The Generous Harvest

Don't Text While Walking

2011-01-18T12:24:00.000-08:00

A Towering, Quiet Hero Says Goodbye

2011-01-10T15:39:00.000-08:00

We lost a great man last week. Major Dick Winters died on January 2, but--in his inimitably humble and quiet fashion--he asked his family to release the news only after his memorial service had been held. Winters was the commanding officer of the now-famous Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army.

Made famous by Stephen Ambrose's exceptional book "Band of Brothers" and the subsequent Emmy Award-winning HBO miniseries, Winters was the hero among heroes in a company of soldiers who fought on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, through the hedgerows in France and the liberation of Paris, the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of Kaufering (a sub-camp of the infamous Dachau concentration camp) and--finally--the occupation of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at the very end of the war.

Winters grew up in central Pennsylvania in the beautiful and pristine town of Lancaster. After graduating high school, he entered Franklin & Marshall College. He mowed lawns, worked in a grocery store, and painted electrical towers in order to earn his way through college, graduating in June 1941 with a business degree. In order to shorten his time in the service, he voluntarily enlisted in the Army in August and was soon selected to complete Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Winters was thrust into leadership in the crucible of D-Day. His CO was shot down in the early hours of June 6, 1944 and Winters--unaware of his CO's loss, became acting commanding officer of Easy Company throughout the D-Day campaign.

Winters' character and personal qualities were perfectly suited for leadership. He was quiet and unassuming, courageous to the point of fearlessness, gathered and rarely impulsive, always ready to lead from the front rather than the rear. His men were singularly devoted to him because they knew he would never ask them to do anything he was not willing and ready to do first.

Winters married his wife Ethel in 1951, raised two children, went into business for himself and retired in 1997. He lived his later years in Hershey.

Winters' extraordinary leadership, coupled with his remarkable humility, are so characteristic of The Greatest Generation. His life and his legacy inspire me--and thousands of other deeply appreciative Americans.

What Christmas Is Really All About

2010-12-20T17:17:00.000-08:00

Public Education Gets A Wake-Up Call

2010-12-11T15:50:00.000-08:00

As faithful readers of this blog already know, I have little love or respect for the National Education Association--the strongest teachers' union in the country and one of the strongest unions in the United States. To briefly reiterate, my biggest argument with the NEA is that it's grossly self-interested in the preservation and expansion of its membership--not the education of our nation's youngsters. The NEA promotes mediocrity, rewarding teachers with the longest service with top salaries while completely disdaining individual initiative and achievement so that the best teachers receive the highest reward. Sure, the NEA gives plenty of awards, but real incentives are financial--and there's no way the NEA will allow anything but remuneration based on seniority.

The preservation of the mediocre is not the NEA's only goal. It also fiercely defends the grossly incompetent. This was most graphically revealed this week in the Southern California city of Compton. McKinley Elementary School has consistently underperformed over the past decade, and ranks in the bottom 10% of California's elementary schools. The students' parents--exercising their rights under a law passed by the California legislature in January--signed petitions demanding school reforms, including the firing of the administration and the faculty, in favor of a charter school. Under the new law, if more than 51% of the parents sign such a petition, they can choose from a menu of school reforms--from conversion to a charter school to removal of the principal and faculty to closing the school outright.

The move by the parents was applauded by Governor Schwarzenegger, as well as by Obama's Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. "This is the beginning of a revolution", said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization focusing on education reform. "Parents are waking up to the fact their schools are failing because they are run on an agenda designed for adults. We advocate a kids-first agenda."

The new California law has inspired similar legislation in the state of Connecticut with six other states now considering parent trigger laws similar to California's.

The reaction of the California Teacher's Association was predictable: it is questioning the way the signatures were gathered and intends to pursue legal action.

But Mr. Austin concludes: "Parents are the only ones who truly care about their children. The only way to truly change things is to take power away from adults with an agenda."

69 Years Ago Today...

2010-12-07T22:15:00.000-08:00

...America changed forever. On a leisurely Sunday morning in Hawaii--December 7, 194--"a date that will live in infamy"--America's nervous peace was ripped apart by the attack of 353 Japanese fighter planes in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers in the infamous and never-to-be-forgotten bombing of Pearl Harbor.

More than 2400 Americans perished that day--and many of them still call Pearl Harbor their final resting place. Five battleships--the USS California, the USS Utah, the USS West Virginia, the USS Oklahoma, and--most famously--the USS Arizona--were either destroyed or run aground. A total of eighteen naval vessels were destroyed.

The next day, President Roosevelt asked Congress for a formal declaration of war against the Empire of Japan. Less than an hour later, the war authorization was approved. Three days later, the Axis powers of Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S.--and America reciprocated with a war declaration of its own later that same day.

Thus--within the space of just four days--America was plunged into a massive two-front war that ultimately claimed the lives of 416,000 Americans before the war finally ended with Japan's surrender in August 1945.

I have visited the USS Arizona Memorial on two different occasions. It is a place of solemn remembrance and reverent respect. Even today, oil droplets still bubble to the surface of the sea from the fuel tanks on the ship--a quiet, poignant reminder that Pearl Harbor is yet a home of the brave.

The History Behind "I'll Be Home For Christmas"

2010-12-06T16:14:00.000-08:00

Often, the meaning of songs and the circumstances under which they are written make the songs eminently more interesting. That's the case with one of America's all-time favorites--"I'll Be Home For Christmas". The song was written in 1943, at the height of World War II. Hundreds of thousands of young GI's were stationed in Europe and the Pacific, far away from their loved ones and the comfort and safety of home.

The mood of the country was perfectly captured in a new Christmas song penned by Kim Gannon and Walter Kent. In it, the song begins cheerfully and hopefully, affirming that the subject of the song will be home for Christmas "where the love-light gleams". But the song ends with the haunting closer: "I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams".

When the song was recorded by Bing Crosby and released in the fall of 1943, it shot to the top ten in the record charts and became an instant classic.

For millions of Americans during the War--and today for those serving our country in Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout the world where our troops are stationed--the closest the troops would get to home at Christmastime is in the dreams they share with their loved ones who would readily welcome them.

A Grief Observed

2010-12-01T21:13:00.000-08:00

As faithful readers of this blog already know, I am an immense admirer of Abraham Lincoln--not only for his astonishing leadership in the our nation's years of greatest crisis--but also for his unutterable eloquence and dexterity with the English language.

I've recently come across a little-known letter that Lincoln wrote in the early days of the Civil War to the parents of Elmer Ellsworth, who died in Alexandria, Virginia after he had torn down a Confederate flag and was subsequently shot by the owner of the hotel upon which it was displayed. Ellsworth was Lincoln's friend, a young protege of Lincoln who had worked with him in Lincoln's law office in Springfield, Illinois before he was elected President. He had formed a largely ceremonial detachment known as the Zouaves, a drill team that thrilled spectators with its exotic costumes and precision choreography. When the war began, Ellsworth--only 24 years old--asked for and received a commission in the U.S. Army and led the Zouaves as they were sworn into military service. Less than three weeks later, the young officer was dead--and the loss hit Lincoln hard.

In the midst of his grief, he wrote this letter to Ellsworth's parents. It is a model of timeless grace, personal remembrance, and tender compassion--and I commend it to you...

My dear Sir and Madam,

In the untimely loss of your noble son, our affliction here is scarcely less than your own. So much of promised usefulness to one's country and of bright hopes for one's self and friends have rarely been so suddenly dashed as in his fall. In size, in years, and in youthful appearance, a boy only, his power to command men was surpassingly great. This power, combined with a fine intellect, an indomitable energy, and a taste altogether military constituted in him, as seemed to me, the best natural talent in that department I ever knew. And yet he was singularly modest and deferential in social intercourse. My acquaintance with him began less than two years ago; yet through the latter half of the intervening period, it was as intimate as the disparity of our ages and my engrossing engagements would permit. To me, he appeared to have no indulgences or pastimes; and I never heard him utter a profane or intemperate word. What was conclusive of his good heart, he never forgot his parents. The honors he labored for so laudably and, in the sad end, so gallantly gave his life, he meant for you no less than for himself.

In the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the sacredness of your sorrow, I have ventured to address you this tribute to the memory of my young friend, and your brave and early fallen child.

May God give you that consolation which is beyond all earthly power. Sincerely your friend in a common affliction.

A. Lincoln

A Little Walnut Humor

2010-11-30T19:43:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is a shameless shill for our product, but it's also entertaining :)
With thanks to Lynn Johnston and her wonderful comic strip For Better Or For Worse

What Thanksgiving Means To Me

2010-11-24T07:51:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love this time of year for many reasons:

It is a uniquely American holiday. As I wrote in my post of 18 November, Thanksgiving has its roots in the first Thanksgiving celebration of the Pilgrims who came to America in 1620. They barely survived their first winter, and in the fall of 1621 they hosted a Thanksgiving feast to thank God for their successful and bountiful first harvest. The legend of that first Thanksgiving became a part of American lore and is remembered today, nearly four hundred years later.

Speaking of the harvest, Thanksgiving is particularly meaningful for those of us who make our living from the land. Harvest is an incredibly demanding time--both exhausting and exhilarating. The walnut harvest begins sometime right after Labor Day in early September and does not end until sometime around the 10th of November. The days are long. We're usually working an average of 14-16 hours. And weekends disappear during that time of the year. We work to gather the crop in, we require huge demands on our bodies and minds to ensure that the logistics of getting the crop in before the fall rains come--or minimizing the damage when they do come--are well-planned and executed. Our employees are incredibly dedicated. Yes, they love the overtime pay--but everyone gets tired. And by the last week of October, we're all ready for harvest to be over so we can get our lives back. But when it is over--when the last load of walnuts is brought in from the orchards--there's a great sense of accomplishment and gratitude.

And, speaking of gratitude, that's what Thanksgiving is for. It is a time to remember that the source of our strength and our provision comes not from our own hands, but from our Heavenly Father who graciously and faithfully brings us our crop each year. We are but stewards of what He has placed in our care. And if we care for the land and the trees, if we tend what He has created with passion and vigilance, if we treat our employees with dignity and honor and respect, and if we remember the source from which all of it comes, then God is faithful to bless us. And so Thanksgiving is a time of remembrance, of gratitude, of rest after the long harvest just completed.

Thanksgiving is a time for the gathering of families. This year two of our three sons will be with us (the oldest lives in Costa Rica, making it a little difficult to get home for the holiday). We'll enjoy time together, probably watch a few football games, maybe go to a movie--and, most of all, just enjoy some time together as a family. We'll watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. And we'll bundle up against the chilly nights and the brisk days.

To all of my faithful readers of this blog, I offer my fondest greetings and wish you all a happy and warm Thanksgiving holiday.

"A Day Of Thanksgiving And Praise"

2010-11-22T21:06:00.000-08:00

In October of 1863--in the months following the tenebrous summer of slaughter at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and the disaster at Chickamauga--President Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Thanksgiving. As many of you know from earlier readings of previous posts on this blog, I am a great admirer of Mr. Lincoln. His proclamation is magnificently Lincolnesque: concise, eloquent, lyrical, even pastoral in its tone and simplistic elegance.

I had the pleasure of sharing it with my family last Thanksgiving as we gathered around our table to celebrate the holiday together, and now I wish to share it with you, my faithful readers (whoever and wherever you are):

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

The First Thanksgiving

2010-11-18T15:29:00.000-08:00

I'm currently reading a fascinating book entitled "Mayflower" by Nathaniel Philbrick. In it, Philbrick provides us with the story of the establishment of America's first successful European immigrant settlement. It's refreshing to read real history, as opposed to so much of the legend and myth that surrounds the founders of modern-day America.

The Pilgrims left England and settled temporarily in Holland to escape the religious persecution they were experiencing in their homeland under the rule of King James. But they increasingly felt stifled in Holland, for although they were free to worship as they pleased, they were still foreigners and were unable to find anything but the most menial of jobs to support their families. Their pastor was introduced to an investment group called The Adventurers who were willing to fund their emigration to the New World with the idea that they would ship back to England a half share of the riches they would undoubtedly find when they arrived on America's shores.

But the Pilgrims did not even arrive until November of 1620 at Provincetown Harbor. By the time they settled at Plymouth, winter had already set in and they hurriedly built a small village of 7 houses and four common buildings in which to live. The first winter was brutal. Of the 102 Pilgrims who arrived, only 50 survived to the spring of 1621. They forged an alliance with Massasoit, the chief of the Pokanoket tribe of Indians and they built a fast friendship with their interpreter, Squanto, who showed them how to plant native corn which was the critical crop which would allow them to survive the winters ahead.

Not all of the Pilgrims were religious. Some of the "Strangers", as the Puritans called them, came to start a new life, though they agreed to live under the governing rules established by the governor of the new settlement (first, John Carver and then--most famously--William Bradford).

Sometime in late September or early October 1621, a great feast was planned at the Plymouth settlement that included Massasoit and some ninety other Indians from the Pocanoket tribe. The feast lasted for three days and included fowl, venison, fish, lobster, clams, berries, fruit, pumpkins, squash, and wild turkey.

And contrary to revisionist historians who, sadly, misrepresent the real Thanksgiving in today's history textbooks, the 53 Pilgrims who celebrated that year did not hold the feast to thank the Indians. They thanked God. They took time to acknowledge the mighty provision and mercy of the Almighty, and they rightly attributed their safety and survival and establishment of their new settlement to God's protection.

Nearly 250 years later--in the middle of the crucible of the Civil War--President Lincoln memorialized that first Thanksgiving with an official holiday. More on that in my next post...

"We Are The Ones We've Been Waiting For"

2010-11-14T21:43:00.000-08:00

One of the most disarming and endearing qualities in any leader--whether a business leader, academic leader, church leader, or politician--is the ability to poke fun at oneself, to engage in self-deprecating humor. It conveys a degree of humility--a quality of not taking oneself too seriously.

By contrast, leaders who display arrogance or an inflated self-importance necessarily separate themselves from those they're leading. They alienate themselves, and are more vulnerable to losing the respect of those they're leading to the point that the followers will soon agitate for new leadership.

The 2010 Midterm Elections witnessed the greatest turnover of U.S. House seats from one party to the other since 1938. The election was not so much a vote in favor of Republican policies or ideas as it was an abject repudiation of President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership. And part of that repudiation comes as a result of Obama's arrogance, who famously stated repeatedly during his campaign for President in 2008 "We are the one ones we've been waiting for!"

Aside from the curious and lazy phraseology of the statement, what is most striking is its puffed up self-importance. Obama was telling all of us that he has finally arrived, although his message is buried in The Royal We. What is The Royal We? It is also known as the Majestic plural and is used, according to Webster, as "the use of the plural pronoun to refer to a single person holding a high office, such as a monarch, bishop, pope, or rector.

So what is so arrogant about the statement "We are the ones we've been waiting for"? By employing The Royal We, Obama was already assuming the mantle of power before he'd been elected. Worse, he was proclaiming to America that he was the one we'd all been waiting for; he had finally arrived. There was not then--nor is there now--a drop of humility in the man. He is generally regarded as thin-skinned, as someone who does indeed take himself all too seriously. You don't find any self-deprecating humor in Obama.

If he was the one we'd been waiting for in 2008, the midterm elections of 2010 should send a clear message to Mr. Obama that we're not waiting for him anymore.

Gratitude

2010-11-11T10:53:00.000-08:00

Today is Veterans Day. It's celebrated on the 11th day of November every year, reaching back to Armistice Day 1918--when what was then called The Great War (now known as World War I)--ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

It is a day when we solemnly thank and remember the sacrifices of the thousands of men and women who have served our country in the name of freedom and liberty.

Veterans Day is commemorated with hometown parades, American flags on Main Street, visits to military cemeteries, and appreciation for the bravery, the suffering, the triumphs of generations of soldiers who've fought and served to keep our country great.

We thank you. From the bottom of our hearts.

They Want A Parade In Troy, New York

2010-11-11T10:35:00.000-08:00

I ran across an endearing and fascinating story in the paper today. It seems the people of Troy, New York want the newly-minted baseball champs--the San Francisco Giants--to come to Troy and show off their new World Series trophy.

You see, the Giants are one of the very oldest professional baseball franchises in the country. And it turns out that they actually began their existence in 1879 as the Troy City Trojans. They played in Troy for three years before league owners voted to move the team to New York. In order to appease the fans of Troy, the league agreed to return teams to Troy occasionally for exhibition games. But that promise was broken, and no major league team has been there since the people of Troy lost the Trojans (now Giants) some 128 years ago.

Now the city is crying out, from across the continent, for some connection to the champs. And the Giants should give it to them. Just imagine Bruce Bochy, Tim Lincecum, Brian Wilson, and Cody Ross holding the trophy and riding down Main Street to the cheers of the long-jilted fans of Troy.

Here's one Giants fan who says yes--let's spread the love.

The Dumbest Voters In America

2010-11-09T11:10:00.000-08:00

California is blessed with a lot of wonderful things: the grandeur of Yosemite, the spectacular coastline that stretches from Mexico to Oregon, a wonderful climate sparkling with lots of sunshine. We also have, I am loathe to admit, the dumbest voters in America.

Let me offer a few examples:

In 2008--as California was sliding toward insolvency--the voters of California approved Proposition 1A, which authorized the issuance of nearly $10 billion in bonds to build a high speed rail system connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco. I won't comment on the efficacy of such a system. But it is ludicrous to borrow a huge amount of money at a time when California's budget deficits are out of control.
Speaking of budgets, Californians just approved Proposition 25 which allows the State Legislature to approve a budget on a simple majority vote, instead of the previous 2/3 supermajority needed. The ploy that California politicians used to get this passed was the provision that--for every day past the mandated July 1 deadline--legislators will lose their daily pay and per diem if a budget is not passed. This cynical provision successfully baited the voters to a) allow the current majority in both houses of the Legislature to more easily levy taxes to reduce the deficit and b) essentially guarantees that some kind of budget is passed--even though it says nothing about getting a budget signed into law.
California--once The Golden State of opportunity and innovation--has drifted over the past two decades into a dismal economic condition. This year California's budget deficit is over $20 billion. The state has been under Democratic control in both houses of the Legislature for more than 20 years--and the Democrats hold just short of a 2/3 majority in both houses. One would think there would be some measure of political accountability for what's happening in California. But one would be sadly mistaken, because the massive majorities of Democrats who have managed to tax and regulate businesses right out of California to neighboring Nevada and other states in the country have just been re-elected with even slightly larger majorities.

As I have written in previous posts, California has one of the most hostile business environments in the country. If you're producing so-called "green jobs" there are plenty of incentives. But if you're not, you're likely being overwhelmed by new and more oppressive regulations requiring huge investment in plant, property, and equipment. You're paying the highest minimum wage in the country. You're staggered by the array of building and environmental permits required to expand your business. You're being hit with among the highest tax rates in the country--and with new taxes and fees that do nothing more than fund more state programs while your bottom line suffers, thereby preventing you from hiring more workers. And you're probably looking for ways to follow so many others and move part or all of your business someplace else--away from the tax and regulatory madness of California. (I know of at least one friendly competitor who moved his business to Sparks, Nevada and willingly pays to truck his raw materials from the agricultural heartland of the San Joaquin Valley over the Sierras at huge cost in order to avoid the taxes and regulations in California.)

So what does this have to do with the voters of California? Well, the voters recently rejected Proposition 23--which would have suspended California's AB 32--the equivalent of California's Cap & Trade law. Yes, while Cap & Trade has been held back at the national level, California is boldly charging ahead. On the surface of it, it all sounds good. Who doesn't want cleaner air and reduction of greenhouse gases? But in a time when our country is experiencing near 10% unemployment (and California's is well over 12%), Cap & Trade is a bona fide jobs killer. Prop 23 would have suspended AB 32 unless and until unemployment fell below 5.5%--a quite reasonable provision to allow the state to generate new jobs and investment from the business community. The measure failed. Which simply means that regulatory pressures will continue to grow, the state will require more and more cost to businesses to comply with new regulations, and business owners will have less and less capital to spend on expansion of their plants and equipment--and will therefore be hiring fewer new workers.

It is a dismal state of affairs. But we are getting exactly what we keep voting for. And that's why we really do have the dumbest voters in America.

Thoughts On My Beloved Giants

2010-11-04T06:50:00.000-07:00

Thought #1: They say that great pitching neutralizes great hitting in the playoffs, especially in the World Series--and that was manifestly so in the 2010 World Series. The San Francisco Giants won this Series on the strength of a simply phenomenal pitching staff. Consider:

The Giants were locked in a three-way battle for the National League West crown with the Padres and the Rockies. Down the stretch, in the crucial month of September, the Giants pitching staff had the fifth best team Earned Run Average for a month in the history of Major League Baseball at a phenomenal 1.78. You have to go back to May of 1968 and the Cleveland Indians before you'll find a better month by a major league pitching staff. It was the Giants' pitching that even got them into the postseason to begin with.
The Giants bullpen was nothing short of sensational. Their ERA ranked second in the major leagues during the regular season, but in that same month of September--when every game counted--their team ERA dropped from 2.99 to 0.90.
In the critical League Championship series against the heavily-favored Phillies, the Giants team ERA was 0.93--the third lowest since the LCS began in 1969.
The Giants were only the third team in Major League history to record four shutouts in the same postseason.
Coming into the World Series, the vaunted Texas Rangers hitters had the highest team batting average in the majors at .276. In the World Series, the Giants pitchers baffled the Rangers, who hit an anemic .190 against them.
It was even worse against the Giants bullpen, which gave up 3 runs in a collective 10 innings pitched--but all of those came in the ninth inning of Game 1 with the Giants leading 11-4. After that, it was lights out. The Rangers never touched the bullpen for the rest of the Series.

Thought #2: Since 1958 when the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco, they've been blessed with some legendary Hall of Fame players: Mays, McCovey, Cepeda, Marichal, Perry, Will The Thrill, Matt Williams, Bobby Bonds, Jeff Kent, and--of course--Barry Bonds. They've had guys like Jim Davenport, Jim Ray Hart, the Alou brothers (all of them), Tom Haller, Ken Henderson, Mike McCormick, Ray Sadecki, Gary Matthews, Garry Maddox, Tito Fuentes, Chris Speier, Randy Moffitt, Darrell Evans, Bill Madlock, Terry Whitfield, Larry Herndon, Joe Morgan, Bob Brenly, Chili Davis, Jeff Leonard, Gary Lavelle, Duane Kuiper, Mike Krukow, Atlee Hammaker, Brett Butler, Candy Maldonado, Dave Dravecky, Mike Lacoss, Rick Reuschel, Willie McGee, Robbie Thompson, Rod Beck, Rich Aurilia, JT Snow, and Frank Reberger (a little inside joke there, but the Giants really did have a guy named Frank Reberger on their roster). It's ironic and amazing that during all those previous 52 years--with such a host of talented players--the Giants could never get it done.

And then 2010 happened. How do you characterize this team? They have one of the finest pitching staffs ever assembled, from their starters to their middle relievers to their closer. They have a gold-plated rookie catcher whose presence since he was called up in late May electrified the team and its fans. And then they have a collection of "misfits and castoffs" who jelled into a team in its true sense. The other day I was listening to MLB Radio where Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster was being interviewed. He made an interesting observation: "You can always tell how close a team is during warm-ups before a game. Most teams divide up into little groups of guys spread around the field to do their stretching and running. Not the Giants. They were all together. All of them. Every one. I was envious."

Baseball is a team sport. Yes, you have the dramatic element of the pitcher and the hitter, mano a mano. But the teamwork of the Giants was never more evident than in the 7th inning of the decisive Game 5 of the World Series: Pat Burrell had a horrible Series, going 0 for 13 with 11 strikeouts. With runners on 2nd and 3rd and one out in a scoreless pitching duel between Tim Lincecum and Cliff Lee, Burrell had just struck out again, failing even to get the ball out of the infield to score the run from third. And then Edgar Renteria came up. He promptly blasted a three-run homer into the left center field seats and the Giants were ahead 3-0. And the first guy to greet him when he reached the dugout was Pat Burrell. He wasn't sulking on the bench about his poor performance. He was celebrating and congratulating his teammate. That epitomized the Giants of 2010, and it's a huge reason why all of Northern California is so enamored with this team.

Thought #3: The ragtag nature of this team has captured the imagination of baseball fans around the country. I'm going to close this post by quoting Rob Neyer of ESPN.com, who writes about baseball throughout the year: "Anyone who is shocked by the 2010 World Series hasn't been paying attention, over the years. The Giants were a very good team that played better than another very good team over the course of five games. If they play another five games next week, everything might be different.

They're not going to play another five games. This one's over. The great majority of Giants fans have never seen their team win a World Series. No Giants fan has seen their team win a World Series since moving to California more than a half-century ago.

Now they've got one. And as anyone who followed the Royals in '85 or the Twins in '87 or the Reds in '90 or the Cardinals in '06 will tell you, the only thing that matters is getting one. All the rest is details.

Meanwhile, as a baseball fan (as opposed to a Giants fan), it's really easy to enjoy this team's success. The Giants wear classic uniforms in a beautiful ballpark. Their roster is studded with fascinating players like Tim Lincecum, Pablo Sandoval and Brian Wilson. Their manager was forced to make any number of tough decisions down the stretch and into the postseason, and nearly all of them worked brilliantly.

This one's for the fans who love the Giants, mostly. But there's plenty left over for the rest of us, too."

Elation

2010-11-01T22:04:00.001-07:00

Tonight my beloved Giants defeated the Texas Rangers in five games to win the World Series--their first championship in my lifetime. I'm over the moon. I can barely believe it. I'll have more to say about this a little later in the week after having taken the time to reflect on it. But, for now, it's complete elation.

The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant! Whoooooooo-OHHHHH!!!

2010-10-23T22:36:00.000-07:00

Tonight my beloved San Francisco Giants beat the heavily favored Philadelphia Phillies 4 games to 2 to win the National League Championship and punch their ticket to the World Series for the first time in eight years. This is just the fourth time in my lifetime that the Giants have made it to the pinnacle of Major League Baseball.

In 1962--when I was just five years old--the Giants lost the Series to the Yankees in 7 games on a whistling line drive out by Willie McCovey in the bottom of the ninth inning with runners at second and third and trailing 1-0.

In 1989 the Giants were swept by the Oakland A's in a series remembered more for the devastating 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck just prior to the beginning of Game 3 at Candlestick Park. (On a personal note, I was there that night and have the ticket stub to prove it--the only World Series game ever cancelled on account of an earthquake.)

In 2002 the Giants held a 5-0 lead heading into the bottom of the seventh inning of Game 6, needing just nine outs to win their first Series in nearly fifty years. But the Anaheim Angels scored three runs in the seventh and three more in the eighth to win Game 6, and then coasted to a Game 7 victory as well.

Three berths in the Series. Three failures to reach the pinnacle.

Now comes try # 4.

The last time the Giants won the World Series was in 1954 when they beat a heavily-favored Cleveland Indians team that had 111 games in the regular season.

The World Series opens in San Francisco at the beautiful AT&T Ballpark on Wednesday night.

I feel like a kid at Christmas...wow wow wow.

The Glory Season

2010-10-19T19:31:00.000-07:00

Back in February, I wrote about "the glory season" for my part of the world--when the almond blossoms were bursting with their pinkish white explosion of color, the peach trees would soon be blooming, and the landscape was covered in a carpet of green, something that disappears by May when the dry season begins.

But this is the peak of the glory season in other parts of the country, most notably New England. I had the pleasure of living there for three years in the mid 1980's. My family and I lived on Cape Cod, and we took full advantage of the spectacular displays of color in Massachusetts to see it all, breathe it in, and savor it in advance of the stark monochrome landscape of winter set in.

From the bright yellows and deep crimsons of the maple trees to the showy deep red of the cranberry harvest to the bright orange of the pumpkins for sale at the country stores and farmer's markets, Autumn has always been the season when New Englanders have bragging rights over those of us in other parts of the country.

I will never forget a vividly memorable outing my wife and I took to the classic New England village of Weston, Vermont. Weston is the home of the Vermont Country Store, has a beautiful grandstand and gazebo on its village green, and offers a picturesque setting for all that is New England on an autumn afternoon.

Now that I'm covered in walnuts during the harvest this time of year, it's nigh on impossible for me to get away to see the colors during the fall in Massachusetts or Vermont or New Hampshire. But I do often think of those years when I was immersed in the glory season of New England.

San Francisco Fog

2010-10-02T23:21:00.000-07:00

I love San Francisco. It's one of the most beautiful cities in America, blessed with one of the mildest climates and surrounded by some of the most pristine natural beauty of any city in the world.

San Francisco--like all great cities--possesses characteristics that mark its personality. One of those features is the fog that reliably rolls in during most months of the year, particularly in the summertime. The fog lends an ethereal mystery to the city, and it's welcomed by the locals like an old friend.

It is also a major reason that one of the city's most famous quotes is attributed to Mark Twain: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."

.

On The Verge Of Jubilation

2010-09-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

A little over a month ago, I wrote of how fun it is for my favorite baseball team, the Giants, to be involved in a pennant race. Today they clinched at least a tie for their division championship and a playoff berth. Tomorrow they can win it outright.

The Giants have had a remarkable stretch run, winning 18 games and losing only 8 during the month of September. Not only that, but their pitching staff's 1.78 earned run average for the month is the lowest for a team since the 1965 Dodgers.

It's been an amazing run.

The Giants haven't won a World Series since three years before I was even born. And they may not even make it to the Series this year. But hope springs eternal...

Another Reason Why Most Of Us Despise Bailouts

2010-09-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

Buried in yesterday's Wall Street Journal is an article informing us that General Motors--the still bankrupt and now taxpayer-paid-for and government-owned auto maker--has resumed providing political donations to candidates for federal office. According to records released by the Federal Elections Commission, GM has paid $90,500 to mostly Midwestern politicians, predominantly Democrats.

While it's not at all unusual for large corporations to engage in political donations to candidates, what is both unusual and troubling is that the dollars GM is donating actually come from you and me--the taxpayers who bellied up to the bar last year to bail out GM in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown.

This is unconscionable. What is, in effect, happening is that taxpayer dollars are being funneled through a government-owned company to--predominantly--one political party. No wonder that, according to Rasmussen Reports, 59% of us think the government bailouts were a bad idea while only 26% support it.

The government does not serve the people. The government serves the government and those in power.

Reward The Great Teachers

2010-09-26T16:12:00.000-07:00

If you're lucky--as I was--to have been educated by more than a few great teachers, you know what a profound impact they have had on your life. The teaching profession is rightly revered and honored in our country, because teachers not only impart to us many of the building blocks of life but they also have the great responsibility and power of molding young minds in their fields of study. Teaching is not just a job--and no one who views it that way should be a teacher in the first place. In no other profession--with the possible exception of the family doctor--do parents willingly place their children in such a vaunted position of trust and influence, hoping their youngsters will be blessed with the guidance and encouragement of a few great teachers.

That is why I have a palpable contempt for the National Education Association, which also happens to be the largest teachers' union in America. The NEA does not believe in rewarding the great teachers. Instead, it's much more focused on gaining and preserving tenure for all teachers, including the very worst. The union never seems to have enough money allocated to public education; it advocates smaller student to teacher ratios primarily to strengthen the union with more teachers, not to improve the degree of personal instruction for each student; it values mediocrity over excellence; and it promotes liberal causes in the classroom that have no place in the classroom in the first place.

These charges may be debated, but the wave of public opinion over the abject failure of the NEA is gaining broader acceptance simply because the facts are immutable. Consider the following: among 29 industrialized nations, the USA ranks 24th in math--beating only Poland, Hungary, Spain, and Latvia. Of thirty industrialized nations, the USA ranks 16th in science.

Now, the NEA will tell you that the problem is lack of funding. And that is a complete fabrication. Consider this: Since 2001, the Cost Of Living Index in the USA has climbed 22.4% between 2001-2009. During that same period, the federal government has increased spending for public education by 76%, from $514 billion at the beginning of the decade to $904 billion in 2009. Lack of spending is simply not the problem. And the most damning fact is that while the US went on its spending spree, American youngsters continued to sink lower in comparison to their peers internationally.

So what's the answer? Of course, there is no magic bullet. But just like an alcoholic who can never begin to heal unless he at least recognizes he has a problem, the public education system will not begin to improve until the majority of us recognizes what a deep hole we're in. That may be happening. A new film titled "Waiting For Superman" was released last week, documenting the dismal failure of our educational system and pinning the blame squarely on the teachers' unions. One might rightly assume that this film was produced by some right-wing organization with a political axe to grind. In this case, one would be wrong. The film is produced by Davis Guggenheim, who also produced the Oscar-winning film "An Inconvenient Truth" which highlighted the effects of global warming. It's encouraging to see that those on the political left are willing to recognize the failures of the unions and of our schools--and that this film is attempting to issue a call to action for all of us.

Here's a second answer--both remarkably common sense but filled with political landmines: fire bad and/or ineffective teachers, train mediocre ones, and generously reward the great ones. I've had more than a few discussions of this ilk over the years with teachers, and their standard answer is "It's a simple and great idea, but how do you do it objectively? How can you guarantee fairness?" And my answer is always the same: you can't. What we can do is to try--and in so doing, do our best to be fair and balanced. But teachers have been pampered by a system that rewards mediocrity for so long that they simply cannot relate to what those of us in the private sector live with everyday. We get an annual performance and salary review, and during that review we learn what our boss thinks of our work--good and bad. We may not think parts of that review are fair, but all we can do is work harder to improve.

Teachers have to be willing to accept what we in the private sector live with everyday. Yes, there will be some mistakes made--especially in the beginning as a new system of reviews, rewards, and consequences takes shape. But over time, I am confident that such a system will reward the great teachers. Like the ones who had such a great influence over us. And like the ones who have such a great influence over the lives of our children and grandchildren.

The Harvest Moon

2010-09-23T17:28:00.000-07:00

Of all the full moons that occur during the year, the most famous and most anticipated is the Harvest Moon. It's the full moon that occurs nearest the Autumnal Equinox, usually a few days before or after. This year, however, the Harvest Moon occurred on the exact same night as the first day of Autumn--an event that has not happened in nearly twenty years and will not occur again until 2029. When this happens, it's known as a Super Harvest Moon.

Why is it called a Harvest Moon? In the 18th and 19th centuries, farmers took advantage of the luminous reflection of the huge Harvest Moon to continue to harvest their crops through the night. It was a bonus, as they worked the very long hours synonymous with the harvest to gather their crops in before rain might slow them down or risk ruining their bounty.

Last night at around 10 pm I walked outside and spent a few moments basking under the huge, bright full moon of September. I thought about all of those generations of hard-working farmers who had labored under that same moon decades and centuries before us. And I gave thanks to God for the beauty of the moment and the privilege of living close to the land, and truly understanding the meaning of the Harvest Moon.

My Favorite Season

2010-09-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

Today at 8:09 PM Pacific Time, the Earth's axis will be exactly aligned with the center of the Sun in the same plane as the Equator. That's a fancy description for the Autumnal Equinox, which is another way of saying that it's the first day of Autumn.

It is my favorite season. There isn't a close second.

I love the Autumn for so many reasons. The harsh heat of the Summer is past. I've never been a fan of Summer because I tolerate the cold of winter (and you're right--we don't have a real winter here in California anyway) much better than the heat of summer. So when the cool, crisp air of Autumn greets me in the morning, I kind of revel in quiet celebration.

It's not just the temperatures, though. I love the long shadows cast by the angle of the Sun. The light bends differently, especially in October and into early November. It's a dream come true for photographers--and it's both comforting and sublime. I love especially the end of an Autumn day. The days, of course, are shorter but it is during that gloaming in the half-light of those days that I find myself more reflective than perhaps at any other time of the year.

Perhaps best of all is the luminescent colors of the season. The hardwoods offered that bright green of the new leaves in the spring, provided shade through the heat of the summer, and now they offer their showy, spectacular finale in bright hues of crimson, ocher, orange, carnelian, and goldenrod.

I love pulling out sweaters and sweatshirts and jackets again--and feeling the coolness of the air when I can draw it down deep and savor the freshness after a fall rain.

I love the return of football season, especially--like this year--on those rare occasions when my alma mater (Stanford) actually has a team to get excited about.

Autumn is when we harvest our crops--a time when it's crazy busy, exhilarating, exhausting, rambunctious, and energizing all at the same time. It's like our once-a-year payoff for all of the hard work and planning and preparation of the crop. And God is a gracious and good God, as He faithfully brings us the crop each year at this time.

It's during the fall that my favorite holiday of the year happens: Thanksgiving. That's when families gather, and the demanding harvest season is over, and we actually get four days off from work to rest, relax, reflect, and give thanks.

It's the best time of the year. And now it's here and I'm celebrating.

A Primer On Peppers

2010-09-21T12:32:00.000-07:00

In my corporate days, I worked as a marketing jock for a large food processing company in their foodservice division. I remember attending a presentation by a research company who was involved in forecasting new trends in the industry. One of the things the presenter said has stuck with me: "As America's population ages, the Baby Boomers will be looking for more richly-flavored and spicier foods. As a person ages, their taste buds don't distinguish flavors as readily as they used to--so the aging Boomers will be looking for help from the spice rack."

Well, as one of those aging Boomers, I can attest to the validity of that prediction. I really enjoy well-seasoned foods, and more and more of my Boomer brethren (and sisteren--yes, I just made up a new word) are discovering the variety and versatility of the pepper.

The thing about peppers is that they come in a whole host of sizes, shapes, colors, and--most importantly--levels of spiciness. As a matter of fact, there's even an objective way of measuring the heat index of various types and varieties of peppers called the Scoville Scale.

The Scoville Scale was developed in 1912 by an American chemist named Wilbur Scoville. Scoville developed a method of adding sugar to an extraction of a pepper's capsaicin until the heat is barely detectable. The more sugar is added, the higher the Scoville rating for a particular type of pepper.

For example, sweet bell peppers have no capsaicin at all and have a Scoville rating of zero. That's not really an eye-opener, is it? What is an eye-opener, however, is how hot the peppers are that occupy the upper level of the Scoville Scale. Here's a look at the peppers and their Scoville ratings:

Bell pepper 0
Pepperoncini 300
Poblano 1,500
Jalapeno 6,000

At this point, I want to intervene with a comment. Before I had ever heard of the Scoville Scale, I thought the jalapeno was one of the hottest peppers around. It is certainly the hottest I've ever had the courage to eat. But as it turns out, the tear-inducing jalapeno is like a 98-pound weakling compared to the truly powerful peppers that follow:

Serrano 18,000
Cayenne 40,000
Scotch Bonnet 250,000
Habanero 400,000

And the king of all peppers--the one that literally cannot be handled with bare hands--is the knee-buckling Naga Jolokia (also known as the Ghost Pepper) with a Scoville rating of an astounding 900,000 Scoville units! Think of that--the Ghost Pepper's potency is 150 times more powerful than a jalapeno.

I'll admit it: when it comes to spicy foods, anything more than a very small taste of the jalapeno is about as far as I go. Call me a wimp. But at least I'll only have to deal with bloodshot eyes when I eat my jalapeno. For those of you who are tougher than me, I want to know when you're scheduling your ulcer repair.

The Day The Skies Were Silent

2010-09-12T05:08:00.000-07:00

Nine years ago today, the skies over U.S. airspace were silent. It was the first time it had ever happened since the dawn of commercial aviation. In the aftermath of the tragedy of 9/11, President Bush ordered all commercial aircraft in the USA grounded because of fears of another hijacking and attack.

I well remember walking outside on that sunny Wednesday afternoon and looking up into the sky for many minutes and hearing complete silence. We lived at the time in the flight path of Atlanta-Hartsfield Airport--the busiest airport in the world. But not on 12 September 2001.

It was a day unlike any in our nation's aviation history.

We pray there will never be a repeat of that sad and melancholy and uncertain day.

We Will Never Forget

2010-09-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

A Word About Trees

2010-09-02T14:02:00.000-07:00

I make my livelihood from trees. My brothers and I are fourth-generation farmers, growing walnuts in the San Joaquin Valley of California. We love caring for the orchards, and we take a lot of personal pride and satisfaction in making the orchards not only productive but aesthetically beautiful as well. Our part of California has been a farming Mecca for generations, but the face of the kind of agriculture being practiced here is changing. The dairy industry is in the middle of a long and deep downturn, and many dairymen are converting their land to almond, walnut, olive and cherry orchards. Cattlemen have been doing the same thing. Fewer cowboys. More orchards.

And I'm not complaining. The orchards are beautiful and they not only dot the landscape--they dominate it.

But it's not just fruit and nut trees that I love. We're blessed in this part of the Valley with an abundance of oak trees. There are White Oaks on the California coast. On the valley floor, we have Valley Oaks. And just a few miles east of here--as you drive into the Sierra foothills--you'll see Black Oaks, and further up in the high country you're likely to encounter Live Oaks, Canyon Live Oaks, and Blue Oaks. One of the biggest oak trees I've ever seen is at the end of the driveway where I grew up--a spectacular Blue Oak that is estimated to be around 150 years old.

Oak trees are fascinating because they have such character. They're gnarled, with limbs that twist and turn. They lack the symmetry of a redwood or a pine. They grow slowly. But they're beautiful and distinctive. And there are still parts of California--especially in the foothills--where one can drive past acres of old oak groves that were likely there when the Mi-Wuk Indians lived among them.

California is perhaps most famous for its Giant Sequoias. The Sequoia is massive. In fact, the General Sherman tree in Sequoia National Park is the largest tree in the world. It's estimated to reach 275 feet high, with a girth of 103 feet in circumference. It is estimated to be at least 2,300 years old. Nearby, the General Grant tree is nearly as big, but it's a relative youth at an estimated 1,600 years old.

Trees are a precious gift, and California is blessed to have such an abundance of beautiful and fascinating trees.

The Loyal Opposition

2010-08-29T21:50:00.000-07:00

An intelligent and conscientious opposition is a part of loyalty to the country. Bainbridge Colby

About a year and a half ago, concerned and patriotic citizens found common voice in a movement called the Tea Party. At first, the movement was discounted by many politicians of both major parties in our country--until Tax Day 2009, when mass demonstrations took place in some 750 towns and cities across America. (What is little remembered is that the term "TEA Party" is an acronym for the phrase "Taxed Enough Already".) These protests were remarkable in the fact that they were peaceful and made by citizens who, for the most part, had never participated in any form of protest or political action in their lives.

Some five months later--on 12 September 2009--some 75,000 marched in Washington to protest not just the policies of the Obama Administration, but the Bush Administration before it for profligate government spending that had put the country on the brink of financial ruin.

Now, nearly a year later, the Tea Party movement is causing upheaval in both major political parties. Three incumbent Senators--Michael Bennett of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and the opportunistic Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania--have seen their political careers end at the hands of the Tea Party. And key Tea Party-supported candidates, including most prominently Sharron Angle of Nevada who is running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid--have the establishment candidates on the run.

Liberals--most prominently House Speaker Nancy Pelosi--have referred to the Tea Party protesters as an "angry mob". But these concerned citizens appear on the brink of a historic election in little more than two months from now. Since 1968--through the upheavals of Watergate, the end of the Vietnam War, the rejection of the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, three major wars (the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the Afghanistan War), and 9/11--the greatest turnover of US House seats was 36 in 1974. And while the election is still 65 days away, most pundits believe that the Republicans will regain control of the House with a turnover exceeding the 39 seats needed to do so. If this happens, not only will the GOP regain control, but the political bent of the members will be decidedly more conservative--buttressed by the many Tea Party candidates who will undoubtedly be elected.

The genius of the Founders was that they allowed America--every two years--to re-define itself and force its elected officials to pay heed to the voice of the common people. That voice is about to be heard with thunderous resonance.

The Fun Of Being In A Pennant Race

2010-08-07T09:10:00.000-07:00

As any faithful reader of this blog knows by now, I am a big sports fan. I love football and have been a huge 49ers fan all my life. I love basketball and--even though I grew up in California--I've always loved the Boston Celtics. But my first love is baseball. I well remember the day my dad and mom took my brother and me to our first baseball game--a San Francisco Giants game played at the infamous Candlestick Park. My favorite player was Willie Mays--and he hit a home run that day, making me a lifelong fan of the Giants.

In the whole scheme of things, the Giants would probably rate as a middling franchise. They haven't won a World Series since before I was born. They've played in three World Series since I've been alive--in 1962 against the Yankees, in 1989 against the A's, and in 2003 against the Angels--and they've lost them all. But I love rooting for my beloved team, and I love rooting against the hated L.A. Dodgers.

Since the departure of the controversial Barry Bonds, the Giants have struggled. Until this year. Now they have a wonderful blend of veterans and extremely talented young players. They have one of the best pitching staffs in the Major Leagues. But what I like best about them is they're a team. There is no obvious star player who carries the team; everyone has a role, and each of them play it with gusto. Rarely are they out of a ballgame, and they are always scrapping to climb back into games where they're behind. Ten days ago, against the hated Dodgers, a recent addition to the team named Pat Burrell hit an eighth-inning home run that beat the Dodgers 3-2. And last night--without the benefit of a hit--the Giants beat the Braves 3-2 in the 11th inning after tying the game in the ninth.

The Giants stand today one game behind the division-leading San Diego Padres, but they've gained six games on the Padres since the All-Star Break a month ago. I don't know if the Giants will make the post-season playoffs, or if they'll get another shot at a championship in the World Series. What I do know is that it's a lot of fun to be in a pennant race.

What Is The Definition Of Democracy?

2010-08-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

On November 4, 2008 voters in California approved Proposition 8 with 52.2% of the vote. The proposition's language was simple: it added a clause to the state's constitution affirming that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in the state of California". Now U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker has ruled that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional, and that gay people should have the right to marry--immediately.

No matter what one's position on gay marriage may be, this ruling is scary. It's one thing for a court to overturn a lower court's ruling, or even to consider a state law as unconstitutional--as has recently been done with Arizona's illegal immigration law. But for a judge to assert his own ideology in direct conflict with the majority will of the people in a state-wide constitutional referendum is astounding.

If the vote of the people can be overturned by a single judge, what kind of democracy do we really have after all? Webster's defines democracy as "a system of government based on the principle of majority decision-making". Proposition 8 was most certainly not a referendum which was decided in the dark of night. It was a huge issue in California, debated for months before the vote--and timed to coincide with the Presidential election of 2008, which drew more voters in California than at any time since 1968. To that end, it's indisputable that, with regard to majority decision-making, the majority spoke clearly.

But that majority's voice has now been abrogated by the sole opinion of one judge. And that should send shudders up the spine of every Californian.

Some Nutty Humor On A Monday

2010-07-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

Some of you know that I am a walnut farmer. Yes, we do crack our walnuts for our customers. No, we don't do it this way...

The Star Spangled Banner...

2010-07-12T21:25:00.000-07:00

...was never meant to be a question. And yet that is how we sing our National Anthem. From the opening line, we ask "O say can you see by the dawn's early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?" And when we finish the song--or at least what most of us perceive to be the complete anthem--we are yet asking another question: "O say does that star spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

The amazing thing about our national anthem is that Francis Scott Key--who wrote the song from a prison ship off the coast of Baltimore when the city was under attack by the British during the War of 1812--never intended the song to merely pose an open question. For in the following three stanzas (yes, there are four altogether), he emphatically answers the question he poses: yes...the banner still waves.

With that, I offer the full text of the Star Spangled Banner as penned by Francis Scott Key...

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Wanted: Decisive Leadership

2010-06-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

First, let's make this point clearly: President Obama did not create the BP Oil Spill. It wasn't his fault and those who point fingers at him for doing so weaken their position on the issue before they even get started. Second, let's also concede that this is an extremely difficult problem with no easy answers.

But all that said, we're learning some disturbing things about our President in the midst of crisis. Namely, he's acting much more like the community organizer he is and not the decisive chief executive we both need and had hoped for. Too much has been made of the fact that Obama took nine days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon well on April 20 to visit the Gulf. While that's important in a symbolic way, it's not substantive and everyone knows that.

What is substantive, however, is Obama's lack of an aggressive, decisive response to the tragedy. Here are some examples:

In the early days after the explosion, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal requested the federal government's help in constructing a series of sixteen sand berms along the Louisiana coast to protect the precious marsh lands from incoming oil. The Washington Post reported that Jindal "reached out to the marine contractor Van Oord and the research institute Deltares to assist with the project...and BP pledged $360 million for the plan". But when U.S. dredging companies and their labor unions objected to foreign dredging companies' involvement, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers indicated they would need to conduct an environmental impact study to determine what damage might be done by construction of the berms--this while millions of gallons of oil were headed toward the coast to do untold environmental damage to the coast!
Norway offered to provide a chemical dispersant said to be superior to the one used by BP with less harm to the ocean's sea life. It was rejected by the EPA.
In the weeks following the explosion, offers were received from Norway, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia to send ships, skimming equipment, and other materiel to the Gulf Coast to assist in the clean-up and to attempt to capture as much oil as possible before it reached the coast. But thanks to a 1920's-vintage law called the Jones Act which prohibits foreign vessels and crews from entering American waters, such offers were not accepted and could not be accepted unless President Obama waived the Jones Act. To this day--more than 60 days after the explosion--such a waiver has not been granted by the President.
On May 5, the State Department reported that it had received thirteen foreign offers of help and that it would assess those offers and respond within 48 hours to determine which of the offers they might accept. Two weeks later, the Department finally responded--accepting none of the offers for help.
In early June, sixteen skimming vessels were finally deployed to the Gulf to vacuum as much oil as possible before it hit the beaches. Incredibly, the Coast Guard immediately took the vessels temporarily out of service to determine if they had a sufficient number of life vests on board.

An activist, involved, decisive Chief Executive would have swept the bureaucratic red tape aside. He would not have appointed blue ribbon panels of experts, including--as Obama has repeatedly pointed out--his "Nobel Prize winning Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar" to advise him, all of whom have twiddled their thumbs while the oil gushes into the Gulf. Instead, a decisive leader would have become directly involved--inviting all offers of assistance and working with the Coast Guard to coordinate their equipment and crews. He would have told the labor unions to pound sand--that this was no time for politics or protecting union jobs, but that it was a national emergency requiring the best minds and more able and trained hands than the U.S. was capable of mounting on its own. He would not only have approved Governor Jindal's request to construct berms, but he would have told the Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, and any other bureaucracy to step aside while the work was getting done and sue him later if they chose to.

Instead, the oil continues to gush. The only hope--the only hope now--is the successful drilling and construction of two relief wells which are being drilled and which, we are told, will be operational sometime in early August. Clean-up efforts are, according to CNN and The New York Times, not well-coordinated. There's just not enough equipment being deployed and what is there is not being deployed in the right places.

In short, it's a fiasco.

On February 20, 2009--during a visit to the Gulf Coast--President Obama told the residents this: "The residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast...are succeeding despite the fact they have not always received the support they deserved from the federal government. We must ensure that the failures of the past are never repeated."

Now, a little over a year later, they most certainly are.

The Privilege Of Being A Dad

2010-06-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'm fortunate and blessed to be the father of three sons. This is particularly meaningful since I myself was raised in a family of three boys and no sisters.

Life in a household with three sons is, as one might imagine, a place loaded with mischief, fun, and testosterone. My sons are all young men now. Jeremy is 27, married, and lives in Costa Rica where he works for IBM and is making a very nice career with a fine company. Joshua is nearly 25, plans to be married next May, and manages a ranch as part of the family business. And Trevor is 21 and is about to enter his final year in college at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

But when they were younger, they made for an active--sometimes chaotic--household. My job when they were little was to give them a bath after dinner, dress them in their pajamas, and settle them down by reading them or telling them a story. Now, I will freely admit that I never really got the concept of "settling the boys down". First off, I understand from fathers of girls that this process is rarely necessary. But with boys--especially three of them--it is a foregone conclusion. Still, I will here and now admit that I am guilty of stirring the pot with the boys from time to time--encouraging shenanigans and, yes, even being part of the mischief when I was supposed to be exerting some authority. There were more than a few times when I got them cleaned up and in their PJ's before an all-out wrestling match--or what I used to call "bear-cubbing" would ensue on the floor of their bedroom. Instead of having them bedded down and relaxed, they would finally crawl into their beds sweaty, charged up, and ready to go another few rounds with Dad.

I remember one time when my wife was away at a meeting and I was asked to babysit. Now, this was also a bit of a misnomer in that the four of us viewed Mom's meetings as the equivalent of Guys' Night Out. Jeremy and I were watching Monday Night Football while the two younger guys were upstairs. What were they doing up there? I had no clue. After all, it was a good game! About the time Mom came home from her meeting, we heard some crying upstairs. We went up to investigate, but it was weird: we could hear Trevor crying but we couldn't find him. Finally, I followed the sound to the closet and discovered that he was stuck halfway down the laundry chute which went from our closet to the laundry room one floor below. I quickly determined that, as long as he was crying, it meant he was breathing so he was okay. But this clearly represented an emergency. I am happy to report that we did not have to call the fire department (I had visions of seeing them hack away at the cupboards in the laundry room with axes to free the young lad) and that we were able, with God's help, to get him out on our own. When he finally emerged and got settled down a little, I asked him "Why would you try to crawl down the laundry chute????" His reply: "Josh told me that Santa Claus did it and I should give it a try." Sigh.

On another occasion, I decided to take the boys (the youngest was not born yet) and their grandfather to a minor league baseball game. I was pretty sure--given the young ages of the boys--that we'd be lucky to last until the sixth inning, but we thought it would be fun nonetheless. In a moment of self-proclaimed genius, I bought them peanuts once we got through the gates instead of candy. Why? Peanuts meant they would have to shell their treat, which would keep them busy for at least three innings. And that's about how it worked out. By about the 4th or 5th inning, Jeremy was starting to get interested in watching the game. Josh was sitting at the end of the row, happily grubbing around in his pulled-out T-shirt for any remaining peanuts that he had missed. This activity got us through the sixth inning and--as the boys seemed happily occupied and the game was close--my father-in-law and I decided to hang around for another inning or two. At the end of the 7th inning, I looked down the row to check on Josh. He had by this time gotten out of his seat and was sitting on the concrete in front of the seat with his back to the field. He seemed to be having fun doing whatever he was doing, so I turned back to the game. Another inning went by. I checked on Josh again. He was still down there, so I bent down to see what he was up to. I discovered that the people seated in the row behind us had left, but not before dropping a whole pile of nacho chips and cheese on the floor. Josh was (and had for the last 10 minutes or so) reaching for the chips one at a time, dipping them in the cheese sauce, and having himself another game-time snack. My father-in-law and I chuckled over this development, and he asked me what I was going to do about it. I replied "Well, let's first agree that--if his mom were here--Josh would be halfway to the emergency room right now to get his stomach pumped. But the way I look at it, he's already been exposed to whatever is in that stuff, it's keeping him occupied, it's a good game, so I say--Play Ball!"

I will conclude the story by reporting that a) we did see the rest of the game and the home team won; b) Josh was just fine, with no apparent side effects as a result of his culinary adventure; and c) yes, I did get into a little trouble with my wife when we got home.

There are loads of other stories I could share that would make our family life seem like the inspiration for Chevy Chase's Family Vacation movies.

Suffice to say that I am blessed and honored to have three fine sons. They make me proud. I remember the day Jeremy was born. I held him and came to a startling realization: he was the first person in my life who I loved at first sight. And it would happen two more times after that.

Great Series, Lousy Outcome

2010-06-17T21:21:00.000-07:00

I'm a lifelong Boston Celtics fan. That's unusual coming from a California boy, but I've always admired the gritty, tough team brand of basketball the Celtics play. Tonight the Celtics joined battle with their most bitter rivals, the L.A. Lakers. The Celtics led at the end of the first, second, and third quarters. But they melted down the stretch and the Lakers won the championship in an epic Game 7.

It was a fantastic championship series. Too bad it had a lousy outcome. Regardless, the Celtics went into the playoffs as the 4th seed in the Eastern Conference. Nobody expected them to reach the Finals. They had a great season and made all of us Celtics fans proud.

Fly The Flag Proudly

2010-06-14T09:01:00.000-07:00

Today is Flag Day. Since President Wilson proclaimed June 14 as Flag Day in 1916, America has celebrated this day by flying its flag.

But the idea of Flag Day has its origins going back some thirty years earlier. The Fourth of July was traditionally celebrated as America's birthday, but the idea of an annual day specifically celebrating the Flag is believed to have first originated in 1885. BJ Cigrand, a schoolteacher, arranged for the pupils in the Fredonia, Wisconsin Public School to observe June 14 (the 108th anniversary of the official adoption of The Stars and Stripes) as 'Flag Birthday'. In numerous magazines and newspaper articles and public addresses over the following years, Cigrand continued to enthusiastically advocate the observance of June 14 as 'Flag Birthday', or 'Flag Day'.

America is a flawed country, yes. But it's also the beacon of liberty for the rest of the world, and the most benign and generous superpower the world has ever known. Two weekends ago, I installed a flag bracket on the front of my home, and a big, bright 3' x 5' flag has been gracing it since then.

So fly your flag today, and everyday. And fly it proudly.

My Speech To The Graduates

2010-06-01T14:50:00.000-07:00

It's June--the month when many young adults will graduate from high school and college, and begin an exciting new chapter in their lives. I haven't been invited to offer the keynote address at any of these commencement exercises, but if I were invited, this is what I would say to the graduates of 2010...

Sweat the small stuff. In spite of what they say, the small stuff often is the big stuff, and if the small stuff is taken care of the big stuff will follow.
Show respect for your parents. Sure, we may have made mistakes when you were growing up. In fact, I guarantee you we did make mistakes when you were growing up. But if we're like 90% of parents, we did the best we could and we love you unconditionally. Remember, living with you wasn't exactly a cakewalk either.
Write a real letter to a friend at least once a month. Not an email. Not a note. A real letter. Tell them what you're doing and what you're up to. When they receive a letter like that in the mail, they'll be thrilled. And you will have made their day--maybe even their whole week. And all it cost you was thirty minutes of your time and a stamp.
Be content with your surroundings and what you have. We really do live in the greatest country in the world, in spite of all of its problems. Maybe you don't live in La Jolla or Carmel or The Hamptons. (In fact, the odds are very high that you don't.) But wherever you are, you live in a pretty wonderful place and you enjoy the freedom of our land and the beauty of our big, wide, open-armed nation. Enjoy it. Relish it. Embrace it.

Dance.

Be grateful. We all have things to be thankful for. When we focus on all we have rather than all we don't have, we're a lot more interesting to be with and talk to. Even when the only conversation we're having is with ourselves.
Learn the social graces. Men, walk on the outside of the sidewalk--even though the days of horse-drawn carriages throwing mud on the boardwalks is a thing from the last century. Pull a lady's chair for her. Help her with her coat. Rise when she enters a room when you're in public. Ladies, don't slurp your soup. Don't talk too much. If there is a lull in the conversation, don't fill it with needless noise; make room for poignant silence. And by the way, it's perfectly okay to ask us guys to put the toilet seat down.
Take a walk everyday. Take your dog if you have one. Take yourself if you don't. A daily constitutional is good for your body, but more importantly, it's good for your mind. In this busy and fast-paced world where we're so conditioned to run, taking a walk is not only not such a bad thing, it's a very good thing.
Find a hobby and pursue it. Make it a passion. Whether it's learning to play the fiddle or planting and tending a rose garden or painting still lifes or landscapes, do it. Spend time with it. Improve and learn and grow. It will relax you and stimulate you at the same time. Besides, one-dimensional people are boring.

Smile.

Go to

Italy

. From the splendor of the Italian Alps in the north to the quaint Sicilian villages in the far south, it's a fascinating country. You will eat some of the best food in the world and you won't ever have to set foot in a 5-star restaurant to get it. You will drink some of the best wine. You will rub elbows with some of the friendliest and most gracious people. And you will see and learn and experience passion. The Italians are lousy at city planning and they will never teach you how to be efficient. It doesn't matter. They will teach you how to enjoy and appreciate life.
Pray with your kids. Don't just pray for them, pray with them. Pray with them while they're still in the womb, so they get used to the sound of your voice when you pray. Pray with them when they are infants and toddlers and young children and teenagers. Pray with them when they are young adults and middle-aged parents of your grandchildren. Pray unceasingly.
Go ahead and dream. Don't be discouraged by the naysayers who say that dreamers have their heads in the clouds. Edison dreamed of harnessing electricity to make light and he did it. Hillary dreamed of scaling Mount Everest and he climbed it. Michelangelo dreamed of creating a masterpiece on a ceiling and he painted it. Nothing great was ever accomplished that was not preceded by a dream. So go ahead and dream. Dream big. Your dreams are the first step to getting there.
Don't worry about how much you have. Worry about how much you give. The great irony is that by giving, you'll ultimately be the receiver. By getting and hoarding, you'll ultimately come away empty-handed. Have as your goal at your funeral a church overflowing with family and friends and many who never knew you but were touched by your generosity. It will be much greater and more interesting than a hearse and a brief graveside ceremony.
One more thing about the small stuff. Remember to separate the minutiae from the small stuff. The small stuff isn't small because it's not important. It's small because it's a part of something bigger. Minutiae--now that's unimportant. Need an example? Your son wants you to play catch in the backyard. That's small. That's important. Your co-worker tells you that the shipment will get there a day late because of a blizzard in the Rockies. That's minutiae. You make a phone call and tell your customer what's happening, and you've already done all you can. Beyond that, it's unimportant.

Laugh. Laugh uproariously.

Hug someone or shake someone's hand everyday. Hug your wife or your husband. Shake your co-worker's hand. You can even shake the hand of the person in back of you in line at the grocery store. Whoever it is, and whatever the circumstances, you will be making someone's day a little happier and a little brighter. And remember, by giving you're actually the one who is getting. It works out that way.
Teach your kids how to save. In our society of easy credit and instant gratification, the simple act of saving is becoming a thing of the past. Our parents and grandparents lived through the Great Depression, when having clothes for school and a hot dinner every night was nothing to take for granted. Nowadays we're not only complacent about that hot meal, but we choose between eating at home or eating out, between Thai food or Italian, between the local corner restaurant or our own dinner table. We buy a new pair of jeans because they're on sale, not because we really need another pair. We lease a new car every three years because the lease on our "old" one has expired, not because we really need a new car. Old Ben Franklin was right: a penny saved really is a penny earned. So teach your kids how to earn more by saving more.
Choose happiness. It really is a choice. Life does throw us curve balls, it's true. And it is also true that sometimes life isn't fair. But guess what? When it happens to you, you're not the only one. And in spite of what you may think, your circumstances are not unique to you. It's not whether we hit that curve ball out of the park, because chances are that we won't. What matters is whether we keep swinging, even when the curve balls keep coming.

Fly.

Dwight Eisenhower said that those who fail to plan, plan to fail. Always have a list of goals and review that list at least once a year. How are you doing in accomplishing those things? And if you're not achieving those goals, how do you kick yourself in the butt to do them? The goals don't have to be huge, but you do need to begin achieving them. It will boost your self-confidence. It will help you bounce out of bed in the morning. And--best of all--when you scratch those goals off your list because you achieved them, you'll be replacing them with new goals that are even bolder and bigger.
Be kind to yourself. Okay, so you don't have the body of Elizabeth Hurley, the voice of Andrea Bocelli, or the brains of Albert Einstein. Guess what? The guy next to you doesn't either. What you do have is your own uniqueness, your own style, your own way of doing things. Every one of us has something we do do better than 90% of our peers. So don't focus on what you aren't or can't or won't be. Focus on what you are and can and will be. You will be a lot happier, and the world really will be a better place.

Oh yeah. Don’t forget to sweat the small stuff.

In Our Youths, Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire...

2010-05-29T10:44:00.000-07:00

This weekend our nation pauses to honor the memories of the thousands who have bled and died on battlefields foreign and domestic. While the holiday is commemorated with parades and barbeques, we would do well to remember the true meaning of Memorial Day and how it all got started.

The first Memorial Day was officially proclaimed by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic on 5 May 1868. Logan arranged for flowers to be placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who were buried at Arlington National Cemetery. New York was the first state to officially recognize Memorial Day in 1873 and by the 1890's nearly all of the Northern states were celebrating the holiday. The Southern states refused to recognize the holiday until after the completion of World War I, when the act of honoring war dead became truly a national holiday.

One of the most famous Memorial Day addresses is one by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, given in Keene, New Hampshire on 30 May 1884. Holmes, who would later become a Supreme Court justice, was a veteran of the Civil War. He fought in the Wilderness Campaign and was wounded at Ball's Bluff, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. His remarks resonate with us today as he remembered the many young men in the prime of their lives who fell on the battlefields of The Civil War some twenty years earlier:

"I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on this earth. They are the same bright figures, or their counterparts, that come also before your eyes; and when I speak of those who were my brothers, the same words describe yours.
I see a fair-haired lad, a lieutenant, and a captain on whom life had begun somewhat to tell, but still young, sitting by the long mess-table in camp before the regiment left the State, and wondering how many of those who gathered in our tent could hope to see the end of what was then beginning. For neither of them was that destiny reserved. I remember, as I awoke from my first long stupor in the hospital after the battle of Ball's Bluff, I heard the doctor say, 'He was a beautiful boy'.
I see another quiet figure, of virtuous life and quiet ways, not much heard of until our left was turned at Petersburg. He was in command of the regiment as he saw our comrades driven in. He threw back our left wing, and the advancing tide of defeat was shattered against his iron wall. He saved an army corps from disaster, and then a round shot ended all for him.
But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youths our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing."

We can never repay the brave men and women who have given their lives over the past two and a half centuries so that we may enjoy this great land of liberty. No, we can never repay them. But we can honor and remember them--those whose youths were touched with fire.

A Guest Blogger...And My Response

2010-05-26T18:24:00.000-07:00

First, a bit of full disclosure: as is clear to all who may regularly read my blog, it is probably pretty clear that I have a conservative world view. Second, some additional disclosure: I have three sons, and my oldest holds views that are...well, let's just say that his world view is to the left of mine.

He recently sent me an unsolicited opinion paper on the libertarians' response to the growing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: the BP Oil Spill. He asked me if I would publish it on my blog. I told him I would, provided I had permission to offer specific responses. So here, without further adieu, our version of Point-Counterpoint:

The BP Oil Spill: A lesson in Libertarianism

Rand Paul has made some significant headlines this week. For everything said, let me commend him on his public honesty, a rare breed in American politics. For the media, those honest opinions are like a fresh Whopper for the contestants on “The Biggest Loser” in a room with no cameras. Beyond making a pundit's job to create attention-catching sound bites a piece of cake, Paul’s comments have opened Pandora’s Box to the true views of the ever-elusive Libertarian ideology.

Let’s leave the Civil Rights barn burner out of the debate and focus in on an interesting Paul opinion regarding the BP Oil Spill.

“What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,’ ” Paul said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business.”

Congratulations Rand. In just 2 sentences, you drew a line in the sand between left and right. Effective, no debate there. Pragmatic, can’t criticize for that either. Honest, without a doubt. Those are all desirable qualities, and I can’t blame your supporters for finding you appealing for the same reasons.

However, there are also those hippy, bell bottom-wearing, green-dreaming (and smoking, don’t forget), Prius driving, flaming liberals, who for all of those same traits we admire, just can’t get past the principles.

One would be hard pressed to find a lot of fans of Wall Street nowadays. However, after listening in to the grilling of Lloyd Blankstein on Capitol hill, I will admit something: Wall Street did not get it wrong. They simply played within the rules of the game. Their role in that game is to search for profits. They found profits in mortgage-backed securities, which few argue should be abolished, lucrative derivatives markets, which even the business-hating Obama administration supports through their lack of support for the Lincoln Amendment, and credit-default swaps, which are still being actively traded to mitigate risk. What was the problem on Wall Street then you may ask? That they played within the rules of the game.

When in doubt, revert to sports for an example. There is no actor more criticized in sports than the Zebra. Everyone, the coach, the fan on the couch, the cheerleaders, the mascot, the hot dog vendor, the girlfriend who doesn’t know where the ball is, is a better ref than THE ref. And yet, how many sports fans would support removing the ref from the game? I would venture to say that only a minute few would truly support taking the ref out of the game. Some may say that they want less active refs, some more active refs, some more intelligent refs,some refs with better eyesight, some may even say that they want to see more women refs, but most would say that the ref is a vital part of ensuring the competitiveness of the game, keeping order to what could otherwise turn into an unscripted Saturday night of Professional Wrestling.

Libertarians--and, judging from recent primary results, an ever-increasing portion of Republicans--believe that there should be no ref, or if there is a ref, that he have no flags to throw. What are the consequences of this, beyond the 10% unemployment that the United States currently faces? Let us dissect the BP Spill as a microcosm for the absence of, or weak, regulation.

Where were the regulators? According to the Libertarians like Paul, the spill is somehow evidence that regulation doesn’t work, shouldn’t be funded, and is downright “un-American.” Certainly lax regulation, like that identified by Interior Secretary Salazar, and legislation requiring that deepwater drilling permits be granted within only 30 days, not allowing sufficient time to properly assess new well projects, are in part to blame for the spill. Yet I somehow doubt that the removal of the referee would encourage the market to implement the necessary safety measures to avoid such an accident.

After all, the risk of such an event is really assumed mostly by the environment, fishing and tourism industries, and the US taxpayer. Analysts at Barclays Capital estimate the maximum total cost of the clean-up, plus compensation, legal bills and lost revenue could be $22.6 billion, just a hair over the $75 million cap set by Congress, effectively limiting an oil company’s risk. (I will spare the “Drill Baby Drill” community from the tales of Sea Turtles, Pelicans, or a picturesque sunset on a white sand beach free of tar balls.)

What is so “un-American” about defending the tourism industry, the beach front property owners, and a vast fishing industry from bearing the risk of a single corporation’s lack of safety controls? Libertarian beliefs in lack of regulation are basically an implicit endorsement of corporate business over small business.

How did that work for us on Wall Street from 2005-2008? It is not un-American to look for profits, innovate, compete…and win. It is un-American to do so by breaking the rules, or doing so at the expense of others.

And if Paul had his way? If there were no rules? I wonder if Paul’s ideal vacation is sipping on a cold Piña Colada, overlooking the tar stained beaches of South Florida, as the sole resident in an otherwise vacant condo building. Just a little piece of Libertarian American Pie.

Your humble blogger's response: First, congratulations to my son. Well done. Effectively argued. Some very good points. And, as usual, WRONG. (That was a lame attempt at humor.) Actually, I find several of his points compelling. And in an effort to respond crisply and concisely, I am going to break down his arguments into two basic premises: 1) Libertarians such as Rand Paul--as well as many Conservatives--believe that the government is too big and that its regulatory authority is too far-reaching; their solution would be to eliminate or at least significantly reduce the regulatory oversight of the federal government. And the resulting impact would be catastrophic. As proof, witness the brooding disaster in the Gulf--and that even with a regulatory apparatus that Libertarians already see as onerous; 2) We need even more regulatory oversight to protect us against the evils of Wall Street, whose barons played within the rules as they were established by Congress--and still managed to invest in wildly-speculative financial instruments that served to inflate a huge global bubble that burst in September 2008 and plunged the US economy into The Great Recession, from which we still have not emerged some 20 months later.

If I have accurately summarized my son's arguments, here are my responses to each of his main points:

1) There is no doubt that the BP Oil Spill is a disaster of still unmeasurable magnitude. As I write, something like 70,000 gallons of crude are spilling into the Gulf each day. The damage to the pristine beaches of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida will be sullied by this disaster for decades. (A small aside: last year, my youngest son, who is a student at the University of California at Santa Barbara, found tar balls on the beach--some 41 years after the infamous Santa Barbara oil spill which served as the genesis for the environmental movement in this country.)

Whether you're a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian, or a socialist, we can all agree that what's happening in the Gulf is terrible--and it's worth getting angry about. The economy--and, more personally, the very livelihoods of fishermen, hotel owners, restaurateurs, and many others--will be affected by this disaster for decades to come. The most exasperating part of this situation is that no one knows when the oil will finally quit gushing into the Gulf, meaning the severity of the problem only grows worse and worse with each passing hour.

Since we all agree that this is a disaster and that it's worth getting angry about, let's look at my guest blogger's specific critique: that Rand Paul and other Libertarians think there's already too much government regulation and that--to prove him wrong--we need only look at the soiled beaches and dead wildlife (not to mention the untold thousands of sea creatures) to know that we need more regulatory oversight, not less.

If that's the basic argument, let's look a little deeper at the problem.

First, let's all agree that accidents happen--no matter how careful we are to try to prevent them. After all, we're human, and therefore prone to error. Yes, we should always try to minimize our mistakes. But mistakes can happen and will happen and do happen, regardless of how hard we try to prevent them.

Second, let's all agree that--given America's insatiable thirst for oil and the federal government's woeful lack of a national energy policy (through both Republican and Democratic administrations)--we must continue to drill domestically until we can develop technologies that will wean us off of the use of fossil fuels and away from the terrible tendency to continue to transfer billions of dollars in wealth from the USA to exporting countries such as Iran, Venezuela, and many other sworn enemies of our country.

Third, one must ask why it has been so difficult to plug the gaping hole in the bottom of the ocean. After all, that hole is some 5,000 feet beneath the ocean's surface. The fact is that the EPA and the Department of the Interior--as well as many coastline states--have required that oil drilling cannot occur within three miles of the coastlines of those states. Nobody wants to look out upon a pristine coastline and see oil rigs on the horizon, but Washington's aversion to drilling closer to shore has forced the very sort of deep water drilling that is now at the heart of the problem in the Gulf. If a rig had exploded in 500 feet of water instead of 5,000, it's a fair bet that the gusher would have been plugged weeks ago. And while I'll admit that this is pure speculation, even the most hardened advocate on the other side of the debate has to admit that the government is partly to blame for what is happening now.

2) My guest blogger maintains that we need more federal oversight to prevent the kind of gross mismanagement that took place by Wall Street investors (and, for that matter, high roller investors around the world in London, Hong Kong, and many other money centers) prior to the meltdown in the fall of 2008. I will, once again, implore us to look deeper into the genesis of the problem.

In October 2005, Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank--both liberal Democrats from the Northeast--pushed through bills to "reform" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Even at the time, the Wall Street Journal opined: "Every Congressional session can be counted on to produce its share of bad bills, even dreadful ones. But the 'reform' bill for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--due to hit the House floor tomorrow--is in a class by itself." What the "reform" did was to broadly liberalize Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's ability to back questionable loans made by private banks to new homeowners whose credit quality was marginal to poor. And when those quasi-government institutions backed those loans, guess who was really on the hook--the American taxpayer.

My guest blogger is correct: the banks and financial institutions played within the rules, and that is indeed the heart of the problem. What he fails to point out is that those rules were created in the middle of the last decade and sowed the seeds of our destruction three years later.

As President Reagan famously declared in his First Inaugural Address on 20 January 1981, "The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months--but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Reagan pushed through the largest tax cuts in the history of our country--and unleashed the longest period of economic growth the nation had ever seen, extending from 1982 through to the end of the 20th century.

Point. Counterpoint.

The Primacy Of The Constitution

2010-05-25T18:57:00.000-07:00

"Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power." James Madison

In my two previous posts, I provided some history on the magnificent document we call The Constitution. The ideas contained in it had only been espoused as ideals by European philosophers like Locke and Montesquieu, but never actually attempted by a free people. Until, that is, the summer of 1787. As I've established, the greatest concern of the Founding Fathers was the great tendency for the reach of government to become centralized, more powerful, and--if not properly checked by the people--tyrannical. This was what those same Founding Fathers had fought against--the tyranny of King George.

I also wrote of how the Constitution was elevated by many of the early Amendments, so that the freedoms established in the Constitution were extended to all Americans--not just in principle, but in fact. It's hard to imagine today a nation where only white men who owned property were allowed to vote, but that was the case in the first 75 years after the Constitution was ratified.

The beginning, however, of the era of Big Government has its genesis in the ratification of the 16th Amendment, which allowed for a national income tax. This differed from the taxation allowed in the original document, which amounted to a form of property tax. When the 16th Amendment was passed, the tax was a flat 3% of annual income. Would that it were so today. But--as is the case with virtually all taxes levied by an over-reaching government, tax rates would never come down. The Law of Gravity does not apply to taxes.

As the federal government's ability to tax its people increased, the money flowing into Washington also allowed for the unbridled growth of government. This process began during the Wilson Administration, gained great speed and footing during FDR's Administration, and saw its apex in the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson's Administration. Of late, the growth of the federal government expanded significantly under George W. Bush and has exploded under President Obama.

What is particularly grievous, however, is not the growth of government in and of itself, but the way in which the federal government has grown. In the last forty years, the American people have seen the creations of huge bureaucracies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, the Department of Homeland Security, and many others which are charged with interpreting laws passed by Congress and enforcing those laws. When some have challenged the constitutionality of those laws, they've often been rejected by Supreme Court justices who no longer actually reference the Constitution in their rulings, but see fit to interpret the law through the prism of their own "experiences".

Need some examples? Try these:

In the case of Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003, the Supreme Court--in a narrow 5-4 vote--ruled that diversity in university admissions would provide "educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body". This ruling, which directly contradicts the 14th Amendment's provision of equal rights for all citizens regardless of race, is a classic example of the Court choosing to make law rather than interpret law. Some argue that diversity is necessary for the further integration of our society, and that members of certain race and backgrounds may have had fundamental societal disadvantages which beg the need for such diversity in our universities. Fair enough. Even if we accept that premise, my simple objection is this: write a new Constitutional Amendment to uphold diversity, get it approved by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, and have it ratified by three-quarters of the states as provided for in Article V of the Constitution.
In the famous case of Roe v. Wade in 1973, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of a woman to have an abortion. Nowhere in the Constitution is this right provided for nor even implied. Indeed, the dilemma faced by the Court boils down to this: whose right to life prevails over the other? Is it the quality of the life of the mother, who finds a pregnancy inconvenient at best and possibly life-threatening at worst? Or is the very life of her developing child, who will not even have the chance at life if the pregnancy is ended? The Court, as we know, chose in favor of the mother. Once again, even if we accept the premise, the fact is that the Court created a new law out of whole cloth. No one would argue that the Court interpreted any section of the Constitution which could possibly have provided for abortion rights.
In the notorious case of Kelo v. New London of 2005, the Court ruled that eminent domain applies in the transfer of private property from one private owner to another private owner, if the intended use of that property will benefit the greater good. This ruling represents a fundamental expansion of the "Takings Clause" of the Fifth Amendment, which specifically cites that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. The City of New London, Connecticut intended to revitalize a depressed section of its waterfront with a mixed-use development of shops, residences, and restaurants. Is this "public use"? Never in the previous 218 years of Constitutional law had anything like this remotely resembled the proper use of eminent domain. The Kelo ruling trampled on the rights provided in the Fifth Amendment, expanded the power of local governments over private property owners, and all of it was done without the passage of a Constitutional Amendment.

How far have we fallen from the days when the Constitution was revered and respected as the true law of the land? Consider Mr. Phil Hare, a Democratic Congressman from Illinois, who was asked during a town hall meeting in the midst of the national debate on healthcare reform: "Where does it say in the Constitution that you have to buy healthcare insurance?" Hare's rather incredulous response? "In this case, I don't care about the Constitution...we in this country have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness". When a citizen pointed out that that clause resides in the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution, he further responded "it doesn't matter to me".

When a U.S. Congressman, who has sworn to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" shows such little regard for that very Constitution, our country is on a slippery slope of making laws which seem either convenient or politically expedient. There was a reason that the Founding Fathers made the Amendment process so difficult. It was done to limit the power of the federal government, as was the structure of the three branches of government under the principle of the Separation of Powers. We, the People, must reclaim our political heritage by rejecting politicians who make un-Constitutional laws and judges who make law rather than interpreting it.

How The Constitution Was Elevated

2010-05-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I provided a brief history of the making of the Constitution--why it was necessary, how it was debated and drafted, and the clear intent of the Founding Fathers to create a government which--as President Lincoln would famously affirm in The Gettysburg Address--would be of, by, and for the people of the United States. The founders knew that all governments will tend toward consolidation of power, and so they installed a series of checks and balances known as the Separation of Powers to limit the broad reach of government into the lives of everyday Americans.

Over time, the Constitution has changed. Many of those changes have been made within the purview of the Constitution through the Amendment process called for under Article V. Some, particularly in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, have not.

This post will review the positive changes made to the Constitution through the amendment process.

The first series of changes came through what is now known as The Bill Of Rights, which encompass the first ten amendments. In the Bill Of Rights, Americans are guaranteed their "inalienable rights" of free speech, freedom of religion, a free press, the freedom to assemble, and the freedom to petition. The Bill Of Rights ensures the right to bear arms, protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the right of due process and a speedy trial by a jury of one's peers, and the definition of eminent domain. And the Bill Of Rights defines and limits the reach of the federal government by enumerating the rights of the individual states.

Beginning in 1865--after the nation had emerged from the crucible of the Civil War--the states ratified the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. (Remarkably, slavery was allowed under the original text of the Constitution as a political calculation to gain the votes and approval of the Southern states.) Months later, the 14th Amendment was sent to the states for ratification, providing full citizenship to all people born in the United States, regardless of race, and accompanying rights of due process and equal protection under the law. The 14th Amendment effectively overruled the notorious Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court, which had held that neither slaves nor their descendants were citizens and held no Constitutional rights. The 14th Amendment corrected this egregious ruling of the Court.

In 1869, the 15th Amendment followed on the heels its two predecessors in prohibiting denial of suffrage rights based on race or color.

Finally, in 1920, the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote for the very first time. (It's remarkable to think that it took the country nearly 150 years to correct this issue.)

Collectively, the Bill Of Rights, followed by the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments served to elevate our Constitution to truly reflect the ringing rhetoric of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Before those amendments were adopted and ratified, America's full freedom extended only to male property owners--a far cry from the lofty phrases that still resonate with us.

But along with the great gains made by these Amendments, dark clouds also loomed--clouds of a more centralized and far-reaching federal government. More on that in the next post...

Why America Needed The Constitution (A Brief History Lesson)

2010-05-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

Nearly 250 years ago, beginning in the 1760's, American colonists experienced the first signs of monarchical power exerted against them with King George III's Proclamation of 1763. The king's proclamation stipulated that American settlers who had established land claims west of the Appalachians were not only violating English law, but would have to return to the eastern side of the mountain range or risk arrest. This law was followed in short order by a series of increasingly oppressive acts of Parliament, including the following:

The Sugar Act of 1764, enacted as a substantial increase in the duty on the importation by England of sugar, coffee, wine, textiles, and indigo, as well as outlawing altogether the importation of rum and French wines. The Sugar Act was intended as a way of raising revenue to help offset the costs of the recently concluded Seven Years' War with France, otherwise known as the French & Indian War in colonial America;
The Stamp Act of 1765, which is the first tax targeted directly at America by her mother country, taxing nearly all printed materials from newspapers to contracts.
The Quartering Act of 1765, which required Americans to provide food and lodging to British troops who were being sent to occupy what the Parliament and the king felt were intransigent colonies--particularly the Massachusetts Bay colony and its largest city of Boston.
The Declatory Act of 1766 which states that only the British government has the power to enact laws governing the American colonies.
The Townshend Acts of 1767, which imposed taxes on paper, glass, lead--and tea. This last tax would be formally affirmed by the Tea Act of 1773.

As the king and the Parliament exerted increasing pressure to impose the will of the British government on the people of American colonies, the people reacted with increasing indignation. James Otis in 1764 was the first to utter the famous objection that these acts were inherently unfair because they represented "taxation without representation". Later, Samuel Adams--a cousin of John Adams--led the Sons of Liberty in rallies and public meetings to protest the increasing weight of oppression on the people of Massachusetts and her sister colonies.

Now skip ahead to a period some twenty years later. The Colonials have defeated the British Crown in the Revolutionary War and have gained their freedom. But it's one thing to win one's freedom; it is quite another to actually form a stable government that serves the people. America's first attempt, in fact, was acknowledged as an abject failure. The Articles of Confederation, enacted in 1781, established a weak central government that was soon recognized to be wholly inadequate to serve the young nation. And so, during the miraculous summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, a Constitutional Convention was called and was convened on 25 May 1787.

During that hot summer, nearly all of the giants of the colonial era--including Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Adams, and Franklin (Thomas Jefferson would undoubtedly have been there except that he was serving as America's emissary to France at the time)--joined with other icons of the Revolutionary era to propose, debate, study, and ultimately forge what Gladstone would call "the most wonderful work ever struck by the brain and purpose of man".

With a crippling war in their rear view mirror--and with fresh memories of what oppression felt like when the British government levied taxes and enacted laws which increasingly restricted their individual freedoms--the Framers of the Constitution began by boldly claiming that the Constitution represented "the people of the United States", and that the people would form a republican government based on representative democracy. The Founders framed the new government with a series of checks and balances, designed to limit power in any one branch so that the pursuits of life, liberty and happiness would be less likely to be breached by a strong and overbearing central power such as they had seen embodied in King George. How were these checks and balances established?

Consider the following:

The executive branch could propose--but could not enact--laws to govern the people. The passage of laws rested solely in the legislative branch. That said, the new law only became official when it was signed by the President. If the executive branch (embodied in the President) felt that a law had been passed too rashly, the executive had the power to veto a bill passed by the legislature and send it back to the legislative branch for reconsideration. The legislative branch could either revise the law so that it was palatable to the President and enable him to sign it, or it could override the President's veto--but only by a two-thirds supermajority of both houses of the legislature.
The legislative branch itself was imbued with a series of checks and balances. Contrary to the original government established under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress consisted of two legislative bodies--the House of Representatives which were elected every two years and the Senate, whose members were elected every six years. These two bodies would by design also serve to check each other. The House (what is commonly referred to today as "Congress") was designed to be closer to the will of the people because it was subject to re-election much more often; the Senate, on the other hand, was designed to be more deliberative, less subject to hot issues which might die down over time. Only the House had (and has) the power to originate bills for raising revenue. Only the Senate has the power to confirm senior members of the executive branch (such as cabinet members) or nominees to the judicial branch (otherwise known as the Supreme Court and the federal court system). Only the House can vote articles of impeachment against a President; only the Senate can actually take testimony and try to President to determine if the President is convicted of those articles voted by the House and is therefore removed from office. The Senate also has the power to ratify treaties. Importantly, the legislative branch (both houses) has the power (not the President) to declare war on a foreign power.
The judicial branch does not have the power to make laws, which power expressly resides--as stated above--in the legislative branch. The judicial branch does not have the power to raise revenue, declare war, ratify treaties, or any of the other duties of the legislative branch. Its purpose is to determine whether laws passed by the Congress and signed by the President conform to the Constitution.
But what about laws which might be written a century or two or three later which the Constitution might not expressly speak to? Or what if the Constitution needed to be changed to more accurately reflect the values of the people of a modern nation? The Founders provided for that, too--in the form of the Amendment process. This rigorous process requires that two-thirds of both houses of Congress--followed by the ratification of three-quarters of the states--can amend the Constitution. To affirm how difficult this is to do, consider that it's only been done 27 times since 1788--and the first ten of those in the form of the Bill Of Rights were passed in 1789 and ratified in 1791.

The clear intent of the Founding Fathers--and their collective brilliance--is seen in the Separation of Powers, designed solely to limit the size, scope, reach, and--ultimately--the power of the federal government. Many of the men who debated the Constitution during the summer of 1787 had fought against the oppression of British king. All of them had sacrificed their livelihoods, their treasure, and risked their lives for the liberties so eloquently proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. When the Constitution was adopted on 17 September 1787, the Founders believed they had bequeathed to the young nation a structure designed to elevate liberty for its people, and for generations of Americans to come.

In the years to come (as we shall see), those liberties seemed only to increase in the form of Amendments to the Constitution. In the next post, we'll review the ways liberty increased during the 19th century. In a later post, we'll see how freedom was chipped away beginning in the early part of the 20th century, and how this phenomenon has gained great momentum in the past forty years or so.

The Ninth Circuit's Newest Nominee

2010-05-12T12:01:00.000-07:00

There are eleven US Circuit Courts in the United States. Of those, the largest and the most controversial is the Ninth Circuit Court, headquartered in San Francisco. The Ninth Circuit Court's jurisdiction is huge, covering nine Western states, Guam, and the Marianas.

But it's not the Court's size which makes headlines; it's the extreme, sometimes bordering on ideologically radical, rulings handed down that gets peoples' attention. The fact that the Court is packed with a high percentage of liberals appointed by Democratic Presidents is not in itself objectionable. What is a matter of concern is the Court's atrocious record in adequately and accurately interpreting Constitutional law in its rulings. In 2009, for example, laws set by the Ninth Circuit were overturned in 15 of the 16 cases reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which is hardly a bastion of conservatism.

Now President Obama has nominated a liberal, Goodwin Liu, who--if confirmed by the Senate--will accomplish the near-impossible feat of shifting the Ninth Circuit even further to the left. Liu, a University of California Berkeley law professor, is a committed left-wing idealogue. As we will soon witness with the confirmation hearings of Obama's newest Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, it is customary for Senators to review a judge's past rulings, writings, opinions, speeches, even letters to the editor to try to divine how a judge will rule once he or she has a seat on the court to which they've been nominated.

But in Liu's case, he is asking the Senate to suspend disbelief by making this rather remarkable statement: "As scholars, we are paid, in a sense, to question the boundaries of the law, to raise new theories, to be provocative...but the role of a judge is to faithfully follow the law. Whatever I may have written would have no bearing on my role as a judge." And yet Liu, in his past writings and speeches, has advocated that the courts create constitutional rights to education, shelter, subsistence, and health care and to rule based on "how a judicial decision may help forge or frustrate a social consensus". He has advocated reparations for slavery, racial quotas in hiring, and the use of foreign statutes to discover the meaning of American laws. In short, Mr. Liu thinks that the U.S. Constitution means whatever he wants it to mean.

In their collective wisdom, the Founding Fathers knew that the Constitution would need to be changed over time to reflect the values and sensibilities of a modern nation. They provided an avenue for that change to occur in the form of Amendments. But they also placed an extremely high and difficult bar for change to occur: an amendment must be approved by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, followed by ratification of three-quarters of the state legislatures (all states except Nebraska have bicameral legislatures, meaning both houses of those states must also approve an amendment).

The Founding Fathers explicitly and deliberately did not provide for new law to be made from the bench of any court, including the Supreme Court and certainly not the Circuit Courts of Appeal. According to the Constitution, laws were and are to be made by the legislative branch and interpreted as consistent (or not) with the Constitution by the courts.

Goodwin Liu (and, for that matter, President Obama who has sworn to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States") would do well to re-read the Constitution.

On This Day...

2010-05-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

A lifetime ago today, on May 1, 1945, a German reporter announced this shocking news to his fellow countrymen: "The Fuhrer has fallen at his command post at the Reich Chancellery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for the homeland of Germany".

Six days later, on May 7, General Jodl signed the act of unconditional surrender which officially ended the Second World War in the European Theatre (Japan would not finally surrender until some three months later). World War II remains the signal event of the 20th century, and its effects are still felt today, 65 years after it ended.

How? There are many reasons, but consider these:

The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council represent the victors of the Second World War: Russia, China, Great Britain, France, and the United States. Germany and Japan, arguably more powerful and influential than Britain or France, are conspicuously not permanent members.
Some twenty years after the Berlin Wall fell, post-World War II tensions still exist between Russia and former members of the old Soviet Union. Georgia and Ukraine figure most prominently in the headlines.
In recent years, the lunatic leader of Iran, President Ahmadinejab, has declared that the Holocaust is a historical lie foisted on the world by Israel and the United States.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization--NATO--which was formed in the immediate aftermath of the war to allow the USA to help protect its European allies from Soviet adventurism, still exists today--having substantially expanded its membership to include many former Soviet states and satellites, including Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia among others. Importantly, NATO also includes the nation of Turkey, the largest Muslim nation in the world.

One of the United States' most enduring historical triumphs was the Marshall Plan. A total of $13 billion--in addition to the $12 billion the United States had offered to the war-torn countries of Europe prior to the Marshall Plan's creation--was poured into Europe to assist the crippled nations of our former enemies rebuild their towns and cities and, ultimately, their pride and their livelihoods. The program's irrefutable success is measured today in the fact that Germany is one of America's closest allies--and a champion of human rights, including its recognition of the nation of Israel.

The Most Tax Burdened State In America

2010-04-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

A recent article in Forbes confirms what us Californians intuitively knew: California is the most tax-burdened state in America. This has been confirmed thanks to a study by the Pacific Research Institute which looked at two critical factors: 1) how much of the state's economy (the gross state product) is taken up by local and state government spending; and 2) how favorably is the state's tax structure designed to benefit small businesses to encourage growth, investment, and innovation.

When burden and structure are combined, the most tax efficient state in the Union is South Dakota, followed closely by Delaware, Nevada, Texas, and Louisiana.

The lowest-ranked states? South Carolina, New York, and....California in dead last.

California politicians have been rankled by a recent advertising campaign by the State of Nevada which encourages small businesses in California to pull up stakes and move across state lines. But until those same politicians address the crushing tax burden--coupled with the brutal tax structure they have erected--California's once shining influence will continue to diminish. And businesses will continue to leave the Golden State in droves.

The Waterfalls Of Yosemite

2010-04-28T07:28:00.000-07:00

One of the great fringe benefits of living in Northern California is its proximity to some of the most beautiful sites and places in all the world. And the most beautiful valley I have ever seen lies less than two hours' drive from my home in Yosemite National Park. The valley was carved out of granite by glaciers during the last Ice Age and--when the glaciers melted--they left an 8-mile-long valley of enduring and incomparable splendor.

The granite walls stretch some 4,000 feet above the valley floor, with half a dozen creeks tumbling from hanging valleys above to form the headwaters of the Merced River which flows from the western end of Yosemite and then down into the San Joaquin Valley on its way to the Pacific. But before the river is joined, a total of nineteen waterfalls tumble from the precipice of those granite cliffs into the valley below.

And it is now--in the mid-spring and particularly during the month of May--that the allure and the power and the magnificence of Yosemite's waterfalls are at their peak. The snows of the past winter are melting, and the runoff is turbocharging the Wonderful Waterfall Machine more than at any other time of the year. Not only that, but particularly in a year like we've had this year--with rains and snow accumulation above normal--the result is utterly breathtaking.

Even the names of Yosemite's falls are enchanting: Bridalveil Falls, Vernal Fall, Horsetail Falls, Illilouette Fall, Ribbon Falls, Waterwheel Falls, Royal Arch Cascade, Sentinel Fall, Staircase Falls, and--probably the most famous of them all--the namesake, Yosemite Falls. Altogether, there are nineteen named waterfalls in Yosemite with drops ranging from as short as Vernal's 317 feet (but still a beautiful and quite powerfall waterfall) to Yosemite's 2425 feet.

Nowhere else in the world is there such a concentration of major waterfalls in one place. Ribbon and Upper Yosemite rank among the world's highest. Bridalveil, Yosemite, and Vernal are among the most famous. And when you visit--especially during the month of May--you literally wonder why the entire valley is not floating away for the sheer volume of water which is spilling into the valley from so many places, from so many waterfalls.

For those of you who live within a long day's drive of Yosemite, I urge you to indulge your senses and see this amazing natural wonder. For those of you who live further away, please mark your calendars for any May of any year to make the journey.

And for those who may live half a world away, I have included this link to let you know what you're missing: http://www.terragalleria.com/photos/?keyword=yosemite-waterfalls .

To see the waterfalls of Yosemite in the mid-spring is something we should all include on the list of things we'll do before we die.

The Greatest President (Part Two)

2010-04-27T06:43:00.000-07:00

Our greatest President was Abraham Lincoln. And while most Americans acknowledge that, most also have only a vague idea of why. If Washington is known as the Father of our Country, Lincoln was the savior of it--preserving the fragile Union in the crucible of the Civil War. People also have a vague notion of Lincoln's humble beginnings, but most don't know that he lived in abject poverty on the American frontier. And, thanks to his immortal Gettysburg Address, most Americans know that Lincoln's skills as an orator stand unparalleled--but there are many other examples of his astonishing eloquence that are left to us.

Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room cabin on February 12, 1809 to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln--the son of two farmers in Hardin County, Kentucky. At the time, Kentucky represented "the West" to most Americans--the hard frontier where settlers were scratching out a living and on constant watch from Indian attacks. Lincoln's mother died when he was 9 and, though he was very close to his stepmother throughout the rest of his life, he became estranged from his father.

Because of the family's need for Lincoln--even at a young age--to help with tasks on the farm, he received only a cumulative eighteen months or so of formal education. He loved school and loved learning--and was known to devour books, having essentially taught himself to read and write (his stepmother was illiterate). As he got older, Lincoln became fascinated with the English language--with the intricacy of words, their meanings and the cadence of their pronunciation. As a young man he studied the law, on his own, and passed the Illinois bar on his first attempt.

He became a successful itinerant lawyer. In those days on the frontier, the population was too sparse and too far away from the county seat to have justice meted out at the courthouse. And so the courts would come to the people. It was not uncommon for the judge, the district attorney, and the defense attorney to ride a circuit together throughout their jurisdiction to hear and argue cases in various towns and villages. This Lincoln did successfully for year, building a prosperous law practice in Springfield, Illinois. It was also during this time that Lincoln saw firsthand the power of the spoken word and how arguments could be influenced through the crafting of a well-turned phrase.

Lincoln joined the nascent Republican Party when it was formed in the 1850's. Although he had been a Whig all his adult life, the Republicans sought to more clearly articulate the brewing conflagration over slavery. It was during this time that Lincoln ran for--and lost--the battle for the Illinois Senate seat with Stephen A. Douglas. The Lincoln-Douglas debates leading up to that election pitted two oratorical rock stars battling for the hearts and minds of their fellow citizens.

Six years later, Lincoln found himself battling Douglas again--this time in the Election of 1860 for President of the United States. It was a surreal political landscape. Lincoln was the sole Republican nominee. But the Democrats were badly split over the slavery issue--with Douglas representing Northern Democrats and two other candidates representing Southern interests. Lincoln's election actually served as the breaking point for many of the Southern states. Barely a month after his election, South Carolina formally seceded from the Union, followed by six other states during the winter prior to Lincoln's inauguration.

It was during that inauguration that the nation first got a taste of Lincoln's remarkable phrases. His appeal to the Southerners not to allow their fervor to devolve into civil war is striking: "I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Four years later during his Second Inaugural, Lincoln spoke on the eve of the end of the terrible war which would ultimately leave more than 620,000 Americans dead. His tone was not one of a brash declaration of victory, but of humility before God, a strong arm of comfort to his countrymen, and a gracious hand of friendship to his enemies: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Five weeks later, Lincoln was shot while watching a play at Ford's Theater in Washington and died the next morning. The nation was wrapped in a paroxysm of grief for months. In the excruciating hours after he was shot, Lincoln's cabinet (except for Secretary of State Seward who was shot the same night), gathered around him. When he passed, Secretary Stanton famously said "Now he belongs to the ages".

The Greatest President (Part One)

2010-04-23T17:34:00.000-07:00

Our greatest President was George Washington. (In the next post, you'll see me say that the greatest President was Abraham Lincoln because, quite honestly, I can't choose between the two.) To those of us who live in the 21st century, he's become iconic, untouchable--as if he is and always was a marble statue in the rotunda of the Capitol.

George Washington was our greatest President not only for what he did, but also--quite importantly--for what he did not do. It's hard for us to relate to this concept today, but during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Founding Fathers were on the horns of a dilemma: on the one hand, they did not want the office of the new President of our fledgling country to be too strong and centralized such that it might resemble a King; on the other hand, they did not want an executive who was so weak that there would be a leadership vacuum at the top of the government. Ultimately, they looked to the man who presided over that convention during the long summer of 1787 when our nation was conceived--George Washington. In Washington, they saw a man whose courage was unassailable, whose leadership and stature throughout America was recognized, who was revered as the man who had endured the suffering with his troops through the course of the long war with Great Britain. They also saw something else: Washington did not thirst for power.

In her book "Miracle At Philadelphia", Catherine Drinker Bowen maintains that the delegates to the Convention drafted Article II (the portion dealing with the executive branch of our government) with Washington in mind. Had he not been there as a reassuring presence, the structure of the office--indeed, our entire government structure--would likely look much different even today.

Even so, Washington could have reached for power. When King George III of England heard that Washington would soon resign his commission as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, he said "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." It had been the pattern of victorious commanding generals to grip and hold power, not to step away from it.

He was so revered by his countrymen that, if he had tried to consolidate power against the will of the Congress, many--perhaps even a majority--of his fellow citizens would have supported him. Not only did he not do this, but Washington tried scrupulously to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States", as he and every President have sworn to do on their inauguration day.

He was constantly aware that nearly everything he did served to create important precedents for those who would follow. For example, his Vice President, John Adams, wanted to address Washington as "Your Excellency"--something far too imperial-sounding, even having an air of royalty in the mind of Mr. Washington. The President insisted on a simple salutation: "Mr. President". It stuck. Today, that's how our Presidents are addressed by their fellow citizens.

Another example, and perhaps the most important: Washington voluntarily gave up his office after two terms. Many think the two-term Presidency has always been part of our Constitution. But after Washington served two terms, every President after him respected his example until Franklin Roosevelt broke the standard and was elected to four terms (he died in office before he could complete his fourth term). It was only then that the 22nd Amendment was adopted, limiting the Presidency to two terms in office.

Washington was, literally, a living legend. Very few Americans have ever held such universal adoration, awe, and respect from their countrymen. His Secretary of State and the future 3rd President, Thomas Jefferson, had this to say upon Washington's death in 1799: "On the whole, his character was, in the mass, perfect. It may be truly said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance".

Private Property Rights Under Attack

2010-04-21T08:22:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I referenced the Kelo vs. City of New London ruling of 2005 by the Supreme Court. This ruling--handed down by the Rehnquist court--continues to have far-reaching effects and represents a frontal assault on one of the core principles of our nation's founding--the principle of private property rights. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in her dissenting opinion,

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.

She argued that the decision eliminates "any distinction between private and public use of property — and thereby effectively delete[s] the words 'for public use' from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment."

Now private property rights are, once again, under assault because of this landmark decision five years ago. Today Fox News reported that the city of Auburn, New York will hold a hearing on May 5 to determine if eminent domain should be used to force the sale of a dog-grooming business in order to make way for the development of a new hotel. This is a classic example of just what the now-retired Justice O'Connor wrote about: the beneficiary of this fatally flawed ruling is a developer who has likely made substantial political donations to local and state officeholders, and who is promising higher tax revenues as a result of a new hotel being built in the city. In the meantime, the owners of the dog grooming business are in shock. According to the Fox News report, the city of Auburn is offering the owners a "fair price" for their business. But "Ms. Smith-Ward blasts the offers as a "very insulting price for our property," and said she was stunned to learn that the city was considering seizing the business she and her husband Doug had sunk their life savings into only to hand their land over to someone else. She told Fox News she always thought eminent domain was "for power lines, roads, schools, hospitals and not for a private developer." "

There is another business--a pizza parlor--that has capitulated and agreed to sell to the city. Ironically, that business is owned by a former Communist from the Soviet Union who emigrated to the United States in the 1990's. She says she never knew there was such a law in the United States that could force a private property owner of a small business to sell out to a higher power and that it reminds her of what she grew up with in Communist Russia.

The truly frightening thing about this is that--if you own a home, a small business, a small farm--anything which is deemed subjectively by local officials as not serving the greater public good (whatever that means and however arbitrarily it's defined)--you can lose that property under the 2005 Kelo ruling. It is nothing short of an outrage. The Founding Fathers must be turning over in their graves.

Becoming A Constitutional Scholar

2010-04-19T23:04:00.000-07:00

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Thomas Jefferson

Today--April 19--marks the 235th anniversary of The Shot Heard Round The World, when colonists from Massachusetts fired on British regulars on the Lexington green west of Boston and so fired the first shots of the Revolutionary War.

Beginning tomorrow--20 April 2010--you can participate in a great national call to join that patriotic effort and become a Constitutional scholar. Led by the actress Janine Turner (whose most prominent role was as the lead in the hit show Northern Exposure), a challenge has been placed before the American people to read and understand what our Founding Fathers wrought during those remarkable 17 weeks in the city of Philadelphia during the summer of 1787.

Never before had a nation been spoken forth from the minds and hearts of men elected for such a purpose. And today--some 225 years after its creation--the United States Constitution stands as both a symbolic as well as a practical model of individual freedom for nations around the world.

But our freedoms are being abrogated by the federal government--not just by the Obama Administration, but by the Supreme Court, the Bush Administration, the U.S. Congress, and the various agencies and bureaucracies that operate the government and enforce the laws that Congress makes with statutes which are increasingly overbearing, intrusive, and even confiscatory.

I will offer one simple example--and I will refrain from picking on the present Administration (though the examples after just fifteen months in office are legion): on June 22, 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Kelo vs. City of New London ruled in favor of the city's power to condemn a man's private property under eminent domain--not to build or widen a highway or to build a dam or some other public work--but in order to transfer private property from one private owner to another so that the latter--a developer--could build a downtown improvement project, including a waterfront development tract of 91 acres. (Ironically, five years after the ruling, the developer has been unable to get financing for the project and the site of the former Kelo property stands vacant and unoccupied--generating zero tax revenue for the city of New London.)

The Court ruled in a narrow 5-4 decision that the city of New London could condemn the property under the "Takings" Clause of the Fifth Amendment. So what would you have done if you were on the Court? Chances are you have no idea what the Takings Clause says. (Candid confession: As of this writing, I don't either.)

And that is exactly why the effort of Ms. Turner is so important. I urge you to go to the Constituting America website by clicking on this link: www.constitutingamerica.org . Sign up on the right hand side.

You can read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers (written most prominently by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, as well as John Jay). Reading assignments of about three pages per night will be assigned, and the readings will be discussed in an accompanying blog by invited Constitutional scholars. And you can also participate, by simply offering your own thoughts in the public discussion section.

I invite you to join me in answering the call of Thomas Jefferson. Let us not be ignorant, or else we will no longer be free.

Willie Mays, The Man

2010-04-16T00:13:00.000-07:00

They say the character of a man is displayed in what he does when no one else is watching. In an earlier post, I referred to a new, authorized biography of Mays entitled "Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend" by James S. Hirsch. As might be expected, the reader learns not only of Mays' on-field exploits, but also details of his private life. And one of the most endearing aspects of his life was (is) his genuine love for children.

In Chapter 25, the author tells of three heartwarming episodes that would likely not ever be repeated by any of today's athletes.

One morning in June 1961, two ten-year-old boys stood outside Willie Mays' home on Spruce Street in San Francisco, hoping he would give them his autograph. When Mays stepped outside, he gladly acceded to their wish, and then one of them--a boy named Billy Knox--got a wild idea.

"Hey, Willie", he said, "We got tickets to today's game and we were going to take the bus, but how about a ride to the game?" Mays told them to hop in.

As soon as they pulled out, the boys realized they had forgotten their tickets. "Where do you live?" Mays asked. Five blocks away, said Knox's friend, and Mays drove them there to get the tickets. Then Billy exclaimed "Willie! My mother made us bag lunches for the game. She'll kill me if we don't pick up our stuff, and she would worry where we were." Mays then drove across town to Billy's house.

"To this day", Knox recalls some forty years later, "I can still see my mom standing at our dining room picture window with her hands on her hips, mouth ajar, awestruck as the green Cadillac pulled out of our driveway and sped off."

In 1963, a writer for the Pittsburgh Press named Les Biederman asked Mays if he would speak to a group of youngsters at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind. Mays readily accepted. During the Giants' next trip to Pittsburgh, Biederman drove Mays to the school, and when he entered the auditorium whispers rippled through the crowd of about 200 students. "That's him", one boy said. "He really came."

Mays was introduced, and became--in Biederman's words--'the eyes of these sightless youngsters". Mays stood for over an hour and answered the kids' countless questions. After the talk, he waded into the crowd and touched the hands and arms of the students, who reached up to touch his face. "I gave them only my time and a little bit of baseball", he later said. "And they gave me their hearts".

In 1965, Richard Martin was a 24-year-old director of the St. James Center in Pittsburgh, an afterschool program for disadvantaged children. The center planned an awards ceremony for a Saturday in June and Martin, wanting a sports celebrity to present the awards, checked the schedule and saw that the Giants were going to be in town to play the hometown Pirates. He called Bill Nunn, the editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, who said he would contact Mays. The day before the Giants were coming into town, Nunn called and asked how many kids would be in attendance. "About two hundred", Martin replied. "Then he'll be there", said Nunn. "He just wanted to make sure it was really an event for the kids".

That Saturday, Martin drove to the hotel where the Giants were staying and called up to Mays' room. "Mr. Mays, this is Dick Martin...I believe Mr. Nunn spoke to you about our program tonight?"

"Yeah, man. I'll be right down", Mays replied. Ten minutes later, Mays introduced himself, wearing a sharkskin suit, and Martin drove him to an obscure youth center in an impoverished part of town. He sneaked Mays into the building through a fire escape and then instructed the astonished 14-year-old master of ceremonies--who nearly fainted--on how to introduce the guest of honor. "And now, to present the Most Valuable Junior and Senior Softball Awards, possibly the greatest player of all time...Willie Mays!"

The curtain opened, and Willie walked out. The audience at first sat in stunned silence. But when they realized it really was him, they shouted, whistled, cheered, and clapped for several minutes. Mays stepped to the microphone and said "Some people may think winning a softball award in a small neighborhood is no big thing. But I'm telling you that when you win the most valuable award in anything, you're doing something!" After presenting the awards--and knowing that Mays had another game the next day--Martin whisked him out and drove him back to the hotel.

Martin, who later became a teacher and school principal in Arlington, Virginia, recalled "I must have thanked him a dozen times for his exceptional generosity. One of the greatest athletes of all time did this for no money, no publicity, no conditions whatsoever. He did it just because he loved kids, plain and simple. What a selfless gesture, what an amazing human being."

In little more than three weeks--on May 6--Mays will turn 79. He was my boyhood hero. And he still is.

The Worst Labor Union Of Them All

2010-04-11T16:11:00.000-07:00

Jaime Escalante died last week at the age of 79. He was not memorialized on network television, and very few Americans know who he was or what he accomplished. But in the 1980's, in the wasteland known as the Los Angeles School District, he broke through the gnawing inertia of mediocrity to teach kids at Garfield High School how to do math. At its peak, more students passed Advanced Placement calculus at Garfield than those at Beverly Hills High School. By the end of the decade, Escalante reached both his pinnacle and his nadir. In 1988, he was immortalized in the film "Stand And Deliver" for which Edward James Olmos received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. But in 1990, Escalante was stripped of his chairmanship of the math department he'd so painstakingly--and successfully--built over the previous decade. Disgusted and discouraged, he left Garfield in 1991 and eventually returned to his native Bolivia.

What happened? How could a wildly successful and impassioned teacher become so disheartened that he would not only leave his school, but the country where his success had been achieved? In a word, Escalante could not overcome the union. Escalante's success was making other teachers look bad. He was coming into work early, leaving late, admitting far more students into his classroom than the union's 35-student limit would allow. In the private sector, such performance would be recognized and rewarded. In the private sector, a teacher like Escalante would be given rapid promotion, increasing responsibility to spread and duplicate his success, and rising levels of compensation to encourage him to continue. But not as a teacher in the public schools. Not with the disapproving union looking over his shoulder.

The National Education Association--otherwise known as the public teachers' union--is a scourge on our public schools, our children, and our country. It's incredibly powerful, with over 3 million members--one of the largest and best-funded unions in America. But the NEA is a cesspool for mediocrity, and it manifests that mediocrity in several ways:

If you're a good teacher, you can't get promoted faster than a bad teacher. The NEA would balk at the notion that there is such a thing as 'bad teachers'. But we've all been there: we all know a bad teacher when we see one--first as students, later as parents. Some bad teachers were once good teachers with high hopes and passion who got worn down by the grinding mediocrity of the system. Other bad teachers were bad teachers from the beginning. What constitutes a bad teacher? Someone who shows up because they have to, not because they're excited about teaching and inspiring young minds. Someone who does nothing but teach out of the textbook, who is not interested in providing anecdotes or application or enlightenment that can help students connect what they're learning to how they can use that knowledge in the real world. Someone who teaches only to squire away the rich perks and retirement benefits the union has negotiated, but cares little for their students. And then there are the good teachers. And like the bad teachers, we all know who they are. They're the ones who make learning exciting. They're the ones who, like Escalante, show up early and will stay late to help a student who has questions or is struggling. They're the ones who recent alumni come back to see--the students who are now in college or are recent graduates, and who come back to thank the great teachers for giving them the foundation for the rest of their education. And thanks to the NEA, those great teachers get paid on the same scale--based solely on seniority and not merit--as the bad teachers. There's no distinction, other than NEA-sponsored award recognition, which often is given to teachers who are most active in the union, not necessarily in improving young minds.

Bad teachers, if they have achieved tenure, can't get fired. Imagine that you're a small business owner and you have an employee who sits at his desk on his computer instead of doing the work he's been assigned to do. Imagine that you talk to this employee and, in his annual review, you admonish him to stop being lazy and to put his energy into his job. Imagine that you write the employee up for unsatisfactory performance. And imagine that, if he does nothing to improve, there's not a darn thing you can do about it. That's the beauty of the tenure system in most of our public school systems. The NEA has created this system, ostensibly, to "protect" teachers from unhappy parents who might want them fired because of a perceived slight to their children. But the net effect of tenure is, once again, simply to perpetuate mediocrity. Unless you're convicted of a felony, you can't get fired.

The NEA hates competition. It's no secret that our public school system is failing. Of course, there are exceptions--certain school districts that still fulfill their mission to educate our young people and send them out prepared to negotiate the challenges of college and higher learning. But those are the exceptions. For the most part, public schools are failing because of the NEA, not in spite of it. As a result, more and more parents embrace alternatives--private schools, home schooling, and other options where they can be found. But there are drawbacks: private schools aren't cheap, and home schooling requires that a parent not only stay home, but have the skills and patience and cooperation of their children to make it work. There is another alternative which is despised by the NEA: school vouchers. Essentially, the voucher system allows parents to take the tax money they've paid into the public school system and apply it toward tuition in a competing private school. The NEA--and the school districts--hate this idea. They claim that voucher systems rob them of needed funds for their own programs, facility maintenance, teacher salaries, and the like. And they're right. But here's the rub: if those schools were doing the kind of job they should be doing, no parent would have any desire to send their kids to private schools in the first place. The NEA, like all unions, hates competition, which really means they disdain the free enterprise system upon which our country was built. And voucher systems mean competition. They're great for kids and their parents. They're bad for the union.

The NEA has a political agenda. Officially, the NEA purports to be non-partisan and therefore plays an insignificant role in national politics. But that's like saying the Yankees play a little baseball. Since 1976, the NEA has endorsed every Democratic presidential candidate from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama. It has never endorsed either a Republican or a third-party candidate. And if the national organization is so decidedly left-leaning, can there be any doubt that its members predominantly lean in that direction as well? And if that's true, why is it important? The answer is patently obvious: those union members are the same people who are with our kids five days a week during the school year. To be fair, most of them stick to the knitting, preferring to teach rather than pontificate. But too many teachers choose to espouse their political views on issues of the day with their students. And since they have a bully pulpit--unchallenged by an opposing point of view--their views can have a powerful influence.

At the peak of his achievements at Garfield High School, Jaime Escalante received visits from other teachers, school administrators, and even then-President Reagan. He told them the same thing: "The key to my success with youngsters is a very simple and time-honored tradition: hard work for teacher and student alike". As long as the NEA has its way, teachers like Escalante will never be allowed to succeed--and our children are suffering because of it.

Easter 2010

2010-04-04T15:22:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter! This song embodies the true meaning of this holy day.

When Preserving The Family Farm Does Not Preserve Family Farmers

2010-04-02T06:20:00.000-07:00

The beautiful Rogue River Valley in southern Oregon is blessed with some of the best soils and climate in the world for growing pears. And if you're a regular customer--as I am--of Harry & David's Royal Riviera pears which are prominently featured in their catalog during the Christmas holidays, you know how delicious the fruit is which comes from this region.

But the pear industry in Oregon is in trouble--and it has nothing to do with the land or the climate or the farmers. It has to do with well-intentioned (in some cases) land use laws with horrible consequences. In the early 1970's, environmentalists encouraged the passage of a law which was designed to "preserve the family farm"--a popular term today. The law restricted land use of designated areas of the pear growing region for agricultural use only--without exception. Now, some 35 years later, the chickens are coming home to roost. Farmers whose land would be worth as much as $100,000/acre if they could sell the land to developers find that their land is valued closer to $10,000/acre--with no buyers.

Strict environmentalists would say "Well, that just proves the law is working; after all, who wants another shopping mall on land that grows delicious pears?" But the whole story has not been told. Farming is expensive. As farmers deal with increasing government regulation, confiscatory inheritance taxes, tougher employment laws--not to mention rising costs of fuel, chemicals, fertilizer, and labor--they often find that the best way to continue farming is to be able to sell their high-value land in order to use the proceeds of such a sale to buy less expensive land further away from urban areas. But the land use laws in Oregon prevent that.

The net result? In 1992, there were 87 pear farms in the Rogue River Valley. Today there are 48--and many of those are in trouble.

About a year ago, I attended a land use planning meeting at the City Hall of one of the towns where my family owns walnut orchards. The town was in the process of revising its General Plan, something that happens only once every ten years. There were a lot of environmentally-concerned people there--and they spoke fervently about the need to "preserve the family farm" by doing exactly what the people in Oregon had done decades ago: restrict currently-zoned land for agricultural use to agricultural use for time immemorial. I hadn't planned to speak. But after several of these people had offered their opinions to the Planning Commission members, I rose and said something like this: "I find it interesting that all of the people purportedly concerned about preserving family farms here are not farmers. My family has been farming our land in this town for nearly fifty years--and we've made a livelihood from farming for nearly a hundred years. In all that time, we've never sold any of our agricultural land to developers. Our life is farming, and we want to preserve that livelihood for more than ideological or esoteric reasons. One of the hallmarks of our nation's capitalist society is the fundamental principle of private property rights. The land is ours: we've been farming it for generations. And some of that land is in an area which is being squeezed by urban growth. We now have neighbors we didn't have 50 or 100 years ago, and they don't like the dust, the spray drift, the noise that we farmers make when we work our land and harvest our crops. We need the vital ability to be able to sell our land if need be at premium prices so that we can buy land elsewhere in the region that is far removed from the cities and towns so that we can continue to farm--so that we can continue this way of life we have enjoyed for five generations now." When I finished--and to my great surprise--the room erupted in applause.

The land use laws in Oregon--and those now being established here in California--are built on good intentions (again, in some cases). But the notion of "preserving the family farm" does not preserve family farmers, and it is slowly but inexorably killing agriculture wherever those laws exist.

One final note: I have twice referred to the "preserving the family farm" movement as well-intentioned--in some cases. I choose to believe that most of the people in that room a year ago fall into this group. But there is a hard-core group of virulent environmentalists who know exactly what they're doing--and their purported concern for family farmers is a ruse. These people would willingly stomp on private property laws in order to slowly revert all land use back to nature. They do not care about farms or farming. But--as I have posted on the sidebar of this blog I designed--farmers were the first and original tree lovers.

The Greatest Baseball Player Of All Time

2010-04-01T22:08:00.000-07:00

Baseball, though its star has dimmed against the bright glow of the National Football League, is still America's Pastime. And back when I was a kid, long before we ever knew about performance-enhancing drugs or the reserve clause or free agency or $25 million per year contracts that have all contributed to baseball's decline, the game was played by some of the brightest stars ever to strap on a pair of cleats. Hitters like Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, and Pete Rose were stepping into the batter's box against the likes of Tom Seaver, Juan Marichal, Sandy Koufax, and Bob Gibson.

But the greatest player of all time was a young outfielder who played for the New York and San Francisco Giants named Willie Mays. In baseball, a great player must possess five key skills: he must be able to hit, hit for power, run, catch, and throw. Mays possessed all five of these skills and displayed them to the delight of his fans for more than twenty years. He broke onto the scene in 1951 and soon worked into the starting lineup of the Giants. In his first year in the league, the Giants played in the World Series--having completed one of the most improbable comebacks in baseball history. On August 11, the Brooklyn Dodgers held a commanding 13 1/2 game lead over the Giants with little more than six weeks to go in the regular season. But the Giants won their next 16 games and 37 of their final 44--a blistering .841 winning percentage--to catch and tie the Dodgers on the last day of the regular season. As any baseball fan knows, the Giants won the playoff series in the third and deciding game when Bobby Thomson hit 'The Shot Heard Round The World' in the bottom of the ninth inning to clinch the pennant for the Giants. What is little remembered is that Mays was on deck when the home run was hit.

Perhaps Mays' most enduring moment occurred three years later in the 1954 World Series. The Giants were playing against the heavily-favored Cleveland Indians, who had won an astonishing 111 games in what was then a 154-game regular season. (To this day, no team has finished with a higher winning percentage during the regular season.) But Mays set the tone in Game 1 with what is still known simply as "The Catch". With the score tied 2-2 in the top of the 8th inning and runners on first and second base, Vic Wertz clubbed a towering drive to straightaway center field. Because the game was being played in the Polo Grounds--a huge baseball venue--the hit would have been a home run in any other ballpark, having traveled an estimated 420 feet from home plate. But Mays broke immediately on the ball when it was hit, running straight toward the center field wall at full speed. He caught the ball over his shoulder and then spun and fired the ball back to the infield, preventing the Indians from scoring the go-ahead run. The Giants eventually won the game 5-2 and swept the Series.

Mays finished his career with a .302 batting average, having hit 660 home runs (despite missing two full seasons in the peak of his career to serve in the Korean War), a .557 slugging percentage, and 1,903 runs batted in. He was voted Most Valuable Player twice--in 1954 and again in 1965, and finished second in the voting two other times.

Willie Mays was my boyhood hero. I have fond memories of sneaking my transistor radio under my pillow and listening to games broadcast by Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons, regaling me with the tales of Mays' heroics for the Giants in the 1960's. I got to see him play a few times at Candlestick Park, which is still in existence--now the home of the football 49ers. Mays played the game all-out, with an evident joy, and he never used illegal drugs--performance-enhancing or not. Within the past couple of months, a new and authorized biography of the great Willie Mays has been published, entitled "Willie Mays--The Life, The Legend". Appropriately enough, the book currently sits 24th on the New York Times Bestseller List. Why is that appropriate? Because Mays wore # 24 on his jersey his entire career.

A Day At The Masters

2010-03-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

Ten days from now the most revered and prestigious sporting event in America will begin its four-day run. It's known simply as The Masters--the first of professional golf's four major tournaments each year, and the most coveted championship any golfer can win. Why is it the most coveted? More than any other sport, golf is built on its traditions--and The Masters is steeped in golfing lore and legend. The tournament was founded by Bobby Jones and Cliff Roberts in 1934. Jones remains one of the game's great legends, the winner of more major championships than any golfer except Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. During one remarkable stretch between 1923-1930, Jones won 13 of the 21 major championships played during that period.

In 1931, Jones and Roberts purchased the Fruitland Nursery, a former indigo plantation in Augusta, Georgia and hired Dr. Alister McKenzie to design a golf course there. The course opened in December 1932 and the first Masters tournament was played in April 1934. Of the four major tournaments (which also include the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship), only The Masters is played at the same course every year. And what a course it is. Augusta National is not the most challenging course for today's modern players, although it has undergone significant changes over the years to remain a world class course for professionals. But it is one of the most beloved venues in all of professional sports.

I had the great honor to be able to attend this tournament in 1995 and again in 1996. I was living in Atlanta at the time and a friend had connections. He was able to get me single day passes, which enabled me to enjoy one of the most memorable days of my life. Why? I got to take my dad with me to The Masters. For those of you who've never had the chance to be there (and only a lucky few of us have), let me try to describe the experience for you...

I remember when I was growing up, and I would watch The Masters and the sportscaster would introduce the tournament as "The Masters from Augusta, Georgia". And then I would see these amazing pictures of the azaleas and the dogwoods and the redbuds and the brilliant green bentgrass and I would think Augusta must be one of the most beautiful small towns in America.

It isn't.

That was the first impression I had when I drove the three hours outside of Atlanta to Augusta. It wasn't of the course itself. It was of the dumpy, honky-tonk town of Augusta. I saw the main street filled with billboards for everything from Waffle House restaurants to Wal-Mart to Holiday Inn. I saw that not only were the streets not paved with gold, but the asphalt was buckling and the potholes needed filling after the recent winter frost.

And then we parked my car and walked to the gates of Augusta National. And all I can say is that--if that golf course is not Heaven, Heaven can't be far away. The course is absolutely pristine. Every fairway is perfectly green, the walkways are covered in pine straw, and--best of all--the azaleas, the magnolias, the dogwoods are all bursting forth in a showy splash of spring glory. Although I can't verify it, I've been told that the groundskeepers at Augusta National watch very closely the timing of the peak bloom of the azaleas and--if it's been a warm spring and they're ahead of schedule--will bring in tons of ice to slow down the plants until Masters Week.

When Dad and I visited, we had our plan. Get there really early. Make a beeline for the famous Amen Corner, which consists of the famous 11th, 12th, and 13th holes. Place our seats as close to the golfers as we can get at the 12th tee. And then take in golf history in an absolutely glorious setting. The 12th hole, also known as Golden Bell, is a treacherous Par 3 which requires the golfer to hit a postage stamp-sized green while shooting over Rae's Creek. What makes the hole so challenging is that the afternoon winds become particularly unpredictable and tempestuous, and are agonizingly difficult to judge. A par is as good as a birdie, and many tournament leaders have lost it all on this hole when their ball wound up in the creek.

In that 1995 tournament, we saw Jack Nicklaus, who had made the Friday cut but was not competitive in the tournament. We saw Greg Norman, a young Phil Mickelson, Tom Watson, Davis Love, and the eventual winner--an emotional Ben Crenshaw, who had lost his friend and mentor Harvey Penick just days before the tournament began.

We also saw the very first Masters appearance from a young player from California named Tiger Woods. He was playing as an amateur that year and finished in 41st place.

A couple of little anecdotes: at almost any major sporting event, you go prepared to being held up by the concessionaires. After all, they have what's called a 'captive audience'. If you want a sandwich or something to drink, you can't very easily leave the stadium or arena or--in this case--the golf course to go to the nearest McDonald's. But you don't get held up at Augusta. I remember paying $1.25 for a ham sandwich and 90 cents for a Coke.

Another anecdote: the sandwiches were wrapped in green wax paper. Why? Because if a patron (the tournament's name for the spectators) is careless enough not to put his or her wrapper in the garbage cans, they will at least blend into the emerald green landscape so as not to detract from the breathtaking ambience of the golf course.

Sometimes, we experience moments that we know we will carry with us for the rest of our lives. That day with my dad at Augusta National is one of them.

The Queen Of All Flowers

2010-03-27T08:35:00.000-07:00

God was smiling when He created the rose. It's beloved the world over, and it gives joy to its growers, those who give it as a gift, and to those sweethearts who receive them. In my garden, I have 42 rose bushes. Most of them are of the hybrid tea type--which is the most difficult to care for. Hybrid teas are a hybrid of tea roses which originated in China and Hybrid Perpetuals from Europe. They require pruning, fertilizing, water, and--most challenging--pest control. But their blooms are regal, and--thanks to the efforts of many large commercial nurseries--they're available in a cavalcade of colors.

Because hybrid tea roses are so challenging, many become discouraged with growing them. I find the challenge exhilarating, and the reward is when I am able to cut the blooms and bring them inside to enjoy for the next week or so.

Here in my garden in Northern California, the bushes have leafed out fully. The foliage is healthy and green--unaffected by the harsh summer heat that is coming in a few more months, when they begin to suffer a little. And the buds are forming--and in about two or three weeks, the garden will be bursting with the first flush of an array of reds and deep reds, orange, yellow, white, pink, and coral blooms that will beckon me to rush out each morning before I go to work to pause for a few moments, tinker a little bit, sniff the delicate scents, and wonder anew at God's creation.

Thoughts On A Morning Ritual

2010-03-23T08:35:00.000-07:00

A lot of men hate to shave. I don't. It's one of the morning's rituals I enjoy. I don't like the stubbly feel of a day's growth of whiskers and I enjoy a clean shave. But shaving is also expensive, thanks to some rather ingenious marketing by the companies that manufacture shaving supplies, especially Gillette. Shaving is a big business. In the US, it's valued at nearly $3 billion in annual sales. Gillette, now owned by Proctor & Gamble, is the biggest of the big names that supplies razors, blades, shaving cream, and after shave skin balms.

In 1990, Gillette truly revolutionized the shaving business when it introduced--with great fanfare--the Gillette Sensor razor. It was the first razor ever designed with floating, spring-loaded blades. And what a difference it made from the fixed blade design that had prevailed for the previous fifty years. The closeness of the shave, the comfort of the shave, and the near-complete elimination of shaving cuts likely put the makers of styptic pencils out of business.

But there was (and is) a catch: the blades are brutally expensive at a cost of about $3.50-$4.00/ blade. Gillette does, of course, have competitors. When their patent on the Sensor expired, Schick introduced their own floating blade razor, which seems to work just as well. But there's not a big price advantage for the consumer. And that means that the name of the game is extending the life of those expensive blades for as long as possible.

I've learned that the best way to do this is to shave in the shower. I rinse my face as soon as I get into the shower, and while I'm washing up, my beard softens. By the time I get my face lathered up and ready to put blade to skin, my whiskers have been soaking for at least five minutes. Most guys shave at their sinks. They splash water on their face, apply shaving cream, and start. I've tried this. And I can say definitively that my whiskers are much less pliable when I shave this way.

Now, I can't document how much longer one of those expensive Gillette blades lasts because I shave in the shower. I can say, however, that a blade lasts for about a month this way--and I shave everyday.

One more thing: Gillette's strategy--since their patent expired--has been to expand from the original Sensor dual blade design to three blades and then four blades. And they're apparently planning to introduce the first five-blade later this year. It's pure marketing, and it's overkill. They got it right twenty years ago when they introduced the Sensor. These huge multi-blade razors have gotten so big that I can't even shave in the tight corners (like under my upper lip) like I can with the Sensor. I also read in an article in the Wall Street Journal that private label blades marketed by the major drug store chains like Walgreen's now offer multi-blade floating head razors that will compete with Gillette. I may have to check that out.

The Golden State

2010-03-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

California is the Golden State. It's an apt nickname, for many reasons. Historically, of course, this is the place where gold was discovered in January of 1848 in the small foothill town of Coloma. Within a year, the California Gold Rush was on, triggering a massive migration of immigrants from around the world as well as emigrants from the East who came in wagon trains across the Plains and over the Rockies and the Sierras. These were arduous journeys made at great sacrifice. For those who sailed into San Francisco, they endured sometimes brutal conditions in steerage for months as they made their way around Cape Horn or through the perilous Straits of Magellan and then north for thousands of miles before reaching California. And for those who came from the East Coast across the broad continent, they endured brutal hardship, the constant danger of attack by various Native American tribes through whose land they were traveling, as well as disease and crushing fatigue. Many did not survive. In the ten years from 1850 (when California was admitted as the 31st state) to 1860, California's population nearly quadrupled, and the great social migration from East to West began. This migration, this amazing social phenomenon, has continued unabated for more than 150 years, making California the largest and most vibrant state in America.

A second reason California is the Golden State has to do with economic opportunity. Despite our overwhelming economic difficulties which have pushed the state to near-bankruptcy, California is still the home of Silicon Valley, the birthplace of the high tech revolution and still the most robust and powerful engine of technological prowess in the world. It's the home of the San Joaquin Valley--the richest agricultural region in the world--and the home of some of the most diverse agriculture anywhere. This year, California will produce more than 350 different crops, much of which will be exported to other nations and will thereby help to offset America's continuing trade imbalance. And California is home to Hollywood and the film industry--an icon which is small compared to high tech and agriculture--but which also contributes to a fourth major industry here--tourism. I have been fortunate enough to visit 47 of the 50 states (I still have not been to Alaska, North Dakota, or Delaware) during my lifetime. And I can say that in a nation blessed with an astounding abundance of natural beauty, California stands alone for its jaw-dropping diversity of beautiful places--from our 840-mile long coastline to our majestic and rugged Sierra Nevada mountain range to our beautiful cities including San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and many others to the rich and pristine Napa and Sonoma Valleys where some of the world's best wines are produced to our climate which Sir Francis Drake called 'the most sublime and gentle in all the world'.

The third reason we're the Golden State is that we're largely a natural desert. Except for the extreme northwestern part of the state near the Oregon border, most of the state will not see rainfall from roughly early April until sometime in October. The winter rains, which have been plentiful this year, have left us in a state of lush verdure--something we especially appreciate since we know it will soon give way to the dry season. The green foothills will turn brown (or, as the Chamber of Commerce likes to say--"golden") and the beauty we see around us will fade until next fall.

But for now, we'll enjoy this spectacular beauty. The wildflowers are bursting forth in the foothills. And around the beginning of May, the winter snows will be melting and the waterfalls at Yosemite will be booming. It is an utterly beautiful time of the year.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

2010-03-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

The Wearin' O' The Green

2010-03-17T05:43:00.001-07:00

A Fun Little Gift For St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T05:12:00.000-07:00

I know exactly one card trick, but it's a pretty good one. But, compared to this guy, I'm a piker. Enjoy!

Hubris or Leadership?

2010-03-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

The week ahead will be full of political theater. Democrats are poised to force a vote on the House floor for President Obama's healthcare reform package, which would federalize one-seventh of the the U.S. economy. What's remarkable about this legislative effort is that the President and Democratic leaders in Congress continue to push this unpopular bill in spite of the fact that the American people--after more than a year of debate--are clearly telling their elected representatives that--while they want healthcare reform--they do not want this bill to become law.

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, 43% of Americans support the bill while 53% oppose it. More telling, only 23% strongly favor the bill while 43% strongly oppose it. This sentiment is not just being expressed in public opinion polls, but in the polls that are the only ones that count--the ballot box. During the fourth quarter of last year, Democrats suffered defeats in Virginia (a moderate, usually right-of-center state), New Jersey (a consistently left-leaning state), and--remarkably--Massachusetts (the bluest of blue states and consistently liberal). Yet in spite of these electoral losses and the clear message that voters seem to be sending to Washington, Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid have clearly adopted a "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" strategy. They are leaning heavily on Democrats to vote affirmatively on the bill, even though many of those Democrats sense that a yes vote will mean a quick ticket home when they come up for re-election this November.

Some see this as leadership--the notion that the President, against a wave of negative polls and the headwinds of public opinion, will lead us out of the morass and into a new era of prosperity with healthcare coverage for all Americans. I see it as hubris on a grand scale.

During a moment of unguarded candor, Obama opened a window on to his view of the often messy democratic legislative process in an interview with Katie Couric of CBS News on February 7: "I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with some very elegant, academically approved approach to health care, and didn't have any kinds of legislative fingerprints on it, and just go ahead and have that passed. But that's not how it works in our democracy. Unfortunately, what we end up having to do is to do a lot of negotiations with a lot of different people."

When one parses this quote, some interesting undercurrents in the President's thinking are revealed:

He believes that an 'academically-approved' approach is the best. Clearly, if we would only allow the academic elites at Harvard or Yale to figure out this healthcare mess for us and then enact their solutions into law, all would be well.
Not only is the academic approach best, but it would be 'very elegant'. The democratic process which includes lobbyists, deal-making, public polls, town hall meetings with voters, and commentary from the pundits is unsavory and beneath the dignified, direct, and monarchical approach which Obama would clearly prefer.
Having 'legislative fingerprints' on a piece of legislation just messes things up. The Constitution is incredibly inconvenient for a man of Obama's intelligence, sophistication, and prowess.

And so it ends with a health-care vote expected this weekend. I wonder at what point the administration will realize it wasn't worth it--worth the discord, the diminution in popularity and prestige, worth the deepening of the great divide. What has been lost over the past year is so vivid, what has been gained so amorphous. Memo to future presidents: never stake your entire survival on the painful passage of one bad bill.

Life Lessons From Pruning Trees

2010-03-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

Each winter when the harvest has been completed, we begin the laborious but vital task of pruning the orchards. This is laborious because the trees are so tall that a man must use a pruning tower (similar to what is commonly known as a cherry picker) to get up into the tops of the trees to make his cuts. It's vital because pruning removes the deadwood and promotes growth of fruitwood, making the tree more productive. More on that a bit later...

The pruner has two tools he uses to make his cuts: a shear for smaller cuts and a saw for the larger ones. How he selects what to cut and where is crucial, for he must be able to look at the overall structure of the tree and maximize the growth of fruitwood in the spring while ensuring that he does not weaken the overall structure such that, if a big crop is set in the late spring and into the summer growing season, a heavily-fruited branch may break, thereby losing that portion of the crop he worked so hard to promote.

The guiding influence the pruner must have is to "open up the canopy", meaning that he wants to remove unproductive wood that will shade the interior of the tree more than is necessary. When the canopy is opened, sunlight filters down into the tree's interior, thereby offering the chance for more fruitwood to develop. A fully-shaded orchard floor may be aesthetically pleasing, but it's also a sign that the trees have not been properly pruned during the preceding winter.

The pruner, when selecting his cuts, looks first for deadwood. These are branches that have shown signs of vigorous growth, but without any or little evidence that they bore much fruit. A branch that grew a great crop of foliage again may be aesthetically pleasing, but it does little for the farmer's bottom line. The deadwood is cut away in order to promote the growing vigor from the tree into the more productive and potentially profitable fruitwood.

Often the fruitwood is not as pleasing to the eye as the deadwood; it's more gnarled, it has knobs and spurs which are evidence that it bore fruit there during the previous season. It's usually not as long or extensive, but is more stunted. But that fruitwood is the key to a grower's livelihood, and the grower will do all he can to maximize its development and continued growth. He will prune to allow more sunlight exposure to the fruitwood, and he will give the tree nutrients designed to maximize the tree's vigor and health such that more fruitwood will grow.

By now you've probably already recognized the parallels between pruning fruit trees and living a balanced and productive life. But, at the risk of declaring the obvious, here are the lessons I draw from this:

When we put our energies into activities and events which are solely self-focused, they make look more aesthetically beautiful to us but they often bear little fruit that benefits others. That makes those things deadwood, and those things must be cut away and removed.
God told us that He is the light of the world. So when we remove the deadwood and open our canopy, we also open ourselves to His wisdom and strength and provision, and we offer ourselves to become more productive, more relevant, more purpose-driven.
Like the fruitwood on the tree, there are parts of us that look more gnarled and which aren't as attractive or presentable to the outside world. But the important thing is not what we look like, but what we do and how productive our lives are for the good of others.

The pruning is done now. Very soon, our trees will be blooming and the pollination will take place. And within a few weeks we'll be able to see the first signs of the kind of crop that's being set and how well we did this past winter to remove the deadwood, open up the canopy, and promote the growth of the fruitwood and the fruit that will issue from it.

A Reading Recommendation

2010-03-04T09:52:00.000-08:00

When I was in college, I took a fun elective course called The Mystery Novel. I don't remember any of the authors I was introduced to in that class--except one. One of the books for assigned reading was entitled "Too Many Cooks" by Rex Stout. And it was through that experience that I was introduced to the wonderful world of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. If you've never read a Nero Wolfe mystery, you don't know what you've missed. Allow me to give you a brief introduction...

Wolfe is brilliant and brusque. He lives in a brownstone on West 35th Street in Manhattan. He is a confirmed bachelor and has a strict daily routine which he follows almost without exception. He enjoys a refined and comfortable lifestyle which is supported by the expensive fees he charges his clients to solve crimes, mysteries, and problems that they put upon his desk when they have nowhere else to turn. His reputation throughout New York City and the surrounding region precedes him.

While Wolfe is the genius, he would be helpless without his right arm--Archie Goodwin. Where Wolfe is cerebral but barely moves a muscle, Archie is the one who chases down leads, gathers evidence, and reports his findings back to Wolfe. Where Wolfe has an almost abject fear of being alone with a woman, Archie loves women, especially if they're comely, sharp, and have curves in all the right places. Where Wolfe is a confirmed gourmand, Archie is just as happy with a ham sandwich and a glass of milk.

What makes the Wolfe novels so much fun to read--aside from the way the mysteries are solved--is the witty, sometimes sarcastic dialogue and the entertaining way Archie guides us through the story as our first-person narrator. Another thing many readers will enjoy is that these novels are not dark, not 'hard-boiled'. They are written to entertain, not to expose the seamy side of society.

During his career, Stout wrote more than 70 Wolfe novels before his death in 1975. The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated in 2000 as the Best Mystery Series of the Century by Boucheron, the largest mystery novel convention in the world.

If I've piqued your curiosity, go to amazon.com, type "Nero Wolfe" in the search bar, and pick out "Fer-de-Lance", which was Stout's first Nero Wolfe novel. Once you open it, you'll be hooked. And you can thank me later.

Rain, Snow, And Water

2010-03-02T11:56:00.000-08:00

It's raining today in Northern California. And it's going to rain tomorrow, with perhaps more rain later this week. It's all very welcome, because we're in the fourth year of an ongoing drought which is straining California's economy and has proved devastating to segments of the agricultural sector. I'm grateful for the rain, and even more grateful for the snowpack in the Sierras--which I can see from my window as I write. In my town, we're ahead of normal rainfall for early March and only slightly behind normal rainfall for the entire year, which is measured from July 1-June 30 of each year.

As important as the rain is, the snowpack in the mountains is the real key to the water needs of thirsty Californians. And even though the snowpack is also ahead of normal, the actual water content in the pack is at just 87% of normal. Which means that--barring a very wet March and April--the water wars in California will continue.

Here's the skinny on the water issue from my perspective:

California's population and economic growth are largely dependent on good, reliable supplies of water. The bulk of this water comes from the seasonal rains and snow which fall on the state during the months of November-early April. If we get a dry winter, we won't make up the deficit during the late spring and summer months, when we often go for 150 days or more without a trace of rain. As California has grown, however, its capacity to store and hold the water that falls on the state has fallen far behind the state's demand for water. Consider this: in 1960, California's population stood at 15.7 million. Fifty years later, the population is expected to exceed 37 million--an increase of 135%.
In spite of this growth, environmentalists have blocked construction of new dams and water storage projects. The last major dam to be completed in California was the New Melones Dam near Jamestown in 1979. It has storage capacity of 2.4 million acre feet. Since the New Melones Dam was completed, California's population has grown by nearly 60%. And yet not only do the environmentalists oppose the construction of new dams in the Sierras to create new reservoirs, they actually support tearing down the O'Shaugnessy Dam which supplies the water and some of the electricity to San Francisco. This dam has storage capacity of 360,000 acre feet.
Some two-thirds of California's water supply comes from a huge estuary called the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Standing at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, the Delta has been a major source of water for Southern California. However, as Southern California has grown and its demand for water has increased accordingly, the fresh water supply has been depleted and incursion of salt water from the San Francisco Bay is now creating a different set of environmental effects in the Delta. Not only that, but the massive pumps used to move the water to and through the 715-mile aqueduct system is depleting the population of a 2-inch long fish called the Delta Smelt.
The smelt population was officially classified as endangered in 1993. Because its habitat has been shrinking owing to the incursion of the bay's salt water--as well as its being sucked into the huge pumps that supply the aqueduct, and because it's a food source for the non-native striped and largemouth bass--the population has been steadily shrinking to the point that the fish stood on the edge of extinction in 2004.
On August 31, 2007, Judge Oliver Wanger of the Federal District Court ordered that water deliveries be severely curtailed from December to June. Farmers have received increasingly smaller supplies of water since the ruling was issued and thousands of acres of prime farmland have gone fallow over the past two summers. This has driven the unemployment rate to over 16% in Kern County, nearly 17% in Fresno County, over 17% in Kings County, and 17.5% in Tulare County.

So the economic impacts to agriculture and the California economy overall are severe. Here's the irony: it's not that California does not have enough water from natural sources. The truth is that an estimated 60% of California's rainfall is not only not captured, but flows straight into the ocean. Until Californians realize that the Sierra Club and other environmental interests are paralyzing the state and its economy, California will continue to shrink, will continue to export jobs to other countries and other states, and will lose huge swaths of one of its most important and lucrative industries--agriculture.

The Generosity Of The People Of Gander, Newfoundland

2010-02-27T19:43:00.000-08:00

This afternoon I had the wonderful fortune to view--during NBC's Olympics coverage--Tom Brokaw's wonderful story about the generosity of the people of Gander, Newfoundland in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. I knew some of this story, but none of the details. Here is the story in a nutshell:

When the FAA realized that America was under attack after the second plane hit the World Trade Center, America's airspace--for the first time in aviation history--was closed. All international flights were re-routed. Some were sent back to Europe or their airport of origin. But some were too far across the Atlantic and did not have sufficient fuel to turn back. Many of those flights were routed to Gander.

Gander is a town of about 10,000 people. Suddenly, with almost no warning, the town was inundated with 7,000 confused, tired, anxious guests. Brokaw's story details the immediate and tremendous outpouring of hospitality, generosity, and friendship from the town's residents to those who had arrived on their doorstep from around the world.

Gander has only enough hotel beds to house 500 people. That meant that thousands were sheltered in the homes of the residents. Stores opened their doors and let people take clothes and food. The two drug stores in town filled travelers' prescriptions free of charge. And the travelers were overwhelmed. There is a segment which sums up the generosity they saw: a local resident tells the guests, who are being transported in a school bus from the airport to the town "whatever you want, whatever you need, just tell us: we will make sure you are taken care of".

The story is truly inspiring. What it shows is that--on one of the darkest days in memory--the worst of a few were countered by the best of many. I just checked the nbcolympics.com website, but they have not yet posted Brokaw's story. I trust they will soon. If they do, I'll come back and post a link. I commend it to you with great enthusiasm.

The Glory Season

2010-02-25T18:02:00.000-08:00

I've been fortunate enough to have lived in almost every major region of our country--the Midwest, New England, the South, the Northwest, and, of course, the West Coast. And each region has its Glory Season. It's the time of the year when nature's beauty springs forth and it's hard not to notice the extraordinary beauty of God's handiwork.

In New England, that season is Autumn, when the hardwood forests light up in florescent shades of red, orange, and brilliant yellow. You can smell the musty leaves on the forest floor and the wisp of a smoke from someone's fireplace. And when you breathe, you can feel the crisp, cool air all the way to the bottom of your lungs.

In the South, it's the height of Spring, when the azaleas and the dogwoods and the redbuds burst into a panoply of color. It's the season of The Masters--one of the great events on the annual sports calendar and the official heralding of Spring.

And here in the San Joaquin Valley of California, it's happening right now. From mid-February to the first week of March, the almond and peach orchards are bursting with color. Unlike the occasional dogwood or redbud tree in the South, here you can take a Saturday drive and see hundreds--even thousands--of acres of trees, in row upon row upon row.

Almond blossoms look much like peach blossoms, except that they're white or slightly pink and are more fragrant. It's a singular experience to walk among those rows of almond trees when the bloom is at its peak. You can hear the bees buzzing and each breath is filled with the delicate scent of beauty.

It's an important time for the growers. Those blossoms must be pollinated, because--unlike walnuts and some other tree crops--almonds are not self-pollinators. They rely on bees to pollinate. The bees need a minimum of four good weather days to do their work. That might seem like an easy proposition since we're here in California. But the almond bloom comes during the peak of our rainy season, and if it rains too much, or if it's too cloudy, or if it is too cold, the bees won't work. And without decent pollination weather, the coming crop could be a bust.

California is the world leader in almond production, garnering more than 40% of the total. It's become one of the most important crops in the state. But the industry has its challenges, not the least of which is the water supply. More on that fiasco in a future post. For now, I'm reveling in this most lovely time of the year--our Glory Season.

Why California Is Exporting Jobs By The Thousands

2010-02-23T19:09:00.000-08:00

California is in trouble. Big trouble. The Golden State, blessed with eye-popping natural beauty and abundant natural resources--including the richest agricultural valley in the world--is laboring under decades of fiscal mismanagement unlike anything ever seen in the history of our Union. It has all hit the fan during the past ten years, with problems so intractable that many believe California is ungovernable.

Now many will tell you that all California needs is the repeal of the now-infamous Proposition 13. What is Proposition 13? In 1978, a voter initiative was passed by California voters in the form of a constitutional amendment limiting the amount by which property taxes could be levied against Californians to 1% of the cash value of the property. Proposition 13 sent shock waves across the nation, and initiated a tax revolt in many other states in the years that followed.

Ever since the passage of Proposition 13, progressives in the state have worked diligently to try to overturn the law, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992. One of the things which absolutely has the progressives tied up in knots is a provision of the law which requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of the state legislature in order to raise tax rates. The liberals in the legislature--and the state house, for that matter--chafe at this. They claim that it is only through their ability to 'enhance revenue' through increased taxes that they have any prayer of balancing the state's budget, which is currently running an estimated $20 billion deficit. But history belies this. Consider the following:

In the ten years from 1998-2008, California's revenue increased by 75%, from $58.6 billion to $102.6 billion. At the same time, California's expenditures rose by 78%. By comparison, the Consumer Price index over the same ten-year period increased by just 29%. Clearly, the state's legislators spent a decade adding lots of new entitlements to its budget--as well as seeing existing entitlements grow much faster than the CPI.
The fact that expenditures grew nearly in lock-step with revenues strips bare the liberals' claim that increased tax revenues will bail California out of its fiscal mess. Liberals can't help themselves. When new revenues are received, they--like a child with a dollar in his pocket--have to find a way to spend the money. And the result is an ever-rising budget that burdens the taxpayer.
California's debt rating was dropped in July 2009 to BBB, just a step above junk status. This, of course, increases the cost of borrowing, putting further burdens on California's taxpayers.

So who's to blame for this debacle? California's last two governors--Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger--have done nothing to get the state's spending under control. To his credit, the Governator did have a brief dalliance with fiscal responsibility in 2004 when he supported ballot initiatives which would have put a lid on school funding, restricted redistricting through gerrymandering, and limited the size and scope of the state government. All of these initiatives failed, and Schwarzenegger was roundly pilloried in the press after the election. He never made a serious attempt at fiscal discipline after that.

But it's not just Davis and Schwarzenegger.

The Democrats have controlled the California legislature since 1974. During that time, the state's spending has increased by more than eight times. By contrast, the CPI has increased by a factor of four. California has been living the dream of the Progressive movement in America. And thanks to its fantastic universities, its mild climate, its abundant natural beauty, and the rise of Silicon Valley, California businesses thrived through the Eighties and Nineties--thanks to a strong tailwind from the federal government's tax policies. But fiscal discipline is not a part of the vocabulary of the liberals who control the legislature. And now that America's economy has a bad cold, California's economy is on life support. In fact, there's a very good chance it will become the first state in the nation's history to declare bankruptcy.

Employers are leaving the state in droves. Why? A heavy tax burden for both individuals and corporations; California's corporate tax burden ranks 3rd highest in the country. A brutal regulatory environment, with agency oversight from the state, regional bureaus, counties, and municipalities. And the toughest environmental laws in the country.

The result is that the tax base is shrinking precipitously just as California's legislators are looking for more revenue. This creates a vicious cycle, driving even more employers out of the state.

What a disaster. What a shame. What a story of fiscal irresponsibility on a massive scale.

Environmental Laws Run Amuck

2010-02-16T19:08:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who's a successful developer. He has recently received approval to proceed with construction of a new Lowe's home improvement store. One of the last requirements before final approval defies logic. The building site contained two elderberry bushes about five feet high. While the elderberry bush is not endangered, the Valley Elderberry Longhorn Beetle is listed as threatened, and has been since 1980. Not only was there no evidence of beetles near these two bushes, but there was no evidence of the beetle in or around the scores of elderberry bushes on a nearby hillside.

It didn't make any difference. Removing the bushes improperly would have resulted in prosecution and a massive fine.

My friend's company had to hire a biologist who confirmed the identification of the elderberry bushes, confirmed that they constituted sufficient habitat for the beetles, and also confirmed that there not only were no beetles, but no evidence of beetles anywhere nearby.

He then had to hire a professional and certified tree removal service who unearthed the bushes, moved them to a location selected by the biologist, and replanted them.

The cost for the biologist and the replanting? $44,000!

Now some of you will react by saying "oh, he's a rich developer; he'll just absorb the cost". And you would be wrong. Because--just like any business--increased costs must be passed along or--after "absorbing" costs piled on top of costs--the business would go belly up. And that means that Lowe's will end up paying for this bureaucratic debacle, which means that, ultimately, anyone who shops at the new Lowe's will end up paying for it.

This is but a small indication of the gross overreach of the environmentalists in our country. Saving polar bears or bald eagles or grizzly bears is one thing, but who really cares about the Valley Elderberry Longhorn Beetle? You and I have no idea how much money we pay every year for goods and services whose prices are inflated by the confiscatory and dictatorial environmental laws in effect in our country.

By the way, it should be pointed out that the elderberry beetle is not considered endangered, but only threatened. It should also be pointed out that this species was proposed for delisting altogether by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in 2006.

Why I Love My Dog

2010-02-16T14:08:00.000-08:00

Throughout my life--from as long as I can remember--I have owned a dog. Some have been purebreds. Many have been mutts. And without exception, all of them have given me their devoted love. That's true of the dog I own now--a 4-year-old Golden Retriever named Brodie. I met Brodie when he was a little over a year old. He was a "rescue dog", meaning he'd been saved from abusive owners who had raised him in a crate. As a result, his hips are a little displaced because, as he grew, he couldn't stand up straight within the confines of the tiny space he was living in. The story told to my wife by the rescue clinic is that the previous owner's neighbors felt so angry about the dog's mistreatment that--when the owners were gone--the neighbors sneaked into the back yard and released Brodie from his pen and then called the rescue clinic to come and get him.

So when Brodie came into our lives, he was thin and his hips were displaced, but he was a bundle of joy and enthusiasm. For the first several months after he came home with us, he could barely believe that he could just be a dog. No more pens. No more confinement. No more long, lonely, confusing days. Instead, Brodie got to chase a tennis ball, terrorize our cats, go for walks, eat whenever he wanted to--all the things that make up the life of a well-cared-for dog. And in return, he gave us his undying love and loyalty.

Some wise person once said "I want to be the kind of man my dog thinks I am". I've always loved that. Brodie thinks I am the greatest person in the world. When I come home from work, he's the first one to greet me at the door. He runs to get his ball and prances proudly with it, daring me to take it from him (actually, hoping desperately I will take it from him) so I can throw it across the yard and he can chase it and bring it back. He wakes me up in the morning at first light, and licks my hand and wags his tail to let me know it's time to get up.

In the time I have known him, I don't think Brodie has ever had a bad day. His disposition is remarkably and consistently fantastic. The humorist Dave Barry once wrote this about his dog: "I can say any fool thing to my dog and he gives me this look that says 'My God, you're right! I never would have thought of that! You're brilliant!'" I know exactly of what Mr. Barry speaks.

And at the end of the day, as I relax and read, Brodie loves nothing more than to pretend he's a lap dog and climb up on my couch and lay his head in my lap. And he absolutely would stay that way all night long if I would let him.

God was smiling on mankind when He decided to create dogs.

The California Many Of You Don't Know

2010-02-15T15:04:00.000-08:00

I remember when I was a freshman at Stanford. People I'd meet would ask me the standard opening question: "Where are you from?" And when I would tell them I had grown up in a small farming community in the Central Valley (or, more properly, the San Joaquin Valley), most of them would look at me as if I'd just told them I grew up in Nepal.

Let's face it: when the large majority of folks think of California, they probably think of the iconic images that are broadcast via the airwaves and in our theaters for most of the past century: Hollywood, with its shimmering movie stars and its puffed-up self-importance; Los Angeles and the whole of Southern California, sprawling and urban, with one of the finest climates in all the world; San Francisco--one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and also one of the most kooky; and Berkeley--the home of Telegraph Avenue, the hippie movement, the anti-war protests of the Sixties.

And this is not to mention many of the huge tourist draws to our state: the Napa and Sonoma Valleys, where some of the best wines in the world are produced; Lake Tahoe, one of the clearest and deepest lakes in the world; the mighty Sierra Nevada mountains and Yosemite National Park (or Sequoia or Kings Canyon further south); the Monterey Peninsula, home of the Monterey Aquarium, the beautiful hamlet of Carmel, and Cannery Row; Palm Springs, made famous by the movie stars of the past who bought second homes there to escape the insanity of L.A.; and some of the most beautiful coastline in all the world, stretching nearly 900 miles from the Oregon border to Mexico.

But there's another California that even most Californians don't think about much or even know about. It's California agriculture. Consider this:

In 2008, California agriculture accounted for nearly $37 billion in revenue for the state's farmers;
California is the nation's top agricultural state, and has been for more than fifty years;
About one-third of California's total land area is covered by farms and ranches (though that figure is shrinking due to the explosive growth of development and land sprawl--more on that in a future post);
More than 92% of California's farms and ranches are family-owned;
California produces more than 350 different crops--the most highly-diverse agricultural region in the world;
California produces more than half the nation's fruits, vegetables, and nuts on just 4% of the arable land.

Okay, so we've established the fact that California has a robust farming industry. But what this also tells us is that California farmers--in terms of their lifestyles, their values, their goals and dreams and hopes and fears--are not much different from farmers in Kansas or Ohio or Florida. That usually comes as a big surprise to people in the "Heartland" of America. Heck, it usually comes as a big surprise to people everywhere. What is different about California farmers--more than any other state in the country by far--is that they are involved in constant battles with groups representing various interests, all of which are competing for the rich but limited natural resources of this amazing place. These groups include but are not limited to various environmental groups, developers, state regulators, local municipalities, water rights groups, and on and on.

I spent nine years living in the greater Atlanta area when I was part of "corporate America". Agriculture is also a big part of Georgia's economy. But I can tell you that the farm community in Georgia faces nowhere near the kinds of pressures and influence from state and local governments or special interest groups as those of us in California do. It's a huge challenge for our industry, and one which, quite frankly, we're losing--in spite of all of the flag-waving and pontificating going on in Sacramento and Washington about the urgent need to "save the family farm". (That's yet another topic for a future post.)

A Humble Introduction

2010-02-15T08:41:00.000-08:00

To the great consternation of the so-called Mainstream Media, everyday folks like me have the ability--via the freedom of the internet--to share our thoughts on whatever comes to mind. This is a wonderful opportunity fraught with danger. Why? Because if the blogger does not approach this enterprise with a certain degree of humility, he or she will fail. There is, in fact, a kind of presumptuousness in the very thought of creating a blog. I mean, what is about me that assumes that somebody out there would actually be interested in reading the things I write about?

Well, dear reader, here are the tenets by which I will be guided as I write and share my thoughts and ideas with you:

You deserve a fresh perspective. I don't live in Washington, DC and have never worked there. I don't live in a large city, although I have worked in some before (namely, Boston, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Los Angeles). I'm definitely not part of 'the establishment', however you define it. The perspective I bring is as an entrepreneur, as someone who derives his paycheck by living close to the land, and who does it in the unlikely venue of California. Yes, I'm a farmer who lives in the San Joaquin Valley of California--the same California that's the home of Berkeley, San Francisco, Hollywood, and Orange County. More on that later...
I'll write with a fresh variety of topics. Since it's my blog, I have the freedom to write about just about anything that comes to mind. That's fantastic! It means I'm not locked in to a specific narrow set of subjects, and so I won't be. Here you will find a liberal sprinkling of thoughts on the farming business and how farmers can carve out a living in the 21st century; travel tips for those of you who may be so inclined to visit our beautiful, diverse, and financially-mismanaged state; a farmer's perspective on the politics of the day--both here in California and in the nation's capital (and perhaps elsewhere as well); and who knows what else? I might even throw in a favorite recipe from time to time, or an essay on hiking in the Sierras, or even some tips on the art of being a gentleman.
I'll do my best not to be boring. That is, I'll write with you--the reader--in mind. But if I get off-track, if I start to get too self-absorbed, if my prose doesn't match my lofty objectives as imparted in this post, I trust that you will let me know. I'll try not to take criticism personally, but will be keenly interested in how you think this effort is going. The key, I think, to avoiding boredom on your part is for me to be fresh, relevant, and insightful.
I will post three times a week. I won't lock myself in to specific days of the week, at least at this point. But I will make sure that I offer new material each time.
I'll offer attribution whenever it's called for, and will appreciate the same from fellow bloggers who may find something here useful for their own readers.

That's it. Those are my rules.

I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I'll enjoy being your tour guide. It will be an adventure for us both. I promise.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, please climb aboard this riverboat I've named "The Generous Harvest". We'll ride wherever the river flows. Feel free to ask questions along the way...