The Best Way to React to Bad News

I am one that has the Tea Party mindset, concerned with the debt we are accruing and the impact that will have on future taxes. When the legislators last week signed into law their Health Care bill things looked bleak indeed. My first reaction was to look for a proper way to mourn, but that isn't very productive. I then remembered this incredible article about a town in Paraguay called Mistolar and how they endured even worse setbacks. So my question for this post is,
"What is the best way to react to the bad news of the new Health Care law?"

1. Wait to see if the other branches of government "check and balance" it away.

2. Resist the fear TV seems to promote by seeking Him in prayer instead.

3. Do everything we can to promote our own health now...exercising, dieting, concientious use of prescribed medicines, setting health goals and working towards them.

4. The Mistolar example relied on the power of the Priesthood to heal sickness.  I believe in this power having experienced it many times.

5. To ward off fight or flight instincts, teach all Creative Problem Solving (CPS) (esp. the doctors and accountants) and the positive attitudes necessary for successful CPS.

6. Remember my motto that there are almost always at least 5 ways of getting a thing done.

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Asking the Right Questions

Are you better off than you were four years ago? That is the question Ronald Reagan asked to get elected. It was the wrong question to ask. It implied that it was the government's responsibility to create well being. Reagan was against big government and yet he was asking the public to look to Big Brother to take care of them.

The polls asking about how many of us approve of what the President is doing seem to be along the same lines. The President is not up for re-election. Aren't there better questions to be asked? What are they? What would better focus national attention on issues that we can more directly effect? What questions would help the majority of America's citizens "be the change they would like to see."

1. Am I taking full responsibility to insure my own family's economic, emotional and spiritual well being for today and tomorrow? (Seth)

2. Am I then realizing and acting upon the obligation I have to aggressively encourage others in my community to do the same through example and active civic participation? (Seth)

3. Am I easily persuaded by one strong opinion, eloquently advocated, only to be swayed the other direction when I hear another equally persuasive "expert" voice the counterargument. (Seth)

4. Do I take enough individual responsibility in my examination of an event to see the big picture clearly by gathering the relevant facts available, recognizing historical patterns and applying truths which I hold as absolute before making a judgment? (Seth)

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How to Love the Refugees

I live in a town with a Refugee Center. I have often heard the complaint that we shouldn't take in the world's poor until we have cared for our own. With the latest influx coming at the same time as wide spread unemployment, the cry has been, "They are steeling our jobs!"

Let's review a few facts. First, the only jobs refugees can get pay minimum wage. Second, the US citizens were out of work before the refugees came. Third, and most important, is a recognition of the stark to horrifying conditions these people have lived in for the past twenty years. Our government has just now offered to relieve some of the over-crowding in the camps. Finally, immigrants have a track record of lifting themselves up by the boot straps and making fine contributions to their new countries.

I am not insensitive to the recent rash of layoffs suffered by my neighbors. I'm also not unaware that I may easily be one of them soon. But blaming the wrong source is not helpful.

So what can be done to employ both refugees and the fearful natives? The world didn't all of a sudden run out of work that needed to be done...

1. Make a new path to a college education...one that starts with two years of developing and practicing a technicle skill before college entrance.  This way students could make enough money while in college to pay for their own educations because they would be able to make more than minimum wage.
2. Enroll adult refugees in this same two year program.
3. Teach all entruprenurship and require at least one year of running thier own businesses.
4. Teach non-english speakers our language using "Super Learning" techneques proven to insure mastery in one half the time.
5. Teach our students other language in the same way so that when refugees arive they would have automatic interpreters and advocates.
6. Build education into assembly line jobs.
7. Have state govenments employ the LDS Deseret Industries systems and locate refugees in those states.
8. Invite local businesses to use Google workplace practices with all workers.
9. Perfect the Universal Translator...or have the world get serious about an international language.
10. Teach all children and refugees "what it means to be an American" to foster loyalty to this country.

Crime Theory

Heather Mac Donald wrote a wonderful article in Wall Street Journal titled A Crime Theory Demolished. Her position is that law enforcement brings down crime, not social welfare programs. The second, and I believe erroneous idea, comes from a Robin Hood position that poor people need to and should take from the rich, thus the raise in crime. So they think the answer is to make people less poor by the government giving them money so they don't have to steel it. (Another Robin Hood notion only this time Robin is dressed in legislative garb.)

This is a vital argument in light of the problems in Haiti. The rule of law has been almost non-existent there. When the US hit the ground with food and medical help, it was not only the mess made by the earthquake they had to overcome in order to get aid into hungry hands. I heard of a man hitting a woman and steeling the recently received food from her arms. I heard of US forces giving out care packages on a golf course but only allowing women and children in to pick it up knowing they wouldn't receive it otherwise.

How do we help Haiti without first locking up a large portion of it's population? The earthquake exacerbated an already huge problem. But when things are so shaken up, fundamental reform can happen if we are willing to step on the toes of a corrupt and ineffective government. The problem I would like to see solved is "How might we best paralyze a criminal population so Haitians can prosper under the Rule of Law?

1. The LDS church found an interesting solution. They provided safety within the walls and on the grounds of the nine meeting houses in Port-au-Prince.

2. Stick enforcement of NYC's "Brocken Window" policies.

3. Put criminals to work rebuilding the city.

4. Find an carismatic Hatian leader that is honest to the core then protect him/her.

5. Provide safe boarding schools for children until the streets are safer.

6. Encourage a system of US host families for semester abroad elementary students until homes are rebuilt.

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 (See also the #7 solution to the "Haitian Boat Crash" post.)

Admiring Ingenuity

As you can see from some of my last posts, I really admire ingenuity. People that can make the world a better place, esp. for the poor, are some of the best resources this planet has. I like the Dean Kamen attitude that if we aren't making the world a better place for someone else, why are we here? (In this there is an implied answer but I think it goes deeper.)

When the political world seems full of gloom and doom, when no amount of talk-show wisdom can turn around power structures bent on illogic, my mind finds solace in stories like this one:

"Brilliant water-based eyeglasses for the masses: No optician required" Josh Silver invented glasses that a person can pump up until the world looks right then seal. His target is people in countries generally not rich enough to afford glasses whose lives and livelihoods are diminished because they can't see. Three cheers for Josh Silver!!!

There is still plenty of problem solving to do. How does he produce and distribute them at low cost?

1. Some of my nephews have focused their Eagle Scout projects on collecting used frames to give to an optometrist. He takes them to third world countries and fits them to the people there. What if the boy scouts put their hearts and hands to helping Mr. Silver?

2. Get sponsors. The Lyon's Club helps children in the U.S. with eye tests. Is there a global Lyon's Club?

3. Get churches to help.

4. Give the challenge of production to engineering students at universities. Make it a competition.

5. Give the challenge of distribution to business students at universities.

6. A Reversal: Instead of people in wealthy countries making them, teach people without jobs, in the countries where they will be used, to make them. This lessens the distribution problem and solves unemployment for a few.

7. Send them out with humanitarian groups that teach people to read and write.

8. Make it part of the PEF package the LDS church offers.

9. Show some celebrities that it is a good cause to take up.

10. Make them part of a care package we send illegal aliens home with.

11. I heard of a shoe company that said for every pair of shoes they sold in the U.S. they would give a pair of shoes to someone in developing countries. Get frame companies to do the same.

12. I found this story by clicking on the "Stumbled Upon" website. Did it ever make the nightly news? What if networks picked it up as part of a public service campaign?

13. At the Mountain Home Auto Ranch they are running ad campaign called Bucks and Trucks. Buy a truck and get a free gun for the deer hunt. What if books stores offered the chance to sponsor a pair of glasses with every book you bought?

14. I heard last night on the radio of the millions the New York mayor spent on getting re-elected. I wonder if he could get re-elected if he promised to spend that private money on this cause if they would vote him back into office. Let him get his other messages out on free blogs.

15. Make manufacturing these glasses a talking point in the next congressional elections.

16. Brigham Young encouraged his people to use "Beans not Bullets" when dealing with the Native Americans in early Utah. Mao had the troops following him help the farmers with their harvest while the other war lords trampled crops as they crossed the land. Our military could take these glasses to our battlefields to engender good will. You might say we were "walking softly and carrying a big pair of eye glasses." :)

17. The first President Bush saw volunteers as "A Thousand Points of Light." President Obama could encourage Americans to help others "See a Thousand Points of Light."

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Effort

I just watched a re-run of a BookTV interview with Newt Gingrich. I usually agree with this guy but not on his views of how to fix schools. Whenever they say the model of what is wrong is in Detroit then I know they will not be interested in fixing the problems in Idaho schools. They are simply not the same. At the core is an entirely different mindset of the people in those two places. The following approach is more helpful to me.

Carol Dweck's book "Mindset" promotes students moving from a fixed mindset, meaning they presently possess all of the talents and abilities they will ever have, to a growth mindset, meaning their abilities grow with effort, practice, and strategies. (Go to my Mindset blog and click on the links.) What are some of the ways we might encourage students to have a growth mindset?

1. Show them that your successes have come because of effort.

2. Ask them them questions that show that you value growth over fixed mindsets eg. "What mistakes did you make today that you learned from?" (Carol Dweck)

3. Ask them them questions that show that you value growth over fixed mindsets eg. "What did you put the most effort into today?" (Carol Dweck)

4. Make statements that show that you value growth over fixed mindsets eg. When they finish something they are proud of say "Wow, you really put a lot of effort into that!" (Carol Dweck)

5. Be an example of learning from your mistakes eg. President Hinckley saying that if the interview for 60 Minutes didn't go well that he wouldn't put his foot in that trap again.

6. Involve them in meta cognition (thinking about thinking). Talk them through your thinking when you were in a growth mindset.

7. Point out growth and fixed mindset actions in television shows as you watch them together.

8. Help them avoid the TV shows that leave out the work that growth takes. This is most of them since the plot usually has to resolve in 30 minutes.

9. If the TV show makes an allusion to the work, discuss what it would take in real life for that good thing to happen.

10. Pass along family attitudes eg. "Any job is better than no job." (Dad)

11. Display quotes about work by respected authorities eg. “Our primary purpose [is] to set up, in so far as it might be possible, a system under which the curse of idleness would be done away with, the evils of a dole abolished, and independence, industry, thrift and self-respect be once more established amongst our people. The aim of the Church is to help the people to help themselves. Work is to be re-enthroned as the ruling principle of the lives of our Church membership” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1936)

12. “There is no royal road to anything that is worthwhile. Nothing that is deserving of earning or of cherishing comes except through hard work. I care not how much of a genius you may be, the rule will still hold” (J. Reuben Clark Jr.)

13. “Do not ever look down on those who labor in occupations of lower income. There is great dignity and worth in any honest occupation. Do not use the word menial for any labor that improves the world or the people who live in it. There is no shame in any honorable work” (Boyd K. Packer, in Conference Report, Apr. 1982, p. 121; or Ensign, May 1982, p. 84). (Dad was right in line with the apostles.)

14. “There are few things that give me more pain than to see young men and women who do not realize their potential, who do not … discipline themselves into the work necessary to acquire the skills and learning characteristic of a good education. There is too much indolence, too much watching of television, too much sunning on the lawn, too much seeking after pleasure, too much dependence upon the opinions and work of others, too little self-reliance” (Dallin H. Oaks, “The Formula for Success at BYU,” Speeches of the Year, 1979 [Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1980], p. 169).

15. Memorize and sing with your family "Put Your Sholder to the Wheel."

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Immigration

Larry Steimle sent this address to family and friends for consideration http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I08lOAHGSoQ
In it is a plea to fix immigration problems. Some obvious solutions might be to strengthen the boarder with guards or fences.... What if instead of stopping them from coming here, circumstances were created to make us want to go there. What are the reasons the flow of immigration from Mexico to the US might be reversed?

1. The economy in our country is worse than theirs
2. The doctors in their country are better than ours.
3. They enjoy greater freedoms than we do
4. Crime is lower there than here.
5. They have jobs and we don't.

O.K. All I've done so far is to reverse the existing conditions. I'm not saying any of these are desirable. However, perhaps they have pushed us far enough out of the rut thinking to consider what might be done to bring one of them to a harmless or even helpful reality. Let's work on #5. In what ways might they make working in Mexico more attractive?

1. Implement Google strategies in the factories.


2. Implement Google strategies in think tank companies.


3. Create jobs that require graduate degrees.


4. Perfect the universal translator.
   
5. Create conditions for a new ice age so the gringos would want to go where it was warm and would bring all of their advances in farming with them.


6. Perfect bio domes for working and living areas. (see picture above)


7. In jobs that required hands only, not a lot of brain work, place monitors above the assembly line that would educate and entertain.


8. Make it so that people choosing the educational assembly lines (see #7) could earn their associates after two years of working there.


9. Make it so that people choosing the educational assembly lines (see #7) could learn about the LDS religion from missionaries while their hands were kept busy.


10. In keeping with the tradition of siesta, make available to each worker a clean, quiet, sleep environment for lunch breaks. These might look like the capsule hotels in Japan.


11. Provide an on-campus Wii workout room.


12. Legalize the monopolies of the U.S. Robber Barron era but impose a system for passing along the wealth.


13. Motivate productivity with carrots not sticks, i.e. reward good work but never threaten job security.


14. Promote socializing by creating cohort groups among the workers and assigning a discussion leader for while they worked.


15. Allow workers to somehow create their own job descriptions.