I own a bunch of small overriding royalties in various natural gas wells in Grand County, Utah. I no longer receive revenue from them as the company that operates the wells, ARB Energy of Utah, simply stopped paying me. They cannot relieve me of ownership, and their obligation to pay me is both written in to Utah regulations but is also a legal “fiduciary” responsibility, an obligation of trust.
Its’ not just me, of course. There are scores of others in my shoes. For me, I planned to have the overrides as part of my retirement, but can survive without them. What I have learned from scuttlebutt is that ARB, taking over the properties in 2019, started out with good intentions, and then made a huge and bad investment in a plant that produces helium, that promptly went broke. The company acted in desperation, and the executive in charge, Humberto Sevint, is a resourceful man who manages to come up with stopgap funding to stay afloat.
Still, he is in violation of law, and so various owners of the wells banded behind another man who wanted to take over operations, and remove ARB as operator. It’s a legal process that is part of what are called “JOAs”, or Joint Operating Agreements. Working Interest owners have the right to remove an existing operator and replace it with another.
It all came to a head last August when the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining, audit division, held a hearing and took testimony. Nine Utah officials sat there, I am told, and in the end eight of them decided that Utah’s hands are tied, and that the only recourse for owners currently being deprived of their rightful income is to sue in District Court. In other words, the State Agency charged with regulating and policing oil and gas operators begged out. This decision was affirmed by the Attorney General of Utah, Derek Brown.
Usually in matters of legal challenges we laymen have to back away and allow the legal minds to decide, but in this case, no. The decision was nonsense, and the AGs justification, that removal of ARB would be an unconstitutional “taking” was nothing more than a reach, seeking safe ground behind a concept that most people don’t grasp. He hid behind a rock.
Once, when still an active CPA, I worked for a trucking company trying to make sense of their books, and uncovering some fraud in the process. They had employees who needed to be removed and replaced, but various matters interfered, as is normal in human affairs. I finally suggested that one such person, whose work contributed nothing to the company’s continuing business, be given a new job. Take her, I suggested, and put her in a room by herself, and have her spend her days filling boxes with Styrofoam. Obviously my term of engagement was close to ending.
That in mind, a sent an email to a Utah auditor with whom I’d had much prior correspondence regarding ARB Energy, Utah. I realized as I sent this that Utah had vacated the scene and abrogated all responsibility, and that they ceased to be a viable agency for representing the public.
Dear BW: I was struck by the large number of recipients on a recent email I sent to people involved in the Arb matter. I only slowly realized that Utah can do nothing about Arb due to bureaucratic inertia. As I understand it, there were nine people involved in the ARB hearing, and only one spoke up about the injustice of doing nothing. That, to me, is about the correct ratio of people in possession of a rare quality, moral courage. Mark Twain noted in his time that he thought it interesting that so many people, soldiers and athletes for example, had physical courage, but that moral courage was a rare thing.
I was once hired as a consultant for a trucking firm, and because I often enough lack social graces, reported to the owner of the company that he had employees doing nothing of value. Since compassion is so common, along with other unmentionable entanglements, merely firing people is rare. So I suggested to him the Styrofoam solution, to reassign these people to new duties. In his small company it would take three: One person fills boxes with Styrofoam and places them on a conveyor belt. At the other end, another person receives, weighs and seals the boxes. Yet another person takes the boxes, opens them, and places the Styrofoam on a conveyor belt going back to the person who originally filled the boxes. This can go on in perpetuity. They are no longer hindrances to productivity among the rest of the employees, while the Styrofoam packers themselves convinced they are performing a useful task.
My email went to 115 people. Perhaps 13 read it, the 1/9 ratio. What to do? In a smaller organization those few people can makes a difference, create useful action. In a large organization like Utah government, there are too many with enough power to quench any action, so those 13 sit fuming about their own inability to make anything happen. They are actively, quietly, looking for new employment. In a government bureaucracy, there’s no profit motive, no bottom line accountability. Large private companies have the same issues, of course, people building private fiefdoms of inactivity and justifying themselves by activity, any activity that appears useful, like filling boxes with Styrofoam.
Oddly, I suspect [ARB Energy] knows about this situation, and so has no problem, despite all of its unethical behaviors, in keeping Utah at bay. That makes them a winner, and those of us whose money they are stealing hopeless losers.
Good bless Utah. It’s a beautiful state with remarkable, clean hardworking citizens. Those attracted to government don’t have to worry about making profit.
Are you beginning to get a sense why, even as a CPA, I rebelled and recoiled at the idea of working for a CPA firm, wearing a suit and tie every day, sucking up to others (no doubt more talented) and living Henry David Thoreau’s life of quiet desperation?
Piece of Mindful 
Reminds me of the book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. Which I tried to read, but didn’t really care for. The basic premise is intriguing and plausible though – just as the title says, that most corporate jobs are fake to some degree or another, and that millions lead lives of quiet desperation, either consciously or subconsciously aware of this.
Graeber, an anthropologist, interviewed workers and classified jobs into a typology of bullshit. I suspect though that his book, often cited by critics of corporatism and business culture, is part of a culture reshaping agenda – not just by himself expressing his personal views, but perhaps as part of the technocratic push toward universal basic income and those sorts of plans. Just as the current system is probably not entirely (or even mostly?) organic, but rather has been socially engineered.
So, six of one, a half dozen of the other. The corporate system from a social engineering point of view seems like it may almost be covertly about breeding, selection, filtering, evolution (or devolution?), ie various old ideas from the Huxleys and other herd management experts from the scientific elite and upper class. With “work” and “productivity” just a cover story.
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Thanks for your recommendation of another book to avoid!
I have a hunch that most “jobs” go to smart people who work hard and want to carve out a comfy place to retire. Changes of ownership, markets and products that don’t last, all of that conspires to throw them to the wolves.
But there is a class of already wealthy people resting on top of it … trust funds assure generational wealth. There’s something about third generation wealth, fire where there is smoke, too easy a life, sense of entitlement, and “achievements” that are not even close to that. Two examples in a family I once worked for, a daughter who spent a fortune on a dance studio that never made a dime, and whose “losses” were tossed out by the IRS because she was not really in business, but just having a hobby. And, an “artist” whose store in a spendy area of a fashionable town failed. His product was chalk lines of various colors. I suppose he studied the color wheel in college. A couple,of generations prior, this family had hard-working well educated people who, while privileged, earned their keep. Then it all devolved into privilege and even insanity, alcoholism, and an inordinate number of suicides.
But there is among us a large pool of talent … simply having talent is not enough, hard work and mistakes and ability to learn from mistakes are necessary. Some of them become wealthy and start the whole cycle over again. But generational wealth never goes away!
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Those families with too much wealth and not enough hunger rings a bell. I sold my condo in Boston for good money several years ago to young couple from Maine who just wanted to live in Boston, the young man a musician, the young woman a ballerina. For some reason they had a big issue with the gun safe I built into my bedroom closet – it was highly practical, a safe that I installed by removing a wall and bolting to the studs of the house, required me weeks of work to complete. Because having a highly secure safe in a city is a good idea, yes? The first thing they did was spend a bunch of money ripping it out, probably because it offended their tender sensibilities. As far as I know neither of them had an actual job.
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“…actual job.”
Funny Ray.
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Now hold on a second.. are you saying all jobs in the arts are B’s jobs? Or just if it’s shitty art? Or if it doesn’t make money, no matter the quality? Or what..? Personally I think ballerinas and musicians are perfectly fine aspirations to have, if it’s a genuine passion and they apply their best efforts.. my main objection is similar to Mathis, if they get fame and money for something that seems half-assed, because they’re connected.
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Sigh autocorrect..
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Repeating myself here but I knew a guy at the gym who worked for a music store in LA and traveled the Western states to stores selling stuff. The guy is in his 90s if still alive, never see him anymore. He said that the store finally came up with private recording devices where aspiring musicians could take them home and make demo tapes.
I said that had to be an arduous task, listening to all those tapes, and he said no, the kids were really good. They just don’t get a break.
John Lennon admitted that he was a lousy guitarist. The Beatles allowed a camera crew to the making of Get Back, total setup, of course. All they did was tune their instruments. At one point “Paul” sat with his back to the camera and did an amazing left-handed bass riff. His back to us, of course, could not see actual fretboard and pick work. It was fake. They could not play their instruments! Then they walked out of the studio and day’s end, and over the speakers they were playing the actual lead-in to Get Back. As if.
Some time, as if you haven’t, listen to “the End” on Abbey Road where each of the three, John, Paul and George, perform a guitar riff, all of it really well done. As Tyrone said about it, it was probably Clapton doing all three.
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You can see Lennon live here on stage in 1971 performing with Zappa, a very accomplished guitar player.
Lennon&Zappa★Well (Baby Please Don’t Go) on Zappa Mix
A lot of fellow musicians, like the Beatles looked up to Zappa for various reasons, because of his musical chops and hard ass individual personality. Whats very interesting is Lennon tried a total dick move on Zappa to try to get publishing credit for it. Very weird story, especially with a rift between two high level agents:
The song that John Lennon stole from Frank Zappa
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Some of Yoko’s finest work.
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“.. another book to avoid”
Haha, well I recommend his short essay version of it, it’s an amusing premise and he has some insights. He padded it out into a pretty popular book I guess, I just sensed a bad odor from it so to speak.
Speaking of book recommendations, you haven’t followed up with much more on the Gabler book. Don’t tell me it got ceremonially tossed in the trash can! Although maybe I overestimated it in my memory, that could certainly be.
Re the rest, sounds about right to me.. Rob Urie had a piece on NC a few days ago with a few insights on “class reproduction,” as the Marxists term it. One interesting tidbit – he linked to an academic writer who had written a book about HR departments as literal heirs and disciples of techniques originated by slave plantations in the Old South.
What you describe of rich kids and their dysfunction brings to mind Arrested Development (the show) which I think you’ve written highly of, and was very funny indeed.
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Another book to avoid … nothing personal. I was sort of taking your recommendation that it was not worth your time.
I did read Life, the Movie, and put. bunch of flags on it. It’s in a stack on my desk, and I’m working in reverse order.
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No I got your meaning/ joke, and I DO recommend avoiding it.. just adding a little nuance. It’s a good premise and has sparked a lot of good discussion out there.
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Nice conversation. Only quibble is your quote about slave plantations in the old South, which IMHO the evils of that era are grossly exaggerated and used a protype of “bad” people, much like the Nazis are an invented entity that never really existed, a fake organization created to blackwash Germans prior to flattening them and enslaving them.
By which I mean hypocritical shitheels like Thoreau and Emerson were big time abolitionists, taking the high moral ground yet completely ignoring the mills of New England filled with local children that were ground into hamburger.
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Are you sure they didn’t criticize that too.. it’s good liberals who eventually gave us child labor laws and agitated for better factory conditions overall. Anyway I know it’s complex, I just can’t qualify everything in a short blog comment. It was more about the interesting line of research for a mainstream academic. She claimed in the piece it had grown out of her research organically, was not something she imposed on the material.
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I need to check whether Thoreau and Emerson were critical of New England industry at the time. It is shocking when you look into the details of manufacturing in New England how awful the conditions were for the workers, and the total absence of the idea of “toxic waste” – all the tanneries and clothing manufacturers were dumping raw industrial waste into the Charles River, and pretty much every major river in New England in the 19th century. Indeed it was the shoe manufacturing capital of the world in that period, along with garment manufacturing along with England.
I am especially critical off those two – Emerson and Thoreau – because they are worshipped as Gods in the Boston pantheon, and I drive through Concord MA almost every day, and frequent Walden Pond. You should see Emersons mansion – it makes his “self-reliance” essay look rather hypocritical. The Emersons were, of course, very rich Boston (suburban Boston) Brahmins, who I’m sure had many maids, cooks and butlers in their Manse – it survives and is an impressive home. And spending time at Walden Pond makes me wonder how Thoreau had the whole place to himself, ostensibly. If you have never been to Walden Pond the place is super primo real estate – an oasis only 15 miles from Boston proper. It is hard to imagine the rich folk of Boston had not built estates on its shores, except that perhaps one family owned it all – the Thoreau family? How else could he build a single cabin on a beautiful pond (actually a small deepwater lake) with total seclusion? I imagine Thoreau and Emerson, although excellent and compelling writers, were the controlled opposition of their day, mincing around with the transcendentalism, and being like Chomsky was in the 1960s-70s.
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Someone ought to check Thoreau’s lineage. That would be a scoop! I’m not much good at that stuff.
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Henry David Thoreau family tree:
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Thoreau-1
At geni.com Thoreau’s family goes back to Pierre Thoreau who…
‘…was born into a Huguenot family, 1675, in the Poitou-Charentes district of France. The other of this Thoreau family probably had been a member of the de la Lesroy family. In 1685, Pierre, his two sisters Francoise and their mother fled, initially to Richmond near London and then to St. Helier on the island of Jersey in the English Channel.’
However his maternal line leads to distant cousins the Presidents Bush, Grant, Roosevelt, etc, as well as Bill Gates, Marilyn Monroe, Henry Fonda, et al:
https://famouskin.com/famous-kin-menu.php?name=37910+henry+david+thoreau
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There are certain topics you just cannot address, as they are third rail, and slavery in the South and Nazis are two of them. With the former, there’s an “other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” kind of feel about it, that if anything good came of slavery, even if only by accident (as in selective breeding giving us professional sports as we know it), you will go down in a boiling cauldron of oil no matter how you qualify it. So be it.
Same with Nazis, one that as an official demonized enemy, we don’t really know much about them, but we have to refer to them as unmitigated evil, and that is the way they are portrayed in history and movies. Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds was just a little bit more over the top than others. As I read it, the Holocaust did not even become a topic of conversation until the 70s. And, this much I will say, Hanna Arendt’s portrayal of the Eichmann trial was either as naive and deluded or dishonest as can be … Eichmann was not hung [excuse me, I mean hanged] and kept his calm demeanor (“the banality of evil”, Arendt called it) because he knew it was just for show, and that Argentina awaited.
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You guys are both missing that this academic was herself stepping on a “third rail”.. ie comparing modern HR departments to the dread evil/ scourge of Southern slavery. Now one could speculate that among certain technocrats, re-engineering work and perhaps abolishing HR departments might be the direction of play, but as it stands, conventionally speaking, her topic and thesis are a bit of a no-no and a slander against our best of all possible worlds.. THAT’S why I mentioned it, why it’s noteworthy, aside from the inherent interest of the idea itself (weighing whether she’s got a case or not.) But I am aware that the Old South is more complex than our propagandized, winner-writes-the-history, views of it.
And I’m also miffed that Ray disregards my question about whether he writes off the arts as all BS jobs or not, or what.. while going off on some tangent about the Beatles, Mark can always get a response from Ray to any brain droppings at all..!
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Tim, your response warms my heart. I didn’t know anyone cared!
But seriously I meant to say i was in error – i do completely agree with you that the arts are very undervalued, and I did not mean to be derogatory towards that. In fact one of the reasons I love Thailand is there is a lot of great live music and folk art.
I really should have stated I was poking fun at the rich kids because they could buy my condo with cash ($450k) at such a young age (about 30) while being “artistes”. When i sold my condo, as I’m sure still happens, there was a bidding war, and these “kids” outbid everyone. They wrote me a long letter talking about their life so I got an understanding of where they were coming from – a life of privilege and wealth. But i would be a hypocrite to say my family is not of some means – just my goddamn dad made me go into science because it was practical, and he as an engineer, instead of going to Bates or Bowdoin as a history major and then becoming a history professor, which was my dream. In retrospect I don’t regret not becoming a history professor – knowing what I know now. But coming from a family that undervalued the arts and overvalued being practial I have a deep appreciation for artists and wish I could have learned a musical instrument at a young age, which i did not.
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You are guilty of holocaust denial and will be imprisoned in the near future.
Hopefully not but you are correct, no way someone can bring that topic up at an all employee meeting, or even at the comedy club without immediate discharge, dirty looks and boos. I would like to know what really happened during that time period. There is a lot of speculating theories all over the place, from bringing a workforce and technology to the usa and uncovering old world buildings that need to be destroyed to hide the past. I talked with a few veterans and both said it was quite a show. The available info points at no mass death or even an actual war, something else happened.
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Don’t forget tomorrow is 11/22: JFKs assassination anniversary. Lol.
I have an older (70s) retired professional jazz musician friend who is smart but sadly confused. I previously made him mad when I told him Chomsky was a fraud in a posting on Facebook.
So today he posted how he freaks out every 11/22 because he believes the straight conspiracy theories on the JFK assassination. He says it started an era of chaos and hopelessness in America and American politics. I really wish I could get him to read Tyrones magnus opus JFKTV, so he could truly understand he is being played. Having lived in Boston and read enough about the Kennedy’s history, they are not the “good guys” people believe they are. At the very least even if we cannot conclude the assassination was a hoax, there is an extremely strong probability it was, based on an “objective” ( a word Mark hates) examination of all the evidence.
And I don’t believe the CIA actually has that much power – they are a whipping boy and fall guy to direct the conspiracy theorists towards, they are totally controlled by some outside entity who uses them for their means.
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Agree on CIA, and did not realize I did not like the word “objective”.
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Haha, yes I do care, you have a lot of interesting views and unique background/ perspective. Appreciate your clarification about the arts, now I understand what you were getting at in your first comment.
Good guess about Thoreau’s family maybe owning all that primo real estate. Unless population density was just so low at the time that 15 miles outside of Boston meant just anyone could find their own scenic idyll just lying about around the countryside. Or, maybe he was friends with some other rich family that owned it but hadn’t yet built there, and they said sure Henry, you can put a cabin out there, we’re not currently using it.
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