Andrew Johnston

Have you seen this one?

Sowell on Obama

Interesting piece by Thomas Sowell on Senator Obama. He obviously won't get every black vote!

New Apostle Song

In case you haven't seen this one, it is kind of clever.

More (2) on Black Leadership

Liz and Danielle have added comments recently to my earlier post that I just read. Dani points out the incredible problems of the ghetto -- and the consequent difficulty of lifting people out. I believe! -- and I've never really had first hand experience, as she has. Yet I still believe nothing is accomplished by telling people that they can't help themselves -- that their condition is hopeless. I think that is Liz's point. No matter how desperate the circumstances, I believe that some can and will do better if properly encouraged. And I believe a caring leader will try to do just that. I certainly agree with Dani that government handouts only breed a sense of entitlement -- and often resentment. Private charity is more likely to be received with a sense of gratitude. (Although I remember buying a lunch for a panhandler on the streets of Washington, D.C., and not getting so much as a "Thank you." I think he'd have preferred cash.)
Of course, what I've said applies as much to everyone who's disadvantaged or poor -- not just members of the black community.

On "Going Green" & Liberty

Anna's post, as a statement of personal lifestyle choices, is unassailable. I, too, eschew spending on many of the excesses I see around me. I wish others would be "more responsible" and make "wiser choices." I agree that many in our society are too focused on "ME" and too materialistic. I wish everyone would do something nice and attractive with their property. That they would mow their lawns, keep their trash picked up, not seek to dominate the landscape or block their neighbor's view. I wish they would volunteer more, become more involved in the lives of their children, care more about their kids' schools, take better care of their health, etc., etc., etc.

The problem with a crusade, however, comes from the inherent conflicts between competing values. One that I place near the top of my hierarchy of values is individual liberty. In essence, liberty means the right to do things -- make choices -- that others who are more powerful, perhaps wiser or smarter, believe are bad or wrong. I wouldn't mind being the one who decides what's right and good for everyone. But I rebel at someone else's judgment being imposed on me. Hence, I believe in the right of others to build huge, perhaps tasteless, monuments to themselves, to drive Hummers, to fly in private jets, to eat regularly at McDonalds, to drink, to smoke, and otherwise to do many things that I would not do because I believe they are foolish, or destructive, or selfish, or simply a waste of money. (On second thought, I might go for the private jet if I had the bucks, but I still probably wouldn't buy a Hummer.)

I believe each individual has the right to make his own lifestyle choices. I think it is stupid to spend $4 on a cup of coffee or cocoa at Starbucks. I also wouldn't spend $78 on the organic turkey Mom saw at KTA the other day. (I'm sure it is probably better -- but not enough better for me to shell out the extra bucks.) I buy See's rather than Godiva; I buy the ice cream that is on sale. I don't patronize Cold Stone, or even Baskin Robbins, with any frequency. Mom shops at the farmers' market because we like the fresh produce -- and the prices. It feels good to support the local farmer. But if things cost significantly more, they better be worth more, or I won't pay the difference. If I can't tell the difference or taste the difference, I don't want to pay for it. (A friend bid our roof redo, but he was $1,000 above the lowest bid. I'd have liked to give him the work, but it didn't make sense to me to spend the extra grand for the same work and materials. If the difference had only been a couple of hundred, I would have probably given him the job, but $1,000 was above my pake threshhold.)

I don't believe the government should require me to fasten my seatbelt (even though one may have saved my life many years ago -- before mandates) or buy an expensive airbag or wear a helmet or even put my kids in approved car seats. (I should even be able to ride in the back of a pickup, if I choose.) I can't accept the argument that society has a right to require such because of the costs imposed on society as a result of accidents and injuries. If this is an appropriate rationale for limiting my freedom, then why not mandated exercise programs or diets? How about fines for anyone who is more than 20 lbs. over weight! Our personal choices in these areas cost society far, far more than do a few accidents. (On the other hand, more early deaths might save Social Security!)

I believe in recycling -- to the extent it makes economic sense. A significant percentage of aluminum in this country is recycled -- and has been for a long time, because it is so much more efficient to reuse it than to produce more -- even though it is the third most abundant element in the earth's crust. This happens without any government mandates. That is not necessarily true of many other products, for which recycling may be an inefficient waste of resources. It may be much more efficient to dump the stuff in a landfill, where it can later be mined if/when it becomes worthwhile to do so, or even burn it for a little extra energy and to save space. I believe the marketplace does a reasonably good job in determining the most efficient use of our resources.

I'm generally not wild about much of the fruit imported from Mexico and Central America -- it often doesn't taste that good. But don't feel sorry for the poor farm worker down there. He's very happy to have a job, and if every American refused to buy his produce, he'd be even poorer than he is now.

Corporate farming and Wal-Mart clearly have adversely impacted the little family farm and the mom and pop store on the corner, and I'm much opposed to government subsidies for the former. As individuals, we have the right to seek every opportunity to patronize the latter and avoid the former. However, if the former were closed down due to the efforts of those who idealize the latter, the middle and upper class might smuggly proclaim that they had made the world a better place while drastically reducing the world's food supply and raising substantially the cost of living. The substantial improvement in the quality of life that has been experienced by the poorest in recent decades would be reversed. The poor throughout the world live much better now because of the more abundant food and lower costs from U.S. agribusiness and Wal-Mart. (No kudos required -- they didn't do it for us, they did it to make money. But they succeeded because we, the consumers, liked their products/prices.)

In the beginning, we are told, we were presented with a choice: We could all be required to do all the right things or we could have the freedom (agency) to make our own choices, to make mistakes, and to suffer the consequences. We chose the latter then. I still do.

For Anna, on Global Warming

I wrote a long response on your blog the other night, Anna, then something strange happened, and I lost it -- too late to start over.

The biggest problem I have with the global warming debate is that the "facts" seem to depend on the who's writing. The stuff I read tells me that:

1. The majority of the relatively modest increase in temperatures last century took place during the first half -- when we were dumping relatively less CO2 in the atmosphere.

2. The temperatures since 2000 have actually declined about 1 degree Celsius -- most of the last century's increase -- and this last winter has been one of the coldest in years.

3. The Antarctic ice mass has thickened over the past few years.

4. There is clear evidence that the earth was warmer in times past -- Greenland was much "greener" when discovered by the Vikings; receding glaciers in the Alps are nothing new.

5. Global warming will bring benefits, as well as problems. The benefits are ignored in the hysterical concerns.

6. Mars is warming, too -- apparently without man and SUVs.

7. The scientific debate is alive and well.

There is clear evidence of cyclical climate change before humans became a factor, and I doubt we are playing a major role in the current changes. I remember the concern a few decades ago that we were on the verge of a new ice age.

I believe we all tend to sift the things we read/hear through a filter of our personal view of the way the world works. I don't believe the world ecology is in a fragile balance, and that we can easily throw it onto an irreversable, disastrous course. I believe, rather, that mother nature is incredibly resilient. Rivers and lakes that were thought to be beyond hope have been cleaned up and restored more quickly than most thought possible. The fires in Yellowstone were thought to be a horrible disaster. Within a season, it was evident that the area was experiencing an amazing recovery. Through my filter, anyone positing crisis has the burden of proof.

Some of the most radical activists believe that man is the major problem of the planet, that the world would be better off without us. I believe the world exists for our use and benefit; that animals don't have equal rights; that we need to be good stewards for our own sakes and that of our posterity -- but not for the benefit of any other species.

Financial resources are limited. Funds spent on reducing carbon footprints, for example, are funds that will not available for other purposes -- whether for research, adaptation to changing climate conditions, or unrelated matters like improving living conditions in third world countries or simply leaving the taxpaying public with more in its pocket. It is, therefore, important that vast sums not be committed until the reality of the problem is established beyond a doubt and the benefit has been determined to worth the cost. The true cost, Sowell would say, is the alternative use to which the funds might have been put. I remember Rachel Carson's Silent Spring that led to the ban on DDT. One result was millions of deaths from Malaria. Subsequent research, however, pretty well confirmed that the threats to the world's birds and people were way overstated.

While it is tempting to suppose that those crying, "The sky is falling," are disinterested and that the doubters are trying to preserve their corporate profits, fearmongering pays off quite well, in fundraising and research grants -- and the motivations of those so engaged are just as legitimately questioned as are those of the skeptics. (How much money would EDF raise if their letter stated: "We are concerned about the possible damage that might be caused to the world's ecosystems by our increasing use of fossil fuels. Please send us money so that we can do further research and seek to confirm whether or not this is a problem.") Dismissing, out-of-hand, science funded by corporate interests is no more valid than dismissing that funded by environmental groups. Both have self-interests that may bias the research or cause them to seek evidence supporting their points of view. In the end, business must convince the consumer to be successful. The environmental group only has to convince the politicians.

Healthy Skepticism & Global Warming

I believe a degree of skepticism is healthy any time we are confronted with claims of impending doom requiring major sacrifice. If you're convinced global warming is happening, is our fault and must be addressed immediately by major changes in our society, check out the following study:
S. Fred Singer, ed., Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate: Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.

Sowell's Economics

I finished Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics last week. I know the title sounds boring, but the book is very readible, loaded with examples rather than graphs and charts. In my humble opinion, far too few citizens -- and especially politicians -- understand basic economic principles.

First a definition: Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses. Every society does it somehow; the more efficiently done, the more prosperous the society.

Here are a few of the interesting points Sowell makes:

• Prices are not just ways of transferring money. Their primary role is to provide incentives to affect behavior in the use of resources and their resulting products. Shortages and surpluses are indications of prices that are too low or too high. When people project that there will be a shortage of engineers or teachers or food in the years ahead, they usually either ignore prices or implicitly assume that there will be a shortage at today's prices. Consequently, price controls and subsidies tend to create shortages and surpluses. Their cost to the society as a whole comes from the misallocation of resources.
• Economic policies need to be analyzed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the hopes that inspired them. Good intentions don't count in economics. Economics is about cause and effect.
• "Costs" to society are the foregone opportunities to use the same resources. Prices and costs often get confused.
• The more efficient the economy, the more prosperous; i.e., the further the scarce resources go.
• Profits are not the product of greed; rather they are the price paid for efficiency. Most profitable enterprises have become so by lowering the price of a product to the consumer.
• Business Week in October 2003 reported an estimate that Wal-Mart saved its U.S. customers $20 billion in 2002.
• Profits are a minor item in the economy as a whole -- about 10%. But the prospect of a profit is critical to the efficient production of the other 90%. The prospect of a loss is also critical to an efficient economy.
• Wages are merely prices paid for human resources.
• The "rich" and the "poor" are often the same people at different times in their life. Three-quarters of those Americans who were in the bottom 20% in income in 1975 were in the top 40% at some point over the next 16 years.
• Comparing "household" income is misleading. Census data show that there were 39 million people in the bottom 20% of households but 64 million in the top 20%. There were more heads of households working full-time in the top 5% of households than in the bottom 20% . Household income only rose 6% between 1969 and 1996, but per capita income rose 51%.
• 80% of American millionaires have earned their own fortunes, having inherited nothing.
• If we define "rich" as having a net worth of over $1 million, and "poor" as remaining in the bottom 20% over a period of years, then only 3.5% are genuinely rich and only 3% genuinely poor. These add up to less than 10% of the population. (So much for a society of "haves" and "have nots.")
• While the average American earned more than four times that of the average in the bottom 20%, the average American only consumed one-third more.
• Discrimination? As far back as 1971, American women who worked continuously from high school through their thirties earned slightly more than men of the same description. Gross statistics show large income differences among American racial and ethnic groups. However, black, white and Hispanic males of the same age (29) and IQ (100) all had essentially the same annual incomes.
• Minimum wage and job security laws result in higher unemployment. The unemployed are made idle by wage rates artificially set above the level of their productivity. Before minimum wage laws were instituted in the '30s, the black unemployment rate was slightlly lower than that of whites.
• Exploitation? Multination companies typically pay about double the local wage rate in Third World countries.
• How much of a given natural resource is known to exist (think oil) depends on how much it costs to know. Exploration is costly, so there is no point in seeking resources too far in advance of the anticipated need. At the end of the 20th century, the known oil reserves were 10 times larger than they were in the middle of the century.

I've gone on too long. I highly recommend the book.

Saturday Hike

Our youth are going to be doing a handcart trek in June and needed to do a couple of hikes before then so that they would be ready. So, the youth leaders asked me to take them over the hill to the back of Waipio. It was foggy and a little rainy (and, of course, wet and muddy!), but nevertheless beautiful.

Took John Roth -- a young attorney that I will probably hire -- and his friend Thomas with us.

From the ledge below the overlook

Across to the other side

The Ultimate Gift

A few weeks ago, the Hawaii Community foundation sponsored a showing for a few of us of the movie, "The Ultimate Gift." It stars James Garner and a couple of other familiar faces. It was on the big screen for only a few months before coming out on DVD -- won't win any Oscars. But it had a wonderful and powerful message about the things that are important in life. I heartily recommend it.

More on black leadership

Anna suggests that perception is reality. I agree to this extent: I believe there is wisdom in the statement: "Whether you believe that you can or that you can't, you are probably right."

A real leader seeks to inspire, to encourage, to challenge his followers to be better than they are, to raise their sights, to rise above what they see as possible. (Isn't that what we were told from the Conference Center all day yesterday and today?) One can become popular by telling people what they want to hear -- especially by telling them that their problems are not their own fault. Telling people that they are largely responsible for their own circumstances probably won't win many votes; but it is the truth. And it is the only way to help the downtrodden extract themselves from their current plight. Wallowing in self-pity and whining won't do it. A real leader will seek to change the perception. And a real leader can succeed in motivating some people to change.

There was a black mother on Good Morning America a couple of days ago whose 8-year old son had had the chance to ask Obama a question at a recent campaign event. The boy had told his mother that he wanted to be a gangster when he grew up, because gangsters made a lot of money. His mother showed him a picture of Obama and told him that the president makes a lot more money than a gangster. So now the boy says he wants to be president when he grows up. A little encouragement at a young age may work miracles.

Blacks in a ghetto (or Hawaiian activists, for that matter) aren't likely to listen to you or me tell them they can pull themselves out of their surroundings and accomplish whatever they really want. But they might listen to an Obama say that. There are a number of black writers that make that point, but they are drowned out by the activists who call them "Oreos" or "Uncle Toms."

My friend Larry Elder quoted black Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson: "The sociological truths are that America, while still flawed in its race relations ... is now the least racist white-majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protection of minorities than any other society, white or black; offers more opportunities to a greater number of black persons than any other society, including all those of Africa." Yet activists heap mountains of verbal abuse on Larry for speaking out against what he calls the "victicrats." One of his recent columns contains a sampling.

The Rev. Wrights, Louis Farrakhans and Jesse Jacksons in America are making too much money and have amassed too much power from Black victimization to want to acknowledge that white racism in the U.S. is largely a thing of the past. Back in 1911, Booker T. Washington said, "There is [a] class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. ... There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public." (Quoted in Elder's book, Showdown.) He thought it true then; it is ever so much more true today.

Take Rev. Wright. I see no useful purpose in standing at the pulpit and condemning outsiders -- it does nothing to encourage the congregants to be better, only emboldens them to blame others for their problems. What if, instead, he condemned illegitimacy, drug-dealing, prostitution, crime, men abandoning their responsibilities as fathers and husbands. What if he challenged his congregants to be different from the stereotypes they so strongly condemn -- challenged the youth to stay in school, to learn to work, to become self-sufficient -- and established programs to help them change. He might then make a real and positive difference. In the final analysis, we each only have the power to change one person -- ourselves; and that's the change, I believe, upon which a preacher (or a leader) ought to focus.

What I wish Obama had said

I want to say a few words to the black Americans in the audience. For too long, some have told us that we cannot succeed in America, that the problems with the black communities are the fault of "whitey" and a legacy of slavery. If so, it is an amazing thing that I have succeeded in becoming a serious contender for the highest office in the land. It is also amazing that two of the most successful media personalities are black -- Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby. In fact, it ought to make us question those who proclaim that we continue to be oppressed and disadvantaged. Of course, there remains some racial discrimination in the United States. In fact, we, too, are occasionally guilty of discrimination.

Nevertheless, we should thank our lucky stars that our forefathers were brought to this country. Their misfortune turned into our good fortune. Had they not been brought to America, we today would likely be living in Africa.

While we do not understand how slavery was accepted in the United States, we should understand that it was not unique to America. In fact, slavery still exists in some parts of the world. We should also recognize that it was in the United States that slavery was first abolished. The ancestors of most Americans came to America seeking refuge. Ours were brought here involuntarily. But in no other country in the world today do blacks have greater opportunity and freedom than in the United States.

Our communities suffer mightily from the worst social pathologies in America. Crime, unwed mothers, drugs, school dropouts, unemployment, welfare dependency. It has not always been so. In the '40s and '50s, despite the existence of real and often legal discrimination, the rate of intact two-parent families in the black community was as high as in the white community. The crime rate in Harlem was no higher than any where else in New York City. Black families attended church on Sunday at a higher rate than did whites. So it is hard to blame our current problems on "a legacy of slavery."

I believe that many of our current problems are the result, instead, of too many of us buying in to the victim mentality sold to us in the name of civil rights. The down-trodden from all over the world still look to America as the land of opportunity. Many seek to come here; some even at the risk of their very lives. We are here already. The opportunities are here for the taking. We can achieve success with the same formula that every other people have achieved success in America -- through hard work. Let's do it!

Charles Kong Died

Charles Kong passed away a few weeks ago -- 70-something, I believe. I'd known him for 10 years or so -- met with him occasionally in his car, initially, then at his home. His lower body was paralyzed when I met him; he was bed-bound the last few years.

I didn't know his story until I met with his girl friend after his death. When he was 14, Charles dove a bit short at Nuuanu Falls at a graduation party -- broke his neck. That was before mandates for assistance for the handicapped, so the school had nothing for him. He was self-taught thereafter -- math through calculus, etc. He had a great speaking voice and worked at a Honolulu TV station, he wrote for Honolulu magazines, tutored students and did other odd jobs -- saving and investing in real estate along the way. By the time I met him, he had acquired several properties in Honolulu and Hilo and a home in Ahualoa.

Rather than wallowing in self-pity, he was always thinking and planning. One of his dreams was to turn his Ahualoa property into a botanical garden, but he never figured out who would be able to pull if off without him. He lived frugally, supported his wife in a care home and his caregiving girl friend of over 25 years, and paid for the additional care required with his declining health. He also looked after an aging aunt in LA.

I don't think I've known anyone who overcame so much with shear will and effort. In this age when so many seem helpless to overcome much smaller obstacles, I was impressed and reassured to know that this still is a land of opportunity for those willing to work and strive -- even from a wheelchair.