I grew up in a community where all the kids freely used the “F” word. Then I went to work on Wall Street, where the “F” word was quite common. If you want a taste of the Wall Street culture multivariate use of the “F” word at that time, read Michael Lewis’ brilliant book, Liar’s Poker.
When I went to Washington, I worked with a group of people who delighted in lying to each other. That was a big change from Wall Street where accurate communication within the workplace was essential to profitability. In Washington, lying could make officials money and was quite commonplace, even admired as a skill. On the contrary, using the “F” word was considered sinful. So I had the opportunity to shed my lifelong habit of using the “F” word.
If you want a sense of how extraordinarily popular lying and various other sins were, you can listen to the tapes I recorded for my attorneys in 1998 about working in the first Bush Administration, which have come to be known as “The Kemp Tapes.
After I recorded them, some of the people working for me asked if they could listen to them. To my shock and amazement, they found them fascinating. I thought they were boring. In addition, the sound quality was not that great, the first one having been recorded as I was driving in a Corvette in the rain with a cold. After all, I never thought they would have listeners other than a few litigation associates at a Washington law firm. Over time, hundreds of copies circulated and developed quite a camp following. Finally, we put them up on the Internet.
Listen to the tapes (MP3 files): (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
There is a billboard on the way into town from my home in Tennessee that posts clever, expensive messages from the Foundation for a Better Life telling my neighbors and me why we should have a positive attitude. Most times I drive by, my subconscious rises up to speak the “F – You” word.
Now this is a bit upsetting to me. I have stopped using the “F” word, I have stopped smoking, I have stopped a lot of bad habits. I would like to stop more, not revert to ones that I thought I had successfully eliminated.
In the old days, I would have written the Foundation and asked for three year copies of their tax filings. I would have tried to determine who was funding them, who was being paid by them and where their endowment is invested. Not-for-profits are required to make their tax filings public. In theory, their tax exemption on their endowment and other earnings and the exemption they offer on donations is a public benefit and come with the responsibility of transparency. Really excellent not-for-profits will often post their tax returns on their website, along with their annual report and full disclosure of who governs and manages them. The Foundation for a Better Life website appears silent on who and how their money works. It is wikipedia and various articles that indicate that they are funded by billionaire Philip Anschutz.
See Foundation for a Better Life (Wikipedia) and
Big Money Behind “Inspirational” Billboard Campaign, by Jeremy David Stolen – The Portland Alliance.
If you are a billionaire and you want to help my county, here is my suggestion for you. In every county, there is a group of leaders. I call them community wizards. Here is what I wrote about them years ago:
“Community Wizards organize their lives around people and relationships. No matter how rich their technical expertise, they make it their business to know who makes things work and to understand how they do it. They are interested in people and take the time to listen. Their mastery at understanding how things look from the other person’s point of view and how to translate that into getting things done reflects years of paying attention.
Community Wizards love their family. Their kids and grandkids always come first. They know their neighbors. They know who is connected to the electricity, water, gas, cable, pest control and other services that come into their home. They are the first to welcome a newcomer. They help people meet other people. They are perpetually useful.
Experts are generally people who understand the “power of one” when they are dealing with exceptional people or lots of money. A Community Wizard’s magic comes from helping the exceptional emerge from what appears to be mundane and ordinary. They perceive the divine in people the experts see as ordinary. Their appreciation for that divine spark in every person is part of a Wizard’s magic.
Community Wizards are masters of project and risk management. They enjoy working “on the line.” They are trusted not just for their personal integrity and discretion, but because they have mastered how to make the mundane and essential transactional aspects of life flow and integrate with a precision and grace that respects other people’s time. Community Wizards excel at finding ways of getting things done with little resources because they know how to get the right people in alignment around a project. They appreciate that “a penny saved is a penny earned.”
Community Wizards include the local school principal who taught for many years and the independent trucker who runs the volunteer fire brigade. Community Wizards started the community bank or were the county executive. They sit on the town council and support the local business, farm, sports or civic group. They include the pastor and co-pastor that created scores of jobs building their storefront church to thousands of members. Community Wizards started the local Internet service provider in their parent’s gas station garage, and got the local funeral home on line as the first website marketing caskets through the web.
Community Wizards include the accountant or attorney that handles their family and friends most sensitive problems. They have a small cotton farm, a dental practice, a cleaning company, a tree service, a nursery, a natural healing center or a hardware store. They are a leader in the local temple who makes sure that money quickly and quietly goes to a family in need. Their beauty parlor is an incubator for community and home businesses.
Community Wizard’s respect for other people is matched by their reverence for all living things. Their pets and plants are happy. They often have a garden or orchard. In California, they like to go for long walks in redwood forests. Community Wizards are the farmers who often win awards for their conservation efforts. They become architects and urban planners. They revitalize shipyards and navigate the local rivers. Community Wizards love weather maps and study the patterns of the tides and stars around them. They can explain the rock formations under their street in terms of what happened during the Paleolithic Age. They donate to the upkeep of trees and bushes around the local historical monument.
Like the Community Wizard of Sebastopol, they are worthy stewards of the resources in a place. Community Wizards have earned what the Chinese call t’ien ming —“the mandate of heaven. ” A place has a soul and an intelligence that is independent of any person or organization. Community Wizards know this and delight in cultivating the soul and intelligence of the place they call home.”
From: The Community Wizard of Sebastopol
In the interests of enhancing the return on investment of your philanthropic dollar, I would recommend the next time you want to invest money in creating positive anything in a place, you go ask the Community Wizards what you, your power and your money can do to help reverse the drain on them and their community. Start with the short run. Every day that the drain on the Community Wizards reverses, is a day that countless possibilities grow.
The fact that the US economy and culture continues at all speaks worlds about the power of their positive values.