Hyde Park's Corner

Merton & Hafiz: Into Darkness to Light, to Love

2012-01-29T16:50:00.010-05:00

Sometimes it's hard to separate one's love of God from love of life, love of creation, love of people, and love of truth, whether spiritual, scientific or historical. Sometimes it all seems to merge into one gestalt, one encompassing perception that defies description. Sometimes we may even start to lose some of our sense of identity in that broader, deeper sense of creation, existence and reality. Further, we may have to acknowledge a different sense of purpose, a growing sense of shared relationship and identity--and it seems to transcend that which changes and passes, and finds more identity with that which endures, perhaps even a timeless shared identity in the infinite and eternal.

But, at some point in that process there necessarily comes many challenges to orthodox thinking and understandings in faith practice and life. The doors get blown off some protected safe havens and refuges from personal change and growth, places too often created by cultural and faith organizations, and even the faithful themselves, because they cannot fully risk following God and truth into the unknown, the unsettling places that cause us to question who we are, what we believe, and what that means for our lives and our speculations about the real and eternal. This is an unnerving, identity-questioning and changing place that most would rather avoid, or escape if they find themselves led there.

I've often talked of the 20th-century Cistercian (Trappist) monk, Thomas Merton, and shared from his writings. I will share more here, along with some poetry by the 14th-century Sufi master, Hafiz. These quotes are excerpted from Merton's book on contemplative prayer. Thomas Merton:

It is natural for one in [certain circumstances] to dread the loss of his faith, indeed of his own integrity and religious identity, and to cling desperately to whatever will seem to preserve the last shreds of belief. So he struggles, sometimes frantically, to recover a sense of comfort and conviction in formulated truths or familiar religious practices. His meditation becomes the scene of his agonia, this wrestling with nothingness and doubt. But the more he struggles the less comfort and assurance he has, and the more powerless he sees himself to be. Finally he loses even the power to struggle. He feels himself ready to sink and drown in doubt and despair.

This is not the moment for arrogance or proud thrusts of will. The arrogant man will break in the agony of darkness. His meditation will be intolerable, and he will either revolt or despair. We must also recognize that one of the causes of mental or emotional breakdown of novices or young monks is...a lack of identity and spiritual maturity.

The man of today is more and more vulnerable in this respect. His efforts to seek peace and light are carried on not in a realm of relative security, in a geography of certitude, but over the face of a thinly-veiled abyss of disorienting nothingness, into which he quickly falls when he finds himself without the total support of reassuring and familiar ideas of himself and of his world. Nevertheless, it is precisely this support that we must learn to sacrifice.

This is the genuine climate of serious meditation, in which, without light and apparently without strength, even seemingly without hope...we drop our arrogance, we submit to the incomprehensible reality of our situation and we are content with it because, senseless though it may seem, it makes more sense than anything else... Here then, we make not the confident and conspicuously generous resolutions of our moment of light, but we abandon ourselves in submission, colorlessness, hiddenness, humility and distress to the will of God. We see there is no hope but in Him, and we leave everything, finally, in His hands. "Take heed, said Jakob Biehme, "of putting on the Christ's purple mantle without a resigned will."

Dread is an expression of our insecurity in this earthly life, a realization that we are never and can never be completely "sure" in the sense of possessing a definitive and established spiritual status. It means that we cannot any longer hope in ourselves, in our wisdom, our virtues, our fidelity. We see too clearly that all that is "ours" is nothing, and can completely fail us. In other words, we no longer rely on what we "have," what has been given by our past, what has been required. We are open to God and to His mercy in the inscrutable future and our trust is entirely in His grace, which will support our liberty in the emptiness where we confront unforeseen decisions. Only when we have descended in dread to the center of of our own nothingness...can we be led by Him, in His own time, to find Him in losing ourselves.

[...] The whole mystery of simple contemplative prayer is a mystery of divine love...

[...] But true [contemplation] is that which transcends all things, and yet is immanent in all...The character of [this Christian contemplation] is pure love, pure freedom. Love that is free of everything, not determined my anything, or held down by any special relationship. It is love for love's sake. It is a sharing, through the Holy Spirit, in the infinite charity [and love] of God. And so when Jesus told his disciples to love, he told them to love as universally as the Father who sends his rain alike on the just and unjust.

---From Contemplative Prayer, Chs. 15 & 16, by Thomas Merton (1996, 1966)

That so-called "dark-night" experience is a daunting abyss to stand at the edge of and look into, never mind casting yourself faithfully, trustingly, headlong into it. But, in their faith and contemplative walk, that is just what many are called to do, if they would find shared identity in the light and love of God. We are advised that some do it with greater faith and trust than others, and some cannot do it at all. Some keep taking two steps forward and one step back; and some go just so far and stop, living as their situation provides for them in the new light and understandings of their spiritual way station.

The Sufi poet Hafiz offers this poem that affirms shared experiences and understandings of the contemplatives of different faith traditions. Hafiz:

Love is the Funeral Pyre*

Love is
The funeral pyre
Where I have laid my living body.

All the false notions of myself
That once caused fear, pain,
Have turned to ash
As I neared God.

What has risen
From the tangled web of thought and sinew

Now shines with jubilation
Through the eyes of angels

And screams from the guts of
Infinite existence itself.

Love is the funeral pyre
Where the heart must lay
It's body.

So then, to what place or what end this most challenging and difficult of divine dances, this spiritual totentanz. Hafiz offers us perspective, if not understanding, in more of his poetry, perspectives and understandings embraced by Merton and spiritual contemplatives of other stripes as well. Again, Hafiz:

In Need of The Breath*

My heart
Is an unset jewel
Upon the tender night
Yearning for its dear old friend
The Moon.

When the Nameless One debuts again
Ten thousand facets of my being unfurl wings
And reveal such a radiance inside
I enter a realm divine--
I too begin to so sweetly cast light,
Like a lamp,
Through the streets of this
World.

My heart is an unset jewel
Upon existence
Waiting for the Friend's touch.

Tonight
My heart is an unset ruby
Offered bowed and weeping to the Sky.

I am dying in these cold hours
For the resplendent glance of God.

I am dying
Because of a divine remembrance
Of who I really am.

Hafiz, tonight,
Your soul
is a brilliant reed instrument

In need of the breath of the
Christ.
*From The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, the Great Sufi Master (1999), as rendered in English by Daniel Ladinsky.

Warren Buffett, On a Stronger, More Accountable America

2012-01-26T21:20:00.005-05:00

Warren Buffet has always commanded my admiration and respect, a man whose views and values extend well beyond his personal interest to what is good, fair and effective economic and social policy for America. I suppose it helps that my own views and values often track closely to his.

In a recent Time article, Warren Buffett Is On a Radical Track, by Rana Foroohar, he is profiled and quoted liberally about his prescriptions and preferences for a better, fairer, stronger America. Rather than summarize or paraphrase, I feel it best to let the the author and Mr. Buffett speak for themselves. But, it is a lengthy article, so I've selected a number of quotes from both that resonated most with me.

Warren Buffett believes in making money. He believes in fairness. He believes in the ability of government to make people's lives better. But most of all, he believes in luck.

"I've had all this good fortune," Buffett says. "It starts with being born in this country, though. It starts with being born male in 1930.

Genes, luck and birthplace may have helped make Buffett the world's third richest man. But in the past year, his good fortune has also turned him into one of America's most unexpected radicals. He's an ardent capitalist who is demanding higher taxes on the rich and more government spending on the rest to solve our economic problems. Although he is giving away 99% of his $45 billion fortune, he operates less out of a sense of noblesse oblige than noblesse outrage. The country that made him rich is lousy with bailout billionaires, a culture of selfishness and a loss of opportunities. "We can rise to any challenge but not if people feel we're in a plutocracy," he says. "We have to get serious about shared sacrifice."

Shared sacrifice, to Buffett, means not just higher taxes for the rich--who often pay extremely low rates on money made by moving money around--but also curbs on short-termism. He'd like to see speculative-trading gains taxed at much higher rates. He believes CEOs of publicly bailed-out institutions should be on the hook for everything they own if their institutions go bust. He's only half joking when he says he'd like to see private schools banned so that rich families would be forced to invest in the public K--12 system. (No Buffett in Omaha has ever gone to a private school, he notes proudly.) And he's for a complete overhaul of health care, which he calls "a tapeworm in America," one that cuts corporate competitiveness far more than taxes do.

It's the opposite of the Darwinian capitalism embraced by many prominent conservatives who believe the market is the only means to distribute the economy's assets. "The market system rewards me outlandishly for what I do," Buffett says, "but that doesn't mean I'm any more deserving of a good life than a teacher or a doctor or someone who fights in Afghanistan."

He doesn't want to stop bond traders from making their billions: "Capitalism has unleashed more human potential than any other system in history." But, he says, "we need a tax system that essentially takes very good care of the people who just really aren't as well adapted to the market system but are nevertheless doing useful things in society." Bond traders and corporate raiders of the world, take note: your higher taxes should subsidize bridge builders and child-care workers.

At 81, Buffett says he's in a unique position to speak out. "If you are a CEO or you have to deal with a conservative board or you have a boss that might get upset by what you say, you can't do what I do. But I don't have a boss. It's hard to hurt me. If you don't speak up now, when are you going to? As my partner Charlie told me, it's like saving up sex for your old age!"

The reason people listen to Buffett, at a time when being the 0.001% may not seem like the best public relations asset, is that in matters of finance he's very often right. But it's also that he's not like other billionaires.

Buffett lives not on an isolated island of wealth but in Omaha, in a shingle-roofed five-bedroom house on an unpretentious street that looks as if it might belong to a successful dentist. He bought it for $31,500 in 1958. The corporation he runs, Berkshire Hathaway, owns 76 businesses--from a candy company to an electric utility--that throw off $1 billion a month in free cash, and he holds major stakes in many of the country's biggest blue-chip firms, including Coca-Cola, American Express, IBM and Procter & Gamble. Yet aside from his indulgence in private air travel (he named his first jet the Indefensible), he estimates his personal yearly expenses to be no more than $150,000. The company canteen in his small office suite, where he has a habit of walking around turning off lights in empty rooms, features a beat-up wooden table, a faux-leather sectional couch and Formica countertops.

His investment habits are as austere as the decor. In an age of leverage, he likes to steer clear of debt, preferring to keep from $10 billion to $20 billion of liquid assets on hand at all times--"so that I can sleep better," he says. In a world of high-frequency traders with two-hour sell windows, Buffett's investment horizon is somewhere between 10 years and forever.

He grew up in Omaha and Washington as the son of a U.S. Congressman and was once president of the University of Pennsylvania's Young Republicans Club. Now he's President Obama's highest-profile supporter, a crusader for higher taxes on the millionaires' club. As he wrote in an op-ed article for the New York Times last summer, in which he noted that his personal tax rate was lower than that of his office staff, Washington needs to "stop coddling the superrich." Millionaires, says Buffett, should pay more taxes--a lot more. And companies certainly shouldn't pay any less.

His worry is that in this era of late-stage capitalism, the next generations won't be as lucky as he has been. The problem of inequality is likely, he says, to get worse. When people can't climb up the ladder, it's bad for the economy--and for his companies. He doesn't believe that the U.S. can innovate its way quickly back to a 1950s level of shared prosperity, nor does he think education will entirely close the gap. "The truth is that there will always be a bottom 10% in terms of capacity," he says. "Someone in America who has a 90-point IQ is qualified for many fewer jobs today than he was 100 years ago."

The solution, to him, is obvious. "People who make withdrawals from societies' resources--like me with my plane--should have to pay a lot for it." That means not only higher taxes for the rich and an extremely progressive European-style consumption tax but also fewer loopholes for corporations. Buffett says it's "baloney" that corporate America's tax rates are too high and says companies should not be allowed to repatriate profits tax-free. (It'll just encourage more investment to flow overseas.) In general, he says, "I find the argument that we need lower taxes to create more jobs mystifying, because we've had the lowest taxes in this decade and about the worst job creation ever."

But [his first wife, Susie] was also responsible for deeper transformations, like Warren's conversion from Republican to Democrat. A civil rights supporter, Susie was involved in helping integrate Omaha in the 1960s, going so far as to front for blacks who wanted to buy houses in white neighborhoods. She took Warren to hear people like Martin Luther King Jr. speak. One speech in particular, given at Iowa's Grinnell College, became a turning point for Buffett. The topic was "Remaining Awake During a Revolution," and one line in particular chimed deeply with the young investor: "It may be true that the law can't change the heart," said King, "but it can restrain the heartless." It was something that Buffett began to think deeply about. Led by Susie, he became more involved in liberal politics, helping overturn anti-Semitic membership rules at the Omaha Club and doing Democratic fundraising at a national level.

As anyone who reads the financial press knows, Buffett is a "value investor," which means that he seeks to buy companies and stocks that are selling for less than they are fundamentally worth. It's a skill he learned from his Columbia Business School professor Benjamin Graham, whose book The Intelligent Investor Buffett memorized early in his career. Value investing is a task that involves forensic examination of a company's balance sheet. It was one to which Buffett, a numbers geek who'd read every book in the Omaha public library by the age of 11 and who enjoys poring over Moody's Manuals in his spare time while eating potato chips, was well suited. Even now, he can call to mind prodigious amounts of data, from the value of the Dow in 1932 to the number of housing starts needed to equal 2006 rates.

Buffett believes that once the housing market recovers, the U.S. economy will be back on track. "Once we get back to a million housing starts per year"--the current tally is 685,000--"I think pundits will be surprised just how fast unemployment will come down in this country," he says. "There are 4 million people hitting age 22 every year in this country. Sure, you can double up on households for a while, but at some point, hormones kick in, and living with your in-laws loses its allure." Buffett notes that nearly every one of his major nonhousing businesses has had several strong quarters, and Berkshire companies are making a record number of investments, the vast majority of which are in the U.S. "I am 100% sure that people in this country will be doing more business 10 years from now than they are today.

But Buffett insists his optimism isn't emotional but quantitative: he focuses not on media headlines about America's inevitable decline or cheerleading about innovation and education but on the underlying data. Basic demographics favor the U.S. over nearly every other rich country in the world. And with corporate America so lean and inventories so low, the growth engine, in his view, has to kick in soon.

The numbers over the past few months have been good: jobless claims are ticking down, and consumer confidence is up. That's great news for Berkshire, since Buffett's portfolio is made up almost exclusively of large U.S. companies and American blue-chip multinationals. Even in the midst of the financial crisis and recession that followed, he remained a U.S. bull. Berkshire spent $15.6 billion in the 25 days after Lehman Brothers' September 2008 collapse, buying up many assets on the cheap. Although Berkshire lost 9.6% of its net worth in 2008, Buffett did better than most everyone else and came across as a stabilizing influence during the financial crisis, speaking out on behalf of the government's management efforts. (He wrote a "Dear Uncle Sam" thank-you letter for the bailouts to the Obama Administration in the New York Times.) "You can see what happens when you have a Plan B, as you have had in Europe, where people have dithered and been unable to come together," he notes. "I think Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner, Sheila Bair, President Bush and Obama--they all behaved magnificently.

I ask Buffett if, when he started, his aim was to be the richest man in the world. "I knew I wanted to make a lot of money. But that's because I knew I wanted to be independent. That was very important to me. The money itself is all going to charity," says Buffett, who in 2006 pledged 99% of his personal wealth to charity, with the bulk going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "I'm really just a steward of it for now." Supply siders like Arthur Laffer have tried to paint him as a hypocrite for his giving. A recent Laffer opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal bashed Buffett for, among other things, shielded income like unrealized capital gains (taxed at 0%) and charitable contributions (which are tax-deductible). "Well, I had a net unrealized loss last year," notes Buffett. "But if Arthur has a plan for how he wants to tax unrealized gains, I'd love to hear it. It's an interesting thing for a Republican to put forward!When Buffett isn't giving, he's teaching. Many of the rich and famous seek his counsel about business and philanthropy. Recent visitors include Fiat scion John Elkann and the Baroness de Rothschild, whom Buffett took to Piccolo's, the modest family-owned Italian steak house where we sit eating dinner. "She loved it here," Buffett says. "She had a root-beer float for dessert."

When Buffett isn't giving, he's teaching. Many of the rich and famous seek his counsel about business and philanthropy. Recent visitors include Fiat scion John Elkann and the Baroness de Rothschild, whom Buffett took to Piccolo's, the modest family-owned Italian steak house where we sit eating dinner. "She loved it here," Buffett says. "She had a root-beer float for dessert."

But on taxes and the debilitating growth of partisan politics, he doesn't mince words. He was horrified by the debt-ceiling debacle this summer and shocked that Republicans were willing to play a game of political chicken with the goodwill and faith put in the world's reserve currency. He was disappointed that so many financiers who'd supported Obama and received the benefits of the financial bailouts were unwilling to support higher taxes to help close the deficit.

He's also got a few choice words about the Republican presidential candidates and their ideas about bootstrapping and "merit" economies. "This whole business about Newt Gingrich going down to Occupy and saying, 'They ought to be getting a job,' that's just--you know, maybe they can be historians for Freddie Mac too and make $600,000 a year." When I ask whether Mitt Romney is a job creator or destroyer, Buffett says that while businesses shouldn't hang on to people they don't need, "I don't like what private-equity firms do in terms of taking out every dime they can and leveraging [companies] up so that they really aren't equipped, in some cases, for the future."

As for President Obama--should he win re-election--Buffett would like to see him lay out the truth about the road ahead to the American people. "I think that the American people would be pretty responsive to shared sacrifice if it was really shared and they knew what to expect," says Buffett. "I've always thought that part of my job at Berkshire is telling people what they should expect and what they shouldn't expect from us. I don't want to be held to things I can't do. On the other hand, I shouldn't totally downplay what can be done just to create a phony target."

Buffett feels the President missed an opportunity to do that right after he took office. But he's optimistic that it can still be done. "We need to tell people that the road is going to be long. We've got too many damn houses. They're not going to go away. This recovery is going to take a long time. And the financial crisis has exposed a lot of flaws in our system." But the flaws can be fixed. With the right rules, says Buffett, our system can work again. "It's like Martin Luther King said. We aren't trying to change the heart. We're trying to restrain the heartless.

"Isn't that," he asks, "what government is all about?

W.S. Merwin: Self Understanding, Duty, Identity

2011-12-30T10:33:00.001-05:00

Merwin reflects on some challenges and life factors influencing our understandings and expressions of identity. First, in "To Waiting," he explores our inclination to more often be looking forward and to change--sometime seeking escape from ourselves--than to understand, accept and respect who we are today.

Then, in "To Duty," he acknowledges the power of an inborn or developed sense of duty in or on who we are and how we face life. And though he treats it as a force unto itself, he leaves each of us to sort out whether this sometimes dominating sense of duty is a quality or product of our inborn personality, or the influence of life-learning and training in shaping it. That's what I hear and feel in his verse today, but tomorrow, perhaps more. From W.S. Merwin:

To Waiting

You spend so much of your time

expecting to become

someone else

always someone

who will be different

someone to whom a moment

whatever moment it may be

at last has come

and who has been

met and transformed

into no longer being you

and so has forgotten you

meanwhile in your life

you hardly notice

the world around you

lights changing

sirens dying along the buildings

your eyes intent

on a sight you do not see yet

not yet there

as long as you

are only yourself

with whom as you

recall you were

never happy

to be left alone for long

To Duty

Oh dear

Where do you keep yourself

whose least footstep wakens

all those sentences

that begin I thought

what makes you so sure

as you lay claim

to the cloudless sky of morning

assuming the grammar of the hours

and whatever they

are supposed to be saying

even if we try

to imagine what life

would be like without you

you who do not

seem to listen

you who insist

without a sound

you who know better

even better you say

than nature herself

you who tell us

over and over

who we are

American Dream Easier to Realize Elsewhere: The Failings of Education, Government Investment & Upward Mobility

2011-12-29T15:39:00.004-05:00

Those headlines and feature stories confront us more often. We don't want to hear it, we don't. We certainly don't want to believe it. After all, through all generations, the vast majority of Americans came here from many other places for that best opportunity to get ahead, the highest probability of being upwardly mobile. But now, not so much. The reports are true: America's upward mobility has been stalled, then jammed into reverse, and our vaunted middle class is shrinking. And most of those formerly enjoying middle-class life have become poorer, not richer.

If we read a little further, we are also informed that the gap in economic opportunity and mobility between America's "haves" and "have-nots" is steadily increasing.There are many factors, but a more dominant financial sector, more a winner-take-all social and economic environment, globalization and, particularly, the failures of American K-12 education, all loom large. What is less often reported, certainly less often heard and understood, is that other countries, at least seven of them have moved past us and now offer more accomodating access to a comfortable middle-class income and lifestyle. The American dream is now more easily realized elsewhere.

The US is now 8th in economic mobility behind Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany and France. Yes, France. And yes, there are those more ideological American's who have long flogged some of these countries as "socialist" countries--mixed economies to the extent that they place social support and services on a level of priority commensurate with the values of an advanced society, and supported by effective, open markets, regulated to protect consumers, the economy, and society as a whole. Some of us would just call them more balanced, effective and civilized societies.

But there are differences to be considered and reasons to be understood. Let's look at some recent articles that make these understandings quite clear.

From a recent article in Time Magazine:

The Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project has found that if you were born in 1970 in the bottom one-fifth of the socioeconomic spectrum in the U.S., you had only about a 17% chance of making it into the upper two-fifths. That's not good by international standards. A spate of new reports from groups such as Brookings, Pew and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development show that it's easier to climb the socioeconomic ladder in many parts of Europe than it is in the U.S. It's hard to imagine a bigger hit to the American Dream than that: you'd have an easier time getting a leg up in many parts of sclerotic, debt-ridden, class-riven old Europe than you would in the U.S.A. "The simple truth," says Sawhill, "is that we have a belief system about ourselves that no longer aligns with the facts."

[...] Yet it is important to understand that when you compare Europe and America, you are comparing very different societies. High-growth Nordic nations with good social safety nets, which have the greatest leads in social mobility over the U.S., are small and homogeneous. On average, only about 7% of their populations are ethnic minorities (who are more often poorer and less mobile than the overall population), compared with 28% in the U.S. Even bigger nations like Germany don't have to deal with populations as socially and economically diverse as America's.

Still, Europe does more to encourage equality. That's a key point because high inequality--meaning a large gap between the richest and poorest in society--has a strong correlation to lower mobility. As Sawhill put it, "When the rungs on the ladder are further apart, it is harder to climb them." Indeed, in order to understand why social mobility in the U.S. is falling, it's important to understand why inequality is rising, now reaching levels not seen since the Gilded Age.

There are many reasons for the huge and growing wealth divide in our country. The rise of the money culture and bank deregulation in the 1980s and '90s certainly contributed to it. As the financial sector grew in relation to the rest of the country (it is now at historic highs of about 8%) a winner-take-all economy emerged. Wall Street was less about creating new businesses--entrepreneurship has stalled as finance has become a bigger industry--but it did help set a new pay band for top talent. In the 1970s, corporate chiefs earned about 40 times as much as their lowest paid worker (still closer to the norm in many parts of Europe). Now they earn more than 400 times as much.

The most recent blows to economic equality, of course have been the real estate and credit crises, which wiped out housing prices and thus erased the largest chunk of middle-class wealth, while stocks where most the rich hold much of their money, have largely recovered.

---"Whatever Happened to Upward Mobility?" by Rana Foroohar, Time (11.14.11)

We're not really that surprised by these reports, are we? In fact, we've all come to better understand these troubling realities as the financial crisis and housing crisis stubbornly refuse to give way to a return to economic normalcy. But what of the underlying systemic and structural changes? More from the Foroohar article in Time:

[...] [T]he causes of inequality and any resulting decrease in social mobility are also very much about two megatrends that have been reshapng the global economy since the 1970s: the effects of technology and the rise of the emerging markets. Some 2 billion people have joined the global workforce since the 1970s. According to Goldman Sachs, the majority of them are middle class by global standards and can do many of the jobs that were once done by American workers, at lower labor costs....

While there is no clear formula for ascribing the rise in inequality (via wage compression) and subsequent loss of mobility to the rise of China and India, one key study stands out. Nobel Laureate Michael Spense's recent examination...found that since the 1980s, companies that operated in the tradable sector--meaning they made things or provided services that could be traded between nations--have created no new jobs. The study is especially illustrative of the hollowing out of the American manufacturing sector in that period as middle-wage jobs moved abroad. The only major job creation was in more geographically protected categories like retail and health care (another reason wages are shrinking, since many of the fastest-growing jobs in the U.S., like home health care aide and sales clerk, are low-paying.

[...] Many of the jobs that have disappeared from the U.S. economy have done so not only because they were outsourced but also because they are now done by computer or robots... Advocates of technology-driven economic growth...argue that the creative destruction wrought by such innovations creates more and better jobs in the future... The problem is that those jobs tend to be skewed toward toward the very top (software engineer) or bottom (sales clerk)....

While there's no doubt that so far, technology has been a net plus in terms of the number of jobs in the economy, a growing group of experts believe that link is being broken... The result, they say, is that technology may soon be a net job destroyer.

But what role education in delaying or reversing this trend? And how might that play out? Ms. Foroohar:

The best hope in fighting the machines is to improve education, the factor that is more closely correlated with upward mobility than any other. Research has shown that as long as educational achievement keeps up with technological gains, more jobs are created. But in the late 1970s that link was broken in the U.S. as educational gains slowed.

That's likely an important reason that Europeans have passed the U.S. in various measures of mobility. They've been exposed to the same Malthusian forces of globalization, but they've been better at using public money to buffer them. By funding ost-secondary education and keeping public primary and secondary schools as good as if not better than private ones, Europeans have made sure that the best and brightest can rise.

In the same issue of Time, the always insightful Fareed Zakaria reports that the American K-12 educational system has now fallen to a ranking of 26th in the world, and offers some well-informed thoughts on America's failing education system. Mr. Zakaria:

In 1972, the year [Steven] Jobs graduated, California's public schools were the envy of the world. They were generally rated the finest in the country, well funded and well run, with excellent teachers. These schools were engines of social mobility that took people like Jobs and Wozniak and gave them an educational grounding that helped them rise.

Today, California's public schools are a disaster, beset by dysfunction and disrepair. They rank at the bottom of the country, just as the U.S. now sits at the bottom of the industrialized world by most measures of educational achievement. The World Economic Forum ranks the U.S.'s educational system 26th in the world, well behind those of countries like Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Canada and Singapore. In science and math, we score even worse.

We've been talking about America's education decline for three decades now, so much so that we are numbed by the discussion. But the consequences of that crisis are only just becoming fully apparent. As American education has collapsed, the median wages of the American worker have stagnated, and social mobility--the beating heart of the American dream--has slowed to a standstill. Education is and always has been the fastest way up the socioeconomic ladder. And the payoff from a good education remains evident even in this weak recovery. The unemployment rate for college graduates is just 4%, but for high school dropouts it is 14%. If you drop out of high school--and the U.S. has a 25% dropout rate--you will have a depressed standard of living for the rest of your life.

The need for better education for most Americans has never been more urgent. While we have been sleeping, the rest of the world has been upgrading its skills. Countries in Europe and Asia have worked hard to increase their college-graduation rates, while the U.S.'s--once the world's highest--has flatlined. Other countries have focused on math and science, while in America degrees have proliferated in "fields" like sports exercise and leisure studies.

Bill Gross, the head of Pimco, the world's largest bond fund, sums it up in no uncertain terms: "Our labor force is too expensive and poorly educated for today's marketplace." There are two variables here: our educational levels, which are low, and our wages, which are high. Either we will raise our educational level or markets will lower our wages.

[...] How to do it? Well, there is one simple, time-tested method. Work harder. Thomas Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Malcolm Gladwell found that behind many supposedly natural-born talents like musical ability lay lots of practice--by his calculations, about 10,000 hours of practice. U.S. schoolchildren spend less time in school than their peers abroad. They have shorter school days and a shorter school year. Children in South Korea will spend almost two years more in school than Americans by the end of high school. Is it really so strange that they score higher on tests?

If South Korea teaches the importance of hard work, Finland teaches another lesson. Finnish students score near the very top on international tests, yet they do not follow the Asian model of study, study and more study. Instead they start school a year later than in most countries, emphasize creative work and shun tests for most of the year. But Finland has great teachers, who are paid well and treated with the same professional respect that is accorded to doctors and lawyers. They are found and developed through an extremely competitive and rigorous process. All teachers are required to have master's degrees, and only 1 in 10 applicants is accepted to the country's teacher-training programs. The contrast with the U.S. is stark. Half of America's teachers graduated in the bottom third of their college class.

Bill Gates has spent about $5 billion trying to research and reform American education. I asked him, if he were running a school district and could wave a magic wand, what he would do. His response: hire the best teachers. That's what produces the best results for students, more than class size or money or curriculum. "So the basic research into great teaching, that's now become our biggest investment," he says. One study estimates that if black students had a top-quartile teacher rather than a bottom-quartile teacher four years in a row, that would be enough to close the black-white test-score gap.

[...] I went through the Asian educational system, which is now so admired. It gave me an impressive base of knowledge and taught me how to study hard and fast. But when I got to the U.S. for college, I found that it had not trained me that well to think. American education at its best teaches you how to solve problems, truly understand the material, question authority, think for yourself and be creative. It teaches you to learn what you love and to love learning. These are incredibly important values, and they are why the U.S. has been able to maintain an edge in creative industries and innovation in general.

The U.S. should truly fix its educational system by emphasizing the basics--like hard work--again but also by renewing its distinctly American character. We will succeed not by becoming more Asian but by becoming, as the writer James Fallows put it once, "more like us." That's what made America the world's most dynamic society--and it can make it so again.

---"When Will We Learn?" Fareed Zakaria, Time (11.14.11)

Now lets return to the Rana Foorahar article for some insights on the role of health care, government support of employment and training, and tax policy.

There are many other lessons to be learned from the most mobile nations. Funding universal health care without tying it to jobs can increase labor flexibility and reduce the chance that people will fall into poverty because of medical emergencies--a common occurrence in the U.S., where such medical crises are a big reason a third of the population cycles in and out of poverty every year. Focusing more on less-expensive preventive care (including family planning, since high teen birthrates correlate with lack of mobility) rather than on expensive procedures can increase the general health levels in a society, which is also correlated to mobility.

Europe's higher spending on social safety nets has certainly bolstered the middle and working classes. (Indeed, you could argue that some of America's great social programs, including Social Security and Medicaid, enabled us to become a middle-class nation.) Countries like Germany and Denmark that have invested in youth-employment programs and technical schools where young people can learn a high-paying trade have done well, which is not surprising given that in many studies, including the Opportunity Nation index, there's a high correlation between the number of teenagers who are not in school or not working and lowered mobility.

[...] Germans, for example, made a command decision after the financial downturn in 2008 not to let unemployment rise because it would ultimately be more expensive to put people back to work than to pay to keep them in their jobs. The government subsidized companies to keep workers (as many as 1.4 million in 2009) on the payroll, even part time. Once the economy began to pick up, companies were ready to capitalize on it quickly. Unemployment is now 6%--lower than before the recession--and growth has stayed relatively high.

The Nordic nations, too, have figured out clever ways to combine strong economic growth with a decent amount of security. As in Germany, labor and corporate relations are collaborative rather than contentious. Union reps often sit on company boards, which makes it easier to curb excessive executive pay and negotiate compromises over working hours. Worker retraining is a high priority. Danish adults spend a lot of time in on-the-job training. That's one reason they also enjoy high real wages and relatively low unemployment.

The final lesson that might be learned is in tax policy. The more-mobile European nations have fewer corporate loopholes, more redistribution to the poor and middle class via consumption taxes and far less complication. France's tax code, for example, is 12% as long as the U.S.'s. Tax levels are also higher, something that the enlightened rich in the U.S. are very publicly advocating.

No wonder. A large body of academic research shows that inequality and lack of social mobility hurt not just those at the bottom; they hurt everyone. Unequal societies have lower levels of trust, higher levels of anxiety and more illness. They have arguably less stable economies: International Monetary Fund research shows that countries like the U.S. and the U.K. are more prone to boom-and-bust cycles. And they are ultimately at risk for social instability.

That's the inflection point that we are at right now. The mythology of the American Dream has made it difficult to start a serious conversation about how to create more opportunity in our society, since many of us still believe that our mobility is the result of our elbow grease and nothing more. But there is a growing truth, seen in the numbers and in the protests that are spreading across our nation, that this isn't so. We can no longer blame the individual. We have to acknowledge that climbing the ladder often means getting some support and a boost.

Many other articles have offered examples and perspectives on America's declining upward mobility, it's slide toward a smaller middle class and a bigger gap between rich and poor. One study reports that in 2007 only 44% of American families lived in middle-income neighborhoods, down from 65% in 1970. ("Middle-class areas shrink as America divides into "two-tiered society of rich and poor," by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times (11.16.11)). That's a lot of damage in a relatively short time to our middle-class strength, and a threat to our economic and social stability. And it won't be reversed overnight.

The reality and the implications are clear enough. We are just now experiencing the unwelcome results of policies and circumstances long in their development. We cannot further delay a national corrective that will move us back on the upward path we've always so proudly claimed. The failings of our education system must be reversed. Germany's approach to the economic effects of the financial crisis reflected sound thinking: to fail to provide for social needs and training would just result in worse conditions that would exact greater social and economic costs in the end. That is thinking that will not come naturally or easy to America's anti-government spending advocates. It's not just the stimulative economic effect--although that is important--but also the reduction of national stress and pain, and reduced volatility of economic cycles.

We have to get past our misguided notions that America is by virtue of its very existence and nature a more advanced, better functioning and economically stronger country than all others. We have to get past this baseless nationalistic hubris and outmoded thinking, too often misled my misguided ideologues and populist demogogues. We must reclaim America's historical pragmatism, education leadership, hard work, and boldness of government investment in our future, a future which threatens to quickly and globally leave us behind. We can and must learn from other countries, many of which we once considered lesser lights. We will require a stronger partnership among government, education, business, and our citizenry, one built on the old foundations of American vision, innovation and hard work, but combined with a respectful view of the new, global, governmental, economic, and educational realities. Amen.

W.S. Merwin: Last Year, Next Year

2011-12-04T21:07:00.005-05:00

I've been reading different poets lately, but found nothing I'm moved to share here. So I picked Present Company (2007) from my bookshelf, poetry by W.S. Merwin--a favorite now, you know. I found these two poems, side by side, but where else would they be? As we look back on this year, fast receding, and to a new year fast apporaching--with promise, or hope, we pray--these two poems offer me sensitive, resonant reflections for this time. Perhaps they will resonate with you, too.

To the Parting Year

So you are leaving everything

the way it is

taking only your day with you

already you are out of reach

you do not know us or hear us

you scarcely remember us

already we cannot imagine

where you are

what we remember of love is starlight

To the New Year

With what stillness at last

you apear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible

Couldn't Take You With Me

2011-11-21T16:28:00.002-05:00

[A short essay from my Beyond Life's Boxes series.]

I couldn’t take you with me. And you didn’t want to come. Remember? That same uncanny, purposeful sense of fate that threw us together, scattered us like expatriates of Babel having lost the language, relationship and purpose of our time and place. And it didn’t matter when or where, because of you with me, it seemed like magic there. Was it school, the Marines, a church, another sojourn or road we traveled? Was it a shared faith, philosophy, or professional life? Or was it the causes and organizations, the boards and councils, or our retreats and pastimes, where our passions and purposes brought us together in common cause? Wherever it was, you were there and so was I. We knew there was a reason; we knew it was important, at least to us—and we were grateful for it. But just as fatefully, purposefully, and surely as we felt brought together, we felt pulled apart. You were gone and so was I.

You moved in your direction and I in mine, you to one box, I to another—and then another. I’ve been in some very different places with some very different people. Perhaps I’ve been led there, as I have said. But even if ushered there by serendipity alone, I’ve encountered a lot of the stuff, stories and lessons of life—seeing into it, then past it. My eyes have been widened and then narrowed, but now feel softer, more comfortable, wiser, more generous. They now see new things, and old things new. I can’t change what I’ve seen and know. I can’t and won’t go back. The call, the challenge is still in going forward. But I couldn’t take you with me then, and I can’t take you with me now. I would, but you have your own invitations and path to follow. I still love you and miss you—but in that time, place or cause we once shared together. And I’m still grateful for that time together, what it meant to me then and what it means to me now.

First written: June 2005

The Tongue is a Fire

2011-11-13T13:04:00.001-05:00

James, brother of Jesus: "The tongue is a fire...a restless evil...which defiles our entire body and sets on fire the course of our lives...[H]ow great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire...With it we bless our Lord and Father; and with it we curse men; from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way." (from James 3:5-10)

Hafiz, 14th-century sufi poet: "What we speak becomes the house we live in. Think what can happen when the tongue says to kindness, 'I will be your slave.'" *** "Now is the time to understand that all your ideas of right and wrong were just training wheels to be laid aside when you finally live with veracity and love." (from The Gift (1999))

Our Poorer Brethren: Understandings and Attitudes

2011-11-12T10:44:00.005-05:00

Our behavior and identity are in part a function of our genetic legacy, yes, but also the way we are conditioned and schooled, what we learn in our families, communities and cultures. Some combination of genes and life circumstances determines who we are, how we act, the scope and limits of our potential and achievements. But for the least fortunate of our brethren--the increasing numbers of poor brethren--their choices are far fewer and their ability to act on them much less. That's a reality we could better understand. And compassion and a generous spirit are sentiments we could more often, more broadly embrace. GH

Zakaria: Tax Law Complexity Equals Corruption

2011-11-09T16:02:00.015-05:00

For much of my career, I worked as a tax lawyer and a corporate tax executive. If there was anything I understood, it was the complexity of the U.S. tax code, regulations, rulings, and case law--at least those parts of it I dealt with most. To be really competent in tax practice, you do have to specialize in one area of practice, or a few at most. It's nothing short of byzantine. And many companies and industries have their special tax breaks or "incentives." They also have their lobbyists, both "in house" and on K Street, who are well paid to protect those competitive tax advantages. (And, it can hardly be surprising that tax lawyers, tax accountants, and financial products architects view each new and more complex iteration of the tax code as tax professionals' full-employment legislation.)

But most of those tax breaks provide no additional incentives for companies to do more of what they are already doing to maximize their profits in their chosen area of commercial endeavor. Not really. They are just thinly veiled, indirect government payments to one industry or another, or one company or another. They are created and sustained by congressmen and senators eager to help their constituent companies, or other companies, for which they have developed sympathetic support--and that sympathy is most often engendered through the financial and political support those companies provide the politicians.

In addressing the 9-9-9 tax plan of Republican presidential contender Herman Cain, Fareed Zakaria finds merit in the underlying ideas, even if the particulars are difficult to support or defend. But in taking on the most basic element of the plan--tax law simplicity--he exposes one of the principal unspoken realities of tax law complexity: political corruption. Mr. Zakaria:

I am going to defend not Cain's specific policy proposals but their general thrust. His plan is sloppy and, in parts, bizarre. But the impetus behind it--tax simplification and reform--is not. Most Americans believe that the federal tax code is highly complex and fundamentally corrupt. They are right. The federal code (plus IRS rulings) is now 72,536 pages in total. The code itself is 16,000 pages.

Complexity equals corruption. When John McCain was still a raging reformer, he pointed to the tax code as the foundation for the corruption of American politics. Special interests pay politicians vast amounts of cash for their campaigns, and in return they get favorable exemptions or credits in the tax code. In other countries, this sort of bribery takes place underneath bridges and with cash in brown envelopes. In America it is institutionalized and legal, but it is the same--cash for politicians in return for favorable treatment from the government. The U.S. tax system is not simply corrupt; it is corrupt in a deceptive manner that has degraded the entire system of American government. Congress is able to funnel vast sums of money to its favored funders through the tax code--without anyone realizing it. The simplest way to get the corruption out of Washington is to remove the prize that members of Congress give away: preferential tax treatment. A flatter tax code with almost no exemptions does that.

---"Complexity Equals Corruption," Fareed Zakaria, Time Magazine (10.31.11)

This is not the first time I have posted on this topic, as some of you know. It is a subject I was passionate about for much of my professional life, and that passion has not abated. It is just so logical and so right. If Mr. Cain's particular proposal is not viable --and it is not, in my view--he has embraced the right idea in simplification.

And after Mr. Zakaria works through the other elements of Mr. Cain's plan, he offers his own own variation on a 9-9-9 type of approach. It is still simple enough, although not as simple as Mr. Cain's. We can be thankful for that. But it is clearly more thoughtful and defensible. It, too, may have elements that one or another of us will take issue with, but on the whole it is much closer to a workable set of particulars. Again, Mr. Zakaria:

My version of Cain's proposal would be flatter but not flat: 9% for the first 90% of Americans, 18% for the next 9% (incomes starting at $150,000) and 27% for the top 1% (incomes starting at about $500,000). I would keep a few straightforward deductions--state and local income taxes and charitable contributions. I would lower the corporate rate to 18% and impose a VAT of 9%. Finally, I would enact a 50% inheritance tax, because nothing is more un-American than an inherited elite that perpetuates itself. So my proposal is a bit more complex--the 9-18-27-18-9-50 plan. Don't expect it to catch fire on the campaign trail anytime soon.

The full article is worth reading, not just for the analysis of the particulars, but for the policy discussion as well. It can be accessed through the following link:

http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,2097396,00.html

Life's Slippery Slope: Who We Too Often Become.

2011-11-09T14:36:00.000-05:00

Following on from my last post, I've added these additional pull-quotes from various of my writings (which have also found their way to my Facebook page). I place them all together here in successive paragraphs because they follow naturally enough from one to the next.

Have we lost our way somewhere on the quest for the greater good, on that path paved with good intentions? Have we lost our footing, our vision and mission? We have our success and worldly goods, yes, but has that fulfilled our potential, our promise? And if that is what we've gained in the world we've so easily slipped into, what have we lost?

We are competitive and contentious as a species, and given too much to disagreement. We contend and disagree among nations, ethnicities, religions and ideologies, and within them all as well. We are set on distinguishing ourselves from others, lifting ourselves above them or separating ourselves from them--and we are often unpleasant or hurtful in doing it. It all breeds prejudice, anger, even hatred. It's clearly not heaven yet, not anywhere close.

So, if loving one another, even respecting one another, is too often just not in the cards, not realistic, don't we have to reach even more earnestly and insistently for tolerance, at least? In the name of peace on shared ground and in common spaces, can't we agree to patiently and politely abide one another? Can't we at least get over the lowest bar of tolerance and civility?

What's Gained? What's Lost?

2011-11-04T11:58:00.003-04:00

Have we lost our way somewhere on the quest for the greater good, on that path paved with good intentions? Have we lost our footing, our vision and mission? We have our success and worldly goods, yes, but has that fulfilled our potential, our promise? And if that is what we've gained in the world we’ve so easily slipped into, what have we lost? GH

true lovers: one more from eec

2011-11-02T16:54:00.001-04:00

Oh, one more, just one more, from this cummings selected poetry collection (well, until the next one).

#82

true lovers in each happening of their hearts
live longer than all which and every who;
despite what fear denies,what hope asserts,
what falsest both disprove by proving true

(all doubts,all certainties,as villains strive
and heroes through the mere mind's poor pretend
--grim comics of duration:only love
immortality occurs beyond the mind)

such a forever is love's any now
and her each here is such an everywhere,
even more true would truest lovers grow
if out of midnight dropped more suns that are

(yes;and if time should ask into his was
all shall,their eyes would never miss a yes)

e e cummings, 5 of 100 gifts

2011-11-02T12:57:00.001-04:00

From e e cummings, five of 100 Selected Poems (a birthday gift from son, Adam.) You do have to keep working with cummings' poetry, mining the alternatives and possibilities, rethinking the pieces and the whole. But if you do, it just keeps on giving and surprising. It is surely worth it!

#83

yes is a pleasant country:
if's wintry
(my lovely)
let's open the year

both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear

love is a deeper season
than reason:
my sweet one
(and april's where we're)

#80

nothing false and possible is love
(who's imagined,therefore limitless)
love's to giving as to keeping's give;
as yes is to if,love is to yes

must's a schoolroom in the month of may:
life's the deathboard where all now turns when
(love's a universe beyond obey
or command,reality or un-)

proudly depths above why's first because
(faith's last doubt and humbly heights below)
kneeling,we--true lovers--pray that us
will ourselves continue to outgrow

all those mosts if you have known and I've
only we our least begin to guess

#84

all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again:
but winter's not forever,even snow
melts;and if spring should spoil the game, what then?

all history's a winter sport or three:
but were it five,i'd still insist that all
history is too small for even me;
for me and you,exceedingly to small.

Swoop(shrill collective myth)into thy grave
merely to toil the scale to shrillerness
per every madge and mabel dick and dave
--tomorrow is our permanent address

and there they'll scarcely find us(if they do,
we'll move away still further: into now

#92

no time ago
or else a life
walking in the dark
i met christ

jesus)my heart
flopped over
and lay still
while he passed(as

close as i'm to you
yes closer
made of nothing
except loneliness

#65

love is the every only god

who spoke this earth so glad and big
even a thing all small and sad
man,may his mighty briefness dig

for love beginning means return
seas who could sing so deep and strong

one queerying wave will whitely yearn
from each last shore and home come young

so truly perfectly the skies
by merciful love whispered were,
complete its brightness with your eyes

any illimitable star

Hope

2011-10-22T11:16:00.003-04:00

There should always be hope--and can be. Hope can rest on you with promise and peace. It can be as natural as the breath you take, and accompany you throughout the day. And in the darker times, it can hold you up and sustain you. It is essential for your emotional health, the confident exercise of your abilities, the reaching out for new horizons, for happiness and peace with who you are and who you are becoming. GH

The Quest

2011-10-22T11:09:00.005-04:00

If you've believed in better understandings and answers (better thinking), new beginnings and endings (cycles and changes), causes and effects (reasons), that there is something right or true out there to believe in (or at least something more), then you’ve had no choice, no other way to go. You've had to keep seeking, assessing, accepting and rejecting--and moving on, again and again. GH

Neutrinos Faster Than Light? U.S Physics Funding Down, Int'l Collaboration Up?

2011-10-17T16:25:00.007-04:00

On September 23rd researchers at CERN, Europe's main physics laboratory, announced that subatomic particles called neutrinos had apparently sped from the lab's headquarters near Geneva, through the Earth's crust, to an underground detector 730km (450 miles) away around 60-billionths of a second faster than light would take to cover the same distance (see article). The difference in speed is tiny, but the implications are huge.

---"Faster than the speed of light: What does an experiment that seems to contradict Einstein's theory of relativitiy really mean?" The Economist, Leaders section (10.1.11)

A foundation stone of modern physics and Einstein's special theory of relativity is that nothing is faster than the speed of light, and more, that its speed remains constant regardless of the place or moving speed of an observer. Well, now an experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has called that into question. There will likely be other experiments to confirm or deny these findings, of course. This is something they will want to be certain about because much in physics could change or be seen differently based upon the results. Consider these implications offered by the Economist article:

If the result is true, though, it does change everything. In particular, the likely explanation is that the neutrinos are taking a short-cut through one of the extra dimensions which string theory postulates are hidden among the familiar four of length, breadth, height and time. Measured along this five-dimensional route, Einstein might still be right. (It would not so much be that he made a mistake as that he did not know the whole story.) Indeed, moving beyond four dimensions in this way would also allow physicists to try to integrate Einstein's work with quantum theory, the other great breakthrough of 20th-century physics, but one which simply refuses to overlap with relativity. A unified theory of everything, including perhaps as many as 11 dimensions, would then beckon.

Now that's very exciting stuff, at least for physicists, lots of other scientists, and those who have a rough idea of what that means for our understanding of the universe. So naturally, many would think the U.S. would be contesting the primacy of place in these research efforts, that funding would be flowing and optimism for more would be rising. But not so.

In fact, on September 30th the U.S. closed the facility and ended the work of Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator outside Chicago, long the standard setter for physics research on subatomic particles. In a feature story in the same addition of The Economist:

At 2pm on September 30th, the last day of the American fiscal year, Helen Edwards, a septuagenarian American physicist, will press a red switch, and then a green one. By doing so, she will kill the Tevatron—a particle accelerator (pictured above), with a circumference of 6.3km, that she helped, in her younger days, to build.

[...] For a quarter of a century before CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) began working in earnest in 2009 the Tevatron, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, near Chicago, dominated high-energy physics. It was the first machine to smash particles together with energies in excess of 1 trillion electron-volts—or 1 TeV, whence its name. This led to the discovery of the top quark, the heaviest elementary particle seen to date and the penultimate piece of the jigsaw puzzle known as the Standard Model that is the best description physicists have of the basic components of the universe.

For a few months in 2010 it looked as though the Tevatron might get a reprieve in order to find the last (and heaviest) missing bit of the model—the Higgs boson, which is thought to give other particles their mass. That would have been a delicious victory, as the LHC's first goal is the discovery of the Higgs. In the event, though, Congress pulled the plug.

---"So long and thanks for all the quarks," The Economist, Science and Technology (10.1.11)

But it turns out that the Fermilab may have a new lease on life in high-energy physics. Quite apart from the Tevatron, Fermilab has the capability to "whip up the world's most intense beams of neutrinos," and a new project NOVA beginning in 2013 places it in a good position to replicate the experiment at CERN's LHC, and affirm or not their recent stunning results. And follow-up neutrino research is already planned well beyond that. But the price tag will be $1 billion, and the recent budget climate raises concerns about U.S. enthusiasm for unilateral funding of leadership research in this field again. It is very clearly another sign of America's contracting capability or willingness to lead in areas and ways this country and world once expected of us.

So we now appear to be entering a new era with a new U.S. attitude of unwillingness to dominate funding for scientific research--but it is also a time when other global research centers appear more willing to step up to more collaborative efforts and shared funding. And that likely implies a new role for U.S. physicists: being more a partner, or perhaps even a role player on a larger stage with Europe's CERN and other emerging centers leading or sharing the lead. And likely that's progress, a better, more realistic model for international physics research and our role in it. From The Economist article:

Though it may gall those Americans who would like their country to continue to go it alone in matters physical, [multinational research partnerships and funding] may represent the future. It already looks likely that the successor to the LHC, a device called the International Linear Collider (ILC), will be built in Japan (if it is built at all). Most physicists agree it would be America's for the asking if Americans wanted it, but the current Congress seems not to, because it would entail doling out half of the $20 billion the ILC is expected to cost.

Even if it ends up on the other side of the Pacific, though, America will be expected to make some sort of financial contribution to the ILC. And the odd American accent is not unknown even in the corridors of Geneva. In matters of particle physics, then, patriotism is passé. The "E" in CERN originally stood for "European", but the organisation already boasts Israel as a member, and India, Japan and the United States as observers. Moreover, more than two dozen other non-European countries have co-operation agreements with CERN. The passing of the Tevatron may cause the shedding of a manly (and womanly) tear or two among America's physicists. But physics belongs to no one country. That said, you can bet the lads and lasses at Fermilab will be happy to grab any credit they can for helping dethrone relativity. For in their heart of hearts, even the sceptics who say they think the result from OPERA must be a mistake hope that it is not.

A new world, perhaps? Perhaps, a better one?

On the Arm of God, in the Arms of Love

2011-10-12T12:46:00.001-04:00

Today, somehow, my heart returns to this poem offered us by the 14th-century Sufi poet Hafiz. When in a certain place with the ways of love and your relationship with God, it speaks to us as few other collections of human words can. It captures so poignantly the experience and longing for love and for God, love that cannot be found "where the Beautiful Bird does not drink," but only in a deeper, more trusting relationship with God.

From a deeper place than most of us are willing to travel, this longing, this excited elevation of one's spirit and hope is shared by Hafiz with such authenticity and authority that it blows the doors off our tepid cautions and protected places, and invites us to throw ourselves into the waiting and trusted arms of love and God.

A Tethered Falcon*

My heart sits on the Arm of God
Like a tethered falcon
Suddenly unhooded.

I am now blessedly crazed
Because my Master's Astounding Effulgence
Is in constant view.

My piercing eyes,
Which have searched every world
For Tenderness and Love,
Now lock on the Royal Target--
The Wild Holy One
Whose Beauty Illuminates Existence.

My soul endures a magnificent longing.

I am a tethered falcon
With great wings and sharp talons poised,
Every sinew taught, like a sacred bow,
Quivering at the edge of my self
And Eternal Freedom,

Though still held in check
By a miraculous
Divine Golden Cord.

Beloved,
I am waiting for you to free me
Into Your Mind
And Infinite Being.
I am pleading in absolute helplessness
To hear, finally, your Words of Grace:
Fly! Fly into Me!

Who can understand
Your sublime Nearness and Separation?

*Renderings in English of Hafiz' poetry by Daniel Ladinsky, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy (1996, 2006).

On Steve Jobs' Passing: His 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

2011-10-06T12:00:00.003-04:00


Steve Jobs has passed from us. The loss is both personal and national. He was so personally hands on and just chatting with us, looking and feeling for all the world like our best friend, and all the while changing that world. The biographies and obituaries are front page everywhere--as they should be. Life exacts its compromises from us all--and often that is the better part of wisdom. But looking back over 65 years, it seems to me the closer you can hold to Jobs' advice--at least at the major crossroads--the more often you will choose risk, renewal and joy rather than compromise, and be happier for it. To view and listen, click on the highlighted title below: Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself -- at the university's 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005. Stanford University channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/stanford
© 2011 YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066

No, No; You're Thinking of Jesus

2011-10-04T17:14:00.002-04:00

Love this sign. Just love it.

The Bolshoi Simulations- Modelling the Virtual Universe

2011-10-02T17:25:00.002-04:00

You may have heard of the mysterious "dark matter" and "dark energy" of the cosmos. Or maybe not--after all, it's part of the arcane lexicon of the matter and forces that compose and animate the cosmos--galactic and inter-galactic space--and drive the what, how and why questions that attend them. Complicated stuff, for most of us.

So, you can be excused if you weren't aware that matter as we commonly think of it--the matter we can see--makes up only about 17% of all matter, and only 4% of the universe's mass-energy density. The rest appears to be this dark matter and dark energy--the things now being studied to help more accurately understand and model the appearance, forces, relationships and expansion of the universe. These are the kinds of things being studied by friend and MIT professor of physics emeritus Kerson Huang, among many others.

But how do you study such things? One of the most recent and promising efforts has been the Bolshoi simulations. A recent summary article on msnbc.com introduces us to it and provides links to related sites. From the article:

If you're going to create a virtual universe, you're going to need a big computer — like the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. Researchers have just made the most accurate computer simulation showing the evolution of large-scale structure in the universe, known as the Bolshoi simulation, available to astrophysicists around the world.

Bolshoi (which takes its name from the Russian word for "grand" or "big") took in data from ground-based and space-based instruments, including the best readings of the big bang's afterglow from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP. Then it used 6 million CPU hours on Pleiades, ranked as the world's seventh-fastest supercomputer, to crunch all that data into a virtual representation of the universe evolving over time. The time-lapse simulation occupies nearly 90 trillion bytes of memory, or the equivalent of nearly 10,000 typical movie DVDs.

The first two papers in a series describing the simulation have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. "A lot more papers are on the way," one of the co-authors, physicist Joel Primack, said in a news release from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

So far, the simulation has been in close agreement with what astronomers are seeing in the actual universe. "In one sense, you might think the initial results are a little boring, because they basically show that our standard cosmological model works," Primack said. "What's exciting is that we now have this highly accurate simulation that will provide the basis for lots of important new studies in the months and years to come."

---"How to Build a Virtual Universe," by Alan Boyle, Cosmic Log, msnbc.com (9.30.11)

And if you think that's interesting, click on the highlighted link immediately above or at the end of this post for a look at a short Bolshoi animation visualizing a region centered on the dark matter halo of a very large cluster of galaxies. Hey, click on it; it's worth the trip!

Okay, very cool, but how does the dark matter, dark energy, and all that play into this? And what do we expect the Bolshoi simulation to help us understand better?

The standard model suggests that only 4 percent of the universe's mass-energy content consists of ordinary matter — the kind that we can see. Another 22 percent is cold dark matter, which can be detected only by its gravitational influence. Physicists surmise that dark matter is made up of exotic particles that interact only weakly with ordinary matter, but they haven't yet identified any of those particles. It's the weightiness of dark matter that is thought to shape galaxy clusters into a "cosmic web," which you can easily see forming in the animation above. (Remember to go full-screen and HD for optimal effect, or check out this music-enhanced Vimeo version.)

The biggest constituent of the cosmos, at least based on current models, is dark energy: This mysterious energy, which is thought to account for around 74 percent of cosmic density, serves to counteract the force of gravity and cause the accelerating expansion of the universe. Its existence is required to reconcile cosmological theories with WMAP's observations as well as observations of distant supernovae — but no one has figured out what it is, which has led some astronomers to look for alternative theories.

Primack, who directs the University of California High-Performance Astrocomputing Center, said a close analysis of the Bolshoi simulation could help point the way to better explanations for the dark-energy effect. "These huge cosmological simulations are essential for interpreting the results of ongoing astronomical observations and for planning the new large surveys of the universe that are expected to help determine the nature of the mysterious dark energy," he said.

The first paper based on Bolshoi analysis focuses on the role of dark-matter halos in the universe's development, while the second paper looks at Bolshoi's predictions for the abundance and properties of galaxies. The researchers have found that the simulation correctly predicts the number of galaxies as bright as our own Milky Way that have satellite galaxies as bright as the Milky Way's major satellite galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg: So far, less than 1 percent of the Bolshoi project's output has been released, Primack said. The Bolshoi simulation computes the evolution of a cubic volume measuring about a billion light-years on a side, following the interactions of 8.6 billion particles of dark matter. A variant of the simulation, called BigBolshoi or MultiDark, was run with the same number of particles in a volume 64 times larger. Another variant called MiniBolshoi is currently being run on Pleiades. It focuses on a smaller portion of the universe with higher resolution.

This all sounds pretty deep, but fortunately, the Bolshoi team has produced plenty of beautiful videos and illustrations that will delight even those who can't tell a baryon from a meson. For still more background about Bolshoi, check out the news releases from New Mexico State University, Ames Research Center and the High-Performance Astrocomputing Center.

If you have interest in reading the whole article or visiting other cited articles, you can click on the title link highlighted, above, or this one to the article:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/30/8065274-how-to-build-a-virtual-cosmos

On My Heart Today, These Poems

2011-09-28T15:28:00.005-04:00

These particular poems of the 14th-century Sufi poet, Hafiz, are on my heart and mind today. At one time or another, for one reason or another, I have claimed them on this space before. Today I claim them anew, just because it's today and today has its reasons, because they are still there and a gift to me.

The Heart is Right*

The heart is right

To cry

Even when the smallest drop of light,

Of love,

Is taken away.

Perhaps you may kick, moan, scream

In a dignified

Silence.

But you are so right

To do so in any fashion

Until God returns

To you.

My Sweet, Crushed Angel**

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One.

You have waltzed with great style,
My sweet, crushed angel,
To have ever neared God's Heart at all.

Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow,
And even His best musicians are not always easy
To hear.

So what if the music has stopped for awhile.

So what
If the price of admission to the Divine
Is out of reach tonight.

So what, my dear,
If you do not have the ante to gamble for Real Love.

The mind and the body are famous
For holding the heart ransom,
But Hafiz knows the Beloved's eternal habits.

Have patience,

For He will not be able to resist your longing
For long.

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to kiss the Beautiful One.

You have actually waltzed with tremendous style,
O my sweet,
O my sweet, crushed angel.

Brave in That Holy War*

You have done well

In the contest of madness.

You were brave in that holy war.

You have all the honorable wounds

of one who has tried to find love

Where the Beautiful Bird does not drink...

Wayfarer,

Why not rest your tired body?

Lean back and close your eyes.

Come morning

I will kneel by your side and feed you.

I will so gently

Spread open your mouth

And let you taste something of the

Sacred mind and life.

Surely

there is something wrong

With your ideas of

God

If you think

If you think our beloved would not be so

Tender.

Just You and Me*

The closer

I get to You, Beloved,

The more I can see

It is just You and me alone

In this

World.

I hear

A knock at my door,

Who else could it be,

So I rush without brushing

My hair.

For too many nights

I have begged for Your

Return.

And what

Is the use of vanity

At this late hour, at this divine season,

That has now come to my folded

Knees.

If your love letters are true dear God,

I will surrender myself to

Who you keep saying

I am.

*from The Gift (1999), poetry ascribed to Hafiz, as freely interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky.

**from I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy (1996, 2006), poetry ascribed to Hafiz, as freely interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky.

It's Time for a Palestinian State

2011-09-27T15:54:00.002-04:00

I was surprise how, without a moments thought, without analyzing it, I reflexively and without qualification judged President Obama wrong. After all, I have been a strong supporter of Obama on most issues. There have been notable exceptions, to be sure, but I've found him on the right side of most issues from my perspective. More, I've been an unwavering defender of Israel's right to exist as a state--and an advocate of American support for her security in an area and among nations often hostile to that notion and Israel's interests.

But when President Obama opposed Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' application to the U.N. for recognition as a state, and threatened to veto it, something in side me cried, "Foul!" and "Wrong!" Obama's hand-waving about the need for more negotiations, and his missing-the-point statements that declaring Palestine a state doesn't make it so, that it would do more harm than good, that more patience was needed, and blah, blah, blah, is part misguided Middle East geopolitics, part American electoral politics, part dissembling and part legerdemain, but all-in-all is just wrong. A U.N. vote for Palestinian statehood, in the General Assembly if not the Security Council, would at least provide an observer's seat at the U.N. table and a lot more incentive for Netanyahu and Israel to get serious and committed to agreement on the necessary boundaries and conditions for statehood that all understand full well.

But again, I turn to the pages of The Economist for a well-reasoned and clear-eyed analysis of why the U.N should now vote to accept Palestine's application for statehood--and why President Obama should support it. From The Economist:

THE Palestinians are edging closer to getting a recognised state, at least on paper. Their application to the UN's Security Council will be rebuffed by an American veto. But if they then go to the UN General Assembly, which seems likely sooner or later, the Palestinians will win an overwhelming majority. The "observer" status that would be given to them would be similar to that of the Vatican—a position short of full membership, which can be conferred only by the Security Council. It would not make an immediate difference on the ground but would help the Palestinians on their way to the real thing by giving them a diplomatic fillip. It should be encouraged, for reasons of both principle and practice.

The principle is simple: the Palestinians deserve a state, just as the Israelis do. The United States, the European Union and the Israeli government have all endorsed a two-state solution. There is broad agreement that the boundary should be based on the pre-1967 one, with land swaps allowing Israel to keep its biggest settlements close to the line, in return for the Palestinians gaining land elsewhere; Jerusalem should be shared; and the Palestinians should give up their claimed right of return to Israel proper. That still leaves much room for negotiation. But provided that the Palestinian request at the UN, still unfiled as The Economist went to press, does not undermine the basic terms of this deal, it is hard to see why any peacemaker, including America's Barack Obama, should oppose a proposal that nudges Palestine closer to real statehood (see article).

Israel's government, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, and his backers abroad, especially in the United States Congress, insist that Palestinian statehood is premature: instead of going to the UN, the Palestinians should return to the negotiating table without tiresome preconditions, such as demanding a freeze on the building of Jewish settlements. Mr Obama, keen to reassert his pro-Israel credentials before next year's election, seems likely to oppose even the Vatican option.

This is barmy. The argument that the Palestinians must resume negotiations before getting statehood is specious. Why on earth should a change in status at the UN stop people talking? Besides, the negotiations have been going nowhere—and Mr Netanyahu has been the biggest stumbling-block. Since his grudging acceptance two years ago of the two-state principle, Israel's prime minister has shown no eagerness or flexibility in his purported pursuit of a deal. Settlement-building on the West Bank, which he has refused to stop (barring a partial nine-month freeze), is no mere side issue; the Palestinians accurately liken it to the spectacle of two people negotiating over how to share a pizza while one of them continues to eat it. (Unlike the UN status, this does change things on the ground.) In his speech to Congress in May Mr Netanyahu refused to accept that Jerusalem, whose eastern Arab-populated part the Palestinians see as their capital, should be shared. He even inveighed against the notion that negotiations over the boundary should be on the basis of the pre-1967 line with swaps.

[...]

A more secure Israel amid the Arab spring

In truth, Israel will be safer when a proper Palestinian state has been consolidated. That is a point that too few Israelis and their American supporters appreciate. This newspaper has argued steadfastly for the right of Israel to exist. We abhor the creeping delegitimisation and demonisation of Israel. But we also believe that the Palestinians deserve a state of their own. These two beliefs are entirely compatible. By his intransigence Mr Netanyahu has played into the hands of those who would destroy Israel. In blocking any Palestinian aspirations at the UN, America is helping extremists on both sides.

---"Yes to Palestinian Statehood: Efforts to stop the Palestinians from winning statehood at the UN are misguided and self defeating," The Economist, Leaders section (9.24.11)

These negotiations have been going on for 20 years or more, and the extreme political elements of both Israel and Palestine have toiled to deny their nominal leaders any real latitude for movement toward accepting the necessary contours and conditions of peaceful agreement to a Palestinian state. Now a Palestinian leader stands ready to do the hard work to make this happen. Most Palestinians want it. Most Israelis want it. Most Europeans, Americans, and everyone else wants it. And they all have wanted it for a long time. The only barrier is now Netanyahu and his backers in Israel and the U.S. And there appears no reason to expect that is going to change. Why wouldn't Mr. Abbas take the initiative to the U.N.? Why wouldn't that be the bold and smart thing to do--if you want to shake up the process, and create some incentives for Israel and the U.S. to get real about this, that is?

(I am so awfully disappointed in Obama's position on this matter. How can he continue to get things so wrong in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and now regarding a Palestinian state? How?)

Link to article:

http://www.economist.com/node/21530117

The Economist: Tax Reform to Increase Tax Revenues

2011-09-26T16:00:00.001-04:00

This week The Economist has offered something for us to think respectfully about: raising tax revenue through tax reform rather relying principally on increased rates on high-income individuals. (And they do allow that Obama's proposal for a very modest increase in the highest bracket is not a significant problem.) Their approach to tax reform is not at all a new idea--but it is an important one. And unsurprisingly--to some of us, at least--it is very much a part of President Obama's thinking as well. The only ones against it appear to be the Tea Party-led Republican Party.

As a former corporate tax executive, I and others have advocated something like this approach for decades. But there was no sufficient constituency or crisis to inspire or force reform. Today the situation is quite different, of course. But what is most interesting about this proposal is that it now comes from The Economist, among the most principled, socially-accountable, and credible conservative and free-market voices. It is a solution that learned people of a responsible disposition support across the spectrum of political opinion. And while the Tea Party folks appear to listen to no one--knowledgeable, responsible, credible, respected or not--perhaps some winning coalition of responsible Democratic and Moderate Republican statesmen might find common cause around such a compellingly fair and reasonable solution.

From the Economist:

[...] The question of whether to tax the wealthy more depends on political judgments about the right size of the state and the appropriate role for redistribution. The maths says deficits could technically be tamed by spending cuts alone—as Mr Obama's Republican opponents advocate. Class warfare may be a loaded term, but it captures a fundamental debate in Western societies: who should suffer for righting public finances?

Leviathan should bear the brunt

[...] In general, this newspaper's instincts lie with small government and against ever higher taxation to pay for an unsustainable welfare state. We reject the notion, implicit in much of today's debate, that higher tax rates on the wealthy are justified because of the finance industry's role in the crunch: retribution is a poor rationale for taxation. Nor is the current pattern of contribution to the public purse obviously "unfair": the richest 1% of Americans pay more than a quarter of all federal taxes (and fully 40% of income taxes), while taking less than 20% of pre-tax income. And knee-jerk rich-bashing, like Labour's tax hike, seldom makes for good policy. High marginal tax rates discourage entrepreneurship, and no matter how much Mr Obama mentions "millionaires and billionaires", higher taxes on them alone cannot close America's deficit.

[...] But there are three good reasons why the wealthy should pay more tax—though not, by and large, in the ways that the rich world's governments currently propose.

First, the West's deficits should not be closed by spending cuts alone. Public spending should certainly take the brunt: there is plenty of scope to slim inefficient Leviathan, and studies of past deficit-cutting programmes suggest they work best when cuts predominate. Britain's four-to-one ratio is about right. But, as that ratio implies, experience also argues that higher taxes should be part of the mix. In America the tax take is historically low after years of rate reductions. There, and elsewhere, tax rises need to bear some of the burden.

Second, there is a political argument for raising this new revenue from the rich. Spending cuts fall disproportionately on the less well-off; and, even before the crunch, median incomes were stagnating. Meanwhile, globalisation has been rewarding winners ever more generously. Voters' support for ongoing austerity depends on a disproportionate share of any new revenue coming from the wealthy.

But how? So far most governments have focused on raising marginal income-tax rates, something most rich people respond to quickly (see article). Capitalists shift their income into less-taxed forms, such as capital gains; they move; they work less; they take fewer entrepreneurial risks. Even if it is hard to be sure how big these effects are, the size of the very top level seems to matter, so Britain's 50% rate is more dangerous than Mr Obama's proposal to raise America's top federal income-tax rate from 35% to 39.6%. Somebody earning $1m pays more tax in London than any other financial capital—madness for a place with so many mobile rich people. The excuse that it was worse in the 1970s hardly inspires confidence.

Simpler, bolder, better

Given the rich world's need for faster growth, governments should be wary of sharp tax increases—especially since they are unnecessary. Indeed, the third argument for raising more money from the rich is that it can be done not by increasing marginal tax rates, but by making the tax code more efficient.

The scope for doing so is most obvious in America, which relies far more than other countries on income taxes and has a mass of deductions on everything from interest payments on mortgages to employer-provided health care, so taxes are levied on a very narrow base. Getting rid of the deductions would simplify the code and raise as much as $1 trillion a year. Since the main beneficiaries of the deductions are the wealthy, richer folk would pay most of that. And since marginal rates would be untouched (or reduced), such a reform would do less to discourage them from creating wealth.

In Europe, where tax systems are more efficient, one option would be to shift more of the burden from income to property, which would collect more from the rich but have less impact on their willingness to take risks. The "mansion tax" proposed by Britain's Liberal Democrats would thus do less damage than the 50% rate. And on both sides of the Atlantic there is room to narrow the gap between tax rates on salaries and bonuses and those on dividends and capital gains. That gap explains why Mr Buffett, most of whose income comes from capital gains and dividends, has a lower average tax rate than his secretary. It is also the one hedge funders and private-equity people have exploited to keep the billions they rake in.

There is a basic bargain to be had. Imagine a tax system which made the top rates on wages and capital more equal, and which eliminated virtually all deductions. To avoid taxing investments twice, such a system would get rid of corporate taxes. It would also allow for a much lower top rate of income tax. The result? A larger overall tax take from the rich, without hurting the dynamism of the economy. Now that would be worth blowing your horn about.

--"Taxation and class war: Hunting the rich," The Economist, Leaders section (9.24.11)

Link to article:

http://www.economist.com/node/21530104?fsrc=nlw|edh|09-22-11|editors_highlights

Some Aspects of Spiritual "Contemplation"

2011-09-26T12:57:00.004-04:00

I have a few things I'd like to share today, especially with those who may understand the context, and perhaps even with some who do not. But if there is to be any hope of understanding that context, I must first introduce and explain a few things about the Christian spiritual notion of "contemplation." And I choose to let Thomas Merton, a 20th-century Cistercian (Trappist) monk, introduce it for me.

Thomas Merton:

[...] And so contemplation seems to supersede and to discard every other form of intuition and experience--whether in art, in philosophy, in theology, in liturgy or in ordinary levels of love and belief. This rejection is of course only apparent. Contemplation is and must be compatible with all these things, for it is their highest fulfillment. But in the actual experience of contemplation all other experiences are momentarily lost. They "die" to be born again on a higher level of life.

--New Seeds of Contemplation, Ch. 1, by Thomas Merton (1961)

As you may have gathered, if you didn't already know, the term "contemplation" as used in the lexicon of Christian monastics and contemplatives does not share the same meanings that attach to it in common English usage. It is something of an arcane term of art, a term refashioned and used to suit the need because there is no other word that comes close to capturing the intended meaning--the range and depth of that meaning--implied by the referenced spiritual path and experience. Merton continues in Ch. 1:

In other words, then, a contemplation reaches out to the knowledge and even to the experience of the transcendent and inexpressible God. It knows God by seeming to touch Him. Or rather it knows Him as if it had been invisibly touched by Him....Touched by Him Who has no hands, but Who is pure Reality and the source of all that is real. A vivid awareness of our contingent reality as received, as a present from God, as a free gift of love. This is the existential contact of which we speak when we use the metaphor of being "touched by God."

This contemplation is something some people feel a spiritual intuition about and inclination toward; it is spiritually, possibly even genetically, visited upon them. And it is not for everyone; it just does not resonate with most. To read books on it to try to learn how to do it, how to achieve it, as though it were the next ambitious step on some step-ladder of spiritual advancement, is to misunderstand it completely. Again from Ch.1, Thomas Merton:

Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him Who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our being: for we ourselves are words of His. But we are words that are meant to respond to Him, to echo Him, and even in some way contain Him and signify Him. Contemplation is this echo....It is as if in creating us God asked a question, and in awakening us to contemplation He answered the question, so that the contemplative is at the same time, question and answer.

[...] Hence contemplation is more than a consideration of abstract truths about God, more even than affective meditation on the things we believe. It is awakening, enlightenment and the amazing intuitive grasp by which love gains certitude of God's creative and dynamic intervention in our daily life. Hence contemplation does not simply "find" a clear idea of God and confine Him there as a prisoner to Whom it can always return. On the contrary, contemplation is carried away by Him into His own realm, His own mystery and His own freedom. It is a pure and virginal knowledge, poor in concepts, poorer still in reasoning, but able, by its very poverty and purity, to follow the Word "wherever He may go."

But if you would know more, if you would try to understand this contemplative experience, there are books you could consult. Reading the accounts of the contemplative writers across the millennia can be of great benefit to those called to it and experiencing it. And there are trained and experienced spiritual directors who can also help you better make sense of it all.

For me, there have been several such mentors from earlier times, but most important and helpful have been the 16th-century Collected Works of St. John of the Cross (ICS Publications, 1991), and the more recent 20th-century writings of Thomas Merton, a Cistercian monk and author of many books, including New Seeds of Contemplation (New Directions Books, 1961, 2007) and Contemplative Prayer (Bantam Doubleday, 1996). But to those without a felt inspiration or inclination, the reading can be dull, recondite and confusing. You have to need to read it. (Further reflections on this can be found in my 2007 post "Guides, Past & Present" on my What God? site.)

Now having come all that way (but really having barely scratched the surface of the topic), we may attempt to move on to two aspects of the contemplative journey and understandings that have been recurrent themes, resonating again and again with me. The first has to do with having one's spirituality and faith compromised and misguided by the co-optation of demagogues of cultural brittleness, narrowness, biases, and bigotry, whether based on nationalism, race, or distorted religious or sectarian motivations. After reciting a long list of things and experiences that contemplation is not, Merton also offers this:

There are many other escapes from the empirical, external self, which might seem to be, but are not, contemplation. For instance, the experience of being seized and taken out of oneself by collective enthusiasm in a totalitarian parade: the self-righteous upsurge of party loyalty that blots out conscience and absolves every criminal tendency in the name of Class, Nation, Party, Race or Sect. The danger and the attraction of these false mystiques of Nation and of Class is precisely that they seduce and pretend to satisfy those who are no longer aware of any deep or genuine spiritual need. The false mysticism of the Mass Society captivates men who are so alienated from themselves and from God that they are no longer capable of genuine spiritual experience.

Yet it is precisely these ersatz forms of enthusiasm that are "opium" for the people, deadening their awareness of their deepest and most personal needs, alienating them from their true selves, putting conscience and personality to sleep and turning free, reasonable men into passive instruments of the power politician.

--New Seeds of Contemplation, Ch. 2, by Thomas Merton (1961)

The second has to do with the mistaken notion that in spiritual contemplation there is some form of escape from conflict, ambiguity, despairing times, and challenges to identity and understandings, both existential and spiritual. Not true. More from Ch. 2, Thomas Merton:

Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." [This important but discomfiting experience can last for years and is addressed more comprehensively, more helpfully perhaps, in the expositive writings on the Dark Night by St. John of the Cross.]

This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance or conventional opinion. This false "faith" which is often what we live by and which we even come to confuse with our "religion" is subjected to inexorable questioning. This torment is a kind of trial by fire in which we are compelled, by the very light of invisible truth which has reached us on the dark ray of contemplation, to examine, to doubt and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas.

Hence it is clear that genuine contemplation is incompatible with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions. It is not mere passive acquiescence in the status quo, as some would like to believe--for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia. Contemplation is no pain-killer. What a holocaust takes place in this steady burning to ashes of old worn-out words, clichés, slogans, rationalizations!

The worst of it is that even apparently holy conceptions are consumed along with all the rest. It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing may occupy the place that God has commanded to be left empty: the center, the existential altar which simply "is."

In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that he no longer knows what God is. He may or may not mercifully realize that, after all, this is a great gain, because "God is not a what," not a "thing." That is precisely one of the essential characteristics of contemplative experience. It sees that there is no "what" that can be called God. There is "no such thing" as God because God is neither a "what" nor a "thing" but a pure "Who." He is the "Thou" before whom our inmost "I" springs into awareness. He is the I am before whom with our own most personal and inalienable voice we echo "I am."

That was Thomas Merton's experience and understanding, a more-or-less consistent one among many contemplatives. But yours or mine may not be entirely the same. And it is allowed, of course. We are each called to our unique path to walk, our own dealt cards to understand and play. Thomas Merton followed the direction of his contemplation beyond the history and life of his Christian monastic and contemplative experience to find what common ground and experience there was with the contemplative traditions of other faiths, spiritualities and philosophies.

In that process, he found both understanding and respect for them. In addition to Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian contemplatives or mystics, he studied, and where possible, spent extensive time with and wrote about the Chan/Zen Buddhist masters, the Taoist masters (Chuang Ze), and at the end of his life, the Sufi masters. He came to understand that God can be found anywhere in creation and among all people, but especially among those who in so many different but related ways seek Him and, yes, in one way or another, find and experience Him.

Harry Kraemer's Mission

2011-09-22T13:46:00.007-04:00

Harry Kraemer's on a mission. It's a good and important mission. He wants to raise the bar on the values and processes by which CEOs, managers and professionals lead and manage America's businesses and organizations. He knows that is the only way to make them more productive, more innovative, more accountable, and better stewards of America's human resources and intellectual capital.

Harry has recently written a new book on the subject, From Values to Action: The Four Principles of Values-Based Leadership, and he is on the road whenever his busy schedule allows speaking to companies and groups to share the insights of his career-long experience from financial professional to CEO, and beyond. How has the book been received? It has received high praise, indeed, from CEOs and executives of some of America's largest and best companies, and from academics alike--including from one of the very best-led companies in America:

"In the post-crisis world, values and culture are paramount to corporate leadership. Kraemer's book provides leaders with the tools to develop their talent and fit inside a social context. His focus on self-reflection, balance, true self-confidence, and genuine humility ring true to me and are practiced inside GE. This is a new world. Values count. Get with it."

--Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO, General Electric Company

Who is Harry Kraemer? He is an old and respected friend, and former colleague at what was then Baxter Travenol. He is now the former chairman and CEO of that global healthcare products giant, now Baxter International, and an executive partner with Madison Dearborn Partners, one of the largest private equity firms in the U.S., where he consults with CEOs and other senior executives of companies in MDP's portfolio. He is also a faculty member at Northwestern's Kellogg School MBA program, and a Vice Chairman of the Conference Board, a global, independent business membership and research association that provides the world's leading organizations with the practical knowledge they need to improve their performance and better serve society.

Why did I write this and send it to you? Because Harry Kraemer is the real deal. I like him, respect him, and really like what he is doing. He's been there and done that--and he's still doing it. And because I think his book should be read by anyone working in organizations or leading them.

So what are those four essential principles?

Self-Reflection: The ability to reflect and identify what you stand for, what your values are, and what matters most.

Balance: The ability to see situations from multiple perspectives, including differing viewpoints, to gain a holistic understanding.

True Self-Confidence: More than mastery of certain skills, true self-confidence enables you to accept yourself as you are, recognizing your strengths and your weaknesses, and focusing on continuous improvement.

Genuine Humility: The ability never to forget who you are, to appreciate the value of each person in the organization, and to treat everyone respectfully.

Harry has been living and growing in these principles since the years we worked together at Baxter in the '80s. That's the Harry I remember. Sometime in 1999, when I was working at Textron, I picked up my latest edition of Fortune Magazine, and who was staring back at me from the cover but the new CEO of Baxter International, Harry Kraemer. And the story line was about how he was bringing his evolving convictions about higher value-based leadership to his role as CEO at Baxter. He believed strongly in those values then, he led by them as a CEO, and he writes, teaches, speaks, and consults about them now.

The principles appear simple, but as he says, implementing them in organizations can be very difficult. His many real-life examples help ground it, make it real, and provide assurance that these principles are not only workable, they are essential to a high-values, high-performance culture. And for those whose companies or organizations could benefit from learning more about Harry's message and experience, they can contact him through any of his organizational affiliations' links I've highlighted above, or by contacting me. I'd be pleased to put you in touch.

Some closing comments from Harry's book:

Values-based leadership is a life-long journey no matter how much a person achieves. This point was brought home in a discussion I had a few years ago with Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric. Jeff and I have been friends for many years, going back to the days when I was CEO of Baxter and he was running GE Medical, based in Milwaukee. When I reached out to Jeff at the request of the Kellogg School dean to see if he would be the 2008 commencement speaker, he graciously agreed.

As we had lunch together before the commencement, I asked him what he saw as the biggest challenge in his role as CEO of GE. "Harry, I am trying to figure out how I can be a better leader for my GE team around the world," he told me.

Here was a talented executive who was running a company that at the time generated more than $180 billion in revenues and employed more than 300,000 people, yet he was striving to become an even better leader! Jeff was correct, of course. Values-based leadership requires lifelong learning and a continuous process of self-reflection to discover those areas in which we need to grow and develop. We are always traveling toward a forward-moving goal; we never arrive.

Values-based leadership doesn't happen automatically, and it isn't always easy. You will encounter distractions and pressures that can derail the best of intentions. When that happens, return to the four principles and take a moment to reflect. [They will take you] back to the heart of who you are as a person and as a leader.

Obama Sets Deficit-Reduction Positions for 2012, Including $1.5 Trillion in New Taxes From Well-Off & Tax Loopholes. About Time.

2011-09-20T15:15:00.003-04:00

It's about time someone in Washington stood up and responsibly addressed the issues. Better still that it's the president actually looking and acting presidential. Of course, politics is driving the timing of this initiative, as it too often does. But we are approaching the ultimate political season: a presidential election year. And a lot is at stake. So there is little chance this plan will pass the Republican-led House. But it does set out clearly what Obama and the Democrats stand for and will campaign for in 2012--and what and who they will be campaigning against.

From a report from the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON — In a blunt rejoinder to congressional Republicans, President Barack Obama called for $1.5 trillion in new taxes Monday, part of a total 10-year deficit reduction package totaling more than $3 trillion. He vowed to veto any deficit reduction package that cuts benefits to Medicare recipients but does not raise taxes on the wealthy and big corporations. "We can't just cut our way out of this hole," the president said.

The president's proposal would predominantly hit upper income taxpayers but would also reduce spending in mandatory benefit programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, by $580 billion. It also counts savings of $1 trillion over 10 years from the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The deficit reduction plan represents an economic bookend to the $447 billion in tax cuts and new public works spending that Obama has proposed as a short-term measure to stimulate the economy and create jobs. And it gives the president a voice in a process that will be dominated by a joint congressional committee charged with recommending deficit reductions of up to $1.5 trillion.

His plan served as a sharp counterpoint to Republican lawmakers, who have insisted that tax increases should play no part in taming the nation's escalating national debt. Obama's plan would end Bush-era tax cuts for top earners and would limit their deductions. "It's only right we ask everyone to pay their fair share," Obama said from the Rose Garden at the White House.

In issuing his threat to veto any Medicare benefits that aren't paired with tax increases on upper-income people, Obama said: "I will not support any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans." Obama added: "This is not class warfare. It's math." [Budget deficit-reduction math, that is.]

---"Obama announces debt plan built on rich," by Jim Kuhnhenn, Associated Press, on msnbc.com (9.19.11)

But President Obama really does believe in these principles and this type of plan--although he understands that broader, deeper social security and Medicare reform will be needed. It's the beginning of the campaign season, it's reaching out to his base, but it's also setting the opening position in any future negotiations.

It is what he has always generally stood for. But there can be little doubt he was rocked off balance by the irresponsible, win-at-any-cost (to the country) tactics of the Tea Party-driven Republican Party and its anachronistic agenda--an agenda that would return America to the economic, societal and governmental environment of the early 20th century. Much less taxation; much smaller government. (That is, less tax to starve and force smaller government, and fewer, smaller government support programs and services.) What could be simpler--or more irresponsible? These are the social support programs necessary for the education, health and productivity of Americans, and in turn for the strength and growth of the American economy.

And let's be honest, every authoritative economic analysis has concluded that the budget deficit cannot be closed by responsible budget cuts alone. Revenues must be raised, eventually on a broader base, but for now on those higher-income taxpayers. A 3% or so increase in taxes paid will not likely decrease their discretionary spending, and therefore will not create a drag on economic recovery. But, including those with incomes of $250K may be setting the bar too low, as Buffet himself pointed out, but somewhere between there and $1 million there is surely an appropriate number. And certainly, most corporate tax loopholes and subsidies are long past their useful and defensible lives, if they ever were defensible. There is a social equity principle to be honored here as well, as the president so eloquently embraces (below).

So what is the breakdown of President's plan? And what did President Obama actually have to say about it? More from the AP article:

Key features of Obama's plan:

—$1.5 trillion in new revenue, which would include about $800 billion realized over 10 years from repealing the Bush-era tax rates for couples making more than $250,000. It also would place limits on deductions for wealthy filers and end certain corporate loopholes and subsidies for oil and gas companies.

—$580 billion in cuts in mandatory benefit programs, including $248 billion in Medicare and $72 billion in Medicaid and other health programs. Other mandatory benefit programs include farm subsidies and federal employee benefits. Administration officials said 90 percent of the $248 billion in 10-year Medicare cuts would be squeezed from service providers. The plan does shift some additional costs to beneficiaries, but those changes would not start until 2017.

—$430 billion in savings from lower interest payment on the national debt.

— $1 trillion in savings from drawing down military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In presenting his plan (and platform), President Obama brought out his strongest in content, conviction, and tone. It sounded again like he was mounting the campaign platform, again laying down political stakes. The time for indulging major compromise efforts will now have to be set aside for a season--for the re-election campaign begins here and now. From the president's speech today.

[...] Everyone knows we have to do more, and a special joint committee of Congress is assigned to find more deficit reduction. So, today, I'm laying out a set of specific proposals to finish what we started this summer -- proposals that live up to the principles I've talked about from the beginning. It's a plan that reduces our debt by more than $4 trillion, and achieves these savings in a way that is fair -- by asking everybody to do their part so that no one has to bear too much of the burden on their own.

All told, this plan cuts $2 in spending for every dollar in new revenues. In addition to the $1 trillion in spending that we've already cut from the budget, our plan makes additional spending cuts that need to happen if we're to solve this problem. We reform agricultural subsidies -- subsidies that a lot of times pay large farms for crops that they don't grow. We make modest adjustments to federal retirement programs. We reduce by tens of billions of dollars the tax money that goes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We also ask the largest financial firms -- companies saved by tax dollars during the financial crisis -- to repay the American people for every dime that we spent. And we save an additional $1 trillion as we end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These savings are not only counted as part of our plan, but as part of the budget plan that nearly every Republican on the House voted for.

Finally, this plan includes structural reforms to reduce the cost of health care in programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Keep in mind we've already included a number of reforms in the health care law, which will go a long way towards controlling these costs. But we're going to have to do a little more. This plan reduces wasteful subsidies and erroneous payments while changing some incentives that often lead to excessive health care costs. It makes prescriptions more affordable through faster approval of generic drugs. We’ll work with governors to make Medicaid more efficient and more accountable. And we’ll change the way we pay for health care. Instead of just paying for procedures, providers will be paid more when they improve results -- and such steps will save money and improve care.

These changes are phased in slowly to strengthen Medicare and Medicaid over time. Because while we do need to reduce health care costs, I’m not going to allow that to be an excuse for turning Medicare into a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry. And I'm not going to stand for balancing the budget by denying or reducing health care for poor children or those with disabilities. So we will reform Medicare and Medicaid, but we will not abandon the fundamental commitment that this country has kept for generations.

And by the way, that includes our commitment to Social Security. I've said before, Social Security is not the primary cause of our deficits, but it does face long-term challenges as our country grows older. And both parties are going to need to work together on a separate track to strengthen Social Security for our children and our grandchildren.

[...] But all these reductions in spending, by themselves, will not solve our fiscal problems. We can’t just cut our way out of this hole. It’s going to take a balanced approach. If we’re going to make spending cuts -- many of which we wouldn’t make if we weren’t facing such large budget deficits -- then it’s only right that we ask everyone to pay their fair share.

You know, last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner gave a speech about the economy. And to his credit, he made the point that we can’t afford the kind of politics that says it’s “my way or the highway.” I was encouraged by that. Here’s the problem: In that same speech, he also came out against any plan to cut the deficit that includes any additional revenues whatsoever. He said -- I'm quoting him -- there is “only one option.” And that option and only option relies entirely on cuts. That means slashing education, surrendering the research necessary to keep America’s technological edge in the 21st century, and allowing our critical public assets like highways and bridges and airports to get worse. It would cripple our competiveness and our ability to win the jobs of the future. And it would also mean asking sacrifice of seniors and the middle class and the poor, while asking nothing of the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.

So the Speaker says we can’t have it "my way or the highway," and then basically says, my way -- or the highway. (Laughter.) That’s not smart. It’s not right. If we’re going to meet our responsibilities, we have to do it together.

[...] It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million.

Anybody who says we can't change the tax code to correct that, anyone who has signed some pledge to protect every single tax loophole so long as they live, they should be called out. They should have to defend that unfairness -- explain why somebody who's making $50 million a year in the financial markets should be paying 15 percent on their taxes, when a teacher making $50,000 a year is paying more than that -- paying a higher rate. They ought to have to answer for it. And if they're pledged to keep that kind of unfairness in place, they should remember, the last time I checked the only pledge that really matters is the pledge we take to uphold the Constitution.

Now, we're already hearing the usual defenders of these kinds of loopholes saying this is just "class warfare." I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare. I think it's just the right the thing to do. I believe the American middle class, who've been pressured relentlessly for decades, believe it's time that they were fought for as hard as the lobbyists and some lawmakers have fought to protect special treatment for billionaires and big corporations. [Amen.]

Nobody wants to punish success in America. What’s great about this country is our belief that anyone can make it and everybody should be able to try -– the idea that any one of us can open a business or have an idea and make us millionaires or billionaires. This is the land of opportunity. That’s great. All I’m saying is that those who have done well, including me, should pay our fair share in taxes to contribute to the nation that made our success possible. We shouldn’t get a better deal than ordinary families get. And I think most wealthy Americans would agree if they knew this would help us grow the economy and deal with the debt that threatens our future.

It comes down to this: We have to prioritize. Both parties agree that we need to reduce the deficit by the same amount -- by $4 trillion. So what choices are we going to make to reach that goal? Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare. We can’t afford to do both.

Either we gut education and medical research, or we’ve got to reform the tax code so that the most profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other companies don’t get. We can’t afford to do both.

This is not class warfare. It's math. (Laughter.) The money is going to have to come from someplace. And if we're not willing to ask those who've done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit and we are trying to reach that same target of $4 trillion, then the logic, the math says everybody else has to do a whole lot more: We've got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the poor. We've got to scale back on the investments that have always helped our economy grow. We've got to settle for second-rate roads and second-rate bridges and second-rate airports, and schools that are crumbling.

That's unacceptable to me. That's unacceptable to the American people. And it will not happen on my watch. I will not support -- I will not support -- any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans. And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share. We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable.

[Amen, and Amen.]

Another link to the AP article on msnbc.com:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44578820/ns/politics-white_house/

From W.S. Merwin to e.e. cummings

2011-09-19T11:55:00.006-04:00

The poetry of former poet laureate W.S Merwin brought to mind that of e.e. cummings, who blazed the path of verse that ignored conventions of form, capitalization and punctuation. But he offered the same brilliance, insightfulness, command of language, and range of moods and messages. Of course, e.e. cummings is already installed in the pantheon of great American poets, but W.S Merwin is destined for a place beside him.

Here's a few on love and lovers from a long-unread collection on my bookshelf, 95 Poems (1950-1958):

#91

unlove's the heavenless hell and homeless home

of knowledgeable shadows(quick to seize
each nothing which all soulless wraiths proclaim
substance;all heartless spectres,happiness)

lovers alone wear sunlight. The whole truth

not hid by matter;not by mind revealed
(more than all dying life,all living death)
and never which has been or will be told

sings only--and all lovers are the song.

Here(only here)is freedom:always here
no then of winter equals now of spring;
but april's day transcends november's year

(eternity being so sans until
twice i have lived forever in a smile)

#94

Being to timelessness as it's to time
love did no more begin than love will end;
where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim
love is the air the ocean and the land

(do lovers suffer?all divinities
proudly descending put on deathful flesh:
are lovers glad?only their smallest joy's
a universe emerging from a wish)

love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star

--do lovers love?why then to heaven with hell.
Whatever sages say and fools,all's well

#60

dive for dreams
or a slogan may topple you
(trees are their roots
and wind is wind)

trust your heart
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward)

honour the past
but welcome the future
(and dance your death
away at this wedding)

never mind a world
with its villains or heroes
(for god likes girls
and tomorrow and the earth)

More Merwin

2011-09-18T10:23:00.004-04:00

I've been too long from the thought-provoking poetry of W.S Merwin. As often unsettling as comforting or peaceful, it is nonetheless a welcome, special friend who feels he can share it all with you, as if you understood and cared. I'm pleased to be back in his company for a time.

Merwin is a different take on things, a different feel. Sometimes you don't want to go there, but others, nothing will do but his verse. But it has changed a lot as the seasons of his life have changed--not in his brilliance, introspection, command of language, or his uncapitalized, unpunctuated verse, but what life has offered him or placed on his heart at that time. He's also one of those poets that it helps to read his bio, the key influences and experiences of his life; it adds insight and depth of understanding, I think.

All three of these poems come from his Pulitzer Prize winning collection, The Shadow of Sirius (2009).

A Momentary Creed

I believe in the ordinary day

that is here at this moment and is me

I do not see it going its own way

but I never saw how it came to me

it extends beyond whatever I may

think I know and all that is real to me

it is the present that it bears away

where has it gone when it has gone from me

there is no place I know outside today

except for the unknown all around me

the only presence that appears to stay

everything that I call mine it lent me

even the way that I believe the day

for as long as it is here and is me

Heartland

From the beginning it belonged to distance

as the blue color of the mountains does

and though it existed on a map somewhere

and might be discovered by chance

and even be recognized perhaps

at an odd moment

it survived beyond

what could be known at the time

in its archaic

untaught language

that brings the bees to the rosemary

many years after it had been found

its true name remained

on the other side of knowledge

yet it was still there

like a season that has changed

but appears in the light

in the unspoken morning

One of the Butterflies

The trouble with pleasure is the timing

it can overtake me without warning
and be gone before I know it is here
it can stand facing me unrecognized
while I am remembering somewhere else
in another age or someone not seen
for years and never to be seen again
in this world and it seems that I cherish
only now a joy I was not aware of

when it was here although it remains
out of reach and will not be caught or named
or called back and if I could make it stay
as I want to it would turn to pain.

A GOP Defector: Cold & Clear, the State of the Grand Old Party

2011-09-14T15:28:00.007-04:00

Mike Lofgren recently retired. He was 28 years a respected Republican congressional staffer and operative. But the cognitive dissonance created by the stark differences in values, views and orientation of this new Republican Party could not be resolved short of breaking his career-long association with it. He had been a Republican of a more moderate stripe, of a time when collegiality, social consciousness, statesmanship and responsibility more marked his party. Many of us can relate, Mr. Lofgren.

The changes that weighed on him were as fundamental as the Republican Party's very identity, its goals, and its tactics. For most of us who have been at all observant, inquiring, and clear-minded, his revelations merely confirm what we knew or suspected strongly. But to hear it voiced so clearly, so coldly, and so authoritatively by a 28-year Republican congressional staffer should be a wake-up call to all. He should have everyone's attention.

But for those who had preferred to think there was a higher ground to be served by GOP thinking and actions, a greater good somehow being served, this is a cold, sobering slap across the face of their naiveté, a stake through the heart of that delusion. He should have their attention most of all.

It must be noted, however, that the tone and conviction of the piece, however well-written and occasionally qualified, surely reflect his disillusionment, anger and resentment. His writing and his points are cold and presented with sharp edges that fashion a damning picture. But the ring of truth nonetheless is clearly heard throughout. His cause for writing, and his defense for tone and conviction, is the truth as he understands it--and the importance of telling it.

Thanks to daughter, Laura, for forwarding the article, knowing how it would resonate with me, a former moderate Republican nine years removed. It resonates with many other former Republicans, too, and some who still call themselves Republicans.

I offer here some excerpts from the article, "Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult." It is a long article, even by my standards, and I have quoted extensively from it. For those who want to read the full article, I have provided a link at the end of this post. Now, Mr. Lofgren:

[...] But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.

[...] Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care. This fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in the Bob Dole era in terms of its orientation. For instance, Ezra Klein wrote of his puzzlement over the fact that while House Republicans essentially won the debt ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might still scuttle the deal. Of course they might - the attitude of many freshman Republicans to national default was "bring it on!"

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

[...] The only thing that can keep the Senate functioning is collegiality and good faith...Far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.

John P. Judis sums up the modern GOP this way:
"Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery."
A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

The media are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.'"

[...] And when a program is too popular to attack directly, like Medicare or Social Security, they prefer to undermine it by feigning an agonized concern about the deficit. That concern, as we shall see, is largely fictitious.

[...] Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting.

You can probably guess who those people are. Above all, anyone not likely to vote Republican. As Sarah Palin would imply, the people who are not Real Americans. Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims. Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base. This must account, at least to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of President Obama. I have joked in the past that the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama's policy of being black.[2] Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives. Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Fags. Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.

It is not clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary and paranoid claptrap. I would bet that most do not. But they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with a nod and a wink. During the disgraceful circus of the "birther" issue, Republican politicians subtly stoked the fires of paranoia by being suggestively equivocal - "I take the president at his word" - while never unambiguously slapping down the myth. John Huntsman was the first major GOP figure forthrightly to refute the birther calumny - albeit after release of the birth certificate.

I do not mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. While it surely exists, it is also a fact that Republicans think that no Democratic president could conceivably be legitimate... Had it been Hillary Clinton, rather than Barack Obama, who had been elected in 2008, I am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of the birther myths, conspiracy theories about Vince Foster's alleged murder.

[...] While Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.

How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what? - can anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare" won out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot, aren't you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is supposed to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep pounding on that theme?

[...] Thus far, I have concentrated on Republican tactics, rather than Republican beliefs, but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason, compromise and conciliation. Rather, this mindset seeks polarizing division (Karl Rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaign strategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.

As for what they really believe, the Republican Party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets I have laid out below. The rest of their platform one may safely dismiss as window dressing:

1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public. Whatever else President Obama has accomplished (and many of his purported accomplishments are highly suspect), his $4-trillion deficit reduction package did perform the useful service of smoking out Republican hypocrisy. The GOP refused, because it could not abide so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates of the Walton family or the Koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest rule that permits billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lower effective rate than cops or nurses. Republicans finally settled on a deal that had far less deficit reduction - and even less spending reduction! - than Obama's offer, because of their iron resolution to protect at all costs our society's overclass.

Republicans have attempted to camouflage their amorous solicitude for billionaires with a fog of misleading rhetoric. John Boehner is fond of saying, "we won't raise anyone's taxes," as if the take-home pay of an Olive Garden waitress were inextricably bound up with whether Warren Buffett pays his capital gains as ordinary income or at a lower rate. Another chestnut is that millionaires and billionaires are "job creators." US corporations have just had their most profitable quarters in history; Apple, for one, is sitting on $76 billion in cash, more than the GDP of most countries. So, where are the jobs?

Another smokescreen is the "small business" meme, since standing up for Mom's and Pop's corner store is politically more attractive than to be seen shilling for a megacorporation. Raising taxes on the wealthy will kill small business' ability to hire; that is the GOP dirge every time Bernie Sanders or some Democrat offers an amendment to increase taxes on incomes above $1 million. But the number of small businesses that have a net annual income over a million dollars is de minimis, if not by definition impossible (as they would no longer be small businesses).

[...] Likewise, Republicans have assiduously spread the myth that Americans are conspicuously overtaxed. But compared to other OECD countries, the effective rates of US taxation are among the lowest. In particular, they point to the top corporate income rate of 35 percent as being confiscatory Bolshevism. But again, the effective rate is much lower. Did GE pay 35 percent on 2010 profits of $14 billion? No, it paid zero.

When pressed, Republicans make up misleading statistics to "prove" that the America's fiscal burden is being borne by the rich and the rest of us are just freeloaders who don't appreciate that fact. "Half of Americans don't pay taxes" is a perennial meme. But what they leave out is that that statement refers to federal income taxes. There are millions of people who don't pay income taxes, but do contribute payroll taxes - among the most regressive forms of taxation. But according to GOP fiscal theology, payroll taxes don't count. Somehow, they have convinced themselves that since payroll taxes go into trust funds, they're not real taxes. Likewise, state and local sales taxes apparently don't count, although their effect on a poor person buying necessities like foodstuffs is far more regressive than on a millionaire.

All of these half truths and outright lies have seeped into popular culture via the corporate-owned business press. Just listen to CNBC for a few hours and you will hear most of them in one form or another. More important politically, Republicans' myths about taxation have been internalized by millions of economically downscale "values voters," who may have been attracted to the GOP for other reasons (which I will explain later), but who now accept this misinformation as dogma.

[...] 2. They worship at the altar of Mars. While the me-too Democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the Joneses with respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as John McCain or Lindsey Graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invading other countries. McCain wanted to mix it up with Russia - a nuclear-armed state - during the latter's conflict with Georgia in 2008 (remember? - "we are all Georgians now," a slogan that did not, fortunately, catch on), while Graham has been persistently agitating for attacks on Iran and intervention in Syria. And these are not fringe elements of the party; they are the leading "defense experts," who always get tapped for the Sunday talk shows. About a month before Republicans began holding a gun to the head of the credit markets to get trillions of dollars of cuts, these same Republicans passed a defense appropriations bill that increased spending by $17 billion over the prior year's defense appropriation. To borrow Chris Hedges' formulation, war is the force that gives meaning to their lives.

A cynic might conclude that this militaristic enthusiasm is no more complicated than the fact that Pentagon contractors spread a lot of bribery money around Capitol Hill. That is true, but there is more to it than that. It is not necessarily even the fact that members of Congress feel they are protecting constituents' jobs. The wildly uneven concentration of defense contracts and military bases nationally means that some areas, like Washington, DC, and San Diego, are heavily dependent on Department of Defense (DOD) spending. But there are many more areas of the country whose net balance is negative: the citizenry pays more in taxes to support the Pentagon than it receives back in local contracts...

Take away the cash nexus and there still remains a psychological predisposition toward war and militarism on the part of the GOP. This undoubtedly arises from a neurotic need to demonstrate toughness and dovetails perfectly with the belligerent tough-guy pose one constantly hears on right-wing talk radio. Militarism springs from the same psychological deficit that requires an endless series of enemies, both foreign and domestic.

[...] 3. Give me that old time religion. Pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. Beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson's strong showing in the 1988 Iowa Caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. The results are all around us: if the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy, the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or quaint beliefs. Also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information voter" - or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."

The Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious test for the presidency: major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to "share their feelings" about their "faith" in a revelatory speech; or, some televangelist like Rick Warren dragoons the candidates (as he did with Obama and McCain in 2008) to debate the finer points of Christology, with Warren himself, of course, as the arbiter. Politicized religion is also the sheet anchor of the culture wars. But how did the whole toxic stew of GOP beliefs - economic royalism, militarism and culture wars cum fundamentalism - come completely to displace an erstwhile civilized Eisenhower Republicanism?

It is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in America) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - at least in the minds of followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets.

---"Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult," by Mike Lofgren, Truthout|News Analysis (9.3.11)

And yes, there's more on this topic and others. But this provides a substantial sample of how he has come to see the GOP, where his Republican party has moved to over his 28 years as a GOP congressional staffer--and how far it has moved from his values, and the values of so many other moderate Republicans of an earlier time.

For those who would read more, click on the article title, above, or this link:

http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779

An Evolved Kindness Toward Strangers? Yes, Really.

2011-08-21T14:53:00.011-04:00

If you look around the world today, and around the U.S., too, there are a lot of reasons to question just how welcoming, trusting and generous different people are inclined to be toward strangers. That is especially true for certain foreigners or immigrants in their lands, even those of other races or religious persuasions. It has too often been anything but an attractive or uplifting affirmation of mutual acceptance, or even tolerance. Yet, there is now research evidence supporting evolution of just such a human impulse to be welcoming and kindly to strangers.

As reported in a recent edition of The Economist, there appears to be a human inclination to to be cooperative, even trusting and kind toward strangers--as long as there is no present threat, demagoguery or signal to warn or poison us against it. An evolutionary basis for trust among those in family or community relationship has long been accepted. But in the case of strangers, it has generally been thought some extraordinary situation or context was required to explain it. Now, this new study uses computer simulations meant to reflect real life interactions, consequences and probabilities, and runs 10,000 generational iterations to reach the conclusion that such openness and kindness to strangers is indeed alive and well, and very likely has evolutionary origins.

From The Economist:

THE extraordinary success of Homo sapiens is a result of four things: intelligence, language, an ability to manipulate objects dexterously in order to make tools, and co-operation... At the moment co-operation is the most fashionable subject of investigation. In particular, why are humans so willing to collaborate with unrelated strangers, even to the point of risking being cheated by people whose characters they cannot possibly know?

Evidence from economic games played in the laboratory for real money suggests humans are both trusting of those they have no reason to expect they will ever see again, and surprisingly unwilling to cheat them—and that these phenomena are deeply ingrained in the specie's psychology. Existing theories of the evolution of trust depend either on the participants being relatives (and thus sharing genes) or on their relationship being long-term, with each keeping count to make sure the overall benefits of collaboration exceed the costs. Neither applies in the case of passing strangers, and that has led to speculation that something extraordinary, such as a need for extreme collaboration prompted by the emergence of warfare that uses weapons, has happened in recent human evolution to promote the emergence of an instinct for unconditional generosity.

Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, two doyens of the field, who work at the University of California, Santa Barbara, do not agree. They see no need for extraordinary mechanisms and the latest study to come from their group (the actual work was done by Andrew Delton and Max Krasnow, who have just published the results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) suggests they are right. It also shows the value of applying common sense to psychological analyses—but then of backing that common sense with some solid mathematical modeling...

After a certain amount of time the agents reproduced in proportion to their accumulated fitness [success]; the old generation died, and the young took over. The process was then repeated for 10,000 generations (equivalent to about 200,000 years of human history, or the entire period for which Homo sapiens has existed), to see what level of collaboration would emerge.

The upshot was that, as the researchers predicted, generosity pays—or, rather, the cost of early selfishness is greater than the cost of trust... For most plausible sets of costs, benefits and chances of future encounters the simulation found that it pays to be trusting, even though you will sometimes be cheated. Which, if you think about it, makes perfect sense... No need, then, for special mechanisms to explain generosity. An open hand to the stranger makes evolutionary as well as moral sense.

---"Welcome, Stranger: The Evolution of Generosity," The Economist, Science and Technology section (7.30.11)

Of course, modeling assumptions, conditions and contingencies can always be questioned or challenged. The modeling in this research is no exception. Still, a rigorous and logical thought process appears to have gone into the modeling and the research. And, if we can remove ourselves from the hot-button issues and demagoguery, the fear and animosity so often incited in us toward different ethnicities and faith perspectives, foreign or immigrant populations, then the notion of welcoming and helping strangers really does resonate with us all, doesn't it?

Absent the sense of economic threat, or threat to our sense of identity and community, aren't we most likely to greet all people from a more welcoming and helpful stance? Isn't our unthreatened impulse to be kind, supportive and generous to others, whether or not they are strangers or in some way foreign to us? I think so, and I think that's true for most people I know.

Hospitality runs deep in us through our history in community and among communities. And it has been buttressed by the faith teachings and practice dictates of the Abrahamic faiths and other deistic and nondeistic spiritualities and philosophies, East and West--even if they are often and wisely suspended in cases of real or threatened harm. So it appears this evolved impulse derives from the multi-generational experience of peoples with their feet set firmly on the ground, even as it is reinforced from the founts of wisdom on high.

If only we could eliminate those features of group interaction (including the exploitative demagoguery) that threaten the well-being, identity or peace of others. Isn't trust, generosity and cooperation so much more appealing? Doesn't it feel so much more assuring and secure? But much of that, too, is a function of our evolved attentiveness to danger, our wariness of potential threats, our self-protectiveness. At the least then, we must more consistently identify, deny and ignore the exploitative populist demagogues and bigots, lay bare the avarice and ambitions for power that drive them, and the divisive designs and methods they shamelessly employ.

That is not to say there are not very good reasons to be fearful and self-protective among certain people or groups, in certain situations or venues. We all know that. But the insidious part, the exploitative part, is using our fears to generalize the real threats to larger groups and conditions that pose no real threat at all--and in the process, deny us access to so many good people who would also be good friends.

Link to the article at the cite above, or here:

http://www.economist.com/node/21524698

Just Who They Are

2011-08-19T20:13:00.009-04:00

Even those whose identity is shaped by the most common human experiences, forged in pain by the bluntest instruments of life--the common carpentry nails of society--fill places and serve purposes unique to them, important to others, and needed by society. They may be marked by humility--although not all are--but they live as well they can, give as much as they can, and care and love with all they are.

Sometimes they are called to serve God or man in ways they may not understand, that those served do not appreciate, and society rarely acknowledges. But they trust in their calling and their work. They must. They just are who they are, the best God has to offer. And I hope they can sense God smiling on them. GH

What The Hammer Holds

2011-08-19T16:27:00.023-04:00

The song "The Hammer Holds" always moves me. It's a favorite. The lyrics and vocal are by Bebo Norman. It begins as though a metaphor for a rather common, but challenging, existential and spiritual understanding. But it then turns to the most unique, inspiring, and instructive of stories in the end. And I don't think you have to be a Christian, a person of faith or spirituality, to appreciate the poetry, the beauty and inspiration of Norman's verse.

The Hammer Holds

A shapeless piece of steel, that's all I claim to be
This hammer pounds to give me form, this flame, it melts my dreams.
I glow with fire and fury, as I'm twisted like a vine
My final shape, my final form I'm sure I'm bound to find.

So dream a little, dream for me in hopes that I'll remain
And cry a little, cry for me so I can bear the flames
And hurt a little, hurt for me my future is untold
But my dreams are not the issue here, for they, the hammer holds.

This task before me may seem unclear
But it, my maker holds.

And the water, it cools me gray, and the hurt's subdued somehow
I have my shape, this sharpened point, what is my purpose now?
And the question still remains, what am I to be
Perhaps some perfect piece of art displayed for all to see.

So dream a little, dream for me in hopes that I'll remain
And cry a little, cry for me so I can bear the flames
And hurt a little, hurt for me my future is untold.
But my dreams are not the issue here, for they, the hammer holds.

The hammer pounds again, but flames I do not feel.
This force that drives me, helplessly, through flesh, and wood reveals
A burn that burns much deeper, it's more than I can stand.
The reason for my life was to take the life of a guiltless man.

So dream a little, dream for me in hopes that I'll remain
And cry a little, cry for me so I can bear the pain
And hurt a little, hurt for me, my future is so bold.

But my dreams are not the issue here, for they, the hammer holds.

This task before me may seem unclear
But it, my maker holds.

The notion of a metaphor for forging identity in the painful difficulties of life, a process in God's hands, gives way to the clearer device that Norman is using. He has anthropomorphized the forging of a common, rough-hewn nail of 2000 years ago--and he is delivering us to the cross and crucifixion of Jesus.

The anthropomorphized nail struggles with its painful forging, simple identity, and purpose in life--and then the sinking realization of the use to which it has been put, which it cannot understand. Norman delivers us to the cross from a most creative and insightful perspective; he does so powerfully, instructively, even inspirationally. He shares how God uses our commonplace identities and painful lives for His purposes in ways we sometimes just cannot understand--but then, refuge and peace is accepted in our faith and trust in His purposes for our lives. And it inspires in me this further reflection:

Even those whose identity is shaped by the most common human experiences, forged in pain by the bluntest instruments of life, fill places and serve purposes unique to them, important to others, and needed by society. They may be marked by humility--although not all are--but they live as well they can, give as much as they can, and care and love with all they are.

Sometimes they are called to serve God or man in ways they may not understand, that those served do not appreciate, and society rarely acknowledges. But they trust in their calling and work. They must. They just are who they are, the best God has to offer. And I hope they can sense God smiling.

A Guest Viewpoint: Qualified Support for Increasing Taxes, Obama

2011-08-18T06:10:00.004-04:00

Long-time friend and former Textron colleague, Rick Watson, offers a direct, well-considered viewpoint in response to my last post and comments--the one on Warren Buffett's WSJ Op-Ed piece advocating higher taxes for the rich and super-rich. With Rick's permission I share it with you here. For many years, Rick managed Textron's pension and insurance company investments, then served as group officer for Textron's financial services companies, and ended his career as vp, treasurer and sometime M&A deal team leader. He and wife Carolyn are among our favorite dinner and conversation companions. Rick's response:

Greg,

Like you, I thought Buffett's comments were on point and appropriate. I also am open to paying higher taxes personally and seeing some reduction in my entitlements. However, I could only be supportive of higher taxes if it were part of a global solution to the debt and fairness issues facing the US. Simply raising taxes on those of us with incomes above $250,000 and making no other changes would allow Congress to temporarily avoid the bigger long-term problems.

I favor a solution like Simpson Bowles and think taxes without addressing all the other important issues is as bad as spending cuts alone. I believe that Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid need to be changed for long term viability. Defense spending needs to be reduced. The tax code needs simplification and broadening of the base. I favor a truly flat, graduated tax, no deductions, no exemptions and no incentives. This should be true for corporations as well as individuals.

We need a clear national discussion about what we want our government to provide and what we want the states and individuals to be responsible for. I now believe that the Tea Party, which I generally dislike, has actually done the country a service. We need the issue of deficits and governments role in our lives put under a spot light. Now that we've got the attention of a least some voters, we need honesty and facing up to the tough choices. Unless Obama's new plan addresses the big issues and is honest about government's limited ability to create jobs, I'll look elsewhere for a presidential candidate.

Rick

Thanks, Rick. Looking forward to dinner and conversation again.

Warren Buffett: Coddling the Rich

2011-08-17T11:49:00.006-04:00

Mr. Buffet:

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as "carried interest," thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they'd been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It's nice to have friends in high places.

---"Stop Coddling the Super-Rich," by Warren E. Buffett, New York Times Op-Ed page (8.14.11)

In my prior comments on deficit reduction, I have made clear my willingness to pay higher federal income taxes--and I don't view myself as rich, certainly not super-rich. But I'm relatively well-off, and I recognize the importance of the revenue side of deficit reduction, the necessity to raise taxes on those who can afford it, those who will be unlikely to reduce their consumption or investment as the economy struggles to recover.

Now comes Warren Buffet, one the world's wealthiest and most socially responsible men. He thinks it's nothing short or shameless and ludicrous--my interpretation--that wealthy people are not called on to play the part only they can equitably play in helping restore budget responsibility and a stronger economy. In this NYT Op-Ed piece, Mr. Buffett shares his reasoning:

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that's actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot... The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It's a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.

I didn't refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what's happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.

Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.

The taxes I refer to here include only federal income tax, but you can be sure that any payroll tax for the 400 was inconsequential compared to income. In fact, 88 of the 400 in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains. Some of my brethren may shun work but they all like to invest. (I can relate to that.)

I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn't mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering...

Twelve members of Congress will soon take on the crucial job of rearranging our country's finances. They've been instructed to devise a plan that reduces the 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. It's vital, however, that they achieve far more than that. Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country's fiscal problems. Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from morphing into hopelessness. That feeling can create its own reality.

I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.

But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

[Warren E. Buffett is the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.]

Thank you, Warren Buffett, for the straight talk, a fair look at taxation of the rich, and why paying 3% more is asking so little of people who have benefited so greatly from the opportunity America affords. As most of you know, I would extend the request for shared sacrifice further; I'd restore the 3% that Bush removed for the very well-off as well, those for whom it will not likely reduce their consumption. That could mean President Obama's definition including those making $250,000 in annual income, or at least those making $500,000.

But to fail to call on the rich and super-rich is both fiscally irresponsible and denigrating to the notion of social fairness. Adding these needed revenues to the necessary budget reductions and social program reform is just too important to a fair and reasonable solution of the budget crisis--and to helping the middle class and poor feel they are not carrying the pain and sacrifice of a troubled economy alone. It's not much to ask.

Link to article after 1st paragraph or here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=1

Sparker's Soapbox: Drew Westen and Obama’s Passion

2011-08-14T10:23:00.004-04:00

This is a great review and opinion by good friend, Sandy Parker, retired corporate treasurer, former area president of the League of Women Voters, and member of my Naples foreign affairs discussion group. It is about the left-liberals' disappointment with President Obama's failure to win the day on all progressive issues due to his lack of passion, and his failure to exercise the power of his gifted rhetoric.

I stand right with Sandy and the supporting commentary of Fareed Zakaria, whom she cites. I too think these left-liberals need to grow up and embrace practical, responsible governance; I too think Obama has most often bravely, rightly, taken the road of balanced realism and common sense. Again, Zakaria offers his balanced, if "simple," straight-forward analysis from a position informed by both fiscal and legislative pragmatism, and realistic, progressive social hopefulness. I was going to post on the Zakaria piece myself, but I can't do it better than Sandy did, so I'm just sending hers along.

Greg

Sparker's Soapbox: Drew Westen and Obama's Passion

Drew Westen and Obama's Passion
Posted: 13 Aug 2011 05:26 PM PDT

Drew Westen

Drew Westen's "What Happened to Obama's Passion" (New York Times 8/6/11) has been sent to me by more friends and readers than any other I can remember. It clearly struck a chord with many who are feeling disappointed and disillusioned with President Obama's leadership.

To me, Westen is "the-glass-is-half-empty" incarnate. (See my 8/3 post "My thoughts on the debt deal.")

So I was gratified to watch Fareed Zakaria, Editor-at-Large of TIME Magazine, and Jonathan Chait, Senior Editor of The New Republic, debate Mr. Westen on The Charlie Rose Show the other night. If you've been taken in by Westen's piece, I highly recommend that you watch the Charlie Rose segment by clicking here.

Rose said he set up this particular line-up of guests because --

If you do what I do, this is a perfect storm. First you have somebody write something, then you have someone respond to it, and then you have someone come along in Time magazine and talk about all of them.

After watching and appreciating the debate, I was curious to read the Chaitt and Zakaria pieces Rose referred to, so I tracked them down.

Chaitt's piece appeared in The New Republic on 8/8 with the title "Drew Westen's Nonsense." Here are some excerpts:

There are some strong criticisms to be made of the Obama administration from the left, especially concerning Obama's passive response to the debt ceiling hostage crisis, and his frightening willingness to give away the store to John Boehner. I've made many of these criticisms myself. But Drew Westen's lengthy, attention-grabbing Sunday New York Times op-ed is not a strong criticism. It's a parody of liberal fantasizing. ....

Westen's op-ed rests upon a model of American politics in which the president in the not only the most important figure, but his most powerful weapon is rhetoric. The argument appears calculated to infuriate anybody with a passing familiarity with the basics of political science. In Westen's telling, every known impediment to legislative progress -- special interest lobbying, the filibuster, macroeconomic conditions, not to mention certain settled beliefs of public opinion -- are but tiny stick huts trembling in the face of the atomic bomb of the presidential speech. The impediment to an era of total and uncompromising liberal success is Obama's failure to properly deploy this awesome weapon. ...

Obama took office at the cusp of a massive worldwide financial crisis that was bound to inflict severe damage on himself and his party. That he faced such difficult circumstances does not absolve him of blame for any failures. It sets the bar lower, but the bar still exists. How should we judge Obama against it? I would argue that both the legislative record of 2009-2010 and Obama's personal popularity level exceed the expectation level -- facing worse economic conditions than the last two Democratic presidents at a similar juncture, Obama is far more popular than Jimmy Carter and nearly as popular as Bill Clinton, and vastly more accomplished than both put together.

Obviously this is the crux of the dispute, and I don't have the time and space to defend this larger judgment here. But Westen offers almost nothing but hand-waving and misstatements. He blames Obama for the insufficiently large stimulus without even mentioning the role of Senate moderate Republicans, whose votes were needed to pass it, in weakening the stimulus. An argument can be made that Obama could have secured a larger stimulus through better legislative tactics, but Westen does not make this case, or even flick at it. A foreign reader unfamiliar with our political system would come away from Westen's op-ed believing Obama writes laws by fiat. ...

Chaitt concluded:

The most inexcusable factual errors in Westen's essay have been documented by Andrew Sprung ["A lover of fairy tales casts Obama as villain-in-chief,"], who points out some of the occasions Obama has used exactly the kind of rhetoric Westen accuses him of refusing to deploy. Westen is apparently unaware, to take one example, that Obama repeatedly and passionately argued for universal coverage. The fact of his unawareness is the most devastating rejoinder to his entire rhetoric-centered worldview. If even a professional follower of political rhetoric like Westen never realized basic, repeated themes of Obama's speeches and remarks, how could presidential rhetoric -- sorry, "storytelling" -- be anywhere near as important as he claims? The clear reality is that Americans pay hardly any attention to what presidents say, and what little they take in, they forget almost immediately. Even Drew Westen.

The Zakaria piece appeared in TIME and on Zakaria's Global Public Square website on 8/12 with the title "Fareed's Take: Defending Obama's pragmatism." It begins:

Over the last week, liberal politicians and commentators took to the airwaves and op-ed pages to criticize the debt deal that Congress reached. But their ire was directed not at the Tea Party or even the Republicans but rather at Barack Obama, who they concluded had failed as a President because of his persistent tendency to compromise. This has been a running theme ever since Obama took office.

I think that liberals need to grow up. ...

The disappointment over the debt deal is just the latest episode of liberal bewilderment about Obama. "I have no idea what Barack Obama ... believes on virtually any issue," Drew Westen writes in the New York Times, confused over Obama's tendency to take "balanced" positions. Westen hints that his professional experience - he is a psychologist - suggests deep, traumatic causes for Obama's disease.

Zakaria offers his own "simpler explanation" – with which I agree wholeheartedly:

Obama is a centrist and a pragmatist who understands that in a country divided over core issues, you cannot make the best the enemy of the good.

Obama passed a large stimulus package within weeks of taking office. Perhaps it should have been bigger, but despite a Democratic House and Senate, it passed by just one vote. He signed into law an unprecedented expansion of regulations in the financial-services industry, though one that did not break up the large banks. He enacted universal health care, through a complex program modeled after Mitt Romney's plan in Massachusetts. And he has advocated a balanced approach to deficit reduction that combines tax increases with spending cuts.

Maybe he believes in all these things. Maybe he understands that with a budget deficit of 10% of GDP, the second highest in the industrialized world, and a debt that will rise to almost 100% of GDP in a few years, we cannot cavalierly spend another few trillion dollars hoping that will jump-start the economy.

Perhaps he believes that while banks need better regulations, America also needs a vibrant banking system, and that in a globalized economy, constraining American banks will only ensure that the world's largest global financial institutions will be British, German, Swiss and Chinese.

He might understand that Larry Summers and Tim Geithner are smart people who, in long careers in public service, got some things wrong but also got many things right. Perhaps he understands that getting entitlement costs under control is in fact a crucial part of stabilizing our fiscal situation, and that you do need both tax increases and spending cuts -- cuts that are smaller than they appear because they all start with the 2010 budget, which was boosted by the stimulus.

Is all this dangerous weakness, incoherence and appeasement, or is it common sense?

Zakaria's opinion (and mine): common sense.

If you're one of those who thought Westen had it right, I hope that Zakaria's, Chaitt's and Sprung's comments give you a different perspective. I know folks are frustrated. I am too. But a lot can happen between now and November 2012, and no doubt will.

Keep the faith. Hang in there. Resolve to see the glass as half full.

You are subscribed to email updates from Sparker's Soapbox
To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. Email delivery powered by Google

Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Here Soar, Here Love

2011-08-08T14:37:00.007-04:00

From the Sufi Poet Hafiz, as rendered by Daniel Ladinsky:

Not With Wings (1)

Here soar
Not with wings,

But with your moving hands and feet
And sweating brows--

Standing by your Beloved's side
Reaching out to comfort the world

With your cup of solace
Drawn from your vast reservoir of Truth.

Here soar
Not with your eyes and senses

That turn their backs
On the earth's sweet stumbling dance
Which needs you.

Here love, O here love...

And with your heart on duty
To the souls of rivers, children, forest animals,
All the shy feathered ones,

O here, Pilgrim,
Love
On the holy battleground of life

Where there are bleeding men
Who are calling for a sacred drink,

A gentle word or touch from man
Or God...

From Thomas Merton, a 20th-century Cistercian monk (2):

All the worst sins are denials and rejections of love, refusals to love. The chief aim...is not to sin against love.

[A] total surrender to the power of love [i]s the sole basis of spiritual authority...So many Christians exalt the demands and rigors of law because, in reality, law is less demanding than [love].

(1) The Subject Tonight is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz (1996, 2003)
(2) Mystics and Zen Masters (1967)

Play of the Hand

2011-08-07T14:27:00.003-04:00

Most often we do not get to choose the cards we are dealt; but we do get to choose how we play them. Its all about the play of the hand. And its often spiritual guidance that best directs us. Some selected guidance that speaks to me right now:

Jeremiah 6:16

Stand by the crossroads and watch,
and ask for the ancient paths,
Where the good way is,
and walk in it.

Isaiah 43:18

Do not call to mind the former things,
Or ponder things of the past.
Behold, I will do something new.
Now it will spring forth;
Will you not be aware of it?

Psalm 73, Excerpts

My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever...

[A]s for me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord God my refuge.

Psalm 139, Excerpts

You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
Even before there is a word on my tongue,
You know it all...

For You formed my inward parts;
You weaved me in my mother's womb.
I will give you thanks
because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works,
And my soul knows it very well.

Psalm 23, Excerpts

The Lord is my Shepherd,
I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul.

Psalm 131, Excerpts

Surely I have composed and quieted my soul;
Like a weaned child rests upon his mother,
My soul is like a weaned child within me.

Psalm 16, Excerpts

The Lord is the portion
of my inheritance and my cup;
You support my lot.
The lines have fallen to me
in pleasant places;
Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.

You will make known to me the path of life;
In your presence, is fulness of joy.

S&P On the Downgrade: Leadership Matters

2011-08-07T09:59:00.001-04:00

Organizational leadership matters. It is the pre-eminent factor in an organization's success. And its failure or weakness most often means the failure or weakness of the enterprise.

Whether we are talking about rating agencies or equities analysts, their role and responsibility is to clear-mindedly and straight-forwardly make well-informed assessments of the strength of an enterprise, their operational and financial strengths and weaknesses, and their ability to meet certain performance expectations or debt obligations. And one of the key assessments in any analyst's report I've ever read--or at least a key assessment to informed investors--is the strength and effectiveness of leadership. (I invite friend and retired Wall Street analyst, Marc Schulman, to expand on this in the comments section.)

So, after S&P announced its downgrade of U.S. debt, and after the disagreement and anger pointedly addressed at S&P for their bold and well-explained judgment, they rightly responded with what the NY Times called "a full-throated defense of its decision." And the defense was the universally acknowledged dysfunction and failings of US political leadership evidenced yet again in the "debacle" of raising the debt ceiling--a dysfunction largely the result of the bitter, partisan divide and the absence among some ideological zealots of the requisite statesmanship and willingness to indulge compromise.

From the NY Times:

A day after Standard & Poor's took the unprecedented step of downgrading the creditworthiness of the United States government, the ratings agency offered a full-throated defense of its decision, calling the bitter stand-off between President Obama and Congress over raising the debt ceiling a "debacle," and warning that further downgrades may lie ahead.

In an unusual Saturday conference call with reporters, senior S.& P. officials insisted the ratings firm hadn't overstepped its bounds by focusing on the political paralysis in Washington as much as fiscal policy in determining the new rating. "The debacle over the debt ceiling continued until almost the midnight hour," said John B. Chambers, chairman of S.& P.'s sovereign ratings committee. Another S.& P. official, David Beers, added that "fiscal policy, like other government policy, is fundamentally a political process."

The ratings agency put additional pressure on the joint Congressional committee to find additional spending cuts, tax hikes or both to bring down the inexorably rising national debt.

Administration officials at the White House and Treasury angrily criticized S.& P.'s action as based on faulty budget accounting that discounted the just-enacted deal for increasing the debt limit.... "The bipartisan compromise on deficit reduction was an important step in the right direction," the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said in a statement on Saturday. "Yet, the path to getting there took too long and was at times too divisive. We must do better to make clear our nation's will, capacity and commitment to work together to tackle our major fiscal and economic challenges."

Still, the posturing on Capitol Hill continued[:]

"Unfortunately, decades of reckless spending cannot be reversed immediately, especially when the Democrats who run Washington remain unwilling to make the tough choices required to put America on solid ground," Speaker John A. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the downgrade affirmed the need for the Democratic approach, which would combine spending cuts with tax increases.The decision, he said, "shows why leaders should appoint members who will approach the committee's work with an open mind — instead of hardliners who have already ruled out the balanced approach that the markets and rating agencies like S.& P. are demanding."

---"Amid criticism on downgrades of U.S., S&P fires back--Agency skewers debt ceiling 'debacle,' warns that more downgrades may come," by Nelson D. Schwartz and Eric Dash, New York Times (8.6.11), as reported on MSNBC.MSN.com.

And the finger pointing continues, the partisan spin and legerdemain remain at center court, and their is no indication that a new sense of statesmanship is coming over those most recalcitrant and ideologically uncompromising. So, it appears it will all have to get still worse before it has any chance of getting better. And there also remains their apparent failure to recognize that the timing of deficit reduction must take into consideration the effect of anti-stimulative measures on a fragile economy, or else recession or worse will have to be added to their continuing failures.

The Onion: Drunk with Power

2011-08-04T12:12:00.003-04:00

For you Onion fans out there--and anyone else with a satirical sense of humor--this piece at the expense of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is just too funny to pass up, whatever your political views. Just click on The Onion, highlighted below. (Thanks to Marc Schulman for sending it along.)

"Drunk with Power," from The Onion.

On Deficit Reduction & Public Policy

2011-08-03T14:30:00.009-04:00

I support deficit reduction and a responsible, accountable budgeting process as much as anyone, anywhere. It is essential, and the future of our nation depends on it. But mine is a politics and social philosphy of pragmatism, nation strengthening, and sharing. It is a politics of continually strengthening all people to help build and contribute to a better economic and societal experience, and it includes compassion and sharing success with all who are truly in need--especially the least fortunate of our brethren, whether poor, infirm, aged or strangers in our land. I believe that's what advanced societies do.

I support reform of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; this is also essential. We have to refashion needed social support programs so that they can be carried out within our means. You could add public education as well. But I believe those programs have to serve effectively and cost-efficiently those who need to be served. They have to be cost-efficient based on global best practices and, with the exception of public education, they should be focused on serving only those who really need them and can't afford them. And that would exclude me. All should be means-tested. And fraud must be policed, rooted out, and punished, consistently.

I view these essential programs--Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid--as public insurance for those who can't afford them, not universal entitlements. And in the area of public healthcare, heroic efforts and extraordinary costs in the last year of life--cases of terminal illness or advanced age--now account for 35-40% of all healthcare costs. Extraordinary cost to keep someone alive for another week, month or months is not something we can afford as a nation. For each of us there comes a time to die; let us learn to do it with understanding and dignity. Most such cases should be directed to hospice care. For those who would so elevate the value and public cost of another day at the end of their lives to such a level, there is available private insurance. A much more responsible public trade-off is to better provide or subsidize care for young and working-age people in need.

But I cannot fly false colors, I also support single-payor--government--health insurance for the general population, at the very least as an alternative. Some form of universal healthcare is almost as important to our economy and society as education. But the varied financial interests in the healthcare industry and their political proxies have frightened the public, often those who would most benefit from it, and their combined voices have assured that it's just not going to happen anytime soon. So, pragmatism dictates that we deal intelligently, responsibly, accountably, with the system we have.

Those social support programs and public education are critical to our increasing need for better educated, healthier and more productive sources of skilled labor and intellectual capital--from every corner of society. But the marketplace, by its very nature and dynamics, does not distribute public goods effectively, equitably to all. It distributes them by amount and quality according to ability to pay. Markets insure that those without most often remain without. That's just the reality of it, the way it works. That's why there is the notion and programs called "public goods," those services needed for all to strengthen and protect our people, grow our country, and maintain its stability, those services that only government can provide on that basis.

But let's say more about the whole issue of social and political stability, especially as it is threatened by a shrinking middle-class of decreasing means. We should be mindful of the dynamics of social and political instability, it's causes and potential results, something we have too little experience with to treat seriously. Nevertheless, it is something we should take more seriously, something about which history and so many failed or dysfunctional international states in modern times inform us. And the relationship between failed or failing social support functions and social and political instability is strong. And a signal, a warning of potential issues of instability is a weakening or disappearing middle class.

If these social goods are as important to our economy and society as I believe, then after reforming them as much as possible, making them as cost-efficient, focused and effective as possible, if there is still a budget shortfall--and everything I've read suggests there will be--then taxes must be raised, and first on those who can most afford to contribute more. And while I would likely be among those affected, another 3% or so will not change my life; I paid that in the '90s. So I would count it my duty and privilege to play a larger part in financially supporting those values, and those social/economic goals. That, to me, is also patriotism. (And yes, I also served my country in the military. I was six years an enlisted man, a sergeant in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War era. Only after did I attend college on the government's GI bill and loans, then law school and graduate business school.)

Then there is the attraction of a balanced budget requirement, which sounds good, but is too often unworkable, or at least too limiting. There have been those times when economic disaster threatened, 1929, 1937, and 2008, and to a lesser extent in every recession, when deficit government spending was important or essential to avoid economic calamity. We ignorantly took the wrong road in both 1929 and 1937, but took the right road in 2008--even if we have a major defit challenge to address as we struggle back toward economic growth. We have to retain the fiscal flexibility to meet the economic challenges facing our country, whatever that may require. And if in the past, the congress has been irresponsible in managing the budget and deficits--and it has, for a long time--then it's time to vote in people who will be more responsible and balanced, not hamstring the congress when it has to lead in those worst of economic times.

Finally there is the question of timing. Substantial progress on deficit reduction has to move forward, even if it must be in the nature of commiting us to measures that will not take effect for a few years. I say that because that is the warning that most credible economists are now sounding, and a concern I raised in a recent post, "I Have Questions." Anti-stimulative measures--reducing government spending or increasing taxes--at a time when the economy remains weak, even fragile, and the original stimulus programs have run their course, runs a substantial risk of either driving us back deeper into recession or significantly extenting the time for meaningful recovery and job creation. We heard little of this in the government and public debate, but it is nonetheless a significant consideration. Only now, in the last couple of days, is it being made clear that this is a further problem that must be treated seriously as deficit reduction planning moves forward.

Of course, there are many who do not agree with--or don't understand--the economic importance I place on these social programs and education, and the responsibility, the duty, we have to pay our fair share of taxes to support them. It is part of the price and privilege of sharing and growing in the American experience, the American dream. I'm sure many of those folks are as sincere and convinced of the rightness of their views as I am of mine. But as a former corporate executive for 20 years, I have become convinced of their importance to meeting the increasing demands of global competition, the need for enhanced capability and increased contribution at all levels of the talent pool, and to the stability and happiness of an advancing society.

Now, as a 21st-century man, and having lived the life of American possibilities for almost 65 years, I also want to be part of the next step in providing for the economic and social advancement of American society, for increasing the breadth and depth of access to opportunity, to education, healthcare, and retirement security, and for broadening the sense of civic responsibility and accountability. That means a strong economy is essential, as is budget responsibility; but it also means that government must play its part in providing the necessary public goods equitably to all, and we all must recognize the duty and necessity of financial support that falls to all who have benefited from them.

The Debt Limit Hobbits

2011-07-31T13:18:00.000-04:00

From The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed pages,

"The debt-limit hobbits should also realize that at this point the Washington fracas they are prolonging isn't helping their cause. Republicans are not looking like adults to whom voters can entrust the government."

---"The Debt Limit Hobbits," The WSJ (7.30.11)

And from the Wall Street Journal, yet. You have to love it. But they are just saying what is more than apparent to most Americans--or should be. That they feel it has to be said from so lofty a dais as the op-ed pages of the WSJ indicates how deaf the tin ears in the GOP's right-wing camps must be. And it's all okay with me. The more, the longer they play the irresponsible obstructionists, the longer they stretch out or deny effective, but reasonable deficit reduction legislation, the weaker and less re-electable they become. Let them proceed just as deaf, dumb and blind as they have been right through the 2012 elections. Then, perhaps, the electorate will present us with a more balanced, more centrist legislature to proceed with the increasingly pressing business that burdens our country.

Link here:

http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904888304576476153557599820.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop&mg=reno-wsj

I Have Questions, Deficit Reduction Questions

2011-07-29T14:52:00.007-04:00

I have questions, deficit reduction questions, but can find no answers. Apparently, no one has the answers, not satisfactory ones, useful ones. Or, they are not sharing them. Even the questions do not appear to be part of the public discourse.

My questions have to do with the impact on our fragile economic recovery of the structure, the focus and timing, of the alternative deficit reduction plans now being debated. Everyone knows that, within limits, fiscal policy can either stimulate or dampen economic behavior and performance--or at least they should know that. The research and empirical evidence are clear. But the state of the economy and timing matters, too--and it can matter a lot.

When the economy is in recession (or worse), increasing government spending for social support or other programs, or reducing taxes, is stimulative to economic growth, within limits. And even though larger, intermediate-term deficits will result, it is still the more effective, less painful course, so long as the increased deficits can be managed back to acceptable levels as the economy grows stronger. (Note that this option is not even available to us with a balanced budget amendment.)

But when the economy is in a nascent or fragile recovery, when it is still weak, if government takes money away from people who would otherwise spend it, either by reducing social support spending or increasing taxes, it has a dampening effect on consumption and economic growth, depending on the size and materiality of the program changes. This is less true, or has a lesser impact, in times of strong economic performance.

So, first question: is our economy now resilient enough to increase taxes or decrease social program benefits without halting the fragile recovery and pressing us back into recession? What are the indicators and measures that guide us? Second question: Do we know or have any guidance on how much to increase or decrease these economically stimulative or dampening fiscal choices even if we are confident about the general direction? And, the third question: Does anyone in the congress or administration elevate such questions (and any available answers they may have) above political and ideological considerations?

The third question is the easiest to answer. In the end, politics rule, or at least play a dominant, mediating role. No, they can't be so irresponsible as to ignore whatever economic knowledge and data point them to the better choices and results, although short-term results always play a disproportionately large role in decision making. In any prior time, I would have said that ideological considerations play a role, but balance, prudence and compromise, fiscal, budgetary and economic responsibility, would rule at the end of the day. Even when the Democrat's left wing were most effective and influential, this was true. But no more. The most conservative Republicans and their Tea Party cousins have elevated ideological purity above all things, even taking pledges to place such considerations above all else. Frightening times.

But still, wouldn't credible, authoritative data make a considerable difference to most everyone? And wouldn't you expect there would be good data and reliable guidance on the implications of these deficit reduction plans, the ridiculous Tea Party plan or the more realistic plans now receiving consideration? Why aren't we hearing and seeing more about that?

You say that the government, the CBO and Fed and others do put out such analysis and information, as do various private economic and market newsletters. Of course, the arcane language, format and implications of these reports are understandable only by the few educated or trained in it. Even then, they are usually the subject of debate and disagreement because the reporting and conclusions reached by them is often internally ambiguous or conflicting, and they often conflict with one another. With all our economic experience and empirical evidence, the last century of accumulated data, the econometric modeling done by the Fed and Congress, by the investment banks and consulting firms, why don't we have more authoritative answers, or at least reasonably strong direction in answering these questions? And if we do, why isn't it part of the public discourse and debate--and presented in simpler, understandable terms to the public?

What tax laws and social programs will be changed and how will that impact different groups of Americans? Is that too much to ask, that the public be reasonably informed, in terms they can understand?

I was comforted when, shortly after the TARP and stimulus programs were effected, Fed Chairman Bernanke made very clear that the larger, intermediate-term problem was the budget deficit. It had to be addressed, and addressed effectively. This was critical. But he cautioned that to move to raise taxes or reduce social programs before the economy strengthened and was convincingly on its way to recovery, would be to drive us back into recession or the depression we had successfully averted through the impact of TARP and the stimulus program.

I trusted Bernanke with his academic expertise on the Great Depression and more recent financial crises, along with his institutional knowledge and experience with the Fed. And I judged him a principled and trustworthy man. The TARP and stimulus programs were easy for me to have confidence in because of the dire circumstances and his role in addressing it all. Credibility. But more recently, on balance, my clear sense has been that the dangers are now greater in failing to address the budget deficits--largely because it appears most credible economists are in that camp (with the exception of Paul Krugman).

When Obama moved aggressively in that direction, I assumed the data, the modeling evidence, and even a great many Dems, supported that direction. But Chairman Bernanke has not spoken to this issue lately, at least not prominently and for impact. That he has not, I've taken as tacit approval for the initiative to start addressing reduction of the budget deficit. I assumed that either Bernanke is advising Obama on this or at least has given no indication of objection. And I assume Obama would have to be convinced given his natural, personal concern for retirement, education, and healthcare programs.

But now, even as the dysfunctional deficit reduction process stumbles embarrassingly forward, revised economic measures and indicators present to us a much weaker recovery than Bernanke had confidently projected. Does he feel that we are still on the right path, or is he merely resigned to the political realities and momentum of deficit reduction? Further, aren''t there now at least more refined question regarding the structure, focus and timing of program cuts, tax increases, or other revenues raised? It appears to me there must be. And even if we hear no legislative rationale of this sort offered, even if the public discussion says little or nothing of it, it must be a factor being analyzed and passed upon by someone of importance to the process, wouldn't you think?

It is on that basis that I find myself accepting the broad contours of Obama's implied approach to deficit reduction.

I do not pass on whether the most intelligent program cuts are being made, but assume they are the most prudent that can be agreed and still protect the programs and people they were meant to serve. Whether its eliminating loopholes and deductions favoring the wealthy, or increasing their tax rates, and whatever the nature of the cuts and the pain involved, the questions I raise involve the impact on the recovery, the likelihood of dampening the recovery and extending the recession. That is my focus. I know that raising rates on high income people now and later reforming the code by removing deductions, reducing the rate structure, and broadening the base would likely be the President's preference, as would social program reform that makes them more cost-efficient and more effective at targeting and providing what is needed for only those truly in need--at least that's what I hope is his preference.

But when I look at what I understand to be the general contours of the best approach available to Obama, it appears to be increasing taxes by closing loopholes on only the very well heeled, both corporate and individual, those with the means to continue to consume, regardless of taxes, and arguably having the least impact on consumption and economic recovery. As to the program cuts, they appear to be scheduled so that they take effect more in future years, which again would appear to produce less of a dampening effect on today's economy.

Am I right to feel that is a good compromise in moving toward significant improvement in the budget deficit, but with limited negative impact in the short-term on a fragile economy? I hope so, but I don't really know enough to be sure. Maybe it isn't yet time for material reductions in social programs or increases in taxes. That's where I was a year or so ago, but have been moved by all the lofty voices and dire warnings moving us in the other direction. Might we be making the mistake of 1937, when anti-stimulative measures created the recession within the depression--in our case, the so-called "double-dip" recession? How is a practical person to find the necessary economic information, the reliable voices of professional wisdom, the balanced political leaders, that offer a principled basis for a position to support?

So, yes, I still have questions--important questions, I think. And I still can't find satisfying answers. And better answers, more authoritative answers could clearly change whether I support one deficit reduction plan over another, how much the timing and targeting of budget changes matter, or whether I believe it is even yet time for deficit reduction.

Of course, by now I understand I am looking to put too fine a point on the analysis and projections that can be produced. They look and sound very sophisticated--and they are--but are still very much the instruments of estimates and general direction, and insufficient for my purposes. In the end, there remain reliable, consistent general principles--to be sure--and a lot of data, but of limited applicability and reliability in defining the structure and timing I'm looking for. In the end, those individuals with the deeper institutional knowledge, the clearer understandings of history, and the more gifted professional intuition will have to guide us. But I wonder if their voices are being heard at all above the din of Right Wing ideological zealotry.

Confucius Says

2011-07-10T13:55:00.002-04:00

I'm reading Henry Kissinger's new book, On China, and so far it has not disappointed. Discussing the singularity of China, Kissinger introduces the profound influence of Kong Fuzi (or Kong Zi)--Confucius, to the Western world. This ancient philosopher (551-479 B.C) of Chinese society, government and leadership, developed his ideas during an era of political and social upheaval, and they have remained at the heart of China's identity and notions of social and political stability for the 2500 years since, notwithstanding the Communist and Cultural Revolutions.

Included in the discussion is a representative quote from Confucius that spoke to me; I hope it speaks also to you.

[L]ove of kindness, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by foolishness. Love of knowledge, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by loose speculation. Love of honesty, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by hurtful candor. Love of straightforwardness, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by misdirected judgment. Love of boldness, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by insubordination. And love of strength of character, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by intractability.

---The Analects, by Confucius, translation William Edward Soothill (New York: Dover, 1995), 107.

A love to learn, impliedly, better informs and imbues such worthy characteristics with deeper, more pragmatic understandings and thoughtfulness in applying them. Rings true to me.

Civic Duty & "Policy" Fairness: $400b a Year in Uncollected Taxes

2011-07-08T13:10:00.002-04:00

On the front page of the The Providence [RI] Journal last Monday (7.4.11) was an article under this heading, "Uncollected taxes cost U.S. over $400 billion [a year]." It was a little ironic that this sad piece of news should command such prominent visibility on the 4th of July, a day set aside to honor Americans' patriotism and individual sacrifice.

WASHINGTON — At a time when higher taxes or deeper government spending cuts seem to be the only options available to close the gaping federal deficit, going after more $400 billion a year in uncollected taxes should be a no-brainer. But in the nation's capital, the so-called "tax gap" hardly rates a mention in the official discussion of America's fiscal woes.

[T]he "tax gap" is the difference between the taxes owed and what's actually paid on time. In their most recent analysis, from 2001, the Internal Revenue Service estimated that only about 84 percent of federal taxes were voluntarily paid on time that year, leaving a gross tax gap of $345 billion, or roughly 16 percent, uncollected. Late payments and IRS collection efforts brought in another $50 billion, which cut the net tax gap to $290 billion in 2001. But similar estimates point to a gross tax gap of $410 billion to $500 billion in 2010, said Benjamin Harris, a research economist at the Brookings Institution, a center-left research group.

"You could go a long way toward solving our budget mess by closing the tax gap, but the problem is, it's not easily closed," Harris said.

---"Here's a debt reduction plan: Get billions in uncollected taxes," by Tony Pugh, McClatchy Newspapers Washington Bureau (6.30.11)

Apparently, for a lot of Americans, that sacrifice does not include the simple civic duty of paying their fair and lawful share of the cost to support, maintain and protect the country they claim to love and honor so much. They choose not to honor it, not if it involves this particular patriotic sacrifice, this civic and legal duty.

But why is this "tax gap," this legal noncompliance, "not easily closed"? From the article:

In the past 20 years, the U.S. economy has grown more complex, blurring the lines between personal and business income and creating more opportunities for tax scofflaws. Congress limits the IRS budget, and sophisticated tax cheats realize their chances of detection are relatively low. Others say that most who misreport their earnings do so inadvertently because of the complexity of the tax code.

Better, more targeted IRS enforcement could probably cut the tax gap by 10 percent without any fundamental changes to the IRS, Harris estimates. Cutting the gap further would require more thorough IRS reporting, increased tax withholding and more money for IRS enforcement.

But the political will to bolster the feared IRS collection apparatus and turn it loose on American citizens just isn't there.

Surely the rest of us who voluntarily pay our full taxes owed have "the political will" to see it done, don't we? What honest taxpayer likes the idea of bearing the burden of those scofflaws--including many very well heeled scofflaws--who would just rather not? And who are these people anyway?

Whether by willful evasion or unintentional mistakes, businesses and individuals that fail to report, underreport or underpay their taxes cause honest taxpayers to pay more — about $2,200 apiece — to make up the revenue shortfall. That basic unfairness erodes confidence in the tax system, which lowers taxpayer morale and, in turn, increases noncompliance.

The biggest losers are America's wage earners and salaried workers, who pay an estimated 99 percent of their fair tax burden because their taxes are automatically withheld from their pay and reported by a third party, their employers.

But individuals with business income — mainly self-employed, sole proprietors who get paid in cash — misreport roughly 54 percent of their actual income by either underreporting it, or claiming deductions, credits and exemptions to which they aren't entitled. "This is incredible," Harris said. "You kind of feel like a sucker as a wage earner. Here you are paying taxes because someone else is paying you, but if someone else is getting paid on their own, they pay taxes at half the rate."

So, just who is it that doesn't have the political will to support correcting this blatant civic injustice? Who has that kind of authority and power? Why, our legislators, of course--and particularly our Republican legislators (although some Democrats, too, have been counted in the effort). Small businesses and the self-employed are a key constituency, after all.

"The government could close the tax gap entirely by putting IRS agents in every family's living room and in every small business. But this is a price that a liberty-loving people and their representatives are rightly unwilling to pay," said Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the senior Republican member of the Senate Finance Committee, which helps write America's tax laws.

But House Republicans, spurred by the anti-tax sentiment of tea party activists, voted to cut the IRS budget by $600 million in fiscal year 2012, citing the need to cut the budget deficit. IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told lawmakers that the proposed GOP cuts would cause tax collections to fall by $4 billion because they'd require slashing the agency's enforcement budget.

But Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said Shulman was simply "posturing" to preserve IRS funding. Strengthening IRS enforcement is a mistake, Dubay said, because "the tax gap is not the result of people illegally evading taxes. It's the result of an overly complex tax code that gets more and more complex every day."

And that is the sad and disengenuous rationale offered by the defenders of the status quo, the purposefully misleading statements offered by so-called "conservative" legislators and advocates who appear not only comfortable with existing disparities, but feel it is their role to perpetuate them. So they support a clearly discriminatory taxation reality, a de facto policy of indulging lower taxation for self-selecting, dishonest small businessmen, sole proprietors, and independent contractors, and overburdening honest small businessmen and salaried employees to make up the difference.

Last spring, I and a very good friend--a small businessman of impeccable honesty and unquestionable civic duty--were discussing the scope of the huge budget deficit and the options for balancing it. Government program reform and cost-effieciency, on the one hand, and tax increases on the other. He surprised me with his deep sense of both fiscal concern and public unfairness. How could accountable government fail to first assure that everyone and every business was paying their full, legal share of taxes due before demanding more of those who were already fully paying theirs?

I didn't get it. I was talking from a broader view of the issues, taking for granted a tax gap that, however indefensible, would not be remedied in time to play a role in balancing the budget--if it would be remedied at all. He was talking personally, as an honest, accountable taxpayer who expected fairness from government. I was retired and relatively removed from the fray, he was still very much engaged in the challenges of his business. I was talking policy from 20,000 feet, he was talking gut feelings about the fairness of government and the honor of American citizens. And it really upset him. We were really having two different conversations. And now I realize that his was the more important one.

Click to read more:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/06/30/v-print/116801/heres-a-debt-reduction-plan-get.html