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I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The Pledge of Allegiance – USC Title 4 Chapter 1 Paragraph 4

The City Council of one of the suburbs in our metropolitan area recently determined that they would dispense with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance before their regular meetings. There is no legal requirement for them to include it. Many public entities do NOT have this as a part of their regular agendas. I might add that this organization is one that I am very familiar with and have admired for a long time. This might not have raised much interest if it wasn’t for the explanations for the action that were given. According to the Mayor who was absent when the vote took place, he was “not a fan of the proposal”. But he goes on to say: “First, I think there are more substantive things we should be working on to make our city more open and welcoming and secondly, I’ve always used the last six words, ‘with liberty and justice for all,’ as a reminder to me that not everyone in our community enjoys the benefits of those words and it’s my job to do everything I can to fix that.” So, it appears that the Council’s reasoning here is that they want to make the City more welcoming to newcomers and they think reciting the Pledge hurts that effort. Perhaps they feel that immigrants may feel intimidated or coerced into saying something that they don’t believe. By the way, as of this writing, the Council is going to reconsider their action.

A part of the red side of me really can get my hackles up about this. I mean if our elected officials aren’t patriots, if THEY don’t affirmatively pledge allegiance to our country, how can we expect the rest of the population to?!?!?! Well, that sentiment makes several “jumps to conclusion”. I don’t believe that this Council is unpatriotic. I think they are genuinely trying to recognize that newcomers to their city, especially new immigrants, struggle to assimilate to our culture and may not FEEL that they have access to liberty and justice.

According to my go-to source for information (Wikipedia), a Pledge of Allegiance was composed by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Army Officer during the Civil War although it didn’t get wide-spread use at that time. The pledge that we are most accustomed to is a variation on Balch’s work written by Francis Bellamy in 1892. Bellamy was a Baptist minister and a Socialist – interesting. It was formally adopted by Congress as the pledge in 1942 as a part of the Flag Code – see above citation. In 1954, the words “under God” were added. This is also interesting; I think a lot of us think that the Pledge is iron-clad law that has been with us since the Founding Fathers. It’s always humorous to me that anything we are in favor of, we automatically assume the “Founding Fathers” were in favor of. But that is another subject.

Balch wrote his version of the pledge as a tool for teaching children, especially those of immigrants, loyalty to the United States. Bellamy’s version was first published in a popular children’s magazine, The Youth’s Companion. James B. Upham, a marketer for the magazine, thought the pledge would instill the idea of American nationalism in students and encourage children to raise flags above their schools. Historian Kevin M. Kruse asserts that this movement was an effort by corporate America to instill in the minds of the people that capitalism and free enterprise were heavenly blessed.

It is more than ironic that one of the writers of the Pledge felt that it was particularly valuable for immigrants. This is like a 180-reverse logic to that of the City Council. And it caused me to try to clarify in my own mind what it is we want for our new immigrants. As I have said before I believe that we absolutely need immigrants and while we can’t accommodate everyone who would like to come to our country, we can assimilate more than we are presently taking in. But when they come, what message do we want them to get from us? I think we should make it clear that it is fine with us that they are here, that we VALUE them and that we want them to become ONE OF US – American citizens who love this country and have staked their futures on the country’s success. We don’t expect them to forget where they come from. My ancestors didn’t, but they were fiercely patriotic. We don’t want to denigrate their country of origin as a “shit-hole” as one of our famous leaders has done. They know how things are in their homelands a lot better than we do. But we DO want them to commit to this country as we all must do. We don’t want them to think that they CAN’T belong here. We want them to totally be a part of the fabric of the country. They should complain about taxes and then PAY THEM like the rest of us. They should work hard every day and try to get ahead like the rest of us. They should want better for their kids like the rest of us. And if their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are being threatened, they should raise cane, like the rest of us.

If an immigrant feels that those rights are not being afforded to them, we must get into that and find out what’s up. And if something needs to change to give them the right to the PURSUIT of happiness, we need to do that. In other words, we want them to be part of the deal – just like the rest of us. We pledge allegiance because we want to be part of this country. We want what the country has to offer and we need to be willing to pay the price of being good, patriotic citizens. We don’t want them hanging around the fringes of our society. Get in the game. Now it is true that as already-here-Americans, we greatly underestimate how hard this is for new immigrants. They may need some help. It is in our best interest to give them that help. But they MUST assimilate as thoroughly as possible and as soon as possible. To me, when an immigrant recites the pledge the terms of the bargain are implied. You are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, BECAUSE you pledge allegiance to this country and all that this entails. THAT’S THE DEAL.

Maybe it’s the nearness of Independence Day. But I think that reciting the pledge of allegiance along with all the newcomers is totally one of the best things that we can do for them.

“When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.”
– David Brin – American Scientist and Award-Winning Author

“Privacy is not dead, just cumbersome and getting more and more expensive.”
– Christina Kubecka – Digital Security Expert – Led Recovery of the Biggest Hack in History

“Crime has always been a regrettably consistent element of the human experience.”
– Mark Frost – American Screenwriter and Crime Novelist

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin

A few years ago, a hacker broke into the network for the accounting firm that does our tax preparation. The firm (a very fine accounting firm I might add) learned of the hack when one of their customers found out that another person had filed a fraudulent tax return (claiming thousands in refunds) in their name. When we were informed by our accountant the full impact became very obvious to us. Not only had the miscreant obtained our Social Security numbers and all our personal financial information, they had also gained access to our bank account information. (We utilize direct automatic clearing house (ACH) transactions for paying taxes and receiving refunds.)

We have had our credit card numbers stolen so many times that this process is becoming old hat to us. We report it as soon as we detect it or often the credit card companies detect it before we do. The old cards are disabled and new ones are issued with a different number. We have been very pleased with the speed with which the companies get on these situations and how they minimize the inconvenience to us. But this breach at our accountants was “a cat of a different stripe” as they say. We did the obvious – we rushed down to our bank to close our checking account. (Their service was EXCELLENT, again minimizing our disruption.) And then we went to work on the less obvious. We made filings with the Internal Revenue Service to prevent someone filing false tax returns with our numbers. We also then contacted the three major credit rating agencies in the country – Equifax, Experian and Transunion. We reviewed all the recent data to make certain that our credit rating was not being degraded by someone impersonating us. And we took the extra step of locking access to our records. This is advisable since one of the unpleasant outcomes of this scenario is that a criminal takes out a mortgage, car loan or personal loan in your name and then defaults. Nearly any lender these days accesses the national credit rating companies before extending credit. Of course, if WE want to take out a loan, we have to undo that so that our lender can check us out and then relock it again. We have had to do that a couple of times and I am getting adept at it. There are fees for the original “locking” but the real pain in the butt for all of this is the time and inconvenience that it involves. Without exaggeration I am sure that we spent fifteen to twenty hours trying to straighten things out.

We were just getting over this shock when we got a letter from Experian indicating that THEIR files had been hacked and our financial data, Social Security numbers and tons of other information had been stolen by an unknown criminal or criminals. Facebook is on the hot seat for their privacy policies along with other major tech companies. And along the way we now learn that our Russian friends have attempted to break into our voting records. My reaction was that this MUST stop. We must step up our efforts to insure privacy. I truly believe that our major companies and governments are working at this. Credit card companies go to great lengths to make sure that our transactions are secure. But that doesn’t necessarily make me feel better every time I see somebody in Florida spending $800 on a car rental using my credit card number. We need more stringent regulations. I WANT MORE PRIVACY.

But on the other hand, my recent experience in changing our internet provider makes me see another side to this. Let me tell you, that was an experience. The new company really seemed to want our business UNTIL it came time to sign up. I was advised that among other things they would be reviewing our credit scores from Experian, Equifax and Transunion. I said – “REALLY??!?.” They assured me that this was an iron clad requirement. Because of our experiences described above they could not access our credit history. I told them we had lived in this house for 26 years and that our FICO score was good. They were totally unimpressed and unmoved. So, I reluctantly went online, accessed our Transunion account and unlocked access for a period of two weeks. Problem solved right? Not so fast!

When I called our new provider back to tell them that the credit records were now accessible and we were ready to sign up, our account representative (a very nice lady) said, “Fine! What is your account number?” I said, “We are new customers and don’t have one yet or if we do, we haven’t been told what it is.” This was a problem. She asked if we had already ordered the installation and I said yes. She said that the account number would be on the order confirmation which fortunately I had saved. But when I gave her that number as it was written on the installation order she said, “That is not an account number – account numbers have three more digits than that.” So, I can’t be a customer??? After some hesitation she said the numbers that I gave her were PART of our account number but there were three more digits that she needed to verify. I said, “Well I don’t know what they are but YOU must, since you knew that the digits that I gave you were part of the number”. She said that she DID know but she couldn’t tell me. CATCH 22!!! So I said, “What can I do?” After a period of silence, she said that she really wasn’t supposed to tell me this but there is another number on the installation work order that has the last three digits in it. I said “Excellent, which other number is that?” She said, “I can’t tell you that”. By this time, I was ready to call our original provider back. The problem was that I had already cancelled that service! So, I just started guessing from some of the other identifying numbers on the order form.

There was a time in my life when I would have gone ballistic and demanded to talk with a supervisor and the company president. Instead although it took me three or four guesses, I finally hit on it and we are all set. I went down to the Laundry Room and had a Miller High Life! Did I run into an uncooperative, nasty company representative? Not at all, she was very polite and patient. She persevered though the problem and in the end between the two of us we were able to complete the transaction. I know that she was absolutely doing her job as she has been taught. And the company really DOES want my business. The representative’s training is based on governmental and industry standards that are totally well intended – intended to protect me and people like me. Now I can tell you that after twenty-five minutes on the phone it didn’t necessarily feel that way but I believe this is the truth. We are so protected these days that complying with these regulations is impeding business. I WANT SOME ACCOUNTABILITY FOR WHO IS REQUIRING THIS STUFF.

Most of my blog entries reach a point where everyone wants to ask, “What’s your point?” The IT director where I used to work assured me that I didn’t need to worry if our credit card numbers had been stolen, that was nearly a given. The crooks have so many stolen credit card numbers their challenge is in knowing which ones to use. If you haven’t been hacked yet, you will be. But as maddening and alarming as it is when this happens to us, we shouldn’t overreact. We can’t crawl in a hole and give up our liberties as Benjamin Franklin noted. We can’t let the bad guys win. Our federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are working on this stuff every day. This is a part of doing business for the credit card companies. They plan for it and they build their losses into their fees – which of course WE pay. I hope you never have your Social Security numbers compromised but you should still have a plan for what to do when that happens. In other words, this is life in 2019. We may not like it, but we need to remain calm and carry on as the Brits say.

The discouraging thing in all of this is the amount of expense and disruption these folks introduce into the system. Hacking is NOT a victimless crime. We are ALL victims even if our individual accounts are never breached. If these technical-whiz hackers are so smart why don’t they take one of the jobs that we are so desperately trying to fill these days?!?!? Sadly, there are criminals in our world today, there always has been and there always will be. The victims of their crimes will have to bear the costs as we always have. Today’s criminals are just adjusting to new business systems. The effect to us is that just like shoplifting or bank robbing, the costs are reflected in what we pay for what we buy AND the bureaucratic hoops we need to go through to buy it!!

“I live in that solitude, which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”
– Albert Einstein

“As my late mother famously observed, the one thing to be said for growing old is that every year there are a few more things I don’t have to give a rat’s ass about.”
– Lawrence Block

“By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be growing old.”
– Benjamin Franklin

It occurred to me the other day that I am probably not going to be elected President of the United States. Heck I probably won’t even be Governor of the State of Minnesota. Well that is kind of silly – did I really THINK I was going to be the POTUS or the GOTSMN?!?! (I just made that second acronym up.) Well not really on any rational level of thinking. As I have said before we were taught from birth that we were nothing special – all that we had to distinguish us was our adherence to our family values of hard work, honesty and godliness. So, what in the world would make me think that I was something special – that I would DO something special in this world? Well, I guess nothing…………… except if I look deep into my soul, something inside there DID think that I was bound for great things or at least note-worthy things. Ohhh, I think for the most part I have been modest and often even self-deprecating. (Given my track record those weren’t all THAT hard to do.) But I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit that at some level, I thought that I would somehow be different than my peers.

I thought I would be healthier than others – after all, following some self-abuse with overeating, over-working and otherwise overindulging in my 20’s and 30’s, I started to take care of myself a little more. I started running and watching my weight and eating a little better. (Janice would dispute that last one.) And for a while there I DID seem frightfully healthy. Sure, I had some high blood pressure, but losing some weight and getting some exercise took care of that. And I did have that V-Block or V-Notch or something weird like that with my heart rhythm, but that never stopped me from running. And I guess I did have some kidney stones – umm I guess I still do make some of those. Oh, and there was that thing with my gall bladder, but I got that sucker removed and that was the end of that. Yeah, and I guess there was that thing with the diverticulitis, but that colon surgery really took care of that. And with the thousands of miles of running there was the traditional knee surgery, but I wear some braces and that is no problem whatsoever. Geez this is starting to not sound so good.

But my heart was SOUND – I could still run a 5K or 10K race without even huffing and puffing. Well actually that started to get a little more difficult over the last couple of years. I had always prided myself on a low heart rate – a product of being in great condition. It turned out, not-so-much. It was actually bradycardia – a condition characterized by a heart rate that is too slow. And when they were checking on that they found that I had atrial fibrillation. There were a few other things along the way but I am getting depressed and you get the picture. Still, I count myself lucky because there are many others with lots bigger problems than me. But I am not that much healthier than most people my age.

OK, but I thought I would be RICHER and more successful than others. In some of my past confessions I talked about my business failures. I found my self at age 40 with NOTHING other than some lingering debt – a net worth of less than zero. But again, I have been blessed so richly. I found great jobs and married Janice, a SECOND wonderful woman who has stood beside me through difficult times as Pam did before. And little by little we were able to raise our kids, get them though college, put food on the table, clothing on their backs and get them on their ways. We buckled down and got our house paid for and have been able to retire. I don’t take this for granted, we are more secure than so many people our age. We are blessed to be able to live a modest retirement. But clearly our riches are NOT particularly noteworthy.

So, what is this all about? Maybe it is some of those rambling digressions Franklin was talking about. In my younger days growing old was kind of academic. You know, you understand and accept it as a physical reality that will happen SOMEDAY. But that someday was always out there on the horizon and really didn’t concern me. I was still bound for greater things. It is clear now that this is no longer the case if it ever was. I was living life forward but now can look backward and understand more.

Clearly, I am not rich or famous or wise. As I have grown older, I have disabused myself of the illusions of grandeur more and more. And I am thinking that this is the beginning of a piece of wisdom. A part of this wisdom as Block notes, is that it is easier for me to accept things now than it was in the past. Some of that may just be fatigue, but I think there is wisdom in it too. There is something “delicious” in this “maturity” I am learning about. As Oscar Wilde said I no longer SUSPECT everything, and neither do I feel that I KNOW everything. But amazingly I am OK with not knowing. I am OK with saying that there are answers I don’t have and things that I can’t explain. It is quite liberating.

Oh, and there is so much joy even in this world of suffering. We saw it when we worked in Haiti – such poverty and such happiness. We have food to eat, clothing to wear and a roof that doesn’t leak over our heads. But more than that we have our families to delight in, to revel in, to laugh with and to love. We are so rich. And I AM famous – to our kids and their spouses and to my nine grandchildren. They don’t know about my checkered past and they don’t even care. And to be honest about it, part of the wisdom I have gained is to know that THEY are really the only ones whose opinions of me matter. Maybe that brings me full circle to what my parents taught us – if we really adhere to our family values we ARE of worth. I feel better. I guess I am plenty rich and famous enough!!

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

Confucius

Men are respectable only as they respect.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s amazing what I don’t know!! I mentioned before that I am in a MOOC (massive open online course) from Yale. Our study concerns the American Revolution. One of our assigned readings (of which there are many – of significant length) related to the capture of British Major John Andre’ by three patriots – John Paulding, Isaac Van Wart and David Williams on September 23, 1780. By all accounts, the three were “yeomen” in the parlance of the day. I think today we would say that they were just common ordinary folks, “Joe-Six-Packs” – you know, guys like me!! Some of the various sources that I read report that the captors were members of the militia for their area – the Hudson Valley area of New York state. Virtually all parts of the country had local companies of militiamen which were called up from time to time to fight with the Continental Army. This whole story was news to me – my ignorance again on display. But as I read, the story had some eerily familiar threads with what is going on in today’s political climate. Let me explain.

Major Andre’ was a close associate of someone I was a lot more familiar with – Benedict Arnold. As you will probably recall Arnold was at one time in the Continental Army – a rising star – and then became America’s most famous traitor. One version of the story is that upon his capture by the three New Yorkers, Andre’ attempted to bribe them for his release to which the men replied that they would never betray their country for ANY amount of money. They directly brought him to the Continental Army which upon further searching found documents detailing British plans to take the American fort at West Point. That plan was thwarted and the three men were hailed as patriots and received the country’s first cash reward for heroism. Andre’ was jailed, ultimately tried and hanged before a crowd of thousands. What a feel-good story!! I think I feel a movie coming on.

But alas, things are never simple. And they weren’t always simple in the 1780’s either. By all accounts Major Andre’ was a “gentleman”, a world apart from our yeomen heroes. Many officers in the Continental Army were also “gentlemen”. Most of these gentlemen Continental Army officers had very little time for the militias and utilized them only when absolutely necessary. They viewed them as unkempt, untrained, undisciplined men who really consumed more of the Army’s resources than their value justified. Historians have built careers exploring this dynamic but it appears as is usually the case, the truth is in the middle – the militias DID play a major role in winning the war but the brunt of the real dirty work was done by the Continental Army. Again, amazing what I don’t know.

During his incarceration, Andre’ became acquainted with some of the Continental officers and a different narrative emerged. Andre’ alleged that the three men were actually “Cowboys”, a term applied to British Loyalist “free-booters” who ravaged and plundered all parties in areas where control was fluid – sometimes controlled by the colonists and sometimes by the British. Andre’s story was that the three yeomen tried to “shake him down”, seeking a bribe, and only decided to bring him to the Continental Army when they feared that Andre’s couldn’t or wouldn’t ultimately deliver the agreed-upon bribe. Some of the “gentlemen” in the Continental Army believed Andre’s side of the story more than the version told by the yeomen. But as noted above the yeoman were hailed as heroes, received their rewards and Andre’ was hanged.

Appreciation of our veteran heroes has unfortunately risen and fallen over the years. (Think about the heightened awareness we have now versus the disgraceful way our Vietnam vets were treated.) Surprisingly in the decades that followed the Revolutionary War, appreciation was a bit lacking. This improved somewhat during the period after the War of 1812. And it was during this period (1817) that John Paulding, one of our three heroes, asked Congress to increase the pension granted to him as part of his reward. Controversy ensued. One of the Continental Army gentlemen who had heard the alternate version of the story (then-Representative Benjamin Talmadge) came forward with the alternate story. Others questioned why these three fellows should be treated so much more generously than the many other Revolutionary War veterans that had received very little in the way of pensions. The Paulding request was denied. Revolutionary War vets finally got their modest pensions in 1818.

The yeomen of the day were incensed. They felt that the “elites” in Congress and in positions of authority throughout the country were out of touch with real people. They railed that these people who had never shouldered the real burden of the war would take the word of an enemy spy over the word of American heroes. And the old resentments between militias and the Continental Army came out as well. Common folks believed in their hearts that it was the MILITIAS that had won the war and now these rich and educated people were bringing that core belief into question.
Enter Andrew Jackson. Jackson was a war hero from the famous 1815 Battle of New Orleans. And they didn’t call him “Old Hickory” for nothing. He was built of sturdy stock. He was convinced that the wealthy elites were fostering corruption in the government. The common folk saw him as a man of the people who would stand up to the elites and wealthy industrialists. In his run for president in 1824 he received a plurality of votes but Congress, following the Constitutionally defined process, ultimately elected John Quincy Adams. This fueled resentment even more. Jackson felt that Henry Clay had struck a “deal with the devil” with several southern congressmen that cost him the office. But in election of 1828 there was no need for Congressional action, Jackson won handily.

Semi-interesting – but what is my point? I hear President Trump being compared to Andrew Jackson these days. I’m not sure that I can go there but I never really got it until I read this story. I’m not certain ANY of us really understand what happened in our last election, or for that matter really understand how Americans think. But I clearly believe that for many Trump supporters, the feelings of the yeomen in the early 1800’s were very present in a 2016 version. They felt devalued, disrespected and disenfranchised. There are probably lots of reasons for this, some of them economic. I doubt that many of them were totally comfortable with what Candidate Trump was saying and they may not be totally comfortable with everything that President Trump is doing. But they felt that the opinions of others – the elites – the educated – the rich, were being counted as more important than theirs. And some of  them were incensed. The focus of that anger was Hillary Clinton, right or wrong. All of us need to be careful as we define and explain our positions. It is so easy for me to feel that I have the only real valid view point. But this is a big country – and people see things from a lot of different perspectives. We always need to RESPECT others’ opinions even if we vigorously disagree. Respect is in pretty short supply these days on both sides of the aisle. Politicians in 2019 and in any year need to look at these two periods in our history and to learn.

“America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can’t be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of new minds, a risk-taking culture with no stigma attached to trying and failing, a noncorrupt bureaucracy, and financial markets and a venture capital system that are unrivaled at taking new ideas and turning them into global products.”

“The historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism.”

– Thomas Friedman – Syndicated Columnist and Best-Selling Author

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”

– John Maynard Keynes – Economist – Considered to be the Father of Macro-Economics

“I’m a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. But capitalism only works if you have safety nets to deal with people who are naturally left behind and brutalized by it.”

– Thomas Friedman – The Same Thomas Friedman Quoted Above

There was an article in our local newspaper this week that talked about a Facebook post from a young man in Southeast Minnesota. He is twenty-six years old and works with his parents on their family-farm dairy. The video is not for the easily-offended. There are some F-Bombs and a showing of raw emotion. The video was occasioned by an argument  between the young man and his father regarding the discouraging outlook for the future of their farm and what they need to do about it. This farm family works very hard, every day, seven days per week – the bane of all dairy farmers – and has for many years. But they are now at a point where it appears that their dream of a future working together on their family-owned dairy farm is about to be destroyed. As someone who was born and raised on a family farm, I find this video hard to watch. It is hard to watch because I have seen the destruction of dreams like his up close and personal. I saw the dreams of many in my family destroyed. The number of family farms has been plummeting for decades. I want to reach out and comfort this guy and somehow to make things better for him. He is so exhausted (physically and emotionally) and so discouraged.

Who is the despicable ogre that has done this to him and his loved ones? Who should we be angry with and what law needs to be changed to correct this injustice? The young farmer struggles with those issues himself. He notes that consumers blithely go to the supermarket and purchase milk for an affordable price without ever thinking about what needs to happen to make that possible. That is true. I buy milk and I never ask to pay more because I think the price is too low. Maybe I am the problem.

I have talked in previous posts about our failed business venture. In our exhaustion and discouragement, we asked the same questions. Who is to blame? We worked really hard; we should have succeeded. At least that is what we thought. Except that is not how things really work in our system, this for-the-most-part capitalistic system that we live in. I think we need to be balanced here. As Friedman notes, we live in a country of huge riches, arguably mostly the result of our capitalistic system. I certainly don’t want to substitute ANY other system in the world for ours. Of course, there is the issue of WHO is reaping the wealth being produced by our system and who is being cut out of those riches. But that is another debate.

In America we admire success and we aspire to it. We admire “self-made” men. (Probably a lot of those that we admire weren’t really TOTALLY self-made men. They may have had some advantages that we are unaware of.) But in any event, we want to be like them. So, we analyze things, we work hard and we invest our resources trying to succeed. Why isn’t our young farmer succeeding? Certainly, they are in an industry that we all depend on – we all like to eat. And by all accounts they are working very hard and have invested everything they have in their business. The cold hard truth is that someone else is doing it “better”. Someone else can deliver that milk to our supermarkets for less money per gallon. That could very well be some huge enterprise that milks 10,000 cows instead of the 200 cows that they do. THAT is capitalism and competition. We all benefit from it because we buy the cheapest milk that is possible.

Well maybe not ALL of us. What do we tell this young guy? He probably identifies with John Maynard Keynes more than Thomas Freidman right now. I think we all need to remember that while capitalism is the greatest wealth making system in the world, that rings a little hollow to a guy like this who may well need to end the way of life that is all he knows. He will NOT be able to do the work that he loves. He will see what little wealth he has lost to bankers and other creditors. He may well need to move from the family farm and start an entirely new life that is NOT the one that he wants. He may not have warm feelings about our wonderful system of capitalism.

Capitalism doesn’t care about his Mom who gets up at 5:00 AM and works until 10:00 PM or his Dad who has been doing the same for forty years. Capitalism doesn’t care that they couldn’t access enough capital to expand their operations to gain some of the efficiencies associated with bigger operations. Capitalism didn’t care that despite our best efforts, the technology of our family business needed more investment to make it work than we could access. And let’s be truthful here, capitalism doesn’t really care WHERE products get made. If we can buy a component that we need for our product in China cheaper than we can get it here, that is what we do. Capitalism may be the greatest wealth-producing system in the world but we should never pretend that there aren’t casualties. Capitalism is efficient – ruthlessly efficient. When there are winners, there are losers. I have been both.

I have read several of Friedman’s books over the years. I found it interesting that his view of capitalism seems to have become a bit more nuanced over time. Now he talks about “safety nets” for those who are brutalized by the efficiency of capitalism. I’m there. We need to make sure that we get the best from capitalism and humanely deal with the destruction that is sometimes left in the wake of its success. In the case of our distraught young farmer, perhaps he can find a way to refinance and make it work. More likely he may find work somewhere else in the dairy industry. He made need some training – I think that is part of our capitalistic society’s responsibility. We can’t make coal burning power plants more efficient and cleaner than natural gas or renewable energy plants. We can’t MAKE coal mining jobs when coal is not going to be mined. But we CAN work with coal miners or displaced farmers or others displaced by off-shoring. We CAN retrain and capture the value in these human resources. There will need to be a time of grieving for them. Coal miners are coal miners because that is what they WANT to do. Our young farmer from Southeast Minnesota LOVES cows. But we can’t totally pick and choose what we want from capitalism. If we try to do that and to REQUIRE capitalism to do inefficient, non-market things, in the end we will all lose. Wealth will not be generated to the extent that it could be. But we need to recognize and attend to the destruction and disruption that this efficiency engenders.

“Three quarters of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world would finish if people were to put on the shoes of their adversaries and understood their points of view”

Mahatma Gandhi

This blog thing is so liberating. You can talk about anything you want, even things you know nothing about!! Today your sewer engineer will delve into the area of psychology. My brother-in-law Ken who is a licensed psychologist is probably cringing. This foray is motivated by my experiences this week. I found myself in bed with the flu. As I was lying in bed moaning and groaning, I was once again reminded how quickly we can be reduced. Life really is fragile. And believe it or not, it brought to mind Maslov’s Hierarchy of Human Needs.

For those of you who have forgotten, failed or never took Psychology 101, Maslov was a psychologist who developed a theory way back in the early 1940s that attempted to at least in some ways explain human behavior and what is important to humans. He articulated it in a pyramid diagram separated into five “strata”. Starting from the bottom there were:

Physiological Needs – like breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis (the need for constancy and sustainability), excretion

Safety Needs – like the security of body, of employment, of resources, of morality, of the family, of health, of property

The Need for Love and Belonging – like friendship, family, sexual intimacy

The Need for Esteem – like self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect OF others, respect BY others

The Need for Self-Actualization – like morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts

Maslov maintained that one can’t achieve the upper levels in the pyramid before he/she has met the needs in the lower levels and may not even aspire to them. This week I found myself sinking into the bottom stratum, the physiological level – really fast!! One of my physiological needs, the absence of pain, was missing. This caused me to not be able to consider any of the other levels. In other words, I really didn’t care about Brexit or the Green New Deal at all!! I wasn’t worried about how our 401K was doing. I didn’t think about what the neighbors or people in our church thought about me. I wore the same ratty night shirt for two days and didn’t care who knew it. Oops TMI.

Now, there have been other psychologists and just people in general that question Maslov’s underlying research and criticize the concept. But to someone with no knowledge of psychology like me, it kinda makes sense. I might add that any theory that’s been batted around since 1943 and is still widely accepted, probably has some validity. Maslov also said that depending on circumstances there can be different times in our life when we operate on different levels. That explains my sinking into the physiological stratum this week.

So, what is my point in all of this other than to tell you I had the flu? As people like me yak and yak about some of the abstractions in the upper levels of the pyramid, how easy it is to forget that in our country, the richest country in the world, there are SO many who are stuck in those lower levels of the pyramid. They are not involved in the dialogues about public policy, haute couture or the latest movies. They are working two or three minimum wage jobs, trying to put food on the table and keeping the wolf from the door – or perhaps ill, unemployed, just laid-off, estranged from family, disabled or otherwise disadvantaged. How unfair it is for those of us who are blessed to have those bases covered to criticize others who do not, for not achieving more in the layers above. Indeed, so many of us have no concept of what it would be like to experience some of the issues in the physiological stratum. How do you “self -actualize” when you are hungry? And by the way, after a few days of the flu I am reminded of how quickly we can slip to other levels in the pyramid. Maybe when we shake our heads at what “some people” do, we should think about where in the pyramid they are operating.

“I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.”

THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to John Taylor, November 26, 1798

“You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.”
Vice President Dick Cheney – Remarks to Paul H. O’Neill – Treasury Secretary (January 9, 2004)

Last week President Trump issued his proposed FY 2020 budget. It was an all-time record $4.75 T proposal (that is $4.75 TRILLION dollars – or $4,750 BILLION dollars). There wasn’t much talk about it but the budget predicts at least four more years of $1T deficits. In 2015 as a presidential candidate, Donald Trump tweeted that if the debt topped $21 trillion, “Obama will have effectively bankrupted our country.” In March 2016, Mr. Trump told the Washington Post that he could eliminate the federal debt within eight years. The federal debt recently ticked past $22 trillion, an all-time high and based on what is proposed for 2020 and beyond it will go significantly higher. Uhhh, what happened there?!?!?! We really haven’t heard a lot of budget talk since. But was the record budget and the deficit the leading story on the 6:00 PM news? Not really – if the deficit was reported at all it was probably down the list. As Vice President Cheney maintained, apparently it doesn’t matter, once you have been elected. In fairness to Mr. Cheney I think he was saying that it didn’t matter POLITICALLY, but then again that doesn’t make me feel any better. Is the measure of political expediency how decisions get made these days? It makes me shiver but I think that is true.

As noted before in this blog, neither political party seems to care about debt reduction, except to bludgeon the other party when they are not in power. President Trump certainly didn’t address it in the State of the Union address. During the first two years of the Trump administration, the debt increased by more than $2 trillion, in part because of the $1.5 trillion tax cut and large spending increases the president has signed into law. But Democrats left the issue largely untouched too. In her State of the Union speech response, Stacey Abrams made no mention of debt. Several of the NUMEROUS Democratic presidential candidates have proposed tax increases, but not to reduce the deficit – but instead to come up with new programs which won’t be funded with revenues but simply added to the ballooning debt.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the “power of the purse” that Congress has. Indeed, spending must for the most part be authorized by spending bills that come from Congress to the President. But to hear some of our congressman talk you would think that these massive debts have been foisted upon us by the Kremlin!! Hopefully, perhaps, some members of Congress now feel the need to at least talk about this. Sen. David Perdue (R) Ga. and Rep. Andy Biggs (R) Ariz. and others, have introduced resolutions declaring the national debt a “national security crisis” and called for stern measures. Funny – this has been the position of many in the national intelligence community for several years. I’m sorry, I have become too much of a cynic, but this makes me laugh. Doesn’t Congress HAVE the power of the purse? Aren’t they in charge of how much money is authorized for spending and the amount of taxes that we raise? This strikes me as a hapless cry to “protect us from ourselves”!!

Where I came from, debt was inherently to be avoided to the extent it could be. I transfer this principal to how we run government. (My friend Tom Jefferson and I agree on that). But is that right? Maybe I am getting all cranked up for nothing.
• After all, Trump administration officials said that while the president was “concerned” about the rise of the debt, the debt level was not a concern. They are going to get tough on NEXT year’s budget. And MAYBE in ten years or so we may actually achieve a balanced budget.
• And along with their supply-side friends, they argue that tax cuts and spending increases will lift economic growth which will in turn result in more revenues.
• Democrats come at if from a different angle but they don’t think federal debt is an urgent problem either – except that those darn Republicans are hypocritical in not reducing the debt.
• While we are borrowing more and more, some “experts” say that we just need to measure the debt as a share of the nation’s economic output – the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). And it’s true by most measures the economy is doing well so presumably we can afford to borrow more.
• All this federal borrowing might drive rates up, but interest is still relatively low.
• China still seems to be ready to lend money to the United States. They are not worried about our debt.
• Its true that our debt has grown but interest payments as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) have actually declined.
• And then there is the line of reasoning that says that our national debt is for the most part an “internal” debt. That is, we owe it to ourselves. Our bond holders count their US Savings bonds and T-Bills as valuable assets. So, we are just moving assets around, I guess the thinking goes.

But somehow all of this just doesn’t make me feel any better. And by the way there ARE some opposing view-points.
• Using that percentage-of-the-GDP metric, total federal debt has climbed from 31 percent of the GDP in 2001 to 76 percent this year. And the fact that the interest cost percentage of the GDP is low relates to low interest rates. As I recall from personal experience, sometimes interest rates go up – sometimes a lot. What if people start to think that those T-Bills are NOT such a solid investment and they refuse to buy them at low rates?
• Some economists warn that all this federal borrowing WILL limit private sector borrowing, constraining economic growth.
• The government’s borrowing is not FREE!! We still need to make interest payments to investors. And that is getting more and more expensive – interest payments now exceed $1 billion a day.
• With the amount of the budget committed to debt, defense and other “entitlements”, budget cutting is very difficult. Discretionary, non-military spending is not a big part of the budget – around $500 – $600 billion. So even significant decreases to these categories do NOT provide huge opportunities for debt reduction.
• Borrowing costs HAVE increased because of raising interest rates. Ten-year Treasury notes, which reached a low of 1.38 percent in July 2016, have nearly doubled since then. They are 2.61% today and I notice that they have been over 3% within the last few months. And there was a time in the bad old days when they were way over 10%.
• The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that if we don’t do something the debt will rise to 93 percent of the GDP within the next decade.
• China might like our debt but apparently not ALL foreigners do. The share of federal debt held by foreign investors has declined from 49 percent in 2008 to just 39 percent last year.
• A few years ago, the CBO predicted that by fiscal year 2022 the deficit would exceed $1 trillion – but as noted above we have already hit that!! Amazingly to me, this level HAS been hit before, but only in catastrophic economic times, not in times of a robust economy as we now have. What will we do if the economy cools, as it inevitably will?
• The CBO says that the fastest-growing component of federal spending is interest on the debt.
• And because of our reduced corporate and other reduced rates our tax receipts are down. In fairness some other receipts like excise taxes and tariffs helped to offset some of the losses.
• The CBO really never bought into the viability of the reduced tax scheme and unfortunately based on the early returns it appears that they were right.

So, what is my point? Authority and Responsibility go together. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t be held responsible for an outcome if you haven’t been delegated the power to address the root-causes of the outcome. But conversely IF YOU HAVE THAT POWER, you ARE RESPONSIBLE for the outcome. Congress has the power of the purse. Congress has AUTHORITY to control spending and revenues and it has the RESPONSIBILITY to control spending and revenues. For a whole bunch of reasons, it has failed miserably to meet its responsibilities in this regard and I swear sometimes it wishes it didn’t have the authority or the responsibility. And by the way, the Executive branch of government plays right along. In the end the taxpayers are left holding the bag.

Try to realize it’s all within yourself no one else can make you change, and to see you’re only very small and life flows on within you and without you.

George Harrison

All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust.

Ecclesiastes 3:20

We went to church on Wednesday night – it was Ash Wednesday. This is not one of my more favorite church services of the year, because its intention is to remind us that we are mortal and that while God has breathed the breath of life into us, this mortal life will inevitably come to an end. Well geez I know that but I don’t see the upsides of dwelling on it. Well maybe there is this. Maybe I can take from this that as agitated as I can sometimes get about things, it will all work out as it should. Chilllax!

We moved to a new house when Rebecca our youngest was about seven or eight. In all the hub-bub of moving things get lost. One of the things that was lost was the “bill-book”. The bill book had thirty-one pages in it, one page for each of the bills that were due on each day of the month. When the bills came in the mail, I would insert them in the book and pay them when due. Of course, without the book I had no idea of who we owed money to, how much we owed and when it was due. Being the anally-retentive person that I am this drove me crazy. I stormed through the house ripping open boxes, throwing things in the air and raging about where in the world the bill-book could be. After days of this I resorted to offering a bounty for its location to everyone in the house. As we heard Macbeth say in Ms. Holland’s twelfth grade English class – I strutted and fretted my hour on the stage – all to no avail – the bill book remained missing.

One night as we tucked Rebecca into bed, she looked at me with those big innocent eyes with genuine concern and said “Dad, what are we going to do if we can’t find the bill book?” My wife Janice gave me a withering glance and I melted. This poor little girl was worried sick about this problem whose scope she thought was really threatening our welfare. I got down on the floor beside her bed and said “Becky, don’t you worry about a thing. We will find the bill book and even if we don’t, we are going to be just fine.”

How much unnecessary angst and stress do we place on ourselves and others, especially those that we love? My good friend Judy Tschumper once had to remind me that our employees often took on my mood, if I was downcast, they were too. If I was upbeat, they were too. Of course, we all have problems, and they are sometimes serious problems. We need to work at them as diligently as we can, to do everything that we can to overcome them. And then we need to let it go. Letting go can be so difficult because we never know WHEN we have pushed enough and when we need to stop pushing.

Many years ago, my family started a business. We all invested our sweat and our blood and our fortunes in this endeavor. We worked so hard and so long, sometimes for twenty to thirty hours in a row without rest. We had so much riding on it. But it was not to be. With each set-back we looked at each other in despair and wondered if this would be the end. Was now the time to cut our losses? Along the way we had a fire at the facility we were trying to build. We were all able to escape but it was a significant setback in time and money. I called my Dad who was one of our major investors to tell him the bad news. He said that he and my Mom would come over for dinner and we would talk about it. When he came in the door, knowing how much money he was going to lose I said, “Dad, this must be the lowest point of your life, isn’t it?” He looked at me incredulously, laughed and said – “One night your Mom and I were sleeping in the car, in the middle of the night, in the street outside of the University of Minnesota Hospital where your brother had just been admitted because he had polio – THAT was the lowest point in my life. This is nothing, nobody got hurt – it will all work out”.

A few months later at the end of an eighteen-hour day at about 9:00 PM on a summer night, as I drove from our parking lot the sun caught the intersection street sign at just the right angle and its message GLARED at me – STOP!!!! I stopped and something inside of me said – it’s OKAY to stop, you NEED to stop, the more you persist the more you are going to hurt the ones you love. We stopped. And then we started – started to figure out how to pay off our debt, how to start again, how to start living a new life. The denouement of that failed effort is a painful memory for me and my family. We lost everything – our savings, our homes and our reputations in a small town. We had debts that took me more than a decade to pay off. We had to pick up our little girls and move to another community to find work. We sold everything we could to pay our debts down. And in the end, we took the last small amounts of cash – about $500 – and kept it in a metal box in the trunk of our car because our creditors were levying on our bank accounts. I was thirty-five years old, with three kids and a wife without a penny to our names.

So where is the good news in all of this? The good news was that I was thirty-five years old with three beautiful kids and a beautiful wife. And we started over and little by little we got on our feet again. That was almost forty years ago. Sometimes it still hurts but so much good has happened since then – some bad too. But life flows on within and without you – it all worked out.

“So, take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

Jesus – Matthew 25: 28-29 (NIV)

It is a dangerous thing when a poor-excuse-for-a-Christian like me quotes scripture. But you know just because I’m not wise doesn’t mean that Jesus wasn’t. So, bear with me while I make a case for the relevance of this passage in today’s political world. This passage was confusing to me as a kid. You know it really doesn’t seem fair. But my Pop said: “You have to read the entire passage for this to make sense”. The “passage” is the famous parable of the talents. And the gist of it is that we are charged with using what we have for good, whatever it is that we have. But there is more, the parable says that if we don’t do our duty, someone else WILL.

There is great wailing and gnashing of teeth these days by Democrats and some Republicans that the President’s Emergency Declaration on illegal immigration on our southern border is an attack on the balance of powers envisioned in the Constitution. This is actually kind of funny – this is hardly the first emergency declaration. I think I read some place that there have been over fifty since the 1976 legislation providing for these actions – PASSED BY CONGRESS and signed by the President. President Clinton declared seventeen, President George W. Bush, thirteen, and President Barack Obama, twelve. President Trump has declared three himself, before this one. President Obama’s declarations were relatively mundane. What really infuriated his opponents were his executive actions, especially those relating to immigration and health care. And executive orders are really just another form of the issue here – are Presidents circumventing the Constitution to get their way?

The shoe is on the other foot now and Democrats are howling. Many Republicans in the Senate are hiding in the weeds hoping they don’t have to cast a deciding vote to oppose the declaration. Now there are those around who say that this declaration is different than those that preceded it since it coopts funding that Congress had dedicated for other purposes and facilitates an undertaking that they specifically refused to fund. Maybe, but like most things in Washington these days it smacks of politics, not anything so lofty as statesmanship or respect for the Constitution. Hypocrisy is totally an acceptable thing these days on both sides of the aisle. Criticizing a member of the opposite party for doing the same thing that someone in my party has done or is doing is routine. I heard former New Jersey Governor Christie say that this began when Democrats failed to call out President Clinton for his lies during the Monica Lewinski affair. That was a stark example but hardly the only one or the first one in my opinion.

Given the lawsuits that are already flying, I would guess that the Supreme Court will have to sort this out at some point since coordination by the executive and legislative branches never works these days. Maybe not. But unless my engineer’s understanding of how things work in passing laws, I think that if Congress is REALLY concerned about this egregious act, they are NOT powerless. All they need to do is to pass an act prohibiting the usurpation of the dollars already budgeted for other purposes and THEN TO BE READY TO OVERRIDE THE PRESIDENTIAL VETO that will automatically be applied. Vetoes are a part of the Constitution too. And I say this to Democrats (of course you think this is a good idea) AND to wavering Republicans. Can you get past your partisanship just once to protect the Constitution if you think it is at risk? If you wonder why the executive branch seems to be gaining power while the legislative branch seems to be withering into weakness or even irrelevance, maybe we need to think about the parable of the talents. In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama laid down an ultimatum for Congress: “If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” he said with respect to climate change. Republicans were aghast while Democrats were quiet. But in the end Congress did what it seems to be predisposed to do these days – it held hearings, it complained, it commented to CNN, Fox and CBS, and then it did NOTHING.

So, if Congress thinks that the President is overstepping his authority, do your duty. Don’t wait for some lower court or the Supreme Court to tell you what to do. Your oath is NOT to the President or to the Speaker of the House or to your party caucus. Your oath is to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America and to represent your people. Do it or shut up and let the President act.

“Propaganda is information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.”
Encyclopedia Britannica

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”
Thomas Paine – in his book Common Sense

Apparently, we have staved off another Federal governmental shutdown. When this governmental inaction will be weaponized again is unknown, but I fear that it will be. I don’t know about anybody else but apart from the morbid fascination of seeing all of this play out, my most dominant feeling is exhaustion. Don’t get me wrong – I have railed in this forum on more than one occasion about how there is no willingness in our government to compromise on ANYTHING. It is always: “We will shove it down their throats”. Here was a case where the two houses of Congress sat down, rolled up their sleeves and hammered something out. I doubt that either political party was all that happy with the product but that is how our system works – NOBODY gets everything they want. I applaud their work. I might add that the process that was followed was suggested in this little rag that I call my blog many weeks ago. Of course, now the President seeks to go around the Congress with his emergency declaration. “I will shove it down their throats”. I don’t know how that will all work out, it will no doubt be tested in the Courts and if this action is unconstitutional, hopefully our Supreme Court will do their duty and say so. If it IS constitutional, it still doesn’t seem like a good thing to do, but so-be-it.

So, what’s my beef now? I talked about my exhaustion above. I think what makes me sick of all this is that there is this seemingly endless drumbeat from both warring factions “spinning” every development to their advantage. Adding a “spin” to any piece of information or news is really propaganda. As I grew up in the 60’s, we learned that propaganda was the misinformation sent out by Tass in the Soviet Union or by Chairman Mao in Red China – and it was an EVIL thing. Of course, politicians in every country in every age including the US have used propaganda to varying degrees. Its usage today seems to have reached proportions that I don’t really remember. Adding to all of this is that we now have “news” organizations that engage in it every bit as much as the politicians – think MSNBC, Fox News or the Huffington Post.

Well if propaganda has always been around what’s the problem? I think that given its dimensions and ubiquity now, that we run the risk that Thomas Paine saw in 1775. We hear this stuff so much that we start accepting it as fact. Or we get confused and don’t really know what the facts really are. Of course, that is part the desired effect. This then results in acceptance of biased facts, which can also be called half-truths or half-lies, as absolute truths. This makes compromise all but impossible to achieve. Just once, for just a little while I wish that politicians would just tone it down a little bit and affirm that there can be TWO or more positions on an issue that are not crazy. And I wish that they wouldn’t promise things that they really can’t deliver on their own. When they can’t, they try to find a way out of their predicament by “spinning” the news.

Trying to find the truth these days seems a lot harder than it used to be. About a year ago, I spent quite a bit of time trying to find the news source that was felt to be the most unbiased. Sadly, I learned that the most respected news source in America is the BBC!! That’s right, Americans trust the BRITISH BROADCASTING COMPANY more than any of our American sources. That seems like a sad commentary. Well I couldn’t really live with that, so my compromise was to subscribe to a service that provides stories from up to ten different news sources. When I chose my ten, I intentionally included Fox News and Huffington Post. I can just about always count on them to contain bias. But I still find them to be of value, because they cause me to test the meddle of the other sources and to question what I am reading. And in the end, I do what everybody else does – we do the best we can with what we have heard.