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Yeah Frank - I've been working on a sponsorship between JB and a certain NorthEast DCI corps.

It's good but a few details still to come out.

As to the legroom, Wall Street has been hammering us for years now that we're "leaving money on the table" and won't recommend the stock to investors.

it's a brutal system when you think about it, as these analysts LOVE the Spirit model, i.e. charge you for each breath of air you inhale, but I guarantee they won't fly on them.

I long for the kind of Warren Buffet logic "open your refrigerator and invest in the brands you see"

If you enjoy flying on JetBlue (in contrast to other airlines) invest in the product, before some analyst forces the company to dilute the product to further gouge travelers.

I give our CEO credit for resisting that pressure for years - he's done in February and Wall Street is happy.

Not me.

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Yeah Frank - I've been working on a sponsorship between JB and a certain NorthEast DCI corps.

It's good but a few details still to come out.

As to the legroom, Wall Street has been hammering us for years now that we're "leaving money on the table" and won't recommend the stock to investors.

it's a brutal system when you think about it, as these analysts LOVE the Spirit model, i.e. charge you for each breath of air you inhale, but I guarantee they won't fly on them.

I long for the kind of Warren Buffet logic "open your refrigerator and invest in the brands you see"

If you enjoy flying on JetBlue (in contrast to other airlines) invest in the product, before some analyst forces the company to dilute the product to further gouge travelers.

I give our CEO credit for resisting that pressure for years - he's done in February and Wall Street is happy.

Not me.

Gotta love those Wall Street anyalysts.

Sometimes they can make or break a company with some well-chosen (or ill-chosen) words.

Had my fill of covering stories about them when I worked for USAToday.com on the Money desk.

"Such and such company increased its profit by 10 percent in the quarter, but analysts were expecting a 15 percent increase".... so, somehow, that 10 percent increase was a failure, and heads will roll, changes will be made, cutbacks are coming, etc. Crazy stuff.

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Ahh, yes. Wall Street Boys and their minions. Some of them are actually ok, but as for the rest...

From the Folks (heartless ba$tards) Who Gave You

-The Great Depression

- The Mortgage Crisis

- The Robber Barons

- Super PACs

Riddle me this: If a corporation is a person, shouldn't it get just one vote? And pay it's taxes?

Oh well, we all work for the Coke Brothers now whether we realize it or not, except on the weekends when we play horns, drums, flags, sabres and rifles.

Edited by ironlips
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And always have been.

The part that drives me crazy - without making myself sound like an airline or business genius, because I'm not, but I've accumulated some skills in both.

But say you ran a drum corps or band or studio that was doing so well it decided to have an IPO and let the general public in on the ownership.

By law you're now obligated to produce for those owners.

OK, so you continue to do it your way and get good results, profits every year, a decent outlook on the future.

Not enough to make your investors rich, but they are part owners of something well run with a great product.

Some 28 year old Wharton School grad (more likely NYU) with an MBA comes along and says "you could get a bigger return to your investors if you raised the dues/fees to belong. The XYZ Lancers' tour fee is $4000 a year and yours is $2200. You need to raise that fee"

You think, "well this isn't really how I designed that, but I get his point" and you raise the fee to $3000. You expect a positive reaction, but this young person, who by the way has never run a business, just done "case studies" of businesses guided by a professor who has likewise never run a business, is miffed that you didn't heed his (or lately her) words and advises investors to "SELL" (most dreaded words a publicly held company can read).

Furthermore, the next quarter you report that you've had a modest increase in profits but your stock is trading lower and said analysts says, "You refuse to listen and we can't recommend your business to investors." You point out that you did listen and you had a better return and he says "But XYZ Lancers started charging their members for meals on tour, a la carte style and their income went up 25% this quarter"

This goes on for 5 years - you have a great product, you're winning awards (10 consecutive JD Power Awards for customer service - like the Blue Devils' DCI Championship record) but your stock is still lagging your competition.

What happens is that the board sees your contract expiring in 6 months and decides to promote the guy that goes along with the Wall Street guys to CEO.

Boom... magically your stock goes up and you're now charging for meals on tour, on top of a $4000 tour fee.

Are you still the ABC Cadets? That's what the name says, but you're now more like the XYZ Lancers LITE.

Makes me nuts, as one of the folks that championed our "bring humanity back" culture.

Only time will tell about tour fees and meal charges, but they've certainly shaken the bedrock we were built on.

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You have just laid out the premise of a best-seller on the basic maleficence of the corporate culture which I propose you title

"Wall Street and the Death of the Social Contract"

- how the soul-sucking ba$tards won -

You will, of course need to form a company to distribute and market the book. Then there are the lecture tour, talk show circuit appearances, (Charlie Rose, Kimmel, Maher...etc.), and the readings (from an I-Pad, natch, since it's pointless to print anything anymore which is why the "book" will exist only in digital form).

It will be downloaded direct from Amazon...whose shares are up again now that they made that tax deal with the Feds. Their shareholders will be happy, you will get your cut and "voila!", you have been co-opted and swallowed by the self-same villians you skewered, thereby exquisitely proving the point your sub-title so succinctly makes.

Resistance is futile. Stop worrying and learn to love the bomb. Ka-Boom!

(Antidote for the above: a daily dose of Kurt Vonnegut with a side of Arban's Carnival of Venice Variations.)

Aside to Nancy: We really do need a new photo here before we slip down any more of these rabbit holes. I'll see what's lurking in my files.

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Yeah Nan - what he said (as always)

Sorry to go riffing on Corporate Greed, and worse yet - Wall Street forcing Corporate Greed on otherwise great companies.

I went to a Charity Dinner with my old Blue Team tonight and I feel much better.

There is still much good to be done.

As Frank said, Back to the Arbans book. It never hurts, no matter what the Corporate Greed machine Hal Leonard says...

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Lots of strong performances Saturday at the Plymouth show, but my "corps of the night" award goes to the Hanover Lancers.

No knock at all on any of the horn lines from any of the other alumni corps... several of them had really good nights... but Hanover's line was amazing.

Balance, blend and discipline, from Note One through the end. With one exception when a lower-brass player (or players) stuck out for a bit... no one "going for the home run" and trying to hit notes that are no longer in reach. Absolutely stellar. :thumbup:

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Thanks Fran.

I really wanted to go, but a month into this I'm still in the transitional stages, especially with Thanksgiving in 2 days.

Hanover doesn't surprise me.

Lot of good players out there, including Brian Moul who did a turn with Archie's hornline back in the day - not wicked far back in the day - just 20 some years ago.

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This is probably not the place, and I'm not sure there is a place.

Our activity went through a long period of coming to grips with the segregation, lack of understanding, and in some cases ignorance bordering on hatred that marked our country's struggle with race.

Two days before Thanksgiving my thoughts are with families on both sides of the issues in Ferguson.

This ain't gonna get better quickly.

If it could, we would have been past all this stuff in 1864 or at least in 1964. 1974 maybe?

But it continues, and it has affected every American in some way or another.

There is no solution in sight, because you can't end ignorance, distrust, or fear.

Most of us grew up with this in the Northeast, and the solutions up here were neither quick nor, in many cases permanent.

Some of us grew up with this issue within the drum corps activity here in the East.

The Wynn Center Toppers were wonderful. The Carter Cadets - I can still hear them playing "To Sir With Love" in (about) 1965.

Scarlet Lancers from Queens - LIC Champions.

Great corps all, like the Carver Gay Blades - the question - why was it necessary to have "All Black Corps"

Or for that matter, all white - the question that we never discuss anywhere on an open forum.

I have no (zero) answers, and I don't claim to be enlightened - I worked through this issue like most young white kids growing up on Long Island.

I'm grateful to people like Gene Bennet, Konga Richardson, Hell - the Skyliners and Sunrisers in general - and to the USAF for helping me get my head out of my ###. It wasn't going to happen in the halls of (all white) Chaminade HS where Cookie Kamerdin and I attended school.

I'm not trying to say anything here - to condemn anyone or to relive the past - just to hope that the situation in Ferguson doesn't continue to deteriorate into riots and further death, and division of the USA.

There's already plenty of that.

Peace to all Americans, and all Earthlings (and beyond).

What a shame it feels borderline silly or pretentious to write something like that.

Peace.

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