Before I began expressing my views on this Commission, I felt it in order to stop and at least attempt to think through those views on the issue of poverty, of human success versus human failure, and try to commit it to print. Each of us has a different set of experiences, differing views on life and the world, and perhaps dramatically contrasting ideas on how to address -- if not resolve -- the circumstance we are charged to consider.
I am comfortable with research and writing. I much admire those of you who are comfortable in the more conversational approach. I hope to learn much from you as we proceed and as you express your views, ask probing questions, and search out the "magic bullets" to help us arrive at realistic, workable recommendations to assist our beloved state to 1) maximize its assets and minimize its weaknesses and 2) prepare itself and its people for brighter futures.
I delight in exploring new, different, innovative, even opposing views. I have many confirmed beliefs, but I like to keep testing them -- and discarding them for better ones as I grow in my own cherished beliefs and understanding. Although I have directed a community action agency for the past twenty-four years, I style myself as "middle-of-the-road" to "conservative." I have seemingly always been the "odd man out" relative to my colleagues. I have marched to the beat of my own drummer -- and we have been extremely successful in that. My by-word is growth. I am always striving to grow personally and to lead an organization of highly creative and growing people.
You may think at times that I am "off the wall," and you may be right. If so please humor me or be patient with me. But I will always want to "stretch the envelope" of my thinking and yours in the hope that what we ultimately produce has in addition to being useful to the General Assembly may have been an eye-opening growth experience for us as well. A recent Ellen Goodman column (January 13, 1995) suggested that we should keep seeking out "ponies" in the midst of a lot of horse manure as we proceed through the contemporary social debates. For every side likely has part of the solution or key to improving the current situation. We should look beyond the rhetoric, give honest consideration of everyone's ideas, and find what we can agree on and build on that. Her pony # 5 was: "The good ideas don't belong to one side or another. The real winners are going to be the ones who ride the common ground." So here I go. I welcome your feedback and criticism -- even if you think my ideas are sometimes just dumb. But I hope my views do not come across as just plain insensitive, though I expect some to be evocative while being not too provocative. I am trying to write with the advice of the legendary Chinese philosopher, Lao-Tsu, who said, "Truthful words are not beautiful, beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive, persuasive words are not good." In the end I hope my words will contribute to helping find that "common ground" that Ellen Goodman says will produce "real winners."
In the ethics booklet I gave you (1993's 66th annual Blue Ridge Report, which I edit and publish), there is a report on a stirring speech by Jeb Stuart Magruder, now pastor of Lexington's First Presbyterian Church. He is, of course, the same Jeb Magruder of Watergate fame, and he was talking about ethics in America -- which he describes as "a society at the crossroads." (Each fellow Commission member has a copy, so I encourage you to read his speech and review the entire report.)
Magruder quoted the accomplished Reagan speech writer and author Peggy Noonan:
We've lost that sense of mystery about us -- our purpose, our meaning, our role. Our ancestors believed in two worlds and understood this one to be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. We are the first generation of human kind that actually expected to be happy here on earth, and our search for it has caused such unhappiness. The reason: If you do not believe in another, higher world; if you believe only in the flat, material world around you; if you believe this is your only chance for happiness; if that is what you believe, then you will be disappointed when the world does not give you a good measure of its riches.
Noonan's "solitary, poor(e) [sic], nasty, brutish and short" reference was that familiar piece from Thomas Hobbes' 1651 work, Leviathan, a commentary on the strife-filled political scene of his day -- the Oliver Cromwell era in England. The citizens' commitment to be governed is a quid pro quo exchange for their expectation to be protected, according to Hobbes' view. (A premise we've likely carried much too far in America.) A couple other salient Hobbes' points bear mention as well: 1) "There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense, " and 2) "Such truth, as opposes no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome." Now if those two quotes don't capture the essence of today's political environment then I do not know what would.
Magruder observed that many -- both rich and poor -- today despair about our society. "Material wealth does not bring happiness," he said. "We need to understand that so much of what we seek cannot satisfy. Happiness and pleasure are externally derived. Contentment and joy are internal. ... Contemporary society focuses too much on the external. ... We need to put a lid on who we think we are."
There is so much rhetoric, but perhaps far less thoughtful consideration of bold pronouncements. For example, we hear so much rhetoric about the "large, growing, unproductive underclass," a reference to the poor, and not incidentally, often a thinly veiled reference to the minority poor. But while I share some of those general concerns, having invested most of my adult life working to help improve the poors' lot, I am more concerned about something even more ominous -- an even larger, faster growing, post-productive overclass that is sapping the life out of the future of America's children and generations that follow.
I first raised that issue at the January 4th Poverty Commission meeting. Having asked the question -- why we are so bent on consumption over investment, why we reward the older "leisure class" while burdening the younger working class, and what can we do to change that -- I quite literally "burned" with my own personal embarrassment over having posed the issue. Indeed, I quite thankfully have both my parents still living quite comfortably on that benefits system. For their sake, I am happy. No doubt like each of you, I was taught to respect and honor my elders and superiors -- such as our honorable legislators with whom I may occasionally differ in view, but always respecting their unique burden. (They bear responsibilities from which we citizen members are free -- and can thus speak without fear of political repercussion what truly needs to be said.)
But I am also the father of two teenage children. And it is for their future that I am most fearful, alarmed, and committed. Their forebears have enjoyed the best of times that any time or place on earth has ever offered. We and our parents truly had the "opportunity society" that Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks of. I am certainly committed to work with him and everyone else to help assure that my children have that kind of open, inviting, unlimited-possibilities world. But I don't think they can if they have to pay for their parents' and grandparents' excesses and left-over debts while striving to create the good life for themselves, their children, and descendants.
Anyone who says current Social Security and government retirement benefits are "earned" is simply practicing self-deception or is downright ignorant. Every legal worker -- and their employer -- in America pays 7.65% of their wages (up to $61,200) earned/paid for Social Security/Medicare. Those taxes represent virtually a pure and simple income transfer from workers (producers) -- mostly the younger in society -- to retirees (consumers, or at the very least post-producers) -- mostly the older (and richer!) in society. The maximum per-worker Social Security tax in 1995 is $4,681.80. That's up 68% just since 1985, just ten years ago. In comparison, the consumer price index rose 42% during the same decade.
The Congressional Budget Office says that Social Security and Medicare cost $342.3 billion in 1990. Projected costs for 1999, just five years from now, are $645.5 billion -- an 88.58% increase over the decade of the 90s. Federal and veterans retirement and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) add another $137.6 billion to the 1999 tab. Together, these will then amount to a whopping $783 billion, almost exclusively for senior retirees.
Meanwhile, the one-would-surmise nation-wrecking AFDC program will cost a projected $20 billion. Yes, still too much, I agree, if only for the level of personal and family tragedy it represents. The National Taxpayers Union released a report in December saying that to keep current benefits in place the Social Security tax rate will have to rise -- between 34 percent and 55 percent by the year 2040, and that the total tax rates on average workers will have to be at least 69% more than today! These "entitlements" now consume about 14 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). Each year they receive guaranteed "cost-of-living" adjustments (increases). By 2040 it will require 23.5% of the GDP -- about the share the entire operation of the U.S. government now costs to provide these benefits alone. I think it's a cancer that's eating away the life of the nation, its government, and its future.
A telling cartoon appeared in the January 10th Courier-Journal. It had two men sitting at a counter over coffee. The four frames read: 1)"...It promotes a culture of dependency!" 2) "The incentives are screwy." 3) "It turns people into freeloaders!!" 4) The up until now silent fellow then asked the complainer, "Welfare?" To which the other man responded, "Social Security."
This reinforces a fact of life: Every system "victimizes" its members! All of us are "victims" of one system or another that limits our vision, thinking and understanding. That's why Joel Arthur Barker's work on paradigms is so important. It's the commonly accepted standards, pattern, practice of thinking that blinds from all of us deeper and greater truths -- to exciting new possibilities, and to more expansive opportunities. We simply convince ourselves we know what's right, best, and possible, so there's no need to question it. For example, we know AFDC welfare is a dependency trap. What we fail to accept is that all the falsely-promised maintenance programs in our society are absolutely no different. Only the rhetoric and the constituencies are different!
A retiree will in three to four years receive everything he/she ever paid into the Social Security system, and from that point forward it is, in my view, welfare -- any way you cut it. It's just money out of workers' pockets to retirees. (And you can't even file a return on it to get any part of it back no matter how strapped the worker's own family may be.) The same is true of the notoriously under-funded public retirement programs. They're all unfunded commitments on our children's and younger workers' future earnings. They're all protected, defined-benefits, income-transfer programs for non-producers -- even if they once were producers -- at the expense of hard-pressed working citizens.
And perhaps worst of all, these beneficiaries get their largess regardless of their other income and resources; plus they get the most beneficial tax treatment as well. A recent opinion in USAToday by Bill Strauss and Neil Howe demonstrated the worsening state of added tax-burden disparity on younger workers in the current rush for "tax cutting" -- I would say tax shifting! -- the one they question being proposed by Virginia's Republican governor, George Allen:
A young working, home owning couple earning $30,000 would pay 28% of their income in federal, state (Virginia), and local taxes; a retired couple of the same description would pay nothing, zero in taxes. Increasing the level of income to $60,000 per year, the working couple would pay 34% of their income in taxes while the retired couple pays only 11%. In addition, the working couple supported a child while the retirees cared only for themselves.
This, I think, is a realistic and reasonable depiction of what actually exists throughout our nation.
So what do Washington's leaders propose to do about it? Well, they are of course going to further ease the "burden" on retirees by making it possible for them to earn more money before any diminishment of their benefits kicks in. And Frankfort, well we must certainly eliminate the taxation of pensions! In the current scheme of things it all makes perfect sense -- and that's why it must be changed in favor of younger, family-rearing, economically-pressed workers. Clearly, we are moving the same direction in Kentucky as Virginia and the nation with the initiatives before the current General Assembly -- rewarding and maximizing the consumptive constituents while further burdening the producers (workers) and future producers (children). Once again, worshiping at the altar of consumption!
Some say it is just plain wrong to use tax policy and taxing power to benefit one constituency over another or to promote "social engineering" of any type. OK, then, at least make it neutral! Now it favors seniors and hurts the young. It's wrong, backwards, upside-down. I am really looking forward to David Richart's presentation on tax policy at the February 1st Commission meeting. If income should be taxed, then income should be taxed regardless of source -- at least beyond a reasonable subsistence floor (which I would suggest is well below the $35,000 level).
Neil Howe, the National Taxpayers Union's chief economist, said in another December article, "The graying of the welfare state is likely to have catastrophic consequences for the after-tax living standards of most working-age Americans. The senior citizens' benefit programs are not practical, not fair to the younger generation and cannot be sustained into the next century."
I have a friend who often says about a community or an organization that there's nothing wrong in any of them "that a few good funerals won't cure." But that's not true with this problem, because it only gets worse as the huge baby-boom generation reaches retirement.
The politicians don't want to touch this. We all understand why. But let's be honest about the problems. Our national funding crisis is not about low-income welfare, it's about middle and upper class welfare! It's about the so-called "entitlements" provided to those who least need them but have the political clout to get and protect them at their generally poorer and younger citizens' expense.
Embarrassed as I am to focus on it, there's where the real problems lie. I am willing to work until I die to give my children a clean slate with which to begin their adulthood and productive lives. That is what I think every generation owes it children. They owe us very little in comparison. Things as they now are are simply out of kilter. No matter how politically unpopular, things need to be set aright. That's why I chose the title I did for this paper. Heaven must wait if we are going to give our children the opportunity they deserve and which we should be en masse committed to assuring them.
Even after more than twenty-nine years -- including two as a social worker and three as a pastor -- working with poor people, I cannot help but view poverty as a human failure -- a failure not always the fault of the poor person nor of the society. It is always a shared failing, I think. Circumstances alone do not prevent some from succeeding despite all odds stacked against them. Nor do the most favorable circumstances assure success in life.
For me, the real tragedy of "welfare" -- for the poor or the middle class -- is not so much the financial cost as the lost or wasted human potential. It's a loss of productive lives, energies, and minds. For those who are retired and still giving back to society, God bless them! We need ever more of that. That should be the new standard of societal expectation for "retirement." The greatest joy in life, I think, is the personal assurance that one truly matters, makes a difference, by the time and space that one occupies.
For me, the Black clergyman, philosopher, and mystic, Dr. Howard Thurman (1899-1980) wrote about this most eloquently in his book The Inward Journey and a piece he entitled "A Strange Freedom:" It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of men without a sense of anchor anywhere. Always there is a need of mooring, the need for the firm grip on something that is rooted and will not give. The urge to be accountable to someone, to know that there is an answer that must be given, cannot be denied. The deed a man performs must be weighed in the balance held by another's hand. The very spirit of a man tends to panic from the desolation of going nameless up and down the streets of other minds where no salutation greets and no friendly recognition makes secure. It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of men.
Always a way must be found for bringing into one's solitary place the settled look from another's grace to undergird the meaning of the self. To be ignored, to be passed over as no account and of no meaning, is to be made a faceless thing, not a man. It is better to be the complete victim of an anger unrestrained and a wrath which knows no bounds, to be torn asunder without mercy or battered to a pulp by angry violence, than to be passed over as if one were not. Here at least one is dealt with, encountered, vanquished, or overwhelmed -- but not ignored. It is a strange freedom to go nameless up and down the streets of other minds where no salutation greets and no sign is given to mark the place one calls one's own.
The name that marks the claim a man stakes against the world; it is a private banner under which he moves, which is his right whatever else betides. The name is a man's watermark above which the tides can never rise. It is the thing he holds that keeps him in the way when every light has failed and every marker has been destroyed. It is the rallying point around which a man gathers all that he means by himself. It is his announcement to life that he is present and accounted for in all his parts. To be made anonymous and to give it the acquiescence of the heart is to live without life, and for such a one, even death is no dying.
To be known, to be called by ones own name, is to find one's place and hold it against the hordes of hell. This is to know one's value, for one's self alone. It is an honor to act as one's very own, it is to live a life that is one's very own, it is to bow before an altar that is one's very own, it is to worship a God who is one's very own.
It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of men, to act with no accounting, to go nameless up and down the streets of other minds where no salutation greets and no sign is given to mark the place one calls one's own.
I love that rich, lyrical piece, but its message is also relevant to my theme for that's what, in my view, the bereft and indigent of productive lives -- the truly "poverty stricken -- experience in my view. Last week I watched the five-hour PBS series about the "War on Poverty." One interviewee recounted seeing the jobless poor come from Appalachia and the South to seek better lives in industrialized Chicago. He said that after the first wave which was assimilated the succeeding transplants found only disappointment and broken lives. While they had been poor where they came from, in Chicago's privations they became "poverty stricken" in their hopeless outlooks. Even more tragic than their economic plight was the fact of their crushed spirits. That kind of loss is so much more debilitating for themselves and their fellow citizens. They become lost to themselves and to society, and who can know what potential treasures are lost for all mankind at this grist mill of consumption -- whether in mis-spent lives or needlessly consumed resources.
It is impossible for anyone to know the usually complex reasons or the solutions to individual or collective poverty. But everyone can -- and usually does -- have their opinions. So I will attempt to collect mine.
This paper is only a beginning view. My views and this paper will be changed, updated and refined as we proceed through the monthly series of meetings and approach the task of committing positions and recommendations by August, 1995, in our report to the General Assembly.
So here I begin with what is, I suppose, the most basic conviction I hold dear:
1. No one truly "makes it" on his/her own. Behind every successful person stands many patrons.
It is in the character of Americans to be impressed with success, not failure -- not helping the less fortunate along life's way. Reports appear in the media quite often showing that it is very difficult for many, perhaps most, Americans even to relate to poverty or understand its magnitude and power over its victims. Only during the Great Depression era did Americans feel that sense of "common plight" and commitment to find "common solutions." Today's self-engrossed American typically thinks only of their own well-being and that of their own. While Washington seems bent on a localized "boot-strap" approach to our social needs I am at the same time reading articles and books -- such as Marvin Olasky's -- in the national press that tell of personal and community "compassion fatigue." Are we are no longer "our brother's keeper?
Speaker Newt Gingrich asked his colleagues during his inaugural speech on January 4th to read Heritage Foundation fellow Marvin Olasky's The Tragedy of American Compassion. So I read it to try to understand where Mr. Gingrich, the GOP, and my fellow Americans are today in term of our collective sense of what we should do in the face of our less fortunate fellows' circumstance. Having served as a minister, a social worker, and for nearly a quarter century administering services for the poor, I did not even recognize from Olasky's depictions where I've spent the past twenty-four years of my life. I am still having some difficulty with Olasky's broad-brush conclusions, but his book does offer a thought-provoking and very useful perspective. I particularly agreed with his contentions that those served must be personally "bonded" to their caring patrons and mentors in order to become successful. Olasky's point is, I think, akin to the beautiful Howard Thurman piece, "A Strange Freedom," I quoted earlier.
Fundamental religious values pervade Olasky's book -- and that's not bad so long as we keep the pluralistic view I think guaranteed by the Constitution with respect to religious values. Personally, I agreed with Olasky in virtually every value-statement, but that it not to say that everyone does or should.
One noteworthy facet in his examination of the poor and poverty was his review of what he called the seven seals (or marks) of compassion, good philanthropic practice, or the "social covenant." They are: Affiliation (family, group, community, etc.); Bonding -- especially with their rescuers; Categorization (e.g., the "deserving" or "undeserving"); Discernment -- a "benign suspicion" toward the poor -- as Olasky sees it; Employment (rather than mere "give-aways"); Freedom -- the "opportunity to work and worship without government restriction," he says (which exemplifies much of the flavor of the book); and (appropriately), God.
On Olasky's point about freedom, I might have said it's the "freedom" to do what one ought to do. It means civic responsibility to me. But interestingly, as Peter Drucker notes in the February Atlantic Monthly ("Letters"), it's those who don't have the time -- the two-earner professional family who at least lack the leisure time, who give the most time volunteering in the social sector. Recipients groups (including retirees) simply don't give back what they ought to in exchange for their public benefits.
Olasky tells of a two-day role he played as a 40-year-old homeless man on the streets to try and see welfare from the inside-out. But he says he was never asked to do anything in return for his handouts and couldn't get the one thing he wanted most, a Bible. He says his helpers were "nice." But he questions whether they were "compassionate" in terms of his interpretation of the word. In his closing chapter, Olasky says compassion is "not a noun," but "the culmination of a process -- which puts people in command of their own fate -- and I agree. He quotes Cotton Mather from 1710 when he said, "Find `em work; set `em to work; keep `em to work." That, I believe, we and today's poor would happily subscribe to, assuming families can make it on their earned income.
"People helping people help themselves." "A hand up, not a handout." Promoting self-sufficiency; developing human capacity...these are the kinds of things, I believe, that I, my staff, and my colleagues have always been about. They're all so consistent with Olasky's lessons. I support them enthusiastically. I share his rejection of entitlement and "help" that only reduces the recipients to dependents, but he and I clearly see entirely different constituents as the malefactors in the present scheme of consumption in America.
We need to help those who would be the producers in our society. Everybody needs that kind of support if they are to become self-actualized. The "one's-own-bootstraps" idea is a myth. It just doesn't happen. No one is truly "self-made."
My experience as a "runaway youth -- I may share that at some point -- tells me that my "success" is only partly to my own credit. Like every other successful person, I think, I could not have enjoyed the measure of success that I have on my own. I received a college education, a work ethic, spiritual and ethical values, numerous opportunities for self-support and service largely due to the contributions of others in my life -- some whom I did not know, and some who did not really know me -- only about me! Parents, teachers, employers, and patrons of all descriptions -- in concert with my own efforts, of course -- have made for me the life I enjoy today -- and have throughout my adult life to date.
Critical people speak of poor people as "being on the dole." But in this wonderfully open and opportunity-blessed society everyone, it seems, is on someone's "dole -- or they'd better be! In reality, the poor benefit least of all, I think, from our system. Our political system simply does not lend itself to patronizing those with little or no visibility, participation, influence, or value in it.
We want our children to succeed. So we know we must heavily invest in them. Not just money, but ourselves and everything we know to marshall behind their growth, development and establishment in adult life. In our hearts we surely know that they will not likely succeed without the nature and nurture we owe them.
2. Poverty is a pervasive systemic ill that can only be seen or solved with a "total systems approach."
W. Edwards Deming is credited with ideologically and perhaps spiritually pointing a broken post-war Japan in the direction of building its now world-class economy. Certainly, Kentucky's "post-industrial" status is not as daunting as was Japan's challenge -- though there are similarities. "Made in Japan" was synonymous with poor quality, limited technology, less-than-first-rate workers, and low expectations. Deming called together the leaders of Japan's sixteen top industrial concerns, which, amazingly, together, employed nearly eighty percent of Japan's workforce.
Deming taught a simple philosophy he called the "total systems approach." His fourteen-point program focused on quality-based outcomes over quantity-based standards. He preached that the focus had to be on the long-term results, not mere short-term indicators. The enterprise had to tolerate short-term "failures" and not be caught up in short-term "successes" in order to produce products that would be ever more pleasing to the customers. Thus, came about the now-famous Japanese concept of kaizen -- or continuous improvement. But this was one of Deming's fourteen principles. It's the virtual opposite of the "Bubba" Good Ol' Boy American concept of If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Deming would say, Never say anything is good enough. "Fix" it anyway, and keep on improving it, never to be satisfied with "as is," he would advise.
What does this have to do with poverty -- and more particularly poverty in Kentucky?
Well, Japan had no natural resources to speak of. They had no advanced technology -- which has bolstered our nation's growth, including Kentucky's. Japan, with Deming's advice, focused on the only resource it had in abundance -- human resources, marshalled in a total systems approach. The rest is well known to all of us. For today, "Made in Japan" means quality, high technology, worker pride, and world class.
Poverty is not a fringe issue. It's a systemic problem. Society is a system. Community is a system. Kentucky is a system. When there is a known problem that portends ill for the entire system -- particularly the most crucial element, its people -- counter-action must be taken.
That action must consider the entire system. The needs of the whole must always be paramount to the so-called "special interests" of any of its elements, and all elements must be committed to preserving the overall integrity and interests of the society at large. Peter F. Drucker devotes a chapter ("The Responsibility-Based Organization") to this premise in his excellent 1993 work entitled Post-Capitalist Society.
That does not imply that all interests are of equal magnitude in the overall scope of things. They are not equal, but all deserve just consideration.
This premise causes me the most concern with certain of the points I emphasize in this paper. But my bottom line is this: I recognize the need and importance of evaluating each view within the context of an overall "systems approach."
3. This nation must stop cancerously consuming itself and commit to investing in its greatest resource -- its people -- and its/their future(s).
This theme comes to me from a work which has perhaps been the most influential book on my own thinking. It was Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life (1984) by Dr. Jane Jacobs, a University of Toronto city planner/economist whose career has focused on building civic life, culture and capital. The overarching message, though, her book conveyed to me was that great nations have historically undercut their security, and ultimately their existence, through their fixation on the mere trappings of their "greatness" -- not what made them great or would have kept them so.
There's a saying that people get the government -- or world, community, future, whatever -- they deserve (and demand). The greatest challenge and peril for any people comes at the pinnacle of their power and prestige. It's analogous to the Biblical admonition that "pride goeth before a fall." And so the great cultures of the past -- as today -- end up in the maelstrom evidenced by the massive consumption of their substance and resource -- physical and human -- versus investing in their future. They rested on their laurels while some other aspiring peoples were building on their hopes and aspirations! Then in time the latter supplanted the former as a "great people." Like these past great nations, we grossly under-invest in the producing and potentially productive elements of our society.
This society can do what ever it chooses. So can individuals. But both must consider the costs associated with their choices. Since I was a very young man I have been using a Spanish proverb I picked up along life's way. It is: "Take it, and pay for it." In that simple statement is life in all its forms. Every choice in life and human events has a price. We can literally have anything we want in life just as long as we're willing to pay life's price for it. What we're facing today is a people who want the benefit, but they don't want to pay its price. That simply won't work! It denies the basic premise by which life must be lived!
Marvin Olasky (The Tragedy of American Compassion) condemns the loss of "aid with discretion" and "compulsory philanthropy." He says, "The War on Poverty of the 1960s was a disaster not so much because of its new programs but because of their emphasis on entitlement rather than need." Having served 24 years of my life in that effort, I scarcely recognize what he apparently sees there. Most of what he rails against I see as benefits to the non-poor "leisure (retired) class," not the struggling lower-income classes, whether assisted or working. Indeed, my agency never had "handout" programs until the Reagan administration instituted them. Previously -- and thankfully, still -- most of the services I have been associated with are developmental and preventive, or at least remedial in their intent and effect.
Despite my disagreement with his most predictable and misplaced conclusions, I think Olasky was right on target with what he claims to have learned about "fighting poverty" from the "Great Society" (regardless of who the public-supported beneficiaries are):
I share Olasky's intended destination, but not his journey. And I think I see what he writes about from a closer, better vantage point.
With all the lip service to "diminishing welfare dependency," this nation and its politicians -- marching in lock step all -- swear fealty to the real consumption culprits. These culprits are, as I have noted in my introduction: middle class entitlements -- for generally well-off retirees -- and tax policy which bears heaviest on those who can least bear the burden -- young working families. The true Welfare State in America wears gray hair!
I am reminded of an excellent review of the "welfare state" in the April 1992 Atlantic Monthly article entitled "The Next New Deal." The lead-in was: "A call for a comprehensive reform of our trillion-dollar system of federal entitlements, which favors the rich over the poor, the old over the young, and consumption over savings, and in other ways makes no economic sense."
It is the worst form of hypocrisy to rail against "redistributionist" tax policy, attributing the direst of consequences to the society for the less than 3% received from the federal government by the poor while swearing unswerving support for the 50-60% of the federal budget that gets redistributed from working people, including strapped young workers, for the benefit of the almost universally better-off retired population.
The state government is no less preferential in its treatment of seniors and its economic punishment of its producing segment. And as Ron Crouch with the State Data Center notes, the underlying message in all of this for young people who hope to get ahead not to produce children. Ben Wattenberg calls it "the birth dearth." Those who should produce more children -- and could best afford them -- don't. While those who can least afford them do. Thus, the dramatic rise of children in poverty -- that "desolate mass," I believe economist/historian John Kenneth Galbraith calls them. And it's worsening all the time.
Olasky quoted Kentucky's own John Ed Pearce from his October 27, 1985 opinion in which Pearce said, "I don't think it ever occurred to any of us" that the New Deal legacy would be "a welfare system that today supports millions who have neither prospect nor intention of earning their own living." Yes indeed, this society has become a massive consumption system as it is today. It and its public institutions are blindly, fatally committed to consuming themselves to death. That has got to change! As John F. Kennedy said in 1961, we must Ask not what your country can do for your country.... If we are to ensure brighter futures as a people we must invest in those things which will produce that to which we aspire.
To begin with, that means supporting through all available means the growth, education and development of our current and future producers -- our children. By contrast, we should create universal expectations that personal growth and giving is a life-long commitment, with "public assistance" at the end of life only a limited, means-tested, humane, dignity-preserving beneficence at the end of life for those who can no longer contribute productively.
It's a great shame that we lose so many people at the peak of their productivity simply because of some arbitrary retirement age or length-of-service. The numbers 62/65 years of (retirement) age and 20/27 years of service for benefits-eligibility are ridiculous (and disastrous) for today's world!
As people approach these thresholds they tend to devise every means to maximize their consumption of benefits perceived as "due" to them. In the absence of incentives for continued productivity, they join the hordes of those sapping out societal life-blood. And given the way the systems are set up -- along with the harmful counter-productive mentality that pervades -- who can blame them. They, like the much criticized AFDC recipient, maximize what they can get for themselves and their family without regard to what would be best for the public at large. Until these dis-incentives to productive alternatives are eliminated, it will not change. So we must change the system(s)!
Work is life's required contribution. Life at its best is each one of us contributing to the species and its future. Idleness and ease should not be life's ultimate ideals.
"Retirement" should consist of perhaps a more flexible and limited work schedule -- even a totally voluntary one if one has the independent means to support themselves. But everyone should expect to remain a producing, contributing member of society as long as he/she is capable of doing so.
And our healthcare system should be prohibited from so-called "heroic"means to extend the lives of old or otherwise dependent citizens. I see no praiseworthy ethic in that.
I watched my own 84-year-old grandfather, tethered against his will, die slowly, painfully on a respirator long after his own badly scarred heart had gone its natural distance. It was wrong, and I shall always believe he was victimized by his doctors and the hospital while he was unable to prevent it or stop it, and his well-meaning, poorly-advised family were believing they were doing the "right" thing for their beloved forebear. There is no telling what it cost, and the benefits of that cruel treatment accrued only to the doctors and the hospital. I do not believe in it.
Dr. Harold K. Bales, a leading Methodist minister from North Carolina, speaking at the 1994 Blue Ridge Institute -- that year on aging -- said, "The church's responsibility to the elderly is to help re-think the relationship between medicine and death." He concluded by saying, "A kind of 'negotiated settlement with nature' may finally have to be crafted in which we will live as long as we can within a certain frame of reference, and then nature will take its inevitable course."
Kentucky Health Commissioner Rice C. Leach said it well when he addressed the Reconvening of Community Support for Young Families at Risk conference October 24th in Louisville. He said, "We spend 99% of our healthcare dollars to help people die in technologically fantastic condition -- and virtually nothing in helping them to develop healthily."
Society is today turned upside down. That should be righted. It will only happen when we convert from a society which worships consumption to one which once again enshrines quality improvement for each succeeding generation of the human species and substantially invests its resources to that end. According to the National Taxpayers Union, the federal government spends, on average, $11,468 per person, per year on every person in this country age 65 and over; it "spends" (I would say, INVESTS!) $1,020 on each child.
Children are not poor. They simply belong to poor parents! And its the younger people who are rearing the children and having the hardest time economically. They earn less. They have less. U.S. Census figures for 1988 give this householder-breakdown on net worth by age:
| Age of Householder | Net Worth | "Other Assets" | Home Equity | $6,078 | $2,820 | $3,258 | |
| $33,183 | $24,190 | $8,993 | |||||
| $57,466 | $41,924 | $15,542 | |||||
| $80,032 | $26,396 | $53,636 | |||||
| $83,478 | $27,482 | $55,996 | |||||
| $82,111 | $28,172 | $53,939 | |||||
| $61,491 | $18,819 | $42,672 |
Clearly, tax breaks, as well as tax-based income transfers, are practically Draconian relative to younger working, child-rearing citizens. It must be changed. If it's not politically feasible to disinvest current beneficiaries -- and justifiable or not, I recognize that many consider their benefits a "covenant" between themselves and their government(s). But new expectations need to be created and changes can be phased in over 10-15 years to set things aright. My generation still has the time to adapt to a new way of thinking about work, retirement, benefits, and its obligations to posterity.
So what I am proposing is not a return to a Hobbesian world for seniors, but it does minimize the absurd, impractical expectations of "having it all" at others' expense, hang the cost -- and I want it now. It is a reaffirmation of mankind's historically proven approach to conserving the species. It implies a return to broadly accepted ethical and character values -- for adults as well as the young!
It's an acceptance of the out-of-kilter current priorities in both the central and state governments. It's a person-by-person return to an old definition of "success," the one Ralph Waldo Emerson perhaps said best:
One of the things I am most enthusiastic about is utilizing retired persons as mentors, tutors, and assistants with children needing added personal attention and help. It's a terrible waste of a human life just to go off in selfish pursuits or isolation -- as with the "Golfcart Grannies" (and Grandads) -- when there are so many places they are desperately needed. That concept also fits in with Olasky's definition of compassion -- which is much more of a personal investment in the one being attended to...or the Scott Peck (Road Less Traveled) idea of "giving attention" as being the essence of love. William James, the great psychologist and philosopher, said "The greatest use of a life is to spend it for something that outlasts it." And nothing honors one's existence and memory like investing in those who will follow us.
4. Consistent moderation and balance must replace alternating radical and reactionary tendencies.
As earlier stated in my point on a "total systems approach," this guiding principle must countervail the others. Moderation and balance has seemingly been the one thing hardest to achieve in our democratic society. We should remember the sage advice of the great historian, Arthur Schlessinger, Jr.:
Both conservatives and liberals have their essential role in the drama of our politics. A functioning society requires both engine and brake. However each may complain of the other, the liberal and the conservative are indissoluble partners in the great adventure of democracy.
Emerson made the point long ago when he wrote: "It may be safely affirmed of these two metaphysical antagonists, that each is a good half, but an impossible whole. Each exposes the abuses of the other, but in a true society, in a true man, both must combine."
Yes, engine and brake. Yin and Yang. Masculine and feminine. A good half; an impossible whole. We must learn, as never before, to seek the middle course where the best of each of these notions share equal force. Our one-up, super-competitive society must learn the value of making everyone a "winner." Any thing less is a societal zero-sum game -- not to mention unlikely to sustain popular support. We are a very pragmatic people who will accept pragmatic solutions.
An example of "imbalance" that I think is hurting us: The media -- the press and the film industry -- has taken the principle of "serving the customer" too far. It has contributed greatly to our present-day "entertain-me" society. Their object is no longer the story, but the audience. They strive to scintillate rather than to inform, educate, lift and inspire people to worthy ends. And for the print and broadcast media who say their sole purpose is to inform, not judge. Nonsense. Every institution in this society owes its ultimate debt to the society itself. Any institution which is not a responsible citizen of that "community" loses its right to exist. Again, Peter Drucker's excellent chapter on responsibility-based organizations in Post-Capitalist Society validates this argument much more effectively than I ever could. Essentially, his premise is that only when and so long as an entity contributed to the good of society does it have the "right" to exist -- certainly not for its own self alone, regardless of its past contributions.
5. The key reason our society, indeed the world, is so jittery is that the transformational shift now in progress from industrial- to knowledge-based economic life finds so many ill-prepared to both understand or compete in the new world -- and largely unwilling to prepare for it .
We must know what time it is. As much as mankind would like to retreat to simpler, more fathomable, more manageable times, we cannot go back. The march of technology, the loss of our "innocence," and the impetus for the growth of the human species simply will not allow that. Drucker says we are in the midst of a massive social transformation -- from the industrial age to the new knowledge society.
We are on a shakedown run headed into the Knowledge Age. Contrary to what we may believe, we're not there yet. Drucker says it may be 2010-2015 before the transition period is over. In the meantime, it will be a time of tension, turmoil, and political upheaval. But protest as one may like, the only valid course of action is to acknowledge the transformation and prepare self and others for a place in the new economic order.
People must grow beyond the comfortable bounds of industrial, pre-information-based society. Individuals', states', and nations' greatest investments must be in educating for the future. "Life-long learning" has to become everyone's highest commitment and pursuit.
Learning is hard work. And everyone must work harder -- and longer -- than ever before. That may not be comforting to many, but it is no less a compelling truth.
I am reminded of the Chinese symbol for change. It consists of two characters. One represents danger; the other, opportunity. Drucker says the coming age will both be a time of unequaled opportunity for those who are prepared for it but a time of greater failure and hardship for those who fail to prepare for it. Unlike the last great economic transformation, from agriculture to the Industrial Age, the skills of the prior age are not effectively transportable to the new one.
The question is not whether we can afford to invest in educating our citizens, particularly the young and young workers, but whether we can afford not to! Drucker says the most transforming feature in modern American society was not the computer, not World War II or the Cold War, but the G.I.Bill.
Millions of men -- and women -- got an education who could have never hoped to get one otherwise. They created the technological revolution that is allowing us to leap forward from the Industrial Age.
David Richart's counterpart in the state of Florida, Jack Levine, describes it this way:
Things were much different following the Vietnam War. In effect, the U.S. said to these veterans, "Who the hell are you?" There was no "outpouring." Now we're meeting their kids in juvenile detention. How did we get so dumb in a generation?
There's a war in our cities and kids are caught in the crossfire. ... We've been deluded: Government is not the enemy. Government can be the partner...the religious sector too. I see a partnership with the private sector working with clean, responsive government in the areas of healthcare and social services as an investment. So, let us think like:
Levine says, "It's not whether you spend on kids; it's when!" Developing human potential is the key to opening the door to brighter futures. For individuals. For states. For nations.
6. For the first time in history, we are facing an era of infinite human resources -- they are: knowledge, creativity, and human potential. They can only be generated from within and among ourselves, and there's no room for waste. We need everyone. "A mind is too great a thing to waste."
We should begin to see people as resources, not just problems to be corrected, or obstacles to be overcome. As a society, we must begin to recognize that people, not natural resources, are the ultimate resource. And we should approach human development from a "strengths model," not by focusing on their "deficits." Like all of us who have achieved any modicum of success, people must build on their strengths while managing or minimizing their weaknesses -- and we all have both. We spend too much trying to correct faults rather than developing strengths!
Our public focus is always more on remediation than prevention, punishment rather than principle-building. And that approach will not work unless our intention is to further exhaust ourselves -- a kind on societal death wish. We have the resources within each other to achieve anything the human race could covet. One never knows which child will carry man's destiny beyond the yet unknown horizons.
Once again, anyone who has read, seen or heard of the work of Dr. Joel Arthur Barker and his concept of paradigms knows that he says that only when we get outside the conventional way of looking at and thinking about things can leaps of progress be made. That is never harder to do than when we make critical and pre-conceived value judgements about each other.
It may come as a shocking revelation, but I believe in a reasonably constrained egalitarianism. I think William A. Henry III, a self-avowed "liberal" and ACLU member, made a very good case for that in his book In Defense of Elitism. Henry says our over-emphasis of egalitarianism has resulted in "anti-intellectualism ... running amok," resulting in the "deliberate dumbing-down" of our society. I think the whole "entitlement" mentality is related to the over-emphasis of egalitarian ideals. Henry lists seven characteristics of what he calls "superior cultures." They include these:
I have strived to avoid using the word fair in this paper. "Who ever said life was fair?" John F. Kennedy once retorted. If there is one thing life is not, it is fair. Life must endure its own random application of fortune -- for good or ill -- notwithstanding the best effort, talent, or worthiness of any given individual.
Failing to consider this, there is a very negative "elitist" bent in America. It is that even if we're not rich, elite or influential, we aspire to be, so we tend to identify more with those we wish to emulate than those who are "beneath" us. Therein, I think, lies the biggest reason so many of the social problems pertaining to our perceived "underclass" seem so emotionally charged and, thus, intractable. It's perhaps akin to the attitude that putting someone else down makes you feel superior.
I am reminded of the story told by Dr. Vaughn Grisham. (Yes, he's John Grisham's -- The Firm, The Pelican Brief, et al. -- first cousin.) Vaughn Grisham is the Director of the McLean Institute for Community Development, University of Mississippi. Probably the only sector of America poorer than Kentucky's mountain counties is the delta region of Mississippi, which, coincidentally like Eastern Kentucky, is also the home of many wealthy power brokers.
In the Delta, while the rich and powerful who lived there could exert mighty influence in Jackson and Washington, and could get almost anything done there, they could not effect any appreciable change in the prevailing adverse conditions in the lives of most people in the Delta -- most of whom there were black. These powerful men and the various political officials were the leaders from the Delta but they were not the leaders in the Delta. If fact, they had little real power to produce desired outcomes there. Grisham proposed an entirely different approach. Essentially, his approach recognized that the real influential "leaders" among delta peoples were largely black, poor, indigenous, and community-level. Only when they were engaged in the change process did material change occur. Grisham uses a medical diagnostic model to illustrate why.
There are Type I, II and III problems, he says. The latter are those which can only be treated in conjunction with the doctor and the patient's concerted effort. For in those, both the problem(s) and the solution(s) were unclear to the practitioner alone. In fact, there likely are multiple definitions and causes for the problem. These, Grisham says, can only be solved by the patients/constituents themselves, not by the outside "experts."
Success, he says, comes from thinking as "community builders" rather than "leaders." "In the final analysis," Grisham says, "it's up to constituents. "Leaders" can't save us in the most complex situations." (Pardon me for repeating this, but each of you has a copy of Grisham's speech in the Communities of the Future report I gave you following our December Commission meeting.)
Another message I derive from Grisham's revelation is that we invest too much in trying to salvage places and too little on saving their people! We generally do that with costly public-funded physical infrastructure improvements such as sewage systems when a community is clearly on "life support," and its real social, economic and natural vitality are already depleted. But we feel some commitment to place, so we vainly try to revive what once was, but due to evolutionary change can really never be again. I have been involved with the Friendship Force of Western Kentucky for a number of years. The Friendship Force has two very good mottos: 1) "Be flexible!" and 2) "Faces, not places." Both are good advice for us as we proceed through these times of transformational shifts in economies, populations, and popular movements. This, I think, is a real issue for Kentucky as we see communities, mostly rural, from one end of the state to the other being depopulated. (This is crucial as we evaluate how and where to invest our limited, if not scarce, resources.)
I came from the country. I also long for the nostalgia of times and places gone by, but the world is so different today. It's a world community. And by and large it's irrevocably urban. Where we're going is a great deal more important than where we're from. We cannot afford to "preserve" all these old treasures of the heart, and we should not waste ourselves in vainly trying. People are the resource of the 90s and beyond! Make people more productive and they will develop those places that matter to them.
The wonderful thing about people is that all have problems, but all also have assets to build on. Productive change comes only when people move forward on what is important to them! I learned early in my life that it was impossible to make another person do anything. Any semblance of that is only a ruse. They may passively do what another demands, but the attitude of resistance is still there. Like the little boy acting out in church whose mother forcefully, with due threat applied, makes the lad sit down. But after a few minutes he leans to his mother and whispers, "I'm still standing up inside!"
Punitive approaches will seldom work toward productive goals or positive outcomes. That is ever more true today as people become generally better educated or perceived power becomes increasingly de-mystified. At the core, the outcomes we desire require the application of proven techniques of human motivation. All such techniques involve helping people achieve that to which they aspire. Human beings are not motivated in these times by what someone else decides is right and best for them!
7. A service system must be in place, and it needs to be a responsive, community-based, community-tailored, community-governed system.
All the federal focus now seems to be on the states and state control of the various domestic programs. The GOP plans I am hearing about seem to be headed toward combining some 300 categorical federal programs into just a handful of block grants to the states. In total, these, if passed into law and appropriations, will likely result in less money being allocated than the cumulative sums for the previous programs. But it also means a substantial increase in funding under the purview and control of the General Assembly and Kentucky state government. So what then?
I have this view. If Washington does not have the answers to complex human problems, then neither does Frankfort! Let me go back to Rev. Jeb Stuart Magruder's sage speech on ethics. As he approached his closing, he said:
But I can worry about and do something about problems in Lexington -- not in Louisville, Cincinnati, New York -- not about homelessness in the nation. But in Lexington we build several houses per year through Habitat for Humanity.
Herbert Spencer said in the 1800s, "Not education but character is human kind's greatest need and human kind's greatest safeguard."
Lao-Tsu gave the formula for this when he said in the Sixth Century:
So I would implore that there not be a state-level approach, "solution," or focus alone, but that local community approaches, designs, and systems also be encouraged and used. John Naisbitt taught us one essential point with regard to overwhelming complexity and high technology: there must be "high touch" human solutions and applications to balance out the shock factors. The more localized the solutions, the more manageable and supported the effort: local people dealing with local needs, not some distant official or agency. Each one of us -- legislator or regular citizen -- are members of a local community, and it is there we can each have the greatest lasting impact as we participate in those localized efforts and service systems.
In Kentucky, all political subdivisions are regulated constructions of the state -- as are corporations of any type. But even the state has its limits in producing desired outcomes and can seldom be as effective as those enterprises which engage the committed support of local people -- the people, not merely local officials. Each locale, area, or region needs its own bottoms-up approach if it is to be truly successful.
In addition, these need to be as open and inclusive of diverse interests as possible. They must also be highly collaborative -- engaging all players that wish to participate and can reasonably contribute to the desired outcomes. This helps mitigate the "turf" issues that so often plague public enterprises. My own organization, my community of Owensboro -- with its active broadbased, citizen-led Human Development Council, and varied interests in our surrounding service area have demonstrated over many years what can be gained for those served as well as the providers when the focus is on outcomes, effectiveness, impact, cost- and resource-sharing, and open participation. These are things that cannot be worked out in Frankfort, only in local areas as people sit eye to eye, work elbow to elbow, and hold their focus on rational and mutually agreed goals.
Now I think there are various service systems already in place state-wide that could meet these requirements. Please forgive my bias if I suggest that I have given my adult life to developing and perfecting one such system in my corner of the state. It is such a responsive, community-based, community-tailored, community-governed system.
There is much to be done to build a brighter future for Kentucky and its people. There is vital work and need for all to do. As Ron Crouch says regarding children, "There's no more room for 'throw-aways'." I would also say for our providers at the community and sub-state level, so I would strenuously argue against a monolithic, uniform state-wide approach to addressing the service needs of Kentuckians. Availing itself of contracting entities also gives the state and the General Assembly increased flexibility in responding to economic, funding/staffing, and programmatic needs that will surely change over time.
As you now know, I direct a 16-county community action agency (CAA) that serves the Green River and Pennyrile areas of Kentucky -- providing Head Start and child care services only in the nine Pennyrile counties and a large array of services in the seven Green River counties. All together, we operate $15 million in programs from preschool to senior services, transportation services to housing, various general maintenance programs to family development/preservation. It's a very broadbased program serving more than 25,000 families annually. We are very collaborative and outcome-focused. We have a strong culture of excellence, sustained innovation, and operational effectiveness.
We are one of twenty-three such agencies throughout Kentucky. Each one is unique in overall programming, scope, and character. For each one is a refection of its local community or area and its life-experience. In 1981 while serving as a national fellow in Washington, D.C., I had the privilege of authoring a 65-page response to the Heritage Foundation report, Mandate for Leadership. Our national association published and distributed 5,000 copies of the monograph throughout the nation's capitol and around the country. In the end, it was credited with a significant role in mobilizing the support which culminated in Congressional action to save these nearly 1,000 agencies nationwide from extinction. Facing each Mandate assertion head on and de-bunking the myth-information, the monograph went on to explain the local character -- their essential strength -- of these agencies. Yes, some have been controversial. Ours has been very conservative. But that's the point: They reflect their local communities and conform to the demands of local citizens/communities/leaders' design -- just what's needed according to virtually every accepted community-building model today. Participation in them is open and available to anyone -- including you if you are so inclined.
If you don't like what you see, you can then help change that. All of us are going to have to change anyway. We've always been is a state of becoming. Peter Drucker's latest offering is an article in the February issue of Atlantic Monthly entitled "Really Reinventing Government." He says, "Every agency should be confronted with these questions: 'What is your mission?' 'Is it still worth doing?' 'If we were not already doing this, would we now go into it?' " He says too much of the public debate revolves around the process of government when it should center on government's proper functions and the results for which it should be held accountable. The public sector and non-profit sector, Drucker says, should be held accountable for 1) continuous improvement and 2) benchmarking of their services. These would require every part of the public-funded services to set progressively greater annual performance, quality, and cost objectives.
Drucker suggests, "An agency which did not improve its performance by a preset minimum would have its budget cut. And a manager whose unit consistently fell below the benchmark set by the best performers would be penalized in terms of compensation or -- more effective -- in terms of eligibility for promotion. Non performers would ultimately be demoted or fired."
If government were to focus on leading, managing and monitoring public services rather than actually delivering them sufficient funding pressure could be brought to bear on its contractors to make that happen or get another entity which will truly serve the public good.
Now that is change. And change for the better. I for one am very comfortable with that. I think my colleagues would embrace that approach as well, and Kentuckians would be well-served by that.
My 1981 response to the Heritage Foundation report, Mandate for Leadership, concluded as follows:
NOTE: One topic not covered in this paper is the currently popular item of "welfare reform" welfare for the poor as opposed for the middle/leisure class which I've concentrated on in this paper. I will write a paper on that topic separately. Here, briefly, is just a preview:
Consistent with the themes already presented, I believe that the best -- and to use Olasky's theme, the most "compassionate" thing one can do for another is help them do for themselves. But I definitely do believe society and government have obligations to help equip those who fail to get the patronage they need from other sources. To the extent that any form of "welfare," provided long-term, creates dependency it should be "reformed" to provide "empowerment"that is, the state of being invested with the means ("power," if you please) to successfully make one's way in the world. We all need and deserve that much from "the world." No one "owes us a living," but everyone deserves the opportunity that both President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich proclaim. Having received the "tools," the outcomes are up to the individual and the whims of fortune. No one totally controls their destiny, but they can certainly influence it, learn how to cope with reversal, and struggle through life as all of us must.
Although I am a University of Kentucky fan I am also an admirer of Indiana University's coach, Bobby Knight. Once when confronted by another with the view that one team won over another because they had "more will to win" Knight said that was ludicrous. Everyone, every team has commensurate will to win. The difference comes in one's will to prepare to win, he said. I agree. Unfortunately, not everyone will have that will to prepare themselves to win. Therein lies much of the frustration among our people as we move through this interlude between the Industrial Age and the Knowledge Age. There's going to be an awful lot of losers and winners in the years ahead, and they will be determined by whether they have prepared themselves to compete.
In closing...
I know that I have been rather more philosophical than substantive in this paper. But I like to think that I do have a vision of a better Kentucky and America, one built upon a dynamic and growing people. Ideas are important to the ultimate destination of mankind. I wrote on the cover of our agency's 1993-94 Annual Report: "Life is a field of dreams where if you can dream it, you can do it. One's vision drives everything.... Audubon is helping human aspirations take wings. Helping people achieve their visions of success and secure for themselves brighter futures." I believe that, and I believe in that! I think such idealism must guide us into the future.
I believe it was Victor Hugo who said, "There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come." No doubt Speaker Gingrich, whatever one thinks of his views, felt that when he conceived the Republican battle plan for 1994, and it has carried him to the opportunity he sought. It has always been that way in the course of human events. It will always be true! So I hope we can conceive such ideas in our work on this Commission. The dire conditions which now portend ill for our beloved state, its people, and their future demand it. So let us be open, let us be creative, let us be bold.
Postscript--
I wish to thank those of you who have provided personal and reference material in addition to that which we receive from Commission speakers and staff. Particularly, I wish to thank Senator Richard L. "Dick" Roeding for providing the Heritage Foundation materials and Dan Petronio for the "Contract for America" analysis. These cover a spectrum of opinion and may challenge our personal views, but that's good -- just what we all need if we are to learn something that will enhance our end-product, which will, hopefully, offer constructive recommendations and alternatives to the General Assembly.
I still don't know how or why I was selected for this Commission, but I'm mighty glad I was. It has been and promises to continue to be a great learning experience. I only hope that I can contributor something meaningful to the success of our mission. Senator Gerald Neal and Representative Freed Curd have ably conducted our sesions and their selection of our presenters -- especially Dr. Ginny Wilson -- who have been nothing short of exceptional. My compliments also to Gilmore Dutton and the LRC staff. They do an outstanding job!