Random thoughts

My life is officially full — my inbox-of-life has not stopped growing since my son was born. The stack of unanswered emails, unfinished projects, and unread magazines are all simultaneously growing despite my best efforts.

What does one do in this situation? Prioritize! Be sure to do the most important stuff first. As one would expect, blogging is a ways down on that list...

But I've had a bunch of things on my mind lately and I'd like to get them out:

• The iPhone 5 - Taller, lighter, faster — a miracle of modern engineering. Everything I loved about my old phone, and a bit better.
• Apple - One of Steve Jobs' earliest mantras was that a brand is about trust. Apple under him never traded that trust for money, and the current management looks to carry on that legacy. There's an example for other companies (and individuals whose name is their brand) to follow.
• Age - Anybody else notice that they're getting older?
• Brain - Turns out I got one of the heaviest doses of anyone affected by the CT overdose problem. What are the odds that I get a migraine that looks like a stroke, and my first and only CT scan is an overdose? I've learned that getting an X-ray is like trying to see what's inside your car by putting it in front of a large white sheet, and shooting it full of holes with a machine gun, then looking at where the bullets made it through to hit the sheet. X-rays can burn or kill cells — I had really weird effects for weeks afterward, the effect of burning all that tissue. Cancer can happen when an X-ray happens to hit a piece of DNA just right to mess it up without killing it. Fortunately, I just had an MRI and it came back clean — no signs of brain cancer yet. Good news, though most cells in your brain grow very slowly, so I may have cancer, but might not know it for 10 or more years. By that time, we may have cancer figured out.
• Obama - Well, I think I was right. Really complicated healthcare reform was passed, but my healthcare costs continue to climb rapidly. Jobs, overall economy, deficits, foreign relations — I mostly hear blame of Bush and other excuses for the current state of affairs. He got Osama, but lost a few planes we didn't know existed. Other than that, most of the news I see about him relate to him hanging out with celebrities.
• Romney seems troubled. If I were him, I'd feel the same way. As Scott Adams says, "the electorate is full of idiots", and in order to win he has to tailor his remarks to whatever group he's talking to, which when taken as a whole looks almost like a different person talking. That's got to be stressful for a very principled person. But I get the feeling that most people don't want a principled person in office because they've come to distrust all principle. I hope he wins, he's obviously a man who knows how to accomplish his goals, and has the determination to do so, and has an amazing track record. But I also don't expect the election to even be close.

He can get anyone hanged.

Cardinal Richelieu:

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

I bet he's not the only one with this kind of skill.

President's address to the kids?

There's a lot of uproar around here about President Obama's upcoming televised speech to the kids in schools.

What do you think? Should parents keep their kids home that day?

Obama reverses abortion funding policy

And so it begins.

The Mall during the inauguration

This is the mall during the inauguration ceremony, as taken by the GeoEye1 satellite.

I actually enjoyed reading the inauguration speech. There was little that I could argue with in there. My favorite quote:

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

I wonder who wrote it.

For me the question remains: in 4 years, will our nation be better off? Will we be more likely to blame others or our government for our personal failings? Will social programs become the lifeblood of more Americans, being easier and more profitable than holding down a job? If abortions become easier to get, will they be more likely to be gotten? Or will violence abroad increase as tyrants smile and nod through diplomacy but do what they please knowing no one will stop them? Will we still be allowed to own guns to protect ourselves? Will churches lose official status for refusing to marry gay couples, or for taking other moral stands?

I'm still nervous about the answers to these questions.

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Check out this interactive zoomable photo of the inauguration -- double-click to zoom, then hover your mouse over a person to see who it is. Not all the people are labeled, but probably all the ones whose names you've heard are. Very nice!

College student tries to hug a panda

Aren't panda bears just so cute and huggable? Some college student in China thought so too, so he jumped in and tried it.

The guy's lucky he survived.

Now doesn't Obama strike you as the kind of guy who thinks the terrorists are simply misunderstood people who just need a hug?

Election maps

I love these maps of the election. This just proves that crowded people are liberal.

Spread out, everybody! =)

Obama wins.

In my mind Bush's greatest failure has been the creation of a climate that resulted in a far-left near-socialist candidate getting elected as the 44th president of this country.

So that said, I'll make a few reckless predictions:

• Great speeches ahead. Obama has a shiny silver tongue, which will make for some stirring speeches. I like those, at least.
• Real leadership? Far as I can tell, Obama's never really led anything, and I imagine that track record will lead to a lot of flutter in the press and in Washington, but very little real movement in this country's sails.
• Mulligan stew. A few poor decisions early on and his credibility will start to slide. He'll revert to "safer" activities and fill a term with busy but rather lame doings.
• Weak captain, strong sailors. When good sailors realize their captain isn't always up to the job, they then start to realize that if they're going to survive, they've got to be cautious and on the ball.
  
  Similarly I tend to think that under strong leadership, business leaders subconsciously think, "Oh, the president has got it under control, he'll take care of things -- we can relax." Under weak leadership, they think, "Uh, oh, we better be super careful and work really hard or we'll never make it!"
• Who's tanking this thing? Did you notice the economy isn't doing so hot? Anybody want to bet how long it will take the short-minded US population to start assigning the blame to Obama? If that sticks, maybe in 4 years we can get back to business.

Don't forget, the president can get us into some real messes militarily, but I don't think Obama will do much of that. More likely he'll do too little.

His real focus is on social programs* -- the only problem he has is that he doesn't get to make laws, nor does he fund them. He only gets to make the budget for them and hope the Congress will pass it and send it back to him to sign.

Fingers crossed that process moves *very* slowly.

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* I really hope he doesn't follow GW Bush's lead and try to fulfill all his campaign promises -- that was Bush's second-greatest failure.

Cause and effect

Back in college, I remember hitting a mental logjam, and it wasn't clear to me what the problem was. It went something like this:

Say I have a headache. A roommate gives me a pair of aspirin. My headache doesn't go away when I swallow them, so I wait. After 10 minutes I feel a little better, but the headache's still there. What can I deduce? I didn't read the directions, maybe I should've taken three? Or do I need to just wait a little longer? Or is it cheap aspirin and doesn't work very well? Or was my headache going away on its own anyway? Or did my drinking water help because many headaches are caused by dehydration? Or did I take too many and this is a *new* headache? Come on, can I really not get any closer than that?!

I posed this question to a very wise friend, John Holman, and with a single sentence cleared up the whole thing for me. Without even thinking he said, "Yeah, it can be hard to separate cause and effect."

Ah, that was my problem -- it *is* hard to separate cause and effect. I just assumed it was easy, and that somehow aspirin just wasn't cooperating.

Kathy and LaVar Jones

Good people and religion

My Uncle LaVar and Aunt Kathy were some of the neatest people I have ever known. They were the epitome of kindness, warmheartedness, and industry -- and everybody seemed to love them. They were deeply religious and attended church and fulfilled church callings to the very end.

After they died, I was talking to one of my cousins who himself is a little more distant from religion, and he made a rather odd statement -- he said, "LaVar and Kathy were tremendous people -- the Mormon church had nothing to do with it, they would've been that way wherever they had ended up."

He was saying, in effect, they were great before they were members of the church, as opposed to believing they were great, at least in part, *because* they were members of the church.

Why were they great? I could never speak for them, but I have a hunch they would interpret the cause of their characters quite differently than my cousin.

If we don't understanding the correct relationship between cause and effect here, we won't be able to emulate well that greatness in ourselves.

Politics and the USA

This is the greatest nation in the world.

But why?

We like the effect of this greatness, but what are the causes of it?

A lot of people right now don't seem to know. Otherwise we wouldn't have two candidates with such disparate views within even a 20 point spread in the polls -- it'd be a landslide for the candidate who had it all figured out.

Since this is my blog, and I can say whatever I want =), let me volunteer a few of my favorite cause/effect pairs (note, these are not my original ideas, but mostly gleaned from great politicians):

• Freedom. This country was built on the premise of freedom, *not* prosperity* -- yes, we like prosperity, but freedom is the cause, and prosperity generally is an effect. Again, generally speaking, you *cannot* increase prosperity by limiting freedom -- that's backwards.
• Innovation and industry. We are prosperous because our nation is an incubator of innovation and industry. We have beds and toilets and refrigerators and cars because someone had the energy, knowledge, motivation and means to build them for us -- company makes stuff > jobs > salaries > buy more stuff > make more stuff. Take away any of those resources, and you cripple the cause of this prosperity. Higher taxes is an example of a "crippler".** So is most government regulation.
• Infrastructure and protection. Government exists to provide infrastructure (roads, bridges, central banks, etc.), and to protect us from one another (police, military, fraud investigators, etc.). It does *not* exist to manage healthcare, bail out failing businesses, dole out welfare, or subsidize farming. All of those things are freedom-limiting, because freedom includes both choice *and* consequence.
• Execution. Another way to state the above is that what prospers this nation is wise execution of great ideas. What's the incentive to execute well if the government stands ready to coddle you in failure? And do it with the dollars taken from those who had the drive to succeed? with dollars that would've been spent creating further industry?

This nation has lots of headaches, and our media and half our citizens have long-since forsaken aspirin for political heroin -- and when the headaches remain, they think the cause is that they just need more.

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* Thanks Ryan Parker.

** My brother likes to quote Winston Churchill: "A nation trying to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to pull himself up by the handles."

700 Billion dollars?

A bedtime story

Once upon a time, the US economy starts to improve a little, and people decide to take their money and invest in real-estate, "which has always been a very solid investment".

House prices start to rise. Others say, "Hey, house prices are starting to rise nicely, looks like a good investment." They buy another house or two.

Average Joe sees his equity go up, and says, "Hey, sweet, I've got equity now -- I'm selling here and buying a bigger house." Joe cashes in some equity on that house and drops it into a new house.

Mortgage banks see housing prices rising and say, "Wow, that's a terrific investment -- let's loosen the reins a little on these mortgages and sell more."

"Sweet, look at all the money we're making!"

Stockholders in other companies complain -- "Hey, how come they're making huge gains and we're just sitting here? We need to get into that action!"

House prices rise faster and faster, and sanity in the lending practices starts flying out the window. Real-estate never goes down in value, remember?

In late 2007, someone realizes -- "Hey, we've been building and buying houses like crazy, but um... who's going to live in them all?"

Uh, oh. Uh oh. "Maybe we don't want our money in mortgage backed securities right now..."

Others -- "Oh oh, neither do we." ("Um, let's slide out the side door before anyone else notices...")

Everyone else -- Huh? Nobody wants them??! They're dropping in value! Panic! Lots of people can't sell now, and they can't afford all these houses we've lent them money to buy! That means we foreclose, but they're dropping in value fast! What are we going to do with them?! Our books are full of depreciating assets, and we don't have enough cash to cover them!

Crash.

Mess.

Bottom line? Every market is driven by "fear and greed" (thanks, Larry) -- greed drove up the prices, and fear is going to rip the bottom out from under us.

We as a nation inflated the values of all our homes, bought a bunch of them, then watched them all deflate in value. The money evaporated.*

So all these huge companies (Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, etc.) that borrowed money to fund all this "action" are now gone.

Gone.

Serves 'em right?

"Let 'em crash, serves them right!"

We're agonizing over high CEO pay and golden parachutes, but these are pennies compared to the big picture here. According to Alan Greenspan (so I've heard anyway), at one point in his tenure we were only 4 years from eradicating the national debt. Huh? I thought the national debt was the number with so many digits that people tried to remember what came after "trillion", would be what finally crushed my grandchildren's dreams and drove the nation into poverty...

But no, money was coming fast into the federal government's coffers -- fast. Where was all the money coming from? Prosperous US businesses producing stuff, and all the taxes rolling in from that activity.

A rising tide raises all ships? That rising tide almost saved my grandkids from economic ruin. But if we let our biggest businesses die, the economic engines that supported and drove that kind of growth, our tide goes out -- way out. They are why our economy is the biggest and most stable in the world. If we let the tide go out, the big ships will end up wrecked on the rocks, but so will lots of others. ("Let 'em crash, serves them right...?") And wrecked ships don't magically float again when the tide comes back in.

We can complain about golden parachutes and try to bring the more buoyant ships down to the same level as ours, but who really cares if the water's receding and our own keels are already bouncing off the reefs?

So greed inflates value and "creates" capital; and fear destroys it. Anybody seeing any more fear? Yes -- the tide goes out faster.

What to do? "We need greed back! We need the real economic engines to keep running." Can it really be as simple as throwing in a bunch of money and rescuing those engines and giving the "greedy" cash to be greedy for?

$700 billion.

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* Well not exactly -- some, like me, happened to sell at a half-decent time and pull out a few tens of thousands of dollars in equity that since would have disappeared had I not grabbed it. Lucky move.

Why didn't anyone see this coming? Brandon Carpenter can attest that *I* saw it coming -- I complained in 2006 that this was "totally ridiculous", and that it was completely unsustainable, and that we were in for a huge mess. Yet nobody at the Fed. listened to me. =)

Hmm... I thought being right about that would have felt more satisfying than it does.

By the way, $700B is about $2300 for every man, woman, and child in America, and is almost what we've spent so far in the Iraq war ($845B).

Post turtle

My uncle Jim just sent this out:

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old Texas rancher, whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Obama and his bid to be our President.

The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Obama is a 'post turtle'." Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a "post turtle" was. The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle'."

The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. "You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he is up there, and you just wonder what kind of a [dummy] put him up there to begin with."*

I must give Obama some credit: he does speak very well, and has an excellent presence on camera, as well as an impressive ability to respond to criticism. I suppose the stereotypical politician is known for smooth-talking, vague unfulfillable promises, and appeasement -- he seems to fit that mold almost perfectly.

That said, this is a man who, as far as I can tell, has never authored a bill in Congress nor lead anything substantial, and has used illegal drugs. Is this really the best our country can produce?

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* Note, this is conveniently un-sourced, but a simple Google search points out that this is rather old and appears to have been first applied to G.W. Bush.

What McCain should say...

Neat commentary by Glenn Beck.

FairTax: Why I love it, and why it will never pass

"FairTax" is the common name of a bill in Congress that essentially makes the IRS obsolete by replacing the income tax with a national sales tax (roughly 23%). The equivalent of the "standard deduction" under FairTax is the "prebate", a monthly check (or direct deposit) to all taxpayers, intended to offset the taxes you're paying on food and other necessities. For me, I'd be getting a check for $606 every month, *and* not paying income tax!

"How can the government just give out money like that, it's going to be hugely expensive and create a welfare state! It's socialism! Ridiculous!"

This is a great example of congressional "smokescreening", scaring people with statements that are just completely wrong. I'll get back to why congress-people do this in a minute.
The FairTax was designed by smart people to be revenue neutral, meaning the federal government doesn't make more or less money with it -- only that they collect it differently. Here's the deal: unless you're poor, at the end of the year, the IRS ends up with a huge wad of your money from income taxes. They're going to under FairTax too. But for poor people the gov't instituted the standard deduction, a way to keep poor people from having to pay any federal taxes by not taxing them on the first X dollars they make ($10,700 in my case). Under FairTax, the prebate does the exact same thing, except people are getting money as a check in exchange for what they're expected to pay at the cash register, instead of have a little less withheld in their paycheck. They expect a family the size of mine sitting right on the poverty line would pay roughly $606 in sales taxes during a month, and they're returning that amount to me -- that's all.

Why I love it

Oh, so many reasons!

• 1040-wha? Tax season is a painful, stressful time for the whole country. Imagine if that were just gone. Gone. Millions of hours returned to the people! Thousands of H&R Block employees and other tax accountants freed to work on things that actually make our lives better -- like knitting sweaters! (Love you, Shells! =)


• Tax evaders actually have to try. Tax evaders are everywhere now -- tons of people just don't file at all. Then we have to spend taxpayers money chasing them down and prosecuting them, paperwork and courts and wasted time and happy lawyers. Under the FairTax, there is no dodging, buy something at the store and you pay taxes on it. Now some say the FairTax will create a huge black-market -- but we already have sales taxes, how's that black market look now? Besides, how would such a black market work anyway? All large transactions are tracked, not like people are buying thousands of cars from Ford and selling them on the black market so people can dodge the taxes. Sure some shady dealers would pop up, but enforcement of taxes would still exist -- it would just shift from chasing mostly careless or otherwise over-burdened individuals to chasing truly dishonest businesspeople trying to make a whole living dishonestly. A *much* easier job, for sure.


• Illegals penalized! Instead of illegals squeaking out of paying taxes by taking jobs paid under the table, the illegals would have to pay sales tax for everything, *and* they would *not* get the prebate! Those evading the system would have it worse! Much lower incentive for them to come here illegally.


• No more taxes on business. Huh? Aren't they the ones with the money? Yes, but they're also the ones creating all that value that you and I are after! Who made that shirt you're wearing? And that computer you're staring at? The economy is a bunch of businesses making things that make our lives better, and giving people jobs. If you burden that process you just slow it down and make it less competitive against factories in China.


• Savings and gardens. Grow your own food? Pay no federal taxes! Saving your money? No taxes there either! Let's incentivize those two things for a change.

What's not to like?

But it will never happen

"Huh? Why not, it sounds like a terrific idea!"

Why? Because Congress would have to pass it, that's why.

My incredibly smart sister pointed out that Congress wields a *lot* of power. Some in lawmaking, some in regulating commerce, etc., but a huge amount of their power comes from the budgetary process. You see, Congress has but one real goal, and that is to get reelected. How? By swinging as much of the federal budget as possible into their own state and constituency. Riding pork into the federal budget is one way, but another equally powerful way is via the tax *incentives* they give. "Let's buy the impoverished vote by eliminating their taxes, the homeowner vote by not taxing money paid on mortgages or charitable donations, the business vote by not taxing business expenses, etc. etc. etc." Yuck.
You see, if they eliminate their own ability to decide how the money comes *in* by enacting the FairTax, they'd be voluntarily stripping themselves of half their fiscal power. Where would they get the incentive to do that? Nowhere, that's right.

So now we're back to "smokescreening"

Cover the whole FairTax thing with vague scary political buzzwords ("welfare", "regressive", "cutbacks", etc.) to keep the populace from seriously considering it, and America stays stuck in the same mudhole we've been in for 95 years.

"Economic Hitmen" strike again?

This blog is becoming my little soapbox where I can yell stuff at the world, apparently today I have a lot on my mind. =)

Did you see this story today on the 80 billion dollar dam for the Congo?

What a wonderful investment, bring electricity to the masses in Africa!

Now go read this book.

Since I can't wait for you to do it, here's the quick summary: an economic "forecaster" in a well-regarded consulting firm predicts that a very large and expensive engineering project will spur double-digit growth in some poor, far-away country -- like the Congo. The World Bank funds it, large US engineering firms do the work, and the poor little country is left with the bill -- only $80B, with flexible payment plans!

World Bank believes it's doing the world a favor. Large US engineering firms gets a terrific contract and a ton of cash. Leader of small country is praised for his vision, gathers a few miscellaneous incentives for his part, and in time turns things over to someone else. Small country is left with a monstrous debt, and an underperforming investment, that the forecaster then blames on ever-changing conditions.

Only the economic forecaster had to be "tainted". Everybody else was on a noble mission to improve the world. The situation takes decades to pan out, and in the end, an entire region's economy is *crushed*. It's happened dozens of times across the world.

As President Hinckley recently advised us -- don't go into debt to make an investment. It bit me in college, and it's about to bite the Congo.

Don't do it! Start small, then let the return on your investment pay for the incremental upgrades -- that's good advice for small businesses (thanks, Larry), and for countries too.

"Global warming", "green", and me.

Somehow "green" is the new thing these days, all the companies want to be more green. (Here's the site that got me started on this...) A noble cause, who doesn't like greenery?

The Pacific Ocean has a garbage patch twice the size of Texas, China and Russia are a pollution mess, and we're pulling up every hydrocarbon we can find, representing (supposedly) millions of years of the sun's energy, and burning it as fast as we can.* This doesn't sound like we're being very good stewards of our planet.

However

... I always get nervous when environmentalist causes -- which seem to appeal disproportionately to the otherwise imbalanced folks out there -- line up with corporate initiatives.

Corporate America loves to find, or create, new "needs" that they can fill. Being "green" means that we need sensors to turn on and off lights when people come and go, better insulation in buildings, and energy-efficient computers. Hmm, sounds like a lot of things we need to buy -- check out all the business ads on this page.

In fact, on 3/23/08, Fake Steve Jobs (a famous not-Steve-Jobs blogger who has a remarkable perspective on CEO life) wrote a tremendous (though rather profane) article on this very point (quoted and cleaned up for my audience):

Truth is, Goldilocks does not really believe the world is about to burst into flames. What he does believe is that the global warming "crisis" is the next big way to make money off hype and fear. It's the Y2K scam all over again. Truth is, .... a bunch of lucky rich [guys are] scheming to get even more rich. I'm telling you this because I've talked to these guys. I've been invited to invest in these funds. And I've done it. Why not? If the ducks are quacking, as they say.

Every VC in the Valley [likes] greentech because it's the first market they've ever seen where they can mitigate their risk by laying it off onto governments (ie taxpayers). The trick is to spread lots of hype and put pressure on governments (hence Kleiner hires Al Gore) so that governments will provide subsidies to keep these venture-funded startups alive until they can be flogged off onto the public markets. They'll sell these stocks to dentists and they'll use the same pitch that Toyota uses on the Prius -- sure it's overpriced, but think how good you'll feel. These will be IPOs as a form of therapy, and the Birkenstock-wearing suckers will sing Kumbaya and talk about how capitalism is saving the world.

The great thing about this approach is not simply that it will let obscenely rich scammers get even more obscenely rich off the backs of taxpayers and suckers in the public markets, but that it also will enable these rich [jerks] to feel really good about themselves while they're doing it. They can run around feeling sanctimonious about doing something meaningful with their lives. They also can feel a little less weird and guilty about having so much money.

As they say, "follow the money".

As for me, am I really going to save the planet by buying those little "compact fluorescent lamps"?** I certainly won't intentionally pollute my space, but I'm fairly confident that I'm not in the world's top 10 polluters or wasters -- let's go after them first.

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* Should it surprise us that the Earth appears to be warming up a little?

** Nevermind that almost a third of the Earth's carbon emissions are coming from forests burning in South America.

What we can deduce about Mitt

According to wikipedia Mitt Romney was once a bishop and a stake president in the LDS (Mormon) church.

"So what?", you ask?

Quick background -- a bishop is the leader of a congregation (ward), and the stake president is the leader of a group of wards called a stake. Nearly all issues faced by members of the church are dealt with at the ward or stake level.

A few months back I was sitting in a bishopric training meeting where someone from the LDS Family Resources center was giving a presentation on addiction recovery and support. The lady mentioned that they had encountered all kinds of people dealing with pornography addiction, including bishops, high counselors, etc. -- everyone, that is, except patriarchs, and stake presidents. I immediately understood that the position of stake president is unique -- that the caliber of person called into that role is much higher than your average church member. It also lines up with my experience with stake presidents.

Note, Mitt didn't run for the office of stake president -- in fact, anybody lobbying for a position like that is more likely to have their sanity called into question than get it. Neither stake presidents nor bishops get paid, and their workload is tremendous!

His story sounds good, but I wasn't ready to believe that Mitt was sincere until I found that out.

More facts for those who don't know:

• Stake presidents serve from 8 to 12 years -- Mitt served for 9.
• They likely spend 12-20 hours a week on stake business
• They oversee and work closely with dozens of the best individuals in the church in the area, interacting regularly with sharp, dedicated men and women who've managed to get their lives in order and keep them there for years and years -- then, they regularly go to trainings with church leaders, an impressive group, to learn directly from them
  
• Bishops and stake presidents are called to hear confessions of people who have committed serious sins -- they spend hours and hours with individuals pouring out their hearts -- listening to things that normal people never get to hear -- people being fully honest about their innermost weaknesses and sins. Mitt has been in this role for probably 15 years! He knows what goes on in the hearts of men, and I bet he knows more about how to read individuals than any of the other candidates, just based on that alone.
• Bishops and stake presidents oversee an organization that's the most perfect of any one I know -- that oversees dozens of ongoing activities and group structures, that takes care of the individuals and the group at the same time. He's been at least indirectly responsible for the religious instruction and care of toddlers, children, scouts, young men and women, young adults, adults, all the way up to the elderly. He probably feels as comfortable teaching a group of 18-month old kids about sharing as he does playing basketball with the old guys. He's been a part of an organization that really works from top to bottom.
  

I could be wrong of course, but all we have on a person is what they've been and done, and his record, both in church and in politics, is quite impressive as far as I'm concerned.

Response from Senator Kyl

Here's the response I got from Senator Kyl:



I'm not really sure if he read my email or not. Of course I would expect that a good politician would respond to letters and emails, probably with a canned/bland smattering of gratitude and praise. A better politician would have his staffers generate a dozen or so canned responses to common concerns and mechanically dole them out. The best politician would have his staffers weed out the banal and asinine, then personally review the rest. I like to think my idea was more than just a general concern about balancing the budget, but I guess I don't know exactly what goes on over there.

It's too late for my idea now. Here's a new one: Appoint an independent commission to monitor congressmen -- if any accept anything material from a lobbyist or insert any "pork" into a bill, they're sent to jail.

We'd probably see quite a few not run for reelection. Of course, what congressman in his right mind would vote for that bill? So who exactly is going to make Congress do the right things? Us? The President?

That was really the point of my original suggestion.

Letter to Senator Kyl

An email to Arizona Senator Kyl about the Republican "lame-duck" Congress:

Senator Kyl,

As a nation we've been consistently funding our federal programs with our children's tax dollars. We've got to correct this someday, maybe now's the perfect time.

With the last 2 months of Republican-controlled congress, pass a constitutional amendment requiring that the annual federal budget be balanced, and include language requiring the national deficit be repaid over a 20-year term.

You and I both know it's the right thing for America, and it will make this Democratic congress *very* unpopular when they attempt to comply.

Warmest regards,

Bryan Harris

He probably didn't even read it. But what better opportunity to make partisan politics do the right thing for America?