A Goofy Foot in Mouth

Today I am reading all sorts of stories about how Syria has finally admitted to its stocks of chemical and biological weapons.  They are threatening to use them on any foreign invaders and not the Syrian people.  Not anywhere can I find word about where they got these weapons and scud delivery missiles.  This is some of the worst reporting ever.

In Nov 2002 under the directive of UN Security Council Resolution 1441, weapons inspectors (Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBarade) searched Iraq for long suspected chemical and biological weapons.  They were thwarted at every turn.  CIA surveillance photos showed trucks leaving out the back of government installations as inspectors walked in the front.  Where were these trucks heading?  Yeah thats right, their northwest neighbor, Syria.  In all fairness, we have no idea what was in the trucks or where exactly they went.  Shortly thereafter, the “coalition of the willing” invaded Iraq and then found no weapons of mass destruction.

In September of 2004 I delivered the following speech at Temple Emanu-El, Haverhill a few months after I became president.  I don’t think many people understood what I was getting at; the metaphor was probably better understood if you read it rather than trying to listen and focus after 12 hours of fasting (it was Yom Kippur).  As I wondered back then, and I wonder now, what was in the trucks and how did Syria get chemical and biological weapons?  I don’t know the answer, but someone should ask the question.

At Rosh Hashanah I spoke to you about our congregation and personal actions.  Today as we look inward, I would like to take the opportunity to examine how we come to make decisions.

When I was in college some of my favorite classes were my liberal arts Philosophy courses.  I remember one that taught me the skills to form a logical argument.  Whatever we chose to discuss, the rule was that all of your conclusions must be driven by statements of fact.  It’s an interesting exercise.  For example:  If I take the position that Blue is my favorite color.  That is a statement of pure opinion.  How do I prove it?  I might start like this: The sky is blue.  When the sky is blue, it is usually a clear bright day.  Clear days allow me to do lots of outdoor activities.  Outdoor activities make me feel good.  Thus the color Blue leads me to think of things that make me feel good.  That is a possible reason that I “like” blue.

If you choose to disagree with me about my opinion, my favorite color, you must disagree with one of the facts in my proof or if there are multiple facts, you weigh them differently.  “Hey Josh, snowboarding is an outdoor activity you enjoy.  Snowboarding requires snow.  Snow only comes on days when it is grey and cloudy”  Good point.  I might reply “Yes but that is the creation of snow, not the act of snowboarding.  Snowboarding is still best on a bright, clear, blue-sky day”

Now most of us don’t have the concentration or time to go through this kind of internal analysis for every single opinion we have.  Instead, we often take shortcuts.  The problem is that in this age of TV and internet news, talking heads, ‘embedded’ reporters and channel X “experts”, we have become lax in our duty to analyze issues.  Pop-media editorials magically become our opinions.  We have lost the art of analysis.

We might see the simplicity in someone else’s analysis and decide that it works just fine for us.  We may have inherited opinions from our parents and choose not to form our own opinions about the same collection of facts.  The real danger is that instead of creating our own opinions, we blindly ingest those of others.  By doing so, we homogenize the thought process and corrupt our own individuality.

In all of our lives, time is the enemy.  And so one alternative to the lengthy analysis process is to extrapolate parallel ideals from other opinions we have already proven to ourselves.  Using these analogies is no substitution for critical analysis, but it can help guide the process: Instead of starting with nothing, we have an outline to follow. 

I am an OK story-teller.  Stories are a great way to look at scenarios and help you to make correlations to lead your analysis to a conclusion.  This particular story works best if you are a parent, if not, well…work with me. 

My wife and I like to think we are pretty good parents.  We have a 16 year old son.  We let him make his own decisions in life.  We believe that by showing him respect and affording him his autonomy, he will make the right choices.  So far he has lived up to these broad expectations for communal living.  But we always know that if he starts to stray, we would need to step in and set him straight for his own good, after all he is still growing and learning.  One day we start to notice that he is hanging with a new crowd.  He is dressing differently, he looks like a degenerate.  Sometimes after he comes home from hanging out with his friends, we notice that his eyes are bloodshot and he seems to be slurring his speech.  Once while he is up in his room with his friends, we notice some smoke emanating from under his door.  It’s a strange smelling smoke that seems eerily familiar.  We decide to be open and forthright with him.  We sit him down and ask if he has tried smoking marijuana.  “No way guys, no way”.  We want to trust him and we take his answers at face value.  A few weeks later we smell it again after one of his buddies brings a small paper bag up to his room.  This time we are more stern.  “We want to inspect your room, will you let us?”  “Sure dad, just let me clean a bit, come up in a few minutes”  There are piles of clothes and junk near the outer walls, he could hide a Ford Expedition in there.  We check randomly, desk drawer, underwear drawer, under the bed.  Looks clean.  “Son, just make sure you are not letting those friends of yours push you in ways you don’t feel comfortable.  We love you and just want what is best for you.  If you need to talk, or if you need any help, we’re here.” 

Time passes and one day I hear loud music coming from his room as I drive up to the house, smoke is wafting from his open window.  That’s it, I’m heading in there.  As I bang on the door ordering him to open up, my wife drives home and sees a few of his buddies with a backpack jumping out the window to run home.  He lets me in, he smells of pot, there’s smoke everywhere, but no ashes and no trace of any marijuana anywhere.  I turn the room upside down, pleading with him to tell me the truth.  He is impassionate as if he knows I will find nothing.  He is quietly smug with an attitude that he has gotten away with something.  Later I overhear a phone conversation “Dude, we got away with it.  That was close”

Do my neighbors think that I had grand aims at subverting my son’s independence?  Or that I was violating the sanctity of his sovereignty?  Of course not!  I am reacting to sociological facts that we read about in the papers every day.  It’s not the little things that scare me, it is the doomsday scenario that gives me pause.  Because I know that once a kid tries pot, they are sure to try ecstacy.  And once you’ve had one pill why not try speed.  And once you’ve had that high you’ve got to try mushrooms.  And after one psychedelic, you’ve got to try LSD.  Pretty soon my son is snorting coke and shooting heroine.  So you’ll have to forgive me if I am a little paranoid and I always fear the worse.  I’m a good parent and I want what’s best for my family.  What scares me even more is that one day, my 5 year old will find my son’s needles and play ‘doctor’ with our infant.  Is it right for me to get this crazy right now about a little experimenting with pot?  Yes, because I have already concluded that the only way to stop this obvious progression, is to stop the rolling boulder while I can still control the slide. 

The decision to storm my son’s room was a no-brainer.  Would any of you have acted differently given the signs?  I tore the place apart to find nothing.  But maybe he’s smarter than me and he found a way to hide the stash where I couldn’t find it at all.  It doesn’t matter because while I am there, he’s got to clean his room and he’s got to let me back into his life.  We have to find a way to co-exist.  I had already decided this course of action to protect all of our future; I needed to act preemptively for his own good.

I’ve worked this scenario in my head a million times, and I’m pretty sure that most of you would have done the same thing.  Caring for your family and seeing where they will be in 2 months or a year or 5 years, is what keeps us up late at night.  But can we all say that we would apply the same standard to other similar scenarios in our lives?  Can this scenario, one in which the conclusion is crystal clear, help guide us in how we shape our opinions about other worldly circumstances?  Possibly.  On one hand, we might look at the facts and react in a way analogous to how we would react to the preceding story.  Conversely, we might look at a similar set of facts on a larger scale and come to a different conclusion.  What makes the exercise so valuable is that each of us looks at a collection of facts, and assigns weights based on our own internal experiences and evaluation.  In the end, our conclusions might be contradictory or they might align perfectly.   Hard to believe, but our convictions may not be as clear as we tell ourselves they are.  Much of it has to do with perspective.

I’ll tell you another story, this one is true.  Megan and I bought our current house just shy of 3 years ago, December 2001.  My next door neighbor put in a pool just before we moved in.  He did not have a fence installed when we got there.  I figured I’d wait for the Spring to see if he would put one up when the ground thawed.  Pretty soon it was summer and still nothing.  I had a day off one day and so I went to the Town Hall Building Inspector’s office.  I wasn’t sure if New Hampshire had the same rules for a 4 foot fence around a pool, that Massachusetts does.  Turns out we do.  I almost pleaded for help with the woman behind the counter.  “By any chance do you ever go back and spot check building permits?  I really don’t want to start a war with my neighbor, because he seems really nice.  I was hoping that maybe you might accidentally discover through a random review of files that he doesn’t have a fence.  By the way, I live on Lake  Street and I think his pool went in last September.”  “Sorry sir, we can’t do anything without the address, are you reporting a specific infraction?”  I left the office in frustration.

There still is no fence.  And when friends come over it is so easy for them to criticize me for not having the conviction to report him.  I remember problems we had with neighbors as a kid.  They had Dobermans, and not getting along made life miserable.  But today my friends see the same devastating future, the doomsday scenario, as I do:  What if one of our kids wanders over there and falls in the pool?  My goodness, how would I live with myself?!?  I can see a future and I know what I need to do to prevent that eventuality.  I am forced with making that choice every day, and I admit I lack the moral conviction to take action.  But oh, it is so easy when you live in another neighborhood.  “Really Josh, just call the Inspector, it’s been long enough”

Isn’t it interesting that with the pool I know what the right thing is but I am paralyzed to actually do it because of a little thing like proximity?  The slight sense of control I get from thinking that I can watch my kids and protect them when they are playing outside, somehow placates my inaction.  In a post 9/11 world, is that not the most dangerous thought you’ve ever heard? 

On the other hand, when I had no immediate control of my son’s actions inside his room, I see the threat as imminent.  And there seems to be clear justification for action.  But when you get right down to the knowledge I have on hand to make these two decisions, is there really a difference in threat to my kids?

Two similar scenarios can lead to different conclusions.  In one case, all my self analysis leads to one clear decision to act.  On the other hand, little pieces of extraneous history skew my analysis and have paralyzed me with procrastination and inaction.  Bystanders, who can stand back and see the issues from afar, are free to do the right thing, free to exercise their moral conviction without repercussions or risk.  They are free to perform their own self analysis and come to completely different opinions than I.  Does my friend have a moral conviction that I do not, simply because she thinks the solution for the fence is so easy to enact?  I say No.  Perspective does matter.  Acting today to thwart a perceived future threat, seems perfectly clear.  However, taking action sometimes risks more danger and strife, when actually trying to curb it.  No matter what the position, you have to respect and admire people that have the clarity of vision to see the future, to realize the potentials, perform their own analysis and know just what to do:  No matter what the recourse.  For them and hopefully for us, it’s hard to do the right thing, but sometimes you just know there is no choice.

I really hate voicemail.  My outgoing message at work even says so and asks people not to leave me VM.  It really is a useless mode of communication.  Inevitably after 5 minutes of trying to get the message and rewind and write down a phone number to a name that I can barely understand, I get it wrong.  If I am at work, I respond via email.  So send me an email instead.

There is only one VM I really appreciate.  And that is the rant from my good friend Loren (FPOTT- Former President Of The Temple).  Loren will call at random times of the day and lecture my phone for well over 2 minutes about whatever it is that is bothering him that particular minute.  If VM runs out of space, you can be sure that he will call back to finish, cursing Verizon for having the audacity to cut him off.  I wish I had saved some of the classics.  Most come while he is in the car and so there tends to be an automotive theme as he screams at me through the wireless microphone: The calamity of “Solah Glayah” (aka solar glare) on 128, the idiots who clearly don’t know how to drive to Fenway while crossing the BU bridge, the governor and his desire for higher taxes, street construction in Bradford, and the list goes on.

I haven’t left a rant for Loren in a while.  There is an art to it, sometimes I even have to write notes and practice.  In his honor, I think we deserve a new medium, and so I will share with everyone here on my blog- minus the colorful language that usually pervades the message and makes these so meaningful.  Note that a rant begins calmly and as you think about the issue more, you become more…lively.

First some back ground.  I work at one of the largest financial services companies in the world and our de-facto head is female.  She has done an amazing job of defining product and focusing on customers in ways that previous male leaders did not.  It is an exciting time.  I work with some exceptional female colleagues and VPs, one whose team I really want to join (hint hint).  I also work with incompetent men and women.  Some make more than me, and some less.  Some are promoted when I think they deserve it and some are promoted to my disbelief.  But inevitably, in 2012 and with everyone I talk to, your success is based on being in the right place at the right time and/or taking a risk on something by working your ass off to be an expert in some speciality.  This applies to women and men equally.  You can’t make evaluations of the current micro-workplace by looking at retroactive statistical macroeconomic measures.  There is a story to every individual employment action and none of them are the same.

So while the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act sounds like such a great idea, all it really did was to change a Supreme Court ruling on how to interpret a statute of limitations clause.  It didn’t change behavior and it won’t directly change statistics.  Today, opportunities are fair, and while the numbers may not have caught up to that reality, corporate America treats everyone the same.  Women that leave the workplace for children are not rewarded for their devotion to the firm, the same as men who take a leave of absense to deal with “family matters” (I know both).  Women who know their s–t are respected and promoted ahead of those women and men who don’t.

But here is where the workplace is fundamentally UNfair.  We need legislation NOW to correct the debacle that has become known as; Business Casual Clothing in the Workplace.  And so begins the rant, press 1 to listen to your message, beeeep…

Yo buddy, sorry I missed you but here’s something I have been thinking about.  Clothing.  Men and women that wear suits to work are about the same.  Pants or skirt, uncomfortable shoes, uncomfortable shirt, maybe a tie/scarf and a jacket.  That is fair.  Young kids don’t understand norms, and so I understand that there are too short skirts (girls) and black dress “sneakers” (boys) from the interns that show up every summer.

But business casual has gotten flat out ridiculous.  Men for the most part wear dress shoes that are uncomfortable just like their suit counterparts.  Please explain to me how women get to wear fricken flip flops that because they have a quarter inch strip of leather are somehow dressy?  How exactly does that work?  And why is it that even their dressier shoes have no tops and no backs?  No socks?  So I have to look at and smell stinky feet as they slip off those shoes in meetings just cause they can pop off so easily?  The equivalent used to be nylons, which have somehow become taboo for business casual, and while I may agree that they look silly, THAT IS NOT THE #$%@ POINT!  If that was the identifier that signified equality in hosiery, why do they get to arbitrarily declare it no longer “in style”?  How is that fair?  Can you see me wearing leather sandals to work?  Loafers or boat shoes with no socks?  Yeah right!

Lets talk pants.  The most comfortable I can swing is a pair of beige soft cotton kackis.  But women can wear capri’s?  With flip flops no doubt.  You think I could show up without a belt?  But women get to wear stretchy flowery prints with elastic waistbands?  Bend over to pick up a pencil and I see underwear?  How exactly is that equality?

We’re moving right up now!  Maybe, just MAYBE on a hot summer day I would feel safe wearing a polo shirt with a collar.  How do chicks justify a tee shirt just cause it’s made of satin or some fabric that looks fancy?  I am usually in a button down, which oh by the way is SOOOO uncomfortable, it totally sucks, and it is always tucked in.  They tuck in shirts maybe 50:50.  Tank tops?  How come that is ok?  I can see a tattoo?  I would get marched to HR!!

I don’t want to hear a single peep about hair and makeup, that is ENTIRELY MANUFACTURED BY THEM as an excuse to go shopping for chemical-crap-de-la-DuPont that does absolutely nothing!  You spend 30 minutes on that per day, times 5 days a week means I am inherently more productive for net 2 hours per week, right?!?!?

I am seriously sick of this.  I feel so repressed and flat out discriminated against.  It is not fair and I should be able to sue someone.  There should be some sort of EEOC or DOL rule that regulates exactly what “business casual” is and what is acceptable dress for both women and men.

Coming up on my exit, hugs and kisses to the family.  Give me a call later.   Beeeep!

So now you know how all good legislation begins.  Please support the FACE Act of 2012(Formal Attire and Clothing Equality) , I will be writing a draft next week.

After reading one of my blog posts Dr. Eric Burger recommended that I read a book called True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo, who writes for Salon.  He is reading it too (a lot faster than I) and is thinking of using it in one of his classes.  I am not finished yet, but the book made me think of a picture and since I have been wanting to try to include a photo in a post, I figured I would use this as an opportunity.

The first chapter is almost impossible to get through.  Manjoo insists that John Kerry was defeated in 2004 almost single-handedly by the Swift Boat veterans and their false claims that Kerry should not have won the medals in Vietnam.  What I remember at the time is that these guys were very angry and while all of their claims were proven false, that is not the reason why Kerry lost.  To summarize, we hated his ‘I know everything’ brahman tone and attitude.  The quote “I actually voted for it before I voted against it” was a HUGE blunder.  The fact that he married a friend and colleague’s widow who just happened to be worth $300M (and she was not exactly a sympathetic figure), was a little ‘creepy’ as Taylor might say.  And most importantly, was the iconic photo from Vietnam.   Which of course I can’t find now.  But it’s the one with him in the field and a camera around his neck, rifle shouldered.  He’s got a camera in the field and then testifies to Congress about the atrocities of his fellow soldiers.  It all just didn’t seem right.  That’s why he lost.

Once you get past that chapter, the book is a really great study on how people surround themselves with only the opinions they agree with and completely close out conflicting thought.  Look at your friends and family with whom you disagree, what kinds of stuff are they always reading and emailing?  It is very powerful, and somewhat scary that we have evolved this way.  Brad Feld wrote a great piece about “Grinfucking” and how  CEOs should avoid that thinking with their companies.  But having this be so commonplace in the rest of our lives is staggering.  Furthermore, there are studies showing that people actually agree with an opinion more, when they like the person giving the opinion, regardless of whether they actually understand the position or not.  The data in the studies is amazing.

One thing that the author denies is the liberal bias in the media, and he cites the existence of Lou Dobbs, Fox News and the “Right Wing” blogosphere as examples of how those outlets create balance to what could be viewed as a leftist slant in other media outlets.  This is a major hole in the argument; you can’t compare a bunch of blogs and talk radio to the big 3 news stations, even if you add in Fox News.

Look at this picture from CBS News during the 2008 debates.  I always say that media bias is subtle, has there ever been a news story on this blatantly biased coverage to date?

This was a picture I took of my TV while watching the debates.  Notice that my TV had a nice indicator of the exact middle of the set by the power button just below the Sony logo dividing the speakers.  I added the black lines for effect.  McCain was talking at this point, notice his mouth is open and Obama’s is closed.  But notice the split screen percentage?  CBS decided to shift just slightly the emphasis to Obama, he probably has 52% of the screen.  Why would they do this?  Notice the relative size of the candidates’ heads?  I drew a horizontal line at the bottom of McCain’s chin.  His head fits on the screen but Obama’s extends beyond the top and his chin extends lower when compared on that horizontal line.  He clearly appears as the larger man.  Does it make him seem to have greater stature?  More powerful?  You can be the judge as to the psychological effects of this kind of media coverage, but you can’t possibly deny that this behavior takes place.

Get the media to love you, the coverage will follow, and people will start to like you and trust where you want to lead the country, no matter what you say.  A new strategy indeed.

The conventional wisdom in VC circles is that you fund good teams and worry about the idea later.  I still think this is silly, but I am starting to see the logic, at least as far as accelerators are concerned.  Given what is coming to be known as the YC Bubble, this is clearly the foundation for what I would estimate as a plurality of the startup world.  Who cares about the idea when you have a team that will live on Ramen and work 20 hour days steering a company pretty much wherever a bunch of ‘mentors’ and ‘advisors’ tell them to go.  A “pivot” in an accelerator is a nice way of saying, “yeah that’s nice kid, but why don’t you build the product around…”

I used to wonder how this can be considered a rational strategy but then I started to think about studios, and the notion of funding a captive group to build your own ideas.  Accelerators are a nice variation on that theme, letting you act like a VC, create incentives for the founder, but build products as they would in a studio (it’s not really the founder’s idea if they change it as a result of interactions in the accelerator program).

Ever wonder why the rich keep getting richer?  Because it is really easy to make money when you already have it.

On my computer I have a series of folders with product ideas.  I am working through probably 5-7 right now, plus a few ideas for work-work because I might have a better chance at getting those moving.  All I really want to do is build something meaningful.  I still dream of the 8FE (8 Figure Exit), but a little pride, recognition and the feeling that I actually contribute something to society, would be nice.

This is college graduation month and I like hearing who the commencement speakers are.  I try to catch a few of the speeches on YouTube when I can.  This year Princeton is having author and alum Michael Lewis speak.  He was on Meet the Press this past Sunday and talked about how he decided to be an author at a young age, but that it was a costly decision that he would not have made 10 years later.  I am turning 40 and that realization is more poignant than ever.  Some of my greatest hits for roads not taken…

I quit IBT in 1995 to start a business called The Stofler System (named after a crater on the moon).  The idea was a wiring product for home theater rear channel speakers.  Sounds silly now, but no one was doing home theater 17 years ago.

There were the dark ages of my career in higher ed, we prefer to skip over that time.

In 2007, Joe and I talked about doing a data management analytics start up to manage data on our platform.  No one even used the word “cloud” back then.  Today there are at least 20 vendors.  I still think my marketing strategy of targeting banks, creditors and equity holders is better than selling the altruism of managing by metrics.  But it seems no one that I share that with agrees.  Bizlytic, I still think that’s a great name, I have other ideas for it.

A few years ago I read Global Trends 2025 published by the office of the Director of National Intelligence.  It talked about a future where micro-NGO’s would be operating in third world nations more than any other single entity.  I had a great idea to build a web platform to allow fundraising, organization, info-sharing, etc for what I thought would be a wave of college graduate PeaceCorps wanna-be’s.  Not to mention I would be adding value in the world.  Too late on that one too…

About 5-6 years ago I had a great idea to create a healthcare payments clearing house through Fido that would enable liquidity and enhanced efficiency.  I talked with Tom Sager one night at Peddlers and he thought it was a great idea.   Just the other day, the leading provider raised $14M in a follow-on round, wonder what that pre-money number was.  And they can’t even provide the money management component.

Just last month I had a great idea to do crowd sourced video that would let people produce entire movies filming on green screen with editing software.  Bunch of those already exist, though not the same model and definitely not to support green screen movie production.  Given what Suster says, I think this is the best way to lower per-minute production costs on high quality video to monetize on YouTube/Vimeo.

Chances are I am missing a great opportunity in Rockledge, FL right now.  Like everything else, I just can’t seem to find a way to make it happen.

If only I had some money and a studio full of developers.  Wouldn’t that be cool.  Those VC guys are right, it’s not the idea, it’s the execution.  What makes things happen, what gets things done?  The same as everything else in this world, MONEY.  For those that don’t get it (Mr. President) this is why capital markets are so important, it is also why finance is a product that has value in the US and what makes our export of financial services so critical.  Everyone has ideas.  I’m sure my readers right now have a few.  What makes them useful is the capital to make them reality.  Capital creates opportunity, opportunity creates jobs, jobs create wealth, wealth creates growth, growth creates more capital.  Fascinating, the economy is, hmmph?

Last fall, I interviewed a college senior for an entry level position at Fido.  This kid was unbelievably smart.  During a break I told them to hire him right now for a different career track.  Big companies don’t work that way and I was unsuccessful in persuading him to join and be a peon.  But I think I was successful in encouraging him to strike out on his own and take some risks, especially while he is young.  I haven’t heard from him in a few months, but I like to think that our little talk was like my commencement address to him.  Hopefully I was more inspiring than Roger W. Ferguson Jr. (president and CEO of TIAA-CREF).  Maybe Jaymin is taking the tough road, and not missing HIS opportunity.  Does that count as an opportunity I realized?

It could be that I suck at being a son because I never send mom a present or even a card.  I always remember to call.  She thinks I don’t remember and will sometimes call me with some silly excuse to talk to cover for what she thinks is my forgetfulness.  That’s how cool my mom is.

“Thanks” just doesn’t go far enough.  After the car accident (thanks a-hole drunk driver) mom gave up a lot to have me.  Throughout my life she did so too.  She found a way to work at home, and made numerous sacrifices for Jenn and I that only now do I recognize.  Seeing what my mom did for me throughout my life is much clearer now that I am a parent and try to place what I learned from her into context with Taylor and Haley.  In a lot of ways I think she did a much better job than we are.

I was spectacularly disrespectful to mom. Dad too, but more mom just cause I was a bad kid and she was around more, especially each day after school.  But there are lots of great memories that made me who I am.  I wonder if these anecdotes are some of the same ones she has for me.

I remember her teaching me to drive by letting me sit on her lap to steer in the neighborhood on the way home.

While I am blind as a bat and have trouble doing it today, I can still see clearly mom’s sewing class at the JCC and threading needles for her students.

I remember how happy she looked when grandpa came to pick me up on Sunday mornings to take me out to breakfast or Friday nights to go to shul.

I remember the birthday cakes and how long it took her to make each.  Spaceships, trains, cars, no matter what crazy shape I wanted, mom was getting it done long before Buddy on Cake Boss.

Some are funny and more contemporary memories.  Like my quilt.  The last (and I think only) hand-stitched quilt mom ever made was for me.  She absolutely HATES it, but it is really special to me.  I was maybe 10 and wouldn’t let her do any patterns (“no flowery paisly crap mom”) except one polka-dot and she thinks the colors are boring.  But to me it is earthy and plain and I love it.  If you have ever seen what mom can do with scissors and a sewing machine, you know what having a completed project actually means.

I love watching mom show the girls her butterflies and how she brought some chrysalises (that is spelled correct, I had to look it up) on the airplane up here from FLA so the girls could watch them hatch.

I remember the time she brought a whole suitcase of fresh grapefruit on the plane (before the surcharge days) because I asked how their trees were doing.

Mom loves shipping us stuff and everytime a UPS box arrives, we always get a kick out of quessing what it will be (even if we forget to call).

My mom is really cool and while she drives me nuts, she wouldn’t be who she is if she didn’t.  And who I am, what I feel, how I think, what I hope for, is all affected by her and what she does every day, even now, to make me a better and more likeable person.

Thanks mom, and happy mother’s day.

Yeah that Paul Krugman.  I don’t care what degree he has or who gave him a prize.  He may be a genius, but when he acts like an idiot, someone should call him on it.  This isn’t my idea, it is his argument.  He noted that someone should call out Ron Paul when he gets facts wrong.  I think he is correct when he says in that same post that face-to-face debates are silly because you can’t present data.  What you present instead are ideas.  And when he presents stupid ideas, someone should call him on it.  Eric Schmidt (Google) tried but his argument was flawed.  Details please?  Yeah I hear you.

I just got finished with this past week’s episode of This Week with George Stephanopoulos.  There was talk on the show of how to get the economy growing.  Krugman continues to argue that a bigger stimulus is needed to get out of the current “depression.”  He notes that private sector employment is back to pre-recession levels, so when questioned if government should hire the unemployed he replied “… the government should actually re-hire the 300,000 school teachers who have been laid off because of — because of misplaced austerity …”

If you know me, you know that I am a strong supporter of education, and at a local level, I believe in much higher funding levels because I want better equipment, teachers, schools, resources, etc.  Colleges and universities need a MAJOR theoretical overhaul.  Primary and secondary education has been neglected for too long.  To ignore an opportunity to make quantum shifts, is just stupid, and ‘calling’ it the way Schmidt did, is simplistic and misses the point.  He replied “…the easy way to do the 300,000 is to do government block grants. I’ve never understood why government can’t do one-time grants. The government basically funds things, but then they become perpetual.”

This is a good point and seems to address the original point about spending stimulus money, creating jobs and ‘investing’ in education, but why would we just rehire the teachers en-masse?  People need to question fundamentals.  In a similar theme, on March 19, 2002 there was a Congressional hearing I was watching on CSPAN (you know me).  This was just after the INS had sent Mohammed Atta his student visa approval.  The House Judiciary committee held hearings on how the INS screwed this up.  I am listening to testimony about how the applications are sent to a vendor and the vendor (ACS, $3B revenue) does some data entry and then puts the images on microfilm.  There is a lot of discussion about how long it takes to get the film back, and how the vendor is planning to work with INS to get it back quicker and they even modified their contract to do so.  Good ideas to fix the current problem of time delays and helping the operations of the INS.  But I am SCREAMING at the TV, “Microfilm!?! We can’t burn the image to a CD so we can actually search it on a computer instead of some stupid 1950’s overhead projector?!?”  Well there was a lot more colorful language, but you get the point.  None of the Congressmen did.

People need to fundamentally rethink the way we do things.  Does the Ryan budget plan “end Medicare as we know it”?  Yes and it should.  Why else would Health Care “reform” have to pass provisions that target “waste, fraud and abuse” in Medicare.  The administrator can’t have operational procedures to fix that which is already illegal (fraud)?  If we come to know something as one way and we change it, by definition, that ends it as we know it.  Same with Welfare reform in 1994, and no children died starving on the streets.

Think about the 300K teachers.  A fully loaded (benefits, FICA, overhead, management) teacher costs probably $100K per year.  So the one year cost of Krugman’s idea is $30B.  But if we look at that $30B as an opportunity to rethink education, imagine what it could do.  And how exactly has student performance looked over the past 20 years?  Would the same exact 300K teachers suddenly change that trajectory?

For $1B in the first year, you could buy tablets for 1M students and give them unlimited internet service for the year.  For $3B, you could fund an education pool for those 300K teachers at $10K each to take two programming classes, plus memberships in Codecademy, Lynda.com, etc.  Add in another $2B to fund a venture fund managed by professional VCs to look for high tech education opportunities (built by those teachers) that would require mere breakeven profit models (who cares about a 10x return at this point).  Let’s throw in a $2B fund to pay bonuses to students (up to $2K each) that excel in their coursework and/or show significant improvements.  So what are we left with? At the end of 1 year you spend only $8B and you get; Retrained education-experienced developers, Close the technology gap with (what will probably be) lower income students, Create a scholastic incentive to achieve, and Fund the development of lots of new startup businesses themed like Khan Academy or something we haven’t even dreamed (which by the way, could be sold to other countries).

Would it work?  Who knows, but it would cost less, be something new, and address problems in a way that doesn’t lead to the stagnation of the past 30 years in education.  Would it pass?  Who knows, I don’t get to sell creative ideas on This Week, or Meet the Press or the floor of any hall for that matter.  The people who are, have a responsibility to be smarter than that silly watered down hire-more-teachers union-liberal-dogma-crap.   I only have 1 degree, no Nobel gold medal and it would seem I can be more creative than Dr. Krugman.

A few minutes later in the debate they talk about how the investment in GM (how did liberals manage to change the language of “government spending” to “investment”) which was out of the box thinking by the Obama administration, worked so well.  So why is it a great idea for GM to start from scratch, lay off a bunch of workers, restructure union agreements, change the product model, but not for education?  When faced with the same opportunities in education, Medicare reform, and SS reform we lose all sense of creativity?  Is that what smart people do?  Because if creative thought is both good and bad but only when Krugman says so, I agree that We’re Doomed.

Point 2 of Krugman being an idiot…Oh wow, this post is getting long.  Suffice it to say his notion that the US doesn’t have a worker shortage in high tech (have you seen how many Indians are here as developers?) and that companies don’t move where taxes are cheaper (because the data says so), well these are just ludicrous.  I noticed in his bio, while the professor has written 20 books and 200 papers, he has never had a job in industry.  How can he possibly comment on a company’s decision making process vis-a-vis their tax preferences, using macro-economic statistics as a leading indicator?  You really think a CEO says, “We need to move to a new office building.  Hmm, let’s not move to a state with lower tax rates because history shows that when states lower tax rates it doesn’t necessarily increase their total tax receipts.”  Individuals make decisions based on financial facts and intuitions, economies do not make decisions.

An egg-head isn’t always smart.  Someone who didn’t go to the same Ivy league schools isn’t necessarily less-smart.  But the genius is correct, when you act dumb, no matter who you are, someone should call you out on it.

Ben Horowitz starts a lot of his posts with a song quote.  When I started thinking through this one, I couldn’t stop singing this song in my head even though it’s not really relevant.

Regrets, I’ve had a few; But then again, too few to mention. I did what I had to do And saw it through without exemption.        -Frank Sinatra  “My Way”

The other day marked one quarter (the 27th) of the year and half way to my goals deliverable which I targeted for my birthday.  I was thinking of my progress to date and my new motto “Self-Control and Focus.”   That lead to thoughts of how I have made a lot of choices to sit on the couch on many nights instead of getting things done, which finally leads to regrets that I have.  At some point, I will get this question in an interview.  So let’s get some prep work done.  This has been a good exercise just writing it down, I would recommend it for everyone.   “Mr. Rutstein, what is your biggest regret?”

There are two kinds of regrets.  Some are just choices you make in life, we evaluate these on how they affect our decision making process in the future.  Hopefully, we learn from them.  I wanted to cite a few examples:

• I should have done homework in high school, I was smarter than my grades reflect as college showed.  I also should have kept my mouth shut more – special apologies to Miss Moynahan, Mrs. Peal and Mr. Fitzpatrick
• I should have played football in HS, I would have been a great corner
• Sucking up debt to live at college would have been worth it.
• I screwed up so many interviews at Bentley, I won’t even mention those
• Megan and I should have dated more people so we could have had the perspective to appreciate each other more
• I should have taken the $5000 offer for the Alfa
• After quitting IBT in 1995, I should have really started a business, not that half-hearted crap.  Home theatre then, was a great opportunity
• I should have focused on my career instead of working on the house at 30 Windsor, probably the same here in Salem
• I should have stuck with programming on my Commodore 64 and kept with it now
• Respect your parents more than I did

These are all lessons I have learned, and I think about them when similar choices come now or when the results of those choices become poignant.  But they aren’t the second kind of regret.  The life altering kind.  This is something that changes your path in life and affects the core of who you are.  If someone asks “what is your biggest regret” you should know it right away, because it hits you every moment of every day.

“I should have served my country in the Armed Forces.”  If you know me and how I approach politics and civil discourse, it probably makes sense that I regret this one.  I will walk it through.

My dad served in the Navy and my grandfather served in the Army in WWI.  I have two uncles that served as well.  Growing up, dad talked about his service, but more in the context of stories that he remembered;  Dragging the MG with a troop transport to free a ceized engine, his friends, fixing a radar with a meter that somehow would only work when attached, mess hall serving better food than my grandmother (that is a whole separate thread that I will deal with at another time, but it’s a funny string of stories that my grandmother would love).  Dad’s service is important to him and I used to like to wear his coat (which wasn’t his, another funny story) but he never displayed his military career in any sort of overt way.

I had always thought of joining the military.  I wanted to join the Navy like he did and fly.  In the 80s after Top Gun, who didn’t?  I remember dad took a trip to Mirimar for work and I wanted to go and just walk around.  It wasn’t until I met Tom (father in law) that I really started to think through the specifics.  Tom’s career was much different and he displays his medals and citations around the house.  Each has a story, only some of which I have been privy.  He recommended that with my 18 year old mouth (yeah that is a pervasive theme) and inability to take orders, that I should only consider service after college and try to become an officer.  That actually worked with my flying plans.  Despite the first Gulf War while I was in college, I always thought this is the way I would go.

College changed this, but before I detail why, let me be 100% clear.  I don’t blame anyone for my decisions, these are all on me.  And while I regret this decision, I am not sure that given other choices I made that I would have made this one differently.  A whole series of events would have needed to be different.  So while I regret the way things unfolded, it is the result of life and not because I was pushed somewhere.

As with any story, it begins with a girl.  Megan was always supportive of me joining the military, we talked about it during college a good bit.  Being a military brat, she knew exactly what it was like (even though she can’t spell Huachuca:) ).  As our relationship evolved, I saw more and more how military life effected her.  She was quiet, shy, in a way that was always the source of jokes with friends.  “Was Megan ok last night?  She hardly spoke”…”Yeah she’s just quiet.”

I attributed this character trait to growing up and moving around.  By college, she had only lived 3-4 years outside of the military construct.  We were getting closer and she was opening up and developing close relationships, the kind you only grow by being around people for a sustained period of time and having stability.  Could I really ask her to go back to a life of moving around following me?  Her success in college definitely pointed at a career that could not sustain picking up and moving every few years.  Would that lead to resentment?

Despite the crappy job market in 1993, the 4 months I spent landscaping, and the HORRIBLE first job I eventually landed, I decided against enlisting.  1993 was a strange time politically.  The country was in the midst of being convinced that a smaller and nimbler military was all that was needed to win wars.  I believe that was about the time that the 2MRC strategy went into effect.  Also, I had been following the procurement of the F22 and JSF programs and knew that better planes than the F14 were on the way.  I would have to truly be “the best of the best” to fly fighter jets.  No one inspired me to take risks in life back then, I just didn’t have that sort of circle, and I never read anything inspirational.  So I took the other route and went back to being inspired by another movie of the 80’s “Wall Street” (yeah I know, but back then I didn’t understand it as the social commentary Stone meant).

Over the years I have had thoughts of going back and enlisting in the National Guard.  The age maximum is 35 and as I watched that creep up, something always got in the way.

After 9/11 my brother-in-law enlisted in the Army and he has developed a career that amazes me.  I miss skiing with him, but every day I think about the fact that he gets to make a difference in the world.  As of yet, I have contributed exactly nothing.  I remember talking to him just before a deployment a few years ago.  “Take care of yourself and be safe.”  I will never forget his response, and this was right around the time that his daughter was a newborn,

“Fuck that.  We’re the US Army, we lead from the front.”

If you know a soldier who has a family, you know the toll that it takes on what is normally a pretty boring home life.  Their devotion to their unit and country is beyond question.  It’s something I wish I could experience firsthand, something that I wish I had in me, something I wish that was part of me.  It has changed the course of my life and effected who I am.  I am turning 40, I am in the best shape of my life and while I read every Navy SEAL workout program I can find and train as hard as I can, I will never be that guy.  No one will ever think of me the way I think of Ian, Tom, Dad, and the millions of others that can say something that I can’t:  I love this country so much, that I was willing to risk (or give) my life for it.  I follow the news and I write my little blog and someday I hope to run for office, but that is all just my way of making up for the gaping hole in my resume that will never be filled.  Imagine having military service as the cornerstone of every decision you make;  Should I cut corners in production, should we offshore these jobs, if we use chemicals it will preserve this food longer, how can we squeeze more profit.

How can anything be more regrettable than that?

This morning driving into work I was listening to my Supreme Court podcast and the oral arguments from last week’s Affordable Care Act testimony.  Justice Scalia had a really funny comment that drew laughter from the attendees in the court.  It reminded me of something at work that I wanted to joke about.  Poking fun at your friends is always good to keep spirits light and my friend Chris has a good heart.

While on an extremely boring call at my desk I searched for the quote so that I could get it right.  I searched Bing for “Justice Scalia 8th Amendment Healthcare”.  The results are a little different right now but at the time the Politico article was third or fourth.  Normally, I like and trust Politico.  Scalia’s quote to the Solicitor General is as follows…

Mr. Kneedler, what happened to the Eighth Amendment? You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?            (Laughter.)       And do you really expect the Court to do that? Or do you expect us to — to give this function to our law clerks?  Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one?

Politico goes on with the following, which if you don’t know the Constitution (I have a copy on the dash of my truck) makes the joke.

The 8th amendment is the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The bill’s length and complexity were a major GOP talking point in 2010.

People talk about the “liberal media” all the time (well Newt does at least) but no one talks about how exactly they get away with it.  It’s not obvious like when Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman gushed over Michelle Obama on MSNBC.  That stuff is obnoxious.  Look at the line above “…a major GOP talking point in 2010.”  The word “major” implies a certain sarcasm in the way that “often cited” would not, but the overt meaning is the same.  The use of “GOP” is a political term instead of using the word “opponents” which is actually more accurate.  And “talking point” implies that it was rehearsed and coordinated by the central party organization instead of saying “theme”.  You walk away from reading this thinking that Justice Scalia is making fun of the bill before he even rules and is trying to score political points.  Your opinion is easily tainted by a few otherwise innocuous and well chosen words.  (I will concede he screwed up the “Cornhusker kickback” comment because that isn’t in the final bill).

Let’s set this aside for a second.  I follow Mark Suster’s blog closely (not “religiously” because that would imply I view it as dogmatic – word choice).  He once talked about being a news junkie which made my heart jump.  And then he wrote “But I tape the shows. I can’t watch them live because I have to skip through the guest interviews. I’m tired of hearing one side of the story – it’s pre-packaged BS. I like the round table discussions they have later in the show because you get to hear opposing views.”  This was disheartening, but I think most Americans act the same way.  Here is someone who claims to want news, and then bypasses the pure for that packaged and artificial stuff.  I agree 100% with his idea of getting opposing views, but how on earth are you supposed to put those views in context without knowing the true facts upon which the commentators base their views?

In this world of social media, what you read and share (who else is sick of those FB posts, “Joe Schmoe just read…”) is very important and we have a duty to curate that media.  More critical is to police your own inbound feed so that you don’t only consume opinion material.  Get your own facts.

Back to Politico.  If I didn’t know any better I would be irritated at Scalia for using a political reference to the 2700 pages.  Another site “ThinkProgress.org” had an article condemning the jurist for having the audacity to pronounce that the court shouldn’t have to read a bill that it was about to pass judgement upon.  Yeah dammit, that would surely turn me into a true blue liberal, dying to get those crazy radical Republicans off the bench.

But that’s not what happened.  That was not the context of the quote.  And I know that because I heard the exchange.  I got the raw data and I processed it myself.

You may be surprised to know, but a good chunk of the questioning was about “Severability”.  The idea that if one part of a law is deemed unconstitutional, can the rest of the law exist without it.  Normally this would not be a problem or even an issue.  Most bills have a specific clause that states clearly whether Congress intends the bill to be severable.  But in 2700 pages this time they forgot.  There is a general rule in the House that says that all bills are severable, but where does that leave the Supreme Court?  Justice Breyer actually made a great analogy about an expenditure that is funded by two taxes 50% each.  If one is ruled unconstitutional, then the expense can’t be incurred without the funding revenue.  But should the government keep collecting the other tax?  In that case the law is clearly not severable.

The exchange with the Solicitor General and Justice Scalia was about how to determine if a law should continue to operate if part of it is severed.  The SG said that the courts would need to evaluate that test on the merits.  At which point Justice Scalia raised an obvious red flag.  Criticisms of an activist court are tied to the need to seek “Legislative Intent” when Congress is vague.  Does the Executive branch really expect the Judiciary to rule on every point of the ACA seeking to understand what Congress really meant?  This might include spending provisions like a program to fund abstinence awareness (that was one of the examples).  As Justice Scalia pointed out, who would even have standing on a spending bill?

My point is this:  Journalists are really smart and they write very well.  You have to be careful when your read or listen to processed news in the same way that you have to be careful when you eat processed food.  I like my vegetables as close to the plant as I can get them.  I would pick them if I had the time.  To get my news fresh, I would sit in the halls of Congress and the Judiciary all day long if I had the time.  But that wouldn’t work.  My news grocery store is the internet…I just make sure I know the farmer actually grows the food instead of manufacturing it.

We were talking at work the other day about how after a Patriots night game (aka kickoff after 4pm) it’s hard to get into work the next day.  To paint the picture, a 4:15 game ends at 7:45, back to the tailgate by 8:00.  Grills on, eat supper and watch the night game until traffic calms down (usually halftime).  Pack up and hit the road around 9:30-10 which means pulling into the driveway at 11:30 after you drop off the crew.  Lets not talk about the 8:30 game, too painful.  The question came up: On Monday why can’t you call in sick for a hangover?

It seems so obvious: duh Slappy, you are hungover because you drank too much, it’s your own damn fault and was totally avoidable.  Response: I feel sick as a dog, should it matter WHY and HOW I got to be feeling this way?

Not that I advocate this kind of behavior but the guy has a point.  We work with another knucklehead who smokes like a chimney.  He is away from his desk at least 45 minutes to an hour each day walking downstairs and outside to smoke his cigarettes.  Inevitably, he is going to get sick more than us.  So since he makes a choice to pollute his body and create a situation that increases the likelihood of illness, should we not also question those sick days?  And if you don’t, why do you draw the line at a self-induced hangover?  Would a skiing accident or falling off the ladder of your house be any different (both avoidable)?

I know what you are thinking, this sounds like some adolescent excuse to drink and not go to work, but I think the issue merits discussion about the notion of healthcare and personal responsibility.  Last week Justice Scalia asked why you can’t make people purchase broccoli because it makes them healthier.  The corollary= Should we grant you sick status even when you haven’t taken reasonable steps to keep yourself healthy?

Side note: I predict that Justice Ginsburg will pen the decision (inc Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer) upholding the individual mandate (invalidates the need to rule on separability)with Justice Roberts writing a separate concurring opinion that very narrowly defines the conditions for a 5:4 majority.  It will be her last opinion and she will retire giving Obama one last appointment before the SC term starts in October.  The Senate confirmation will be SO contentious that America will get fed up with Republicans and Obama will get re-elected.

I’d like to see some more conversations about personal responsibility in healthcare.  I know I seem cruel, but fat people should pay more for insurance.  As an adrenaline junky, I should too (offset partially by my regular exercise and diet).  I admitted that I was once diagnosed with asthma and had to pay a higher life insurance premium (I think it is just allergies).  I am at about 10% bodyfat and can run a half marathon in 1:45 but I am a higher risk than a couch potato eating MCDs all day but doesn’t have asthma?  Please.

If we say that personal responsibility has no effect on your risk profile for health insurance then how can we say that personal irresponsibility is not a valid excuse for using your sick days when you actually feel sick?  Yeah I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but I can’t stand the inconsistency with this stuff.  If you believe in a theoretical course of action, then you should follow it through wherever it applies.  If nothing else, it should force people to think through their positions a little more thoroughly rather than just blindly listening to Limbaugh, O’Reilley, Maddow or Maher.