We Are All Bricks in the Wall Now

I just got off the phone with the registrar's office at my law school, and the assistant told me I had a 5% chance of adding one line to a verification letter about what should be an undisputed fact.  It has taken 14 emails and a phone call to get to this point.  

Let me start at the beginning.  I'm applying for a graduate law program overseas.  Foreign institutions are enamored with the word, "apostille," which is basically a notarized verification, but potentially more complicated because a government agency may need to verify the notarized copy of an issued document.  Luckily, the European law school realized the U.S. doesn't really do apostilles and told me I could use a notarized copy of my diploma with the application.  So far, so good, right? 

I head out and make two color copies of my undergrad and law school diplomas--about 8 USD to get usable copies with the right copy size--and write my American law school, asking them to notarize my diplomas. I find out they can only notarize my law school diploma, and I'm fine with that, but I want to get a letter on university letterhead verifying I graduated in 2002 and the process of graduating from my law school required, at some point, a check with my undergrad institution to verify graduation there.  With both a notarized copy of my law school diploma and this letter, I'll be covered both ways.  The cost of the notary is 35 USD, plus 10 USD for each notary stamp, which comes to be 55 USD (one stamp on the verification letter and one for the law school diploma).  

I asked to include a statement on official letterhead as follows: 

"I am a notary authorized by AGENCY NAME and employed by UNIVERSITY's Registrar's Office.  I have checked the databases available to me and confirmed that STUDENT NAME graduated LAW SCHOOL in 2002. As part of attending LAW SCHOOL, STUDENT NAME was required to receive an undergraduate diploma, which he received from University of California at Davis.  I have reviewed both diplomas and have confirmed STUDENT NAME's identity and his possession of UC Davis and LAW SCHOOL diplomas."  

After being told the registrar wouldn't have anything to do with the undergrad diploma and that receiving an official letter was a separate process costing another 10 USD, I asked if its databases link or linked with my undergraduate institution to verify my undergraduate graduation. (I would hope so, because otherwise, any competent forger could apply to any grad school nationwide with the aid of free software and a printer.)  I didn't get a direct response to my question, and if there really was no communication between my law school and undergrad institution, then all this is moot, but it makes sense that at some point in the application process, my law school confirmed I graduated from UC Davis.  So I said, "All right, I'll pay for the additional letter, but let's modify it and just add the following to the existing template: 

"I am a notary authorized by the California Secretary of State and employed by LAW SCHOOL's Registrar's Office.  I have checked the databases available to me and confirmed that STUDENT NAME attended from DATE TO DATE and graduated LAW SCHOOL in 2002 with a GPA of X. As part of our process, LAW SCHOOL verified at some point that STUDENT NAME was listed as a graduate of UC Davis."  [An alternate version could say, "I saw STUDENT'S UC Davis diploma, checked the information on it, and am verifying the person bringing it to me is in fact STUDENT," but that idea was shot down.]  

Only the last line above is in dispute, and apparently I have a 5% chance of having it added to my letter.  If I don't get the additional sentence, I'll have a potentially harder time convincing other institutions to accept my applications without driving over to UC Davis and going through the same process again, which will cost me more money.  Mind you, I paid my law school about 100,000 USD.  The only reason I--and other graduates--and in this situation is because American colleges, despite increasing tuition far higher than inflation every single year, have yet to create databases where graduates and students can consent to having their attendance dates and graduation statuses publicized online. Because of this inaction, we live in a country where an entire industry of notaries is partially supported by inefficiency.  

This is the modern American economy--it is driven by inaction and failure to use technology in consumer-facing ways, necessitating administrative jobs that consume time and energy and pit common sense against established procedures. It's not technology that is ruining our lives--it's decisions made by people in agencies and governments that fail to utilize technology properly and instead support existing professions, regardless of actual utility. Sure, it would cost some money to set up a database and get consent to publicize student graduation and attendance data, but once completed, the consent process would be included along with the regular graduation form.  Thereafter, no reasonable person would need a notarized diploma, and each individual applicant would save about 50 USD forevermore. (By the way, California's State Bar website lists both undergrad and law school institutions for lawyers, indicating such a database wouldn't be that complex.) Yet, taking this common sense approach is problematic not because of the money--colleges have plenty of it via government-guaranteed loans--but because any legislator that tries to insert efficiency and common sense antagonizes an established body of notaries who have paid hundreds in fees themselves to get a special stamp and notebook, and of course organized into their own interest groups.  

The services-based economy in America is creating social rebellion as more people become fed up with inefficiency for inefficiency's sake, even when jobs wouldn't necessarily be lost with greater efficiency.  If the database I've proposed goes down, someone still needs to maintain it--a process that wouldn't need a technical degree with today's available templates and hosting services from Amazon or Intuit.  An IT department might even need to hire more people to increase security against hacking, though such services would presumably already be part of its bailiwick.  

Someone still needs to take calls if a student's or graduate's information isn't listed correctly.  Someone still needs to take the initiative and make sure the list of graduates every year is submitted in a format compatible with the database and easily uploadable.  Yet, in a world where jobs are given to people not based on character and ability to learn on the job, but by a piece of paper that seems to confirm nothing other than obedience, here we are.  Let's see if I can convince the university tomorrow to add the one line to a letter costing me 10 USD. If I can't, why shouldn't machines take over American jobs when American employees in universities that cost 47,000 USD in tuition each year can't think independently or provide decent customer service?

Bonus: my friend tells me, "The notary is likely someone who works in an adjacent office and not the registrar herself. She literally cannot sign as you've written it--California law prohibits it. The registrar is the document custodian, and all the notary does is certify that the document custodian is who he/she says they are.  A notarization is solely a confirmation of identity (in this case the registrar's)."

Bonus: "All progress depends on the unreasonable person."

Update: I received a notarized copy of my diploma.  Basically, it's a copy of your diploma with a piece of paper attached to it signed by the registrar indicating as follows: "I am the University Registrar at UNIVERSITY NAME.  I hereby verify that the attached diploma is a copy of the original." A notary reviews the diploma copy to make sure it's an accurate copy of the original.  The registrar recites a short statement and the notary stamps a piece of paper and makes a notation in her book.  That's it.

The registrar--a delightful, smart woman--said she had nothing to do with the law school application process, so she wouldn't certify or write anything other than what her databases showed.  She referred me to the law school's assistant dean of student services for the letter I requested.  Luckily, I knew the assistant dean from my time at the law school, and she is an amazing person.  I got the letter.

The registrar told me national databases do in fact exist that collect student data.  See HERE (NSLDS) and HERE (National Student Loan Clearinghouse).  However, from my research, such databases are not publicly accessible like the State Bar's website, leading to this ridiculous business of notarizing diplomas and transcripts, which transfers money and time from regular people to institutions and their employees.

Why my law school diploma had to be verified by the undergraduate registrar rather than the graduate institution itself, I don't know.  For a smaller private school, I suppose it saves overhead to consolidate graduate program information into a single central database that includes undergraduates.  I lament once again the American predilection not to be consumer-facing in terms of saving time from the perspective of the consumer, but to organize affairs in order to save costs from the perspective of the entity. 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2017)

A final note: apparently, some law schools, during their application processes, don't actually check any database to see if an applicant graduated from the listed undergraduate institution.  They just request a verified official transcript. 

Brocade Communications Special Meeting (2017)

Brocade Communications (BRCD) held a special meeting at the Santa Clara Hyatt on January 26, 2017 to approve a merger.  The hotel offered pastries, a fruit platter, and beverages, including mineral and flat water.  After the formal portion of the meeting, Brocade didn't bother opening the floor to any shareholders until I asked why they weren't soliciting feedback or questions.  Apparently, Brocade believes that special meetings aren't appropriate venues for shareholder questions, but deigned to include them after my request. You may be wondering, "Why bother having shareholders attend if you won't answer questions from them?"  Such a question assumes a minimum IQ and an ability to understand logic, two items we'll see might not actually exist in Brocade's corporate repertoire.

My question was about privacy and security vulnerabilities in Brocade's technology.  With the NSA's activities becoming well-known post-Snowden (see Citizenfour for more details), I asked whether Brocade allowed backdoors in its products or had been solicited by the NSA to do so.  Brocade appeared startled by the question and told me they couldn't answer it.  I replied, "So you can neither deny nor confirm the existence of backdoors in any of your products?"  Brocade, smart enough to realize the trap I'd laid, still wasn't courageous enough to answer the question, gave a convoluted answer and basically said it wasn't the type of question appropriate at the special meeting.  (Because something like privacy vulnerabilities couldn't possibly be relevant to a merger or its price, right?)  I walked out, saying, "There's no leadership here."

Two men affiliated with the company approached me after the meeting and asked if I really expected the company to answer questions that might jeopardize the merger.  "Today is precisely the time that such questions are relevant, because shareholders and lawyers on both sides deserve to have full information before approving or voting on the merger," I said.  Meanwhile, I was thinking, "Why is it my problem if the teams' lawyers didn't do their due diligence properly?  Why am I bound by their limited scope?"

I repeated my insistence that corporate America as well as the country at large was diminishing because of a lack of leadership and integrity.  I'm willing to bet each of the directors or executives silently sitting at the table during my questions had undergraduate or graduate degrees from schools that advertise they're creating leaders.  I recalled one of my favorite scenes from Scent of a Woman: "'Cradle of leadership.'  Well, when the bow breaks, the cradle will fall. And it has fallen here, it has fallen!"

Brocade's refusal to answer my questions was steeped in no law--only cowardice.  Once the formal portion of the meeting concludes, the informal part isn't necessarily regulated by specific laws other than what the company decides or what is presented in the notice.  The company should of course be consistent from year to year to avoid being accused of discrimination or other issues, but with respect to the informal portion of the meeting, I know of no "Brown Act" equivalent that limits questions.  At other shareholder meetings, I've seen people ask questions about CEO's personal lives and even sing "Happy birthday" to one.  And yet, here I was, being told by Brocade that they couldn't answer my questions, because questions about the company's technology weren't within the scope of the special meeting's purpose.

Let me repeat that--from what I understand, Brocade refused to answer shareholder questions on its own technology's vulnerabilities because it didn't believe that such information was relevant to the merger price or merger agreement.

The first page of Brocade's December, 20, 2016 "Notice of Special Meeting of Stockholders" states, "We are holding the meeting for the following purposes... To transact any other business that may properly come before the special meeting, or any adjournment or postponement of the special meeting, by or at the direction of the board of directors of the Company."  [Emphasis added.]  Who signed the statement? Ellen A. O'Donnell, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary.

Who refused to answer my questions because she felt they weren't appropriate for the special meeting?  It appeared to be Ellen A. O' Donnell, Esq., graduate of Stanford University and Loyola Law School.

That's not even the best part.  Brocade's own 10K from 2015 states, "Customers have become increasingly sensitive to government-sponsored surveillance and may believe that, as a U.S.-based manufacturer, Brocade’s equipment contains 'backdoor' code that would allow customer data to be compromised by either governmental bodies or other third parties. As a result, customers may choose not to deploy Brocade networking products, which could negatively impact Brocade’s business and financial results."  Note the language above doesn't admit or deny the existence of backdoors--it just states that customers might believe they exist.

I now have two further questions: 1) What is Brocade trying to hide about its cooperation with government surveillance requests?

2) Should you, as a consumer, use the services of any company that buys Brocade products when you might be giving your network information or data to the U.S. or foreign governments?

(c) Matthew Rafat

Disclosures: I own a non-substantial number of shares of Brocade (BRCD).

Blue Devils

A few days after criticizing Duke basketball, I visited my alma mater, UC Davis and a local museum.  Unbeknownst to me, the local high school's mascot are the Blue Devils.

One of the docents was kind enough to print me a history of the mascot's origin, which relates to a WWI French Allied military unit.

The most interesting memorabilia were WWI items, such as Liberty Bond advertisements.  From the Federal Reserve website: "World War I began in Europe in 1914, the same year the Federal Reserve System was established."   Yet, the Federal Reserve at that time disfavored money printing to fund wars.  The Secretary of the Treasury "opposed printing money because it would hide the costs of war rather than keeping the public engaged and committed. 'Any great war must necessarily be a popular movement.'"

I love UC Davis and going back made me wonder if I should have found some way to stay after graduation.  Unfortunately, the law school put me on its wait list, and I never heard from them after that.  If you have a chance to attend UC Davis, go for it.  It was a wonderful school when I attended, and it is still a wonderful place.

Bonus: more from Duke University HERE on the Blue Devils.

North Carolina State Basketball

From Seth Davis's Wooden: A Coach's Life (2015, paperback)

North Carolina State beat Duke this week in basketball.  Even more satisfying was Abu's non-flagrant foul against Grayson "Most Punchable Face in the World" Allen towards the end of the game.  As the lily-white audience cheered a failed comeback attempt, I wondered why anyone would support Duke when so many other Carolina basketball options exist.

First, it was UNC's Dean Smith who truly integrated Carolina basketball, not Duke, by accepting Charlie Scott on a varsity athletic scholarship.  It's true that Maryland's Bill Jones, in the 1965-66 season, was the ACC's first African-American scholarship player.  Of course, Maryland isn't North or South Carolina.

It is true that Wake Forest's Norwood Todman became the first black scholarship player on the Demon Deacons's freshman team, but that was non-varsity.

It is also true that C.B. Claiborne played Duke basketball in the 1965-66 season, but he was on an academic scholarship, not an athletic one; only eight African-American students preceded him in graduating in 1969; and he, like Norwood Todman, played freshman ball, not varsity.

That's not all.

Every sports fan knows about NCSU Jim Valvano's 1983 championship victory against a Houston team led by future NBA Hall of Famers Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler.  Fewer people remember it was the NCSU Wolfpack that ended UCLA's streak of seven consecutive national titles when it beat Coach John Wooden's Bruins and Bill Walton 80-77 in double overtime in the NCAA's 1974 national semi-final game.

The year before, David Thompson led North Carolina State University to an undefeated season (27-0), then followed it up with a 30-1 season and the anti-climactic 1974 national championship.

Ok, ok, that was a long time ago.  "What about now?" you might ask. Fair enough.

The only major college I've personally seen play a basketball player wearing hearing aids was NCSU.  His participation was so under the radar, a Google search of "hearing aids North Carolina State basketball player" yields zero relevant results as of today.

Remember Deah Barakat? His favorite team was NCSU.

NC State's amazing 2015 March Madness run was heaven on earth for any basketball fan.  The only recent college basketball experience rivaling it would be UNI's Ali Farokhmanesh taking down #1 seed Kansas.

Finally, watching Abdul-Malik Abu this week, it's clear he'll make the NBA [someday] and provide basketball fans with even more excitement and hopefully a long career.

What else do you need to stop supporting Duke and switch over to NCSU?  A lynching?

(c) Matthew Rafat

Bonus: One redeeming aspect about Duke is that Bobby Knight is responsible for its success.  Coach Knight took Coach K under his wing by coaching him on the Army's basketball team, being his mentor, and helping him find employment as a coach.  No Bobby Knight, no Coach K, no Duke success.

Why do I like Bobby Knight so much?  He was perhaps the last honest "Power 5 conference" coach in the NCAA, now that even UNC has admitted academic violations.  Here's one of my favorite Coach Knight quotes: "We've gotten into this situation where integrity is really lacking...we've got a coach at Kentucky who put two schools on probation, and he's still coaching. I really don't understand that."

Update: ESPN's 30 for 30 "The Last Days of Knight" documentary shattered Coach Knight's public image. From the director: "I was a fan of Bob Knight. I read the book A Season on the Brink in 1987 and loved it. I thought Bob Knight was a great coach, my kind of coach. Someone who doesn't cheat, is not politically correct and a man who does a great job of turning young boys into men. I had no idea that 13 years later I would be asked by my boss at CNN to find out why good players were leaving Knight's program. When I was assigned the story, I had no idea what I would uncover..." 

Update: on January 29, 2017, a few days after my post, it appears Duke's History department page no longer accepts my original link to "lynching," so search for "Duke noose tree 2015" if further links don't work.

Update: I checked again on January 30, 2017, and the original link works again, but I've kept the new link in the main article.  

The Ideal Algorithm for a Single Person considering Worldwide Options

I've stumbled upon the perfect algorithm for choosing a new city (of at least 50,000 residents) if you're single and over 30 years old:

(Percentage of inter-racial marriages and inter-racial relationships of at least six months) + 

(Percentage of inter-religious marriages, including deists and atheists, and inter-religious relationships of at least three months) - 

(Suicide rate per 100,000, averaged over most recent four years) - 

(Pollution levels).

I call this the "Rafat Relationship Index," or RRI. The blue criteria are mandatory, while the violet ones are optional but necessary for more complete data.  The suicide rate would only apply in cities of over 100,000, though I'd be very pleased if any non-resort city smaller than that ranked highly on the first two criteria.  An ambitious researcher might try a formula with both percentages and hard numbers, which would still favor larger cities but provide better conclusions. You only need to find one person, after all, so the more people, the higher your chances.

Upon hearing my idea, my friend's wife burst into fits of laughter, while he said it worked--"It's the tolerance + happiness formula."  When his wife stopped laughing, she posited that countries with public healthcare systems like Canada would rank the highest.

I disagree--from what I've seen in Scandinavian Facebook and other online profiles, it seems rare there to marry outside your race, even though Scandinavia has great public health care and relatively high levels of immigration (when considering its size).  I suppose many of the non-blondes are probably recent immigrants who may not speak the native languages, making it harder to evaluate true tolerance and segregation levels, but the growing presence of Scandinavian Neo-Nazi groups--an issue touched upon in Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series--indicates growing societal problems. In any case, as you can see, this kind of exercise can be quite interesting, even if you're married or in a relationship.

To determine what city to visit to meet a potential lifetime partner, I had been evaluating economic numbers such as levels of private debt.  From a statistical analysis, however, such efforts are futile because it's almost impossible in developed countries to link private debt or lack thereof to fiscal responsibility, lack of materialism, lack of greed, or moderation.  A person living in a more affluent area could be justified in taking out more debt than someone living in a smaller but equally nice area.  Another person could be able to buy a larger property because of parental assistance, while another might not have such options, while still another might have such options and forgo them, indicating higher levels of character than all others. We don't even need to further parse our analysis by considering student loans or their repayment rates to understand that levels of debt are great starting points for character analysis, but so in need of individual tailoring as to be non-optimal for relationship formulas.

At the same time, at least with private debt (or even something more subjective like educational quality), you can easily ascertain objective data if you have the right access.  In contrast, with the first two criteria in my formula, it's not possible today to do a objective analysis because most cities don't keep or even try to find such personal data, and even if they did, many of them experience substantial inflows and outflows year-to-year, making any data gathered unreliable.  Fortunately, the last two criteria can, for the most part, be found using online databases, so we won't discuss them further except to say they provide completely objective markers that would eliminate places with tolerance and open-mindedness but not quality of life. (You might argue I should include GDP growth because most people need a job, but the reality of our modern world is that capital is mobile but labor is not; therefore, a GDP criterion would be inferior to an additional criterion relating to immigration rules and policies, such as ease of student visas and visa extensions.)

If someone was brave enough to attempt to complete my formula, the first step would be deciding which relationships to classify as interracial, an act requiring an in-person check subject to individual preferences.  Does an American woman with light skin but olive eyes who is half-Chinese and half-Caucasian qualify as inter-racial if she marries a white American? What if the male is a white immigrant from Germany or Norway who speaks English less than perfectly? (Are you able to see the vast possibilities and variations yet?)

Taking the potential analysis further, does President Barack Obama's relationship with Michelle Obama qualify as inter-racial?  (He's half-white and half-African, while she's full African-American.)  Or do their respective educational pedigrees render their race and backgrounds less relevant and therefore outliers that should be excluded from the formula's input?

For the religious factor, does someone who goes to church once a year for Christmas qualify as "inter-religious" if married to someone who goes every week? Take Homer and Marge Simpson. If Homer was Chinese, most people would classify his relationship with Marge as both inter-racial and inter-religious, but since they're both the same color with similar facial features, most people would classify them as neither. (By now, I'm almost tempted to return to debt levels as a more reliable factor in finding a suitable relationship, but I'm too enamored with my formula's potential.)

Although it's very, very difficult to parse racial and religious differences without in-depth interviews, sociologists can still get adequate data by going to popular cafes and restaurants at lunchtime and in the evening within different cities and doing an eye-check of inter-racial couples.  In San Jose, California, they could, on at least one weekday and one weekend, visit Westfield Mall's food court, Santana Row, a Starbucks on the East Side, a Starbucks far away from Santana Row, and a few independent coffeeshops using Yelp's ratings.

Researchers may then go to religious services in multiple locations and do a similar eye-check to ascertain further data on interracial marriages.  For example, does the local Catholic Church have separate masses for Latinos and non-Latinos?  If so, what percentage of married couples are interracial? How many African-Americans and Africans does the local mosque have attending on Friday, or is it all Pakistani-American and Arab-American?

The disheartening part about such a study in America is that even a casual observer will notice that religious entities are about as racially and ethnically segregated as you can get.  Near my hometown, Persian Christians have their own church rather than being incorporated into an existing one.  In other words, one can legitimately argue that religious entities, even established ones in America, don't do much to integrate people who look different from their existing congregations or who have different customs--in which case, what's the point of religion anyway?  To increase segregation and provide a tax benefit for doing so?

In any case, research would not take more than two weeks in each city, although the timing must be right--no holidays, no college towns (too young), no one-off days (like April 15 in the U.S.), and no fiscal quarter close time periods.

As for data on inter-religious marriage and coupling rates, the data must include relationships of at least three months to be valid.  I'm at a loss on how to proceed in a creative way.  The regular route of a paid study with voluntary participants would be one way to go, though I'd name the study something else and use it as a conduit to get background information (doing it this way increases the likelihood of accurate information).

In some ways, my formula, like debt levels, is subject to individual perception and therefore bias, but if done over a period of years, one can actually create the framework for a useful metric when it comes to solving this problem we call love.  If any sociology or psychology students end up using my idea, please give me credit.  I think it would make a fantastic idea for a dissertation or end-of-year paper.  You'd need at least three observers and of different genders and ethnic backgrounds to follow the procedure above in cafes, restaurants, and religious entities and majority agreement before marking a couple as "interracial," but it would be a great start.  If cities were judged under my formula, they'd no doubt do a better job reversing centuries of voluntary and involuntary segregation, leading to better outcomes for everyone.

(c) Matthew Rafat (2017) 

Bonus: "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." -- fictional quote attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche by Simpsons creator Matt Groening 

Intuit, Inc. 2017 Shareholder Meeting

Intuit, Inc. (INTU) held its annual shareholder meeting on January 19, 2017.  As always, Intuit's meeting is one of the best to attend in the Bay Area because of CEO Brad Smith's preparation and ambassador-like demeanor. This year, Intuit's food spread included a delicious coffee brand I'd never seen before--Equator Coffees and Teas--literally a nice perk.

CEO Smith's presentation followed his pattern of guiding Intuit--a 34-year old company "born in the era of DOS"--into his long-term vision of becoming a services-based, global company.  The company's focus continues to be in the U.S. and Canada, where 95% of the profits are generated.  Of all the goals in Intuit's game plan, this figure is disappointing after years of hearing Intuit's desire to expand internationally.  Its technical staff continues to be based primarily in California and India (pp. 19, 10K), but it seems unable to get a business foothold in other countries.  CEO Smith, ever the optimist, said Intuit continues to be "constructively dissatisfied" and is "starting to get momentum outside the U.S."

Curiously, on February 1, 2016, Intuit gained access to a five-year credit line of $1.5 billion, leaving $1 billion in "ammunition" after retiring debentures issued in 2007 (pp. 23, 10K). On this particular banking deal, Intuit did very well--its 5.75% bonds are being retired with a 2% credit line (about 0.5% above LIBOR). I predict Intuit will buy a smaller company, perhaps Palo Alto-based Adaptive Insights, or a private company specializing in machine learning.  It currently has the option of leasing IBM products for machine learning without disclosing PII to third parties, but if all of their other algorithms are in-house, it seems Intuit would want its machine learning (i.e., "personal, anticipate, populate") and business intelligence programs to be wholly owned as well.  The most interesting data point I heard this year was that the chances of a small business surviving in its first few years increases by 89% if the business owner is linked to an accountant.

Intuit's goal of moving into a services-based, subscription model seems to require it to boost its accounting expertise portfolio, especially with regards to improving Quickbooks Online.  ("As we continue to transition our business to more connected services, we become more dependent on the continuing operation and availability of our information technology and communication systems and those of our external service providers." -- pp. 15, 10K.) Intuit's transition to the "cloud" (rather than just CD-ROMs sold through third-party retailers) has led it to divest Quicken--which was only about 2% of its profits--and focus on integrating all of its products across platforms within a broad, diverse ecosystem.

The Q&A session was excellent.  CEO Smith did not limit people who asked questions and involved members of his executive team when appropriate.  One person asked why he had to pay an additional 20 to 30 dollars to file his state taxes when the transmission cost of his federal return was zero to the federal government.

It turns out that the cost goes directly to Intuit, not a third party transmitter or entity.  Why?  Complying with each state's tax rules involves new work for Intuit.  CEO Smith explained that 44 states had their own tax codes, and the value came from Intuit's work trying to maximize tax credits and deductions based on each state's individual tax codes--which change each year.

I was concerned about privacy and third party security in the era of "big data."  I asked what Intuit did with customer data, and whether it shared that data with third parties without full anonymizing.  I expected to hear that Intuit sold some of the insights it gained from its data to third parties because doing so would be highly profitable; however, CEO Smith firmly stated that Intuit did not sell any customer data and did not share any customer data without express permission.  It's "not our data, it's the customer's" and Intuit does "not sell that data."  Moreover, it complies not only with U.S. laws but also EU laws relating to privacy coming from Brussels.

I wanted to be absolutely sure CEO Smith wasn't putting me on, even though his statements were unequivocally pro-consumer and pro-privacy.  (Data is the new gold in Silicon Valley, after all.)  I asked a similar question about privacy and data sharing in a follow-up question.  He reiterated his stance, and then asked Intuit's general counsel, Laura Fennell, to confirm that no third parties gain access to Intuit's data without express user consent.  She immediately confirmed his statements and later explained to me after the meeting that although IBM's Watson was mentioned during the presentation, Intuit can rent IBM's Watson and extract its own insights without sharing any data with IBM.

My final question related to the Free File Alliance, an agreement with the federal government.  Intuit's 10K makes this program sound as if it's preventing the IRS from directly competing with Intuit's software: "The current agreement with the Free File Alliance is scheduled to expire in October 2020. We anticipate that governmental encroachment at both the federal and state levels may present a continued competitive threat to our business for the foreseeable future" (pp. 14, 10K).  However, when I asked CEO Smith about the Alliance (no Star Wars figures included, unfortunately), he said it was merely a way to give taxpayers below a certain income threshold the ability to get online and do their taxes more efficiently.  "Voluntary compliance" is the goal from Intuit's standpoint, and it is working with the IRS to assist taxpayers who would otherwise use pen and paper or not file at all.  He added that the idea of assisting lower income taxpayers fits into Intuit's mission, which is to serve the community and the nation.  Stirring words, indeed, but I suspect there's much more behind the scenes between government agencies and Intuit.  Many years ago, I remember seeing a former CEO become almost frothy when asked about the government's encroachment into Intuit's business.

Overall, Intuit continues to focus on serving consumers and adapting to technological change. Having beaten Microsoft's attempts to win away its customers, its biggest challenge now is adapting to the cloud and its new ways of doing business--at least until it figures out how to expand internationally at a faster pace.

Disclosures: I like Intuit's corporate culture and may apply for employment.  As of January 20, 2017, I own an insignificant number of Intuit shares, but my holdings may change at any time. Nothing herein constitutes investment advice.  You are responsible for your own due diligence.

Modern Capitalism, or How to Guarantee a Military-Industrial Complex

My uncle once told me, "In the future, there will be five companies, and they'll own everything."  We needn't go into the future to see such a reality--in most important ways, the aforementioned scenario is already here if you add two zeros to the end of the number above.

Where does innovation come from after a company achieves multinational status, starts paying a dividend, but still has to grow by x% annually to please Wall Street? Some people may know that such growth comes from buy-outs and mergers. Indeed, after a certain size, large companies succeed based on how adept they are at incorporating a newly bought company's products and remaining employees into their own pre-configured business and legal systems. In short, scalability, supply chain management, and risk controls drive value in a major corporation if it survives long enough. What about innovation?

Under the current merger-and-acquisition system, major companies will "buy" innovation and pay premiums--sometimes obscene ones--to avoid having large and unpredictable R&D budgets. In such a dynamic, large companies can pay a small percentage of their revenue to attract a smaller company, but without taking the risk of having larger or recurring R&D costs on the books that don't produce consistent ROI. Smart, right?

Yet, it is precisely the large companies, with their established products and revenue streams, that are best able to take the risks necessary to produce great ideas. If only smaller companies are taking bank loans or SBA loans to try new ideas, then the banks become the primary risk-takers and consequently demand greater influence and political power to take on such risk. If the big banks' investment banking, consulting, and M&A groups are the major players backing smaller companies or venture capital firms, then most innovation not linked to academia is supported by the banking sector.

Guess who supports the banking sector? The FDIC and your deposits.  In other words, under America's current capitalist system, taxpayers are back-stopping the risks of innovation under "too big to fail" because many larger corporations aren't investing enough in R&D, which is seen as an unpredictable cost by Wall Street. Today, only Tesla (TSLA) appears to be choosing innovation over steadily increasing share price. Other companies like General Electric have large R&D budgets, but as a percentage of gross revenue, they're actually minuscule--usually no more than 7%.

Seen this way, of course America's banking and insurance sectors will have the most influence in Congress--they're the ones driving innovation by funding R&D that larger companies should be funding but won't. Not only will large banks and insurance companies demand favorable tax policy for their risk-taking (witness Warren Buffett asking for and receiving a "terrorism" exemption post-9/11), they get their funding directly from the Federal Reserve or indirectly by convincing the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. What are you, the taxpayer, getting in exchange for stricter personal deductions than businesses; receiving low interest rates on your deposits; and being the insurer of last resort?

You probably won't guess the correct answer: a military with a budget not subject to audits that does the R&D for you, but with the higher risk of pursuing war as a testing ground for new weapons and strategies, and with debt that could sink or split the entire country if mismanaged. If the larger companies have external checks and balances that mitigate R&D risk-taking, and the banks are being back-stopped by the government (and therefore taxpayers) when they make loans that support R&D, big banks and the military become the two groups not subject to checks and balances but necessary for innovation. Under such incentives, it's only a matter of time before the military and banking sectors dominate the entire country and become powerful enough to ignore President Eisenhower rolling in his grave.

And so it goes.

Matthew Rafat (copyright 2017) 

Bonus: "In the past 30 years, America has had 13 wars at a cost of $14.2 trillion...what if they [had] spent part of the money on building up infrastructure?" -- Alibaba CEO Jack Ma

Bonus: below are the numbers supporting the arguments above:

People don't understand the difference between budgetary outlays and discretionary spending, or appropriations/expenditures, which is responsible for the inability to see eye-to-eye on fiscal responsibility debates.

Mandatory spending is federal spending based on existing laws. This budgetary spending is mainly entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, whose spending criteria are determined by who is eligible to apply for benefits and not by Congress, and includes items supposed to be relatively predictable. Discretionary spending, on the other hand, is the portion of the budget that the president requests and Congress appropriates every year through legislation. In the past, such spending was supposed to be for one-off, unusual and unpredictable items but has now become a slush fund for military adventurism, as we'll see.

Furthermore, when discussing military spending, it's debatable whether to include VA spending as part of the national defense budget, which creates further confusion. Let's try to clear up these issues.

Spending on national defense is estimated to be about 15% of all outlays in 2017. This is less than average when compared to budgets from other years. (Average proportion = 22%). That 15% is about $516 billion, not including VA funding.

The President’s 2017 budget includes $182.3 billion for the VA in 2017. This includes $78.7 billion in discretionary resources and $103.6 billion in mandatory funding (for veteran's disability benefits). Including national defense and VA budgetary amounts together, we have a total of $698 billion spent on military-related budget items. Technically, that's less than what we spend on Health and Human Services (e.g., Medicare) and Social Security (almost a trillion projected in 2017). However, the above figures do not include discretionary spending, which causes annual deficits funded partly by issuing debt to foreign countries. Let's look at those numbers.

For 2017, 49% of total discretionary spending is projected to go towards national defense, or about $500 billion. That means we spend about $1.2 trillion every year on the military and military-related items. Thus, the largest spending items in America in 2017 are the military and the VA; Social Security; and Medicare. Why is that a problem?

In 2017, the government is estimated to have a total debt of $17.7 trillion. At 104.4% of GDP, this percentage is extremely high when compared to other years (avg. 59.0%). Spending on SS is fine--that debt is owed to Americans. Spending money borrowed from future generations on unnecessary or inflated medical expenses like pharmaceuticals and on unnecessary wars or wars of choice is unconscionable. It guarantees fewer opportunities for younger generations. It means our intelligence agencies work overtime trying to justify illegal military invasions or are tempted to engage in false flag or psychological operations to justify security spending. It means millennials are called lazy or immature when they're anything but. In short, when you're going in debt for unnecessary items, and you need the jobs related to that unnecessary spending to get votes and stay in political office, you have to resort to fear and outliers to maintain the status quo. Such an approach is inadvisable in any era, but especially so in an era of increasing competition worldwide and against countries to which you owe money.

Bonus: The local level creates no reason for optimism, either.  In most major American cities, 50% to 70% of all local tax revenue is spent on "public safety" aka cops and firefighters. Many of these taxes go to pension obligations, i.e., paying gov employees who no longer work and who haven't paid into the retirement fund in sufficient amounts to sustain it without higher taxes or cutting other local programs.  Consequently, America's military budget is not subject to any real audits due to the federal gov's ability to borrow almost unlimited debt, while even local entities are forced to divert their taxes into strengthening a police state because by law, pension interests are vested and therefore untouchable. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, this is the kind of activity required in such a regime: http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2015/11/06/Department-of-Defense-paid-53-million-to-pro-sports-for-military-tributes-report-says/stories/201511060140

Basically, the gov spends taxpayer monies to normalize the abnormal, then demands the entities continue its show at their own cost or be called unpatriotic.

Both parties are complicit, and both parties are locked into unsustainable programs that require more debt because neither party wants to impose any fiscal discipline. Why should they, when they can rely on more debt to maintain the status quo and their jobs? In the case of California Democrats, their allegiance is to an unsustainable K-12 system, teachers' unions, and the teachers' pension plan, which guarantees a return of 7.5%--even though the economy is growing about 2% to 3% a year.

Rather than take a common sense approach and reduce benefits for existing retirees--who negotiated an 8% ROI under much different economic conditions--it appears govs will reduce benefits for incoming, younger employees and wait a generation to try to balance their books without relying so much on debt.  It remains to be seen whether any system that depends on achieving consistent 7.5% ROI can be sustained in the "new normal."