The West Wing!

The West Wing is the center of world power. Its inhabitants demonstrate good or ill, compassion or indifference, truth or fiction, power or impotence, take the moral high ground, or demonstrate obstructionism.

When Nathan Wyeth[i] designed the Oval Office, an appendage of the West Wing of the White House, he used the oval Blue Room as a design concept. It is unique and meant to intimidate those who enter.

The room is a symbol of our country, its power, and its influence in the world. Some call it a sacred space. During most of my growing-up years and since, the room’s occupants have treated it that way, demanding honor and respect for the presidency.

I find myself going back to that place often.

The West Wing is where I find solace and think about what could be. I especially favor the episodes that show the Oval Office with grown-ups acting in grown-up ways[ii].

 I find, to the amusement of many of my friends, that one or two episodes each week quiet the nerves and provide a needed break from the fulminations that emanate from this sacred inner sanctum. The play is better than reality.

Presidents get the blame for what goes wrong during their tenure and they get credit for what goes well, whether the result is because of their policies or those of past administrations. Given that rule of thumb, President Trump gets credit for one of the lowest unemployment rates in decades, for the stock market at an all-time high, for putting two nominees on the Supreme Court, and for building a solid base of supporters. The mounting deficit will be a negative in a few months, the result of a massive tax cut. He maintains a base of supporters that is strong if not very large. He is reducing regulations in spite of science that says he should not. The country is divided on his priorities. My observation is that the Oval Office changed past Presidents. Simply walking into the room would seem to overwhelm them with the enormous responsibility they shouldered.

Politics is a bloody contact sport. Campaigns are brutal. Once elected to the office of the President of the United States, however, people expect the President, difficult as it may be, to become “presidential.” It is hard to define “presidential” but you know it when you see it. I have not seen in lately, especially in the Oval Office. Today, the sacred space is treated like a TV set. Actors and reality show-people parade in and out for sound-bite moments; the stage is set for Executive-Order signings and photo ops.

Did other presidents use the Oval Office as a stage? Yes, but …

I wish our President would watch a couple of episodes of West Wing each week. It could change his perception of the presidency and might even change how he behaves in those sacred spaces.

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[i] www.capitol.gov

[ii] West Wing – 155 Episodes – 1999-2006 - NBC

Enemy of the People

“It is the press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence, cultural elevation, and the economic independence of the nation.”[i]

“The press is the enemy of the people.” Donald Trump lashed out at the press in the last few days, again, as the nation and the world grappled with the largest terrorist attack against the Jewish people in the history of the nation. In New York City, the Empire State Building went dim in honor of those killed in Pittsburg. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower went dim. Across the world, there were prayers for the families of the lost. In the U.S., there was politics as usual.

The day after another pipe bomb was delivered to CNN, the President tweeted that “There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame...”

We could be gracious and assume that the President and his minions do not understand the gravity of their discourse. We could believe that the President does not understand the history of the term. We could lay the actions of the administration to poor timing or lack of sensitivity. We could, but it is none of the above.

Enemy of the people goes back to the time of Nero. During the Reign of Terror in France, the government used “ennemi du peuple” to describe those who disagreed with it. The Third Reich called Jews the sworn enemy of the people. Mao called the press the enemy of the people. Stalin used the press to teach the populists to believe in his government, and those who did not agree wore the title of an enemy of the people.

There is, to be sure, a lot of fake news in newspapers with agendas. Human Events comes to mind, as well as the Weekly Standard, National Review, the Washington Times or the New York Post. Social media simply boils with agenda driven lies. However, the major newspapers who report the news accurately, in a democracy, cannot be called the enemy of the people. It is the role of the press, the Fourth Estate, to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.[ii] When they do their job well, they are not the enemy of the people.

To be sure, we are a few days from a significant mid-term election that will decide the tenor of the country for the next two to six years. It is legitimate to rile up the base and get out the vote. It is legitimate to work with all your energy to win the election. It is not OK to do whatever it takes to win.

In a period of national mourning, we depend on the President to be the Consoler in Chief. In a week when fifteen or more bombs were sent to leaders and prominent institutions across the country, we had no one to console us because our leader was on the campaign trail complaining about how the wind had blown his hair, or tweeting about the pitching changes in the World Series game. Any other President, of either party, would have called for at least three days of mourning and cessations of campaigning. They did it in past years. Ours, today, continues the campaign in earnest, building up hatred against those who disagree with him.

It should never be forgotten that the people of Germany elected Adolph Hitler to be their Chancellor. Once in power, he rallied the populist into a frenzy that allowed for the extermination of millions of the enemies of the state. The people of Russia allowed Lenin and Stalin to come to power and to eliminate millions of the enemies of the state.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.[iii]

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[i] Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf - 1925

[ii] Finley Peter Dunne – Mr. Dooley in Peace and War - 1898

[iii] Martin Niemoller – First They Came - 1946

Judicial Temperament

At heart, I am a history teacher, irrespective of all else I have done since those early years. I am a political junkie too. I try to moderate my views but sometimes I stray. A few weeks ago, I spent most of a day watching the first Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on Judge Kavanaugh’s suitability for the Supreme Court. He already serves on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. (Ironically, Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, which the Senate Majority Leader derailed, is Chief Judge of that Circuit.) Most nominees to the Court are well vetted, but it still didn’t go well for Brett Kavanaugh.

The President nominates candidates for the federal judiciary “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.”[i] The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has responsibility for questioning nominees, considering information in the background checks conducted by the FBI and its own investigators and voting to either reject or forward the nominations to the full Senate for a vote. The quest to determine basic competence and integrity often becomes a deep dive into party politics.

The American Bar Association, the traditional arbiter of the competence of the nominees for the federal courts, considers several characteristics in its evaluation: compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, sensitivity, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias and commitment to equal justice. Throughout their deliberations, they consider judicial temperament.[ii]

 Professor Jeffrey Rosen, one of the most important scholars of the Supreme Court[iii] writes about judicial temperament this way: “The most important predictors of success on the Supreme Court are not academic brilliance, philosophical consistency, or methodological ambition.” Successful justices are open to compromise, set aside ideology, and get along well with their colleagues.

Judge Kavanaugh spent hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee answering questions and rebutting innuendo about his fitness. Frankly, he did a good job of defending himself. There was little question that his nomination would be sent to the full Senate for confirmation. Then the other shoe dropped.

During the two weeks following Kavanaugh’s initial testimony before the Judiciary Committee, a letter from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault during their high school years. Later, two more allegations of sexual assault and drunkenness became public. Faced with mounting public outcry and political jousting, the Chair of the Judiciary Committee was forced to re-open the hearings.

Dr. Ford’s testimony brought visible angst to the Senate majority members. Her presentation was professional and wildly credible. The nation watched transfigured and found the professor’s stinging testimony compelling. She had made her mark on the country. Judge Kavanaugh would plead his case in the afternoon. Most agreed that he needed to be credible, as well, and do it in a way that showed judicial temperament at its best.

 He opened his rebuttal in a very unusual way. “The behavior of several of the Democratic members of this committee at my hearing a few weeks ago was an embarrassment,” and then suggested that the sexual assault allegations against him from three different women were part of a vast left-wing conspiracy going back to the Clinton era.[iv] Some wrote, “Kavanaugh was not simply angry; he was unhinged.”[v]

Judge Kavanaugh had suffered a shattering bruise to his reputation: top of his class in high school, in college, and in law school. He was a pillar of the community, serving the homeless, coaching his daughter’s basketball team, teaching at Harvard Law and serving actively at his church. He had a right to be angry, very angry. The accusations against him were embarrassing and career breaking. From the start, he went into attack mode. His opening statement in defense of his reputation and the charges against him was strong. His exchanges with members of the minority were impolite, to the point of requiring an apology. He did everything wrong. Judicial temperament was missing, and the nation saw it on full display.

Justice Gorsuch, a conservative Trump appointee, had had his difficulties with the minority during his confirmation hearings. His seat on the bench, however, was simply replacing conservative Justice Scalia with another conservative. Then Justice Kennedy, the swing vote on the court, resigned. This was now the stuff of historical proportions. Kavanaugh sitting at the bar would change the course of American jurisprudence for decades. In a divided nation, the appointment would not go down easy.

We witnessed one of the most historic days in the history of the Senate. Hoping for a rush to judgment and a quick floor vote, the Chair of the committee called the roll. It came down to one Senator who managed to work out an agreement with the minority side. He would vote to send the nomination to the floor only if he had an assurance that the majority party would agree to reopen the FBI background check to search for more evidence. It likely doesn’t matter what the FBI finds in its investigation. The Senate, so split in its view about the country, in its distrust of other members, in its penchant for a more conservative court, and in its fear of Donald Trump’s ability to persuade his base of voters in the fall election, that few will change their vote.

By the standards of judicial temperament, however, Judge Kavanaugh’s partisanship, lack of civility, and visible disdain for those who disagree with him failed the fundamental test for office. If confirmed to the highest court in the land, the institution will be changed forever. People will no longer see it as the blindfolded holder of the scales of justice but a highly politicized institution. It will change the country’s view of justice, impartial courts, the rule of law and its fundamental ethos.

Teachers will have to develop a new narrative when they teach Civics, when they teach about our being a nation of laws; when they teach about the basic values of our experiment. I hope that they won’t have to teach that democracy has run its course.

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[i] Article II, Section 2 – Constitution of the United States

[ii] American Bar Association – 2016 – Committee that evaluates judicial appointments

[iii] Ellen McGirt – Fortune Magazine- September 28, 2018

[iv] Stephane Mengimer – Mother Jones – September 27, 2018

[v] Howard Ross – USA Today – September 28, 2018

Dignity

I like pomp! Throw in some circumstance and I am a happy fellow. I’m sure it’s a leftover from my early days as an altar boy, in a parish that pulled out all the stops almost every Sunday. It was part of the French-Canadian tradition carried to extremes: lots of candles, lace, and bejeweled vestments, and incense rising to the rooftop. Today, we would call it “high church.”

We saw pomp and circumstance the last weekend in August when America laid to rest one of its great warriors and statesman. We experienced quiet but uplifting ceremonies when he lay in the rotunda of his home-state capital. We experienced the military reception of the hero-senator when his casket arrived in D.C. We saw John McCain become only the 31^st person to lie in state in the rotunda of the nation’s capital, on the same catafalque that held Abraham Lincoln. The funeral service in the National Cathedral featured talks by two former presidents. Then, there was the burial at the Naval Academy. Dignity overshadowed the pomp.

We don’t have an overabundance of dignity in our political world anymore. John McCain, however, brought together people of different political parties to speak with each other. He brought together people of different religions to pray together. He brought together people with strongly divergent philosophies and convictions, and they walked together. There was dignity in the prayers, the songs and hymns, and the homilies. There was dignity in the stories and the humor. It was as if the nation needed a respite from the lack of civility in the last few years and the lack of dignity that is palpable.

President Obama quoted from Hemmingway, McCain’s favorites: “Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.”[i] No matter our disagreement or agreement with McCain’s policies, his methods, or his voting record, he made every day count. He pursued truth and spoke truth to power. His was a life which knew heroism, which knew service to country, which believed in the founding documents and which was determined to make every day count. The nation stopped for a few days and expressed its affection for a life well lived. And, it did it with dignity.

The talking heads gave their interpretation of the events. For some, it was a needed dose of how life once was. For others, it was too much for someone willing to compromise with, or even befriend someone from across the aisle. It was both really. Meghan McCain’s eulogy included “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.[ii] More than one commentator noted that that was true for those in the cathedral. When the cameras panned the congregation it showed mostly older and mostly white well-to-do people. They looked like the stereotypical power elites of D.C., and they were. The jab was directed at the absent President Trump, who was not invited. Some noted that the gathering didn’t represent Trump’s strong base of supporters anyway. They are not part of the power elite class and resent the actions of that cast of citizens. The tweeting quickly followed.

My experience was, perhaps naively, that those elected to office, those to whom we gave the reins of power, those we entrusted to work for the good of the country, did it with fervor, did it with conviction, debated the issues well, took a vote, and then went out for a drink with each other. In the end, they were on the same team. The ideology was in support of the country, its constitution, and its traditions, not the party.

This rupture in our approach to governing slits the country, and we know from experience that “a house divided against itself, cannot stand.”[iii] Neither can a house lacking in dignity and civility.  

Maybe my propensity for pomp and circumstance drives my appreciation for the dignity John McCain brought back to America, even if only for one weekend. I suspect, however, that the visuals of that long weekend will remain with us for a long time and that we will demand more civility and dignity from our leaders, at all levels of government. We have seen what goodness and dignity look like. We need more of it.

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[i] Earnest Hemingway – For Whom the Bell Tolls - 1940

[ii] Town and Country –September 1, 2018 – Lauren Hubbard

[iii] Abraham Lincoln – June 16, 1858 – Springfield, Illinois

Imagine

Imagine there’s no heaven… It’s easy if you try … Imagine all the people living for today[i]

Imagine there’s no privilege, it’s easy if you try. Imagine all the people living as equals, living as one.

White Privilege! Most of us never thought about it. We didn’t have to; we had it. It came naturally to rich and poor. It’s who we are. I began hearing about White Privilege a couple of years ago. It was a chant on college campuses where they measure the past by today’s standards. The next generations call us to “walk the talk.”

Our creation story,[ii] and birth documents state “all men are created equal.”[iii] But it wasn’t true. Our Constitution, one of the most important documents in the history of the world, says that “We the people” can rule our own land, but then defines some people as more privileged than others. The document would not have received a plurality of votes without enumerating slaves as only 3/5^th of a person. Many of our Founding Fathers were slave owners. We grew the Union based on whether territories allowed slavery or not; the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, and others. Some claim we are a nation of immigrants, but we are occupiers as well; we took other people’s land and made it ours. The victors write history, so ours is very white, loaded with privilege. We are also a nation that expanded by use of force. We encouraged homesteading of other people’s land, we fought wars to take over most of northern Mexico, the Philippines, Guam and other territories. Much of our growth was expressed as Manifest Destiny, our God-given right to bring the White ways to the less regarded. Our history effused White Privilege without using the words, and we learned it well. It’s who were and who we are.

Ask yourself if you are privileged. Did your parents have “the talk” with you, or did you feel the need to have it with your son? When police stop you for a traffic violation, do you wonder if you will get home alive? When you buy an expensive item in a store, do they look at you with suspicion when you hand them your American Express Card? When you went to school, did the teachers assume you couldn’t learn as well as White kids, so you were sent to shop classes instead of math and science?

White Privilege is systemic in our society and that of many other nations. Nice people don’t know that they behave with an assumption of privilege. It’s not racism, which is much more a singular act or belief compared to a societal belief. The truth is we are trained to be that way. Survey courses in literature were always about Western Civilization. In high school, we learned Greek mythology, read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, gushed over the Song of Roland, survived through at least one Shakespeare play each year and read the poets that best exemplified the supremacy of whiteness. World Literature was really Northern European and English writings, as if Africa, Asia, and South America had nothing to offer or were not part of the civilized world. U.S. history pretty much, until recently, ignored the Spanish settlements in the western part of the continent. We were, oh so subtly,” taught before it’s too late.”[iv] We learned it well, without knowing it. It's nearly 2020 and many still find it difficult to deal with the idea of equality.

Ultra right-wing commentator Laura Ingraham[v] launched into a diatribe about how “massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people…”The America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore.” A preponderance of young people on social media took her to task, but she was talking to a political base that listens and believes her. Their world is being turned upside down and they have yet to figure out how to cope with the new technologies, the closing of manufacturing plants, the regulations that make it difficult to eke out a living, the push for equality, all taking away their unearned privilege. They feel trapped and blame their problems on immigrants, legal or undocumented. They blame it on anyone of color. They blame others for taking away “their” jobs, which weren’t theirs, to begin with. Their loss hurts.

The fight for White Privilege reared its ugly head in Charlottesville when Unite the Right mounted a protest with a mission to “unify American White Nationalists.”[vi] The hidden anger coursing through a small segment of the populist movement in the country showed itself and the President allowed that they were good people, rather than condemn their actions.

Does this history of White Privilege have an effect on how America operates as a country? Yes, it does. The country is 61% White, 18% Hispanic/Latino, 12% African American/Black, and 5% Asian. Yet, there are only four Black CEOs in the Fortune 500. Of the nine million students in college, only 2.7 million are Black and 3.3million are Hispanic. Of the nearly two million students in graduate school, only 364 thousand are Black and 243 Thousand are Hispanic. Blacks own only one percent of the land in the country.  

Some say that there is an interesting difference between racism and White Privilege and White supremacy.[vii] Racism, for example, occurs when a police officer is found guilty of using deadly force unnecessarily and we write it off as one-bad-apple rather than looking at the systemic issue of a police department overwrought with feelings and attitudes about White Privilege. Those old enough to remember Dr. King’s efforts to change people’s foundational thoughts about privilege know that much has been accomplished toward the goal. But, one of the unintended consequences of the drive for equality is the rise of resistance from those who see their place in society dwindling.

Congress and the Executive branch of government have been loath to do anything about the consequences of the inbred White Privilege. That leaves it up to the people to bring about change. The usual bromides about voting the rascals out of office don’t amount to much, so we need to ask people to be more aware of the fact that they have an unearned privilege and to try not to take advantage of it.

People, on their own, can do simple things to move the needle. They can insist on schools that are equal for everyone, with good teachers, good materials and safe environments and buildings. They can insist on pre-schools for every child. They can insist on some form of good basic health care for everyone. They can resist housing based on race. They can ensure a level playing field for everyone. They can stop assuming that everything is for the Whites and others get the leftovers.

“You may say I’m a dreamer, But I’m not the only one.

 I hope some day you’ll join us

And the world will be as one.”[viii]

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[i] Imagine –John Lennon - 1971

[ii] Elizabeth Martinez – SOA Watch: Close the School of the Americas – 2018

[iii] Declaration of Independence 1776

[iv] Rogers and Hammerstein – South Pacific - 1949

[v] Fox New – August 9, 2018

[vi] Benjamin Coggin – Digg –August 14, 2017

[vii] SOS Watch ibid

[viii] Imagine – John Lennon - 1971

Stalking!

I’m being stalked! I can feel it. I can see them. I see them at all times of the day or evening. I see them no matter how hard I try to ditch them. It is really nerve-racking.  

 I got an email from Dillard’s Department Store telling me about the annual fall men’s clothing sale. It has always been a great sale. They try to empty the store of merchandise that hasn’t sold to make room for the new fall items coming in a few weeks. I’ve saved a lot of money over the years at their August sale, so I read the ad on their website. Bad move!

I looked at dress shirts, golf shorts, and tee shirts, shoes of all kinds, even a couple of sweaters, in September, yet. We decided to drive to Stockton and save a lot of money. Bad move! You have to spend a lot of money to save a lot of money.

After reviewing the sale items, I turned to other things on the web; there was an ad for the shoes I had looked at. I went to another website; I saw an ad for the shirt I had looked at. Then there was the ad that had all of the items I had looked at. They stalked me for well over a week.

This week I booked a flight to St. Louis for October. Now the airlines are stalking me, the hotels are stalking me, and the car rental companies are stalking me. It is only a matter of time before Uber starts serious stalking shenanigans.

Our world, once we sign on to the internet, is no longer ours. Why is that? Google makes most of its money from ads. Most blogs make money from ads. Not this one! Without ads, there is no viable internet for the masses. I think we all get that. Money is the easy answer.

Retail businesses are riding the crest of a major sea change in how they do business. Newspapers, those that still exist, tell us about brick-and-mortar stores closing, malls shuttering or standing half-built. Advertising dollars are moving by the buckets full to the internet because that is where people shop. Buy something today and receive it the next day on your front porch.

Websites will even curate sets of clothes for you each month. Try them on, send them back, or pay for what you keep. However, be prepared for the onslaught of continuing ads that will stalk you for days.

We must assume that if we go online there is little or no privacy. That’s also true when we are offline. [i] Google Maps stores your location online. Go to a store, it saves that location for future use. Google calls it improving the customer experience. I call it an invasion of privacy, but I still use it all the time.

Nearly two billion devices operate on Google’s Android software each day. Consider how much they know about so many people, and how vulnerable that information is to the world’s hackers. Those who can write the algorithms control much of the world’s information, private and public. Is that what we want?

I wanted to use Google Maps to find a local cannabis store, for medicinal purposes only. Do I want every pot dealer in the county stalking me for months? Not yet!

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[i] Axios – Ryan Nakashima for AP – August 2018 

They are changing us!

Each year, FORTUNE publishes its lists. Everyone is familiar with the Fortune 500 list of the biggest companies. Not everyone is familiar with the “40 under 40” list of the most influential people in the world under the age of 40. I never made that list. I’m sure that I consistently ranked 43^rd, 44th. I have often wondered who these people really are, what they did to get the high rating, and what makes them so influential. If I had known that years ago, I might have at least come in 42^nd.

I spent a few years in the business world. In retrospect, the best and the brightest made the difference. They seemed to be better educated, They saw the long-term better, They had a vision, and they took measured risks. I suspect the same is true today. It’s always been that way, except this time it’s different.

People over 60 years old, and those under 25 years old should consider the “40 under 40” list required reading. It helps us understand how the world has changed, how it is changing, and it points us to the future.

Technology, obviously, dominates the list of new young companies led by young people. Time was when a person needed years of experience to rise to the top of a major corporation. Not so much anymore! Kids start companies in the college dorms, expand them when they leave the ivied halls, get the financing they need, and grow to a billion dollars in a few years. What do those companies do? What do they make? What value do they bring to the world? None of those questions is easy to answer.

A few years back the “40 under 40” list would have included Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, and others who changed our world. Let’s look at those who are changing our world today.

The number one most influential person on the list is Kevin Systrom, co-founder and CEO of Instagram, which is owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s (tied for #1) Facebook.

Systrom founded the photo-sharing company in 2010. Today it serves one billion users per month who want to share pictures with their friends.

Brian Chesky, #5, founded Airbnb, an online hospitality company, in 2009. The company has 4.0 million rooms for rent in 34,000 cities and handles about 100 million web searches each month.  

Xu Li, #7, cofounded Bytedance in 2010. The company specializes in data mining that allows people to aggregate news the way they want it presented. It also furthers China’s strategy of being the leader in Artificial Intelligence (A.I) in the field of machine learning.  

Dhivya Suryadevara, #4, is CFO of General Motors. I think they make cars and trucks. She has degrees from India and her MBA from Harvard.  

Katrina Lake, #8, cofounded Stitch Fix, a subscription-based personal shopping platform in 2011. Its two and a half million users provide revenue of about $1.0 billion per year.  

Rena Kalioby, #40, founded AFFECTIVA in 2009. It trains machines to recognize human feelings – “emotion A.I.” It has captured visuals of 6.8 million people to date and compared them to their emotions at the time of the photo.

What does that all mean? To say that change is in the air is a gross understatement. Do any of these companies create value? That depends on your definition of value.

They create thousands of jobs and billions of net worth for millions of people. The data tell the story about the future. Jobs will go to those who train in technology and highly skilled professions. Low skilled people will struggle to find meaningful work. It does not take many people to create a company with a huge market cap.

GM has a market cap of $53 billion and employs 180,000 people. Facebook, on the other hand, has a market cap of $504 billion, but only 25,000 employees. Bytedance has a market cap approaching $45 billion with only 4,000 employees. Apple is nearly at a $1.0 trillion market cap with only 123,000 employees. Change is coming. A.I. is everywhere.

The Fortune 500 was traditionally a compendium of manufacturers and financial institutions. Most made something that people wanted.

 Most of the companies on the “40 under 40” list don’t really make anything. They process data, they provide platforms for social communications, business analysis, and strategic alignments. Do we need these companies? Maybe it’s for the millennials to decide.

The “40 under 40” are a big influence in the world. They are leading us to the future, in a direction we may not have chosen, understood, or even dared to risk. This list of leaders consists of highly educated, multi-degree folks that surely fit comfortably among the best and the brightest the world has to offer. It’s always been that way, except this time it’s different.