What I've Learned About Building Financial Stability

1. Do your homework to the best of your ability every time. Don’t dog it. You’ll develop a habit of dogging it. Well after school, the habit of being better prepared than everyone else will serve you well.
2. Go to the best schools you possibly can. The experiences, the learnings, the credentials, and the connections will serve you well.
3. Read widely, deeply and constantly. If you don’t, you will become a habitual listener to those who have read more. By reading deeply, I mean, incorporate what you read into your increasingly broad and deep world view. Create slide decks of the books and things you’ve learned. I’ve got several hundred; you can use them in many different places.
4. Pay attention to the energy level in the room. Adjust your style to creating high energy—but based on evidence. Charismatic (often religious) charlatans get high energy but often based on faulty beliefs. Add high energy to fact based insights. Truth delivered in a monotone loses to lies delivered with drama.
5. Charge what the market will bear and give them more than they are expecting. Give more than you take and your reputation will grow.
6. When people tell you, “you don’t charge enough,” listen.
7. Add dramatic story telling to your repertoire. Study acting and how to convey powerful messages powerfully.
8. Save and invest 10–15% of everything you earn. Never spend beyond your means. Let your investments grow, but don’t drain your base. Serial entrepreneurs will argue this one; it’s based on your personal risk aversion profile. I always wanted a stable financial base while serial investor/gamblers are willing to bet the farm.
9. Clean as you go. Don’t dump toxics, take care of the “commons,” (air, water and soil) so you don’t have pay up later. Think “sustainability,” will this approach last? Leave your campsite cleaner than you found it—even if that means a little less profit in the short-run; it will be more profit in the long run.  

What's the role of technology in education?

I was always an early and avid adopter. What kills learning in the classroom is boredom. Lectures are boring. High student participation with open debate based on pre-reading and especially well-chosen open-ended case studies heightens energy and learning in the classroom.

Technology is a part of a multi-channel approach to facilitating learning. Chalkboards, overhead projectors, document cameras, wifi internet connections (fraught with challenges), simulations, video clips, lighting management, audio clips, flip charts (3M Post-It versions that can easily hang on the walls likety split), microphones, Adelphi voting stations, Excel mirroring from student computers, distance learning cameras, and more CAN BE excellent accelerators of learning facilitation. The key is to be so practiced that the transitions from one channel/mode to another are seamless and without stumbling. If the video won’t play, if the audio doesn’t work, if the cable isn’t connected properly, etc., the disruption destroys the “magic bubble” that I tried to create in every class—a situation in which everyone was enthralled with what was happening the room and paying attention 100%. Seamlessly moving from one mode to another provides variety, energy, and poignancy.

AND technology may not be the right answer for any given element. I have taught worldwide the second chapter of Shaara’s book Killer Angels about the dilemma Joshua Chamberlain faced (https://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/clawsonj/General/PUBLIC/Chamberlain.pdf ) for 40 years. I told the story and recited Chamberlain’s speech to the deserters live (using some drama techniques). It was always, no matter what continent we were on, a very powerful class: Would you, given legal authority, shoot the deserters?

When the film Gettysburg starring Jeff Daniel came out I was excited to load the clip onto my PowerPoint pages with menu of multiple video clips (so you could pick one at a moment’s notice depending on the discussion). I did so, used it 2–3 times and you could feel the energy leaking out of the room. So I went back to doing the episode live and in person—and the energy level went back up. Technology is not always the best channel. Technology is not the goal, it’s one tool for facilitating learning.

I taught some on-line distance classes. Students were spread all over the world. Sometimes the connections weren’t that good, sometimes students were on commuter trains trying to listen, or in coffee shops getting breakfast. I had no way of knowing if they were prepared, had read the assignment, etc. For learning, it was a poor mode/channel.

I taught some classes face-to-face in a Middle Eastern country. Not a classroom, rather a flat room with movable chairs, no desks. At first, there were 10–15 people there. By the first afternoon there were 50 people there. By the next day, 100. The culture was, a few will “check it out” and text whether it was worth while or not. No advance prep, no attendance guidelines—but the technology grew the class hour by hour.

With technology we can listen to people speak worldwide and that's a plus.  We can invite speakers to check into our classrooms.  Having a meaningful discussion with eye contact over that medium is much more difficult--and ultimately unsatisfying.  Can't do role plays.  Can't scan and assess room energy and mood.  etc. 

Technology is a tool not an end goal. If it helps, great. If it gets in the way, lose it. There are things we do in a F2F classroom that we just cannot do over technology linkages. 

What Do We Learn Later in Life?

First, age is no guarantee of wisdom. The passage of time does not insure growing awareness or insight.

Second, what does “grown up” mean? Clearly, it’s not chronologically determined. In my view, a person becomes a mature adult when and IF they reach a point where they are willing and able to review their semi-conscious Values, Assumptions, Beliefs and Expectations about the way the world is or should be (VABEs for short). Many, probably most never get there. (See The Evolving Self by M. Csikszentmihalyi) Between the ages of 0 and 10, humans are defenseless, vulnerable beings who are imbued by their parents and surrounding environment with a host of assumptions about how the world works including who is good and who is bad. If one never examines these VABEs once one has gained a stage of maturity, then one simply becomes a vessel perpetuating the past into the future.

Not that everything we were taught as youths was bad; we need to decide when we are conscious, sentient, data-based thinkers what to keep, what to lose and what to add to one’s worldview.
Third, what does it mean to be a self-reliant person and citizen?

How does one learn to become self-reliant and a responsible citizen? I believe this includes the ideas that:

1. No one owes me anything. Mother Nature grants no “rights” only governments do. Work for what you want.
2. People should be judged by their behavior and not their appearance.
3. Unless we as the Scouts said, “leave our campsites cleaner than we found them” the world will fill up with garbage and trash.
4. People who take more than they give sow the seeds of revolt and war. History is full of military and economic examples of the “have’s” taking as much as possible resulted in revolt by the “have not’s.” Therefore, it’s better to be a net contributor rather than a net extractor and to seek “sustainable profits” that include the cost of contributing to air, water, soil, and human health.
5. No matter how much people have, they will want more—and this leads to destruction of the “commons,” the world that we all share. (See Driven by Lawrence and Nohria) Unregulated, greed destroys us all. Conquerors of all sorts—religious, political, business, economic—exemplify this greed for “more.” Life on the earth is naturally in a delicate balance and over-fishing, over-hunting, over-cutting, over-planting destroys this balance and causes mayhem.
6. Short-term palliatives and feel-goods for dealing with the difficulties in life like alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity, don’t really solve the issues, they just cover them up.
7. Many children, far too many, are abused by their parents in various physical, emotional, sexual and social ways. While we regulate parenting variously from country to country, child bearing and rearing seems to continue without much oversight. How many people continue to have children that they cannot and do not care for?
8. A variety of birth anomalies are persistent and statistically a part of evolved life over millions and billions of years.
9. History shows us what previous generations have learned; ignore history at our own peril.
10. People somehow want to identify with one group or another that distinguishes them from other people—and this leads to much we/they conflict.
11. People will lie to you — easily 

What Makes a Good Educational Experience?

One can learn from most happenings in life. Saul Alinsky once noted “Most people do not accumulate a body of experience. Most people go through life under-going a series of happenings which pass through their systems undigested. Happenings become experiences when they are digested, when they are reflected on, related to general patterns, and synthesized.” (Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, quoted by Henry Mintzberg in “The Five Minds of a Manager” HBR 11/03)

SO, the first element of a good educational experience is the willingness to slow down and think about what took away from each of the major events of one’s life. Most people don’t consciously do this. I’ve taught a class in which we ask people to write their Life’s Story in 400 words or less. Then b) list all of the major events in column A. Then, c) rate each events in column B from -5 to +5 on their emotional impact on you, and d) write in column C what that event taught you (requires some reflection, may not have done that before) and finally e) chart your numbers from column B.
This is a process for identifying explicitly on paper what you took away from (or didn’t) each of your main events in life. Having done that, you have a set of some 15 or more “lessons” with related stories (of what happened at each event) that you could use to pass on or teach what you’ve learned.

Teachers can create good educational experiences—AND we know that people tend to put their beliefs ahead of data/facts when they make decisions. (See Kahneman, Fast Thinking Slow Thinking→ Nobel Prize). SO good instructors gently help students have VABE abrasions. That is, they nudge students to challenge and re-think their Values, Assumptions, Beliefs, and Expectations about the way the world is or should be.

This might include new information, introduction of new theories, and ways to tackle common problems. Ken Bain’s book, What the Best College Professors Do summarizes much of what we know about adult learning. The chapters on Adult Learning in my book, Teaching Management also does that. Essentially, adults learn best when

1. They are dealing with issues that are important to them.
2. They believe they can learn something about how to deal with those issues.
3. They are actively involved in the discussion and finding solutions.

There are more, but that’s the core. SO, lecturers are at a big disadvantage compared with case method instructors. “Cases” are current, relevant descriptions of problems (in medicine, business, war fighting, etc.) that students read perhaps along with some related theory chapters or articles and then debate what to do in class under the guidance of a skilled instructor.

The skilled instructor will use multiple channels including cases, discussion, short lecturettes in response to student comments or questions, frame great questions with care in advance, incorporate video clips, PowerPoints, and one of my favorites, intense role plays in class SEAMLESSLY (so the transitions don’t disrupt student attention and the flow of ideas). That kind of class, in my experience, creates long moments of “flow,” “resonance,” or being in the educational “zone” that stimulates and engages everyone in the room.

AND good educational experiences are by no means, as I said above, limited to classrooms. LIFE is a classroom. Sadly, most people go through life simply recreating the VABEs that their parents imprinted in them. I’ve come to believe that chronological age has little to do with becoming a mature adult: rather one reaches that point when / IF one becomes willing and able to review and rethink all the things that were impressed on them when they were between the ages 1 and 10.

Does this help? What’s a good educational experience? One creates one’s own by being “mindful” and learning as deeply and rapidly as one can from every event, turning happenings (inside and outside a classroom) into experiences. Life then becomes a continuous learning environment limited only by your willingness to engage it. 

What's the Purpose of Life?

Life has evolved from the simplest molecules to the complex organisms we see around us today. That took millions of years. (See A Song of Humanity by Only One Man.)

Religions will tell you that god has a purpose for you. Or not. I’ve met people who are waiting for “god” to reveal to them what their calling or purpose in life is. Many say they have been “called” by god to some kind of ministry or other.

YOUR purpose in life is what you make it. In my view, don’t wait for someone else to tell you what it is or should be. In my 40+ years of studying human behavior in organizations, I’ve become convinced that we create our own purposes in life whether its to cure cancer, sell more widgets than anyone else or provide people with warm and appropriately cooled homes.

I’ve had three last names—won’t bore you with why. I’ve wondered about my three heritages and what they mean for me. On my father’s side, there are four generations of alcoholics—possessors of the D2 addictive allele. One of my purposes was to break that genetic chain. I did.

Later in life I learned about Collins’ Hedgehog Concept in which success is found at the intersection of a) love of an activity, b) skill at that activity, and c) monetary value in that activity. I later learned about Flow (Flow by Csikszentmihalyi) Resonance (Powered by Feel by Clawson and Newburg), and the process of being in the “zone.” Having spent 35 years in a very comprehensive, conservative religion which included the dilemmas of how a loving, all-powerful father-god could create a world in which 1% were schizophrenic and 10% had gender ambiguity and included all kinds of horrible birth defects, I had a mid-life crisis.

I started over again at 48 with a zero-based, blank slate approach to figuring out how the world worked, relying on my own research rather than what a limited group of people told me. I came out in a very different place: the world is an evolved environment. There is no higher, divine purpose in life, other than the one that you personally create for yourself. We can look at biographies from all over the world and see clearly the purposes that others have created for themselves. Some claim that those purposes were “given” to them by a god. Why them and not everyone else?

So, here’s my answer. The purpose of life is four-fold:

1. Find your Resonance (the thing that engages you passionately)
2. Invest in your Resonance (practice, rehearse, learn, refine, build)
3. Enjoy your Resonance (realize that when you are in Flow or Resonance or the Zone, life doesn’t get any better and enjoy that moment)
4. Help others find their Resonance. Imagine the potential energy you could unleash if you could do this with your team, your family, your group(s).

Based on my history, my purpose in life is and has been “to help people find themselves.” Beginning with myself and my three last names, my spouse who was abused horribly as a child, my children, my students, my readers, my clients, everything I do in life revolves and has revolved around that central purpose—to help people find themselves. I spent 35 years teaching a Career Management course that would help students identify their dominant Life Themes that they could use to assess each and every career option that came along. My writing, my teaching, my consulting, my counseling, all revolve around that purpose.

Mine is no more important or noble than one who spends their life laying sewer pipe to deliver clean, disease-free water to people or repairing automobiles to help people move around freely or whatever profession you choose. All are necessary in a complex world.

The difference is that many if not most people go to work hating what they do and their daily routine. They give minimal energy to their jobs waiting impatiently for quitting time. PURPOSE IN LIFE COMES INSIDE OUT. If you can create your purpose in life, you will find more energy, be more productive, be more satisfied, and more of a contributor to people around you.

Don’t wait to hear your purpose in life. Create your purpose in life. Find what you love doing that you are good at and that people will pay you money for doing. Then adopt the Greek term “arete” (excellence what you do) and become a craftsman, an artisan, someone who loves what they do because it defines their purpose in life.

Consider the three bricklayers. In reply to the reporter’s question, “what are you doing?” the first one said, “I’m laying brick. Millions of effing bricks.” The second one said, “I’m building a long wall, forty feet high.” The third one said, “I’m building a cathedral in which people will worship their god so it has to be perfect in order to contribute to that overall feeling.” While I view cathedrals as majestic, emotion creating architectures built to non-existent beings, I admire the clarity of purpose the third brick-layer displayed. Imagine how each of these “workers” went to work each day.

Finally, some people’s apparent purpose in life is to make as much money as they can. It is what it is. And I have more respect and admiration for people who become wealthy doing what they love to do who share their fortunes with the communities around them. Not just creating jobs, but also contributing to those who were born with less privilege. I admire the “net-contributors” more than the “net-extractors.” People who give more than they take. People who care about the poor and homeless. Not doles—they seem to produce lethargy. But support for those who do what they can and can’t do enough to live on.

Okay, my purpose in life is “to help people find themselves.” What’s yours? 

On the balance between theoretical and practical instruction in schools and universities

Kurt Lewin (management scholar) once noted there’s nothing so practical as good theory. That said, there’s a lot of bad theory out there. Professors at universities are paid to add to the pool of knowledge in the world. There are thousands of professors, each with their own VABEs (Values, Assumptions, Beliefs, and Expectations about the way the world is or should be) struggling to find something new and important. Some of them use bad ideas, some use bad research techniques, some of them even lie about their results. Blind reviewed journals are the main way the academy tries to sift through it all. And most practitioners in management that I knew over 40 years never read the academic journals. They would read the popular business books—which were summaries of research studies. For example, In Search of Excellence, Good to Great, Seven Habits (not research based but very popular), Leadership Challenge and several others.

So, these professors in class push their preferred theories. I was in class listening to Steve Covey teach his “7 habits” of highly effective people long before he published his best-selling book. But whether its management or STEM or astrophysics, professors profess—and they profess the theories they know and (maybe) understand. AND the usual method of professing is lecturing. THAT is generally the kiss of death to learning because it’s one way, often monotonic, and goes at the pace of the instructor, not the students.

At Harvard Business School and Virginia’s Darden School we used case method extensively because we believed that when students do most of the talking, when students are presented with actual current problems and wrestle with them aloud, when students read theory that could apply to the day’s problem(s), and when students’ peers react to what one say, people are highly engaged, learning as fast as they, not the instructor, can, and likely to remember more in what one author calls “deep learning.”

“Practical Life” includes launching missiles and satellites, building autonomous vehicles, processing food, managing waste liquids, watching the climate and its effects on humans, etc. All of which are full of theories, some solid, some not so much. One develops a theory about how something works and then tests it. Throwing virgins into volcanoes proved to be a bad theory about how to affect the weather. We encounter theories everyday in everyday life.

A good education will help you sift through them and settle on the ones that have repeatable, demonstrable data to support them. No system is 100% efficient, even education. Lifelong learners have to listen to some junk while searching for the true nuggets in life.  Rather than being bored by someone else's theory, learn to think logically and critically and see if you can understand and then debunk or appreciate by apprehending it. 

Theory and practice are inextricably intertwined.  

When Does One Know What to Do in Life?

The educational situations in Germany, the UK, India and USA are somewhat different. Some countries encourage, nudge, or channel people early in life toward one kind of education or another. The main challenge in life is to find that intersection among a) what you love to do, b) what you are good at, and c) what people will pay you for (Collins’ Hedgehog Concept).

A key in discovering that is identifying your personal life-long habits and trends, call them Life Themes. By 18, most of these are in place even if you aren’t fully self-aware. I inherited and taught for 30 years an award-winning system at Harvard for identifying Life Themes—available for free on my website. Think of your Life Themes as the outline of your hand and the demands of various career option as gloves. Some gloves fit better than others. Finding the right glove can take years — or if you know yourself more explicitly months.

Not everyone is suited for the kind of learning that occurs in universities, some are more suited to voc-tech disciplines. Some countries try to push people into one or the other at an early age—usually based on performance rather than preference. That effort is I believe to try to save people years of experimentation when their talents “seem” to point in one direction or another.

It’s your life though, you can choose the path you want to go—if you have enough self-awareness and determination. Finding the right FIT will result in more satisfaction and contribution.  Some people intuitively know this even before age ten.  Some people never figure it out and spend their careers wandering from job to job.  I encourage you to become clear on your Life Themes and then to use that awareness to sift through various job and career/educational opportunities and options.

Why Do Business People Make More Than Academics?

This is not necessarily true. I know many academics who have made more money than many “business people.” Yes, not the majority nor the average, and there are millions of business people who are struggling to make ends meet and/or who go bankrupt.

Some academics have turned their research into very successful businesses including consulting firms, manufacturing firms, etc. And who is to say that working with, shaping, molding the minds of young aspiring people, in my case, aspiring business people (I taught my whole career in graduate schools of business, Harvard and Virginia), is less valuable than producing and distributing electrical fixtures?

Teaching tends to be focused on groups of 20–100 at a time while selling electrical fixtures or glue or paint (pick your favorite) typically targets millions of people. IF one can find and sell something that millions need or want one can make a lot of money.

That said, I was more successful financially than I ever thought I would be by becoming an academic and then using my understanding of leadership and organizational behavior to create a worldwide consulting practice. Some academics went even farther to create worldwide consulting FIRMS, e.g. Boston Consulting Group, Bain and Company, etc.

So my answer is it depends a lot on the academic and the business person you want to compare. I’ve written cases on people who made 100 times what I have. So, if you want to make as much money as you can, business is a better bet than academics AND I hope you will think about success and life as something more than in that unilateral money-focused way. People who love what they are doing, who are good at what they love doing, and do something that other people want to pay for (Collins' Hedgehog Concept) will do just fine in life. 

And then the issue will be, have you contributed more than you took? Are you a net contributor or a net extractor from society? And how will you measure that?

What is the time line from school to leadership?

There are phases in careers. ("Four Stages of Professional Careers," Dalton, Thompson and Price) You can find the original article on Google Scholar.

When one first joins an organization out of school, one is in the Apprentice phase in which one relies on others to show them how things work technically and organizationally.

At some point, with no apparent recognition, one knows what to do and how to do it. At this point one has become a self-reliant functioning professional. In terms of the Career Concepts model (see my website for a free opportunity to take the self-assessment tool) one is then a “technical expert.”  See "Career Concepts" half way down this page:  https://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/clawsonj/index.htm

Thereafter, one may or may not be promoted into management wherein one supervises other people. This requires a jump in skill set from doing to skills in getting other people to do. Many experts are inappropriately promoted into management just because they do a good job. Everyone I’ve ever met has seen a good doer ruined by promotion into management. Doers accept that promotion for more money without knowing themselves and unless they can let go of doing and pick up managing its a formula for failure.

Some managers are then promoted into “sponsor” phase in which they become responsible for the health of the organization vis a vis the outside. Whereas management is internally focused, sponsors must understand and manage strategic issues that ensure the organization’s survival. This is yet another and different set of skills.

There are no set time lines for these steps. Indeed many if not most experts actually prefer to spend their careers doing rather than managing. Also, the timelines for movement through these phases, assuming one a) wants to and b) can acquire the new skills required vary from company to company.
Finally, I note there is a fine line between respecting historical success and going through the constructive destruction required in innovation. The pace of change is critical and varies widely from industry to industry.  

Trump Rolls Back Wetland and Watershed Regulations

I think the EPA issue boils down to the relative value one places on profit vs clean air-water-soil. Unregulated, the evidence is clear that people opt for profit. If their discharge fouls the AWS but they're  making more profit, they have chosen profit. 

This is in ethics "the tragedy of the commons."  The Boy Scout principle of leave your campsite cleaner than you found it is trumped by profit maximization. The thing is we all need clean AWS to survive. If a farmers fertilized field grows more and the runoff kills the downstream flora and fauna, and Chesapeake fisherman go bankrupt, much less people who enjoy kayaking, where does one draw the line?  

I'm all for less government right up to the point that selfish motives harm the "commons", the lives of the rest of us. If everyone cared about what happened downstream, this would be a non-issue. If dentists dumped mercury into the water table, who would stop them?  If people found it too bothersome to take used motor oil to a recycling center and just dumped it on the ground, what about my well water?  The country's littered with toxic plant sites, leaking landfills, etc. Who is managing that?  Does Spirit Aerospace "care" about runoff from manufacturing fuselages?  I'm sure there are some stupid regulations out there.

I'm also convinced that a) we all need clean AWS and b) left alone, business people care more about profit than clean AWS. The EPA's creation was a reaction to that history just like labor unions were a reaction to abuse of employees. Finding the right balance is a challenge, but no regulation has already proven disastrous for the rest of humanity. Companies can still be profitable if somewhat less so by being environmentally responsible. “Max profit” vs “sustainable profit.”  Take a walk in Beijing as I have and be afraid to breathe the air. Drink from a stream down river from a plant?  If you pee in the creek upstream from my drinking water, I’m not happy. 

Whom Should I Vote For?

I’m an independent, and have policy preferences on both sides. 

For Choice for example.  Get religion out of personal choices.

For limited immigration.  You come here, you obey our laws, not yours, speak our language not yours. 

For fiscal responsibility. Used to be Republicans were the leaders here, not any more.

For ban on assault rifles. 

For tighter controls on entitlements. 

For EPA light.

For nuclear and renewable energy. Ban coal plants.

For getting the fat out of the health care system.  Look out insurance industry.

For provisions for homeless. 

For legalizing all drugs, all drugs, and regulate and tax them and have clinics next door for those who want off (eg Switzerland).  Prohibition didn’t work, War of Drugs won’t either. 

For sustainable business practices.  You foul it, you clean it up.  You provide recycling for junk cars.
For a strong, the strongest military in the world.

For cleaning up the Pacific and limiting plastic use worldwide. 

For removing CO2 from the atmosphere NOW. Remember fluorocarbons? 

For citizenship only for children of two American citizens (would require change in Constitution), citizenship of parents decides, not where you were born.

For prosecuting hate crimes.

For regulating over fishing (New England fished themselves out of work) and saving whales

For wind farms and solar farms.

Against, vehemently against, gerrymandering.  Play the game straight up.
For term limits for both houses of Congress.

For progressive income tax up to 30%, no more.

For sales tax for healthcare—that way everyone participates, no free lunch.  Buy more, pay more into national health care

For taking care of those who truly cannot support themselves.  Eg my schizophrenic son.  Cannot work.  1% of the worldwide population is schizophrenic, crazy.  One Republican friend said “turn them out on the hillside with the predators.”  Turned my stomach.  Nazi.  Turn empty strip malls into homeless shelters. Don’t ignore the mentally challenged. 

Against fraud in entitlements.  IF you can work, you have to. No payments for second, third, etc. child.  Only the first one.  If you can’t take care of them, don’t have them. 

For inter-color marriage.  The more the better. (we are all the same “race” it’s a color issue)

Treat people by who they are and what they do rather than their color.

Allow end-of-life dignity.  I choose when and how to go, not the government.  Allow euthanasia.

For SEPARATION of church/religion and state.  IN TRUTH WE TRUST, not in god we trust. Not Christian, not Muslim, not Hindu, not Jewish, none of ‘em.  They all try to dominate pressing their beliefs on others.  NO!

For honesty and transparency.  Lived too long under the shadow of liars beginning with my mother and my church. 

For supporting democracies worldwide with aid and military—but we’ve done a shitty job of that:  Iraq, Nicaragua, Panama, etc.  Let the Ukrainians have a “fair” vote.  We didn’t want Russia in Cuba, why should we be in Ukraine?  NATO.  Treaties.  Yes, I get that. 

For balanced trade.

For Made in America.

Vehemently against cult leaders and secret deals. 

Against leading by threat, intimidation, and coercion.

For reducing the prison population (marijuana possessions released), but FOR obedience to law.

For honest, free, inclusive one citizen, one vote. 

Against the Electoral College.

Okay, what are YOUR preferences on those issues? 

And given mine, whom should I vote for?

Shame on Republicans

As an Independent with policy preferences that align on both sides of the aisle, I have become ashamed of the behavior of the Republican Party.  I used to a member.  My shame began when I heard retiring Senator Orrin Hatch say on national TV that whether POTUS was committing crimes or not, he didn't care, since he was doing a "good job." 

The Republican behavior presently with the impeachment and trial of POTUS to withhold information, deny witnesses, and to follow lock-step with a personality regardless of principles of obedience to the law, truth vs. lies, separation of Church and State, and moral demeanor just perplexes and amazes me.  It's reminiscent of the personality cult that emerged in Germany in the 1930's wherein by intimidation, subterfuge, and nefarious goals to accumulate power, the populace became subservient to a megalomaniac. 

I have become ashamed of the behavior of the Republican Party.  I listened to a Republican congressman from my own state declare that no matter what the Democrats proposed, even if it was good for the country, the Republicans would fight it. 

This kind of behavior is why people lose faith in their government.  When did Party become more important than Country?  Was it Newt Gingrich's efforts? 

I remain an Independent.  I find much to eschew on both sides--and the stated behavior of the Republicans during this past three years has been, I say, deplorable. 

People say, well, look at the economy.  Yes, let's.  The stock market is performing well.  But the average wage earner is not doing well.  Divisiveness has risen.  Hate crimes are on the rise. 

I'm amazed that people want to support those who lie, cheat, threaten, fire, intimidate, and pre-judge other ethnic groups.  At the base, we are all homo sapiens.  At the detailed level, we are all individuals.  In between, the efforts of ethnic groups, religions, political parties and others to point out and create bias against others are pushing us backward in history. 

Country first.  "In Truth We Trust."  Find the facts, illuminate the facts, and make decisions based on the facts and your moral principles.  DO NOT trust charismatic individuals.  Put your trust in principles.  Truth.  Law.  Constitution.  The commonality of all homo sapiens. 

By the way, read A Song of Humanity:  A Science-Based Alternative to the World's Scriptures.   Each chapter ends with questions not dogma.  By what principles do you live your life?  By what principles do the Republican Congressmen and Senators live their lives?  It seems as Senate Majority Leader declared, they are in step with POTUS no matter what he does, abdicating their principles and loyalties. 

So sad.  I'm ashamed of them.