Author: Peter

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Is Cutting Taxes Really a Good Idea?


Stockton California is filing for bankruptcy, the seventh U.S. city to do so this year.  The principle of bankruptcy is a very simple one: your debt load far exceeds your ability to pay it off in a timely manner at the very least but usually means your income goes to zero before you are able to pay the minimum of your debt service.  Such is the plight of Stockton and many other U.S. cities are on the brink.  By law, government has a single source of income, taxes.  The law also requires that they annually construct a budget, bring it before the town meeting or city council, and then vote on it.  If they have done their work properly, town and city leaders have done the homework properly in balancing their income against their outlays, and leave a little in reserve for emergencies.  States and the Federal Government must do the same thing but public discussion of those budgets is generally limited to elected officials and their appointees.  Still, government’s income at all levels is derived from the single source, taxes.   Stockton probably got into trouble, in part, from poor management of its debt load but had there been a tax reduction initiative earlier, this certainly would have happened all the same, just earlier.  Is this what we want for the United States in general?

Every level of government so has the ability to carry a certain level of debt.  Usually this debt arises from the issuance of bonds.  Bonds are usually issued to cover the cost of major construction programs, such as schools at the local level, and large transit projects at the state level.  These bonds can be found in the Moody’s Investment Guide and are rated according to the entity’s credit worthiness.

The Federal Government is a whole different story, however.  It too sells bonds on the U.S. market.  But it also sells its debt and that is usually to other governments of the world.  Right now, China is one of the largest holders of U.S. debt.  This worries a lot of people.  China could, for example, say, “We want all our money, now.”  It is a “demand” kind of debt.  But this is unlikely to happen simply because the adverse hit on the U.S. economy from such a move would have world implications what would, of course, affect China negatively.

The amount of debt the U.S. is carrying now is well over one-trillion dollars.  People worry about this, as they should.   The ways to reduce debt are to reduce spending or increase income.  In the case of governments you can reduce spending by reducing the government’s size.

Mitt Romney is running a campaign, as so many Republicans have before him, George W. Bush included, of tax reduction.  Their logic says that it will put more money in the pockets of the average American and therefor stimulate a sluggish economy.  They say this with great certainty, strongly enough that their message is “you should absolutely believe them.”  There is one problem with their hypothesis.  They are projecting into the unknown and this is what Americans with actually do with that extra dollar or two.  Personally, I’d pay down some of my own debt but I certainly would not be out on a spending spree, and  think that is the same thing many Americans would do.  This act is neutral with regards to the national economy, it neither grows nor shrinks the economy.

Now if you listen to Ron Paul, he will tell you that the way to deal with lowering taxes is reducing the size of the government.  And on that point he is exactly correct.  Government is expensive at all levels.  But government is also necessary at all levels.  If you take away the aspect of national defense from government and international relations, pretty much every other government entity exists, in some form, at every level.  All levels have police forces, fire fighters, lawyers, road maintenance people, tax collectors, land assessors, and so on.

Let us say, for example, that the city of “Big” one day declares that it can no longer pay for all the services is supplies.  The Mayor of Big, after long and arduous discussions decides his city has to cut back immediately on at least one of his city’s services.  He sees that maintaining the city’s streets is one of his biggest expenses so he declares that hence forth the people who own property along a street will be required to pay for its maintenance at the level required by state law.  The people of that street must pool their money and see to the street’s maintenance which includes its repair, snow removal, and resurfacing as called for.  He then dismantles the city’s highway department and not only is his budget in balance, but now he has extra cash on hand to pay down the city’s long festering debt.  He tells the voters that their property tax is immediately reduced by 5% because of this.

With this initial success under his belt, and people all over Big declaring him their savior, he announces that he can low property taxes by another 5% just by eliminating the fire department.  When asked how, he says it requires a simple principle that was actually used in the U.S. in the early 19th Century.  People would support a local privately owned fire department.  They pay their annual dues and their house or business would have a placard placed upon it saying the owner was a member in good standing of the local fire department and fires at that address will be attended to.  Even better, he announced, you are not required to buy into the program!  You can save even more money.  But, if your house does catch fire, then you are personally responsibility for putting out the fire, and are responsible if the fire spreads to other houses and businesses.

The people are so excited after a year, and paying hundreds of dollar less in taxes, that a man from West Big, suggests to the city council that all parks and recreation areas be maintained by the neighborhoods in which they exist!  The people of West Big, where most of the population exists, love this idea because most of those parks are located in East Big where the rich people live.  Their thinking is, why should they have to pay for something they don’t use very much, if ever.  The people of East Big like the idea because not only can they afford to pay for the parks but it gives them the right to say who can and who cannot enter into “their park.”  They have long groused that a “certain element” seems to come to their neighbor which they find unsavory.

Until this point the people in South Big haven’t had much to say about anything as they are all farmers who own large tracts of land and have been relatively unaffected by all the new smaller government ideas, and they of course have benefited greatly from the greatly reduced property tax.  But South Big is where the town’s lake exists and this is the summer escape for all the residents of Big.  But the few residents of South Big decided, in accordance with the latest law, to put up a fence around the lake and declare it closed.  They promise to maintain it, as required, but since they do not have the resources to run a public beach, nor to the desire to run the beach even if they did, they simply close it down.  Suddenly the city of Big is at odds with one-another.  The time-honored right to enjoy the summer on the shores of their lake has been taken away by four farmers who simply are not interested in keeping the tradition going.  People all over Big are asking each other how it happened that so much power fell into the hands of so few people.  The farmers replied to them that they were simply using the new laws, and besides, most of their families had lived in Big as long as anyone else, if not longer.  Weren’t they entitled as much as anyone to exercise their rights under the existing laws?

The basic tenant of government is to provide services to its constituents that cannot be reasonably, or equitably, provided by private organizations.  There was a time in its early history that the United States was a morass of private highways and bridges.  To leave Boston, for example, you had to pay a toll to cross one of the few bridges over the Charles River.  Towns and private citizens set up toll booths along public and private ways to collect monies for their upkeep and for the right to use them.  Philadelphia is renowned for its private fire companies in the 19th century who actually had wars between companies over who would cover which houses.

The point is a simple one: if you want a continued level of service you now enjoy in your city or state, or at the national level, then you have to pay taxes because they simply are not free.  If you think government is inefficient then you must offer solutions in how to make it more efficient.  It is not enough to point at some government entity and declare that they are very inefficient.  You must provide both the proof of the inefficiency and the method of improving its efficiency.  In the mean time you must accept the level of funding just to maintain what you have.

My suggestion is that there needs to be a major revision in the tax code.  Although I never liked Ronald Reagan as a President, he did come up with the idea of a “minimum tax” that he thought everyone, particularly the rich, should pay.  Somehow that has fallen into disfavor by today’s Republicans.  Personally I think a national sales tax, together with the elimination of all personal income tax, would solve many tax problems and reduce the size of one portion of the government greatly.

The bottom line is, every American has to ask himself what level of service he expects from the government and at the same time, he must realize that it will cost him something.  He must also recognize and accept that everyone is going to have their own idea of how much government we need to have.  But in the end, regardless, we will have to pay taxes to pay for that government.  Highways, fire departments, police departments, national defense, airports, and so forth are things we all have to pay for.  They are not cheap.  If you want your highways to be as good as they are now, or better, then you must pay for that.  This is not the time to cut taxes.  It might be the time to reorganize government at all levels, but it is not the time, yet, to reduce taxes.

 

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Republican Nominating Process Shows Demise of American Political System?


It was reported in the Boston Globe (June 24, 2012, P. B1) recently that the state Republican Party revoked the delegate status of 17 Republican delegates.  Why?  They had refused to sign an oath of support to Mitt Romney.  Massachusetts, of course, voted overwhelmingly for Romney as the Republican candidate but state Republican party rules do not bind delegates, nor does it require any oath of allegiance.  The state party decided that had to be changed.  Why?  The 17 delegates in question were supporters of Ron Paul.

What state party leaders fear is that the Paul delegates, once at the Republican Convention, would draw attention to Paul’s agenda.  That, of course, has the possibility of gaining support from delegates of other states at the convention and bring on unwanted turmoil.  This is nothing new, of course, but it is showing the power of the super-pacs who now seem to control our election process.

To be fair, I think the same sort of process exists within the Democrat Party but since it is not looking for a candidate this year, it is not nearly so important that party doctrine be held in lock-step at their Republican counterparts seem to need.

This really started about 1994 when Republican party leaders demanded that all congressional members sign their “Contract With America.”  On the outside it seemed not only harmless, but a truly good thing.  Much of what the contract contained were statements that seemed entirely common sense.  But it served as a vehicle to reign in party members in the future.   By the time of Pres. Bush’s first election party leadership brought in their “our way or the highway” by threatening the withholding of election funding.  It has been, to say the least, effective.

The point is, Americans have allowed the election process to be co-opted by extremely well-financed political action committees.  These committees, both conservative and liberal, set agendas.  And now we have the “super-PACs” to deal with.  These PACs have made public financing of campaigns irrelevant.  That means, a single person or business can give as much money as it wants to a PAC that is not directly supporting any single political candidate.  How have the gotten around that?   Simple.  They launch attack ads against opponents’ ideas without ever mentioning the candidate they support.

Campaign Finance Reform of many years ago was designed to keep this exact thing from happening, but there are truly gifted and talented people who can find a hole in a seeminly solid slab.  They have an army of lawyers on the ready, as well, to back up their position should they be challenged.

I fear we are becoming a country where puppets of well-placed people do their bidding in the halls of Congress.  Our elected officials only get there after they have been vetted by rich and powerful groups.   Simply put, the best candidate for office will never get past the nominating process if he/she does not sign on the line with the PACs that support their party.  If Abraham Lincoln had to run his campaign then, as things are now, he would never have been supported.  He was an unknown from Illinois who was not presently in public office and who had only once served a two-year term as an Illinois representative.  Family problems that become known once he was president would have served as fodder for his opponent.

We cannot allow our political system to be taken over by the rich and powerful.  This is at the heart of what the founders of this country feared.  Such had been the case in 1775 England when the Lords of English Parliament held a deaf ear to their American cousins.  And that, as much as anything, is what is at the heart of our Constitution.  No other country had regularly scheduled elections as we do here in America, a purposeful design of the constitution.  No other country in the world has the absolute separation of powers, legislative, executive, and judicial, as we do in America.  And nowhere else is the power of the people so heavily invested in the words of a constitution as is in ours.

The PACs and super-PACs serve only to undermine those powers for their own selfish purposes.  PACs do serve a good purpose but their power and sway have got to be brought into check.  They wield far too much power in our elections and now, seemingly, hold the power of who, at the very least, will be that party’s nominee to any elective office.  This is a serious affront to the ideals that Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and so many others fought for.  It is time Americans became not just angry, but furious with the way the PACs are conducting themselves, and in turn, affecting our sacred political process.

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Think Your Car is Made in America? Think Again and Check the List Below


1.  Chrysler, most assembled in America although some in Canada, some transmissions made in Mexico and Brazil

2. Ford

– Escape, engine manufactured in Mexico, tranmission manufactured in Japan, assembled in Missouri

– Explorer, engines manufactured in Germany and U.S., tranmissions manufactured in U.S. , assembled in U.S.

– Focus, engines manufactured in U.S., transmissions manufactured in Germany and U.S., assembled in U.S.

– Fusion, engine made in U.S., tranmission made in Mexico, assembled in Mexico

– Mustang, manufactured and assembled entirely in U.S.

– Taurus, manufactured and assembled entirely in U.S.

General Motors

– Buick, engine made in U.S. and Canada, tranmission made in U.S. and Mexico, assembled in U.S.

– Cadillac, engine made in U.S., Canada, and Mexico; tranmissions made in U.S., France, and Mexico, assembled in U.S.

– Chevrolet, engine made in U.S., Canada, and Mexico; tranmissions made in U.S., France, and Mexico, assembled in U.S.

– Honda (all) Manufactured and assembled entirely in U.S. except for some transmissions which are made in Japan

– Nissan (all) engines made in U.S., transmissions made in Japan and Mexico, assembled in U.S.

– Toyota (all), engines manufactured in U.S. and Japan, transmissions made in U.S. and Japan, assembled in U.S.

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Advice to People in Their Twenties


When my generation was in its twenties it was concerned with things like birth control, the Vietnam War, and equal rights.  We were headed up by the likes of Gloria Steinem, Abbie Hoffman, and Bill Baird.  We also had Bill Gates, Jim Henson, and George Lucas.  These people, and many more like them, contributed greatly to the quality of life we enjoy today.  You might find Abbie Hoffman as a strange choice for the list as he was regularly identified at a villain at the time.  He was extremely outspoken against “the establishment” of the day.  But some years later he joined “the establishment” as a part of the Wall Street financiers.

It’s not difficult to find out what we stood for.  My generation was known for its protest songs, student sit-ins and strikes, burning the bra, and fighting the war in Vietnam.  I fit into that last category as I spent the entire 70s in the US Army.  But that did not keep me from experiencing much of what was going on.  My eldest daughter spent many an hour watching Sesame Street and getting the beginnings of a fine education from it, thank you very much Jim Henson.  We watched east coast cities burning during the race riots of the 70s, and the stream of war protestors who headed to Canada to avoid the draft.  I did not then, nor do I now, bear them the least bit of animosity.

For those of you who are in your 20s now this is the time to take copious notes, become of causes that mean something to you, do not shy away from political controversy, and take a stand for those things you feel passionate about.  It is extremely important, however, that you keep an open mind, be flexible, be willing to alter your position, and be prepared for a long fight.  You will find that most of the things you believe to be in the greatest need of changing are going to take the longest to get changed.  Keep that in mind and do not quit no matter what.

I absolutely believe that among you exists a mind that will find the cure for AIDS, certain cancers, and will revolutionize prosthetic devices.  Some will become President of the United States, senators, and supreme court justices.  You will have Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer Prize winners.  You will win gold medals in the Olympics and championships in professional sports.

Most of you, however, will lead quiet lives and you can make some of the biggest changes of all.  At your finger tips is more information you can use to your advantage than any generation prior to you has had.  Use it to make your children’s lives better, you life better, and to keep yourself informed about what is going around you.  Abbie Hoffman told us to challenge authority.  What he meant was, when someone holds themselves up to be an authority on any subject make them prove themself, and be judicious in believing what you are told.

The best predictor of your future is the past.  Look closely at the history of everything when you consider anything.  People have a natural tendency to resist change so if you want to know how people are going to react to some future event, see how they responded to the same or similar events in the past, and plan accordingly.

Do not sit quietly by when something wrong is happening.  Become involved, it is the only way to make a difference.  Change is inevitable.  Your choices are two: be a part of it or be run over by it.

Make a promise to yourself now that when you look back on your life, 30 or 40 years from now, you will be able to smile knowing you we an agent of positive change and that your generation can hold it head proudly for be at the forefront of that change.

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Resentments: A Recipe For Disaster


I think a lot of people have resentments and call them something else.  I mention that because I used to be one of those people.  When came to feeling evil towards someone, I was a master.  It never occurred to me, however, to ask myself what good it did me.

By and large, I had a really good childhood but even so, some really horrible things happened to me.  It would be easy to dismiss whatever resentments I formed because of those bad things except that I carried them around for half of my life.  My mother was the prime recipient of a number of those resentments.  She had earned some of the anger I felt but once I had vented that anger, which I did, she was no longer responsible.  You would never have known that from my actions however.  Most times resentments only hurt the person carrying them but in this case it hurt two people.  My mother deserved better than that and I did make amends to her for my actions before she died,   well before fortunately.

There is a saying about resentments, “It’s like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”  I drank from that poison many times always expecting the other person to feel something bad but the only one who ever felt badly was me.

It’s ironic.   figured out a long time ago the foolishness of jealousy, another of my shortcoming although I overcame that one early on in my adulthood.  I call it the most foolish emotion a person can have and only shows that person’s insecurities.  It would have been nice to have carried over that logic to my resentments, but I did not.

Mind you, I still get resentments but now I treat them like a minor injury.  I figure out what the source of the pain is and deal with it.  Almost without exception the source of the pain is from something within me.  What is happening is I am seeing something inside someone else that I hate within myself and that is how a resentment begins.  This is not to say that the person had not wronged me or done something to allow me to feel poorly towards them, but the resentment is a level of anger that is always uncalled for.  The resentment is self-flagellation at its worst.  The resentment is what takes up space in my head and eats at me in its desire to get out.  The resentment is what has pushed me into making too many bad decisions.

I still feel the resentment come over me but when I do an alarm goes off in my head and I tell myself it is time to take action.  As I said before the first thing I do is find the source of the resentment.   Then once I have identified the other person’s part in it, I forgive them in the sense that I tell myself that whatever they are doing has nothing to do with, or that they are fighting some demon within themself and it is presenting itself in this unflattering manner.  Most of the time I eliminate the resentment by simply telling myself that they have a problem and I’m not it.

So here is the thing; it is okay to be angry, as angry as you need.  But get over it as quickly as you can because anger is like milk left out too long.  After a while it curdles and smells bad and turns into something else, something ugly.

 

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Are You a NIMBY?


First of all, NIMBY is the acronym for “not in my back yard.”  It generally refers to people who like the idea of something so long as it does not exist in their back yard, or in close proximity to it.

Recently, in a Cape Cod community, a group of people managed to get a wind turbine shut down because they claimed it made too much noise.  I am trying to imagine that but it escapes me how something that is not burning fossil fuel makes much noise at all.   But I’ll come back to this issue.

A number of years ago the Massachusetts Port Authority pushed the idea of getting a commercial airline to serve out of Hanscom Field, the civil portion of Hanscom Air Force Base.  There was an almost immediate uproar from the good citizens of Bedford, Lincoln, and Concord, all of whom declared unequivocally that such a move would create an unnecessary noisy nuisance.  They claimed the increased air traffic would be responsible.  MassPort was making the move in an attempt to alleviate Boston’s Logan Airport of some of its congestion.  No one with any knowledge of air travel expected anything more than small commuter aircraft to serve Hanscom Field.  The true noise makers were, and are, the corporate jets that frequent the airport.  To date, not a single commercial jet as availed itself of Hanscom.  Commercial propeller aircraft have served.  To quote the bard, “Much ado about nothing.”

More recently, the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, along with other groups, has been pushing to convert an abandoned railbed into a bicycle trail under the auspices of the RailTrail Act.  The idea is to have a bike path extending from Waltham MA to Chicopee MA.  One community, Weston, has stood in the way of this happening.  They claim it would bring an undesirable element into their fair town.  For those of you not familiar with Weston MA, it is a Boston bedroom community of considerable wealth.  It is somewhere between difficult and impossible to find a house selling for under $500,000 there.  The people of Weston fear that a bicycle path will increase the crime rate in their town.  And there it is, NIMBY!  The people of Lexington MA, another upscale Boston bedroom community, did not have the same concerns when the railtrail was developed in their fair town.  Today it brings in hundreds of bicyclists, pedestrians, and tourists into the town.  Even more, it provides a resource for the townspeople who want to go out for a stroll on the tree-lined and beautiful path.  But somehow this fact is lost on the NIMBYs of Weston.

Most recently, a group proposed that a rather substantial wind farm be built-in the waters off the coast of Massachusetts adjacent to Cape Cod.  Well don’t you know, out came the NIMBYs claiming first that it was unsightly.  And then when that got laughed at they claimed it would irreparably harm the fishing grounds on which it would be built.  That too was proven false but they persist.  Now they claim that it will generate electricity that is too expensive.  Of course these are the same sort of arguments used when the automobile was first introduced.  Many said it would never amount to more than a novelty.  It was expensive, at first, but then a guy named Ford figured out how to drastically reduce the cost of production.  I expect the same is going to happen with wind generated power.

Another group of people howled when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority decided to reopen a long abandoned rail line to help alleviate traffic congestion on the Massachusetts south shore.  Once again out came the NIMBYs.  One small group claimed that some colonial structures would be ruined by the passing of trains.  Of course they failed to realize that heavy freight trains had once toiled over the same location without incident.  Others were trying to protect illegal structures they had built on the old railroad right-of-way.  To its credit, the MBTA pushed the line through and now nary a complaint can be heard.  The line is doing what it was intended.

Americans are spoiled.  They want things like cheap power which translates to oil forever.  Of course oil will run out by the end of the century.  That is a given.  In the mean time Americans have to accept that things like wind farms are going to have to go up in their back yards if they really want to continue to enjoy cheap electricity.  The price of wind generated electricity will go down and the price of fossil fuel generated electricity will go up, and rather quickly in the not too distant future.  The same is true of other emerging technologies.  They will take time, and space, to develop.  If Americans want to continue to enjoy the fruits of our society there is a price to pay.

 

 

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People of the Lie


I have stolen this title from Dr. M. Scott Peck who wrote a book, same title, on the subject of narcissistic people.  I recommend it as a good psychological read.  M. Scott Peck was a well-known psychiatrist, now deceased, who also wrote the best-selling book “The Road Less Traveled” which stood atop the NY Times non-fiction best seller list for years, literally.

Narcissus was the guy in Greek mythology who would look lovingly at his own image and fail to see any faults what-so-ever.  Unfortunately our society is filled with such people.  I offer up Dick Cheney as an excellent example of narcissism.  He could lie so well I think he actually believed his own b.s.  What is worse about the narcissist is their absolute failure to either see or admit to having a part in anything wrong.  They rationalize their own bad behavior in a manner that leaves them blameless.

In his book Peck identifies these people as being evil.  It suggests that you need only look at history’s most evil villains and you will find they are all narcissists. The question becomes, then, how do you protect yourself against such people?

I think the first thing you have to do is recognize them when you encounter them.  Fortunately they are, it is my belief, relatively rare in their “full blown” form.  That is, the total narcissist is not all that common.

Unfortunately, aside from recognizing them and keeping them out of your life as much as possible is about all you can do.  I know, no answer, how can that be?  Sometimes you run into circumstances that one person cannot overcome.  You surround yourself with people who know you, trust you, and love you, and there is nothing the narcssist can do to you that you cannot overcome.   Now that you know what you are looking for, be careful and be safe.

 

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How To Land the Job You Want


I will assume that you have an interview coming up.  That interview is the most important step to landing the job.  The first person you meet likely will not but the decision maker but rather someone from HR who will sort of “check you in.”  But should the first person you meet actually be someone who has a say in your hiring you want the look of success and the sound of success to be drooling from you.  So here are the points you need to make.

You only get once chance to make a good first impression.  That means, dress for success.  You should dress well enough that you wonder if you might actually be over-dressed.  Not to worry.  Being “over-dressed” is a sign of respect for the person you are meeting.  Men, that means a dark suit with a red tie.  Ladies it means a business suit, conservative.  Do not try to trade on your body.  If your great body is what gets you hired, you are in the wrong job.

When you meet someone for the first time, reach out and firmly shake their hand while looking them in their eyes, smile, and say something like “good to meet you.”

Be totally honest and forthcoming.  Now this does not mean tell them your life story.  Answer only the question asked, don’t offer more “icing” because it more likely will ice you.  Interviewees have a tendency to talk to much, offer up too much.  If you don’t understand the question being asked, say so.  Every interviewer asks the question, “what do you think you strength and weaknesses are.”  Be ready to answer each question, briefly.  They guy who claims to have no weaknesses will also have no job.  Have a list of at least five questions you want to ask the interviewer.  These questions will revolve around potential growth in the job, what the future of the company is, what position you will be holding, etc.  The more interest you show the interviewer the more interest they will show towards you.

Look the interviewer in the eyes.  People who look other people in the eye are thought to be honest.

Directly ask how soon they need the job filled, intimating that you can start tomorrow if need be.  This not only sends the message that you want the job, but you are ready, now.

Don’t talk yourself out of the job!  Being enthusiastic about getting a job is a good thing.  But show that enthusiasm in short, direct questions.  Too many people who interview for a job try the “tell all” method.  Unless you are asked a complex question, which is unusual, you should never have to talk for more than about 1 minute at a stretch at any one time.  Stay focused on the question asked.  But complete and succinct.

Strengthen you weaknesses.  You know what they are, just don’t offer them up.  But when asked, pick one that can be remedied in your new position.  You tell them how this position will put you next to people who excel in that area and how you hope to learn from them.  Then say, you also hope to get additional training through company offered programs or local colleges.  That is when you ask about college reimbursement.  By doing these things it sends the message that you are already considering what a long-term investment in that company looks like.  That is always a good message to send.

When the interview is winding down, and you have decided that you want this job, tell the interviewer that fact in no uncertain terms.  Just come right out and say, “I want this job.”

If they are unwilling or unable to commit, ask about follow-up interviews.  Also ask when they expect to make a decision as to who they will hire.  The effect you want to give at that point is “I want this job but I need to move my energy in another direction if I am not going to get it.”

Importantly, if the interviewer offers something you can relate to, join in a short conversation about whatever it is.  You want to endear yourself to you possible employer in any fashion you can.  Leave no stone unturned.

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Vegans and Health Food People Really Piss Me Off!


Last night I was at a restaurant with my wife.  I had a particularly good piece of baked haddock and then decided, which is unusual, to indulge in dessert.  My wife pointed out that on the dessert menu was flour-free cake.  I told her that was either a misprint or a misrepresentation.  Cake is made with flour, sugar, butter, and in this case, chocolate.  I told her it was indeed a chocolate something but it sure as hell was not cake!

I blame all of this on California, of course, the land of fruits and nuts.  They started it all when someone decided alfalfa sprout would be such a good thing to put on a sandwich.  Are you kidding me!  Everyone knows alfalfa is grown to feed to livestock.  But they couldn’t stop at that, nooooooooo.  The next thing you know they are marketing this stuff called tofu.  Be honest, how many of you had any idea what tofu is when you first heard of it.  For that matter, how many know even now?  Tofu is soy but sounds better, somehow, when you call it tofu.  Except on Chinese food, where it’s great, soy/tofu, is evil!

Then they came up with this stuff called “soy milk.”  Really?  Last time I heard there were two sources of milk, mammals and coconuts.  But now these bastards have invaded my favorite coffee shop with their soy milk.  One day I accidentally poured some of it in my coffee.  One sip and I was certain I had been poisoned.  In coffee you put cream, milk, low-fat milk, skim milk, or nothing at all.  But as any real coffee drinker knows, you never ever put soy into such a drink.

One day I was out with a good friend and we stopped for coffee and a snack.  She was buying and she knew what kind of coffee I wanted and backed it up with a brownie.  Chocolate is a huge addiction for me but it goes so well with coffee.  Well, one bite into the brownie and once again I thought I had been poisoned.  When I questioned her about the brownie she snickered and said it was “gluten-free.”  Once again, I must insist, that is NOT a brownie.  It is something but not a brownie.

Remember those commercials for “I can’t believe it’s not butter.”  Really?  Have you no taste buds at all?  I can tell the difference all day long.  Do you put margarine on pop corn?  No!  Of course not.  It tastes like crap!

Take ice cream.  By definition ice cream is a combination of sugar and milk fats churned and cooled into its solid form.  People used to respect this and when they made something similar, but which did not quite meet the actually definition they called it sorbet.  My hat is off to them.  But sugar-free ice cream?  That is an oxymoron.  Even worse is “fat-free” ice cream.  Impossible!

And what about those people who say we should not eat meat!  Really?  We all have two front teeth, incisors or canine teeth.  They are an ancient remnant of humans having to tear at the flesh of animals to feed ourselves!

Americans desperately need to learn that it is not what we eat that is unhealthy, it is how much we eat.  We are so indulgent of our food desires that we are fat a lazy, and that is what is unhealthy.  If we think healthy, and act on those thoughts, we will be healthy.  Once I am finished with this I am acting on my thought of quickly finding and devouring a whoopie pie.  It’s not at all healthful but I will get a truly healthy sense of pleasure.  Eat on!

 

by

Don’t Sell Yourself Short


When I was younger, much younger, I had two mental lists. The first list was of everything I wanted, and the second list was of everything I believed I could have or could get. The second list bore only slight resemblance to the first. That should not have been the truth, but it was. That first list was not a truth for me because I did not believe that those things were within my reach or that I was capable of gaining them. That, I believe, is the exact definition of selling yourself short.

As a young adult I had an absolutely miserable self-opinion and my body image was not much better. That was at the base of all my problems. People always said, “just be yourself.” But what good is that when you don’t know who you are? Even that would not have been such a great problem if I had someone to bounce things off. That meant I needed someone in my life who would be non-judgemental and give me good advice. I actually had such a person but I was so fearful that I could not get up the courage to talk my mind to her.

This person in my life, Pat, was one of the more beautiful and intelligent women in the community I was living it at that time. I mention that because I was living in Italy at the time and in a rather small community of Americans living over there at the time. Pat was kind, compassionate and understanding. I could have confided anything in her and gotten good advice in return but my insecurities did not allow for that and so I suffered.

In my senior year in high school I was smart enough and had good enough grades that I was able to secure early admission to Boston University. I don’t know if things like that happen anymore, but at the time it meant I had my letter of acceptance from B.U. in November of my senior year while others had months of waiting in front of them. But when I got to B.U. I failed miserably. Why? I did not believe in myself and once again my insecurities did not allow for my owning up to my shortcomings and asking for help from my advisor. Of course I flunked out of college. They didn’t throw me out. I left because I knew I was failing and didn’t know what else to do. I resolved that by joining the army, not the greatest idea in 1968 but not the worst either.

The things I have just spoken of are classic examples of “fear of success.” It sounds like an oxymoron but it is not. I could not handle success so I made certain I torpedoed any success I was having by some sort of ridiculous action. Let’s say, for example, I was dating that gorgeous blonde. I would inevitably allow my insecurity to take control and say something that made her want to run for the hills which of course meant an end to the relationship, such as it was.

While I was at B.U. my advisor one day said that I should have gone to Harvard. I thought he was kidding me, of course, because I definitely was not smart enough to go there. But he wasn’t and so I set up an interview. I was usually good at interviews but I was so intimidated by where I was that at the end of the interview the man told me that I should never even consider going to Harvard ever again. Many years later I went to, and graduated from, graduate school at Harvard but that is another story. I does show, however, how much I was selling myself short. Rather than take what the interviewer said as a challenger, I took it as fact.

Earlier I mentioned a fear of success. The other half of that is a fear of failure.  I was projecting.  I was always going to worst case scenarios and thinking that failure was the only possible result.  What didn’t occur to me was that it was okay to have failures along the way as long as I kept with it until I succeeded.   I had a course at Harvard once that I got a C+ in.  That is an unacceptable grade in graduate school and the course does not count towards the degree but that 2.7 does get figured into your GPA.  That stopped me dead for a while.  But once I got my wits back about me, I pushed onward, wrote my thesis with a lot of help, and graduated.  Decades later I recognized, fully, what I was capable of if only I allowed for failure.

I heard someone say recently, “don’t worry if you are shooting for the moon and miss.  It just means you will end up among the stars.”  And so much of life really is that simple.  Relationships failure, we fail in school, work, sometimes stumbling just walking down the street.  We feel foolish briefly but we move on.  In the long run, regardless of what happens, I know I will be all right.  Not everyone is going to like me and accept me as I am and that is all right.

I wrote this because I was inspired by a young man today who had just left a toxic relationship and was feeling badly about it none-the-less.  I advised him that he can have anyone he wants and that he need only continue on as he is.  I didn’t mean that he can simply go out and point to any woman and she’ll be his, no.  I mean that when he meets someone he truly likes and is compatible with that he is the quality kind of guy a good woman will want to be with.  That’s the “don’t sell yourself short” part.