9 years, 2 months, and 14 days. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

A surprising look at how ancestry still determines social outcomes

How much of our fate is tied to the status of our parents and grandparents? How much does it influence our children? More than we wish to believe. While it has been argued that rigid class structures have eroded in favor of greater social equality, The Son Also Rises proves that movement on the social ladder has changed little over eight centuries. Using a novel technique―tracking family names over generations to measure social mobility across countries and periods―renowned economic historian Gregory Clark reveals that mobility rates are lower than conventionally estimated, do not vary across societies, and are resistant to social policies.

Clark examines and compares surnames in such diverse cases as modern Sweden and Qing Dynasty China. He demonstrates how fate is determined by ancestry and that almost all societies have similarly low social mobility rates. Challenging popular assumptions about mobility and revealing the deeply entrenched force of inherited advantage, The Son Also Rises is sure to prompt intense debate for years to come.

https://www.amazon.com/Son-Also-Rises-Surnames-Princeton/dp/0691168377

My most dearest Shosh and Jaialai:

Remember, you are my sons and you come from a long line of people who have proudly served their country and their people. Prior to us becoming refugees, your forebears include, I’m told, the country’s representative to the colonizer’s National Assembly as well as those who fought to free the country of the yoke of colonialism and its abuses and the Acting Secretary of Treasury for our country when it first became a republic.

Honor our family name. Work hard. Keep your noses clean, regardless of what others do or say. Stay true to who you are.

Remember, there is much evil in the world, and many derive much pleasure from seeing the ruination of others. The worst of them do not come in henchman attire but are clothed in fine garbs and eloquent words. They exude an air of goodness, but their actions belie their words. They often proclaim they do charitable work to serve the needs of refugees, the poor, and the marginalized, but, behind closed doors, they prey on the weak and feed off the carcasses of the very target populations they claimed to serve. Recent examples include human traffickers who prey upon unsuspecting and needful Ukrainian refugees fleeing homes and cities destroyed by an unjust war. Other examples include Western-run “orphanages” in Cambodia, founded by pedophiles who came bearing gifts for orphans as well as poor children who were given away by parents burdened with overwhelming poverty. Many of the latter unknowing gave their children over to a life of horror, thinking they best serve their children by giving the children a brighter future under the auspices of Western benefactors.

We see this cruelty in the U.S. as well in the form of the McMartin Preschool Abuse case, for example. Without evidence, teachers in that case were falsely accused of fondling the children, sodomizing them, forcing them to take part in pornographic films, slaughtering animals in front of the children as part of the abuse, and engaging in “ritualistic satanic abuse.” Five teachers were arrested and charged and the school shut down, without any evidence being recovered.

Kee MacFarlane, a consultant for the Children’s Institute International (CII) handled the investigation and conducted more than 400 interviews with the alleged victims, using techniques that are frowned upon in forensic investigation, including the offer of rewards and asking a series of leading questions.

At first, many of the children denied seeing evidence of abuse, but eventually, most of them changed their stories. In total, MacFarlane diagnosed 384 children as sexually abused. Besides being interviewed, 150 children were medically examined by Dr. Astrid Heger from CII, who concluded that 80% of them had been abused, even though she could not find physical evidence in most cases. See, e.g., https://www.amazon.com/We-Believe-Children-Moral-Panic/dp/1610392876; https://famous-trials.com/mcmartin; https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-mcmartin-preschool-case; and, https://www.oxygen.com/uncovered-the-mcmartin-family-trials/crime-time/mcmartin-preschool-trial-where-are-they-now.

Here, the devil came in the disguise of child welfare experts who manipulated the children to enhance their professional careers and achieve financial rewards for their organizations. The worst is that the very children who are supposed to be protected by those hired to protect them were abused and used as pawns by the latter in their efforts to make a name for themselves. Never mind that lives were destroyed and the children suffered greatly and needlessly. Such is the face of evil.

Children, who are malleable and easily suggestible, were manipulated by trained professionals to achieve the desired ends of the professionals. Truth is but one casualty.

The children were innocent. They didn’t know better. They were used and abused by the very people who claimed to act in their best interests.

To the extent you have similarly fallen prey to such evil dynamics, know that you are not to be blamed. You are innocent. You are used and abused by those with ulterior motives and whose interests were not aligned with your own.

Shosh, for example, do you remember who potty-trained you? Do you recall how? For many many months, your mother joked about buying you Depends — the diaper for adults — since you were quickly outgrowing children’s diapers. We worried kids would mock you should your classmates discovered you were still wearing diapers at night. However, instead of helping to wean you off diapers, your mother joked. It fell on me to do the hard work of waking up every two-hours throughout the night to wake you up and take you to the bathroom so you wouldn’t wet the bed. After several long nights, you were weaned of your diaper and knew to wake up to use the bathroom when the need arose.

Who had your best interest at heart? Was it the one who paid lip service to loving you or the one who actually acted in your best interest?

So it is with others in life. Don’t give credence to what they say and their polished messages, tweets, and social media posts: watch what they do.

Work hard, be kind, and strive to be good people. Do me proud.

All my love, always and forever,

Dad

9 years, 2 months, and 12 days. Self-discipline is tough love and a necessary ingredient to success.

My most dearest Shosh and Jaialai:

Winners do: losers whine. Winners do, even when it gets difficult, and that makes all the difference in the world. If success were easy, everyone would be successful. Remember, luck is 95% sweat.

Self-discipline is the key ingredient for those willing to work through sweat, blood, and tears to achieve their goals instead of blaming others for their failures or crying about it. Self-discipline is a necessary ingredient.

Get some. Cultivate it.

During all those years when I woke up at 2:30 – 3:00 A.M. to start my work day, it wasn’t for the love the waking up early. I did what was needed to get the job done. I hated getting up early and crawling out of the comfortable and warm bed to sit in front of a computer in a cold room during the predawn hours when sleep was still in my eyes, but hate/love wasn’t part of the equation. Work needed to get done and if I didn’t get up early to do it, it wouldn’t have gotten done. This discipline, for example, enabled me to resolve and achieve in a matter of months what teams of lawyers and others had been unable to resolve and achieve in the years preceding my arrival. I did not say that to brag: it is a mere factual description of events that you were too young to know and understand.

But don’t just take my word for it. Others much wiser than I have made the point better and more eloquently. For example, in his book, “Who Will Cry When You Die?” Robin Sharma (the author of “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”) wrote:

I call the habit of self-discipline “Tough Love” because getting tough with yourself is actually a very loving gesture. By being stricter with yourself, you will begin to live life more deliberately, on your own terms rather than simply reacting to life the way a leaf floating in a stream drifts according to the flow of the current on a particular day. As I teach in one of my seminars, the tougher you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you. The quality of your life ultimately is shaped by the quality of your choices and decisions, ones that range from the career you choose to pursue to the books you read, the time that you wake up every morning and the thoughts you think during the hours of your days, when you consistently flex your willpower by making those choices that you know are the right ones (rather than the easy ones), you take back control of your life. Effective, fulfilled people do not spend their time doing what is most convenient and comfortable. They have the courage to listen to their hearts and to do the wise thing. This habit is what makes them great.

“The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do,” remarked essayist and thinker E.M. Gray. “They don’t like doing them either, necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.” The nineteenth-century English writer Thomas Henry Huxley arrived at a similar conclusion, noting: “Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.” And Aristotle made this point of wisdom in yet another way: “Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it: men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players, by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled; and by doing brave acts, we come to be brave.”

Robin Sharma, “Who Will Cry When You Die?”  HarperCollins Publishers (April 19, 1999).

I cannot say it better than Aristotle, Huxley, or Gray.

Be self-disciplined, my sons. That way lies success.

All my love, always and forever,

Dad

9 years, 2 months, and 11 days. Perspective and audience: two critical factors in any analysis.

‘Egregious level’: Journalists are being called out for bias reporting on Ukraine

Media coverage of the war in Ukraine has largely been praised. Some journalists see this as an opportunity to reevaluate how wars and conflicts are covered when the victims are not mainly White or directly related to Western interests.

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/business/2022/03/18/ukraine-war-media-coverage-bias-mc-orig.cnn-business

My most dearest Shosh and Jaialai:

These are dark days for everyone. We have barely survived a pandemic that has taken more than 6 million lives worldwide and nearly 1 million lives in the U.S. when war in Ukraine caused the displacement of 10 million Ukrainians, with 3.5 million seeking refugee protection outside of their country. Inflation is on the rise while economies and personal finances for most have yet to stabilize. People are sad and worried. Many of us have experienced war, insecurity, hunger, and/or fear at various points in our lives, and images out of Ukraine remind us of the fragility of our lives.

It is important for you to be more kind than necessary at this time. Be patient with others. You don’t know the burden they must bear. Listen. Try not to judge or project your own fears and biases onto others. Just listen and reserve judgment. Acknowledge each other and empathize.

Too often we fail as individuals because we cannot get away from ourselves and get outside of our perspectives. We see the world through our senses, our biases, and our insecurities, and we assume everyone sees the world the same way. The silliness of that assumption is clear on its face, yet too often our default position is our viewpoint instead of trying to understand the viewpoint of another, the audience. Be better.

It’s not easy, but nothing worthy is. Practice listening and asking questions to flesh out the perspective of the other, your audience. Listen. Really listen. Listen to understand, not to argue.

As you strive to understand the worldview of another, be mindful also of his/her biases, insecurities, etc. You need not judge the person, but you must be mindful of the flaws in order to more accurately assess the strengths and weaknesses of the information that flows forth from the other.

Remember, when starting out, Warren Buffett had access to the same data as everyone else: he was only better at teasing out the patterns and at using the data to animate his decisions. Be like Warren Buffett. (Note also how he still lives in the house he purchased decades ago and still drives his old car instead of being flashy with his billions. He’s a good role model in many ways. Be like Warren Buffett.)

All my love, always and forever,

Dad

P.S., my energy wanes as the vagaries of life and the injustice that has befallen our family take its toll. But know that my love for you never wavers. I love you with all my heart and hope and pray that one day, we will reunite.

9 years, and 2 months. Garbage in, garbage out. Go slow to go fast.

My most dearest Shosh and Jaialai:

Business is the new cool. Everyone boasts of being busy (therefore, important) that they have no time for anything — exercise, socialize, prioritize, etc. But studies show, for example, most people waste hours each day checking social media, watching television, etc. People lie. They lie to others and — worse — to themselves.

Likewise, when asked about their decision-making processes, people often give the same tired-response: they make decisions based on the best data available. They are full of shit. Everyone claims to be data-driven; however, relatively few truly are because it takes effort to find, gather, and vet good data.

One example is illustrative of our lip service to being data-driven, and failure to follow through.

Following the 101 California Street shooting in 1993 (eight persons were killed and six injured by an assailant with no known motive) and the siege at Waco earlier that same year (where more than eighty members of the Branch Davidian religious group were killed), Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. That legislation, among other provisions, requires the attorney general to collect data on the use of excessive force by the police and to publish an annual report on those statistics. But to this moment no accounting for the nation’s seventeen thousand police departments exists. [Footnote omitted.] After over two decades, no data? What’s going on here? The stunning truth is that this law does not require any police agency anywhere in America to keep a record of any kind, much less provide information to the federal government. Moreover, Congress has consistently failed to fund it. As a consequence the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was born dead. The New York Times reported: “For all the careful accounting,… there are two figures Americans don’t have: the precise number of people killed by the police, and the number of times police use excessive force. In fact, to no one’s surprise, there are practically no statistics out there at all on the numbers the cops have killed.” (my emphasis). [Footnote omitted.] That was in 2001. Today we are left still recognizing the shocking truth: There is no national database of police-involved killings.

Gerry Spence, Police State: How America’s Cops Get Away with Murder, St. Martin’s Press, 2015 (emphasis added)

In fact, the best available data on police extra-judicial killings are kept by an ex-cop, ex-lawyer, and current criminologist at Bowling Green State University. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/an-ex-cop-keeps-the-countrys-best-data-set-on-police-misconduct/. To build and maintain his database, he relies on Google Alerts of police shootings as reported by the media. Thus, his database is far from perfect. However, it is the best data available.

These examples illustrate two things. First, we lie when we say that, as a society, we are data-driven. That is far from the truth. If memory serves me, I recall reading once that despite one person being sexually assaulted in the U.S. every 68 seconds and college age women are among the highest risk for rape, https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence, colleges and universities are forbidden from keeping data on incidents of rape on campus. As a society, we are more often like ostriches with our heads in the sand than wise owls searching for truth. Second, it takes much effort to find, gather, and vet good data. Even then, the body of data gathered may be far from perfect; however, it may still be the best data available at this time.

The importance of using the best data available at the time of decision-making cannot be overstated. Garbage in, garbage out. You cannot produce good analyses based on bad data. Junk begets junk.

Unfortunately, too often, fools rush to judgment without even bothering to examine the data at all. Sometimes, experts rely on the most recently available data to make judgment and are mocked by the less-learned. We saw that this past year when public health experts and scientists updated their recommendations based on the most recent data available and less learned members of the public mock the experts for “changing their minds” without understanding that updated recommendations for courses of actions necessarily must follow updated data. Of course, the laymen may simply be lying to themselves and others for no other reason than they don’t want to be inconvenienced by masks — even though masks HELP SAVE THE LIVES OF THE MOST VULNERABLE IN THE COMMUNITY: THE ELDERLY, THE INFIRMED, THE YOUNG, ETC.

(I can never get over the shock of nearly 1 million Americans dead from COVID-19. Americans made much hay about the death of 3,000 from 9/11, but cruelly mock and attack those who made efforts to protect our communities from the ravages of this deadly disease.)

I want you boys to be mindful of the data based upon which you make decisions. This applies to all aspects of your life. Shosh, you are now in college and must decide on which major to pursue or which graduate schools to apply. Do the research. Ask the right questions. Don’t simply follow others or rush to judgment without bothering to look at relevant data. Jaialai, the same for you. Start researching colleges, scholarships, etc., and start getting ready for the application process. Doing the leg work up front may save significant heartaches and pain later on. For example, I know of numerous kids who wasted years of their lives pursuing degrees they don’t want at colleges which did not serve them well.

There are no do-overs in life. Time and opportunities, once passed, can never be regained.

Take time to do right.

All my love, always and forever,

Dad

9 years, 1 month, and 26 days. Embrace Hope. Life is a series of problems and tomorrow is promised to no one, but there is always Hope.

My most dearest Shosh and Jaialai:

I won’t lie: it’s been excruciatingly difficult. It is sheer hubris and arrogance for people to think they can understand, merely from the images of refugees fleeing Ukraine, the suffering of refugees and those who have lost everything through not fault of their own. As someone who has spent a chunk of his lifetime helping refugees gain refugee protection under international law and helping them adapt to their new lives, and who has twice been a refugee himself, I can tell you the pain is often beyond tolerable.

Most days, I look around and get gut punched by the loss of the life I had built from the ground up as a former child refugee and the caliber of the people I used to collaborate with from top-tier law firms and organizations. Some think me a fool for even trying to clear my name and right the great injustice that had been inflicted upon our family and millions of others who have been similarly aggrieved by America’s pretend system of justice. Some think virtues are wasted efforts in this dog-eat-dog world where thieves, liars and criminals can lie, cheat or steal their way to the top.

Those people may not be wrong, but I refuse to live in a world where that were the only version possible. Until my last dying breath, I will continue to embrace what is right, moral, and humane, and endeavor to do my best to bring to reality better human conditions for my little corner of the world. I can’t change the world, but I will do my best to improve my little corner of it.

In defense of my foolishness, I can only quote Augustine of Hippo:

Have courage to stay the course and do what is right, my sons. The naysayers and the weak-willed are many. The siren songs of convenience and comfort are difficult to ignore, and too many give in to their allure. But don’t. Just don’t you give in.

Life may be long, but eternity is forever. How we live this moment, and each moment of our lives, determines what comes after.

Pray for patience, courage, and wisdom. Endeavor always to do what is right. We may falter, as all men are wont to do, but strive to return to what is good and kind. Embrace not what is evil or cruel, especially when those are the most convenient choices available.

I leave you with four invaluable guiding principles that have served me well throughout my life: Serenity Prayer, Isaiah 6:8, Prayer of St. Francis, and Jesus’s two commandments.

Know that I did not seek this battle to fight false allegations animated by the same racial dynamics that caused the death of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and many others. Know that on more days than I care to count, I pray and beg that this not be my burden to carry and that I would wake up from this decade-long nightmare. But that is not my reality. I am confronted with a problem and have no choice but to fight to fix it.

If it is any comfort, it is that this is not my first rodeo. I spent five years in my solo fight to stop the multi-billion dollar, largest healthcare delivery system in the U.S. from defrauding consumers. (By the way, that battle was by choice: I could not in good conscience ignore the numerous fraudulent misconducts as the organization’s leadership repeated ordered me to, so I fought back.) If it took five years to fight a corrupt multi-billion dollar corporation, how much longer would it take to fight a corrupt system into which many more billions are invested annually?

Have patience, my sons. One day, we will prevail. That is my hope and prayer.

All my love, always and forever,

Dad

9 years, 1 month, and 23 days. Be discerning and have grit.

My most dearest Shosh and Jaialai:

“Find a way, or make one!” Let that be your moto.

There are two types of people in this world: the doers, and the whiners. The former are the stuff of legends, the people President Teddy Roosevelt spoke of in his speech about “the man in the arena.” They have the courage to live by their convictions and to forge ahead despite the obstacles and the naysayers. Whether they succeed or fail in their valiant efforts, the credit belongs to them who dare to do. Be among their numbers.

Avoid those who whine about their lot in life as if life were a spectator sport. They moan and groan, blaming everyone but themselves for their lack of success. Beware their negativity and penchant for blame. It is infectious and, like shit, will be impossible for you to avoid getting its odor and bits stuck on you. Keep your distance.

Have grit. Success never comes easy. Learn from your mistakes and press forward.

Success rarely ensues without grit.

Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of “grit” as a predictor of success.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H14bBuluwB8

Be discerning. Among other things, this means know who to trust and when to quit … a person, a project, etc. Remember, life is a thinking man’s game. Those unable or unwilling to think are often relegated to menial jobs and low stations in life.

Think for yourself. Never swallow whole what ANYBODY feeds you. Deconstruct their arguments and vet each component using the latest data and the body of knowledge you have accumulated up to this point in your life.

For example, I am certain you have been fed a lot of lies about me this past decade. Is it true?

What do you know about me? You know I partnered with Mr. Ted, who is among the top 1% of all the trial attorneys in the U.S., on cases. If I were a lazy idiot, he would never have invited me to join his efforts. (During the divorce, your mother claimed I was lazy and didn’t want to work after being fired for whistleblowing against a multibillion dollar corporate giant. The court believed her. On the contrary, I worked extremely long hours to help my teams of lawyers win our case — then your mom promptly claimed she deserved part of the winning despite not supporting me during the multi-year trial and treating me like shit for causing her to return to work after she had unilaterally chosen to be a housewife for years after you were born, Shosh.) You also know that for nearly a year and a half, I took you boys to weekly child therapy and met with Ms. Nicole after every session to debrief and understand how I could best support you that week: your mother met with Ms. Nicole ONLY once and refused repeated requests from Ms. Nicole to meet a second time because your mother claimed she did not have the money (about $35) to pay for such meeting eventhough (1) according to her financial statements I received during the course of the divorce, she spent more than $900 one month on eating out and going to Starbucks nearly every day; and, (2) I paid out of pocket for the entirety of both your child therapy to avoid it being part of your records. (I have the evidence to validate the preceding.) Further, you know that during our weeks together, I took you boys to the park every day to play outdoors, socialize with other kids, and get fresh air. On the other hand, as you repeatedly complained to me of your weeks with your mom, she often refused to take you to your favorite park NEXT DOOR TO YOUR HOUSE, preferring to stay home and watch TV instead. Last but not least, having been forced to spend more than $100,000 to fight the false allegations against me and nearly the same amount to fight her nasty divorce lawyer, I forewent needed dental work and ended up losing teeth in order to save money to care for you kids. This, too, I can validate.

So who had your best interests at heart? Think for yourselves. Don’t let people lie to you. When people lie to you, they are saying you are stupid, so stupid that you’d believe their lies. Don’t give them that satisfaction. Be skeptical. Be discerning.

All my love, always and forever,

Dad