Craig Common Sense

“I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.”

Warren Buffett – Founder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

“Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.”

Paul Samuelson – Nobel Prize Winner, Chair of the Presidents Council of Economic Advisors, World Renowned Economist

“If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.”

John Bogle – founder and former CEO of The Vanguard Group

“Rule #1: Never lose money; Rule #2: Don’t forget rule #1.”

Warren Buffett

“Don’t gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.”

Will Rogers – Early 20th Century Humorist and Wise Sage

Have you been paying any attention to what has been happening on Wall Street the last few days? Whew!!!!! We are not rich people with a lot of investments but we have SOME but after the last few days we have quite a bit less. The main factor that seems to be scaring investors is what the World Health Organization calls COVID-19 or what most of us the “Corona Virus”. Whatever you call it, it certainly is causing an uproar. It all started in China but it categorically is going to cause disruption to the world economy and to our national economy. It is another demonstration of how interwoven the world economy is these days – for better or for worse. I have read other commentaries that say that COVID-19 is not the only reason for the downturn. They cite the recent surge in stock prices as perhaps overvaluing many of the shares being traded and uncertainty over the upcoming election. These commentator/economists would say that we are due for a market correction at some point anyway. As always one can find a commentator that says exactly what we want to hear and one that says exactly what we DON’T want to hear.

I think it is fair to say that I know nothing or next to nothing about investing. Of course, you can always Google it and find out all kinds of stuff – like all the helpful quotes that start this column. Seriously though, if you are interested you may want to check out a blog written by one of our very best friends, Jeff Johnson, called Cornerstone Investments – https://cornerstoneinvestmentsllc.com . Jeff has been involved in investments for his whole career and he is one of the smartest guys I know. But even more than that he is somebody with the highest integrity and principals. I would trust him with my life. If you wanted some real, informed, meaningful commentary instead of this silly story you might want to check that out.

So, what SHOULD somebody like us who has just a few dollars to invest, do in these times? How do you decide? Many years ago, Janice and I owned some stock in the small company that I worked for. I should add that this was a WONDERFUL company that was very successful. Because I left their employment, I could no longer be a shareholder and we sold our shares which had experienced a significant gain in value. We consulted with our advisor as to what to do with this little windfall. He reminded us that at our young age it made no sense to do anything but to invest this in the same manner that we were investing ALL our retirement savings – in the stock market. If memory serves me correctly, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was about 11000 at the time. AND as fate would have it, this was the beginning of the stock market crash of 2002.

In those days we relied on printed monthly statements to tell us how things were going with our little nest egg. It seemed that every month was worse than the one we just went through. Janice began hiding the monthly reports from me. The DJIA went down to under 7000. I remember sitting down with her late one night after the kids went to bed and talking about what to do. We so feared that our little savings would be gone and that we would never be able to get our kids through college and or to retire. We considered selling all the stock and putting the money in a FDIC guaranteed bank account. At least we would be able to keep a little of what we had saved.

Well, we both needed to get to bed, because we both had to be at work early the next morning. And after the busy workday that followed and getting the kids to the umpteen places they needed to go, we really didn’t have a chance to talk about that anymore. And so the days went on. Thus, we made a non-decision by default to stay the course. I wish I could say that we were that smart or confident, we weren’t – we were just busy. The rest is history, until the recent debacle, the DJIA was over 28000.

In the early 1990’s Janice’s workplace went through an ownership change. As part of the transition the employees were given the options to keep their saved retirement dollars in a defined benefits pension fund or to move them out to a 401K or a personal individual retirement account (IRA). Janice didn’t feel that she really understood all the ramifications of the options. If we had been married, I would have strongly advocated that she move those funds into a stock-oriented IRA. This was the 90’s, people were making money hand-over-fist. Why limp along with some staid-old-duffer-managed pension fund when you could get out and REALLY make money?!?! Fortunately, I wasn’t there to influence her and she made the default non-decision to stay in the pension fund. Janice has been retired for several years while her peers who withdrew their savings are still working. NOBODY has access to a defined benefits retirement plan anymore but she does.

This is usual point in my little ramblings when my readers ask the obvious – so what is your point? I think it is something like this: We tried to be careful in our financial dealings. We tried to save and not live beyond our means. We tried to do the right things. But in the end, its better to be lucky than trying to be smart!! Our good fortune was not a product of our wisdom. We had a discussion the other night – maybe we need to sell anything that we have in the stock market. But we were so busy again today………………….

“It does not take much to make us realize what fools we are, but the little it takes is long in coming.”
– Flannery O’Connor

“My life didn’t turn out like I expected.”
– Roy Hobbs in the movie “The Natural”

We have lived in our house for about twenty-seven years. We have an island in the kitchen. It had no electrical outlets, which is now a code requirement but apparently wasn’t when our house was built many years ago. Janice has always wanted two of those. Well, I thought after twenty-seven years shouldn’t she be entitled to a couple of electrical outlets? I mean, how much could this cost? But then a funny thing happened to us – to Janice and to me. It was the slippery slope of “scope creep”. Scope creep is the phenomenon that allows projects to grow and grow because the extra work would be good and makes sense. I have battled scope creep in public works construction projects and other undertakings my whole life and I hope that I am not being too immodest if I say that I think I did a pretty good job in doing so. You may or may not have heard the “scope creep” term, but here is a real-world example of how it how it goes.

If we were going to be working with the center island wouldn’t now be the time to put in a granite or quartz countertop? That makes sense. And you know one would never have a different countertop on the island than what is adjacent to the rest of the cupboards. So, we better include those too. And really there are some things that really should be changed on the cabinets and they are SO dark. We really should modernize them or replace them with more-modern lighter colors. That makes sense. Oh, we would never want to keep that old backsplash. And you know the ceramic tile floor that we have in the kitchen has some cracked tiles. They would look tacky with new cabinets. And isn’t that new vinyl plank that we saw at Home Depot nice? We have the same ceramic tile in the hall, the powder room and the “mud room”. You wouldn’t want different flooring in those areas, would you? That makes sense. And with these improvements, are we going to keep those old appliances? (They really weren’t ALL that old but…..) And if we are replacing the floor in the powder room wouldn’t now be the time to replace the vanity top and the mirror in there? That makes sense. And on and on it went – the electrical outlet project ended up involving seven rooms and costing somewhere around $44,000. But it all made sense!!

Given the self-pride that I had in my ability to contain scope creep, how in the heck did all of this happen? Setting the humorous parts of the project aside, which many times resembled the movie “Money Pit”, this episode reinforced something I am learning about myself. I don’t know as much as I used to. Or maybe a better way to say it is that I am not as confident about things as I used to be. Or maybe what I thought I knew, I didn’t really know. Or maybe I was wrong before. Or I am not so sure that things are the way that I thought they were when I was younger and smarter. What the heck?!?!?!

Is this just a part of growing old? I certainly see things in a different way these days. I find myself being a lot more tolerant and a lot less judgmental. Does that mean I am becoming WISER or WEAKER? This question dogs me a lot in trying to understand our present political climate. But it goes beyond that for me, to virtually all areas of my life. And while it is now easier for me to own up to the fact that a lot of times I just don’t know what is best, I sometimes feel guilty about that and feel that I should be of more value to those who look to me for guidance. Shouldn’t I know what to do and how things are? What good is a supposed wise elder if all he tells you is that there are two (or more) ways of looking at every situation and that he is not so sure what the right path is?

I often ask myself how I came to be this way. I think part of what has happened is that when you are young, you are at the beginning of everything and you are certain of how the end will turn out even though you haven’t been there yet. At this age we are confident we know how things work. A wise elder once told me I was too dumb to be scared!! But now that I am old, I have seen a lot of those things that were beginning, come to their end. And as Roy Hobbs said, “My life didn’t turn out like I expected”. Maybe I didn’t REALLY know how things work and maybe I don’t know now. I HAVE learned that few things ever turn out to be as good as we hope or as bad as we fear. When we are young, most of us think we are bullet-proof and we are confident of our abilities. At this age I have taken quite a few of those bullets – and they HURT!! I also found that I wasn’t quite as capable as I thought.

Well, what can I say? I certainly don’t want to dampen the enthusiasm of youth. A lot of times that enthusiasm and courage overcomes what is lacking in knowledge. I am NOT criticizing young people. We NEED their drive and their willingness to ignore the potential problems, or at least to forge ahead without knowing what those challenges will be. On the other hand, I am finding that it is easier for me these days to live with what I have done and what I have failed to do, and to live with what I know and what I don’t. Weak or wise, I am kind of OK with where I am.

“We’ve given up on so much. Now, people are talking about a standard that is ‘if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.’ Think about it. Is that the standard we’re willing to live under?”

Rand Paul – US Senator from Kentucky

I didn’t fall off the face of the earth – yes. I know it has been long since my last pearls of wisdom. A couple of things intervened – the holidays, but mostly home remodeling. This is another subject that I will cover in the next few weeks – it was quite the experience! I feel compelled to talk today about an event coming up on March 3 – the Minnesota Presidential Primary. I will confess in advance I feel a little ashamed that the parameters of this event caught me completely off guard. How could I not have known how this was going to go?

For many years I was a staunch Republican. I was a member of a group within the party called the Century Club. You needed to contribute a certain amount to the party to be included in that and I happily met that criteria. I worked booths; I served as a finance chairman for a state senate election; I served as a caucus delegate, a county delegate and a district delegate to the state convention. These were the heady days of Al Quie, Dave Durenberger, Vin Weber, Rudy Boschwicz and others. We were on a roll. I was even approached to run for the state house. But then I returned to public service and felt compelled to not show any partisanship, so I cut back on my party involvement. When that period of my life ended, a funny thing had happened. Somebody stole my party!!!! The Republican Party of today bears little resemblance to the organization that I was a part of. Even though it took me more than fifteen years to no longer be solicited for contributions, I am NO LONGER a Republican. Don’t get me wrong that doesn’t in any way mean that I am a Democrat. I vote for Republicans and Democrats and in the last presidential election I voted for Gary Johnson from the Libertarian Party. My objections to the positions and actions of both major parties are the subject of another rant, which will probably bubble up someday soon but that is not really what I am talking about now.

In our presidential primary on March 3, I will need to affirm that “I am in general agreement with the principles of the party for whose candidate I intend to vote” according to a statute adopted in 2018. It appears that this provision applies only in the presidential primary. Because of the way things are these days in politics with our major parties, I don’t know if I can say that for EITHER major party. But beyond that, I object to this being a requirement to participate in this PUBLICLY funded election. And even more, I object to my decision on which ticket to consider being a matter of public information. My Pop used to tell me that when you went behind the curtain of the voting booth, NOBODY could or should know who you voted for. I especially object to the fact that the information will be made available to the chairmen of the state’s political parties. This is not a personal shot at Ken Martin, the state DFL party chair or Jennifer Carnahan the state GOP party chair. I simply don’t have any trust in the integrity of either party organization. And the idea that they will “control” the usage of this information gives me ZERO reassurance.

It is true that the US Constitution does NOT address a citizen’s right for privacy with their vote. Still, this feels SO WRONG. In my paranoia I can see my name on a list that will be somehow disfavored or disenfranchised by a party that is in power. Or that I will be intimidated in some way by a party in power. Or in the alternate I can see me being badgered for the next umpteen years for contributions (as I have been before) and other participation that I simply don’t want to be a part of. Am I overreacting here? This seems so contrary to the direction that we should be going. And it feels that I am unwillingly being drawn into these sectarian turf battles that now masquerade as the political process in our country. LEAVE ME OUT OF IT!! Just let me cast my vote in private.

So, as I write this missive, I am giving serious consideration to doing something that I have never done before – refusing to participate in an election in which I am lawfully able to vote. I have roundly criticized people for doing this very thing in the past. But I really refuse to give up my right to be independent – and this feels like I am being required to be red or blue, when I am purple.

“Come gather ’round, people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
And you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’”

Bob Dylan – From the song “The Times, They are A-Changin’”

“Well, then can I walk beside you?
I have come to lose the smog
And I feel myself a cog
In somethin’ turning
And maybe it’s the time of year
Yes, and maybe it’s the time of man
And I don’t know who I am
But life is for learning
We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we got to get ourselves
Back to the garden”

Joni Mitchell – from the song Woodstock

You may have seen previous postings from me about climate change. If you have you know that while I don’t hold myself out to be a climate scientist, my own observations are that man is impacting the climate, everywhere, including here. I plan to prepare an update to that posting when the data is in for another record setting year of precipitation in our state. It is hard to believe but there are people in the world who don’t accept that I have a corner on the truth and actually hold beliefs that are different than mine!! There is a school of thought that says that while climate is changing that these changes are nothing more than variations that take place over the eons of time in our world.

The divergence of opinions about climate change is an example of something that I wrestle with a lot in my old age. The struggle is described in the line from the 1970’s song by Joni Mitchell – “maybe it’s the time of year, or maybe it’s the time of man”. One of the good things about growing old is that you get a better sense of time. By that I mean that I have lived more years than my children and grandchildren, (although not as many as my wife’s mother who is still living). We have seen things come and go. When I was younger, I didn’t have the perspective that I have now. It was hard for me to escape the present. It was hard to imagine that things could or would ever be different. I was impatient. Things were not changing fast enough – those old people just weren’t getting out of the way fast enough. That is the way Bob Dylan felt, but then again that song was written in the early 1960’s!!

But sometimes all this supposed wisdom of the years just makes me more confused. If you believe what many of the pundits say, things today are more extreme than they have ever been. With what is happening in Washington and in California it does make me wonder. Wildfires have never been this wild. Income disparity has never been this great. The moral fiber of our country is weaker than ever before. Political parties are more radical than they have ever been. We have less unity than we have ever had in our country. There is more corruption in business and government than ever before. There is more unrest in our country and in the world than there has ever been. At least this is what some would have us believe. But is that all true? Is it just “the time of year”? You know, maybe all of this is just a phase in the course of human events not unlike phases that have come and gone in the past. Or maybe it’s “the time on man”, things are fundamentally different now, and we are headed for some cataclysm unlike what we have seen – this is THE time in the course of human history.

What is the answer? My wisdom is lacking. But maybe the truth is that there IS no single answer. There sometimes IS hard objective data to help us. For instance, economic data indicates that income disparity IS higher than it has been since the mid 1900’s. But what kind of data is there about how much “unrest” there is? What kind of data is there about how moral we are now compared to the past? I believe that there ARE many things that we need to be concerned about. But I don’t subscribe to the feeling that everything is going to hell in a hand basket. I am old enough to remember that the “good old days” weren’t always that good. Many things are much better than they used to be.

Maybe Joni had it right – it will always be a struggle to understand. We may feel like we are just a “cog in something turning” and we don’t know who we are but “life is for learning”. I wish I could say that this “experiential learning” was always fun and an adventure. Sometimes for me it is just plain scary. And I must tell you that sometimes I just want to withdraw – to stay in my little corner of the world and to not engage in the concerns. That is a trap! We can’t allow ourselves to do that. We DO need to stay engaged, and to evaluate everything that comes along and to ACT on our beliefs. That is what Dylan and Mitchell would want us to do.

“On November 9, 2016, a sleepless night was ahead of us. And when around 8 a.m. the most important result of our work arrived, we uncorked a tiny bottle of champagne … took one gulp each and looked into each other’s eyes …. We uttered almost in unison: ‘We made America great’.”

An intercepted message from an employee of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) – the Russian agency working with the Kremlin to interfere with and influence the 2016 Election

Sometimes it is amazing to me what is on the front page of our newspapers and what is found on the “inside”. Last night after plowing through the headline stories I came across a story about the “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence in the US Senate on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 Election – Volume 2”. This story was on page 3 although I actually read an on-line version of the newspaper. The story really got my attention. It got my attention because I gave it credibility. With the amount of propaganda and disinformation flying around these days I hardly give ANYTHING credibility anymore. As the saying goes, I believe 1% of what I hear, 5% of what I read and only 50% of what I see!! Why do I find this article credible? Because it is BI-PARTISAN. Yes, it’s true that the Committee chair is a Republican and yes, the Republicans control the Senate. But the findings and recommendations of this report are being validated by Republican AND Democratic senators. I took the time to download the report. It’s eighty-three pages long and is heavily redacted in some parts but if you are interested visit https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf .

The first finding of the Committee is that the IRA and the Kremlin categorically DID seek to influence the election by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump. This assertion is denied by some. Now, before my Trump supporting friends go ballistic let me add that I did NOT find anything in this report that said that President Trump was involved with the IRA although at their request his campaign committee did provide some information about his candidacy. Clinton would probably have done the same. The Kremlin apparently felt that Mr. Trump would be easy to work with and worked towards getting him into office. I should add that in furtherance of that they also worked against his Republican primary election opponents, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.

But the goals of the IRA and the Kremlin are much more comprehensive than just one election. The Report says that the real goal of the effort is to undermine public faith in our election processes and to sow discord among the American people – to disrupt our society. So they focused (and focus) on divisive issues such as race, immigration and Second Amendment rights, attempting to pit Americans against one another and against their government, or to quote the Report – “…to stoke anger, provoke outrage and protest, push Americans further away from one another, and foment distrust in government institutions.”

Once the IRA obtained their desired result in the 2016 election, they didn’t waste a lot of time celebrating (as noted above it was just a TINY bottle of champagne). The IRA INCREASED their activities after the election by huge amounts. The Report says they “… stepped on the gas.” But it might surprise you how they ramped up their efforts. They began to promote anti-Trump messages – like #Impeach45 and #GunReformNow, while at the same time promoting anti-FBI messages via #ReleaseTheMemo. One of the IRA Facebook sites that has since been taken down REALLY got me. It was called the “Army of Jesus” Facebook page. In the months leading up to the election it contained wholesome Christian messages. And then right before the election it delivered what they call the “payload”. In this case the payload was an article that stated as a fact that Hillary Clinton approved the removal of the word “God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, with no chance for rebuttal.

So, are the Russians winning? I think they certainly have been winning the battles lately – our country is arguably more divided than ever before. I write this while protests and counter-protests are raging in Minneapolis. What should we do?
• Unfortunately, I think we must be very careful about what we hear and what we read. We must consider the source and not make automatically assume something is true or false.
• We need to advocate for the recommendations of the Senate Committee.
• We need to maintain our cool and keep our discussions civil, wherever they occur – whether that be in the op-ed section of the newspaper, in Congress, on the Sunday morning talk shows, on MSNBC, on FOX, in the state legislature, the barber shop or over Thanksgiving dinner with our family – and I might add in the pages of this blog.

And we need to become a little more tolerant of each other. The more divided and polarized we become, the more at risk our society becomes.

“If the President is in favor of a number of things that he has discussed openly and publicly, and I know that if we pass it, it will become law, I’ll put it on the floor.”

Mitch McConnell – Majority Leader of US Senate

“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

U.S. Constitution – Article 1 Section 1

“Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law.”

U.S. Constitution – Article 1 Section 7

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has taken the position that he will not “waste” the Senate’s time voting on bills that the President has indicated he will not sign. (See the above quotation from a September 3 interview.) I kind of understand the reasoning behind the statement. If the President is going to veto a bill why burn up the time on the Senate floor considering it. But Senator McConnell, listen to what you just said!!! The Lord knows I am not a constitutional scholar and clearly, I do not understand the arcane rules of the Senate that allows this SINGLE person to have this much control of the legislative process. BUT in my opinion, this is WRONG. More than wrong, I think it is unconstitutional and not in keeping with the principal of the balance of powers which is woven throughout the Constitution. That document CLEARLY empowers the Congress to make laws. Those laws are automatically in place unless the President elects to not sign the bill and sends it back with his objections outlined. At that point the Congress can STILL pass the legislation by overriding the veto.

By refusing to even consider a bill that has already been passed by the House, the Majority Leader presumes to KNOW without error exactly how every member of the Senate would vote on a veto override. How presumptuous! And what a sad commentary on the state of politics in our Capital – one person who I did NOT elect, in effect controls the opportunity for MY SENATOR to cast their vote. The Senate is disempowering itself and OVER-empowering the chief executive. Or stated another way – they are being derelict in their duties and allowing our President to have much more power than the Constitution ever envisioned the office to hold. The founding fathers greatly feared this and crafted the constitution to avoid it. Stand up and do your duty for crying out loud! If you think a bill should be a law PASS IT!! We didn’t send you down there to be rubber stamps for the President. At LEAST have enough gumption to send a bill to the White House. If the President sees that you have at least this much initiative he may actually believe that you are an equal partner in this process in stead of being his sycophant.

And why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

Jesus in Matthew 7:3

Clean your finger before you point at my spots.

Benjamin Franklin

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.

G. K. Chesterton

Within the last weeks I heard from a guy  for whom I have the greatest respect. And his input leaves me a little perplexed. Let me explain. The input was a broadcast email that suggested that the Democratic Party and anyone in it should have no standing in criticizing what is going on in the current administration. The email pointed to various past accusations against the Clintons, former President Obama and other Democrats. The point was that since people in the Democratic Party are so very flawed and have committed so many wrongs that for them to accuse anyone of anything is hypocritical.

I am not sure that everything that was listed was fact-checked and proven. But I can certainly remember at least one occasion where President Clinton looked me in the eye and said with a straight face – “I did not have sex with that woman.” We all know how THAT turned out. So, there is at least some truth in the accusations that at least some of the Democrats are hypocrites. But are any Republicans ever hypocritical? I saw a posting today in which then-candidate Trump was talking about how President Obama should be dealing with Iran and criticizing the very things that he is presently doing – kind of hypocritical. I have whined before about the criticisms that then-candidate Trump had about the national debt, which contrary to what he said he could do, HE in turn has driven even higher, MUCH higher. I have noted before that neither political party seems to blanch at hypocrisy these days. There is so much mudslinging and subterfuge going back and forth that it is hard to know WHAT the truth is. The question arises, does the fact that an accuser is a hypocrite automatically make their accusation false?

It is so easy to dislike a hypocrite. Hypocrisy seems so patently dishonest and smug and it violates the sense of fairness that nearly all of us have. It seems like the worst form of dishonesty. But truthfully, I am certain that there have been times in my life that I, the perfect author of this posting, have been a hypocrite. But if I have been dishonest once, does that mean that everything I say is false? It might make things that I say SUSPECT, but in some cases my statements could still be true. So unfortunately, I have come to agree with Chesterton: I will listen to what anyone says, even if I believe that they are being hypocritical as they say it, BECAUSE there may be truth in what they say. And by the way this cuts both ways for me. So, for example if there is some implication that the President is enriching himself because of his position as president, especially from foreign dollars coming into the US – the emoluments cases, I say let’s check that out and act on what is found. And if there was an inappropriate enrichment of the Clintons because of foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation, I say let’s check THAT out and take it to them if there were violations of the law. You will note that my preface to all of this was the word UNFORTUNATELY. It IS unfortunate that our political discourse has descended to the level that it presently is on, but given the torrent of accusations and counter accusations, what else can we do?

“If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you’ll be going, ‘you know, we’re alright. We are dang near royalty’.”

Jeff Foxworthy

I haven’t fallen from the face of the earth. Yes, it has been a long while since my last posting. I have had some health issues this summer (nothing serious) which occupied some of our time. More impactful was our decision to remodel the kitchen. That is a far more serious and impactful factor. Did you ever see the movie “The Money Pit” starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long? If you have you know how our summer went. My wife thinks my postings are sometimes too serious. I think she is probably right. She asked if there wasn’t something up-beat I could write about. Something uplifting? Something encouraging and or fun? I am an engineer by training and a government bureaucrat. This is a tall order for me.

But then I thought about the later part of our summer. It is our tradition to dedicate a significant part of this time of the year to county fairs and to the phenomenon that is the Minnesota State Fair. We spend two days each year at the Douglas County Fair and this year we spent five days at the State Fair. Some of those days relate to our granddaughter’s 4-H and FFA competitions but in honesty we spend a lot of time just strolling around too. People ask me how we can spend FIVE days doing this. I guess we probably are a little over the top, but we do thoroughly enjoy it. Why is that?

Well, truthfully, some (OK most) of these days involve me sampling the wares of the beer vendors that are rarely more than fifty feet from you when you are on the grounds. Jan loves looking at the crafts, especially the quilts and other fine arts exhibits. I absolutely must have at least one Pronto-Pup per day. We take the grandkids on the carnival rides. We listen to the abundant, really good quality, free music. We are regaled by the sellers of the slicer-dicers in the grandstand. Jan absolutely must have a scone at the French Meadow stand and no Fair is complete without visiting the corn-roast. As you can see, we have our traditions that we need to honor and all of that takes time. Ohhh, and we also do a fair amount of “people-watching”.

But one can get nearly all this stuff at other places without paying admission fees and fighting through the challenges of getting to fairgrounds. What’s up? Many of you know that I grew up on a farm. My farm days are arguably a small fraction of my life. But they were very influential years in my life and are a great part of shaping my character and values. Since those days I have been a city dweller, for almost the last forty years living in a metropolitan area. The State Fair brings all of this together for me. It reconciles it – it makes me see that there really aren’t multiple worlds – worlds apart. Farm animals, marching bands, historic artifacts, new technology, politics, country music, religion, hip-hop music, Ecuadorian flute players, inner-city youth choirs, jazz bands, lawn mowers, new cars, old farm equipment and a lot more. And people from everywhere in the state come to this place – like all kinds of people – people from farms, people from small towns, people from big towns – and for the most part get along and actually learn something about each other’s worlds. For a little while at least, we all tolerate each other.

I think it’s the last thing that draws me back year after year. This seems to be a place where it doesn’t seem weird to simply strike up a conversation with someone you have never met who happens to be next to you. It doesn’t seem intrusive or creepy to ask where they are from and how their day is going. And it is easy for me to share something about myself. This happens to us a lot, on the bus riding in from the park-and-ride, waiting in line to buy my Pronto-Pup, waiting for the show to start at the Leine’s Lodge, looking at apples in the Horticulture Building and yes, tipping a cold one at Coaster’s or O’Gara’s. Could we possibly replicate this kernel of good-will and tolerance for the rest of the year? I’m not sure about that, but I am pretty sure that the State is a better place because we have this respite at the end of the summer each year. I know that I am.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it….”

Joseph Goebbels – Reich Minister of Propaganda – Nazi Germany

“No matter how big the lie, repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth.”

John F. Kennedy – Criticizing the Republican Congress in 1948

I was a licensed civil engineer in the State of Minnesota from 1976 until 2018. One of the things that I did as a civil engineer was to design drainage systems. This involved the concepts of probability and agreed upon standards for what probability storms should be accommodated for individual elements of the overall systems. For instance, a storm sewer pipe in my local street is probably designed to handle the runoff that results from a storm that has a 10% probability of happening in a given year. Facilities that serve larger areas are usually designed to accommodate the runoff from 2% probability storms or 1% probability storms – the so called one-hundred-year storm. But what amounts of rainfall are in these design storms?

The Bible for drainage engineers for defining design storm events has for many years been a document published by the United States Weather Bureau – Technical Paper 40 (TP 40). TP 40 is a series of curves that reflect predicted rainfall intensity, duration and frequency. A part of my career was spent as a public works director. A public works director is someone who is probably an engineer but whose duties also involve OPERATING the stuff that engineers design. As a public works director my observations were that the storms that our system was experiencing were so much more intense and frequent than what TP 40 predicted. But was that really true? It is all probability and perhaps we just experienced a naturally occuring series of intense storms. Is it really raining more in Minnesota?

According to a report from Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), in 2018 the city of Harmony in Southeast Minnesota set a new total rainfall record for the state, coming in at 60.21 inches of total precipitation for the year. This would be like what one might normally see in something more tropical – like maybe New Orleans. This new record eclipsed a record that was set in 2016, just two years earlier, in Waseca – 56.24 inches. These levels are more than 20 inches above our normal precipitation in the state. So total rainfall is increasing dramatically but what about those “design events” that I talked about above?

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) climate office has assembled a list of so-called “mega-rain” events that have occurred since statehood. There have been fifteen. One can always question how accurate the records were in the old days although the DNR has worked very hard poring through rainfall reports, newspaper accounts and other historical documents. If we look at the period between the early 1970’s and 2016, there have been eleven of the mega-rains, with a sharp uptick since 2000. Of these 11 events, two were in the 1970s, one was in the 1980s, none were in the 1990s, but four occurred in both the 2000s, and the 2010s (which are still underway). Thus, the 18 years from 2000-2017 have seen nearly three times as many mega-rains as the 27 years spanning 1973-99. Now that data more coincides with what I observed as a public works director. But why is that happening?

So what’s my point? I am often asked if I “believe” in global warming or do I think as President Trump has stated on more than one occasion that it is a “hoax invented by the Chinese”. I certainly am not a global weather expert, but I know what I have seen with my own eyes. The pace of the changes we are seeing convinces me that this increase in temperature and rainfall intensities MUST be related to human activities and not a natural long-term trend. And I don’t think we fully understand how the impacts of this phenomenon will play out. I can tell you that local governments are spending lots of money trying to prepare for these new realities. FEMA is going broke trying to keep up with the seemingly endless series of unprecedented weather events. But am I really concerned? YOU BET I AM!!! Being an old-timer, I may not live to see how this hits us – then again, I just might. But I KNOW that my children and grandchildren will be encountering weather related challenges that our generation never has.

Is this an EXISTENTIAL THREAT? I don’t think that anyone can say that with certainty. But clearly it IS A THREAT and one that I believe will soon dwarf the other challenges that we have as a society. And I believe this so strongly that the environment has risen to number one on my evaluation criteria for possible holders of public office. And I think that this issue is moving toward the top of many other people’s list too.

It is this belief that makes the rhetoric of the last few weeks regarding the environment so disheartening to me. I try to be somewhat politically balanced in this little thing that I publish. The Lord knows that there is ample criticism that can be made of both parties and of individuals in both parties. And I believe that President Trump is sometimes unfairly criticized and doesn’t get credit for good things that he does. I think this is a bane of all presidents to some degree. BUT I wouldn’t be truthful if I didn’t stand up and say that President Trump’s characterization of his efforts to enhance the environment is GREATLY exaggerated. I might even say that it is subterfuge that rises to the level of the quotations at the beginning of this article. He and his administration have done nothing but to try to reverse the scant progress that has been made on global warming. And I am not just talking about pulling out of the Paris Accord. I am talking about the rampant relaxation of coal burning standards, the undoing of automobile mileage standards and many other actions. He has given the appearance of truly denying that there is any issue that even needs attention.

The President recently said that his administration has worked HARDER than prior administrations on the environment. He talked about major improvements that have been made in air quality and water quality since the 1970s. I don’t know if it is true that we really have made so many gains, but if it IS TRUE, he sure as hell didn’t have anything to do with it. I don’t care how many times he says it. It is BS. I can only assume he is following Goebbel’s playbook by telling us the most audacious lies he can think of and saying it over and over again on the assumption that we are stupid/gullible enough to believe it. Maybe he believes HIMSELF – because he has heard himself say this stuff so many times. But I don’t.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights Governments are instituted among Men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,…..”

Paragraph 2, Declaration of Independence – 1776

George Will is a well-known conservative, syndicated column writer and author of best-selling books. His work has been recognized with numerous awards including the Silurian Award for editorial writing and a Pulitzer Prize. He is also a famous baseball fan and has written two books on this subject. He is an unabashed and pure conservative oftentimes clashing not only with liberal Democrats but also Republicans who he doesn’t think are pure enough! He roundly criticized George W. Bush, John McCain and Donald Trump. I appreciate people who stick to their principals no matter what the “leaders” in any given party say and do. This is sorely lacking these days in both parties. So, I really enjoy reading Will’s work. I do have to say that he is a little too erudite for this old sewer engineer. I oftentimes need to read his stuff a couple of times before it sinks in.

Will wrote a syndicated column a couple of weeks ago about…. ummm, the title was “Is the Individual Obsolete?”. It was wide ranging. He began with a discussion on what he labels as a progressive principal – recognizing that our individual achievements could not be accomplished entirely on our own. That is, that we ALL need certain things provided by society to succeed – like education but also more basic elements of society like transportation, legal and law enforcement systems. This seems like a pretty basic truth to me but Will sees it as the first turn-off on the road to perdition. He foresees a slippery slope where government as the formal organization of society takes an ever-increasing part of the success that is realized by successful people. Individuals will be devalued in favor of an overreaching government. Will goes on to a discussion about all kinds of things in our society. I like Will but I found myself scribbling things in the margins questioning several of his assumptions as he laid out his arguments. I guess the biggest argument I have with his logic is the degree to which he believes prosperity has permeated our society. He thinks average people are a lot richer than I think they are. And I find it a bit ironic that he rails at the “political elites” when if there ever was one – it would be HIM!!!

Sometimes seemingly disparate inputs come to me and blend in ways that truthfully, many people find to be a bit strange!! Such was the case today as I was thinking about Will’s article, the recent posting I made about the Pledge of Allegiance and one of my traditional Independence Day observations. Each July 4th I listen to the 1970 recording of a medley by the Fifth Dimension entitled “The Declaration/A Change has Gotta Come/People Gotta be Free”. The first part of the medley is nothing more than the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence set to music. Its hard to believe, but I’m old enough to remember it – there was a backlash when this was published. Who can be against a song made up of the stirring words of the Declaration? Apparently, there were those who felt that it was “Anti-Nixon” and advocated for the overthrow of the government. Boy that wasn’t how I interpreted it. I still tear up when I hear it. Maybe it was the second part of the medley which was the old Sam Cooke song, “A Change Has Gotta Come” that offended them. The blending of these songs makes me feel so much pride in our beautiful country but reminds me that we have so much to do to achieve our full potential. Far too many people are struggling. There are ethnic and geographical groups that are struggling, but in the end this about real people, real individuals, who are trying to get ahead – trying to pay their bills and make a better life for their kids.

Will goes on to talk about the economic transitions that have occurred in our country. In the beginning the great source of wealth in the country was land. A century ago wealth was measured in capital. He contends that the source of wealth today is human capital – knowledge, information and cognitive skills. Will contends that “Although these are widely distributed by nature and augmented by universal free public education, there are limits to how much education – even if competently conducted which it not always is – can do to equalize the ability of individual to thrive in a competitive society.” My comment in the margin there was – Will, read what you just wrote. You are contending that people like me who WEREN’T born with the educational and other advantages of the privileged CAN’T COMPETE in today’s economy. How discouraging!! I would even say how un-American!! I don’t think he is being flippant; he is trying to be realistic about how he sees things. If that is the way it is, no wonder people sing the blues like Sam Cooke. I pray it is isn’t so for it will be our undoing.

God bless those who are successful in our country. I salute their risk-taking, their abilities and their hard work. And I think they are entitled to reap benefits from their success. But I am on a different page as Will on some of this. If any kid, who has the talent and the drive, can’t get ahead in this country, something is definitely wrong and we need to fix it. I think it is that realistic hope, that this is a place where ANYONE CAN SUCCEED that has propelled to us to where we are – the best country in the world and a place I that I love dearly and would never leave.

Happy Independence Day – God Bless America