Tuesday, June 07, 2011
What Does Government Cost?
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Selfish Seniors!

Friday, February 25, 2011
The Rich and the Unions: Two problems to solve.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Reducing the Deficit and Debt
Sunday, November 07, 2010
Big Changes Take Long Term Planning
It's obvious that none of these problems is susceptable to instant solution; there are no "silver bullets". Neither electing a new crop of politicians nor throwing a lot of short term money at them will have much effect. What is really needed is a vision of where we would like to be in the longer term and a systematic approach to getting there. If we look at the meteoric rise of China since Mao's passing, for example, it's easy to see that this resulted from the slow implementation of very well-conceived and multi-faceted plans. We need the same sort of strategies if America is to solve its seemingly intractable problems.
In a former life I played a big part in effecting major structural change in the way a corporation accomplished an important function. The change began with conceiving a vision of the desired "end state", which was so dramatically different from the current state that the human and technological challenges to achieving it were daunting. Yet, by developing a long term plan and slowly, over six or seven years, taking logical steps in the right direction, we accomplished what lots of smart people thought was impossible. The measured pace of the change minimized disruption and chaos in the ongoing function. America's problems must be addressed in the same way - we need to get to very different places while keeping disruption at an acceptable level.
Our democracy, while having many laudable characteristics, is often a dis-enabler when it comes to tackling big problems. Since major change creates "winners" and "losers", politicians are extra sensitive to the concerns of the "losers". For example, the changes needed to put Medicare on a sound financial footing will excite the giant "senior citizen" voting block; a politician willing to work for change is likely to lose his/her seat at the next election. "Losers" in all the other area needing structural change will be similarly energetic. Consequently, democracies have real difficulties overcoming roadblocks set up by powerful constituencies that favor the status quo - things that "must be done" often can't be made to happen.
Unfortunately, democracies seem to enact major changes only when problems reach the crisis stage and great damage has already been done. The cost of this damage, and of the hugely disruptive and expensive "crash projects" that follow, usually far exceeds the cost that would have been incurred if the needed change had been implemented earlier and in a measured fashion. For example, slowly adjusting Medicare benefits and taxes would be much preferred to abruptly shutting down major aspects of the plan because the government ran out of money to pay the bills. Understanding this, is it possible for the American democracy to avoid the crises that it will almost certainly face if it fails to act now?
My answer to this question is that the "commission" strategy often used by presidents and the congress is the best potential solution. The commission, composed of members with many points of view, gathers facts, calculates likely scenarios, and produces one or more variations of a long term plan to solve the problem. Congress and the president then debate the alternatives and are forced to choose one of them by the "rules" that set up the commission. The "choice" also requires the congress to pass legislation and appropriate the funds to carry out the plan, and the administration to take positive implementation steps. Years ago, my management set the stage for major change by doing much the same.
Perhaps the "commission strategy" is not do-able in our democracy. If so, we will end up with crisis after crisis and pay dearly for our lack of long term planning. This would provide a lot of evidence that our democracy does not work, and set the stage for some sort of revolution and the installation of a much stronger executive - Hitler was Germany's solution in the 1930's. Do we really want this? It's time for our leaders to pull up their pants and skirts and get going on the right path.
Monday, September 13, 2010
A Gentle Reminder
Sunday, September 12, 2010
No Breaks for White Collar Crime!
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Haiti, Pakistan and the Concept of "Relief"
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Louisiana Scofflaws Cry the Blues
Regulation - An Often Meaningless Panacea
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Thanks, Praise, and Payback
Thanks, Praise, and Payback
Most of you probably know that I’m trying to finish hiking the
Walking so many miles in the wilderness allows me to experience something that I value very highly – solitude – life with minimal distractions. I’m alone with my thoughts, and I’m usually surrounded by the world at its most elemental level – nature, filled with beauty but also with challenges if one has to walk through it, day after day. As I subconsciously plan where I’m going to put my next footstep, to avoid a root, a rock or a puddle, my conscious thoughts often turn to the temporality of life, how short it is when compared to the mountains I’m climbing – mountains that have been there for several hundred million years, all of them being slowly worn down by wind, rain, and ice. I think about all the things that had to happen for me to even exist, and about the miracle that I have intelligence and can consider how all this came to be and what it means. I recall that everything I can see is made of elements formed in the hearts of stars, billions of years ago and so far away. And, here I am, the walking man. What does it all mean?
It’s at times like this when the thoughts of men and women from the Bible often come to mind. As I walk through primitive places, I can place myself closer to the Israelites who walked through the desert to the promised land. I can think about the pain of the Hebrew exiles as they walked from their homes to
In the scripture that
When our hope is in God, it’s natural to be filled with thanks and praise. Thank you, God, for creating everything, including all of us. For the heavens full of stars, for the warmth of the sun, the beauty of the flowers, for the incredible miracle of every sensory experience and emotion, whether pleasant or not. God’s power and majesty is beyond comprehension. Knowing this, every breath I take, every thought I think, every experience of my life is God’s gift. What gift could be more valuable, more deserving of thanks every day? Does it matter that my life will some day come to an end? I don’t think so. Who of us would prefer to never have lived – not me, that’s for sure. I can’t imagine never holding a loved one, never feeling the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat, never existing in any way. How can we not join with the Psalmist and, with confidence and heartfelt thanks, repeat the the simple truth of faith – “O God, my hope is in thee.” For me, there is no alternative.
Let’s jump forward eight or nine centuries from the time that poignant Psalm was written, but we’re still in the same country. Jesus has been roaming, walking, visiting small towns and preaching out in the open. People follow him everywhere because he’s been doing amazing things. His words follow a similar pattern wherever he goes. He repeats his summary of the Ten Commandments – “Love God and your neighbor as yourself”. He tells people that God wants far more from people than simply following a rule book of laws – he wants them to live a life of love from the heart, to have gentle spirits, to be peacemakers. Years later, Matthew compiles Jesus’s words in Chapters 5 through 7 of his gospel. This story, of Jesus teaching on a hill as he often did, is known as the Sermon on the Mount.
Verses 43 through 48 of Matthew 5 always get my attention. The passage has two primary thoughts. The first is that God gives everyone an equal chance; God does not play favorites. Jesus says, “Your father makes his sun rise on the good and the bad alike, and sends the rain on the honest and the dishonest.” In this world at least, God does not punish bad behavior or reward good behavior. Wonderful things can happen for anyone, as can tragedies. Regardless of how we live, life will have its perils and disappointments. The same rain that waters one person’s crops washes away another’s home. The same sun that produces the lush foliage outside this window also parches marginal land into desert and drives affected families into despair. Even in our own relationships, no matter how hard we try, how lovingly we behave, sometimes even our best intentions do not bear fruit. We are to accept that this is the way the world works. But this does not in any way alter the fact that our world and our lives are the greatest gifts we can imagine. They are God’s gift to us, and Jesus says, “Your heavenly father’s goodness knows no bounds.”
The second thought in this passage is about payback. God did not give these gifts without having some heavy expectations about our response. Just as God gives the sun and rain to good and bad, equally, God expects us to treat everyone we meet with equal love. “Forget about the old idea of loving your neighbor and hating your enemy”, Jesus says. “If you love only those who love you, what reward can you expect? Everybody does that. I want you to be special, I want you to act like me.” Well, I don’t know about you, but I find this command to be very challenging.
The way I see it, being like Jesus does not mean just doing good when you get a chance. It means actively looking for opportunities to do good. Jesus often stopped what he was doing, or diverted his attention from another task, so that he could minister to someone who was ill or needed his help. How often do we do that? The thing is, God does not consider that kind of selflessness to be exceptional. It’s expected. It’s the payback for our gift of life and the boundless goodness of God. Can we do it? Maybe we can, much more often than we think. A good way to start would be to echo the Psalmist every morning when we get up. “O God, my hope is in you.”
So that’s it. The scriptures tell us that life is short and often unpredictable, but God’s goodness is boundless. Our every day, our every moment, is a miraculous gift from God. What else can we do but say, “Thank you, wonderful God, for all of this.” Thanks and praise. Then, it’s time to roll up our sleeves. It’s payback time.
Friday, May 28, 2010
SIck of CNN!
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Hyperbole Reigns in America
The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a case in point. There are 3,400 oil platforms in the gulf, hovering over the 35,000 wells that they drain. During the past 20 years no serious accidents have occurred there and major hurricanes have not destroyed a single platform. But, accidents are inevitable when large numbers of complex machines are used to accomplish difficult tasks; we should have expected something of this nature to happen sometime. When it does, the important things are the short term actions taken to resolve the problem and the long term impact of what has happened. Instead of dealing calmly with this accident, our media, politicians, and interest groups turned the event into a circus of rash statements and hasty decisions. With many mitigation activities in progress, it's likely that most of these reactions will be found to be dead wrong. Let's check back on this in a year.
The same sad truth applies to the two other major events of the past week or so, the lone terrorist car bomb in NYC and the stock market's reaction to Greece's debt situation. Both situations should have been expected, and in both cases the real impact is likely to be minimal. The moment by moment coverage and over-reactions probably caused more problems than they solved. As Churchill said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." We actually have excellent security services and effective economic backstops; it's just that we'd rather panic than allow them to work.
Lastly, I can't help but take on the Obama issue. From the screams I hear from the right, Obama is destroying the country. From the real news, I see that the market is back (despite this temporary setback), housing and car sales are up, manufacturing employment is coming back, the Iraq war is winding down on schedule, foreign policy is steady and rather uneventful (that's good), and Obama seems to be pretty comfortable in his job. Bush II left him a real bag of snakes, and he's coped pretty well with the mess. With a couple of years to go before having to run again, I'd give Obama pretty good odds of being a two term president. So much for the screamers; there's plenty of time to judge whether or not they make any sense at all.
We need to calm down and dampen the hyperbole. There's far too much noise from the right, the left, and the media in general. Life does go on, and problems generally get solved without the world coming to an end. I have a lot of trust in the ability of people and governments to do the right thing over time, even though there are always hiccups now and again. Screaming and overstating seldom add any value to the problem solving process, and we should not accept it when we see and hear it. Relax, America. It's going to be OK if we just keep our heads calm and focused.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
48% Approval for Obama?
Other times, I think the republicans got out in 2008 while the going was good. The economy in shambles, the deficit out of control, wars not being concluded...how bad could it get? Time to cut and run, give the problems to Obama and then blame them on him. So far, this cynical strategy seems to have some traction. After all, if people can listen to Glenn Beck they can believe anything.
I'm very happy I voted for Obama. He's quietly pursued progress in many areas and achieved quite a few goals in just over one year. The stock market has rebounded and the economy is slowing rebounding - slow, but much faster than most people would have predicted twelve months ago. Iraq is winding down to a conclusion, and Afghanistan is on a timetable. Obama's won a health care reform war that some opponents wrongly thought would be his "Waterloo", and a financial reform package is also likely to pass. He's beefing up education policy, and he's done pretty well with foreign policy. Not too much to complain about!
Republicans and tea partiers call Obama a socialist or worse. The problems they decry were made worse during many years when their own party was in control, but memories are short and anger, even inane anger, is powerful. It's not what Obama has done, but the idea that he personifies a government that does things and influences our world, that is the reason they hate him. I just disagree with them, for the most part.
Time is on Obama's side, I think. As the country continues to heal economically, and, if there are no big uncontrollables to sidetrack him, Obama's steady pace of accomplishment will win back the independents. This will be true especially if his opponents continue to oppose but have no plan of their own to sell. November's elections will be important, but they will not make or break Obama. He has several more years to make the case for his approach, and the republicans need to worry about 2012 - it's far from in the bag for them.