How I Survive a Meeting

Ok, for most people this picture would seem an entirely benign image. For some, it might be oddly comforting, with its symmetric layout...glasses placed in even numbers on either side of the sweating water pitcher, pens laid evenly on both sides of the complimentary Hyatt notepads, the tray of candy, inviting. For me and many souls like me, the picture is a dire warning of something horrible to come. Whenever I see this image or any like it, my bowels begin to constrict, beers of sweat start to form around the hairline, then my heart sinks. I know what this picture means. I know what I will be doing for the next however many hours....sitting and trying desperately to listen, trying desperately not to bolt from the room.

I have been attending meetings of this sort for nearly 35 years now. They are necessary. There is information that I must know and apparently, mankind hasn't figured out a more efficient way to disseminate this information since the Council of Trent. So, here I am.

I am not without recourse. I always pick a table in the back of the room, so on the many occasions when I find standing up utterly irresistible I can do so without being too much of a distraction to 99% of the other perfectly normal men and women in the room who seemingly could sit through a three hour tort lecture without even shifting their weight from one butt-cheek to the other. I watch them and marvel at their...stillness. Who are these people? More importantly, what is wrong with me??

Maybe all of them are on some sort of medication which renders even the most sand-poundingly boring material absolutely fascinating. Or maybe they all are grown ups and have acquired the adult skill of sitting and listening. Regardless, I sat through 6 hours and listened to 8 different speakers, all of whom were highly skilled and professional. I'm thinking I might have heard and processed roughly 2 hours of information. The rest of the time I was busy A. Pondering how anyone could possibly have come up with the design of this carpet and B. How anyone else could possibly have purchased it. And, don't get me started on this chandelier... an explosion in a plastics factory that claimed the lives of fifty people. I'm telling you, it is seriously hideous. The rest of the time I ..wait...SQUIRREL!!!!

Sigh....

Living With Regulations

This week, I will be attending a business meeting in Bonita Springs, Florida. Ever notice how business meetings are almost never held in Des Moines or Grand Rapids? Anyway...it's a two day affair where the main topic will be the impending Federal regulation known as the Department of Labor's Fiduciary Rule, its cost and implementation requirements. I'm stoked...

Once I survive,(and I'm making no assumptions here) the rest of my stay will involve rest and relaxation with my beautiful wife in the Florida sunshine. I could sure use it, but my wife deserves it, a clear distinction I should make up front.

Now, if you are of a certain age and political persuasion, you may be thinking, "Great! Another fat cat soirée at some fancy resort, fully comped by some Wall Street cartel bent on screwing the little guy!!" Sorry to disappoint, but the cost of this soirée is being borne by yours truly. I bought the plane tickets, I'm paying for my hotel rooms, the tickets to the Red Sox spring training game were bought and paid for by...me. I am being fed for two days, but, I have to pay for Pam if she decides to join me. So much for my Wall Street benefactors!

However, in fairness I should probably point out that the entire purpose of the dreaded DOL's Fiducairy Rule is to correct abuses in the financial planning/investment business brought on by the fact that some of the folks who do what I do for a living...are crooks. It turns out that if you are a self serving scumbag who doesn't care about anyone but yourself, this is a good business to be in because it is relatively easy to take advantage of people who have placed their trust in you. Of course, to solve the problem of a minority of bad actors, the federal government regulatory regime has chosen a sledge hammer to drive a thumbtack into the wall. The cost of compliance is high and will force me to jettison small clients from my book, the relentless power of unintended consequences once again rearing its ugly head! But, the law is the law. So, comply I must! Unlike the pundits who are constantly extolling the virtues of the regulatory state, for me...the regulatory burden isn't theoretical. I have to write checks.

Sure, I would rather live with bad regulations than no regulations. But that doesn't mean that every or even most regulations that are mandated onto businesses are fair or just. I believe that most were well intentioned but naive, designed to solve legitimate problems but wind up creating more problems than they solve. Make no mistake though...I will comply. I don't get to pick and choose which laws I will obey. I live in a democratic republic and if this is law of the land, then I will fly to Florida on my own dime to find out exactly what I must do to follow that law.

And to make the trip worth while, I'm staying two extra days with the love of my life at a fabulous resort which I am very grateful isn't in Grand Rapids.

Time To Cut Defense Spending

Recently, I posted something on Facebook defending the proposed defunding of the National Endowment of the Arts. Like day follows night, my son rose to the defense of government subsidized do-goodery on the grounds that Art is good, therefore the government should promote it...or something. Although he knows me well enough to know that I too love the Arts, he also is quite aware that I am generally for any cut in Federal funding for...well, anything. Still, he dropped the mic with this challenging observation, "I sure would like to see you endorse cutting the defense budget with as much passion as you're endorsing cutting the NEA."

Little did the young squire know that I have been gathering data for just such an endorsement for quite a while now. At his urging, it's time to write it up. Let's hope that he defends his dear old Dad with half of the passion with which he lit into me for screwing with government-laundering of taxpayer funds to provide Italian operas for the fine people in Podunk Junction, Iowa.

Ok, as a Libertarian, I am, generally speaking, in favor of government spending for only the core functions outlined for it in the Constitution. While people who want the government to fund everything usually cling to the "promote the general welfare" clause as their barest of fig leaf constitutional covering, most everyone can agree that "providing for the common defense" qualifies as an iron clad proper function of our Federal government. As such, it needs to be funded. Yes, we live in a dangerous world. I suffer from no delusions in this regard. But, let's look at some facts, shall
we?

In 2015, here are the five largest defense budgets on the planet in U.S. dollars. To the right of this number is the percentage of each country's Gross Domestic Product which this amount of spending represents:

1. United States.      596 billion.      3.3%
2. China.                  215 billion.      1.9%
3. Saudi Arabia.         87 billion.    13.7%
4. Russia.                    66 billion.      5.4%
5. GB.                          55 billion.      2.0%

Of course, the first thing that jumps out to me from this chart is...wait, what's up with the Saudi's? I mean, good lord, for that kind of money, they could air condition the entire stinking place!

So, this past week, our President met with the German Chancellor and complained (rightly) about the fact that four years ago all NATO members agreed to spend a minimum of 2% of their GDP on defense. Of the 28 countries now counted as NATO members( talk about your mission creep...) only 5 have stepped up to honor their commitments, Great Britain, Greece, Poland, and Estonia. Notice that the two nation's closet to the Russians are fully up to date, and the most broke country in the alliance, Greece, has somehow managed to pay their fair share. The Germans, on the other hand, who happen to be the only country practically in the entire universe who currently is running a freaking surplus, checks in at a mere 1.19%, while the haughty French can only be bothered with 1.78%.

The other thing that stands out from the chart for me is this...we spend nearly 381 billion dollars more than the number two spender, China. Think about that for a minute. What the devil is wrong with us?? But Doug, but Doug you say, we are the world's super power, the beacon of democracy, the defender of the free world. To which I say, says who? Have the American people fully agreed to this role of civilization's policeman with all of its attendant loss of treasure and fortune? Have we been consulted on why we have to spend this amount of money every year despite running trillion dollar deficits? How much of this nearly 600 billion dollars actually goes to defense of our borders as opposed to say...South Korea's borders or Poland's borders? And, how can it be possible that there are actually people screaming that we need to spend more, a lot more to make up for that cheapskate Barack Obama's hollowing out of our military? Well, if reducing defense spending from 687 billion back in 2009 to 596 billion last year qualifies as hollowing out, then Hell's Bells, we are doomed.

My problem with this sort of military spending...besides what it does to the financial stability of the budget, is the fact that if you constantly build bigger, better, fancier and more deadly weapons, you will end up with a hundred generals who start dreaming up ways to use them. I mean who gets a shiny new toy for Christmas but never wants to play with the thing, right?

Here's my proposal. I say we live up to the obligations we have made to the NATO alliance and spend 2% of our GDP on defense. We would still be outspending everyone else in the galaxy...by a lot. This would free up roughly over a quarter of a TRILLION dollars to the U.S. Treasury...every year!! We can immediately start fighting over what to do with all this money. My son can lobby for full funding of every Arts program known to exist in the free world and even invent some new ones. I could start arguing for a tax rebate back to the citizens who actually pay taxes, and I would not even be opposed to a paying down of the national debt with the windfall.

Before you start haranguing me about how naive I am about how the real world works, explain to me what exactly we got out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Was our safety and security enhanced or threatened by those vast expenditures of men, women and materials? My modest proposal above still calls for spending more on our defense budget than Russia and China do on theirs combined.

Greatest Speech I Ever Heard

I'm generally not the type of person who goes in for motivational speakers. I find them trite and formulaic and a bit too flashy for my taste. Consequently I have avoided them for most of my life, with one notable exception. I was in Atlanta, probably twenty years ago, attending a Million Dollar Round Table meeting...something else I have tried to avoid for most of my life. I was with my friend, Doug Greenwood and we had both signed up to go to an evening breakout session with some guy named Jim Rohn. I can't remember why we had chosen him, since I had never heard of the man, but nevertheless, there we were at 7:00 in the evening walking into a standing room only ballroom with two thousand other people. We were stunned at the size of the crowd and surprised at the buzz flying around in the atmosphere as we waited. I kept hearing the descriptor, great man, wafting in the air. I remember thinking, who is this guy?

He walked out onto the small stage to thunderous applause. Apparently, we were amongst a pack of Jim Rohn groupies, I thought. I immediately noticed how small and unimpressive he was except for a shock of white hair, mostly on the sides of his head. His attraction came from somewhere besides his looks. Then I noticed that there was no podium. He carried nothing in his hands, no notes of any kind. There was no TelePrompTer. The only prop anywhere to be found was an old school easel holding one of those giant flip pads of plain white paper. He began his talk by walking up to the easel and drawing a sail boat and a couple of swooping lines to indicate windy conditions. Then he stepped away and turned to all of us and spoke these words:

"It's not the blowing of the wind that matters, it's the setting of the sail."

Thus began an incredible fireside chat filled to the brim with the wisdom of the ages. This was a man with almost Godly gifts of story telling who stood alone and almost immobile at the front of a room filled with two thousand type A personalities without a single note and held us in the palm of his hand for the better part of two hours. It may sound a bit overwrought, but that speech changed my life. The things I learned that night have stayed with me. I used many of his insights to teach teenagers at my church for ten years. I have applied lessons learned there to my professional no personl life ever since I got back home. The funny thing was, even though I didn't take any notes, I remember almost everything he said. Some of the highlights:

Success is something you attract by the person you become.

If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse.

Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better.

You are ultimately the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

No one else "makes us angry." We make ourselves angry when we surrender control of our attitude.

Stand guard at the door of your mind.

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.

Things don't cost too much. You just can't afford them!

Be strong, but not rude; kind, but not weak; bold, but no bully; thoughtful, but not lazy; humble, but not timid; have humor, without folly.


He delivered all of this wisdom seemingly from memory while making it all seem like a spontaneous conversation with not a syllable rehearsed. Every so often he would go off in an odd direction almost like an aside to himself, like he was thinking out loud. One of the greatest such asides was when he was trying to make the point of how crucial education was to the creation of a well rounded person. Then this came out of his mouth:

You know what the worst thing in life would be? Waking up when you're forty years old and realizing that you're stupid. I mean, being broke is bad,  but stupid? That's the worst. Being broke AND stupid would be doubly bad...only thing that would make it worse would be if you were sick. Sick, broke and stupid. Awful! About as far as you can fall unless you're ugly. Ugly, sick, broke and stupid! Life's most negative scenario!!!

The hall was laughing hysterically and I'm not even sure he was trying to be funny. It was more like he was just talking to himself, trying to work it out. Regardless, it was a magical moment.

I was reminded the other day that Mr. Rohn had died a few years back. He was only 79, I was told. But, what a 79 years it was. He left a piece of himself inside everyone who ever heard him speak. I'm told he spoke to over 40 million people during his life. I was one of them on a hot and humid night in Atlanta twenty years ago. I still remember it, all these years later.

Words matter. Good words, fine words, uplifting, inspiring words matter eternally.

A Facebook Critique

I have been an active participant in the social experiment known as Facebook for a very long time now. I find it a fascinating place to interact with large numbers of people. It has allowed me to keep up with hundreds of old acquaintances who otherwise I would have long ago lost contact with. It has delivered a treasure trove of hilarious dog videos to my doorstep, costing me nothing. It has flooded me with a million memes, some hysterical, some simply stupid. It has exasperated me with the often ignorant political musings of people who have never once in their entire lives had to pay an employee and yet profess to know exactly what the minimum wage should be. But hey...that's what Facebook is for, the uninhibited flowering of opinion. Asking those opinions to be informed is asking the impossible. So, I take the bitter with the sweet. For the most part, I thoroughly enjoy my daily excursions onto Mark Zuckerberg's playground.

Having said all of that, there are a few irritants which must be dealt with. Although what irritates me might not irritate you, diversity of irritation being the spice of life and all. But here goes...

The biggest problem with Facebook is that far too many people suffer from the flawed impression that large numbers of people actually give a flying *€#<?! about:

1. What you had for breakfast
2. How tired you are of this bad weather
3. What you had for lunch
4. The fact that you just "checked in" at the Waldorf, Maryland Jiffy Lube
5. What you had for dinner

But, even more annoying than these staples is the dreaded Type "Amen" if you agree declarations that usually come with some sappy picture of a white clapboard country church. Saints preserve us!

Then, the worst of all, and we all have them...that friend starving for affirmation who begins some long screed with the threat, "I'm about to find out who my real friends are," then lays out his or her crisis with the demand that if we are really their friend we will copy and paste said screed onto our  Facebook wall as tribute. Thanks, but there's enough self-absorption run amok in this world without me spreading yours around. Emotional blackmail is no less annoying just because it comes with cute emojis via the internet. Think I'll pass.

But, hey, keep those awesome puppy videos coming, people!!

My Bracket

Yes. I filled out a bracket. Me and fifty million of my fellow Americans sat down for ten minutes and made 61 snap decisions based on nothing more than the unscientific urgings of instinct. This one cost me twenty bucks and is run by our office bookie, Bland Weaver. Three or four years ago, I won the thing. Most years I'm middle of the pack.

There once was a time when I followed college basketball. I would watch a dozen or so games during the regular season, and read up on the fortunes of my local teams (UR, UVA, VT and VCU). But, not so much anymore.

Ok, so let me explain my methodology. When you have actually watched not one single game in its entirety all season, and know virtually nothing about all but a handful of teams, how does one go about making picks? I always start with the 16-1 matchup and pick the number one seed, since an upset there has never happened. Then I look for all of the local teams and pick all of them except UVA. Why? Mostly because it is my firm belief that there exists nowhere in the universe a university as overrated as Mr. Jefferson's school. Besides, their coach, Tony Bennett is frankly entirely too handsome to be a basketball coach. It's just not right. Then I go on to the matchups where I have literally no information. Perfect example of this...Purdue vs. Vermont. Frankly, it would require at least three boilermakers to force me to watch this game. I picked Purdue because I had no idea that anyone in Vermont even played basketball. Or how about Oregon vs. Iona? Seriously? Iona? They named a college after my fourth grade teacher?

Here are a list of the major upsets that I picked:

UNC Wilmington over UVA
Florida Gulf Coast over Florida
Nevada over Iowa State
Rhode Island over Creighton

That's it. Four upsets. I guess I'm a front runner.

I did notice that this year's bracket sheet comes courtesy of Jiffy Lube, a perfectly legal business enterprise which happily attaches its name to what amounts to a criminal enterprise whereby businesses throughout the nation are transformed into illegal wagering parlors in clear violation of every gambling statute on the books. The cops would do something about this wanton law breaking, but they are all watching the games!

Worst. Job. Ever.

I stumbled across a story yesterday that I have never heard of happening, and immediately wondered how it could be possible for it to never have happened before. Ever get that feeling? Yeah, me neither. Until yesterday. What am I talking about? Well, I just may have uncovered the very worst job in America that nobody has ever heard of.

I read it in the Washington Post. Early in Monday's Senate session towards the end of Senator Mitch McConnell's opening remarks, it was revealed that the Senate stenographer had collapsed. The unidentified woman had just keeled over right there on the floor of the Senate not twenty feet from the man. Senator McConnell is said to have remarked, "Oh, my goodness." A brief recess was declared as the poor woman was revived and taken to the hospital for observation. The video from C-SPAN shows the woman slowly teetering to her right, then collapsing head first onto the Senatorial carpet accompanied by a loud thud. How can this possibly be the first time this has happened? I mean, what are the odds?

Imagine for a moment that your job is to preserve for posterity every word that proceeds from the mouths of 100 of the most pompous windbags in America. Think about that...every utterance from the likes of Mitch McConnell and Church Schumer, everytime one of them opens their pie holes, you have to be there, manning your front row seat, typing every word into a machine. You alone have to bear witness to the oratorical stylings of the first blonde-haired, blue-eyed Native American Senator, the self righteous musings of the wild-eyed Vermont Socialist, the nasal dronings of the curly haired windbag from Kentucky. Five days a week, eight hours a day you have to type out classic exchanges like this:

"If it pleases the chair, I would like to yield the floor and grant the remainder of my time to the distinguished gentleman from the great State of North Dakota."

"The gentlemen from North Dakota is recognized."

"I would like to thank the distinguished gentlemen from the great State of New Hampshire for yielding his time and will gladly yield back the floor for him to revise and extend his remarks shortly..."

You're damn right the poor woman collapsed!

We are constantly told about the thousands of jobs that Americans just won't do. We are told that some disagreeable work is beneath us. This is why we need cheap foreign labor. Well, I am here to tell you, the collapsed woman laying out cold, spread eagle in the well of the United States Senate should stand as a dramatic refutation of such nonsense. Here is a woman, an American woman, who stands for eight hours a day listening and recording the most inane, inconsequential men and women spout the most inane and inconsequential rhetoric known to be uttered anywhere in the civilized world. This is her job.

You think you got problems??