When it isn't OK to express opinions?

When those opinions endanger lives.

I have tried to avoid the Duck Dynasty controversy because I don't like to bring attention to ideas that I believe are harmful and divisive. But finally, I had to put down my thoughts. The stakes are too high. 

Here is the problem. Straight, supposedly religious people have gay kids. It is unfortunate but it is just the way it is. And I know, believing that we are born gay is not universally accepted in the way that the Big Bang or evolution is not universally accepted. But it is true and a fact of nature.

Most kids know they are gay when they are still too young to leave home and thus, lives are endangered by those opinions. Growing up with a parent who will tell you that you can change or that who you are is intrinsically evil, is in fact a form of child abuse. And that is that.  Gay kids kill themselves because of this and it is a form of parental bullying and that is that.

In this country, those kids, if they survive childhood can grow up and live happy, healthy lives after they work through their parent issues. But in other parts of the world, this idea and message continues to spread in large part with the help of so called Christian evangelicals. Take a close look at Africa and you see that this is a message that is endangering lives. So while you spout off your opinions, you have a role in the torture and abuse of innocent gay people all over the world. When do those opinions become the same thing as crying fire in a crowded theater?

Accountability and Government spending

I was reading an article in Newsweek about private for profit companies that do contract work for the U. S. Government. I think that the topic especially resonated in light of the failure of the IT team that built the Affordable Care web site. The gist of the article was that while non-profits are held to a high standard by the government, profit based companies often are not.

The article referred to this government site and suggested taking the data on here with a grain of salt-USA Spending Government Site

And here is another interesting government site  Payment Accuracy

Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation

Walter Mosley's 2011 book, "Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation" is based on the 12 step program for addicts and really compares our lack of political awareness around our role to that of an addict. He explains how we are manipulated to believe many falsehoods by the power brokers of our current economic system. His term for the wealthy is to call them the "joes" in an effort to point out how they are really just ordinary human beings who have somehow managed to control our system to which we all play our proscribed roles.

Step One is simply admitting there is a problem and then defining that problem. I think we can all agree that there is a problem. 

Step Two is learning how to speak to the problem. I think that is a huge step because we are manipulated by the words that are thrown around, terms like socialism or welfare. Mosley uses this chapter to point to our failed educational system as one of the reasons we cannot have a common language to discuss big ideas. 

Step Three is telling the truth and he advocates that many of us lie to ourselves out of fear. When we see a truth but are afraid to speak out, we should write it down. Perhaps sometime in the future, we can work our way to speaking the truth. I found this chapter compelling and tried to think of an example that I could call out. One of the lies I think is that we have come to believe is that government cannot do a good job of anything. While government is not perfect, neither are profit based corporations.  

Step Four is Defining the Classes and this goes back to the truth telling. Can you really say where you fit in. He makes the point and I agree that if you live paycheck to paycheck, no matter to what scale, you are not really solid middle class. You are one bad thing away from being poor, a job loss, a sickness, etc.

Step Five is about using psychotherapy in political development and the ideas are a tad esoteric. 

Step Six is about practicing this truth telling, questioning, and re-evaluation every day. It is like any new habit, you have to do it regularly or it never catches.

Steps Seven and Eight are about becoming better citizens 

Step Nine is about not  living in the past and is one of my personal favorites. 

Step Ten is truth telling around really understanding cost and the true value of things. 

This leads to Step Eleven which is understanding your own true worth. 

Step Twelve is the coming together of minds to become greater than anyone of us. The sum is greater than its parts.

I think the idea of examining the things we are told is key. We know we have to do that in our lives. An unexamined life is not worth living. But we have to do that politically and economically as well. Who knows where it all might lead?

The Christmas Season

With the holiday season upon us, I was thinking about f how conservatives and the religious right try to claim that the country, patriotism, religion, marriage, or even holidays fall within their own purview.   They have done that with the Founding of the US, turning Jefferson and Franklin into religious zealots that they never were. 

We see the fights at city halls around the country over displaying Nativity Scenes.

It was a Republican presidency that pushed the idea that it was our patriotic duty to shop in order to restore the 2008 collapsing economy. And that idea was never truer than at Christmas time.  So I asked myself, what does Christmas mean really? is it too commercial, is it strictly a religious holiday or culturally does is now encompass so much more?

Christmas Customs

According to this website, we don’t really know why Christmas is celebrated on December 25th but it definitely looks like it has some relationship to earlier celebrations of the Winter Solstice. Before there were Christmas carols, there were pagan carols sung around the Winter Solstice. Ironically, the Puritans in England and then later after they emigrated to the US were very much against the singing of Christmas carols. They actually attempted to ban the celebration of Christmas altogether.  This trend surfaced several time in the US and it was not really until the 19 century that Christmas was taken in by more conservative Christian groups that were spawned by the Puritans.

So as with all things, the history is much less cut and dry. Perspectives change. Institution change and what is conservative now would have been radical once. We can all define what Christmas means to us and none of us have to be right or wrong.

Third World America

Arianna Huffington makes many of the points in her book, "Third World America" that I found in Barbara Garson's book, "Down the Up Escalator".  Huffington shares statistics and examples of many middle class Americans that met their demise not only from the economic downturn of 2008 but even before. Her fear, which is a consistent theme, is that there will someday soon be only those who belong in one extreme or the other. 

Defining the middle class statistically is difficult but you know it when you see it. She gave some income ranges but I felt that the low end of 45,000 per year for a household is pretty darn low if that income has to support several children and a mortgage in a location with high property values. On the other hand, if a couple is retired with a paid for home, then that can become a comfortable income. 

She points to the obvious culprits. Washington is completely broken and controlled exclusively by Wall Street and high priced lobbyist who speak for corporations and not people. While President Obama has at least tried some things to help, his successes are limited and approaches are timid. She points to the recovery act as a positive idea but because the substance was put together by politicians who are bought and paid for, it was not able to do what the WPA did during the Great Depression. 

She spends a great deal of time on the "Too Big to Fail" banks and what an obvious scam it was to bail them out. If they were in fact too big to fail, then they were too big. And why has there been no meaningful reform? Well again, we know the answer to that. You can hardly call it capitalism when corporations take no risk for loss but pocket all the profits. 

What does Arianna Huffington, publisher of the The Huffington Post suggest we can do to turn things around? A lot of her ideas are not political and fall into the realm of what we can all do as human beings to help our fellow citizens that are suffering. She also suggests we boycott the big banks and keep our money in local small banks or credit unions. This is an idea that I love and fully support. She does suggest that we absolutely must have vast, meaningful campaign finance reform. Without it, we will never be able to look to government to do the right thing. And without a government working for the best interest of the people, it is really hard to imagine that anything will ever change. 

The Digital Age is upon us

I want to showcase three writers whose work intersects with this content and helps us think   differently. The common theme within all their writing is the presumption that the economic framework, morality, and organizations of our world are not scaling well to a new digital age.

Eli Pariser is the chief executive of Upworthy. He was also on the board of MoveOn.Org.  In his book, the Filter Bubble,  he examines how the internet is filtering out what we want to see and what we don’t want to see.  That is concerning as allows many of us to filter out views that are counter to our own. This can be very dangerous in a democracy.

Then there is Don Tapscott, who wrote, “Grown up Digital” and “Macrowikinomics”

Tapscott suggests that we really need to develop new frameworks and paradigms.

Here is a quote from a Forbes interview that he gave, “In one sense, the Internet is like the discovery of the printing press, only it’s very different. The printing press gave us access to recorded knowledge. The Internet gives us access not just to knowledge but to the intelligence contained in people’s crania, access to the intelligence of people on a global basis. This is not an information age. It’s an age of communication, of collective intelligence, of major collaboration, of major participation.”

And finally, Michael Sandel is a a writer for Atlantic and his book "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets," is an examination of how market based thinking so completely dominates that we assume we can “buy anything”. But we all know that you can’t buy love.  You can however, pay someone to stand in line for you and sell advertising space on your body if you live in Japan.  In the "Case Against Perfection," he continues this line of thought by pointing out that our morality is not evolving at the same pace as our technology.

 

Down the Up Escalator

In her book, "Down the Up Escalator," Barbara Garson chronicles real life stories from the recent "Great Recession" showing us the personal pain and loss that so many ordinary Americans experienced. She interviews a group that she called the "Pink Slip Club" where no one's life has returned to normal after being laid off from their modest but solid middle class jobs. She looks at workers in retail sales and highlights how this once secure service sector job has now become part time work without benefits. 

She tells the story of many faced with losing their homes from the mortgage crisis. In many cases, we see individuals who made bad choices to refinance at the wrong time or buy up in a speculative manner only to end up losing it all. One point she makes is that many solid citizens who once would have thought it unthinkable to walk away from debt did just that and walked away from their homes and mortgages. I can't say that this all has a distant ring for me. Some of my own friends at work were laid off during this time and I know that they often dug themselves into a deep hole by living on credit cards and dipping into retirement accounts. Even once they found a new job, their salaries never met what they once had. And my own next door neighbors, going through a divorce, found a short sale on their house to be the best solution when they found that they had refinanced one too many times and now owed more than the house was worth. 

While the book is full of individual stories, her real focus is on the cause and consequences of this long period of history where wages have not come even close to keeping pace with productivity. This has been a time where the wealth in America has gradually transferred to the hands of fewer and fewer. From the dot com bubble to the real estate bubble, it is always the average American that comes out on the losing end because they simply do not have the access or the means to weather these storms.

She ends her book with a few profound thoughts. First, she acknowledges that this is not like the Great Depression. These folks are not hungry and by in large not homeless. But they are not sure if they will ever work again and have lost any sense of security around home ownership and retirement. Planning for their own future has become day to day. We as human beings do not like uncertainty and yet we have allowed an economic system to dominate where safety nets are considered a sign of weakness.

Malcolm Gladwell

Just finished my second Malcolm Gladwell book. The "Tipping Point" triggered my thoughts around what the country would look like when marriage equality hit the "tipping point" and fortunately, we just saw that happen in 2013.
The one I just finished, "What the Dog Saw" is a collection of his writings in the New Yorker. The only one I did not enjoy was on Ron Popeil, the kitchen gadget guy. But the rest of the collection will really inspire you to look at things in a different way and that is really what this blog is all about. How can we face all the challenges we find in our world and cast them in a new light?

One of the most interesting pieces was on the Enron scandal. He points out that while we think things like that happen because of secret accounting practices that hid the problems. The truth is that they were not secret at all and it was all out there for anyone to see. But it was so completely complex and convoluted that no one was able to easily draw out what was going on. So while we definitely need oversight, it is also imperative that those overseeing the accounting need to have the skills and knowledge to understand what they are seeing.

More Economics

When trying to solve big problems, it is important to know that the "conventional wisdom" that so many believe is truly accurate. I would suggest that two things that so many people think are true are not true.
First, one might assume that the way for a country to get out of debt would be to decrease spending. But governments are not households and some of the spending can be directed towards investing in its people.
 
US productivity has doubled since 1971 but real wages have not kept up. Health care costs aside, wages actually only went up by 4%. So while not everyone is more productive, many of those who work in the service industry are truly the support personnel for those who are. The statistics clearly show that a small % are profiting from this increased productivity while arguing against a raise in the minimum wage. We buy that argument because again conventional wisdom suggests that doing so will kill jobs but is that true?

The book, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" is the classic conservative capitalistic mantra. People do not have money because no on has taught them how to have money.

The book makes several key points and I do not disagree completely with any of them. I just don't think it is quite that simple. First, it says that you need to think of assets and liabilities and the most controversial concept is remembering that your house if not an asset. While that may be true, unless you want to be homeless, some type of housing is necessary. If you take that point to avoid buying up and living beyond your means, then it is probably a positive message. But having a home and eventually getting to the point where you don't have house payments or rent is not a bad thing.

I do agree that more education on how to invest in the stock market is called for in a world where pensions don't exist and you have to depend on your  401K and Roth investments to retire. This is the part I find interesting. Not everyone wants to understand the financial markets and investing to such an extent that our new world order requires. What is wrong with a day where people just want to work hard and be rewarded for that intention. Why does everyone have to become the person described in this book. What exactly should we expect from a just society?

But this point is made and it is hard to disagree.
"Our current education system has not been able to keep pace with the global and technological  changes in the world today. We must teach our young people the skills, both scholastic and financial, that they will need not only to survive, but to flourish."  While some people can read this book and become inspired to turn the corner financially, it is just not for everyone and we cannot leave those people behind.

Half the Sky

To continue with my theme around international poverty and what does make a difference, I just read one of the most difficult books I have ever read. "Half the Sky" by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn tells the story of perhaps 1 billion women living on our planet today. While I have read unimaginable horrors described in history books that chronicle the stories of slavery or the Holocaust, I always knew that it happened in the past. But as I read this one, I had to confront the reality that this is today and these women were suffering while I read this book. It ended with hope and throughout the book, there were many glimmers of goodness and change. I will try to summarize the bad and the good of these stories and will start with one key theme. While we in the privileged West want to make a difference, it has to be done on their terms, not our terms.

Some of the topics covered include women in slavery, sex trafficking  women suffering unspeakable agony from childbirth, often giving birth when their bodies are too young to be ready. Women routinely beaten, tortured, isolated, and quite frankly treated as property. But there are also many impoverished women who have found ways to become educated, return to their homes and make a difference. The most hopeful aspect of the book is the idea that educated women will change the world.

Unfortunately, many government based aid efforts tend to ignore the fact that allowing half the population of any struggling country to be an untapped resource is dooming that country to fail. And some of the answers are so simple. A South African study found that giving girls a $6 uniform every 18 months increased the chances of them staying in school and decreased the chances of becoming pregnant. According to authors, it is clear that countries that are experiencing the most economic growth are those that have educated girls. While we shudder at what the "one child policy" has done in China, on the flip side Chinese women are far ahead of where they once were. Another thing that was hard to understand but is reality, in China and potentially elsewhere, the sweatshops are good for women. Because they excel at the factory work that has become so prevalent, making clothing and shoes, it provides an entry point for women to make their own money.

I think I can best sum up the book with this quote from the book, "Girls in Poor Countries are particularly undernourished, physically and intellectually. If we educate and feed these girls and give them employment opportunities  the the world as a whole will gain a whole new infusion of human intelligence-and poor countries will garner citizen leaders who are better equipped to address those countries' challenges."

It also gives hope that comes in some unexpected ways. It seems that access to television and watching soap operas did more to change the viewpoints of impoverished Indian women than any education program ever did. These rural women in India seeing their middle class counterpoints having jobs, coming and going freely without asking permission from their husbands empowered them to see that the modern way is to be treated as human.

And one of the easiest solutions is to be sure that all salt is iodized. Low iodine contributes to lower IQs for all newborns and changing that is inexpensive and can make a world of difference.

So as such a book should, it does end with ways we can help. It lists a number of great organizations. One that I am already into a lot is Heifer International. The book's appendix contains many other organizations and ends with the following :

Four steps you can take in the next 10 minutes:

1. Go to Global Giving or Kiva Micro Loans and open an account. Both sites are         People to People and link you directly to individuals overseas.

2. Sponsor a girl or woman through Women for Women International

3. Sign up for e-mail updates on Women's News and find out what is going on that     affects women.

4. Join the CARE Action network and I will add my own 5th one that affects the     LGBT community worldwide which is IGLHRC.

Super Freakonomics

The book "Superfreakonomics" is not about traditional macro-economics but actually more of an exploration of human motivations relating to money and micro-economics. It is also about proving theories and gauging human behavior based on the scientific method. The premise of this book is that we often believe ideas that do not bear out statistically. Their first book was quite controversial as it suggested that when the Roe v Wade ruling came down, there was a drop in crime in subsequent years. They suggested that was because many future criminals were no longer being born.

This book was equally controversial. There were several interesting chapters about prostitution and the debunking of the mythology around the 1964 Kitty Genovese murder. But the really interesting ideas covered in this book relate to global warming. They were not suggesting that global warming is not real nor that is is not that man-made. Instead, they pointed to an innovation group that is led by Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at Microsoft.  

This group, "Intellectual Ventures" is proposing some very inexpensive solutions to solve global warming and the point of the book is that sometimes sacrifice is not the only answer. They suggest that if we implement the Al Gore proposals to lower carbon emissions, it will negatively impact those billions of our fellow world citizens who are just now climbing out of poverty. But instead, there are these relatively inexpensive ideas we could try. It is an interesting point but in either case, we will at some point run out of carbon based energy.

I always notice when I read these types of books, which really are the inspiration for this blog, that even if the topics seem completely un-related, there is always some recurring theme that emerges. One of those themes is that when facing complex problems as our planetary population is currently facing, we have to make sure our beliefs about how to solve them are grounded in truth. One of the memes that was in the Watchmen's Rattle post was "Counterfeit correlation"  

 

The other emerging truth is that there is often a simpler solution that will emerge at some point and thus, optimism is called for. That solution can come suddenly and become a complete game changer in a fairly short span of time. We can all hope that is the case when it comes to the major challenges we are facing, climate change, poverty, inequality, and injustice.

Why isn't foreign aid more effective?

In his book, "The White Man's Burden", William Easterly expounds on why he believes all of the efforts to fight poverty have failed and in some cases done more harm than good. How does it hurt? He says by empowering the systems that funnel the aid and find it in their best interest to maintain the status quo.
He believes there are "planners", which is the Jeffrey Sach's approach and "searchers" which is the approach that he advocates. He believes that in our effort to help and over plan, we try to force others to become what we want them to be. He even goes so far as to say that this is really just another form of western imperialism. He believes that instead of focusing on eradicating poverty, we should focus on what foreign aid can do for poor people. He does not believe in doing nothing but has a radically different approach. 

Searchers look for any opportunity to relieve suffering and don't get stuck on what he calls "infeasible objectives".  He believes in operating without goals and more accountability for those that are trying to help.

There is yet another perspective in the book "A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty". You can read more on the website  Poor Economics which includes a link of ways you can help by funding microfinance projects which do seem to make a lot of sense.

 

Current Affairs

In the midst of the Supreme Court hearings around two marriage equality cases, I wanted to reflect on how we got here and where we might be going. Many of us who came out in the 70’s or 80’s would agree that realizing we were gay freed us from a path toward conventional marriage. Many of us found our happiness in that difference. We were coming out at a time of sexual liberation and marriage was the last thing on anyone’s mind. 

But we grew up and marriage grew up along side us. We watched a very role based institution evolve and truly for the first time in the history of humankind, marriage became an equal partnership of two people who loved each. We grew up to realize that the happiness of love, stability, family and home are just as possible for us as for anyone and so a fight for marriage equality began. 

It was slow and small for many years and 2004 saw the passage of so many state constitutional amendments banning marriage equality. There was a presidential campaign that focused on pushing us back from our quest. But then as more and more of us felt safe enough to come out and we became just another sister, a cousin, a friend, a co-worker, a neighbor, we stopped being so scary. So the support numbers began to grow at a rapid rate. High profile celebrities didn’t hurt but the real difference was made in our home towns.

I would suggest that during these two days of Supreme Court hearings, with social media and visibility, it is possible the support numbers went up another 1-2% points. Maybe even more?  We do not know how the Court will rule. Will there be a sweeping decision or a partial decision? or at worst, a negative decision? We will know for sure in June. 

What I do know now is that our quest to be part of the marriage culture is certainly not destroying the ever evolving institution. In many ways, we may be saving it. I think interest in marriage was on the downturn. But when something you have is coveted by others, you often appreciate the value for the first time.

A World Without Want

One of the world situations that likely keeps us all from feeling as happy and content with our own lives as we wish is the knowledge of such massive poverty that exists for so many in a world of such abundance. Many economist see great progress towards a better life for 6 billion of the world's inhabitants. But most experts agree that there is really no end in sight for a group called, “the bottom billion.” There are differing perspectives on this issue because when we do donate or do what we can to help, we want to think that we are really making a difference.

Some of the countries that you might find in the bottom billion include Malawi, Ethiopia, Haiti, Laos, Chad, Burma, and the countries of central Asia including Afghanistan. Other, once poor countries such as India, Brazil, or China are seeing vast economic progress. So why are some countries stagnating, or even becoming poorer? Many of the economists that are studying the situation are using very complex forms of statistical analysis to come up with that answer. 

In his book, “The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing”, Paul Collier suggests that sending money is not always the answer. Change must come from within and cannot be imposed. He suggests that in all these countries, there are reformers and those opposed to change. We may have to help the reformers by the use of military interventions and trade policies. The problems are not easily solved by celebrities spotlighting the problems and there is not a one size fits all solution.

 

Jeffrey Sachs, the author of “The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity"  applies his global economic theories to the US. Sachs is an advocate for economic aid and he works with celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Bono who raise visibility for his programs. His work in Africa has been in the form of initiatives such as the Millennium Villages Project.  He wrote this book as a result of his growing concern that America is not going in the right direction. He suggests that neither party, the Democrats or Republicans have any really substantial ideas.

He believes the Republicans to be the party of “Big Oil” and the Democrats to be the party of “Wall Street.” Just as he believes the right kind of activism can make a difference in the bottom billion countries, so he believes the same for the US.  He advocates that the current diagnosis that big government is the problem is exactly the wrong diagnosis. In reality, only government can fix the real challenges we are facing, globalization, technological change, and environmental threats.

He suggests a partnership between the market economy and government can make a difference and that the top 1% have a social responsibility to do their part.  There are many things in these ides that ring true, both globally and locally. 

 

Eating Ethically

"Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser hits on a subject near and dear to my heart.     I consider myself a "foodie". What that means to me is that I love food and I am thoughtful about what I eat. When possible, I want to know where the food comes from and the impact it has on the planet.

Do I sometimes indulge in fast food? Yes, for convenience or from a craving established in my college years. But I feel that every meal I eat that supports healthy, sustainable agriculture is a tiny victory.

Schlosser suggests there are other things we can do, aside from avoiding fast food. We should push Congress to ban advertising targeted at children and pushing unhealthy food.  We should demand better health safety laws. He goes into great detail around how the meatpacking industry that has often been driven by the fast food industry is a disgrace. There are high rates of worker injuries. Both meatpacking and fast food rely on high turnover employees, with limited access to quality health insurance, training, career advancement, or even basic fair treatment. He has a great quote, "When labor unions have too much influence, they can become corrupt and encourage inefficiencies. But the absence of unions can permit corporations to behave like a criminal enterprises, violating labor laws with impunity." Our food supply is not as safe as it should be and that has been tolerated while the occurrences of food poisoning  continue to grow. The right pressure applied by consumers could result in change faster than anything the government can do. I wonder what the tipping point will be.
 
Imagine a future where more and more of those that can afford to spend more of their income on local, organic, sustainable food decide to do so. That means more restaurants spring up that deliver healthier food. That means more small farmers establish themselves. This could result in the rebuilding of small town America. This means more jobs that do require intelligence but also hard work and not necessarily an over-priced college degree. As this network of farming grows, prices can begin to drop. Once the farmers have more security and a more consistent consumer base and delivery channels, the food can become more and more affordable. While I expect it might take some time before farmers can make a livable profit,  with increased opportunities to work remotely, one spouse/partner could continue to hold a more conventional job.

Spending in the U.S. will slowly shift. One can hope that spending more on food results in less of the cheap, useless goods from China being bought. Perhaps even some of those dollars can be directed to spending on other healthy choices? It is hard to say how that could all play out.  Health care spending should level off as American become healthier.