Ideas rooted in truth can be build upon, like the gospel and great societies.
common sense
"there is no arguing with one who denies first principles"
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
The Fed and Accountability
I heard an interview with Larry Kudlow recently on ‘professionals’
at the Fed. By professionals (my word not Larry’s) he means academics without
experience running a bank or institution who use modeling to make decisions. Something gets lost when economists move from higher education to
federal offices and eventually hold titles, director of this and coordinator of
that. Stack enough decades together and patterns of behavior on finance repeat
themselves over and over until the thinking defines the institution. The Fed is
in such a state.
During the seventies and eighties federal institutions drew
its experts (primarily) from community bankers, farmers and small business owners.
The idea being that real world experience in a field was critical to making
tough decisions on a larger scale. The people responsible for the economic
health of the nation have a clear understanding of market principles and the
consequences of tweaking the currency. For sure, the Federal Reserve has always
been responsible to clean up dumb political decisions made by administrations
hoping to goose the economy.
Private sector bankers typically have rational ideas on
lending versus a government employee who hasn’t met a payroll or bothered with
ledgers. Not that public sector workers can’t be trained or understand how
global finance works, but according to Kudlow, they lack the economic philosophy.
Economists from similar schools and similar philosophies
will come to similar conclusions when making decisions. This shouldn’t surprise
anyone. Talk to salesmen at a convention and their opinions and attitudes on
money and work will be familiar to each other and the profession. Ask teachers
who they like for president in any election year and the response will likely
be the Democrat. Surgeons vote alike and join the same clubs; their thinking on
issues is familiar across states as is their salaries. The free market allows
for like-minded people and groups to employ and be employed by each other. In
the public sector (especially federal) this creates problems because bureaucrats
are un-elected but have an increasingly outsized role in how Americans buy and
sell.
Kudlow wasn’t
bemoaning the institution of the Fed as much as arguing for a more accountable
Fed. Government offices that draw heavily from one school of thought eventually
stop listening to other schools, and thoughts. When everyone thinks the same
way the mechanism for pulling back on bad ideas isn’t there. A rethink is
needed when accountability is lacking.
The Central Intelligence Agency drew almost exclusively from
the WASPy Ivy league schools right after World War II. Part of it just seemed
logical, pick college kids with parents who attended the same clubs, went to
same churches. The agency got bigger and through political will was forced to
change its loose way of operating and accounting. Some high profile failures
like the Bay of Pigs forced Congress put a lid on some of their crazier
schemes. The CIA recruits from all over the US now.
Larry Kudlow didn’t make any suggestions about how to turn
the Federal Reserve around but interestingly he is on the Donald Trump team of
advisers. If Trump does win I think the country will see some positive moves
toward a more accountable system of lending. The president’s authority over the
Fed chairman is limited and presidents don’t like to interfere too much lest
they get blamed for a messy problem. Kudlow is a known supply-sider advising a
borderline protectionist candidate (Trump) on economic indicators. It is an odd
pairing but one that can work if Trump does get the nomination next week.
First comes accountability then comes philosophy.
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
"Do You Believe in (baseball) Miracles?"
The Cubs are in the World Series!!!
I almost can’t believe I wrote that last sentence but there
it is, how sweet! They need to finish the season with a win of course but just
getting there is a feat that this team hasn’t seen in 71 years—of just
appearing in a World Series! Since 2003 I’ve been an occasional watcher of the
north side abysmals, but always a fan. Why that year?(head drops...lets out a
long sigh) This was the infamous Bartman year where that poor S.O.B reached for the foul ball and ‘interfered’
with Moises Alou’s ability to catch it. The entire city knows now that it was a
foul ball, out of play, and Bartman was within his rights to reach for it. Alou
overreacted (shouting at him) and so did the tipsy outraged fans at Wrigley. He
was escorted out like a criminal by some security guards who protected him from
beer-throwing, cursing, threatening fans—a sickening display really.
ESPN did a brilliant documentary on it called “Catching Hell”
outlining everything from crowd behavior and crowd psychology to rules
governing fan interference. They even selected a sermon from a minister on the
connection between Steve Bartman and Hebrew scapegoat traditions.
2003 was my junior year of college. I had time to spare and
the Cubs were good! That meant skipping the occasional class to catch an
afternoon game and rushing home from late classes to catch the last few innings.
Not a lot of work (school or other) got done that year and the biggest let down
was that playoff season where we lost to the Marlins. They were just better.
Bartman or not, our guys couldn’t strike out the Florida club and managed to
create additional problems by overthrowing runners, missing ground balls and
walking batters. They were abysmal. Our pitching led by Kerry Wood and Mark
Pryor had been almost automatic until the 6th game of the series
(the Bartman game). Kerry Wood threw the last game poorly. Marlins advanced. Cubs
stayed home. Wrigleyville faithful drowned their sorrow in Old Style and raised their
fists toward heaven—Greek tragedy style. It was further proof their ivy
walled stadium was cursed.
Until last Saturday…they never got over it.
The most I could muster since that heartbreaking fall of ’03
was watching WGN (when they still played games) on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Cubs had stars in those years and reached the playoffs a few times; in 2008 they
got swept and of course just last year the Mets knocked them out with AMAZING
pitching. Last year made a believer out of me like it did for so many. This
team was built to win. The front office made purposeful decisions to spend
money on young talent and develop it. The General Manager Theo
Epstein had similar results with the Red Sox in the early 2000s and he made
good on his promise to Chicago to invest long term. Fans sense a dynasty is
being put together in the best place in the world for baseball, Wrigley field. Nothing is guaranteed of course but the talent this team has trained, traded
for and developed is unlike any team before.
I can’t imagine having the time or passion that I did in ’03
ever again. Baseball is just too slow a game for me to sit down for 3 to 4
hours a night and watch. I suspect this is true of most people, even Cubs fans.
The pace and regularity of the sport makes it difficult to focus exclusively on the game. We just don’t watch TV like that anymore and
even with the DVR recorders, who can catch 50 games a year let alone 162?
I’ll
be watching every pitch of this historic World Series though. I might even
record a few next season and follow the club better in 2017. So I am not the
most dedicated fan anymore but like so many others who have hoped, and believed
this day would come—GO CUBS!!
Sunday, October 16, 2016
"Getting Ahead in the 1st World" or Despicable ME
I’m in new car season. Also known as pumpkin spice latte season. I hate car shopping.
Concern over ‘lemon’ buying fills my head. It shouldn’t. The regrettable purchase
from the shifty sales guy hasn’t ever happened to me. Always in the back of my
mind though.
The shoulder slumping reality that another item needs purchasing
(another blasted thing!) forces me to imagine life as a hamster. Not the bad
smell or the short life span (although that too) but the endless wheel spinning.
Oh the spinning! Do people ever really
get ahead? I don’t mean get rich by discovering an unknown talent like uh…spider
whispering. You know, lure them to their doom (I’d pay huge!). I just mean
paying debts, growing wealth, saving money and traveling. How common is it for
families and individuals to graph their income as a steady increasing line
while keeping their expenses line relatively stable?
I understand that making money and ‘getting ahead’ requires
attending to small things and overseeing everyday purchases, no scratch off
lottery tickets or Monster energy drinks. Even after all the penny pinching, dollar
skimming ways households manage to level the field, it still seems like certain
people make deals and some just survive. We either get it or we don’t.
Some women can craft and some can’t; some men can dress and some can’t.
Not that my spending isn’t occasionally frivolous and piggish.
I can eat like a state fair rat once the noisome folks are gone; it costs a lot of
money OK…so sue me!
Anyone can improve through discipline though. If ‘getting
ahead’ means more income that outgo, I have to be content with small progress.
Loosing ‘hands’ are inevitable in games of Texas ‘hold ‘em’, but anyone leaving
the game with more money at the end of the night than at the beginning is successful.
I need to get a little more income if I am going to get a new
car though. Poker isn’t an option. Even if I do get enough money for a new car
with the extra income I haven’t improved my lot. Sure I have a new car and
that’s awesome but it’s kinda worse. My paid off car was getting me from one
spot to another under the same speed limit (usually) and costing zilch. Old cars
break down and need constant maintenance putting the owner in the poor house to
keep the clunker running. So get a new car and make payments, still in
the poor house, but driving to it in a nice car. The hamster wheel keeps
spinning.
By the way ‘poor house’—super old phrase. It just kind of
works though.
I have an Altima from 2000 that runs quite well considering
the high mileage and the condition of the front. See I get a little close to
that cement barrier in the parking lot and frequently run the bumper over the
edge. So it is hanging in there but showing signs of wanting to fall into
traffic, death by speed bump.
I am doing a fair amount of whining here with no real argument
for anything but contentment. Sometimes we need to just vent.
After that though edit the bad language out and post it.
My arc of responsibility for savings over the last 10 years
bends toward progress. I’d like to keep it that way but I have my ‘needs’ and
preferences. Vacations are a preference and I take a large one every year. I
don’t mean riding a limo through Europe large, but a decidedly spendy trip whereby I leave Oklahoma at least. I need something to push me through the busy summers
at work, a carrot propelling me forward through the dog days of the busy
football season. Vacation is that carrot.
Until I discover a hidden talent or learn to budget, the
complaining about VERY 1st world problems will continue unabated.
God Bless.
Friday, October 7, 2016
On Fiction and Writing
"If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."
Elmore Leonard
Being able to describe a thing is a wonderful gift that
needs to be curated and perfected, fretted over and dreaded about. What is it
that I like good writers to do with characters, scenes, dialog and tension? The
short answer...it depends. Non-fiction and historical books draw me in a way
that fiction never did. Fiction of the action hero kind is great too and burly
enforcers like Jack Reacher are a joy
to read. Non-fiction though is the learner type book. Life-long learners seek
knowledge and love the presentation a writer delivers through their work.
In recent years I’ve developed a respect for fiction writers
who do research on a topic and then write a gripping story bringing the reader
along to discover something new. The something new that is discovered is a trick however. The author puts wonderfully human emotions and
histories into a fictional world that explains a larger paradigm. Classic novels
always do this. They are classic because the characters and worlds they inhibit
are almost tangible things. Readers get lost in the plot-lines and threads
connecting seemingly separate narratives. Then worlds collide. Stories are
suddenly representative of larger events and shifts in culture.
Boo Radley’s (To Kill A Mockingbird) anti-social behavior becomes a strength when he is
revealed as a gentle figure to Scout and Jem. Harper Lee didn’t just understand
the South and attitudes about race and society; she knew human nature better
than most. During the Jim Crow era, cultural lines were drawn sharply between
blacks and whites but human nature remained the same across all barriers. Lee
hooks readers by distracting them with mysterious neighbors and myths about
unknown people in town. Her trick was to sell the reader on a nasty version of
Boo Radley, all the while pointing out how the same fear and wrong assumptions
led to the imprisonment of an innocent black man.
Writers develop by creating a recognizable style or
philosophy and exploring it different ways to make for a complete picture. Ayn
Rand started doing this by writing plays and essays with a common but basic
core theme, self-interest drives decisions. Her book We the Living was her first organized attempt at putting her
developing believe in self interest into story form. A clearly fumbling attempt
at shining light on a philosophy, it wasn’t Aristotle but it was still good. Her
characters were simple one dimensional archetypes, set pieces really, existing
to demonstrate an extreme view, positive or negative.
She moved on to richer characters with better histories, and
dialogue chocked full of philosophies on everything from sex to existence. By
the nineteen fifties she was calling her philosophy 'Objectivism' and her ‘self-interested’
characters exemplified the ‘rational man’ and also the evils of collectivist
thought. From We the Living to Atlas Shrugged she wrote essays and gave
lectures on her Objective principles while building her own special style, she
crafted her ‘voice’. She started with a simple framework and layered it for an
easily recognized style.
Mark Twain does dialogue like no one else and his Huckleberry Finn is rich with language
and regional accents. Kids in early grade school have trouble with Twain (I
certainly did) because the spelling of the words and phrases are incorrect as
they are taught. Words like “knowed” “haint” and phrasing like “…I’s wuth eight
hund’d dollars” keep kids from ‘sounding’ them out. The mannerisms from the
characters feel as genuine as the prejudices defining the small towns along the
Mississippi. His short stories have the same language and ‘yarn spinning’ from
the mostly Midwest and rural characters.
Not sure why writing development was on my mind, but it
helps to be reminded of what I admire in other work, great work.
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Those Darn Cats
The neighborhood cats love my yard. It’s a little like
Switzerland during World War II. It’s a neutral zone where fighting is
prohibited but everyone is welcome--a reprieve for weary warriors. Hard to say
how my yard became this ‘no man’s land’ for feline R&R. The neighborhood is full of strays who spend most time defending their home turf from fellow feline ruffians. My yard is a woodsy bliss with no trace of anything cats would find menacing.
I blame myself for
never chasing them off the land. I encouraged their disregard for boundaries
and dangerous curiosity. Like a wicked witch cooking a stew though I had ulterior
motives, mice. I hate when mice invade my kitchen or garage. Cats are the only
real killers that mice respect. Mice are difficult to catch and nearly
impossible to kill, once they’ve moved in the only choice is death…uh…for the
mice I mean.
But aren’t cats lazy and selfish, concerned with being fed
and rubbed before agreeing to work? Ahhh, but here is the beauty of my plan.
All cats are welcome for a time but none can’t supplant the others and claim
ownership of said property, least the others object. It’s all very legal.
Occasionally I do wake up to the sound of screeching cats under my window
fighting each other over the yard space. Night time is precarious for those
unaccustomed to the schedule; new recruits wander recklessly into the lush
grass. Veterans set them straight by roughing them up a bit. Youngsters
exercise caution next time.
I get the benefit of
mice hunters without the annoyance of having them jump on my face at 6:30 a.m. ready
for breakfast before I’m awake. Hair and subsequent dander stay outdoors just
like the litter box waste. My leather (pleather) chair remains in one piece not
subject to clawing stretching felines ripping holes in soft fabric. They don’t
bother me with incessant meowing (begging) for wet, stinky canned meat or that
cardboard dry mix they ignore. All previous cats I have owned have either left
the canned food half-finished or just walked away at the sight of whatever I
shoveled out for them. This isn’t a problem for dogs. Dogs never have enough.
You could order a semi-trailer full of kibble and they would devour it in time
to sit by the recliner and whine for popcorn from your bowl.
This isn’t to say the welcome cats haven’t gotten lazy in
their day time prowling. I’ve pulled in the driveway multiple times to find the
neighbor’s tabby asleep on my sunny stoop, oblivious to danger. Oblivious to my
loud car too since it hadn’t so much as twitched when I zoomed into the parking
spot. An overweight, lethargic tabby is a cat that isn’t getting a workout
chasing mice around my crawl space. But I don’t complain. I know the next one
through the yard will be hungry. I’ve
also nearly run them over crossing the street in front the curb; the veterans
don’t run so much as stroll away unafraid of my loud engine and lights piercing
the quiet and dark yard.
I don’t own a dog so my decent size yard is a playground for
felines blowing off steam and chasing birds. Dogs would raise hell at the sight
of a cat cutting through the grass and leaping over the fence. Dogs never
manage to catch those irritating fur balls walking skillfully from fence to
roof, roof to fence. It does limit the chance that cats will spend time using
the yard as a hunting ground though.
For now the truce among midtown Tulsa cats abides. Let’s
hope not one gets greedy wresting exclusive control of the yard and breaking
the agreement. For me not having mice scurrying through the house to their
well-healed caverns is worth whatever trouble cats are up to.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Separation of Powers
Hungary thinks it should and they have doubled down by
insisting Christian groups be given help before Muslims. I think it is entirely appropriate for governments'
to pick who lives in the borders of their country, even at the expense of
discriminating. Citizenship is not a right it's a privilege. It shouldn't
matter the motives of a particular country or regime in favoring one group over
another. Whether safety from Islamic radicals or just a preference for a common
religion, countries can allow whomever they wish.
This is the ‘defend and protect’ position, the law
enforcement initiative.
Christian citizens around the world have a responsibility to
help whoever is in need regardless of religion. The church is most effective
when unleashing the power of aid and volunteerism through their countless
channels. Often they are first responders in disasters and emergency relief.
Organizations like World Vision and Samaritan's Purse have warehouses of food
and supplies strategically located around the world for better effectiveness.
Non-Christian charities work the much the same way. They have locals who
specialize in relief and charity. These charities frequently need the
diplomatic assistance of countries everywhere for flight clearance, easing visa
restrictions, military support and logistical support.
This is the ‘serve and give’ position, the compassionate
voice initiative.
As tough as it is to reconcile the opposite opinions on
refugees it remains an issue that can't be ignored. When the rich world lets
countries like Syria descend into civil war the result is massive inflows of
refugees. Also come the migrants from poor countries just escaping the cycle of
poverty and lack of real jobs. It isn’t the responsibility of governments to
provide housing, food, medicine and work but it is the responsibility of
believers of Christ.
Officials can make Christian charity an easier goal to
accomplish by removing transportation barriers and letting the military provide
support and protection. I am not sure how the two sides can reconcile
differences and give genuine aid without flooding borders and subjecting
citizens to possible terrorism, but ideas must be brainstormed. The choices shouldn't be all or none.
"Whoever has earthly possessions and notices a brother in need and yet withholds his compassion from him, how can the love of God be present in him?" (I John 3:17 International Standard)
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