Our country is broken.  We have been lurching from one bad president to another, from one war to another and from crisis to crisis.  Our government spending is out of control and so many people are out of work that tax revenues are in the tank.

Our country has huge negative momentum and that’s bad for America and the American spirit.

We had the crash of 2008 driven by a failure of government to properly oversee the housing market and a failure of regulators in preventing speculators from creating a hugely leveraged, virtual debt pool that nuked companies and markets right and left.

Jobs  disappeared all around us as companies scrambled to cut costs.  Bush and Obama bailed out the banks, the big car companies and their unions, while doing nothing for Main Street.

In Washington, the Democrats raised spending like crazy and became obsessed with passing a health care law that is one of the worst pieces of legislation ever.

People got angry, got organized and sent the Tea Party to Washington with a single mission of getting our budget back under control by cutting the ridiculous spending spree.

From there, we’ve had a continuous fight over cutting spending that has paralyzed the country and the government on a number of occasions.  A fight that has yielded just tiny spending cuts that are real. All the big numbers are BS fake cuts from some imaginary future budget.

This past Friday the nation was dissed by S&P when they downgraded the US debt rating from AAA to AA+.  They did this despite the fact that they have countries with even worse debt problems, like France, rated AAA .

I found it both sad and amusing that  Sen. John Kerry declared that this was a Tea Bag Downgrade.  What a jerk.  Even though I voted from him instead of Bush, I never liked the guy.  The Tea Party folks didn’t create this problem, it’s lifers like Kerry that created this problem.

And to top things off,  Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve, was asked if T bills are still safe and he responded “Yes, we can always print more money.”

Somehow, this has got to change.  Our government leaders are stuck in a mind set of no compromises and blaming the other guy.  Our business community has frozen up due to all the uncertainty about what’s going to happen next.  Our national attitude is one of doom, gloom and the pain of austerity.

We, the people, elected the 536 people who run our national government. They created this mess with their decisions. If our debt is too high, its because they decided to make it too high.  If our spending is out of control, they decided to spend way too much. If  our tax system is all screwed up, it’s because they decided to screw it up.  Everything comes down to their decisions.

These 536 people are also the only ones who can make the decisions needed to get us out of this mess.  From my perspective, each and everyone of these people should be forced to tell us their plan to fix things or to stand up and be counted for someone’s plan.  Whether you like it or not the House Republicans came up with a plan and stood behind it.  The Senate Republicans should do the same.  The Democrats should do the same.  And most of all the President should have some plan that is more than just talking points about shared sacrifice.

Personally, I don’t want more sacrifice, I want it to feel like it’s  “morning in America again”.  And I think that’s doable.

My plan would be simple:

1. Make growing our GDP is the top priority to create jobs and enable us to enjoy the privileges of this country. To do this I would focus on 2 policies:
• Figure out a way to eliminate the tax on jobs.  It makes no sense to tax jobs here at home, when companies can outsource and not pay the tax. It’s simply a bad tax that kills jobs and we should get rid of it.  The temporary reduction in payroll tax rates is a start, but the whole tax should go permanently.  It should be in the constitution:  Government  should not tax people or companies for providing jobs.
• Eliminate the capital gains tax on the first $5 million in gains from the sale of a small company.  IMHO this would do more than anything else to spur investment in small business.
2. Set spending and revenue targets at 18-20% of the GDP, and everyone should sign a pledge that compromise that gets to that range is the right thing to do for America.  To do this I would:
• Reform the personal and corporate  income tax system to fewer, lower tax brackets with few or no deductions
• Put all spending is on the table and force it fit within the 18-20% range within 5 years.  If we want more health care, we have to spend less on defense and vice-versa.
3. Put the country on a path to positive momentum.    Start making changes in a positive direction.  Start small and keep making decisions that make things better.  Rinse and repeat until we turn this nation of around.

From my perspective, if your  Congressional, Senate or Presidential candidate can’t come up with this plan or something else that fixes the mess they created, then they don’t deserve your vote.  They certainly aren’t getting mine.

BTW.  If anyone else has a better plan, I’d love to hear it.

The Long Beach Press Telegram continues to write misguided editorials about the recent passage of a law requiring out of state retailers to collect sales tax.  The last time I wrote to the editor, they totally censored my post.  So, here is the reponse I sent to them tonight.  I hope they have the guts to publish it entirely this time.

Here’s my response:

Supreme Court of the United States has already ruled that it is unconstitutional for states to force out of state retailers who do not have physical presence in the state to collect sales taxes.  This is the second time the Press-Telegram has advocated in support of an unconstitutional law on this matter.  Do your home work!

Secondly, you should realize that the biggest backer of the unconstitutional law is Wal-Mart, Inc.  Wal-Mart is not the friend of local small business. Because of their lobbying efforts and poorly informed editorial staff advocating unconstitutional positions, the State of California passed an unconstitutional law that caused thousands of people working for small business to lose their jobs.

California has lost jobs and tax revenues because of our legislature’s arrogant attempt to bypass the Supreme Court’s ruling.  Amazon is no saint, but like the Press-Telegram they have a right to fight for their constitutional rights.

If you’re going to write editorials, get your facts straight.

PS – either print this entirely or you don’t have permission to use it at all. The last time you edited my position you totally distorted my message.

I spent the past few weeks enjoying the Women’s Soccer World Cup and it really made me think about the importance of being “on frame”.  That’s soccer lingo for putting your shot on the target.  In soccer, the target is with the frame of the goal.  Putting your shots on frame is the only way you’ll score.

The US National team was like magic to watch.  The game against Brazil was especially fantastic with a last minute tying shot that Abby Wambach put on frame.  Then, they win it in penalty kicks with 5 more shots on frame that all scored.

The final game had everything you could want in a quality soccer match.  Ups, downs, the stories of two incredible teams, sportsmanship, and everything left of on the field by all involved.

Congrats to the Japanese Team.  They fought hard and deserved their title.

The US team was equally worthy of winning and that made watching them choke painful.  They chocked on defense, on offense and in the PKs.  Really sad to see this from such great competitors.

The team had two defensive mishaps that allowed Japan to tie things up in both regulation and in overtime.  Then, Japan won the penalty kick contest.

But it wasn’t the defensive mistakes that cost the US the game.  The problem is that too their shots we not on frame.

Before the penalty kicks, the US had 27 shots at the goal, with only 5 being on frame.  Japan only had 14 shots, but put 6 of them on frame.  Then in PKs, the US had two shots blocked and one that missed the frame.

If you’re not on frame, you have no chance to score.

It’s like that in life too.  If you’re not on frame, you you have no chance of realizing your goals.

The past month has been a frustrating battle with Google’s search results.  My audiobooks for ipod site has been bouncing between the first page of Google search results and the last page of results.  When it gets pushed to the back, the whole site seems to be affected.  It will be on the first page for thousands of keywords one day and then the next it won’t show up for just about anything.  Very frustrating.

I think it has to do with duplicate content that Google has indexed.  First, I had set up some subdomains to serve images faster, but Google began duplicating content like mad so I cut of the subdomains. Now, I’m seeing Google index XML feeds which create duplicate content.  I added noindex to those last week, but it seems to take forever to get out of the doghouse:<

I recently sent a letter to the editor of the Long Beach Press Telegram in response to an editoral they published called “Online Sales Should be Taxed”.  The editorial’s position was that we needed a law to make online retailers collect tax to make it fair for offline retailers.

The editorial board obiviously does not know what it’s talking about and has fallen prey to Walmart et al lobbying efforts, just like the Democrats in Sacramento.

Below is the full letter to the editor.  The bold parts were edited out, much to my disappointment.  I guess that’s what happens when big media wants to censor the public.

For your information, online sales ARE taxed already. Every good sold
in California that is subject to sales tax is already taxed whether it
is sold online or in stores. All Californian’s are responsible for
paying the sales tax regardless of how they purchased the goods.

The issue is the State’s ability to force retailers to collect taxes.
For retailers with a physical presence in California, the state
government forces retailers to do the State’s job of collecting the
sales tax.  That uncompensated tax collection burden applies to both
retail store operators and online stores operated by companies that
have a physical presence in California.  Just try buying something
from Walmart.com and they will collect sales tax from you.

It is unconstitutional for the State to force retailers who do not
have a physical presence in the state  to do the State’s job of
collecting taxes. . In Quill Corps. v. North Dakota, the Supreme Court
ruled that a business must have a physical presence in a state for
that state to require it to collect sales taxes.

Our State representatives are trying to create physical presence,
where one does not exist, to force out of state retailers to do the
State’s tax collection work. The way they are doing that is by saying
that if an independent publisher or marketer based in California
promotes the out of state retailer’s products and gets a commission
then the retailer has to collect taxes.  Its like saying that because
Amazon ran a pay for performance ad in the Press Telegram they are now
based in California and can be forced to collect taxes.

If the law passes, out of state retailers will discontinue
relationships with an estimated 25,000 businesses in California to
avoid being forced to collect sales tax.  That will mean we don’t get
the sales taxes and that lots of tax paying Californian’s will lose
their jobs and livelihood.  We will end up with fewer jobs and the
loss of of income tax receipts. It’s a lose, lose proposition.

The only constitutional solution is to have the Federal government
pass a law to make it happen.

There is just no other way to say it. Verizon Fios customer service sucks.  I spent about an hour ranting about it on Twitter last night, but still need  a bit more venting to clear my frustration with them.

The issue started when Heather and I decided to rent a VOD movie instead of going out.  Bad decision on our part, because the resulting service just ruined the night.

It all started when we select the movie we want to watch, “The Adjustment Bureau”, and click on the rent button.  Then we wait and finally an error box pops up.  We try this a few times, unplug the set top box to reset it and try again. Still getting error box so we hit the troubleshoot button which is useless, but it does give a number to call at the end.  So I call the number, and the Verizon call systems asks for my phone number.  Why they don’t have my number is beyond me.  My bank always knows my number when I call.

After I enter my number, I go through a mind numbing phone tree only to get disconnected somewhere.

We decide to try something different and use the VOD system to view a movie from HBO, but again we get an error message.  This one tells us we do not have enough credits to rent this movie and provides another number.  I don’t know what the credits thing is all about, we pay plenty to have Fios and we pay extra to have HBO and access to it’s VOD library.

After we find the same problem on Starz and some other premium channels, I call the number that this error message says to call.  It’s different than the last one so I try it.  There is a short code to enter when I call.  Again, the call system asks for my phone number.This time it tells me my phone number does not exist or something like that. After some other phone tree mumbo jumbo I get asked to enter the short code.  I enter the code and wait.

The phone tree seems to be doing something….then the computer voice says “there is no answer at that number and the call will be disconnected.”  Now I’m pissed.

So I drag up my browser on my phone and go to Verizon.com and try to find a number.  Their contact numbers are well hidden behind lots of pages trying to deflect you from calling.  I find them after some serious problems trying to get through two modal pop up windows on my phone.  Modal pop ups on mobile devices don’t work very well, but that’s a different rant.

So I get the number and call.  Phone tree asks for my number again, then try’s to make me go away by leading me all over the place.  I just want to talk to a person, but the phone tree is the Resistance Monster incarnate.  It really does not want me to talk a live person.  Finally, I beat the phone tree and get to a person.

Sounds like the lady is very far away,  has an Indian accent and a name I don’t quite get.  Maybe I got sent offshore? Don’t know.  Don’t really care as I can understand the lady and she seems nice. The lady asks for my phone number again.  Click, click as she types away.  Now she asks what my problem is and I tell her.

Oh, no.  She’s not part of Fios.  She’s part of some other operation.  She offers to transfer me and asks for a number in case we get disconnected.  I envision more time waiting and then getting disconnected.  So, I demand a warm transfer where she stays with me until I get to the next rep.

There we sat waiting.  Verizon music playing away.  Me and the Indian lady. We wait and wait.  I’m not giving up now, I’ve got one of their reps and I am going to keep her waiting too.  10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. Some more waiting and then there is a different person picking up the phone.

It’s Debbie.  Debbie is from Fios. The Indian lady signs off.  At least she stayed with me, even if she could provide no help.

I think Debbie asks for my phone number again, but I’m not sure what she said.

She asks me what my issue is and I tell her.  I hear her give a friendly chuckle.  This is not going to be good I think.

The VOD system is down.  She tells me that it’s not just me, it’s affecting everybody.  She tells me like she thinks that is going to make me feel better.  Doesn’t work.

I ask why the system is down.  She mumbles something about maintenance.  That I find hard to believe. Who would schedule VOD maintenance on Friday evening in prime time?  No competent person would do that.  But then again it is Verizon Fios.  Maybe they would be so stupid as to bring down the VOD system on a Friday night for maintenance.

I ask if they will give me a credit for their system being down.  She says it needs to be six hours.  Ok, I say.  When will the VOD be back up and available.  She tells me an hour sometime on early Saturday morning.  Well that’s more than six hours I say, how about that credit.

Debbie can’t give me a credit.  I have to talk to the billing department.  I complain about having to wait some more, but tell her ok.  Get me to billing I say.  I want my credit.  I know it would only be few dollars, but now I’m in it to win.

Debbie does the normal, can I have a number to call if we get disconnected thing.  Again, I tell her I want her to stay with me and do a warm transfer.  OK she says.  I wait and then the music again.  Debbie tells me it will be 13 minutes, do I want to wait?  I say yes and I want her to stay with me.  Ok she says.  Then moments later Debbie is gone.  She comes back after 5 minutes or so to check up on me.  Do I want to wait more?  Yes and I tell her I’m mad at her for not staying with me.

Debbie sneaks away again.  Finally, I get to billing.

I don’t know the billing ladies name, but she asks me what I want.  I tell her my VOD is down. Debbie said six hours and I get a credit.

Billing Lady says no.  No credit for the VOD system being down.

I ask why not.  She tells me VOD is a free service and they don’t give credit on free service.

My blood pressure must have gone up 20 points at that statement.

I pay big bucks to Verizon every month for the Fios service.  The service I pay for has a feature called VOD.  If I don’t pay, I don’t get VOD or Fios.  There is no way it’s free.

Billing Lady tells me it’s free because everyone gets it.  I say only if they pay for Fios.

Billing Lady sticks to her position. No credit.

I ask about HBO VOD.  I pay for that.  It’s not available to everyone.

Billing Lady says no credit.

I ask why Debbie told me it was possible and made me wait to talk to Billing Lady.

Billing Lady tells me she doesn’t know.  I think she thinks Debbie was an idiot.

I tell Billing Lady I’m pissed off.  She says that she apologizes for me being upset.  She doesn’t apologize for the VOD system being down. She doesn’t apologize for their terrible service.  She doesn’t apologize that she can’t or won’t help me.  She doesn’t apologize for my time waiting and the awful experience.

She’s sorry that I got upset.  Like I’m not supposed to get pissed off when treated this poorly.

I think I lost it at that point, because the Billing Lady was gone.  Just silence.  I lost.  Verizon Fios awful service won.  It’s no wonder that the last thing the phone company wants is to talk to their customers.  It’s awful for me and probably costs them a fortune.

The sad thing is it never needed to happen.  All Verizon needed to do was tell it’s customers that the VOD system was going down, or was down and tell us when to expect it back up.  They could have done that via the set top box.  They could have put that on the web site. They could have had the phone tree tell me.  They could have tweeted it and it would have been more effective than the experience I went through.

They could have put a link on the error message to get help and then tell me VOD was down.  They could have put phone numbers on the error messages that actually get answered.  I could go on and on about fixes, but I’m sure they just don’t care.

And why does the phone company keep asking for my phone number when I call? They’re the phone company and they know my number.

Come on Verizon, at least fix that.

Unless maybe Verizon thinks people will get frustrated with this stupid procedure and drop off before they actually get to talk to a person.  Sounds cynical, but that’s how big companies think.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of resistance over the last 24 hours.  How I got to be thinking about it is a happy confluence of things I’ve been studying.  I have long been interested in helping people lead change, and the Resistance Monster is a constant enemy.  But the Monster is always in hiding, so it took something to make me more conscious about the Monster and to want to talk about it.  That something started with a book called Do the Work, which talks a lot about resistance.

And then the Resistance Monster was forced into focus into my conscious mind by studying some of the teachings of Brendon Burchard, a personal development guru, and Fabienne Fredrickson, a client attraction guru.  They both  focused on our need to serve, and to find the thing we most need to serve.  For a long time, I thought that was leading change, but I could not get excited about it despite knowing a lot about it and knowing how to help people with it.

I think that thing that I most need to serve is helping people beat the Resistance Monster.  Maybe this discovery is good fortune, good luck or the work of the laws of attraction.  Whatever that force is is a topic for another day.  But whatever, I know I need to write and talk about Beating the Resistance Monster, before the Monster stops me.

You may not have consciously thought about the Resistance Monster before, but he/she/it is there and everywhere.  It is omnipresent.  It lives in me and in you.  It hides in the shadows of our unconscious minds.  It is heartless and unfeeling.  It is relentless, unstoppable and persistent. It never sleeps.  It never breaths.  It never rests. It is insanely creative in finding ways to stop us and make us weak.  It’s worse than the Terminator.  It’s worse than the Borg.

It’s a horrible and insidious Monster that stands between who you are and who you could be.  It stands like a wall between you and your potential.

I used to think that its goal was sameness.  That it wanted things to stay the same.  That was wrong.   The Resistance Monster likes sameness, but only if it supports its real goal. The real goal of the Resistance Monster is CONTROL.  The Monster wants us weak and compliant.  The Monster wants total control.

It will use any tools and weapons it can to maintain control.  It hides from our conscious minds using deception, distraction, social norms, procrastination, fear and temptation to get it’s way.

Even worse, my Resistance Monster colludes with other Resistance Monsters to stop me and you.  It’s greatest weapons of mass control are our communication systems(meetings, mail, email,  phones, internet, etc). It uses these systems to distract us and divert us from what we should really be doing.

Just think about it, how many meetings and emails are about your life purpose?   Probably none.  Emails are about getting us to do what someone else wants.  The Monster knows this and uses it to distract and control us.

Why is opening up your email system and reading your email so important?  Because the Monster wants it to be so. Our Monster has colluded with the other Monsters to create a social norm that we must read and respond to our email. It has that power.

If we want to realize our potential or to realize the potential of our organizations, we must do battle with the Resistance Monster and we must beat it into submission.  And then we must do it again and again.  This is a war that the Monster will never stop waging.  We can win battles and make lots of progress, but the Monster will be back to fight another day.

But if we are to realize our potential, we must fight, we must win the battles that really matter.  We must beat the Resistance Monster.

Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist, has produced a report for The Global Warming Policy Foundation called The Shale Gas Shock.

It basically says shale gas is really important and the benefits outweigh the costs by a lot. I hope he’s right, because the implications for the environment, energy security and world prosperity are huge.

Freeman Dyson’s Forward sums it up:

I agree emphatically with the conclusions of Matt Ridley’s report.

This foreword explains why. Two scenes from my middle-class childhood in England. In my home in Winchester, coming wetand cold into the nursery after the obligatory daily outing, I sit on the rug in front of the red glowing gas-stove and quickly get warm and dry. In the Albert Hall in London, in a posh seat in the front row of the balcony, I listen with my father to a concert and hear majestic musicemerging out of yellow nothingness, seeing neither the orchestra nor the conductor, because the hall is filled with London’s famous pea-soup fog. The gas-fire was the quick, clean and efficient way to warm our rooms in a damp climate. The fog was the result of a million open grate coal fires heating rooms in other homes. In those days the gas was coal-gas, with a large fraction of poisonous carbon monoxide, manufactured locally in gas-works situated at the smelly and slummy east end of the town. Since those days, the open-grate coal fire was prohibited by law, and the coal-gas was replaced by cleaner and safer natural gas. London is no longer the place where your shirt-collar is black with soot at the end of each day. But I amleft with the indelible impressions of childhood. Coal is a yellow foulness in the air. Gas is thesoft purring of the fire in a cozy nursery.

In America when I raised my own children, two more scenes carried the same message. In America homes are centrally heated. Our first home was heated by coal. One night I wasstoking the furnace when a rat scuttled out of a dark corner of the filthy coal-cellar, and I killed him with my coal-shovel. Our second home was heated by oil. One happy day, the oil-furnacewas replaced by a gas-furnace and the mess of the oil was gone. We were then told that the supply of natural gas would last only thirty years. Now the thirty years are over, but shale gashas extended the supply to a couple of centuries. While the price of oil goes up and up, the price of gas goes down. In America, coal is a bloody fight in the dark. Gas is a clean cellarwhich became the kids’ playroom.

The most important improvements of the human condition caused by new technologies are often unexpected before they happen and quickly forgotten afterwards. My grandmother was born around 1850 in the industrial West Riding of Yorkshire. She said that the really important change in working-class homes when she was young was the change from tallow candles towax candles. With wax candles you could read comfortably at night. With tallow candles youcould not. Compared with that, the later change from wax candles to electric light was not soimportant. According to my grandmother, wax candles did more than government schools toproduce a literate working class.

Shale gas is like wax candles. It is not a perfect solution to our economic and environmental problems, but it is here when it is needed, and it makes an enormous difference to the human condition. Matt Ridley gives us a fair and even-handed account of the environmental costs and benefits of shale gas. The lessons to be learned are clear. The environmental costs of shale gas are much smaller than the environmental costs of coal. Because of shale gas, theair in Beijing will be cleaned up as the air in London was cleaned up sixty years ago. Because of shale gas, clean air will no longer be a luxury that only rich countries can afford. Because of shale gas, wealth and health will be distributed more equitably over the face of our planet.

I saw this chart in the WSJ today and was stunned by how much the federal budget has grown and the projections for the future.

I know which line I would choose. What about you?

Google’s Art Project uses street view to tour museums and allows you to view high resolution art right in the browser.

Right now they have 17 museums in the system including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY, MOMA, Palace of Versailles, Van Gogh Museum, Tate, Uffizi Gallery and other great museums.