I have been sitting on this post for a little over a month or so because I wanted to be clear in what I said, and I wanted to check some of my source materials. I’ve also been a little afraid of offending some people who I happen to really like, even though we disagree. At the same time, I need to be honest in what I feel and believe, and not sit by idly while those beliefs are ignored.

I am an active member of the LDS church. I try to attend faithfully, contribute and overall live a Christ-like life. The LDS Church demographically is very conservative, especially within Utah. That means, when discussions turn the least bit political, I am likely on the wrong side of the issue for most people in the congregation. This problem arose a few weeks ago in the adult Sunday School lesson. I won’t bore you with all the details, but the main flow became one of outrage at the ‘persecution’ of religious people in this country, as well as the devastating social effects of ‘removing god from our schools’.

After the 3rd or 4th comment, I could no longer sit quietly. I raised my hand and when called on said:

I think we need to be careful about the level or exaggeration and hyperbole we use when we talk about being persecuted for our religion. We are all sitting in a church that operates without government interference. We came today without fear that our presence was being recorded and tracked by the government. We can worship how we want and when we want.

We can talk to our neighbors and our co-workers about our beliefs without fear of imprisonment. We can wear religious symbols in public and at work without fear of reprisal.

There are limits on what the government can do with regard to religion, but as private citizens, I just don’t see the persecution that keeps being talked about here.

There was a hew and cry about the governments “war on religion”, and again comments about not being able to pray in school, to which I tried to respond but wasn’t really effective. The instructor (who I respect and is a good instructor I should add) tried successfully to move along from that topic to the next bullet point in his lesson.

That would have been the end of it, had the instructor and I not found ourselves leaving the building through the same door at the same time. He mentioned to me that he appreciated my comments, and the fact that I felt comfortable expressing them. I thanked him, and said I thought he did a good job, and that these discussions are hard for me because I think the separation of Church and State is an important and often misunderstood topic. That lead to him bringing up some specific examples of religion in schools (prayer, religious choral music, etc) and said he would have not problem with a mainstream protestant prayer, or “even a Muslim prayer”. I tried to explain my issue with the entanglement of government and religion, and especially the promotion of a particular religion by schools and then I used this example:

Most people who are in favor of organized prayer in schools don’t have much of a problem with Christian prayer, and some are even okay with Jewish and Islamic prayer.

But what about that first parent-teacher conference when you find out that the teacher leading little Johnny in pray every morning is a Wiccan?

To which he responded:

Well, there are religions and then there are “religions”.

Unfortunately that is where the conversation ended. I had no chance to follow-up with:

• Yeah, but who decides which is which? How do we determine which is appropriate?
• What about the atheist, who, regardless of what you believe, shouldn’t be forced by the government to pray at all?
• What about all the places in this country where someone is saying “But what about the teacher leading little Johnny in pray every morning that is a Mormon?” and the response is “ Well, there are religions and then there are ‘religions’.”

I could certainly go on, but in reality, the constitutional law here is pretty well settled. The rule applied by the Supreme Court is the “Lemon Test”. When there is legislation or government action concerning religion:

1. The government’s action must have a secular legislative purpose;
2. The government’s action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;
3. The government’s action must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.

If the government’s action is contrary to any one of these three statements, the action is said to have failed the “Lemon Test” and is found to be unconstitutional.

• Students have the right to be excused from some activities if they conflict with their religious beliefs.
• Individual students have the right to pray whenever they want to, as long as they don’t disrupt classroom instruction or other educational activities, or try to force others to pray along with them.
• Students can form a “Bible Club” or other religious club, as long as (1) the club meets during non-school hours; (2) school officials aren’t involved in organizing or running the club, and (3) the school makes its facilities available to all student groups on an equal basis. 

Please click through the link above to read through more things that are allowed and disallowed. But ultimately remember this… We live in a pluralistic country with a secular government. The separation of Church and State is important for this society to continue to function, because without it, we are likely to fall prey to the tyranny of the majority. The Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the constitution guarantees that individuals can worship (or not) in public and private with strictly limited government intrusion, and at the same time, any government establishment of religion is prohibited.

I don’t want anyone else deciding for me what is a religion, and what is a “religion”.

In Did you really build that I raised the following question:

How do we, as a society, balance the corporate interest of maximized profits (and by corollary minimizing expenses), against the social interest of workers earning a ‘living wage’ and being able to provide for the ‘general welfare’ of their family?

I’m not sure I have a great answer, but I did want to lay out some of the thinking that lead to that particular question.

Until recently I have been a PC/Windows guy. But I married a Mac person, so in our house we have an iMac, a couple of MacBooks and you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an iPod. (Not that I would actually swing a cat, dead or alive…). I have come to appreciate Apple’s attention to quality and design. At least in the iPod/iPad space they build an incredibly useful product.

So I was particularly interested when I saw a note in passing about Apple’s earning for the fiscal quarter ending April, 2012. Apple’s net profit (that is, the amount of money they have left over after paying all expenses including taxes and wages) was approximately $11.6 Billion on revenue of $39.2 Billion(1). So, out of $39.2 Billion coming in, Apple spends 27.6 Billion on wages and benefits, supplies, materials, taxes and all other expenses, leaving $11.6 Billion free and clear. Those numbers by themselves are huge, but don’t really tell us much. Let’s combine combine them with some employment figures.

Apple has approx 47,000 employees(2) - a large portion of them are retail and clerical workers making $12-$15/hour, or a little over $6,000 a quarter. These are the people who handle shipping and fulfillment, and who work the counters in the Apple Stores. Clearly there are higher paid employees, and the average wage across the company is estimated to be just under $12,000 a quarter(3).

Let’s do some math. $39.2 Billion (That’s $39,200,000,000 for those of you who like to see the zeros) divided by 47,000 will give us the amount of revenue per employee. That figure is just over $834,000 / employee. $11.6 Billion divided by 47,000 will gives us a net profit of $247,000 / employee.

Here is another way to look at it: Less than 1.5% of the money paid to Apple is returned to the employees who make and sell the items in the form of wages. Even if you argue that Apple has the most generous benefit plan in the country, you are safe assuming that less than 3% of Apple’s revenue is returned to employees as compensation.

Why should anyone care?

I don’t know that you should really - this is just one case of a very profitable and very successful company. Maybe Apple already pays ‘above market wages’ to their employees. But the flip side is that Apple made $247,000 in profit on the effort of individuals it paid on average $12,000. What if they decided to give every employee an across the board $5/hour raise. Their profit would fall to around $245,000 a quarter, while each individual’s income would go up over $800 a month.

Now, I am not a communist. I think companies should be able to turn a profit, and unless the workers want to form a co-op, somebody has to ‘own the means of production’. And the structure of a modern corporation obscures the question of who the ‘owners are’. Apple has nearly a billion shares of stock outstanding, so there are literally millions of ‘owners’ of Apple, many of whom are also employees.

I am also not a fan of unfettered social redistribution through fees, fines, taxes or regulation. But at the same time proponents of an unregulated laissez-faire economy need to be able to make a case that the distribution of over 95% of the revenue to ‘owners’ and less than 5% to the ‘producers’ is both fair, and socially optimal.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it…

Footnotes

(1) http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/04/24Apple-Reports-Second-Quarter-Results.html

(2) http://www.apple.com/about/job-creation/

(3) http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-apple

It may seem like I am a little late coming to this party, but in reality I have spent the last week engaged in multiple conversations about the president’s “you didn’t build that” quote, and candidate Romney’s spin.

Unfortunately we live in a soundbite society. You might be lucky and hold someone’s attention for a couple paragraphs of a facebook update. 140 characters is all you get usually and it’s not enough to deal with even the simplest of situations in our modern world.

And now according to the republicans, we have the president saying “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”, with the clear implication according to the spin, that as a business owner, you didn’t build your business. But that is not at all what the president actually said. His full quote, at least the three most relevant paragraphs of the speech are:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me, because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t – look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something, there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

Clearly any rational and honest reader of that quote has to admit that what the president implied is “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build [the roads, bridges, Internet, teacher that inspired you and American system that allowed you to thrive]. Any other representation of what is being said here is an outright lie, and instead of continuing to hedge and spin, candidate Romney should stand up to the spin and denounce it.

It will never happen. And that’s unfortunate, because beneath that quote is a set of deeper philosophical questions that deserve to be explored.

• What is the role and expectation of government toward businesses, especially when the interests of the business do not always align with the interests of individual citizens or the larger society?
• What is a fair and equitable way to divide the tax burden for common or public goods (roads, infrastructure, military and police protection)?
• Is it fair and equitable to tax different kinds of income at different rates, or even not tax some income at all?
• Are there perverse and unintended consequences when we privatize what was formerly a public good or service (for instance, if prisons are private, aren’t the shareholders happier if more people are declared criminal and incarcerated, violent or not)?
• How do we, as a society, balance the corporate interest of maximized profits (and by corollary minimizing expenses), against the social interest of workers earning a ‘living wage’ and being able to provide for the ‘general welfare’ of their family?
• As the last remaining super-power, are we as a society bearing too much of the world’s burden as the neighborhood cop? Are we involved in conflicts we should be avoiding, and avoiding others we should be fighting? Upon what basis do we draw that line?

The debate on these questions, and many, many more, can and should rage in public square. It has for centuries. For example, the debate over whether to have income, estate and property taxes versus consumption or sales taxes was argued in the Federalist Papers:

Personal estate (as has been before remarked), from the difficulty of tracing it, cannot be subjected to large contributions by any other means than by taxes on consumption. Hamilton Number 12

It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end proposed – that is, an extension of the revenue. When applied to this object, the saying is as just as it is witty that, “in political arithmetic, two and two do not always make four.” If duties are too high, they lessen the consumption; the collection is eluded; and the product to the treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. Hamilton Number 21

So, let’s have a conversation. Sit down and have a real, honest talk about the problems that face us, and the solutions that (no matter how far-fetched and politically infeasible) are available to us.

Try to make a tweet out of that…

Picking a dinner menu is not the easiest thing to do in our house. One occupant is a pretty picky eater, the Maestra rarely eats meat, and on any given day one or more occupants may be trying to “watch what they eat”. So, when I came across a nachos/taco salad recipe that looked good, but was based on ground beef, I decided to experiment. It turned out great so I wanted to share:

BRS Tex-Mex Beans and Rice
1 15oz Can Chili Beans, Pinto Beans, or Black Beans - Drained, rinsed and coarsely mashed.
1 15oz Can Black Beans - Drained
1 12oz Can Condensed Tomato Soup
1 1/2 C Instant Rice, uncooked
1 pkg Taco Seasoning
1 1/2 C Water

In a large sauce pan combine all the ingredients and stir well. Bring to a boil on high heat. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer 5-10 minutes (stir once or twice) until rice is cooked and tender.

Makes about five 1 cup servings.

For Taco Salad, serve 1 cup over a bed of chips and top with shredded cheese, shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes and your favorite salsa.

For Burritos, server 1/2 cup in a warmed tortilla wrapped with shredded cheese and/or your favorite toppings.

Note - I prefer mashed chili beans as the base, but almost any canned bean would work.

And if you were wondering what BRS means - it stands for Baumgart - Ray - Steiner; the three valid surnames in our house.

When we left off I was explaining how I wasn’t worried about things moving fast because basketball season, and my responsibilities as a coach were going to start in a few weeks. Then Jenna surprised me by showing up for my sophomore’s basketball games. We had formal dates, like dinner after the symphony (she played, I watched); and informal dates like me reconfiguring her wireless network while she sat suffering from a cold in her comfy reading chair (I couldn’t stand her dropping connections while I was trying to chat with her from my apartment). This led to standing dates like “dinner and Monday Night Football”. The big debate quickly became whether or not we were an exclusive couple or not.I think Jenna was worried that I was too new to the dating scene, and that she was a rebound.I kept telling her that I didn’t care if she was seeing others or not (maybe a little white-lie) but that I wanted to be the easiest-to-deal-with guy in her life (totally the truth). I think the debate lasted about 3 weeks before we realized we didn’t want to see anyone else and wanted to see where this led.

Turns out it led to Moab! We decided to get away during the Christmas break and spend some uninterrupted time together. A road trip to Moab and visits to Arches and Canyonlands was perfect. We rented a romantic apartment overlooking the town, ate bagels for breakfast and packed sandwiches for lunch. (Attractive and frugal? How lucky could I get?!) We hiked to iconic landmarks like Delicate Arch, had nice dinners, and watched movies in the evenings. It was during this trip that I really began to have the feeling that I had known Jenna for years, not just the few weeks and months that we had actually been together. Everything was easy; everything was comfortable. Jenna has a great mix of practicality and pragmatism, balanced with a clear sense of adventure, and tempered by a deep spirituality.

It took a few more weeks for me to get around to proposing, but to tell the truth, I suspected before Moab, and knew for sure during that trip, that I wanted to spend forever with my wonderful sweetheart. A New Year’s proposal would have been cliché, and I didn’t have a ring. But by the end of January I was packing the ring in my glove box, and waiting for the right day. That day was February 5th. I was more excited than nervous, and I was ecstatic that Jenna, “the one I chose”, accepted the invitation to build a life with me.

We began our official life together on April 1st, 2011. At this point, we have been married almost a year though it feels like forever, and just keeps getting better and better.