The Life and Death of a Rez Cat

Life on the Navajo rez was hard.  I was always the type of person who was easily moved by others' suffering, both human and animal alike.  So much so that my 4th grade teacher's rather cruel nickname for me was "Fragile" as if it were some fundamental flaw.  If there was one word that I would associate with the Navajo rez, the first word I would think of is "death" and the second, "poverty".  That was the way of the rez for not a day would go by where one wouldn't see the carcasses of wild dogs strewn across the highways.  A sight that I was told that I would someday get hardened to.  I never really did but, instead, hid my distress at the sight by ranking it for gore on a scale of 1-10.  It wasn't so much that people died all the time out there.  Instead, the greatest death toll was in both the cats and dogs that were born out there.  There were diseases that afflicted the animals for which the Navajo had no name, whether it would be the disease that ate all the fur off their bodies or the one that rotted them from the inside until maggots came out of a still living dog.  Then there were the animals themselves, frequently left feral and hungry.  The wild dogs would eat the cats or even each other.  I remember rescuing a puppy out there only to discover that it got out and found itself a carcass of a puppy to chew on.  It horrified me to the bone though it was the way of the rez.

On the day that my cats, Lucky and Gin, were born on the rez, it was nothing more than another typical glimpse of that brutal world.  They were part of a litter that had been given birth to in the parking lot or perhaps had been immediately dumped there by the cat's owner.  Hard to say but there the litter of 6 were left in a small pile within the parking lot of an office building.  All day long, the employees working inside clucked and pitied the mewing and dying kittens; yet, none did a thing to try to save them.  Survival for such an occurrence was an impossibility to the Navajos working there.  The only possible outcome for these kittens was a slow, cold and hungry death.  I didn't hear about the kittens until 5 pm that day when my daughter's father called me to tell me of the horrible sight.  He said that he heard a fierce mewing and sure enough, one of the litter had survived the day in the desert sun.  I demanded that he turn around and bring me the kitten immediately.  In the short time waiting, I found a recipe for emergency kitten formula and went door to door, looking for a infant medicine dropper with which to feed the kitten.  I'll never forget my first sight of Lucky.  His placental sac had never been licked clean and had dried to his fur in a dark brown speckled with clay dust. His umbilical cord was still long and he was a tiny, fragile thing.  I sent my daughter's father straight back out to the grocery store to pick up the supplies to make the kitten formula and immediately started to gently clean Lucky and clip down his cord.  As luck would have it, her father stopped one more time to check on the litter and found one more surviving kitten flopping in distress in the setting sun.  This was Gin and she was perhaps the luckier cat of the two for by the time she came into my care, she was cold. 

Just a few weeks old and already adored.

I spent the rest of the evening, tending to Lucky and Gin's distress.  After they were cleaned and both their cords clipped, I warmed them against my chest before giving them their first meal ever through the baby dropper.  I didn't even think twice about doing any of this or give any thought as to what it truly meant to take on the role of mother to two kittens.  Baby kittens aren't unlike human babies at all.  They needed to be fed every two hours, kept warm constantly, and on top of it all, baby kittens can't defecate and urinate without their mother.  After the first 5 days, I was deeply exhausted and was contemplating possibly giving up. I couldn't do that though because I was poignantly aware what precisely I was to these two kittens--I was the only mother they ever had known and they depended on me for life.  How could betray such tiny things?  My only real choice was to become their mother in return, just as much as I would be my own two human children.  It filled me with fear to understand this for I knew that it would only end in sorrow for me.  The norm is that our children tend to survive us.  These two children of mine weren't going to ever possibly do that.  I would outlive them both.  That, too, I accepted and we, three, survived the 5 weeks of every two hour feedings.  Living out on the rez where the closest veterinarian was a horse doctor, I also took on the role of veterinarian, too.  Gin had a concave chest that needed special care.  Both struggled with bouts of constipation and bloating from the kitten formula.  We got through it all though and I was rewarded with two beautiful little children with furry faces. 

I washed them clean a few times a day with a warm, damp washcloth wrapped around the tip of my forefinger to emulate a mother cat's tongue.  As they grew older, I taught them to pounce and drag away tiny stuffed animal kills for these were survival skills that I knew that they may possibly need.  I taught them to touch noses as a way of saying hello. In the end, they became two very unique cats--a mixture of both human and cat qualities.  My son helped me during the day with Gin and she bonded most with him.  Lucky was my son, through and through, loving to be held like a baby and reaching his paw up to gently touch my hair and face with a look of complete adoration on his face--just like my own human children did when they were infants.  None of us ever considered either of them to be as simple as pets.  They were our family, through and through. They were more than just survivors of what should have been a fatal birthing, they were survivors of the Navajo rez.  Some of the Navajo came to see them once they had survived and were taken aback at how amazing the two kittens were. 

Little People were way cooler to Lucky than a lousy ball.

When it came time for Lucky to be neutered, there was little choice but to go to the horse doctor.  Yet, he had experience in the neutering and spaying of smaller animals for he, out of grief for what he saw happening to the feral cats and dogs on the rez, would capture them and fix them for free before setting them loose again once their wounds were healed.  He was in absolute awe over Lucky and I think he didn't want to part with him at all when I went to pick him up.  I knew my Lucky bear was special.  I always did.  I was so happy when we returned to Oregon because the neighborhood we were in was sheltered and safe.  Lucky liked nothing better to play in the backyard and would only leave the yard to occasionally walk with my daughter and I to the school bus stop around the corner.  Life was great for Lucky until 6 months ago, a feral cat wandered into the neighborhood.  Perhaps turned out by a desperate homeowner in the midst of this recession, it began to terrorize all the cats living in the block.  Lucky became injured and formed an abscess over one eye, which my son and I promptly treated that night.  I took Lucky in to the vet the next day to make sure that he would survive and updated his shots.

Touching noses

 Lucky's abscess quickly healed and he became himself again.  Doting, adorable Lucky who was an example of perfect health with his shiny, thick fur, good build, and clear eyes although he had taken up the most heinous cat activity of urinating outside of the litter box. I presumed it was spraying to ward off the feral cat, who did eventually disappear.  He also took to drinking from the faucet and rarely left my side.  Beyond these new affectations, however, he was such a picture of health that it deeply confused me when I started to feel like he was going to be leaving me soon two months ago.   There wasn't a single thing about him that had changed but yet, something had imperceptibly and irrevocably changed, which terrified me.  Yet, there was Lucky, seemingly the picture of health, to grab my hand from his perch on my bed to tell me that it was time to sleep only to sit upright on my chest with his own chest puffed and a cat smile on his face, purring wildly at his conquered victim.  In fact, he exuded so much good health that, when an accident occurred one night and his tail became injured, the vet gave him his checkup and found that Lucky was extremely anemic.  More testing came and feline leukemia was found.  A fatal flaw had been made when Lucky had been treated for his abscess--he was not given the vaccine.  My Lucky bear was dying yet, even the vet was convinced that he had much more time, despite the dangerous anemia.  His fur was so shiny, his weight so good.  Such a happy cat despite the pain of his tail injury.  She sent him home with me for which I'm glad.  Lucky passed away in my arms that night when he no longer had enough red blood cells to keep his body alive.  A mother always knows when her beloved child is dying, even when everything seems right.  We still know. These past two months, both Lucky and I savored each others' company, seemingly with the poignant awareness that we would soon be parted.

The next day, Gin was taken in to be tested for feline leukemia.  Delicate, beautiful, tiny little Gin immediately charmed the entire staff as much, if not more, than Lucky did.  We all cried for joy when she came up negative for the disease that had killed her brother just the night before. Lucky's poor veterinarian was devastated that he had died.  I told the staff to remind her what she had said herself about Lucky--he tried so hard to keep everyone from worrying about him.  Lucky duped us all but, because of her, Gin had a chance.  Lucky, himself, had given her a chance by all his little weird behaviors from stopping using the litter box to no longer sharing a water bowl with her.  Gin, in return, is taking care of me for Lucky in picking up all of Lucky's routines with me that he can no longer do. Lucky may have been born a rez cat but he was a rez cat extraordinaire and so, too, his sister.
 

Reaching for my hand, saying "love me!"

I know it's hard in these uncertain times to remember or rationalize the cost of a vaccination for a beloved family member but I urge you to take the time to do so.  Most cities in the US have mobile pet clinics that are also low cost.  Many also run vaccination specials that can further bring down the cost.  It is far better than tears, grief and loss for your family or for your neighbors. 

Good Neighbor Mobile Vet Clinic

The New Dark Ages

We live in a most pivotal time.  As much as that may be so poignantly hard to believe as it is far too easy to get up in the morning, drive through relatively clean suburban neighborhoods to work, spend the day working with others who, through the very onerous task of maintaining the depersonalized world of business by eschewing human emotion, emphasizes a sense of stability. Only to drive back home through those same relatively clean suburban neighborhoods to eat dinner and watch television programming that makes real life seem so much simpler in some ways.  Rinse and repeat.   Yet, there are little seeds of discontinuity even within those relatively clean suburban neighborhoods.  The homes in need of paint, lawns slightly overgrown, the empty storefronts within the strip malls--all prickling away if one is attentive.  Each of these harbor untold, unshared stories of desperation.  What has happened to America whose ideals were once the white picket fence flanking a pristine yard and the well maintained home? 

Historians have the task of labeling the various time periods of human civilization through terms that adequately describe them.  The Golden Age, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, The Industrial Age.  If there is any term that I could say most adequately describes our own time period, it would be none other than the New Dark Ages.   Some may balk at such a comparison for certainly we have far greater technology and are far cleaner.  Our educational system is still providing learning for the masses and the average way of life is still a vast improvement from our prior Dark Age counterparts.  Yet, that would also be turning a blind eye on those seeds of discontinuity buried within our own seemingly pristine world.   We need to recollect the very basic idea of cause and effect.  For every thing that occurs, there will be a resultant effect.  Nothing lives within an isolated bubble.  Quite the opposite, we, along with every other living creature on this planet, live in one bubble together.  The ramifications of changes within this bubble will be felt throughout.  So as more and more find it increasingly difficult to obtain adequate health care, then so will disease increase.  Already, diseases once thought abolished through vaccinations have been rearing their ugly heads as parents with little choice but to continuously cut corners, choose to put food on their table over vaccinating their children.  A very poignant example of cause and effect. 

The Dark Ages, however, are not defined as simply being a very dirty, disease ridden time. On the contrary, the Dark Ages were dark because human beings lost any form of enlightenment.  Dark is the absence of light.  The Dark Ages were a time where the masses were left uneducated and where feudalistic structures stratified and removed all hope of opportunity to surpass the economic and social status of one's ancestors.  A time period where the mass of human populous, with little doubt, had no choice but to be subservient to their masters whether through inducement of poverty, stripping of land ownership, and even life, itself and could not believe in anything otherwise for to oppose such forces most certainly meant death or incarceration.   Intellectualism and the sciences were shunned and deemed heretical while religion fleeced out promises that, at the end of it all, the meek shall inherit the earth.  Yet one has to ask whether God would smile upon those who allow themselves to grovel in the dirt over utilizing the very gifts that God so purportedly gave to them to shine?  If I were to point to the greatest source of deprivation for the masses in the Dark Ages, I would say that it was that human beings were deprived of the one thing that normally would drive them to improve to their fullest potential--self interest.

We are in the New Dark Ages indeed despite our cleanliness and education because that is precisely what has been stripped of the human masses.  We have lost our self interest to survive, to seek better for ourselves, and shine.  How different from the Dark Age world is Greece?  Spain? Or even the United States?  I have found it so baffling to see so many willfully strip away their and others human rights of choice, liberty, and opportunity for prosperity through a sense of self-interest that is no different than the farmer willfully giving away most of his crop to protect what little livelihood he could maintain.   We live in a time where science again is regarded as heresy and where a man making less than $30,000 a year will vociferously and sacrificially defend a man making over 30,000 times more.  Where has self interest or even the concept that we, as communal beings, benefit when our communities thrive gone?  Humanity is no less indoctrinated in belief systems that, either through gentle persuasion, irrationality or brute force, enforce subservience.   To say that this is unacceptable is not to condone revolution for the only revolution that can possibly hold any hope for humanity as a whole is not one filled with blood but a revolution in thinking.  We need another Renaissance.  Yet, is it any mistake that even those who may recognize this so perversely blame the root of it as being the Illuminati, the very name of the group of scientists and philosophers who strove to rekindle enlightenment in humanity so long ago?   We need to recall that it is not a matter of whether we deserve better but to recall that we can do better for ourselves and for our children.  That to shine, to be a light is what illuminates and enlightens us all.

Attempting to Comprehend Discretionary Spending in the Federal Budget

This morning, I hopped on facebook and found a message waiting for me there.  A friend of mine, having seen a pie graph about discretionary spending floating about in FB land, asked me if the pie graph was skewed or not.  Off I went to the source data as provided by the US Office of Management and Budget, where I was able to relatively quickly ascertain that yes, the pie graph was indeed accurate and made my own version of it using the very source data.  Although I had finished the requested task, the numbers that I was seeing within the spreadsheet were grotesquely fascinating.  I was hooked.  I apologize in advance for the quick and dirty graphs but when I started doing this, I was thinking in terms of accuracy and haste.  After all, this wasn't something that I was going to get graded on or paid for to do.  It was purely out of sheer curiosity.  The second caveat is that, although the OMB states that "to the extent feasible, the data have been adjusted to provide consistency with the 2013 Budget and to provide comparability over time",  it doesn't say how far back and whether the numbers have been adjusted for inflation.  Comparability over such a length of time would, however, require some form of inflationary adjustment so I am tentatively assuming that the data has been adjusted for inflation with a nod to the possibility that I could be wrong.  With that being said, let's see what I found.

US Federal Discretionary Spending 2011 (as percentages)

This was the initial pie chart that was asked to be recomputed and redone.  This pie chart shows the discretionary spending of each program as a percentage of the total discretionary spending for the year.  For programs showing 0%, that doesn't necessarily mean that there was no discretionary spending.  It simply means that the amount was less than 1% of the total. The total discretionary spending for 2011 was a little over $1.3 trillion so we're talking about a whole lot of change with National Defense being the largest component of it.  96% of that "National Defense" is DoD-military discretionary spending and the other 4% is simply listed as "Other Defense".  The information within the spreadsheet goes back all the way to 1962 so I thought that would be rather interesting to see as well.




Federal Discretionary Spending in 1962

Even from a distance, you can guess that yep, that big grey Pac Man is for "national defense".  Surprisingly enough though, the percentage of national defense as a portion of total discretionary spending has actually decreased considerably between 1962 to 2011.  But, before we all can start waving peace victory banners, what needs to be considered is that some of the other programs have been expanded over the years as the world has changed.  What we're really seeing is that the number of programs utilizing discretionary spending has increased its use of it.  On a humorous side note, the general composition of what constitutes "national defense" is relatively unchanged--even in 1962, it was 96% (rounded) DoD-military and 4% "other defense".  Some things apparently don't change over time.

Thinking in terms of "over time" got me wondering about how just has discretionary spending changed over the past 49 years.   I needed a new graph.

 Total discretionary spending from 1962 to 2011

Scary!!  Even from a distance you can see that this really is not a good thing.  For those that get confused about the (in millions) thing--100,000 would be the equivalent of $100 billion and 1,500,000 is the equivalent of $1.5 trillion.  At this point, even an atheist like me is praying that these numbers aren't actually adjusted for inflation after all because this just looks so ludicrous.  A good question to ask at this point, however,  is "just what the hell is discretionary spending?".  Wikipedia provides us with a quick definition: "US government expenditures which are subject to annual review and authorization by Congress, as distinct from expenditures authorized by existing laws." (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/discretionary_spending).  Okay then, discretionary spending is what money gets spent through Congress' discretion and not because of existing laws.  I bet you that the president at the time probably has veto power on this, too, because that's how our government works--checks and balances.  Apparently, though, the guys running the government just seem to be thinking of just checks. 

We already know that national defense is a big piece of the pie so what has happened with that over the same time period?  Hmmm, let's see:

National Defense Discretionary Spending from 
1962 to 2011  Interesting. Well, it makes sense somewhat as these jumps are probably wars, right?   Let's see...the US became involved in the Vietnam War starting in 1965 and ending in 1973 so a spike should be there, right?  Hmmm, I guess it goes up a little.  Well, okay...how about the Persian Gulf?  That went on from 1990 to 1991 and that explains that spike in...hmmm, it decreased in 1990 but spiked in 1991.  There's the spike!  Hmm.  Did something happen in the 80's?  I'm confused.  Afghanistan started in very late 2001 and Iraq in early 2003 but why is the spending getting ramped up again in 2000?  If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that the DoD has psychics on board, but no worries, I'm not.  I just don't have any explanation for this at all.   I'm not a member of the DoD--that's a matter of national security.  We're not supposed to know what they're doing outside of spending a ton of money with very little historic explanation.

Let's go with what we do know historically.   The growth in spending from year to year can tell us a lot because it's not dealing with numbers but simply the percentage of change.  Therefore, we can compare the spending growth in the military involvements during the period available (1962 to 2011).   And oh yes, I went there--lavender (has to match my blog!!)

Growth in national defense discretionary spending during wartimes

I give up.  Where's my white flag of surrender?  I have zero explanation for this. Keep in mind that any positive number means that they spent more than the prior year by that percentage amount.  If it's negative, it means that the discretionary spending was less than the prior year.  So,  what we have is a decline in spending in the first years of Vietnam and the Gulf wars but not in the first year of Afghanistan (and they were already ramping up spending the year before!).  In Vietnam, it started declining about mid-way through the operation whereas it's a constant growth during our last operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.  It is nice to know, however, that this kind of spending declined the year after the Persian Gulf (it looked very lonely with it's little blip).  That got me wondering though.  How much has discretionary spending for national defense changed in the last 49 years?  It has increased 129%.  That's a lot more money being spent today today by the DoD than 49 years ago.  Please, please tell me that it's not adjusted for inflation....please.

Stepping away from the defense spending and back to just Congress' spending.  I thought it would be interesting to see what information I could find as far as how our deficits and surpluses are looking over the last 49 years.  If Congress is spending a lot more, then it has to be because we can afford it, right?   The ideal scenario for a government is to hover right around 0.  Too much surplus means that wealth is being accumulated that isn't getting passed on to the citizens.  Too much deficit means major trouble.  (Think Greece, Ireland, Portugal and more as the extreme example of that).  Luckily, the OMB had that information available, too. 

US Federal Surplus and Deficits from 1948 to 2011
Really, very not good.  You don't even have to click the link to know that this is really, very not good.  It's heartbreaking.  We were in great shape for so long.  What the hell happened?  Well, in the 1970's, there was a recession and the OPEC oil embargo but things start getting out of hand in the 80's.  That's the handiwork of "trickle down" economics.  Problem with trickle down economics is that they most likely didn't provide enough tax revenues to make sure that the natural growth in spending as the nation grows was balanced out.  That's exactly what that says.  Toss in increases to discretionary spending and it's gruesome.  The surplus in the late 90's where it spikes up above the 0 ridge is Clinton tweaking the budget and vetoing line items within it.  If you look back at the graphs of total and national defense discretionary spending, you'll see a plateau there.  He was definitely trying to balance the budget and we ended up with a surplus.  Hopefully, that surplus was used to pay down some of the accumulated debt.  One can only hope....

In 2000, it drops back significantly below the 0 goal line with the election of George Bush but you can tell that they tried to reign it all back in again.  And then, catastrophe strikes in 2008.  A lot of people want to point fingers at Obama for that one and perhaps that is somewhat well placed.  Discretionary spending was growing at a fast clip and seemingly unchecked. However, there is another way that we can compare this to decide what exactly happened to our nation's budget.  We can look at other countries.  Finding that kind of information in the same format is  hard but looking for this kind of plunge should be pretty obvious.  Thankfully, the website, Trading Economics, has a cool little feature where they will put all sorts of information in a graphical format. 

First:  Greece, one of the most financially bankrupt governments in the world



Second:  UK Government Budget Deficits and Surpluses

Both Greece and the UK's deficits plunge horrifically in 2009 to 2010.  The US plunged first in 2008.  What happened in 2008 that could affect countries around the world similarly?  It wasn't Obama being elected as president because Obama has nothing to do with Greece's or the UK's budgets.  All that leaves is the Financial Crisis of 2007-8.  It truly crippled the world.

Professionalism and Accounting in the 21st Century

This is my accounting capstone final paper where we were asked the question of what it means to be a professional accountant in the 21st Century.  Enjoy.

The traditional idea behind what it means to be a professional within the field of accounting has generally had an emphasis on the important role of the accounting professional in serving the public interest.  The concept of serving the public interest as an accountant has been to provide as much assurance in the accuracy of reporting financial statement data in order to preserve and restore the public confidence within the field of accounting.  Although these concepts are undoubtedly important to  professional accountants, they are also short sighted in today's socioeconomic climate as global civil unrest increases.  The target of protesters and the general public's ire is ubiquitously labeled as simply "capitalism".  However, both the accounting profession and protest groups like Occupy have it all wrong.  For the common people, their confidence has not been shaken in the accounting industry but instead, in capitalism as a whole.  For professional accountants who solely focus their self criticisms in subjects such as the accuracy of the numbers they provide, they are missing the broader implications and effects of the very data that they provide in managerial decision making.  

When Ray Johnson asked the question what it meant to be a professional, many of the students stated that being a professional required that one be certified.   In the role of devil's advocate, I suggested that a plumber was still a plumber regardless of certification.   Comparing a plumber to an accountant may seem to be distasteful but it's effective for describing the impacts that can occur when either a plumber or an accountant does not behave ethically in the course of their profession.  For a plumber, the damage of unethical behavior can result in the damage to the foundation of the home where the work was done and the public's perception of the profession.  On the other hand, for an accountant to do the same in their field, the damage done is less on the public's perception of the profession and more on the very foundation of capitalism, itself.  

Enron is a perfect example of the affect of the power of accounting.  The Enron scandals could not have occurred if it weren't for Andy Fastow, the former CFO of Enron, and Arthur Anderson both working against the public interest and the accounting profession as a whole by utilizing their professional knowledge to enable fraud and illegality.  If Arthur Anderson had, instead, upheld the public interest required as accounting professionals,  the Enron debacle would not have occurred.  Although we within the accounting field focus heavily upon Fastow and Arthur Anderson, we fail to recognize that it is not the field of accounting that was damaged in so much as Enron becoming the poster child for corruption within capitalism among the general public.  The accountants and others abusing accounting methods, such as Andy Fastow,  who participate in these scandals are rarely household names for the general public.  However, ask the same public what Enron means to them and they will invariably answer with corruption and capitalism.  Instead of focusing on what the accounting firm of Arthur Anderson should have done, they will, instead, be aware of the thousands of individuals who lost their pensions due to the fraud and corruption of Enron.  

Probably the most well-known catch phrase of the Occupy movement globally is "People, Not Profit" as the protest targets capitalism as a whole.  As I mentioned earlier, the Occupy movement is off the mark in its target.  Instead, the movement should be targeting the very methods of accounting used world-wide.  Over the years, news articles discussing the working conditions and treatment of employees globally have been on the increase,  further fueling the sentiment of Occupy's "people, not profits".  Most recently, I came across an article on the probably biased Mother Jones' site where one of their journalists worked undercover at an Amalgamated Giant Product Shipping warehouse here in the US.  While maintaining reasonable skepticism at hand as I skimmed the article, I read the following line, "From the temp agency, Amalgamated has ordered the exact number of humans it should take to fill this week's orders if we work at top capacity."[1]  Although the journalist has no apparent idea what it is precisely that she is complaining about, what she is describing is undoubtedly, to an accountant's eye, the effect of cost accounting on the human condition when the calculation of those numbers does not include the human condition, itself.    However, not once does the journalist make this link and, instead, the article becomes yet another in the long line of criticisms against capitalism.  Instead, the criticisms should have fallen on the methods of accounting that encompass numbers alone and without comprehension of impact or public perception.  

 

Working conditions are not the only area where accounting professionals may be doing the public perception of capitalism harm.  News articles reporting companies closing factories after reporting billions in profits such as Huffington Post's recent article titled, " PepsiCo Layoffs: World's 2nd-Largest Food Company Cutting 8700 Jobs Despite Higher Revenue"[2] also certainly doesn't help.  Although PepsiCo's restructuring may improve the profitability of the company for its shareholders through figures provided by its accountants, one has to wonder whether the accountants placed a monetary value on possible public enmity and negative press as a factor within their calculations or advisements to PepsiCo's CEO in making this decision.  Did they even consider them to be factors while they were focused on the numbers provided for the upcoming year's financial forecast? 

Another news story fueling public enmity towards capitalism over the last two years has been corporations stockpiling cash despite maintaining profits during the recession.  Although each of these companies may individually have reasons for stockpiling cash as with Molson Coors' plans to expand their market, collectively the behavior has been contributing to raising the public's ire. According to Jim Zarroli in an article about corporations stockpiling cash for NPR, "U.S. companies that earn profits abroad have to pay taxes when they bring it home, so they tend to like to keep money overseas as long as possible."[3]  Keeping income offshore to avoid US taxes is undoubtedly the work of accounting professionals and it is not the only tax related accounting activity that has raised public ire towards capitalism.  Another common public complaint is the very well known matter of GE and their tax accountants who are responsible for GE paying no taxes at all despite billions in profits for the last several years.  Although both the stockpiling of cash and the avoidance of taxes are both clearly accounting related issues, it is still not the accounting professionals that are being questioned but instead, simply these matters become more fuel for the capitalism funeral pyre. 

If one would ask any professional in any field what would be the worst outcome possible of their actions, I would not be surprised if the answer would be "to cause another's death".  The loss of life has perhaps the most dramatic impact of all.  In September of 2011, the final report on the cause of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and death of its 11 rig workers and untold numbers of wildlife due to the resulting oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 was released.  This report by the US Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management found " five examples of where the company made 'decisions that reduced costs and increased risk' as the well ran $58m (£37m) over budget."[4]  It is not CEO's that create prospective budgets.  It is professional accountants. 

Although it may seem unjust to level a large portion of the blame on accounting professionals for what is happening globally and the potential demise of capitalism as they are simple suppliers of numbers, I argue that the quality of those numbers provided are not inclusive enough.  The professional accountant provides the very backbone from which management makes their decisions and that provided information can have dire consequences upon human rights, society, politics, and the environment.  As accounting professionals, we must recognize this grim fact and shift our thinking to embody this.  It is a natural fit for accountability and accountant both share the same root.  Likewise, it is already our duty to serve the public interest in the most basic of terms.  As accountants, we must be accountable for our actions and respect the trust given to us by the public with a broader definition of "public interest".  We cannot simply be number crunchers bent on accuracy in reporting but we must also act as philosophers able to measure ethics and potential outcome.   Maintaining growth in profits for our shareholders as our sole measure of duty may ultimately lay waste to the very society and environment in which our shareholders reside.

There is an inherent need that the quality of the information that we provide be inclusive of more than simply just numbers. There is no adequate measure of public enmity nor is a human being capable of operating at a maximum capacity  like a machine. There is no measure of discontent when a middle class citizen pays more taxes on $100,000 income than GE, who made $14.2 billion in 2010.[5]  Nor is it readily apparent that the accountants, whose advise is expected by management, are considering the larger picture of public discontent at all. Over the last 6 months, the world has experienced massive civil unrest stretching across the globe from Nigeria to Japan to Greece to New York City and beyond whose predominant focus has been capitalism.  If capitalism as a system appears to the general public to be drunk on greed, as protesters frequently state, then it is the accounting professionals who act as the enablers by providing the bottle from which capitalism drinks.  

In today's fast paced and interconnected world, serving the public interest as a professional accountant can no longer be simply about accuracy in accounting numbers but, instead, a professional accountant must regard the world with their eyes open wide.  What we are dealing with today in the 21st century is no longer simply just a lack of public confidence towards the field of accounting but a rapidly declining loss of public confidence towards the very system that accountants operate within as a whole.  The damage that can be done by a professional accountant who chooses to keep his/her eyes closed is substantial and the resulting loss of public confidence within the profession goes relatively unfelt.  Instead, it can cause thousands to gather in a city to protest the very system in which they work. It can cause people to lose their homes and live on the streets, in cars, or tents. It can plunge a country into burning chaos.  Their cost cutting measures can result in the defilement of a gulf and even death.  One of my favorite sayings has long been, "With great power comes great responsibility"[6] and if there is any profession that holds such an immensity of a power, it is the accountant.

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[1] McClelland, Mac "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave".  MotherJones. March/April 2012.  Retrieved: March 13, 2012. http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor?page=2

[2] Anderson, Mae "PepsiCo Layoffs:  World's 2nd-Largest Food Company Cutting 8700 Jobs Despite Higher Revenue" .  Huffington Post, February 9, 2012.  Retrieved: March 13, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/09/pepsico-layoffs_n_1265407.html

[3] Zarroli, Mark.  "Companies Sit On Cash; Reluctant To Invest, Hire" NPR August 17, 2011. Retrieved: March 13, 2012http://www.npr.org/2011/08/17/139703989/companies-sit-on-cash-reluctant-to-invest-hire

[4] Rowena Mason, "BP cost-cutting a cause of Gulf of Mexico oil spill, US report finds", September 14, 2011.  The Telegraph. Retrieved: March, 13, 2012. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/8763644/BP-cost-cutting-a-cause-of-Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-spill-US-report-finds.html

[5] Jake Tapper "General Electric Paid No Federal Taxes in 2010".  ABC News, March 25, 2011.  Retrieved: March 13, 2012. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/general-electric-paid-federal-taxes-2010/story?id=13224558#.T2ACaPXp4xA

[6] Uncle Ben, "Spiderman".

The Meaning of Austerity

I love words.  It's true.  No great surprise then that one of my favorite sayings is "the pen is mightier than the sword".   Most people take words for granted.  While they may say that they feel sad, I instead will say that I feel sorrow or a deep somberness because those words may describe precisely how I feel other than just "sad".  Today I feel deep sorrow and a sense of disillusionment and despair.  These feelings are not new but ones that have increasingly felt over the last two years as my awareness and learning grew of our dire circumstances that we all face.  I felt the rumblings of discord and, as time progressed, I watched as words became misappropriated by the global elite.  Austere once met plain and simple, without luxurious adornment.  It's a word I know well.   Austere would be the desert in which I lived for 7 years that I still describe as having an austere beauty.  Austere is how I dress each day with no jewelry on at all despite my mother constantly piling it upon me.  I simply prefer the simplicity of austerity.  Austerity isn't the doing without of necessity.  It never has meant such a thing.  Someone who is austere will forego luxury but not food.  They will forego a large house for a simple house but austerity does not mean going without a home entirely.  Austerity is the basics of necessity not the eschewing of necessity.

Austerity, however, has wholly changed its meaning through our politicians (and when I say politicians, I mean all of our politicians, globally, for they are all using the same rhetoric).  Austerity to them means a cutting back of social services in a time where, due to the high costs of living and recession, they are of a necessity.  Almost a year ago, I did several vlogs on the economy but brought it down to a very personal level where people could understand some of the underlying issues that are occurring.  One of the things that I mentioned was that most households were relying on credit to simply get by month to month.  Doing so adds more to the cost of everything purchased.  It assures that certain amounts of income are going to be relegated to credit card payment and interest.  It's an unhealthy relationship that so many here in the US have become dependent on.  Is it recklessness or is it necessity?  I lean towards it being the latter as people have struggled to pay for the gasoline in their cars, the food on their table, the clothes on their back, and the medical insurance (and post-insurance high bills) for their health.  I pointed out that the growth of our cost of living has rapidly outpaced the growth of the average worker's income by grotesque measure.  Even with saying all that, I find it hard to describe the average American as being austere.  I, for one, don't have an iPhone but I know many that do and probably shouldn't. 

Despite the issues with Americans as being described as austere, we can, however, use the "rules" that we all learned from elementary school.  The food pyramid and what constitutes the necessity for a healthy diet is an example.  The understanding that people need some form of shelter over their heads.  Even Homo Erectus knew that basic necessity hundreds of thousands of years ago when he built little lean-tos of sticks to protect himself from the elements.  Likewise, modern humans long knew the necessity of clothing, crafting needles of bone to sew together skins for winter wear or garments of woven grass in the warmer months.  Add in the most obvious water and one can form the basics of what is necessity.  Food, shelter, clothing and water--these are the basics and what is meant by austerity.  Austerity does not mean eating a poor diet, living on the streets, or finding oneself being forced to give up one's children because they cannot be fed like in Greece.  If anything, the people of Greece are probably one of the most austere groups of people in Europe at this time.  It's an easy assumption to make because one just can't see that a parent would think to themselves, "well, I really want this iPhone so I'm sending my children to an orphanage to get food just so I can get it."

If there is anywhere on this planet that creates the most cognitive dissonance within me, it is Greece.  "More austerity cuts!!" with a thump on a mahogany desk as the people by the thousands freeze laying on the streets.   "More austerity!!" from the luxurious offices of the Greek Parliament as a parent takes their child to the orphanage in tears.   More austerity for whom, I want to very indignantly ask.  For when I regard the pictures of the normal lives of the citizenry of Greece, I see something far lower than austerity.  I see impoverishment but this new "austerity" isn't enough and it certainly doesn't seem to apply to the politicians currently making decisions for the people of Greece without popular support.  The Greek Parliament, itself, is the very antonym of "austerity" with its gold framed pictures lining the walls from floor to the ceiling, the flat screen television, and the obviously newer, modern chairs and sofas stuffing the room and the men also stuffing it in their suits and ties (though one wore jeans and a polo under his suit jacket).   "Austerity for whom?" I want to even more loudly cry when I contrast this with an image on NPR of food being left out on a table for the hungry--simple loaves of bread and cartons of milk.  And then more quietly and with tears in my eyes, I ask for whom do these so-called austerity cuts truly benefit for I look at the people of Greece, already seemingly very austere or to the very definition of abject poverty, and see the debt for those sofas and chairs, the flat screen tv, and new carpet in the Parliament all being borne on the backs of the ones most suffering.
Picture of the interior of the Greek Parliament in Athens
Austerity in Greece

It benefits the EU.  It benefits the European banks.  It benefits the private creditors who, in another time would have been left to suffer their losses for foolishly acquiring the Greek debt.  Instead of letting things fall as perhaps they rightly should, we bail it out instead.  Greece is breathtaking.  A lover of history, Greece is one of our older civilizations--the so-called cradle of democracy.  For millenia, Greece existed--strong and self sufficient.  How did it fall so far?  At what point did it lose its self sufficiency?  More so, if this has occurred to a country as old as Greece, then in all likelihood, it is happening elsewhere, too.  While the mainstream news lauds the passage of the austerity cuts as Athens burns and muffles the expulsion of the 40+ dissenting votes from the Greek parliament, I question how plunging the people of Greece into more poverty so that private creditors--mostly banks-- can have more assurance of getting their mistakenly invested funds is actually going to help the people of Greece as a whole.  The most terrifying thing about this is that this isn't just a Greek tragedy but a tragedy that is similarly falling in other countries as well.

Even here in the US, counties and cities are on the brink of financial disaster due to the near exact causes as what occurred in Greece.   In Jefferson County, Alabama, corrupt politicians profited heavily off of building a new sewage treatment plant and investing in faulty derivatives that plunged the county into economic chaos and forced ungodly bills for water and sewer upon the people living there.  While the citizens of Jefferson County installed porta-potties in their yards to avoid the $400-500 bills, the court appointed overseer was paid over $1 million by the bankrupt county and was heavily praised by the county commissioner.  Jefferson County Sewer Receiver no longer on payroll

The irrationality of it all, the seemingly massive level of corruption and greed is so immense that I sometimes question whether this is all but a dream.  How is starving a people to death, a slow sort of population control, going to save a country?  How can a county in the throes of bankruptcy whose citizens can no longer afford water rationalize paying someone over $1 million? If this is not a dream, then madness is what rules our world.  With my love of words, madness is the perfect description of what is happening across the globe and the awareness of it fills me with the deepest of sorrows.

A Generation Impacted

 15 year old Sean Kealiher on being assaulted by a police officer

Photo by Ray Whitehouse, The Oregonian

I watched this video today, provided by Occupy Portland, of a 15 year old Portland boy named Sean Kealiher who had been purportedly struck three times by an officer of the Portland Police during a protest.  It filled me with somber introspection as I attempted to put myself into this young man's shoes.  I understood his shock and disenfranchisement and it called up yet another image that I had seen just a couple months ago of  yet another 15 year old boy, Walker Prettyman, within the same city.  When I first came across that photo, the initial thing that caught my eye was the dried blood all over his face but then I was drawn, inexorably, to his eyes.  His eyes told me everything of his current mental state, captured eternally within that single photo.  Fear, horror and disbelief in comprehending what had just occurred to him brilliantly captured on celluloid by photographer Ray Whitehouse of The Oregonian.  Prettyman is clearly traumatized in this photo.  In an interview just a few days after the incident,  Prettyman's thoughts seem to echo Kealiher's sentiments in the questioning of why the event occurred at all and the actions and decisions of the police department as a whole.  (Located here: Prettyman Interview )  Why did this happen?  Why were the police dressed the way they were?  Was it not an excessive response to peaceful protesters?   Both have been clearly and profoundly impacted by the incidents.  Kealiher speaks less like a normal 15 year old boy but with more of a wisdom that should be beyond his years.  Their similar responses to the traumas incurred, however, are not within the normative response of a victim of trauma. 

The element of questioning why something happened is very much within the norm but victims of trauma frequently internalize their inward questioning of events.  Both Prettyman and Kealiher show signs of awareness that their incidents hold some sort of social value and importance by actively voicing them within a public forum.  This difference could be answered by the nature of the incidents themselves.  Both were purportedly assaulted by police officers, individuals that each seem to have been raised to trust like many of us instruct our children to do so today.   Both incidents were publicized in some form through either the news media or Youtube whereas for other victims of trauma, their incidents are generally not a public matter.   Both Kealiher and Prettyman chose to speak, however, on the events that had befallen them.  Kealiher was not actively sought by any news media but, instead, voiced his concerns directly within a public forum, which simply happened to be filmed at the time.  Kealiher's action is important to consider because this was not a matter of him being forced into interview but instead, having the impetus of the incident become a driving force towards direct engagement of the subject, itself.  Very contrary to what one would normally see within a victim of a trauma. 

I think the answer for this difference is both held within the nature of the trauma, that is it being the action of a trusted authority figure, and also within the generational stereotype for both of these boys.  Both could be considered to be a part of Generation Y, also called Millennials.  As a generation, Millennials are known not only for their idealism but also for some degree of skepticism in authority figures as well.  Furthermore, expression and the ability to freely express ones opinions are of stark importance to Millennials.  Comprehending these boys' generational characteristics helps explain both their responses to what happened to them and their ability to air their questioning of the events and actions in a very public manner.  Additionally, it also explains why they seem to be ahead of their respective trauma responses in that both could have already held some degree of skepticism in the first place.  They have, essentially, been raised to become skeptical and airing their questioning in the face of their skepticism.  Having potentially found answer to the question of why they are responding in this manner, the next question to ask is what is the effect of such a response?

A couple months ago, while reeling from the shock of what I had been seeing through livestreams of protests, I called my mother.  My mother is your typical Baby Boomer.  When I, distraught by all I had seen, informed her of my shock, she was downright blase in response and even perhaps a little irritable and embittered.  In a snippish manner, she responded that she was well aware of what could happen in these kind of protests having seen the same things occur during the Free Speech, Civil Rights, and anti-war movements of the 60's. Furthermore, I wasn't even alive to recall what had happened to student protesters at Kent State so don't I dare tell her about how upsetting it all was.  After the phone call promptly ended, I was shocked for a different reason.  It wasn't simply what I had seen but the sheer fact that my mother had, throughout the course of my life, never revealed an inkling of her own distrust of authority figures or state anything at all on the subject matter of police activities during these movements.  Utterly riveted by this epiphany, I listened to Martin Luther King Jr's final speech, "I have been to the mountaintop".  Within this particular speech, as plain as can be, he spoke of just such similar activities not solely by the police but also the curious reporting methods of news agencies during times of protest.  In many ways, it was oddly comforting to know that what we were simply encountering was the endless repeating of history. 

It's almost ludicrously ironic that the very generation who experienced the activities within the 60's and 70's is now the generation that is at the helm of society itself.   Our political system and the chief executives of some of our largest corporations are still predominantly filled with Baby Boomers.  Although these movements did generate a change in direction for the country, the generation most poignantly impacted in their formative years by them were, for the most part, assimilated into the systems, themselves.  Before we can simply rely on the idea that what is happening now is simply history repeating itself, we have to consider if history is indeed repeating itself and if the outcomes will be similar.  There is one key, fundamental difference between these two periods of protest movements.  Thirty years ago,  Baby Boomers had more opportunities in which to become assimilated into the political and capitalist systems.   The same cannot be said for the Millennials. 

The Millennials are entering into the world not only with a greater sense of idealism and strength of expression and self-importance of their own individual views but also into a world whose leaders have a very fundamentally different sense of self and worldview and where the opportunities for assimilation into the American dream have profoundly declined to near non-existence.  For Baby Boomers, success was relatively defined as accumulating material wealth and the road to success was paved through education.  Millennials, on the other hand, have a tendency to be more selective of their employers and their respective ethical activities and are currently finding themselves obtaining degrees with little assurance of gainful employment at the time of graduation.  Whereas the "American Dream" may have existed for the Baby Boomers,  the knowledge of it seems to be more of a bitter dream lost to Millennials.  Through the economic situation that we currently find ourselves in, the Millennials are unlikely to be assimilated as the Baby Boomers were previously within the very fabric of our society.

We cannot always use the past to comprehend the outcomes of the future.  Were there young men like Prettyman and Kealiher speaking out and blatantly questioning authority figures in the 60's?  Mario Savio was one of those individuals but was in his mid 20's--not a young teenage boy still unable to legally drive. Therefore, the answer to that question is probably lost due to time.  However, it is clear that, although history has the innate tendency of repeating itself, the outcomes of such a historical repeat upon one of our largest generations cannot be predicted by looking backwards.   If Millennials are unlikely to be assimilated as were the Baby Boomers previously, then the possibility arises that this could be an increasingly disgruntled generation.  As such, it is likely that protests will continue and potentially grow in scale.  The outcomes of such a thing are ones that I fear to express.  However, how this all is engaged and played out within the near future is of distinct importance for our future.  Our options are either to listen and engage with what is being said or to simply fuel the fire with blase, discarding attitudes such as my mother's.   We must think again of what is being held in the eyes of Prettyman and the words of Kealiher.  We need to ask ourselves what society, as a whole and not just within these boys' generations, is going to do to bridge this generational gap in order to cushion the impact on this generation.

The Greatest Protest Ever

Today marks what has to be some sort of a landmark as far as the sheer number of individuals and companies joining together in order to protest two bits of legislation that Congress is working on passing this month.  I don't need to explain what this legislation entails.  All one needs to, very likely do, is use Wiki or go to one of their favorite websites to get an understanding of SOPA and PIPA.  To do so here would be unnecessarily redundant.  The point is, here we are at the apex of commentary like no other time in history.  October 15, 2011 was yet another one of those breathtaking moments where you had yet another incredibly massive gathering of people to protest the current state of the world.  Based on city by city estimates worldwide, I would hazard a guess that untold millions gathered that day in solidarity with one another.  Today, just a few months later, you are bearing witness to that same massive outpouring of solidarity.   It's almost tragic that, in both instances, much of the messaging was geared towards our country, our financial system, and, most especially, our Congress.

Even with this troubled economy, there is no doubt that the United States is indeed a super power still yet we often forget that the actions that we do often affect those living outside of the United States.  When we actually consider our own system's involvement with other countries, it is often held within a framework that seems to center on the effects to our own.  When we talk about American jobs in China, we focus not on the quality of life and safety for those workers but, instead, we speak with a resentment about how they are "stealing all of our jobs".  Foxconn, the manufacturer of parts for Microsoft, Apple and other tech companies, recently had a rooftop protest in the city of Wuhan where 150 protesters lined the rooftop to remind the company of the spate of worker suicides just last year.  These workers live in dormitories by the hundreds of thousands with amenities that either they are too overworked to utilize or are so polluted by the sheer number of inhabitants within the factory "city" itself that cannot be used.  It's hardly any different from what one might find in a prison in the United States.  But no, we instead hold a narrow focus of our country's actions on how they affect us--not the rest of the world and, as a result, we have the nasty tendency of dragging the whole world down with us.

The effects of activities in the United States has no more profound and obvious affect than the Financial Crisis of 2007-8.  Our banking industry, through questionable lending and the rating and selling of questionable CDOs, plummeted the entire global economy into the depths of despair.  Our world is still feeling those effects.  Here was a case where the policies within the United States  had an unprecedented effect on the global economy.  If we broaden our focus to not just view the effects on ourselves and the global economy, we will find that our own plights are currently be shared with many other people just like you and I all over the world.  This is why what had to be the world's largest protest on October 15, 2011 happened in the first place.  We are a super power and the effects and usage of that power is not just felt here in the United States.  It is felt everywhere.

Climate change, resource depletion, bankruptcies, so-called "austerity cuts" (which honestly are nothing more than asking the already downtrodden and beaten to cut back more), child and slave labor, pollution on a grand scale,continents of plastic bags within all of our major oceans--the list of the grotesque and negative effects of how we use our great power is unimaginably long.  Just this last month, Nigeria, probably the most polluted country on earth because of the activities of oil companies, rose up in protest of those companies.  In the words of Uncle Ben, "with great power comes great responsibility".  We have had great power for so long yet when have we ever really used it responsibly?

Here in the United States, it's been a year of unprecedented.  In my own city, 10,000 people marched on October 6th to protest the inordinate power of corporations and the toll that greed has taken upon everything we hold dear.  Across the United States in cities small and large, protests erupted.  Yet, instead of holding our government policy makers accountable, we regarded it, almost uniformly, with acrimony.  Here in the United States, we are breaking records.  We are breaking records not just in terms of people gathering together to demand change but we are also breaking records in narrow mindedness and dogmatic belief in systems that are currently failing.  We are breaking records in apathy when confronted with a Congress that broke its own record of having the lowest approval rating ever.  As human beings, we prize our ability to act rationally and logically--this is what is supposed to set us apart from all other living creatures.  Perhaps how we separate ourselves from other species shouldn't be based on either of these but on our level of stupidity.  You don't see deer raping the earth in order to go ahead and make Happy Meal toys.  I know it's insulting and I'm sorry for that but what other way can we see our own actions?

Today, we have some of the largest, most dreadful issues before us.  The choices we make no longer affect just our own locality but can create an adverse effect upon every living creature on this planet.  We find ourselves living in a time of the unprecedented and here we are, again today, having an unprecedented protest.  A massive outpouring in competitors and individuals worldwide to protest two bills that impact are civil liberties on the internet.  It is both amazing and heart wrenching at the same time.  On one hand, our very survival is at question and yet, it does not receive the same regard.  On the other hand, it shows our human potential.  Probably the most frightening fact of today's action is that it may not do anything at all.  We have a Congress today that has the lowest approval rating ever and the $94 million in lobbying fees spent may very much win the day.  How is it even possible that $94 million still somehow trumps the desires and needs of a world?  We already disapprove of our Congress' latest actions and inaction yet we somehow expect that, by uniting for one day, we will somehow change their minds?  We have already tried that. 

We have a fundamental flaw within our system that our Founders most certainly did not foresee and that is that we have allowed the perversion of our democracy through monied interests to the extent that it trumps democracy, itself.  It's interesting to note that the Founders were fearful of the majority of citizenry harming the property holders and depriving them of their properties.  That was the context and viewpoint of their fears.  I doubt that they could ever imagine, living in a time where there was no such thing as an unlimited life corporation, that the tables would turn so grotesquely so that the minority would instead be depriving the majority of democracy, itself.  We expect that our Congressman "do what's right" when we elect them into office and what we hold as right can be highly variable.  Yet, at the very least, we expect our Congress to represent our interests.  How much confidence our current Congress must have that they will somehow remain unaffected by their constituents' opinion of them to gain such a disapproval rating.  It fills me with a curious fascination but a fascination that is akin to the seeming inability to look away from a catastrophic car wreck.

Over 10,000 websites, communities, and perhaps millions of people may not be enough to avert SOPA and PIPA.  Even the threat of not voting for them may not be enough because they know that you are going to vote for your Democratic or Republican favorite.  They know that you're going to chose to vote for your own view of what constitutes the lesser of two evils instead of voting "not evil" at all. This is why our system is failing.  To make it clear, the last thing that I want for my beloved country is massive civil unrest.  I do not want the overthrow of our government or harm to come to any wealthy individual or elected official.  I love my country and I truly believe that if we use the democratic process given to us appropriately, we can fix everything.  If our political parties do not listen to us, then how do we expect to get them to amend the very laws that allow them to profit so considerably?  This year, we should have the most unprecedented movement ever held at the voting booth where we vote not for whether someone is democratic or republican.  Instead, we vote for actual change through candidates that pledge to remove the undue influence of money within our government and make every assurance that they do it.  If we can find a way to unite ourselves in this manner, we can do anything.