Starving the Beast

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Those of us old enough to remember the Reagan years can probably remember hearing the phrase "Starving the Beast." What did it mean? From Wikipedia:

Starving the beast" is a political strategy employed by American conservatives in order to limit government spending[1][2][3] by cutting taxes in order to deprive the government of revenue in a deliberate effort to force the federal government to reduce spending. The short and medium term effect of the strategy has dramatically increased the United States public debt rather than reduce spending .

Those of us still around to see what happens when terms like "fiscal cliff" and "sequestration" enter the lexicon are able to see what will happen when the starvation takes hold:

Imagine that just before Thanksgiving a major retailer, say Nordstrom or Wal-Mart, announced it would furlough 10 percent of its sales, collections and accounts payable staffs.

The stock would tank. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the CEO or the board of directors keeping their jobs as customers switched to other retailers during the holiday buying season, costing the company revenues far in excess of the savings. Not only would the corporate overseers become everyday laughing stocks, they would surely be enshrined in a Harvard Business School case study as the worst of all corporate dunces.

Well, on March 1 — right in the middle of tax season — the IRS will be faced with cutting staff ten percent under the federal budget sequester…

Rational people would think that a law-enforcement agency which saved taxpayers more than 150% of its budget would get some support from Congress because its highly cost-effective. The operative word there is rational.

House Appropriations Committee Democrats on Feb. 13 offered these rational observations on what sequester would do to the IRS and to taxpayers: 

  • Sequestration will be particularly devastating to the IRS, since it will require furloughs to take effect during the 2012 filing season. Furloughs at IRS call centers equate to longer hold times on the phone for taxpayers, if the call is answered at all. Fewer enforcement agents will be available to investigate fraudulent claims, leading to an increase in the number of identity theft cases unresolved. Further, each dollar invested in enforcement actions returns $4 in additional revenue to the Treasury. Cutting investment in enforcement will lead directly to an increase in the deficit.

It's hard to generate any sympathy for the IRS, but if we must have an IRS (as we must) then we should make sure it has what it needs to complete its mission.

Land of the Free, Home of the Afraid?

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On Facebook a friend recently shared an article from The Atlantic titled "A Repbublic Demands Courage From Its Citizens" that essentially calls into question most Americans' perception that America is indeed the Land of the Brave. The piece focuses on our willingness to set aside the values that have largely defined our society for generations – basically we're against torture and for civil rights – in reaction to threats that aren't really as bad as we perceive them to be. From the article:

We have suffered several thousand casualties from 9/11 through today. Suppose we had a 9/11-level attack with 3,000 casualties per year every year. Each person reading this would face a probability of death from this source of about 0.001% each year. A Republic demands courage — not foolhardy and unsustainable "principle at all costs," but reasoned courage — from its citizens …. To demand that the government "keep us safe" by doing things out of our sight that we have refused to do in much more serious situations so that we can avoid such a risk is weak and pathetic. It is the demand of spoiled children, or the cosseted residents of the imperial city. In the actual situation we face, to demand that our government waterboard detainees in dark cells is cowardice…

Look at it this way. 

There were almost 10,000 drunk-driving fatalities in 2011 alone. That's the equivalent of three 9/11s in people killed, plus many more seriously injured, every year. Is a majority of Americans ready to lower the blood alcohol limit to 0.01 and to mandate breathalyzers on all ignition switches? Nope. That would be an onerous government intrusion on liberty. I'm fine with that. But it vexes me when the same citizenry faces the significantly lower risk that terrorists pose, spends far more on prevention, and still insists that targeted killings in Yemen and Somalia can't be constrained, because taking more care to save innocents would threaten us. 

These concerns are very real. Simply ask yourself this question: If Canada's  Security Intelligence Service were to fly drones into Michigan and fire missiles at well-armored SUVs that they had strong evidence were carrying gun runners who were directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Canadian citizens, and in the process they accidentally killed four American families who happened to be traveling in the vicinity on their way home from a church picnic, how would you as an American feel about it? Horrified? Terrified? Incensed? You bet. Now ask yourself this: After an episode like this how would we Americans react to Canada insisting that we do something to take care of our gun problem? Would we see the Canadians as a well-intentioned society trying to be the world's "good cop" or would we see them as vigilantes willing to suspend any semblance of due process and recklessly endanger innocents in an effort to protect its own citizens? 

The point is that many of America's practices during its War on Terror have eroded our moral standing in the world, and while our "hawks" would like us to believe that our practices convey an image of strength to the world the reality is that our society is exhibiting cowardice.  Don't confuse that notion with the notion that our armed forces are perceived as weak – to the contrary they've exibited a great deal of courage and fortitude over the last decade after being put in some very tough positions – but our society can only appear weak when we overreact to a threat that is not as great as it's perceived and when we abandon core principles that have always defined our society.  As the first paragraph in the excerpt makes clear it's not that we shouldn't fight back against terrorists, it's that we should do so in a way that's proportional to the threat and without sacrificing our principles. 

In a nutshell we need to grow some you-know-whats and we should demand our elected leaders do the same.

Easy Way to Record a Meeting

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Today at our office (I work for a trade association) we hosted a board meeting and the secretary asked if we could record it so that she could reference the recording later in case she missed anything for her notes. We don't have a digital recorder in the office so our solution was the following:

  • Signed up for a free Google Voice account. 
  • Tied the Voice account to my office phone since you have to tie the Google Voice number to an existing number. 
  • From our conference room phone I called my office phone and had someone answer it and then press "4" to start the recording process. (Google Voice allows you to record any incoming call, but currently you can't record outbound calls which is why we called my office phone from the conference room and not vice versa).
  • The recording is automatically saved as an MP3 in your Google inbox which you can then share as a link you email to whomever you want, embed in a webpage/blog post or download to share offline. 
  • When the meeting was over I simply hung up the phone which ended the recording.
  • After the meeting was over I emailed the secretary the link to the recording and that was that.

Other uses I can picture for this setup:

  • Recording interviews with industry experts over the phone to share on our blog.
  • Recording our educational offerings to be archived or posted online for others to access.

All of this was unbelievably easy to do and the price was definitely right.

Memories

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This five minute Freakonomics segment from NPR's Marketplace show should freak out anyone who:

  1. Thinks they have a great memory and thus eschew the use of notes, reminders, planners, etc.
  2. Is in a position that they are dependent on anyone else's memory in order to stay out of jail or avoid some other catastrophe.

Luckily I have a bad memory and know it so I've developed all kinds of systems to compensate for that fact. Unfortunately my kids also know I have a terrible memory and they use it to their advantage by saying things like, "Dad, don't forget you promised to buy me the new Halo for Xbox today." I've started to wise up and have developed a simple system to deal with that too: if they don't get it from me in writing it doesn't count. 

Here's the Freakonomics segment:

Priorities

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The Affordable Care Act (ACA), a.k.a. Obamacare, is starting to kick into gear and states are having to make decisions about how they are going to participate. Here in North Carolina the state legislature is considering opting-out of the expansion of Medicaid called for by the ACA:

Legislation is moving forward in the General Assembly to opt out of the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. The expansion would provide health insurance to people living in households with incomes below 133 percent of the poverty line. The federal government would cover 100 percent of the costs for the first three years and 90 percent of the costs thereafter.

Besides extending coverage to about 400,000 poor NC residents who wouldn't get health insurance otherwise, the expansion would bring in $40 billion on net (about $50 billion in total spending), which would jolt the economy and create jobs.

A new report by Regional Economic Models, Inc. forecasts that the expansion would add nearly 6,000 jobs to the NC economy in the first year of the expansion, as participation in Medicaid starts to grow, and 20,000 to 25,000 jobs in subsequent years, as participation stabilizes at a higher level.

It's no secret, or a surprise, that the newly empowered Republican majority in the NC legislature is opposed to the ACA. Most conservatives I've talked to would like to see entitlements of all varieties cut rather than expanded, and if you avoid getting all hot and bothered and really listen to them you realize it's not out of meanness. Many of them truly believe that we're robbing an entire generation of any incentive to improve their own lot. Most I've talked to absolutely believe we should help the truly helpless, but defining who the truly helpless are and determining how best to help them can get you into some heated debates faster than you can say Obamacare.

On the flip side most liberals I know truly believe that as a society it's in our best interest to make sure that all people have access to good health care. Most I've talked to view it as a moral issue – we should do it because it's right. 

Here's where I get frustrated: I think there's a middle ground between the two groups. I too think there's a moral obligation to do everything we can to make sure all members of our society have access to health care, but I also think there's a solid "business case" to be made for it. A healthy society by definition will be more efficient than a sick society, and the resources tied up in caring for very sick people could be better spent elsewhere.

Put simply sick people have a hard time working or contributing to society in a meaningful way, and if you want to institute reforms in other areas of our entitlement programs – for instance requiring X hours of community service in return for Y dollars of aid – then you need to make sure they are healthy at a bare minimum. We can debate the details all day long, but in terms of priorities I don't know how you can put health care anywhere below the very top tier.

Why No Trader Joe’s in GSO?

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The Triad Business Journal explores why there won't be a Trader Joe's in Greensboro in the near future. In addition to all of the reasons cited in the article – Greensboro not being on TJ's 2-year plan, the attorney involved in the proposed project last year no longer being involved, and nothing happening on the development front – they might want to add that no one in Greensboro (that I know of) made a video to try and woo Trader Joe's. Some folks in Winston-Salem did a couple of years ago and now we have a TJ's in Thruway. So, folks in GSO here's a helpful hint from your neighbors in Camel City.

The Perils of Helicopter Parenting

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A teacher has written a nice little piece about what she sees as the danger of overprotective parents. Here are the money paragraphs:

These are the parents who worry me the most — parents who won't let their child learn. You see, teachers don't just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. We teach responsibility, organization, manners, restraint, and foresight. These skills may not get assessed on standardized testing, but as children plot their journey into adulthood, they are, by far, the most important life skills I teach.

I'm not suggesting that parents place blind trust in their children's teachers; I would never do such a thing myself. But children make mistakes, and when they do, it's vital that parents remember that the educational benefits of consequences are a gift, not a dereliction of duty. Year after year, my "best" students — the ones who are happiest and successful in their lives — are the students who were allowed to fail, held responsible for missteps, and challenged to be the best people they could be in the face of their mistakes.

If you spend enough time at schools, youth sports events, scout meetings, etc. you'll see plenty examples of what this teacher is talking about. What will really blow your mind is what parents of some high school students will do to make sure their kids' transcripts are pristine for the all-important college application process. They'll manufacture "community service" projects, write their childrens' application essays, do their kids' school projects or let them drop a class if it's too challenging or threatens to lower the GPA by a smidge. In their minds the purpose of education isn't to help their children truly learn and grow, it's to get them into a prestigious school so that they can get a prestigious job. And what happens when those same kids get to college and struggle? They call home and guess who comes running to try and bail them out?

Obviously there are times you should help your kids, but providing help is often more about the parents than the kids.  It's actually harder to watch your kids struggle than it is to intervene and do it for them – it's literally painful – so when we step in and bail them out we're actually being very selfish. We're assuaging our own pain to our children's long-term detriment. If we really care about them we will let them fall and learn how to pick themselves up. It ain't easy, but no one ever said that good parenting was easy and that's why they pay us parents the big bucks anyway. Right?

Standing on Principle

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Winston-Salem city councilman Dan Besse is taking a bit of a political hit for his stance on an issue before the council. From Yes! Weekly's editorial about the matter:

The Winston-Salem city councilman took a stand last week against a proposed resolution by the city to oppose the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which equated money with free speech and enabled corporations and unions to make unlimited financial contributions to the political process…

But the time is being spent regardless of Besse’s opposition, largely at the behest of his political allies and constituents…

Surely there would be no harm to Dan Besse’s political future by backing down on his stance and throwing in with the opposition groups. It’s an election year, after all, and though Besse’s Southwest Ward seat seems safe, he will surely face a Republican opponent in the General Election.

The editors then provide two quotes from Besse that I think should be printed and hung on the walls in the chambers of every city/town/county council in the land:

“I strongly believe that as a good-government issue, that local governments should focus on the good things we can do — services and infrastructure that we are responsible for — instead of serving as an adjunct public debating society on issues over which we have no jurisdiction,” he said.

and

“If you can’t act on what you believe is the right thing to do, then you shouldn’t be in office,” he said.

Councilman Besse also pointed out that he is an activist on many issues like assault weapons bans, the Affordable Care Act and environmental quality, but he is active in other more appropriate venues. His point – that being a member of city council doesn't preclude him from advocating for any issue on his own time, but when he's wearing his councilmember hat he should be focused on the city's business – is spot on.