By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jan 14, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET “Want to quickly and easily get your credit score right now for free?
If you answered ‘Yes’ then click here….
Oh, wait a minute….
Let’s decode that offer.
“Would you like to pay a $30 monthly fee to have your credit score sent to you each month (nearly $400 a year if you forget to cancel) and if you try to cancel it’s a real pain in the neck because although they will sign you up in a jiffy… online, to cancel you have to call in during certain hours and remain on hold for a maddeningly long time until you speak to a customer-service representative who will essentially refuse to cancel your membership until you shout at them that, “Yes, you understand all the amazing benefits of having your score sent to you monthly and despite the  fact you are an inexplicable ignoramus unable to decipher obvious commonsensical benefits to yourself and my family, you still want it cancelled?”
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jan 13, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET My wife and I have just endured the worst flu virus either of us has ever experienced.
This was no ordinary “Stay-in-bed-and-watch-TV- flu.”
This was more of a “Don’t-speak-to-me-for-three-days-except-to-bring-me-a-cup-of-tea-on-the-third-day-or-a-copy-of-Albert-Camus’-The-Plague-but-preferably-tea-because-I-don’t-have-the-physical-strength-to-read-and-I-was-serious-about-not-speaking-to-me-seriously-oh-no-I-have-to-throw-up-again-please-just-leave-me-alone-like-I-already-asked-several-times-but-do-leave-the-book-on-Bubonic-plague-and-know–I-love-you-and–I-am-sorry-about-this-and-also-sorry-about-that-thing-I-said-several-years-ago-but-can’t-remember-now-I-will-make-it-up-to-you-if-I-survive.”
By Artur Davis, on Mon Jan 13, 2014 at 10:00 AM ET To be sure, there are numerous things that Marco Rubio’s anti-poverty speech this week failed to do: the list of omissions run frominsisting on budget neutrality for his proposals without giving any hint exactly how and what he would cut to support them; to not addressing whether his plan to block grant antipoverty programs would end up with the red-state, blue-state disparity that characterizes Medicaid and TANF; to vagueness on how his job training condition for extended unemployment benefits would function in distressed communities that have no reliable higher wage jobs available.
These aren’t quibbles, and some of them leave Rubio’s ideas vulnerable to the charge that they would in practice gut or outright eliminate subsistence for millions of low income Americans in the name of “upgrading” the War on Poverty.
But to enlarge the discussion beyond policy specifics, there are arguably two broader dimensions to the Rubio address, each of which illustrates the challenges Republicans face when they venture into this arena. First, the senator’s context from start to finish was that a (relatively) bipartisan generation of antipoverty legislation amounts to a massive systems failure. Liberal commentators were correct to shoot this overstatement down: a country stripped of Medicaid, SSI disability, Title I education funding and food stamps would not only be fundamentally crueler, it would have inevitably fractured into revolt under the strains of the Great Recession. In the same way that De Blasio style liberals have glossed over the contributions the Giuliani/Bloomberg run made to a safer, more livable New York City, the “failure” critique that Rubio and most conservatives advance regarding the War on Poverty is too glib, too shallow.
 This criticism, by the way, isn’t just finding fault with rhetoric. The legislative challenge for a President Rubio would be assembling a coalition of a unified Republican Party and more centrist Democrats to enact a new anti-poverty agenda: and one of the primary requirements for attracting any Democrats into that coalition would be the preservation of most of the anti-poverty regime that exists today. Could Rubio even begin to sell the right wing of his party on such a trade-off if his premise has been that the status quo is a disaster?
And that leads to the second challenge that Rubio tackled, but not forcefully enough. The leading ideological sensibilities of today’s GOP voters are that (1) poverty is not really systemic and is a product of either inept economic management by Barack Obama or of weak individual choices and that (2) stirring up public interest in poverty or income inequality is usually “class warfare” based pandering. Rubio has earned credit for implicitly rebuking this mindset by bringing up the issue at all.
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: What Rubio Did and Did Not Say About Poverty
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Jan 10, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET
If you are in your 20s or 30s –or even early 40s–and feel overwhelmed and under-appreciated, I implore you to hang in there and not give up.
If you can make it to 50, everything changes. Being 50 is awesome. It’s no accident they call it “the prime of your life.” Everything comes together and you finally feel like you are, indeed, master of your fate; captain of your soul.
Being 50 is like being a senior classmen (after your parents held you back two years in kindergarten to give you an edge over the other kids). You know how everything works–and others look to you to show them. You are truly on top of your world. Finally.
Everyday you feel like you are a BMOC (Big Man On Campus) Except it’s not a campus; it’s your life. Which is even better.
The only problem with being 50 and feeling on top of the world is you have trouble remembering why you feel so together and invincible.
I have found writing down all the reasons (like the ones I just listed above) and keeping the list handy on the notepad of your smartphone or on a piece of notepaper you keep in your pocket is very helpful, if not essential.
Otherwise you just look like a blissfully happy idiot who has no idea what is going on and others will start to suspect you aren’t as together as they initially believed.
So, if you are a young adult and stressed out and depressed, the good news is it will get much easier and much better. Even if you can’t remember why.
Just hang in there. And copy this list to your smartphone notepad. Trust me on this. This list is the difference between being a C level executive at 50 and a greeter at Walmart. The two positions require the same basic skill set, except the former exudes a great deal of confidence and cocksureness. And carries a list like this in their pocket.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jan 9, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET Tom Mabe’s most popular –and depressing—prank yet.
Louisvillian Tom Mabe is a very talented and funny guy. He’s the ultimate social media prankster and very clever and provocative as he pushes the comedic envelope.
His latest exploit …didn’t feel as funny as usual to me, though. Perhaps his most popular prank to date (at least in YouTube views, now over 17 million), Mabe tricks a hard drinking buddy who has passed out from intoxication (again) that he has been in a coma for 10 years and missed out on a lot of important life moments due to his excessive drinking.
It’s tough love that overlaps into cringe humor.
It is a brilliantly clever prank that was hopefully going to scare Mabe’s friend straight. The friend already has 5 DUIs and wasn’t changing his drinking habits. Tom was trying to help a friend, help protect others, and create a viral video at the same time. And I hope he succeeded with all three objectives.. The video’s viral popularity is already established.
But did it help his friend? I’m not so sure. In my view, a prank like that, by itself, rarely has a long term impact on the drinker. But the 17 million views of this video means that the secret on this heavy drinker is now out—something that most everyone knows or will soon hear about in this gentlemen’s home town.
That public intolerance for his alcohol abuse will mean he’ll have to change to stay in his current community or live elsewhere. But a few more days passed and the video prank continued to gnaw at me for some reason. My self-righteous conclusions weren’t enough to satisfy me.
There was something else going on in this video that was vaguely haunting me. And, I suspect, vaguely haunting others because several friends brought it up to me. For me the metaphor of going into a coma for 10 years and missing out on important life moments, saddened me. In some ways I am guilty of that. And I am not in a medical coma and don’t drink alcohol. But that doesn’t mean I (we) can’t go on auto-pilot, get too obsessed with work, hobbies, other distractions and miss out on some important memories with our children, spouse and friends. And that, in the end, is what I learned most from this video. It’s unintended consequences.
A prank to scare a heavy drinker straight by outing him was a very funny scheme. But what was profound –and perhaps ultimately more socially beneficial from this video–is that as much as we 17 million viewers want to laugh and feel superior to the drunken foil in this prank, I suspect a significant portion of us were simultaneously trying to conceal our sadness that we’d been outed too.
I hope Mabe’s friend does get help and get sober or at least stop driving while drinking. But whatever happens to Tom Mabe’s boozing friend, I hope this video helps change me in ways so that 10 years from now I don’t feel like portions of that time were spent in my own metaphorical coma.
Because, thanks to Tom Mabe’s prank, I now have a clearer idea of what that looks like and how horrifyingly tragic it can be.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jan 8, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET  One day, I am confident, I will come to understand the female species.
At least if reincarnation really exists.
Because doing so in this lifetime isn’t looking likely, even though I have felt at numerous times that I was on the cusp of “getting it.”
But these times that I believed I was on the verge of a breakthrough of complete comprehension of the distaff side turned out instead to be what psychologists call “a delusion.” And made me feel like a marathon runner who believes he just caught sight of the finish line but as he gets closer realizes it is just another starting line.
Which is probably just as well.
As much as underatanding the female psyche sounds like a desireble goal, it would take a lot of fun out of life. And be depressing to think that they were no more mysterious than my half of our species.
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Great seques in spousal conversations.
Dec 21st 2013 10:30pm: “You have been in a mid-life crisis for a long time now, haven’t you? You think it will ever end or just keep dragging on and on?”
(Note: In case you weren’t sure, that question was posed by my wife to me, not the other way around.)
My response:
“I dunno. At some point it no longer makes sense to ever finish it.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jan 7, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET Never, never, ever, ever no matter what, no matter why, no matter how lucky you are feeling or how good your “excuse” is, never, never, ever, ever go beyond the speed limit.
I won’t try to scare you about potential car accidents that can cause serious, even permanent, bodily injuries –or even death to you or another driver or a bystander. Those kind of scare tactics don’t seem to work well.
So I’m using my personal experience about something very likely to happen to you if you do speed. You could….pay attention now!
Seriously.
Pay attention because this could save your life and even your weekend. If you get caught speeding you could end up spending your entire Friday and Saturday night taking the “I Drive Safely” Traffic School course online. It is educational and a well organized and presented course.
But not the way you want to spend a Friday and Saturday night–especially just before a major holiday. The course improves your driving but not your mood. Take it from me.
Ho friggin’ ho!
So….I am easing up on the pedal. And suggest any of you who have read my cautionary tale do the same….Trust me. You don’t want to spend an entire weekend before Christmas being taught all the things you know about driving but seem to have trouble remembering when you actually get into a car and start driving.
Now I remember.
By Artur Davis, on Tue Jan 7, 2014 at 10:00 AM ET A year ago, in lieu of resolutions or predictions, I offered a more guarded set of wishes for the new calendar year. Could the track record have been worse? There was the melancholy: Mandela no longer lives; while George H.W. Bush survives, his conciliatory brand of leadership is discredited in his own and seems impossible to revive nationally. There was the embarrassingly off base: describing Virginia’s likely soon to be indicted Bob McDonnell as a politician without a single ethical blemish, and a much too laudatory take on the Washington Redskins’ Robert Griffin III were the low points.
There were rosy hopes that didn’t pan out: some of my favorite center-right thinkers have added a lot of wisdom to the internal Republican debate without influencing it very much; Atlanta’s Mayor Kasim Reed, rather than soaring, is the latest southern black politician whose ambitions suffer the limitations of his party’s “electability” mantra; and Bobby Jindal is a much longer presidential shot now than he appeared 12 months ago.
And there were the parts that really made my label of “wishful thinking” unintended irony. Let’s just say that Phil Robertson isn’t the principled voice of federalism on same sex marriage that I had in mind; that the Heritage Foundation’s assault on food stamps is not quite the anti-poverty agenda I was hoping for; and that education reform continues to lie in the overstocked, undersold column on aisle 32.
So, in the hopes of doing better, a more guarded set of wishes for 2014:
(1) That a year from now, some Republican has decided to run for President unabashedly as a center-right alternative, with policy ideas and campaign message to match. Whether that individual is Chris Christie, the most successful coalition builder in big league politics today, or Paul Ryan, who should keep channeling his former mentor Jack Kemp’s vision that upward mobility is a legitimate conservative aspiration, or someone to be named later, it would be to the good of Republicans and domestic politics in general if a presidential level Republican owned the notion of a vital center rather than running from it.
(2) That George Packer’s superb “The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America” follow up its National Book Award with a Pulitzer. One can take issue with Packer for skimping on the fine points of economics, or for staying vague on solutions, but this is the most gripping account that has emerged of what the guts of the country looked like in the depths of the Great Recession. He nails the development of alienation that has eroded normal ideological boundaries. And if Packer’s subtle narrative maneuver of reducing national politics to the margins seemed incomplete to critics, it surely captures how the swamp on the Potomac registered to most rank and file Americans.
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: Wishful Thinking for the New Year, Part II
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jan 6, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET I made a new friend today. An unknown number from Atlanta called and I excitedly answered to see who could be on the other end of the line. It was Portfolio Recoveries calling me today–not a long lost friend, as I had hoped– although they did act like they knew me well. In fact, they insisted I owed over them $9000 on two credit cards.
They offered no information about purchases or any other helpful details. And were just terrible at making pleasant small talk. They just kept asking me angrily “How are you going to pay for this?” and “You need to set up a payment plan– now!”
I insisted that they I have never owned either card and had no idea what they were talking about.
I must have been doing well with my answers because the angry person who called me told me she was going to let me speak to her manager.
I am guessing not everybody they call gets to do that.
The manager was clearly the manager. I could tell because he read from the exact same script but sounded both angrier yet also more sane than the first person I spoke to.
No disrespect to her but she just isn’t management material —yet. At least in the debt collection biz. Time will tell. She may make it there one day. But for now she is well placed as just the “initial contact” person.
I told her and “the manager” that I had to go but would call them back tonight.
They thought I was saying I would “call them back” like some people say but never do, for example, with a one night stand. I could tell they didn’t believe me–and couldn’t blame them. They were acting like a stalker girlfriend in high school calling me constantly, not wanting me to ever hang up the phone with them, probing into my personal financial business and God knows what else. I wanted to tell them I wasn’t currently involved with any other debt collection agencies but instead simply reassured them I wouldn’t leave them feeling like all we had was a single casual conversation by saying “I promise I will call you back tonight. Really. I swear.” I didn’t want them to think I was one of “those guys” who says he will call but never does.
So I did. At around 9:15pm
I got a new person this time. A sort of new friend who seemed really excited to hear from me—and, frankly, amazed I actually called back. It made me feel good inside.
We chatted for a while exchanging pleasantries and then after about seven and a half seconds she was back on the “How are you going to settle this debt?” topic…which I didn’t care much for and more and, frankly, was bored with from my earlier conversation that afternoon on this same topic.
So I said “Look, I am a lawyer.” That had no relevance to our conversation but I rarely ever get to say that to people and this seemed like a good opening to mention it. I wanted them to know that even though she was dealing with a clueless person who they claimed owed a debt they were trying to collect–that I did happen to have a law degree. My hope was that she would think I could use some sort of legal Jiu Jitsu to talk my way out of the supposed debt they were collecting and just give up after hearing my status as a “lawyer.” But, as it turns out, telling her she was unbowed. And after I told her I was a lawyer I couldn’t think of anything about that to elaborate on about staring down debt collection agencies. ” I thought about telling here a second time I was a lawyer just for the effect but figured it might come off as overkill.
There was an awkward pause after the lawyer comment and I filled up the silence by repeating again that I swore I really knew nothing about the two debts she was referring to. I even said, “I swear to God, I don’t know anything about these two credit cards.” I tried to make my swearing comment sound like legal jargon but it sounded more like a teenager who had been caught red-handed and was trying unsuccessfully to talk his way out of something.
Unconvinced of my innocence, she asked me again how I was going to “take care of this” and and after a pause asked me again. I said somewhat exasperated, “Uh. Well….I guess I’ll take care of it by not paying for it since its not my debt. I think that’s going to be how I’m going to handle it.” And I added, “And I would also ask that you all stop calling me. (At this point I could have been more polite and said, “Please don’t call me anymore about debt collection but if you want to just talk about personal things, sports, the weather and whatnot then that would be fine. But I didn’t. Frankly, I was starting to suspect we didn’t have that much in common anyway and I just wanted to get the false debt claim against me resolved.)
I said “There are a lot of John Browns out there, you know? Is there any chance you could have the wrong one?”
I asked for the address and birth date they had on file for “me.” I had never heard of the address she gave and; and as for the birth date, it turns out the John Brown they were looking for is 61 years old.
I assured her that wasn’t me and that I had never lived or had an office at the address she gave me—- and that no one had ever thought I looked a day over 50 before and I suggested she try harder next time to call and harass the right John Brown.
She finally agreed and conceded reluctantly, “It does appear we have the wrong John Brown –this time.” Maybe in a few years I will be the John Brown they are after—maybe when I’m 61–but I was the wrong John Brown this time.
I asked if she was going to offer me an apology for the heavy handed tactics, harassing calls, and offensive insinuations that I was lying.
She said she would have to check with her manager but didn’t offer one herself.
At first I thought that was a bit rude not to apologize but, on the other hand, I admired their commitment to protocol and procedure and the need to run it higher up into management chain before anyone could officially say, “Sorry we got insulted, offended and harassed the wrong person.” There is something about that discipline in any organization that you have to respect.
She told me she hoped that I had a nice evening and I wished her a nice evening as well. Both of us were sincere but I think mine was a little less formulaic and more genuine in my well wishes for the evening. And we hung up.
She seemed like a nice lady. She really did. And said earlier she would write me (by sending a certified letter to me about my debt —or something like that.) But I didn’t tell her I would call her back. I could have said that I would call her back to make it easier on both of us as we said goodbye, but I didn’t. Because I knew I wouldn’t likely call her again. She’s just not my type. Of debt collector, that is. And, besides, I’m just not that type of guy either.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jan 6, 2014 at 10:00 AM ET  Click here to review and purchase Congratulations to RP writer Josh Bowen for being named on of the world’s top 10 fitness trainers by Life Fitness magazine.
And as if that weren’t enough, congratulations to Josh again for the recent publication of his new fitness book 12 Steps to Fitness Freedom.
I haven’t read it yet, obviously. But need to. And will. Very soon.
Initially, I was going to try to write a humorous cop out for my good friend Jonathan Miller crushing me in our friendly fitness competition we begin this time last year. But I’m taking a different tack.
Since our fitness challenge, Jonathan has stayed the course, worked closely with Josh, worked out regularly and dieted reasonably and the results? He has patiently progressed physically and seen his overall health improve. Nothing that would boggle the mind or make the TV nightly news broadcast— but something significant; something noteworthy and something worth doing.
The tale of the tape? A loss of 4 pounds in weight and of about two inches in the waist and hips; and a gain of about two inches in the chest and shoulders and an increase of an inch in both upper arms. And Jonathan looks, feels and, most important, “is” healthier.
It took time, commitment, sacrifice and work. Not a tremendous amount but regularly. Monthly. Weekly. Even daily. But he did it. And Jonathan believes it was worth it. And I, in retrospect, have to agree.
Kudos, my friend. You won by default against me. But you won fair and square competing head-on with yourself. Which is, I have decided, the only real competition in every diet/fitness challenge.
That part of ourselves that can somehow keep our eye on the small-sounding prize of a loss of 4 pounds, 2 inches of fat reduced in areas we don’t want fat and 2 inches of new muscle in places where we want muscle has to “beat” the greedier part of ourselves that wants the apple fritter now; the soda pop we think we are thirsty for now; the part of ourselves that wants to stay seated instead of standing and wants to lie down instead of sitting. In short, the “Harder ‘NO’” has to repeatedly beat out the “Easier ‘YES’” –and not for a sure-fire immediate gratification. No, siree. But for sticking with the longer term plan that will show small but real improvements—in the future.
 Jonathan and Josh — before and after My experience is that the immediate gratification course is more fun but doesn’t work out as well in the long run. So for this new approach I’m adopting, I am going to have to give up a lot of little immediate gratifications. I’m just going to say it. This part sucks. It does. Big time. Wow! Ouch!!!! Hate it.
But the downside of going from immediate gratification to immediate gratification is you feel like a pinball between flippers. It’s an empty uncertain feeling until the next “hit” when you “score” some more points. I’m going to turn off the pinball machine for a while, I suppose, and plug in a device that keeps a real and boring score, like a health/fitness measuring device. There’s not the same loud bells and fun whistles but there’s also not the empty feeling between being flung from bumper to bumper. Less noise; less careening in the dark. And I will have to move beyond the pinball machine. Move a muscle, change a thought. But maybe the air is cleaner and smells better outside the arcade. And I will also have time to read Josh Bowen’s new book, 12 Steps to Fitness Freedom.
It doesn’t sound sexy or very fun, I know. But despite how counter-intuitive it all is, I am curious to find out if a year from now I report back that I like it a little better than the old way. Something tells me I will. Even if there’s no one for me to beat –except myself.
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