “platinum.”

These past three years, well… not so much.  It’s not just because a gaggle of insensitive and insufferable cheerleaders for the banks write the newspaper, although that certainly is a big part of it.  It’s mostly because the paper’s views are entirely predictable, and unreservedly smug… no they’re smug².  We’re not even having a recession in the Wall Street Journal, its positively surreal.

So, I’m clicking around through my news alerts yesterday, and I see this headline: “We Can’t Ignore Housing Anymore.”  Huh?  Can’t ignore it… anymore?  Well, why the heck not?  It’s been going swimmingly, thus far.  Why quit on a winner?

Neal Lipschutz, who first joined the company in 1982, is today senior vice president and managing editor of Dow Jones Newswires, wrote the article, and according to his bio, he “directly supervised the news staffs in the Americas and served as chief arbiter of and spokesman for news policies, coverage and standards on a global basis.”

And today, Neal has “global responsibility for Dow Jones Newswires editorial.”  So, Neal is a man with “global responsibility,” and I’m almost positive that I’ve never even met a man with global responsibility.  Apparently, Neal has written articles that have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, The New York Times, and The Baltimore Sun among others.

So, at first I thought… Neal is Journalism Man, but then I started reading what he had to say and I quickly realized…  nope, he’s just another Lipschutz.  Here’s how he kicked off his article on how we can’t ignore housing…

“In the end, we can’t dodge housing.

The U.S. recession and financial crisis of the late aughts began with housing and the scourge of subprime mortgages, which were so messily dispensed. It spread to Europe and its banks.

For a few years we tried to work around the paralyzed housing sector – the drip, drip of steadily lower home prices, the unresolved status of the wounded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — and it seemed to be working.”

Obviously, either Neal has the cognitive abilities of a fruit loop soaked in milk, or he’s just disturbed.  What do you suppose he thinks “spread” to Europe and its banks?  I mean, I don’t think loans can spread… loans are not germs or viruses… they don’t just spread.  Someone has to spread them, right Neal?  And let’s assume you’re right and within the mortgage-backed securities and CDOs that were sold to Eurobanks, there were a few loans leveraged to the hilt.  So, who do you suppose might have taken them to Europe, Neal?  Because it wasn’t me Neal.

And then he writes:

“Now that worries mount about an ever more likely return to recession amid a significant equities markets decline, we are hearing again about housing.”

Hearing “again” about housing?  Who’s hearing again about housing?

I wouldn’t worry too much about you hearing anything, Neal.  I just don’t think you’ve heard anything in maybe twenty years.  I think you should consider donating your head to the particle physicists at CERN’s laboratories as they’re studying the beginnings of the universe and are apparently trying to find the densest matter on earth.

And Neal continues to offend…

“There’s the foreclosure mess, the underwater mortgage mess, the tight mortgage lending standards and all the rest. There’s displaced construction workers. There’s consumers unwilling to spend as their perceived real estate wealth evaporates.

There’s housing, traditionally the leader out of recession, still generally in decline, and harder to ignore.”

It’s only my perceived wealth that’s been evaporating?  Well, that’s certainly a relief.  Only my perceived wealth.  Well, thank goodness for that.  Hey, here’s an idea, since it was only perceived wealth, how about you write an article telling the bankers to give everyone perceived principle reductions?  You’d be in favor of that right, Neal?

You want to know what I’m thinking about right now.  I’m thinking about how much fun it would be to watch you perceive my size 12 boot kick your hard to ignore mass.

Neal’s also got some answers to our housing market problems.  Here’s what he says we should consider in order to fix the housing mess he’s having a hard time ignoring…

“… more people who are current on their mortgage payments have to be able to refinance their mortgages to take advantage of rates near 4%.

That savings for many would go into additional spending, a stimulative measure, and would boost their economic psychology, which is important. Even if they used the savings to pay down their own debt it would do long-term good.”

What kind of a word is “stimulative,” Neal?  Let me guess… were you a triple-digit SAT score kind of guy?  You know, math and verbal combined, what… about 770?  And then straight to the local community college to get your Associates in North American Egotistical Studies or possibly Recumbent Illiteracy?

How did you ever get a job as an editor at Dow Jones Newswires using words like “stimulative?”  Either the bar’s just not that high, or… hang on… I know how you must have done it… maybe I should be calling you Kneel?

Okay, I’m done.  There’s no point in going on about Kneel anyway.  If I’m not going to get to kick his callous, insensitive and entirely ignorant behind around a parking lot, then what’s the point?  I suppose I could challenge him to a battle of wits, but that wouldn’t be right either because he’s unarmed.

And Neal closes by saying…

“Given political realities, it’s hard to imagine much of a fiscal push, in housing or elsewhere.”

You know, Neal’s right about those “political realities.”  The reason we’re not solving the foreclosure crisis isn’t because of economic or fiscal realities… what has doomed us to suffer the economic pain of a deflationary spiral are only “political realities,” or in other words… what people think… just thoughts.

At least half the country doesn’t understand that it is a crisis.  They think that irresponsible people bought homes they couldn’t afford.  They do not think it right or fair to bail out those that made irresponsible decisions.  But thinking something doesn’t make it true. Ours is not a housing crisis, it is a credit crisis.  And the credit markets froze in 2007, not because of borrowers, but because of bankers.

Those that oppose saving their neighbor from foreclosure are costing the rest of us, and themselves, trillions of dollars in aggregate losses.  But the people in foreclosure have already lost.  And by forcing those losses, everyone else loses too.  Only by saving them from further loss do we save the rest of us.

And as we fiddle… Rome burns.

Are you listening, Neal?

Mandelman out.

Today, another victim of the foreclosure crisis took her own life.  She was a disabled American veteran and her family was counting on me to help.  And I let them down.

You see, when I returned from a trip to Hawaii earlier this summer to meet with members of the state’s legislature on how the state might better deal with the foreclosure crisis, I received a call and a letter from a couple who’s home was about to be sold by Ocwen.  The husband, afflicted by multiple sclerosis, could not be moved from their handicapped home and I couldn’t stand what watching what was about to happen… so I wrote about it… attacking Ocwen for allowing such an injustice to take place.

And Ocwen responded.  Within days the trustee sale was cancelled and Ocwen agreed to modify the loan so the family could remain in their home of so many years.  It should go without saying that the couple was joyous and thankful, although I couldn’t help but wonder about all the families about whom I would never be able to write about… and perhaps save from the pain of foreclosure.

Soon after that I received another letter and call from a couple’s daughter who lived in Hawaii… her parents were facing foreclosure in California and their lawyer who had been hired to help them had dropped the ball… they were on their way to being evicted.  They’re older… in their 70s, and they were caring for a disabled American veteran… a member of the family.

I tried to help… called an attorney friend of mine who stepped in and filed what could be filed, but acknowledged openly that it was a long shot.  Maybe some media attention would help, as it had previously, and I said that I would write about their situation.

But, the truth is that I never got around to it.  I had other pressing concerns.  And I’m only one person fighting a much larger fight.  I spent several weeks in Arizona, meeting with lawyers and homeowners… and filming a documentary that I’d come to believe is the most important contribution I can make to the war against the bankers and the foreclosure crisis that is quietly tearing about our country and destroying our middle class and our economy.

I found out today that a few days ago she took her own life.  Wells Fargo Bank had allowed the eviction to proceed; they refused to do anything else.  Maybe they wouldn’t have changed their mind had I found the time to publicize the couple’s plight… maybe not.  But, we’ll never know… I’ll never know.

The couple called me, their daughter called me… many times during the month of August, but I was away in Arizona, I needed the rest… my own health was in question and I felt I needed to rest and recuperate before I‘d be able to continue the fight effectively.  I spoke with the husband… and the wife… they sent me their story written out on many pages.  It all started when Wells Fargo said they had made a trial payment a couple of days late.  The couple said they had made it on time.  How petty a thing that could lead to such a tragic end…

I tried to calm them down… told them I would try to help them.  But, I never got back to them… never wrote their story.  And now it’s too late.

The last phone message I received was from their daughter.  I played it today when I got the news.  She was literally begging for my help.  But I didn’t hear it in time.  And now a disabled American veteran is gone.

I don’t know what to say except that I am so very sorry that I let them down.  So deeply sorry… and I’ll never forget them… I’ll try never to let something like that happen again.

But the other truth is that I’m angry.  I’m angry that I even have such responsibility… such power that my writing about someone’s situation has the potential to save their home from foreclosure.  It shouldn’t be the case.  The banks should not be allowed to lie to people, the process should be transparent… none of it should be done in secret.

God damn the bankers that continue to treat American homeowners struggling financially as a result of the global financial crisis and our country’s deepening recession that they caused as if they are meaningless souls… as if they are to be disposed of like diseased cattle.

And God damn those who have no compassion for the millions of Americans who continue to receive foreclosure notices every day… their lack of compassion comes from their ignorance of the facts involved, and at this point there is no excuse for that ignorance.

And God damn the Obama Administration for ignoring and abandoning the American middle class in favor of the banking billionaires to whom he has given a blank check as reward for their crimes.  None of this should be happening in my country.

But, again… I’m just so sorry that I let them down.  Please join in this prayer for a fallen soldier… its author is unknown…

I saw a soldier kneeling down,

for this was the first quiet place he had found.

He had traveled through jungles, rivers and mud.

His hands were scared and toil-warned.

He folded his hands and looked to the sky…

I saw his tears, as they welled in his eyes.

He spoke to God, and this is what he said.

God Bless my men, who now lie dead;

I know not what You have in mind,

but when You judge, please be kind….

when they come before You, they will be poorly dressed

but will walk proudly, for they have done their best.

Their boots will be muddy and their clothes all torn…

but these clothes they have so proudly worn.

Their hearts will be still and cold inside,

for they have fought their best and did so with pride.

So please take care of them as they pass Your way…

the price of freedom they’ve already paid.

AMEN.

Mandelman out.

(This was first published last July 4th, but with so many new readers this year, I thought I’d share it once again.  To see the Independence Rap video, scroll to bottom.)

Today is Independence Day. And Independence Day is a uniquely American holiday. It commemorates the day on which our Founding Fathers, after more than a year in the Continental Congress debating the issue of independence from the British Crown, finally compromised, and one by one rose to take the quill pen in hand in order to append their signature to the document written by Thomas Jefferson, our Declaration of Independence.

(To the younger generation, that’s the document that, if you shine a special light on its back, you can find a treasure map that leads you to fabulous riches and Nicholas Cage.)

It truly is a remarkable thing to celebrate. It had never been done in the history of the world… independence, that is. Back then, the sun never set on the British Empire, a reference to its global reach, and what our Founding Fathers were engaged in was treason of the highest order. Had they been caught, they would have surely all been hanged.

The idea of colonial independence, sovereignty of the people, written constitutions, and effective checks and balances in government, was both radical and new. In fact, it was an idea put on paper by a man who has been described as “a professional radical and revolutionary propagandist,” Thomas Paine, who was brought to America by Benjamin Franklin. It was an idea that had rarely if ever been tried, much less succeeded. It was an idea you spoke of knowing that to do so could lead to your death.

Because of this rather extreme penalty associated with the idea itself, Thomas Paine wrote the pamphlet “Common Sense,” and published it anonymously in January of 1776. It was “Addressed to the Inhabitants of America,” it became an instant best-seller, and it made Thomas Paine the first true American Idol.

Common Sense advocated the immediate independence from British rule, and conveyed a special moral obligation of America to the rest of the world. It brought into sharp focus the suffering of the American colonies and placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the reigning British monarch, King George III.

Thomas Paine would go on to write “The Rights of Man,” and “The Age of Reason,” but there’s no question that the words he wrote in “Common Sense,” represent some of the most brilliant and ultimately important words ever written. It sparked a revolution whose shots were heard around the world. It led to a revolution in France, and later one in Russia. And it remains to this day, a beacon of freedom around the world.

Today we celebrate the day on which the world’s first revolution against monarchy, tyranny and oppression began. And it is uniquely OUR revolution, we need share it with no one. Today is a day on which all Americans should be very proud of this country’s heritage, a day on which we can forgive our many mistakes along the way, in favor of recognizing the men and women that gave their lives and the lives of their children so that millions could live in freedom and self government for hundreds of years to come.

And I think everyone in this country should understand that today is more than just fireworks and a barbeque. Today is the day on which the country I love celebrates its birth… the day back in 1776, upon which “they made a revolution”.

And that leads me to my story…

A few  years ago I was offered a position at my daughter’s elementary school teaching U.S. History and Social Studies to 5th and 6th graders. My daughter was in 6th grade at the time, and I suppose because she knew that the kids all liked me… after all, we’d been at the school since Kindergarten… she was perfectly okay with me doing it. In fact, she was happy about the whole thing, and so was the rest of her class. Were I to have suggested the same thing last year, when she was in 9th grade, I am confident that she would have gone directly into the street to lay down in traffic before allowing me to be a teacher of her friends at school.

So, understanding that opportunities like this only come around but once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky that is, I jumped at the chance to teach my daughter’s class a little U.S. History at The Berkeley School in Fullerton, California. I taught every Tuesday and Thursday morning from 9:00 AM until 10:30 AM, when the kids would go on break.

When I started planning my curriculum for the year, a few months before school was to start, I had no idea that as a result of going back to 6th Grade, I’d learn so much. It was the most wonderful professional experience I’ve ever had, and I’m saving up to do it again someday. Teaching elementary school is a lot spending a month in Italy… if you can afford it, I’d recommend doing it.

Anyway, when I was a kid, the public school system had a way of teaching U.S. History that was a little less interesting than say… watching them give haircuts on Saturday. I remember opening our history (or I think they called it Social Studies back then) books and then spending the rest of the class trying to sleep without being caught by the teacher who seemed, by the way, to be old enough to have attended the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In other words, history class when I was in school was BORING… with a capital B-O-R-I-N-G.

Not only that, but I grew up in Pennsylvania, which is, one should remember, where our history comes from, and as a result my parents felt it their parental duty to drag us kids through every single historic site the state had to offer… at least once. We even went to Boston in 1976, the year of the Bicentennial, where my father grew up, and he dragged us on every step of the Freedom Trail, stopping at church after church, and graveyard after graveyard to examine the headstones and talk about their significance to our nation’s heritage.

As a result, although I don’t agree with what the infamous Menendez Brothers did when the gunned down their parents with shotguns back in 1989… but, let’s just say I understand it. (Kidding… Mom & Dad, if you’re reading this… just kidding… I’m a kidder, ask anyone.)

The point is, that as I started planning how I would teach American History to my daughter’s class, I was determined not to be boring even for a moment. The question was… how to accomplish this obviously worthy objective.

You see, to me… there’s nothing as exciting as American History. Even though my parents and teachers did their best to make it as boring as possible, they ultimately failed, because as an adult I found history to be down right sexy. From the moment the Puritans, named because they wanted to “purify” the Christian Church, which at the time had become too liberal for their tastes as a result of King Henry VIII breaking ties with the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church over not allowing divorce and starting his own Protestant Church of England, stepped onto the Mayflower to seek freedom in a new land, Americans have been breaking rules and generally kicking butt in one way or another.

Oh sure, we’ve had our more than our share of shameful periods, the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of African Americans, forcing Japanese Americans into internment camps during WWII, Disco dancing in leisure suits, and many others. But all in all, we’ve moved ahead and been the “good guys”… the land of the free and the home of the brave… where the streets are paved with gold… one nation, under God, indivisible… with liberty and justice for all.

Of course, I understood from the start that were I to begin the school year examining the significance of the Pledge of Allegiance, I’d be run out on a rail, if not by the school itself, then metaphorically, certainly by the kids. So, I decided that I needed something that would grab them from the moment they said goodbye to summer and took their seats to endure yet another school year that at that moment seemingly would never end. I need a “hook,” as they say in the Ad Biz.

And that’s when it hit me: a hook… music. Sixth graders love music. It’s a magical age. It’s the age when you not only know the words to the Top 10 on the radio, but you’re still young enough to join in on a round of “Bingo was his Name-O,” or “Three Cheers for Our Bus Driver”. In my day, we sang “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” or “What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor,” but those aren’t politically correct anymore so, say la vie.

Anyway, I decided to call the year, “Racing Through the Years Through the Music of Our Times”.  I chose “racing,” because it implied that we wouldn’t be going slowly… at 12 years old “slowly” means “boring”.  And when they walked into the classroom on the day in late August, I had a “boom box” set up with a CD player and speakers possibly big enough to blow out the windows in the classroom. You could see from the looks on their faces that they had already started thinking that this was not going to be just another school year.

I began my first class by hitting the play button and the music blared out: “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Aquarius… Aquarius…” I was standing at the front of her class groovin’ and my daughter looked like she was not at all sure that she had been thinking correctly when she had approved me to be teacher of her class.

I lowered the volume and spoke to the class: “When I was your age,” I told them, “I hated having to sit through history class. You know why, right? Because it was sooooo boring, that’s why.”

I think I had them when the music started, but now they were hanging on every word. I went on to explain that when I was their age I listened to and knew all the words to all the hot songs on the radio, just like they do now. And I explained that one of the best ways to understand history is through the music of the times. When I hit the button on the remote control, the next song hit the airwaves, it sang:

“War… huh… Good God, y’all… what is it good for? Absolutely nothing… say it again.”

I waited through a verse or two before turning the volume down and talking about what was happening in the 1960s. The next song was a change of pace, “We shall overcome,” and then Bob Dylan sang, “The Times They Are a Changing”.

When we got to the Watergate years, we heard “The Backstabbers,” and I showed how popular music reflects what’s happening at the time. I gave each one a CD that I had made as part of their first homework assignment. I also told them that when they came to the next class… they would have a “Pop Quiz,” meaning that the answers would be found in the popular songs of the 1960s that were on the CDs I’d given them.

Several classes later, when we were entering the year 1976, I used the opportunity to jump into a musical time machine to travel back to the year 1776 in the City of Philadelphia at the Continental Congress. I was excited to teach the kids about how our nation was started, but I could tell that the music of that day wasn’t going to have the impact of rock and roll. Nowhere close.

I needed an answer that would maintain my credibility as a “cool parent,” and I needed it fast.

I found it in “The Independence Rap”… the headline of this article, you might recall. I wrote “The Independence Rap” and taught it to my students. Then I took them into a recording studio in Studio City, of course, and together we made the video you can watch below.

I learned a lot that year I went back to 6th Grade.

In fact, I’m quite sure I learned a lot more than the kids did. I’ve watched those children grow up from when they were babies… now they’re starting High School.

My beautiful daughter, Taylor, today.

They are our future and we have a responsibility to make sure that the world they live in is the one our Founding Fathers did everything possible to create and protect. It’s our greatest responsibility, in my view… one that we cannot ignore. Without its people, this country is nothing. With its citizens, we will continue to be the beacon of freedom and land of opportunity.

But there’s no question that we are living in and facing trying times. So, in the words of Winston Churchill… Never give up… never give up… never, never, never.

Happy Independence Day Everybody!

And thank you for reading Mandelman Matters… you’re the ones that MATTER most.

Mandelman out.

CLICK IT AND WATCH ME WITH MY 5TH AND 6TH GRADERS AT THE BERKELEY SCHOOL IN FULLERTON, CALIFORNIA!

You can even sing along… I mean “rap” along:

VERSE 1

Way back in the year 1-7-7-6

Our Founding Fathers saw some things they had to fix

So they met up in Philly for some further explanation

On the 4^th of July, they signed a declaration.

CHORUS:

It’s Independence…. That’s independence.

VERSE 2:

Well that’s how our country started and we fought and won the war

We beat the heck out of the British and opened up the door

For other countries to get rid of Queens and Kings

It’s because of what we did that freedom still rings.

CHORUS:

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

VERSE 3:

Then a few years later they made a resolution

To run this country right they would need a constitution

So, locked behind closed doors they prepared for debates and fights

And when they come out we had our very own Bill of Rights.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

VERSE 4:

The first ten rights are how we got our start

They’re totally important and should be taken to heart.

They give us freedom of speech and of the press and our religion

And they’re often the basis for our Supreme Court’s decisions.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

VERSE 5:

Without our Bill of Rights we wouldn’t know where we stand

So to our Founding Fathers we should all give a hand

To John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and the rest

They created a country that is one of the best.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

VERSE 6:

It’s independence that’s important to all of our lives

It’s our freedoms that we hold so dear and we must always strive

To keep our Founding Father’s vision clearly at our core

We’ve come this far because of them and we should all adore.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

VERSE 7: (Rapped, if you can call it that, by me!)

It should never be forgotten and always top our list

It’s our freedoms that we hold so dear, and they would sure be missed

We’ve got to keep up our rep as the place where all are free

It’s our freedoms that matter so much to you, your friends and me.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

It’s Independence…. Our independence.

Re-posted from last year by special request, and because it’s Fathers’ Day!

I’m a father and there’s no father in the whole world happier than I am about being a father.  I love my daughter more than words could ever express, and if I had one wish, without hesitation it would be to be able to relive my life with my daughter over and over for eternity.  Every second I spend with her is the best moment of my life, and I hope we are together forever.

There’s nothing to compare to fatherhood.  In fact, someone once asked me to recount one of my life’s most embarrassing moments, and for a moment I considered telling them about the time…

… It was just after a big rain storm, and I was driving my car with the window open, waiting to turn left at the light, staring out the window, just daydreaming for a moment, head leaning to my left, supported by my hand, and apparently with my mouth open just a bit, when a car turning in the oncoming lane passed through a six or eight inch deep puddle of water that was exactly 90 degrees to the side of the car, soaking me from head to toe, as if standing under a waterfall, but more importantly, filling my mouth with puddle so entirely, so unexpectedly that I believe I lost all composure for several moments.

… Or, there was the time, back in second grade, when I was running extra fast to impress Susie Mulvahill, while playing tag in the playground during recess, when I failed to notice one of the eight inch wide, vertical iron girders that rose from the cement to support the four story tall fire escapes that stood on either side of the old red brick school building that was Wightman School… girders that had been painted black, but should have probably been “Alert Yellow,” and I was running at full speed when I slammed straight into the unforgiving iron and knocked myself out, only to remember being awaken by a teacher and gaggle of classmates all yelling, “wake up!”.

… Or, there was the time when I was eleven and, against the advice and strong objections of my parents, I went swimming far too soon after eating a large Italian Hoagie and… well, maybe we don’t need to talek about that one.  I don’t think we know each other well enough for that one.

Anyway… I decided instead to say that my most embarrassing moments were all of those in which, before my wife and I had a child, someone who did have children invited me into a discussion about raising children… and I participated.  Wooooo-boy… I would not want to learn that any of those discussions had been taped, and I was about to be a guest on “This is Your Life”.  That’s the sort of thing that makes me want to run screaming from the room… even now, as I’m writing this.

There is nothing that compares with having a child.  Nothing even close.  I really don’t believe you know joy, fear or sadness until you have a child… at least I did not.

So, for that… I am happy today.  Very, very happy because I’m a father.

But, it’s hard for me to be happy without thinking about the hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of fathers who while they smile through their day, are also worrying about what will happen tomorrow because they know that, despite their best efforts, they may lose their homes.  And I know that most of them blame themselves for decisions they made during a very different time that now seem so irresponsible or foolish but that then seemed entirely reasonable. And that makes me sick because I understand that it’s not their fault that things have changed so dramatically. They could not have known what was to come. They didn’t do anything wrong, yet they blame themselves.

It’s also not a natural disaster. It’s the fault of a very small, specific and definable group of Wall Street bankers and related financial types… criminals, in my mind, if not in the eyes of the law… that literally plotted to abuse the system to such a degree that what they did for profit has essentially bankrupted millions. They’re not bankrupt, however, they made tens of millions, and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars off of their scheme.

Then when it started to unravel… when Alan Greenspan raised rates 17 times in a row by the summer of 2006 in an effort to cool off an overheated housing market… at the same time something else was about to break… something else that was much harder to see than the houses that would soon start going into foreclosure: the bond market, and specifically the market for mortgage backed securities.

You could say that one triggered the other on top of a mountain of loans designed to be refinanced every couple of years. You see, the bankers designed loans that needed to be refinanced every 2-3 years. That way, they could make more money refinancing loans. They didn’t have to make loans that needed to be refinanced so frequently, they could have made them sustainable loans that someone could keep for 30 years, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as profitable so they made them so they would blow up if not refinanced.

When rates went up, some went into default, and then when the pension plans that had bought Wall Street’s securitized and re-securitized bonds and derivatives realized that the bonds were improperly rated triple A, they dumped them immediately and at fire sale prices. No one trusted the ratings, so no one would buy the bonds, so the banks couldn’t sell their mortgages, so they stopped lending. It was like a 10th Avenue Freeze Out, as The Boss, Bruce Springsteen sings.

So, people were defaulting because rates had risen, and because they had loans that had been designed to need to be refinanced, but there was no refinancing because Wall Street had sold improperly rated bonds and now no one trusted the ratings, so the banks wouldn’t lend because they couldn’t sell the loans to Wall Street because no one wanted the bonds… and the winners were the people who bought credit default swaps… and then there was the leverage… whew! Hold it right there.

Do you see why I’m saying that it wasn’t any father’s fault? Because it wasn’t, and anyone who would like to argue that is welcome to come my way because I’m gunning for the next one who wants to go down.

It wasn’t the borrowers, it was the God damn bankers. And don’t write to me about saying God damn in this situation because I mean specifically that God should damn them. So, if that makes you uncomfortable then read someone else, because you are not welcome here.

When it all happened, the media started blaming the thing they could see, and the bankers pushed the point of view… it was the borrowers who were causing their own plight. It was a lie then and it’s still a lie.

And it’s caused so much pain, and it caused more today, a day when fathers should feel nothing but joy. So, instead of my feeling only joy today, I cried for the fathers who felt guilt and shame and fear inside, while they smiled through their special day. Because they shouldn’t have had to feel any of those things because they didn’t do anything wrong… they didn’t put their family’s home at risk of foreclosure… the Wall Street bankers and catatonic government regulators did that.

Because fathers do anything and everything for their families they love, and one of my readers reminded me of that today by sending me the video below to remind me that I’m fighting for my family and for fathers everywhere. I’ve seen the video before, but the reader who sent it to me reminded me that I am fighting for my family and families everywhere.

Watch it… and then scroll down… there’s more and it matters…

Someone else sent me something today. Danny Schechter, the writer, producer and director of the new movie PLUNDER, contacted me by email today. He had just found Mandelman Matters and he wanted me to watch his film and talk to him about how I could help get the message out about the film.

So, I did. I watched the whole thing and was glued to it the whole time. I stumbled over a couple of things in the beginning, but I stayed with it, and found those things didn’t matter at all.

PLUNDER is the first and only movie that explains what I’ve written hundreds of pages about in a movie that’s 1 hour and 40 minutes long. It’s way better than Michael Moore’s Capitalism – Love Story, if you happened to see that.

And you need to see it. All of you, but especially the fathers out there that are feeling that they let themselves and their families down. If you’re a father… BUY IT!!! If you know a father… BUY IT!!!! If you’re a mother BUY IT!!!! EVERYONE PLEASE BUY IT!!!!

HAVE PARTIES… PLUNDER PARTIES!

INVITE EVERYONE YOU KNOW OVER TO WATCH IT WITH YOU!

LET THE FATHERS AND MOTHERS OF THIS COUNTRY OFF THE HOOK. IT WASN’T THEY WHO CAUSED THIS, IT WAS THE BANKERS. PERIOD. THE END.

HERE’S A TRAILER, AND A LINK TO AMAZON WHERE YOU CAN BUY IT RIGHT NOW FOR LIKE $16. BUY IT. BUY IT. BUY IT FOR YOUR FRIENDS. BUY IT FOR EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

For those of you not yet 50 years old, just so you know, it’s anticlimactic… I feel the same as I did when I turned 40, or 30, for that matter.  No big deal, nothing changes at 50 that I can tell.  Oh sure, I’ve got to lose some of the weight I’ve put on, but that’s not age… that’s blogging.  Blogging will kill you if you’re not careful.

What’s changed is this country.  It’s not at all the same as it’s been throughout my lifetime, in fact it’s very different in quite a few substantive ways… do you feel it too, or is it just me?  It actually has me pretty worried about us… about our future.

A few years ago we were pretty solidly polarized… thanks mostly to cable news stations… we had become a country of red states and blue states, instead of a country with states in every shade of purple, as we’d always been in the past.  I suppose that’s what happens when you allow the line between “news” and “editorial” to blur.

Not that we weren’t politically divided when I was growing up in late 1960s and into the 1970s… we were plenty divided then too.  But we all got our news from the same places back then… Walter Cronkite, Roger Mudd, Huntley and Brinkley (Barbara Walters in 1976 was quite the shock), our daily newspapers… they all brought us the same basic news, and we only divided up over what it meant to us individually.  The “News” was boring back then, even when it was reporting something exciting or terrifying, but it didn’t matter… the “News” wasn’t a profit center back then.

Those days are long gone now.  Since the latter part of the 1990s, we’ve been divided into demographic and psychographic audience segments.  Fox News, with the help of a certain blue dress, transformed us into “liberals” and “conservatives,” on the right, or on the left… and soon that would be replaced with the easier to remember red and blue color divide.  “News” today is rarely boring, and it’s very much its own profit center.

It occurs to me that today, we don’t really get “News” on television anymore.  What we get is programming that’s carefully designed to confirm our existing views of the world.  For example, what’s on Fox News this morning in the “Latest News” category?

1. Paul Ryan Hits Back at Critics of Budget Proposal
2. Clinton Presses Pakistan in Surprise Visit
3. N.J. School, ACLU Agree on Graduation Location
4. Texas Minister Wins Fight Over Memorial Day Prayer
5. Dems Warn Against Cutting Planned Parenthood
6. California Assembly Votes to Limit Immigration Checks

Now let’s see if MSNBC is covering the same events as National News…

1. A New Darfur? 80,000 Flee Sudanese Forces
2. New Consumer Protection Agency Undermined Before it Even Opens
3. Obama Signs Patriot Act Extension
4. Nuclear Reactor Near Twister Cited for Safety Flaws
5. Clinton Visits Pakistan to Repair Relations
6. Failure on Debt Could Spell Trouble for Economy

Now, there are two things that stand out to me when I read those disparate lists of “Top Stories in the News.”

The most obvious thing is that Fox News’ list of top stories plays like a symphony for those on the right… those that identify themselves as conservatives and Republicans.  Paul Ryan hits back, Clinton presses against something yet again, the ACLU is causing trouble as always, thank God the minister won the prayer battle this time, Dems want free abortions, and the California liberals want the illegals to take over this country.

While the MSNBC listing of top stories is obviously designed to tickles the sensibilities of those that consider themselves on the left… Democrats.  Human rights matter – send money to Darfur, Republicans are evil, Warren is Harvard professor, Obama not afraid of what people think, Nuclear power is bad, Thank God for Bill Clinton, Republican controlled congress threatens to block anything the Democrats need to do.

None of that causes me to pause, I could probably write those headlines without actually looking at either of the two sites.  What stops me in my tracks is what isn’t there… in fact it’s nowhere to be found on most days… I’m talking about any news of the financial or foreclosure crises.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d start to wonder if we weren’t having one.

I’ve come to the realization of late, that writing Mandelman Matters and making myself accessible by providing my email or phone number online, I’ve created a large and very fluid focus group of sorts, where I interact with homeowners, attorneys, mortgage industry professionals, and numerous others on a daily basis, through either phone or email.  You could think of it as a front row seat to the most severe economic catastrophe in the history of the world.

So, perhaps that’s why I see what has changed about this country, and why I am so concerned about our collective future.  I’ve been around a while now… that’s the nice thing about being 50, you don’t have to risk being called a “kid” when you claim to have been around the block at least once… and I’ve never seen anything like the dynamics I see converging today.

Join me and I’ll show you what’s happening all around you every day and that represents a real change in the culture of America.  And away we go…

A. As a nation, we are today awash with scammers who target working class homeowners at risk of losing their homes.

We’ve always had con artists in this country.  But today, we have thousands of scammers going after working class homeowners at risk of foreclosure.  I’m talking about people that don’t have much to begin with, and as a result were not normally targeted by scammers, now being literally under attack.

Today, there are an army of ex-mortgage brokers, trained to hunt for working class and lower income elderly homeowners, that are increasingly willing to lie about anything in order to rob homeowners of thousands of dollars by playing on the vulnerability that results from being at risk of foreclosure.

Ever since the mortgage meltdown began, this group has been struggling to find a place to employ their skills.  Some went to work for loan modification companies while others went into debt settlement, or the selling of forensic loan or securitization audits, and the like.

But as of January 30, 2011, the FTC’s new MARS Final Rule took affect, and it made it essentially impossible for mortgage brokers to be involved in loan modifications nationwide, while other new regulations eliminated debt settlement as a place for ex-loan officers to make a living.

This is a group of trained salespeople who are knowledgeable about mortgages, and expert at gaining someone’s confidence in order to get them to write a check, all too often for something that delivers no value to the homeowner.  And it seems that as they’ve become more desperate, they’re less and less worried about getting caught, largely because they’ve learned that that crime does in fact pay.

I would think that just about everyone in this country has learned that bankers or mortgage bankers don’t go to jail most of the time.  To-date, there have been almost no criminal prosecutions as a result of the financial meltdown that has thrown this country into its depression… or deepening recession, if you’d prefer.  And I think the lessons being learned include the reality that crime does in fact, very often, pay.

We used to worship heroes, now we just want to “get away with it.”

B. Mortgage servicers mistreat homeowners in ways never before seen in this country, and yet few seem to care.

In late February of 2009, President Barack Obama, just one month after being inaugurated, announced his Making Home Affordable program that included both refinancing and loan modification components.  It was an acknowledgment by our government that we were in a deep recession that was causing millions of Americans to find themselves at risk of foreclosure, due to no fault of their own.

In fact, President Obama even said in his speech that introduced the program that it wasn’t to reward those that irresponsibly bought homes they couldn’t afford, but rather was going to help those that had done nothing wrong and were being swept up in a deepening recession.  And it was to help 4-7 million American homeowners.

It didn’t help 4-7 million homeowners, it should go without saying, its helped fewer than 600,000 homeowners to-date, and the blame for that shortfall, clearly should be placed on mortgage servicers who have failed to live up to their promises as HAMP contracted providers.

But, even more than that, the servicers continue to be downright abusive towards homeowners.  Servicers routinely lie, break promises they’ve made to homeowners, lose paperwork submitted by homeowners, foreclose improperly on homeowners, break into homes they don’t own, foreclose on active duty military service members in violation of federal laws… the list goes on and on and is at this point, very well documented.

No other business I’ve ever heard about behaves in such ways, treating its customers as if they were… I don’t know… incarcerated criminals.  Because incarcerated criminals get jerked around quite a bit by our criminal justice system, but we seem to be okay with it because after all, they are convicted felons.  But homeowners who are applying for loan modifications, as promised by the President of the United States wouldn’t seem to fall into the same category… and yet they do seem to be treated as if they are in that same category.

And our society seems not to care at all.

C. We’re divided between “irresponsible homeowner” and the “responsible homeowner”.  And they’ve got us looking in each other’s garages to see who is and who isn’t.

My parents never told me that there were two types of homeowner, a responsible one and an irresponsible one.  I was only told that buying a home was the responsible thing to do.

Today, however, in this country we are supposed to believe that are two kinds of homeowners… the responsible kind and the irresponsible kind.  How do you tell the difference?  It’s simple really… the responsible kind aren’t at risk of foreclosure.  The irresponsible kind… are.

You can tell the difference by looking in someone’s garage.  Irresponsible homeowners have jet skis and flat screens… maybe a Hummer in the driveway.  Responsible ones may have these things too, but they’re not at risk of foreclosure, or at least they’re not YET at risk of foreclosure.

Should they become at risk of foreclosure, then they will have fallen into the ranks of the irresponsible homeowner and they too will keep their situation a secret from everyone around them for fear of being branded “irresponsible,” and therefore deserving of their fate.

It’s a strange culture to be a part of, because it shows me an ugly side of human behavior…  the side that is wholly lacking compassion for one’s fellow man.  To participate, would require me to ignore everything that’s happened since our economy slid into a deep recession, and the causes of that downward slide, and focus on my neighbor as being a part of that problem, even though my neighbor may only be guilty of losing a job, or buying a home at the wrong moment in time with a loan that should never have been offered in the first place.

D. A representative democracy made up of elected representatives that no longer seem to be all that concerned about those they represent.

Our politicians, it seems to me, used to appear as if they were trying to represent the wants and needs of their constituents.  Maybe they were only pandering to our wants and needs, but at least they felt the need to pander.

Today, our elected representatives appear to be representing some other entity, maybe their political party, or some other special interest group or lobby, but certainly not those that voted them into office in the first place.  It’s as if they have come to believe that what they’re doing is over our collective head, that they know what’s best for the rest of us, and that whatever we think is important… well, isn’t.

Nowhere is this more evident than when it comes to the foreclosure crisis, or the abominable behavior of mortgage servicers, or what the Wall Street bankers have done to cause our economy to fall off a cliff.  When it comes to these topics our elected officials have little or nothing to say.  In point of fact, the last time we heard from our president about the foreclosure crisis was the third week of February 2009.

Our government pumped over $13 trillion into our nation’s banks since the fall of 2008, but no one has much of anything to say about that?  Our nation’s largest banks were caught “robo-signing” affidavits to be fraudulently presented in our courts… and not a word?  The OCC, OTS and Federal Reserve just completed an investigation of mortgage servicers and they concluded that their practices are absolutely awful for everyone involved, but nary a word about that either?  Soldiers on active duty military losing their homes to foreclosure in violation of federal law, and little more than a sound bite or two on even that egregious act?

And when someone in our government does acknowledge that there have been people foreclosed upon improperly, what has actually been allowed to transpire seems to be entirely lost on them.  “Someone has been foreclosed upon improperly,’ is another way of saying that someone has lost their home who should not have lost their home!  It’s hard to think of anything, short of someone being denied medical care, that’s more horrific than that, and yet it is treated like just another thing that sometimes happens in this country.

At the end of it all, it seems to me that this country has very significantly changed as a result of the economic meltdown that began in 2007, and took center stage in the fall of 2008.  We lost trust, compassion and confidence in our leadership… and we’ve given up, in many ways, on our democratic process being capable of change… we no longer feel part of our government, and we’re seem resigned to all of it… as if “it” has taken on a life of its own and is not just a manifestation of “us”.

Some scammer rips off homeowner for five grand and no one really cares.  Homeowner loses home to foreclosure that shouldn’t have, or because their bank lied to them, and few show any compassion for their plight.  And our politicians obviously care more about those who fund their campaigns than about the voters who elect them, but we feel like there’s nothing we can do about that either.

And in light of all of this, our mainstream media is still playing to the red or the blue?  Do most of us even care about that distinction anymore?

It’s a sad state of affairs.  I don’t remember my country being like this at any time in the past.  And I wonder if this is all part of “the new normal,” nothing more than the unavoidable outcome of what has transpired.  It’s a scary thought, don’t you think, that going forward… this is it?

Or, maybe it’s just me.

Mandelman out.

Reposted in honor of Steeler’s fans everywhere…

It’s a terrible thing, but truth be told, I’m not much of a sports fan anymore. Haven’t been since 1980, the year I turned nineteen and left my childhood home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to join the United States Air Force. It’s not that I don’t like sports, I do. I love to play just about all of them. (I can do without ice hockey, so sue me.)

But watching them… well, it’s just never been the same as it once was, back in the days when the Pittsburgh Steelers dominated the NFL, and commanded the attention, respect and adoration of a city to such a degree that no one who was there could ever possibly forget it even for a moment. Pittsburgh was a single city, but it was still a case of the best of times, and the worst of times.

Between 1972 and 1980, the Pittsburgh Steelers, under the leadership of Coach Chuck Noll, won eight divisional championships and four, count them, four Super Bowl championships. I was eleven years old in 1972 when they won the AFC divisional playoffs for the first time ever. It was the first time I remember hearing the unforgettably nasal voice of Pittsburgh’s most famous and beloved sportscaster, Myron Cope, who passed away last year, and so didn’t live to see his team win their sixth Super Bowl championship. That was the year of the “immaculate reception,” the play that some call “the greatest play of all time”.

The year 1972 was the beginning of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ dynasty. Franco Harris caught the ball that bounced off of Jack Tatum, who played for the Oakland Raiders, the team we hated more than any other by far. He ran for a touchdown and Raiders fans have been whining about it ever since. Raider’s coach, John Madden has said that he’ll never get over that play. (As a Steelers fan, all I can think to say is: So?)

I was almost nineteen when, in 1980 against the Los Angeles Rams, they became the first team to win four Super Bowls and Terry Bradshaw became the first to win back-to-back MVPs since Bart Starr in Super Bowl’s I & II. The Steelers beat the L.A. Rams 31-19 that year, coming from behind twice. Bradshaw threw for over 300 yards that day, and two touchdowns. He completed 14 out of 21 passes. He was a God.

I like to tell my friends who did not grow up in Pittsburgh: “We had Super Bowl parties like you guys had Halloween.”

In the Steelers, we didn’t just have a team for which to root… we had heroes that went into battle in defense of our city on Sunday afternoons. In bitter cold and blinding snow we cheered, not just our team, but each individual player… we knew them all by name, by face, and by number. They were ours, and we were theirs.

Of course, before this year’s Steeler victory over the Arizona Cardinals (I could have sworn they were a base ball team, by the way) both Dallas and San Francisco had won the same number of Super Bowl titles, but neither record can really be compared. No team in NFL history can stand along side the Pittsburgh Steelers in terms of stability in ownership, coaching and playing style.

The Steelers didn’t have an “owner,” they belonged to the City of Pittsburgh. Instead they had a “founder,” Mr. Art Rooney, who started the team in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, and whose family still owns the team today. I hope they always will.

All told, 22 of our Steelers played in all four Super Bowls, and nine of those players were later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The first time they won was in 1975 and I was fourteen, just starting High School. That was the year that Myron Cope was asked to come up with a “gimmick”. And the “Terrible Towel” was born.

Then, the following year, when I was in tenth grade, the Steelers won again. It was 1976… the year of the country’s Bicentennial… which was nice and all, but it was no Steelers Super Bowl back-to-back victory. We poured out of our homes and into the streets toilet papering everything that didn’t move out of the way.

They didn’t win in 1977 or 1978, but we knew that at any moment they could be back on top, so every game was super to us. And then in 1979, my last year in High School, and again in 1980… our Steelers showed the world that they were as strong as the steel city ever was… and the feeling was one of indescribable elation.

The Steelers didn’t have just a defense… they had a “Steel Curtain”. And it was, in our eyes, impenetrable. When it snowed, and boy did it snow in the Pittsburgh of the 1970s… it was awe-inspiring. The Steel Curtain would line up, like warriors preparing to do battle under unbearable conditions. You could see their muscles flex and feel them ache, and you knew that no matter what, our Steelers would never give up. They were playing for us… fighting for us. And in return, we’d never turn our backs on them… we’d sit through sub-zero temperatures and frostbite inducing wind… win or lose… we’d come home proud.

And that feeling of pride was much needed in the Pittsburgh of my youth, because it was a time when so many of our city’s residents weren’t feeling very proud at all. It was the end of the American steel industry, and for the hundreds of thousands of Pittsburgh’s iron and steel workers, whose fathers and grandfathers had worked in the mills, the mines and on the barges before them, it must have felt like the world was coming to an end.

Pittsburgh’s industrial demise meant massive unemployment, and coupled with the nationwide recession of the late 1970s, the impact was nothing short of devastating to Pittsburgh’s economy. When I applied for a job at a fast food restaurant in 1978, the manager who took my application just smiled kindly as he said: “I’m sorry son, those jobs are for men with families.” And I understood.

The money problems were only part of the story. Once proud and mighty steel workers who had helped to build our nation, had been robbed of their livelihoods, but worse than that, they had been stripped of their self worth. And you could see it in their eyes as they drove the busses and cabs, took your ticket at the movies, and stood in line for day labor jobs… none of which paid half what they had earned stoking the blast furnaces of Pittsburgh’s fiery steel mills that used to run 24 hours a day, every singled day of the year… except on Christmas.

I didn’t grow up as a part of “that Pittsburgh”. I grew up in another Pittsburgh, a well-to-do, tree-lined Pittsburgh, with large, stately homes made of brick and stone that had been built by the Robber Barons of the Industrial Age. Men like Frick, Mellon and Andrew Carnegie. No, the Pittsburgh I grew up in seemed a million miles away from the mills, mines and barges. We knew “they” were there, we saw the lines cut into their weathered faces… and we were taught to respect them and feel deep compassion, but we had little in common with the lives they had known or now were forced to know starting in the 1970s.

As a kid, I couldn’t have fully understood the implications of what was really happening… Of being left behind by a society that simply no longer needs you.

Throughout the 1970s, the U.S. economy felt recessionary. But when the steel industry left our shores for Japan, it took a lot of Pittsburgh’s pride with it… and for that part of the city, it would never return. Even today, with Pittsburgh now a vibrant cultural Mecca, dominated by its universities and world famous medical centers, it still feels like a city living with a dual economy. Some of the people, those whose histories are in the mills and mines are still there… and you can seem them… walking across the bridges, staring down the rivers and dreaming of the days when they watched the men steer the barges of coal which fired the mills that made the metals that built the nation… of which we were all taught to be so proud.

As we slide towards increasingly difficult economic times, I am haunted by my memories of the Pittsburgh from my youth. A city divided by economic realities beyond anyone’s control… or comprehension. A feeling of loss that never quite went away… except, of course, on Sunday afternoons when, for a few hours anyway, the only things that were “terrible,” were the towels.

Read Along With Me, With Rhythm & Rhyme… Introducing the 1979 Pittsburgh Steelers.

Jack Lambert, Jack Ham, Rocky Bleier, Donnie Shell, Franco Harris, Mean Joe Greene, Mel Blount and Theo Bell.

Mike Wagner, Ron Johnson, John Banaszak, and Lynn Swan. Larry Anderson, John Stallworth, Craig Colquitt, and Greg Hawthorne.

Bennie Cunningham and Jim Smith, Randy Grossman, Robin Cole. Dwayne Woodruff, Dennis Winston, and Rick Moser all had soul.

Larry Anderson and Sidney Thornton could be seen around the town, and everybody cheered when they saw Larry Brown.

Anthony Anderson, Mike Kruczek and who else, well, let me see… Oh, of course, Terry Bradshaw and Matt Bahr… kicking for three!

Now watch this short segment on ABC News on the Terrible Towel’s legacy… it’s really worth it… I think.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=6824255

IN CASE YOUR INTERESTED

At 49 years old, and having originally founded my firm back in 1989, it’s been some time since I’ve been asked for a resume, as one might imagine. So, it’s also about time to commemorate what’s gone on over the last twenty years, and I have to tell anyone reading this, it’s gone by in a flash.

I started my firm in 1989, back then it was called The Marketing Workshop, and it was to be a marketing communications agency that would use the disciplines of direct marketing, disciplines that had only recently emerged along with the advent of the personal computer… the Macintosh had only been on the market for four years, and DOS was… well, DOS.

Prior to the Mac, it wouldn’t have been possible to start an agency like the one I envisioned back then. I had worked at midsize and larger agencies prior to starting my own firm, and they had millions invested in equipment that was used by the various “creatives” to create the artwork that would become the print, television, mail packages, and radio ads that the clients depended on to drive their sales and build their brands. With the Mac, you still needed education, talent and experience to be great, but the cost to create went way down.

The idea of The Marketing Workshop was that it would be a “workshop,” a place where clients could come in and work directly with their creative team, as opposed to the “closed door” agencies that would never think of letting clients interact directly with creative types. It would also be a place that would build campaigns that would elicit a direct response, as opposed to merely increasing awareness, as was the norm for ad agencies of the day.

Direct response, back then, was the ugly step-child to the general advertising world. They made ads that increased awareness, while direct marketers slapped 800 numbers all over everything, and asked that people respond directly to the message they saw. How crass, was the thinking at the time. It’s funny, but then ad spending was 90% general advertising, and 10% direct marketing. Today, it’s completely reversed itself, and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t 99% direct and 1% general advertising. Few companies today want to spend money advertising without eliciting a response of some kind.

In 1989, I was one of the early innovators, in the sense that I didn’t see why the two advertising disciplines had to be mutually exclusive. Why couldn’t a given ad build image and awareness AND elicit a direct response? Why could ads always do both? That’s what clients wanted ads to do, of that there was little question.

What made me different, I knew from my experience at general and direct response advertising agencies, was that I was two things too. I was considered a very creative writer and strategic thinker, but I was also an economics major with a background in finance and accounting, who could understand the business case behind each client’s needs and objectives. I had worked as an account executive and as a copywriter, and I was equally comfortable in either role… and there certainly weren’t a lot of people who would say that.

The final differentiator that I planned to take advantage of when I started The Marketing Workshop was that my agency would have a deep bench in terms of technical and industry knowledge. I had been working in the health care communications area, and no one knew more than I did about how to communicate and market various health care related initiatives. From HMOs to PPOs… from the Point of Sale products to the Medicare-risk models, I made sure that I and everyone that worked for me, would know more about our client’s businesses than they did.

So, The Marketing Workshop was born in November of 1989, and it was just as I had envisioned it. We were a highly creative, direct response agency staffed by people with expertise and knowledge in health care marketing that was essentially unrivaled by any of our competitors. And we didn’t need a layer of account executive suits stopping clients from working with their creative team… we were a true “workshop,” and we would win because we were smarter and worked harder.

And it worked… very well. In fact, it was so well received that we finished our first year with $1.6 million in gross sales, and went into year two looking to double our size, which we also did a year later. Our first health care client was FHP Health Care, a company that in part due to our work, grew from being a small regional player to being the largest or second largest managed care organizations in the country.

That kind of visibility and success drove other health care organizations directly into our now very capable hands, and in part because we required no training curve, and because the campaigns we were creating were working, we started to build a client list of some of the largest health care and insurance companies in the country. Kaiser Pernanente, Blue Shield, Blue Cross, Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, Pridential, New York Life, and many others. We also started attracting ancillary health care companies, like hospitals, and then physician groups, which were then forming as IPAs, Independent Physician Associations, so that the doctors could negotiate more collectively.

Four years into The Marketing Workshop, we were doing something like $8 million in gross annual billings, and we had 72 employees at our peak, I believe. We now had clients that went beyond health care, to things like retail sales… Warner Bros. had engaged our firm to help with the opening of the Warner Bros. Studio Stores, that would soon be found in malls over the globe.

Back to School…

I had gone back to graduate school during those years, getting my MBA at Pepperdine University’s prestigious Presidential/Key Executive program, and then completing a second masters program at the University of Misourri at Kansas City’s Block School of Business, which was focused on direct marketing and market research. It was a highly specialized program that had started at Oxford University in England and then had come to Harvard, before being funded by H&R Block, and brought to UMKC.

Kansas City is a Mecca for direct marketers, with such organizations as Sprint, Hallmark, H&R Block, Cerner Corporation, Waddell & Reed, Dairy Farmers of America, AMC Entertainment, and numerous others, to say nothing of the Chicago and St. Louis headquartered companies that were a hop, skip and a jump away, including Sears, which at that time was still the largest cataloguer in the world. The faculty was what drove me to attend the program, and I’m proud and fortunate to say that I took classes from Bob Stone, of Stone and Adler fame, and learned everything he was willing to teach and then some. I even danced cheek to cheek with him at graduation, and can probably still find the photos to prove it, if challenged to do so.

Bob Stone in one of the founders of direct marketing as we know it today. His work spans four decades. His book, Successful Direct Marketing Methods, in its sixth edition with over 150,000 copies in print, is considered the definitive work in the field. He is a senior Fellow at the International Society for Strategic Marketing, and a member of the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame in New York City.

He’s won countless awards, including two gold Echo Awards, and the John Caples Award for Copy Excellence. He’s also the former Director of the Direct Marketing Association and the former President of the Chicago Direct Marketing Association. He teaches at Northwestern and at UMKC’s Block School of Business, and has lectured all over the world.

Other members of the faculty included Martin Baier, who is regarded as one of the fifty leading direct marketing thinkers, practitioners, and educators of the past hundred years. He is Founder of the Center for Direct Marketing Education and Research at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and currently is Adjunct Professor in The College of Business at James Madison University.

And I was fortunate to have Joan Throckmortin as my creative and strategic copywriting professor. Joan assed away a few years ago at the age of 71, but she was one of the greatest direct marketing copywriters in this history of advertising. Throughout her career she worked for Doubleday, American Heritage, and Time Inc., where she launched many of the product lines that are household names today, including Sports Illustrated, and the Life Picture Cookbooks. At Time Inc. she was the assistant to the Chairman of the Board. Business Week named Joan as one of the “Top 100 Corporate Women in America.”

It was an education made exponentially more powerful by being able to apply what I was learning to real life situations as my agency was now the 8th largest in Southern California, with a client roster made up of many on the Fortune 500. Upon graduation from UMKC, I now not only had one of the most successful direct marketing and strategic communication firms in Southern California, but I also had learned about marketing and market research from the undisputed best the world had to offer. I was not yet 35 years old, and the only thing I hadn’t yet done was fail.

The Marketing Workshop ended in 1995 when a partner turned out to be less than honorable. I fought it in the courts for eight months before making the decision to do what we should have done in Viet Nam… I declared myself a winner and quit. Those eight months fighting an unscrupulous ex-partner were miserable at the time, but I would soon come to view them as an education in business litigation that one couldn’t hope to get in four years at Harvard Law. The day I stopped fighting, I started the firm that would ultimately become The 4th Floor.

Ice, Ice Baby…

I decided to start my new company in an abandoned ice house, the second largest and the oldest ice house in California. Originally built in 1902, it had been abandoned for many years and was literally on the wrong side of the tracks… sitting along side the railroad line in Fullerton, California where it once was used to load ice onto the railroad cars that were taking oranges and walnuts all over the United States from the groves of Orange County.

I spent well over a million and a half dollars refurbishing the ice house, transforming it into one of the most dramatic ad agency working environments anywhere. It was featured in How Magazine, a magazine devoted to excellence in design. In our conference room, everything was suspended in mid air, including the bright yellow roman columns, and a bright red British phone booth, complete with functioning telephone. The conference room had windows and a dramatic archway, also painted bright red, but it had no walls.

In the middle of The Big Room, we had a badminton court, a game I still love today, although I don’t play nearly often enough. As far as creativity went, we were the cat’s meow. Clients would come to tour our facility, and marvel at where we worked each day.

I started a program for corporate executives called Creative College, and we taught teams of executives how to think and plan strategically and creatively. We also became the Home of the Corporate Blusical, and wrote Songs in the Key of Business for some of the largest corporations in the world who hired us to create transformational communications campaigns that were responsible for monumental changes in internal cultures and external marketing programs.

We stayed in the ice house for two and one half years, which was long enough for me to lose two and one half million dollars. It’s not that we were not successful in terms of the work we were doing, but there were several forces at play, and as I’ve said many times since then… you learn a lot more on the way down then you do on the way up.

For one thing, our base expertise in health care communications, that had fueled our growth since 1989, wasn’t producing the results it always had, and I learned from that experience that you have to look as carefully at external market forces as you do at your internal competencies. The heath care industry was growing, sort of, but it had reached the point where the industry leaders would look to grow through acquisition, as opposed to organically. We did catch on after the first year in operation, and landed several high profile clients, including Safeguard Dental Health Plans, Blue Cross of Ohio and Indiana, and even American Honda Motor Company.

We worked on strategic communications for Safeguard and successfully helped the company transform itself from a fixed cost heavy, staff model dental HMO, to a lean and profitable marketer of managed care dental management services. Working with attorneys from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and accountants from Deloitte, we created both the consumer brand and direct marketing campaigns, and the investor relations initiatives. The company’s stock price went from $11 a share when we took over the account, to $22 a share when it was sold to John Hancock a year and a half later.

The ice house was a labor of love, but a costly one, and at a certain point you just don’t love what is bleeding you dry every day in terms of expenses. A 1902 ice house is like a drug habit, you have to feed it every day, and it never goes away. Having lost enough money on a facility that clients thought was cool, but not cool enough to pay a premium for, I made the decision to cut my losses and we moved onto the fourth floor of the Chapman Building, a beautiful 1922 bank building just a mile or so away from the ice house.

As office buildings go, the Chapman Building had character, and you could open the windows, which we all thought was quite important because we liked to hang around after work on occasion drinking Sidecars, which I explained to my staff, was the only civilized way to drink cognac in extreme heat… and smoking fine cigars.

It was the beginning of the dot-com craze of the latter half of the 1990s, and nothing made sense anymore. As a strategist, I found myself so out of step with what was going on in business that I wasn’t sure my education would ever pay off. It was to be a “new economy,” in which profits didn’t matter, only the monetization of eyeballs was to be the goal.

It was a bunch of crap that never made a lick of sense, and I was writing papers forecasting the popping of the bubble in 1998, while most everyone else was still reading Fast Company and looking for shares in the next nonsensical IPO… which by the way, as I tried in vain to tell countless others, stands for “It’s probably overpriced”.

When the bubble popped it was April 10, 2000. I remember it like it was yesterday because I was at San Jose airport, of all places, ground zero for the popping of the tech bubble. I was boarding a plane to come home from meetings at our client Satellite Health Services, a company we had helped to strategically diversify from being a leading dialysis provider, into a group of companies that included a laboratory division, and a capital division, that invested in emerging medical technologies.

After the bubble popped, most companies were wrecked in one way or another, but we came through unscathed, in fact stronger than ever. Most of my team had now been with me for going on a decade, and we were capable of doing more and better work than any firm in our field. We now had clients that included Bain & Company, Arthur J. Gallagher, AXA Equitable, Kaiser Permanente, among others I can’t recall off hand. We were in a way happy that the bubble had popped and fundamental principles of economics were again important in business.

In 2000, I wrote a paper titled: How Digital Technology Has Changed the Face and Increased the Power of Mass Communications, and it was to transform the medium of communications with which we would work.

The paper explained that hundreds of years ago there had been media kings with names like King Henry and King George. They had thought that they derived their power from their armies and their money, but they would soon learn that their real power came from their control of the media, which at that time meant sending men around on horseback to read a proclamation to those assembled in the town square.

Then a man named Guttenberg invented the printing press, and it put the power of mass communication in the hands of the common man. Years later a man named Thomas Paine would write a pamphlet titled “Common Sense” and one revolution after another would take place as a result, first here in the colonies, and later in France. Another hundred years later a man named Karl Marx would write The Communist Manifesto, and yet another revolution would bring an end to monarchies as the most common form of government on this planet.

Then we would see technology leap ahead once again with the invention of radio and then television, and after the Presidential debates of 1960, television would be the medium that could win or lose the White House. But television was expensive, and over the last thirty years, we’ve seen the creation of a new group of media kings, but now their names were Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone and Barry Diller, to name but a few.

The key point of my paper was that now the Internet and digital video technology would combine to put the power of television into the hands of the common man, and the effect would be no less dramatic that what was made possible by the printing press four hundred and some odd years ago. It would, my paper explained, change the way the President of the United States was elected. No longer would money necessarily have to come from the established sources, and no longer would control of the airwaves control the outcome of a presidential campaign.

My paper of the year 2000 wouldn’t come true until years later in 2008 when an unknown African American by the name of Barack Obama would harness the power of digital technology and the Internet to become the 44th President of the United States.

What my paper concluded, however, had profound implications to The 4th Floor in the year 2000, however, because it meant that we could now afford to have our own television production center, and what we produced could be distributed, if not via broadcast television, then at least streaming on the World Wide Web, or on DVD, which stands for Digital Versatile Disk, few people realize.

We invested in the technology and went out to win our first client that would understand the power of being able to produce what you might otherwise see on television, but produce it at a fraction of the cost.

Just like the Mac had done years before, we could now use it along with new compression technologies to create movies and video programming that could influence at a whole new level, and at a cost never before contemplated. Truth be told, if one had the talent, the knowledge and the experience, you could now create a major motion picture or a broadcast quality television program in a studio and with equipment that was one tenth of what it had cost in past years.

We were already expert and experienced in working in any medium, including video, having produced award winning television commercials years before, and now we would have greater control and be able to offer the medium as a means to achieving objectives that would have never afforded the medium before.

Our first client was Kaiser Permanente, and our challenge was to produce a program that would attract a segment of the audience to Kaiser Permanente that had never even considered Kaiser Permanente in the past. It was a difficult objective, we realized, but we were thrilled by the challenge and confident that we would succeed… and we did, eventually. The project was plagued from the very first day by two unseen forces. For one thing, the new technologies were buggy and didn’t always do what they promised to do on the box, as it were. And for another, the change over from analog to digital was painful for the industry. People that had millions invested in technology that would soon be outdayed were being challenged by lower cost start-ups and they didn’t like it one bit.

We had a $300,000 budget and should have had a 33% gross margin, but when all was said and done, we lost money… a lot of money. And we delivered the final project late, four months late. The only redeeming factor was that the end project was exceptional work and the program achieved its difficult objective. In fact, when the 29 minute program was premiered in front of 500 physicians at a conference in Dana Point, California, it received a standing ovation. I remember all I could do was wave at the crowd in appreciation… I had tears in my eyes and couldn’t have said a word.

That was late June of 2001, and after losing roughly $250,000, I did what entrepreneurs do on occasion after a long and hard march to financial failure, I went home to bed and didn’t get out of my bathrobe for weeks. Luckily for me, I bounce well, but when I was finally ready to shave again, I didn’t go straight back to the office. I went to visit video production facilities throughout Southern California, and I went to learn all I could about the new technologies. I needed to learn to edit with the new tools so I wouldn’t be at the mercy of market forces beyond my control.

I wrote numerous white papers that I sent out to CEOs all over the country. I repositioned my firm and developed new collateral materials to carry the new message. I was ready to launch but decided first I would take my family on a summer vacation. We returned ready to conquer new horizons… it was late in August. 2001.

I remember our home phone ringing at six o’clock in the morning. It was a close friend of mine and he sounded frantic. “We’re being attacked,” he stammered, “turn on CNN!” I grabbed for the remote and clicked the television on… Oh my God.

Our daughter was five, she had school and her teacher had said to go ahead and bring the kids in. They would keep them distracted. They were too young to understand what was happening… hell, I remember thinking that I was too young to understand what was happening.

Our economy was already suffering from the recession caused by the bubble having popped in April of 2000, and now this. I’ve always felt a little guilty that my first thought upon seeing the first tower fall was that this would mean a delay in launching my company’s new strategy… we had lost a lot on our last project and this just wasn’t was needed at all.

Of course, that only lasted for a moment and my wife and I never left the bedroom television set for the rest of the day. It was horrific and no one will ever forget what they saw on that day, in part because we saw it played over and over and over. The people jumping from the top of the World Trade Center with their arms crossed or holding hands was frankly too much to bear.

The next eight or so months were terrible for my firm, but we weren’t alone. We got by somehow, I really don’t know exactly how, but we did. We took on clients that we shouldn’t have and ended up giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars in work for a fraction of its true cost. But we made it, and maybe eight months later we got a call from the CEO of a company that was a large financial services firm. He had read one of the white papers that I had written and sent out months before. In fact, the company was the number one provider of non-qualified deferred compensation plans, TBG Financial.

“We have absolutely no experience with nonqualified deferred compensation plans,” is what I said a few days later while standing in TBG’s conference room on one of the top floors of the Century City towers late on a Tuesday afternoon. “But we’re definitely the right company to learn about them, because we’re the right company to learn about anything.”

Over the years, The 4th Floor had attracted a group of professionals that were simply smarter and worked harder to be great than any firm I’ve ever seen or heard about. One year, we had very successfully launched “interventional nephrology” to the scientific community. We were arguably the most knowledgeable heath care communications strategy firm in the country. We had won hundreds of awards, and most recently had mastered the new technologies that allowed us to deliver broadcast quality programming that consistently had proven itself more than just effective.

We went to work for TBG as of that day, and within a few months, I authored and we published a series of white papers that are still easy to find online to this day. I also wrote the book, “The Simplified Guide to Nonqualified Deferred Compensation,” and it was a major success. We had, in less than four months, learned more about executive compensation plan design, and about the many strategies for the informal funding of such programs, that we were now the leading experts in what was a multi-billion dollar, highly specialized field.

Soon our work was noticed by JPMorgan, and then Merrill Lynch… and then by Nationwide Insurance, and then by AXA Equitable, and then Lloyd’s of London… all of whom would become clients of The 4th Floor at the CEO or C-Suite level. I was asked to be the key note speaker at all of their annual conferences.

At Arthur J. Gallagher, where we were brought in by the C-Suite executives, including Patrick Gallagher Sr., I was the kep note at their President’s conference two years in a row. We had simply gained the same level of knowledge in the financial services space that we had developed over many years in the health care industry, and now we were fast becoming know for being able to develop strategy and produce tactics for any company on the planet.

We also found that we could be effective using the new digital video technology level to support major litigation, to help labor law firms stop unionization drives, to even conduct research and produce strategic marketing briefs for AON, Bain & Company, and others.

One of the areas that we dominated was the realm of the RFP (“Request for Proposal”), and creating the written proposals that were depended on to either win or lose tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars by those that make up the Fortune 500. We were… and are… simply the best at winning these high stakes competitions, and there was no shortage of companies that wanted and needed our help.

In 2005, I decided to write another book, this time the title was: “RFP NATION – How to Win New Business in Our Proposal Driven World,” or something to that affect. I immediately was asked to speak on the subject at a plethora of professional conferences, including those held by the American Institute for Certified Public Accountants, and numerous others similar organizations.

My travel schedule was brutal. I was always on an airplane, it seemed, and I was getting tired of it. We launched a new company and developed some new and exciting strategies for the financial services sector, mostly for AXA Equitable in New York, the Arthur J. Gallagher Company in Chicago, and Nationwide, which is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

I was still flying around speaking to groups of lawyers and accountants and we were ready to launch a new investment discipline we called Target Income Planning. It was about creating safe and predictable retirement income, something sorely needed by the baby boomer generation that is fast approaching their retirement years.

Then it was September 17th, 2008. Next thing I knew, Lehman Bros. was filing bankruptcy, and Wall Street would never look the same. I had known there would be a meltdown in the near future, in fact I had been writing about what was happening on Wall Street and why it was happening for close to a year, but even I hadn’t counted on our government being so incredibly inept in their response.

I knew I would have to delay the launch of Target Income Planning. I knew it would take some time before anyone would be ready to talk about saving for retirement again… the stock market was in a freefall, and I remembered that after the 2000 bubble had popped, it was a year or two before most people gave up on the idea that “it was coming back”.

To be entirely candid, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do instead, and after Barack Obama won the election, and I learned that he had been the first presidential candidate to harness the poser of Web 2.0 technology, I started doing a little reading on the new technology… and by a little I mean I became obsessed with learning about the new ways to communicate with the world.

Two months later, last Christmas, I launched my first blog on MSNBC’s Newsvine, where I quickly rose to the top of the list of popular columnists and a few months after that, Mandelman Matters was born. Then The Niche Report magazine sent me an email asking me if I would write for them too.

Almost a year later and I’ve written over 360 articles on the foreclosure crisis, loan modifications, and the economy and the political folly that continues to botch the recovery in the rich tradition of Herbert Hoover and FDR. And I’ve had millions of readers, which is not The New York Times, or anything, but it’s not chopped liver either.

Today, I’m committed to being a advocate for homeowners. I’m offended by what the banks have done, and by the way they’ve responded, and I’m shocked by the ongoing ineptitude of our federal and state governments as they’ve botched one attempt after another to stop the spread, or at least stem the tide of foreclosures, allowing the freefall in our housing markets to continue unchecked, and our economy to continue its deflationary collapse.

I’m committed to doing everything I can over the next year to make a difference by spreading the message to homeowners that we have to make noise if we expect our government to act. We must tell our elected representatives that if they continue to vote as the banking lobby wants them to, then there isn’t enough money in the world to get them reelected, but it they vote for the people, they won’t need the banking lobby’s money to get reelected.

I want people to know that it’s not their fault. That no one saw The Great Depression Part 2 around the corner. I want to help heal the shame that binds millions of American homeowners in order to help shorten this crisis even if by a single day.

Twenty years ago I founded a firm that would engineer persuasive communication in order to shatter paradigms, shift attitudes, and change behavior. And if success is measured only in monetary terms then there have been many more successful ventures than my own. But if, however, success is measured by a hunger for lifetime learning and a dedication to doing breakthrough work of which you are proud, then I think The 4th Floor and those that have been a part of it are a resounding success. And I’m proud to have led that team through the ups and downs, and proud of the work that we’ve done together.

What’s next… make a difference that matters, of course.

Martin

~~~

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It was one year ago that The Niche Report magazine’s publishers, Robert and David Pegg, offered me my very own monthly column. Feeling a little taken with myself at the time, I demanded the very last page in the magazine, right before the inside back cover… mostly because I’ve always fancied myself the “While You Were Out by Stanley Bing” type… and “Bringing Up the Rear” was born.  (Actually, by “demanded,” I meant that I asked nicely, and since they’re two of the nicest guys on the planet, they said sure.  I think I replaced the Index.)

Every month, I’d bring up a new REAR, at the END of the magazine, pointing out who was underwhelming me for one reason or another.  Hey, you gotta’ have a hobby.  And besides, with the year we were having I figured the darn thing would practically write itself.

I want to tell everyone that has read me throughout the year how much I appreciate them… their comments and emails… they’ve all been wonderful, for the most part… LOL… Your response to my column has made this past year one that I’ll remember fondly for the rest of my life.  Really, thank you all very much.

And I’d also like to most sincerely thank Robert and David Pegg, the two brothers that publish The Niche Report magazine, for putting up with me when I was pushing the deadline, and they were holding the presses, and because they never edited me once… that’s right, they never once told me that I couldn’t write what I wanted to write, and that takes a lot of guts in this day and age.

Throughout the year, I’ve chastised Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, Edward Yingling, the President of the American Bankers Association, John Coursen, the President of the Mortgage Bankers Association, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, although I keep flip-flopping on whether I like her or not, Treasury Secretary Tim “Transparency” Geithner, Lord Blankcheck/Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, Howard Miller, President of the California Bar Association, Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr, FTC Chair Jon Leibowitz, Ex-Chief Credit Officer Ed Pinto, The Banksters, all of them, and even President Barack Obama to kick off 2010… for which some jackass actually accused me of being a racist.

So, since this is my 1 Year Anniversary of Bringing Up the Rear, I thought it only fitting that this month’s REAR would be… ME!  So… here’s to hoping that you’ll keep reading me this next year.  There are so many REARS that I haven’t touched yet… actually, that didn’t come out exactly right.  Maybe I should just shut up and get to this month’s column…

Bringing Up the Rear: Starring This Month’s Rear: Me, Martin Andelman

You know, I’ve spent a lot of time this past year darn near speechless at what’s been happening in this country.  I don’t know whether you’ve realized it or not, but we’ve blown right through whatever tipping point there was, and we are going down where we’ll stay for some time.  In fact, the next time this country feels anything like what I’ve seen over the last 30 years could very well be after I’m gone… and I just turned 49 years old.

All the stupid talk about “double dips” was starting to get to me anyway.  Does anyone actually buy any of that garbage?  Like the recession ended sometime this past year, but I’m just not able to tell, is that what I’m supposed to believe Professor Bernanke?  Yeah, it’s weird because I had no trouble discerning when it started.  You guys inside the Beltway may be so insulated that you need to check with your mega-computer to figure out such things, but me… no problem.  So in case of a power failure, feel free.  I’m here for you.

The thing is, I’ve had some time to really think about this meltdown and I’ve got to say… this one has made me a lot smarter.  All I learned from the last bubble popping was not to buy a stock with a 400 P/E whose business model involves shipping 50 pounds of kibble across the country overnight for free.  Not all that handy for anything I’ve seen since, so it’s not exactly knowledge I expect to put to work anytime soon.

And the bubble before that?  I believe the key learning there involved not banking at an S&L owned by Charlie Keating.  Oh, and something about Michael Milken, but he’s sort of like eating eggs every morning for breakfast… I can never remember for sure whether he’s good or bad for me.

Ah, but this bubble, my friends… this bubble’s an educational marvel.  And, just like emotional baggage, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.  I’ve always thought that there were only two things in life that led to real learning: age and pain.  Everything else is forgotten a week after you take the test.  But, this meltdown… it’s one of the true wonders of the world… this one has it all.

It’s a credit crisis, a global financial crisis, a foreclosure crisis, an economic catastrophe, the total destruction of the secondary mortgage market, the end of pension plan investing and Wall Street’s investment banks, and an ongoing example of why derivatives should be regulated until they’re no fun to play with anymore.

This bubble’s got its own lexicon… like tranches… something that should be served at brunch; “did you get the tranches, try the sauce.”  And the bottom tranche, called the “mez,” which sounds so much more valuable once you re-securitize it into yet another triple A rated bond.  Then there’s CDOs and CDOs squared, CDSs, and counter-parties where there’s no counter, and the only person thinking ‘party’ is the banker picking up his check from Treasury when the music stopped.

This bubble’s got securitized trusts that were supposed to taste great with mortgages inside, but instead are much less filling without.  And let’s not forget the certificate holders that basically are the “investors” that get blamed when Chase doesn’t feel like modifying a loan.

Yep, this deepening recession is a teaching machine, let me tell you.  And, do you want to know what I learned more than anything else?

That I’m a real idiot, that’s what.

And that I have been one for something like the last 30 years.

I was thinking about the 1970s the other day.  A kinder and gentler time.  Union strikes, dirty politicians, inflation, stagflation, 18% interest rates, the gas crisis, disco music, the hostage crisis… you know… the good old days.  I was remembering my family, while I was growing up, when we used to go on vacation.  Before leaving town, my father would walk down to the bank to buy traveler’s checks.  Then every day or two on our vacation, when he needed cash, he’d cash a traveler’s check.

I remember our family car back then too.  Dad would read Consumer Reports for maybe a year… finally buy one and then drive it until it had rusted out and needed to be towed away from the front of our house… then he’d repeat the process and buy another.  I remember one year he was debating whether to get our new car with an AM and FM radio, or whether AM alone was really enough.  Hey, it was important, every option cost money.  And then there was filling up with gas at Esso.  He’d pay for it with his Esso card, a “charge card” with a bill you paid at the end of every month.

We had some wonderful family vacations in the 70s, back before our family took all the fun out of dysfunction, as families so often do.  The thing is, there’s one component I don’t recall being in the mix… Gold Visa Cards, car payments, or stupid frivolous spending on absolutely nothing.

Since then, however, look what the guys on Wall Street have done to improve our lives.  It’s not bad enough that they’ve run non-stop ads my entire adult life to convince me that I should be investing with Paine, Merrill, Smith or Barney.  It wasn’t enough to sweep up my portfolio’s losses every seven years like locusts.  No, they also had to come at me with a more subtle, even hypnotic message: Debt is good, my boy.  No, it’s better than good… it’s the coolest thing going.  You want as much debt as we’ll give you.

Debt is how you let the world know you’ve arrived.  Debt comes in precious gems and shiny metals.  Hi, I’m a gold debtor… no look at me… I’m a platinum debtor.  Maybe you’d like to be a sapphire debtor?  Just think how good you’ll look and feel when you show the world that you’re a sapphire debtor.

Yes, Wall Street’s finest hired the guys from Mad Men, and worked us over pretty good.  They actually convinced me that these plastic cards of gold and platinum were status symbols.  Pulled out my American Express Platinum card, because membership had its privileges.  I paid $300 a year to carry that stupid grey colored piece of plastic around, and I think the only privilege I ever got was a late check out from a hotel on Sunday that I’m sure could have been had by anyone who asked.

Wall Street has been selling us on how cool and good looking being a debtor really was, because they were making a fortune on that debt, securitizing it, and packing it up to be shipped to investors all over the world.  And they sure got me; I think for a while there in my early thirties, I can remember charging a new wallet just so I could sit atop an entire deck of VISA and MasterCard playing cards, and I’ve got the back problems to prove it.

What’s the difference between those ads that make debtors look so successful, and cigarette ads that show beautiful people smoking their way to the beauty of lung cancer and heart disease?  We got rid of those ads pretty darn quick, didn’t we?  I wonder which actually kills more Americans each year: smoking cigarettes or the mountains of debt under which we’re constantly told we should bury ourselves.

And I remember now, that look on my father’s face.  He must have been wondering why in the world his son would choose to walk around showing the world what a debtor he really was, when in his day, that was something of which people were ashamed.  Yeah, that must have looked pretty darn weird all right.

Yes, there’s no question that this recession is going to be around for quite a while.  But you know why, right?  Because we’re not going to borrow our way to feeling prosperous again.

We’ve fallen for three bubbles in my lifetime and I for one am not going down for a fourth.  Next time I’m going to be asking about the price of the car I’m buying because I’ll be paying cash, and before I go on vacation, I’ll be stopping to pick up some traveler’s checks… or using my debit card, I suppose.  Unless fees for those get too high as well, in which case I’ll just carry cash, thank you very much.

I know what you’re thinking… carrying cash is dangerous… you might get robbed.  Really?  Well, at 49 years old, I’ve never been robbed of my cash by a street thug, but I’ve sure as heck been robbed every single day that I’ve carried around those credit cards that were supposed to keep me so much safer.

That’s what happens when our government encourages Wall Street to run ads 24/7 everywhere we turn telling us how wonderful life as a debtor can be.  As long as you don’t smoke, of course.

Yes, no question about it… this time around there’s been a whole lot of learning going on over here in Mandelman-land.  I’ve learned what a jackass I’ve been all these years… and that you were right, Dad.

I guess what they say is true… it costs money to go to school.

Mandelman out.