Spero Consulting

Archive for December 24th, 2008

One of them, at least.

Update: We’ve added an excel­lent line from Peggy Noonan’s Decem­ber 26^th, weekly col­umn, as it fits so per­fectly with our theme.

We spent a recent noon-​time dis­trib­ut­ing year-​end, hol­i­day, bonus checks to a group of care-​givers and their managers. 

It was very grat­i­fy­ing, espe­cially since it wasn’t our money. We’re jok­ing, of course. It would likely have been more grat­i­fy­ing had been our money, but while the lunch was for a small orga­ni­za­tion, it’s not that small.

Now, we know that it is quite easy to go through life ignor­ing not only peo­ple in need but also those who help them on both a vol­un­teer and paid basis. (It’s worth not­ing that those who do get paid usu­ally don’t get paid much for their efforts.) There are a lot of car­ing peo­ple serv­ing a vari­ety of con­stituents, e.g., in fields like men­tal retar­da­tion, men­tal health, the aged, etc.

Those folks spend sub­stan­tial time and energy help­ing oth­ers, includ­ing the less for­tu­nate, to lead more ful­fill­ing lives. For exam­ple, we know good peo­ple who have devoted their entire work­ing careerss to pro­vid­ing such aid, and that often requires fight­ing against an uncar­ing and soul­less gov­ern­ment bureau­cracy (in their attempts to do the right thing.) For another exam­ple, we know of oth­ers who call their work­places on their days off to check on their favorite clients. All of these peo­ple, for at least some por­tion of their daily lives, try to do the right things for oth­ers. (Yeah, some­times it seems weird to us, too.)

In her weekly col­umn, A Year for Books, Peggy Noo­nan men­tions “Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire” by Father Joseph Lang­ford, a friend of Mother Teresa’s. Ms. Noo­nan writes: “…and of the things he learned from her includ­ing, most cen­trally, this: You must find your own Cal­cutta. You don’t have to go to India. Cal­cutta is all around you.”

In that regard, if the reader has access to Touch­stone Mag­a­zine, we encour­age them to read the Anthony Esolen’s excel­lent essay, “Pot­ter­ville Nation,” in the Decem­ber issue. Unfor­tu­nately, it is not avail­able on line.

In the essay, Mr. Esolen writes about the clas­sic movie, It’s a Won­der­ful Life. His point is that it was not nec­es­sary for George Bai­ley to have never been born for Bed­ford Falls turn into Pot­ter­ville. (In the movie it is called Pot­tersville with an “s.”)

Even if George had been born, there were any num­ber of steps along the way when he could have veered slightly (almost imper­cep­ti­bly) away from his con­science and duty, and that would have been to the severe detri­ment of other indi­vid­u­als, his com­mu­nity, and soci­ety. Many of those small turns would have seemed innocu­ous or would have been unob­served by oth­ers. It’s quite pos­si­ble that no one, includ­ing George, would have known the dam­age he caused or did not pre­vent as he chased his dream. (Per St. Fran­cis de Sales, that doesn’t mean that one should over-​analyze or over-​account for ones every actions and deci­sions. We’ll try to pro­vide a link in the near future.)

Mr. Esolen notes that nowa­days much of soci­ety looks more like Pot­ter­ville than Bed­ford Falls, and he attrib­utes that phe­nom­e­non to folks (self­ishly) fol­low­ing their dreams to the exclu­sion of oth­ers. (Per­haps, like Utopia, Bed­ford Falls never existed. In fact, Mr. Esolen men­tions that self-​recognition and feel­ings of guilt may have been the rea­son why the movie was unsuc­cess­ful dur­ing its ini­tial release in 1946.)

Now, one rea­son we par­tic­u­larly like his essay is that it fits quite nicely with a recent con­ver­sa­tion we had with one of the princesses. We were told “When I’m an adult, I’ll do what I want.” Our reply was, “Hmmm, we don’t see any real adults act­ing that way. In fact, it seems to us that ‘I’ll do what­ever I want’ is the antithe­sis of adult­hood, civ­i­liza­tion, moral­ity, ethics, and rea­son. The impul­sive ‘I’ll do what­ever I want’ cer­tainly makes one no bet­ter than ani­mals and not very close to angels.” (Obvi­ously and clearly, we’re not talk­ing about those who are old enough to be adults, but who choose not to be, but that’s a post for another day.)

We told her that being an adult involves doing what oth­ers need you to do. In that sense, adult­hood isn’t lib­er­at­ing, but as George Bai­ley dis­cov­ered, it can be very ful­fill­ing. (Lib­er­a­tion involves liv­ing a coun­try where the gov­ern­ment per­mits cit­i­zens to be adults, but that, too, is post for another day.) 

We’ve won­dered how many times we’ll have to repeat that mes­sage in the com­ing years, and at Christ­mas Eve Mass, we prayed for the strength to be able to do so as often as it is needed to be heard.

We’re also quite thank­ful that her mother, the chair­man, sets such an excel­lent exam­ple of adult behav­ior and respon­si­bil­ity (and com­pen­sates for our many fail­ings and immaturity).

Unlike the folks that we ref­er­enced above, we doubt that we do our fair share, but we pray for those who do. We wish them and you a Blessed and Merry Christ­mas and a Healthy and Happy New Year.

Higher Pay for Con­gress­men and Greatly Reduced Staff Staph Levels

This past week­end – the last before Christ­mas – we saw a few reports crit­i­ciz­ing the upcom­ing Con­gres­sional pay raises, includ­ing this one at FoxNews: Pay Raises for Law­mak­ers Anger Watch­dog Groups.

In that arti­cle, some­one from a watch­dog group noted that “Mem­bers of Con­gress don’t deserve one addi­tional dime of tax­payer money…”

We’ll leave the issue of what Con­gress­folk deserve to oth­ers, includ­ing their maker. Our stan­dard response when folks com­plain about the weather in West­ern PA – we think the sun appeared once in the first 24 days of the month – is to ask, “do you really deserve any bet­ter?” That nor­mally silences the hon­est ones.

As we promised last week in Cas­san­dra, the SEC and Mr. Mad­off, here is our rec­om­men­da­tion as well as our moti­va­tion and ratio­nale to elim­i­nate gov­ern­ment bureau­cracy (via changes in the leg­isla­tive, rather than the exec­u­tive, branch of the fed­eral government).

As reg­u­lar read­ers know, we’ve pro­posed our own solu­tion to the mort­gage cri­sis that is based upon sim­ple changes in tax rules: pro­vide either invest­ment tax cred­its or accel­er­ated amor­ti­za­tion (imme­di­ate write-​offs) of the pur­chase price of mortgage-​related assets: more car­rot than stick for pri­vate investors. We have also pro­posed a solu­tion for the larger crisis-​in-​confidence, which has evap­o­rated liq­uid­ity faster (and drier) than the after­noon sun in Death Val­ley. That one is much more stick than car­rot for cur­rent finan­cial firm shareholders.

We’ve sent our solu­tion to var­i­ous mem­bers of the media, the com­men­tariat, and a few politi­cians. All to no avail. We have been ignored, but, of course, we think that says more about them than it does about us: would you expect us to write any­thing else?

After see­ing her at Mass one Sun­day morn­ing in Octo­ber, we sent our idea to the Melissa Hart, our for­mer U.S. rep­re­sen­ta­tive and this year’s Repub­li­can can­di­date for the same Con­gres­sional seat that she lost two years ago.

She ran this year’s cam­paign as dread­fully as her 2006 effort, and so while she’ll con­tinue her law career in Pitts­burgh while Jason Alt­mire will again rep­re­sent our dis­trict in Washington.

Other than see­ing Ms. Hart at Mass, we’ve had almost no direct per­sonal obser­va­tion of her. One excep­tion was at an August fund-​raiser for a local char­ity. It was at a com­edy club, where politi­cians of both par­ties per­formed stand-​up rou­tines. Note: we’re using those last three or four words very loosely.

Pre­sum­ably watch­ing the likes of David Let­ter­man on tele­vi­sion every late night per­mits many to delude them­selves into believ­ing that they, too, can suc­ceed in telling jokes in front of an audi­ence. (Hey, Mr. Let­ter­man and CBS have suf­fered from a sim­i­lar afflic­tion for many years.) That reverse psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­jec­tion seems anal­o­gous to lis­ten­ing to Madonna or Brit­ney and then try­ing karaōke, because, hey, it really can’t sound any worse, can it? Yeah, actu­ally, with­out clever pro­duc­ers and proper edit­ing devices, it cer­tainly can.

Any­way, most of the politi­cians were as bad as you’d expect. One was truly and painfully hor­ri­ble – quite embar­rass­ing – for a par­ties involved, but a few were very funny.

The most painfully bad was Ms. Hart. Based upon that per­for­mance, we’d guess that prior to law school she earned a degree in account­ing and before that served on the stu­dent coun­cil and glee club in high school and before that won hand-​writing awards in ele­men­tary school and prob­a­bly still has the neatly-​organized papers and cer­tifi­cates to prove it. It was being forced to lis­ten to some drunk guy yell at his kids at a car­ni­val or be party to a con­ver­sa­tion where some­one refers to his wife as “my old lady.” Ick.

As it turns out, Mr. Alt­mire was very funny, acerbic, and jus­ti­fi­ably cruel to Ms. Hart, who had gone first.¹ Based upon view­ing his cam­paign ads, we were quite sur­prised by his wit and humor. We had erro­neously pegged him as a younger, House ver­sion of Penn­syl­va­nia Sen­a­tor Robert Casey, whose recent claim to fame is his dis­gust that his favorite potato chips are no longer served at the Capi­tol cafe­te­ria. No, we’re seri­ous.

Based upon that sin­gu­lar pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence with Mr. Alt­mire and in the spirit of post-​election, bi-​partisan coöper­a­tion, we sent this e-​mail to Mr. Alt­mire in early Decem­ber. Despite being naïve and ide­al­is­tic, we’re quite skep­ti­cal – some might even say cyn­i­cal – so we had extremely low expec­ta­tions, and they were indeed met. Two Fri­days ago, we received this form mes­sage in reply.

Now, please real­ize that we have extremely low expec­ta­tions so we gen­er­ally avoid con­tact­ing our elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives, but to receive such a silly let­ter, which may be an appro­pri­ate response to an 80-​year-​old widow won­der­ing about her grandchildren’s future in an illiq­uid Amer­ica. Well, it is just down­right demean­ing, and it pro­vided us with a rare, per­sonal glimpse into the inner non-​workings of our fed­eral government.

With that obser­va­tion came the real­iza­tion that Con­gres­sional staphs are a major crutch as well as a major rea­son why Con­gress is so dys­func­tional and has approval rat­ings that stand at about half of Pres­i­dent Bush’s. ² We hypoth­e­size that as part of this year’s per­for­mance review, some stapher will sub­mit that e-​mail form as part of a port­fo­lio of out­put to show proof pos­i­tive of their value to Mr. Alt­mire, and that’s both a shame and a national dis­grace. It pro­vides no value to Mr. Alt­mire or his con­stituents. It’s just bor­ing, stu­pid, and bureaucratic.

Our rec­om­men­da­tion: limit Con­gres­sional staffs to three peo­ple. One recep­tion­ist in the home office and two employ­ees in Wash­ing­ton, DC: a recep­tion­ist and an assis­tant. With the cost sav­ings, dou­ble the pay of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Senators.

We think it would pro­vide more effec­tive term lim­its than term lim­its, and would focus Con­gres­sional atten­tion on only impor­tant and gen­eral top­ics. In addi­tion, we think that it would focus the atten­tion and speech of indi­vid­ual Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Sen­a­tors ton top­ics on which they have some per­sonal knowl­edge, rather than the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion where they speak on all top­ics on which their staph may write.

We’ll likely expand this post and write more on the topic, but isn’t the near elim­i­na­tion of Con­gres­sional staphs “change that you can believe in?” Also, isn’t it the best way to fight the staph infec­tions that plague our nation’s Capitol?

We were at Williams-​Sonoma this past week­end and saw a beau­ti­ful cop­per, KitchenAid mixer for $899.95. (Its twin is made of nickel, and we have no idea of how prices of that metal have changed, but we doubt that they have gone up since the summer.)

The nearly $900 seemed a bit expen­sive for a mixer; so, we joked with the clerk that KitchenAid must have bought their cop­per sup­ply much ear­lier in the year when prices were three times as high and that it must be still try­ing to recoup its costs. (Unfor­tu­nately, no one really cares about your cost, only your value, and we doubt that KitchenAid hedged or even “nedged” or “sledged.”) They’re quite beau­ti­ful mix­ers, and if they can sell them at that price, we say, “God Bless ‘em.”

Our clerk didn’t give much of a ver­bal reply to our joke, but had she done so, it would have prob­a­bly been some­thing like: “Yeah, what­ever, please go away if you’re not going to buy it.”

We were reminded of that brief encounter by the Com­modi­ties Report in today’s edi­tion of The Wall Street Jour­nal: Cop­per Is at a Four-​Year Low. This year, prices have decreased from about $4 per pound to about $1.25 per pound.

Now, that report made us pon­der: with the recent dras­tic reduc­tions in such com­mod­ity prices, what will des­per­ate thieves steal? Given the risks, is it still worth­while to strip cop­per down­spouts from churches or remove wiring from con­struc­tion sites or take man­hole cov­ers from roads or siphon gaso­line from stor­age tanks or other cars? 

If such folks were a bit more indus­tri­ous and had a bit of mall space, they might try to sell $300 mix­ers for $900. Merry Christmas.