In our days here we are living the dash A4 Tuesday, September 23, 2014
There is an exercise that motivational speaker and writer John Maxwell does at some of the seminars he teaches. He gives each participant a note card. He then has each person write down on the card their full name, first, middle, and last, and then write underneath their name the date they were born and then a dash. He points out that each of us knows those entries will appear on our tombstone, but we don’t know what the date after the dash will be. What we do know is that there will be a date following the dash. Billy Graham once said, “We cannot truly face life until we face the fact that it will be taken from us.” We are each living the dash. Several years ago I had the opportunity to hear Lou Holtz speak at a conference in Albuquerque. In his talk he told about a walk he took in a graveyard in England when his college football
OPINION
RICK KRAFT
JUST A THOUGHT
team was playing overseas. Without missing a word, Coach Holtz recited from memory a saying that was on a plaque in the graveyard. It is titled, “The Dash:” “I’ve seen death stare at me with my own eyes in a way many cannot know. I’ve seen death take others but still left me below. “I’ve heard many scream of mothers’ cries but death refuses to hear. In my life I’ve seen faces filled with many tears. “After death has come and gone a tombstone sits for many to see. But it is no more than a symbol
of a person’s memory. “I’ve seen my share of tombstones but never took the time to truly read. The meaning behind what is there for others to see. “Under the person’s name it read the date of birth, dash, and the date the person passed. But the more I think about that tombstone, the important thing is the dash. “Yes, I see the name of the person but that I might forget. I also read the date of birth and death but even that might not stick. “But thinking about the individual I can’t help but to remember the dash, because it represents a person’s life and that will always last. “So when you begin to charter your life make sure you’re on a positive path. Because people may forget your birth and death but they will never forget your dash.” We are each living our dash. We
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have a period of time here and then we are gone. One or more of us reading this may not be around next week at this time. We could soon become commemorated by a dash. Samuel Johnson said, “It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.” So while we are still alive, how do we choose to live? Each day is a gift that is unwrapped as we live it. When you lay your head on your pillow tonight, this day has been spent. As you look back on your day, have you added value to the lives of others? Or do you just have one less day to make a difference? Sometimes it doesn’t take much. Marian Wright Edelman wrote, “We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot
foresee.” It has been said that if one pays attention to the little things, the big things will take care of themselves. The Bible says in Matthew 6:21: “For where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” What is your treasure? Where you spend your time will show where your treasure is. Spend time on what is meaningful to you. Spend time on your priorities. Spend your time on what you want your dash to represent. Stephen Covey writes, “Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by agendas and forces surrounding you.” It doesn’t do any good to climb to the top of the ladder only to realize that it is leaning against the wrong wall.
KRAFT, Page A5
EDITORIAL
‘Worst’ tax code behind corporate flight It’s not corporate greed or a lack of patriotism that is driving American corporations overseas, as President Barack Obama contends. It’s one of the worst corporate tax codes in the developed world. The cold, hard evidence of that is detailed in a new study ranking the tax competitiveness of 34 industrialized nations. The United States ranks 32nd, ahead of just Portugal and France, according to the Tax Foundation, a free market institute. It measured nations on 40 variables, including corporate and individual income taxes, sales taxes, property and estate taxes and international tax rules. That the country that taught the world the principles of capitalism and free markets now ranks so poorly should shame American policymakers. Instead, the president and Senate Democrats want to heap additional, punitive taxes on corporations that move their legal domicile overseas to avoid already confiscatory rates in the U.S. Estonia, a former Soviet satellite, is new to the free marketplace. And yet it ranks first in tax competitiveness because, the study says, it has a relatively low 21 percent corporate tax rate, no double taxation on dividend income, a nearly flat 21 percent income tax rate and property taxes only on land, not on buildings and other structures. Compare that to the United States, which has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world at 39 percent and is one of only six industrialized nations that taxes the overseas earnings of corporations. The U.S. is also dinged for its estate tax and chaotic state and local property tax policies. The study faults the high U.S. top marginal income tax rate and a double taxation on capital gains and dividend income. Those all are things that can be fixed with the sort of smart tax reform proposed by Michigan’s Rep. Dave Camp, R-Midland, who is retiring. Other nations have proved they can change their rankings in a hurry if they adopt the right reforms. New Zealand, for example, was far down the competitiveness list in 2010. But it lowered its corporate tax rate, cut top marginal income tax rates and shifted a greater portion of its tax burden to a goods and service tax. This year, it ranked No. 2 on the list. By comparison, the last major change to the U.S. tax code was 28 years ago, when Congress and President Ronald Reagan dropped corporate income taxes to 34 percent from 46 percent. Since then, most other nations have leapfrogged the U.S. in making their tax climate more attractive to business. The average corporate tax rate among industrialized countries is now 25 percent, down from 47.5 percent in the 1980s. The Tax Foundation gives considerable weight to the neutrality of the tax code, meaning policies that seek to raise the most revenue with the fewest loopholes, credits and tax breaks, and without favoring consumption over saving. Tax competitiveness is a good indicator of economic competitiveness, and thus growth. The U.S. recovery has been sluggish, in no small part because of tax and regulatory policies that dampen growth. Rather than concocting a tax scheme to hold corporations hostage, the president should be crafting reforms to make them flock here. R EPRINTED F ROM T HE O RANGE C OUNTY REGISTER
New Paul Ryan book offers thoughtful framework
Midwestern backyards lack fences. Why the custom is dif fer ent fr om the concrete block walls of New Mexico or El Paso’s rock walls, I don’t know. Community benefits of the openness include homeowners accommodating one another when choosing a boundary for mowing. Open space allows kids to wander from house to house via back yards. Wo o d s ( s m a l l g r o v e s o f trees) might fill the back parts of lots. Paul Ryan had these things when growing up in Janesville, Wis., where he still lives, just down the str eet fr om his childhood home. Ryan climbed the political ladder from junior class president to semi-accidental congressman elected in 1998 at age 28, to Republican policy guru to candidate for vice president in 2012. An important step for Ryan was the decision to spend a s e m e s t e r i n Wa s h i n g t o n ,
HAROLD MORGAN NEW MEXICO PROGRESS
D.C., which became a job w i t h Wi s c o n s i n S e n . B o b Katsen, who “was a wonk, which is to say he was my kind of guy,” Ryan says. (All quotes are from R yan’s memoir and policy manif e s t o , “ T h e Wa y F o r w a r d , Renewing the American Dream,” published in August.) That job led to an entrylevel position with Empower America, the Jack Kemp-Bill Bennett think tank. The rest, as they say, is history. Kemp’s thinking permeates Ryan. For those who forget, Kemp was kind of an ultimate economic policy wonk politician. All these details, no doubt,
are to show Ryan as a regular person. In charm terms, the best detail is the wood pellet smoker Ryan surveyed at the Janesville Ace Hardware early in the summer of 2012. R yan’s wife Janna, a tax attorney from an Oklahoma political family, decided it would be the consolation prize when Mitt Romney did not choose R yan as the vice presidential candidate. For R yan’s development, the most important detail has been his alcoholic lawyer father who died when Ryan was a teenager. Between stories, R yan does issues and ideas. He quotes Kemp, who called politics the battle of ideas. One must have ideas, it should be noted, a problem for Republicans nationally and in New Mexico. “The American idea is a way of life made possible by our commitment to the principles of freedom and equality — and rooted in our respect for every person’s
natural rights,” R yan says. Government is part of the American Idea. The distinction between “the different ideas about government — its proper role, its proper scope and its approach to sustaining the American Idea … really begins with a simple question. When we look at America, what’s the first thing we see: gover nment or society?” Ryan sees society. Others (think Barack Obama) have “a vision that puts government, not society, at the center of the picture.” The issues list and accompanying policy recommendations includes: entitlement and health care, Social Security, economic growth (society versus government), labor force participation, tax reform, cronyism and corporate welfare, regulatory reform (people have few ways to appeal rulings), immigration, monetary poli-
House tenure. That accusation was wholly false, but discovering the truly culpable wasn't easy — because President George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, worked hard to prevent a full investigation by the 9/11 Commission. In due course, that probe r evealed how Bush and Cheney had ignor ed clear war nings — fr om Clinton himself, from counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke and finally from the CIA on Aug. 6, 2001 — that al-Qaida was preparing to strike the homeland. Preoccupied by their tax cuts and their plans for an invasion of Iraq, they had done nothing. The country and the world rallied around Bush as he declared war on the Taliban and sent U.S. and NATO
troops into Afghanistan. But thanks to the incompetence of Bush, Cheney and their military command, not only did Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar escape and remain at large for years but also the entire ef fort eventually collapsed into futility, with no plausible goal or exit strategy. It soon became clear that the Bush White House and Defense Department had other fish to fry, over a few bor ders in Baghdad. Even the most forgetful citizens pr obably r ecall how Bush, Cheney, their national security advisers and their allies in Congress misled the nation into war against Iraq, falsely alar ming us about nonexistent weapons of mass
MORGAN, Page A5
American amnesia: Why the GOP leads on national security
If the latest polls are accurate, most voters believe that Republican politicians deserve greater trust on matters of national security. At a moment when Americans feel threatened by rising terrorist movements and authoritarian regimes, that finding is politically salient — and proves that amnesia is the most durable af fliction of our democracy. Every year ar ound this time, ever since 2001, we promise never to forget the victims of 9/11, the courage of the first responders and the sacrifice of the troops sent to avenge them all. Our poignant recollections seem to be faulty, however, obliterating the har dest truths about that terrible event, as well as the long after math that continues to this day.
JOE
CONASON SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
The r esult, attested to by those polls, is that Republicans escape responsibility for the derelictions and bad decisions of their party's leaders at crucial moments in the recent past. Not long after the 9/11 attacks, the Republican noise machine instantly began blaring a message of blame aimed at for mer President Bill Clinton, insisting that he had ignored the threat posed by al-Qaida during his White
MORGAN, Page A5