My epitaph for Cowboy season..waited on this one

I use to be a die hard fan and still fight not being one. Got upset when they lost to the Redskins. Actually been trying not to comment on their season, but sooner or later the bug hits me.

One reason I waited is because of the death of one of the players this year and the culture that is going on that lets this happen.

The best way to describe it for me is if you are the owner of a team and had the same General Manager for over 15 years, and it has been over 15 years since your last Championship, and that GM has been through 5 or more coaches, and still nothing, whose fault is it? In most other organizations that GM would be long gone. Yep, it is no secret Mr Jones may be a great businessman, but he knows nothing about football. He had Parcells for awhile and chased him off. Coach Parcells almost got us back on track, but Mr Jones meddling destroyed that progress. And I have nothing against the other coaches that have been with the Cowboys. I lay the blame for everything on GM Jones.

If you are in the midst of a possible playoff run, why is it your players are out partying till all hours of the night. The Cowboys suffered a great tragedy this year and I hate pointing that out, but it is the culture that Mr Jones lets slide that possibly led to this tragedy. I do not blame the coach because the coach (whoever it may be) is always end run by the GM.

Over and over again, year in and year out, there seems to be some crazy behavior by the players. And there has been one person in charge for the entire time. And as a life long fan it irks me that nothing can be done. Every other organization in the league does not have the consistent personnel problems that the Cowboys have. Yes there are some incidents throughout the league, but for a team that is suppose to be a top notch organization, the Cowboys have had way too many.

If you live in Dallas it is no secret that Jones is completely out of touch with creating a successful team. Sports talk stations have probably already beat my point to a pulp. I use to listen to them, but due to lack of time and then frustration with the Cowboys I can't bear to hear anything. Truth can hurt like crap some days. So I know I am not saying anything new, but since it got to the point where we have lost three season ending games that kept us out of the playoffs the last few years I had to get it out of my system.

So is there any adventurous lawyer out there who wants to sue the Cowboy ownership for incompetence based on the idea that the Cowboys ( or any sports franchise) is owned by more than the owner. Or better phrased can the owner be held accountable to the fans for his mistakes that basically affects more than the business, but a whole community. Sports franchises are businesses and a person who has a business can make mistakes and go out of business, but I am thinking that a sports franchise has a indirect ownership by the fans and they have a right to a better product when the business ownership is completely lost as to the product. Not too many courts probably will take this because of rights etc, but at some point when an owner is so lost for so long, isn't there an argument that the community has some rights since they invest in the team not only with money, but psychologically as well. The community benefits when the team does well, so shouldn't they have some say when it goes south for this long. And not because of the lack of championships, but the character of the team. IT is hard to win a championship, but it is possible to have a competitive team whose make up is not a sore spot for the community. And saying this I am definitely not blaming the players. It is the ownership that allows a culture of irresponsibility year end and year out that is the problem.

Again, if you are in the midst of a possible playoff run shouldn't the team be focused, and if not, and it happens year in and year out, there is only one person to blame. The person that is there year in and year out.

Anyway long suffering fan wanting to change the management, which I think about 90% of Dallas is ready to see.

And a final note;Shame some coaches lost a job etc, because one person's ego is so disconnected from reality that the truth is no where in sight.

Is gun control the solution

Good Saturday morning to you,

I don't like weighing in on hot topics with so much emotion involved, but I want to address exactly what we are trying to accomplish with all this new gun control talk.

I am not real pro gun or pro gun control. I am worried though that what we are trying to do with gun control is not going to stop the problem that caused the uproar in the first place and that is the shootings in Newton.

Think about this; mostly humans are social animals, we interact, have conversations, even arguments over gun control, and everybody though gets along with each other to some degree. What we run from is when we see people not interacting with society. For some reason we don't address alienation very well or mental illness. And quite frankly this is the problem we need to be addressing.

There is so much political capital being spent on gun control verbiage back and forth and the real issue is getting no press. Go back and look at most of these types of incidents in the last few decades and people alienating them self from society seems to be more of the problem. Did the unabomber use a gun, did Timothy McVeigh, or how about that guy in China who stabbed 20 kids the same week as the Newton shooting? Could better gun control have prevented Newton? Actually we don't know. What we do know was there were some problems that were not addressed with him, and now for society in general not being addressed. What gives?

Taking a real quick look at the New York legislation, what do we find, but something that sounds good, but how effective will it be. Does lowering the amount of a magazine allowance from 10 rounds of ammunition to 7 really effective? I hate to be morbid, but are we thinking that now we have saved three children because we did this. What good is this? Yes there is some verbiage about better background checks and mental illness being scrutinized, but what about trying to deal with mental illness. People will get around regulations, so why aren't we addressing the root problem?

All the gun control legislation is only going to create a way for criminals to make more money selling the stuff people want. Now at least we have background checks, I don't know how effective some background checks are, but much better than taking them away completely. If we truly want gun control, if we, as a society, want to make a difference with gun control, lets sit down when the emotions have died down and seriously spend the time deciding what will work, and what will create problems. Right now gun control is no more than putting a band aid on our feelings. Yes this was a heinous crime, a complete atrocity. I have children and I have no idea how it would feel to lose one, but lets address the real problems, not do something that is so ineffective that it causes other problems down the road.

I don't know how you feel, but mental illness is hard to deal with, and we really don't even know how to define mental illness. You probably see it more than you realize because we cannot put it into terms we can identify. Right now though if we want to prevent the atrocities of multiple killings we really need to spend more time finding ways to identify: when people start to check out from society, what are the causes of alienation, where does it start, and many more questions I cannot think of right now. Basically we need to put our political capital and energy into helping our society by evaluating the research that is out there, find solutions, and start creating a way to report problems without interfering with some one's privacy. A person who is ill, even mental illness, still has a right to medical privacy, but as a society we have a right to prevent problems. This will be a fine line to create, but much more effective than spur of the moment legislation that doesn't do anything.

As always, there are probably answers out there amongst the vast amount of information we have built up over the years. And we may need to do more, resolve conflicting information, decide what is physiology vs psychological, see if we can even find a cure, or at least identify someone to work with family etc to keep the individual involved with society so they don't get so lost they commit these atrocities. It should be our job now to recognize we need to get together to make sense of mental illness.

If we don't, well, again; we are putting band aids on our feelings instead of curing the disease.

Government, Business; where do they meet

Usually I try to come up with some title that really has nothing to do with nothing, but sounds good for the post. This post, however, I just couldn't get clever.

A big selling point for the Republicans in the past election was that Mr Romney was a business leader and our country was having fiscal problems so we needed someone who knew business and was successful to lead our country.

And basically this is a failed idea, but that is not what I want to discuss, rather I would like to discuss how government can successfully interact with a free market or capitalist society and still function as a government whose primary function is to serve the people. So a business leader doesn't work, because business leaders are single minded where a leader of a country has to manage competing interests for the better of the whole country. Finding this success is what I want to accomplish.

This is not something that can be done in simple posts, but I have a few ideas of what it may look like and how to draw a picture for better understanding, then down the road more direct ideas of making ours better.

To paint this picture I am going to use an analogy. You go to your financial planner and that person sets up a portfolio to meet your needs. Outside of specifics for your situation, most will have some sort of diversified portfolio with each portion set to help you manage your risks and grow your assets.

A government needs to think like this also. It needs to assess the needs of the country and find ways to grow the economy. So like a financial plan for an individual the government needs to create policy that leads the market forces to invest in certain ways.

For example just like a person needs some growth stocks, the government needs to create policy that encourages companies to create new products, and this includes encouraging blue chip companies to stay strong with new product development and for new companies to emerge with new technologies and products that add to the economy, basically this is the type of company that creates long term job growth along with the ability to add to exports to increase income coming in for the country. And for the benefit of the market and the country these are the types of companies where you want to see the highest earnings. This is where it is okay for a company to make outsize billions in earnings and it be a positive for everyone. A free market country wants strong growing companies.

The next group of investments that should be in a market driven economy is companies that support the infrastructure of the country as a whole. A big difference here is the government actually needs to have some involvement in two ways. One is protecting the people and their needs and two is not allowing these companies to monopolize the market and take undue profits from products that we need such as energy, water, and government services. Now there could be much discussion on what I mean by energy, for now we will stick with traditional companies like electric and gas utility companies. These are needs of the people of the country, but better served if people can make money from them. Difference that is important is the investors cannot expect to make outsize profits like the more market driven products like cars, shirts, TVs etc. It is fine to make a great TV, have everybody love it and make a fortune. It is not fine to monopolize basic needs and take advantage of the situation. Like an individual's portfolio you use these types of investments for income and stability in your portfolio. Government should regulate services here, but find ways to allow for growth investment and the investors to make a reasonable income so our ability to supply the country's needs are met. Like the individual portfolio has reserved expectations for utility stocks the economic forces should have reserved expectations about income, but some protection or policies that protect them against some downside so they will make the investment to upgrade.

Another investment is foreign investment, financial planners will want you to invest beyond your country to help growth and diversify risk. A government needs to have foreign investment also. And this can come in different ways. It isn't necessarily directly investing in foreign countries like you would in a portfolio, but developing other economies to give our companies a larger market to work and sell. This is a high risk investment for your portfolio and for a government, but for different reasons. For the government you are managing tax dollars that need to be put to the public good. How and where you invest in other countries has to be carefully analyzed, not on what the country is making, but what the country can do in the long run. And then you have geopolitical factors that can throw a wrench into any pragmatic investing. A factor that most business people ignore and why our government is better suited to determine where we allow foreign investment is how does this country reflect our values. It is better suited for the country in the long run to have governments that show the ability to respect their own people, this way our investments aren't affected by turmoil within the country and we are not associated with previous regimes and now we are investing tax dollars to protect a few interests. Most current business leaders don't want to deal with this intrusion into their world, but this again is why a government needs to be ( I don't want to say manager because that is socialism) a factor in developing the overall plan and criteria. Our country has competing interests and letting companies make money is only one. There are long term consequences to decisions so those decisions cannot be left to the people who have the least concern for the big picture. Yet we need to make serious foreign investment. And most of this should not be in the form of foreign aid. It needs to be in infrastructure and economic development where our whole market can see a return on its tax payer investment.

A good advisor will want you to invest in debt. For a government though you need to invest in debt two ways, one you need to borrow to continually improve your infrastructure and you also need to lend. A government needs income. This is a slippery slope situation for a government though and why oversight even of our government is so important. And there are different types of ways for a government to lend. Some of the obvious are the most dangerous, such as lending money directly to other countries to do what I mentioned in the paragraph above for foreign economic development. Having countries beholden to you can create friction and if things go wrong only add to the tensions. Government lending needs to be indirect. An example we could use internally is our social security. First of all that needs to be record kept separately from the government's till because that is truly for a specific purpose with specific income, but as we know is running into a potential shortfall of income vs payout. And handing it over to wall street to invest is an obvious disaster since their only concern is their profits. Yet we need to find ways to increase income for social security to make it a success long term. So the SSA with help can invest some of the proceeds into revenue bonds for municipalities. This creates a new income stream for the money from the interest earned. I am trying to touch very carefully on an idea that needs to be explored and developed. One for the premise behind this post and one just because Social Security needs some updating for the long term, but this has to to be very carefully moved forward. This type of selective investing in lending money though is something a market economy's government needs to consider as part of managing the whole of a country's portfolio.

I know this is already being done is some shape form or fashion, but when you look at our current economy it is being done unsuccessfully. Many people have examined this and come up with some plans to address some of the issues, but what I would like to start with this post is for people to sit back and look at the whole picture. The average American does not put a market driven economy into perspective with the whole picture of the country. Either they are too focused on business and feel intrusion from the government and currently it is too intrusive; mainly because of bloat not regulation (we do need regulation to be less costly but more effective), vs people who don't trust all businesses and want the government in everybody's business--socialism. Both extremes are way too heavily represented in our current thinking. I want people to see the middle ground where we promote strong business development, but manage (okay I don't like the use of that word), not over regulate, business development where the needs of the people are more important than just profits. This is the job of government in a free market economy. Again is this new or original, no, but I don't think the average American considers to look at the big and competing picture. Hopefully this analogy about comparing it to the investment advice a person receives about diversification, why you diversify,and that you need to make adjustments from time to time or as needs change helps to illustrate a government of a market economy has to create/have diversification also.


The Christmas season ends, the New Year is about to get into full gear, and tomorrow is just another Monday. What challenges are we ready to conquer in 2013?

where is that fiddle

Or maybe we should just be singing along with Talking Heads "Burning down the House".

because whatever they passed out of the bowels of Congress was not any real help towards our fiscal situation. This is truly Show and Tell by our government. Yep the democrats got a couple of wow we did it moments, but overall the deal is nothing more than hyperbole.

And the so called conservatives and their best friends the tea party didn't get anything they wanted due to their obstinate ways. I had suggested back in November that if we really wanted to get things done the Republicans needed to take charge and start offering a compromise then. They didn't get any spending cuts now and delays on getting any started.

So no real progress on cutting down our debt and deficit. Yeah 600 billion over the next ten years is going to put a dent in nothing. We do need to raise revenue, and we do need to cut spending. There are many ways to do both, but neither was truly accomplished.

And of course nothing more will get done. Yes we will get more Show and tell moments, but real progress, real work, I just don't see it.

I am at a loss on how to get people to realize we are the ones that have to hold Congress accountable. Until we find enough people to get energized to address Congress nothing substantive will be done. Right now I blame the so called conservatives for failing to act early enough to show true leadership and actually start working on a compromise that would have produced something more substantive.

To continue my blog redundancy: we need to improve real jobs, real wages to raise revenue and lower a tad bit of spending on entitlement programs, we need to think about tax raises at all levels, but at small amounts until spending is under control. Spending needs to come down in stair step fashion. One thing that will motivate the populace to hold Congress accountable is to make taxes come down again once we truly start spending less. Yes I said raise taxes and I am not talking about large scale raises, but true small amounts across the board. Just hit people with this carrot: taxes coming down once we get spending levels on a downward track.

And you can lower spending without lowering services if you plan ahead, but this is where I fear you won't get what we want. Relying on Congress to think is asking to win the lottery. We always talk about government waste. Hopefully we can trim the easy fat off first just to get the momentum started. I could go into great detail on budget cutting, but for the first couple of years we could very carefully find true fat to cut. And it is out there without touching any benefits or programs or even things like road repair, much less the military's ability to function well.

And some final comments from the redundancy file: tax incentives for job creation and product creation that helps us export, diversified energy programs, improve education being the one area where we might continue to increase spending or at least stay level ( we do need better criteria for judging how well our schools are doing). To really attack our deficit and debt we need to plan short and long term.

If we want our taxes to stay low, we have to accept reality and get our budget in line to afford lower taxes. Until then we have to compromise selectively to reduce debt and deficit, if we don't we fail ourselves, our children's children, our country.

To put it into a nutshell: reality sucks dude

As independent conservatives we need to champion a voice of reason because the Republicans and Tea party our shoving the country far left of center.

2013

I wish you a very blessed and prosperous New Year. May the new year bring you success in your endeavors and happiness in your life.

Peace, Peace on Earth, Peace in your heart


And there is still 5 more days of Christmas, enjoy.



Warm blush wine on top of tequila, what a way to start the New Year.