The Four Legged Stool and the Gateway to Prosperity

The title of this piece is a metaphorical construct covering the sort of alliances/relationships we are starting to see take place in this country and why they won’t work.

The Four Legged Stool

The four legged stool derives its support from, no surprise here, four areas: government, big business, media/entertainment, and special interest groups. One leg will not hold the stool up, two won’t unless whoever is using it can do a pretty good balancing act, three provides stability and a great weight bearing surface, and four?  Well, the more the merrier.

Government. Whether at the national or state level, we have seen it encroach into more of our personal lives than we are comfortable with. Through burdensome regulation, confiscation of private property for the so called “public good”, questionable practices and policies that are at odds with the Constitution, and increasing taxes to cover its operating expenses, we are reminded that big brother is everywhere.

Big Business. We are reminded by the left that it is the evil doers in big business and their Republican foils who have caused much of the pain and suffering in this country. Some of that may be true, but big business does not care which side its bread is buttered on. A case in point would be United Health Care. According to one watchdog group, The Center for Responsive Politics, since the 2008 election cycle, United Health Care has given 61 percent of its political contributions to Democrats, which mirrors the current political makeup of both the Senate and House (60% and 59% respectively).

Media/Entertainment. What can I say? These folks just don’t get it. They do not like anything that smacks of conservatism or anyone with an R after their name. They are willing to go out on a limb and distort the truth, in some cases fabricating it altogether if that helps their side out. If you disagree with what they believe in (regardless of party affiliation), if you can be considered a threat to what they hold near and dear to their hearts (that includes the politicos and causes they support), they have no problem coming after you. The CEO of Whole Foods comes to mind as a good example. The only label that can be hung on these people that actually fits is one borrowed from Orwell’s novel 1984, “The Ministry of Truth”.

Special Interests. This is the tail that wags the dog. You have labor unions, academia, community action and environmental groups, and numerous other organizations. They helped catapult the first African American into the White House. They delivered a supermajority in both the House and Senate to the Democrats and are now looking for payback. They are driving the domestic issues you see in the headlines on a daily basis. They are providing the foot soldiers to ensure that policy initiatives get the widest dissemination possible. They are also using those same foot soldiers to help quash any dissent on the aforementioned policies. Conservative commentators who lumped them into the same category as the Brown Shirts from Nazi Germany may not have been that far off.

The gateway to prosperity

This gate is supported by hinges attached to two massive pillars. These pillars could be made of granite, marble, reinforced concrete, or who knows what. The key idea is that without the pillars, the gate would not have any means of support. The pillars, as it turns out are the two most important things that keep our economy afloat: small business and the American people.

Small Business. This title in and of itself is an oxymoron. Despite having less than 500 employees, these organizations are responsible for more than 80 percent of the nation’s job creation. With that kind of muscle driving our economy, one would think that the government would be sensitive to the plight of small business. Not so, CIT one of the financial institutions responsible for lending to small businesses has been in financial straits for several months. They have been rejected for bailout money from the Federal Government and have had to get a temporary cash infusion from their bondholders. If they go under, it would not bode well for small business. With no one to help out small businesses financially, a lot of them will go under or have to scale back their operations, which will make for bad times for a lot of American workers and their families.

Your fellow Americans. These are the people who live on your street, in the same apartment complex, or subdivision. They are the ones you work with, who thank you for stopping by the drive through at your favorite fast food haunt. They are the ones whose hard earned coin, when they are playing the role of consumer, is responsible for 70 percent of this country’s economy. Without their spending, the economy goes nowhere, which is why economists and business show talking heads make mention of consumer confidence in assessing the state/health of the economy.

The Fork in the Tale

I belong to a union, but I sometimes fail to see the purpose they serve. On the local level our councils seem to be doing an alright job, but on a national level, a lot of us feel that our money has been going to waste. The union has become more of a political tour de force than a force for good. Allowing unions to run roughshod over any business they choose is a bad idea. Card-Check, or what supplants it will not do much for American workers since smaller companies that cannot remain competitive due to having to adhere to collective bargaining agreements will either fold up, or pack up and go overseas. That will definitely help big business, but not the unions or workers.

The environmental lobby seeks to redefine the way we use energy by supporting bills like Cap and Trade. The only problem with this is that our industries that rely on energy consumption and the production of greenhouse gases in the process of providing goods or services to their customers will suffer mightily. Again, those that are not able to compete due to burdensome regulations will go away (either fold up or pack up). Once more, who will suffer? Workers and their families.

Healthcare reform is the hot-button issue of the summer. Most Americans want some sort of meaningful reform which includes lowering costs (medical liability and tort reform come to mind), being able to keep their current plans if they’re happy with them, and finding creative ways to get even the uninsured under some sort of coverage. Then there are those who feel the only meaningful reform is to have a government run plan, one that either competes with private insurers or replaces them altogether. Hint, any government plan that aims to compete will have our deep pockets to help it run everyone else out of the business. The government will become one of those predatory entities you see regulatory agencies going after in the private sector. With one source for all of America’s health care needs, will there be enough to go around? Not likely as evidenced by what’s going on in Great Britain and Canada. Who stands to lose on this deal? Just about everyone. Private insurers will be forced out of business and all of those choices and efficiencies we were promised will have evaporated like water on a hot skillet.

End of the Line

So, here is the question I put to you, dear reader of this rambling missive. After having seen what the future holds for small business and the American consumer, would a four legged stool be able to do the same job as a pair of massive support pillars?

Oddballs

“In order for America to be great, she has to be good” Author unknown

To some, this may seem academic, a no brainer. To others though, it may seem almost comedic, a throwback to a bygone era. But ask yourselves this question: why does this matter and should it in this day and age?

The answer, at least from my perspective, is an unqualified yes. How did we get to where we are today? The worst recession since the Great Depression, a federal budget and national debt that is on the verge of overwhelming our fragile economic recovery; federal laws that have thwarted the will of the people and contain provisions that can only be construed as well placed landmines. It isn’t a pretty picture.

Our current federal budget weighs in at over three trillion dollars, with about two thirds of that going to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The rest is split amongst various programs with Defense drawing a rather healthy share. For those who think that getting out of the Middle East will free up enough money to do other things, I’ll leave you with this little morsel to digest: U.S. involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas where we’re involved in operations formerly known as “the Global War on Terror”, cumulatively hit the one trillion dollar mark last year (after 9 plus years). Yet, you have a triumvirate of programs that are set to almost double that amount in just this fiscal year alone.

We’ve all heard about what the original intent of Social Security was and how most Americans at the time didn’t live long enough to enjoy the benefit. We know that our life-spans have greatly improved to the point where we live into our eighties or beyond which is putting a tax on the system. Additionally, when Social Security was running a surplus (receipts vs outlays), Congress enjoyed going to its favorite piggy bank for various unfunded mandates or pork barrel projects. Any attempts to reform the system were met with campaigns to shout down or ridicule the louts who would do away with granny’s retirement money. What was really happening though was a well orchestrated effort to retain control over an already broken system, lest the truth get out about how dicey things were.

Before there were any government social safety nets in this country, Americans somehow managed getting by on their own. The Greatest Generation was among the most patriotic, energetic, and productive groups in American history, sadly though, they were among the last of the spendthrifts/savers. The idea that you were responsible for yourself, whether it meant your day to day dealings, putting enough away for a rainy day, saving for college, or the golden years, meant something back then. Government played no central role in anyone’s lives, nor did it need to. The Libertarian train of thought has long espoused this view, but rather than embrace these ideals, both political parties have “cherry picked” what they wanted and then branded those subscribing to the Libertarian mindset as a bunch of oddballs.

 The Republicans will champion the fact that they are the party of limited government and unfettered capitalism and free markets. They pillory the Democrats for their “big government” stance on various economic and social issues. The truth be known, they are just as bad. Their ideas on how to prioritize government spending may differ significantly from those of the Dems, but they plan on spending your money as well.

The Democrats are into the whole civil liberties thing. They want government to stay out of our personal lives, but believe that government can cure all of the social and economic ills that plague us. They have yet to figure out that once you open the door and government gets its foot in, it’s only a matter of time before it insinuates itself into every aspect of our lives (personal and otherwise).

We’ve been conditioned to believe what one side of the aisle or the other is saying, it all depends upon timing and the situation at hand. We tend to focus on the messenger and not the message, all the while lamenting the fact that no one seems capable of doing the right thing. Why? The answer is as simple or as complicated as we want to make it. It depends on our perspective.

We’re told by one side that corporations and the rich are to blame for our current state of affairs. They don’t pay their fair share in taxes and exploit loopholes to get out of paying taxes whenever possible. If it weren’t for the intervention of government, these folks would have destroyed the environment. If it weren’t for unions, they would have plundered the wealth of the land and exploited the working stiffs who toil at their behest.

The other side would have us believe that unions are a plague that are bleeding this country dry with their demands for unsustainable pay, perks and benefits for their membership. We’re told that rules or laws governing how companies conduct their business have done nothing but make them uncompetitive in the global marketplace and will drive them out of the country or out of business.

As with most things in this world, the truth lies somewhere in between. A good case in point would be the analogy below:

1. Unions serve a purpose, but we deal with union leadership that is self serving.
2. Corporations serve a purpose, but we deal with corporate leadership that is self serving.
3. Government serves a purpose, but we put up with bureaucrats and politicians who are self serving.

Anyone notice a pattern here?

It’s the folks we’ve left in charge who are part of the problem. The other side of that equation is who put them there in the first place, meaning us, we the people. Catchy phrase that “we the people”, no wonder the founding fathers used it in the Preamble to the Constitution, but what does that have to do with this diatribe?

Well, let’s see. For starters, we do have a government that is supposed to be “of, by, and for the people”, meaning that we need to take an active part in its administration. I’ll even extend this past government to other organizations such as unions and corporations, because good governance is really at the heart of the matter. Active participation and good governance go hand in hand, in fact, I daresay that they are inseparable and provide a synergistic effect when it comes to guaranteeing the successful operations of any organization. Without it, organizations become dysfunctional and are at risk of, or (in some cases) are already in various stages of decay.

The founding fathers envisioned a society where its citizens saw service to their fellows (public service) as a higher calling and as such required individuals who were virtuous and moral. Now by virtuous and moral does that mean that one has to be a saint and live the life of a priest? Certainly not, but having a strong moral compass to point one in the right direction, especially during times of duress or when temptation rears its ugly head, gives those in charge a distinct advantage where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. The second part of the equation deals with the populace at large. Becoming involved in the aspects of how government is run, gives all concerned a better idea of how expectations have become confused with requirements.

Requirements are the necessary functions of an organization, i.e. those which fulfill the needs specified in its charter document(s). In the case of government, it would be the Constitution. Expectations are views or beliefs held by some about what they think ought to be done. Necessity and legality do not factor into any of this, only the idea that we would be better off if things were only done, or not done a certain way. We have come to expect things that were never government’s to give, nor ours to receive, and in doing so, opened up the door for the gradual erosion of the rights and freedoms we’ve come to enjoy, but not cherish.

Enjoyed, but not cherished? How can this be?

Simply put, if you cherish something, you’re not willing to part with it under any circumstance. If you just enjoy something, you can always make do without it. A lot of this is due to the fact that we’ve been taking the blessings of liberty bestowed upon us by our creator for granted and failed to understand how fragile a gift it can be if not cared for properly. We’re told time and again that someone out there has our best interests at heart and we are convinced to relinquish a little more of our liberty so that we can be better cared for.

Newsflash, the great experiment that is our country wasn’t based on having someone care for us because we had become basket cases. It was about rugged individualism and making something of oneself. It was about understanding the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. It was about understanding that doing the right thing would be a lot more difficult than settling for what was expedient. It was about offering up the best in ourselves, regardless of what was being thrown our way. Being good meant that we would become a great nation.

So now, once again we come to the fork in the tale. Remember the question of expectations versus requirements? Well, we’re going to tackle it one more time. We have come to expect certain things of our leadership (government, corporate, union, etc) and find ourselves continually disappointed. This time however, how about requiring them to meet certain standards of conduct? How about holding their feet to the fire when it becomes apparent they’re starting to stray from the path? Finally, if it becomes obvious that they no longer represent the ideals we have come to stand for as a nation or organization, how’s about we send them on their merry way and replace them with someone willing to do the job properly and to the utmost of their abilities?

Hopefully none of this is too radical of ethereal for anyone since:

1. We’ve come to a point in time when the medicine needed to make the patient healthier is going to be a bit strong, extremely bitter, and cause a few short term adverse reactions (short term pain for long term gain).

2. Make no mistake, the idea that doing the right thing is somehow outdated and out there in the ether is part of the reason why we’re in this mess in the first place.
   

If you somehow find yourself nodding in agreement, or thinking that there might actually be something to this nut job’s rant, or wanting to scream at the top of your lungs “finally, someone willing to write about what most of us have been thinking this entire time!”, you just might be an oddball. Welcome to the club.

 

Emotions vs Intellect

I find it truly amazing that the liberal/progressive left in this country can characterize conservatives or Republicans as less intellectual than themselves. As the elites, they consider themselves more intelligent, better educated and more capable of handling/solving all of the world’s ills/problems. They claim that they react on an intellectual level to things, versus those on the right who are much more prone to unenlightened emotional responses.

In the words of F.A. Hayek, that will prove to be a fatal conceit.

Take a look at the hot button issues of our time and the millions spent on ad campaigns, protests, and rallies. Then there are the soundbites from politicians or special interest group spokespersons on these news shows on the major networks and the cable news outlets. Both sides have mobilized the troops to do battle, and at times have made the truth a casualty in their war of ideas. The politics of fear knows no party affiliation and just about everyone has been guilty of using scare tactics. But it is the left more than their counterparts on the right who have “dumbed down” their message for the masses. Why?

Because it needs to play on an emotional level. Remember, they are the intellectually superior group, they understand the arguments and the logic behind it all, but don’t expect everyone else to be able to do the same. It’s much easier to hand out Cliff Notes, which oh by the way don’t even come close to fleshing out things in detail, or revealing any of the little nuances that only the real McCoy has the ability to do. But then again, we’re not supposed to be able to see things the same way that they do. We can’t possibly understand all of the potential ramifications concerning the issues at large. We can’t grasp concepts like the idea of cause and effect or the law of unintended consequences. We just don’t have what it takes, but they do.

So, everything is engineered to happen on an emotional level because it’s the best way to communicate with the great unwashed masses. Which ultimately means that: it’s just not the conservatives or Republicans they consider themselves superior to, but everyone else as well.

Saul's Teabaggers

Q: What do Saul Alinsky and the Tea Party movement have in common?

A: Everything.

This is what I don’t understand (it also points to a fatal flaw in the way some Americans think), unlike Janeane Garofalo’s comment about the Tea Partiers being a bunch of “tea bagging rednecks”, we find out that they are mostly fairly well-educated middle class and upper class folks. Isn’t it kind of funny that what tends to get lost in the argument is the fact that we are mostly a middle class country?  In fact, our success as a country was built on having such a large, burgeoning middle class. Take a look at other industrialized nations and see whether or not they have a large middle class at the core of their respective societies, they do.  So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is the fact that the Tea Partiers have been painted as a small disgruntled group that is trying to hold onto its money and deny others who are less fortunate an opportunity to share in their wealth/largesse. This is about as far from the truth as one can get, given Americans’ propensity to give more to charitable causes than any government of any other industrialized nation. That’s right, we give more to charity as private citizens than any government ever has. That being the case, why should government dictate to whom, where, and how we should be giving up our hard earned our coin? 

About 40 years ago Saul Alinsky penned a how to manual for community organizers titled Rules for Radicals. There has been much debate on whether or not it helped the left in this country achieve its political and social ends, but it was definitely an eye opener at the time of its publishing. Love or loathe him, Alinsky was a uniquely American story. More to the point was what he stated in the final two chapters of the book. He outlined three groups, the haves, have-nots and an in between group, the have-somes (or something like that). It’s the last group, Alinsky focused on in those two chapters that matters most since this group bears a striking resemblance to the middle class.

Alinsky predicted that as events progressed over time, and this group began to feel the same forces squeezing them that had been ravaging the have-nots for some time, they would inevitably begin to push back in a way that the have-nots were unable to. Well ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached that point in time, and Mr. Alinsky has been proven prescient. The Tea Parties are that logical next step towards pushing back. The nice folks in Congress on both sides of the aisle will either try to marginalize, discredit, or co-opt them because they do realize just how powerful a force these people really are and that worries them.

Power sometimes corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s a tried and true axiom. Growing government has never solved this nation’s problems and those who point to FDR’s New Deal as an example of the good that government can do, tend to omit the fact that none of those programs got us out of the Great Depression. It was the mobilization to go take the fight to the Axis Powers during the Second World War that did the trick.

Think of any government social program that was supposed to be a magic pill and I can show you where it went awry and why some in power will: 1) not admit that there is something wrong and 2) resist any changes proposed which would either overhaul or eliminate these programs because so many of their constituents have been helped by these programs and touching them would be a sin. What they’re really saying is that too many people have become dependent on them (i.e. it’s become their lifeline) and any attempt to wean them off of the government teat will be vigorously opposed since this is some politico’s ticket to reelection.

For the most part, the Tea Partiers, regardless of political affiliation, want the same things. They want smaller, less intrusive government. They want lower taxes and an end to wasteful spending. They want elected and appointed officials who are for the rule of law and have a strict Constructionist interpretation of the Constitution. There will be disagreements on minor points, but then again, they’re not a political party but a loosely based network or group of networks who share one common interest, getting government out of their hair.

Although the spotlight is currently on the upcoming presidential election season, no one should forget that a third of the Senate as well as the entire House are up for re-election next November. This will not be lost on those who have had their fill of an overreaching government incapable or unwilling to get out of the way and letting Americans reclaim the liberty and prosperity they feel that they have been denied these past few years.

Boomers

A couple of years ago, I went to breakfast  while I was on the road and ran into a former Marine who was also a pilot with my former employer. We got to talking about the state of the company and the pending pilot furloughs (I was let go the following January). It was funny, I never mentioned politics or the state of national affairs, but he said something that I had been feeling very strongly about for the past few months. He called Baby Boomers (our generation) a bunch of narcissists. The first thing I thought was “wow buddy, you just hit that one out of the park”. Just about everything that has happened to our society over the past forty years could be traced back to the boomers.

I’ll start with the Vietnam era and move on from there. These were the same people who protested the war. They were all about peace, love, and joy. They could not accept a war of aggression against a peace loving people who had done nothing to raise a hand against the U.S. of A. Yet here they were, folks with such open minds, tolerance and understanding, spitting on their fellow Americans, calling them baby killers and other epithets, all because they either answered a call to duty and served their country, or were unfortunate enough to have their draft number come up. They along with the mainstream media were instrumental in turning American opinion against the war. To make a long story short, Congressional funding dried up, support for the South Vietnamese government dried up, which led to its fall and the rise of regimes like the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the same people responsible nearly two million deaths of their fellow countrymen. Where was this group in calling for intervention into what became one of the most horrific genocidal episodes in human history?

Death to Disco. I’d just as soon forget that this era ever happened. The seventies was called “the decade that taste forgot” for good reason.  It was more than just that. The boomers went from bad to worse. 1960’s ideas like “if it feels good, do it” and free love were transformed.  The love-ins gave way to casual sex with complete strangers (i.e. one night stands), psychedelic drugs used to help one achieve a higher level of consciousness gave way to recreational/leisure drugs like cocaine (the choice of beautiful people). All in all, boomers became a hedonistic group who cared about nothing else but their own needs and pleasure.

I’m going to lump the ‘80’s and ‘90’s together. The focus here for the boomers was to make as much money as possible. In the ‘80’s, you had movies like Wall Street and Gordon Gecko extolling the virtues of greed. Couple that with real life characters like junk bond king Michael Milliken and you get a hint of how the focus had changed but not the underlying desire. The 90’s saw the tech bubble come and go, and with it the hopes and fortunes of those who had leveraged whatever they had with the expectation of hitting the big time or getting in on the ground floor of the next big thing. The “bottom line” truly was the bottom line.

As we begin the second decade of the new millennium, we find ourselves about to go over a precipice that could lead to this country’s ruin. The national debt clock is at nearly 16 trillion dollars and spiraling upwards, Congress and the White House have stuck us with a health care system that could break the bank and we barely keep dodging a cap and trade environmental nightmare that could hamstring U.S. industries and forestall any chance this country has of pulling off an economic recovery. The current economic downturn has erased about a third of the accumulated wealth that the boomers planned on for their retirement. As a late stage boomer, I’ve had my stash affected too, but I have the luxury of being able to work at least another 15 years to make up lost ground.

I’d love to say that I feel sorry for these folks, but they are the ones who led us astray over the past forty years. They have through avarice, arrogance, neglect, incompetence, and ignorance caused more problems that future generations are going to have to undo, not to mention the fact that my contemporaries and I will be forever lumped in with them because of when we were born. These children of the Greatest Generation, whose sacrifices over the course of two wars (World War II and Korea), whose hard work and industry helped propel this country into its position of a perpetual economic juggernaut, have been squandering the family inheritance. Their motto used to be “trust no one over thirty”, but given the times we live in, I have a new one. Trust no one over fifty.