Every day, since the March lows of '09, I feel trapped in some alternative "Groundhog Day" universe where Cher serenades me each morning with "I Got You Babe." This is how it goes. I snap on CNBC to check the stock market indices. They are always up. If markets, heaven forbid, fall a little bit- parties unknown rescue them and drive them back up. Indeed, markets haven't doubled since '09, they have tripled. Have we entered a new gilded age? An industrial renaissance? Day after day, week after week, month after month, I hear that song. Going on 73 months in a row. I wake up, snap on the television and watch the gum flapping, never ending, equity cheerleaders on CNBC. The latest installment came this morning. The BLS reported an increase of 223,000 jobs for the month of April. The market reaction went straight up- 250 DJIA points. What nobody (MSM) mentioned was the further downward revision to March jobs- another minus 41,000. The jobs added...

Many years ago as a mid level police manager in a small police agency, we had an employee become disgruntled over a promotion and subsequent to that- he turned into a general pain in the ass. He started to act outside of policy, refusing to wear assigned attire, refusing to park in assigned areas, re-arranging the schedule to suit himself- all of those little things that angry employees do when they don't get what they want. Each of those things in and of themselves were small potatoes. However in the policing business, particularly at the mid management level and above, you have to hold employees to some sort of standard. In other words, if you allow one employee to break the rules- you are probably going to have other employees break those same rules. You also face the risk of not being able to enforce those rules later on when you have failed to enforce them initially. So you enforce the rules of conduct or face varying levels of employee anarchy. It was the enforcement of t...