Happy Monday morning. This week I'll be leading the PA Early Intervention Association in a two day retreat built around the theme Creating The Enthusiastic Employee. The best way to start any event is with a little humor. Found this via Joanne Jacobs
And to be Fair and Balanced.....the Millenials respond
The Foundation Center just released its Annual Report which now doubles as it's home page.
For you traditionalists, there is a .pdf file of the report as well.
The eminently readable Rich Harwood, founder of the Harwood Institute and author of The Work Of Hope and the philosophy of Turning Outward has an ordinary moment where he discovers that ordinary people have ordinary worries about our country.
In My Ride With The Tea Party, Harwood encounters a retired teacher on her way to DC in order to exercise her right to petition the government for redress of grievances......in this case the powerful hammer of the IRS brought down upon the heads of average Americans. Her group, the Liberty Township (OH) Tea Party was one of hundreds of citizen groups pursued by the IRS in what the media generously describes as 'inappropriate targeting'.
Harwood (a man of the left) comes to this unifying moment with his political opposite:
Over and over again we returned to the common theme of “trust” – people’s trust in their elected leaders and public officials, and people’s trust in one another. On these issues, we held exactly the same views. Too many of us no longer trust public officials.
If there is a common theme for nonprofits it is this: The ones on the right are outraged this power was wielded so arbitrarily. The nonprofits on the left live in fear that they are just one bad election away from having that power turned against them. In many ways that loss of trust is a good thing, for it calls up the spirits of Thomas Jefferson and his cautionary words about overarching power of centralized rule.
Say the name Foster Sayers around here and most people will
reference the lake encompassed by Bald Eagle State Park.
Sayers was just a country kid from Centre County, Pennsylvania. Some called him a bit of a roustabout...a ruffian. Feeling a bit aimless he volunteered for the US Army in the middle of WWII. Then, in November of 1944 he moved forward on his own initiative to engage two German machine gun emplacements and drawing their fire so the rest of his company could move across an open field and outflank the enemy position. While his mates wiped out the Germans, Sayers was hit multiple times and died that day from his wounds.
Foster Sayers was posthumously awarded our nation's highest honor, the Congressional Medal Of Honor
From his citation:
He displayed conspicuous gallantry above and beyond the call of duty in combat on 12 November 1944, near Thionville, France. During an attack on strong hostile forces entrenched on a hill he fearlessly ran up the steep approach toward his objective and set up his machinegun 20 yards from the enemy. Realizing it would be necessary to attract full attention of the dug-in Germans while his company crossed an open area and flanked the enemy, he picked up his gun, charged through withering machinegun and rifle fire to the very edge of the emplacement, and there killed 12 German soldiers with devastating close-range fire. He took up a position behind a log and engaged the hostile infantry from the flank in an heroic attempt to distract their attention while his comrades attained their objective at the crest of the hill. He was killed by the very heavy concentration of return fire; but his fearless assault enabled his company to sweep the hill with minimum of casualties, killing or capturing every enemy soldier on it. Pfc. Sayers' indomitable fighting spirit, aggressiveness, and supreme devotion to duty live on as an example of the highest traditions of the military service.
He was just 20 years old.
Every now and then one is confronted with something so absurd that it makes one want to
run off and sit in the meadow for a mass dandelion break.
In this case it was last week’s briefing by President Obama’s spokesperson Jay Carney stepped in front of reporters to explain the White House’s role in the IRS playing political favorites and the Department of Justice secretly obtaining the call logs of the Associated Press. This is not a Red Team/Blue Team commentary….forget the partisan talking points for a moment. What continually depresses most Americans is that this press conference was just another accepted routine bit of Theater Of The Absurd.
Jay Carney is a smart man. Has to be in order to get that high up the food chain. But everyone knows he didn’t believe half of what he was saying that day. He was Just Doing His Job. And the journalists sitting in the crowd that day. Also very smart people at the top of their industry. Not one willing to stand up and say “Oh this is just BS”. Instead they reported in dry terms the typical He Said/She Said “balanced” reporting. They were Just Doing Their Job.
In that context I came across Seth Godin’s recent post concerning Thomas Midgley, the man famous of his invention of CFCs and the idea of putting lead into gasoline in order to reduce engine knock...both environmentally destructive innovations. However, the patents on those ideas were worth billions.
Of course the introduction of lead immediately had serious health consequences for refinery workers. Yet Midgely and others quick downplayed the effects. As Godin notes:
An entrenched industry needs the public and its governments to ignore what they're doing so they can defend their status quo and extract the maximum value from their assets.
I would add this also applies doubly so to entrenched government bureaucracies, media outlets, and even third sector advocacy organizations.
Godin continues:
And we give them a pass. Because it's their job, or because it's our job, or because our culture has created a dividing line between individuals who create negative impacts and organizations that do.
People who just might, in other circumstances, stand up and speak up, decide to quietly stand by, or worse, actively lie as they engage in PR campaigns aimed at belittling or undermining those that are brave enough to point out just how damaging the status quo is.
In general, people just want to be left alone to live their lives with as minimal hassle from The Power as possible. But that is increasingly hard in a world full of Midgleys who succeed in a society which rewards spin and obfuscation. Godin concludes:
We might consider erecting a statue of him in every lobbyist's office (and college campus and public square and government bureau), a reminder to all of us that we're ultimately responsible for what we make, that spinning to defend the status quo hurts all of us, and most of all, that we have to balance the undeniable benefits of progress, innovation and industry with the costs to all concerned. I can't imagine a better person as the symbol for a day that's not about honoring or celebrating, but could be about vigilance, candor and outspokenness instead.
My suggestion: Use this post to contemplate not what they are doing, but to consider how you are defending the status quo.
The most obvious important realties are often the hardest to see and the most difficult to talk about (9 minutes)
