Civil Rights - A Bigger Picture

After years of legislation that never made it to a vote in the State Senate, same-sex marriage is available with all of the (state) benefits it confers. It was a long process but we got there. I have written somewhat extensively about this topic not just for myself, but for the children of same-sex couples and for young people struggling to come to terms with their own sexuality and sexual orientation. My country has always struggled with civil rights issues. Slavery, the right of women to vote and own property in their own right, racial equality, the right to unionize, the right of women to birth control and the right of women and their doctors to privately decide to terminate a pregnancy, the rights of women to work in a place free from sexual harassment and the right for same-sex couples to marry just scratches the surface. In some cases it took a civil war. In some cases it involved many years of marches, letter writing campaigns and appeals of cases to the Supreme Court. Hard work can pay off.

There is more work to do, though. Achievements made in the last 50-75 years are being threatened. There are elected officials committed to destroying a social contract by radically changing or repealing legislation that established Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and a host of federal and state benefits and rights that most of us began to take for granted. A fiscal crisis caused by squandering federal budget surpluses to start a military adventure in Iraq, among other terrible public policy decisions, makes it easier for enemies of dignity and freedom to claim we cannot afford to maintain, much less improve, access to health care, fully funded secondary education or a long list of other programs that are relied upon by some our most vulnerable fellow citizens.

Everyone with a paycheck and a checkbook knows that spending more than one earns cannot go on forever. Federal tax policy ignores this reality. We are sold the often repeated line that we can grow more prosperous by limiting taxation on the wealthiest households and corporations but, frankly, that is simply not true now, if it ever was in the first place. Modest increases (or repealing tax breaks that are unnecessary) in taxes do not make us a Socialist nation. They make us a responsible nation that can well afford to take care of the most vulnerable among us.

It's a choice. What kind of communities do we want to build or maintain? For me, I want to know that my Mom's next-door neighbor at 90 years old and entirely dependent on Social Security and Medicare can live in dignity and remain in her home. I want to know other vulnerable people who have committed no crimes and ask for very little beyond roof over their heads and food in the house get those things. Many devoutly religious people know that most mainline religions ask us to remember that we are our brothers' keepers. They also know that we cannot trust individuals to do the things their religions teach them. To me, that is when our federal government needs to step in and make hard choices about taxes (and, yes, spending) so we achieve some stability and keep our promises. Philanthropy is a big part of keeping some institutions alive but it is optional. Helping others retain their dignity requires more than lip service. It does not matter whether the check comes directly from me to them or that I leave my checkbook at home and pay slightly higher taxes. The issue is about stability. When we get so disconnected from the reality of others' lives, it is easy to forget that people with substantial wealth can, through a rational tax policy, well afford to stabilize and guarantee that market-based capitalism is not destroyed by a social safety net. It means we are a pragmatic, caring, understanding citizenry that pays its bills. That is hardly radical.

Enough Is Not Necessarily Enough

I am not joking when I ask this: when can we individually say to ourselves we are "enough" in our private and public lives or whether the judgment must come from others based on their own standards over which I had no input? I'm not talking about whether we made enough widgets for an employer. It goes far deeper than that. I wish there was a formula or even an online calculator (like they have for determining how much you can afford to borrow for a home mortgage) that would give individuals some sense of their value. It would probably have to start with what you have to offer in terms of intellect, time, money, age, compassion, physicality and would probably have to end with what you should offer given your life circumstances and opportunities. Most people - unless they are complete sociopaths who don't give a damn - want to think that what they do and who they are measures up. Most people who value their privacy (and I confess I don't care to spend much energy on people who don't value their privacy) are somewhat handicapped when it comes to turning one's life trajectory over to someone else in an effort to determine to what extent they need to re-think their priorities or simply do more or be more than they already are. Sometimes I ask myself which David does this person or group want or need me to be today? Nice David who asks for nothing? Hardworking David? Generous David? Tell-it-like-it-is David? Compliant David? Conversational dinner party guest David? Political David? Apolitical David? Defensive David? Self-assured David? Crisp, breezy, funny David? I can do all of them authentically without performance anxiety but it strikes me that very few people beyond my closest family members, friends or partner ever appear to wonder what I need them to be at a given moment. I think it's cheesy to ask or imply that there are times when I actually do need a handful of people to consider what I need but there are times I wish I could get away with telling them. The farther I drill down, it gets more superficial and more personal. I have been told I am too rigid, usually by people who are unable to develop any sort of discernible value system. I have been told I don't respond quickly enough to non-business voice mails on my mobile phone, usually by friends I love but who don't realize I get tired like the rest of the world. I have been told I am too thin, usually by people who could probably stand to drop a fair amount of weight. I have been told by a casual acquaintance I should let him become my personal stylist. That happened to be a day when I thought I had done a pretty good job on my own, thank-you-very-much. In each case, I could respond in a way that would probably be very hurtful to the messenger. I freely admit I enjoy thinking of responses that would shut them down but I do listen and usually eat a shit sandwich and give a polite response which typically involves yessing someone to death. The common thread that runs through all of these little encounters is that on some level or another, I am not "enough" yet. I suppose I could just dismiss all of it and become a self-satisfied jerk but that is not who I want to be and, of course, I realize I have as many character defects as anyone else, even if they are different. I'm guessing that much of it involves the perception of a fair number of people that I am too privileged and therefore insulated from the reality of "ordinary" lives. (Actually, I have been told that by someone who hasn't even seen or spoken to me in nearly 40 years. I have to thank Bill Gates and Steve Jobs for making it so easy to use email as a form of drive-by shooting.) Rightly or wrongly, I interpret that as telling me that my opinion does not matter because it comes from a place they don't understand as well as they might like. I'll admit I am privileged but I can't bring myself to sincerely apologize for it because I think I earned a fair amount of it and I am not as privileged as many others but do not run around assuming a more privileged person could not relate to my own life experience. Perhaps there will come a day when I stop thinking about whether I am enough and won't fall into the trap of being smug and dismissive or unable to accept legitimate criticism. I know a few people like that and they will never get an invitation to any social or other event over which I have any control. By the way, I generally think that most people I know on more than a superficial level are enough, sometimes much more than enough, and for those I don't know as well, I try to suspend judgment until it is obvious that they are or are not. I know that sounds self-serving but after spending as much time as I do thinking about the issue, I think I get to at least say something nice about myself.

Is it possible to listen on the Internet?

I suppose that the answer to the question posed in the title suggests the answer. I am not convinced that "listening" is easy based on text. I have run into this problem more than once and each time, I got it wrong. There is too much left unsaid. It's almost impossible to interrupt at the right moment to explain oneself. There will always be lingering questions about what the sender meant and what the recipient thought. When I am trying to be my best self I try to follow my own advice: it does not matter what your intentions were when you wrote to someone; what really matters is how it is perceived by the recipient. That may sound "politically correct" to some, but most of what people complain about being "politically correct" is more properly described as polite and loving. If the internet exchange is purely transactional or otherwise socially innocuous, it does not matter as much. If the exchange is personal, email is a poor substitute for a telephone call or airline ticket. You can hug a loved one even when you are angry with them. As a person is writing, you won't know if they were shedding a tear as they did so. If you don't know, you are in no position to ask why and that question you did not know to ask might be the key to understanding everything the person is feeling because it prompts a question or two. Technology permits so much back-and-forth. (I won't say "communication" because I have come to believe that there are far too many grades of communication to call every keystroke communication in its proper context.) Often, it seems like a substitute for real communication, a way of saying we are communicating without actually communicating. I'm working on this. I'll continue to get it wrong sometimes. I am grateful for the technology that permits various forms of communication than would otherwise be available but it cannot take the place of the real thing when it comes to one's closest friends and family.

Public Sector Collective Bargaining

Having spent nearly 13 years in public employment as a manager - specifically as an advocate in contract and disciplinary arbitrations and on the negotiating team for three rounds of collective bargaining with public employee unions - and another dozen working for unions in a similar capacity, I can say with some authority that collective bargaining rights are perhaps the most stabilizing part of labor relations in the public sector. To this day, I still find it odd that so many of us view people who work for a democratically elected government to be worse than private sector employees who answer only to shareholders of corporations or, in truly private enterprises, to no one but their bosses.

Teaching is a good example. I think many of us forget that teacher salaries - with some exceptions - have traditionally lagged behind those of occupations requiring the same (or less) formal education and the real bargain most teachers made at the time they were hired was to get job security, good benefits and a decent pension in exchange for accepting less salary. Some - particularly the brightest, best educated women in the 1950s through the early 1980s - had few choices if they chose to work outside the home. Less than 10% of women earned a bachelor's degree in the late 1950s. Their choices were generally limited to teaching, nursing or secretarial work. Let's not forget that Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court, graduated at the top of her law school class at Stanford University in the 1950s. The only private sector work she could get at a top law firm was as a secretary. She had more opportunities in the public sector, took them, worked hard and became the most important swing vote in the Supreme Court for over 20 years.

The same is true for other types of public employment. It's a fair trade. If we now want to to change that social contract that has existed in some states for more than 50 years and individualize negotiations with every teacher, whether a new hire or a 30 year veteran, your kid's art teacher will make a lot less than the math teacher even if your child wants to be an artist, not an accountant. Your football coach will make a lot more than your English teacher even if you see a budding poet at your dinner table. Those who think that is acceptable often speak about unregulated market economies being the perfect 'invisible hand' that ensures compensation matches the value of the employee to the enterprise. If that is true, why did so many of us decide that multi-million dollar bonuses to people employed in finance were grotesque? There were no relevant regulations on compensation for most finance jobs. Those employees knew that they either performed and contributed to creating profits or were out on the street. Personally, and I have said this before in other posts, I think it is silly, insulting and counterproductive to broadbrush an entire industry as being filled with incompetent, undeserving employees, whatever the industry. There will always be bad teachers. There will always be bad finance employees. In most teaching jobs, there is a three year probationary period before achieving tenure. You can tell pretty quickly if a newly hired teacher can deliver and terminate them at will if they cannot get up to speed. It may take a bit longer to locate the bad hires in finance and, other than a severance package, they have few rights to challenge their termination even after 20 or 30 years of employment.

You can bet on one thing: if you attempt to strip non-managerial public employees of their right to collectively bargain and get a due process hearing before firing them, there will be chaos and it won't be primarily of their making. If you think your teacher earns too much, shadow them for a day. Having grown up with one, I can tell you that good teachers get up at 5:30, are exhausted by 4:00 p.m. and after dinner, most are not watching television. They are grading papers, fine-tuning lesson plans and do not get to sleep by 10:00 p.m. It is certainly true that I experienced some really terrible teachers in junior high school and high school. The blame rests squarely on the school administration for not identifying them early and terminating them or being squeamish about seeking their termination and letting an arbitrator decide whether their decision holds water or doesn't. Not for nothing, but my mother's salary went a long way towards helping me end up in a tax bracket most Americans would find pretty satisfactory. I have paid more federal and state taxes than many people my age and although I don't consider myself wealthy, I do not think I deserve a tax break.

This last couple of years is so full of craziness and shifting allegiances it's hard to get one's arms around the whole thing. First, demonize the finance industry. Three cheers for the common man! Then, let's go after public employees. They are lazy, stupid and are not like the rest of us. Three cheers for the people who toil in the private sector with no job security! Mandated health care coverage for people in their 20s and 30s? They'll never use it and just subsidize those who are older and use too many resources. Three cheers for the young and healthy!

If people care about other hardworking people or those who have very limited choices and few resources, agree to cough up a little more in taxes or raise taxes on people who can best afford it. This is not about charity and don't forget that most families making under $50,000 per year effectively pay no federal taxes at all.

The vast majority of us would have to admit that we want excellent public services, no matter what our income. There is nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong when we're not willing to pay for it or negotiate with a union over the ability to pay for increases in salary or benefits.

Please don't tell us you did not realize that many states were headed toward a fiscal crisis long before the recession hit. They were borrowing money to pay for day-to-day expenses with no assurance that tax revenues would rise quickly enough to pay it back. Meanwhile, our sage leaders decided to grant wage increases and improved benefits to themselves and public employees. New York State counted on free flowing tax revenues from those working in finance to cover the State's obligations. Forget party affiliation. The worst spending blunders came from a Democratic-controlled Assembly and a Republican-controlled Senate. I certainly love the term "tax and spend" liberal a lot more than "borrow and spend" conservative. They are the ones who say 'vote for me, I won't increase your taxes'. What they don't say is that eventually taxes will have to be increased or your garbage won't be picked up, your streets won't be plowed, your schools will have outdated textbooks and your teachers will end up spending hundreds of dollars of their own salaries to subsidize your child's education. Honestly. Who is more responsible? Is it the candidate who says we have to pay as we go or the one who says we have to borrow as we go?

How about some common sense: To States: Borrow to build your bridge (even if it goes nowhere). Pay cash for services. Not enough money to pay cash for essential services? Increase taxes or find a way to make delivering services more efficient. Tell the union at negotiating time that you are broke and can't afford wage or benefit increases and propose cuts. If the union screams about it, make sure you have a system where a neutral arbitrator is appointed with a legislative mandate that he or she cannot impose a contract that has a potential to bankrupt the state. Impose layoffs if you have to but understand the consequences of doing so which include, among other things, paying unemployment benefits and filling up emergency rooms with people who lack health insurance for primary care.

It's no different from the advice a rational family would give: Borrow to renovate your house if it will increase its value. Borrow for post-secondary education for yourself and kids because it is the best investment you can make. Pay cash for everything else. Not enough cash? No flat screen TV. No vacations beyond your back yard. No eating out. No ordering in. It's actually pretty simple, right? Sure, this is a political game, but at its root is really about the value we place on people who teach kids, protect us and help lock up criminals and rescue you from a house fire that might even be the result of your own negligence. If you have a specific number in mind for the salaries of these folks, let us know. The last time I checked, contracts get signed by at least two parties - the union and the employer. If you think the employer made a bad deal, let them know. I promise you that eliminating collective bargaining won't do a thing to make it cheaper to provide essential services. When you see the foreclosure notice and badly peeling paint on the house of the teacher who inspires your kid and wrote him a recommendation that helped get him into college and who took a 20% pay cut because she had no collective bargaining rights and based her purchase on a social contract that she was reasonably certain would not radically change, don't complain that the value of your own house is diminished because the neighborhood is perceived as going to Hell in a handbasket.

Egyptian Autonomy

A friend on Facebook suggested a link to the following URL. It's worth reading. My comments after having read many posts may sound like absolute drivel but you can skip them if you want.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/20112611181593381.html

The more posts I read, the more convinced I am about all of the missed opportunities to admit our lack of understanding of other nations, cultures, religions, creeds and how they are intertwined with economic, political and social systems that grow from them. It seems to me that we could easily have studied our own history to understand the Middle East at critical moments in its history. Many of the first European settlers in what is now the United States claimed they were motivated by a desire to guarantee themselves the religious freedom they lacked in Europe. I am certain that there was a percentage of those early settlers who were very sincere about their motivation. I am also certain that there were many early settlers who envisioned building an economic system that better suited their spiritual beliefs and a political system that would be more consistent with their faith.
The reality is these early settlers accomplished very few of their stated goals. They imported existing European common law on property ownership, the rights of women and until the middle part of the 18th century, tolerated the notion that the nations of their birth considered them as merely colonizing land in the name of the U.K., the Netherlands, and other countries with no true democracy as we understand it today. Religious sanctuaries were certainly built but what we now understand as our Constitution's protection of the free exercise of religion and the prohibition on the government's establishment of religion was not in place for at least 150 years after the Mayflower's arrival in what is now Provincetown, MA.

These new colonists realized they needed to develop trading relationships with the nations of their birth in order to survive and until the second half of the 18th century lacked the military power to resist European domination. Of course, this includes newly created slave trading that forever changed Africa and what became the United States. By aligning themselves with British, French, Dutch and other nations, the colonists cleverly exploited old hatreds and used the militaries of those nations to protect themselves. Once addicted to those trading relationships and the material wealth they created on both sides of the Atlantic, it didn't require much imagination to understand that the socio-political ties could not be easily severed.

It seems to me that modern revolutionaries reject the notion of voting with one's feet as early U.S. settlers did and with few exceptions, when governments do not answer their people, they will eventually be replaced. Other than European pilgrims to the U.S., the main exception to staying put and not 'voting with one's feet' are European Jews, who learned early their survival in Europe depended on a strategy of elevating the importance of education, the development of portable skill sets that permitted them to pull up stakes when it was clear they would otherwise be divested of whatever wealth they had amassed or killed. Their ability to move, adapt, offer necessary services and preserve their traditions and religion left them permanent outsiders wherever they settled because, as most of us know, the most portable, critical professions and endeavors were ultimately more lucrative than the endeavors of the agrarians around them. Of course, we know how well that strategy worked in the long term.

When compared to the colonization of North America by Europeans, it's not difficult to understand the similarities between the U.S. and many Middle Eastern countries, particularly as it relates to the importance of religion, attempting to avoid European domination and maintain cultures and value systems thought to be existentially important. Religion played a key role, as did the necessity to develop trading relationships amongst themselves and with other nations. Skipping over the next 150 years from the U.S.'s political independence from European powers, the West's insatiable demand for crude oil inflated the potential of Middle Eastern military and political power, bringing with it wealth but not the kind of independence it sought to preserve. European and U.S. businesses flourished in the Middle East and, once addicted to the wealth that came from trading with the West, Western nations came to dominate the Middle East's political independence and autonomy. The 20th century is littered with American and European involvement in determining the leadership of individual Middle Eastern nations, often preferring dictatorships and sales of military equipment to cut out the middle man in negotiations over crude oil and the future of Israel. The resentments of Middle Eastern citizens inevitably led to protests and in some cases, revolutions.

It should come as no surprise that Egyptians have been watching Middle East conflicts and, despite their peaceful end to decades of wars and skirmishes with Israel, do not want a dictator or to be bought off for a few billion dollars that apparently have not trickled down to its poorest citizens. We played a large role in creating an environment that has already led to chaos in other Middle Eastern nations. If we haven't learned any lessons at this point, we better start to do so. Mubarak may be considered a long term "friend" but if his citizens want him out, the only answer that will save us in the long run is to either help the Egyptian people pursue peaceful, democratic change or stay out of their way by acknowledging Mubarak must go and permitting their autonomy and will to govern their future. They already know we will support Israel in the event a new Egypt decides to attack Israel. I, for one, believe that ordinary Egyptians will give the U.S. a great deal of credit for permitting the peoples' will to be done and will find ways to punish us if we don't. The United States slogged through years of war to win its independence. We should understand that other nations, whether toppling a dictator or king or taking other actions to improve their collective lot in life, deserve the same respect we demanded for ourselves in the late 18th century. An apology might not hurt, either. I think it's important to add that this involves listening carefully to what is being said by ordinary Egyptians. As with any other issue involving human beings, listening is essential. It is why I started this whole blog in the first place.

Active Listening

My best friend for nearly 30 years launched his own consulting firm a couple of years back. Its focus is to help companies evaluate their existing business models and take better advantage of their strengths and minimize whatever weaknesses they might face. He has a natural gift of putting people at ease, shrugging off things and people that cause the rest of us to line up at the local pharmacy to buy antacids and is annoyingly, effortlessly good looking. He truly loves his wife and two daughters and, aside from my partner, is the most reliable person I have ever met. Of course, his life has not been perfect by any means, including issues with parents, siblings and, more notably, not always being taken as seriously as he should be. Some skip over the Ivy League education, the resume, the hard work and succumb to jealousy and treat him like the classic dumb blonde. With those blinders on, they don't realize why he knows he is going to sell them on his approach. He is actively - very actively - listening to them. They have no idea what is cooking inside of his head because they are too busy trying to figure out why they are drawn to him. Some will never know.

I see some parallels in our philosophy today that I did not see until recently. We both place a great deal of value in listening closely to what others say, how they say it and why. When I launched this little blog, it grew out of a desire to start conversations on topics that are often political and controversial. (I haven't done a thing to advertise it and have no idea if it would be popular if I did.) This post is more about foundation, principles and style than who wins the argument or sells his product.

Recently, we were writing back and forth about intelligence, social grace and how it is that each of us are in the early stages of starting our own practices (mine in law, his in business realignment) that have been, so far, gratifying and objectively successful. He suggested that what I consider to be my own oddities might actually be gifts. He always manages to say something no one else would think about, much less articulate, and turn (at least my) oddities into attributes. He believes I am much more socially graceful than I think I am and believes I am empathetic or sympathetic, intelligent and humbler than I do. He is also an expert in telling me I am full of crap when I lament my shortcomings. That's what good friends do.

To some extent, I think he is right and I would tell him the same thing about himself. I am usually polite and can summon up the energy to exhibit some social grace although I think politeness and social grace bleed together and for a person who is as generally shy as I am, I cannot say that whatever social grace I have is primarily rooted in shyness or something else. I like leaving very light footprints wherever I go although I don't always achieve it.

For me, trying to be more polite and actively listening to others is about avoiding conflict, especially in my personal life, because my professional life is almost always about dealing with conflict even when I am not the person at the center of the conflict. If intelligence plays a role, I'll take the compliment but I think it is not so much about native intelligence. If I had a nickel for every intelligent person who lacked a molecule of social grace, I would be happily working for free. At least for me, it is mostly about two things that I think are often underappreciated - truly active listening and having read enough books to turn an otherwise unsatisfying conversation into something distracting and interesting.

When I am able to tell someone that despite their troubles they remind me of a character in a novel where everything works out fine in the end, I walk away thanking my mother for telling me to read everything I could get my hands on. Doing that, appreciating the sincere efforts of others without regard to their immediate success and keeping an open mind make life a great deal easier. Let's not forget smiling and making the person with whom you are speaking feel like they are the only person in the room. It's not phony. It's smart.

We both go to a fair number of rubber chicken dinners with rooms full of people we barely know. 20+ years ago I would have been terrified. Today, all I truly dislike about those events are the bad food and mean drunks. I have been asked many times about my background when at these sorts of gatherings and have learned to keep it to a couple of sentences. To the extent I am perceived as "lucky" in my solo practice, the people with whom I speak seem to think I have some social or class advantage. Note to parents: I think it has more do with having decent table manners and what people consider to be my unaccented English which, of course, is silly because what I believe they really mean is that I sound far more patrician to them than I actually am and it is generally because I have a relatively flat, Midwestern accent. All English speakers have an accent. Mine just happens to sound more standard on television.

I continue to believe my best skill is to leave an event after speaking to 5-10 people in any depth never having revealed very much about myself. I don't think the people with whom I speak at these events even realize they learned nothing very personal about me because they are hungry to be heard or, more specifically, are hungry to have someone really listen to them. Those I know very well already have all the personal information they need about me and if they need more, they ask. Whether I tell is another story. One colleague who knows me pretty well, including aspects of my private life, asked me, quite audibly - at a table of 10, nine of whom were perfect strangers - whether gay men in long-term relationships were generally monogamous. I was more than a bit shocked at first but I knew it was not meant to embarrass me. I deeply value my privacy but would never hide my sexual orientation because I believe it is important that people understand that every profession includes lesbians and gay men and am a firm believer in being out and moving on quickly to a more interesting topic. I answered the question at the same volume he asked it, told him I could not speak for others but that I was monogamous after 17 years with the same guy and then we talked about other things. No one at the table flinched. Perhaps it was because my colleague is far, far more prominent than I am in my field and if he felt comfortable with me and was my friend, they should be, too. If I am right, I am delighted. If I am wrong, that's fine, too.

Ironically, the best conversations I have with strangers start with professional discussions and end, if they ask, with the person finding out I am gay. They are the people more likely to contact me on a professional basis. Merit first; irrelevant personal information second. If you flip the conversation around, the entire thing becomes about me and the focus is completely different. I don't want any conversation to be entirely about me. We cannot tackle any issues or solve any problems if all that I am is a member of a small demographic group with a decent resume.

If you have read this far, thank you. If you have a business in need of realignment, my best friend is your guy. He's an excellent listener and radiantly energetic and smart.