Now That Hybrids Have Become Popular…

True. You and I don’t need to see it, but it might help to define Clover for the masses in a graphic-art exaggerated-cartoon manner, to show how truly odorous and self-destructive he truly is.
– – – – –
Are you a brown noser or brilliant?

Most people have heard that in order to be successful in their roles, they need to manage up.

But, what exactly is managing up? In simple terms, managing up is a conscious, deliberative effort to build an effective, efficient, and productive relationship with a superior.

This will create great opportunities of growth for you and your boss, as well as establish a direct and valuable communication line between you and them.

While you should take advantage of the open communication line between you and your boss, you shouldn’t simply become their “lackey” or subordinate.

bn

Unlike a good follower, a subordinate blindly follows orders simply in an effort to please their master. A follower, on the other hand, has reason and purpose for following, and does not do so blindly. In other words, subordinates are brown-nosers, followers are brilliant.

2types

To avoid being a brown noser you need to learn to master the art of managing up, the big question is “How?” Breaking down the definition will give us some insight.

Being Conscious
If you are “being conscious” in your relationship with your boss, it means you are alert and aware of their needs and the needs of the project. You know: What the end result should be; What your boss expects of you and your team; How often your boss would like to be updated; The types of updates your boss would like; What the boss’s goals are and how those align with the organizations;
How to align your team and projects with these goals

Essentially, you’ve taken inventory. You have the basic awareness and understanding of what the project is, how your team fits in, and what your boss expects.

A Deliberative Effort
When you are being deliberative in your efforts, you are being purposeful with your decisions. Because you are already conscious of the boss’s needs, your actions are calculated to meet those needs. You’re able to: Tailor deliverables to your boss’s specific requirements; You know your boss can become overwhelmed when presented with too many numbers, so you deliberately create graphics when designing your reports;
You turn your work in on time, at the very latest; You understand that deadlines are set for specific purposes; missing a deadline has a ripple effect and can make your boss look bad; Your communication with your boss always has a purpose and direction;

Because you are conscious of the fact that your boss enjoys small talk before getting down to business, you make sure to ask about their weekend, kids, dog etc. before beginning your discussion

You recognize that every interaction you have with your boss is an opportunity to further the project’s goals, the team’s goals, and, in essence, yours.

An Effective and Efficient Relationship
In order for your relationship with your boss to be beneficial to you both, you need to make sure your conscious and deliberative efforts have operational and competent results. These results are how you know whether or not you’re actually being conscious and deliberative.

A Productive Relationship
A productive relationship with your boss should not be one sided. Basically, you should be reaping the benefits of your efforts as much as your boss. When you manage up properly, the lines of communication are open between you and them. This means several things:
You are able to advocate for your team
From proposing new software to getting more opportunities for your team, the boss’s ears will be more open to someone who is properly managing up than someone who isn’t.

You are able to “lead” up
Leading up means you are adding value to your boss beyond keeping them informed of what’s going on in the office; leading up may mean you are giving them strategic advice, or even coaching them on better ways to communicate with their employees

You are rewarded for your work
When you make the boss look good, you look good. You will know the relationship is productive if you are recognized by your boss for the work you are doing. This will look different depending on your boss, but you’re a conscious follower so you should know what that looks like for you.

So, the next time you look in the mirror and see a brown spot on your nose, wipe it off quickly and remember to be brilliant. Managing up effectively benefits everyone, especially you!
– – – – –

Is Jay Leno a Corporate Shill?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTWCvEENccw

But Tor, it is so much easier to be a browner. You just have to swallow (literally?) your self esteem in exchange for the corner office & company car. Isn’t that success?

Steve Victor wrote:
In USA, a consumption tax would be a sales tax, REPLACING income taxes. All purchases would be taxed, encouraging savings, essentially eliminating the IRS, and preventing the uber-wealthy from using tax loopholes. Buy a mansion or yacht, pay the tax. Simple. Everyone pays, no exceptions. Ten percent would be fair, IMHO, although asshole politicians who favor such a tax proffer a MUCH higher percentage (of course).

Why pay any tax? The simple reason is that government has bigger guns and that all taxes….no exceptions….are tantamount to slavery. When you speak of fairness in taxation, that’s a non-sequitur. It’s absolutely no concern of the government, or anybody else, how an individual chooses to expend his or her fairly earned resources. No tax is fair. Every tax is armed robbery. With taxation, the taxed are funding their own oppression. I do think that this kind of oppression being considered in NC amounts to the height of irony. The “green” collectivists are being hoisted on their own petards with this one…..sort of like with “Obamacare”.

The idea that the IRS would simply go buh-bye if a national sales tax replaced the income tax is patently absurd.

For starters, some agency is going to be required to enforce the new sales tax on a federal level. We could call this agency…hmm…the, uh, Internal…Revenue… Yup, them.

Next. Some years ago, a man claiming to be an IRS employee called the Rush Limbaugh radio show and said that if a national sales tax replaced the income tax, the agency already had created contingency plans. If audited, you would have to produce receipts for everything you and your dependents bought to prove you had paid the proper and complete amount of sales tax. They don’t plan to go away, folks. Don’t get naive and think a sales tax will eliminate the IRS.

Next. The government already monitors every penny you make. Again, don’t be naive. It ain’t gonna give that up. A national sales tax will pretty quickly give the enforcers the excuse and resources to monitor every penny you spend on everything as well. Yeah, just what you want.

Next. Such a tax would inevitably hit services. The consumption/sales tax scheme will never bring in enough money without doing so. You go to the hospital for emergency heart surgery and run up a $500,000 bill? Taxed. Another $50,000, $100,000, etc., to the feds. Go to a lawyer to defend yourself from a frivolous lawsuit? Lawyer’s fees—taxed. Pay rent or mortgage? Taxed.

Then would come reselling. You sell your old car or your home to buy another? You sell your stuff on eBay or at a yard sale? All taxed. And you’d better pay it—or else. Remember, monitoring your income will continue, and possible evasion of sales taxes from selling something will be another excuse for that.

Next. In many of the proposals for a national sales tax, because rent and mortgage payments will be taxed, “something for fairness” will have to be done about all the people who own their homes free and clear. So there will be a special “imputed income tax” based on the rental value of the home you own. I’m not making this up; look it up. Boortz probably had no idea this was in his “Fair Tax” sales tax proposal, but it is, buried in the fine print.

Next. Studies by conservative/libertarian groups that have actually crunched the numbers come up with far higher sales tax rates to bring in the same revenue, some approaching 100%, to recoup all the revenue lost from ending the income tax. And many of these studies were done years before the present debt and deficits figures that have made matters even worse.

Next. Differential tax rates to punish some things and reward others will end up in such a sales tax system. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once proposed a 10,000% tax on certain handgun ammo as a backdoor means of gun control, so that a single bullet would cost hundreds of dollars. Imagine what the people in Congress and in federal agencies could do with that concept.

I could continue. But you see a national sales tax would have serious issues. And as stated by other posters here, we would be told that we’d have to have a transition period with both sales and income taxes—but then the income taxes will never go away, or even be significantly reduced for the average Joe. We’d have both forever.

Think—and tread—carefully concerning this idea.

Dear Tor,

I am merely taking a leaf from the statists’ book. Fighting fire with fire.

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
— Rahm Emanuel

Bevin, on the idea of fighting fire with fire, I have sometimes thought that if some small area could be taken over to set up a refuge against the larger state, it could conveniently have poll taxes using a scale that levied high rates on public servants trying to implement state actions. But, quite apart from the risk of becoming what that set up is structured for, we have many examples of what the state does to people who try to follow that path, e.g. the Strangite mormons of Beaver Island (the vigilantes that actually carried out the deed had the backing of U.S. naval forces).

Wow, more American history I didn’t know: “The hapless Strangites were rounded up, forced onto hastily-commandeered steamships and removed from the island. Most were simply dumped onto docks in Chicago and Green Bay, destitute and deprived of all their property.”

…And as you say, “had the backing of U.S. naval forces”.

No surprise there.
Disappointment, maybe.
Is that a guidebook, like 1984 is turning out to be?

Dear PM,

Strangite Mormons. Wow. Interesting story!

Thanks for sharing that. Useful “intellectual ammunition” that can be used in future arguments with statists, who make empty boasts about how a Liberal Democracy is “government of, by, and for the people,” and how it obtains the “consent of the governed.”

Logically that kind of behavior from a “Liberal Democracy” is no surprise to hardcore libertarians.

But it’s always disturbing to learn about specific incidents, with flesh and blood human beings. It never ceases to affect one emotionally.

Dear PM,

Hey, it just hit me.

The Strangite Mormons, like the Branch Davidians, were a breakaway Mormon sect!

What the feds did to them was a precursor of Waco!

Or Sir Bevin, Do not forget the Lakota Indians of the Dakotas in the 1860’s and 70’s. They had a religious leader by the name of Sitting Bull. They also had some issues with the U.S. Government and the 7’th Calvary led by a fellow named George Armstrong Custer at a place called The Little Bighorn

From Wikipedia:
Custer’s announcement of gold in the Black Hills triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush. Tensions increased between the Sioux and European Americans’ seeking to move into the Black Hills.[18]
Although Sitting Bull did not attack Custer’s expedition in 1874, the US government was increasingly pressured to open the Black Hills to mining and settlement. It was alarmed at reports of Sioux depredations (encouraged by Sitting Bull). In November 1875, the government ordered all Sioux bands outside the Great Sioux Reservation to move onto the reservation, knowing full well that not all would comply. As of February 1, 1876, the Interior Department certified as “hostile” those bands who continued to live off the reservation.[19] This certification allowed the military to pursue Sitting Bull and other Lakota bands as “hostiles”.

Bevin, as the old question has it, “are you really paranoid if they really are trying to get you?” And they are, although (so far) only when you have a real chance of getting out from under (Strang was on course to go state wide when they got him, and had defeated attacks on him through the legal machinery in a way that boosted him). Maybe the Scientologists aren’t as crazy as all that, at any rate in this area.

@Bevin – My guess is that Clover would have problems with that whole Sitting Bull and the Little Big Horn shootout thing too.

Or, more on point, like the Income Tax. When passed, it was only on “the wealthy.”
Now, we are all “the wealthy,” and yet “poor ol’ Uncle Sam” is always there “begging”…

No, the original V.A.T. was not supposed to replace income tax. It was designed and structured to replace earlier taxes on goods and services that could be and were regularly being evaded, particularly in France and Italy, and it did in fact replace them with something harder to dodge. Then it became part of the “harmonisation” for the Common Market (as it was then), and was brought in elsewhere in the Common Market.

The equivalent G.S.T. (Goods and Services Tax) here in Australia was brought in under the claim that it would replace various economically inefficient state level taxes, none of which is an income tax (only levied federally, in practice), with the G.S.T. being levied by federal machinery but all its revenue being granted to the states; the G.S.T. came in some fifteen years ago, but there has been little if any change in the taxes it was supposed to replace.

Dear Tor,

“… My Deprogramming – By Larken Rose?”

Not yet. But you can be sure I will.

Market Anarchism cannot have too many spokesmen. The more the merrier.

There is an ecological niche for high falutin’ Market Anarchist academics such as Hans Hoppe.

There is also a place for folksy, crackerbarrel polemicists such as Rose and Molyneux.

My own essays at LRC are closer to the latter than the former. I think the latter approach is more accessible, and reaches more grassroots supporters.

Dear Tor,

The most insane aspect of “taxation” is how it so obviously contradicts the other premise of “Liberal Democracy,” namely that “we are all equal.”

Well fuck, if we’re all equal, where the fuck do you get off taxing me???

How about I tax you???

It’s mind-boggling how the sheeple don’t see it.

Yes it’s ‘more’ but it is not proportionally more. It’s quite literally factors of thousands greater wear and tear.

You’re not introducing any argument I haven’t heard before. They are the same emotional based ‘my industry is important and deserves to be subsidized’ stuff that is way too popular in this country. Yes, the price to ship the goods should be reflected in their prices. Why the hell do you think I should have to pay taxes and pay more to drive so my consuming neighbors can buy the shit they end up throwing out for less money? I don’t buy a lot of stuff, so go for it. If it is done fairly I’ll save in the long run.

As to wealthy truckers, ever see wealthy engineers? No. As the feds bring in mexican truckers these days they’ve been bringing in Indian, Pakistani, and Chinese engineers for decades to drive down salaries.

Lastly I don’t have any representatives. Do I seem like a wealthy person to you? Around here if you want representation you have to pay for it and I don’t have that kind of money.

Dear Brent, Eight,

The fault as usual, lies with the inability and unwillingness of government as an institution to ensure “fairness.”

A genuine market mechanism could ensure fairness, such that payment reflected usage and wear and tear.

But as long as government is in the catbird seat, the market is prevented from addressing the problem.

Brent, so quit using TP, water, eating, a/c, heating and I’ll work for nothing. That’s not thousands of times less as you say but it’s the best I can do. Please send the kids some food now and then. Our dougout gets lonely too but we’ll deal with it. Thousands, sheesh. And I thought the difference in 4,000-5,000 lb.s and 80,000 was only 20 or 15 times as much. Thousands times the wear. I’ll just start hauling it in on my back, screw big rigs. Please let me continue to breathe the air, sorta important to me. I’ll wean the kids. Hell, we’ll just put up some snares and catch some feral hogs and you can haul your own freight…..good enough. So long everyone, no more electricity for us, engineers need ours.

Spare me the tales of the noble trucker and how I owe him my very existence. I’ve heard it all before. But if you want to play that, without my kind truckers wouldn’t have trucks or roads capable of supporting them.

All long haul truckers could disappear right now. This instant and goods will find another way to market. A period of adjustment would come but goods will still get to market if all that disappeared from the planet were truckers and government didn’t step in.

It is not a linear relationship. This ancient report has a graph showing the axle weight relationship to road damage on page 40. http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf Here is a more recent report, but you have to read a table: http://facweb.knowlton.ohio-state.edu/pviton/courses2/crp776/776-roads-handout.pdf And some background on ESAL: http://www.pavementinteractive.org/article/equivalent-single-axle-load/

The passenger car scores don’t even register. They are down in the fourth decimal place.

Anyway, I get your point, trucking is important so we should pay more to subsidize it. Same with the military, food stamps, farm bills, welfare, social security, wall street banks, general motors, the oil companies, the sugar industry, on and on. The political process should tell us what is important to us and force us to support those things one way or another or else. Heaven forbid we live in a society where what is important is decided based on how people choose to spend their money.

Brent, trucking is an industry, noble, ignoble or otherwise. It’s fast delivery of goods. It wasn’t always this way and maybe it should never have been but evidently it’s what the conditions called for. 25 years ago I contracted to remove RR sidings in a couple places. I thought it was stupid to remove them since trains cannot pass in these locations any longer and there is no freight delivery since the docks and stations are high and dry, not a track close. I would point out though that RR’s have always received direct federal subsidy and sometimes even state subsidy. As an independent trucker, I never received any subsidy of any sort. I got screwed royally when the oil companies foisted off a non-existent oil shortage on us though. I’m reminded of an old aggie joke though. It seems two aggies went into the trucking business. After a few months things didn’t look very good. Freight rates had dropped precipitously even though that’s the only way people get their goods. They decided to buy grain, haul it and sell it. They buy wheat for $2/bushel, take it to market and sell it for $2.30. They rock along and are starving, just barely covering fuel. Once they put a pencil to it(they weren’t engineers, didn’t even have a slide rule)they saw the writing on the wall. One finally says, well, I think I know what we need to do. The other aggie says Yeah, what? The first aggie says It’s obvious, we need to buy another truck. Every trucker can identify with that. Be thankful you’re an engineer. I’m genuflecting, I’m genuflecting. I’ll slink back under my rock now and let the engineers figure out freight hauling without large trucks and highways. BTW, I kept up with studies of truck wear on roads for 40 years. I’ve changed plenty tires and am quite aware of their weight. Canals, that’s the ticket. Of course to deliver freight every single business will need to be on the canal since no trucks will exist. Believe it or not, dirt did exist when I was born and I didn’t actually set this system up and I had no choice I was born into a trucking family and actually liked the work…..my bad….once again.

Next you’ll be telling me how us “four wheelers” should just get off the truckers’ roads…. Or maybe like our dear Clover here, tell me how that truckers always have right of way upon them. That’s where else these sort of threads go.

Every driving/auto forum I’ve been in, sooner or later it’s this same old tune about how important trucking is and how we must just pay and pay and pay some more so our neighbors can continue their consumptive live styles at our expense or we would have to do with nothing but what we could make ourselves from raw materials on our own land. Trucking is just too important not to socialize the costs. But that’s where it all starts…. something is just too important to leave alone.

In the end you’re just claiming that trucking as a whole, like the banks as a whole are just too big to fail. Well the decision was made ages ago to go with long haul trucking and let rail decay and so the politics have decided and now there’s no turning back. Can’t have a free market. Never ever… too late now. The pain is too great. Keep paying up you rubes or you won’t have TP!

How dare I or anyone suggest your favored industry isn’t important enough for socialistic support along with all the others. Just look at the taxes you pay and how you’re a victim of government’s more favored sons. After all, we are supposed to play off against each other, not reject the whole damn system. It’s supposed be about getting rid of the other guys’ subsidies while getting more for ourselves. That’s the game we are supposed to play. That’s the correct way to be “Libertarian”. Like the Koch brothers and so many others. More for me, less for you, but not rejecting the system, don’t be a kook I’m told.

And yes, big trucking, big oil, big banks, big everything screw the little guy. That’s the America! “Get Big or Get Out”. If you don’t own senators you don’t count.

If you know the studies, then why try to corner me on the point of wear and tear? The fact of the matter is without millions of passenger car drivers long haul trucking would cease to exist. If trucking companies had to be like rail with their own right of ways and infrastructure, even with Lincolnesque corporate welfare it would still be too expensive.

And as far as figuring out transportation…. hell we all could just quit too. That solves the problem. Nothing to haul, nothing to haul it with, and nothing to haul it upon.

Brent, I’d be interested to see how trucking companies get subsidy. I never knew of any that did although I never knew owners of really large companies either. Buy a truck, put it on the road and then next year, tell me where those subsidies are. I might be talked into buying one again. When I got into trucking in the 60’s I was just trying to make a living and it’s a damned hard job and I made more money in every other way I’ve made a living….and with one hell of a lot less work and risk. There’s a badge every couple feet waiting to take a truckers money and bureaucrats by the hundreds of thousands that are paid just to dream up ways of robbing them. If you want to find a bunch of people, an industry that hates govt., just ask a trucker. Can you understand I got into the business as a teenage, worked my ass off and never ever heard of subsidy for trucking, still haven’t? I noticed a couple decades or so ago when trucking was really being shaken up that I’d see the same rigs with different names every several months. If finally made sense when I followed the money, or lack thereof. Big entities who needed a tax break bought the big freight companies, the bigger the better so as to have a write-off. Sound promising for owner/operators? If you have to lease your truck which most people do since they can’t afford their own state issued licenses to haul this or that good from here to wherever, you’ll find the big company skims the cream off the top and you’re once again left fighting for the crumbs. Your strawman argument for getting cars off the road isn’t going to happen. Truckers drive cars too. Naw man, I’m just messin’ with you. The wife and I drove team for years and just decided to sell the truck and let those subsidy checks roll in and that’s why all my pol friends just refer to me as The Big Cheese, cause I can’t quit smiling. Manna from heaven.

The subsidy is the infrastructure which the use of is not fully paid for. Trucking accounts for nearly all the road cost that isn’t a residential street. It’s not a linear scale from bicycle to triple trailer semi-tractor. It’s exponential. The taxes are maybe linearly proportional. If long haul trucking had to pay its way in a free market against other freight moving industries it probably wouldn’t be viable except to those willing to pay for express service.

Bank tellers at Chase don’t make squat either. But are we going to say Chase isn’t subsidized? The guy with the local gas station selling Mobil gasoline doesn’t get subsidized, but big oil does. Are we going to say GM isn’t subsidized because some guy sweeping the floor under a contract company doesn’t make much? Just because government squeezes the little guy, doesn’t mean the industry as a whole isn’t subsidized. You can point to some family farm the government crushed but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a corn subsidy. What the hired help and contractors, independents, and other labor makes doesn’t mean squat with regards to subsidy. I shouldn’t have to explain this here.

This thread reminds me of this book:

A Future of Private Roads and Highways

http://mises.org/daily/3416

Brent, I’m not trying to have the last word here. When I started trucking Texas had a huge surplus in it’s fund and continued to do so without robbing everyone. It had so much better roads than every other state Tx. truckers hated to go out of state. Didn’t matter what state it was, you could shut your eyes or be asleep and know when you crossed the Tx. line. When the Interstate Highway Act was passed most states just sat back and waited on that federal money to do the job. SE states were decades behind SW states, esp TX. To this very day Tx. makes up the taxes for 13 other states. You don’t have to tell me about being robbed for TPTB. All those years of 55mph Texans screamed constantly, Give ’em there damned taxes and raise our speeds back to 70. Of course the state pols were a bunch of shits w/o any guts who thought the citizens had no clue as to what their taxes would be. Now our speeds are higher than ever and we still pay all those other states ways who have unions and benefits Texans never dreamed of. I’m reminded of what John Steinbeck once said “Socialism never took root in American because the poor there see themselves not as exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Socialism DID catch on in other places but not here.

@8 -You ain’t alone. Like Mother Hubbard found out, the cupboard is bare because some thief took the cash.

In California “Caltrans” has forgotten how to repair a road, much less build a new one (Haven’t seen one of those in years).

I-5 and I-10 from the L.A. harbor to Bakesfield and Phoenix/ Las Vegas (you know those roads 1/2 of your Wal-Mart stuff goes over) is a patchwork of chipping third world gopher holes. I refuse to drive anything like my motorcycle or pickup & trailer in the #3 and #4 lanes because of the beating I receive.

Even when they do spend 6 months resurfacing a state two lane, the non-english speakers running the machines are laying down 18 month-to-shot-again asphalt in nice waves suitable for motocross.

Then this:
He said Caltrans’ budget has doubled to $12.8 billion over the last 10 years but “new highway construction has virtually flat-lined during the same period.” He said Caltrans’ culture has gone from “a nation-leading ‘can-do’ attitude to an embarrassing ‘probably-not’ mentality.”

He said the average yearly pay of Caltrans’ 20,000 employees is $100,000, including salaries and benefits.”

And we pay Fed & roughly 8% state sales tax on each $3.90 gallon of gas, and even more for diesel.

Revolution maybe?