Essay

Wow factor

Here is the original article which precipitated my letter:

“Maybe the two cranes towering over First Street SE will get the public to notice the $160 million federal courthouse under construction there.

The eight-story edifice will be faced with stone and then glass that will stretch as wide as a football field from the Cedar River to Second Street SE between Seventh and Eighth avenues SE and look toward downtown.

Brad Thomason, leader of the Ryan Cos. US Inc. building team, and David Sorg, a principal with project architect OPN Architects Inc. of Cedar Rapids, scratch their heads at the lack of interest.

Sorg says people have yet to grasp the magnitude, beauty and importance of the courthouse. When complete and ready to open in fall 2012, the 330,000-square-foot building will stand a little taller than the nearby Great America Building. . . .” (More from gazetteonline.com)

My Response:

Regarding “wow factor.” I can understand the architect’s enthusiasm for what sounds like an immense, complicated project. We should all take pride in our work. Perhaps I can shed some light on the public’s indifference [to which the article alludes].

I know I’m not alone in considering the new $160-million federal courthouse building in Cedar Rapids just another expression of our excessive, obscene, financially bankrupt government, which I’m required to pay for, just like I pay for bank bailouts, stimuli, domestic spying programs and foreign, undeclared wars.

Few people know that one-sixth of America’s labor force is employed directly by government (source) [and this doesn’t even include contractors].

It is the five-sixths of the labor force, the voluntary sector of our economy, that grows food, sells coffee, trims lawns and produces all the goods and services society voluntarily consumes.

Taxes on them pay for the projects, salaries and health care benefits of the government one sixth, including the new federal building’s eventual occupants, all of whom will have better health care than me.

The architect is right. My jaw will drop when I see the finished, arching, stone, glass-covered whatever, but not for the reasons he thinks. I will see only $160 million worth of goods and services that never came into existence because money was taken from the voluntary economy to build yet another gratuitous monument to our rulers in Washington D.C.

(from gazetteonline.com)

I had to cut many corners to make the 250-word limit. My first draft was about 600 words.

Life Lessons

I’m honor to be participating in the NY Time’s homefires blog:

LIFE LESSONS

I’m occasionally asked what I’ve learned from my experiences in the military.

My responses, particularly before my third tour, have always involved leadership, confidence, knowledge of myself and of people in general. This hasn’t changed. I remain grateful.

Sometimes I feel the pressure of expectation to cast myself as a victim of my experiences, but in truth, I think I’ve benefited from them.

The Army, and especially the infantry, gives its junior leaders tremendous responsibility. The rough world of the 82nd Airborne Division was a steep learning curve for me, a freshly minted lieutenant accustomed to the studious habits of Stanford University, of its School of Engineering, no less. I learned an awful lot and, I think, emerged a better person.

More recently, I’ve realized some of my beliefs have formed so slowly and subtly that their learning has been entirely unappreciated. I’ve learned that no matter what, life goes on — it’ll do so with or without any one of us — and I’ve found a measure of respect for selfishness; for people who look out for themselves and their lives yet to come. This is surely cynical.

If there’s redemption in the selfishness, it has to do with loving life, with respecting yourself enough not to end your days prematurely or in futile pursuits. Yes, I said it. Somewhere between my second and third tours, I came to believe that our foreign, undeclared wars flaunted our Constitution and made us less safe — from terrorism, from debt and from tyranny at home. Believing this wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t help it. Without faith in our military endeavors, my long-held notions about duty, heroism and fighting the good fight didn’t survive long.

I think you’re only a hero for as long as your image is useful. . . . (Read more from nytimes.com)

Now that I’m published in the NY Times, am I still allowed to complain about the media?

Not Left vs Right, Power vs Liberty

“These are perilous times to believe in liberty. Because I oppose Obama’s expansion of government (socialized health care), people assume I was for Bush’s expansion of government (wars, domestic spying, suspending habeas corpus for detainees, monitoring domestic travel, etc.).

Such is the world through the lens of left-versus-right glasses. I’ve been lumped together with neo-cons, called a Republican agent, and faced such comments as, ‘Think of [alternative-energy subsidies] this way: It’s a new weapon to use against the Middle East. It’s weapons research. That should satisfy your tiny repubtard mind.’

I’ll note that I voted for neither McCain nor Obama — neither for the old white guy who believes in bank bailouts and expanding foreign, undeclared wars, nor for the young black guy who believes in bank bailouts and expanding foreign, undeclared wars.

In both cases, dissenters were/are portrayed as fringe, radical, unreasonable, and irrelevant. In both cases, the conflict is crammed into a paradigm of left versus right, and, in both cases, it’s an uphill battle for those of us who oppose an expansion of government.” (from DailyIowan.com)

Canoeing the Upper Iowa

We canoed the Upper Iowa, and spent most of the first day floating and fishing from the canoe. We’d cast into the dark deep swirls in bends behind rapids.

This was ideal. Where there were no such spots, we cast where little creeks flowed into the Upper Iowa, or behind fallen trees, or into deep spots.

When possible, we cast upstream, and pulled our lures down toward us ahead of the current, so they’d wiggle in the water. I caught the first fish, which was a joke. It was barely double the size of the lure. An ambitious little guy.

In places, the river was wide and no more than eight inches deep all the way across, the surface rippling over the stony bottom. Now and then, the canoe dragged, and we pushed against the bottom with our paddles.
(Read more from gonomad.com)

Politcal Posturing over AIG – a letter from my senator

I recently received an e-mail from Sen. Tom Harkin expressing outrage over the AIG bonuses and vowing to ‘pass legislation that completely taxes those bonuses away,’ and ‘send a message to AIG and other companies who received bailout money.’

While I think the anger is well-founded, I fear it misses the point.

Government should never have entered the business of giving our money to failing companies. The line between government and private enterprise is now perverted. Because of the bailouts, politicians are now posturing by interfering in businesses they know little about, and businessmen (bankers in this case) now have more reason than ever to lobby and influence politics.

The whole process is outrageous. Bad companies should simply go bankrupt. There are plenty of banks here in the Midwest that have been responsible. If we lived in a free society, they would find themselves in a position to buy assets from the hugely irresponsible and incompetent New York banks. Instead, money is taken from the competent and given to the incompetent.

At the same time, politicians are pretending to have stuck it to the man. Scolding AIG over several hundred million in bonuses after handing them several hundred billion is ridiculous.

If Congress wants to scrutinize something, they should scrutinize the Federal Reserve. Instead of worrying about AIG’s millions, they should provide transparency to the Fed’s trillions. (from press-citizen.com)

Iraq Revisited

In their March/April 2009 edition (online), STANFORD Magazine published this brief essay, a rebuttal to my own perspective, Email from Iraq, from five years earlier.

“. . . . I have not been victimized by my military experiences, or by the Army. Claiming so is such a common refrain among veterans I’ve been tempted to adopt it, simply because it would require less explanation. In truth, I’ve benefited from my experiences. I have no complaints about pay, though I would likely have done better following through with my long-forgotten computer science degree. I haven’t suffered from shortages in benefits or care, though I don’t doubt others have. I enjoy the respect and credibility veterans seem to get for free and entirely independent of their competence. I’ve made many friends, and got to bear witness to that mysterious and heavily mythologized thing called combat. The great responsibilities I’d been entrusted with”leading men in combat as a platoon leader, preparing paratroopers as a jumpmaster, serving as a diplomat with Iraqi councilmen or Afghan tribal leaders”taught me much about myself and about people.

I think the breadth and depth of these responsibilities overwhelmed my perceptions when I wrote “E-mail from Iraq.” To me, now, it reads like war propaganda “a demonstration of the goodwill, energy and character of war’s participants, while beckoning the reader to ignore how we got there. . . .” (Read more at STANFORD Magazine)

Kilimanjaro: Climbing Africa’s Tallest Mountain

From the Lava Tower, we began a two-and-a-half day traverse of Kili’s southern slope. That afternoon, we descended to the beautiful Baranco camp, with steep cliffs on either side of the broad valley, the snows of Kilimanjaro peaking through the clouds behind us, and villages glimmering through the blue haze on the distant plane to our front.

Cartoon-like trees called Senecio Kilimanjari in my guide book stood throughout the valley.

The porters, who’d walked directly from Shira to Baranco, had already set up camp. They rested in their crowded little tents or stood with hands in their pockets, joking with one another.

I was lucky. My body adjusted well to walking and altitude and I had been wondering if it wouldn’t be truer to the spirit of adventure to carry my own tent, food, fuel, but I quickly grew accustomed to the luxury porters provide.

My only task upon arrival at camp was unzipping the door of the tent they had pitched, pulling some belongings from my pack, and waiting for the assistant cook to summon me in his broken English to dinner. (Read more from GoNomad.com)

Also, see more photos here.