Drugged and Constipated: A Tale of Middle Age and a Muddle Through Economy

Our view of Canandaigua Lake

My wife, Suzanne, and I just returned from a two week vacation at our second home in Canandaigua, NY – the name translates to the Chosen Spot in Iroquois. I am sure you can see why. We drive up and back, a trip of 1400 miles one way – which strikes most people as crazy. But, we love to hang out at the lake and we love to hang out with our dog; so, we drive the dog to the lake. After two and half days of sleeping pills and fast food, we arrive drugged and constipated.


It gives us the opportunity to experience a little slice of America that we would miss if we flew. I am an amateur economist so I always view these little slices through that lens.

We always talk about selling the place on the way up. Our financial planner would approve. We bought it during the run-up in real estate as an investment which, of course, hasn’t worked out as we planned. But, once we get there, those thoughts always evaporate.

Vacation when you own the place isn’t the same as renting a room at a four star resort. Ours are more like rehearsing for retirement than true R&R. What do we do? We go on hikes, visit family, read, and have friends over for dinner. And, we shop. Oh, when I say shop I don’t mean going to the nearest Gucci outlet. We go to TJ Maxx to replenish the linens and to the local furniture store to buy a new mattress. (Mostly Suzanne does this while I hang out with the dog and read.)



Yours truly hanging out with Parker

 I managed to polish off two eBooks. The Big Short, Michael Lewis’ story of the mortgage crisis, and Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, a 673 page tome cataloging the emergence and development of human civilization since the Ice Age. I recommend them both.

I also quit my job half-way through. That was a weird thing to do on vacation. There is a new opportunity waiting for me this week. Yes, folks, there are jobs out there but it helps to have one when you are looking. In my role at Tatum, I have met 10’s or maybe 100’s of unemployed executives with great qualifications who can’t find meaningful work. It’s a national problem not just a Florida problem.

Most economists would agree.

Our niece, Renee, and her husband, Bob, dropped by. Their son just received his commission in the US Army and is on his way to Kuwait. Bob owns an electrical contracting business. His take on the economy is that things will be like this for years. Why? Because people lack confidence. No one is quite sure what will happen next. He is not talking about the EU debt crisis, the budget deficit or the prospective failure of the Medicare system. He is talking about people who build things and buy things. “It might not be so bad,” he says, “if ‘they’ wouldn’t talk things down so much.”

Most economists would agree.

On the drive home, we checked in at the Residence Inn in Waynesboro, VA and got a takeout dinner at the Outback next door. Chicken strips for the dog. We like stopping in Virginia since we are focused on it as a prospective place to retire. We keep saying we should spend more time there. We need to go back soon. (Without the dog.) The girl who took my money at Outback was a local resident who grew up in Danville, NY a few miles from Canandaigua. She told me that she moved back for a few months last year to be closer to family but returned as soon as she could. “Couldn’t handle the weather?” I asked. “No,” she said. “It’s too expensive there.” Taxes, rent and almost everything else are cheaper in VA. Good place to retire, right?

Most economists would agree.

The next day, we stumbled onto the Island Grill in Port Wentworth, GA. What a great place to eat (Exit 109 off I-95, in case you are interested). The parking lot contained more pickups than SUV’s. So, when we found a little spot in the corner of the patio under an umbrella, the conversation wasn’t Wall Street or Washington. It was about Harleys, fishing and felling trees. These are the people who pick up and move to where the work is. They live from paycheck to paycheck and the paychecks aren’t as big as they used to be. Like most Americans, they are working harder and making less these days.

Most economists would agree.

Our last day on the road, I woke up and checked out the NY Times on my iPad. I read David Brooks' column describing the way in which key executives at Fannie Mae spent the better part of the 1990’s currying favor in Congress so they could increase home ownership in America, all the while taking big bonuses for themselves. We all know how that worked out. If you want the details, read The Big Short.

I flipped on CNBC to listen to John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell Oil, complain about the anti-oil bias of the Obama administration. It’s a fair criticism. I think we should take advantage of America’s natural resources without government interference. Perhaps the interviewer should have asked him if he would give up federal subsidies for oil drilling in exchange for an improved regulatory environment. I would have. By the way, guess what Mr. Hofmeister is doing now. He’s a lobbyist, of course.

While Washington dithers, Fannie Mae is doing what it has always done and Big Oil (and every other big money interest) is having its way with Congress. Meanwhile, from Williamsport to Waynesboro to Port Wentworth, Americans are muddling through as best they can. We are addicted to a media that feeds us a steady stream of immaterial stories -- the President’s birth certificate or (dare I say it) Wiener’s wiener.

We are indeed drugged and constipated.

Most economists would agree.

WHO WILL LEAD?

No Excuse, Sir!

I had many responses to my last posting (Memorial Day Memories). Most were expressions of gratitude for my service which were warmly received. Others complimented the health of my whiskers (also warmly received). But it was the one from a very close friend, Bob Cannan, which really stood out. Bob was a year behind me at the Naval Academy (USNA). It’s fair to say that my posting caused him to remember some of his own lessons from that time.


By way of background, I should recount for those of you who did not attend USNA that our plebe year (like all military training) was a process of breaking down our conditioned responses to stimuli and replacing them with something more suitable to the armed forces. There were only four acceptable responses to any statement or question from upperclassmen: “yes, sir”; “no, sir”; “I’ll find out, sir”; and, “no excuse, sir”. That’s it. Nothing else need be, should be or had better be said. Try on something else and there was a price to pay.

Why? Well I quote, in part, from Bob’s email:

“Here’s the one phrase that impressed itself on me most profoundly in those formative years: “No excuse, sir.”


“And, the few times I was stupid enough to say it, it was always followed in a nanosecond by, “YOU’RE GODDAM RIGHT THERE’S NO EXCUSE!”


“After a whole (plebe) year facing the holy truth of that response I realized, “Hey, there really isn’t any excuse.” It worked. That got through, and it’s been a big one for me.


“Since then, it always amazes me that the same people who step up and say they “take full responsibility” never really do.


“And further, the main point is that an admission of guilt is not what we want. We don’t want excuses, certainly. But we also don’t want admissions of guilt or failure. Who cares? They’re failing or quitting. That’s been done. They want our sympathy? Our admiration for their honesty?


“We want them to do what they were hired to do, and keep at it until they deliver. That’s when they’ll have my admiration. Honesty and candor aren’t as courageous as the media makes them out to be. In fact they’re so common they’re not even very dramatic anymore. Here’s an alternative: how about shutting your mouth and getting the job done? That’s what you promised. That’s all I want.”

Obviously, Bob is a passionate guy. That’s why I love him. Passion aside, let’s examine for a moment the value of the lesson. We have been served up a succession of failures by our so-called leaders who would have benefited from some USNA conditioning. Think of Richard Nixon, Bill CLinton, Martha Stewart and Scooter Libby.

The common element in each of these examples is that these folks were not guilty of the underlying crime of which they were accused. They were guilty of the cover-up, the lie – the excuse. Richard Nixon wasn’t involved in Watergate; he was guilty of the cover-up. Clinton’s failure was not the Whitewater caper but lying about his sex life. Stewart wasn’t found guilty of insider trading but of lying to the FBI about it. Ditto Scooter Libby.

I often tell people that the personal attribute I value most is “forthrightness”. Think about that for a moment. Forthrightness is more than just honesty. You can be silent and still be honest. Forthrightness is about putting your failures on the table and saying, “There’s no excuse for this but everyone needs to know”.

Can you admit your failures without being drawn out? To your colleagues? To your family? To your children? To your spouse?

In combat, when someone doesn’t admit to a problem, people die. Hopefully that doesn’t happen in our personal and business lives. But, the next time you screw up – and we all do – put it out there to those that matter and simply say, “I have no excuse for this. Let’s talk about it and discuss how we move forward”.

Over the last 20 years, there has been a call for our military heroes to run for President. Schwarzkopf, Powell, Petraeus. What is their appeal? The sentiment transcends party politics. People don’t care about that. Quite simply, they long for true leadership, forthrightness – a “No Excuse” approach to the job. Isn’t that what we grew up with? Eisenhower, JFK, John Glenn?

The Veterans Campaign, a non-profit dedicated to helping military veterans run for office, reports that, in 1969, 75% of members of Congress had served in the military. Today the figure is 22.5%.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have and will produce veterans who will step up and serve. It’s already happening. Indeed my own Congressman is a West Point grad. It will continue to happen because those who serve in the military will want to continue to serve. It will happen because people are tired of partisan politics.

To quote Seth Lynn, the Marine Corps veteran who heads the Veterans Campaign, “Military members have served overseas and seen that the enemy is the guy at the end of the battlefield, not the guy on the other end of the aisle".

Perhaps we will soon have the answer to my favorite question, WHO WILL LEAD?

Memorial Day Memories

My son, Peter, sent me this picture a few weeks ago. The naval officer with the big, black, bushy beard in the foreground is yours truly. It was taken at the change of command ceremony of the USS Alacrity (MSO-520) in 1972. He found it while going through a shoebox of old photos at his H.S. reunion. I didn’t even know the picture existed.

I was the Chief Engineer of the Alacrity at the time. I was 23 years old. By the time I was 24, I would be the ship’s second in command -- its Executive Officer (the XO in naval parlance). Although I didn’t enjoy shipboard life (it wasn’t exactly Carnival Cruise Lines) and hated being away from home, I still think of it as the best job I ever had.

I was an east coast sailor during the wind up of the war in Vietnam. I never saw any combat and never won any medals. However, the military was the experience of my formative years. While others were going to parties or going to business school, I was going to sea.

Think about how those first years out of school have formed who you are. Can you imagine how fortunate I was to learn life lessons from Vice Admiral Al Konetzni (he was only a Lieutenant when he was my Company Officer at the Naval Academy) and Rear Admiral Joseph Barth (he was a Captain when I served under him).

Who are our heroes?

The military gets good press these days. I view it as a positive that the names of Petraeus, Powell and Schwarzkopf are spoken in heroic phrases. Societies need heroes. It is part of the glue that holds us together.

Every experience in my life, both good and bad, has taught me something. From the military, I learned lessons of leadership. It was the culture we lived in. Its constructs were well defined and spoken out loud. First in classes at the Naval Academy; later embedded in the daily routine discussions about how we carried out our responsibilities.

Recently, a friend asked me over dinner when I thought our nation had lost its way. “It’s a bit self-serving,” I replied. “But, I think it was the day the draft ended.” The lessons of the “Greatest Generation”, the WW II generation, were about shared sacrifice, a sense of civic responsibility and the possibilities of human endeavor. They knew how lucky they were to be Americans and had a sense of responsibility to the larger society. It was best expressed by JFK in his famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”.

The Baby Boomers who followed seem to me to have lost that sense. If the 1970’s were the Me Decade, it was because, in the aftermath of the 60’s none of the old rules applied. We got MBA’s and law degrees and pursued self-interest rather than the national interest.

The results are now well documented. The best and brightest among us are funneled into Wall Street jobs and learn to embrace a culture of avarice. Our media celebrates the misdeeds of professional athletes and movie stars. Journalism is focused more on profitable enterprise than the responsibility to inform our citizens.

Leadership Defined

In the midst of it all, I was struck by the words of Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense who gave the commencement address at my alma mater yesterday. He defined leadership in terms of conviction, self-confidence and courage. But he didn’t stop there. He went on to discuss the personal attributes of common decency and integrity. These are just words, right? We have heard this speech a million times in our lives. However, at a time when our economy is still reeling from the aftermath of Wall Street’s misdeeds, I ask you to listen carefully to Gates’ words which I quote here:

“Nowadays, it seems like integrity — or honor or character — is kind of quaint, a curious, old-fashioned notion. We read of too many successful and intelligent people in and out of government who succumb to the easy wrong rather than the hard right — whether from inattention or a sense of entitlement, the notion that rules are not for them. But for a real leader, personal virtues — self-reliance, self-control, honor, truthfulness, morality — are absolute. These are the building blocks of character, of integrity — and only on that foundation can real leadership be built.”

From my mother, I learned the difference between right and wrong. From my father, the value of hard work. But, it was the military that taught me how to make it work in my daily life. The lessons of leadership were there for me to learn. Have I always been perfect? No, I haven’t. But, belief in those lessons continues to guide me and I am grateful for having learned them.

The Next Mayor of Blowhardville

“I am pleased to announce that I am running to be the next mayor of Blowhardville.”

 John Calia, April 30, 2011

Yes, that’s right, friends. I am running for office. I figure now that Trump has vacated his post as mayor of Blowhardville to run for President the field is wide open. I admit he’ll be a hard act to follow. Why am I so confident that I can win? Because it’s not just Trump who has vacated the little burg of Blowhardville. It seems that blowhards of all political stripes have hit the highways.

My first campaign promise is to create jobs by making a strategic investment in a shovel ready project to build a Blowhard Hall of Fame.

The charter inductees will include both Republicans and Democrats. It was tough to narrow the field but there are a few standouts.

This is Obama from the 2008 campaign: “In ten years, we can reduce our dependence so that we no longer have to import oil from the Middle East or Venezuela. Number one, we need to expand domestic production and that means telling the oil companies the 68 million acres that they currently have leased that they’re not drilling, use them or lose them.”

Wow. We’ve made so much progress in the last three years; I can hardly believe we’ll need another seven.

Or, how about this? During the same campaign, the current Secretary of State referred to her visit to Bosnia in 1996, thusly: “"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

That doesn’t sound bad other than the fact that it isn’t true. Later, she admitted that she “did misspeak”. Misspeak? That might qualify as the understatement of the decade.

Newt Gingrich is a really smart guy. Everybody says so. After all, we are told he reads two books a week which is two more than Sarah Palin. I knew he was getting ready to run for President last fall when he started saying really stupid things. Yet nothing he has said recently compares to this quote from his days as Speaker of the House: “The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument.”

A Socialist argument? Really, Newt? Really?

My favorite quote from the 2008 campaign came from Dennis Kucinich, once the youngest mayor of Cleveland and now the Mental Midget of the Left. Ready? Drum roll, please: “I am running for President of the United States to enable the Goddess of Peace to encircle within her arms all the children of this country and all the children of the world.”

The Goddess of Peace? What church does this guy go to?

Some blowhards have a style that belies their status as a blowhard. We expect blowhards to be loud like Trump. However, my all-time favorite blowhard is the former Vice President of the United States, the avuncular Dick Cheney. He can deliver a line so calmly in that you hardly notice how ridiculous he sounds. Here are few examples:

“There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction”. That was in October, 2002.

Or, how about this one: “I believe we will be greeted as liberators”. That was three days before we started the Iraq War. How’s he doing so far?

And, my favorite Dick Cheney quote: “Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter”. That was during the 2004 re-election campaign.

Now that all the blowhards have left for Washington, I am almost certain to win election for mayor of Blowhardville. The only question that remains is:

WHO WILL LEAD?

40 Years? Are You Kidding?

     "The best way to predict the future is to create it."

                                                   Peter Drucker

In 1920, the Great War (the War to End All Wars) had ended. Germany was utterly vanquished and in disarray. Few would have predicted that, 20 years hence, Europe would again be plunged into war and that Germany would occupy all of Europe from the Pyrenees to the Russian border. But, that's what happened.

Germany lost that war, of course, by virtue of being forced to fight on two fronts with the US from the west and the Soviets in the east. How many people would have predicted that by the time another 20 years passed, the US and the Soviet Union would be locked in an epic struggle called the Cold War -- spending vast amounts of sovereign capital on a nuclear arms race and a space race?

By the time another 30 years had passed, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Not too many people would have predicted that either.

All of this came to mind recently when I was asked back for the third time to give my lecture titled "How to Choose a Career for the Next 40 Years" to undergraduate business students at Johnson & Wales University in N. Miami. The topic first came up extemporaneously when I was asked a question during my first visit to the class. By the second visit, I had turned it into a prepared lecture; however, many of the students challenged my “facts” which, I must confess, came straight out of my middle-aged memory.

So, in preparation for this latest visit, I did my homework. I pulled data from the Congressional Budget Office, the US State Department, the World Bank and even the economic development bureau of the Russian Federation. I won’t recount it all here but here are few of the highlights:

Basic economics: I needed to give these kids some context. So, I started with a little Econ. 101. After laying out the formula for GDP, I gave them the formula for GDP growth. It’s the sum of population growth and productivity improvement. That’s the definition not an economic theory. So, to see where the jobs are, you need to understand both demographics and what drives productivity improvement.

Demographics. The Baby Boom has been a key driver of the economy since the end of WWII. And, so it will be for the next 20 years. But, then what?

The birth rates of the industrialized countries have slowed to a rate that will not sustain their populations. This will result in GDP shrinkage. Within 20 years, we will be competing for immigrants.

Technology. Tech of any kind will be the place to be. How do you improve productivity? Technology, that’s how. Any kind of technology: infotech, biotech, nanotech, aerospace tech, etc. Especially, aerospace tech.

But, the students of J&W are not the big brains who will invent the next Segway or send a man to Mars. They are the ‘B’ students -- the future working stiffs. Dilbert Cartoonist, Scott Adams, wrote a great column in the Wall Street Journal called "How to Get a Real Education" aimed at these students. Use your college experience to learn how to be an entrepreneur. That’s his advice.

Healthcare… NOT! The growth of healthcare spending will not continue at the same rate. Baby Boomers may cause their own boom in expenditures in the near term but before this crop of college graduates experiences their mid-life crisis, the rate of growth will slow. The industry will do what all industries do when the market growth slows. They will consolidate. And, consolidation causes layoffs.

Go Global. If you want a great job, learn to speak Portuguese and move to Brazil. Latin America is growing three times faster than the US, as are Russia, China and India. If you don’t want to move overseas, work for a global company based in the US. The Global 2000 have been investing in the infrastructure of developing countries for 20 years. Now is the time to reap the rewards.

Keep an eye on DARPA. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration has been the source of disruptive inventions since the 1950’s. The silicon chip, email, the internet and GPS all originated in their labs. In other words, everything on your iPhone came from DARPA. What are they working on now? Alternative energy to reduce the military’s dependence on oil.

Countries to Watch. Turkey will be a major player. Their economy is humming and their government and business institutions are productive. Their most recent rejection by the EU will cause them to turn eastward to Iran and Russia for both economic and security cooperation.

Poland will become more important to the US as a bulwark between Russia and Western Europe and a counterbalance to Turkey. Oh, and keep an eye on Mexico. Today’s 17th largest economy will eventually get past its drug war (as Colombia did) and become a growing economic power.

Countries whose influence will decline over the next couple of decades – Russia, Germany, Japan and China.

The world will be as different 40 years from now as it was 40 years ago. Remember 1971?

And, so it goes……

Veterans. What Are They Entitled To?

Congress should stop treating veterans like they're asking for a hand out when it comes to the benefits they were promised, and they should realize that, were it not for these veterans, there would be nothing to hand out.

 Congressman Nick Lampson (R-TX)


This is what arrived in my Inbox a few days ago:

Case # 7658: SM (that’s Service Member, in case you didn’t know) filed a VA claim for service connected PTSD ( that’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) on November 17, 2010 just beyond the 24 months per SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) policy for consideration…. SM became homeless (emphasis added) in October 2010 and was forced to live out of her car while her 12 year old daughter resided with friends that lived close to her school…. once all the required documentation is submitted to HUD, it may take up to two (2) months to process the case completely…. landlord requires SM pay, security deposit, first and last month’s rent immediately.

SM requested just over $5900 for first and last month rent, food and other expenses. What would you do?

On July 28, 1932, U.S. Army troops commanded by General Douglas MacArthur attacked WW I veterans marching on the U.S. Capitol demanding payment of veterans benefits promised to them by the World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924. Believing they were communists and criminals, the General ordered infantry and the Third Cavalry Regiment (led by Major George S. Patton) to attack the marchers. Fifty-five veterans were injured and 135 arrested.

Well, I guess things aren’t that bad for veterans. Are they? Here’s another one:

Case # 9051: SM participated in the OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) campaign from May 1, 2003 to April 23, 2004. SM was discharged as an Army National Guard reservist on August 26, 2010 and was subsequently admitted to a Rehabilitation Program at the Miami VA Hospital [for PTSD]….. SM states he did not want to admit that he had this and this is why he waited 3+ years to seek treatment.

I am not making this up. These are real cases of SM’s who have submitted claims to Operation Homefront, a non-profit that provides assistance to wounded warriors, combat veterans and their families. In a strange twist on Joseph Heller’s novel of WW II, Catch-22, one can get help from the VA for PTSD but is discouraged by a culture of denial to apply.

SM has applied to VA to increase his PTSD rating. He requests assistance to avoid eviction….

The Serviceman’s Readjustment Act, or GI Bill, was passed in 1944 to provide veterans with educational opportunities after the war. Most soldiers and sailors who served went straight from high school to boot camp and received little or no vocational training. As such they were trained to be soldiers but had few skills required in a manufacturing or service-oriented workforce.

President Barack Obama appointed retired General Eric Shinseki to head the Veterans’ Administration at the beginning of his term. In August of 2009, he liberalized rules used by the VA to diagnose and treat PTSD saying, “The hidden wounds of war are being addressed vigorously and comprehensively by this administration as we move VA forward in its transformation to the 21st century”.

SM returned from deployment with a mild case of TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) has been unemployed for eight months……

Unlike previous wars, including the war in Vietnam, our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are exposed to danger constantly with little opportunity for rest. Operation Homefront provided assistance to over 160,000 veterans and their families in each of the last two years. The cases ranged from dysfunction related to PTSD to debilitating wounds that prevented veterans from finding work to veterans and their families becoming homeless.

SM is E4 Army veteran, infantry who served 7 years with Army with 2 tours with OIF. SM was honorably discharged April 6, 2007 ….. SM displayed PTSD symptoms after return from second tour in Iraq, and these symptoms increased after his discharge.…. SM was incarcerated in November 2008 when he fired “warning shots” at an aggressive driver from his gun in his car.

I am delighted that Secretary Shinseki has embarked on a program to increase the numbers of service members who would be eligible for treatment for PTSD. However, in my role on Op Homefront’s Florida board, I am exposed to the extent to which the VA and the services themselves are guilty of not helping discharged veterans to successfully transition back to civilian life.

This is not an attack on the Armed Services or the Veterans’ Administration. There are laws governing what they can and can’t do. The laws are converted to regulations and the people who deal with these cases are legally bound to follow the rules. Any set of rules will create exceptional cases and many of them will be egregious.

I think the larger question is: are we, as a society, ready to deal with the aftermath of our dual combat missions? The amputees? The psychologically impaired? The family problems?

There are ancillary questions as well. How do we evaluate these cases to ensure people are getting the help they need? What is the responsibility of government to help them? How will we expand the existing entitlement programs to encompass this new population?

Or to say it differently, WHO WILL LEAD?

Rules? What Rules?

"My, we seem to be a little short on brotherly love round here." 

-- Butch Cassidy, as played by Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

I got into a Facebook Fight last week. Have you ever been in one? It's kind of like that scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. You know the one where Butch has to get into a knife fight with a really big, scary guy. He asks him, "What are the rules?" Big Scary Guy replies: "Rules? In a knife fight? No rules!"  He no sooner gets the words out of his mouth than Butch kicks him in the groin. Well, there are no rules in a Facebook Fight either.

I use different internet tools for different purposes. LinkedIn for business; Facebook for personal stuff, pictures and messages to friends and family, etc. So, when I woke up at my usual 5 AM to a posting on my Facebook wall supporting the Wisconsin 14, I went off the deep end. Last year, I had de-friended members of my own family for posting their support of the Arizona immigration law. So, why am I waking up to some commie crap on my damn wall? By a so-called friend no less.

Now, 5 AM is not my best time of day. I could have deleted it. I could have blocked the friend from posting on my wall. I could have de-friended him. But, no-o-o-o! I responded aggressively.

My opponent was a very well read Ph.D. And worse, he was abetted by an old high school chum of mine with whom I haven’t spoken since graduation day. In fact, I am not sure I even spoke to him then. Two against one. That’s not fair! Oh yeah, there are no rules in a Facebook Fight. My H.S. buddy is a school psychologist according to his Facebook page. So, he is right there with the Ph.D.

Ph.D. hits me with Robert Reich. I parry with Freidrich Hayek. He’s never heard of him. Hah! Take that, Ph.D.

I am a fan of NY Times columnist, David Brooks. I never miss a column. He mostly writes about political and policy issues and represents a moderate voice that does not adhere to any political dogma. I guess that’s why I like him. His new book is called The Social Animal. I understand from the reviews and summaries that it is a fictional representation of the ways in which we form relationships and connect ourselves to ideas and social norms. Though not an expert on brain science, Brooks has written of our new understanding of it and how it has affected us. Think of all those bright business school grads on Wall Street and how they self destructed during the financial crisis of 2008/09.

So, here I am parrying the thrusts and jabs of my formidable opposition and it occurs to me that Brooks is right about all this. I am fairly well read myself and yet could not convince either of these guys of the wisdom of my thinking any more than they could convince me of theirs. It’s not that their thinking was irrational. Indeed, their thoughts might be considered to be a rationalization of their beliefs.

All their reading and learning had been directed to support their values and biases. So, were mine. There was no winning this Facebook Fight for any of us. No way, no how.

Isn’t that what’s happening across the nation? Don’t you get emails from your friends and colleagues that either reinforce your views or infuriate you? So, how can we solve the big national problems when we are all so enamored of what’s going on in our own heads that we can’t compromise?

A recent speech by Republican Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana to the Conservative Political Action Committee provides some insight on how we might answer that question. He counsels his right wing followers to put everything on the table including tax increases and defense spending to resolve the problem of our deficits and debt.

He reminds his followers that “big change requires big majorities” and that we will “need people who never listen to Rush or Glenn or Laura or Sean”. He also reminds us that the founders “made compacts and concessions and, yes, compromises” in the cause of creating one union from the 13 colonies who won their freedom from the British crown.

NPR called it a Grown Up brand of GOP politics. We need that from both sides of the aisle. A recent report from economist John Mauldin found that a “majority of voters incorrectly believes the federal government spends more on defense/foreign aid than it does on Medicare and Social Security (63%). Also, a similar majority (60%) incorrectly believes problems with the federal budget can be fixed by just eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.”

The President created his own version of Grown Up politics with the Simpson Bowles Commission aimed at resolving our national debt. Their controversial proposal is dying a slow death like those of most Presidential commissions.

Our debt problem is serious and addressing it will be painful. What is called for is the equivalent of Ronald Reagan’s dollar bill speech in 1981. He held up a dollar bill and opened with “This is a dollar bill…..”

We guffawed about it the following day on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs. But, that’s the kind of communication that is called for now. Reagan explained to voters how every dollar they earn is divided up. The equivalent of a PowerPoint pie chart.

The pie chart needs to be updated. If nothing changes, every dollar of tax revenue will go to paying interest on the national debt within 10 years. Nothing left for national defense. Nothing left for social programs. Nothing.

The only question is: WHO WILL LEAD?