A Liberated Mind

Faithful Readers,

Thank you for your patience over the last week as I have been extremely busy with work and have failed to post any new entries over the past 7 days…I hope this short series on Effective Government will make up for my lack of communication and the fact that I cannot tell you anything about the covert op in Libya I have been on for the past few days…

That being said, recently I got to spend some time with a local restaurateur who has a great story about the role city planning commissions and city councils play in business development and the power they wield over local business owners…And though this situation happened about a year ago, it is still a great example of a local government seemingly overstepping its bounds and not reining itself in to limit its authority…

The story goes like this: As an Italian transplant from New York, Danny Falcone came to Oklahoma 15 years ago and a few short years later followed his dream of opening his first New York style pizza restaurant in north Oklahoma City…

In the years following the success of his initial restaurant, Mr. Falcone has expanded into the Bricktown area and Midwest City without incident and to much new business…Each of his restaurants are very successful and all look alike with awnings around the buildings that borrow their colors from the Italian flag – an obvious reference to his proud heritage… 

And then there is restaurant Mr. Falcone runs in Edmond - a wealthy suburb just north of Oklahoma City…

The long of the short of it is that according to city of Edmond’s website (starting on page 8) in his original plans for his Edmond restaurant, Mr. Falcone had originally wanted to use burgundy awnings around his business but later changed his mind and instead wanted to go with the awnings that used the Italian flag colors much like his other establishments did…

However, in order to change the awnings, he had to go in front of the Edmond Planning Commission (which, again, according to the city of Edmond’s website is a five member board that is appointed by the mayor and the city council) to get their approval…

That is where Mr. Falcone ran into trouble…

In opposition to this request, “Attorney Lydia Lee with the Edmond Neighborhood Association spoke in opposition to this request indicating that the shopping center had been designed as a group of buildings with the Edmond Depot. They had placed sculptures around the landscaping and water features in the project and that the addition of the canopy would significantly change the architectural character previously approved. The burgundy metal canopy that was approved for the building to house multiple tenants and approval of the proposed change will allow others in this building to change, which will completely affect the architectural character and setting of this area.”

Um, what?

The crux of the argument against the Italian-flag inspired awning is that it would change the architectural character of the building because of the use of multiple colors…And keep in mind, this is nothing more than a strip mall…A nice strip mall, but a strip mall nonetheless…

Subsequently, Mr. Falcone argued that “the canopy represented the Italian flag and his cultural heritage and was being designed to comply with Edmond’s requirements. He indicated it was critical to have the canopy for the investment he was making and the commercial branding associated with the Falcone’s restaurant.”

So what happens?  Well, it seems that only three of the five members of the Edmond Planning Commission were present, and his request for a change in awning was denied by a vote of 2-1…

Now you might be thinking, “Okay, Seth, what’s the big deal?  He wanted to change the awning, he put in the request, he argued his side, and he lost…What is your point?”

The point is that while it is quite understandable for cities to have their own requirements for buildings and general uniformity of architecture, it is a whole other deal when you as a municipal body begin dictating how a businessman runs his business even though he has done everything in his power to follow the rules that municipality had laid forth….

If you read the entire section of the minutes from this meeting, you will see that Mr. Falcone has literally gone to every length (including renting the empty space next to his restaurant) in order to follow the city code and ordinances laid out…

Yet that is still not enough for this board and for the leader of the Edmond Neighborhood Association who seemed more worried about the building than the businessman who was making his livelihood in that building…It is just colors on an awning, folks!

But the story doesn’t end there…

According to Mr. Falcone, he then had the opportunity to appeal to the Edmond City Council (which he says he did though no record can be found online), and his appeal was again denied…

So what would have changed in this situation if the planning commission employed 3 folks on there who believed in a limited role of government in municipalities? 

No one can know for sure, but it could be that because having a limited government means having less government involvement in community issues such as business development, then Mr. Falcone would have been able to put his new awning up, he would have spread the word about how gracious and helpful the city planning commission was, and he could have been worried about more important things – namely further expansion of his restaruant business…

Instead he had to appeal the request denial, figure out how to show of the colors of the Italian flag, and do his best to comply even more to the city planning commission’s ruling against him…

And in conclusion, it frankly a shame to me that Mr. Falcone was not helped by the city planning commission in Edmond, but rather his business was harmed by them…That is very discouraging indeed…

It just shows you how a more limited local government could have been a help to him rather than a hindrance… 

S

Ah yes, Thanksgiving Day has come and gone, and Black Friday is here in full force…My in-laws and wife are hustling around the metro looking for bargains for Christmas gifts, and I am at my house, thankful to be off of work today…

Currently OU is playing on TV – though it is the basketball version and not my beloved Sooner football team…But, they do play tomorrow in a nationally televised game that has Big 12 title implications, national championship implications, and even Heisman Trophy implications…Um, wow…And I was hoping for a big game atmosphere…

Anyway, all sarcasm aside, this is a big game for the Sooners against their instate rivals up at Oklahoma State, and I am quite nervous about it…In an ongoing dialogue between myself and a fellow OU grad this week, we discussed why I am so nervous and he gave me all the reasons not to be…A great argument to be sure as he talked about our defense versus Tech, our powerful offense, and their lack of defensive prowess…But I am still not convinced as he is that this game will not be close…

Why do I think it will be close?  Ah, the curse of Stillwater…

What I mean is that for some reason the Sooners rarely play really well when we play the Cowboys at their place…Only once in maybe the last several trips to Stillwater have the Sooners rolled, and the Cowboys always seem to get fired up to play their big brothers from Norman – especially when such big stakes as national title contention is at stake…

They have seemed to gotten more fired up than the Sooners have recently in this series…And yeah, OU has won the last five games in Bedlam, but still…

Thus I will be with the wife and the daughter tomorrow night, and my hope is that the Sooners come through…I am predicting a score of OU 45 – OSU 31…Close for the Sooners, but a win is a win at this point…Especially on the road…

I also predict a trip to face a salty Missouri squad in the Big 12 title game by leaping Texas in the BCS standings and then a  trip to Miami for the National Title game…But, I am getting ahead of myself; more on that later next week…

So until then, enjoy the game tomorrow, Sooner fans, and I hope you will be more relaxed as you watch it than I will be…

S

As a new week dawns and work calls most of us to a very busy 3 days of not getting behind as we head into the holiday weekend (I love Thanksgiving!), I hope, faithful readers, that your weekend that just passed was as great as mine…

Let me hit the highlights before I try to squeeze out one more post for the day…

And I apologize beforehand to all my non-Oklahoma readers…Some of this stuff may bore you, and I will try to get back on the whole political/pop culture vibe this afternoon…

Anyway, first off, I got to spend a lot of time with my wife’s family over the weekend, and with Thanksgiving coming up, I hope and pray each of you have reason to be thankful for your families…Yeah, they may drive you crazy from time to time and you may be all weirded out at them other times, but still…Family also should be the ones who would lay down in traffic for you and not hesitate to help you when things are not quite right with the world – even if they are the ones who made the world not quite right…

And I realize this is not always the case, but we still need realize how blessed we are to have family, and we should do our best to be thankful for them… 

Secondly, a couple of you pointed out that I was incredibly far off on my OU/Texas Tech prediction…Well in my book this is a very good thing…Yeah, I would do horrible if I ever went to Vegas, but as long as my beloved Sooners keep playing like they did on Saturday, I am happy with that…

I really felt like it would be a better game than it was, but all I know from being there is that the crowd showed up and helped make sure that the home team came out on top…In all my years of going to that stadium and watching that team, I have only seen the crowd that hyped, electric, and excited one time…It was truly a memorable night to be a Sooner fan inside that place…Just tremendous…

By the way, when they played “Jump Around” by House of Pain right before half, that was the most awesome thing I have ever seen from a crowd at a sporting event…And yeah, they ripped it off of the University of Wisconsin, but it was awe inspiring nonetheless…

And I realize the two guys from Texas Tech who sat in front of us will never read this because we never even introduced ourselves by name, but guys, it was a ball hanging out during the game…Texas Tech should be proud to have you guys as students and as ambassadors of the school…Nice job the other night…It was a good time watching the game with you both…

Thirdly, we also went to the OU women’s basketball game yesterday, and alas, they lost to North Carolina in the last few seconds when the OU girl (name escapes me) missed a layup as time expired…Pretty good crowd, though, and very good teams on both sides…

And I kind of dig women’s hoops…Not nearly as exciting as men’s, but still very fun to watch…

Lastly, on Friday I also won the Editor’s Choice (again) on blogivists.com for my post about term limits, and that is a very cool thing for me…Considering I have won little in my life besides secretary/treasure of the Math and Science Club in high school, I kind of dig the thought of someone out there enjoying my endless ramblings…Thanks for that, Mr. Editor…That was a great way to start the weekend on Friday…

So check back later for more musings, and please leave your comments and concerns below…I wholeheartedly accept them both…

S

So my job for American Majority (website) is pretty simple: identify, recruit, and train conservative folks to run for public office such as school board, city council, county commissioner, and even on up to the state legislature…Frankly, it is a pretty cool gig, and I am thoroughly enjoying every aspect of it…

Anyway, for the last several months I have been identifying and inviting people from across the state to come to one of our two candidate training seminars coming up this weekend to learn about running efficient and quality campaigns…I have spoken to activists, businesspeople, politicians, and potential candidates all with the hope that they would come to our event and take what they learn with them and become unbeatable in their respective races…

Well, tomorrow in Tulsa and Saturday in Oklahoma City are the culmination of the first part of that plan – the events…As stressful as they have been to put together, it is also very exciting to see so many folks ready to make a difference within their community for conservative values such as limited government, free market ideas, and liberty-minded/personal freedom type issues…

Our hope is that this spring we can have some school boards and city councils that focus their efforts on trimming their budgets, lowering the tax burden on families in the community, and looking for ways to make their cities and school districts run more efficiently…

It is a big goal, but I think we can do it…If nothing else, we are sure going to try…

And I think this is a worthwhile cause because lots of folks see the amount of money the federal government is spending on bailouts and pork projects and they see how much their states spend on black holes like education and bureaucracy, and to put it bluntly, they are fed up with it…

But the crazy thing is, this sort of thing happens at the local level, too…It may just be that no one knows about it…And that is a scary thing to think about…

So I ask people, “Why not take a good look at your school board or city council to see where effective and conservative change needs to happen and do something about it?  Heck, running for one of these offices is not that expensive and not that scary”…

This is what I want to try to convince people to do…

And yeah, running for public office is not for everybody…But there are enough fed up people out there with good ideas and fresh ways to look at things that could make a difference within their communities…They just need to be taught how to get started in it…

Thus it is my job to find them and then help them in very cool ways so they can change the cities and towns in which they live…And in my book, that is a pretty cool thing…And I am more than happy to do it…

S 

I heard a story once about a country that used to be under the rule of the Soviet Union in the 1970s…During the occupation the country had a chain of state-run clothing store in each of its cities, and these stores were the only places that the regular citizens of this country could buy clothes…Frankly, the citizens of this country were forced to shop at this store in their community or they would not have clothes at all…

At the same time, however, the ruling class of this country had multiple clothing stores they could choose to shop at depending on the type of clothes they wanted…But you had to pay membership fees to shop at these stores, and the normal folks of the country could not afford these high membership costs…

The working class of the country had no choice of their clothing even though there was a myriad of problems associated with the state-run clothing store in each town…

First off, the people of the country were unhappy with their lack of clothing choices because the state-run clothing store only had a couple of brands of clothing they sold, and those brands were of very low quality…Every couple of years the government would change out the brand, but it always seemed like it made the problem worse…The clothing the government provided to the people to use constantly wore out and made it difficult to get good work because of the way the clothes looked and fit…

While most of the people didn’t realize how bad the clothes were, there were some who saw the clothing that the elite of the country wore…In fact, there were a few people who thought it was completely unfair that they could not buy their clothes at the private clothing stores for which only the ruling class got to shop…

Secondly, each year the Soviet government would pour lots and lots of money into the upkeep of the stores to try to convince people of how great the stores were…They would spruce up the displays, put a new coat of paint on the walls, decorate for the holidays, and occasionally even rearrange the displays to try to convince people the clothing was of higher quality than it truly was…Basically they did a lot of cosmetic changes to make it appear as if the stores were successful…

At the private clothing stores, however, those who shopped at these stores would raise money to make sure their stores always had the best brands available to their shoppers and that the stores always looked nice on the inside and out…

Another problem, though, was that the salespeople at the state-run store were not at all motivated or helpful because they knew the shoppers had no other choice but to go to their store to buy their clothes…If a shopper needed help, they may or may not have gotten it, and it seemed that most of the time nobody cared about the shoppers at all…In fact, there were lots of salespeople but they were not of very high quality because the best salespeople were all moving to other countries to sell clothes…And the salespeople who were there did nothing to earn their paychecks, but they could not be fired because their union was too powerful and the government did not want to hassle with them…

The salespeople at the private clothing stores were motivated, however, because they knew their clientele could go to the other private stores to buy their clothes if they were unhappy with the customer service at their store of choice…

On top of that, the leadership of the state-run store was constantly telling the government that if they just got more and more money each year then the store would do better with the quality of clothing, the satisfaction of its customers, and the quality of the salespeople…They claimed that money could fix all of the store’s problems even though the government was already giving the stores billions of dollars each year…

Again, though, the government gave no money to the private stores, and they thrived nonetheless…

So at long last some of the citizens of the country went to the government to ask them for more choices and more freedom of where to shop…All they wanted was the opportunity to get better clothing that would last them longer and look nicer for when they wanted to improve their lives by getting better, higher paying jobs…They figured the nicer clothing they got, the better their lives were going to be…

But the government was having none of it…While the wealthy and the elite got to go to their private stores, the regular folks had not right to choose where they shopped…The government told them that they would simply give the state-run clothing stores more money and mandate them to sell better clothes and that would make everybody happy…The government was getting more and more involved, and that only made matters worse…

And this all happened even though studies done by the government pointed out that shoppers in other countries were much more prepared for their futures because of their wardrobe choices and the overall satisfaction level was higher because they had more choices and more freedom in where to shop…

Yet it was not enough to turn the tide…It seemed the government did not want to give their regular citizens the option of shopping at the private stores even though there were creative solutions being presented such as membership fee scholarships and tax credits for the elite who wanted to help some of the regular shoppers out…

But the government would not budge – heck, they would not even bring it up for a vote…Their minds were made up that the citizens who could not afford to shop at the private clothing stores were destined to forever shop in clothing stores that were of low quality, employed unmotivated and unhelpful salespeople, were consistently inefficient in controlling their costs, and that gave their shoppers very little hope for the future…

In short, the citizens of this country were stuck with what they had, and until the Soviet Union collapsed and freedom and liberty came to the country, they were simply out of luck in their shopping choices…

Isn’t that a sad story? 

But, hey, that was the 1970s in the former Soviet Union…I sure am glad we don’t do stuff like that here in Oklahoma in 2008, aren’t you?

S

I live in suburban Oklahoma…To many folks that statement may seem like a oxymoron, but it is absolutely true…

In central Oklahoma we have urban sprawl, a booming population, new retail construction everywhere you look, a new skyscraper in the works for downtown Oklahoma City that will supposedly be the highest building west of the Mississippi River, a thriving economy, and an above average housing market…

Heck, we even got us an NBA team now thanks to the guy Seattle citizens love to hate…

To put is simply, the Oklahoma City metropolitan area is classic, stereotypical suburbia…

But living in Oklahoma also means that I live in a much different place economically than the rest of the coutry…

In fact, this article in Forbes named us the most recession proof city amongst major metropolitan areas…Frankly, right now a lot of people in Oklahoma are doing quite well for themselves even in the midst of this downturned national economy…And yes, this is mostly because of the energy industry and thus when that pricing bubble eventually begins disentingrating, then most likely the Oklahoma economy will go right with it…

But still, right now the state of Oklahoma has a booming economy…Which brings me to a few serious questions: 

Just how brutal is the economy in America?  How bad is life out there in the rest of the country?  How awful is it in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio?  How dismal is the outlook of the average American outside of the prospering parts of Middle America?

Honestly, I want to know this because I read stuff and hear stuff all the time, but not living there – and in fact living on the opposite end of the economic spectrum as far as the economic conditions of cities go these days – I have no idea what people are going through…

That is not to say that folks around here do not struggle, but I see my fair share of “Help Wanted” signs everywhere I go in the metro OKC area, and thus there are opportunities… 

I say all this because on election night when President-Elect Obama first spoke after McCain conceded, frankly I thought he painted a very bleak picture of this country…I noticed this and I think even turned to my wife and said something about it; which is strangley similar to the conversation we had after we watched some of his 30 minute informercial that aired last week…  

And evidently I am not alone in my wonder at how bleak and dour President-Elect Obama describes our country…In this editorial at the Wall Street Journal, the author walks through this issue much more eloquently and smartly than I ever could, and it would be well worth your time to read it…

It all just makes me wonder if the economy is as bad as it is being propped up to be…

And it makes me curious about how much our country needs to revolutionize or modernize our economy to keep up with our global counterparts…

Consider this: According the website aneki.com, the United States has the largest economy in the world.  The United States is third worldwide (behind Norway and Switzerland) in Highest Income Per Capita.  And the United States is sixth worldwide in GDP per Capita (basically this makes us the 6th richest country in the world) and sixth in highest quality of life.

But here is the biggie: Right now our unemployment rate (even after the 8 years of “failed policy” of the Bush Administration) is at 6.1%…To compare that, to say, the height of the Great Depression when the unemployment rate was at 24.9% is no comparison at all…

And yet all we have heard from a lot of folks on both sides of the aisle is how this is the “worst economy since the Great Depression“…Really?  Strangely, John Kerry even touted this is 2004…Hmm…

Listen, I have to believe it is bad out there…I do know that there are a lot of people struggling to make it in this unfair and difficult world we live in…I know that this economic crisis has affected lots of folks in a very negative way…And my heart truly goes out to those folks…

It is just hard for me to see in the environment in which I live, and thus it is hard for me to understand how much some people are hurting financially across the country…

But even thinking about that, I still think we need leaders who will not paint such a despairing picture that we are all tempted to throw our hands up and give up…I would like leaders who don’t seemingly look at all the negatives of our society yet ignore the massive amounts positive things happening…And really, I just want leaders who don’t lend themselves to a society of victims but rather of victors…

There is a middle ground somewhere between completely reveling in the negative aspects of our society and being in complete ignorance of them as well, and in that middle ground is where I believe authentic optimism is truly born…

And a little optimism sure could go a long way right now…

S