Government Transformation at $800 Billion

What do we know about transformation?
What have we learned about growth?
Is living through just dumb luck?
Can we hit the targets?

I watched a motorcyclist jump onto a large trailer.
Rather, I watched him miss, and crash under it.
His was a transformative experience.
He was transformed into a saline sack of shattered fragments.
He survived to cameo a bit part in the movie.

There was more concrete data available to plan that motorcycle jump than the federal bailout.
We do not know the speed required to succeed at this jump.
State and federal government stimulus packages are largely ahistorical.
There is no known or tested or even secret formula available to propel the economy onto that distant ramp.
There is no precedent.
We have never been here.
We have never succeeded in this space before, and never failed.
We must all be great fiction writers.
The goal of such fiction is the biography of Garcia-Marquez:
Living to Tell the Tale.

I have transformed small things with that specific goal in mind.
Houses. Land. Organizations. Kids.
I can point to a few successes.
I learn more from the failures.
I have learned three lessons.

First: Praxis.
Doing nothing yields an equivalent result.
Theory must be indistinguishable from action.
Every hypothesis, every thought, must result in some perceptible pressure on the rudder.
A thousand tiny points comprise a smoother arc than one grand theory.

Second, abort failure as early as possible.
Early failure is better than late failure.
Isolated failure is better than total failure.
A course correction is preferable to any of them.

Third, transformation is positivistic.
It must be realized to be real.
A Kuhnian paradigm shift replaces more than the skin it sheds.

I have never guided the type of transformation that involves filtering hundreds of billions of dollars through the bitter and opaque filters of state and federal bureaucracies.
My credentials are the exactly same as everyone else on the planet in this regard.
I would be capable...
Of failing,
Of succeeding,
Of some interpretable outcome.

I trust myself as much as I trust those in charge.
Equally.
Good luck to them and to us.
Perhaps, in the worst case, we will all survive to cameo a bit part in the movie.

Questions of Loyalty

Is loyalty over-rated? George W. Bush has certainly abused the concept.

Loyalty is but a carpenter's hammer for Machiavelli, most politicians, and many business associates. It is required for framing a house, but dispensable once you move in.

What about the lack of loyalty? If loyalty itself is problematic, then betraying loyalty should have no meaning beyond the span of short-term memory, no tangible or intangible benefit in public life, no impact on the collective conscience, and no inherent individual moral or spiritual value - positive or negative.

Maybe it is a form of poison. Perhaps loyalty is only reverse revenge.

Something inside me is greatly disturbed by this interpretation. It would not please me to wake up and determine my allegiances anew each day. Success built on such a fault-line ridden foundation would not be success at all.

Maybe I should grow up.

Maybe
I
do not
want to.

I Learned Something about Myself 4.0

I never get in a line I can go around.

Most people hesitate, or even stop. I find that curious.

Some hesitate out of perceived politeness. Others out of mere hesitation. Still others because they do not know the way around.

I accelerate.

Do not judge me inconsiderate or rude.

A line is but an arrow pointing the way to those who can interpret the signs.

Going around is natural to me. I have always wanted to be in front.

Maybe
     I
          will
               save
                    you
          a space.

Joey stepped up, ...

...and he raised his hand and said, "We're not those kind of men
It's peace and quiet that we need to go back to work again".
Bob Dylan, Joey

I seem to have really angered some "Obama supporter" friends of mine because I argue in favor of Hillary. One has halted correspondence. Apparently the alienation of friends is becoming the rule in this contest.

According to exit polling in the Texas primary, 91 percent of Clinton supporters said they would be dissatisfied with Obama as the nominee; 87 percent of Obama fans said they would be dissatisfied with Clinton. Nationally, a quarter of those who back Clinton say they'd vote for John McCain if Obama won the nomination (while just 10 percent of Obama supporters would do the same if he lost).
Newsweek

I am shamed.

What is the real underlying cause of this fracture between two camps with policy differences so minor that they require a thorough reading of footnotes, appendixes and columnists even to understand them. The lamest explanations begin with "everybody knows...", but that phrase prefaces every diagnosis I encounter regarding the apparent antipathy between the Clinton and Obama camps.

Here is my message to Obama supporters: Get over yourselves.

Here is my message to Clinton supporters: Get over yourselves.

Here is my message to Democrats: One of the candidates will win. Maybe yours. Maybe not. One of the candidates will get second place and lose. Maybe yours. Maybe not. We will probably know before the convention. Maybe not.

Either way -- if your candidate wins or if yours does not win -- Democrats will be represented by a solid and fully vetted candidate in the general election. The Democratic candidate will win the election in November if average Democrats do not act like children, spiteful jilted lovers, or third world petty dictators.

Or like OReilly and Olberman.

This competition is not over. Neither candidate has won. Neither has lost. When that moment comes, electoral success will depend on average Democrats to follow the example of Joey, when he stepped up,

and he raised his hand and said, "We're not those kind of men
It's peace and quiet that we need to go back to work again".

I Learned Something about Myself 3.0

Recent conversations with friends have caused me to realize something that I could not earlier have so clearly articulated.

I want Hillary Clinton to win.

I want her to beat Obama.

I want her to become the next President, Madam POTUS.

But I do not want you Obama fans to be mad at me because I want that.

You know, when we race, we race to win, and we race to the finish line. We do not stop before.

One does not race for some greater good against someone who is running for himself. It is not a good bet. Sometimes it works, though.

I do not think she should quit.

If you quit, you lose. It is a fact.

I have won a lot of races from much further behind.

You know I have. You have seen it.

We Hillary fans are still in this.

I don't want you to be angry with me about that, either.

If Obama wins, then he is my guy. Absolutely, man, all the way. It will be more fun than we have had in years kickin' these guys' butts out of Washington. Like a fantastical and wonderful dream that is in all the papers. O-BA-MA! Yes. If he wins.

We must strive always to have a civil discussion, but it sometimes becomes uncivil.

Even so, we choose not to quit.

I would not choose that. You know I would not choose that.

Mostly, I do not want you to be mad at me about my choice to race all the way to the finish line for something I believe. You know I do not have another choice inside me.

Go Hillary!

I Learned Something about Myself 2.0

I worry about things I cannot control.

This problem would appear to increase the number of things I cannot control, as I evidently cannot control what I worry about.

It is a great wonder I am capable of learning at all.

Sometimes I get it all wrong...

I interrupt someone who is trying to agree with me.

I offer assistance to someone who is goofing on me.

I sneeze when I should cough.

Sometimes I get it right.

I see the feigned cooperation that is merely a disguised attempt at cooptation.

I see real cooperation that is masked by anxiety.

I offer an obvious target to someone who is goofing on me.

Sometimes I just do not get it.

I zig when I need not zag or zig at all.

I post when even a get is out of place.

I opt out when there is no option at all.

Sometimes I give it away.

Sometimes I just give it all away.

I Learned Something about Myself 1.0

I suddenly realized that people who actually know how to care for their hands and nails do not use carpentry tools, or anything hanging from a key chain, to do so.

Dang. It seems so simple in retrospect.

Christmas has come

...and gone.

The tree is gone. The wrapping paper is in the recycling bin.

The cookies are gone. I am fatter than before.

The toys are scattered around every room in the house and on the stairway. They make noises, aided or unaided by their new owners.

My son lays on the floor for hours assembling Bionicles, or fights bad guys on the Television screen.

My daughter grooms her dolls or horses or reads another Harry Potter.

My wife helps with the quilt using the new sewing machine.

I am spying on the "neighbors" on the hill, a half mile away, with my new binoculars.

Thousands of dollars in web shopping carts, wrapped or mailed packages, holiday flights, spent bows, and a cardboard packaging, wrapping paper and plastic mountain of trash later, and Christmas has gone.

It took New Years with it.

I
     wish
          you
               the best
                    year
                         ever!

A Flower and a Russian...

kept me company so many years ago. A Flower and a Russian encouraged me always to write.

A Flower and a Russian tried to help me grow.

Consciousness and conscience are but a chorus of voices. The Flower and the Russian have been clear and distinct voices in my mind for nearly 30 years.

A small well-distinguished chorus of two provided a continuous light by which to pen my thoughts.

The Flower blossomed anew this week. I have never been without the memory of the fragrance, not even for a moment.

They tried to help me grow. I hope they succeeded.

I blog here now
       but for the gift
    of light
    given to me
        so long ago
    by
           a Flower
      and a Russian.

Sometimes my kids climb...

... on stuff. I let them fall down. Sometimes they run when they "might oughta not". I let them fall down. We have a slide in the living room. They jump from the slide to the back of the couch. Guess what. I let them fall down.

I lost a lot of skin falling down before I was 15 (and since). It's ok to fall down.

My job is not to keep them from falling. It's to teach them to always get back up.

(Originally posted on the Unicylist.com forum. 2005-04-04, 04:00 PM)

*******************************************************************

My kids were aged 5 and 7 when I wrote that.

Today my daughter, almost 10 years old, was sent to the principle's office for the first time.

(It wasn't her fault. Is it ever?)

She cried like an infant when she told us about it. I was very stern, like a real adult.

I tried not to giggle when she was looking.

I am such a proud parent. I think my daughter grew up just a little more today.

So I had to kiss it and make it better.

Get out the band-aids, and find the Bactine.

        This
             little girl
                     is
                        still
                  my
              baby.

Failure is a great teacher...

...if one lets her do her job.

I have trekked behind in Her footsteps for years.

The Goddess Quit is the angry nemesis of Failure. Quit aborts the unborn Will from Failure, and leaves her daughters Depression and Dismay to fester in the womb.

Quit is a low pressure system that teases the energy from Failure. I will side with Failure in every stormy battle against Quit.

I will ever choose Failure in Her n'er ending battle with Quit's vamp sibling Inertia.

I will battle Nothing with Failure.

"I will stand on the Ocean until I start sinking."

Failure breathe my final essence, I will not exchange a kiss with the seductress whore Quit.

I respect fair Failure and will battle beside Her. I do not pursue Her. She is but one of triplets.

I much prefer her most beautiful sister Success, of the three.

I have
         slept
                  most often
                           with the
                  homely
and
         good
                  sister
                           Adequacy.

David D died...

in his early twenties. He was six or seven years older than I. His sister Donna was my age. I was in love with her in first grade. But her brother David was a local hero.

He was one of the funniest people I've ever met. His powers of observation and imitation were known to everyone. Our moms liked David. Our friends liked David. Our siblings liked David. Everyone who knew him liked David, except perhaps his mother.

David's mother kicked him out the house. She did it over and over, starting from the time he was about seventeen. David was a good person who drank and smoked and violated curfew. David never hurt anyone. He didn't drive fast or get in fights. She was a small town mother who worried more about reputation and discipline than where her son slept. I saw her crying at his funeral. She paid a huge and unthinkable price for her small-town morality.

I spent my fourteenth summer hanging out evenings with him and others in the park. He slept in his car when he couldn't find another place. He drank and smoked whatever was available. He was arrested once or twice for underage drinking -- once because he spoke up for someone else. The cop said, "blow in my face." David did. The sheriff smelled the alcohol. "Git'n the car," he said. David was never hostile. He never resisted. He had a bunk that night. He was back in the park the next evening.

David never spoke badly of anyone, though no one was beyond the reach of his humor. It was a privilege to be the subject of one of his jokes. A local dad named Owen had a signature gesture. His over the dashboard wave included wide eyes, a wide open O-shaped mouth, and an outstretched forefinger that tracked his long slow upward nod. We had all seen it all of our lives. It took David's powers of observation to convert something we'd seen a thousand times to the iconic "Big-O Wave". After David adopted Owen's wave, so did everyone else in town.

He had voices and gestures all his own, too, though many of them could be traced back to someone you knew. David always made us laugh. All of us, and our fathers, too.

I once spent a day with David trying to remove a heater core from an old car in a local farmer's barn. David was not mechanically adept enough to extract the used part. It was freezing. His good mood never flagged, though our ultimate failure meant he spent the winter with no heat in his car - a maroon Pontiac of some sort.

He accepted everyone. The rejection he suffered provides a metaphor for small town life. The range of the acceptable is narrow. Different parents handle their children's problems in different ways. David's parents handled theirs tragically. David merely drank. He wasn't a criminal. He wasn't violent. He wasn't abusive.

He was just enough of a clown to prefer a drink in the park to dying at home.

It has been over thirty years since that summer in the park, but I still miss him when I think of him. I felt very sorry for his baby sister Donna. His brother Bobby hugged me at David's funeral, and said, "We've both lost one now." I think I cried.

He left a lot of laughs in my heart, and a lot of tears in my heart, and a lot of laughs in my heart.

David used to laugh and say, "Don't bury me when I die. Just prop me up in the junk yard."

David committed suicide. As a final act of irony, he shot himself standing in a dump.

How can
             I
              not feel
                that
         we all
           killed
David D?

If I could choose a super power...

it would be the ability to be relaxed and always pleasant.

It is harsh being coarse and having a temper. Impromptu presents a constant danger. I do not suffer an attack supine.

I do not drink alcohol. My continued abstinence has nothing to do with any moral judgment. It has mostly to do with my certain knowledge that intemperance does not mix well with my intemperance.

I am basic working-class peasant stock. I found my reflection just where I needed it.

I have worked very hard to educate myself, including diction lessons, German universities, and history books. I have poured tens of thousands of educational dollars into conquering my self doubt.

I have not overcome it.

I have not mastered the rage of inequity, though I have largely mastered its visible aspects. I have mastered the fear of public speech, but not the ellipsis of disorganization native to my mind. I have come to accept that I am often better at what I do than others, but I cannot relax to take my advantage for granted.

I am explosive with the need to prove myself to myself. Peasants have no need to prove themselves to others. Except to prove our control over self.

To what sort of inverted self-actualization am I addicted?

I know that my super power now comes in a bottle labeled Prozac or Seredyn. Personality in a bottle. I could not live with such an admission of failure.

I can live without my super power.

I hope
  those I meet,
            those I love,
       would be friends,
               can
          live well
          without it
   too.

She asked me to stay all night...

and I told her that I already had a place to stay, but that I appreciated the offer.

I was twenty-six, and dancing with one of the hottest girls I have ever danced with. I completely misunderstood her offer.

I was visiting a friend in Atlanta during a national Sociology conference. She was my best friend's friend's girlfriend. We spent several hours at her house before we went dancing. We got along extremely well.

I realized what I had done about three minutes later.

Three minutes and two sentences too late.

I've spent the last twenty years in utter disbelief. I'm nearly beyond the despair, the grief, the remorse.

Perhaps I'm no better now than I ever was at reading such signs. There's no telling what opportunity I might have alienated during nearly fifty years of completely missing gestures I thought covered by genetic receptors. I guess. I doubt if there are many hot women who've thrown themselves at me. I guess.

I wonder if my seamless slide into letchery has altered my perceptiveness.

It matters less now.

It matters
          less
       than
   ever.

A guy named Tracey...

vomited out the passenger window of a 1976 Rabbit at over 90 mph.

Jim's reaction was pretty intense. He was asleep in the back seat. It must have been an immeasurably unpleasant awakening.

I was merely driving - and thus located outside the splatter zone.

Tracey demolished three-quarters of a case of Coors as we Jetta'ed across Iowa toward Kansas. You couldn't get Coors regularly east of Iowa back then.

Tracey was one of those toughish guys who emitted a great throaty post-gulping noise - "phhhffftsssss - aaahhhhh" - after ....... every ....... single ....... swallow.

Do you know how many swallows are in a case of Coors? Any idea how many swallows between Dowagiac, MI and Wichita, KS?

He demanded we let him drive at the next gas station. Jim and I cleverly declined, though it required one of us to remain in the driver seat for the entire stop - taking turns to manage all the essentials.

Jim was one of the greatest guys I ever met. I haven't seen him in over 25 years. How great is that?

I was welcomed by the Kansas State Police the next morning as I screamed into Wichita at 6 AM. He nailed me for going 76 mph in a 55 zone. I drove over 90 mph all night long, so I paid my ticket like a pathetic whiny baby.

I stayed drunk in Wichita for four days, and watched the 1979 National Junior College Cross Country Nationals. I was injured, useless and not terribly talented. I think my team was second. It must have been fun.

I bought an obnoxious straw baseball cap at a great western store, and wore it in the hotel hot tub. I kept that goofy looking hat for years. I can blame the initial weekend on alcohol. The subsequent period may be attributable to nature or nurture, but was combined with inexcusable ignorance in either case.

Tracey bought a lot of Coors on the return trip to take back to Michigan.

I think he stayed sober during the ride.

I wonder if
he
                                  still
                        makes
            that
sound.

The town marshall chased us...

all through our little village in southwest Indiana. We would stand in a field when he did his rounds, waiting for him. As he made a curve, his head lights would shine on us, and we would break into a run.

He would chase us for somewhere between thirty minutes and two hours, until we slinked home in the dark, or he got bored.

Cynthiana has under a thousand population, and stretches about a mile and a half end-to-end. It is shaped like a diamond: maybe a mile deep in the middle and a half-mile deep at either end. We had two long-term marshalls, and a few short-timers. "Specs" spanned most of my younger years; "Tore" was the marshall during and after my junior high years.

The town marshall knew us all. He knew where we lived. He knew our parents and siblings. He could probably recognize any of our silhouettes in the dark.

Curfew was eleven P.M.

I guess he figured that we'd get in less trouble if he participated in our leisure time activities. He was right. We spent a lot of time "running from the cops" but we never really did anything wrong or illegal. Mostly.

My best friend's parents owned a liquor store. We pilfered the random quart of beer or bottle of Boone's Farm. We were still too young to drive cars, so we were in the pre-DUI days. My best friend Kelly always got the girl. I was the fast one, on foot or on a bike - it didn't matter.

Once, after we had been throwing shelled corn at cars all night on 68/80 on the east end of town, Tore came driving up. It was after a Cynthiana-Haubstadt football game, near Halloween. We were hiding behind a 6 foot privacy fence, lobbing corn over onto passing cars on the highway. We had a guy stationed up the street to read license plates and tell us if the car was from Haubstadt. We had been at it for over an hour, and the road was covered with an inch of corn, when Tore arrived.

"Time to go home, boys", he boomed. "But Bob, it's only 10..." "TIME TO GO HOME!"

I wonder if kids have that luxury today.

I fear that
                 today
                      they
           would
       get shot.

Frank was a drunk and...

a liar and other unpleasant things besides. But you couldn't dislike him.

He cheated at cards when we played for dimes and quarters.

We all stole corn - "roastin' ears" as my Grandfather called them - from the fields in the river bottoms. We took what we needed for a meal to go with a mess of channel catfish. Except for Frank. He didn't take a dozen, he filled up the trunk of his car. It had to go to waste.

He'd bring 3 beers, drink ten of someone else's, and put nine more in his cooler when he left - so he'd have an even dozen.

Or he'd leave his completely full cooler in his car, and deny he had any at all.

He'd seine every living creature out of any "bait pond" he could find, filling five-gallon bucket after bucket with bait - just to let it die. The bait pond would be ruined for a year for all of us. We'd never share the location of any pond we wanted to continue to use.

He was a bastard in every sense I can remember.

But we liked him. As a kid, I spent innumerable Sundays playing poker, spinning yarns and running trot lines with Frank.

He was always welcome. My Grandfather welcomed everyone. Frank came every Sunday.

I mostly remember
                        how much
                I liked
that old bastard.

DB was the nickname...

I gave to a manager I never liked. It was back when I was a snob about such things as people who I didn't think were as smart as I (thought I) was.

He didn't meet the minimum education requirements for the position of IS Manager in a hospital in Nashville. A Bachelors degree is not a high bar, particularly in such an environment, but he had failed to cross that threshold.

The Director of IS, Dave, hired him anyway.

I can't help but believe he regretted it later.

But that didn't give me any pleasure.

Once in a meeting, DB was so quick to agree with Dave that Dave said, "wait, we appear to be one opinion short here."

I liked Dave a lot more after that day, and had more respect for him.

And DB got his name: Dave's Bitch.

Everyone on the team adopted the nickname. So we developed a cover story in case it slipped out in front of him - which it periodically did. We said he looked like the actor who played DB Cooper in the movie (Treat Williams). He didn't.

DB left and went back to the renal facility whence he came.

I took my arrogant ass back to Georgia.

Dave kept the faith until he left.

And none of it matters
              to anyone
         any
more.

The Green River runs...

from it's head near Mammoth Cave to it's mouth on the Ohio River just east of the bridge connecting Evansville, IN with Henderson, KY. It's a deep and gnarly river with a dam at Spottsville, KY, as well as a couple others.

I haven't any idea why there is a dam in Spottsville. I don't think it generates electricity.

I have only been a few miles up river from Hebbardsville, KY, but I've boated the twenty odd miles down to the mouth. The locks in Spottsville are a rush in a canoe. The cliffs at Bluff City provided us a lot of rocks for stepping stones.

I spent my childhood tugging catfish out of the Green River on trot lines baited mostly with crawfish. I seined every wet spot within 25 miles of Hebbardsville for crawfish, minnows, and any other bait we could find.

I was afraid of eels until I showed that fear publicly; the elders ensured I progressed beyond that fear. Ridicule is held in much lower regard now than it was back then.

The water came over the banks in the winter, commonly rising 20-40 feet from pool stage. Coal barges were tough to push through the narrow channel; the tugs regularly failed to navigate the bend above our camp, and came careening out of the channel. All that power.

And me, an 11, 14, 17 year old in a wide beamed 12 foot wooden john boat with a 4 hp Evinrude motor. I barely made any progress against a fast current.

I loved that boat,
                  that river,
            and those old bastards
who taught me poker.