Today I  took a trip to Atlanta, Texas to celebrate Thanksgiving.  Atlanta is an East Texas town of about 6500 people.  As I drove through “downtown” Atlanta it was clear that that any resemblance to its namesake in Georgia was in name only.  It was named after Atlanta, Georgia because many of the early settlers were from that area.

It was a typical one street downtown as I have seen in other small Texas towns such as Olney, Boyd and Archer City where the classic movie The Last Picture Show was filmed.   Streets like you would see in any “Route 66” town across America.    As is standard in small Texas towns, there is a barber, candy shop, bank, hardware store, bakery, sporting goods store, few antique stores, a Dairy Queen and of course a huge, bustling, Walmart.  The staples of  life that can be cut and pasted to countless small towns across America.

There were also numerous boarded up storefronts.

The Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Web Site states:

“Atlanta exemplifies small town America. Warm smiles and warmer greetings reflect a friendly and progressive community.”

What Atlanta and other small towns all over the country never envisioned when they were formed (Atlanta was founded in 1872)  was that small town America would one day be synonymous with the arrival of Walmart.

Today in Atlanta as I lay in a turkey coma on the couch watching The Dallas Cowboys dismantle their opponent in their new stadium dubbed “The Death- Star”  I casually mentioned that it was sad that there were so many boarded up stores. Out of the depths of my turkey fog I heard a voice in the room yell out”

Walmart Did This To Us!

It then occurred to me.   Many in small town America may look at  the arrival of Walmart as the invasion of Evil Empire and its own type of economic Death-Star

Darth Vader, who was unmasked many years ago, didn’t initially destroy these towns with his death ray. He arrived with the promise of peace and prosperity. The Death -Star then set down in the middle of town,  touting every possible convenience a person could want at cheaper prices, with greater diversity and quantity.  Unfortunately no Jedi Knights ever came to the rescue.  They were to busy fueling up their Starfighters at discount prices.

Now, instead of seeing the sign “Victory Tonight And Free Haircut Tomorrow” if the high school football team or basketball team wins, we see, “Going Out of Business Liquidation Sale.”

How can the “It’s A Wonderful Life” dream of small town America possibly compete with the neon lit entrance to the Death Star just a block away?  Instead we see “The Last Picture Show” at the local theater just before it closes for good to be transformed into a Walgreens.  The residents of Atlanta, Texas leave the theater and disappear into the Death Star never to be heard from again by the local merchants.

©2009 Brian Cuban

Not long ago I began using a free service call TrueTwit. It is a free captcha validation service than is supposed to prevent automated spam bots from following you.  Pretty simple and straightforward.  It has its limitations.  If the spammer is a real person and enters the captcha code, he’s in until you get rid of him manually.   That being said, there has been a noticeable reduction in “I’m so horny” and “make 300 dollars the hard way” bots.

The other day I received a Direct Message from @tweetuptexas. A quick look at the twitter page confirms that the person is trying to brand him/herself as one of many Twitter services that help organize and broadcast local tweet-ups. Nothing unique or even remotely appealing as an already done- spun and re-spun twitter model.

While the DM’s messages seemed to have disappeared this person basically tweeted me what a jerk and sad pathetic individual I was for asking people to validate that they are not spam bots. Here are a couple of the public tweets around the interaction for context.

Here is the novel and brilliant @tweetuptexas branding strategy:

When you are new to twitter trying to start a Texas Tweetup business, find the most active tweeters in your own back yard.  Find the ones who have been doing this for a while and have large followings. Then send them all insulting uninformed douchebag messages about what sad pathetic losers they are for doing something different than you do.

Interesting business strategy. I am curious to see how that was outlined and factored in the ROI in the @tweetuptexas business plan.

Nothing is certain in business or in the twitter universe. There is however one thing I am relatively sure of.  More legitimate, respected tweeters will read this blog than will ever follow @texastweetup. Maybe they should try making 300 dollars the hard way.

The Michael Jackson death mystery continues to crescendo towards the expected announcement of his cause of death.  The announcement will have an impact on numerous level the most obvious is being any criminal liability. The announcement will also have an effect on both insurance coverage and civil liability arising out of his death.

It is being reported that concert promoter AEG spent well over $20 million in preparation for Michael Jackson’s 50-date run to have started July 13 at O2 Arena in London. The promoter sold about $85 million in tickets for Jackson’s comeback stand against an expected profit of approximately 115 million.

AEG chief exec Randy Phillips  has stated that AEG may  break even or make a profit regardless of the failed concert series. They have offered Jackson ticket buyers the choice of a refund or to receive the actual concert tickets as souvenirs in lieu of the full refunds. 

Insuring Jackson was not an easy task in itself.  With Jackson’s history of canceling concerts, AEG reportedly had trouble finding suitable insurance.  They were allegedly able to finally secure coverage for the first 23 million.

In order to get a better understanding of these issues I contacted one of the countries top producers of special events insurance.

James Chippendale is the President of  CSI Insurance Group.  They are the leading hospitality and entertainment insurance specialist in the country, placing coverage for some of the country’s top recording artists, live music venues, concert promoters, special events, nightclubs, bars and restaurants. This includes artists such as Ludacris, Busta Rhymes,Better Than Ezra, the Nation’s largest events such as Lollapalooza,Austin City Limits Music Festival and even President Obama’s Victory Party Inauguration.

What will be the primary liability and coverage issues with regards to the failed Michael Jackson concert series?

“Whether AEG had Key Man Insurance in place will be of prime importance.  AEG’s insurance carrier is no doubt anxiously awaiting the results of the toxicology report from the autopsy. The  ”key man’ insurance policy should cover accidental death. On the other hand, recovery of insurance proceeds is often prohibited  where  intentional, willful acts are involved.”

What is Key Man Insurance?

“Key man insurance is a sub-type of life insurance pout in place where one person’s skills and abilities can make an enormous financial difference”

Who Needs It?

“Key man insurance is meant to cover the company’s losses in the event of the death of a key employee or in the case of a concert the star performer or band member whose inability to perform would prevent the event from going forward.”

What Is It?

“Key man insurance is generally a term life insurance policy, with the length term being the time until that employee retires. The company pays the premiums on the policy and receives the death benefits if the key performer, Jackson in this case, unexpectedly dies.”

Will there be underwriting Issues?

“This again will ride on the results of the toxicology report.  The Insurer or insurers will no doubt be closely scrutinizing the AEG application for insurance.  They will be looking closely at all disclosed pre-existing medical conditions and drugs Jackson disclosed he was taking at the time of application.”

If the AEG insurance carrier believes there could be reason to deny coverage, what steps will they take?

“The first thing they will do and what they have probably already done is to issue what is known as a Reservation of Rights to AEG.”

What Is A Reservation Of Rights?

‘Reservation of Rights are common in the insurance industry.  It is basically a letter that would be sent from the insurer to AEG  putting them on notice that for a one or several reasons there may be no coverage for a particular claim under the insurance policy covering Jackson or other aspects of the concert.”

We have heard a  lot about AEG allegedly having coverage with “LLOYDS”.   Can you explain what Lloyds is and how it works as an insurer?

“A broker would place the risk with LLOYD’S.  In the case of the Jackson concert I believe it was Robertson Taylor.  The broker commission would be 20-25 percent”

“LLOYD’s is a network of syndicates  ( individual companies ) they each take part of the risk. An  example would be a company that needed 100,000,000 in coverage for a specialized risk that he could not obtain coverage for elsewhere.”

“Company A may take on the “lead syndicate” at 60 percent of the risk or 60k.  There could be dozens of companies below each taken on a small percentage of the risk.”

Why do companies go to LLOYD’s and not standard carriers for such coverage?

“There are only about 5 insurers in the United States that write this type of coverage. No mainstream also know as “standard market” insurer  would take this kind of risk. LLOYD’s  is the market of global choice for high risk events such as this”

Who would have insisted on a personal doctor for Michael Jackson?

“Either the insurance carrier, AEG or both”

My thoughts:

There also the looming issue of whether Michael Jackson died as a result of medical negligence.  More specifically, if he died as a result of the negligence of Dr. Conrad Murray who was allegedly hired by concert promoter AEG to monitor Jackson’s health.  This in itself will raise various insurance issues. If there was medical negligence, we will certainly see a malpractice/wrongful death suits against Dr. Conrad as well as other doctors involved.  We should also expect a suit AEG for negligence in the selection of and monitoring of  Dr. Conrad if the toxicology results so warrant.

My opinion? I am always leery of a “negligence by enabling” type  claim.  They always smell of an abrogation of personal responsibility.   When, however, you have licensed medical professionals involved the buck is supposed to stop there.  In my humble opinion, it is a treating doctor’s  ethical responsibility to put a stop to the prior medical enabling.  It was Dr. Conrad’s responsibility.  If he failed in that responsibility he should be held to the applicable standard, criminal, civil or both.

In the meantime, long after the  memory is gone the lawyers will continue to churn on….

There has been a lot of talk within the Jewish community about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s responsibilities as  a Jew within the confines of the Facebook Holocaust Denial  dispute.    Some have argued that because of his religion he has some greater personal and corporate responsibility to see that these groups or antisemitism in general do not flourish within the Facebook social networking universe.

I could not disagree with this more.  Facebook is not a Jewish company in the sense of corporate goals.  To my knowledge it does not set out in it’s corporate mission statement that it will espouse Jewish values and traditions.  If it did, I would feel differently.

There are certainly circumstances where the ethnic makeup or religion of a business owner, customer or end user does play a part in how the company operates.  Chik-fil-A is closed on Sundays for that very reason.   It is reflected in the Corporate Mission Statement:

“To glorify God by being a faithful steward to all that is entrusted to us.  To have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A.”

Everyone can probably agree that in a social networking company like Facebook one of the primary “products” they sell is the “free exchange of ideas”.   To argue that outside of a “religious goaled” company.  a social networking CEO has some greater  responsibility to be sensitive to one idea over another based on the CEO’s personal religious beliefs or upbringing is not practical or proper.  It would be akin to arguing that Jewish sports-team owner’s Ed Snider(Philadelphia 76ers and Flyers) Mark Cuban(Dallas Mavericks)  or Jerry Reinsdorf(Chicago Bulls and Whitesox) should arbitrarily shut down their teams on Jewish Holidays, not allow their team to play on the Sabbath, or screen for  Holocaust Deniers at the stadium entrance.

So am I siding with Facebook now?  I am not.  My argument has never changed.  I  simply understand Facebook’s obligation to meet the needs of all customers and it’s efforts to define hate speech on that basis.  Having been around some pretty smart CEO’s in my life, I am in agreement that this is a sound business philosophy.

Where I part ways with Facebook is over how those needs are met and should be met on a continuing objective basis. In my mind, the primary dispute is over how Facebook defines “direct hatred” and whether their current definition is appropriate for the times we live in.   I wonder whether their definition while striving for “binary certainty”  relies to much on form over substance to be truly effective in battling the alarming rise of online hatred including Holocaust Denial.

From a corporate CEO perspective, Mr. Zuckerberg does have that responsibility.  A responsibility that not only affects Jews but Muslims, Armenians and a slew of other ethnic and religious  minorities who are the targets of online hate.  We are all Facebook customers.

My argument is and has always been that you can not look at “direct- hate” in a “binary vacuum”.  Hate is constantly evolving.  The corporate values of social media companies that serve as breeding and recruiting grounds for these groups  must also evolve.

A perfect example is Facebook’s “nipple rule“.  This rule evolved in response to the outcry over their decision to remove certain photos of depicting women breastfeeding.  Their rule as I understand it is that if nipple shows it violates TOS.  If the nipple is covered it is ok.  Would that be the same standard if Facebook was around in 1900, 1920, 1960?  Will it be the appropriate standard in 2050?  Societal norms evolve with history.  For Facebook to ignore this fact in my mind is lazy and enabling the rise of a major problem for which they must take partial responsibility.  For Facebook to take the position of “we will wait until a crisis to re-evaluate”  simply enables a repeating of  historical cycles hate.

That’s my argument.  Its not about religion. Lets keep religion out of it.