We have lost our way

As I watch news talk shows and listen to the hosts and guest discuss the problems of our society, government and news stories, there is always a common question that comes to mind.  Don’t you think this problem is rooted in a cultural misdirection?

I say this in my head over and over.  Our cultural misdirection are forms of instant gratification.  The American Dream still lives but it seems people are not taking advantage of the opportunities that exist.

Whether you are discussing education, labor costs, federal budgeting, or healthcare the root of the issue can trace back to wanting something for nothing.

Education is not a funding issue.  Education is a value issue.  We have to value the education.  Value comes from the elder care takers of the student.  In its simplest form, parents must instill the value into the child.  We have lost our way on this tenet of our society.  If more parents took a more active role in the students life, more schools would be successful.  As any teacher and they would tell you this.  Teachers would prioritize parental involvement way above salary in terms of making education more successful.

High labor costs are often rooted in unions and minimum wage.  Smart organizations will modify their bidding to market value.  The more intimidating of unions will hike up the bids and demand a larger stake even at the risk of putting workers on the sidelines.  We lost our way.  We want something for nothing.  Government workers should be paid equally as the same job function as private sector workers.   Unions can be useful as a collective force, but when they power grab, they hurt themselves and the economy as a whole.

Budgeting at home is a challenge for many people.  But we have to weigh our wants and needs to create the financial balance.  Those who have more wants tend to incur debt to make that happen which can lead to troubles later.  Federal budgeting is a disaster right now.  Something as simple as only spending what you can collect in taxes from the people, is derailed because we want something for nothing.  No matter who you want to blame individually or collectively (democrats or republicans), the fact remains we don’t have a budget.  The argument is spend less or tax more.  We want something for nothing.

Healthcare is the grandest example of “something for nothing”.  Healthcare is trying to fix itself by throwing money at it.  The real fix to a healthy community is the individual who needs to take care of themselves.  Our instant gratification has lead us to obesity.  Obesity leads to diabetes and cancers.  I simplify, yes, but you do recognize that your chances of good health go up when you keep yourself fit and healthy.

We have lost our way.

We can find it again.  Every individual can do this.

Earn more than you spend.

Learn everything you can.  Be productive and valued.

Don’t feed your ego with money.   It’s not about money, its about respect from peers.

To solve a problem, you must identify the problem.  Just because an answer feels good, be sure it addresses the problem even in the face of unpopularity.   In most cases, the identification of the problem is the hard part.  The fix is the easy part.

Take care of yourself physically.  Instant gratification with food, tobacco, drugs, or booze can quickly lead you down the wrong path in the long run.  In the same methodology of finances, burn more calories than you consume.  Exercise.  Sweat at least once a day.

Avoid advertising.  Throw out flyers, catalogs, and other mailings that suck you in and try to convince you to purchase something.  You will be happier for it.

Get 8 hours of sleep.

Work hard and hug your kids.

Teaching your kids sports will benefit everyone.  Learning to lose is more valuable than winning.

Wear sunscreen.

Gratuitous Image

Sorry for the image.  Caught your eye right?

This is a followup to this old post ( http://craighope.com/wordpress/?p=1390 ).

I like Instant Messaging (IM) and I had it.

I like the “instant” feedback (duh).  I like that you can have multiple convo’s simultaneously.  I like that you can archive the conversation.

I dislike IM because it can be intrusive, bothersome, and too interrupting.  When you get an IM, you feel you have to respond immediately as opposed to email or a phone call.  Where you have multiple convo’s (a like) it is also a bother when you are having a convo and someone IM’s you and interrupt.  They don’t know you are having other IM’s going (not their fault).  I wish I could see how many convo’s others have going so that I can think twice about my need to IM then.

In my opinion, the best way to IM is to open it up during a conference call and have side conversations with your colleagues.  You can have a little sidebar while the conf call is going on then engage with better info.

People often misuse IM.  If your question, comment, whatever is something that can be responded to later, send an email.  When you send an email, people have the courtesy (mostly) to respond to do you in a timely manner.  An email (in my opinion) is something of a task that sits in my inbox that I will get to eventually.  Priorities range.

One thing I can’t stand is this.  I will send someone an email of minor importance but requires a response and that email NEVER gets responded to.  That pisses me off.  When you never respond, I interpret that as “I am not that important”.  To that I say F off!

Moving on…

I’ve witnessed this phenomenon where people refrain from using email for the reason that they don’t want their words “recorded”.  I don’t get this line of thinking at all.  In my estimation, no matter how you communicate your message will be remembered no matter if it is an email or not.   If you write, say, communicate something that later changes in nature of fact etc. that’s fine.  You have the right to retract or change your message.  Maybe its because people are afraid of being wrong.  I get that, but I also respect you more if you can admit you were incorrect about something.  Moving on…

What have we learned?

Use email when don’t need immediate feedback.  Use IM only if necessary, don’t overuse it.

My personal belief is that everyone should buy insurance coverage.  It is the prudent thing to do in order to take of yourself and your loved ones.  I also don’t believe that our system of government should force people to purchase.  I believe in that inherent freedom at the same time understand the reality.

So here we are.  You win Liberals.  You have once again created a program under the guise of basic human rights.  While at the same time with little regard of how to pay for it.   Like always you use the term “shared sacrifice” but it boils down to putting the burden on all the people.  Not all people, but the wealthiest of the people.

There are realities to funding something so large and so overreaching.   We are seeing it with Social Security, Veterans administration, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Let’s only talk about how to implement a “mandate”.  How do we enforce/encourage all the citizenry to get health coverage insurance?

The car insurance analogy gets tossed around.  The only difference is that we choose to buy a car thus we have to carry insurance.  This is a choice.  With your health, there is no absolute that can assure you never visit a doctor or ER which WILL treat you and then the costs get spread among the paying consumers.  You can claim you never get sick, but you can’t guarantee it.  If your religion dictates no medical attention or use of modern science, we can allow for that.  However, there may come a time when you are unconscious and end up in a medical facility needing treatment.  The people who don’t want insurance is a small portion of the entire population (maybe 5% or less).

I don’t know the answer to this 5% outlier.  My only thought is a national registry of exempt individuals based on either self insured (more in a second) or religious reasons.  If you are on this list, you don’t get treatment.  Sort of a like a living will or do not resuscitate order.  Maybe a “medic alert” bracelet equivalent.   If you claim to be self insured, you must keep a special account active and well funded.  That account must be referenced before treatment is administered.  This sounds somewhat complicated and when executed by a federal system, it is sure to be performed poorly.  If you ever receive treatment while on this exemption, you are then put into the system by way of the “penalty” that is added to your taxation.  Probably another can of worms.

Our health care system works from the Hippocratic Oath premise that everyone who needs treatment will get treatment.  If we somehow establish an exemption system where people can choose and accept the consequence of no treatment we can stop calling coverage a mandate.

Heck, it may pay for itself.  Those who refuse medical science probably live shorter lives.   I’m speculating.

The show is successful.  Network TV successful.  This means they make money, big money.  Yet the cash payouts to the winners (their charity) are small by comparison.  They range from $20k to $50k which probably equates the interest earned by Trumps accounts on a daily basis.

I don’t want to sound like a whiney 99%’er and criticize the people who give by saying they don’t give enough.  I want to shine a light on any endeavor that uses “in the name of charity” to pull at the strings of the viewer to enterprise the greater thing. Trump is using all of these celebs and their chosen charity to air a network tv show that makes millions.

It’s not unlike the Pink Ribbon breast cancer organization.  They all pay their top people a handsome salary “in the name of the charity” and they do good things.  I understand the overhead involved.  The end result is charity funds.   That should be the end of it.

Does this bother you?  If you had the power to shutdown the operation and the charitable money dried up, would you feel ok about that?

Food for thought.

Fall Sports have begun, school started for the kids, and the 2012 election cycle about to really get moving there are things that need to be discussed.  I apologize if I offend anyone.

We have 2 voting tribes in this country.  Republican and Democrat.  We also have a non tribal faction.  Call them Libertarian or Independent.  Whatever you call them, they sway our general elections.  People on the left and right are going to vote like they always do along tribal lines.  That much we know.  The people in the middle are a different stripe.  They can shift directions.  Kudos for their voting efforts.

Voters are generally apathetic and uneducated on issues and policy.  They tend to be especially uneducated on how policy directly effects them.  Too many voters in the middle fall prey to attack ads (notice how these ads show up the final day before the election) and issues that don’t really matter in terms of policy that makes this country great (social issues).

I would implore people to stop watching real housewives and start reading up on your candidates and the issues.  There is no excuse in this information age.  The information is readily available.  Read both sides of the issue.  Avoid blogger and opinion pieces.  Don’t read material that supports your preconceived thoughts/opinions.  If you’re a lefty, don’t watch MSNBC.  If you’re a righty, don’t watch Fox News.  Watch and listen to the other channel.   …this is just an example.

Where are we headed as a nation?  We are slowly creeping toward an unsustainable entitlement driven society.  We have labor that is too expensive because of unions who bully the process and neglect to train and educate their own ranks.  We expect the top wealth to support the bottom 50%.  We have a mentality to help the less fortunate at any cost while not investigating the paths to help those who can help themselves.  We have an education system that throws money at the wide range of problems without holding parents and students accountable.

Feeding this is a generation of coddled kids who lack a work discipline, an inability to compete while thinking they are “competitive”.  Video games, helicopter parents who gush over their kids, and excessive participation trophies do not lay a decent enough foundation for creativity, the ability to deal disappointment and failure, or a drive to make something out of nothing.  Sprinkled into all of this is a hair trigger on playing the victim card in life.

Times are tougher economically.  People are out of work.  Business is not hiring (draw your own conclusion why).  They are not dire and will improve.  We see those with less than they had in the 90′s but yet more than those had in WWII.  There are enough programs to tide us over until we pull ourselves up.

We have a banking system holding toxic assets that has shrunk credit and lowered interest rates.  This helps upper end borrow at nothing, invest, and produce decent returns but the same banking system is not lending to small business.

What can we be doing?

Start with an education.  We need less emphasis on liberal arts and more focus on technical skills.  Accounting, science, and trades are the key.  Empower a generation with skills that solve problems and build something.

Healthcare is not going to improve because everyone pays an insurance premium.  Health only gets better by eating right and exercising more.  I know this sounds simplistic but it is largely true.  A healthy society is a happy and capable society of workers.  Less disability thus less entitlement spending.

Politics will change if everyone understands the issues at hand and stops blindly following their tribe.  This is the information age.  We can elect true representatives if we work at it as much as we do our devotion to little league.  60% turnout during elections is shameful.  Those 40% have no right to complain about government when they are unhappy with the results.  Cast an educated vote and not an emotional vote.

No matter where you lean (left of right), you have to figure out a way to pay for your program.  If you want everyone to have free healthcare, free retirement, you have to fund it somehow.  If you want businesses to go unregulated, you have to find a way to fix any collateral damage of unemployment, crime, and environmental issues.

My name is Craig Hope and I can use your vote.  

Pippa Middleton

I have never thought Maria Shriver was attractive.  I think Pippa Middleton is an easy “7″ but not as “hot” as people seem to rave about.

As a conservative, I am disappointed at who we have (thus far) running for 2012.  Newt is not the answer.  I would never vote for Palin.

Floods happen.  Don’t buy property in a flood plain.

This nation should cut spending more than it should raise taxes.  It’s common sense.  Would you take a cash advance on your Visa to pay your cable bill?

We need to get the hell out of Afghanistan.  They are living in the stone age and don’t want to change.  Why should we impose the Kardashians on them?

Amnesty for immigrants and raise consumption tax on goods and services.

If you buy a large SUV or Truck because you think its safer, YOU are now the menace on the road.

I don’t watch Oprah.

Teens today who smoke should not be allowed to vote when they turn 18.  They have proven 1. They make bad decisions.  2. They fall easy prey to their equally stupid peers and can’t think for themselves.

You can save money by stop thumbing through catalogs.  Out of sight, out of mind.

I’ve never ridden on a train.

Avoid going into debt with student loans with a major in social work.  Get the accounting degree first, then save the world.

Obama proved he was a US citizen and not a Muslim all in the same week.

Glaciers were melting long before humans drove cars.

Baseball is a nuanced game and full of players who barely graduated high school.

I need to eat more chicken.

I used to be way more tidy when I was younger and the days before having kids around.  My college roommate Adam can attest to this.  He was not so tidy. Everyday he would return to our dorm room and flop his book bag right behind the chair to my desk.  Every time I needed to use the desk, I had to push the damn thing out of the way.  It drove me crazy.  Adam never grasped what the bid deal was.  After a while, I know he did it just to get a rise out of me.

Fast forward to the toddler years.  All the stuff that accumulates with having babies/toddlers/kids is a maddening.  I quickly learned to let it go.  It starts with the primary colored rattles, swings, saucers, special spoons and bowls, sippy cups, and all the other wrangling devices we use to confine the toddlers. These just make their home in the living room for about 2 years.  Your house looks like the physical therapy gym for Willie Wonka’s staff.

Why can’t it look like the Pottery Barn for Kids ad ?!?!?!?!?!!?!

Our kids are old enough now to manage their own tidying.   Notice that I said “old enough” and not “willing”.  It’s a slow program thus far.  They do a fair job at “cleaning their rooms” which is to say the merely move all the crap from one location to another with a slightly less cluttered feel.

*Warning* If you are full OCD, you should probably stop reading now or pick up the phone and schedule an appointment with your therapist.

The behavior that drives me nuts?  Leaving things around.  They leave their socks in every room.  And not just a pair, they leave one sock here and another sock over there as if they are leaving breadcrumbs to find their way back.  I don’t get it.  They leave the drawers open after they retrieve something.  Board games are never put back together and they leave the pieces and cards all over.  I have a basket in their room where I simply toss the random stuff to be later sorted out.

Our house was built to accommodate a small version of the Brady Bunch.  The kids rooms adjoin with a bathroom.  Two sinks, one for each.  Shower and toilet.  You’d think the universe is in order.   Oh… NoOOOO!!!!   The little buggers have to use our bathroom.  Is there some human nature where primping is communal?  It was our desire for them to use THEIR bathroom, to have them fight over the time spent in there and bond over the experience.  Mostly just don’t mess up our bathroom.  Isolate your filth in your bathroom.  It hasn’t worked.

In our bathroom, Emmie leaves her box of earrings on the counter all the time and neglects to put back in the drawer.  She brushes her teeth in our bathroom and leaves her toothbrush laying out.  She will shower in our bathroom and leave her dirty clothes on the floor.   …are you dialing your therapist yet?

I will be in the other room knowing she is brushing her teeth and hear the “SPLEUPHT” of  her spitting efforts.  I use the term “spitting” quite loosely.  It resembles the sloppy sneeze of a rhino instead of the precise spit of a viper (“spsst”).   The end result is a constant dried pasty film on the sink basin and sometimes the clump of toothpaste that never seems to breakdown during the brushing process.  It’s annoying and disgusting.

The bedrooms are insanity.  Toys and pieces of toys are everywhere.  About twice a year we will get in there and go through everthing and tidy up by consolidating those board game pieces, throw out old toys, DVD’s back in their jewel cases, and generally put things in their place.

The Little Pet Shop toys are the worst.   Each character has 23 pieces.  Where do all the stuffed animals come from?  I fear I am going to move the stuffed animals and find ET staring back at me.

This euphoria of tidiness lasts about 10 hours.  And within 2 days, it looks as if nothing was ever cleaned up.  The room looks like mobsters came in to ransack the place.

The kitchen.  You can imagine.  Adults are bad enough.  Kids leave wrappers everywhere, crumbs, and the floor is nothing but dried mac and cheese and cereal bits.  Here is a slight upside though.  Go buy a rechargeable vacuum that can be quickly deployed for getting that stuff sucked up.  The kids actually like to do this one.  We bought the Electrolux broom.  It is a dust buster on a stick but with more umph than what we grew up with.

We have tried to implement programs of allowance.  They don’t last.  The kids are well fed, their clothes are clean, so why should they bother.  We figured that throwing a few sheckles at them, they might come around.  We share the same last name which means we can’t violate any labor laws.

I have but one victory in all of this chaos. I have successfully trained them to leave the TV remote in the same place. Thank God for that.

I suppose I will just have to live with it.  Or I can kick my other plan into action.  I want to hire a non-english speaking 18 year old Swedish maid.  I am taking applications.  I will do my due diligence and check references on Angie’s List.

Send photo’s with resume.

Either way, with this new pace there are some things we should consider before sending that text, email or Wall Post on Facebook.

By the way, a great book on communication (in general).  Crucial Conversations.

1. Stop forwarding emails with no context. We have all received the email with the long winded diatribe about why conservatives are smarter than liberals or why Bush lied.  Aside from the annoying political slant of the content, you need to at least forward with comment (“I found this funny… enjoy.”  or “what a crock… be appalled with me on this…”).  In a business setting, when you forward me something at least tell me what you want me to do with this.  It isn’t always obvious.

Even worse are those urban legend emails about winning a trip to Disney if you forward to 100 people.  This crap has been around since AOL was the king online service.  Stop it already.  Before you forward this crap, get some info on the topic from Snopes.com.

2.  Proper “Reply” vs “Reply to All”.  If you receive an email that was addressed to all parties and your response will benefit the group, reply to all.  If your response won’t be appreciated by the group or sensitive in some way, then by all means reply to the sender.  I don’t know how many times trying to figure out a date or time for the group when everyone starts replying to individuals and the conversation gets way off course.

3.  Facebook Wall Posts vs Messaging. I don’t know what people are thinking sometimes.  I often see a Facebook wall post with somewhat personal information/questions that are way better suited in a more private setting.  Everyone can see the wall post!  Send those private things through messaging.

4.  The Voicemail that says “hey its me, call me”. It makes more sense to actually leave a message about the subject you want to discuss.  Open ended “call me” is my signal to call back whenever.  I do this a lot.  I call back much later than the originator expected.  ”why didn’t you call me yesterday?”  …”cuz you didn’t say to…”

5.  Avoid all of the above while drinking. I think this is self explanatory.   We don’t want to put ourselves in any situation where the NFL has to investigate texted pictures or voicemail from a mistress.  Loose lips sink ships.

6. DO NOT BCC !!!!!. The dreaded Blind Carbon Copy.  If the BCC victim ever finds out, that person is pissed.  Or worse yet, someone forwards an email that was BCC’d and the victim eventually sees it.  Bad Times.

7.  Stop attaching funny videos. This is what YouTube is for.  Just put the link in the email.  For crying out loud, this is 2011.

8.  Proper use of “lose” vs. “loose”, “too, to, two”, and I see this one a ton.  ”with all intensive purposes.”  It is “intents and purpose”.

Tone:  It is important to convey your message properly.  Sometimes the tone gets misinterpreted.  Short and abrupt messages can come off as bitchy or rude.  I personally assume nobody is trying to be rude because putting rude comments into writing can be professionally limiting.  But I have witnessed occasion where people thought it was rude.

Love makes the world go ’round.  I love having extra $ in my paycheck.

Here is a quick Kiplinger article on what it means to you.

Extra money to “We the People” = more money to spend or save.

If we choose to save, we add solid assets to our banking system.

If we spend, we add jobs to those providers to make the goods or offer the services.  Thus, they continue to earn and thrive (and get a tax cut).

What can you do with an extra $50 to $100 per month?

Note: next task, lower our national spending.

I would rather keep money flowing in a free market than allow our professional politicians “decide” what they think it best.

This John Kerry clip sums it up nicely.

Unsubscribe

I get junkmail all the time.  We all do right?

We buy something online or even at a store and they grab your email address.  Yes, I recognize we volunteer the info and it is partly my fault.  I am simply too lazy to give them a fake email address.  I have thought about giving a fake email address but chicken out thinking that they see right through my act as I stammer out “craig dot smi… sampsonite! at compuserve dot com”.

Anyway, I digress.  I clicked that “unsubscribe” link from an Aeropostle email and it tossed up a message that it would “…take 5 business days to take effect.”

What!?  5 business days for an automated software driven method of information collection?  Does my request get emailed to some intern at Aeropostle who then has to update the mainframe by retyping my email address?  This should be immediate.  My regional bank offers online banking and my debit transactions are posted almost immediately.

It makes no sense.