From: The New York Times
August 30, 2012
Party of Strivers
By DAVID BROOKS
America was built by materialistic and sometimes superficial strivers. It was built by pioneers who voluntarily subjected themselves to stone-age conditions on the frontier fired by dreams of riches. It was built by immigrants who crammed themselves into hellish tenements because they thought it would lead, for their children, to big houses, big cars and big lives.
America has always been defined by this ferocious commercial energy, this zealotry for self-transformation, which leads its citizens to vacation less, work longer, consume more and invent more.
Many Americans, and many foreign observers, are ambivalent about or offended by this driving material ambition. Read “The Great Gatsby.” Read D.H. Lawrence on Benjamin Franklin.
But today’s Republican Party unabashedly celebrates this ambition and definition of success. Speaker after speaker at the convention in Tampa, Fla., celebrated the striver, who started small, struggled hard, looked within and became wealthy. Speaker after speaker argued that this ideal of success is under assault by Democrats who look down on strivers, who undermine self-reliance with government dependency, who smother ambition under regulations.
Republicans promised to get government out of the way. Reduce the burden of debt. Offer Americans an open field and a fair chance to let their ambition run.
If you believe, as I do, that American institutions are hitting a creaky middle age, then you have a lot of time for this argument. If you believe that there has been a hardening of the national arteries caused by a labyrinthine tax code, an unsustainable Medicare program and a suicidal addiction to deficits, then you appreciate this streamlining agenda, even if you don’t buy into the whole Ayn Rand-influenced gospel of wealth.
On the one hand, you see the Republicans taking the initiative, offering rejuvenating reform. On the other hand, you see an exhausted Democratic Party, which says: We don’t have an agenda, but we really don’t like theirs. Given these options, the choice is pretty clear.
But there is a flaw in the vision the Republicans offered in Tampa. It is contained in its rampant hyperindividualism. Speaker after speaker celebrated the solitary and heroic individual. There was almost no talk of community and compassionate conservatism. There was certainly no conservatism as Edmund Burke understood it, in which individuals are embedded in webs of customs, traditions, habits and governing institutions.
Today’s Republicans strongly believe that individuals determine their own fates. In a Pew Research Center poll, for example, 57 percent of Republicans believe people are poor because they don’t work hard. Only 28 percent believe people are poor because of circumstances beyond their control. These Republicans believe that if only government gets out of the way, then people’s innate qualities will enable them to flourish.
But there’s a problem. I see what the G.O.P. is offering the engineering major from Purdue or the business major from Arizona State. The party is offering skilled people the freedom to run their race. I don’t see what the party is offering the waitress with two kids, or the warehouse worker whose wages have stagnated for a decade, or the factory worker whose skills are now obsolete.
The fact is our destinies are shaped by social forces much more than the current G.O.P. is willing to admit. The skills that enable people to flourish are not innate but constructed by circumstances.
Government does not always undermine initiative. Some government programs, like the G.I. Bill, inflame ambition. Others depress it. What matters is not whether a program is public or private but its effect on character. Today’s Republicans, who see every government program as a step on the road to serfdom, are often blind to that. They celebrate the race to success but don’t know how to give everyone access to that race.
The wisest speech departed from the prevailing story line. It was delivered by Condoleezza Rice. It echoed an older, less libertarian conservatism, which harkens back to Washington, Tocqueville and Lincoln. The powerful words in her speech were not “I” and “me” — the heroic individual. They were “we” and “us” — citizens who emerge out of and exist as participants in a great national project.
Rice celebrated material striving but also larger national goals — the long national struggle to extend benefits and mobilize all human potential. She subtly emphasized how our individual destinies are dependent upon the social fabric and upon public institutions like schools, just laws and our mission in the world. She put less emphasis on commerce and more on citizenship.
Today’s Republican Party may be able to perform useful tasks with its current hyperindividualistic mentality. But its commercial soul is too narrow. It won’t be a worthy governing party until it treads the course Lincoln trod: starting with individual ambition but ascending to a larger vision and creating a national environment that arouses ambition and nurtures success.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Thursday, August 16, 2012
What I Read Today - Thursday August 16, 2012
From: Forbes Magazine
Some Presidential Words On Federal Income Taxes
Peter J Reilly
Contributor
Julian Block is back, this time with a collection of thoughts by Presidents and Presidential candidates on taxation.
Some Presidential Words On Federal Income Taxes
Income taxes are such a pervasive and everyday part of our financial lives—and such a central issue in presidential campaigns — that they seem to have been around forever. They have not. Their debut is relatively recent.
Abraham Lincoln created the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the predecessor of today’s Internal Revenue Service, and introduced the first U.S. income taxes in 1862 to pay for the North’s Civil War expenses. The Confederacy also imposed income taxes. After all, military wars, especially big ones, have to be paid for; at least, that used to be a fact of life.
Mr. Lincoln’s levies fell mainly on the well-to-do. There was an exemption from taxes for the first $600 of income. Once beyond that amount, the maximum rate topped off at five percent. The taxes were temporary, not becoming permanent until the ratification in 1913 of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In an 1864 address to the 164th Ohio Regiment, Mr. Lincoln said “I apologize for the inequities in the practical applications of the tax, but if we should wait before collecting a tax to adjust the taxes upon each man in exact proportion with every other, we shall never collect any tax at all.”
Another Republican understandably went out of his way not to poke fun at the tax collectors. Richard Milhous Nixon, caught up in the struggle to avoid impeachment and stay in office, informed the nation that “The President, when the IRS is concerned, I assure you, is just another citizen and even more so.” Time magazine waited until the issue that coincided with the tax filing deadline of April 15, 1974, to note Mr. Nixon “offered that wry observation exactly one month ago, when advance warnings had been posted that he might owe half a million dollars in back taxes.” He resigned on August 9.
Ronald Wilson Reagan stood out for his ability to make complicated subjects understandable. Mr. Reagan particularly liked to poke fun at the shortcomings of our modern tax system. For instance, he alerted future taxpayers to what awaited them in a talk to students at Northside High School in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 6, 1985: “If our current tax structure were a TV show, it would either be `Foul-ups, Bleeps and Blunders,’ or `Gimme a Break.’ If it were a record album, it would be `Gimme Shelter.’ If it were a movie, it would be `Revenge of the Nerds’ or maybe `Take the Money and Run.’ And if the IRS ever wants a theme song, maybe they’ll get Sting to do `Every breath you take, every move you make, I’ll be watching you.’ ”
Mr. Reagan stayed on message at a joint session of the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa on March 11, 1981: “The American taxing structure, the purpose of which was to serve the people, began instead to serve the insatiable appetite of government. If you will forgive me, you know someone has once likened government to a baby. It is an alimentary canal with an appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
Mr. Reagan’s vice president, George Herbert Walker Bush, had sewn up the nomination for president when delegates at the Republican convention in 1988 cheered his famous pledge of “Read my lips—no new taxes!” However, as president, the elder George Bush had to deal with a Democratic Congress and to be more conciliatory, unlike his son. So despite his vow and because he knew it was helpful for the economy, President Bush crafted a deal with Congressional Democrats to raise new taxes in 1990, a decision that contributed to his re-election defeat in 1992 by William Jefferson Clinton.
President Clinton easily won again in 1996, notwithstanding tax increases in 1993, becoming the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As Mr. Clinton recalled, “There’s a lot of evidence you can sell people on tax increases if they think it’s an investment.” Of course, tremendous growth in the 1990’s also made it easier to sell increases.
Mr. Clinton’s other 1992 opponent was H. Ross Perot, a super-wealthy, third-party candidate making his first run for the office. Like Time magazine with its Nixon revelation, Mr. Perot waited until the filing deadline to reveal that “I’m delighted to pay big taxes. Big taxes mean big income.”
During Mr. Clinton’s first term, a key element of his legislative efforts was to attack the welfare system and promise to end welfare as we know it. In 1996, Republican candidate and Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole of Kansas invoked the same oratorical flourish when he declared that “I will eliminate the IRS as we know it.” Mr. Dole attempted to tap into anti-IRS sentiment abroad in the land. Among other things, he promised a simpler system “that will allow Americans to file their tax returns without the help of a lawyer or accountant, or both,” yet another of the countless proposals for simplification that never get anywhere.
Mr. Clinton was the first Democrat in the White House since James Earl Carter, a president who characterized “the federal tax system” as “a disgrace to the human race,” an assessment decidedly less upbeat than those of other Democratic chief executives.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in an address to Congress on April 20, 1961, declared that “One of the major characteristics of our tax system, and one in which we can take a great deal of pride, is that it operates primarily through individual self-assessment. The integrity of such a system depends upon the continued willingness of the people honestly and accurately to discharge this annual price of citizenship. To the extent that some people are dishonest or careless in their dealings with the government, the majority is forced to carry a heavier tax burden.”
While President Roosevelt was campaigning for a second term, he told a gathering in Worcester, Massachusetts, on October 31, 1936, that “One sure way to determine the social conscience of a Government is to examine the way taxes are collected and how they are spent. And one sure way to determine the social conscience of an individual is to get his tax-reaction. Taxes, after all, are the dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.”
William Jennings Bryan campaigned unsuccessfully three times as the Democratic presidential candidate. During his famous acceptance speech at the party’s National Convention in Chicago, on July 8, 1896, he declared that “The income tax is just. It simply intends to put the burdens of government justly upon the backs of the people. I am in favor of an income tax. When I find a man who is not willing to bear his share of the burdens of the government which protects him, I find a man who is unworthy to enjoy the blessings of a government like ours.”
Long before the introduction of income taxes, Andrew Jackson took a resigned view of all taxes. “The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that operates with perfect equality.”
—————————————————————————————————————————-
Julian Block is an attorney and author based in Larchmont, N.Y. He has been cited as: “a leading tax professional” (New York Times); ”an accomplished writer on taxes” (Wall Street Journal); and “an authority on tax planning” (Financial Planning Magazine). Information about his books is at julianblocktaxexpert.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article is available online at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2012/08/15/some-presidential-words-on-federal-income-taxes/
Some Presidential Words On Federal Income Taxes
Peter J Reilly
Contributor
Julian Block is back, this time with a collection of thoughts by Presidents and Presidential candidates on taxation.
Some Presidential Words On Federal Income Taxes
Income taxes are such a pervasive and everyday part of our financial lives—and such a central issue in presidential campaigns — that they seem to have been around forever. They have not. Their debut is relatively recent.
Abraham Lincoln created the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the predecessor of today’s Internal Revenue Service, and introduced the first U.S. income taxes in 1862 to pay for the North’s Civil War expenses. The Confederacy also imposed income taxes. After all, military wars, especially big ones, have to be paid for; at least, that used to be a fact of life.
Mr. Lincoln’s levies fell mainly on the well-to-do. There was an exemption from taxes for the first $600 of income. Once beyond that amount, the maximum rate topped off at five percent. The taxes were temporary, not becoming permanent until the ratification in 1913 of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In an 1864 address to the 164th Ohio Regiment, Mr. Lincoln said “I apologize for the inequities in the practical applications of the tax, but if we should wait before collecting a tax to adjust the taxes upon each man in exact proportion with every other, we shall never collect any tax at all.”
Another Republican understandably went out of his way not to poke fun at the tax collectors. Richard Milhous Nixon, caught up in the struggle to avoid impeachment and stay in office, informed the nation that “The President, when the IRS is concerned, I assure you, is just another citizen and even more so.” Time magazine waited until the issue that coincided with the tax filing deadline of April 15, 1974, to note Mr. Nixon “offered that wry observation exactly one month ago, when advance warnings had been posted that he might owe half a million dollars in back taxes.” He resigned on August 9.
Ronald Wilson Reagan stood out for his ability to make complicated subjects understandable. Mr. Reagan particularly liked to poke fun at the shortcomings of our modern tax system. For instance, he alerted future taxpayers to what awaited them in a talk to students at Northside High School in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 6, 1985: “If our current tax structure were a TV show, it would either be `Foul-ups, Bleeps and Blunders,’ or `Gimme a Break.’ If it were a record album, it would be `Gimme Shelter.’ If it were a movie, it would be `Revenge of the Nerds’ or maybe `Take the Money and Run.’ And if the IRS ever wants a theme song, maybe they’ll get Sting to do `Every breath you take, every move you make, I’ll be watching you.’ ”
Mr. Reagan stayed on message at a joint session of the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa on March 11, 1981: “The American taxing structure, the purpose of which was to serve the people, began instead to serve the insatiable appetite of government. If you will forgive me, you know someone has once likened government to a baby. It is an alimentary canal with an appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
Mr. Reagan’s vice president, George Herbert Walker Bush, had sewn up the nomination for president when delegates at the Republican convention in 1988 cheered his famous pledge of “Read my lips—no new taxes!” However, as president, the elder George Bush had to deal with a Democratic Congress and to be more conciliatory, unlike his son. So despite his vow and because he knew it was helpful for the economy, President Bush crafted a deal with Congressional Democrats to raise new taxes in 1990, a decision that contributed to his re-election defeat in 1992 by William Jefferson Clinton.
President Clinton easily won again in 1996, notwithstanding tax increases in 1993, becoming the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As Mr. Clinton recalled, “There’s a lot of evidence you can sell people on tax increases if they think it’s an investment.” Of course, tremendous growth in the 1990’s also made it easier to sell increases.
Mr. Clinton’s other 1992 opponent was H. Ross Perot, a super-wealthy, third-party candidate making his first run for the office. Like Time magazine with its Nixon revelation, Mr. Perot waited until the filing deadline to reveal that “I’m delighted to pay big taxes. Big taxes mean big income.”
During Mr. Clinton’s first term, a key element of his legislative efforts was to attack the welfare system and promise to end welfare as we know it. In 1996, Republican candidate and Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole of Kansas invoked the same oratorical flourish when he declared that “I will eliminate the IRS as we know it.” Mr. Dole attempted to tap into anti-IRS sentiment abroad in the land. Among other things, he promised a simpler system “that will allow Americans to file their tax returns without the help of a lawyer or accountant, or both,” yet another of the countless proposals for simplification that never get anywhere.
Mr. Clinton was the first Democrat in the White House since James Earl Carter, a president who characterized “the federal tax system” as “a disgrace to the human race,” an assessment decidedly less upbeat than those of other Democratic chief executives.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in an address to Congress on April 20, 1961, declared that “One of the major characteristics of our tax system, and one in which we can take a great deal of pride, is that it operates primarily through individual self-assessment. The integrity of such a system depends upon the continued willingness of the people honestly and accurately to discharge this annual price of citizenship. To the extent that some people are dishonest or careless in their dealings with the government, the majority is forced to carry a heavier tax burden.”
While President Roosevelt was campaigning for a second term, he told a gathering in Worcester, Massachusetts, on October 31, 1936, that “One sure way to determine the social conscience of a Government is to examine the way taxes are collected and how they are spent. And one sure way to determine the social conscience of an individual is to get his tax-reaction. Taxes, after all, are the dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.”
William Jennings Bryan campaigned unsuccessfully three times as the Democratic presidential candidate. During his famous acceptance speech at the party’s National Convention in Chicago, on July 8, 1896, he declared that “The income tax is just. It simply intends to put the burdens of government justly upon the backs of the people. I am in favor of an income tax. When I find a man who is not willing to bear his share of the burdens of the government which protects him, I find a man who is unworthy to enjoy the blessings of a government like ours.”
Long before the introduction of income taxes, Andrew Jackson took a resigned view of all taxes. “The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that operates with perfect equality.”
—————————————————————————————————————————-
Julian Block is an attorney and author based in Larchmont, N.Y. He has been cited as: “a leading tax professional” (New York Times); ”an accomplished writer on taxes” (Wall Street Journal); and “an authority on tax planning” (Financial Planning Magazine). Information about his books is at julianblocktaxexpert.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article is available online at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2012/08/15/some-presidential-words-on-federal-income-taxes/
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
What I Read Today - Wednesday August 15, 2012
From: Success Magazine
Modern Marketing: Why go 2x when you can go 10x?
The advantages of "10x thinking"
Dan Sullivan April 10, 2012
If you could grow something that’s important to you by 10 times and end up with a simpler, easier-to-manage, more enjoyable business than you have now, would you do it?
It could be something obvious, like taking profits or sales tenfold, or perhaps something more creative, such as doubling your results with one-fifth the clientele or having 10 times more time off. What it looks like is totally up to you, as long as it amounts to a 10x greater result in some area of your entrepreneurial life.
Now what if I were to tell you that your chosen 10x goal was not an end unto itself? Rather it would just be the means by which you could develop and hone a new set of capabilities to enable you to go 10x in any area you choose in the future. Sound appealing?
This is essentially the challenge I’ve been offering to my most advanced clients—all highly successful, growth-focused entrepreneurs—over the past year and a half, and not surprisingly, almost all of them have taken me up on it.
Nonetheless, some entrepreneurs still think that 10x is too daunting or overwhelming to think about, and I understand how that might be the case, especially for those struggling with the complexity of the day-to-day in a tough economy. For those people, even growth by 2x may seem like a stretch.
My commitment to 10x thinking comes from my conviction that 10x is the only guaranteed way that entrepreneurs can ensure their continued freedom and success in a world where change happens at an exponential rate, led by technology. Incremental growth simply isn’t enough to stay ahead of the curve anymore. You and your team have to be able to think in terms of 10x improvements, 10x growth and 10x innovation in order to continually thrive. The future belongs to 10x companies. The good news is that growing one is probably much easier and more enjoyable than you think.
One reason is that 10x thinking immediately takes you out of the box of your current limitations and obstacles. The rewards of 10x thinking and 10x learning, driven by 10x goals, are immense and often surprising. Here are some of our observations so far from going through the process, as 150-plus top entrepreneurs from more than 50 industries have done.
1. As soon as you start thinking 10x, everything automatically speeds up.
Thinking 10x has a wonderful way of creating clarity that allows you to make greater progress more quickly. This happens because a 10x goal is a powerful filter for decision-making and action.
It immediately sorts out what parts of your business are or aren’t in alignment, and makes it clearer and easier to make decisions about what belongs in the future versus the past. You begin to ask yourself, “Does this relationship, this project, this activity have 10x potential?” or, “Is this process going to take us 10x?” or even, “Is this how I want to be spending my time to go 10x?”
Think for a moment: What would you have to stop doing to go 10x? There’s a 25 to 50 percent productivity increase just from stopping certain things that aren’t supporting your future growth. As you start to filter your activities, decisions and relationships through 10x, you can quickly begin to transform everything in your life that doesn’t support exponential growth, and create and attract everything that does.
2. Thinking 10x moves you into purely entrepreneurial decision-making, creativity, risk-taking and teamwork.
Bureaucracy is like kryptonite to entrepreneurs. Because there’s nothing bureaucratic about 10x thinking, it becomes a kind of protective shield: Any bureaucratic thinking, structures or processes that may have crept into your business can’t survive for long when you’re committed to 10x.
The reason for this is that 10x requires innovation, risk-taking and a level of entrepreneurial teamwork. Everyone on your team has to be creative on the spot and has to innovate and make continual improvements. This is the essence of what entrepreneurs do. A 10x company makes the ability to grow 10x part of its DNA. Its approach is always 10x, its systems and structures are built to create and support 10x growth, and its team members share its leaders’ 10x thinking. In such a company, if a new opportunity doesn’t have 10x potential, it’s likely to get rejected as a game not worth winning.
3. With 10x progress in mind, you start seeing an increasing number of 10x factors that can contribute to that progress.
Have you ever noticed that the eyes only see and the ears only hear what the mind is looking for? It’s just like when you buy a car, and at first you think you’re the only one with that model of car, and then you start noticing it everywhere. There are all kinds of 10x opportunities within and surrounding your business, but you have to look for them to see them, and then, all of a sudden, they’re obvious.
Great people with incredibly useful capabilities, strategic relationships, unique technologies and innovative shortcuts surround you. They’re what you need to go 10x, and your mind should see the project clearly to find them and put them to use.
4. As your team gets involved in 10x progress, leadership emerges, relationships strengthen and creativity increases.
Many entrepreneurs don’t love being in charge of developing, training, managing and motivating their teams. But when you focus your team on a 10x goal, all of these things become much easier. In fact, you may see much of it happening without any extra effort on your part.
Growth-oriented people, the ones you want on your team, are energized by big goals, and 10x gives them a big project on which they can work together. On the other hand, anyone who’s just there to collect a paycheck is likely to opt out. In a 10x company, every team member is always looking for things they can do 10x faster, easier, cheaper or bigger in their own areas of responsibility and knowledge. Adding up these small and perhaps big 10x improvements, the whole company eventually goes 10x. Think of it like a pot of water heating up on a stove. Each 10x innovation represents one of the small bubbles that eventually combine with others to bring the whole thing to a rolling boil.
5. Striving for 10x progress is faster, easier and cheaper—and is far more enjoyable and satisfying—than striving for 2x progress.
The statement above may seem counterintuitive, but going 2x is something that can happen without actually changing much of what you’re already doing. When we think about doubling our progress, we often just try to leverage our current capabilities, whereas going 10x engages a different level of creativity, energy and excitement.
Going 10x requires real change—leaps in value creation, in efficiency, in resourcefulness and in productivity. It can also put you at the forefront of change, driving it rather than struggling to keep up with constant, unpleasant surprises. Evolving technology is going to change you anyway, so why not say, “I’m going to adopt a level of thinking right up front that makes it a profitable, enjoyable trip.”
Modern Marketing: Why go 2x when you can go 10x?
The advantages of "10x thinking"
Dan Sullivan April 10, 2012
If you could grow something that’s important to you by 10 times and end up with a simpler, easier-to-manage, more enjoyable business than you have now, would you do it?
It could be something obvious, like taking profits or sales tenfold, or perhaps something more creative, such as doubling your results with one-fifth the clientele or having 10 times more time off. What it looks like is totally up to you, as long as it amounts to a 10x greater result in some area of your entrepreneurial life.
Now what if I were to tell you that your chosen 10x goal was not an end unto itself? Rather it would just be the means by which you could develop and hone a new set of capabilities to enable you to go 10x in any area you choose in the future. Sound appealing?
This is essentially the challenge I’ve been offering to my most advanced clients—all highly successful, growth-focused entrepreneurs—over the past year and a half, and not surprisingly, almost all of them have taken me up on it.
Nonetheless, some entrepreneurs still think that 10x is too daunting or overwhelming to think about, and I understand how that might be the case, especially for those struggling with the complexity of the day-to-day in a tough economy. For those people, even growth by 2x may seem like a stretch.
My commitment to 10x thinking comes from my conviction that 10x is the only guaranteed way that entrepreneurs can ensure their continued freedom and success in a world where change happens at an exponential rate, led by technology. Incremental growth simply isn’t enough to stay ahead of the curve anymore. You and your team have to be able to think in terms of 10x improvements, 10x growth and 10x innovation in order to continually thrive. The future belongs to 10x companies. The good news is that growing one is probably much easier and more enjoyable than you think.
One reason is that 10x thinking immediately takes you out of the box of your current limitations and obstacles. The rewards of 10x thinking and 10x learning, driven by 10x goals, are immense and often surprising. Here are some of our observations so far from going through the process, as 150-plus top entrepreneurs from more than 50 industries have done.
1. As soon as you start thinking 10x, everything automatically speeds up.
Thinking 10x has a wonderful way of creating clarity that allows you to make greater progress more quickly. This happens because a 10x goal is a powerful filter for decision-making and action.
It immediately sorts out what parts of your business are or aren’t in alignment, and makes it clearer and easier to make decisions about what belongs in the future versus the past. You begin to ask yourself, “Does this relationship, this project, this activity have 10x potential?” or, “Is this process going to take us 10x?” or even, “Is this how I want to be spending my time to go 10x?”
Think for a moment: What would you have to stop doing to go 10x? There’s a 25 to 50 percent productivity increase just from stopping certain things that aren’t supporting your future growth. As you start to filter your activities, decisions and relationships through 10x, you can quickly begin to transform everything in your life that doesn’t support exponential growth, and create and attract everything that does.
2. Thinking 10x moves you into purely entrepreneurial decision-making, creativity, risk-taking and teamwork.
Bureaucracy is like kryptonite to entrepreneurs. Because there’s nothing bureaucratic about 10x thinking, it becomes a kind of protective shield: Any bureaucratic thinking, structures or processes that may have crept into your business can’t survive for long when you’re committed to 10x.
The reason for this is that 10x requires innovation, risk-taking and a level of entrepreneurial teamwork. Everyone on your team has to be creative on the spot and has to innovate and make continual improvements. This is the essence of what entrepreneurs do. A 10x company makes the ability to grow 10x part of its DNA. Its approach is always 10x, its systems and structures are built to create and support 10x growth, and its team members share its leaders’ 10x thinking. In such a company, if a new opportunity doesn’t have 10x potential, it’s likely to get rejected as a game not worth winning.
3. With 10x progress in mind, you start seeing an increasing number of 10x factors that can contribute to that progress.
Have you ever noticed that the eyes only see and the ears only hear what the mind is looking for? It’s just like when you buy a car, and at first you think you’re the only one with that model of car, and then you start noticing it everywhere. There are all kinds of 10x opportunities within and surrounding your business, but you have to look for them to see them, and then, all of a sudden, they’re obvious.
Great people with incredibly useful capabilities, strategic relationships, unique technologies and innovative shortcuts surround you. They’re what you need to go 10x, and your mind should see the project clearly to find them and put them to use.
4. As your team gets involved in 10x progress, leadership emerges, relationships strengthen and creativity increases.
Many entrepreneurs don’t love being in charge of developing, training, managing and motivating their teams. But when you focus your team on a 10x goal, all of these things become much easier. In fact, you may see much of it happening without any extra effort on your part.
Growth-oriented people, the ones you want on your team, are energized by big goals, and 10x gives them a big project on which they can work together. On the other hand, anyone who’s just there to collect a paycheck is likely to opt out. In a 10x company, every team member is always looking for things they can do 10x faster, easier, cheaper or bigger in their own areas of responsibility and knowledge. Adding up these small and perhaps big 10x improvements, the whole company eventually goes 10x. Think of it like a pot of water heating up on a stove. Each 10x innovation represents one of the small bubbles that eventually combine with others to bring the whole thing to a rolling boil.
5. Striving for 10x progress is faster, easier and cheaper—and is far more enjoyable and satisfying—than striving for 2x progress.
The statement above may seem counterintuitive, but going 2x is something that can happen without actually changing much of what you’re already doing. When we think about doubling our progress, we often just try to leverage our current capabilities, whereas going 10x engages a different level of creativity, energy and excitement.
Going 10x requires real change—leaps in value creation, in efficiency, in resourcefulness and in productivity. It can also put you at the forefront of change, driving it rather than struggling to keep up with constant, unpleasant surprises. Evolving technology is going to change you anyway, so why not say, “I’m going to adopt a level of thinking right up front that makes it a profitable, enjoyable trip.”
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
What I Read Today - Wednesday August 8, 2012
From: The New York Times
Average Is Over, Part II
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
A big mismatch exists today between how U.S. C.E.O.’s look at the world and how many American politicians and parents look at the world — and it may be preventing us from taking our education challenge as seriously as we must.
For many politicians, “outsourcing” is a four-letter word because it involves jobs leaving “here” and going “there.” But for many C.E.O.’s, outsourcing is over. In today’s seamlessly connected world, there is no “out” and no “in” anymore. There is only the “good,” “better” and “best” places to get work done, and if they don’t tap into the best, most cost-efficient venue wherever that is, their competition will.
For politicians, it’s all about “made in America,” but, for C.E.O.’s, it is increasingly about “made in the world” — a world where more and more products are now imagined everywhere, designed everywhere, manufactured everywhere in global supply chains and sold everywhere. American politicians are still citizens of our states and cities, while C.E.O.’s are increasingly citizens of the world, with mixed loyalties. For politicians, all their customers are here; for C.E.O.’s, 90 percent of their new customers are abroad. The credo of the politician today is: “Why are you not hiring more people here?” The credo of the C.E.O. today is: “You only hire someone — anywhere — if you absolutely have to,” if a smarter machine, robot or computer program is not available.
Yes, this is a simplification, but the trend is accurate. The trend is that for more and more jobs, average is over. Thanks to the merger of, and advances in, globalization and the information technology revolution, every boss now has cheaper, easier access to more above-average software, automation, robotics, cheap labor and cheap genius than ever before. So just doing a job in an average way will not return an average lifestyle any longer. Yes, I know, that’s what they said about the Japanese “threat” in the 1980s. But Japan, alas, challenged just two American industries — cars and consumer electronics — and just one American town, Detroit. Globalization and the Internet/telecom/computing revolution together challenge every town, worker and job. There is no good job today that does not require more and better education to get it, hold it or advance in it.
Which is why it is disturbing when more studies show that American K-12 schools continue to lag behind other major industrialized countries on the international education tests. Like politicians, too many parents think if their kid’s school is doing better than the one next door, they’re fine.
Well, a dose of reality is on the way thanks to Andreas Schleicher and his team at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which coordinates the Program for International Student Assessment, known as the PISA test. Every three years, the O.E.C.D. has been giving the PISA test to a sample of 15-year-olds, now in 70 countries, to evaluate reading, math and science skills. The U.S. does not stand out. It’s just average, but many parents are sure their kid is above average. With help from several foundations in the U.S., Schleicher has just finished a pilot study of 100 American schools to enable principals, teachers and parents to see not just how America stacks up against China, but how their own school stacks up against similar schools in the best-educated countries, like Finland and Singapore.
“The entry ticket to the middle class today is a postsecondary education of some kind,” but too many kids are not coming out of K-12 prepared for that, and too many parents don’t get it, says Jon Schnur, the chairman of America Achieves, which is partnering with the O.E.C.D. on this project as part of an effort to help every American understand the connection between educational attainment at their school — for all age groups — and what will be required to perform the jobs of the future.
“Imagine, in a few years, you could sign onto a Web site and see this is how my school compares with a similar school anywhere in the world,” says Schleicher. “And then you take this information to your local superintendent and ask: ‘Why are we not doing as well as schools in China or Finland?’ ”
Schleicher’s team is assessing all their test results — and socioeconomic profiles of each school — to make sure they have a proper data set for making global comparisons. They hope to have the comparison platform available early next year.
Says Schleicher: “If parents do not know, they will not demand, as consumers, a high quality of educational service. They will just say the school my kids are going to is as good as the school I went to.” If this comparison platform can be built at this micro scale, he says, it could “lead to empowerment at the really decisive level” of parents, principals and teachers demanding something better.
“This is not about threatening schools,” he adds. It is about giving each of them “the levers to effect change” and a window into the pace of change that is possible when every stakeholder in a school has the data and can say: Look at those who have made dramatic improvements around the world. Why can’t we?
Monday, August 6, 2012
What I Read Today - Monday August 6, 2012
From: The New York Times
August 5, 2012
To Increase Learning Time, Some Schools Add Days to Academic Year
By MOTOKO RICH
PHOENIX — It was the last Sunday in July, and Bethany and Garvin Phillips were pulling price tags off brand-new backpacks and stuffing them with binders and pencils.
While other children around the country readied for beach vacations or the last weeks of summer camp, Bethany, 11, and Garvin, 9, were preparing for the first day of the new school year at Griffith Elementary, just six weeks after the start of their summer vacation.
Griffith, one of five schools in the Balsz Elementary School District here, is one of a handful of public schools across the country that has lengthened the school year in an effort to increase learning time.
A typical public school calendar is 180 days, but the Balsz district, where 90 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch, is in session for 200 days, adding about a month to the academic year.
According to the National Center on Time and Learning, a nonprofit research group in Boston, about 170 schools — more than 140 of them charter schools — across the country have extended their calendars in recent years to 190 days or longer.
Neither Bethany, who plans to run for student council president, nor Garvin, who was excited about his fourth-grade teacher, seemed bothered by the change. “The kids’ education is more important than all of these breaks that we have,” said their mother, Debra Phillips.
A growing group of education advocates is agitating for more time in schools, arguing that low-income children in particular need more time to catch up as schools face increasing pressure to improve student test scores.
“It’s not as simple as ‘Oh, if we just went 12 hours every kid would be Einstein,’ ” said Chris Gabrieli, chairman of the Boston group. “On the other hand, the more time you spend practicing or preparing to do something, the better you get at it.”
Education advocates have been calling for more school time at least since the 1983 “Nation at Risk” report presented an apocalyptic vision of American education.
Teachers’ unions, parents who want to preserve summers for family vacations and those who worry that children already come under too much academic stress argue that extended school time is not the answer. Research on longer school days or years also shows mixed results.
But studies also show that during the summer break, students — particularly those from low-income families — tend to forget what they learned in the school year. Getting back to school early, supporters of a longer calendar say, is one of the best ways to narrow an achievement gap between rich and poor students.
Many charter schools, including those in the academically successful KIPP network, attribute their achievement in part to longer days and calendars. President Obama has repeatedly promoted expanded school time, even inspiring “Saturday Night Live” to poke fun, with Seth Meyers saying in his Weekend Update segment that only “Catherine, the fifth grader nobody likes,” would support such a proposal.
Within the last two years, both the Ford Foundation and the Wallace Foundation have made multimillion dollar commitments to help nonprofit groups work with school districts to restructure the school day and year.
Advocates of longer school years say that the 180-day school year is an outdated artifact.
“The fact that our calendar has been based on the agrarian economy when almost none of our kids work in the field anymore,” said Arne Duncan, secretary of education, “doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.”
Yet several recent efforts to lengthen the school calendar have foundered. The Woodland Hills Academy in Pittsburgh extended its school year to 195 days in 2009, but this year it will return to the traditional 180-day calendar because of state budget cuts. Similarly, Parkside Elementary in Coral Springs, Fla., tried a 200-day calendar for one year before abandoning it because of insufficient financing.
Last year, legislators in Arkansas and New Mexico introduced bills to institute a 200-day school calendar, but both stalled. In Iowa, after Gov. Terry E. Branstad discussed the possibility of lengthening the school year at several town-hall-style meetings, protesters prompted the state to convene a study group to examine the issue.
Critics say that with so many schools already failing, giving them more time would do little to help students.
“It is true that we have an unfair society, and it is true that kids who are coming from the poorer backgrounds and whose parents don’t do a lot of reading are losing reading skills over the summer,” said Peter Gray, research professor of psychology at Boston College. “But let’s look at other solutions.” He added, “Whatever job we give to the school system, they ruin it.”
Advocates say that schools need to plan carefully how they will use the extra time. Some say that adding the kinds of art, music and other activities that more affluent students typically get outside school is as important as beefing up academics. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the teachers’ union have been battling over his plan to lengthen the school day; an agreement was reached last month when the school district agreed to hire back teachers for more enrichment programs rather than simply forcing classroom teachers to work longer hours.
“Better is as important as the more,” said Jeannie Oakes, director of educational opportunity and scholarship programs at the Ford Foundation.
When Jeffrey Smith, superintendent of the Balsz district, arrived in 2008, he inherited a district where two of the five schools had been rated underperforming for several years running and the district was at risk of being taken over by the state.
With the recession pinching state and local budgets, Mr. Smith seized on an Arizona law that gave an additional 5 percent of state financing to districts that added 20 days to the school year.
While many parents supported the initiative, some teachers resisted, worried that they would not receive enough extra pay to compensate for the additional time. The school board voted in 2009 to extend the year, and with the additional state financing and a local property tax increase, the district raised teacher salaries by 9 percent.
Since the district transitioned to the longer calendar, the proportion of students passing state reading tests has gone to 65 percent from 51 percent, and math scores are also improving.
Some teachers say that it is a new curriculum, targeted tutoring and two hours of professional development a week, as much as the extra days, that have helped raise achievement.
“Quantity is great, if you have the quality to back it up,” said Kathleen Puryear, a 20-year veteran fourth-grade teacher.
The district has lost several teachers since the longer school year began. At Griffith, Alexis Wilson, the principal, said 10 out of 23 classroom teachers retired or resigned last year, some citing the 200-day schedule.
Given the choice, many children would also rather be out playing than sitting behind a desk. But Riziki Gloria, a fifth grader at David Crockett Elementary, a Balsz school that serves many refugees and homeless children, said that she was keen to get back to school. “Sometimes summer is really boring,” she said. “We just sit there and watch TV.”
Outside Griffith Elementary early last Monday morning, children and their parents arrived early, eager to start. Sheena Padia said she had chosen to send her sons Isaiah and Elias Mercado to Griffith even though they live outside the district, in part because of the 200-day calendar.
“I love it because it is more education for them,” said Ms. Padia, as Isaiah, 7, showed off new black-and-white Adidas sneakers and Elias, 5, brandished a mechanical pencil.
The shorter summer break seemed to help the students adjust quickly to being back in school. After the morning Pledge of Allegiance, Ms. Puryear’s fourth graders easily recited the school’s mantra: “No one has the right to interfere with the learning, safety or well-being of others.”
Down the hall, Sarah Ravel used the morning to review school disciplinary codes, and she played get-to-know-you games with her new sixth graders. By afternoon, it was down to schoolwork as she handed out a math review sheet.
Ms. Ravel sat at the front of the class, her left hand magnified to several times its size as she projected the work sheet onto a digital white board. Hands shot into the air, waving urgently. The class had hit a tricky problem: subtract 2 hours and 45 minutes from 5 hours and 20 minutes. Ms. Ravel carefully explained how to work out the solution.
“If you are not comfortable with that, know that we are going to do one of those every day for the next 200 days,” she said. “I guess I should say the next 199 days,” she amended. “So we are going to get really comfortable.”
August 5, 2012
To Increase Learning Time, Some Schools Add Days to Academic Year
By MOTOKO RICH
PHOENIX — It was the last Sunday in July, and Bethany and Garvin Phillips were pulling price tags off brand-new backpacks and stuffing them with binders and pencils.
While other children around the country readied for beach vacations or the last weeks of summer camp, Bethany, 11, and Garvin, 9, were preparing for the first day of the new school year at Griffith Elementary, just six weeks after the start of their summer vacation.
Griffith, one of five schools in the Balsz Elementary School District here, is one of a handful of public schools across the country that has lengthened the school year in an effort to increase learning time.
A typical public school calendar is 180 days, but the Balsz district, where 90 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch, is in session for 200 days, adding about a month to the academic year.
According to the National Center on Time and Learning, a nonprofit research group in Boston, about 170 schools — more than 140 of them charter schools — across the country have extended their calendars in recent years to 190 days or longer.
Neither Bethany, who plans to run for student council president, nor Garvin, who was excited about his fourth-grade teacher, seemed bothered by the change. “The kids’ education is more important than all of these breaks that we have,” said their mother, Debra Phillips.
A growing group of education advocates is agitating for more time in schools, arguing that low-income children in particular need more time to catch up as schools face increasing pressure to improve student test scores.
“It’s not as simple as ‘Oh, if we just went 12 hours every kid would be Einstein,’ ” said Chris Gabrieli, chairman of the Boston group. “On the other hand, the more time you spend practicing or preparing to do something, the better you get at it.”
Education advocates have been calling for more school time at least since the 1983 “Nation at Risk” report presented an apocalyptic vision of American education.
Teachers’ unions, parents who want to preserve summers for family vacations and those who worry that children already come under too much academic stress argue that extended school time is not the answer. Research on longer school days or years also shows mixed results.
But studies also show that during the summer break, students — particularly those from low-income families — tend to forget what they learned in the school year. Getting back to school early, supporters of a longer calendar say, is one of the best ways to narrow an achievement gap between rich and poor students.
Many charter schools, including those in the academically successful KIPP network, attribute their achievement in part to longer days and calendars. President Obama has repeatedly promoted expanded school time, even inspiring “Saturday Night Live” to poke fun, with Seth Meyers saying in his Weekend Update segment that only “Catherine, the fifth grader nobody likes,” would support such a proposal.
Within the last two years, both the Ford Foundation and the Wallace Foundation have made multimillion dollar commitments to help nonprofit groups work with school districts to restructure the school day and year.
Advocates of longer school years say that the 180-day school year is an outdated artifact.
“The fact that our calendar has been based on the agrarian economy when almost none of our kids work in the field anymore,” said Arne Duncan, secretary of education, “doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.”
Yet several recent efforts to lengthen the school calendar have foundered. The Woodland Hills Academy in Pittsburgh extended its school year to 195 days in 2009, but this year it will return to the traditional 180-day calendar because of state budget cuts. Similarly, Parkside Elementary in Coral Springs, Fla., tried a 200-day calendar for one year before abandoning it because of insufficient financing.
Last year, legislators in Arkansas and New Mexico introduced bills to institute a 200-day school calendar, but both stalled. In Iowa, after Gov. Terry E. Branstad discussed the possibility of lengthening the school year at several town-hall-style meetings, protesters prompted the state to convene a study group to examine the issue.
Critics say that with so many schools already failing, giving them more time would do little to help students.
“It is true that we have an unfair society, and it is true that kids who are coming from the poorer backgrounds and whose parents don’t do a lot of reading are losing reading skills over the summer,” said Peter Gray, research professor of psychology at Boston College. “But let’s look at other solutions.” He added, “Whatever job we give to the school system, they ruin it.”
Advocates say that schools need to plan carefully how they will use the extra time. Some say that adding the kinds of art, music and other activities that more affluent students typically get outside school is as important as beefing up academics. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the teachers’ union have been battling over his plan to lengthen the school day; an agreement was reached last month when the school district agreed to hire back teachers for more enrichment programs rather than simply forcing classroom teachers to work longer hours.
“Better is as important as the more,” said Jeannie Oakes, director of educational opportunity and scholarship programs at the Ford Foundation.
When Jeffrey Smith, superintendent of the Balsz district, arrived in 2008, he inherited a district where two of the five schools had been rated underperforming for several years running and the district was at risk of being taken over by the state.
With the recession pinching state and local budgets, Mr. Smith seized on an Arizona law that gave an additional 5 percent of state financing to districts that added 20 days to the school year.
While many parents supported the initiative, some teachers resisted, worried that they would not receive enough extra pay to compensate for the additional time. The school board voted in 2009 to extend the year, and with the additional state financing and a local property tax increase, the district raised teacher salaries by 9 percent.
Since the district transitioned to the longer calendar, the proportion of students passing state reading tests has gone to 65 percent from 51 percent, and math scores are also improving.
Some teachers say that it is a new curriculum, targeted tutoring and two hours of professional development a week, as much as the extra days, that have helped raise achievement.
“Quantity is great, if you have the quality to back it up,” said Kathleen Puryear, a 20-year veteran fourth-grade teacher.
The district has lost several teachers since the longer school year began. At Griffith, Alexis Wilson, the principal, said 10 out of 23 classroom teachers retired or resigned last year, some citing the 200-day schedule.
Given the choice, many children would also rather be out playing than sitting behind a desk. But Riziki Gloria, a fifth grader at David Crockett Elementary, a Balsz school that serves many refugees and homeless children, said that she was keen to get back to school. “Sometimes summer is really boring,” she said. “We just sit there and watch TV.”
Outside Griffith Elementary early last Monday morning, children and their parents arrived early, eager to start. Sheena Padia said she had chosen to send her sons Isaiah and Elias Mercado to Griffith even though they live outside the district, in part because of the 200-day calendar.
“I love it because it is more education for them,” said Ms. Padia, as Isaiah, 7, showed off new black-and-white Adidas sneakers and Elias, 5, brandished a mechanical pencil.
The shorter summer break seemed to help the students adjust quickly to being back in school. After the morning Pledge of Allegiance, Ms. Puryear’s fourth graders easily recited the school’s mantra: “No one has the right to interfere with the learning, safety or well-being of others.”
Down the hall, Sarah Ravel used the morning to review school disciplinary codes, and she played get-to-know-you games with her new sixth graders. By afternoon, it was down to schoolwork as she handed out a math review sheet.
Ms. Ravel sat at the front of the class, her left hand magnified to several times its size as she projected the work sheet onto a digital white board. Hands shot into the air, waving urgently. The class had hit a tricky problem: subtract 2 hours and 45 minutes from 5 hours and 20 minutes. Ms. Ravel carefully explained how to work out the solution.
“If you are not comfortable with that, know that we are going to do one of those every day for the next 200 days,” she said. “I guess I should say the next 199 days,” she amended. “So we are going to get really comfortable.”
Saturday, August 4, 2012
What I Read Today - Saturday August 4, 2012
Psalm 55 (New International Version)
Psalm 55
New International Version (NIV)
For the director of music. With stringed instruments. A maskil[b] of David.
1 Listen to my prayer, O God,
do not ignore my plea;
2 hear me and answer me.
My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught
3 because of what my enemy is saying,
because of the threats of the wicked;
for they bring down suffering on me
and assail me in their anger.
4 My heart is in anguish within me;
the terrors of death have fallen on me.
5 Fear and trembling have beset me;
horror has overwhelmed me.
6 I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest.
7 I would flee far away
and stay in the desert;[c]
8 I would hurry to my place of shelter,
far from the tempest and storm. ”
9 Lord, confuse the wicked, confound their words,
for I see violence and strife in the city.
10 Day and night they prowl about on its walls;
malice and abuse are within it.
11 Destructive forces are at work in the city;
threats and lies never leave its streets.
12 If an enemy were insulting me,
I could endure it;
if a foe were rising against me,
I could hide.
13 But it is you, a man like myself,
my companion, my close friend,
14 with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
at the house of God,
as we walked about
among the worshipers.
15 Let death take my enemies by surprise;
let them go down alive to the realm of the dead,
for evil finds lodging among them.
16 As for me, I call to God,
and the Lord saves me.
17 Evening, morning and noon
I cry out in distress,
and he hears my voice.
18 He rescues me unharmed
from the battle waged against me,
even though many oppose me.
19 God, who is enthroned from of old,
who does not change—
he will hear them and humble them,
because they have no fear of God.
20 My companion attacks his friends;
he violates his covenant.
21 His talk is smooth as butter,
yet war is in his heart;
his words are more soothing than oil,
yet they are drawn swords.
22 Cast your cares on the Lord
and he will sustain you;
he will never let
the righteous be shaken.
23 But you, God, will bring down the wicked
into the pit of decay;
the bloodthirsty and deceitful
will not live out half their days.
But as for me, I trust in you.
Footnotes:
a.Psalm 55:1 In Hebrew texts 55:1-23 is numbered 55:2-24.
b.Psalm 55:1 Title: Probably a literary or musical term
c.Psalm 55:7 The Hebrew has Selah (a word of uncertain meaning) here and in the middle of verse 19.
Cross references:Psalm 55:1 : Ps 27:9; La 3:56Psalm 55:2 : Ps 4:1Psalm 55:2 : 1Sa 1:15-16; Ps 77:3; 86:6-7; 142:2Psalm 55:3 : S 2Sa 16:6-8; Ps 17:9; 143:3Psalm 55:3 : S Ps 44:16Psalm 55:3 : Ps 71:11Psalm 55:4 : S Ps 6:3Psalm 55:4 : S Job 18:11Psalm 55:5 : S Job 4:14; S 2Co 7:15Psalm 55:5 : Dt 28:67; Isa 21:4; Jer 46:5; 49:5; Eze 7:18Psalm 55:7 : 1Sa 23:14Psalm 55:8 : Ps 31:20Psalm 55:8 : Ps 77:18; Isa 4:6; 25:4; 28:2; 29:6; 32:2Psalm 55:9 : Ge 11:9; Ac 2:4Psalm 55:9 : Ps 11:5; Isa 59:6; Jer 6:7; Eze 7:11; Hab 1:3Psalm 55:9 : Ge 4:17Psalm 55:10 : 1Pe 5:8Psalm 55:11 : Ps 5:9Psalm 55:11 : Ps 10:7Psalm 55:13 : S 2Sa 15:12Psalm 55:14 : Ac 1:16-17Psalm 55:14 : Ps 42:4Psalm 55:15 : Ps 64:7; Pr 6:15; Isa 29:5; 47:9, 11; 1Th 5:3Psalm 55:15 : S Ps 49:14Psalm 55:17 : Ps 141:2; Ac 3:1; 10:3, 30Psalm 55:17 : Ps 5:3; 88:13; 92:2Psalm 55:17 : Ac 10:9Psalm 55:19 : S Ex 15:18; Dt 33:27; Ps 29:10Psalm 55:19 : Ps 78:59Psalm 55:19 : Ps 36:1; 64:4Psalm 55:20 : Ps 7:4Psalm 55:20 : S Ps 41:9Psalm 55:21 : Ps 12:2Psalm 55:21 : Pr 5:3; 6:24Psalm 55:21 : Ps 57:4; 59:7; 64:3; Pr 12:18; Rev 1:16Psalm 55:22 : S Ps 18:35; Mt 6:25-34; 1Pe 5:7Psalm 55:22 : Ps 15:5; 21:7; 37:24; 112:6Psalm 55:23 : Ps 9:15; S 30:3; 73:18; 94:13; Isa 14:15; Eze 28:8; S Lk 8:31Psalm 55:23 : Ps 5:6Psalm 55:23 : S Job 15:32Psalm 55:23 : Ps 11:1; 25:2; 56:3
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New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Psalm 55
New International Version (NIV)
For the director of music. With stringed instruments. A maskil[b] of David.
1 Listen to my prayer, O God,
do not ignore my plea;
2 hear me and answer me.
My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught
3 because of what my enemy is saying,
because of the threats of the wicked;
for they bring down suffering on me
and assail me in their anger.
4 My heart is in anguish within me;
the terrors of death have fallen on me.
5 Fear and trembling have beset me;
horror has overwhelmed me.
6 I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest.
7 I would flee far away
and stay in the desert;[c]
8 I would hurry to my place of shelter,
far from the tempest and storm. ”
9 Lord, confuse the wicked, confound their words,
for I see violence and strife in the city.
10 Day and night they prowl about on its walls;
malice and abuse are within it.
11 Destructive forces are at work in the city;
threats and lies never leave its streets.
12 If an enemy were insulting me,
I could endure it;
if a foe were rising against me,
I could hide.
13 But it is you, a man like myself,
my companion, my close friend,
14 with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
at the house of God,
as we walked about
among the worshipers.
15 Let death take my enemies by surprise;
let them go down alive to the realm of the dead,
for evil finds lodging among them.
16 As for me, I call to God,
and the Lord saves me.
17 Evening, morning and noon
I cry out in distress,
and he hears my voice.
18 He rescues me unharmed
from the battle waged against me,
even though many oppose me.
19 God, who is enthroned from of old,
who does not change—
he will hear them and humble them,
because they have no fear of God.
20 My companion attacks his friends;
he violates his covenant.
21 His talk is smooth as butter,
yet war is in his heart;
his words are more soothing than oil,
yet they are drawn swords.
22 Cast your cares on the Lord
and he will sustain you;
he will never let
the righteous be shaken.
23 But you, God, will bring down the wicked
into the pit of decay;
the bloodthirsty and deceitful
will not live out half their days.
But as for me, I trust in you.
Footnotes:
a.Psalm 55:1 In Hebrew texts 55:1-23 is numbered 55:2-24.
b.Psalm 55:1 Title: Probably a literary or musical term
c.Psalm 55:7 The Hebrew has Selah (a word of uncertain meaning) here and in the middle of verse 19.
Cross references:Psalm 55:1 : Ps 27:9; La 3:56Psalm 55:2 : Ps 4:1Psalm 55:2 : 1Sa 1:15-16; Ps 77:3; 86:6-7; 142:2Psalm 55:3 : S 2Sa 16:6-8; Ps 17:9; 143:3Psalm 55:3 : S Ps 44:16Psalm 55:3 : Ps 71:11Psalm 55:4 : S Ps 6:3Psalm 55:4 : S Job 18:11Psalm 55:5 : S Job 4:14; S 2Co 7:15Psalm 55:5 : Dt 28:67; Isa 21:4; Jer 46:5; 49:5; Eze 7:18Psalm 55:7 : 1Sa 23:14Psalm 55:8 : Ps 31:20Psalm 55:8 : Ps 77:18; Isa 4:6; 25:4; 28:2; 29:6; 32:2Psalm 55:9 : Ge 11:9; Ac 2:4Psalm 55:9 : Ps 11:5; Isa 59:6; Jer 6:7; Eze 7:11; Hab 1:3Psalm 55:9 : Ge 4:17Psalm 55:10 : 1Pe 5:8Psalm 55:11 : Ps 5:9Psalm 55:11 : Ps 10:7Psalm 55:13 : S 2Sa 15:12Psalm 55:14 : Ac 1:16-17Psalm 55:14 : Ps 42:4Psalm 55:15 : Ps 64:7; Pr 6:15; Isa 29:5; 47:9, 11; 1Th 5:3Psalm 55:15 : S Ps 49:14Psalm 55:17 : Ps 141:2; Ac 3:1; 10:3, 30Psalm 55:17 : Ps 5:3; 88:13; 92:2Psalm 55:17 : Ac 10:9Psalm 55:19 : S Ex 15:18; Dt 33:27; Ps 29:10Psalm 55:19 : Ps 78:59Psalm 55:19 : Ps 36:1; 64:4Psalm 55:20 : Ps 7:4Psalm 55:20 : S Ps 41:9Psalm 55:21 : Ps 12:2Psalm 55:21 : Pr 5:3; 6:24Psalm 55:21 : Ps 57:4; 59:7; 64:3; Pr 12:18; Rev 1:16Psalm 55:22 : S Ps 18:35; Mt 6:25-34; 1Pe 5:7Psalm 55:22 : Ps 15:5; 21:7; 37:24; 112:6Psalm 55:23 : Ps 9:15; S 30:3; 73:18; 94:13; Isa 14:15; Eze 28:8; S Lk 8:31Psalm 55:23 : Ps 5:6Psalm 55:23 : S Job 15:32Psalm 55:23 : Ps 11:1; 25:2; 56:3
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New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
What I Read Today - Saturday August 4, 2012
From: The New York Times - Friday - August 3
Congress Goes Postal
By GAIL COLLINS
Congress is gone. Yeah, I miss them, too.
All the members are off on a five-week recess, after which they’ll return for a few days, then go away again, then hobble back as lame ducks. This is going to do terrible things to the Congressional approval rating, which had climbed all the way up to 17 percent at one point this year. Now it’s sunk to BP oil spill level, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re back to the point where poll respondents say they have a more favorable attitude toward “the U.S. becoming communist.”
You are probably wondering what your elected officials have been up to. Well, the best news is that House and Senate leaders worked out a plan to avoid a government shutdown for six more months by agreeing to just keep doing whatever it is we’re doing now.
This is known as “kicking the can down the road.” Failure to kick the can down the road can lead to “falling off the fiscal cliff.” There are so many of these crises looming that falling off a cliff should be reclassified as an Olympic event.
Just this week, Congress failed to protect the Postal Service from tumbling, and the service defaulted on a $5.5 billion payment for future retiree health benefits. It was the first time that the U.S. mail system failed to meet a financial obligation since Benjamin Franklin invented it.
The Postal Service has multiple financial problems, and, earlier this year, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to deal with them. It would not have fixed everything, or even resolved the question of whether the strapped agency would be allowed to discontinue Saturday mail delivery as a cost-savings measure. “It’s not perfect,” admitted Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, one of the sponsors.
At this point, the American public has been so beaten down by Congressional gridlock that “it’s not perfect” sounds fine. In fact, we’d generally be willing to settle for “it’s pretty terrible, but at least it’s something.”
The Senate plan would have definitely been preferable to the Postal Service default, which could be followed by an all-purpose running-out-of-cash later this fall. Carper was pretty confident that if the House passed a postal bill of any stripe, the two sides could work out a compromise during the long August vacation. That would presumably be a watered-down version of imperfection, which, as I said, is exactly what we’re currently dreaming about.
But the House leadership wouldn’t bring anything up for a vote. Speaker John Boehner never said why. Perhaps he was afraid voters would blame his members for the closing of underused post offices. There is nothing Congress cares more about than post offices, 38 of which the House has passed bills to rename over the past 18 months.
So, no Postal Service bill. You can’t deal with every single thing, and the House had a lot on its to-do list, such as voting to repeal the Obama health care law on 33 separate occasions.
Meanwhile, the national farm program was teetering on the cliff.
The farm bill has long been a classic Congressional compromise, combining aid to agriculture with the food stamp program, so there’s pretty much something for everybody. The Senate recently voted 64 to 35 to approve a new five-year authorization, which reformed some of the most egregious bad practices, like paying farmers not to grow crops. It was, I hardly need mention, not perfect.
Then, the House Agriculture Committee passed a bipartisan farm bill itself. Yes! In the House, people! Everybody was on board!
Then, the House leadership refused to allow it to go up for a vote. Boehner told reporters, “no decision has been made” about what to do next, without giving any hint as to when said decision might be coming along.
The problem appears to be Tea Party hatred for the food stamp program. But who knows? Boehner isn’t saying. Maybe his members want the power to rename the farms.
The House Agriculture Committee chairman, Frank Lucas, just kept making sad little noises. Lucas is from Oklahoma. His state is having a terrible drought. It’s been more than 100 degrees there forever. As a gesture of appeasement, the leadership did allow passage of a narrow bill providing disaster relief to cattle and sheep ranchers. The Senate dismissed it as too little, too late.
Meanwhile, several attempts to get a bill passed on cybersecurity for the nation’s power grid, water supply and financial systems failed entirely.
Maybe Congress will pick up the ball when it comes back to town for a couple of weeks this fall before the election. But it already has a full agenda of futile, symbolic votes plus the crucial kicking the can down the road.
Maybe it’s possible to have a negative approval rating.
Congress Goes Postal
By GAIL COLLINS
Congress is gone. Yeah, I miss them, too.
All the members are off on a five-week recess, after which they’ll return for a few days, then go away again, then hobble back as lame ducks. This is going to do terrible things to the Congressional approval rating, which had climbed all the way up to 17 percent at one point this year. Now it’s sunk to BP oil spill level, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re back to the point where poll respondents say they have a more favorable attitude toward “the U.S. becoming communist.”
You are probably wondering what your elected officials have been up to. Well, the best news is that House and Senate leaders worked out a plan to avoid a government shutdown for six more months by agreeing to just keep doing whatever it is we’re doing now.
This is known as “kicking the can down the road.” Failure to kick the can down the road can lead to “falling off the fiscal cliff.” There are so many of these crises looming that falling off a cliff should be reclassified as an Olympic event.
Just this week, Congress failed to protect the Postal Service from tumbling, and the service defaulted on a $5.5 billion payment for future retiree health benefits. It was the first time that the U.S. mail system failed to meet a financial obligation since Benjamin Franklin invented it.
The Postal Service has multiple financial problems, and, earlier this year, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to deal with them. It would not have fixed everything, or even resolved the question of whether the strapped agency would be allowed to discontinue Saturday mail delivery as a cost-savings measure. “It’s not perfect,” admitted Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, one of the sponsors.
At this point, the American public has been so beaten down by Congressional gridlock that “it’s not perfect” sounds fine. In fact, we’d generally be willing to settle for “it’s pretty terrible, but at least it’s something.”
The Senate plan would have definitely been preferable to the Postal Service default, which could be followed by an all-purpose running-out-of-cash later this fall. Carper was pretty confident that if the House passed a postal bill of any stripe, the two sides could work out a compromise during the long August vacation. That would presumably be a watered-down version of imperfection, which, as I said, is exactly what we’re currently dreaming about.
But the House leadership wouldn’t bring anything up for a vote. Speaker John Boehner never said why. Perhaps he was afraid voters would blame his members for the closing of underused post offices. There is nothing Congress cares more about than post offices, 38 of which the House has passed bills to rename over the past 18 months.
So, no Postal Service bill. You can’t deal with every single thing, and the House had a lot on its to-do list, such as voting to repeal the Obama health care law on 33 separate occasions.
Meanwhile, the national farm program was teetering on the cliff.
The farm bill has long been a classic Congressional compromise, combining aid to agriculture with the food stamp program, so there’s pretty much something for everybody. The Senate recently voted 64 to 35 to approve a new five-year authorization, which reformed some of the most egregious bad practices, like paying farmers not to grow crops. It was, I hardly need mention, not perfect.
Then, the House Agriculture Committee passed a bipartisan farm bill itself. Yes! In the House, people! Everybody was on board!
Then, the House leadership refused to allow it to go up for a vote. Boehner told reporters, “no decision has been made” about what to do next, without giving any hint as to when said decision might be coming along.
The problem appears to be Tea Party hatred for the food stamp program. But who knows? Boehner isn’t saying. Maybe his members want the power to rename the farms.
The House Agriculture Committee chairman, Frank Lucas, just kept making sad little noises. Lucas is from Oklahoma. His state is having a terrible drought. It’s been more than 100 degrees there forever. As a gesture of appeasement, the leadership did allow passage of a narrow bill providing disaster relief to cattle and sheep ranchers. The Senate dismissed it as too little, too late.
Meanwhile, several attempts to get a bill passed on cybersecurity for the nation’s power grid, water supply and financial systems failed entirely.
Maybe Congress will pick up the ball when it comes back to town for a couple of weeks this fall before the election. But it already has a full agenda of futile, symbolic votes plus the crucial kicking the can down the road.
Maybe it’s possible to have a negative approval rating.
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