A Mild Voice of Reason

Tax Rates — The Next Civil Rights Battle?

Posted on 14 December 2011 | No responses

Amid the drama of the Occupy movement, with its anti-corporate sloganeering, and the push by Democrats in Washington to reduce the deficit through tax hikes, conservatives seem to be waging a rearguard action. Prominent Republicans (the “Young Guns” of the House, notably excepted) appear to be mostly accepting of Democratic arguments at face value, without bothering to dig into the premises behind those arguments. The game seems like a tit-for-tat struggle over talking points for which the Dems, by virtue of their ethics-laden rhetorical style, enjoy a natural advantage. Who, after all, wants to be seen as taking away goodies away from voters?

The problem is that the Democrats, by and large, simply aren’t serious yet about the discontinuity between their policies and the health of the country; they either refuse to acknowledge, or fail to understand, the cliff up to which their entitlement programs have pushed the federal treasury. It was smart politics a century or even a generation ago to promise more Social Security, more Medicare, more union benefits. More, more, more. Yet it’s increasingly obvious that America has reached a point — brilliantly observed and meticulously calculated by the likes of National Review‘s Kevin Williamson and Mark Steyn — where the old rules simply don’t work anymore.

To be fair to the Democrats, it’s not exactly easy to pivot when your party’s playbook has transformed from a path of short-term electoral success to a program of long-term national suicide; witness the GOP struggle to define a coherent foreign policy in the aftermath of the Soviet dissolution. The wrenching change that accompanies a material shift in the country’s fortunes rarely ends well for ideologues who anchor their political edifice to yesterday’s reality — think, for example, of the unceremonious death of the Whig Party before the Civil War and the implosion of the Republicans during the early New Deal years. We can hold out hope that the Party of Jefferson will find a bold leader who will reorient the left toward a saner worldview. It’s possible … but then, so is failure.

Yet although there are hints that some Democrats have wisened to the new economic reality (think James Carville or Doug Schoen), the rank-and-file of the party seems caught in the cross hairs of a struggle between centrist-leaning New Democrats and hard-left Progressive Democrats. The failure of the so-called Supercommittee to find meaningful deficit reduction seems to boil down to one point: Republicans wanted to cut spending without increasing taxes. Democrats wanted to make wealthy people pay higher taxes so as to reduce the spending cuts to programs that they favor.

This leads to a curious impasse, with the Dems forging a curious end-run around it through the politics of group discreditation.

American history is replete with examples of scapegoating. When hard-working Protestants were priced out of the labor market in the nineteenth century, Irish Catholic immigrants bore the blame — and the wrath of government, through immigration restrictions and laws that made it harder for Catholics to integrate into mainstream society. When Detroit suffered the first massive wave of layoffs in the 1980s, people blamed Japan and Japanese. During the national paranoia after the Soviet bomb and Sputnik, the rump of U.S. communism was persecuted without mercy. In the 2000s, it became fashionable to blame Mexican illegals and NAFTA for “taking good jobs” from white Americans (despite that white Americans steadfastly refused to take those jobs). After Pearl Harbor, FDR ordered Japanese Americans rounded up and put in prison camps; after the Civil War, wounded Southern pride exacted its pound of flesh from freed blacks, setting up generations of segregation and lynchings.

And so on, and so on. Easier to blame than to reform.

America overcame institutional scapegoating largely though a deeper commitment to ensuring civil rights for all citizens. Anti-Catholic bias is mostly gone. Racism has largely been eradicated from government. Everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Although some problems remain — why does anyone care if a Mormon is elected president? And why is Mexican immigration still such a hot potato? — the default position in polite society remains one of neutrality and toleration of our differences.

Curious, then, that the response of the Most Elevated Disciples of Toleration, the Democratic left, seems to play the scapegoating game again with reckless abandon. Economy in the tank? Blame “millionaires and billionaires” who’ve gamed the system by speculating off of unsustainable bubbles that left the working family’s 401(k) plans empty. Can’t find a job? Blame “large corporations” for sending jobs overseas. Cutting back on bloated local spending? It’s because “the rich” aren’t paying their “fair share.”

Is there any problem in today’s America that doesn’t spring from the wealthy? One would think the rhetoric of socking it to the Rich Parasite would have fallen away after Auschwitz and Treblinka and Birkenau, but apparently it’s still okay as long as you substitute “millionaires and billionaires” for “Jews.”

Blame substitutes for reform, because reform would make the Democrats face the unpleasant reality that a not-insubstantial share of today’s economic crisis results from generations of DNC-sanctioned policy preferences. Easier ignore the facts and point fingers than to accept responsibility for giving birth to Leviathan.

Housing bubble? Look at the irrational federal expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act that mandated banks to make housing loans based on sociopolitical rather than economic factors. Death of heavy industry? Most of this comes from generous union contracts, making domestic labor significantly more costly than foreign labor. Infrastructure decay? It costs much more in time and regulatory compliance just to get an clean environmental impact statement — making such projects unattractive and inherently risky. Medicare at risk? The doc fix doesn’t help, leaving fewer and fewer providers willing to pick up federally insured patients.

America has a lot of problems. Insufficient taxation of the wealthy isn’t among them. Consider:

• For tax year 2009, the top 1 percent of wage earners paid 36.7 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 10 percent of wage earners — those with a federal adjusted gross income of just $112k or higher — paid 70.5 percent of all federal income taxes. By comparison, the bottom 50 percent of wage earners paid 2.3 percent of all federal income taxes.
• Taxing income at 50 percent for earners in the $1 million to $10 million category would raise enough revenue to reduce the deficit a mere 8 percent (and the debt, just 1 percent). Taxing at 100 percent for all people earning $10 million or more would generate a 12 percent deficit reduction and a 2 percent debt reduction. Guess what? That’s a drop in the bucket.

So. Even if we granted every progressive’s wet dream and taxed the wealthy at 100 percent levels, we won’t have enough revenue to solve America’s financial problems. Not even close.

Demonizing the wealthy isn’t about economics, it’s about politics. It’s about redirecting blame from bad policy to allegedly bad people. It’s easier to lambaste successful Americans for “not paying their fair share” — and why isn’t 70 percent of revenue among the top 10 percent of earners fair enough? — than it is to admit that a socioeconomic model based on wealth redistribution eventually proves unsustainable.

Conservatives need to fight back against this demonization of the successful by turning economic success into a civil right. Just as it’s not fair to scapegoat Jews or Catholics or blacks or gays or Mexicans for our problems, it’s also not fair to scapegoat the wealthy. The counter-argument must self-consciously adopt the language of civil rights activism if it’ll stick against Democrats who relish class warfare as much as children relish candy.

The rich didn’t make America’s economic problems; bad policy did. If we want to play the blame game, lets start with generations of politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, who treated America’s wallet like a no-limit credit card with a bill date of February 30. And instead of merely pointing fingers, let’s put in place policies that promote economic growth and reduce the influence of burdensome regulations pushing down on small businesses across the fruited plain.

America faces a difficult economic future. Present spending is unsustainable and no amount of tax increases will fix it. The only solution comes from significant spending restraint and entitlement reform. If we continue to let the Democrats blame the wealthy, we will turn these important reforms into an unnecessarily ideological hot potato that means we’ll see ruthless ideological warfare in the back seat as Uncle Sam drives off the cliff.

The unhappy ending is avoidable. The question is — will we stop the unnecessary and distracting class warfare and actually address the problem, or will we let envious scapegoating continue to block meaningful reform?

Perhaps a bit of good old-fashioned civil rights talk can help the body politic get the scapegoat off the altar long enough for our leaders to institute real and meaningful reform.

Quick Thoughts re: Last Night’s GOP Candidate Debate

Posted on 11 December 2011 | No responses

Last night, six of the GOP candidates (from stage left: Santorum, Perry, Romney, Gingrich, Paul, Bachmann) for the presidential nomination met on stage in Iowa for a televised debate hosted by ABC News correspondents Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. The event lasted nearly two hours. Impressions:

• Sawyer and Stephanopoulos did a good job at moderating. They tended to be warmer than other moderators, and less critical of the candidates. They seemed to view their job as being facilitators rather than dictators, being much less aggressive about timekeeping than, say, Scott Pelley was, and more celebratory of the human side of campaigning. Although Sawyer’s delivery tended to ramble a bit, the questions themselves were fair game and delivered in fair manner. The pair made for the best debate moderators I’ve seen yet this cycle.
• Maybe it was the more relaxed timekeeping, or that there were fewer candidates on stage (Cain backed out and Huntsman and Johnson weren’t present), but it seemed like the candidates had more time for crossfire and to express themselves in a reasonable amount of time. No one was really cut off the entire night. Everyone on stage had plenty of time to talk — no “Siberia” in the corners, as it were.
• Santorum performed well. His answers were generally good, and delivered strongly, although he felt too nervously earnest. Like the popular high school jock running for class president, and you know in 10 years he’ll be selling used cars and be overweight with three kids and a minivan. Unfair, I know. I just wish he seemed warmer and less uptight. He could try smiling and even crack a joke every now and then.
• Perry had a good night — he rarely stumbled and had some fairly decent answers, although it’s not clear he helped himself by appearing unable to count to three. He has a maddening habit of giving a cursory answer to the question presented to him and then using the rest of his time to answer someone else’s questions — the net effect is to suggest that he can’t answer on the fly and instead needs to think about what the last guy said and then try to one-up it.
• Romney was Romney — generally polished, with good answers and an easy grace. He took more of a beating than Gingrich (unfairly, I think, from Bachmann) but handled it OK. The ABC News commentators argued that Romneys’ “$10,000 bet” to Perry about the contents of Romney’s book hurt him in Iowa, because Iowans don’t bet $10k even on sure things. Not sure I believe that — it was a gimmick, but it pushed Perry on defense. I wasn’t a huge fan of Romney’s answer about Gingrich’s “Palestinians are an invented people” claim: The former governor seemed to suggest that the President of the United States needs the approval of the Prime Minister of Israel before opening his mouth about Middle East affairs, an absurd claim if ever there was one. Yes, Gingrich’s comment was ill-timed. But it wasn’t wrong, and to suggest publicly that making statements of that sort requires pre-clearance by the Israeli government transmits a sense of American weakness I think it’s best to avoid. Romney seems to defer to the side of caution. This may be admirable in a POTUS but as a candidate being blunt about being cautious sends the wrong signals.
• Gingrich was Gingrich. The Speaker did well, giving generally good answers. Sometimes he seemed a bit too impressed by his own cleverness, but again — Gingrich was Gingrich. He handled the marital-fidelity question with grace. Newt is a polished extemporaneous speaker. The ABC News commentators suggested that by this point, it’s Gingrich instead of Romney who’s the apparent nominee. I wouldn’t be upset by a Gingrich candidacy, but it’ll take a lot of discipline to get through the primaries then the general election, and Newt’s lack of discipline is … well, legendary.
• Paul remains the GOP’s irascible old curmudgeon of an uncle. He provides color, and a welcome diversity to the ideological spectrum on the stage, but his policy proscriptions are so off-kilter that it’s good for America he’s polling so poorly.
• Bachmann enjoyed a very strong night. She spoke frequently, and forcefully, on many issues. Although her performance was solid and likely helped her in Iowa, her bulldog-like attacks on Gingrich and Romney seemed contrived and desperate (and were successfully rebuffed by both men simultaneously heaping scorn on her for the comparison) and when she gets on a roll, her eyes glaze over and she doesn’t blink or shift her gaze. Minor point, but it kinda creeps me out. And she needs to stop worshipping Herman Cain.

In all, the debate left me heartened about the overall quality of the Republican field. Any of the people on stage — even Paul, and even the candidates who weren’t there — would make a far better president than the incumbent.

The current horse race puts it as a two-way competition between Romney and Gingrich. I’m OK with either candidate. I think Romney would perform better with independents in the general election, but Gingrich may inspire more conservatives to turn out. And although Obama is currently weak, the Democrat’s chances could improve, and the eventual GOP nominee may well suffer from self-inflicted danger.

The long series of debates had a real impact on the nomination process. Painful as it sometimes was, the system did its job of helping Republican voters better understand who their nominees really are. For that, and for the quality of Republican candidates in this cycle, every conservative ought to be relieved.

The Last Few Weeks ….

Posted on 10 December 2011 | No responses

Caught in a titanic struggle between “busy” and “sick,” the last few weeks have been somewhat less than enjoyable. Nevertheless, a few items of note are worth passing along.

• Malaise.  Last weekend was unhappy; by Friday afternoon I got clobbered by some sort of stomach ailment that didn’t clear up until Sunday night, although it came back for a mini-encore on Wednesday. I ended up missing Mega 80s and the TGIO party last weekend (sadness) and scrubbed a planned site visit to Zeeland on Wednesday.
• Cigar Night. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I hosted another monthly cigar night. Tony, Rob and Brad attended. We shared Tony-supplied Gispert robustos and I made bison grass martinis. A pleasant way to unwind before Turkey Day madness, even if Tony’s intervention led to a few of the martinis being more olive than alcohol. Next event is planned for this coming Tuesday, at Chop House.
• Thanksgiving. This year’s holiday was fun … the festivities started the Friday prior, with an office potluck. My sausage jambalaya went over well — cutting back on cayenne and adding more red curry and chili powder led to a more flavorful but less intense spice profile. On Thursday, the family assembled at my mom’s house. Brian, grandma, and Sue/Robert/kids attended for a lovely meal.
• NaNoWriMo. I didn’t “win” but I learned a ton about novel-writing, and had a blast at the twice-weekly write-ins. Kudos to everyone who made it so enjoyable, especially Duane, Jennifer, Adrianne, Liz, Nicole and Mary. This year, I discovered that it’s a bad idea to try to force-fit a character story on top of a genre template. Next year, I’ll be more ready. At Duane’s suggestion, I bought a Kindle copy of Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. The book is a largely unstructured and informal reflection by this popular Japanese novelist about his lifelong loves of running and writing, and how the two intertwine throughout his career. I’m up to the third chapter.
• Interface Rejections. My team at the hospital grew by one member and one huge pile of work. We are now cleaning up all the daily rejections between two of the hospital’s primary systems — the facility clinical environment, and the facility billing system. Yay us.
• Walking. I’ve driven along Butterworth Avenue often enough that I decided it was time to start exploring all the trails in Millennium Park. From the trail head near the Coke plant at Butterworth and O’Brien, I walked along the trail that hugged Butterworth, crossed the new elevated pedestrian bridge over Maynard and then skirted the lake along the park proper before looping back to the trail head by means of the Grand River path. It turned out to be a nearly 6 mile circuit — quite refreshing. I’ll have to walk (or cycle) this more often.
• TV. I don’t watch too much television, but based on Sondra’s recommendation, I watched both seasons of Better Off Ted on Netflix. The show featured a deliciously sociopathic Portia de Rossi and the suave Jay Harrington as two of the main characters. If you seek a TV show that mixes over-the-top satire with wickedly funny dialog, you’ll love this program. It’s what The Office should have been.
• Phone.  This week I managed to drop my phone into a sink full of hot soapy water. Although it took a few days to completely dry out, the HTC HD7 survived with no apparent problems. Yay. And even better — last week I received a Windows Phone upgrade that, inter alia, included a new Wi-Fi hotspot feature. Which works really well, although it is a bit of a battery drain.

All for now.

Past, Present, Future

Posted on 20 November 2011 | No responses

Feels like I’ve been living my own little version of A Christmas Carol lately. To wit:

Past. Last weekend I took the scenic route home. Drove through eastern Ottawa County, and passed by the haunts of my childhood — the beautiful river views from Lamont, the rolling farmland in Marne, the dirt roads on the periphery of northwest Grand Rapids. Cruised by the three houses in which I lived in as a child (the two on Lincoln, and one at Leonard and 14th). Interesting to see what’s changed, and what has stayed the same. Prompted fond memories of my youth, but also a reflection on what “home” means; I’ve lived in five different places in the last five years, and eight places in the last 15. That’s a lot of impermanence. Although I’m delighted with my current abode, it’s hard to find a place that feels like “home” when you move around a lot, even when you move around the same metro area.

Present. In the process of moving some task-oriented stuff from OneNote to Outlook (hooray for the new Office365 subscription, and the tight integration across desktop/laptop/WP7 devices), I noticed that I’ve made substantially more progress on some of my goals than I expected. This makes me happy. The major “hard work” part remaining is the challenge from Tony, to be prepared to appear in public in a swimsuit for the water park experience during his birthday celebration in June. Last time I was shirtless in public was, oh, September 2008, when Andrew and I decided to spend the day lazing around at Oval Beach. I have the lead time to get into the kind of physical shape I’d prefer for such an excursion. Fun part will be thinking through the upper-body program. I’ve always had a slender chest/shoulder/arm profile (when not covered in blubber) so I’m thinking that a weightlifting program may be in my future. On the bright side, the June trip provides ample opportunity to prepare.

Future. As I continue to work through my novel, it occurred to me that although it’s hard work, chunking out the aspects of novel-writing into into a series of discrete steps, with deadlines, helps to sort through the work. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to “win” NaNoWriMo this year, but I’ve learned a heck of a lot already about how to write a novel, and if I can get this MS done by the end of the year, I think I could be in good shape … to write more novels. If I could find an agent — yay. If not, I’m enjoying the craft of writing, and I think that Duane’s model of putting them up on Amazon will work, too. He gets monthly royalty checks that somtimes cross into the triple digits for some of his old, early novels.

Assorted Ruminations

Posted on 12 November 2011 | 1 response

Well. What an interesting couple of weeks it’s been. Summary commentary follows, on subjects as diverse as writing, politics, socializing and privacy. Read on, dear friends, and be enlightened.

“Society” Isn’t Responsible For Your Bad Choices

Big Al and I have engaged in several recent conversations about Occupy Wall Street, and in particular, about the nature of the main claims emanating like a vile penumbra from the protestors’ wish lists. The crux of the debate: To what extent is society responsible for the condition of people saddled with huge student loan debt and no strong employment opportunity?

Although Alaric refuses to state categorically that he thinks the protestors are totally free of moral culpability for the current condition, he does seem to argue that they aren’t solely culpable and therefore deserve a personal bailout. He asserts that the overwhelming social message that “college is the key to success” means that people really had no other choice if they wanted to be successful, and that colleges have misled many students about the value of their chosen courses of study. As best as I can tell, his position is that the social pressure to attend college mixed with bad or misleading counsel about the options available for majors means that many unemployed students were effectively sold a bill of goods. Therefore, in the interests of the macro economy, it makes sense to lighten their load and to implement reforms to prevent such from happening again.

Our debates have been lively. Although I appreciate his perspective — and do, in fact, concede that social pressure is a not-insignificant contributor to the higher ed bubble — I cannot agree that debt-laden students get a pass. For one thing, imprudence isn’t a virtue. Yes, I’m sure some people really did think that a degree in puppetry would be fulfilling — but did they bother to check the expected labor market for such a focus? Research is abundant and free, beginning with the Department of Labor public databases. As an ethics major, I realize that the only job I’m qualified for is one that requires “a degree, any degree” — no one is actively looking for someone with a B.A. in moral philosophy. I knew that going into it. I made my choices, and I have to accept my consequences. Choosing to go in willfully blind doesn’t provide a layer of insulation for when times get tough.

I get that for many people, life is challenging. I don’t think it’s society’s problem.

Evening of Cocktails and Fine Dining

Last Saturday I welcomed the opportunity to have dinner with Jon and Emilie, Tony and Jen, and Joe. We started with cocktails at Tony’s office in Lansing, then went to Copper for dinner. The meal was delightful and the company was heavenly. We had a great time and settled on the dates for the “All Things Tony” trek to The Happiest Place on Earth in early June.

Scotch Is Good for the Soul

Good Scotch whisky is proof of the existence of a benevolent God. In recent weeks, I’ve enjoyed Ardbeg 10-year (a staple of Jim Murray’s list of top whiskys) and now I’ve laid hands upon another rare bottle of Ballentine’s 17-year. Add to that a good deal on Lagavulin 16-year, and life is good.

But added to the mix: Gentleman Jack. I saw a fascinating Discovery Channel documentary on how Jack Daniel’s is made, and it impelled me to pick up a bottle. Glad I did. GJ may become my default sipping whiskey.

NaNoWriMo Is Harder Than It Looks

So I’m writing a novel. It’s harder than it looks. The goal of National Novel Writing Month is to produce a minimum of 50,000 words in the month of November. Some people have already met their goal, and bully for them. I remain stuck in the low four figures, mostly because I started late and have been planning as I go. The prose I’ve generated so far, I’m mostly happy with. And I purchased Scrivener for Windows — an all-in-one writing application for professional writers — and sync its data files with SkyDrive so I can pick up on any of my computers. So far, so good.

The “discipline thing” presents something of a self-improvement opportunity. My goal is to generate 80,000 words and shop it for sale. As a published writer of non-fiction work, I hope I have at least a tiny bit of credibility to get an agent to look twice at my submission. But if not — it doesn’t matter much. I’m enjoying the craft of writing for writing’s sake.

The fun thing about NaNoWriMo? The social aspect. There are active forums and chatrooms for local areas. The “Ottawa County – Grand Rapids” group has been a blast. I’ve done two write-ins with fellow novelists already, and will do more in the coming weeks. It’s been motivating, and fun to connect with fellow local writers. Even if Elizabeth insists on circulating a paper chat room while I try to write and even if Jennifer won’t bring me Scotch. At least Adrianne gave me chocolate because she’s a nice person.

I’m Not a Commodity: Or, Facebook+Spotify Sucks Huge Donkey Dick

Having read of the hype around Spotify, the streaming music service recently made available in the U.S., I was eager to install the app on my phone and enjoy a wide library of musical bliss. The downside? The only way you can actually register for Spotify is to log in with your Facebook account and agree to share an astonishing amount of personal information (including your name, age, location, friends, and profile details) with Spotify. There is no other way to gain access to the music service. Spotify, seemingly caught off-guard, insists that people can create dummy, empty Facebook accounts if they wish — which seems to defeat the purpose.

Long story short: I refuse. I uninstalled Spotify. And for good measure, I logged into Facebook and stripped all of my data from the service. I deleted all my photos (except a really crappy one for the profile), untagged myself from everyone else’s photos, removed all my personal profile details, and set all privacy settings to the most restrictive level. I even “unliked” almost everything I’ve liked in the history of Facebook — only a few dozen things, but still. My profile is now mostly an empty shell devoid of useful marketing data. Fuck you, Mark Zuckerberg.

Note to Big New Media: I’m a human being, not a data profile. I own my information. You don’t. I grow weary of being offered “free” apps or services only to discover later that the fine print says that you get to commodify me into a package of information that you can sell to others and that I have no say in the matter (not even to opt out or to at least curate what gets shared). I’m also out of the game of “logging in with Facebook” (or Google, or Twitter, or …) — give me the chance to log in using de-identified information, or forego me as a customer. Next up for scubbing: Google. I’m watching you, Mountain View.

State of the GOP Presidential Race

Here’s what I know. Most significantly, Rick Perry managed to disappoint me; I can forgive a bad debate performance, but not a 100 percent failure rate in debate performances. Mitt Romney really does look like the default nominee, and despite Erick Erickson’s bloviations, I think he’d be a strong contender and a solid POTUS. Notwithstanding my lack of enthusiasm for his early debate performances (where he came off arrogant and picking fights on social issues he didn’t need to wage) I think Jon Huntsman might be the best man for the job — he’s sufficiently conservative, smart, polished and experienced. Paul, Gingrich, Bachmann and Johnson should probably exit, stage right. And Herman Cain? He just needs to implode and retire from the race before too much damage is done to the GOP brand. Between the sex scandals and the implausibility of 9-9-9, the risk to Republican seriousness is high.

What a Difference A Gigabyte Makes …

Last week, I acquired for the low, low price of $44 a 2 GB memory chip for my netbook (the package also included an 8 GB micro-SD card). I installed it, booted up the machine — and it purrs like a kitten. Still not quite as fast as my full-sized laptop at home (what, with its dual-core Athlon processor and 4 GB of RAM) but the netbook is keeping up admirably with a dual-boot Win7+Fedora16 setup.

Truth be told, I think I’ve finally settled on an all-Microsoft approach to data management. My laptop, netbook and smart phone all run Microsoft OSes, and I use Windows Live SkyDrive for all my personal cloud storage. I’m increasingly centralizing information with OneNote, conveniently synchronized across all my screens. Although it’s not a perfect setup, I’m satisfied with it and am more productive than I was in the days of miscellaneous FTP syncing and random OS mixes.

… Also, a Single Settings Tweak

The only non-MS device left in my portfolio is my HP TouchPad. Granted that I acquired it at firesale prices, I find WebOS to be snappy and elegant. I was tempted to install the CyanogenMod tweak to push it to Android, but why screw around when WebOS works? The only problem I had — and it frustrated me to no end — was TouchFeeds, an RSS reader that’s simple and robust. However, it would hang the tablet on occasion and sometimes be mind-numbingly slow. Slow, to the point I wanted to chuck it at the window and grind my boots on the shards just to show it who’s boss. Funny thing, though: Simply changing the TouchFeeds setting to stop auto-mark-read-as-you-scroll completely fixed the problem. Now, I just push the “mark all read” button and it flies like a dream. Sometimes, just screwing around with settings solves problems.

Pictures on the Wall

Last weekend, I finally got around to printing 21 4-by-6 photos for the huge wall-mounted photo display I got for a steal a while back. Picking which 21 I wanted to print prompted a delightful trek down memory lane. It also reminded me of how bad of a job I do at taking pictures, despite having a 5 MP camera in my HD7. Now the display is prominenly affixed to the wall of my living room.

NaNoWriMo: Taking the Plunge

Posted on 1 November 2011 | 1 response

Aided by the counsel of my good friend Duane, I’ve decided to take the leap into actually writing a novel instead of merely intending to write one. The National Novel Writing Month — conveniently contemporaneous with “November” on the calendar — provides aspiring novelists a loosely structured environment for pulling together a work of fiction of 50,000 or more words.

So far, so good. I’ve registered an account and posted my introductory message in the Ottawa County/Grand Rapids local forum. Yay. I’ve done a bit of initial planning, but still have some work to go before I’m ready to actually put prose to e-paper.

It helps to have a firm plot concept in mind. The narrative, the major characters, the setting — it’s all in my mind’s eye, which marks a point of departure from my previous tinkering with fiction work.

Next steps include finishing my plot grid and character studies. I figure I’ll be ready to actually write on Thursday. I’m excited. Even if I’m not successful, I’m glad for the opportunity to hone my craft of writing.

Liberate Wall Street! Or, Thoughts re: #Occupy Shenanigans

Posted on 23 October 2011 | 2 responses

The phenomenon that is “Occupy Wall Street” boggles the mind. The inchoate protests across the country that have no rhyme, reason or focus — other than to “just protest” — marks either the canary in social discontent’s coal mine, or Thermidor for the progressive Left. Regardless, watching people protest with no coherent message, animated only by their desire to benefit from taxpayer largesse, proves instructive.

Two points.

First, the Occupy movement, despite its small size and dazzling parade of clowns, represents the same type of discontent from the Left as the Tea Party marked for the Right. The Tea Party said: “I don’t want to pay for other people’s bailouts.” The Occupy movement says: “You paid for everyone else’s bailout, now where’s mine?”

It’s easy — too easy, for some conservative pundits — to let ridicule substitute for engagement in their approach to the Occupy phenomenon. The “where’s mine?” attitude on full flower in New York is easy to dismiss as naive or to caricature as the whinings of people too stupid to realize that a master’s degree in Medieval French Feminist Literature has relatively little market power. The dismissals are on-point, to be sure, but they miss the point at the same time. The protesters are demanding personal bailouts. It’s not caricature if it’s fact, and the fact is, student loan debt (most significantly) has fanned this particular flame of discontent, and those left with more debt than they can pay back really do feel like they’ve been sold a bill of goods. Deriding it without acknowledging that people genuinely believe they deserve a personal bailout risks missing the forest for the face-pierced trees, and acting like personal bailouts are unreasonable despite our history with all sorts of public bailouts (not to mention welfare policy) constitutes willful blindness of a point that many consider to be valid in principle if not always in practice.

Second, the emergence of the Occupy movement and its sycophantic support among mainstream Democrats from Obama on down, unmasks in a creative new way the far Left agenda.  The general public so far seems less than amused. Conservatives and even some moderates snicker at some of the demands that have leaked from the “General Assembly” in New York — including immediate debt forgiveness for everyone, everywhere — but in truth, they are doing everyone a form of service. They are showing the country where the real Left pole lies. Elected Democrats shy away from this pole even though they’re beholden to it, much as elected Republicans have their own love-hate relationship with the far Right. Yet the challenge from the Left is that the old divisions (centrist, liberal, progressive, socialist, communist, anarchist) are eroding just as the internal divisions eroded within the Right in the last generation. People point to today’s monolithic Republican Party with much less internal ideological diversity as being a bad thing, yet this outcome is the end result of a process beginning with Watergate and continuing through the GWB years — and it’s only now beginning in earnest within the Left. Just as moderate Republicans are an endangered species, so also are the moderate Democrats: Just look at how the Blue Dogs were wiped off the map in 2010.

This means that in the coming years, the folks to the left side of the center almost surely will undergo the wrenching sea-change in ideology that will pull Democrats further to the fringe and impose a more rigid political and ideological template on rank-and-file politicians. The Republicans moved further Right in the 1990s and 2000s; the Democrats will move further Left in the 2010s and 2020s.

A NoLabelist third-party conglomeration of moderates is unlikely to prevail; the system revolves around a two-party duopoly, and in any case, not many beyond the ranks of self-appointed public intellectuals feel the call to rally to the cause of moderation. Instead, the independents will trend Right or tune out altogether.

It’s not hard to envision this moment — the Occupy movement, the weakness of the Obama administration, the ongoing failures of Keynesian stimulus, “leading from behind,” the backlash against Obamacare — as the point where another generational change begins. A change where the aspirations of the progressives decisively lose favor with the broad Middle America, and Democrats seem poised to devolve into decades of bitter internecine wars of ideology. Whatever the outcome for the Democrats, the progressive movement looks like its on the verge of collapse, at least as a serious contender for mindshare among educated citizens.

The progressives want to Occupy Wall Street. Fine. Yet it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if the net result is that we’re now witnessing the first wave of the liberation of Wall Street from the powers of regulation and redistribution that are only now shedding the pretext of moderation and allowing their full ideology to flower.

America is a center-right nation. Always has been. When the progressives could cloak their ambitions under the veneer of moderation, Democrats have been successful. Just look at Bill Clinton. It takes a real crisis of public confidence mixed with effective blame assignment toward the Right to elect a true left-wing president — FDR, LBJ, BHO. Under ordinary circumstances (think McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, William Jennings Bryan, or even TR’s Bull Mooses) the further to the left they drift, the less likely the odds they’ll be elected.

Market economies work. That so many graduates with useless degrees are unemployed sort of proves the point. As long as the Right presents a solid pro-market strategy that leaves reasonable room for helping out the less fortunate, conservatives will win election after election. A pro-growth agenda that holds people responsible for the choices they make while providing a safety net to help those whose choices were constrained by circumstance will lift more boats than a soak-the-rich, give-to-the-poor Robin Hood fantasy that seems to animate the Left lately.

And as far as the freak shows in Zucotti Park — laugh, if you must. But beneath the unwashed hippie facade lies a discontent that could fizzle. Or explode. Conservatives would be well-advised to keep eyes wide open while they chuckle at the spectacle, lest they find themselves being tomorrow’s lion fodder.

Six Strategies

Posted on 16 October 2011 | No responses

As part of my normal life planning work, I try to keep a few concepts top of mind. Over the years I’ve honed the list, tweaking ideas and words, but a few enduring maxims represent the principles by which I try to make the long-term decisions that will govern my personal growth. My current six strategies include:

1. Reduce consumption.  The drive to possess material things exposes a hollow core that too often people try to fill with objects – it’s better to spend your energy and resources acquiring experiences and ideas that will endure for a lifetime, than on trinkets or status symbols that will soon be discarded. Eat less, purchase less, indulge less — and thereby develop the asset base to leverage better and more lasting things in the future.
2. Cultivate serenity. Don’t get trapped in the drama of today. Keep a calm center, remain dispassionate about the things that don’t matter, and never let the bastards create turmoil within.
3. Nurture relationships.  Our social networks not only define us, but they give us access to resources of different types that we would not otherwise possess on our own. Keep a tight inner circle and a wide net of acquaintances — but curate them carefully. Cut off relationships that are negative, and maintain the ones that are good. Be a friend when a friend is needed, and accept help when you’re the one in need.
4. Exhibit insatiable curiosity. Always ask why. Seek out new ideas, new people, new experiences. Try new things and be bold about pushing your limits.
5. Do few things, but do them well.  Jacks of all trades are masters of none. Find one or two things in which you can excel, and focus on those; don’t be such a polymath that you achieve mediocrity in a wide range of things but demonstrate mastery over nothing.
6. Favor action over study.  Active and conscious life planning makes a person the master of his fate instead of a victim of it, but too much planning opens the door to analysis paralysis. It’s easy to keep kicking big things down the road, telling yourself you need to keep thinking about it, but the key to a truly self-directed life is to do and not merely think. Develop a bias for doing.

Jason’s Current Playlist …

Posted on 10 October 2011 | 1 response

Interesting tidbit: I’ve been paying attention to the songs I’ve been listening to, over and over and over. The same 19 keep getting repeat listens. The list tends to change frequently. Currently (alpha by artist/first name):

• Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart (Extended Version)”
• Britney Spears, “Everytime”
• Chevelle, “Closure”
• Chevelle, “The Red”
• D12, “How Come”
• Eagles, “Hotel California”
• Eminem, “Just Lose It”
• Hanson, “I Will Come to You (a capella)”
• Hinder, “Better Than Me”
• Hoobastank, “The Reason”
• Limp Bizkit, “Behind Blue Eyes”
• Linkin Park, “Numb”
• Matchbox 20, “Unwell (Album Version)”
• Nick Lachey, “What’s Left of Me”
• Roberta Flack, “Killing Me Softly”
• Shinedown, “Second Chance”
• Shinedown, “If You Only Knew”
• Stone Sour, “Bother”
• Weezer, “Buddy Holly”

Doors, Open or Bolted: A Reflection on Past Choices

Posted on 9 October 2011 | 2 responses

I finally built the second bookshelf for my office yesterday. I had the materials for a while, but I didn’t do anything with them; I needed to saw some boards and drill holes and stain everything, which seemed like a bother every time I thought about it. At long last, my disappointment over seeing a pile of books on the floor outweighed my tendency to tell myself I’d take care of it “later.” So, now all of my books are sorted and shelved, and I feel a sense of great relief. Almost like I accomplished something meaningful.

As I was basking in the glow of a proper home library, my eye caught the youngsters across the street at play. A group of three guys and one girl — they looked to be in their late teens, with the air of skateboarders about them – were doing handstands and hackey sack in the grassy half-lot across the road. Ordinarily I’d not give them a passing thought, but one of the kids looked like I did when I was in junior high — short, pencil-thin and a bit uncoordinated. Daydreaming being what it is, the sight prompted some reflection about the choices I’ve made that have put me where I am today from a starting point not radically different from the view from across the street. A few decisions stand out, for good and for ill.

The first major shock occurred in seventh and eighth grades. Up to that point, I was scrawny — the kind of kid who would would totally rock today’s super-skinny jean trend. In fact, I was so underweight that my pediatrician suggested steroids to prompt growth. But when my mom took over as the maintenance supervisor for our church, I started the “early teen munching” and soon started to flesh out. Fat, by no means, but I can remember looking in the mirror and noticing the weight gain, even when I was probably still on the low end of the “normal” range. I looked — and although I wasn’t exactly thrilled, I didn’t change course, even though at that age I considered exercising. Yes, I was a kid, but still. A door to good health and social acceptance began to close, and it remained bolted for more than a decade.

After that came high-school socialization. In those days my social confidence wasn’t all that high. The social environment at West Catholic High School was more cut-throat than at St. Anthony’s. Cliques formed. I tried to stay above the fray; St. Anthony really didn’t have cliques, so I didn’t know how to adapt. But although I had plenty of friends — and was even elected senior class treasurer — I never really felt like I fit in. Nor did I try to. I deliberately chose  to endure high school instead of diving into it, and in the process there were certain rites of passage that most people experienced that passed my by entirely. I prided myself on being too mature and too dispassionate for the antics of high school, but in the end the only person I ended up fooling was myself.

From West Catholic, I enrolled at Western Michigan University — largely by default; I “chose” WMU because my friends Jeni and Aaron were going there  – and three separate situations transpired my freshman year that reverberated for a lifetime. First, although I went to WMU in the Honors College and under an Army ROTC three-year advanced designee full-ride scholarship, I failed out after my first year. Not because I wasn’t capable (when I returned after a one-year “sabbatical,” I was full dean’s list), but because I never went to class. I sat in my room for the most part, and spent all my money on food. My “freshman 15″ was more like “freshman 45.” Second, I joined the student government. The Western Student Association led to the Western Herald, and my entire WMU experience was colored by the influence of the twin basement wings of the Faunce Student Services Building. Third, I surrendered the ROTC scholarship. I told myself that I couldn’t meet the program requirement of graduating in four years because I wanted to major in practically everything, but in truth, part of it was fear of being successful. If I applied myself, I could have been wildly successful — and who knows? Today, I may well be a field-grade officer somewhere, serving a career as an Army officer.

In those early days, my bad choices stemmed from one, pervasive root: Fear of success. I thought I was smart. Hell, I thought I was well-nigh omnipotent. So what better way to preserve the fantasy that you could be larger than life at something than to never really strive at anything? To avoid doing your best so that your failures are either someone else’s fault (usually the “system”) or because you told yourself that if you had really wanted it, you could have done it, but you know you didn’t really try so the inner fantasy remains intact?

And to top it off, I acted as if the rules didn’t apply to me, with legal and financial consequences that were not exactly insignificant.

The first kick in the pants came from my grandfather. Just knowing he was Disappointed — capital D — was the one thing that ever got through to me. Not my own lack of self esteem, not my mother’s lectures, not being trapped in low-paying jobs with no real future. Just him. And eventually I got to experience the full brunt of it.

From there, I went back to WMU and did well enough to graduate with a not-terrible GPA despite the damage from my first year. I continued to balloon physically, and I remained socially insular (to this day I regret never doing the Wednesday night Roadhouse thing), but my focus moved toward getting out of college to go into the seminary. The goal was laudable enough, but I got caught in Catholic politics — it’s a risky proposition to be more theologically conservative than your vocations director, and in Grand Rapids it would have been hard to be to the left of him. A few years of effort came to naught but a bachelor’s degree.

Seminary having been taken off the table, I went to grad school because, well, it’s what comes after undergrad school. Right? Bad choice. I wasn’t ready for it in the sense that I didn’t have a purpose. Today, I’d like to go back — I have a research angle in mind and already know what my thesis would be. Then, though, I tried to delay the inevitable by means of more schooling, with the usual less-than-impressive outcome attached.

I’ve said before, and I’ll reiterate — 2005 was a watershed year. Until then, I went with the flow and had no sense of structure. No teleology. I floated along with whatever current was strongest. Overweight, reclusive, angry — I simply existed with no goals and no real ambitions other than to win the petty battles of the day.

The biggest choice of all, then, closed the door on my life from age 18 to age 28. I left the grad program, left the Herald, went on a diet (and lost 110 pounds), took up running and karate, updated my appearance, and first started thinking about what direction I’d like for my life to take. The changes were dramatic, and the decisions were all rendered in the first week of January.

The intervening years have been something of an exercise in maintenance. I lost some traction with my series of annual moves and the whole Vitamin D issue, but I didn’t appreciably lose ground. Then again, I didn’t move forward, either. October 2008 through December 2010 marked off an odd side-journey wherein I finally gained social confidence and a well-balanced sense of self-worth by seeing how really disappointing the dating life was like. So far, 2011 has been a good year — recovery and renewal.

But I cannot help but ponder what would have been different had my choices fallen in a different direction:

• If I integrated in high school instead of remaining an outsider, would things have changed?
• If I had gone to Michigan State to study veterinary medicine as I had originally planned, instead of political science and philosophy at WMU, what would have happened? What different set of friends and what other experiences would have opened doors for me?
• If I had aggressively pursued a priestly vocation instead of letting the vocations director send yet another potential seminarian away, would I be at a parish now?
• If I stuck with ROTC, would I have seen combat? What career specialization would I have entered?
• If, instead of leaving grad school, I forged ahead with the M.A., what would I have done with it? Would I have been tempted to pursue a Ph.D?

Life is like a maze of cubicles, stretching from birth to death. Every choice leads to another corridor, like the branches shooting off from another branch, from another branch, from the main trunk. The choices we make — deliberate, or accidental (my journalism experience began over a simple too-long letter to the editor, for example) — open some doors while closing others. Sometimes, those closures are temporary; sometimes they’re permanent.

It’s easy to lament the roads not taken. It’s harder to recognize the choices that had long-term salutary outcomes. I think that the failures I’ve experienced over the years proved to be necessary correctives — they cured me of my arrogance, my dogmatism, my inflexibility, my disdain for social interaction. In most of the ways that matter, I’m a better man now than I was one or five or 10 years ago, a proposition worth celebrating.

And I’ve seen through the mental charade that clouds the eyes of so many — namely, that a fear of confronting one’s own limits stops us from achieving greatness. There is no “aspire,” there is only “do.” Or “do not.” As they say, “shit or get off the pot.” I’ve identified a life strategy, I’m actively working toward it, and my self-awareness is less clouded than it used to be. These are all good things. I grieve for those who are still stuck in “aspire” mode, and may well be for life. Despite the ups and downs I’ve experienced, I’m currently happy and stable and focused. That’s a good thing, even if I couldn’t have predicted even a few years ago where I’d be today.

Yet I look out the window, and wonder — what if I never became addicted to trans fat as an adolescent?

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