Political Profits
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Fred Smith (no relation), the founder of Federal Express and the inventor of an entire industry, spoke at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club tonight. George Shultz — a man who held more secretary positions (Secretary of Labor, Secretary of the Treasury, U.S. Secretary of State) in the U.S. government than Monica Lewinsky – sat attentively in the front of the audience.
That’s one of the wonders of San Francisco. Smart and accomplished people live here anyway and hang out in the audience with the plebs.
During his talk, which covered commerce, energy and tax policy, Smith mentioned in passing that FedEx is currently about a $40 billion company. California is about $40 billion in the hole this budget year. Fairly clear who would be better running a government – a person acquainted with commerce or politicians acquainted only with pocket picking. But I doubt Fred wants the pay cut or having a belligerent boss like me.
This incidental contrast of $40 billion positive and negative statuses made me involuntarily ponder Meg Witman, a woman who apparently has lost her mind given she now wants to skate away from eBay, the online auction house she founded, and preside over the California’s $40 billion fiscal tar pit. Of course eBay churns less than $9 billion in annual revenues, so perhaps it is a shorter step down for Meg than Fred.
Fred thankfully validated – hell, he almost repeated verbatim – one of my common comments, that government does not produce anything and only moves money from one source to another. Business people do produce, and they do so with the help of a lot of employees who work toward creating value (and Fred values employees – he always puts them on the top of the hierarchy, acknowledging that they create FedEx value and he merely sets the direction).
That is why you will see every California state employee campaign vigorously against Whitman as they did against presidential contender Mitt Romney, another successful businessman. State employees fear Meg will force them to create value like the rest of us.
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