Ted’s Head is in trouble. The engine works fine and the gears mesh pretty well but I think I must have some bad gas in the fuel line. My petrol is simple. Take an idea or concept to be discussed, try to think it through and maybe even come up with a better way to do things. 

My buddy Pete calls me a “fixer”. That is not necessarily being a smart ass but trying to look at things in an alternative way. Maybe my way sucks but at least we ran it up the flagpole. A key ingredient is getting my facts right without any personal biases. You don’t make the problem fit the solution. You do a strange thing called listening. 

We have just come back from a cruise that wandered from New York City to Montreal. Boston was a revisit to where Kathy and first met too many years ago. We went right to the door front. Good stuff. Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were a discovery of so many things they called the New World in the 1400’s and 1500’s. 

My overall impression was that this is a part of the world that is doing fine. Sure, they would like more of this or that but they and their forefathers were used to sustaining life not necessarily embellishing every aspect. Until you look at not one but plenty of houses that where built in the early 1500’s you haven’t seen a thing. These were not a cutesy Sturbridge Village type of tourist attraction. People lived in them now and raised families in them and probably will for centuries to come. Hardy stock.

In New York City you were smashmouthed by the size, the opulence, the frenetic pace and the overall dispassionate mien of people towards their fellow travelers.  I really don’t say this to be critical. They love it that way…I think. But because of its size and many others, they dominate the conversation and set us on a path that we outliers don’t have a lot of sway over. 

We went to the 9/11 Museum. Every aspect of it rips at your guts. It was the area where I worked for many years and many of those faces on the wall were guys that I knew from trading bonds to drinking beers. The massive feel of the destruction and chaos was overwhelming at times. Ditto the hatred that engendered such a plot. Whether it was a fireman or cop or secretary or a hot shot executive no one was spared the swath of hellish fire that enveloped them all. 

After three or more hours Kathy and I didn’t say much but we felt together. As a city, as a country and maybe even as a world we were united back then. We cried and hugged and displayed the flag for all to see. USA was more than a chant. It was a vision we had all hoped for. You’ll see. We will do things differently. And yet like so many other good intentions, we let them slide in lieu of more important things. Our minds distracted by the banal. We want to be wooed or salved by more important things. 

I have really been into this fellow man thing. David Brooks has caused  me to be so much more aware of the other person. You have likes,dislikes and tendencies that are true to you alone. They are not left,right or conservative or liberal. They are your thoughts.  How dare some jerk try to silo you or me into this or that group for the sake of targeting you from everything as to who you are going to vote for and what kind of car you should buy. 

How many time have you been labeled this or that and come to realize you don’t buy everything that group is saying. In politics you cannot have an original thought without being chastised. How many of us in a business meeting thought the theme was out of line but never spoke up? Some will say that type of discourse is chaotic. I say it is creative and a hell of a lot easier to arrive at a consensus. 

I hope this does not sound crazy but the more we realize how unique we are,the greater chance we have of pulling this thing called life off. That being said I have no idea how to get started. Maybe that is the reason for my inertia. I am not going to change politics or the makeup of cities or my religion in my lifetime. And my period to pull it off is getting shorter and shorter. Swimming upstream gets tiring. 

Then again, maybe I am completely wrong. We should not change but just let things happen. We have lasted this long, why get so bent out of shape. It will all work out in the end. Maybe this should be my path to travel. Not quite there yet. 

I want to end up with one thought,humility. Think about that for a second. If we were all humble we would not be the end all and be all.

We would look at another person as something to be looked at for their unique properties not how they can benefit me.  We wouldn’t have to have so much stuff because we wouldn’t have to show off constantly. That is what we have it all,don’t we? If I am humble, I am just a part. Probably nuts but I am going to work on it. 

I am sorry my rudder is bent. At this point I should be able to put it on autopilot. I am old fart. I don’t have that equipment yet. 

As Always 

Ted The Great 

Governance is in its simplest form, a system to control, guide or manipulate. How do we make sense of whatever orb or orbs we live in? We elect a government of what we hope to be good administrators, who will watch over the fort while we go about our daily lives. In a sense we live in many different governing arenas from families to municipalities to states to nations and of course the world. 

Now if we lived on a desert island, we wouldn’t need much. When we start gathering and building stuff, then it gets more complex. Today we have two different schools of thought. One side says we have to regulate down to the tiniest detail and the other says blow your brains out. Just don’t include me. 

It would be so much easier if we could just trust one another to do the right thing. Just put out quality merchandise of whatever sort, get a fair price and pay your taxes so we can keep this puppy running on all cylinders. Yeah right! And that is why we need cops of all sorts. Save us from our own frailties and good old basic larceny that lies in the heart of all of us. At least mine!

I have breakfast with a great friend on Saturday mornings and we try to put on airs that we know what we are talking about. We take a topic and try as best we can to find some common ground to move forward. Yesterday we grappled with Israel and Hamas, inequality and the IRS. Add in about a half a dozen cups of Joe for moi and chaos ensued. 

Invariably we get to a point where there is no clear solution. Point being, we would not need audits from the IRS if everyone was legit and there weren’t a thousand different loopholes. What happened to Israel on October 6th was heinous by any measure but can you really ignore the death of a wife and four kids when the father was out getting a birth certificate for the newborn babe? I want you to make as much money as you can but when a mother with a job and two kids has to live in a car because their rent got jacked 50% and they can’t afford it, that gives us pause. 

The governance has two parts, the rules and regs and the people doing either the inventing or enforcing.The Wall Street Journal reported, Congress accidentally left a hole in the 2017 tax law by writing mismatched effective dates for new tax rules—and then failed to fix the problem. That is now allowing big companies to save tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that otherwise would have gone to the government. The solution is easy.  A minor fix. And yet neither party wants to solve it lest the other side look good. 

A burgh in Illinois built a water park for $13 million using COVID relief money. They weren’t alone. In Denver, it is next to impossible to build any type of housing because the permit process is so fraught with rules and departments that have to approve plans. The Code of Federal Regulations ran to 185,000 pages in 2020. In addition, state and local governments have their own laws and rules. It is estimated that there are dozens of agencies involved in affordable housing. Want to build a nuclear power plant? 

How did this morass get created? We did it. Think about it. Pols get  elected because they are going to change this or that. Specific interest groups or philosophies push to get their person a seat at the table. Let’s face it. They don’t care what is going on nationally. They want their district to reap benefits and not worry about the rest. If you keep getting returned to Congress you will move up the food chain and get more power. You can do whatever you want as long as it is in your district’s best interest. And the beat goes on. 

When some bill gets passed it is now up to the bureaucracy or cops if you will to figure out the details and enforce it. Congress cedes the responsibility for this because they are far too busy getting reelected. Nancy Pelosi, when asked what was incorporated in the Obamacare bill,  blithely replied, “Let’s just pass it and we will figure it out from there.” This gives enormous power to people in the back room.  

We don’t have a very efficient system. Bloated is a highly descriptive term because that is what we are. Cerberus with over fifty heads is even better. Spacex has been launching rockets weekly for years while Boeing and NASA are still playing with themselves at the International Space Station. Huge amounts of funds are unaccounted for in every area of government. Houston, we have a problem. 

Never fear, we will all come to our senses, tighten up and clean house. Really? Look at how we lead our own lives. We overindulge in everything from food to booze to things of all sort. Immediate satisfaction is our mantra. Put it on the credit card and worry about it next month. 

This is not trying to be a preacher at a revival meeting. This is from an old fart that is going to get out the door just fine. Look 20 or 30 years down the road. I’ll be long gone and leave you with a real mess. Oh, I forgot. We are in a new era. Let’s not be proactive at home or in the world. Let’s let things work out on their own. I am just going to worry about me. Now that is self governance. I wonder how that will work out? 

As always 

Ted The Great 

Factoids:

There are 435 seats in Congress that are up for reelection. 365 are considered safe for either party. 48 are likely or leaning. That leaves 22 that are truly up for grabs. They have an 80% disapproval rating. 

Harris wants more spending. Trump wants to cut taxes. Please tell me what either side is going to do about the debt?

Improper payments, which refer to payments that are made incorrectly by the government, cost the U.S. $247 billion in 2022, according to the Government Accountability Office. The U.S. government has lost almost $2.4 trillion in simple payment errors over the last two decades, by GAO estimates. It seems like we don’t want to do anything about it. It is what it is.

When I questioned things about the way the government is run, a DC wag told me you can’t run the government like a business. My comment above about Spacex was not naive. I understand that there are constraints when one has to serve many masters and not just stockholders, but it does not exclude efficiency and of course that absurd word, CHANGE. There is little room for creativity and reward of excellence in our system of government.