Epidemic of dishonesty

Micheal Bloomberg served as mayor of New York City for three consecutive terms beginning in 2002. Bloomberg has an estimated net worth of $53.4 billion, making him the 11th richest person in the world. "Americans are facing an "epidemic of dishonesty" in Washington." Media mogul, philanthropist and former New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg warned in his speech at Texas' Rice University that "an endless barrage of lies" in national politics poses a dire threat to U.S. democracy.

• If you don't know what you're going to do for the rest of your life, don't worry about it. Leave that to your parents! 
• The concept of honor has taken on different meanings through the ages: chivalry, chastity, courage, strength. And when divorced from morality, or attached to prejudice, honor has been used to justify murder, and repression, and deceit. 
• The words ‘honor’ and ‘honest’ are two sides of the same coin. To be honorable, you must be honest. And that means speaking honestly, and acting honestly, even when it requires you to admit wrongdoing and suffer the consequences. The commitment to honesty is also a patriotic responsibility.
• One of the first things children learn about American history is the story of George Washington and the fallen cherry tree.  ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ young George tells his father. ‘I cut it down.’ The cherry tree legend has endured because it's about what what we value in our leaders: honesty. 
• We’ve always lionized our two greatest presidents -- George Washington and Abraham Lincoln -- not only for their accomplishments, but also for their honesty. Today when we look at the city that bears Washington's name, it's hard not to wonder: What the hell happened?
• People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. 
• Those in politics routinely dismiss any inconvenient information, no matter how factual, as fake and they routinely say things that are false. 
• The plain truth about America -- the freedom, opportunity, and prosperity. 
• The more communists had access to real news, the more they would demand freedom.
• Today many of those at the highest levels of power see the plain truth as a threat. They fear it. They deny it. And they attack it. And we are in the midst of an epidemic of dishonesty, and an endless barrage of lies.
• Free societies depend on citizens who recognize that deceit in government isn’t something to shrug your shoulders at. 
• When elected officials speak as though they are above the truth, they will act as though they are above the law. And when we tolerate dishonesty, we get criminality. It's in the form of corruption or abuse of power or both. Left unchecked, these abuses erodes the institutions that preserve and protect our rights and freedoms and open the door to tyranny and fascism.
• There’s always been deceitful politicians and dishonest politicians in both parties. But now, there is now more tolerance for dishonesty in politics. The only thing more dangerous than dishonest politicians who have no respect for the law, is a chorus of enablers who defend their every lie.
• The Honor Code doesn’t require you to be honest but also requires you to say something if you saw others acting dishonestly. If we want elected officials to be honest, we have to hold them accountable when they are not -- or else suffer the consequences. [Bloomberg was a high profile critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, branding the future president as a “con” and “demagogue."]
• Honest people can disagree. That's what democracy is all about! But productive debate requires an acceptance of basic reality.
• If censorship solved problems, today we’d all be part of the old USSR.
• It's always good to be skeptical and ask questions. But we must be willing to place a certain amount of trust in the integrity of scientists. If you aren’t willing to do that, don't get on an airplane, don't use a cell phone or microwave, don't get treated in a hospital. Scientific discovery permeates practically every aspect of our lives, except our political debates.
• The dishonesty in Washington is about lack of good jobs in many communities, to the prevalence of gun violence, to the threats to the economy and threats to the environment -- because too many political leaders are being dishonest about facts and data, and too many people are letting them get away with it. [The Washington Post has documented more than 3,000 false or misleading statements made by Trump since he took office in January 2017]
• How did we get here? How did we go from a president who could not tell a lie to politicians who can not tell the truth?  From a George Washington who embodied honesty, to a Washington, D.C. defined by deceit?
• It’s popular to blame social media for spreading false information. The problem is the public's willingness and eagerness, to believe anything that paints the other side in a bad light. That's extreme partisanship, fueling and excusing dishonesty.
• Extreme partisanship is like an infectious disease that cripples the mind. It blocks us from understanding the other side.  It blinds us from seeing the strengths in their ideas and the weaknesses of our own. And it leads us to defend or excuse lies and unethical actions when our own side commits them.
• But governing is not a game.
• When people see the world as a battle between left and right, they become more loyal to their tribe than to our country. When power, not progress, becomes the object of the battle, truth and honesty become the first casualties.
• Honesty leads to trust and trust leads to freedom. If we aren't honest with one another, we don't trust one another, then we place limits on what we ourselves can do, and what we can do together as a country. It's a formula for gridlock and national decline. It doesn't have to be that way.
• When I was in city government, I didn't care which party proposed an idea -- and I never once asked someone his or her party affiliation during a job interview, or who they voted for. As a result, we had a dream team of Democrats, Republicans, and independents.  That diversity made our debates sharper, our policies smarter, and our government better.
• In Washington today, partisanship is everything and the dishonesty it produces is one of the greatest challenges that the present young generation will have to confront.
• Partisanship is not a new problem. George Washington warned against it as the ‘worst enemy’ of democracy, a precursor to tyranny. There is now unrestrained, rabid partisanship everywhere we look.
• Fifty years ago, most parents didn't care whether their children married a member of another political party, but they didn't want them marrying outside their race or religion, or inside their gender. The percentage of parents who don't want their children marrying outside of their political party has doubled and the more people segregate themselves by party, the harder it becomes to understand the other side.
• The country is more divided now than ever before. An era during which “alternative facts” and “post-truth” have entered the nation’s vocabulary, and like-minded groups huddle together, drowning out the opinions of others and rejecting scientific and other evidence that contradicts their world views.
• Honesty matters. And everyone must be held accountable for being honest. So as you go out into the world, do what honesty requires.
• No one, nor either party, has a monopoly on good ideas. Judge events based on what happened, not who did it.  Hold yourself and our leaders to the highest standards of ethics and morality.  Respect the knowledge of scientists. Follow the data, wherever it leads. Listen to people you disagree with -- without trying to censor them or shout over them. And have the courage to say things that your own side does not want to hear.
• It will be up to you to decide how to live your life and to follow your own honor code.

Mike Bloomberg's speech at Rice University on May 12, 2018

Today in India, all the traits pointed out by Bloomberg are in gigantic proportions but what surprises is its resilience to survive without collapsing. Truth and facts are hard to spot. Politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and even common man practices dishonesty and tell lies for making money and abuse society & laws with impunity. Justice delivery system is at its worst with very low conviction rate, unaffordable for majority of Indians, drifted away from common man -- serving only rich and well connected. No ordinary citizen can think of approaching courts for grievance redress. This is not democracy in any sense. The only sign of existence of some kind of democracy in India is that its general elections often unseats ruling party and once in a while anti-establishment judgments pronounced by courts.

Hetty Green, the world's greatest miser

Hetty Green 1834-1916

A miser is a person who hoards money and wealth and spends as little money as possible, and that is exactly what Hetty Green was. Though a wealthy lady, she did all the grocery shopping to save money. She bought crushed cookies because they are cheaper. She ate mostly pies that only cost fifteen cents. She was also said to bring with her dried oatmeal and will just cook it over the radiator. She refused to use hot water and the water heater during winter. One time, she spent the whole night looking for her lost 2-cent stamp only to find out that it was in her pocket all along. She was a female tycoon of the Wall Street. She reportedly amassed a fortune of $200 million ($4 billion in terms of current purchasing power). When she died, she left one of the largest inheritance packages in the history of the US. Her investment strategy consisted of conservative buying backed by substantial cash reserves to cover any movements in her positions. She invested in railroads, mines and real estate and lent money while acquiring mortgages. The Guinness Book of World Records awarded her the distinction of being the world’s “greatest miser.” 

• She was such a familiar sight, with her grim face and strange dress, everyone called her “The Witch of Wall Street.”
• Hetty’s audacity was apparent when her aunt, Sylvia Howland, died in 1868 and left $2 million to charity, Hetty was incensed. She challenged the will in court, presenting a will that left everything to Hetty. The courts determined that Sylvia’s signature were a complete forgery, and Hetty lost the case. 
• Hetty Green refused to use hot water or heating. 
• Her son Ned was a teenager when he was struck by a child driving dog cart. Hetty took her son to a free clinic in the city. But the doctors demanded payment as they suspected of faking poverty. So Hetty decided the leg would likely knit itself if given time and home treatment of “oil of squills” etc. Ned’s leg worsened and was amputated, with Ned’s father using his own dwindling money to pay for it, rather than haggle with Hetty.
• When she developed hernia, she refused to treat it, as its treatment was a pricey $150.
• Green conducted much of her business at the offices of the Seaboard National Bank in New York, surrounded by trunks and suitcases full of her papers. She did not want to pay rent for her own office.
• She changed residence with a skulking frequency, moving from one small, unheated apartment to another. This was her attempt to hide from both the press and tax collectors. She believed that this, combined with taking confusing and varied routes to work (at an office provided free by her bank, of course) also kept kidnappers and robbers at bay. 
• There is no great secret in fortune-making.  All you do is buy cheap and sell dear, act with thrift and shrewdness and be persistent - she said.
• She was an innovator in the field of value investing, which has made billionaires out of people such as Warren Buffett. Green was eccentric, but in her own special way, she was also a genius.
• Her advice to women on investing: “I regard real estate investments as the safest means of using idle money. Let a woman watch and see in which direction a city is going to develop and buy there.”
• In an interview with a reporter at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, she said: "The poor have no chance in this country. No wonder Anarchists and Socialists are so numerous. The law must be upheld, must it? Then why don’t they begin at the right end? Who begins to break the law? The great railroad magnates. Let the poor man break the law and see how soon he gets into jail.
• Hetty Green divided her estate evenly among her children. Ned, squandered much of his fortune, leaving the rest to his sister Sylvia. Sylvia donated his Round Hill, Massachusetts estate in 1948 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Sylvia had married a man who agreed to forgo her money. She died childless in 1951 and left her money an estimated $200 million to 64 colleges, churches, hospitals, and other charities. 

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For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. 

It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith 

and pierced themselves with many pangs.

Don't love money: Money itself is not evil. What’s evil is the love of money. Lot of suffering and pain in this world can be traced back to greed and selfishness. World has enough resources to feed every human. However, because of the love of money, most people starve and suffer from pestilence and famine. Money can be very seductive. If we let it control us, it will eventually lead us away from our faith and eventually suffer the many consequences of our decision. Life can become miserable if we love money more than our relationship with God and each other. It is only by having a loving relationship with others that we can have a more fulfilling life.