ProfilesMSBlog

WHAT IS A LIQUIDITY CRISIS?

2009-07-24T13:40:00.004-05:00

WHAT IS A LIQUIDITY CRISIS?

by Frank Givens

What is a liquidity crisis? First of all, I don’t think all this up. It is an accumulation of ideas that have come my way. This particular subject is well documented in financial and economic journals. A liquidity crisis is a period of de-leveraging. It is when money and credit are in short supply.

Institutions like banks and investment companies (mutual funds) dump stocks wholesale to satisfy withdrawals. It is a time when fear grips business and industry. “Liquidity” is the capacity to turn assets into cash, or the assets in a portfolio that have the capacity to be converted to cash. Cash itself (i.e. money) is “The” liquid asset. Cash becomes king!

Debt of course eats liquidity. Borrowers can be characterized in three ways. There are those who can pay their debts from income. There are those who rely upon increasing values to satisfy debts. There are those who rely upon rolling debt and lower interest rates to satisfy debts.

These are the kind of economic times that our folks warned us would come. They may not have been familiar with the terminology, but price rations the available resources. Price is the fulcrum between supply and demand. In this present phase of the economic cycle, demand is fueled by liquidity, not speculation.

I’ve been reading a classic in economics, Manias, Panics, and Crashes by Charles Kindleberger. Our current situation falls into a well worn pattern that Kindleberger terms a “hardy perennial”. (It also demonstrates, in my opinion, that social engineering does not cure the evils of capitalism).

The cycle goes something like this: Profit is the incentive that fuels/creates economic expansion. In the pursuit of profit, we become dissatisfied with “small gains.” Increasing prices entice investment. Speculation leads away from rational behavior. Making money never seemed easier. A follow the leader process develops. Banks make riskier investments in this more optimistic climate. Easy credit fuels the fire of speculation. Everyone wants a piece of the action.

Individuals and business ignore evidence that it would prefer not to think about. Consciousness is repressed (modern economists call it cognitive-dissonance). Eventually this mania gives way to reality. A “displacement” like a surge in oil prices changes expectations. The cycle continues and the party always comes to an end! Good times give way to panic and then the markets crash! We have a liquidity crisis. Those who can pay their debts are separated from those who can’t. Asset values slide to equilibrium, often overcorrecting. And the process starts over!

The risk today is that fiat money (bailouts) will distort incentives to produce. But that is in the future and is a whole other economic story.

---

Frank Givens, CPA, is a partner in the firm F.O. Givens & Co. in Senatobia, Miss. The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Frank can be reached at 662-562-6721.

Why Talk About Taxes Now?

2009-07-14T16:04:00.006-05:00

Why Talk About Taxes Now?

By Beth B. Burgess, CPA

With summer upon us, most people aren’t thinking about their income taxes. As a matter of fact, most people want to think about taxes as much as they want to have a voluntary root canal. And actually, the root canal may place first since the person is usually sedated for that procedure and I can’t provide that convenience along with the delivery of an income tax return. So, that leaves me with a slight disadvantage toward keeping my clients and friends pumped up about taxes and accounting issues.

With another tax season behind us, it always pays to plan ahead for next year. This year, I had an unusually large number of clients who were “unprepared” for tax season and everything that I would need to complete their return. And as most everyone has heard, we’ve got a number of changes for 2009 that you may need to plan for.

Here’s a quick list of items to keep in your “2009 Income Tax Folder” (If you don’t have one, go ahead and get one. It will be worth it.):

Copies of your car tag receipts - This is my most often forgotten item. We need the ad valorem taxes for your itemized deductions. We don’t need to know that your tag says 1HOTMOM but that is pretty cool.
HUD-1 settlement statements on any real estate purchases, sales or refinances. Many times these statements reflect deductible expenses such as points or real estate taxes paid at closing.
Receipts for charitable contributions. Whenever you are cleaning out those closets, make sure to get a receipt for your donations of goods to charities. So many times, I have clients tell me that they donated items to Goodwill or Salvation Army but failed to ask for a receipt. Also, go ahead and provide a value of your donated goods. This is a lot easier to assess at the time of the donation rather than a year down the road when you are frantically trying to get your tax stuff together. Donations to your friends, kids or neighbors are not tax deductible.
Receipts for college tuition and books. These expenses are easier to keep up with as you pay them, so make a copy and put it in your tax folder.
Copy of your new car purchase papers reflecting sales tax paid. This deduction is now available to non-itemizers.
Copy of your real estate tax payments made during 2009. There is a deduction available for non-itemizers as well as people who itemize.
If you use your vehicle for business, make sure and keep a log of your business miles. This deduction adds up rather quickly. You are also entitled to deduct mileage for medical purposes if you itemize your medical expenses.
If you are blessed with the birth or adoption of a child during the year, your tax professional will need to know the child’s social security number and date of birth. You will also need to provide information on your child care payments in order to take the Dependent Care Credit. Certain adoptions expenses may qualify for a credit also. We know you are equally proud of your new Yorkie so feel free to send us a picture but don’t expect to claim the little fella on your return.
Don’t forget to let your accountant know that you moved! You wouldn’t want us to move and not tell you, would you? If your move is associated with a job change and you move more than 50 miles from your old job, then you can most likely deduct the unreimbursed costs of your move.
If you change your marital status during the year, you should let your accountant know. Your marital status as of December 31 determines whether or not you file as married or single. Many times, you will need to adjust your withholding when you change your marital status.
Job changes affect your taxes! If you change jobs, you will be asked to fill out a new Form W-4 withholding statement. Make sure this is filled out properly to avoid unpleasant surprises next April. Also, if you become self employed or take on a second job, you may need to pay quarterly estimates.
Considering retirement? Did you know that your social security income can be taxable? Many times this comes as a shock to new retirees. Let your accountant plan with you for retirement so you can enjoy your days fishing with the grandkids.
If you pay quarterly estimated tax payments, keep a copy of your check and payment vouchers so that your accountant will have a confirmation of what you have paid. As hard as it is to imagine sometimes people “forget” to pay these and if we assume that they are all paid, we are guaranteed a dreaded letter from the IRS.
Rather than wait until tax season to update your bookkeeping on your small business, why don’t you go ahead and ask for some help on getting started with QuickBooks or some other accounting program? The “off season” makes for a more relaxed time to assist clients with bookkeeping set up and maintenance. Plus, we can help you reduce your accounting fees down the road by getting everything set up correctly on the front end.
If you make energy efficient improvements to your home in 2009, these may qualify for a tax credit. Make sure and put all of your receipts in your tax folder.
Generally, retired persons are required to take a distribution from their IRA each year. This requirement has been waived for 2009. So, if you don’t need the money, you may want to evaluate if it is best to postpone withdrawing any funds this year.

As you can tell, I get real excited about taxes. I think about taxes 12 months a year. Most people think I’m pretty strange. Actually, I’m just trying to be helpful. Planning ahead really does save money. I haven’t met anyone yet that didn’t like to save money. Organize and plan. Tax season will be back around before you know it.

-----

Beth is president of Burgess ∙ Crechale, PA in Flowood, Mississippi. The firm specializes in small business accounting, consulting, tax preparation and retirement plan administration. When Beth isn’t busy solving tax crises, she enjoys spending time with her husband and daughters and cooking for college kids.

CALIFORNIA NIGHTMARIN’

2009-07-13T14:31:00.003-05:00

CALIFORNIA NIGHTMARIN’
By Robert McElvaine

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
— William Faulkner
Requiem for a Nun (1951)

“. . . for time past is not believed to have any bearing on time present or future, out in the golden land where every day the world is born anew.”
— Joan Didion
“Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” (1966)

Let’s talk about California and what it may be saying to us in Mississippi and the rest of the nation about the journey we have been on over the past three decades and where we may be headed now.

It may seem that California has little to say to us in Mississippi. The two states have long been at the opposite poles of America. As the quotations above from leading writers of the two states indicate, so much in our state is tied to the past, while in California it often seems that there is no past.

Here are the contrasting ways in which the states tend to be seen around the country and the world:

Mississippi has been haunted by the Ghost of America Past.
California is haunted by the Ghosts of America Present and
America Yet to Come.

If the states were theme parks, California is Tomorrowland.
Mississippi is Yesterdayland.

Mississippi is about never forgetting the past;
California is about completely forgetting the past.

California has long been seen as being on the cutting edge of progress and change. By the 1960s, the nation's westward movement had been replaced by new trends emanating from California and moving eastward.

“All that is constant about the California of my childhood,” Joan Didion wrote of her home state in 1965, “is the rate at which it disappears.”

Mississippi, on the other hand, has been a place wholly rooted in the past and the most resistant to change.

The rate of change in the two states is even reflected in nature. California is famous for the sudden upheavals of its massive earthquakes. In Mississippi, we have what amount to slow-motion earthquakes in the form of the expansions and contractions of Yazoo Clay.

The geographic extremes in California are vastly greater than in Mississippi. California has, in close proximity, the lowest place in the United States, Death Valley, and the highest in the contiguous 48 states, Mt. Whitney, from 282 feet below sea level to 14,505 feet above—a range of 14,787 feet. Mississippi is all within the narrow range of 806 feet from sea level to the top of the generously named Woodall “Mountain.” (Recall that when Martin Luther King looked forward at the 1963 March on Washington to the day when freedom would ring from various mountains in the South, he referred only to “every hill and molehill of Mississippi”).

In weather, the differences are in some respects not as great. Mississippi has its long, hot summers, in which the weather stays almost exactly the same for weeks on end. Southern California’s weather often seems similarly unchanging. But both locales are subject to “weather of catastrophe”— flash floods with houses sliding down eroded embankments and the warm Santa Ana winds bringing onrushing fire and madness in people in California, and tornadoes and hurricanes in Mississippi.

Yet even in weather, there is much of an omnipresent feeling that the apocalypse may be right around the corner in California. Again, it is Didion who says it best: “The violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.”

Mississippi is all about permanence, but the very nature of California is that nothing is intended to be permanent. Movie sets are removed after the picture is finished. Houses slide down cliffs. The ultimate fear is that much of the state will be destroyed by “The Big One”—a gigantic earthquake.

It is very easy to depict California and Mississippi as polar opposites:

“Going south” has a very different meaning than “going west.”

Mississippi was about tradition;
California was about innovation

Mississippi is wet and humid;
California is dry.

Mississippi is all about old;
California is all about new.

Mississippi was the Old South;
California is the New West.

California is change.
Mississippi is anti-change.

♦ ♦ ♦

What, then, can California have to say to us that is worth listening to?

Actually a majority of Mississippians have been listening to and following what has come out of the Golden State for a fairly long time. California was, more than a quarter century ago, the source of a political movement embraced by many Mississippians and of a leader who came to be revered in Mississippi.

In the 1970s, both the conservative anti-tax movement and Ronald Reagan came to us out of California. (We won’t talk now about the other two presidential gifts California presented to the nation, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon.)

The nation’s sharp turn to the right took off in 1978. One of the leading indicators of this turn was the passage that year of California Proposition 13, the Jarvis-Gann Initiative, which severely limited property taxes and made future increases in all types of taxes very difficult. It was the beginning of a disaster caused by unchecked direct democracy. Voters in California have increasingly bypassed the legislative process by making key decisions through referenda. That may sound good, but what has happened, unsurprisingly, is that the voters keep voting to tax themselves less and spend more.

The result has been disaster. Before the passage of Pop 13, California had perhaps the best public school system in the nation. In recent years, California schools have ranked last, below Mississippi’s. Today, California is teetering on the edge of one of those cliffs, with a mudslide on the way.

It may not always be true that “you get what you pay for.” But it is usually true that “you don’t get what you don’t pay for.”

Three years after Prop 13, Mr. Reagan brought that California state of mind to Washington.A recent letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times got it right:

“Ronald Reagan’s dream is finally realized. California will now be a model for a Republican utopia. No taxes. No services. I’m from the private sector, and I’m here to help you.”

California nightmarin’ has become a reality.

Mr. Reagan told us in his first inaugural, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He set out to lessen that problem, cut top tax rates, and reduce the regulatory powers of the government.

Most Mississippians cheered. The majority view here has long been that big government is dangerous. It is. What is dangerous about it, though, is not the noun, government, but the adjective, big. If big government is dangerous, does not the same apply to big business? Not according to those who joined in the Reagan Revolution. Their attitude was: Don’t worry about how big financial institutions become; they can’t harm us.

We now ought to know better.

Indeed, the need for big government lies very largely in the existence of big business, from which we need powerful government to protect us.

It should be clear now that, under current circumstances, President Reagan’s statement needs modification to: “Big business is not the solution to our problem; business that is too big is the problem.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Democracy is clearly the best political system, but our nation’s Founding Fathers had the good sense to realize that democracy carries with it inherent dangers and so provided a system of checks and balances to rein in its potentially detrimental excesses.

Capitalism is clearly the best economic system, but what we need now are some Fathers and Mothers with the good sense to realize that capitalism carries with it inherent dangers and so to provide a system of checks and balances to rein in its potentially detrimental excesses.

Some of those checks and balances were provided in the New Deal, but they were broken down by the Reaganites, especially during the eight years of the second President Bush.

In California, a large part of the problem is democracy without checks and balances. In the nation as a whole, a large part of the problem is capitalism without checks and balances.

California’s task now is to try to find a way to restore political checks and balances. The nation’s task now is to restore and improve upon those economic checks and balances.

California has always been the cutting edge of the “Reagan Revolution” and that edge has now cut it to the point of the state bleeding out. We need to apply a national tourniquet to stop the bleeding before the nation succumbs to this Golden Bear Flu.
---

Robert McElvaine is the Elizabeth Chisholm Professor of Arts & Letters and Chair, Department of History, at Millsaps College in Jackson. He is also the author of several books, most recently Grand Theft Jesus and is a regular contributor to huffingtonpost.com. McElvaine lives in Clinton and is currently at work on a book about the Sixties.

Turning Adversity into Success: Business Survival in Today's Climate

2009-07-07T15:36:00.005-05:00

By: Mark A. Chinn, Attorney at Law

There are few businesses that have not suffered in the economy which some experts say started plunging into recession in November of 2007. This recession reached its peak when the markets exploded downward in the Fall of 2008. This makes any business person ask, “How do I survive in this environment, with the whole financial world seeming to collapse around me?” In this article, I will outline some solutions to this problem of survival. These solutions have been gleaned from many years of operating my own family law practice and reading and writing and speaking on topics of practice management.

Tip 1. Carefully Examine Your Business Model and Service. When there are cash flow problems, the first fear that any entrepreneur has is that he has done something to ruin his business. This fear is paralyzing at times and totally unproductive. The way to deal with this fear is to call a meeting of your trusted partners or employees and ask some questions and discuss them. These are some questions you can ask:

Is there anything wrong with what we are trying to do here?
Are we delivering the service that we promise?
Have we had complaints that we need to address?
Is there anything fundamentally wrong with the clientele we have been trying to reach?

Odds are that the conclusion of this meeting will be that there is nothing wrong with your business model or service. From this conclusion, you can then go forward with confidence to address the things affecting you from the outside.

Tip 2. Create A Plan and Identify the Final Safety Net. There is a temptation in crises to try and solve the problem all at once; to look for the “silver bullet” solution and go for it. Such a response might be a knee jerk decision to cut overhead by laying off significant numbers of employees who are really essential to delivering your companies service. This can be a big mistake. Instead, break your solutions to the problem down into phases and identify when each phase might be necessary. This will create a more methodical and measured response which is less likely to detract from your firm’s ability to deliver service or which might destroy morale. Here is an example:

Phase 1. Cut Unnecessary Expenses and lay off fringe or non essential personnel. Arrange credit line. Identify sources of funds for emergency.

Phase 2. Make significant overhead cuts, which would include salary and benefit reductions. Ask the employees for help and input into how they think this should be accomplished. In other words, empower your associates and employees to help save the company. Re-examine the products of the company, the pricing, and the targeted clientele. Make changes which may increase cash flow but which will not significantly change the companies’ brand of product or service.

Phase 3. More serious salary reductions or layoffs. This may involve a trimming of previously critical employees. Look for other expense cuts that were previously thought to be untouchable, such as health insurance for employees or pension matching programs.

Phase 4. Cut overhead to bare minimum and look at other areas of business previously eschewed to see if the economy has opened up another business niche after closing your previous niche.

Phase 5. What is the bottom line of survival. For most professionals, this may mean getting rid of all overhead and operating out of the home. Talk to people who already operate like that and find out what their lifestyle is like. You may find that lifestyle attractive, and therefore a solid safety net. In other words, there is no final disaster if everything doesn’t work out the way you planned.

Tip 3. Cut Expenses. Over the last 30 years that I have studied and practiced business, the thinking has generally been that the entrepreneur’s mentality should not be focusing on cuts in overhead, but increases in revenue. In other words, don’t count paper clips. Focus on getting clients in the door who will want to reward you financially for your service. This particular crises requires a different mind set in my opinion. This is a time to cut expenses. This is a time to throw some things overboard and make the ship lighter.

The way to start cutting expenses is to make a commitment to develop a new mentality of saving expense and money where ever possible. This should be done on both a personal and business level. I think many of us today remember that our parents had that mentality and maybe so did we, but most people lost that mentality in the business frenzy of the last thirty years. Start by making cuts off non-essentials. You might cut the fresh flowers in your reception room or the music on hold. You might cut personal expenses by eating at home more often or depriving yourself of simple luxuries such as a golf cart or a beauty treatment.

Cutting such expenses may not put a very big dent in the budget, but it will create a positive feeling that you are taking action to respond to the crises.

Tip 4. Get Help. Your associates, partners and even employees want to help. They know your business and they care about its success. They can give you answers that you would never think of. One way to do this is to meet with just a few of your most trusted associates or employees. Share the problems with them. Let them know what the company is facing. Tell them that cuts to overhead are generally not going to be significant until salaries and benefits are reduced. Tell them the choices you see. For example, one choice would be to lay off a number of people. Another would be to cut salaries by a percentage. Another would be cutting time worked or the taking of non paid vacations or sabbaticals. If you get positive feed back from your trusted group, ask them if they think the rest of the group would like to be involved. If that seems to be a positive avenue, have your trusted employees arrange a meeting of all of the employees and discuss the alternatives and come up with some solutions. Business books and coaches have preached for years that if you want to know how to create incentives for your employees, “just ask them what they want.” The same is true for how to respond to a crises. Ask the employees how they would like to respond. This will empower them and create ownership, which will be positive for them and the business.

Tip 5. Ropes Course Rules. Entrepreneurs are much like jungle animals: always on the alert for danger and disaster. This quality helps the entrepreneur be aware of what he needs to do to be successful. It also helps them to anticipate difficulty and plan ahead. Unfortunately, this quality can also be his enemy, because it can cause the entrepreneur to focus on the negative problem and not the positive solution. One example I use for this comes from a day when I participated in a ropes course exercise. I am afraid of heights. But one day I was asked to participate in a ropes course with a group. This required me to climb a wall and then navigate various ropes and wires strung a distance between trees about thirty feet in the air. Of course, participates are protected from real danger by protective wires, but the height and difficulty play with the mind. Though terrified of heights, I had no choice but to do the exercise because I wanted no one to know I had fear. On the first tight wire, I learned the following rules which I coach my clients to use in getting through adversity:

“Take one Step at a time.”

“Focus on your goal (i.e. the other tree)”

“Don’t look down (meaning, don’t allow yourself to think about how far you might fall)

“Remember, there is always a safety net.” (meaning, even if you fall, you are not likely to fall all the way to the group.)

Tip 6. Stay Positive. Our firm follows the motto that we “turn adversity into success.” We coach our clients in maintaining a positive attitude through difficult times and looking for ways to create a better life out of the storm. One image we like to use is the image of a surfer before a hurricane. Remember Jim Cantori from the weather channel standing at the point on the beach where the eye of the hurricane is expected. Almost without exception, he tells the camera to “pan back” to catch surfers taking advantage of the high pre-hurricane surf. These surfers are turning a destructive storm into the ride of a lifetime. We coach ourselves to handle difficulties in our practice by looking for ways to turn what appears to be an unfortunate outcome or response into a positive. We ask ourselves, “how can we turn this into an opportunity.” There are two aspects to this approach which are essential to remember. The first is that it is important to realistically appraise the danger. Keeping a positive attitude does not mean burying your head in the sand. The second aspect is that worrying about danger is a waste of time and can actually defeat you efforts to survive. Your mind set should be the same and Jon Elway facing a last minute drive for a touchdown and that probably sounds something like this in the huddle: “Okay guys, you know what we need to do, now lets go do it.”

Tip 7. Work Vigorously. Our firm coaches our clients that adversity is best faced by paying close attention to the health of their minds, their bodies and their spirit. This is also the motto on the wall of the YMCA. It is always good to pay attention to your overall health, but in crises, it is absolutely essential. It is well documented that physical activity improves the immune system and produces endorphins and other body chemicals that raise a persons spirits and capacities. Join a gym aeriobics or fitness class or hire a trainer and attend the training religiously three times a week for at least an hour. Train so hard you have to sit down for 20 mintues before you can even make it to the car or shower. Intense training will clear your mind and give you confidence. This will help you deal with crises.

Tip 8. Take it One Day at a Time. After evaluating your situation and developing plans for how to deal with it, take things one day at a time. Remember the ropes course image and just put one foot in front of the other. If you try to run to the next tree, you are likely to fall.

Instead of thinking, “Oh my goodness, I need $50,000 in the next three weeks or I’m going under, focus on what you can do today. Instead of focusing on all of the business you might need in the next thirty days to survive, focus solely on getting that next client. This mind set is so crucial to life, we find it all over in the spiritual and faith world. Those who study yoga are familiar with the concept of meditating on “being present.” In the Judeo Christian world, this philosophy is found in the Bible with scriptures such as “This is the day the Lord hath made, rejoice and be glad in it.” Or, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow.”

Conclusion. This is a different time. The ways of the past twenty or thirty years will not aid entrepreneurs in survival today. The mind set must turn from going full speed and spending whatever it take, to getting lean and focusing on net profit instead of big dollars. Survival is not for the feint of heart and it does not come naturally to most. Any one who wishes to survive must develop new habits and be willing to take unpleasant steps, such as terminating valued employees. The survivor must accurately appraise his danger but never focus on it. The survivor becomes the conqueror when he practices an attitude of turning adversity into success.

---

Mark A. Chinn operates a family law practice in Jackson, Mississippi. He is the author or co author of five books including How to Build and Manage a Family Law Practice, published by the American Bar Association. For more on Mark see www.chinnandassociates.com.

Environmental Economics

2009-07-01T22:29:00.003-05:00

Environmental Economics

by Frank Givens

Rotary International has some great programs. If you don’t know about them, look on the website at Rotary.org and when you find something you are interested seek out a local Rotarian. He or she will be glad to help. Here are the three big ones. Most common is the Rotary Exchange program where a young person (ages 14 to 18) can attend high school in another country. Another is the Ambassadorial Scholarship for undergraduate and graduate students to study in another country. A third is called GSE (Group Study Exchange) and is a cultural and vocational exchange for those ages 25 to 40 in the early stages of their careers.

A few years ago, I had the good fortune of leading a GSE team of young professionals to Norway. You travel from community to community and visit people who are in your own profession. You attend Rotary Club meetings and tell about your home and work. You stay in the homes of local Rotarians. You are treated like royalty. On this trip I learned a valuable lesson about the economy of environmentalism.

When it comes to the environment we all want to preserve it for future generations. After that, there isn’t much consensus. But we know what happens to the goldfish bowl if the water doesn’t get changed. So where do we find solutions? First, the best thing for the environment is a strong free economy. You don’t see a strong economy unless it is free. And you don’t see a good environment unless the economy is strong. You might say that these factors are interdependent.

In Norway, they have had two environmental and economic disasters, not entirely of their own making. And they got one really big break for the economy. In the old days, their economy was built on fish and timber. At some point the waters were over fished and the fish stock became depleted. At some point the timber began to die from acid rain. Russia (that command economy, environmental disaster of a nation) was polluting the air.

When it affected their pocketbooks, Norwegians became environmentalists. Their big break came from oil in the North Sea. They are the third largest exporter of oil and gas. As a result, they have the national wealth to provide for the social systems that are in place.

So what does all this mean for us? We must protect our economy as well as our environment. Government can set policy. Education works. Beyond that, should government do more, can government spend tax dollars without harming the economy? Keynes may say yes, Friedman or Hayek would say no. Can the justice system rather than budgets keep the environment clean? What part of the resources can the government take to spend and we have a free economy? Does really big business become a branch of the government? Our children need to learn about economics. And there are some questions we can’t answer. That’s economics. So learn, participate, think and vote. That’s all folks.

Frank Givens, CPA, is a registered representative with and securities are offered through LPL Financial, Member FINRA/SIPC. Frank can be reached at frank.givens@lpl.com. The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

GRANDPARENTS’ RIGHTS

2009-06-30T15:38:00.004-05:00

GRANDPARENTS’ RIGHTS

Thomas W. Crockett

As difficult as it is to believe, baby boomers have entered and continue to enter in droves that exalted, privileged and sometimes heartbreaking status of grandparents. As long as the intra-family relationships between the in-laws, step-families and other combinations resulting from our complex society, ripe as it is with divorces, remarriages and other disruptions, remain healthy, grandparents can have a fulfilling and loving relationship with the grandchildren, and become a part of the extended family that all children need so much in these turbulent times.

Things do go wrong, however, and the closest of relationships can be disrupted by the divorce or death of one of the parents, leaving the grandparents to deal with the son or daughter-in-law, who may have (and sometimes with good reason) become hostile to the grandparents and takes out this hostility by denying the grandparents visitation. Sometimes, even if the marriage is intact, both parents may unite against the grandparents to deny visitation.

When the relationship between the grandparents and the parent or parents has become so hostile as to be irreparable, grandparents need to know what legal rights they have to require the custodial parent or parents to allow them visitation. The Mississippi statute grants grandparents the right to petition the court for visitation rights in two circumstances:

First, if a parent dies, or loses custody or parental rights, then that parent’s parents have the right to petition the chancery court for visitation rights.

Second, any grandparent who is not entitled to petition under the above facts may petition for visitation if the grandparent has established a viable relationship with the child (which means a relationship in which the grandparent has voluntarily and in good faith supported the child financially in whole or in part for not less than six months), or had frequent visitation including overnight visitation for a period of not less than one year.

Although the grandparents have the right to petition, the visitation is still subject to certain restrictions, the most important of which is that the visitation is in the child’s best interest.

Assuming that the court finds that the visitation is in the child’s best interest, the additional factors the court will consider in determining the grandparents’ rights are:

(1) amount of disruption visitation will have on grandchild’s life,

(2) suitability of grandparents’ home with respect to amount of supervision,

(3) age of grandchild,

(4) age and physical and mental health of grandparents,

(5) emotional ties between grandparents and grandchild,

(6) moral fitness of grandparents

(7) distance of grandparents’ home from child’s home;

(8) any undermining of parent’s general discipline of grandchild,

(9) employment of grandparents, and

(10) willingness of grandparents to accept that the rearing of the child is the parents’ responsibility and that the parents’ manner of child rearing is not to be interfered with.

Although these rights are there to be used in extreme cases, the enforcement of them is costly in time and money, disruptive of relationships, and uncertain of outcome. Avoid the need to do so by respecting, understanding, and even tolerating the parents – both of them – as they muddle through the difficult job of rearing children. In short, grandparents’ legal rights are like good credit; they should be used only when absolutely necessary.

Thomas W. Crockett is a shareholder in Watkins Ludlam Winter & Stennis, P. A., which has offices at 190 E. Capitol Street, Suite 800, Jackson, MS 39205-0427; One Hancock Plaza, 2510 14^th Street, Suite 1010, P. O. Drawer 160, Gulfport, MS 39502; and 8925 East Goodman Road, P. O. Box 1456, Olive Branch, MS 38654; tcrockett@watkinsludlam.com

SURVIVING AND PERHAPS THRIVING DURING RECESSIONS

2009-06-30T15:33:00.004-05:00

SURVIVING AND PERHAPS THRIVING DURING RECESSIONS

by Frank Givens

If you haven’t heard about the economy, the recession, the stock market, the stimulus plan then you must be hiding under a rock.

Most financial experts agree that we haven’t hit the bottom of this and it will likely take years for our economy to be back to pre-recession levels.

I have seen some organizations that have not only survived but done well during the last two recessions. There are several common characteristics shared by these companies before, during and after the recession.

So what did they do? They didn’t get sick and go to bed; they didn’t roll over and die. They did more than “make do” and they continued to succeed during a recession.

They all had a strong strategic vision and knew who they were before, during and after the crisis. Before it began they controlled costs and established a rainy day fund which they then used during the crisis. They continued to advertise, reduced costs without long-term damage to business and they figured out ways of growing new revenue.

These same basic ideas can be applied to the family. Communicate with your family—be honest about your financial situation. If you don’t have a rainy day fund, start one. Savings accounts are free and usually require just a small deposit to activate.

Let your teenagers get a job to pay for their own spending money. If you’re eating out every night learn how to cook. There’s a reason that the “greatest generation” grew up during the Great Depression.

When my daughters were little one of their favorite books to have read aloud was the Laura Ingles Wilder series. As Pa used say, “It’s better to be safe than sorry.” He was talking about not falling in a well, but the same is true for your long-term and short-term financial goals.

Today, yes, the economy is bad. History tells us that eventually the economy will turn around. Hopefully, the young people witnessing this today will make better choices about spending and saving in the future because of what has happened.

Local Jewelry Artisan Lil McKinnon-Hicks Named to Southern Arts Federation

2009-06-30T15:09:00.005-05:00

Local Jewelry Artisan Lil McKinnon-Hicks Named to Southern Arts Federation

Jackson, MS … Lil McKinnon-Hicks, a local jewelry artisan, was one of only 23 Mississippians designated as a master artist by the Southern Arts Federation and named recently to the organization’s adjudicated registry: www.SouthernArtistry.org.

Nominated by the Mississippi Arts Commission, McKinnon-Hicks is one of approximately 300 visual artists, authors, designers, performers, film-makers and arts educators across the entire Southern U.S. (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee) who were admitted to the registry during the current year.

McKinnon-Hicks, whose work in sterling, gold and enamel is marketed as ‘Lil McKH Jewelry,’ maintains a private studio at 200 Commerce Street, located above Hal & Mal’s Restaurant in downtown Jackson.

McKinnon-Hicks’ jewelry designs are available at her studio (open Tuesday – Thursday and by appointment, 601-259-6461) as well as through Nils & Angela’s Gallery Jewelers, Mississippi Museum of Art, Mississippi History Store and the SPA at St. Dominic’s Hospital in Jackson.

Her work is also displayed and sold through the Mississippi Crafts Center in Ridgeland; P is for Primitive in Canton; The Attic Gallery in Vicksburg; The A Gallery in Hattiesburg; National Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, TN; Gallery Janjobe in Lexington, KY; Cedar Rapids Museum of Art in Cedar Rapids, IA, and online at www.LilMcKHJewelry.com.

Lil McKinnon-Hicks is an exhibiting member of the Craftsmen’s Guild of Mississippi, as well as a member of the Florida Society of Goldsmiths, the Mississippi Gem & Mineral Society, the Eastern Federation of Mineralogical & Lapidary Societies and the Southeast Federation of Mineralogical Societies. She is a member of the Mississippi Forge Council, Ethical Metalsmiths and the Precious Metal Clay Guild.

The Southern Arts Federation, a non-profit organization founded in 1975, creates partnerships and collaborations; assists in the development of artists, arts professionals and arts organizations; presents, promotes and produces Southern arts and cultural programming; and advocates for the arts and arts education. The organization is funded through the National Endowment for the Arts.

SouthernArtistry.org is an online registry dedicated to showcasing the lives and work of outstanding visual artists, writers, performers, filmmakers and arts educators who are living and working in the South. Each artist on the registry has been nominated by one of nine state arts agencies based on the quality of their work.

Pictured: Lil McKinnon-Hicks, a Mississippi jewelry artist who produces work under the name of Lil McKH Jewelry, at work in her downtown Jackson studio.

Book Review: Promises I Made My Mother

2009-05-21T12:30:00.002-05:00

Promises I Made My Mother
By Sam Haskell with David Rensin
Hardback; 236 pps; b/w photos; $24

Promises I Broke in this Review
by Jim Fraiser

Book reviewers tell themselves white lies on occasion. Mine were that I would never review a book written (or as told to a writer) by a celebrity, actor, rock star (or even more unthinkable) a Hollywood agent, and that I would look before I leaped when considering reviewing books by friends, acquaintances or professional colleagues. But when I heard that my former Ole Miss fraternity brother-turned-renowned William Morris agent, Sam Haskell, had penned one, I immediately agreed to tie this one on.

After all, what Hollywood agents hail from small town Mississippi, make lifetime commitments to honesty, compassion, loyalty and other such values, and still succeed in the modern-day Babylon? How could this story not be intriguing? And how could any critic dare slam a tome written in honor of a good southern boy’s mother?

Indeed, the shocker here is precisely that Haskell, who grew up in Amory, matriculated at Ole Miss, has maintained strong ties with his old friends and fellow Mississippians and rigorously followed his mother’s advice to hold on to his integrity wherever he went, would be named in 2007 by TV Week as one of the 25 Most Innovative and Influential Persons in Television.

In relaying this most extraordinary odyssey, Haskell imparts, in the same matter-of-fact and easy to read style, how his mother taught him the virtues our society claims to admire, and how he worked his way from the mail room to the height of power in the William Morris Agency working a town whose nabobs often ignore such virtues during their rise to the top. From his “humiliating” failure to win an 8th grade Good Citizenship award to his deft handling of client crises such as his first client Kathy Lee Gifford’s career launch to tense negotiations to salvage sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, Haskell’s life proves the feel-good story that his book’s title, Promises I Made My Mother, suggests it will be.

Haskell relates everything from Prince Edward’s royal visit to Amory, his packaging of the 1982 Golden Globe Awards for CBS which led to his friendship and eventual representation of singer/actress Dolly Parton, his marriage to and partnership with beauty queen and accomplished singer Mary Donnelly, and his negotiations on behalf of client Will Smith to launch NBC’s The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. His post-retirement organization of eight Stars Over Mississippi concerts and his Shelter from the Storm Katrina concert are a testament to both his love for his fellow Mississippians and the great esteem in which he is held by popular Hollywood entertainers, including many from Mississippi such as Morgan Freeman, Gerald McRaney, Sela Ward and Faith Hill.

But the most telling of his tales is the one concerning his efforts to meet his favorite movie star, Bette Davis, in 1982, and how following his mother’s advice helped him to succeed professionally and personally in that and other ventures. At the time a fledgling agent, Haskell assumed the daunting task of obtaining Ms. Davis’ services as a presenter on David Frost’s The American Movie Awards in honor of producer Hal Wallis. Having no previous connection with her, Haskell boldly volunteered to contact Davis personally. Instead of the tongue lashing many expected he’d receive, Haskell succeeded not only gaining her participation in the show, but also her respect and longtime friendship. This happened because, as she later related, she wanted “the company of this funny young agent with the heavy Southern accent, who was both earnest and eager.”

How Haskell proved that integrity, perseverance and compassion, the virtues that good mothers like his always teach by example, can prevail even in Hollywood, is what Promises I Made My Mother is all about. And that is a story from which everyone could benefit. ##
--
Jim Fraiser is an Administrative Law Judge in Tupelo, the author of twelve books, and a professional stage and film actor, having made his successful theatrical debut after being hustled to his first audition by future superagent Sam Haskell during their tenure at Ole Miss.

Reason Magazine: Gov Barbour sabotaging eminent domain reform in MS

2009-05-12T23:43:00.004-05:00

From Sold Down the River: How Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour sabotaged eminent domain reform:

Since the Supreme Court's notorious 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, which allowed that municipality to seize private property on behalf of the Pfizer Corporation, 43 states have passed laws protecting property rights against Kelo-style eminent domain abuse. Mississippi is not one of those states.

The article exposes why our governor has rejected eminent domain reform, reveals the true nature of a new bill that Barbour proposed in a recent special session, and explains the steps being taken now to stop him.

Respect Workers, Defend Liberty

2009-04-23T12:05:00.005-05:00

"Union Joe" Atkins, as Paul Gallo called him on this morning's show, has had his last free shot at Mississippi employers. Henceforth, I'll supply a rebuttal to every one of his columns that the Clarion-Ledger prints. Here is rebuttal column no. 1.
--R. Pepper Crutcher, Jr.

Genuinely, laudably, Clarion-Ledger labor columnist Joe Atkins cares for the working poor. But his judgment of their interests is clouded by hatred of nameless, faceless villains Joe calls “bosses.” Clarion-Ledger readers and advertisers accustomed to Joe’s outbursts don’t read them or worry about them. But I take Joe seriously, because liberty is lost incrementally, and is marginally imperiled each time Joe goes unanswered in the public square.

For example, in Joe’s story-length, April 19, Clarion-Ledger column, “Respect workers,” he argued, essentially, that the Employee Free Choice Act (111^th Cong., S. 560) is good because the “bosses” are evil. By such logic, anything anyone favors is good, if opposed by one you dislike. Well, I have tried cheeseburgers and I like them. That judgment will not change even if I should learn that Osama bin Laden shares my taste. A thing, a policy, is good or not on its own merits, about which each reader should make his or her own judgment. And Joe wrote nothing about the Employee Free Choice Act that should support a favorable judgment of it.

Joe’s column was prompted by an April 9 Ole Miss Journalism School debate that he . . . moderated, for lack of a fully descriptive word. Pete Perry and I spoke for employers. Remarkably little of what I said in that debate appeared in Joe’s column. I explained EFCA’s card check section by applying it to the 2011 election for the Mississippi House District 70 seat held by my worthy debate opponent, Rep. Jim Evans, who won that seat in 2007 with 3,077 votes, running unopposed. If his 2011 race were run by card check rules, an opponent could unseat Rep. Evans with no vote, by submitting to the Mississippi Secretary of State just 1,539 cards designating the challenger the new District 70 House member. Rep. Evans would have no right to solicit his own cards, or to know of the campaign against him, or to hear about or to contest any promises or threats made to get opposing card signatures. Indeed, Rep. Evans would have no legal right to inspect the challenger’s card signatures or to contest their authenticity.

Under another EFCA section, I explained, the government may impose so-called “contracts” on employees and employers without either’s consent. But solicitors of union cards are not required to explain that to workers. Workers also would be uninformed that, once saddled with a union, the law prohibits them to change that decision for years to come.

Rather than review those and other salient debate points, Joe’s recent column distorted a related article that I wrote for Engage magazine. You may read what I wrote, in full, at www.fed-soc.org/publications (Vol. 10, Issue 1, February 2009). Joe wrote that I expect Southern bosses – a peculiarly bad sort, presumably – to retaliate for EFCA’s passage by “hiring fewer African-Americans.” As they say in that car rental commercial, “not exactly.”

EFCA won’t pass, at least not this year, because so many Democrats have defected that S. 560 will struggle to attract a bare majority in the Senate, where one needs 60 votes to get a cup of coffee. And my forecast of EFCA’s harm hinges on the social utility of the secret ballot, especially for African-Americans, especially in the South. Union card solicitations are unregulated because people who are tricked or coerced into signing a card may cast a secret ballot against the union a short time later – no harm, no foul. Card check’s threat to workplace race relations is a direct result of the unions’ southern strategy of race-based organizing. In some communities, for various reasons, racial solidarity among them, an employee cannot, practically speaking, openly oppose a union. The social price is just too high. She may disagree only privately. And that fact explains most union election losses in most of the South, especially the rural South. Many African-Americans sign union cards and then, having heard both sides in an election campaign, secretly vote “NO.” It’s that right that EFCA targets for destruction, for that very reason.

I don’t know an employer who thinks that union representation questions should be race-based. So I’m not surprised that minority-owned enterprises strongly oppose card check. Harry C. Alford, president and chief executive officer of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, recently called EFCA “absurd and hideous.” My Engage magazine article predicts some particularly hideous consequence of its enactment. Unions quickly would target African-American workers for race-based, card check organizing. Card solicitors will avoid and alienate white workers, for fear that they might tell the “boss” what’s up. Judging from our sad history, I would expect such racial alienation to produce dysfunctional employee and employee-management relations. If you need this explained, you ain’t from ‘round here. Some employers, I believe, would flee in advance of being run out of town by abuses of EFCA. Others would drop their plans to locate here.

Given those foreseeable consequences, my article predicted that a clear and present danger of EFCA passage will prompt Southern legislators to regulate union solicitations by, among other things, imposing financial disclosure obligations. Indeed, the Mississippi Senate did just that in the 2009 General Session, only to see S.B. 3111CS blocked and killed in committee by House leaders.

I confess that each of my educated guesses is debatable, but this is not: no amount of disdain for “bosses” can justify EFCA’s deprivations of fundamental liberties. And by the way, Joe, we need more “bosses,” because we need more jobs.

Gov. Kirk Fordice: A Personal Recollection

2009-04-22T14:47:00.006-05:00

A personal recollection of Kirk Fordice

By Jack Criss

Kirk Fordice was a fascinating man.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been five years since his death from cancer. Governor Fordice was the type of person that you would think might live forever. With his brashness, toughness and give ‘em hell attitude, he seemed immune to life’s slings and arrows. A car-wreck couldn’t kill him. Neither could a bout with prostate cancer. Nor could his battles with the Mississippi legislature!

Yet he didn’t win his final battle and I miss him. Not only the man himself but also the type of era he represented and lived through. Modern intellectuals often scoff at the Horatio Alger, rugged cowboy-type American icon of years past; but that’s really what Kirk Fordice was. If only we had more like him around today.

I was—and still am—Kirk Fordice’s authorized biographer. We worked closely for about two years on a manuscript and, one day, the book will see the light of day albeit in a different form than originally planned.

He was so pleased the day I called him, only months before he succumbed, to tell him the good news about a publishing contracting for Steel Will, the name I had given the Governor’s biography.

“That’s great news, Jack!” he yelled through the line. “I’m so proud of ya!” Barney and Gwen McKee of Quail Ridge Press had agreed to publish my proposed biography and I couldn’t wait to get the news to Governor Fordice. Especially after all of the rejection letters I had received.

One of those letters in particular really got under Governor Fordice’s craw. A man who Fordice knew well owned a conservative publishing house in Washington, DC called Regnery. The Governor had given large sums of money to this man for several of his political causes and had told me that I should really submit my proposal to this particular house. After a number of rejection letters from other houses around the country, I took the Governor’s suggestion and did just that.

To make a long story short, I finally received a letter from the big man’s secretary telling me that they simply were not interested in my proposal. If you remember anything about Kirk Fordice you can only imagine his reaction!

Well, after telling Governor Fordice that Barney and Gwen at Quail Ridge would publish the book, he couldn’t resist the following: “Jack, when the book comes out, let’s mail a copy to (the Regnery owner) with a note that says, “You can kiss our a__!” We both laughed out loud and I told him I though it was a good idea. (In fact, when the book is published, I think I will send that letter—in the Governor’s memory!)

Kirk Fordice and I didn’t see to eye to eye on everything. But he was, at heart, a classical liberal—as I am—and he believed very strongly in individual autonomy and responsibility and less government involvement in our lives. That’s what initially attracted me to this dark horse gubernatorial candidate from Vicksburg back in 1991.

I first met Kirk Fordice at a private fundraiser at someone’s house in Brandon, I forget now who’s exactly. A financial advisor friend had called and invited me saying that he thought I would really like this guy. I was 26 at the time and a fairly well known radio talk show host.

That night I met Fordice and was impressed with him. Being the youngest person in attendance (and hence the poorest), Fordice nevertheless took a long time with me discussing the finer points of his education plan. I made him promise me that night that, if he got elected, he would come on my talk show every single week (Ray Mabus, the incumbent at the time, would not be interviewed on talk radio in Jackson). He said he absolutely would do that.

I endorsed him on the air the next day. When Fordice made Mississippi history in November, 1991, he was—as promised—on my show the following week and with me every week until I left talk radio in March of 1992.

We communicated sparingly after those early days. I was beginning my career in business publishing and the Governor was hard at it in his new job. I did meet with him on a number of occasions, though, and he was always cordial, funny and friendly, more open and direct than any other political official I had ever dealt with.

Flash ahead to early 2002: I was living in Greenville, Mississippi working with the Delta Business Journal, and had not talked to Governor Fordice in a number of years. It occurred to me one day that someone needed to write his meteoric and explosive life story and that it should be me.

Governor Fordice did not use a computer, fax or voice mail, so I wrote and mailed him a letter. I remember writing that I knew someone would write his story and it would probably be a detractor, someone wanting to dish dirt and disparage the governor’s record. I asked his permission to be considered as his authorized biographer.

A few weeks later, I got a handwritten note from Fordice saying that he thought it was a great idea and that he would fly up to Cleveland (where my office was) to commence work. I was thrilled and couldn’t wait to see the Governor again and get started.

Over the next year and a half, Governor Fordice would fly his plane to the Cleveland airport next to Delta State University, and my friend, boss and mentor in publishing, Scott Coopwood, and I would meet him. Then I would spend hours interviewing the Governor, recording the talks, about his life, opinions, stories…everything and anything I needed for the book.

It’s hard for me to being to tell about all the fun we had during those visits. Yes, I said “fun”. Probably the most misunderstood and publicly maligned government officials in our state’s history, Kirk Fordice was not only one of the most well-read and smart men I’d ever known, he was also one of the funniest.

When we’d get through with our interviews, Scott, or my wife, Natalie, and I, would take Fordice out to eat at some of the Delta “hotspots”. Over many glasses of Scotch, he would regale us with stories for hours and I would laugh so hard my face would hurt! Along with his own stories he would also often talk about his favorite David Letterman moments, a show he never missed. It was during these relaxed, intimate dinners that I felt I really got close to Kirk Fordice and got to know the man behind the Clarion-Ledger myth, as it were.

While he could be outrageously funny, Fordice could also flash that famous anger on a moment’s turn. I recall once, sitting in Belazars’ Restaurant just outside of Cleveland, I had made the mistake of interrupting Governor Fordice as he relayed he story. When I finished talking he sat perfectly still, jaw clenched, and said, without looking at me: “Jack, don’t EVER interrupt me again.”

Needless to say, I never did.

Then, once after a late night of interviewing, Governor Fordice, Natalie and I along with two other guests, made our way to KC’s restaurant in Cleveland. Walking in, we noticed a crowd of folks eating and drinking in the bar. However, our maitre ‘d informed us that they were “closed” for the evening. This miffed me more than a little so I asked for the owner. I knew him and I thought that, certainly, he would allow the former Governor and his guests in for dinner.

“No,” he told us. “We’ve already turned off the grill.” I was incredulous and so was Fordice as well we should have been. He let out a few choice works (and I did too, if I recall) and we left.

Then, though, there was the charm. Scott and I took Governor Fordice to Crawdad’s, in Merigold, for dinner one evening. As we were nursing our cocktails waiting for dinner, former Democratic Representative Charlie Capps came walking in. As soon as Fordice saw him, he called out, and the two met each other in an embrace. Scott and I could only exchange knowing looks as these old political warhorses proceeded to reminisce and tell stories.

Governor Fordice was also the perfect gentleman. He would make my little girl, Dagny, laugh out loud and was always quick with a joke with anyone he met. As a former businessman, he treated everyone the same. Whether meeting a laborer or a CEO, Fordice always presented the same face. He was genuine. Like or him or not, he was who he was.

The other side of Kirk Fordice that so intrigued me was him intellect and grasp of history. I had the honor of going through his home library several times and it was loaded with historical tomes, philosophy volumes, political tracts…a veritable cornucopia of knowledge. I was impressed to see all the notes he made in the margins of these books, evidence of the time and effort spent with them. His was not a library for show…it was one for use.

The last time I saw Governor Fordice was at a dinner at the Edison-Walthall Hotel in downtown Jackson celebrating our book contract. Natalie and I, Barney and Gwen McKee, and the hotel owner and Fordice friend, Earl Gaylor had a wonderful evening together, celebrating, laughing and discussing current events.

Governor Fordice’s hero, Ronald Reagan, had just died and that was on his mind. He was very upset that Governor Barbour had not invited him to the funeral. I recall his sadness when discussing this and the passing of the man he himself idolized.

We all knew there had been some health problems. Fordice spoke freely, that night at the Walthall, in fact, of some tests that had been run. However, I found out how bad things really were along with everyone else in Mississippi when I saw the Clarion-Ledger cover story. I immediately picked up the phone and called him to see what I could do and if we could meet again. I didn’t recognize the voice on the other end.

The cancer had evidently hit and hit hard. It was a strain for Governor Fordice to talk to me. I wished him well and he asked me to come see him. We would talk only once more before he died. I never did get out to his Madison home to visit. Perhaps I was scared to see what I knew I would see. I had heard reports from Jim Ingram and others about his condition and I put off going to see him. Now I wish I hadn’t.

I knew, for example, that he was not eating. Earl Gaylor would have meals cooked at the Edison delivered to the Governor’s house only, I was told, to have Fordice feed them to his beloved dog, Lance. He just couldn’t—or wouldn’t—eat.

His funeral—in downtown Jackson at the First Baptist Church—was one of the most touching displays I have ever witnesses and I admit to shedding a few tears. The tough, grizzled, bigger-than-life Republican was gone…and was so my friend and father figure.

In June of 2005 I ran my first marathon with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training in San Diego, California. I had chosen Kirk Fordice as the person I was dedicating my race to due to his fatal battle. During the six hours-plus it took me to finish, I would occasionally look down on my left wrist to read the band that bore his name.

I will get around to finishing his book one day. I honesty don’t know when. The governor’s family has not communicated with me about it so it will be done in a different style that what we had originally planned. It will be published, though. And what a story it will be.

Marathon Makeover: Turning Couch Potatoes Into Marathon Runners

2009-04-20T18:41:00.002-05:00

Marathon Makeover: Mississippi entrepreneurs transform lives, turning couch potatoes into marathon finishers

By Jack Criss

(The following article will appear in the next edition of Mississippi Sports Magazine published by Profiles Mississippi designer, Greg Pevey, and his wife, Mendy).

Mark Simpson turned a challenge from a friend into a statewide health and wellness program that has exploded into the Mississippi athletic environment changing countless lives along the way.

Marathon Makeover is a 40-week wellness program that takes “couch potatoes” off the couch and transforms them physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually through the process of training for a marathon.

“It’s really about transforming one’s total wellness within a supportive community toward an audacious goal,” says Clinton-based Simpson, who is the co-founder and co-director of the organization.

Why a marathon? “The marathon is an point of reference that, seemingly, all things in life are judged by,” Simpson answers. “You so often hear things referred to as being a ‘marathon’—the connotation is that it’s the ultimate definition of accomplishment or perseverance.”

There are other marathon programs out there for individuals to choose: Why did Simpson start this one? And in Mississippi of all places?

“I was talking to a marathon fanatic one day,” Simpson relates the story, “a guy who ran a marathon once a week. He was complaining about how no one in Mississippi wanted to ever train for and run a marathon. I told him that it’s not such much that no one here has the desire, it’s just that they wouldn’t know where to start.

He laughed and said to me, ‘Simpson, I could have you ready to run a marathon in six months. I’ll even train you if you can find five other people to do it—but you won’t be able to.’ That was the gauntlet being thrown down,” Simpson says. And he picked it up.

It took Simpson a little bit longer than six months—nine, to be exact—but he did, in fact, find some twenty-two people to train alongside him as he prepared for the Chicago Marathon in 2004. “Twenty of those folks finished the marathon with me,” Simpson says. “That gave me the impetus to do this type of training on a regular basis. There was such a groundswell of interest and support from that first group that my wife, Robin, and I decided to form Marathon Makevoer.” (For the record, Simpson completed the 2004 Chicago Marathon—his first race—in five hours and three minutes. He has completed five more since.)

Charging a nominal fee for their time, the Simpsons officially kicked off Marathon Makeover in 2005 taking 54 participants to Chicago that year. Marathon Makeover currently has over 450 people training for a marathon.

“Robin and I have pulled together a team of coaches to help us,” Simpson says, further explaining the program. “The group outgrew just the two of us as far as providing the necessary training and tools. Last year we broke our local groups into area groups and now have a Clinton, Ridgeland and Brandon Reservoir team in the Metro Jackson area. We have a turnkey training system which is DVD based that all of our coaches use equipping them with the program’s consistency and sharing the insights we developed in the previous years.” Marathon Makeover has expanded further in 2009, becoming a franchise with new teams in Vicksburg, MS and Mobile, Alabama.

For those individuals wanting to participate in Marathon Makeover, Simpson says it’s essentially “wide open.” With a doctor’s go ahead, the only requirement of the program is that participants must be over the age of 21 (16 and over if training with a parent) and in good health. “We’ve had several participants and finishers over the age of 70,” Simpson says, “and people from all other ages and backgrounds.”

Simpson and his Marathon Makeover team were participants in the now-infamous 2007 Chicago Marathon in which one runner died and many others were hospitalized due to the extreme heat and fluid shortage. Did having a group of first-timers in the middle of the worst marathon disaster in the sport’s history cast a pall over the program? Quite the opposite, according to Simpson.

“It was one of those defining moments, without a doubt,” he says. “It served to build our characters and resolves I see in retrospect. I think it highlighted the effectiveness of the Marathon Makeover program, honestly. We arrived with 135 participants and all of us felt ready. Yes, it was hot, but we trained in heat. Although the race was called off in mid-stream, the amazing thing is that we had over a dozen of our people finish and they all would have finished if it had been allowed to continue. We ended up saying that Mississippi was ready for Chicago but Chicago wasn’t ready for Mississippi!”

Last year, Marathon Makeover put on its own road race at the Renaissance at Colony Park in Ridgeland, a half marathon. “Of course you have to hit the 13.1 mile mark in training for a full marathon,” Simpson says, “and with our previous groups we would always celebrate and acknowledge that momentous step with our members. It was suggested to me that a really special way of acknowledgement would be for us to have our very own half-marathon. Chuck Gautier, an alderman in Ridgeland, actually was the one who encouraged us to start this road race and open it up to the general public. So, we put the ball in motion, and with the help of the City, H. C. Bailey Company and the people at the Renaissance, we put on our first half marathon in June of 2008.” Over 830 people registered for the race resulting in one of the state’s largest races and a post-race survey undertaken by Marathon Makeover rated it a Nine out of Ten. Simpson says the 2009 half marathon will be a bigger and better one.

“For this year’s half we’re bringing in a race director from Austin, Texas who was the logistics coordinator for that city’s half marathon as well as other races,” Simpson says. “His expertise and knowledge will add a whole new level to the Renaissance race this June.” In addition, Marathon Makeover will be putting on a full marathon in October to replace the group’s yearly trip to Chicago.

“We did the math,” Simpson tells us, “and realized that, in 2008, by taking over 300 people to Chicago resulted in over $200,000 being dropped in that city’s economy. We thought: why not do that locally and invest in our home? Plus, it would afford our participants the opportunity for more of their family members and supporters to witness their accomplishment and cheer them on.” The inaugural Marathon Makeover Marathon, which will also include a half, will be held on October 17 in the Highland Colony area. Registration will open at the Renaissance at Colony Park Half-Marathon in June.

Avid and enthusiastic promoters, Mark and Robin host their own Marathon Makeover talk show Friday mornings from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. on SuperTalk FM Radio and will also soon be publishing a full color, glossy health magazine called Marathon Makeover magazine. “Additionally, one of our partners, Don Warren, is a professional videographer and is continually shooting video for promotional purposes and future products to compliment our program.

“Marathon Makeover can drastically improve people’s lives,” Simpson says. “We’ve seen so many wonderful, inspiring stories of people who, perhaps going through life changes or difficulties, have participated with us, reached a challenging goal, and came through in transformed. That’s why we use as many media means available to us as we can to get the word out. We want people happy and motivated and we’ve seen that happen so many times.”

Marathon Makeover is a true community in every sense of the word, Simpson says. Not only do people complete the program having accomplished a major athletic event, becoming happier and healthier in the process; they also establish ties and relations that will last lifetimes.

“I stay in touch with so many of our participants and can’t tell you all of the great success stories I’ve heard. It is so gratifying to me and Robin,” Simpson says. “That was our purpose in creating Marathon Makeover and it moves me to see so many instances where we’ve accomplished our mission.”

For more information, please log on to www.marathonmakeover.com or emailing mark@marathonmakeover.com

Rockin'--Not Retiring--In The Recession: Interview with Todd Rundgren

2009-04-20T18:01:00.002-05:00

Rockin’—Not Retiring—In The Recession: Legendary Musician, Todd Rundgren, Stays In The “Arena”

Interview by Jack Criss

Publisher

Profiles Mississippi Magazine

(The following interview was conducted March 18, just days before Todd Rundgren took to the road again for another leg of a tour supporting his latest CD, “Arena.” It is published here only slightly edited.)

JC: The new CD, “Arena”, finds you very prescient: the lyrics and message are very relevant, almost in a frightening way. Was that on purpose? Did you see some signs during the recording of the record?

Rundgren: I do try and make the records, especially the ones I’ve done recently, relevant to some degree to the circumstances I find myself in at the time. So it isn’t necessarily always polemical; it’s not always me behaving as if I’m some sort of reporter (laughs). But it is a reaction in me—I guess I’m more like Bill O’Reilly (chuckles) than someone who just reads the news. I’m opinionated about the things that happen around me. In this particular instance I had already taken on one kind of personal revelation, which was the degree to which people lie (Ed. Note: TR’s CD “Liars” released in April, 2004). (With that CD) I was thinking at the time that only the executive branch was lying, but it turns out we all do it all the time, so it became ripe fodder for me to deal with that theme.

When it came time to do “Arena” it appeared we were entering another era in which everyone was realizing the degree to which they had been deceived over the past eight years. Now we’re at the point where we won’t be as easily deceived but we might be talked out of what we have to do by people who are just too entrenched or cowardly to buy into any kind of new order.

JC: Speaking as a fan, though, you’ve never really been overtly polemical in your career outside of the concerts you did for presidential hopeful John Anderson back in 1980. You always seem to address individuals and what they can do to change.

Rundgren: That’s a very astute assessment in that a lot of people, when they start evaluating the kind of situation we’re currently in, will stop at the societal level or tend to lump people together into larger groups as opposed to going to the individual components of that group. I guess there’s a recognition that the mob has a mentality all its own and that if you can figure out how to talk to that thing then you can control it. But underneath that “mob” are individual people who are much more complicated than any single-minded mob agenda. So I figure that if I want to affect change, I don’t address the mob, clan or family; I address the individual inasmuch as that’s where change comes from for me—I already wrote a song about it. (“Change Myself,” 1990) I can’t expect change in the world if I’m incapable of change. I figure let’s start with me and rather than act as a bludgeon act more insidiously like a virus.

JC: I think that’s a much more refreshing, and effective, approach than how some over-politicized musical group like Rage Against The Machine or The Clash come across.

Rundgren: Well, the advantage of the Rage Against The Machine approach is just like the way we’ve been going through the last eight years—they just happen to be on the other side of the political spectrum. Essentially, though, it’s the same thing: it’s all about somebody else. It’s not about me; it’s all about “you” or “you guys” or “the Man”—something like that. I mean, you never hear Rage Against The Machine screaming out, “I’ve got some personal problems that I need to deal with and I really have no right yelling at other people!” (laughs).

JC: Yes, and by the same token you never hear older Republicans say, “Don’t cut my government benefits.”

Rundgren: Exactly, but that comes from a survivalist sensibility that’s inside everybody and the “I will not be responsible for my behavior if, for instance, someone in my family is threatened.” I mean, it’s all well and good to keep the social contract as long as the most vital things are being handled and taken care of. So I can be all lovey-dovey and Christian like so many other people but, again, like so many other people, if you or your family is being threatened all “Thou Shalt Not Kill” stuff goes out the window. We can all be high and mighty when everything is safe and secure; it’s how we behave when we are threatened that really indicates where we’re at in a more accurate way.

JC: And we’re going to find out, aren’t we?

Rundgren: Well, it’s starting to happen now—we’re all at each other’s throats. The question is: What do you do in a time of panic? Do you just panic along with everybody else or do you try and ride it out? I’ve always subscribed to the theory that whatever is happening, if you succumb to your fear and confusion, you’re never going to make it any better so you might as well, just, Zen-up (laughs) and endure it until it’s over!

JC: Given all this, it’s easy to be cynical. In your career, though, you came of age in the Sixties, a very idealistic time, and were influenced by idealistic musicians like The Beatles and Dylan. Is there a role for the musician to enact change or are artists like you just tilting at windmills?

Rundgren: We tend to think that pop music is inherently trivial, but what passes for popular music at any particular era is usually serving some particular purpose. For those of us in the Sixties—and that fact that the music industry matured during a World War—a lot of the music was looked at as escapist: during the war (it was) to make you forgot about those conflicts as much as possible. By the time we got to the Sixties we were in total escapist mode: we’d been threatened by nuclear annihilation our entire lives and we’re thinking, God, can we just get a mental break here? I think a lot of the music of the Sixties, though, started to really address the root of our anxiety. Out of that came the whole peace movement and all the music that went with it that was supposed to mean something, something to take to heart. Music has always had that component, you know, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie loved to sing pretty songs about flowers and stuff but found their conscience wouldn’t allow them to only sing about that (laughs) so they had to sing about the strife their fellow man was going through.

JC: But, as you have decried in your song “Soul Brother,” so much of the music today is very plastic—there are few artists who are singing songs with messages. Where are the Pete Seegers? They’re veterans like you and your peers who are still putting out good and relevant material but I don’t see many musicians out there with much talent, frankly.

Rundgren: Well, it doesn’t necessarily even have to be “message music,” because the central mean nowadays for discovering new artists is all about American Idol, not the A&R department’s romantic search for new talent (laughs). American Idol is the likely place for the next commercial artists to come out and the audience that show draws just reaffirms how hungry people are for that kind of music you describe, the empty calorie stuff. I don’t think there’s ever been a night on American Idol where all the contestants had to sing protest songs! And I don’t know if that night will ever come (laughs).

In any case, you have to say, for almost any kind of so-called “art,” that it will tend to seek the level of the audience. There was a time when even the average person might have an appreciation for what is called fine art. Before television was the one and only media outlet, people would go to museums and look at paintings. I recall that that world of fine art always seemed a more political and social place than the field of pop art. Of course, pop art is relevant depending on the context. I get the feeling, though, that our current scene is a reaction to the so-called Global War on Terror—that, when people hear music, they just want to completely forget about terrorism.

JC: Let’s talk about your discography. You’ve said in the past that you make your records for yourself and your own enjoyment. That begs the question: do you ever go back and listen to any particular record or song of yours? Is there one that really stands out?

Rundgren: I don’t often go back and listen to my records from years ago. I do, however, listen to my most recent recordings fairly intensely and copiously for a couple of reasons. One is that I’m going to have to go out and play it live so I need to ingrain it to a certain degree. Another is that part of my music evolution is not to repeat things that I’ve done before regardless of the level of success that it achieved. That’s not contrarian, that’s just me. I’m like a shark—I have to keep moving musically or else I atrophy. I don’t dwell on what I’ve done in the past enough to develop that level of affection.

The other problem is that I have trouble with absolutes. You know, name your favorite this or that. Those would be absolutes and I personally live in a world of constant relativity. Change is inherent and stability is really an illusion—it’s just that change is happening so slowly you don’t notice it so you think there’s stability. I’m pretty much unafraid of change as a basic principle. I realize there are changes that are unpleasant and that you regret or would rather not have to go through, but such is life. These are the rules of the game. And constant change is one of the rules.

JC: That would seem to be a very Buddhist approach or theory.

Rundgren: Well I don’t practice any formal sort of religion but, in that sense, I’m very comfortable with a lot of Buddhist philosophy mostly because it doesn’t dwell on questions about the personality of the creator as so many religions do. Original sin to me was Man’s self awareness and as soon as he became aware of himself he did so as relative to all other things and it wasn’t good enough for man to just be one of those things—he had to be the most important thing and that’s why the personality of God was invented. So when people ask me if I’m an atheist I say no, I just don’t think we can understand the nature of what’s at the bottom of all existence. It doesn’t hurt us to think about it but when you become absolutely sure that you know, you’re about as far away as you can possibly get.

JC: Tell us a bit about the recent tour.

Rundgren: Musically we’re moving in a more moderate direction and I’m fine with that. We want to convey high energy and get the crowd exhilarated but, at this particular point, it’s not like we’re going to say vote against this or vote for that—everybody’s tired of voting. Now we have a whole other range of things we need to work on—we’re toiling in the fields, poring over the numbers (laughs), you know. In some ways it appears on the surface to be less heroic but, actually, it’s the steadfastness of it that does make it heroic: The fact that the storms are blowing all around you and yet you still…deliver the mail!

JC: Well whatever you do, take care of your vocal cords: those new songs require a lot of power!

Rundgren: As a matter of fact, my voice is holding up better than any other part of my body at this point!

Is Haley Barbour Really A Republican?

2009-03-24T17:23:00.002-05:00

I'll make this quick for now with a longer update to follow in the next few days. Let me just say, though, that Governor Haley Barbour's endorsement of emminent domain is a travesty. Here we have, once again, a prominent member of the Grand Old Party, the side supposedly FOR property rights, saying that such rights can be thrown out the window if a new, unproven economic project comes down the pike.

Like the late Governor Kirk Fordice, I had strong reservations about the giveaways we threw to Nissan to land that project. Touted as a major catalyst for "job creation," the truth is that jobs actually just "shifted": people left their existing jobs for a few bucks more at Nissan. No jobs were really created: people merely departed existing positions (mainly from local companies) to go with the new company. And all of those spin-off companies that were going to come into being from Nissan? Well, many are now closed.

While local companies and businesses struggle to survive while battling all the regulations, red tape and high taxes they must deal with, the Nissans and Toyotas of the world are invited in on red carpet with lavish incentives and exemptions that we local business people can only dream of.

Now, the Governor of our state says that private property and land should be no obstacle to "economic growth." Love your land? Love that property that's been in your family for generations? Well, if a big, sexy, foreign automaker wants it, you're just out of luck according to the theory of emminent domain.

Governor Barbour is wrong on this. Really wrong. Plus he is betraying the conservative credo by advocating the violation of property rights, a major and logical extension of the sacred rights of individuals. I wish he would pick up a copy of University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein's seminal work on the damage caused by emminent domain,"Takings," but he won't.

Let's hope members of the state Senate do the right thing, like their counterparts in the House, and oppose emminent domain.

Free to a good home: economic perspective

2009-03-24T13:34:00.008-05:00

In an unprecedented move today, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner asked Congress for the power to regulate non-banking financial companies. If granted, in addition to power wielded over bailed out banks, the Treasury Department could seize control of financial institutions outside the banking industry, essentially nationalizing our country's financial system.

What does this mean for the average American citizen?

Beyond talking points issued by talking heads, many of us taxpayers don't fully understand how a blended economy based on the principles of capitalism is supposed to work. Some of us decry government controls but lack the knowledge to defend our arguments. Others of us vilify for-profit corporations but don't fully understand the implications of our pro-regulation theories. Fortunately, you don't have to be an economist to understand the economy.

Thanks to the omnipresence of the internet, you don't even have to buy a book. Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt is online in its entirety (Side note: I don't know who Jim is, but I'm glad we at least have such widespread access Hazlitt's work, which is still relevant more than 60 years since its original publication.).

You're busy. I understand. You don't have time to read all your email, much less a whole book (on economics, no less). Humor a tired, cynical blogger and just read a few chapters:

Chapter 1: The Lesson
Chapter 2: The Broken Window
Chapter 5: Taxes Discourage Production
Chapter 6: Credit Diverts Production
Chapter 14: Saving the X Industry

Of course, reading the book cover to cover would be beneficial, too.
--
Posted by Natalie Criss

How Free Are We?

2009-03-18T00:58:00.002-05:00

According to a recent study, Mississippi falls in the "fair to middlin" range.

Conducted by William P. Ruger, Jason Sorens, and Fait Muedini, the Freedom in the 50 States: Index of Personal and Economic Freedom (PDF) provides "the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres" Unlike previous studies, the Index seeks to more accurately measure American freedom by including:

1) social and personal freedoms such as peaceable citizens’ rights to educate their own children, own and carry firearms, and be free from unreasonable search and seizure;
2) far more variables, even on economic policies alone, than prior studies, and there are no missing data on any variable;
3) new, more accurate measurements of key variables, particularly state fiscal policies.

According to the Index, the freest states are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota. States that fared the worst were New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, California and Maryland. Mississippi falls in the median quintile along with Arkansas, Alabama, Oregon, the Carolinas, Nevada and Florida.

Compared to the Magnolia State's dismal standing on most national studies, this may sound like cause for celebration. Others, however, view this as a map of freedom's lost and ask: how must freer could we be?

Go On, Take The Money And...Run? Loan? Become Nationalized?

2009-03-10T15:17:00.004-05:00

The news is probably not totally shocking: 16 WAPT is reporting that, as of today, nine Mississippi-based banks have accepted government "bail out" monies. What this will ultimately means remains to be seen. Personally, however, I was hoping that our locally-owned banks could hold out. As this story unfolds, perhaps we will receive insight into whether the nine banks got an "offer they couldn't refuse" or if they actively sought the funds. For the time being, however, I refer readers to my recently published op-ed on the frenzy, Let The Bailout Games Begin.

Let The Bailout Games Begin

2009-03-05T14:41:00.005-06:00

Let The Bailout Games Begin
by Jack Criss

You really almost have to laugh to keep from crying.

Industries and businesses are lining up to get their government bailouts. Business is bad, they lament, and we need help. Billions of dollars worth of help. Where will this money come from? No one really knows—that question is put off for later. This is a national emergency, an unprecedented crisis, we’re told. We must act first and think later.

Can the businesses doing the begging slash their own budgets, maybe take some pay cuts or delete some unnecessary expenses? Well, no, not really. It’s not their fault, you see. It’s this economy, and Bush, and China, and the whole wide world, actually. Besides, blame is unproductive during the crisis. We must receive help to continue on as we always have and keep up a façade of normalcy and productivity, the executives wail. If not, the country will suffer. Detroit and Wall Street are symbols of America, are they not? They must survive. At any expense.

I’m an entrepreneur like many of you. I have lost my shirt many times. I have made terrible business decisions more than once. I wasn’t born into family money nor do I have a man in D.C. or in Jackson who can deliver favors. I survive by taking my case directly to the customer. I have to watch my reserves, if any, as diligently as I possibly can. Never will I have the resources and power like the major corporations and industries begging for federal aid. Yet this is what they are doing and will continue to do. Everybody is on board for the bailout games---everybody. Democrats and Republicans alike have signed up for the money and parrot all the justifications given.

Let me be clear: I don’t want federal money. I don’t want to take my neighbor’s money to prop up my business if I can’t make it on my own. I would deserve to fail and find other work. Yet that is what GM, Wall Street, the newspaper industry, the porno industry, the state of California… just about all the big players are asking for taxpayer-generated money to prolong failing business models.

What we’re witnessing on an unprecedented level is government paternalism as its most flagrant and, possibly, most dangerous. It is not just the “have nots” or the “underprivileged” who must have government assistance we are told; no, today any industry or company that is struggling---for whatever reason; causes are irrelevant---is requesting help, demanding it in many instances and, most ominously, are expected to ask for it. It is the norm in the new, state-sponsored economic reality of 2009.

Autonomy, therefore, is quickly vanishing in this nation, from the individual giving up on paying his credit card balance to the Wall Street firm begging for billions. Any default or negligence in your business model is seen as a claim to federal assistance which, of course, means money siphoned from taxpayers or worthless notes printed by the Federal Reserve to be paid by future generations or China.

What will happen, though, when there are no taxpayers, i.e., when those who still produce and make profits are all begging for assistance themselves or simply closing shop? With the economy sliding as it is, many companies attempting to survive on their own merit are finding it increasingly difficult to do so. Before, these businesses had to compete with others in their field; now, they also have to compete with their own government, the same government that may be financing their competition. Is the game being rigged where you have to get paid to play?

Nudge, nudge

There is a trendy new ideological movement in vogue at the moment, hailed by Democrats and Republicans alike and gaining momentum in our universities’ social science departments. It is called “Nudge”, named after a book by the same title, and one of the book’s co-authors, Cass Sunstein, will head President Obama’s White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Dr. Sunstein was an advisor to Mr. Obama during the campaign, as well, a prominent member of his inner circle.

While couched in pseudo-individualistic jargon, the book “Nudge” represents an endorsement of government paternalism in ways once thought unimaginable. Sunstein and his co-author, Richard Thaler, lay out arguments by which the government and private sector (an antiquated term today) can improve people’s choices by manipulating the “choice architecture” they face. Call it B.F. Skinner with a smiling face.

One would have thought such flagrant attempts at government paternalism might be greeted with outrage or, at the very least, chuckles. Well, one would have thought that many years ago. In today’s America, however, where bailouts are becoming the norm, morality is whatever can be gotten away with and responsibility is playing along and not making waves, “Nudge” has become all the intellectual rage.

We can rule people’s lives not by brute totalitarian force, this theory says; instead, we can treat them like children or farm animals, dangle the carrots and squeak the toys, and they will do what we want them to do. According to the authors, most Americans are more like Homer Simpson (impulsive and easily fooled) than homo economicus (rational, cool and calculating). They write, “One of our major goals in this book is to see how the world might be made easier, or safer, for the Homers among us.”

Implicit in the Nudge theory is that government and social planners know what’s best for the individuals living in the United States. They don’t, obviously, but the fact that our top executives, highly educated and well-heeled men and women, are defaulting on their autonomy by begging for bailout money, tells me that this nation may be as meek and docile as Sunstein and Thaler believes it to be.

Those who know the history of government intervention will no doubt realize that, in time, “nudge” will become “shove”, and people will be forced to do things that are deemed in the best interest of the community, the nation…the state. Things such as bailing out failing companies and who knows what else.

“Knee Jerks”

The arguments offered in defense of the bailout frenzy are so weak and circular that it’s amazing they get any traction at all. Of course, sadly, most citizens are ignorant of economics so perhaps it’s not surprising. The worst defenses, however, may be those submitted by the so-called defenders of the free market. That has been a surprise.

John Allison, former CEO of BB&T Bank of North Carolina and erstwhile Ayn Rand devotee, said his company “had” to take the federal monies. If they didn’t, he whined, the other banks that did receive the cash would get an unfair competitive advantage.

And while Governor Haley Barbour said Mississippi may have to take some of the stimulus package bailout money he didn’t want to take it all. I applaud him for the courage to even show that much backbone; however, one national critic fired back at Barbour, admonishing him for taking this semi-principle because, he railed, “(Barbour) will only hurt Mississippi but not taking all the money.”

In both cases, a prime example of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Meanwhile, too many free market defenders worldwide are behaving like “knee jerks”, as I call them, looking only at government to blame while giving businesses a free pass. There is no doubt that government intervention, especially in the market, is damaging. No honest student of history or economics can really challenge that fact.

The market, though, because it should be free, must allow for human errors and mistakes. Sometimes big ones. I and others argue that people should be allowed to correct those mistakes even if it takes years. Regulators, on the other hand, insist on immediate new laws on top of laws, which then encourage cronyism, inflation, and nationalization, i.e., what we have now. Nonetheless, free market advocates cannot become social utopians as we have long accused leftists of being. The big business community has let us down this go around: most didn’t speak up. They mouths were shut even as their hands were out.

Run Along, Children

Free markets require intelligent adults who understand risk in business and prepare for hard times. There are no guarantees. Sometimes you do have to ask for help but you ask it from family members and friends or you reconfigure and approach investors to aid you through incentives that will benefit them, as well. You cut prices or vacations or some other expense. In other words, you do whatever is necessary in a private, freely cooperative manner.

In this recent crisis, though, we have witnessed the obscene spectacle of corporate executives acting worse than the caricatures made of them by many in the media: company loyalty has been thrown out the window along with concern for the employee and the customer. It’s all “Give me mine and to hell with the rest”. When Ayn Rand praised the “virtue of selfishness” she meant rational self-interest not childish, cutthroat narcissism. In business, selfishness properly means making as much money as possible but only by producing and creating products that people will pay for. It’s not very rational to act as a hack parasite of the federal government to keep your golden parachute. Being subsidized is not capitalism.

It’s a jungle out there right now. Those of us who didn’t ask for all the daily economic headaches are having to deal with them anyway. Even if we did want a bailout it won’t be forthcoming to businesses like Profiles Mississippi or yours. I will reiterate what I mentioned in the last issue: what we have to do is take care of each other, support each other and do business with each other as we see fit. Wall Street and the Beltway won’t take care of us nor should they. Let’s take care of ourselves. Not because there’s a law, a nudge, a bailout or a command. Because it’s the right thing to do.

Technology: All Is Not As It Appears

2009-03-05T10:43:00.001-06:00

Technology: All Is Not As It Appears
by Richard Phillips

There are at least two instances where you should not trust your senses: mirages and television commercials. Neither is what it appears to be, and in at least one of the two, your misapprehension is deliberate. Television commercials are designed to convince you that something (theirs) is good, while something similar (someone else's) is bad. It puts me in mind of election advertising, that season being just behind us. Neither ever tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

What has brought on this train of thought is the recent series of Apple commercials showing one young man (“Hi, I'm a PC.”) being caught in some rather silly situations by another young man (“Hello, I'm a Mac.”). The whole thrust of these commercials is that the newest Microsoft Windows operating system—Vista—is no good and you should buy Apple's Mac with its infinitely better operating system. To which I say, “Scoff, scoff—bull biscuits!”

The facts are these. When Vista was just first released, it was too powerful and too much a drain on (the then) system components such as the microprocessor, memory, hard drive space and graphics processing. Wow, the four main pieces of a personal computer! The computers at that time did not, repeat, not have enough oomph in those areas as well as in several others. Consequently, the people who upgraded their computer from Microsoft Windows XP to Vista suffered terrible system bog-downs and crashes. That's where Vista first got such a terrible reputation.

In addition, Microsoft had expanded on some of the “fail safe” features, which attempt to make your surfing around the Internet more carefree and safe. Thus, User Account Control asks you, every time you go to install a new program, “Are you sure you want to allow this?” It's like the pop up that occurs when you go to delete a file, “Are you sure you want to delete filename?” They are both safeguards, and in User Account Control's case, it's safeguarding against the inadvertent installation of a program, which piggybacked on an e-mail, which appeared to be from one of your good friends.

Malware, they call it; spy ware, viruses, Trojan Horses, worms and the like. The only problem is that in guarding against inadvertent installations, Microsoft had to include intentional installations of programs you have bought. It's a price you have to pay to be safe, similar to having to take off your shoes as you check in for an airline flight. Annoying, but necessary, in this day and age.

As to the Mac operating system's “freedom” from these same kinds of problems, if Apple had a larger market share of the personal computer marketplace, they'd be in the same boat. The malware programmers (thieves, cutthroats, pirates, hackers) are going to put the majority of their efforts into the area, which will yield the greatest results, and in Apple's case, that ain't it.

Don't get the wrong idea—I like Apple products and the Mac and the iPod and the iPhone are wonderful gadgets, but I also like the truth. Today's PC running Vista is equally wonderful!

Old Rocker Gives Good Advice

2009-02-22T17:54:00.002-06:00

These are indeed interesting---and stressful---times we are living in.

So imagine my surprise when I came across this quote from my favorite rock musician, Todd Rundgren, in a recent interview. Keep in mind that Rundgren, while for 40 years one of the most articulate musicians in the rock world, is no political grandstander. He keeps most of his politics in his music, if revealed at all. His sole bit of blatant political activism took place way back in 1980, when he played a series of benefits for Presidential candidate John Anderson (remember him?).

The quote: "I suppose that the message (on his new CD "Arena") is to call men back to what would be traditional values, the things that we can admire about men, like their heroism, take the bullet for the friend, protect the weak, make the hard decisions, do the hard work. Don't be constantly looking for short cuts. Realize the ennobling value of labor. These are so-called traditional values. They might even be considered right-wing values. I just think there are properly manly values and that this record is about that. The people you admire are the people who take their burdens on quietly and execute them with supreme responsibility as opposed to hubris."

How can you not agree with that statement? Yet as I argue in my new column for the next Profiles Mississippi (out VERY soon), our nation has turned so infantile and dependent that the men Rundgren refers to are crying like boys, begging for bailouts and caring about nothing but their own carcass. And I worry that future trends will not change their childish behavior; in fact, I see such behavior only increasing with a concomitant rise in government power and the necessary loss of individual sovereignty that will accompany that rise.

I think of this statement by C. Wright Mills, a thinker who, only a year ago, I thought I would never, EVER be quoting: "The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern."

The opening sentence of "The Power Elite" rings so true today, does it not?

Let's keep fighting....

New column added today: "Back To Basics"

2009-02-10T10:17:00.003-06:00

Ashby Foote, president of Vector Money Management in Jackson, MS, and one of the preeminent economic thinkers in the state, has written a new column exclusively for Profiles Mississippi. Please visit www.profilesms.com to read his thoughts on the current economic situation.

In addition, Jack Criss will be posting comments and opinions daily on the ProfilesMSBlog, so we invite you to subscribe to it today.

Save the Big Three, Kill the U.S. Auto Market

2008-12-04T14:59:00.004-06:00

December 4, 2008

Washington, D.C.--Advocates of a bailout for the Big Three claim that if we allow these giants to fail, it will destroy the U.S. auto industry. “In fact,” said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, “it is the bailout, a veritable marriage between Detroit and Washington, that will destroy the U.S. auto industry.

“The Big Three have no right to demand that taxpayers risk money on them when private investors won’t. They do, however, have a right to demand the repeal of the policies that have helped destroy the auto industry. These include the labor laws that have forced them to acquiesce to economically catastrophic UAW demands, and fuel economy laws that have forced them to produce small cars that they can’t profit from given their labor costs. Indeed, the Big Three should have done this long ago--so that they would have been free to produce desirable cars at a profit in America, just as they do in scores of countries around the world.

“But instead of demanding their freedom and making a case to the market, the automakers are surrendering even more of their freedom to the government in exchange for taxpayer money. They have met Congress’s demand to commit to producing more small cars--even though it is small cars that have bankrupted the companies in the first place.

“By seeking handouts, not freedom, the auto industry is helping to destroy any remnant of a genuine auto market. In a real market, free companies would make money by producing the cars that free individuals judge best. In the new pseudo market, companies will make money by collecting taxpayer dollars in exchange for making whatever cars Washington tells them to. If this is what it means to save the U.S. auto industry, then the industry should die, and then real, freedom-seeking, profit-making companies might emerge.”

### ### ###

Mr. Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, focusing on business issues.

Mr. Epstein’s op-eds and letters to the editor have appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Canada’s National Post, and the Washington Times. He is also a contributing writer for The Objective Standard, a quarterly journal of culture and politics. Mr. Epstein has been a guest on numerous nationally syndicated radio programs.

Alex Epstein is available for interviews.
ARC media contacts:

West Coast: David Holcberg
Irvine, CA
(949) 222-6550, ext. 226
davidh@aynrandcenter.org

East Coast: Kurt Kramer
Washington, DC
(202) 454-1997, ext. 101
kurtk@aynrandcenter.org

For more information on Objectivism's unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

Interview with author, cultural critic Diana West

2008-11-25T16:27:00.003-06:00

Diana West, the author of The Death of The Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization, writes weekly column for The Washington Times. A CNN contributor, she appears regularly on “Lou Dobbs This Week.” He work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, The New Criterion and The Atlantic Monthly. She lives with her family in Washington, D.C. West was interviewed recently by Profiles Mississippi publisher and “Ready, Aim, Right!” author Jack Criss.

Criss: Why The Death of the Grown-Up? Was that your working title or did the publisher suggest it?

West: Yes, it was my idea and was the original working title. The subtitle we worked on together.

Criss: How does your book differ from so many other conservative social critics out there? One can think of Mark Steyn, Roger Kimball, Robert Bork among many others.

West: Well, I am a conservative and not a neo-conservative, which is an important distinction, although I used to work for Irving Kristol, the “godfather” of the neo-cons.

Your question is a broad one. I’d like to think my book is for a more general audience. As a columnist by profession, I try to disseminate ideas as widely as I can, not for an academic audience necessarily. In this book, I tried to broaden my readers’ perspective on the kind of people we have become and hit the notion home that we have changed culturally, during a short time in a way that is not positive; hence the “death of the grown-up”. In addition, I think I brought a more personal perspective on these changes in the book; other social critics don’t really do that. Also, instead of solely focusing on the culture, I go into detail about the threat of Islam to our way of life.

TNI: You focus on culture in your book. Usually, when a self-described conservative brings up cultural issues as it relates to the political realm, censorship is advocated or, at least, alluded to in some form. You don’t do that in your book. Why?

Criss: There are a couple of ways to look at that issue: I don’t have a problem with, for instance, the idea of the old Boston censor---which I write about in my book---a gentleman who oversaw a locality determining what could go on its public stages. That really doesn’t offend me. I don’t mind when pornography is not available at the 7-Eleven. I like that kind of society. A lot of those restrictions I believe come about by what the public desires. We used to live in a society where there was a mainstream and there were fringes. Today, thanks to the efforts of (Penthouse publisher) Bob Guccione and Hugh Hefner, everything is all one big, great, messy mainstream.

(Conservative critic and author) Roger Kimball made a good point on this issue when he was discussing the “Dung Virgin” art exhibit in New York some years back that Rudy Giuliani tried to cut off public funding for: Kimball noted that, by the time you have to go to the courts to enforce decency, you’ve really lost because it’s no longer a natural expression of the population.

Recognizing the validity of that view, the question then becomes, well, what do we do? For those of us who have moral and aesthetic objections to trash and smut, how do we fight back? To me, it comes to having, or getting back, a grown-up sense of confidence to tell a museum you don’t want to see such and such, you won’t bring your school class to it, you don’t appreciate objectionable art or music being displayed. An activist population is required and, unfortunately, I think today many of us too often feel overwhelmed and defeated by the ubiquity of media culture.

Criss: But the genie is out of the bottle, really. For those who prefer the finer things, the higher and more sublime things, don’t you see such people insulating themselves? They can find the art they admire in so many more mediums today and, because of that, have just given up and exited the public debate concerning decency and values. Many are also embarrassed to even point out the crassness all around them, wouldn’t you agree?

Criss: Yes, exactly. Part of what you say is what motivated me to write the book and use the metaphor of the death of the grown up. The authority figure, the Babbitt, has been eroded and made to feel “uncool” and out-moded. You can look at the last half century of culture as one big assault on traditional hierarchy and authority, one big reeducation camp. Now, I don’t argue in my book so much for squeaky clean, G-rated everything as some conservatives do; I bemoan the lack of an adult sensibility in so much of our cultural product.

But why are we so cowed? Why are we so embarrassed? I think it has to do with the general message being pushed today by the media culture, the stars of the world, Brittney Spears and so forth. The irony is that they themselves are so isolated in the very culture they helped create. There is in the world today a demise of manhood, of manliness, and a concomitant rise of feminism, an erosion of the lack of traditional authority figures, which has led to a lack of confidence so that people who generally have fairly decent and regular types of instincts do feel cowed. In school situations, for instance, if you say, “I really don’t feel my child should be reading X in class,” people will give you a strange look and then later come up and agree with what you said. I’ve had that happen to me.

Criss: You mentioned feminism: one of the sad ironies of women’s lib to me is that it has succeeded in liberating women to act as boorish as men were always accused of having acted. Feminism is brought up in the book as is the counterculture and the Sixties as the usual bete noires; but, unlike most social critics, you point the biggest finger at the idyllic 1950s. Why?

West: I’m glad you asked because obviously a lot of readers and critics have missed that point. I honestly think sometimes that there’s not much book reading in the book reviewing business (laughs). I wonder quite a lot about what we call the “Greatest Generation” and the culture of the Fifties. We saw such an explosion in births and affluence and the whole country was transformed radically. It was almost like a cultural perfect storm: Higher education became widely available for the masses for the first time; parental lore and authority was replaced by expert advice, such as with Dr. Spock; women entered the workplace in big numbers for the first time; wealth and the ability to spend more freely was much more common---all of this combined with the Depression and World War II parents spoiling their children, giving them much more than they had ever dreamed of having. What interested me when I was researching the book was how all of these trends were really solidified in the Fifties and that it was around this time the term “teenager” first appeared in our national lexicon. Suddenly, whole industries appeared catering to this newly “discovered” and pampered demographic. There was a whole reorganization of life to make room for the teenager.

Criss: You write about the role of the newfound “experts” taking over parenting for the parents. Ayn Rand put a lot of the blame on the immaturity, or irrationality as she called it, of the Sixties radicals on the influence of philosophers such as Dewey and his progressive education theories. You don’t touch on that in your book.

West: I do mention some changes made in education such as the advent of the middle and high school in mid-century America. I’ve never read Ayn Rand, believe it or not, and I’m not sure really how I missed doing so. My teenage daughter just brought home Atlas Shrugged so maybe I’ll get it around to it.

Criss: Well, Rand and others also note that government will always take on the role of authority figure or of Santa Claus by force or other means when responsibility is abdicated. If you give up your autonomy or maturity, as you say, by default you turn it over to the government.

West: Yes. De Toqueville spoke to that, incidentally. He wrote in Democracy in America that if authoritarianism ever came to this country it would do so by default, by the citizenry becoming infantile.

Criss: Many conservatives tend to blame the market and capitalism for the types of ills you describe in your book. Do you share these criticisms of consumerism? Is it the fault of the record company executives, for example, that so much garbage is out there in the music world?

West: I consider myself a capitalist. However, I do think a lot of our problems rest with the record company executives of your example and I try to get at that in my book. I discuss the sense of responsibility of movie executives in this country in the 1920s and the record executives in the 1950s and it’s one of my favorite parts of the book, actually. Some executive and critics in the Fifties thought that their industry should be self-policing in reaction to the new rock and roll that was being promoted. The same thing happened in the Twenties in reaction to talkies just coming into being. The film executives cleaned up their own industry in reaction to all of these censorship bills that were popping up all across the nation at the time.

The people who run the markets today don’t have that sense of responsibility or even the economic inclination. Many movies today are losing money but that doesn’t seem to faze the modern executives. Louie B. Mayer, the head of MGM in its heyday, did not like to make movies in which a mother was badly portrayed. This was important to him. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? But I don’t blame the market; I look more at the individuals running the market.

Criss: Interestingly, you also didn’t fall back on the religious argument made by the typical conservative in cultural criticism. Why not?

West: I’m not a religious observant person and my theory in the book doesn’t stand or fall on religion. The churches have changed along with the culture. A recent article in the New York Times told how many churches, in order to keep up membership, are using the worst products of the culture, like these awful video games, so-called Christian rap, etc., just to get kids to show up. It’s extremely objectionable and represents the same lack of sensibility and maturity I decry. The cultural problems I try to address in the book have little to do with the role of private worship in people’s personal lives.

My whole point in writing The Death of the Grown-Up was this: why have we become a nation of perpetual adolescents? I had been toying with the idea for some time but almost gave up on it after 9/11. However, I found an extra urgency upon reflecting on my whole theory when I began thinking about the politically incorrect facts about Islam. It is an immediate crisis facing all of us and yet few of us will look. We have a presidential campaign going on and nobody is talking about Islalmization, Western values vs. Islam, the threats to us…no one wants to talk about these things. The silence, I believe, is a product of what we’ve become in this nation: fearful adolescents.

Criss: We are so apologetic for our values and success in this country that we may end up capitulating in the face of politically correct pressure.

West: I write a weekly column and this issue is constantly on my mind. Is it too late? I don’t know. I mean, I wrote something negative about Led Zeppelin recently and I get droves of hate mail and indignant responses yet I don’t receive the same type of fervor or interest about the threat of Islam. This proves my book’s point: take away people’s toys and they get really upset. I wrestle with this every week. There’s a surreal aspect to it, honestly. The president talks about the progress being made in Iraq and Afghanistan and yet people are still being sentenced to die for blasphemy in those countries! Islam is not being challenged and that is a major danger.

Criss: You say you don’t know if it’s too late. Can a maturation process take place in our culture? Can we defend ourselves against militant Islam?

West: The cultural decay seems harder to reverse than the Islamic threat, in my opinion. The decay is so advanced and the problems are related as my book demonstrates, yet no defense is being mounted in either situation. It can be done but it will require quite an intellectual overhaul. I wonder if we have it in us. For example, I’m shocked that so many conservatives, some of whom I know, have completely ignored the sections on Islam in my book. The silence is deafening and appalling. There are things we can do, and I write about them in my book. But will we do them? That’s the major question.

Criss: Will there be a follow-up to your book?

West: Well, The Death of the Grown-Up is going into its second printing and has done moderately well. I’m talking to the publishers about another book; there are some plans, but nothing on the board right now.

Criss: Thank you for your time and a fascinating book, Diana.

Book Review

2008-11-24T16:58:00.003-06:00

The Life and Times of Aristotle by Jim Whiting
(Biography From Ancient Civilizations: Legends, Folklore And Stories Of Ancient Worlds; 2007, Mitchell Lane Publishers, Hockessin, Delaware.)

While our bookstores and school library shelves are filled with biographies on sports heroes and politically correct figures for young readers, there are few books on Western Civilization’s greatest lives. For every twenty books on Kobe Bryant you might possibly find one on, for instance, on Julius Caesar.

The small, but extremely concise, hardbound book The Life And Times of Aristotle changes that ratio slightly. It would be a perfect gift for a grandchild, especially in today’s world.

Published in 2007 as part of a series of biographies on famous lives, The Life And Times of Aristotle does a remarkable job of conveying the times and main philosophic and scientific points of, arguably, the greatest thinker who ever lived.

In fact, author Jim Whiting (himself a prolific and versatile photojournalist) begins his book posing the very idea that Aristotle is the smartest man who ever lived. The rest of the book goes on to demonstrate why that claim is very possibly true.

Written for young people between the ages of 9 and 12, Whiting skillfully blends biographical and historical accounts of Aristotle’s life and world with the philosopher’s own theories. Whiting also shows how Aristotle’s influence still extends into our world today in examples that never pander and are quite helpful for this young of an audience. His side section, “Aristotle and the Movies”, for example, quotes Seabiscuit director and producer Gary Ross as saying that Aristotle’s Poetics “is the best book on screenwriting.”

Another side section (which Whiting calls “FYInfo”—For Your Information) is called “Aristotle Influences the U.S. Constitution” and demonstrates how Aristotle’s political writings influenced the Founders. One rarely finds such salient integration and observation in college texts let alone a book for children.

The final chapter, “Aristotle’s Awesome Afterlife” goes into great detail about the Greek thinker’s long lasting influence on Western Civilization. Whiting follows this with a timeline of events in Aristotle’s life, a chronology, a glossary of Greek terms, suggestions for further reading and a final “FYI” on what happened to Aristotle’s famous school, The Lyceum.

This impressive book deserves the widest young audience possible. Adults will find it an informative and entertaining refresher, as well. Attractively designed and nicely illustrated, at 48 pages it is the perfect length for today’s student wishing to learn about whom Dante called “the master of those who know”.