White House honchos and others use the term “communication failure” to explain the inability of Congress to pass healthcare legislation and other key parts of President Obama’s agenda. Such reasoning assumes the bills deserve passage in their current forms. That, however, is another topic. 

This week’s topic looks at why, from a communication standpoint, some of politics’ brightest operatives failed to present a comprehensible message. To do this, we start with the basic communication model taught in high school: Message => Sender => Medium => Receiver

Interpretation of the message and feedback complete the process. Any glitch along the way can produce negative outcomes of varying degrees. Too little information can knock the message off of the political radar while too much information can distract and confuse, which will derail any debate, whether on Capitol Hill or in the local town hall.

The model creates its own communication failure, in terms of understanding it, because of the many variables involved in the process (type of message, characteristic of sender/receiver, choice of medium, etc.).  This led me to develop the 4 Cs of Communication Rule: All credible communication must be clear, concise, consistent, and correct. 

I’ve asked colleagues and my university students to find successful communication examples that violate my rule. None has crossed my desk. 

Here are brief definitions of each C, in alphabetical order, because no C is more important than the others.

Clear

A graphic is the easiest and best example of this category. Any outfit with a logo needs a set of graphic standards dictating the appropriate use of the logo so that it’s clear and easily identifiable. 

Clear also refers to the meaning of a word or of the message. A writer should never assume the reader knows everything, and should clearly explain or identify anything that may not be common knowledge.

Have you ever received unclear directions? A Cuban friend looking for directions in a small Mississippi town was told to drive down the street and turn left at the tar place. He never saw a tar place, but he passed a tire store a couple of times. 

Concise

Write as if you had to pay for each word and the size of the word. Sounds simple enough, but even the best of the pros ignore it. A few years ago, the Public Relations Society of America sent out a news release with an opening sentence containing 63 words, of which 20 were in the dependent clause that started the sentence.

How often have you seen “on a permanent basis” instead of” permanently”? Is it wrong or offensive to use three or more words instead of one? No, but why would you?

Adding just one word to a phrase may not seem like much, but it can make the phrase look silly. A local university frequently touts that its students come from more than 130 different countries. I hope so, because it would be strange if the 130 countries were the same.

Consistent

Consistency may be contrary to nature, according to Aldous Huxley, but it is imperative to credible communication in any form. Your high-school English teacher drilled you on parallel structure because it keeps your points, items, or phrases consistent.

Consistency also keeps you out of trouble. Nothing raises suspicions among journalists, or with significant others, more that inconsistencies in your story.

Even if there is nothing nefarious going on, you must be consistent in message, style, and information. A national corporation bragged in its news release that its Houston aquarium had 600,000 gallons of underwater tanks (a statement that belongs in the next category), while its brochures placed the gallons at a half a million. Nitpicky? Maybe. But it’s still not consistent.

Correct

Correct information is a given for any organization, particularly one that wants stakeholders to take it seriously and wants to maintain control of its message. Incorrect information doesn’t help one’s credibility.

When I worked for a state university, I used to say being an institution of higher education meant we had to look like we had a higher education. One year, the annual financial report had four mistakes on the cover, six on the first page, and five in the letter from the VP. Accountants may have written the report, but the number of mistakes in the first few pages could call into question the accuracy of the numbers.

Misspellings (alright), non words (irregardless), noun/verb disagreement (media doesn’t) are bad on their own, but imagine the damage from incorrectly identifying someone in a photo. A non-profit organization’s magazine not only gave the wrong name to the wife, but used the first wife’s name.

Here’s what may be the best and simplest example of the importance of the 4 Cs Rule. Awhile back, some guy wanted a CHI-TOWN tattoo. When finished, it was clear (easily read), concise (seven letters), consistent (one color, font and point size), but it came out CHI-TONW.

So, does the 4 Cs Rule work in every situation? Show me the exception.

President Obama’s proposed $1.267-trillion budget deficit will be the subject of much haranguing and scrutiny in the coming months. Opponents will assail the shortfall as a giant step toward the economic destruction of the Union and will use it as a fiscal call to arms as the November mid-term elections draw nigh.

But who really understands the budget? A trillion is a huge number to grasp. Journalists, it seems, have a hard time comprehending it, which explains why few news stories put the budget deficit in terms the rest of us can easily appreciate.

Any good reporting of a budget, whether it comes out of Washington, your state house, or your school board, should always include the basic information: revenues and expenditures. How much does the entity expect to take in, and how much does it expect to spend?

Financial reporters understand this, because most of them have business degrees or some background in accounting. I’ve tried unsuccessfully for more than twenty years to convince heads of university journalism programs to require their graduates to take one or two accounting courses. Here’s why. Most J-school graduates will cover local government for small-town news organizations. Passage of the annual budget will be one of the bigger stories of the year. The budget is a fertile source for enterprising journalists in search of waste, fraud, and abuse stories. But you have to know a credit from a debit, an asset from a liability, revenues from expenses.

Journalism department heads come up with the same academic excuse for not requiring their students to acquire the financial tools needed for good, basic reporting. Accounting courses, they say, are in the business school. End of discussion.

Well, guess what? Business schools now require writing courses.

The Houston Chronicle devoted about thirty column inches, including a graphic, on the proposed budget, but omitted revenues and expenses, which the budget lists as receipts and outlays. I mean, come on, the federal budget isn’t baseball where you can get away with reporting just a player’s batting average. A truer picture requires knowing total hits and at bats. A player may retire with a batting average of .500, which sounds impressive until you learn he had one single from two times at bat.

The 192-page federal budget (available at whitehouse.gov/omb) is best explained for us regular folks in terms of a household budget. What is our income this week? What are our expenses? What’s left over?  

The proposed budget estimates receipts of $2.567 trillion and outlays of $3.834 trillion. Subtract outlays from receipts and there’s your $1.267-trillion deficit. 

You may understand trillions, but I understand hundreds. A proportional reduction brings the budget story closer to home.

Say you expect to bank $493 in cash money each week, and you plan to spend $737. Well, you’d be in the hole $244 by the weekend because you overspent your income by about 50 percent.

Where do you cut back? Unlike the government, you can’t print money, and no bank will give you a loan because of your fiscal irresponsibility. So, you decide not to eat at restaurants and to forgo that flat-screen TV. Those are discretionary expenses, unlike your rent or mortgage, utilities, car payments, and other legally binding financial obligations, also known as mandatory expenses.

The federal government also has mandatory and discretionary spending. Mandatory programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, TARP, and others) account for around 57 percent of total outlays, or $2.165 trillion in the proposed budget.  The realty of that figure hits home when it’s compared to income. Mandatory programs take 85 cents of every dollar going to Washington.

See what we’ve just done? We’ve converted trillions of dollars to pennies, a much easier amount to understand. Using pennies we see the federal government has only 15 cents left out of every income dollar to fund Agriculture, Defense, Interior, Homeland Security, NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, and the rest of the government agencies and programs.

But, the government needs 65 cents to fund all of its discretionary outlays. That’s why it goes into debt by 50 cents for every dollar it takes in, which comes to $1.267 trillion.

So that’s the budget. But just how much is $1 trillion? Well, it’s a million million dollars.  And if you placed $1 bills end to end, the chain would go up to the moon and back 200 times.  Something NASA won’t be doing even once under the Obama budget.

(Video commentary at http://www.youtube.com/user/jdp1953#p/u/4/kLsYOWb730Y)

The late Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, Jr., made grammarians grimace and pundits ponder when he shared the wisdom of his father who noted that “all politics is local.” The elder O’Neill’s comment followed his son’s only election defeat, the result of the campaign’s failure to heed what was happening in the candidate’s own backyard.

As of this month, I am an involuntary member of the army of the unemployed, sharing the anxieties of millions of my fellow citizens without paychecks because the economy no longer supports the functions we performed for our former employers. We are an army in need of a leader, one who understands our plight and who heeds what is happening in his own backyard.

This isn’t the first time I’ve looked for work during difficult economic times. Back in the last century, during the late 80s, I received my MBA in finance just as the stock market took a tumble to start the one-term presidency of Bush 41. I returned to college in hopes of trading in a career in broadcast journalism for a life in the corporate world. Instead, I ended up in print journalism, reporting on crimes and corruption in the public sector.

An opportunity arose at the end of the century that allowed me to combine decades of experience in journalism, public relations, and marketing to support the various aspects of a public university system. It was a great job, one that included writing speeches, legislative testimonies, op-ed pieces, and magazine articles to summarize issues and policies for the university family, business and community leaders, elected officials, and other stakeholders.

I then coordinated communications for the university’s largest college, and developed the university’s first monthly, interactive electronic newsletter. This last assignment gave me a communication presence (in radio, television, print, cable, satellite, or online) in every decade since the 1950s. OK, full disclosure dictates I mention that I started out doing radio commercials as a pre-schooler. True story.

Anyway, at the end of the two-term Bush 43 administration the economy collapsed, university endowments shrank, and non-academic functions paid the price. 

There is some solace knowing the university eliminated my position through the dreaded Reduction In Force and did not fire me because of poor job performance, crimes, or violations of university policies. In fact, the people who chose the easy way to save money and keep their jobs allowed me to leave mine with a certain level of dignity one would expect to accompany a decade of service at the highest levels of the organization, i.e., I got two days to clean out my office instead of being escorted immediately to my car, and I stayed on the payroll with full benefits through the holidays and into the first of the year.

Job hunting is a learning experience. You learn discrimination is alive and well and thriving. Do not be fooled by the terms “affirmative action” and “equal employment opportunity.” Today’s employers have their pick of the lot. I had one person tell me her business received scores of applications for a receptionist’s job. One way to cull the list was to pick the first name of a current employee then eliminate all applicants with that name. 

I’ve also learned that trite excuses haven’t changed over the decades. People still think they’re softening the blow by saying you’re over-qualified, not realizing what they’re really saying is they hired a less-qualified person.

So, how does my unemployment relate to “all politics is local?” Conservative estimates put the nation’s unemployment rate at ten percent. The rate in my household, however, is 100 percent, because my wife is on disability.

This means that when President Obama delivers his State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress, I’ll be waiting to hear what his administration plans to do about the economy and jobs. I’m not interested in healthcare reform, because I’m happy with my coverage. I’m mildly interested in housing and mortgages, because I don’t like to see people who could afford their homes when they had jobs lose their homes because they don’t have jobs.

And I don’t want to hear how the government will punish evil bankers for making money for their stockholders. In other words, doing the jobs they’re paid to do.

In my opinion, Washington should concentrate on the economy and jobs because all politics is local and the President needs to heed what’s happening in my own backyard.

From Surviving Wonderland: My life with temporal lobe epilepsy an unpublished book by John David and Sharon Powell

Looking back, we see that Sharon’s temporal lobe epilepsy has been a manipulative companion throughout our lives together, from our first days at Indiana State University, through the years of unpleasantness and separation, and up to today as we compile this amazing compendium of her survival of Wonderland.  How would our lives be different if we had known?

Sharon writes of pain as a constant companion today, but it’s always been around for the nearly 40 years we’ve been together.  When we first met, she blamed migraines for her horrible headaches and ulcers for her stomach pains.  And why not?  It’s what her doctors diagnosed.  Auras and sensitivities to light and sound meant migraines.  Stomach pains and cramps had to be ulcers, unless they were stomach migraines.

Then there were the visions, hallucinations, dreams, or whatever you want to call them.  A couple of early incidents stand out.  She awoke from a nap at my parents’ house to see pots and pans dancing across the room.  Everyone laughed and chalked it up to another Sharon dream.  Another time, Sharon’s dorm mate awoke to see a man standing in the room, dressed similar to a knight from a deck of cards.  Sharon roomed alone shortly after that.  Such weird Wonderland-type of incidents didn’t frequently reveal themselves to others until a few decades later.

God has a way of taking care of mothers, particularly the mother of my children.  Sharon’s TLE seemed to go into remission during both pregnancies and through the toddler years, otherwise she would have bounced off the walls during those months of little sleep, late nights, loud crying, and stress.

Sharon’s condition didn’t explode within our lives until after 2000 when she started working from home for 3M and traveling to Utah and around the country.   Maybe it was the stress of traveling, or the constant need to please unreasonable managers, or the difficulties associated with two teenaged daughters, or living with me, or a combination of these and other things, or just the fact that it was time.  Whatever the causes, life became difficult and even strange on occasion.  Looking back, we can see how her TLE flexed its muscles and took control of her life and ours.

One of the major problems facing people with TLE and their families comes from doctors and specialists who don’t listen to the patient, but forge ahead with the easiest and quickest diagnosis.  You must be schizophrenic if you hear voices.  You must have migraines if you have head pain and auras.  You must be bipolar if you have trouble concentrating or have hallucinations or have wide mood swings.

So, the doctor prescribes what may be the wrong medication or treatment, which not only fails to address the condition, but also may cause additional physical, emotional, and psychological troubles for the patient and for the people around the patient.

Learning how to live with TLE is an ongoing process for loved ones.  And so, I learn and observe.

I’ve learned to watch for the visual triggers, and to adjust our daily life around them.  People who do not have epilepsy and who do not live with epileptics have no idea of the number of visual triggers that confront a patient every day.  We no longer go out to the movies, because digital film-making technology creates cinematic conditions similar to standing in front of a thousand flashbulbs.  We may not be aware consciously of the effects of special effects, but the epileptic’s brain still registers them and goes into a full-blown seizure.

Television production techniques may be worse for epileptics.  At least you know what to expect when you go to the theatre.  Commercials can trigger seizures when they’re chock-full of special effects.  Awards programs, particularly music awards, are guaranteed to set off a seizure, because of strobing lights and quick camera cuts.

CNN may be the worst of the news channels.  Some consultant somewhere said studies show that constant movement on the screen keeps a viewer’s attention.  Sure, if the viewer is ADD.  I once counted 53 graphics changes in one minute, which did not include the slow and constant movement of the map behind the anchor.  I counted the number of graphics changes during one five-minute news block in the middle of the day and came up with an average of 37 per minute.

This next sentence may be more for the person with TLE rather than for the person sharing the condition.  In our relationship, TLE causes inconsistencies in actions and behaviors, likes and dislikes.  We’ve had periods throughout our marriage where all of sudden she dislikes or cannot tolerate something that she’s enjoyed, wanted, or participated in, sometimes for many years.

This can be anything and everything involving one or more of the five senses.  The frustration and confusion to the other person may lead to inappropriate responses, anger, or total bewilderment.

One more thing, and probably an essential point to living with and around Sharon: she looks in the mirror and sees the distortions she sees in others when she’s full-bore into a seizure.  It’s a carnival fun house without the fun and without any connection to reality.

And so, I tell her many times during the day that she’s beautiful and how much I love her.  Do the same with the person you’re with.  The person may not hear it at the time, and may not accept it, but I’m convinced that somewhere in the fog and confusion your voice and your love will serve as the light that leads out of Wonderland.

A series of events, from the birth of our first grandchild to the loss of my job, kept me from writing my annual Christmas column.  In its place, I humbly offer this piece written by my wife, who joins me in wishing all of you a very merry Christmas.

My Christmas Story
 December 23, 2009
Sharon R. Powell

Everyone has a personal Christmas story. That is the beauty of the season. The story often holds a mirror up to our natures allowing us to see not only ourselves, but also God’s gifts. My story has taken years to form. My life has seen the tragedies of unexpected death and the joys of parenthood. This story is about more than overcoming loss and grief or experiencing parental satisfaction. It is about seeing the truth.

More than five years ago, a hidden illness made itself known while I worked for a large company doing all the things in my profession that indicated success: publishing articles, giving presentations, and traveling. At the time, I did not know what was happening with me, only that I was in constant mental and physical pain, and that I felt I could no longer live with my family. I thought I needed quiet and solitude to survive what was going on inside my head.

I could not get a correct diagnosis from my family doctors who prescribed all the wrong medications, which exacerbated the condition and left me ready to run. I did leave and as a result I found out I had Temporal Lobe Epilepsy whose symptoms are similar to migraines, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or simply insanity.

The diagnosis devastated me and left me unable to come to terms with my condition, even as it worsened. It had been dormant in my body for many years, making minor appearances here and there until I persisted in a stressful and aggressive lifestyle that brought it into full bloom.

As my TLE progressed, it took with it all the things I thought were important. First to go was my ability to be diplomatic at the office. I was in the medical publishing business after years of working in hospitals dealing with doctors. I prided myself in my ability to hold my temper when doctors screamed at me as I tried to keep them and the facilities in compliance with various laws and regulations. The TLE sat in my emotional center and made for some rather dramatic responses to requests from managers. While this entertained my co-workers, it was hardly helpful to me.

My ability to work on computers, particularly with spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, was the next to go. This frightened me because it threatened my ability to earn a living. My job was my security. It was supposed to keep the proverbial wolf away from the door. I had no idea what I would do if I could not work.

I also realized I was no longer a safe driver. I did my best to catch rides with others or to stay home during and after seizures.

During all of these changes, I refused to ask for help. I was seeing a therapist and that was the only thing holding me together. By that point, I had lost my family, or so I had thought, and my ability to work, which, I felt defined me. My work did not give me satisfaction; it gave me status and material rewards. I let it define my intelligence.

As I was trying to decide what to do, my husband, who had refused to divorce me earlier, talked to me about returning home to Texas from Utah. This is the part of the marriage vows that speak to sickness and health.

I moved home and began a concentrated program of recovery along with attempts to repair my relationships with my husband and daughters. Over the next two years, I went through six drug withdrawals to clean out the medication that either no longer controlled my condition and my pain or were the wrong drugs for me.

I worked with both of my daughters, who were in their late teens to middle twenties, to restore what the disease had taken away. I struggled daily with my husband to re-establish our thirty-three year relationship and to adjust to my new situation without fear, anger, or flight. In many ways, it was the hardest period of my life.

Repairing damage is difficult when you don’t remember what you did a great deal of the time, or when you look back and realize your actions were motivated by a condition in your brain. There are no excuses or reasons. It simply was what was happening at the time.

I went through three neurologists and a family doctor dealing with the pain and seizures. My persistence finally paid off as I found the correct treatments for me. I felt clear and sane for the first time in years. Then the economy hit the skids and my husband lost his long-time job at the university.

Losing a job is always tough. It’s harder during bad economic times. And it’s really bad when it happens around Christmas as all of the trappings and trimmings of holiday cheer only deepen the fears and depression.

We’ve been in tight situations before, but one of us was always working. Our current situation is new to me. The insecurity that had driven me to a high stress, type-A job, kicked into full gear. I had to consider more than the goals of getting off the wrong drugs and working to get better. I had to live with myself knowing that I did not have the ability to improve our situation.

Then the miracle happened for me. My older daughter gave birth to a very large and healthy boy. As I held him and looked into his peaceful and beautiful face, I realized the significance of the Bethlehem story. This is not to imply that I think my grandson is anything more than a normal little boy. It is simply that God gives us amazing gifts each day and so often they go unnoticed.

I had spent the last year mourning my losses: the job and its status; my independence; and my access to money, travel and friends. None of these survived, including most of the friends. I felt stripped of all I had and concerned that the last bit of what my husband and I had worked so hard to maintain, our home, would be the next to go.

Then I looked into my grandson’s face so full of trust and peace. As I watched him sleep or rocked him while he made small, sighing noises, I saw clearly I had gained far more than I had lost. I lost my job and my status, but I gained a true insight into myself and the strength to fight a difficult condition by sheer will.

I lost my community standing, but I understood that breaking the mold of propriety frees you to be yourself. I lost my income and designer wardrobe, my color-coded closet and my name brand shoes and purses, but I realized I used these things as armor against a hostile world I never expected to accept me or my intelligence. I now know who I am and what I can accomplish. This had nothing to do with Coach purses or Chanel scarves.

My relationships with my daughters have been restored, along with my relationship with my husband. I now have a confidence in him I had not had before. I understood I need to give him my trust, faith, and support to find his way, which I hope is one of self-realization and not the path I chose so many years ago.

Over the last few years I also lost my ability to really see God. He has been there for me each step of the way, but when I was in pain or distress it was easy to imagine that I was completely alone. I saw him again in the face of my grandson, illustrating the continuing miracle of life.

This year the Bethlehem story is alive for me. There was no place in the inn for me, not because God had not provided it, but because I wanted more, a condominium maybe. I could not see what was important in life. My grandson has allowed me to understand the love we feel for each other, the love we learn to feel for ourselves, and the love we give to God are the most important things.

Houses, clothes, jobs, even health are all subject to change, but not God’s love for each of us. We just have to let Him into our lives to experience it.

Sharon Powell is working on a book about her battles with temporal lobe epilepsy. Her email address is sharonpowell@yahoo.com.

Once again the nativity season brings attacks by those offended by ubiquitous displays of Christmas.  This Christmas, I’m drawn to the similar ways some Christians and Republicans create opposition to their beliefs and, like the innkeepers of Bethlehem, provide no shelter for travelers.

Every year brings new incidents of holiday political correctness, from removal of nativity scenes from public places to banning of Christmas references and displays in public schools.  These events do not bother me, and I do not see them as infringements on my Christian beliefs.  I do not need to see Mary, Joseph, and the Baby Jesus welcoming shepherds and magi on the town square to remind me of Christmas and of the reason for the season.  I do not rely on public schools to educate my children on the significance of Christmas or their religion.

As a Christian, I carry Christ in my heart every day (although I do not honor or adore Him as much as I should), and I tried to teach my children about our religion through my daily thoughts, words, and deeds.  This is why I do not have strong feelings either way regarding prayers before public meetings or moments of silence in school. 

Prayers in public settings, in my opinion, are religious displays that underscore one of the central questions of prayer, that is, whose petition does God grant?  When the mayor prays at the start of a city council meeting for God’s guidance and grace, so, too, are the opposing sides in the upcoming debates.  Who does God favor when both football teams and their respective fans pray that their guys beat the bejeezus out of the other guys?

Prayer is a personal thing to me, which is probably why I have problems with in-your-face declarations of any Christian tradition.  It’s why I understand non-Christians, particularly atheists, who seem to lose all reason during Christmas.  Stores now put out Christmas displays before Halloween, which makes it kind of creepy to see costumes of ghouls and politicians next to Santa and the Christ Child.  News outlets devote much time during the days leading up to Thanksgiving to explain the economic importance of Christmas (or holiday) shopping, thereby underscoring the non-Christian argument that Christmas is merely a pagan observance forced upon society.

Christmas also exemplifies the vast differences in the ways Christians observe the holiday and practice their religion.  My conservative, Eastern Orthodox tradition calls for fasting during the 40 days before Christmas.  Other Christians have parties with drinks, meats, and merriment.  And that’s OK, or should be, because I believe each of us practices our faith and traditions differently, not better.

Orthodox tradition sees Mary as a teenager betrothed to the older Joseph, a widower with children.  Others see the Holy Family as a couple of starry-eyed teenagers heading to Bethlehem in compliance of Caesar’s law and the fulfillment of God’s plan.  The end result is the same.

Orthodoxy is not demonstrative and showy in its practices or politics.  One does not find mega churches, televangelists, or political action committees that try to influence public policy with their versions of faith-based politics that alienate other Christians as well as non-believers.

Christianity is a big tent that accepts many traditions.  Some Christians, however, spend considerable time and resources promoting their interpretations of Jesus and Salvation, which many times conflict with other Christians.  Orthodoxy, in a simple form, says there may be many paths to God, but we must concern ourselves with the single path laid out by a tradition that remains unaltered and unbroken since revealed by Jesus through the Apostles.  Other Christian traditions, however, believe it’s their way or no way. 

That thought brings us to the Republican Party of today, which many believe has been hijacked by a narrow brand of conservatives and by fundamentalist Christian beliefs.  The quiet, but growing discourse says this strident political/religious stance not only alienates people with moderate conservative political views, but also people of other faiths, including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Wiccan.  And let’s not leave out agnostics and atheists.  Today’s Republican Party will falter and die unless it removes the walls erected by fundamentalist Christians and dismantles the political barriers that create impassable regional divides.  Doing so will allow welcoming and inclusive spaces within its big tent for diverse personal convictions.

A gun-control advocate should not be ostracized from the party that advocates reduced government control.  An abortion-rights proponent should not feel unwanted in the party that believes in lower taxes.  A supporter of programs that assist children and families in need should not be cast out by those who seek stricter enforcement of immigration laws.

Christmas provides a fundamental lesson for Christians, that Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the first.  He who created all things was born in a shelter alongside the road because all the good rooms were taken.  What would you do if you were an innkeeper and knew what we know today? 

If today’s Republican Party continues catering to the far-right of center and to its fringe elements, it is highly probable its epitaph will read: It provided no crib for a bed.

Barack Obama’s steady decline in the polls this week may mean the American people are tired of the president’s divisive campaign rhetoric after nearly a year into his administration.  The Rasmussen Report’s daily tracking poll shows 53 percent of Americans disapprove of his performance in office.

With an economy shaking, unemployment rising, and two wars draining our nation’s human and financial resources, Mr. Obama prefers to use the divisive language of the campaign trail in hopes of gaining public and political support for economic policies rather than to provide the leadership his supporters sorely hoped he possessed.  He demonstrated this us-versus-them style during his interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes this past Sunday when he used the term “fat cats” to describe banking executives in line for rather substantial, and contractual, year-end bonuses.

As a victim of the tanking economy, one would think I would be the first to shake my fist at another’s paycheck and bonus.  I worked for the last ten years for a state university system, the last two years assigned to a division that receives the bulk of its funding from investments.  University administrators instituted a series of reductions in force that eliminated my position, which effectively put me on the streets at the start of the Christmas season with salary and benefits to expire in a few weeks.  Administrators cited my salary as the reason for their decision.  My experience, institutional memory, and contributions to the university had no value to the administration.

Ken Feinberg is the Obama Administration’s special master for executive compensation.  He distributed $200 million to Vietnam vets suffering from Agent Orange, and most recently he administered the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund by putting a price tag on the lives of those who died.

“Dollars are a surrogate for worth,” he told Time Magazine.  “When you start talking about dollars, what people hear is a ruling on their overall integrity and value to society.  It gets difficult.”  Indeed, especially if value to society is a key factor in compensation calculations. 

The people who collect your trash every week don’t make enough money to take European vacations, but their value to society rises rather rapidly when they don’t pick up the trash for several weeks. 

How much value do you give a person who operates on your heart or cuts into your brain?  Just before you go under the knife, ask if your surgeon makes $40 million an hour.  That was the pay rate for Floyd Mayweather, Jr. in his welterweight title defense two years ago.  His take was $20 million for a 10-round fight.

Tiger Woods, whose value to society is free-falling these days, made $110 million just from selling his name last year.  And Ricky Gervais, creator of “The Office” franchise, gets $50,000 every time the U.S. version of the show airs.

Mack Brown, head coach of the University of Texas football team, will get $5 million next year.  Someone asked me if that were fair.  He should be paid what the market allows, I answered.  The UT football program is one of the few in the nation that pays for itself.  It provides incalculable public relations and marketing for which UT doesn’t shell out a dime.  In fact, UT gets paid every time they’re on television.  And what’s the value of three hours of national television exposure?

Thanks to changes in federal compensation guidelines, approved by Congress, the number of federal employees earning more than $100,000 annually, increased from 14 percent to 19 percent during the first 18 months of the recession, according to a USA Today study of the federal salary data base.  And that’s before overtime and bonuses (by the way, I’ve never figured out why public employees get bonuses for doing the public’s work).

And speaking of bonuses, the president forgot his Wall Street executives kept their bonuses when they joined the administration in January.  The Wall Street Journal reported in March that the White House merely “encouraged” them to “review” their compensation packages.  A Citigroup executive took his bonus, but donated it to charity and, one assumes, wrote off the contribution.

Watching the president Sunday brought to mind Winston Churchill as he prepared his country for the possible German invasion of the island after the fall of France.  “The massacre on both sides would have been grim and great,” he noted in his memoirs.  “I intended to use the slogan, ‘You can always take one with you,’” he wrote.  He realized, though, the British people needed strong, positive rhetoric, and leadership, and not cheap slogans and weak performances from His Majesty’s government.

Barack Obama is not a Winston Churchill, but current and coming battles demand more than empty and divisive rhetoric from the chief executive.

Now that the ruckus has subsided over the Nobel Prize for Peace to Barack Obama, the time has come to examine an issue largely overlooked in recent years. Here is the question:  Does the prize hold any relevance, or is it nothing more than a popularity contest judged by a handful of Norwegians with a distorted world vision?

The Peace Prize, according to the Nobel Foundation, should go to a person who, during the preceding year, did the most “for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”  The Norwegian Nobel Committee, however, the small panel that decides who receives what used to be one of the world’s most prestigious honors, added to the criteria the protection of the world’s climate, thus allowing Al Gore and the International Panel on Climate Change to share the prize in 2007.

So, who received the award last year?  That was Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president and, according to the Nobel Committee, a “citizen of the world” who, in 2005, became the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General to come up with a plan for the future of Kosovo.  The Ahtisaari Plan of 2007 promoted Albanian independence for the Christian heart of Serbia.  The plan drew harsh and immediate criticism from the Serbian government, particularly in light of Muslim-backed terrorism against the Christian population of Kosovo that resulted in the damage or outright destruction of approximately 150 Christian sites between 1999 and 2004.

The awards to Obama and Ahtisaari were not the first to be greeted with bewilderment.  The Gore award in 2007 and Jimmy Carter’s in 2002 were among the other curious selections of recent decades.  Remember the 1973 award shared by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho?  Kissinger was one of the architects of the Cambodian expansion of the Vietnam War.  Le Duc Tho declined the award, knowing he and his country were drawing up less-than-peaceful plans for South Vietnam at the time.

Rigoberta Menchu got her 1992 award “in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples."  The Nobel Foundation let her keep it, even after learning she lied about her life and family.  One might call it a disingenuous indigenous story.

Mikhail Gorbachev received the 1990 award for his part in ending the Cold War, which he could not have accomplished without the politics and policies of President Ronald Reagan, whom the Norwegians believed was unworthy of a share in the prize.

Yasser Arafat, an avowed terrorist widely considered someone who enjoyed the company of young boys, and who once packed heat when addressing the UN General Assembly, shared the prize in 1994.

Kofi Annan and the United Nations sharing the prize in 2001 may be the most outlandish decision in the controversial history of the prize, one akin to holding up Adolph Hitler as a champion of peace.  Although Annan took the money and a bow, he admitted three years later he did nothing to stop the slaughter of nearly one million Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994.  “The international community failed Rwanda and that must leave us always with a sense of bitter regret,” he said.

Sports analogies have a way of keeping controversial decisions from becoming slam dunks.  Several stories about Obama’s prize pointed out that winning Rookie of the Year does not qualify one for the Hall of Fame, or sentiments along that line. 

A recent statement regarding this year’s Heisman Trophy brought to mind its relationship to the Nobel Peace Prize selection.  Here’s what happened.  A college football announcer stated there’s talk that University of Houston quarterback Case Keenum is a serious candidate for the Heisman Trophy, given each year to the person selected as the nation’s best collegiate football player.  The color guy quickly stomped on that comment by saying Keenum doesn’t belong in the conversation. 

He could have said Keenum is one of several good players in the running this year.  He could have said there’s a lot of football to be played, but Keenum certainly deserves consideration.  He could have said Keenum has given some strong performances this season and that he hopes Kennum continues to have a good year.  But he didn’t.  Instead, he scoffed at the player who leads the nation in total offense with 2,501 passing yards, 76 rushing yards, and 19 touchdowns.

One can only assume “the other guy in the booth” based his snobby snubbing on the fact that Keenum does not play in a conference that gets an automatic Bowl Championship Series berth.  In other words, he’s not a member of the self-ascribed elite and doesn’t deserve even the utterance of his name in conversation.

How like the peace prize selection process this sounds:  A small group of individuals of dubious importance deciding who deserves the highest accolade they have to offer, regardless of talent, accomplishments, or other tangible measures of success. 

And the world buys into it each year.

Mundus vult decipi

The hot and miserable August weather has moved indoors in cities and towns across our land. Moved indoors and taken the form of recriminating rhetoric as neighbors square off in shout fests billed as informational town hall meetings about health care.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) enjoys using the term “evil mongers’ to describe American citizens expressing their anxieties and frustrations, many times with verbal vigor and abuse, over healthcare proposals they fear will adversely affect their lives and the lives of their children and of their parents.

Reid, along with many supporters of the various healthcare bills floating around Capitol Hill, says Republican special interest groups have organized the protests. That is the case to some degree. But to say individual Americans who cut across generational, social, and economic lines cannot think for themselves and cannot decide on their own to attend these meetings is simply absurd and borders on the disingenuous.

These town hall demonstrators, many of them children of the Summer of Love, have taken a page out of the liberal playbook to create our current Summer of Dissonance. Obstructive behavior to silence opposing views is not uncommon, particularly on college campuses, and the targets are usually conservative speakers.

In October 2006, someone pulled a fire alarm at Georgetown University to stop a speech by Minuteman co-founder Chris Simcox. A few weeks later, Columbia University students stormed a stage where Jim Gilchrist, the other Minuteman co-founder, was speaking.

In October 2007, members of Amnesty International, Veterans for Peace, and Students for Justice in Palestine, among others, disrupted a lecture by David Horowitz at Emory University, a common occurrence for Horowitz.

In April 2008, dozens of lesbians at Smith College climbed through windows and stormed the podium to stop a speech by Ryan Sorba, author of The Born Gay Hoax.

And last April, University of North Carolina police arrested six people who disrupted a speech by Virgil Goode, a former congressman from Virginia, who was speaking against affirmative action and illegal immigration. A week earlier, UNC police used pepper spray on students who disrupted a speech by Tom Tancredo, a former congressman from Colorado, who was talking about his opposition to in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants.

Back when I handled communications for a university president, I crafted the school’s position regarding controversial speech on campus. The result was a statement that said universities, by their very nature, are forums for the free expression, discussion, and debate of all views, including those that may be unpopular or even repugnant to some members of the university community or to the public. I went on to point out that we should encourage these exchanges as long as they remain within the boundaries of the law, which is an idea essential to a thriving and open democracy and, if followed, would temper today’s tempestuous town hall meetings.

I have come to believe over the years that some people on the left of the political spectrum interpret the First Amendment to mean this: “You can say what you like as long as I like what you say.” This is why they meet challenges to their political agenda with hateful words and ham-handed techniques. These attempts to stifle questions and concerns end up frustrating citizens not used to civil disobedience and unruly demonstrations.

They learn fast, however, these so-called special-interest puppets and evil mongers. They learn fast and respond to attempted censorship with shouts and jeers, chants and slogans. They quickly become that which they do not like and do not respect.

And this why we need Atticus Finch, the quiet and reasoning father in Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird. We need to sit on the porch and listen to Atticus explain how we confuse issues and drown discourse with raised voices and angry fists.

He would begin by telling us to hold our heads high and keep our fists down. “No matter what anyone says to you, don't let 'em get your goat,” he would say, adding, “Try fighting with your head for a change.”

Atticus would then raise his chin and look out over those assembled around his porch, the very ones who had been hurling invectives at each other and getting no closer to resolving the issues. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” he would say, “until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Finally, he would place his hands on his knees, slowly stand, then look down upon the upturned faces. He would watch the thoughtful in the crowd nod their heads and walk away into the night. Then he would imperceptibly shake his head as he looked at the remaining angry faces, and, in a quiet voice, almost as if speaking to himself, he would say, “I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time.”

We frequently use fear as a motivator, sometimes with good intentions. The fear of blindness temporarily stayed many a boy from personal exploration. On the other hand, some people play into deep-seated fears of social exclusion, racism, or terrorism to gain some level of control over individuals, whole classes of people, or nations.

One can make an argument that the United States government overreacted in some of its anti-terrorism laws and measures following the Sept. 11 attacks. We and our leaders responded in good faith to the fear that additional terrorists were poised to kill more Americans using airplanes and other weapons. The seduction of fear led to National Guardsmen patrolling airport terminals, armed with weapons that had no bullets. We continue debating the necessity of the past administration’s efforts to protect our nation, which included water boarding, wire tapping, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano this week said she disagrees with Bush Administration measures that fed into fears and did not include the participation of the American people in improving the country’s resilience against attacks. “The consequences of living in a state of fear, rather than a state of preparedness, are enormous,” she said.

Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology at the University of Kent, contends the seduction of fear feeds into the Precautionary Principle, which is designed to eliminate the risk of harm. Furedi says people no longer believe in acts of God or naturally occurring events. For example, accidents are preventable injuries, and we need to fix the causes. If a teenager dies in a car wreck, the family blames missing guardrails or poor road maintenance, and demands laws that keep teenagers from driving at night.

He also believes society no longer expects individuals to rise above adversity. Society, instead, treats people as victims scarred for life. Enter the poverty pimps and community organizers who convince people that racists, bigots, and the wealthy will never let them succeed because of their race, their gender, or their economic status. Only they, the poverty pimps and community organizers, can affect justice for the oppressed.

Individual responsibility does not exist in a precautionary culture, according to Furedi. Thoughtless people, greedy corporations, and incompetent government watchdogs cause a plethora of societal woes. So, we divide the citizenry into vulnerable or at-risk groups that need government protection from a government we do not trust, and we roll over to the seduction of fear by allowing that government to throw money and regulations at circumstances within our control.

If we believe the national news media and Washington fear mongers, each one of us is in danger of losing our home to foreclosure or seeing our home’s value plummet unless Uncle Sam steps in with mountains of cash. People across the country bought into that fear, causing the value of homes in unaffected areas to fall. The government, meantime, pumped billions of dollars into the system to save troubled mortgages given to individuals who could not and cannot afford them.

Buried in a wire-service story this week was a statement from the chief economist of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation who estimates the number of home foreclosures could reach 5 million by 2011. That’s a big number, especially if you are one of the 5 million, but it represents just over 6 percent of all homes in the country. In other words, 94 percent of home mortgages are safe and have been.

Another example is the current healthcare debate. Eighty-nine percent of respondents to the latest Time magazine poll said they have some form of healthcare coverage, and 86 percent of that group said they are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their plans. A Gallup poll last November found that 83 percent of Americans said the quality of their health care is excellent or good.

Proponents of sweeping changes in healthcare coverage and healthcare delivery use the seduction of fear to make their case rather than rely on reasonable examinations of the underlying causes and effective cures.

The seduction of fear only leads to the reduction of reason, which comes with a price tag no one can afford.

Mundus vult decipi

Regular readers of this column know that, at times, we look at the ways Muslim countries, those nations where Islam is the national religion and the foundation for their laws, are not like us (if you’ll excuse the grammar).  Egypt and Turkey are two examples.  Both have been in the news recently for their unabashed persecution of their Christian populations.

An official policy of the Obama administration is to keep happy our pigs and those who raise them by avoiding the term “swine flu” when describing the influenza virus that jumped from pigs to people.  It is not the swine flu, but rather the H1N1 virus, they tell us. 

The Egyptian government, however, uses swine flu as an excuse to launch another round of persecution against its minority Christian population.  Even though the World Health Organization reports no swine flu in any African nation as of this writing, the Egyptian government ordered the destruction of the entire pig population in a nation where only Christians raise pigs because Muslims consider pork unclean.

Earlier this week, according to various news organizations, about 1,000 Christian pig farmers armed with stones and bottles faced off against about 200 police officers armed with tear gas and accompanied by armored vehicles.  The Christians lost. 

Now, Egyptian health officials say the pig slaughter is part of a campaign against unsanitary conditions on pig farms, especially in Cairo slums where garbage collectors live.  And since all pig-raising garbage collectors are Christians, some observers believe this is another way to harm Christians in a nation where the law strongly discourages conversion to Christianity.

Or, someone serving at the wedding of a Muslim who converted to Christianity.  Father Mattaos Wahba received a five-year prison sentence last October after his conviction on charges he helped a Muslim woman obtain an ID card that falsely listed her religion as Christian.  The woman obtained the ID of a deceased Christian woman of about her age two years before she met her future husband, according to the organization Christian Copts of California.  The priest, according to the group, had no knowledge of the woman’s fake ID.  He, instead, is a victim of Egypt’s open violation of religious and human rights.  At least in the way we understand them. 

Even the U.S. State Department describes the Egyptian government as applying discriminatory religious laws and practices, and effectively shutting out Christians from senior positions in the government, military, and education.  And forget about building or repairing churches.  An 1856 law says non-Muslims must obtain a presidential decree to build or repair a place of worship.  A church in a Cairo suburb has been waiting for a construction permit for the past 50 years, according to the State Department. 

Turkey doesn’t need a swine-flu ruse to persecute its Christians.  That government is open in its de jure and de facto forms of discrimination, including the systematic removal of Eastern Orthodoxy from within its borders.  Turkey does not recognize the ecumenical role of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of the world’s 200 million Eastern Orthodox Christians, whose patriarchate dates back to the fourth century. 

At one time, the patriarchate possessed holdings on par with those of the Vatican, but it is now a small, beleaguered enclave with most of its property seized by the government and its priests and patriarch victims of constant physical and political attacks.  For instance, the government must approve a new patriarch who must be a native Turk.  The government also closed all Christian schools and the Halki Seminary that trained Turkey’s priests and patriarchs. 

In 2007, the late Congressman Tom Lantos joined 50 members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which he chaired, in sending a letter to Turkey’s prime minister urging an end to all restrictions on the religious freedom of the patriarch.  President Obama made a similar statement in his April 6 remarks to Turkey’s parliament.

Mr. Obama, however, did not mention a case under deliberation by a Turkish judge.  The monks of the fourth-century Syriac Orthodox monastery of Mor Gabriel want the court to stop a group of state land surveyors and Muslim villagers from taking about sixty percent of its property.  The monks believe the taking of their land is another way to force non-Muslims to leave.

The case of Mor Gabriel may have profound political ramifications for Turkey, as pointed out by the Assyrian International News Agency.  Turkey wants to become a member of the European Union, and protection of minority and religious rights are conditions for entry.  But, history often shows us that political expediency often trumps religious rights, particularly when the religion is Christianity in a Muslim state.