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Tuesday, May 25, 2010
022 - Attention graduates: Can you still make a difference
Most folks my age cannot recall what was said during their high school graduations. But I can remember one thing from mine. More on that later.
For over 40 years, I have been writing columns called messages for graduates. Plus having been a graduation speaker, it is an appropriate topic this time of year.
Almost every one of these other columns was concerned about jobs and the economy.
Instead, today, it is appropriate to go back to that message delivered to my 74 classmates and me in 1964 in a stuffy gym in Elgin, Iowa.
A future senator was our speaker. He said we could change the world.
Change the world?
This is a very hopeful message. So how does one change the world? Find a cure for cancer? Start a company or a charity or a movement, which will improve mankind?
Perhaps you could affect somebody’s life who will go on to do wonderful things?
Let’s go to the core. Let’s talk about ethics. I am talking about you, as the graduate, looking in the mirror and deciphering what is looking back at you.
This is a big deal. Ethics are needed more today by our graduates than ever before.
My favorite definition of ethics is how you behave when no one is watching.
Another example is what a wise old guy named B. T. McManus once told me: “Bill, if you always tell the truth, it is amazing how easy it is to remember what you said.” McManus founded the vast Bi-Rite Drug Store chain in Wyoming 60 years ago.
Over time, you learn there are absolutes in life.
Ethics. Morals. Standards. Rules. What are your guiding principles?
Are graduates too young to contemplate such a concept? I doubt that.
Everyone needs a roadmap. And a roadmap defined by ethics and morals can be the best tool you can have to ensure that you enjoy a successful life.
In my pro-business messages to grads before, I have talked about the following:
• Find wonderful mentors. These folks will help you more than anyone else.
• Good experience often comes from bad experiences.
• Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly the first time.
• It is not a choice between what you know or who you know. It will come down to what you know AND who you know.
That will suffice for my business advice in this column.
Back to how to improve the inner you.
As a young man, it was easy for me to adopt the slogan that “everything is relative.” As an older person, you learn from a lifetime of experience that this is absolutely not true. There is a difference between right or wrong. And good and evil. And just and unjust.
The Wyoming Legislature even adopted an official code during its last session, which dealt with such ethics. Called the Code of the West, it dealt with concepts such as ”when you make a promise, keep it” and “always finish what your start.”
During my business life, I admit to succumbing to something that I call “situational ethics.” As you look back on your life, you find there were times when you let people down. And you let yourself down.
Hopefully a person learns from these mistakes.
Not long ago I heard a wonderful talk by Fr. Robert Spitzer, the former president of Gonzaga University, who reports most people have one of two kinds of personalities.
He called one the consumptive personality and the other, the compassionate personality.
In our family, we think I have the former and my wife has the latter.
The former type of person usually can be defined as “all about me.” The latter is “all about you.”
I am trying hard to change mine to the compassionate kind. As Nancy says, that person will have a lot more friends than the former.
But the lesson here is huge. The compassionate person will truly make a difference by being kind and concerned about his or her fellow citizen. The consumptive person pretty much only worries about how he or she is doing.
Obviously there are various grades of each, but a real goal in life is to try to be more compassionate. And that compassion comes with the practice of high morals and ethics.
If you do become compassionate, then, even if you are not able to change the world, you sure can change yourself.
And that will make a heckuva difference.
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Wednesday, May 19, 2010
021 - The long winter of our discontent (2009-2010)
Here in the second half of May, 2010, in Wyoming, we are basking in warm weather and blue skies. The only snow we can see is glistening in the sunlight on the nearby mountains.
Snow? Yes, lots of snow. Tons of snow. But for the time being, it is hanging around up there. Soon it will be down here, but please not too fast.
I started writing this column on Wednesday, May 12, with a pretty glum look on my face. It was cold. The roads were closed. And it was still snowing outside. We were in our eighth month of this longest winter on record and well, like most Wyomingites, I had had enough.
That snowstorm dumped about 22 inches at my house in Lander. It snowed 10 inches on Cheyenne. And various amounts in-between around the state.
My glumness prompted a search to verify if this was, indeed, the longest winter in our state’s history.
After spending 40 winters in Lander (a famous place for extreme winter), most of my friends agreed that this was the most stretched out winter season they had ever seen. So that was settled.
It is often joked that we have four seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter and Summer. Some other folks suggested that instead of Summer, we have Mud or Construction or July 4th as the fourth season.
This long “winter of our discontent” started with record low temperatures of 20 degrees last Oct. 2. Casper, Sheridan and Douglas also had all-time lowest temps around that time.
But then the state was buried under a huge, wet and heavy snowfall. By Oct. 5, I was writing about how my trees were all breaking. My column recalled me getting out of bed at 1130p and staggering outside to shake my trees, which were breaking under the onslaught.
At this point, most of you readers probably want to abandon me. You’ve had enough of this 2009-2010 winter. You don’t want any more.
Hopefully there is a punch line here that you will find interesting. Be patient.
Between those heavy October snows and that last wintry blast in May, well, Wyoming folks have grown irritable and impatient. That is, except for those hearty snowmobilers and X-C Skiers, but that’s another story.
Nancy and I even made two trips south in our small motorhome over those eight winter months but to no avail. We endured record January colds in Texas including a blizzard in Dallas. We fought our way through three blizzards in Arizona earlier this month.
My friend Jeff Wacker told me during that Dallas trip that we are in a period of “Global Wierding.”
This refers to a Twilight Zone time between what we used to consider normal and what is going to occur as a result of climate change.
Not sure I buy any of this, but something significant is occurring.
If you think our weather is bad, have you looked at a worldwide inventory of weird stuff that has been happening so far in 2010? These were not just weather events.
It started with catastrophic earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. Then one in China and another in Taiwan. Then the world has endured the Iceland volcano.
Here in the USA, our citizens experienced terrible floods in Nashville and tornados in Oklahoma City. And the year is barely 4.5 months into itself.
Lots of friends and relatives have contacted me about Yellowstone. Is it going to blow? Several are planning trips to see it before it blows its top.
Well, friends, so far so good with the world’s oldest national park.
But I can be a superstitious person. Who would have thought an earthquake of 8.8 magnitude would hit Chile? Look it up. That magnitude was one of the five most powerful in the world since 1900.
And that volcano in Iceland? Another news report says that a much bigger volcano next door to it usually blows later. It would be so huge, it could disrupt the entire planet. Is that coming later in 2010?
It is easy to sit here and whine big-time about how long this past winter has been. And not just for folks in Wyoming. People all over America have endured and endured and endured.
So what is in store for us next, both on a weather front, or more importantly, on the Global Wierding front?
As a long-time newsman, this looks like an exciting time.
As a jaded old guy sort of thinking about a calm retirement, frankly, I am getting nervous.
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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
020 - Three questions for 2010 Wyoming governor candidates
This is the time of year when governor candidates go around the state and shake hands and rub shoulders and try to impress folks.
As someone who participated in over 60 of these meet and greet events during the 2002 governor’s race, I have some experience with this drill.
So it seemed appropriate if I could help out our voters by giving them some suggested important questions where we deserve to hear answers from these candidates.
But first, let me list some questions that, while important, do not need to be asked again. Trust me, they have been asked them 200 times already:
a. Are you an NRA member and do you support gun rights? They will all try to out-do the other by saying how long they have been an NRA member.
b. Are you pro life? They will say they are. You may want to press them with questions about the sanctity of the life of a baby that might result from rape?
c. Will you work to limit growth in government? If you insist on asking this, you should to seek specific examples. Anyone running for this office should be able to pinpoint how he or she will cut specific budgets or specific government jobs. If they can’t then they are not really serous.
Now, comes the fun part.
The following are the questions that really deserve to be asked of someone who is running for governor. You will notice that in each case, we have included follow-up questions.
For some reason, the citizens (and often reporters) will not ask the follow-up question. Do not forget to ask: when and how did you come to this conclusion? Can you give me an example? What personal experience do you have with this issue? When? Where?
Here are three questions:
1. Severance tax. Revenues from severance taxes on coal, natural gas, oil and other minerals provide the bulk of our state’s revenue. You candidates should be intimately familiar with how our tax system works and what options are available to the state. Thus, in topsy-turvy economic times, are you willing to consider raising severance tax rates or modifying our system of collection of such taxes on our minerals?
Have you made an effort to see how Sarah Palin addressed this important question three years ago in Alaska? Are you willing to ask corporate officers of these out of state energy companies to personally guarantee the amounts they claim they owe for severance taxes? Do you buy into Ronald Reagan’s mantra of “trust, but verify” when it comes to Wyoming’s honor system of collecting severance taxes?
Are you willing to step up the number of state audits of severance tax payments, when history has shown that Wyoming benefits greatly when this occurs?
2. Graying of population. You might think this question is specifically suited for folks over 50, but not so. So here goes: sometime during your term as governor, Wyoming will become the “oldest” state in the country. Some folks view this with alarm, do you? What specific programs have you come up with to take advantage of having so many “experienced “ people in our state?
With our population so elderly, do you have any specific health initiatives tailored for this population? Have you thought about a program to recruit former residents and Wyoming natives and their families back to our state as a way of bringing more younger and middle-aged people in the state?
3. Interstate 80 tolls – Gigantic amounts of freight travel across America from coast to coast. Interstate 80 in Wyoming is a major route because of mountains both north and south of I-80. Thus, this pinch point has resulted in up to 6,000 semi’s per day traveling through our state.
Do you agree with outgoing Gov. Dave Freudenthal that it would be shortsighted for Wyoming to act alone by putting tolls on I-80? If you do, what is your plan to raise the $4 billion projected in the next 30 years to keep that highway in good repair?
Would you consider an increase in gasoline taxes to pay for it? Do you agree that this is even a problem?
We can think of many more good questions to ask candidates and will probably share those in a future column.
But for now, if you can get concrete answers out of candidates to talk openly and with new ideas about these three questions, then Wyoming, the electorate and even the candidates, themselves, will all benefit.
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Saturday, May 01, 2010
019 - Would Wyoming ever try the Arizona Experiment?
When you cross the border into Arizona, you turn your clocks back an hour. Some critics of the state’s tough new immigration law think you should also turn the calendar back 150 years.
When we visited the Grand Canyon state last week, many of our friends urged us to be careful.
But my wife Nancy demurred that we probably did not fit the “profile” being described as the reason this new law was enacted by its legislature and signed by its governor.
Arizona is doing when it feels the federal government has failed to do – crack down on illegal immigration. In a nutshell, their new law allows law enforcement officers to demand identification of anyone they suspect could be an undocumented alien.
What Arizonans are doing, though, just does not register with most Wyomingites and the reason is that our state is the “most white” state in the union.
With only 540,000 people, our state is not being over-run by illegal alien humans from a foreign country.
Conservative estimates place the number of illegal alien human beings in Arizona at 450,000 people. Wow, what a gigantic number. This is equal to three-fourths of Wyoming’s population, and yet is only fraction of what it estimated to be 13 million illegals across the USA.
The new law dominated the news while we were there. Their governor proudly said that calls praising their action outnumbered calls criticizing it by 2:1.
The 10 p.m. TV news in Phoenix quoted a CNN poll that showed 51 percent of Americans supported the Arizona action with just 37 percent opposing it.
As we entered Maricopa County, it is easy to identify that place with the famous Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
He is the man who operates a tent prison and has his prisoners on chain gangs. His famous quote is “these folks are not in college, they are in jail.”
“If you done the crime, you’re doing the time,” is the mantra that drives Sheriff Joe and perhaps he is right. Perhaps he is wrong. Perhaps it is the likes of Sheriff Joe that scares constitutional scholars so much about the Arizona experiment. And this past week the Sheriff was thinking of running for governor. He wisely demurred, though.
Some of this is the result of a domino effect. Some newscasters in Arizona claimed that California made it harder for illegal aliens to get into that state some years ago so they are all coming into Arizona.
Utah, reportedly, is considering passing a similar law because leaders there fear so many illegals will abandon Arizona and head north.
Some states also are thinking of passing similar laws as a way to support what is going on in Arizona. The Tea Party movement has endorsed the Arizona experiment across the country.
Wonder if Wyoming leaders would consider such a law here?
A New York Times report stated: “Hispanics make up 30 percent of the population here in Arizona, up from roughly 25 percent in 2000, according to census data. As the state’s economy, largely dependent on construction and development, has slumped, hostility toward illegal immigrants has increased in recent years. ‘More people now seem to think Hispanics are taking jobs from Anglos,’ said Bruce D. Merrill, a polling expert.
“Further, laws like the immigration statute and another new law requiring political candidates to prove citizenship are generally written by the hard-right lawmakers who dominate the Legislature — with far-left-of-center minority members opposing them — but neither side reflects the relatively centrist political views of most residents.
“Residents are unnerved by the violence in Mexico and the heavy drug trade and illegal immigrant trafficking in Arizona. Most studies have shown illegal immigrants do not commit crimes in a greater proportion than their share of the population, and Arizona’s violent crime rate has declined in recent years.
“Half of the drugs seized along the United States-Mexico border are confiscated in Arizona, and it is a major hub for human smuggling. Last month, Robert Krentz, 58, a member of a prominent ranching family, was killed on his property 20 miles from the border, and the police said the gunman was probably connected to smuggling.
“’People outside of Arizona are not living in this state and don’t understand the issue,’” said Mona Stacey, a computer technician from Mesa. ‘Most of them coming across are mostly good, Catholic families getting over here. But you also have the drug lords and the smugglers. It makes the good guys look bad, and you don’t know who is who.’”
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