Friday, March 29, 2013
What I Read Today - Friday March 29, 2013
On Keeping a Notebook in the Digital Age
By Elizabeth Spiers in Architecting a Life
A few days ago I had a moment of sheer panic because I couldn’t find a pen. I went through the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross stages of penlessness (Denial: Maybe I don’t need a pen? I don’t need a pen! Anger: Where is my goddamned pen?! Bargaining: If you give me your pen, O nice, accommodating waiter, I’ll leave you a bigger tip) and finally got to the final stage, Acceptance: Alternatives to Pen.
I desperately needed a pen because I had an idea. And I feared that it would slip away from me before I could write it down. My ideas are very slippery and they disappear quickly, easily abetted by distraction. And so I’ve developed a routine of pulling out a notebook and writing them down before they escape, and this process is so much a part of my innate behavior at this point that missing either the pen or the notebook creates an intolerable amount of anxiety about idea loss.
In this case, I resorted to my smartphone and emailed myself the note with a category heading in the subject line. And all was technically fine. But it’s not my preferred method.
My preferred method for idea capture is something akin to Steven Berlin Johnson’s idea of keeping a “spark file” which he’s written about on Medium. (Johnson is a prolific and versatile writer who has covered a wide range of subjects. I would particularly recommend his book The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. It’s rare that “I couldn’t put it down” can be said of a book on disease and city planning, but it’s true in this case.)
He notes, “...Most good ideas (whether they’re ideas for narrative structure, a particular twist in the argument, or a broader topic) come into our minds as hunches: small fragments of a larger idea, hints and intimations. Many of these ideas sit around for months or years before they coalesce into something useful.”
In order to exploit this particular quality of idea formation, he keeps what he calls a “spark file”: “A single document where I keep all my hunches: ideas for articles, speeches, software features, startups, ways of framing a chapter I know I’m going to write, even whole books.” He doesn’t try to organize them. The randomness is intentional. He reads them over every few months and finds themes emerging — connections between fragments that wouldn’t seem apparent if those fragments were presented in isolation.
I do something similar myself — making disjointed notes in a notebook, entering them into a master file, and reviewing after long stretches.
I’ll do it anywhere but I definitely have venues and times that are more productive than others. Modes of transportation are particularly fertile — subways, airplanes, trains. Areas where I can be alone while sitting in a room full of people — coffee shops, dinner solo at a bar, jury duty — are ripe for observation. The evening works better than the morning, but mostly because I’m more alert at the end of the day than the beginning.
But for me, the note-taking works primarily because I have learned to separate my putative spark file from my task list. If I feel the impulse to make a note to myself about something that needs to be done, I put it somewhere else — my actual to-do list or a list of potential projects.
In Scott Belsky’s book, Making Ideas Happen (also recommended, especially if you manage people in a creative industry), he distinguishes between ideas and “action steps” — separating your notes, sketches, etc., from things that need to be done.
This may not be true of everyone, but I find that I’m the most creatively fruitful when I approach pure creative work and execution separately. If I start with the execution, I’m much more limited in how I think about what I want to accomplish. I won’t pursue a story idea further because I think it’s going to take more time than I have. I won’t explore an article topic because I don’t have all the research at hand. I don’t want potential action steps to make pursuing a new idea seem too intimidating or insurmountable. So I keep separate files for those — mostly task lists associated with specific projects and a master list for overall prioritization.
I also have something called a “backburner file ” — also a Belsky invention — a task list for pie-in-the-sky projects that are interesting but not high priority. (One such backburner project that I can say with 99% confidence I will never do: No Comment Magazine, a monthly publication consisting exclusively of write-arounds on famous people who won’t talk to the press.)
For those of us comfortable with the digital age, the plethora of note-taking apps makes idea capture fingertip-convenient. I’ve used Evernote for work purposes and keep most of my idea files in Google Docs. But that said, my first medium for idea capture is still pen and paper — usually in a highly disposable three-by-five paper notebook that I carry everywhere and fill up at a rate of about one a month. This is partly a function of immediacy (I don’t have to open an app and find a file) and partly a function of the fact that I’m terrible at typing on a smartphone and it takes me longer to get the words down if I try to do it digitally. But I also like the romance of physical handwriting, even though my atrocious penmanship falls somewhere between “five-year-old” and “average medical professional” and this sometimes means I’m unable to decipher pieces of what I wrote. I concentrate less when I’m typing and my first drafts often have missing phrases because my fingers have failed to catch up with my thoughts. Writing things down enforces slowness, and by extension, thoughtfulness.
Notes from a random page of my notebook:
news ticker on a story about Newtown shootings: “Experts say that it is okay to tell your children that you don’t know why it happened.”
fish on antidepressants swim away from the pack
Short story about twins named Elemental and Ephemeral
From Solomon: “The biggest stress is humiliation; the second is loss. The best defense, for people with a biological vulnerability, is a ‘good enough’ marriage, which absorbs external humiliations and minimizes them.”
Everything is an idea for something, something that touches the imagination, a fact that seems relevant or maybe just a statement I find interesting — either because it resonates or because I disagree. All of it is fodder for continued work or thinking on the topics. It’s also important to me to record the ideas that my instincts tell me are bad. (Elemental and Ephemeral? I definitely scribbled that one at a bar.)
Sometimes they contain a germ of something good. Sometimes they serve as contrast, existing simply to remind me that there are better ideas worth pursuing.
One model for me is Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s Waste Books. Lichtenberg was an eighteenth century German physicist whose scientific accomplishments have become somewhat overshadowed by the popularity of notes he took on English transactional ledgers (informally called “waste books”) that were later published by his sons. His waste books are a collection of short personal reflections and quotations covering a wide range of topics and infused with wit. He is the master of the aphorism (“We have the often thoughtless respect accorded ancient laws, ancient usages and ancient religion to thank for all the evil in the world”) but peppers the notebooks with whimsical observations (“They sneezed, wheezed, coughed and made two other kinds of sound for which we have no words in German”). They are idea rich, and not always rich with good ideas. And I like to imagine they probably went a long way in shaping the rest of his professional life.
That’s certainly the case with Joan Didion, who writes in her classic essay, “On Keeping a Notebook” (which you can find in her essay collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem), that she keeps a notebook not to record what happened (she has no interest in keeping a diary), but to record details as they felt to her. “We are not talking here about the kind of notebook that is patently for public consumption, a structural conceit for binding together a series of graceful pensées,” she writes. “We are talking about something private, about bits of the mind’s string too short to use, an indiscriminate and erratic assemblage with meaning only for its maker.”
If I go back through my ersatz spark file now, each note triggers the memory of something I was thinking at the time, but the fragments look disjointed and nonsensical. It’s a text that is, per Didion, meaningful only to me.
Friday, March 1, 2013
What I Read Today - Friday March 1, 2013
From: The Wall Street Journal
Friday 03/01/2013
Noonan: Obama Is Playing a New Game He seems to think the way to win is by trying not to make a deal.
By PEGGY NOONAN
Larger Everyone has been wondering how the public will react when the sequester kicks in. The American people are in the position of hostages who'll have to decide who the hostage-taker is. People will get mad at either the president or the Republicans in Congress. That anger will force one side to rethink or back down. Or maybe the public will get mad at both.
The White House is, as always, confident of its strategy: Scare people as much as possible and let the media take care of the rest. Maybe there will be a lot to report, maybe not, but either way the sobbing child wanting to go to Head Start and the anxious FAA bureaucrat worried about airplane maintenance will be found. This will surely have power.
And in truth, the sequester's impact may be bad. Rep. Maxine Waters of California, a 22-year House veteran and ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, this week warned of "over 170 million jobs that could be lost." That's actually more jobs than America has, and it's little comfort to say, "But she's a famous idiot," because Washington is full of famous idiots who are making serious decisions about how the sequester cuts are to be applied.
If the sequester brings chaos and discomfort, it's certainly possible the Republicans will be blamed. But it's just as possible President Obama will be. Not because the sequester idea came from his White House—that probably doesn't interest anybody outside Washington—but because a) he's the president, and presidents are expected to take care of things and work out agreements, not "force the moment to its crisis," and b) he's the chief executive of the federal government, and therefore capable of directing agencies to make sure all cuts are in wholly nonessential offices. I was thinking the other day of the General Services Administration scandal—the red-carpet retreat in Vegas, the toasts, the shows, all paid for by taxpayers. Maybe the president could start there.
***
How's the president's game going? What's new is that almost everyone does seem to understand he's playing games. He used to get more credit. His threats of coming mayhem and his lack of interest in easing it have dimmed his luster.
Certainly in the past few weeks he's become more aggressive and gameful. A crisis is coming—a series of crises actually, with more ceilings and the threat of a government shutdown—and he is not engaging or taking ownership. The "We're not speaking" thing with Congress is more amazing and historic than we appreciate. Only a president can stop that kind of thing, and he doesn't. He doesn't even seem to think he owes the speaker of the House—the highest elected official of a party representing roughly half the country—even the appearance of laying down his arms for a moment and holding serious talks. He journeys into America making speeches, he goes on TV but only for interviews the White House is confident will be soft.
He doesn't have time for Congress, but he has time to go on Al Sharpton's radio show and say Republicans care only about protecting the rich from taxes. Which is the kind of thing that embitters, that makes foes dig in more deeply.
But here's what seems really new. Past presidents, certainly since Ronald Reagan, went over the heads of the media to win over the people, to get them to contact Congress and push Congress to deal. Fine, and fair enough. But Mr. Obama goes to the people to get them to enhance his position by hating Republicans. He's playing only to the polls, not to Congress, not to get the other side to the bargaining table. He doesn't even like the bargaining table. He doesn't like bargaining.
Where does that get us? We are in new territory. There is a strange kind of nihilism in the president's approach, it's a closed, self-referential loop. And it's guaranteed to keep agreement from happening.
Meanwhile, the president has been receiving some raps on the knuckles from journalists and thinkers who've been sympathetic in the past. There's a lot of coolness toward what the president is doing, to his threats of coming disaster. Howard Fineman in the Huffington Post, in a piece called "The Celebrity President," noted that Mr. Obama "doesn't hide his disdain for Congress," for the "folkways of traditional Washington" or for Congress and the media. The president in the next few months should avoid "cheap theatrics," Mr. Fineman added: "Somebody has to be an adult in this situation, and it falls to the president."
Bob Woodward famously slammed the president after he suggested, at the Newport News shipyard in Virginia, that maintenance of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln would be delayed. Before that he'd warned work might have to be slowed or stopped on the USS Truman. Mr. Woodward, on MSNBC: "So we now have the president going out [saying] 'Because of this piece of paper and this agreement, I can't do what I need to do to protect the country.' That's a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time."
***
While the president is bringing a partisan edge and soft-voiced pugilism to the drama, the first lady is becoming . . . let's call it culturally dominant, and in a way that seems politically related, that seems fully networked and wired. Michele Obama is omnipresent—dancing with Jimmy Fallon, chatting with Rachael Ray, on "Good Morning America" talking about the kids and another show talking about the bangs. On ABC she accidentally said something factually incorrect, and they thoughtfully edited it out. Mrs. Obama's presence reached its zenith, one hopes, Sunday night at the Academy Awards when she came on, goofily star-struck military personnel arrayed in dress uniforms behind her, to announce the Best Picture award. It was startling and, as she gave her benediction—the movies "lift our spirits, broaden our minds, transport us to places we can never imagine"—even in a way disquieting.
This would not be an accidental assertion of jolly partisan advantage. It seemed to me an expression of this White House's lack of hesitation to insert itself into any cultural event anywhere. And this in a 50-50 nation, a divided nation that in its entertainments seeks safety from the encroachments of politics, and the political.
I miss Michelle Obama's early years, when she was beautiful, a little awkward, maybe a little ambivalent about her new role, as a sane person would be. Now she is glamorous, a star, and like all stars assumes our fascination.
It can be hard to imagine after four years in the White House, whichever party you're in, that people might do all right for a few minutes if they're free of your presence. There's a tendency to assume you enliven with that presence, as opposed to deaden with your political overlay.
All of this—the president's disdain for Congress and for Republicans, the threats of damage unless he gets his way, the first lady's forays—is part of the permanent campaign, and the immediate sequester campaign.
But they push it too far. It feels uncalibrated, over some invisible line.
It looks like what critics have long accused this White House of being—imperious, full of overreach, full of itself.
Copyright 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
www.djreprints.com
Friday 03/01/2013
Noonan: Obama Is Playing a New Game He seems to think the way to win is by trying not to make a deal.
By PEGGY NOONAN
Larger Everyone has been wondering how the public will react when the sequester kicks in. The American people are in the position of hostages who'll have to decide who the hostage-taker is. People will get mad at either the president or the Republicans in Congress. That anger will force one side to rethink or back down. Or maybe the public will get mad at both.
The White House is, as always, confident of its strategy: Scare people as much as possible and let the media take care of the rest. Maybe there will be a lot to report, maybe not, but either way the sobbing child wanting to go to Head Start and the anxious FAA bureaucrat worried about airplane maintenance will be found. This will surely have power.
And in truth, the sequester's impact may be bad. Rep. Maxine Waters of California, a 22-year House veteran and ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, this week warned of "over 170 million jobs that could be lost." That's actually more jobs than America has, and it's little comfort to say, "But she's a famous idiot," because Washington is full of famous idiots who are making serious decisions about how the sequester cuts are to be applied.
If the sequester brings chaos and discomfort, it's certainly possible the Republicans will be blamed. But it's just as possible President Obama will be. Not because the sequester idea came from his White House—that probably doesn't interest anybody outside Washington—but because a) he's the president, and presidents are expected to take care of things and work out agreements, not "force the moment to its crisis," and b) he's the chief executive of the federal government, and therefore capable of directing agencies to make sure all cuts are in wholly nonessential offices. I was thinking the other day of the General Services Administration scandal—the red-carpet retreat in Vegas, the toasts, the shows, all paid for by taxpayers. Maybe the president could start there.
***
How's the president's game going? What's new is that almost everyone does seem to understand he's playing games. He used to get more credit. His threats of coming mayhem and his lack of interest in easing it have dimmed his luster.
Certainly in the past few weeks he's become more aggressive and gameful. A crisis is coming—a series of crises actually, with more ceilings and the threat of a government shutdown—and he is not engaging or taking ownership. The "We're not speaking" thing with Congress is more amazing and historic than we appreciate. Only a president can stop that kind of thing, and he doesn't. He doesn't even seem to think he owes the speaker of the House—the highest elected official of a party representing roughly half the country—even the appearance of laying down his arms for a moment and holding serious talks. He journeys into America making speeches, he goes on TV but only for interviews the White House is confident will be soft.
He doesn't have time for Congress, but he has time to go on Al Sharpton's radio show and say Republicans care only about protecting the rich from taxes. Which is the kind of thing that embitters, that makes foes dig in more deeply.
But here's what seems really new. Past presidents, certainly since Ronald Reagan, went over the heads of the media to win over the people, to get them to contact Congress and push Congress to deal. Fine, and fair enough. But Mr. Obama goes to the people to get them to enhance his position by hating Republicans. He's playing only to the polls, not to Congress, not to get the other side to the bargaining table. He doesn't even like the bargaining table. He doesn't like bargaining.
Where does that get us? We are in new territory. There is a strange kind of nihilism in the president's approach, it's a closed, self-referential loop. And it's guaranteed to keep agreement from happening.
Meanwhile, the president has been receiving some raps on the knuckles from journalists and thinkers who've been sympathetic in the past. There's a lot of coolness toward what the president is doing, to his threats of coming disaster. Howard Fineman in the Huffington Post, in a piece called "The Celebrity President," noted that Mr. Obama "doesn't hide his disdain for Congress," for the "folkways of traditional Washington" or for Congress and the media. The president in the next few months should avoid "cheap theatrics," Mr. Fineman added: "Somebody has to be an adult in this situation, and it falls to the president."
Bob Woodward famously slammed the president after he suggested, at the Newport News shipyard in Virginia, that maintenance of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln would be delayed. Before that he'd warned work might have to be slowed or stopped on the USS Truman. Mr. Woodward, on MSNBC: "So we now have the president going out [saying] 'Because of this piece of paper and this agreement, I can't do what I need to do to protect the country.' That's a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time."
***
While the president is bringing a partisan edge and soft-voiced pugilism to the drama, the first lady is becoming . . . let's call it culturally dominant, and in a way that seems politically related, that seems fully networked and wired. Michele Obama is omnipresent—dancing with Jimmy Fallon, chatting with Rachael Ray, on "Good Morning America" talking about the kids and another show talking about the bangs. On ABC she accidentally said something factually incorrect, and they thoughtfully edited it out. Mrs. Obama's presence reached its zenith, one hopes, Sunday night at the Academy Awards when she came on, goofily star-struck military personnel arrayed in dress uniforms behind her, to announce the Best Picture award. It was startling and, as she gave her benediction—the movies "lift our spirits, broaden our minds, transport us to places we can never imagine"—even in a way disquieting.
This would not be an accidental assertion of jolly partisan advantage. It seemed to me an expression of this White House's lack of hesitation to insert itself into any cultural event anywhere. And this in a 50-50 nation, a divided nation that in its entertainments seeks safety from the encroachments of politics, and the political.
I miss Michelle Obama's early years, when she was beautiful, a little awkward, maybe a little ambivalent about her new role, as a sane person would be. Now she is glamorous, a star, and like all stars assumes our fascination.
It can be hard to imagine after four years in the White House, whichever party you're in, that people might do all right for a few minutes if they're free of your presence. There's a tendency to assume you enliven with that presence, as opposed to deaden with your political overlay.
All of this—the president's disdain for Congress and for Republicans, the threats of damage unless he gets his way, the first lady's forays—is part of the permanent campaign, and the immediate sequester campaign.
But they push it too far. It feels uncalibrated, over some invisible line.
It looks like what critics have long accused this White House of being—imperious, full of overreach, full of itself.
Copyright 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
www.djreprints.com
Thursday, February 21, 2013
What I read Today - Thursday February 21, 2013
From: The National Journal (as tweeted by Matthew Dowd @matthewjdowd)
Published 02/20/2013
By Ron Fournier
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/you-may-be-right-mr-president-but-this-is-crazy-20130220?print=true
You May Be Right, Mr. President, But This Is Crazy
As the nation's chief executive, Obama is ultimately accountable for the budget fiasco, even if he is right on the merits and politics.
Your federal government is almost certain to blow past the March 1 deadline for averting $1.2 trillion in haphazard budget cuts that could cost 700,000 jobs. Don’t worry. We know whom to blame. President Obama makes a credible case that he has reached farther toward compromise than House Republicans.
But knowing who’s at fault doesn’t fix the problem. To loosely quote Billy Joel: You may be right, Mr. President, but this is crazy.
Is this fiscal standoff (the fifth since Republicans took control of the House in 2011) just about scoring political points, or is it about governing?
If it’s all about politics, bully for Obama. A majority of voters will likely side with the president over Republicans in a budget dispute because of his popularity and the GOP’s pathetic approval ratings.
If it’s about governing, the story changes: In any enterprise, the chief executive is ultimately accountable for success and failure. Sure, blame Congress — castigate all 535 lawmakers, or the roughly half you hate. But there is only one president. Even if he’s right on the merits, Obama may be on the wrong side of history.
Fair or not, the president owns this mess. What can he do about it? For starters, he could read this op-ed piece published two months ago in a Midwestern newspaper. With a few tweaks, Obama could make it a presidential address. The author, whose identity I will disclose later, laid out a case for the then-looming “fiscal cliff.” It is still applicable, even powerful. (The op-ed excerpts are in italics.)
Americans are fed up with the jousting.… There is a lot of public posturing but apparently not much genuine conversation.
White House officials and liberal commentators will push back: They say it is naïve if not outright stupid to think that Republicans want to talk to Obama, or that conversations would do any good. I contend it’s not any smarter to believe that the president’s agenda will be passed without breaking gridlock, or that Washington is the only place where two wrongs make you right. Somebody has to be the grownup here. Let it be the president.
Here’s the reality: When facing a $16 trillion debt and spending 32 percent more money each year than we take in, revenue must go up and spending must go down. There are no other choices. So the debate is centered on how to collect more revenue and where to cut spending.
It has suddenly become fashionable for Obama’s liberal allies to deny the existential threat posed by suffocating U.S. debt. They should read the president’s old speeches. Debt dismissing is irrational.
Neither party is without fault. Republicans must confront their own conventional wisdom that says, “The only way to shrink government is to starve it of resources.” Government has consistently grown in size and interfered with the private sector … during periods of both high and low tax rates. Spending has become completely decoupled from revenue and that’s a dangerous policy. What, in fact, has actually happened under this strategy is that both the debt and the size of government have grown and all debt is simply a future tax on the next generation … someone, someday will have to pay the bill for the debt driven spending today.
In the last week, three senior members of the Republican Party have told me that the House GOP is making a dire mistake to think voters will consider this “the president’s sequester.” Yes, the White House proposed the gimmick, but only as a way to avert a GOP-backed debt crisis, and the House Republican leadership supported sequestration. More broadly, there is no way to seriously reduce the U.S. debt without more revenue, which means raising taxes.
Democrats must challenge their orthodoxy as well. While annual revenues are roughly what they were in 2006 — just a few years ago — spending has increased by $1 trillion every year since 2008.… We must recognize that even though raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans makes good politics, it does little to solve our nation’s financial crisis…. All of us receive the benefits so all of us must share the sacrifice — either in the form of higher taxes or lower government benefits.
The biggest lie in politics today is that the debt can be tamed without hurting the middle class via tax hikes and entitlement cuts. Obama and his allies know better, or should, but there is no stomach in Washington for honesty.
Democrats have to demonstrate their willingness to put serious spending reductions on the table and Republicans need to offer a pro-growth, pro-job agenda that includes revenue. Most importantly both sides need to lay down their swords and act like the problem solvers the American people deserve and expect.
The op-ed was published in the Green Bay Press-Gazette and was written by Rep. Reid Ribble, a Republican from Wisconsin. Ribble represents one of the few House districts still divided almost equally between Republican and Democratic voters. Many of the rest are gerrymandered, drawn to easily elect a hyper-partisan conservative or liberal. It is one cause of gridlock, what voters loathe about Washington.
I wonder what would happen if Obama were to deliver such an address. Would voters reward him for the honesty of the argument and the courage of challenging his liberal base? Would he change the tone of the debate from mindless sniping to an environment in which leaders are publicly shamed if they offer no solutions?
I may be wrong. I may be crazy. But I suspect we’ll never know.
Published 02/20/2013
By Ron Fournier
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/you-may-be-right-mr-president-but-this-is-crazy-20130220?print=true
You May Be Right, Mr. President, But This Is Crazy
As the nation's chief executive, Obama is ultimately accountable for the budget fiasco, even if he is right on the merits and politics.
Your federal government is almost certain to blow past the March 1 deadline for averting $1.2 trillion in haphazard budget cuts that could cost 700,000 jobs. Don’t worry. We know whom to blame. President Obama makes a credible case that he has reached farther toward compromise than House Republicans.
But knowing who’s at fault doesn’t fix the problem. To loosely quote Billy Joel: You may be right, Mr. President, but this is crazy.
Is this fiscal standoff (the fifth since Republicans took control of the House in 2011) just about scoring political points, or is it about governing?
If it’s all about politics, bully for Obama. A majority of voters will likely side with the president over Republicans in a budget dispute because of his popularity and the GOP’s pathetic approval ratings.
If it’s about governing, the story changes: In any enterprise, the chief executive is ultimately accountable for success and failure. Sure, blame Congress — castigate all 535 lawmakers, or the roughly half you hate. But there is only one president. Even if he’s right on the merits, Obama may be on the wrong side of history.
Fair or not, the president owns this mess. What can he do about it? For starters, he could read this op-ed piece published two months ago in a Midwestern newspaper. With a few tweaks, Obama could make it a presidential address. The author, whose identity I will disclose later, laid out a case for the then-looming “fiscal cliff.” It is still applicable, even powerful. (The op-ed excerpts are in italics.)
Americans are fed up with the jousting.… There is a lot of public posturing but apparently not much genuine conversation.
White House officials and liberal commentators will push back: They say it is naïve if not outright stupid to think that Republicans want to talk to Obama, or that conversations would do any good. I contend it’s not any smarter to believe that the president’s agenda will be passed without breaking gridlock, or that Washington is the only place where two wrongs make you right. Somebody has to be the grownup here. Let it be the president.
Here’s the reality: When facing a $16 trillion debt and spending 32 percent more money each year than we take in, revenue must go up and spending must go down. There are no other choices. So the debate is centered on how to collect more revenue and where to cut spending.
It has suddenly become fashionable for Obama’s liberal allies to deny the existential threat posed by suffocating U.S. debt. They should read the president’s old speeches. Debt dismissing is irrational.
Neither party is without fault. Republicans must confront their own conventional wisdom that says, “The only way to shrink government is to starve it of resources.” Government has consistently grown in size and interfered with the private sector … during periods of both high and low tax rates. Spending has become completely decoupled from revenue and that’s a dangerous policy. What, in fact, has actually happened under this strategy is that both the debt and the size of government have grown and all debt is simply a future tax on the next generation … someone, someday will have to pay the bill for the debt driven spending today.
In the last week, three senior members of the Republican Party have told me that the House GOP is making a dire mistake to think voters will consider this “the president’s sequester.” Yes, the White House proposed the gimmick, but only as a way to avert a GOP-backed debt crisis, and the House Republican leadership supported sequestration. More broadly, there is no way to seriously reduce the U.S. debt without more revenue, which means raising taxes.
Democrats must challenge their orthodoxy as well. While annual revenues are roughly what they were in 2006 — just a few years ago — spending has increased by $1 trillion every year since 2008.… We must recognize that even though raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans makes good politics, it does little to solve our nation’s financial crisis…. All of us receive the benefits so all of us must share the sacrifice — either in the form of higher taxes or lower government benefits.
The biggest lie in politics today is that the debt can be tamed without hurting the middle class via tax hikes and entitlement cuts. Obama and his allies know better, or should, but there is no stomach in Washington for honesty.
Democrats have to demonstrate their willingness to put serious spending reductions on the table and Republicans need to offer a pro-growth, pro-job agenda that includes revenue. Most importantly both sides need to lay down their swords and act like the problem solvers the American people deserve and expect.
The op-ed was published in the Green Bay Press-Gazette and was written by Rep. Reid Ribble, a Republican from Wisconsin. Ribble represents one of the few House districts still divided almost equally between Republican and Democratic voters. Many of the rest are gerrymandered, drawn to easily elect a hyper-partisan conservative or liberal. It is one cause of gridlock, what voters loathe about Washington.
I wonder what would happen if Obama were to deliver such an address. Would voters reward him for the honesty of the argument and the courage of challenging his liberal base? Would he change the tone of the debate from mindless sniping to an environment in which leaders are publicly shamed if they offer no solutions?
I may be wrong. I may be crazy. But I suspect we’ll never know.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Saturday, January 12, 2013
What I Read Today - Saturday January 12, 2013
From: Seth Godin's Blog
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b31569e2017d3d4702f6970c
The cost of neutral
If you come to my brainstorming meeting and say nothing, it would have been better if you hadn't come at all.
If you go to work and do what you're told, you're not being negative, certainly, but the lack of initiative you demonstrate (which, alas, you were trained not to demonstrate) costs us all, because you're using a slot that could have been filled by someone who would have added more value.
It's tempting to sit quietly, take notes and comply, rationalizing that at least you're not doing anything negative. But the opportunity cost your newly lean, highly leveraged organization faces is significant.
Not adding value is the same as taking it away.
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The cost of neutral
If you come to my brainstorming meeting and say nothing, it would have been better if you hadn't come at all.
If you go to work and do what you're told, you're not being negative, certainly, but the lack of initiative you demonstrate (which, alas, you were trained not to demonstrate) costs us all, because you're using a slot that could have been filled by someone who would have added more value.
It's tempting to sit quietly, take notes and comply, rationalizing that at least you're not doing anything negative. But the opportunity cost your newly lean, highly leveraged organization faces is significant.
Not adding value is the same as taking it away.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
What I Read Today - Tuesday December 18, 2012
From: The Wall Street Journal Tuesday December 18, 2012
HOW TO TREAT WORKPLACE STRESS
As the new year approaches – and with it the inevitable wave of self-improvement plans–we’ve identified 10 strategies for advancing your career in 2013. From recovering from an office blunder to learning why it doesn’t pay to be Mr. (or Ms.) Nice Guy, this ten-point plan will offer daily tips on what to do and how to do it.
Dr. David Posen, an author and general practitioner in Oakville, Ontario, started noticing a pattern almost 20 years ago: Patients were coming into his office with symptoms like high blood pressure, heart problems, panic attacks and depression. When he pressed for a sense of what was happening in their lives, the patients shared tales of burnout, overwork and abusive managers. These stories “made me want to call their employers and say, ‘Stop doing this! You’re killing your employees!’” he said.
Instead of calling all those bosses, Dr. Posen wrote the forthcoming book, “Is Work Killing You? A Doctor’s Prescription for Treating Workplace Stress.” In it, he offers suggestions for what workers, managers and companies can do to lower stress levels all around. He condensed some of his suggestions during a talk with At Work.
WSJ: What are the main causes of workplace stress?
Posen: The big three are volume, velocity and abuse. In terms of volume, people are working longer hours, which then affects their health, their sleep patterns, and their personal lives. By velocity, I mean the pace of the workplace has gotten faster because of technology, increased expectations, overlapping deadlines, unrealistic deadlines.
Abuse is bullying, harassment, and all the politics people play. It’s amazing how one abusive person can create stress for dozens of people. It’s become a bigger problem because people have less freedom to say ‘I don’t want this job’ and go somewhere else. So people aren’t quitting and they’re not even complaining because they don’t want to seem like troublemakers.
WSJ: What would you say to a mid-level corporate employee who’s suffering from stress-related illnesses?
Posen:Identify where the stress is coming from. Is it about deadlines? A difficult boss? The fact that you don’t have resources you need? A fear that you don’t have the skill set to do what you’re being asked to do? Zero in on what aspect of work is the problem and then deal with that. Take breaks – whether that means 5 or 10 minutes, lunch, a mental health day here and there, or going on vacation. In 2010, Americans left 424 million paid vacation days on the table.
WSJ: What are some simple ways people can reduce stress without making huge changes in their work situations?
Posen: I recommend people take regular time-outs, even just 15 minutes walking in the sunshine on your lunch break. Time-outs are built into sports, and they should be a part of a regular workday too. We all need opportunities to relax and catch our breath. Another pretty easy fix: drink less caffeine. Energy drinks, coffee – these stimulate a stress reaction and block the natural relaxants in the brain. I call coffee “stress in a cup.”
WSJ: Many people can’t afford to leave their jobs. What are their options?
Posen: Some of my patients go on disability, or they take a medical leave of absence. You do need a doctor’s diagnosis – diagnoses might list depression, burnout, hypertension – but when done properly, that shouldn’t be shared with the employer, only the insurance company. Depression is by far the most common stress-related diagnosis.
WSJ: Does one have to give up their professional ambition in order to restore a sense of well-being to their work lives?
Posen: For the vast majority of people, when you take better care of yourself, you function better and perform better. One of my mottos is, it’s better to work 40-50 productive hours a week than 50-60 semi-productive hours. After 60 hours, you’re getting diminishing returns for your efforts.
WSJ: If a manager had to come up with a New Year’s resolution around helping employees deal with stress, what should it be?
Posen: As a manager, you need to know who’s wilting under the pace or workload. Start talking to people and ask them simple questions like, ‘How are you managing here? Is it too much work? Is the pace too fast?’ Ask people what they need, what resources would be helpful. And be a good role model. If the manager is working long hours, people feel they have to work long hours. If the manager is sending emails on Sunday, they feel they have to respond on Sunday. Give people permission to slow down. When the boss says to someone at 4:30, ‘You look pretty fried. Why don’t you just knock off, go home early, and I’ll see you tomorrow?’ It’s like handing an employee the biggest gift.
HOW TO TREAT WORKPLACE STRESS
As the new year approaches – and with it the inevitable wave of self-improvement plans–we’ve identified 10 strategies for advancing your career in 2013. From recovering from an office blunder to learning why it doesn’t pay to be Mr. (or Ms.) Nice Guy, this ten-point plan will offer daily tips on what to do and how to do it.
Dr. David Posen, an author and general practitioner in Oakville, Ontario, started noticing a pattern almost 20 years ago: Patients were coming into his office with symptoms like high blood pressure, heart problems, panic attacks and depression. When he pressed for a sense of what was happening in their lives, the patients shared tales of burnout, overwork and abusive managers. These stories “made me want to call their employers and say, ‘Stop doing this! You’re killing your employees!’” he said.
Instead of calling all those bosses, Dr. Posen wrote the forthcoming book, “Is Work Killing You? A Doctor’s Prescription for Treating Workplace Stress.” In it, he offers suggestions for what workers, managers and companies can do to lower stress levels all around. He condensed some of his suggestions during a talk with At Work.
WSJ: What are the main causes of workplace stress?
Posen: The big three are volume, velocity and abuse. In terms of volume, people are working longer hours, which then affects their health, their sleep patterns, and their personal lives. By velocity, I mean the pace of the workplace has gotten faster because of technology, increased expectations, overlapping deadlines, unrealistic deadlines.
Abuse is bullying, harassment, and all the politics people play. It’s amazing how one abusive person can create stress for dozens of people. It’s become a bigger problem because people have less freedom to say ‘I don’t want this job’ and go somewhere else. So people aren’t quitting and they’re not even complaining because they don’t want to seem like troublemakers.
WSJ: What would you say to a mid-level corporate employee who’s suffering from stress-related illnesses?
Posen:Identify where the stress is coming from. Is it about deadlines? A difficult boss? The fact that you don’t have resources you need? A fear that you don’t have the skill set to do what you’re being asked to do? Zero in on what aspect of work is the problem and then deal with that. Take breaks – whether that means 5 or 10 minutes, lunch, a mental health day here and there, or going on vacation. In 2010, Americans left 424 million paid vacation days on the table.
WSJ: What are some simple ways people can reduce stress without making huge changes in their work situations?
Posen: I recommend people take regular time-outs, even just 15 minutes walking in the sunshine on your lunch break. Time-outs are built into sports, and they should be a part of a regular workday too. We all need opportunities to relax and catch our breath. Another pretty easy fix: drink less caffeine. Energy drinks, coffee – these stimulate a stress reaction and block the natural relaxants in the brain. I call coffee “stress in a cup.”
WSJ: Many people can’t afford to leave their jobs. What are their options?
Posen: Some of my patients go on disability, or they take a medical leave of absence. You do need a doctor’s diagnosis – diagnoses might list depression, burnout, hypertension – but when done properly, that shouldn’t be shared with the employer, only the insurance company. Depression is by far the most common stress-related diagnosis.
WSJ: Does one have to give up their professional ambition in order to restore a sense of well-being to their work lives?
Posen: For the vast majority of people, when you take better care of yourself, you function better and perform better. One of my mottos is, it’s better to work 40-50 productive hours a week than 50-60 semi-productive hours. After 60 hours, you’re getting diminishing returns for your efforts.
WSJ: If a manager had to come up with a New Year’s resolution around helping employees deal with stress, what should it be?
Posen: As a manager, you need to know who’s wilting under the pace or workload. Start talking to people and ask them simple questions like, ‘How are you managing here? Is it too much work? Is the pace too fast?’ Ask people what they need, what resources would be helpful. And be a good role model. If the manager is working long hours, people feel they have to work long hours. If the manager is sending emails on Sunday, they feel they have to respond on Sunday. Give people permission to slow down. When the boss says to someone at 4:30, ‘You look pretty fried. Why don’t you just knock off, go home early, and I’ll see you tomorrow?’ It’s like handing an employee the biggest gift.
Monday, December 17, 2012
What I Read Today - Monday December 17, 2012
From: CNN webpage on Monday December 17, 2012
Note: We visted Mystic CT (mentioned in this article) for a couple of days back in September.
CNN) -- George Hochsprung's world began to crumble Friday when one of the students at the Connecticut middle school where he works walked up to him.
Something was happening at the elementary school less than 10 miles away where Hochsprung's wife was principal, the student said, holding a computer. There were reports his wife had been killed.
Hochsprung rushed out of the building, one of dozens of family members of students and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, desperately seeking information about their loved ones that day.
His wife, Dawn, was in a meeting that morning when a 20-year-old local man blasted his way into the elementary school armed with three guns. She stepped out of the meeting to find out what was going on and never returned.
She was among the 26 people shot and killed inside the school by the gunman, Adam Lanza, who then turned a weapon on himself. Twenty of the dead were children.
Vigil held for shooting victimsTeacher: Sandy Hook is a tight-knit groupSunday school teacher faces heartbreakThe lives cut short in school shootingAs people across the world struggle to comprehend Lanza's atrocious acts, George Hochsprung has been left with a future that no longer makes sense.
He is more than 20 years older than his wife, who was 47 when she died. He never imagined he would outlive her.
"Dawn and I built this beautiful house in the Adirondacks, our dream," he said in an interview Sunday night, sitting on a couch surrounded by his three daughters and one of his stepdaughters.
"It was going to be Dawn's house because I was going to die," he said, explaining that they had included extra rooms in the house, so that their children and grandchildren could come keep his wife company after he was gone.
"And now it's me," he said. "I don't think I can do that."
He is now leaning on the support of their children and 11 grandchildren, but even that seems incongruous to him.
"My job has always been to take care of other people," he said.
Slain principal remembered as energetic, positive, passionate
Fittingly for two people who had made their careers in education, the couple met at a school, Rogers Park Middle School in Danbury, Connecticut. It's the same school where he was working Friday.
He was a good deal older when they met, but she was his superior in the school hierarchy: She was an assistant principal, and he was a seventh-grade math teacher.
"I just fell in love with her," he said. But it took a little while for him to persuade her to marry him: "She turned me down five times."
Once he won her over, their wedding was influenced by their mutual love of sailing, taking place on a boat at sea near the Connecticut port of Mystic a decade ago.
They had both been married previously, and their union brought together three daughters on his side and two on hers.
One of her two daughters, Erica, described a devoted mother.
"Every practice, she was there," she said. "All of my sister's cheerleadering stuff, she was there. Every dance competition. She was doing homework on the bleachers, but she was there. And she was my rock."
Dawn Hochsprung's commitment to her family was closely matched by her dedication to her students, according to friends and family members.
"She was really nice and very fun, but she was also very much a tough lady in the right sort of sense," according to Tom Prunty, a friend, whose niece goes to Sandy Hook and was uninjured Friday. "She was the kind of person you'd want to be educating your kids. And the kids loved her."
Her decision to step out into danger when the shooting began has left her husband with some difficult emotions.
"Dawn put herself in jeopardy, and I have been angry about that," he said.
But that changed Sunday, he said, when he met two teachers who told him that his wife had instructed them to take shelter while she confronted Lanza.
"She could've avoided that," George Hochsprung said. "But she didn't; I knew she wouldn't. So, I'm not angry anymore."
His voice wavering, he continued: "I'm not angry. I'm just very sad."
Note: We visted Mystic CT (mentioned in this article) for a couple of days back in September.
CNN) -- George Hochsprung's world began to crumble Friday when one of the students at the Connecticut middle school where he works walked up to him.
Something was happening at the elementary school less than 10 miles away where Hochsprung's wife was principal, the student said, holding a computer. There were reports his wife had been killed.
Hochsprung rushed out of the building, one of dozens of family members of students and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, desperately seeking information about their loved ones that day.
His wife, Dawn, was in a meeting that morning when a 20-year-old local man blasted his way into the elementary school armed with three guns. She stepped out of the meeting to find out what was going on and never returned.
She was among the 26 people shot and killed inside the school by the gunman, Adam Lanza, who then turned a weapon on himself. Twenty of the dead were children.
Vigil held for shooting victimsTeacher: Sandy Hook is a tight-knit groupSunday school teacher faces heartbreakThe lives cut short in school shootingAs people across the world struggle to comprehend Lanza's atrocious acts, George Hochsprung has been left with a future that no longer makes sense.
He is more than 20 years older than his wife, who was 47 when she died. He never imagined he would outlive her.
"Dawn and I built this beautiful house in the Adirondacks, our dream," he said in an interview Sunday night, sitting on a couch surrounded by his three daughters and one of his stepdaughters.
"It was going to be Dawn's house because I was going to die," he said, explaining that they had included extra rooms in the house, so that their children and grandchildren could come keep his wife company after he was gone.
"And now it's me," he said. "I don't think I can do that."
He is now leaning on the support of their children and 11 grandchildren, but even that seems incongruous to him.
"My job has always been to take care of other people," he said.
Slain principal remembered as energetic, positive, passionate
Fittingly for two people who had made their careers in education, the couple met at a school, Rogers Park Middle School in Danbury, Connecticut. It's the same school where he was working Friday.
He was a good deal older when they met, but she was his superior in the school hierarchy: She was an assistant principal, and he was a seventh-grade math teacher.
"I just fell in love with her," he said. But it took a little while for him to persuade her to marry him: "She turned me down five times."
Once he won her over, their wedding was influenced by their mutual love of sailing, taking place on a boat at sea near the Connecticut port of Mystic a decade ago.
They had both been married previously, and their union brought together three daughters on his side and two on hers.
One of her two daughters, Erica, described a devoted mother.
"Every practice, she was there," she said. "All of my sister's cheerleadering stuff, she was there. Every dance competition. She was doing homework on the bleachers, but she was there. And she was my rock."
Dawn Hochsprung's commitment to her family was closely matched by her dedication to her students, according to friends and family members.
"She was really nice and very fun, but she was also very much a tough lady in the right sort of sense," according to Tom Prunty, a friend, whose niece goes to Sandy Hook and was uninjured Friday. "She was the kind of person you'd want to be educating your kids. And the kids loved her."
Her decision to step out into danger when the shooting began has left her husband with some difficult emotions.
"Dawn put herself in jeopardy, and I have been angry about that," he said.
But that changed Sunday, he said, when he met two teachers who told him that his wife had instructed them to take shelter while she confronted Lanza.
"She could've avoided that," George Hochsprung said. "But she didn't; I knew she wouldn't. So, I'm not angry anymore."
His voice wavering, he continued: "I'm not angry. I'm just very sad."
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