You're Not A Fucking Unicorn

Reading the recent cover story Sucks to be Us in New York Magazine was enough to boil the blood of even the most jaded Gen Xer.  The article, written by 20-something journalist Noreen Malone begins with an extended "gchat" between the author and her sister, who is bemoaning the fact that she has moved back in with her parents and is also seeking gainful employment.  The narrative arc of the chat, written in that shorthand that anyone under 30 immediately recognizes and anyone over 30 finds annoying and grammatically embarrassing is a microcosm for the rest of the story, which essentially says that a generation raised to think that their shit did not stink, that merely showing up warranted a certificate and were so overscheduled with after-school activities and extra-curricular resume polishers entitled them to the American Dream the minute the ink dried on their diplomas but instead, they were slapped with the cold hand of life in the form of a tanking economy and a round trip ticket back into the nest from whence they sprung.

To which, on behalf of everyone else who has been there and done that, I quote the comedic genius Artie Lange: "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH".  Guess what millenials?  The universe is indifferent to the fact that you were the captain of the soccer team or spent a spring break feeding orphans in Somalia or that your mom and dad so coddled you that the mere whiff of criticism makes you break out into hives.  The world does not owe you anything except the same heaping pile of shit and aggravation that the rest of us have been dealing with since you were in diapers.  There are no guarantees in life, nothing is handed to you and not everyone is going to pucker up because you showed up to your job on time and did your work properly (it's the basic pre-requisite to *keeping* your job).  Put your head down, shut the fuck up, drop your cell phone and do work, menial work, meaningless work, but work, work that makes you value work qua work, and understand that just because you do work, or learned fencing during your semester abroad in France, does not mean you will get ahead. 

For a generation that reveres Palahniuk, you seem to have missed one of the key messages from Fight Club.  You are *not* a unique snowflake.  When you realize this, perhaps you will quit whining about the raw deal you were handed and go do something of value, or of complete meaninglessness (to you at least) because that's what people do.  Your grandparents lived through a Depression and fought World War II.  Do you think they were overly thrilled with the hand they were dealt?  I know it's not as bad as losing your cell phone while you were bar hopping or having someone say something mean about you on Facebook, but work with me.  Their grandparents (if they were black and living in the South) were not considered human beings, but chattel.  The rest didn't have it much better, what with the hundreds of thousands of them that died either defending or attempting to subvert our Constitution (who did what is predicated largely on which side of the Mason-Dixon line you lived). Not quite as bad as not having extra sockets in your childhood bedroom to plug your iPad2 into, but pretty awful nonetheless.  Your uncles and great uncles fought in a war that no one remembers (or commemorates), came back to a society that had passed them by and had to wear the label of the generation that "lost" a war (while wearing polyester leisure suits).  Admittedly, this might not be as damaging as having your mom fold your laundry or your dad take the car you didn't pay for to the Jiffy Lube, but a challenge nonetheless. 

Oh, and there's a whole segment of your own generation that has had limbs blown off, lost best friends and essentially been forgotten by the rest of us while they fought for our freedoms in far away lands for a cause that looks ever more murky and questionable the longer we are there.  They come home broken, emotionally, spiritually and physically, carry the scars of war in their bodies and their psyches; of course, they did not have to suffer the humiliation of getting ditched at Bonnaroo or snubbed on LinkedIn by the recruiter you met at your college job fair, but hey, re-learning how to walk with a prosthetic leg is no fun.

Overachieving millenials, I do feel your pain, but when I got out of college in the middle of the last recession and had 100 rejection letters thumbtacked on my wall, I didn't wrap a kafiyyah around my head and complain about my student loan debt or how I got hosed out of my dream job at the non-profit I wanted to work at, I worked - I worked in a dry cleaners, I worked in a retail store, and I worked for a catering company.  I hustled to make money while keeping my long-range focus of becoming a lawyer in mind. It sucked, I hated it, but I did it because mom and dad weren't letting me live rent free in my childhood bedroom and paying my cellphone bill. 

When I took out loans to go to law school, I knew full well what that meant and what my obligation would be.  Even so, the first job I had out of law school didn't even come with a paycheck- yes, I volunteered because I wanted a foot in the door in the office I was working, and eventually, I got in and even after I got in, I was paid peanuts, and scrimped and got by on nothing for a long time but I did it because I loved what I did and it had meaning.  Eventually, I got to a place where I earned enough to pay down that debt and ultimately retire it in 9 years, not 10.  But in between, I was unemployed, I did "temp work," I took jobs that were well below my level of education or ability because I was brought up to work, to pay my debt when I borrowed money and not complain about it. 

There seems to be a disconnect between outcomes and decision making that suggests these millenials had to do little of the former and never appreciated the latter.  For example, Ms. Malone tells us about "Sam," a high school classmate and high achiever who, now nearing 30, is deeply in debt, aimless and questioning whether he should have gone to college in the first place.  The story between high school and now answers all our questions.  Sam, who had an acumen for math, took out $50,000 in loans to attend college, but when faced with stiffer competition in the math department, opted for a poetry writing major instead.  After graduation, Sam took a flyer on being a woodworker's apprentice, a job that lasted "a couple of months" but ended because he got tired of vacuuming up wood chips. After bouncing around for a time, Sam took out another $25,000 in loans to take continuing-education classes in engineering.  His money didn't last long and we're told Sam is now toggling between his car and parents home, feeling worthless and regretful of, all things, his college education. Sam's tale of woe is supposed to illustrate the plight of the millenial but what it did for me was illustrate how one bad decision gave way to another and another until Sam ended up where he is.  Instead of say, sticking with something he was good at - math - that might have turned into a career, maybe not the career he dreamed of, but a career nonetheless, he bailed and chased a dream that lasted just a few months before he quit that too.  When that didn't work out, he dug his hole deeper to take continuing education classes.  Baffling.

To Sam's parents credit, they did try to steer him back to math and science at some point, but one wonders where they were when Sam was taking out that first loan and certainly the second.  If Sam was such a high achiever in high school, why didn't he go to a state school or a community college that might have offered him scholarship money.  And who is to blame for Sam's aimless shifting from poetry major (really?) to apprentice wood worker to "job working in urban education" to his current observation "I need to get a career, I need to make that move."  You think? Careers don't just fall into you lap, Sam.  The semesters you spent studying poetry are when you should have been laying the foundation for that career you now so desperately want.  If not then, perhaps instead of grousing about scooping up wood chips, you should have stuck it out and learned a trade.

We also learn about Yaphet, who had a $45,000 a year job as a taxi dispatcher.  Pretty good, right?  Not good enough for Yaphet, who decided to take out $50,000 in student loans to get a degree in marketing management.  Now don't get me wrong, I think education is an important and valuable thing, but if you need to take out that much money to get it, perhaps you need to rethink which school you attend, or attend part-time, or save some of that hard earned money until you can afford to go to school without having to take out loans.  Alternatively, Yaphet could have stuck with the taxi dispatching gig and made a life and career out of that, slowly accumulating experience, perhaps opening his own taxi or limo service and becoming a small businessman.

Ms. Malone quotes something posted on a Tumblr for Occupy Wall Street: "I worked hard (40 hours a week during most of my education), for what? Tell me what I need to do to get ahead, because I did everything right!"(emphasis in original). There, at its core, is what is wrong with the millennial attitude.  No one ever told them that just because you "do everything right" means that you get to live happily ever after.  Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people.  Life is unfair, you get your degree and are thrust into a job market that is awful and no one is going to wipe your tears or blow your nose.  Get over it.  Use those finely honed skills and network with your parents friends, your own friends, get on that Internet thing you seem tethered to 24 hours a day already and figure it out.  It is discomfiting to think that a generation of children are being graduated from our educational institutions with this level of both entitlement and lack of coping skills to handle failure.  The world is not only an imperfect place but a cruel and hard one where things do not always go your way.  That this immutable truth was not shared with these young adults borders on parental malpractice.

Of course, generalizing all millenials as entitled crybabies would be no more accurate than saying all Baby Boomers were pot smoking hippies who fucked at Woodstock.  No doubt there are countless people between the ages of 20-30 who work for a living, without complaint and without being photographed for a magazine. One such person, Ms. Malone's friend Desi, dropped out of Georgetown and now makes a living delivering cloth diapers and doing wood working (must be a theme among Ms. Malone's friends?). Many others are raising families, gainfully employed and quietly going about the business of creating a life for themselves.  But let me clue Ms. Malone and the rest of those she speaks for into some of the realities that they will come to know - bills need to be paid, money needs to be earned, and it does not always happen from a job that is enriching and meaningful.  Sometimes work is just a means to an end - a way to make sure there is food on your table, hot water in your shower and gas in your tank.  Ideally, it is something much more, a way to make a difference in the world, to help others and express, through your labor, the value you place on yourself and what you do.  It is both naive and idealistic to think you will (or can) get these things 6 months or in many cases, 6 years, after graduating college, and it is laudable to want those things so quickly.  But like all the generations before you, dues must be paid, life lessons must be learned and trial and error is a fine way to drift so long as there's a north star you follow.

If Millenials want to see a cautionary tale, they should look at the real victims of the economic downturn. While it's unfortunate that 20somethings are struggling to find work, they have the greatest commodity at their disposal - time.  Sadly, people their parents age and older do not have that same luxury.  The market meltdown in 2008 destroyed hundreds of billions of dollars of savings that people in their 40s, 50s and 60s were relying on for their retirement and will never get back.  Older workers laid off or fired from their jobs will find it hard to make up the income and salary they earned and do not have the experience and in many cases, the technological savvy that young adults take for granted.  A middle aged man or woman is far worse equipped to compete in the global economy than a person two decades their junior. Moreover, unlike young people who can now be carried on their parents health plans until age 26, think about a 50 year old who has no job and no health insurance.  Medical bills, prescription drugs and basic screening for a variety of diseases from colon cancer to high blood pressure are far more critical in your 50s than your 20s.  Finally, while young people are hiding out in their parents homes, their parents friends are struggling to pay their mortgage and help get their own children through school.

When I graduated college, Generation X was tagged as a shiftless and cynical cohort, littering malls and shopping centers in low wage McJobs because the future we expected and had been promised to us was not there.  We were latch key kids who grew up in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic and a "say no to drugs" mentality that frowned on even the slightest bit of experimentation. Twelve years of Republican rule had expanded the gap between rich and poor, a savings and loan meltdown had cost taxpayers more than $100 billion and the future looked bleak.  If we had looked at our future through the narrow lens of the present day, it would have been just as depressing as it must seem to recent graduates and 20somethings who see a broken political system, an awful job market and a general lack of opportunity.  What I would tell all of you is that life is a marathon, not a sprint.  Within a few years of graduating college, our economy was going gangbusters, and classmates and friends were making more money and doing more creative things in the Internet boom of the 1990s than their parents could have possibly imagined.  Times change, for both good and bad, but if you have long-term goals in mind and are flexible in reaching them, you stand a good chance (no guarantees!) of making it.  Water tends to find its table, and if, as a group, you are as motivated, diverse in your experience and open minded in your attitude as you seem to be, things will work out just fine and the cycle will continue. You will be the home owning, leaf raking, snow shoveling bill payers and carpool drivers of the 2020s, eager to tell the next generation with the temerity to complain about their situation "you don't know how good you have it."

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How Occupy Can Avoid Losing The War

If the movement that is Occupy Wall Street, and its offshoots in dozens of other cities, are interested in avoiding the dustbin of history, the clearing of Zuccotti Park was the biggest favor the NYPD could have done for it.  While the NYPD and other police departments across the country are acting with brute force, pepper spray and hand saws, occupying public space without any organization, organizing principles or demands was going to drain the movement of its energy anyway.  That winter was quickly setting in, crime had been reported at various sites and the media was beginning to lose interest in the "occupy" storyline should be viewed as a boon to the movement, not its death knell.

Our country, whether the Occupy folks like it or not, is built on the political process, and the political process culminates at the ballot box, not in a park in New York City, Oakland or Seattle.  The Occupy movement must now direct its attention and energy to mobilizing at every level from local school boards to the election of our next President.  If Occupy wants to have its voice heard, it must define, through cogent policy, what "the 99%" stand for, what income equality should look like and how it can be achieved.  While the Zucotti Park demonstration stretched into its second month, tens of millions of dollars were being spent trying to impact the shape of the legislative compromise most people believe Congress will eventually reach to trim entitlements and (possibly) raise taxes.  Hard bitten political types understand how battles (and wars) are won, and while protest has its place, if you are not actively involved in the political and legislative process, your energy and effort will go for naught.

The sharp relief that governmental action toward the Occupy movement should show to the protesters is that the only way to make a difference is through the system.  Any legal advisor worth his or her salt would have told the Occupy folks a long time ago that the law is pretty well settled that overnight camping is not a form of expression that is entitled to unfettered protection.  The endgame should have been well known to decision makers some time ago and while the visuals associated with the clearing of these encampments has not been pretty, it was inevitable.  What should give people who support the general concept of highlighting income inequality is that there does not seem to be any intellectual underpinning or 2.0 strategic thinking that should have occurred before the protesters were shooed away.

Now, with the major protests essentially shut down, it is easy for the media to write the obituary for the movement.  Even before the final move was made by the NYPD, a subtle shift in the media narrative had occurred.  Crimes, both serious and petty, had been reported, little by little dissenters to the long-term presence of the protesters were voiced and, as is inevitable in our media, their eye began to wander, whether it was the awful child molestation allegations at Penn State or the re-appearance of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, at some point, without a new angle, any story will be shunted aside and Occupy was no different. 

If the Occupy movement wants to outlive its ignominious ending in Zuccotti Park, it must mobilize, organize and become political, overtly, through the creation of an agenda that articulates its ideas, voter registration, and fundraising.  Further, Occupy must identify its leaders and have them out in the public consistently, on the television talking head shows that dominate cable news, radio and the Web, drilling home its message.  Finally, as unsavory as it may be (or sound), Occupy must take a page from the Tea Party and put up its own candidates in the primary season (or vocally support candidates who support their positions) and in general elections at both the state and federal level to increase the chances that the grievances they have aired and the attention they have given to the growing inequality in our country does not go unheard.  If they do not, their moment in the sun will quickly slip from our collective memory and nothing will change.

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Book Review: That Used To Be Us

For the better part of three decades, Thomas Friedman has written about foreign affairs and the global economy with a rare ability to take complex macro-level concepts and distill them down into catchy, basic ideas that are not only easily understandable to the average reader, but intelligible as well.  For example, not long after 9/11, he observed that our money funds both sides of the "war on terror" - with the dollars we spend fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq (more on the latter, later) and with the money we spend on gasoline, which Arab countries use to fund the madrassas that teach young, unemployable boys and men to hate America, which in turn fuels terrorism.  Friedman's initial focus was primarily the Middle East (his seminal work, From Beirut to Jerusalem, remains, in my view, the essential primer on the subject) but as the years passed, his lens broadened to look at globalization, the rise of third world economies and the post-9/11 world.  

For his most recent work, That Used To Be Us, he has a co-author, Michael Mandelbaum, a professor at Johns Hopkins University.  In 356 pages, the authors attempt to summarize how we, the United States of America, ended up in the deep fiscal and competitiveness hole we find ourselves in and propose some solutions for getting out.  Readers of Friedman's prior work will see his hand in the narrative flow and pithy asides (e.g., our need for an "ET" (energy technology) revolution) and use of anecdotal evidence to tease out broader themes.  Readers of Mandelbaum's work are on your own, I haven't read any of his books.  

If Mssrs. Friedman and Mandelbaum were doctors, I would say they do a far better job of diagnosing the illness than coming up with a cure.  In tracing our country's economic arc from agrarian to industrial, they rightly point to five areas - education, infrastructure, immigration, research and development and regulation - as the pillars upon which our competitive advantage in the world has rested and deconstruct how each has atrophied or been ignored in recent years.  For example, they note that the time to process immigration visas is long, our post-9/11 procedures disincentive people from seeking them and as other economies have risen, there is less reason for white-collar immigrants to stay in America if they moved here for an education.  By failing to attract (and keep) immigrants in the country who are interested in building businesses, conducting research and development and taking the education they received here and applying it in positive ways, we lose twice - we have given immigrants the tools (a good education) to take back to their home country to compete against us while losing their skill and ability.   

The book also makes a clear and compelling case for the connection between educational attainment and global competitiveness.  As the global economy "flattened," that is, access to capital markets became greater, technology leveled the ability of people throughout the world to access information and compete, America could no longer presume to be the world's leader, but we got, in the authors' words "fat and lazy."  In everything from the U.S. Army to the smallest start-up, no longer is a mere high school education sufficient.  The rapid development of technology and its utilization in everything from IED-detection in Iraq to health care requires greater *and* more sophisticated educational ability, something, the authors note, America is not doing nearly as well as it used to.  For example, they cite a math and science test administered to 15 year-olds throughout Western countries which is used to gauge problem solving skills.  American students finish in the middle of the pack and, more generally, when it comes to standardized testing, while our students are competitive at a younger age (4th grade), by high school, they fall behind peers in Finland, Korea and Singapore.  More depressing is a study cited in the book that almost half of all adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate, and comments by current Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan that roughly 25 percent of 9th graders fail to graduate high school within four years and only 60 percent of students who enter a four-year college graduate within six years.  

The authors strongly support educational reform that recognizes the central role that teachers and principals play in the development of children; however, they note that the manner in which education is delivered in our country almost ensures that benefits received by a student by an above average teacher one year can be quickly erased if that student does not have a similarly high level of teacher in subsequent years.  Further, they talk about how the gap is not just between minority students and whites, but between whites and the students of the rest of the world.  In short, they argue, the challenge our educational system faces not only has to do with raising the educational standards of minority students so they are on a par with whites, but that all students must then rise to meet the challenges of their peers worldwide, who have relentlessly focused on improving teaching, critical thinking and access to technology as we have ignored them.  

With regard to research and development and infrastructure, Friedman and Mandelbaum correctly point out that both are critical to the long-term viability of our economy.  Some time ago, Friedman noted in one of his New York Times columns the dissonance he experienced in flying from China to the United States and how the airport he flew out of in China (I forget the city) was modern, well appointed and easy to navigate, while the terminal in (I believe) New York City was cramped and dated.  Here, the authors point out that things taken for granted in China, bullet trains that travel at near 200 miles per hour with perfect cell phone reception and Internet connectivity, are largely a pipe dream in America, where high speed rail is demonized as a government boondoggle, Republicans attempt to cut funding to Amtrak and one is lucky to have a cell phone call dropped less than a few times on the Acela between New York and Washington. They also note that Americans spend more on potato chips in a year than the federal government puts into research and development during that same time. Lastly, there is the gratuitous plug for energy independence and investment in green technology, an idea that has long animated Friedman's writing and is no less relevant today than it was 10 years ago.

While the book does a good job not only of framing our historical commitment to what they refer to as the "five pillars" of our economy, but also of noting where we are falling short in laboratories, schools and science fairs, the authors lost me in their overview of our political system and its failings.  The authors dub the Bush Era as the "Terrible Twos," a time where taxes were cut while we invested a trillion dollars in war and new prescription drug benefits while forgetting the needs of education, investment, infrastructure spending and research and development. This, according to the authors, has only carried over into the Obama Administration.   Their thesis is true so far as it goes but the premise is disingenuous.  First and foremost, while bemoaning the enormous fiscal calamity the Bush years were, Friedman mentions only in passing his prior, full-throttled support for the Iraq War without noting its enormous cost, in human life and general treasury.  Indeed, many of the prescriptions vaguely pointed to later in the book could have come to fruition (and then some) with the nearly trillion dollars poured into the Iraqi desert.  

Second, they rely on the odd mainstream media position that Republicans like Lindsey Graham, Robert Bennett and Bob Inglis somehow pass as moderates who just want to get things done.  A passage with Graham on pages 203-05 is particularly noxious.  The authors recite how Graham was working with Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman on an energy bill that would have imposed a carbon tax in an effort to encourage the use of clean energy, spur development and improve our environment.  In a true "profile in courage," Graham fretted more about leaks in the negotiation than the forward-thinking work that was being done.  The authors quote Graham as saying "[T]he second [the Fox newscasters] focus on us, it's gonna be all cap-and-tax all the time, and it's gonna become a disaster for me on the airwaves." (emphasis added).  Naturally, when the Fox spin machine started, Graham walked away from the discussion.  See, instead of standing on principle and defending the importance of legislation that would spur our economy, clean our air and punish polluters, Lindsey Graham was worried about being dinged by some talking heads on conservative cable television.  This point eludes the authors, who fail to mention that the House passed clean energy legislation and pin blame on President Obama for not spending "political capital" to help the process.  Moreover, the authors fail to note Graham's lockstep voting with his Senate Republican colleagues in setting a modern day record for the use of the filibuster, and in many situations, killing legislation passed by the House during President Obama's first two years in office.

So who else did Friedman and Mandelbaum interview to show the frustrations in our nation's capital?  Former Congressman Bob Inglis.  He was one of the managers of President Clinton's impeachment and served in the House of Representatives until last year, when he lost a primary contest to an even more conservative Republican challenger.  Inglis's insight into our nation's politics was captured by the authors thusly: "Democrats tend to concentrate on fairness.  Republicans excel at building meritocracies." Indeed they do, Congressman.  Savings and loans were wonderful institutions until they collapsed and cost us more than $100 billion to be bailed out.  The financial industry was deregulated and ultimately sunk the entire economy and oil and gas companies gorge on federal subsidies and corporate loopholes even as they collect record profits.  Similarly, former Senator Robert Bennett, he of the near 90% rating by the American Conservative Union before being ousted by a "Tea Party" challenger in a 2010 primary, bemoans the partisanship while the authors blithely ignore Bennett's own intransigence or his post-congressional career as a Washington lobbyist at a large D.C. law firm.  That all of these Republicans were in office and voted for the budget busting tax cuts, two wars and a prescription drug benefit plan under Medicare, all of which were put "on the credit card" goes entirely unmentioned.  

To be fair, the authors do cite those fiscal errors on the Republican side of the ledger generally but, in a misguided attempt to be (pardon) "fair and balanced," pin state and local fiscal woes on (their opinion) profligate pension and raises given by Democrats to union workers.  This false equivalency is lazy journalism done in the service of attempting to frame a narrative of shared blame.  For example, in my home state of New Jersey, it was a Republican governor (Christie Whitman) who raided the pension fund of state workers to pay for a statewide tax cut and then failed to repay that debt, instead hoping that unrealistic stock market returns would fill the gap (they didn't).  When she left the Governor's mansion to become EPA Administrator, her successor (also a Republican) gave state workers a generous bump in their pension calculation and salary.  While it is true that some Democratic governors did the same thing, the problem with trying to conflate what one body (U.S. Congress) did with what 50 states and myriad localities and municipalities did, is that at the state and local level, the "blame" is not one sided, whereas by and large, a Republican President, aided by Republican majorities for much of his presidency, redistributed hundreds of billions of dollars into the coffers of the wealthy while spending hundreds of billions more on Iraq and Afghanistan and giving seniors a (mediocre) prescription drug benefit without paying for any of it.

The other main shortcoming of the book is that the "solutions" are buried 300 pages into the book and are elusive at best and unrealistic at worst.  They pull out the familiar refrain that we need to make the right investments in education, infrastructure and R&D, scale back entitlement spending and raise taxes.  Essentially, the point that President Obama has been making for some time with little to no reaction from Republicans.  Moreover, it is one thing to say that we should look at whether wealthier retirees should have their Social Security benefits trimmed (or done away with entirely), but it's quite another to say "[T]he national interest depends on everyone, including seniors, making some sacrifice so that the country can make the investments it needs in America's future."  Painting with such a broad brush implies that all seniors, including the millions that rely on Social Security as their sole (or primary) means of income, should have their benefits reduced.  


Moreover, while the authors point out that nearly 30 percent of Medicare spending comes in the final months of a person's life, they say nothing of the demagoguery of Tea Party "death panel" rhetoric or the fact that Republicans in the Senate filibustered Donald Berwick, a respected leader in health care, as President Obama's choice to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (he was ultimately given a recess appointment).  Actions of this sort make rational discussion about how to trim the cost of Medicare nearly impossible.  That more than half the state Attorneys General are suing the federal government to block implementation of a health care plan that was initially proposed by a Senate Republican (John Chafee) and would hand private insurers more than 30 million new customers speaks as clearly to the one note obstruction of Republicans every bit as much as the Affordable Care Act's passage without a single GOP vote in Congress.  


Similarly, the book cites the example of Delaware Governor Jack Markell using tax incentives to lure Fisker Automotive to his state and of Intel CEO Paul Otellini bragging that he can "build a factory anywhere on earth but here and get a $1 billion discount."  That's great for Intel, but $1 billion in lost tax revenue has to be made up somewhere and the authors don't come up with plausible explanations for where that gap can be filled or the fact that many U.S. corporations already manipulate our tax code to pay little or no federal tax each year.  


Finally, Friedman and Mandelbaum blow an enormous air kiss in the not-so-subtle direction of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who, while not named specifically, meets the description of the change agent our system, according to them, needs - a person who balances social responsibility with fiscal conservatism and an eye to the use of McKinseyean consulting efficiencies.  Indeed, were Mitt Romney not twisting himself into a pretzel to be on every side of every hot button issue near and dear to the GOP base, he too might be what the authors think our system needs.  The authors cite prior third party Presidential candidates like H. Ross Perot and Teddy Roosevelt (as a Bull Moose in 1912) as examples of how a third party can give voice to the desires of the populace that are not being met due to the extremism of the two parties.  While there is some truth to this, the argument is not particularly persuasive.  With regard to Perot, while he did advocate tackling the deficit as a third party candidate, so too did Bill Clinton.  Indeed, the very tax increases Friedman and Mandelbaum give credit to helping move our budget toward balance in the 1990s were passed by President Bush and a Democratic Congress in 1990 and by Democratic-only majorities in both houses of Congress in 1993.  So while Perot may have echoed similar themes, it is not true to say he was advocating ideas that were foreign to the two major party candidates.  


Further, another third party candidate cited by the authors, George Wallace, race baited and helped Richard Nixon cleave the Democratic party in the 1960s. This "southern strategy" resulted in an enormous GOP landslide in 1972 and shifted the center of gravity for the GOP to the South, where it remains to this day. That Wallace gave voice to the fears and insecurities of whites during the civil rights era that were co-opted by Nixon is nothing to be proud of and merely illustrates that third party candidates are not some panacea to what ails our political system.  In addition, while the broad strokes outlined in the book make sense - more public/private partnership, greater commitment to educational reform, and others, these ideas cost money, money the authors don't identify in terms of where (or how) taxes should be increased or entitlement programs cut.  Ultimately, this amounts to heckling from the bleachers, not driving for solutions.


Ironically, the "shock therapy" Friedman and Mandelbaum call for would be unnecessary had Republicans in Congress made an affirmative decision upon President Obama's inauguration to work with him instead of doing everything in their power to stop him.  Contrary to the right wing spin machine, Obama's inclination is toward compromise and solution.  What the right has done is pervert that tendency to bend Obama to their will in debt and budget fights and extract compromises that are contradictory to the GOP's rhetoric (extending tax cuts that add to the deficit and debt) or are largely symbolic (minuscule budget cuts that fail to make any meaningful dent in our deficit while shrinking aid to the infirm, poor and needy).  While doing a post-mortem on "how we got here" is beneficial only to a point, the idea that a third party candidate can come in and offer answers that are not already being offered is to ignore political reality. 


If the authors wanted to attack the root of political gridlock, they might have delved into the idea of non-partisan redistricting, public financing of elections or other "good government" ideas that are already widely circulated among the chattering class.  Banning former members of Congress or their staff from working for lobbying firms is another idea that might have been worth exploring.  They might have also looked into the track record of prior Administrations in working with Congress.  Unsurprisingly, the highest level of partisan gridlock has occurred under recent Democratic Administrations (Clinton and Obama) while prior Republican Presidents have not been stymied in that way. 


They could have also been more accurate in their assessment of entitlements.  For example, Social Security is fully "solvent" until the mid-2030s, that is, it can continue paying out full benefits to every retiree until that time.  The only reason that date is not further in the future is that every Congress (and President) for years has raided the surplus (that pesky "lock box" Al Gore wanted never came to fruition) to mask our deficits.  While the Chinese do hold nearly a trillion dollars of our debt, we, the people, hold far more than that in the form of IOUs to Social Security sitting in a vault somewhere in West Virginia (thank you Sen. Robert Byrd).  They also could have pointed out that tax rates in America do little to inhibit the wealth and income of the truly well off.  Tax rates have been as high as 91 percent and now top out at 35 percent, yet in times of exceedingly high taxation and modest taxation, the rich always do well, it is just a question of how well.  That $4 trillion in savings that is being searched for in vain is staring us right in the face -   rolling back all the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 would get us just that amount, but that would require the expenditure of political capital that no one wants to use and the authors do not even mention.  

In sum, That Used To Be Us is a helpful primer in understanding where and how the United States has fallen behind its global competitors.  The book is at its strongest when discussing issues such as educational reform, the critical need for research and development, and innovation taking place in organizations from the armed forces to Silicon Valley.  Unfortunately, the authors stumble when they move beyond anecdotes from far flung parts of the American economy that show our innovation and ingenuity, offer little more than bromides and generalities for answers and completely misread and, in same ways, misrepresent, the current state of our politics.  This book feels like it was cobbled together from old essays and columns wrapped together with some overarching themes that have been circulating for some time and do not come across as particularly original.

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I Found The Jobs, Mr. Speaker!

One of the more frequent Republican talking points is that President Obama has failed to create jobs in our economy.  Speaker John Boehner invoked a message asking "where are the jobs, Mr. President" in the run-up to the 2010 mid-term elections as a rallying cry for the conservative cause.  This message is amplified by an often lazy mainstream media that tends to look at top line data and fuse it with sensational headlines to convey the message that our economy is stalled, jobs are not being created (or not being created fast enough) and when you put it all together, things generally suck.  And to a certain extent, they are right - things do suck - 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty while the gap between rich and poor are near pre-Great Depression levels and our unemployment rate remains high.  It is convenient to point the finger at the man in the Oval Office and say "HIM" - blame HIM for all of this while, conveniently dodging any of your own responsibility, and that's essentially what Republicans have done and the media has generally permitted them to do as they stonewall proposals and seek major concessions in making permanent the very tax cuts that have helped contribute to both our debt and wealth inequity. 

Of course, Republican orthodoxy is rarely internally consistent and the irony of criticizing government (which they loathe) for failing to do enough to promote private sector job growth is lost on them.  Moreover, our media culture relies, to a great extent, on conflict, creating it, dissecting it and feeding off it to fill endless hours of cable news programming, garner website page views and column-space in newspapers.  Regardless, because the economy is our top priority as a nation and comparing ideas to fix it will animate political discourse leading up to Election Day 2012, Mr. Boehner is right, we should be asking "where are the jobs" but in doing so, I do not think the Speaker will like the answer.

Any rational discussion of our economy and job creation must start with the acknowledgment that the financial collapse triggered by the Lehman Brothers default in September 2008 triggered an enormous contraction in our economy.  Final government statistics for the 4th Quarter of 2008 indicate that the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) shrank at an annual rate of 8.9 percent[1], the greatest reduction in GDP since The Great Depression.  The 1st Quarter of 2009 saw GDP shrink at an annual rate of 6.7 percent[2], which, but for the drop in the previous quarter, would have been the largest quarterly drop in GDP since The Great Depression.

The job picture also demands some reflection.  Consider that in just four months between December 2008 and March 2009 our monthly job losses were as follows: December 2008, 619,000 jobs lost; January 2009, 820,000 jobs lost; February 2009, 726,000 and March 2009, 796,000.  Those job losses were on top of nearly 1.8 million jobs lost between September-November 2008 (434,000, 509,000, 802,000). In the year between February 2008 and 2009, our unemployment rate went from 4.8 percent to 8.1 percent.  In short, our economy cratered in September 2008 and the after effects of that implosion reverberated for months afterward.  By March 2009, the country's seven month net job loss neared 5 million, a total unprecedented in modern American history[3].

Into this enormous chasm a law was passed that provided a $237 billion tax cut, $51 billion in tax incentives to corporations and $144 billion in aid to state and local government, among other things.  Pretty impressive, right?  Huge tax cuts for 98 percent of all Americans and incentives to corporations.  Surely this bill must have received broad bi-partisan support, particularly since Republicans had just helped bail out Wall Street and have never met a tax cut they did not like.  Unsurprisingly, this law, which came to be perverted and turned into a dirty word ("stimulus") received exactly ZERO Republican votes in a harbinger of many other legislative battles that animated President Obama's term in office.

So how did that stimulus bill, which every Republican under the sun labeled a failure even as many of them happily touted the benefits received in their Congressional districts and states, actually perform?  According to the Congressional Budget Office, which the Republicans touted as the gold standard for scoring and evaluation when health care was being debated, posted a lengthy analysis of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in August 2011.  The report concluded that employment was boosted by the ARRA by between 1 million and 2.9 million jobs from its passage through summer 2011. Further, when the increase in hours worked by employees is tabulated, that is, part-time employees who were able to achieve full-time employment and full-time employees who were able to get overtime work, the "full-time equivalent" job growth was by between 1.4 million and 4 million[4].

Some liberal economists both at the time and in retrospect pointed out that the ARRA was unsuited to the crisis at hand.  That is, the stimulus was actually too small, and, when the needle on unemployment (another 1.8 million jobs were lost between April and July 2009) ticked up in the immediate aftermath of the passage of the ARRA, critics savaged the program and have not let up since.  Importantly, when ARRA funding began to be employed, unemployment did stabilize and job creation started to happen.  For calendar years 2010 and 2011, we have seen net job growth in 16 of 22 months, including net positive job growth in every month since October 2010[5]. 

In fact, contrary to Republican talking points, the unsteady job growth we have experienced has little to do with the *private* sector, which has added more than 2.5 million jobs between October 2009 (the bottom of the recession) and October 2011. Indeed, even with the enormous job losses in the early part of 2009, total private sector employment is only down 144,000 from its January 2009 level[6]. Rather, the enormous losses in *public* sector employment, something that Republicans, at least philosophically should not be bothered by, is what has kept our unemployment rate hovering at 9 percent.  As federal assistance to states waned with the winding down of ARRA and state-level economic recovery remained tepid, more than 750,000 federal, state and local jobs (primarily state and local) were lost in 2010 and 2011[7].  

In short, job growth, while not outstanding, has been positive for two full years.  The drag on our unemployment rate has far more to do with layoffs in the public sector than the private sector.  Net job growth was nearly 1 million in 2010 and is already over 1.25 million in 2011.  But for the significant job losses in the public sector, the unemployment rate would be lower.  Of course, the current state of job growth is not enough, at this time, to significantly lower the unemployment rate; however, the idea that the private sector is not hiring is simply untrue.  Moreover, Republicans are blocking the President's agenda for injecting needed investment in infrastructure, tax incentives to small businesses, and additional aid to states to invest in education and public safety.  Taken together, it is hard to see this as anything other than crass political gamesmanship executed with the hope of dragging economic growth down as we near next year's Presidential elections particularly when not only many of these proposals are ones Republicans have supported in the past, but recent history shows are effective in getting jobs into the economy.  If Speaker Boehner wants to know where the jobs are, all he has to do, like Dorothy finding out she had it within her power to go home all along, is to look at the private sector he worships, *that* is where the jobs are.

---

[1]   http://www.bea.gov/faq/index.cfm?faq_id=1003.

[2]   Ibid.

[3]   .  http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/ces0000000001?output_view=net_1mth.

[4]   http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/123xx/doc12385/08-24-ARRA.pdf.

[5]   http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/ces0000000001?output_view=net_1mth.

[6]   http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost.

[7]   http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog2.php/2011/09/06/labor-day-look-at-jobs-data.

It's Time To Give Tiger A Break

Nothing quite satisfies our collective desire for schadenfreude than the image of a powerful and rich person brought down low by scandal.  As the collected masses, we can stand in judgment of someone else's bad behavior while also confirming that just because someone has money and celebrity, it does not make them better than us.  Few people are more famous, or fell further, than Tiger Woods.  Never universally loved by the media or the public, but always respected for his ability, Woods's private life exploded into the public consciousness during the Thanksgiving weekend of 2009 when he crashed his SUV into a fire hydrant and was briefly admitted to the hospital.  Within a few days, tales of mistresses and kinky sex with everyone from porn stars to waitresses and the daughter of a business associate came out.  The media horde gorged on the story and made bit celebrities out of the various paramours Woods bedded.  Not long after, Woods made the cliché trip to "rehab," and much ink was spilled judging his private conduct and questioning what spurred it in the first place.

The nearly two years since the initial incident occurred have not been good to Woods.  The steady stream of embarrassing details continued for weeks after the initial story broke, his mea culpa press conference in February 2010 seemed robotic and canned and corporations, who had showered Tiger with millions in lucrative endorsement deals over the years, distanced themselves from him.  Any thought that Tiger could compartmentalize his personal and professional lives could never be truly tested because his golf game suffered too, because of (depending on whom you believe), a balky knee, constant tweaks to his swing and/or the psychological and emotional turmoil he was experiencing.  In truth, it was probably some combination of all three.  Tiger has not won a tournament since the crash and the steady stream of "firsts" that once had to do with his being the youngest/first to win .... (a major, the career grand slam,  $10 million in prize money in a single year, etc.) now focus on the negative (first missed cut, first time not ranked #1 in the world, first time not qualifying for Ryder Cup, etc.).

Not only has Woods's aura of invincibility on the course disappeared, but an undercurrent of disdain has leaked into the media and the cultural zeitgeist about him.  Questions about his veracity were understandable in light of the conduct he undertook; however, the reaction of many in the media to his behavior always struck me as both overblown and potentially hypocritical.  Tiger Woods did nothing that thousands (if not millions?) of married people do, and have done, since, well, marriage was created.  His sin was to be famous and rich and therefore subject to our judgment even as many who ripped him would not want their own dirty laundry revealed.  For a country where religion is never far from the surface, absolution for one's sins apparently does not carry over for the wealthy adulterer. 

Perhaps part of the fault lies with Woods himself.  Having been in the public eye from a very young age, his public persona was always opaque and distant.  That celebrities seek to control their image is not surprising, but Woods seems to take this endeavor to new heights.  His luxury yacht was christened Privacy and before the scandal, he rarely commented on his personal life, famously firing his first professional caddie, "Fluff" Cowen, for being a bit too open about his work for Woods in the wake of Tiger's 1997 Masters victory.  Woods's leeriness of the media made the after effects of his scandal that much more difficult to manage and address.  His personal contrition aside, it was not in his nature to explain himself to the public and certainly not about matters of the heart. 

On the other hand, and at some point, we need to acknowledge that the requisite pound of flesh has been extracted and let this guy get on with his life.  I think the inflection point occurred a few days ago, when Tiger's former caddie, Steve Williams, was quoted in the press as saying that the aim of his celebration after his new employer (Adam Scott) won a tournament that Tiger was also playing in was "to shove it right up that black a***hole."  Williams had gotten into hot water at the event itself a few months back by calling it "the best win of my career," conveniently omitting the more than 60 tournaments (including 13 majors) he had played a role in as Woods's caddie (not to mention the millions he earned during their time together), but this most recent utterance seemed intensely personal and over the line.  Perhaps Williams's statement is the tipping point when Woods ceases being a piñata.

This latest contrempt followed hot on the heels of another low point in Tiger's career.  Having fallen to #58 in the world (his 623 weeks as the world's #1 golfer are almost as long as the total run of the other 13 golfers who have held that spot in the 24 years the rankings have existed) and in need of time on the course and a decent performance, Woods entered the PGA's Frys.com tournament in early October, a second-tier event that just a few years ago would have been below Tiger's standards to play in.  He finished 30th.  To add insult to injury, a fan threw a hot dog at him on the 7th green during the final day of the tournament.  This stunt was a bookend to a forgettable year that included missing the cut at the PGA Tournament, withdrawing halfway through the first round of The PLAYERS Championship (he was +6 through his first 9 holes) and just over $660,000 in tour earnings (by way of comparison, he earned more than $10 million in 2007 and 2009, and nearly $6 million in 2008, even though he missed the entire second half of the year with a knee injury).

His life off the golf course has suffered as well.  He reached an undisclosed settlement with his now ex-wife and little by little, other pieces fell apart too.  He put Privacy on the market earlier this year, the golf course design company he launched has yet to complete a course (three were in the works at one point but none have been finished) and the endorsement deals that once garnered him an estimated $90 million a year, shrank.  A number of sponsors either terminated their agreements with him or did not renew their contracts when they expired, including, Accenture, Gatorade, Gillette, and TAG Heuer.  In their place, the best Woods could do was a Japanese heat rub balm until Rolex signed him to a deal in October.     

Arguably, the harshest pill Woods has had to swallow is the loss of the aura he once carried on the golf course.  He is derided in the press, his talent questioned by his opponents, and the most important career milestone he hoped to achieve, surpassing Jack Nicklaus's record 18 professional majors, may now be out of reach.  Woods's public comments about his game bring skepticism because the results on the course do not comport with the claims being made and Woods himself seems to be either living in denial about that or is so contemptuous of the press that he does not think they can understand the work a world-class golfer puts into his game. 

And for all of this, I say, enough.  Enough of the morality police and enough of the parody that has become Tiger's life.  Enough of people trying to cash in and enough of the pot shots and criticism.  This man has been brought down low - he has experienced public humiliation, lost tens of millions of dollars and the respect of his peers and must live every day with the embarrassment of knowing that his private failings have not only been made public, but will be known by his children and anyone with a computer for the rest of his life.  Professionally, he has lost his ability, or at least the ability we associated with him, and likely lost the chance at the record he held most dear.  The burden of these things has to weigh on him, and maybe some believe it is karmic justice that they do.  Perhaps he was not sufficiently contrite or is just a venal monster who cares of nothing but fame, glory and sexual conquests.  Either way, Tiger Woods is now an object of ridicule, who can be dissed by his former caddie and have his play interuppted by a fan throwing a hot dog at him.  He is a shell of the person he once was and has suffered the moral, emotional and financial penalty of his deed.  It is enough.  Let him move on.

On Work and the Workplace

The workplace is constantly changing.  Technology evolves, roles change, and expectations are fluid, but even though desks now have computers where typewriters once lived and people gchat instead of talking on the phone, some things remain the same.  The way you navigate through the office is critical.  You spend roughly half your waking hours (and sometimes more) in this environment, the money you earn from your job pays your bills and for many people, work defines who they are.  With that in mind, here are some lessons I have learned after more than fifteen years in the work force:

Be the indispensable person.  This is the first lesson I learned well before downsizing, outsourcing and efficiencies allowed companies to trim their workforces en masse.  This doesn't mean you take on everyone else's job, but rather, have your hand in the air when volunteers are asked for, or, better yet, be the volunteer before the request is made.  Your willingness to go outside the four corners of your job will ingratiate yourself with supervisors, and, more importantly, put your name in their head the next time some special project or assignment comes up.  Lastly, if layoffs occur, you won't be on the chopping block because your role is so critical to the overall success of the organization.

Figure out the bureaucracy.  This works hand in hand with being the indispensable person.  You, or someone you work for, invariably needs things - you might need to know something big, like who has sign off authority in another company/business/agency for your proposal or who can short circuit a long process and get your travel request approved, or a smaller thing, like how to get your friend's resume to the top of the pile or figure out why your security card is not working.  Being able to make these things happen quickly and cleanly is a skill that, if developed, is invaluable.  Of course, reciprocating those favors where you can and thanking the people who are doing them for you, goes without saying.

Do not undervalue institutional knowledge.  Guess what?  Unless you got in on the ground floor of the start up that is now the next Google, there are people who have been in your company a lot longer than you have.  They are very valuable resources and should be treated as such.  You may want to blow up the organization chart or fire Larry down in accounts receivable, but before you do, talk to some folks who have been there a little while.  Chances are, they can explain the way the company works and give you some helpful tips before you go making a fool of yourself.  Also, see above.  It is highly likely that the person who can facilitate things without going through traditional channels is either one of these people or knows someone who is.  

When you are the "new guy/girl" keep your mouth shut and listen.  Whether you were hired as the Senior Vice President or a summer intern, you are joining a family already in progress.  Sandy the receptionist was there 10 years before you got there, and she'll be there 10 years after you're gone.  If she doesn't like buzzing people in, make sure you have your badge when you leave the office.  In meetings, observe, see how they are run, how people interact, and what the rules of the road are.  Is your boss a stickler for time who expects everyone seated and ready at the appointed time or does s/he let people stroll in 5 minutes late.  Are smart phones on vibrate, incessantly thumbed, or is the use of all technological devices verboten?  Be mindful of the fact that overwhelming your new colleagues with your personality, the smells from your lunch or the decor in your office are all sure fire ways to get ostracized.  Be low key, don't make any waves, and allow your transition into the group dynamic to happen naturally and you will be fine.

Be judicious with your comments in meetings.  Once you are acclimated to your new surroundings, you might be inclined to dazzle your co-workers with your brilliance or pick apart weak Power Points with your cutting wit and incisiveness.  Avoid these temptations.  In the same way the pushy/loud/bossy person is always one of the first people voted off "Survivor," so too are know-it-alls in the office.  If your comments advance the conversation, identify (or better yet, solve) a problem and show creative thinking, a lone comment will have far more power than a 5 minute disquisition that makes you sound like a bloviating jerk off.

Anticipate your boss's needs.  Is s/he a technophobe who uses the one finger "hunt and peck" typing technique?  Does the sight of an iPhone or Blackberry make them recoil in horror?  Are they morning people or roll in late (and expect you to do the same?).  If you're in a support position, and let's face it, whether you're a junior associate in Big Law or that associate's secretary, you support someone else.  It's in your best interest to know who they are, how they tick and help them do their job more effectively.  One of my bosses was a quintessential "big picture" thinker who could rally a room to run through a wall, but left the niggling details to me.  After a working for her for a little while, I began to prepare before meetings for what the likely takeaways would be, edited, without comment or quibble, her drafts, which were sometimes just free form association of ideas and I listened, intently, at what she wanted that "big picture" to look like in practice, not theory, and learned how to effectuate her vision.

Avoid the office bully.  Every office has a bully.  Avoid this person at all costs because there's usually one of two reasons this person is allowed to be a bully: (1) The bully is one of those indispensable people I am suggesting you become (but also happens to be an asshole) and therefore, management is reluctant to get rid of him/her; or (2) The bully is protected either because of some personal relationship with a very senior person in your organization or some connection (family, personal) that makes them untouchable.  Either way, it is in your best interest to not be on this person's radar screen unless absolutely necessary.  If you must interact with the bully, do it deferentially and with as little interaction as possible while getting whatever it is needs to be achieved, done.  If the bully is your boss, my condolences.  Unless you have a high threshold for pain, your tenure in the bully's department is likely to be short.

Respect the assistant.  Administrative Assistant, Secretary, whatever you want to call the person who supports the person you need to/want to get access to, be nice to them.  Granted, being nice to others should be your general default conduct towards everyone, but this is particularly true with the gate keepers, schedule keepers and helpers who can grant or deny you the help you need.  Learn their names, treat them with respect and be courteous and you will be amazed at how much easier they can make your life.

Accept the fact that you may not get the recognition you think you deserve.  You stayed late and found that killer language from the case nobody bothered to research that persuades the judge to rule in your favor.  You color coded the exhibits before the big deposition.  You fixed the copier machine and replaced the toner cartridge without even getting an ink stain on your shirt.  You worked three Saturdays in a row.  You brought in the big account or fixed that error in the letter to the client that would have really ticked them off.  Congratulations.  Don't expect a parade, a promotion or a pay raise.  If you get any of those things, it's gravy.  Work has to be its own reward or you will chase your tail waiting for the gold star that may never come.

Put people over.  On the other hand, when you are in a position of authority or supervision, make sure the people who work for you and do a good job are recognized, not just by you, but by the people *you* report to.  Unless you're the CEO or the head of the agency, you have a boss.  When you come into contact with that person, let them know how others contributed - be specific, give a name (or names) and, when you can, put a face to the name.

Be generous with the little things.  Similarly, consider the value of small things.  It takes 2 minutes to compose a department-wide email acknowledging the hard work of a person (or persons) who went the extra mile for you (and your company) and you can get a nice Friday spread of coffee and donuts for about $20 to recognize a colleague or underling's achievement.  While we all understand that the two ways people receive true recognition are pay and promotion, those things don't happen everyday; however, the morale boost that people feel when they are recognized is important.  It guards against the feeling that a person's effort is not valued and also shows that you are paying attention to who is doing good work.

Deflect praise and accept responsibility.  Conversely, you should not be doing an end zone dance when something goes right and you should take the hit when something goes wrong. Rarely is anything that happens in an organization, no matter how small, the result of a single person's effort.  There's *always* someone who helps you accomplish some task.  If you are the person in charge, give credit to your team.  Even if you worked on the substance of a project or assignment yourself, an assistant, intern or volunteer probably contributed some administrative role that helped get it done.  Thank him or her and let their supervisor know how much you appreciated their help.  When something goes south, take responsibility, do not get defensive or attempt to justify why things went wrong.  Also, don't point fingers or try to deflect blame.  Showing a willingness to throw others under the bus will only get you the reputation of being untrustworthy and a poor leader.  Instead, be ready with a "lessons learned" takeaway of how things will improve in the future.

Don't be a chazer.  In Yiddish, a chazer is a pig.  I think of the word as more like someone who takes and takes without knowing when they have crossed the line into inappropriate.  To me, people like this are the people who make a "to go" plate at the office party after a nice spread has been laid out (and paid for) by someone else, take sick days for phantom (or minor) ailments and otherwise game the company system in small ways that erode morale.  No boss wants to be bogged down in the minutiae of your "special" vacation request and your co-workers don't want to be reminded that you always show up late (or leave early) because your office is located in a remote location that few people visit.

Save requests for important things. The fewer waves you make, the more you put your nose to the grindstone and foster a reputation for competence and ability, the greater the chance when you ask for something, you will get it.  For example, I once worked in an office that had a notoriously bad secretary.  She was one of four in our department and when my secretary (who was great) left, I was re-assigned to her.  When I found out, I went to my boss, and since I could preface my request to *not* be assigned to her with the words "you know I never ask for anything" he switched me to one of the remaining assistants with a better attitude.  That "chip" was much better spent on getting the right secretary than asking for every other Friday off in the summer so I could go to the beach.

When the right opportunity presents itself, go for it.  If you are respected and well thought of, someone else will inevitably come looking for you. If that someone (and something) is the right opportunity, move heaven and earth to get it.  Like those little favors you should only ask of in limited circumstances, if there is a "dream job" within your reach, go all in and get the people who can help make it happen to advocate on your behalf.  You can't abuse the privilege, so be sure it's what you want.

Have an exit strategy before it is needed.  Look, sometimes things don't work out.  Sometimes you work for a horrible boss or your company downsizes or you say the wrong thing to the wrong person or hey, you just hate your job.  It happens, but rarely overnight.  If you start to get an inkling that things are going south, that's a great time to update your resume, transfer contact information from your work computer to your personal one, network and otherwise assess what the job market may hold.  If things are not going well, it is better to jump to a new job than be pushed into unemployment.  Oh, and if possible, make sure you have that "emergency fund" the financial experts always tell us to have but few people actually create, handy.

Don't take a job based on the paycheck.  This is my last lesson and one that is easier said than done, but  has never steered me in the wrong direction.  I know, there is always an exception (I'm a lawyer, I make my living off of finding exceptions) like true financial need due to unemployment, but all other things being equal, you cannot make decisions about where you work based on what it pays if happiness and fulfillment are things you want out of your work.  The best jobs may not pay the most money and the jobs that offer the most money may not make you happy.  Given a choice between the two, the former is far more desirable than the latter because there is nothing worse than hating what you do everyday or feeling miserable or depressed when you wake up in the morning and have that feeling be due to the fact that you have to get dressed and go to work.  Even jobs that fulfill us will sometimes make us unhappy, frustrate us or cause us take a "mental health" day; however, if the core of what you do is meaningful, it makes getting up everyday for work that much more tolerable.

Good luck out there. 

The Myth of Saint Ronald

If it is true that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, the unveiling of a statue of Ronald Reagan at, of all places, a national airport surely falls in the latter category. The irony of creating a paean to a man who destroyed the nation's air traffic controller's union at an airport would be rich were the airport itself not renamed for him already.  The right has created a highly successful messaging movement (it's what they do best) to ensure Ronald Wilson Reagan's legacy as a tax cutting, bureaucracy hating, Commie defeating cowboy hero who single handedly revived our economy, restored Americans' pride and beat the Russians.  Indeed, there is a project afoot to ensure that Reagan is commemorated in every county throughout the country and intermittent trial balloons to further memorialize him on everything from the $10 bill to the side of Mount Rushmore.  

The hagiography of Reagan extended to the choreography of his funeral, a multi-day commemoration orchestrated with the same eye for the visual that made his advance team's work in the 1980s so forward thinking, the construction of his library (with the larger than life use of Air Force One as a backdrop) and the encomiums from Presidential candidates both declared and flirting, all of whom make the pilgrimage to the Reagan Library and pronounce their fealty to Dutch's memory.  Of course, in death as in life, the myth of Reagan was always more useful than the reality and a cowed "mainstream media" genuflects appropriately at his memory while rarely delving into our 40th President's actual record.   

While Reagan did campaign as a conservative and famously declared in his first inaugural address that "Government is not the solution to our problems, it is the problem," the reality of his eight years in office is far more moderate than the myth-makers would have you believe.  Indeed, Reagan's willingness to cut deals with Congressional Democrats that raised taxes, instituted taxation on Social Security and placed mandates on states in order to receive federal funding runs deeply afoul of prevailing Republican orthodoxy in 2011.  Moreover, he created a new federal cabinet agency and, when he left office, there were more federal employees than the day he put his hand on the Bible to take the oath of office.

Tax policy is probably the area most in need of historical revision.  While it is true that Reagan passed a large tax cut within weeks of assuming office, most partisans (and some journalists) choose to focus on that accomplishment and ignore the fact that the result of that tax cut, which was a large spike in the federal deficit, resulted in tax increases of one kind or another in every subsequent year of Reagan's Administration with the exception of his final year in office.  Reagan was an equal opportunity tax raiser.  Gas taxes were raised, Social Security was taxed for the first time in history, and even a third of the tax cuts instituted in 1981 were restored a year later.  Reagan raised the amount employees paid into FICA and closed business loopholes.  Until the Omnibus Budget Act of 1993 raised taxes on roughly the top 2 percent of income earners in the country, Reagan's 1982 tax increase was the largest peacetime increase in history.

Of course, all that tax raising would get Reagan branded a liberal these days, but his budget deficit politics were merely a precursor to the ruinous deficit policies followed by George W. Bush.  Former Vice President Cheney is often quoted as saying that "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter" and that may be true so far as it goes, but one need not look too deeply at the Reagan record to see that deficits seemed to matter to Reagan.  While the numbers do not look that substantial in today's dollars, and the difference in the FY82 budget deficit of $127.9 billion and the FY89 budget deficit of $152.6 billion does not seem that great, the trajectory of deficits was upward through the early part of Reagan's term of office, peaking at more than $212 billion in FY85 before slowly ebbing due to "pay as you go" legislation passed by Congress, additional tax increases in 1986, 1990 and 1993 and sustained economic growth in the 1990s that all helped get the budget into balance by FY99.

Those annual deficits also manifested themselves in a substantial accumulation of debt while Reagan was in office.  The debt ceiling was raised seventeen times in eight years, going from $985 billion in 1981 to $2.8 trillion in 1987.  While this may seem insignificant compared to today's numbers, that debt continued to accrue after Reagan left office, adding even more to our overall indebtedness.  When George Bush left office in 1993, he and Reagan had borrowed more money in 12 years than had been borrowed from 1776 until the day they assumed office in 1981.  Of course, no Tea Party rose up in opposition to this because deficits and debt only matter when Democrats are President.

Another totem of right wing mythology is the need to shrink government, but here too, Reagan's record is hardly conservative.  Federal expenditures as a percentage of overall Gross Domestic Product remained relatively constant from 1981 to 1989 - going from 22.2% to 21.2%; however, during the 1982-3 recession, that amount went up to 23.1% (1982) and 23.5% (1983) when what we now commonly refer to "stimulus spending" occurred to spur economic growth.  As for the sheer size of government, Reagan created the Department of Veterans Affairs and 61,000 more federal workers were on the payroll when he left office than when he was sworn in.  If one is looking for a President who actually substantially lowered federal employment, that would be Bill Clinton, who oversaw a reduction in the federal workforce of roughly 377,000 employees.

In Reagan's foreign policy, there is a similar disconnect between the myth and reality.  The right would have us believe that Reagan foreign policy was muscular and caused countries to shrink at the reassertion of American military strength.  Historians will long debate how much credit Reagan deserves for "ending" the Cold War, how much is due Soviet Premier Gorbachev, and whether the Soviet Union merely crumbled due to a sclerotic economy that failed to keep pace with our enormous military build-up.  One need only look at revolutionary change that has occurred in other totalitarian regimes in the Middle East to know that inevitably, they are consumed because they do not provide the basic rights their citizens’ demand.  While Reagan certainly deserves some credit, even here, the right misses important aspects of his foreign policy that they now revile.  For example, Reagan signed a treaty in 1987 that limited the deployment of Intermediate Range Nuclear Weapons.  A year earlier, Gorbachev offered a proposal to eliminate *all* nuclear weapons but was rebuffed because of disagreements over the so-called "Star Wars" missile defense (the efficacy of which is still unproven nearly three decades later).  Today, attempts at modest arms reductions are no longer bi-partisan affairs.  When President Obama negotiated a weapons treaty with Russia, Republicans in the Senate voiced open opposition to it and the treaty passed with far fewer votes than prior agreements under Republican Presidents.

In many other aspects, Reagan pursued a foreign policy that toggled between ineffectual (no progress was made in negotiating peace between Israelis and Palestinians while Reagan was in office) and criminal (Iran-Contra).  Indeed, when Reagan's staff was not engaging in activity that would result in indictments and convictions, an Independent Counsel and controversial pardons by his successor, his Administration was paying off hostage takers and "cutting and running" from Lebanon in the wake of a suicide bombing at a U.S. Marine Corps barracks.  The Reagan Administration was also slow in imposing sanctions on the Apartheid-led government in South Africa, funded right-wing huntas in Central America and sent an emissary (some guy named Don Rumsfeld) to Iraq in 1986 to meet with Saddam Hussein. 

These major flaws in Reagan-era foreign policy are papered over in the re-telling of his time in office, but, taken together, represent enormous failures by our government.  Instead of critically examining these decisions, feel good actions like our "invasion" of Grenada to "rescue" some medical students who were studying there and the release of the American Embassy hostages on Reagan's first day in office, are perverted into examples of the re-assertion of American might, even though the Grenada invasion was laughable and the Iranians decision to release the hostages was not a sign of their fear of Reagan, but rather, a final jab to President Carter (the terms of the release, transfer of funds and other particulars had already been negotiated and agreed to).  Other incidents like the murder of American soldiers in Berlin by Libyan terrorists and the taking of a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, went largely unavenged (with the former, a couple of missiles were sent into Libya, to little effect; as to the latter, the "muscle" hijackers were captured in the aftermath of the event but the mastermind of that attack escaped and was at large for another 19 years before he died).

Of course, the most infamous foreign policy blunder of the Reagan years was Iran Contra.  The granular details are well covered by people far more expert than me, but in short, our government sold weapons directly to the Iranians (which was forbidden by law) and took the proceeds to fund a group called the "Contras," a rebel force in Central America attempting to overthrow the Communist government in Nicaragua.  Multiple senior level officials, including the Secretary of State (Caspar Weinberger), two National Security Advisors (Robert "Bud" MacFarlane and John Poindexter) and about 7 other high-ranking officials were indicted and/or convicted of crimes associated with this misadventure.  The scandal was an enormous embarrassment to our government and exposed a rogue element operating out of the White House and in contravention of federal law. 

The waning days of Reagan's time in office not only exposed the Iran-Contra scandal but saw a massive crash in the stock market and a drift that was further exposed in May 1988 when former White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan published a tell-all book that revealed First Lady Nancy Reagan's use of an astrologer to manage her husband's schedule. Reagan's role (if any) in Iran-Contra was never fully determined and while some convictions were overturned on technicalities on appeal, no true closure occurred as President George H.W. Bush issued pardons in the last month of his presidency, wiping the slate clean. 

In short, Reagan advanced policies that today would get him expelled from the Republican Party.  Raising taxes, expanding the scope of government and indebting the country in ways unseen at any point in our history do not form a comfortable narrative for people seeking to advance the myth of Reagan as a tax cutting, government shrinking hero.  Further, selling arms to a rogue state like Iran, pulling troops out of Lebanon in the wake of a suicide bombing and failing to gain retribution against Libyan terrorists who killed American servicemen in Berlin would all get Reagan labeled a heretic in today's GOP.  What modern-day Republicans have digested is a myth of Reagan that has endured - no Republican in Congress has voted for a tax increase since President George H.W. Bush's compromise deal with Democrats in 1990 and the supply-side mantra of lower taxes is rolled out when the economy is good (raising taxes would slow growth) and when the economy is bad (raising taxes will kill any recovery).

Reagan was by no means a liberal but he was also not an intransigent political leader unwilling to accept fiscal (or political) realities.  Part of Reagan's (and his advisors') genius was to create the mythology that he never saw a tax he did not want to cut or a Communist he could not stare down, and for the purposes of molding a legacy, those things are fine so far as they go.  But when it came to governing, and to making government work, more or less, for its citizens, Reagan was both a pragmatist and a realist.  He cut deals to raise taxes; he did not attempt to tamper with Social Security by privatizing it or turn Medicare recipients into unwilling clients of insurance companies. Unfortunately, the dogma internalized by Republicans is suffocating Congress’s ability to pass meaningful legislation to aid our economy.  What Republicans should be doing is going back and looking at the true Reagan record and realize that compromise is not a sin and blind allegiance to conservative orthodoxy is not something even their vaunted Saint Ronnie would do.