Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!
Updates
Earlier this week I had an unpleasant adventure while traveling. I was heading to Grand Rapids via Chicago. The leg from Chicago (O’Hare) was supposed to leave around 7 PM. It was delayed at least 4 times until 9:25. They said the plane was there but that there was some issue. And they wouldn’t say if or when they would cancel the flight.
I thought about renting a car and driving three hours or so to my destination but 1) it was already late by the time that seemed like a reasonable alternative, 2) they had my bag (the downside of boarding near the back of the line!), and 3) I already had a car reserved and waiting for me in Grand Rapids.
Then they delayed the flight to 5 AM the next day…So I bit the bullet and got a hotel room (on my own dime because their voucher offer came later and was at hotels at least twice as far from the airport). It felt a little weird to check-in after 10 PM and check out a little before 4 AM, but it was worth it to actually get some sleep.
Years ago I might have roughed it at the airport, but now I am older, wiser (I hope), wealthier, and I realize it’s worth a hundred bucks or so to avoid staying in an airport overnight.
So, instead of getting to my destination the night before and getting a normal night of sleep, I started my day a little before 4 AM, flew to Grand Rapids, and then drove a couple hours to the conference to get there around 9:30 AM. Still, I am grateful that I did not have any small children traveling with me, and I felt terribly sorry for those who did have small children and had to navigate the delay and early morning flight!
On a different note, I want to brag on Kathryn who completed her first commissioned stain glass piece. It turned out great! The piece was a bigger project than she would have done as a hobby, but she dove into it anyway, learned a lot, and has established herself as a legitimate stained glass artisan.
In the not too distant future, The Abbey Glass, LLC will join The Abbey, LLC!
News
I had a couple news spots this week. Here is a five-minute Iowa radio interview I did. I was also on Opening Bell for Newsmax earlier this week. I did a recorded interview with the Daily Wire about personal ESG scores, but it hasn’t been used or posted yet.
I also want to follow-up on the news story about the crypto exchange FTX and the conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). I mentioned last week that depositors were being made whole because of the surge in prices of cryptocurrencies and, therefore, that SBF was being convicted for misuse of customer funds rather than loss of them. The correction, which was discussed on the All-In podcast yesterday, is that the depositors are not actually being made whole.
You see, they are receiving the monetary (dollar) value of their deposits on the date FTX went bankrupt. However, those deposits, if they had remained in various cryptocurrencies, would be worth far more today. So suppose someone had, say, 100 Solana tokens that were worth about $4000 at the time FTX went bankrupt. They will receive $4000 from the custodian and bankruptcy court. But given the change in prices, that $500 might only be equivalent to 30 Solana tokens today. Put another way, if SBF hadn’t stolen funds and FTX hadn’t declared bankruptcy, that depositor’s holdings should actually be worth over $12,000 today if they received the 100 Solana tokens back.
So funds really were lost, and depositors would have been better off if FTX hadn’t gone bankrupt and SBF hadn’t wrongly transferred (and lost) customer deposits.
Reflection
I’ve been thinking over the past couple weeks about organizing occasional work projects for men in the church. The idea grew out of planning men’s ministry activities. Often friendships and meaningful conversations emerge as people work together on shared projects and enterprises. This should be the case in marriage with housekeeping, financial planning, raising kids, etc. It should also be the case between parents and children, especially as children get older and more capable. And it should happen among friends and within the church.
As I’ve talked with folks about this, the number of potential projects has impressed itself upon me. There is a lot of work that can be done! There are church projects – renovations, improvements, and upkeep. There are community projects – elderly folks who need help with their yard, poorer folks who have problems with their houses (or vehicles) but little means to pay to fix them. And there are personal projects men in the church have with their houses, properties, or businesses.
I, and many of the men in the church, have lists of small and big projects to take care of. And we have a hard time getting to them because of work, family, other church and ministry activity, etc. When we do get to these projects, we usually carve out time away from family and everything else and try to tackle it as quickly as possible.
So the idea for this ministry is that we coordinate our projects and work together on them – which leverages skills and resources while creating opportunity for meaningful conversations and shared experiences. I haven’t drafted plans yet, but the idea is to create a list of projects using the categories above, make sure each one has a point person who is responsible for the scope and resources of the project, and then define how many guys can or should be a part of it, and how long of a project it might be (a few hours, all day, multiple days, etc.). Then we’ll try scheduling a work project every couple weeks open to whichever men (and for some projects, older boys) want to participate.
My involvement in church, besides being faithful to Christ’s call and trying to disciple others and help them to grow to be more like Jesus, is part of my desire to cultivate meaningful community. We’ve committed to a geographic place and a local group of believers for a significant amount of time (Lord willing at least a decade, and maybe several). That affects how I think about engaging local government, the local paper, people in the neighborhood, etc.
Robert Nisbet wrote an important book many decades ago called The Quest for Community. In it, he argues that commercial society creates change and disruption – and has for centuries. This change undermines old forms of association and community. Usually new forms of community form. At least they did until about the middle of the 20th century.
But post WWII, he observes that technological and economic change continue to erode old means of association and types of community. But very few new forms of community have been forming. And this, he argues, is largely due to intrusive government that crowds out and reduces the need for civil associations.
Many, many fewer people have their elderly parents live with them than in the past. Social security and Medicare are the biggest reasons for this change – most elderly people can get by without much day to day help from their adult children in ways that would be unimaginable without these major entitlement programs.
Increasingly local governments fund outreach and care for the homeless, or those in crisis. They carry out more functions that used to be done by the PTA or the Elks or churches. As a result, people are less active in forming and participating in civil associations. Religious entities like churches and some nonprofits are the few remaining holdouts.
I believe that one of the most important things we can do as good Christians (and as good citizens), is to wisely lean into voluntary civil associations – including political associations at the local level. This is what the founders’ had in mind when they talked about self-government. And it was what Alexis de Tocqueville found so incredible about the United States in the early 1800s. People would work with their neighbors and friends to solve problems. They wouldn’t call the police, or create a government housing agency, or expect the government to transfer money to reduce poverty.
Writing
I had an op-ed in The Blaze this week about the SEC’s new climate disclosure rules. A U. S. court has already issued a stay on the rules, which the SEC is not contesting, and so the rules will not go into effect until after they have gone through court proceedings. And I would give the SEC low odds of successfully persuading courts that they have the authority to issue these rules.
Game Corner
There may not be a game as iconic and widespread as chess. It has been played for well over a century and has spawned huge numbers of books and even some films. I would guess that more people know how to play chess than any other board game in the world.
My oldest two kids go through phases of playing chess with each other quite a bit. Teddy will sometimes rope me into playing with him during these phases. It’s fun to play because he understands the rules and has some basic strategy (he likes to tell people that he beat me once with a backrow checkmate that I had missed…).
I used to play a lot of chess in high school, and some in college too. It’s hard to find the time, though, to play seriously. I used to play online where you could get chess ratings and watch them go up or down. It was fun, slightly addictive even, and so I have avoided entering that world again. Still, it is a great game that requires discipline, concentration, and practice. And it is widely played and could be a great form of leisure – especially with friends in person.
When I play it now, it’s usually either speed chess or some variant. One game is called “Hand-Brain” that involves two teams of two players. One player is the “Brain” and decides which piece to move but not where, the other player is the “Hand” who decides where to move that piece. This version is especially fun to play with children as the “Brain.”
There is another version of team chess called “Bughouse” or “Bunkhouse” – it involves two chess boards and four players. Partners sit next to each other. One plays as white, the other as black on the two boards. Whenever you take an opponents’ piece, you pass it to your partner. You and your partner are allowed to place pieces anywhere on the board (with the exception that you can’t place pawns on the home rows).
As you can imagine, this is a wild way to play chess – quite different from the basic game. Still, it can be useful for learning how certain pieces can be leveraged in creative ways. One problem is that relatively few people have played this way and so it’s challenging to set up reasonably equal teams.
Have a great week!