We Can Do Better

                                              NOTES OF CONCERN....
                                                              ... JACK BLAIR 


                                                “  We Can Do Better “

The older I get, the more I am convinced that most people fall into one of two broad general descriptive categories.

The first category I call people with good hearts.

The second category is for people who are just mean spirited.

With the recent dust-up in Washington, DC we had lots of opportunities to see both good-hearted people and mean-spirited people.

We saw them on television.

We read them in our newspapers.

We heard about them in the hallowed halls of the U.S. Capitol.

There were elected representatives who have a deep concern for the needy and downtrodden and clearly saw that affordable healthcare was an incredibly important service to offer the people of the nation.

There were elected representatives who have a deep concern for the needy and downtrodden and clearly felt that enacting another law that would result in spending trillions and create yet another group of entitlements was not in anyone’s best interest.

I can accept that the representatives described in the two preceding paragraphs could easily be included in the category of people with good hearts.

How can that be you might well ask.

The answer is quite simple. The representatives I describe have deep convictions and they vote those convictions. They each want what is best for the people they represent although they differ on the best way to provide what is best for the people.

These folks are the true inheritors of the best of elected representatives throughout our history. They understand where the other views have been generated. They value their colleagues who think differently. They do not question the motives of their colleagues with whom they differ.

At the end of the day they will vote, the votes will be tabulated, and they will move on to the next important issue awaiting their deliberations, and they will do so without rancor.  They know that on each future issue there will be a multitude of differing opinions, and that they may well find themselves on the same side with a colleague who was on the opposite side of the most recent legislative battle.

Now let's move to the mean-spirited group.

Into this group we can easily slip every representative who berates his fellows, damns their views, questions their motives, and generally finds it necessary to demonize them in order to win the day.

This is a relatively unsavory group of politicians. They represent the worst of our people. They have no class and even less talent. The Republic is not well served by them.

Sadly, more and more of them are getting elected.

Sadly, more and more of the people with good hearts are choosing to retire or simply have no interest in re-election. What was once a classy deliberative body is rapidly becoming a farce.

Americans bear a serious responsibility to correct this trend.

Correction can only be delivered at the ballot box.

When you meet a candidate for office who is eager to tell you why his or her opponent is dangerous,  untrustworthy, or out-of-touch and that the only thing standing between the horrors that would come with the election of their opponent is......him, you are in the presence of a mean-spirited man.

Run to the polls.

Vote for people with good hearts.

They are the people who know how to work together to solve problems.

Let me remind you that arguably the most liberal Supreme Court Justice is Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the most conservative Associate Justice is Antonin Scalia. They rarely agree on anything before the court. Yet outside the court they are the best of friends, socialize together, and have great admiration for one another.

President Eisenhower had very little in common with the Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn or the Majority Leader of the Senate Lyndon Johnson, but he understood, as did they, that working together quietly behind the scenes and reaching the best agreement they could was the way to do the nation’s business. They worked together to deliver the Era of Peace and Prosperity.

Each of my readers with some reflection could construct his or her own list of leaders throughout history who were people with good hearts.

I use only these few examples of what are many  of people with good hearts who know how to get the peoples’ work done. And in all the instances I have studied in history, these people simply did not permit personality to enter into the mix, learned to identify and admire the positive traits of their opponents in the public arena, and found ways to disagree without being disagreeable.

We pay our elected representatives a lot of money and load them down with a serious list of “perks.”  While they might whine about how much more they could earn in industry, you may have noticed few of them are applying for jobs in industry. They know exactly how good they have it.

Now what we have to convince them of is that getting us more “stuff” is not the way to earn our vote. Convince them that what we want is serious consideration of the issues, teamwork in the interest of the nation, and that we understand that sometimes sacrifice is needed, not just in the halls of Congress but in our own living rooms.

And let them know that we are ready to join them in making whatever sacrifices are necessary to ensure the future of our country.

This unseemly need to demonize, castigate, and tear down opponents is neither appropriate nor helpful. It is the work of amateurs, poseurs, and mean-spirited people.

Let’s not reward mean-spirited people by electing, or reelecting, them to public office. Let us retire them all.

Let's identify and honor people with good hearts.

Our country will be so much better off if we are able to accomplish this.

BE HAPPY

                                                                                           
   


My wife and I were blessed this summer with our eighth grandchild. Many of my readers have children and grandchildren and I feel certain they join me in acknowledging the amazing feeling that comes with new life.

All of us are busy with our lives and our careers but into each of many of our lives comes the realization that the future is in the hands of our offspring and their offspring.

When my wife and I were having children it was very different than it is today. We did not know much about ultrasound. We did not know much about genetic testing. We did not know much about learning the sex of your baby before birth. It was not commonly accepted that the father should be in the delivery room. We had our babies in the 1970’s.

Today they tell you your baby’s sex in advance.

Today the father is present in the delivery room and watches and participates in the birth of his child.

When I was born my mother was in the hospital two weeks. She was permitted to recover from giving birth and the baby was carefully observed during the early days of life.

My daughter gave birth and went home the same day.

Big difference.

Progress?

My mother was one of 13 children. They were all born at home not in a hospital. Neighbor women helped with each birth. It was amazing that in those days all of my mother’s siblings were born healthy and safely.

Life is amazing. Our procreation is part of history. We continue to add to the human race without much thought to the importance of the continuity of history.

We should stop to marvel.

Is it not a wonderful thing that we have children and they have children and that human life is sustained?

My wife and I brought Jay, Mark, Scott and Anne into this world.

They brought Carter, Patrick, Collin, Charlie, Sam, Alissa, Madeline and Caeli into the world.

And so life continues and family grows.

What a wonderful blessing can be found in all of this.

The world in which we live is indeed a place of miracles. There are lots of happy times and many pleasant opportunities for growth. Within our own families we can find the foundations on which to build our lives and see hope for the future.

In these days of ranting, raving, grousing and political infighting I wanted to write a column that left readers with a positive feeling. I wanted it to be a break from the gloom and doom.

Have a truly great week and look for the sunshine in your life.

FLY AWAY

“ FLY AWAY  “

I had occasion recently to go to California to visit children and grandchildren. My flight involved a plane change in Denver on my way to San Jose.

In my business career I flew a great deal. This trip allowed me the time for a trip down memory lane.

When I started my career in business we lived in Pittsburgh. Flying was still a novelty in those days. I remember a few years flying on prop planes and then the jet engines arrived.

In the beginning flying was such a novelty that people “dressed” for the trip. Men wore sport coats, suits and ties. Women were always attractively dressed with purses, jewelry and often gloves.

Flying was quite a treat.

I also remember in those early days that you would be served coffee before take off on a morning flight. Meal service always included a three cigarette pack on every tray. In the back, in coach, there was a “booth” like arrangement for people who might want to play cards or have a drink together.

On dinner flights they actually brought a moving card down the aisle and would carve you a slice of beef right at your seat, spoon vegetables on the plate, and deliver your drink order. And this was in COACH class!

And, as an aside, the airlines made a profit.

In those days, there were no “stewards,” just “stewardesses. And designers competed to get contracts to dress these ladies in strikingly beautiful uniforms. In fact, in those days being a Stewardess was considered an exciting profession that allowed you to travel all over the world.

Every trip was an adventure. Those who got to fly enjoyed the experience, they felt special. And of course, flying made it possible to stay in touch with distant family and for businesses to expand.

That was the beginning of the end of the pleasure of flying although it does remain an adventure!

Fast forward to today.

Getting to, and through, airports has become a tedious chore.

Taking a morning flight, best to get your coffee in the terminal and carry it on the plane. It takes most of the carriers at least an hour to get their coffee/breakfast service underway.

Forget the snazzy stewardesses and their great smiles and wonderful uniforms. You are now most like served by Flight Attendants who had enough seniority to claim the best flights (read here: the oldest and longest serving attendants). Union protection also enables many of them to be surly and not helpful.

Forget the full meal in coach. Today you get roughly twenty stale peanuts in a very small package, or perhaps five potato chips, unless you want to shell out more money to buy a dry, unattractive and unappetizing box of food.

Of course, no smoking.

Cocktails-sure! But you have to purchase them and, by the way, only with a credit card, no cash. I thought about that and decided they must have felt they were “losing” too much cash and moved it all to a cashless business.

Now medical experts have shown that breathing the recycled air in planes is not exactly healthy, especially if any of the other hundred passengers might be ill. So the longer the flight, the greater the health risk.

Unless you want to pony up an extra couple hundred dollars, or in some cases thousands, you will be wedged into a very uncomfortable seat and, in some cases, you will have the pleasure of your neighbor taking over part of your armrest or spilling over on part of your seat.

Today it helps if you are willing to fly with your knees up around your nose. The floor space is non-existent and if you actually do use the space under the seat in front of you for a carry on, you have to do a magic dance to find a place for your feet.

This might be bearable if you are flying a short distance, like Boston to New York. It become less so if you are flying across the pond to Europe. And it is madness if you are flying from the East Coast to any Asian destination.

So today airfares are high. Planes are packed. The amenities are few. People are herded like cattle. There are no more empty seats. Food is non-existent.

Yet the airlines are not profitable.

It is not necessary to have a Harvard MBA to realize that if you sell all the seats and spend little on amenities the airlines should be turning a profit.

So what is wrong?

There are so many deals available at all times that one person may be paying $500 for his ticket while the person sitting next to him is paying $!50 and the person across the aisle is flying free on frequent flier miles.

Unions have set rules and regulations that have forced airlines into payrolls that simply make no sense financially.

The cost of oil is both unpredictable and outrageous. Since our friends in the Middle East have a lot to do with the pricing I don’t think relief is on the way.

So we have companies that are supposed to exist to make profit for their shareholders falling more and more by the wayside or into serious debt. We have employees bargaining their way out of important jobs. The traveling public is ignored so customer service is a forgotten quality.

Are their exceptions, possibly. But what I describe is rampant in the airline industry.

On this most recent trip we were told in advance there would be no empty seats. We were implored to take only one carry on bag and we were told what the dimensions should be.

As I was seated in an aisle seat I could watch what my fellow travelers were doing. I could not believe the size of bags people described as “carry on.” I was annoyed that they ignored the pleas for small bags. I saw people with a bag under the seat in front, a bag twice as large as was permitted in the overhead, thereby insuring that a late arriving passenger would have zero space to store his bag, and then they would also have a “purse” or briefcase on their lap.

As if this lack of consideration was not enough, the woman in line ahead of me when I boarded asked for TWO seat belt extensions from the attendant. And I can attest she needed both of them. Seeing that I was not seated next to her brought a peace to me and I decided all my other complaints were “small stuff.”

My conclusion is that the airlines have no one to blame but themselves. They sell tickets for the same seat in a huge range of prices. So someone always gets screwed. They announce carry on sizes but do not enforce the rule. They talk about insisting seriously obese people purchase two seats, let me know when you actually see that happen.

I would tell you to take the train, or the bus, but I think those modes of transportation are having similar problems.

As usual, I miss the old days in so many ways.

The writer welcomes comments on the subject.

Please email comments to jacksonblair@gmail.com or

post them on my blog at

http://www.blair-notes.blogspot.com

Ranting & Raving

Notes of Concern…

                      …Jackson Blair

RANTING & RAVING

You think everyone is busy “texting?”

Well, that shows what you know!

Everybody is actually busy “ranting.”

It seems the whole world is ranting. Our president is ranting that his opponents don’t want to pass his programs. Of course, he is correct. That is the way governments work. One philosophy against another. His job is to find compromise, to cajole, and to persuade. Ranting is not in his job description. But lately he has been doing some ranting and raving.

The Republican opposition is ranting and raving that the president’s health care plan, known as Obamacare, costs too much, isn’t any good, and is opposed by most of the people it is meant to benefit. Of course, they have an argument that supports these views. Ranting, however, is not helpful here. Americans want the opposition to be open to compromise, to work with the president and his party. Yet Nancy Pelosi was reported to have put the president on mute when he called with ideas; Speaker Boehner makes nice with Obama, then makes not nice with Obama. Then both go out and rant and rave to the press.
Now some Democrats are abandoning the president, and Tea Party Republicans are abandoning anyone in the House or Senate who does not agree with them. And, yes, ranting and raving at one another.

Senator John McCain wrote an article that was published in the Russian paper Pravada in which he ranted and raved against Russian President Putin. This followed an article Putin wrote for American papers in which he questioned our exceptionalism.

Bashir Assad ranted and raved that he had no chemical weapons, then did a complete turnaround and said he would give us a list.

Vladimir Putin said Syria had to reduce her arms. But while Putin was saying that, Putin was supplying those arms to Syria.

At the end of the day, the President is probably thinking that the idea that most Americans don’t like Obamacare cannot be correct because, after all, most Americans voted to return him to office.

As the sun sets on that very same day, the Republicans are probably thinking that their job every day is to convince those wayward citizens who voted to return the President to office that they made a serious mistake.

Politics is fluid.  Daily events change the playing field. Both parties have to work each day to win the confidence of a majority of the people. Neither political party is even close to successful on this goal today.

It is a fact of life that every president’s popularity changes in the course of his last years in office. No president gets to keep his majority popularity after the last election for the next four years. His popularity either rises or it falls. And this is how it should be as it is based on a continuing relationship with the people and a requirement to present good, workable plans for the country.

As you get older, you sit back and look at these kinds of things and put them in perspective derived from years of living. You find it all very sad. You hate to open the newspaper in the morning or to watch the television news. So you rely on your own good instincts, the history you have seen in your life, and you make a determination as to how well the current leaders are doing.

I have done this. Here is where I come out:

Leaders in all fields are behaving like spoiled children.

No national leader should abandon dignity to rant and rave.

There isn’t an adult in most of these rooms when major decisions are being made. They are all children.

We should give all the ranters and ravers a “time out,” just like parents do with wayward children, until they learn to play nicely, and we should ship them all off to the island of Elba where their opportunity to do damage would be severely reduced.

In our country we have got to stop putting “8x10 glossy” handsome men and women in office who have little experience and show no dedication to America.

In our country we have got to stop returning politicians to the Congress because they remember our birthday or send us Christmas cards or because they are “nice.”

We have to begin to look beyond politicians who have velvet voices and can mesmerize us with their speeches.

It is time to look hard at resumes, lists of truly applicable experiences where performance can be measured, and to seek for at least a modicum of patriotism in each and every representative of ours at all levels. And perhaps, more importantly, lets do our homework before we cast a vote. Anyone representing us should be doing exactly that and if they are not we need to bring them home and send someone else. And we keep doing this until we get it right.

The fate of the Republic stands on that approach.

The writer welcomes your comments, ideas and suggestions.

Please take a moment to share your views on the topic by emailing

 jacksonblair@gmail.com or leaving a comment on his blog at

www.blair-notes.blogspot.com

For further information:  jacksonblair@gmail.com