From Shanghai to Karlstad (Minnesota, that is)

While visiting Shanghai a few years ago, I had a conversation with a Chinese tour guide. He asked me what I did for a living and I explained how I touched up pictures all day that went into magazines. He didn’t quite get it until we happened to drive by the Ritz Carlton. Then I proudly explained how my name was in every room of that hotel, more precisely, in the publishing credits at the front of every Ritz Carlton in-room magazine. We had a good chuckle about how I am almost famous.

Playing in Photoshop is a wonderful way to make a living. But processing thoughts and writing them down is my mental release. It is not the act of writing I like. After all, my spelling sucks, my grammar sucks, and my sentence structure often makes no sense. It is the process of condensing my thoughts into words that I love. I do pictures for a living, but writing is my hobby. That is why I do this blog. Although few people read it, that is not the point. Writing is an exercise to give voice to those crazy thoughts that occasionally wake me up at three in the morning. They say people who don’t dream will eventually go crazy, that dreams are a way for our minds to purge all the nonsense swimming around in our brains. Well, I guess that is how writing thoughts into words works for me. It keeps me from going crazy.

So last week when my brother Bubba felt it worthy to use my post-election blog post in his weekly newspaper column, it reminded me of my conversation with my driver in Shanghai. I may have my name in the publishing credits of every in-room magazine in every Ritz Carlton in every major city on this planet, but seeing my words in a small weekly newspaper in northern Minnesota was every bit as thrilling. Thanks Bubba.

What Voters Want Voters Never Get

There was a somewhat insightful opinion post on the Baltimore Sun site after the election that I gleaned from a friend on Facebook. In it, the author accurately points out the unrealistic expectations of what we expect our government to provide us.

An excerpt:

After devoting long minutes to careful analysis of Tuesday night's election returns, I now know what Americans want:

We want roads and bridges that are always in good condition but do not require tax money for upkeep.

We want world class schools with teachers who are so dedicated that they will work for minimum wage. (Note: the best one should be in my neighborhood)

We want 60-inch plasma TVs that cost $200 and are produced by workers in Ohio making at least $30 per hour.

We want our military to win every war, every heart and every mind, everywhere, at no cost in lives or money.

He then goes on to site another half dozen or so similar points. Curiously, there is an obvious topic missing: healthcare. No where does he mention something about how we want world-class healthcare and we want it for free. Ask an American how much he spent on his flat screen and he will gladly brag about it. Yet that same soul will complain to no end if he has to spend a dime of his own money on his own well-being.

...but I digress.

I give kudos to the author for recognizing how out of whack our expectations are of what government can "provide". Yet he seems to ignore the possibility that maybe government shouldn't be providing any of these things.

Americans have lost the realization that our government was not created to "provide" for us. It was created to protect us so that we may actively pursue providing for ourselves. Instead, we have been conditioned to believe that our right to vote gives us license to steal from each other, ignoring that no matter how just we see the cause we vote for, stealing is still stealing. We take turns at the government trough, thinking that a 51% majority gives us the right to steal from the other 49%. We look to government to "provide" us all our wants and needs, then get mad at "the other side" when they do the same thing.

It brings to mind the old quote,

"Democracy is nothing more than two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner."

And although I can agree with Mr. Nachlas when he says:

Personally, I want leaders who will tell us frankly that all these things are not possible, that the blessings of infrastructure and education given us by our fathers are wearing out.[...]I want leaders who will tell the truth: that there is no free lunch.

I have to respectfully disagree when he says:

I want thinkers who can paint a picture of a greater America that could exist in 50 or 100 years, and then unite us with a roadmap to get there. I want America to have a shared vision and an understanding that we all benefit when we all contribute, and that we all suffer when we demand only for ourselves.

The simplistic notion that we can elect "thinkers" who can plan our future is exactly what got us here in the first place.

Let's do a quick thought exercise. Think back one hundred years -- no let's just do fifty -- say 1960. What "thinker" could have painted the world we live in now? I cannot even begin to touch on the millions of social changes, innovations and conflicts that have complicated our world since 1960. Who then would have accurately envisioned the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the attacks of 9/11 and how that completely changed our world view, the rise of the personal computer, smart phones, the Internet, Google, Intel chips, flat screen TVs, Oprah? No one.

Our world is too complicated to be centrally planned. When we expect our government to "deliver all these things", we can only expect -- no, do I dare say -- we only deserve what we get.

When we expect the government to "provide" for us, we get stupid things like governments declaring Happy Meals are illegal. Then we are surprised when our elected officials think they have the right to decide who can marry who, or what consenting adults can do, or what plants people can cultivate. Indeed, the list of their involvement in our lives becomes endless. And we give it to them every time we vote for them to "provide" for us. As Americans we used to be productive, innovative, independent. Now we have become a nation of leeches taking turns sucking off the government teet.

Again, I end with a quote from the great French "thinker" Frederic Bastiat:

"Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter -- by peaceful or revolutionary means -- into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it."

We have obviously chosen to share in it.

I want America to have a shared vision and an understanding that we all benefit when we all take responsibility for ourselves and stop trying to use the voting box as a way to enrich ourselves. We need to stop participating in legal plunder. Until then, we all suffer when one side wins an election -- and it doesn't matter which side that is.

The BCS vs A Playoff System

This has been a crazy year for college football. According to a great blog by ESPN’s Ivan Maisel, since the inception of the BCS in 1998 only twelve teams have played in the twelve BCS Championship games. Of those twelve games, four SEC teams have gone undefeated, winning half of them.

Oh, how things have changed. As of today, none of those teams are in the top five. According to Maisel, it ain’t looking good for the traditional power houses. “In the era of the BCS Championship Game, only three teams have climbed from outside the top five 10 weeks into the season and into the final game. All three are SEC teams -- No. 8 Florida in 2008, No. 7 Florida in 2006 and No. 9 LSU in 2003 -- and all three won the championship.”

With only one SEC team in the top 10 (#10 LSU), it looks like things are going to wrap up differently this year. Is the world really ready for a Championship game potentially containing the Horned Frogs, the Utes, or the Broncos?

I can already hear the annual lament starting: when will the BCS be scrapped and a playoff system installed? I am with them. The BCS bowl sites could still be used for the final rounds, eliminating their financial worries. And teams that don’t make the playoffs could still play in traditional bowl games. With a sixteen team, five week playoff system, the season would still be virtually the same length, ending somewhere in mid January. And, most importantly, the Championship would be decided on the field, not by computer or some voter’s whim.

It would be more exciting, more revenue generating, and down-right logical. Oops. Logical. That’s why it will never happen...

A View of the World Via The Window of Africa

How we view the world --and all things in general -- is often inaccurate, distorted, biases and/or, at the very least, incomplete.

Here is a great example. Although I can't vouch for the accuracy of this graphic, it does a nice job of exposing our tendency toward what the creator defines as "immappancy."

As someone with a social science degree, I am a bit ashamed to admit that I would have visualized the US as larger than shown here.

The Parking Lot

Okay, I have to admit, I am somewhat of a bigot -- at least when it comes to fat people and parking lots. I have this thing about going to places with big parking lots. I detest sitting in my car waiting for people to back out, or dilly-dally as they move their carts, or cringe as they park in the middle of the road, waiting ten minutes for some slow poke to get in their car so they can take their spot.

This is why I park in the first available spot. I don’t care if it’s a half a mile away from the store. I don’t care if it’s over one hundred degrees outside. I park as far away from the entrance as possible.

Besides, the closer you park, the fatter you are. I am not making this up. The next time you are sitting in your car at the store, just watch for yourself. It is an amazing phenomenon. And I always wonder, do these people even realize this? Ironic, isn’t it? The people who are the most in need of a little extra exercise tend to be the ones that drive around for a half an hour so they can park six spots closer to the front door.

Look, I can in no way be considered thin, but just on this observation alone, I am walking the length of the parking lot.

Only in LA

Okay. Do I have this right? The future ownership fate of the Los Angeles Dodgers is presently at stake in a high profile divorce case. The owner’s ex is trying to lay claim to the team even though she signed a prenuptial agreement.

Her defense? She didn’t read it.

Actually, that may be over-simplifying it. But this blog, dodgerdivorce.com, gives the day-by-day court proceedings if you want a more in-depth analysis. Fun stuff if you like dirty laundry and wallowing in other people’s misery.

By the way, can you guess the ex’s previous profession? You know, the one that is using ignorance as her defense against a signed prenup? Yes, she was a lawyer.

Only in LA...

My Friend's View on 1070

I am occasionally asked about my opinion on 1070, Arizona's controversial immigration law. In fact, I have been in a few "discussions" on Facebook about it. It is a subject that doesn't work too well in that format, though. One or two lines isn't enough to explain it very well. Explaining my position takes some time and length and I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Before I do, I thought I would share this from a friend. Although his history is quite different (and more interesting than my homogeneous rural upbringing), outside of the conflict he feels on the subject, much of his reasoning falls in line with mine.

Hopefully, I will get around to writing my thoughts on the matter soon. In the meantime, take this wonderful perspective into account:

I've been digging with a tiny shovel lately. After the national events of the last 10 years I've rolled back quite a bit: too stressful. I have generally been avoiding political discourse on facebook as working in the public sector, I am concerned that it could cause me some professional heartburn at some point.

Honestly, I have not read the bill, but my S.O. has and I trust her interpretation.

This is probably going to bounce around a bit so bear with me.

Some background: I'm a Phoenix native. I did not realize it at the time but I grew up in a lower income neighborhood (there were worse) and went to a fully integrated inner-city high school.

In my youth, I was aware of illegals, generally known as "wetbacks" even though there is no river on the border. I don't think there were any at my grade school. The "Chicanos" or Mexican Americans or whatever they were called then (I called them Robbie or Pablo or whatever) got really mad if they got called wetback, because they were from HERE. Of course some of my Anglo friends called them that because they didn't like people that weren't Anglo. (Interesting side note: Anglos and Hispanics all called Joe at Joe's market a chink)

Once I got into high school, there were probably some illegals in the mix, but the only ones I knowledgably ever came into were the dishwashers at Bill Johnson’s Big Apple where I bussed tables for a short time. They taught a few of us some choice words in Spanish usually by calling us it. The Anglo and Black staff would occasionally yell “la migra” just for fun and watch them all run out the door opposite where the yelling was coming from.

The high school was a bit tumultuous, usually along racial lines, and I was a victim of racial attacks on several occasions, and I had some friends at a neighboring, more Anglo school that precipitated violence in the other direction.

A few years after high school, I went into the construction trades, specifically, painting. On the job sites, only 2 trades had illegals, landscapers, and plasterers (but usually only the stucco plasterers on the housing tracts).

Jumping now to present day:
I live in the neighborhood where Pruitt’s Furniture is. About 5 years ago, along Thomas road near the Home Depot was “day laborer central” on any given morning there would be 200+ day laborers in front of the Home Depot, and probably several hundred more along Thomas between 40th and 32nd street. Sheriff Joe started some round ups, some left. [My S.O. was] at ASU working on her bachelor’s then her master’s degrees. We went to a few city zoning/planning meetings one of which some executives from Home Depot were there, wanting to put in a “new mini-urban Depot at the old Toys-r-us location at 7th and Camelback. The conversation quickly turned to “not if it becomes like your 36th and Thomas store.” The reply was “we are aware we have a problem there.” A time later the signs went up, some of the laborers left, some just moved over by the Wal-Mart, some moved up the street to the 7-11.

Now, where does this put me? Conflicted. I’ve lived around immigrants of one generation or another all my life; I’ve been around racism all my life. Immigrants I can live with, most of the time. Racism I have no stomach for.

Now, as I previously discussed, there is no way that hundreds of humans can get together in those numbers for any length of time, before problems arise, whether it be just litter or if it escalates to violence. Additionally, it was quite obvious that there was not enough work for the amount of people looking for it, and this was before the housing bubble burst.

Meanwhile, the illegal immigrants come in via traffickers that seem to be expensive and abusive, preying on their fellow humans. Those traffickers more than likely have colleagues that also traffic drugs. I’ve lived here all my life and I know, without a doubt, that lots of drugs come through Phoenix from Mexico. Then there is that boogeyman “terrorist” that could come through a border like a sieve.

I’m conflicted about this bill because I am certain it has it’s roots in racism, but parts of it go after “those traffickers.” I’m conflicted, because if I support it, I can see myself getting lumped in with racists.

There’s the emotion, now some practicality:

Is this enforceable? Do our local law enforcement departments actually have the resources to follow through with the requirements? I doubt it.

Will this actually save money on the bilked medical bills etc. vs. the lawsuits that are sure to result? I doubt it.

Will this actually change anything? I doubt it. It certainly won’t get any incumbents out of office in November that supported it, nor, in other districts remove those against it.

Part of me thinks something needs to change, and I would rather it not be my cushy environment. I would like to see “those traffickers” go away. I would like immigrants to come in, but in smaller numbers, and so we know whom they are and that they want to work, raise families, and be grateful for the opportunity and not to sell our kids cocaine and heroin.

Most of the time though, this bill feels like being given a piece of notebook paper to cure the flu I might have. Sure, I might be able to blow my nose with it, but not very well, and it certainly is no cure.

For many, this bill seems to be a distraction to what the problems actually are. Californians seem to be loudly screaming “that’s racist” while they have some pretty heavy security on their southern border. My recent trip through California took us past 4 Home Depots where there were zero day laborers at any of them. Methinks they want those illegals to stay, or at least be filtered through AZ. None of those boycott leaders that I heard invited them into their community, nor petitioned the feds to send their border security resources to Arizona. I find that just damn hypocritical.

For others, the best thing to come out of this is open discussion of the real issues. The legal immigrants that I work with tell me that the process to become citizens is a 10-year process, and full of hoops to jump through. That seems excessive to me. One of them shared a story about their dad loosing or misplacing his green card. It took him 6 months to get a replacement. These things need to be streamlined.
Other items:
Corrupt Mexican government, still
Failed war on drugs, still

Here are some steps that might start to fix things:
Raise the quota for immigrants from Mexico.
Cut the wait for citizenship red tape.
Start looking at Mexicans living in heavy drug cartel violence areas as refugees.
Legalize pot, not decriminalize, legalize, regulate and tax.
As far as the corrupt Mexican government, I’m not sure where to begin there, but pulling a tooth or 2 out of the cartels might be a good place to start.