Per Chance To Understand

Every year that I get to experience this life, I gain a deeper understanding of the cliché, "The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know." This does not stop me from trying to, at the very least, understand what is going on. So I read. I read anything and everything that I can get my hands on. On some nights I wish I didn't need eight hours of sleep so that I had more time to read.

Lately I am trying to understand two things, at least at a basic level: the current recession and the health care system debate. I think if people read more, and tried to understand more, there would be a great deal less shouting at town hall meetings across the land. I could be wrong. It may very well cause more.

These items gave me some greater understanding today:

On the recession:
How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?
Paul Krugman, NY Times

On Health Care:
How American Health Care Killed My Father
David Goldhill, The Atlantic

Bending the Curve: Effective Steps to Address Long-Term Health Care Spending Growth
The Brookings Institution

I must give a nod to yesterday's David Brooks column for pointing me in the direction of the two items on health care.

Celebs Dogs Slept Better Than Most Last Night

Normally, I avoid any news about celebrities. In my opinion it is a contributing factor to the dumbing down of America. One of my guilty pleasure is a website that posts daily funny and absurd photos from the web's zeitgeist. Well, "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Anyhow, this morning I just happened upon some photos of a very nice house. A house that a celebrity paid $250,000 to build... for her dogs! I followed the link for the photos to the original blog that posted them. The blogger said it best, "Paris Hilton’s dogs sleep in a better place than me."

Yes folks, the world is definitely out of whack when a spoiled brat can build her dogs a better house than most of us have. It makes me chuckle and a little sad at the same time. I'm sweating these past few days in a New England heatwave, but Paris's dogs have AC. The irony... that high school history classes taught us that the French and Russian revolutions were started in part due to the disparities between the upper class and.... not the poor, but the "working class." (In my opinion the "middle class" is a modern American euphemism.)

Are we headed in the same direction? I think that if Paris were told about the plight of everyday American's, she just might say, "let them eat cake."

"Responsible Capitalism" Gaining Traction

I'm seeing the glimmer of a positive shift in business news. It is nice to see that people are realizing once again that we are all in this together.

A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality - NYTimes.com

DIY stimulus: CEO gives workers $1000 each from his own pocket

DIY stimulus: CEO gives workers $1000 each from his own pocket

Now, if more businesses in the insurance, real estate and banking sector CEOs were like this, maybe we wouldn't be in this huge mess.

On the Budget: An Open Letter To Fellow Manchester Citizens:

It is time to keep our emotions in check. The political parties and some organizations in Manchester are counting on us to get emotionally "fired up." I believe it is so that we can be more easily manipulated to champion their ideas on this year's difficult budget process. I'm not saying that we should be heartless. On the contrary, now is the time to be empathetic and give consideration outside of the line items in the budget that would be either to one's benefit or detriment.

To keep my emotions in check, I try to walk a mile in General Manager Scott Shanley's shoes, and look at the entire recommended budget.

• GM's Introduction to the FY09/10 Budget (Presentation)
• FY09/10 GM Recommended Budget
• FY 09/10 School Superintendent Budget Presentation
• FY09/10 BOE Recommended Budget

After that I open up a spreadsheet program (Microsoft Excel or Spreadsheet in Google Docs), create the formulas for figuring out my tax bill based on my property's assessed value, mill rates and then start plugging in numbers. I look at the mill rate calculation in the budget introduction, found on page 10 in this document. If the total town budget is increased or decrease by a certain amount, I can calculate what the new mill rate would be, and then determine what that change comes to in real dollars on my tax bill.

If you aren't computer savvy, then get out a pencil (you'll need the eraser, trust me), a pad of paper, and a calculator. If you can do your federal and state tax returns, you are smart enough and have all the skills needed to do this.

I promise you, if you do all that, you have just taken away the ability to be manipulated by someone who will be counting on you to be ignorant of this process. Now you will not be rattled by people throwing around large budgetary dollar amounts, percentages, or phrases like "actual tax levy increase." By doing the basic math, you have put the power where it belongs: in your hands.

I have included a Google Docs Spreadsheet here for you to view. It can be exported to Excel so you can input your own values. Just go to File > Export > .xls

Here is the budget process schedule. The town has made a budget comment web page available and it can be found here. There is also e-mail available. Look up the Boards of Directors here and the Board of Education here. There are plenty of opportunities to have our voices heard. Decisions are made by those who show up. We need to go to them with solutions, not problems and generalities.

"Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes."
Maggie Kuhn

Lastly, please remember that we as citizens have a new mechanism available to us this year in the town budget process. If enough people disagree with the outcome of the BOD vote in April, a petition for a budget referendum can be made. How to do that can be found here.

It is an austere year, but we are all in this together.

Open Letter to the BOD, BOE and Manchester Party Leadership:

Now is the time for cooler heads to prevail. It is certainly not the time for partisan vendettas. Here is what this voter and taxpayer is looking for in this budget cycle that I will carry through to my vote in November:

• Pragmatism
• Transparency
• Vigorous yet respectful political debate to flush out all ideas and possibilities
• Sincerity in deliberation and discussion
• Willingness to break rank, or cross political divides to do what is best for all of us, not for a party's position come November
• Open-mindedness and willingness to consider options that may not be the first or ideal choice

There is no doubt in my mind that this year's budget process will be difficult for all of us. This current economic environment has already been difficult enough. Disagreements are to be expected, and I'm not looking for everyone to sit around boardroom tables singing kumbaya. I do expect everyone to to act professional, respectful, and give the benefit of the doubt that we are all in this together.

"It's time to get angry"

Have values like integrity and honor become outdated? Is there no room for them in our current consumer culture and atmospheres of corporate greed? Since when did they become idealistic principles? Am I a few generations out of place?

I don't mean to barrage you with questions, but I'm curious to know where the outrage is. I know that I'm certainly guilty at times of hunkering down and hoping for the best. I certainly don't have all the answers, but I certainly know enough to see that we are way off kilter.

Now is not the time to play the blame game. Now is not the time for pointing fingers and political positioning. Now is the time for bold leadership. It's time to get back to basics.

This got me fired up today:
It's got so horrible that we ought to be revolting
By: Simon Caulkin

I Manage To Find The Time...

AP study finds $1.6B went to bailed-out bank execs...

Ok, the main subject of the article linked above is infuriating enough, but here is what put a bur under my saddle:

"Goldman Sachs' tab for leased cars and drivers ran as high as $233,000 per executive. The firm told its shareholders this year that financial counseling and chauffeurs are important in giving executives more time to focus on their jobs."

Wow, I have to focus on my job and give my company 100% for at least eight hours a day (most days it's nine hours), and drive myself to and from work, and do my share of household chores, and be a father, and be a husband, and still be expected wake up and do it all over again the next day, and the day after that. Most days I'm happy to be able to put in a hard day's work. All this and Phil Gramm has the nerve to call us the whiners!?

I'm Mad As Hell!

"I don’t have to tell you things are bad, everybody knows things are bad: It’s a depression! Everybody’s out of work, or scared of losing their job; the dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shop-keepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street; nobody anywhere seems to know what to do and there’s no end to it! We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. We sit watching our TVs whilst some local newscaster tells us that “today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes” as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be! We know things are bad, worse than bad: they’re crazy! It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore! We sit in the house and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller and all we say is “please, at least leave us alone in our living-rooms - let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything! Just leave us alone!” Well I’m not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest, I don’t want you to riot, I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write, I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street – all I know is that first you’ve got to get mad! You’ve got to say “I’m a human being goddammit! My life has value!” So, I want you to get up now, I want all of you to get up out of your chairs! I want you to get up right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!"

-From the character Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network.

Economic Policies For the Working Class

During my research on a recent subject, I found an organization called the Economic Policy Institute. In their own words they are "a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that seeks to broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy." They have a noble mission statement, "To inform people and empower them to seek solutions that will ensure broadly shared prosperity and opportunity." After reading some of their publications, I felt some vindication in my personal philosophy of what I like to call "responsible capitalism." A free market with a conscience and without rampant greed, or "moral hazard" as the Federal Reserve Board likes to call it.

Now, before all the conservatives out there start sniffing, yes, the EPI seems to be left side of center, and they do have a number of labor union representatives as part of their board of directors as well as liberal university egg-heads. BUT, yes, that's a big but, that is just their board. Their researchers and economist on the other hand are graduates and Ph.D's from places like MIT, Columbia, Yale, Princeton, Georgia Tech., and other places that give you really expensive pieces of paper after four, six or eight years of school. Their facts and research are rather interesting and explain a great deal on why I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel getting no where fast.

I highly recommend reading the following:

1.) How Much More Can Consumers Be Squeezed by Stagnant Income, Skyrocketing Household Costs, and Falling Home Prices?
Testimony given by Dr. Jared Bernstein, Senior Economist for the Economic Policy Institute, to the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives.

2.) A Plan to Revive the American Economy
If I was to give this a title, I would call it The New Deal for the New Century
Part of the EPI's Agenda for Shared Prosperity.

It is obviously part of the progressive movement, but unless you are part of the top 1% of America's wage earners, as most of all of us are not in a town with deep working class roots, why wouldn't you support this?