The Pope’s Social Media Guru Talks About That First Tweet

As Pope Benedict XVI prepares to send out his first tweet on Dec. 12, few wait with greater anticipation than Monsignor Paul Tighe. As Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Tighe is the Pope’s social media guy. I spoke with the Irish-born priest about how he’s easing the leader of the Catholic Church—who will tweet under @Pontifex—into the digital world.

How does the Pope feel about doing his first tweet?
I think he’s intrigued and he’s pleased. We’ve been waiting for the questions. We have to select questions and engage him around those questions. I wish we could just have it lined up, but each tweet will have been seen and approved by the pope.

Do you anticipate daily tweets?
Initially, I think it will be infrequent and regular, probably related to those set piece moments where the Pope addresses the world. On Sunday, he gives a public address in St. Peter’s Square. Wednesday audience is another public occasion. In the preparation of that, the Pope can give some attention to the formulation of a tweet so that it’s actually coming from him. For the initial launch, he will respond directly to a number of questions pertaining to faith.

Did Twitter help?
They know how to establish a sense of occasion. They’ve been extremely helpful, particularly the vice president for social innovation, Claire Diaz-Ortiz.

The prospect of being hacked must be a particular concern.
We’ve worked with Twitter on this. They’ve worked with other major global figures and they’ve been able to assure them and help them have appropriate levels of security, whether it’s Barack Obama or the Dalai Lama. We feel we have as good security as it’s possible to have with that medium.

Why doesn’t the Pope follow anyone?
The choice between following and not following was partly because we noticed the Dalai Lama didn’t follow anyone. How do you decide who do you follow? That’s one reason why Facebook (FB), where you have to consciously decide who is and who isn’t a friend, wouldn’t be the best medium. We could have looked at following cardinals and bishops but then what?

Barack Obama follows more than 600,000 people.
Maybe we should talk about this as a best practice for global Church leaders.

Why now?
A number of figures, from cardinals and bishops to individual believers, are quite present in Twitter. In a sense, the Pope’s presence is, ex post facto, an endorsement or encouragement of them. We have a lot of people who are saying, “If the Pope is going in there, maybe it’s time for me.” We’ve been looking at this actively at least since January, when the Pope gave a message focused on silence in advance of World Communications Day.

Silence?
Silence is an integral part of communications. If you’re not not silent, you’re not listening. He feels that if we use these well, we can be listening. Social media gives you a means to listen. This has extraordinary potential in helping to figure out how people are interpreting your message. The Pope feels new media can also help to foster attitudes of silence and reflection and teach people meditation. He also said that it’s possible, using very small phrases, to communicate important truths.

How do you get those truths down to 140 characters?
It’s a challenge, but the essence of biblical teaching is short. They’re pithy. Last year, we divided the Pope’s message for Lent into 40 tweets or 40 short phrases. We went on a site we created about four years ago called Pope2you.net and asked if anyone wanted to get it. About 30,000 wanted to get one of the Pope’s tweets every day for Lent.

I saw a video on the home page for Advent, Gangnam Style.
The Diocese of Sydney was responsible for that. It’s a great site. We spent about €2,000 ($ 2,599) on it. In the first week, we had 5 million hits. We have 25 people working full time in the council. The Church is a community of communities. It’s not unlike a network. Look at that Advent video. We liked it. We put it on our website and other dioceses picked it up. I sent it to my nephews and nieces in Ireland and they loved it. That’s the power of social media.

I know. The pope has 610,000 followers without having done a single tweet.
It’s not about trying to clock up the number of followers. But there’s a certain little pleasure in seeing that the numbers are relatively good. But we’re not in competition with anyone. The name of the game is not about followers of the Pope. It’s about ways to reach people who may be touched by, strengthened by, encouraged by the words of the Gospel. If there are followers, they’re followers of Christ.

So Twitter is a new place to preach.
It’s almost like the equivalent of the old marketplaces where Jesus went to engage people. That’s where we have to be, with all of its ambiguities and difficulties, because that’s where the people are.

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Australian prank call radio to donate profits to nurse’s family

CANBERRA (Reuters) – The Australian radio station behind a prank call to a British hospital will donate its advertising revenue until the end of the year to a fund for the family of the nurse who apparently took her own life after the stunt, the company said on Tuesday.

Southern Cross Austereo, parent company of Sydney radio station 2Day FM, said it would donate all advertising revenue, with a minimum contribution of A$ 500,000 ($ 525,000), to a memorial fund for the nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, who answered the telephone at the hospital treating Prince William’s pregnant wife, Kate.

The company has suspended the Sydney-based announcers, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, scrapped their “Hot 30″ programme and suspended advertising on the station in the wake of the Saldanha’s death. Southern Cross said it would resume advertising on its station from Thursday.

“It is a terrible tragedy and our thoughts continue to be with the family,” Southern Cross Chief Executive Officer Rhys Holleran said in a statement.

“We hope that by contributing to a memorial fund we can help to provide the Saldanha family with the support they need at this very difficult time.”

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Notorious patent troll hits RIM with new lawsuit, seeks BlackBerry sales ban

Well-known patent troll Wi-LAN has filed a new lawsuit against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Wi-LAN, which describes itself as “a leading intellectual property licensing company,” claims RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones infringe U.S. Patent No. 6,260,168, owned by Wi-LAN, which relates to Bluetooth implementation. The lawsuit covers multiple BlackBerry handsets including Bold, Torch, Pearl and Storm models, Reuters reports. Wi-LAN is reportedly seeking unspecified damages and is looking to ban sales of RIM’s infringing BlackBerry phones in the United States.

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‘Lincoln’ leads Critics’ Choice Awards nominees

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Film critics love “Lincoln.” The historical drama earned a record-breaking 13 nominations for the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards.

The Broadcast Film Critics Association announced the nominees for its 18th annual awards ceremony Tuesday in Los Angeles.

“Lincoln” beat the 12 nods earned by 2010′s “Black Swan” with bids for director Steven Spielberg, star Daniel Day-Lewis and supporting actors Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones, as well as cinematography, adapted screenplay, costume design, makeup, editing, art direction, score and acting ensemble.

“Les Miserables” follows with 11 nominations and “Silver Linings Playbook” has 10. “Life of Pi” earned nine nods. “Argo,” ”Skyfall” and “The Master” each have seven.

Winners will be announced Jan. 10, 2013, at a ceremony set to be broadcast live on the CW network.

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Online:

www.criticschoice.com

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Head of $3B Texas cancer effort asks to resign

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The executive director of a troubled $ 3 billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas has submitted his resignation letter amid escalating scrutiny over the management of the nation’s second-biggest pot of cancer research dollars.

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas made Bill Gimson‘s resignation letter public on Tuesday. Gimson has led the state agency since it launched in 2009 but fell under mounting criticism over the recent disclosure that an $ 11 million award to a private company was never reviewed.

Gimson wrote that he had been “placed in a situation where I can no longer feel effective.”

The agency’s board must still approve his request to resign.

Only the National Institutes of Health doles out more cancer research dollars than CPRIT.

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Wall Street edges up with help from McDonald’s

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks were modestly higher on Monday, helped by stronger-than-expected sales from McDonald’s, but gains were constrained as investors awaited any sign of progress in talks to avert the so-called fiscal cliff.

Developments in Europe also tempered sentiment after Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said he would resign once the 2013 budget is approved. The move added to uncertainty about reducing euro zone debt and drove Italy’s borrowing costs higher.

U.S. President Barack Obama met with Republican House Speaker John Boehner on Sunday to negotiate a deal for avoiding the “fiscal cliff” that is set to go into effect in the new year.

The two sides declined to provide details about the unannounced meeting. Obama is expected to make remarks at 2 p.m. (1900 GMT) from Michigan where he is touring an auto plant.

The fiscal cliff talks have kept markets on edge in the last month as investors worry the scheduled measures could send the economy into recession if politicians do not reach a deal.

While the negotiations are at the forefront of investors‘ minds, most have adopted the position that a deal will be reached, even if it is at the last minute, said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer’s Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio.

“We haven’t had any ‘progress’ the last two weeks or so, yet all in all equity markets have continued to hang tough,” said Detrick. “The rhetoric from Washington is strong, but Wall Street is betting something probably will get done.”

The Dow was helped by a gain in McDonald’s Corp . The fast food chain’s stronger-than-expected November sales marked a rebound after a decline in October. The stock was up 1 percent at $ 89.33.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 32.64 points, or 0.25 percent, to 13,187.77. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.spx> added 1.09 points, or 0.08 percent, to 1,419.16. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> rose 9.90 points, or 0.33 percent, to 2,987.95.</.ixic></.spx></.dji>

Ingersoll-Rand Plc said it will spin off its security division and announced a $ 2 billion share buyback, sending its shares up 2.4 percent at $ 49.86.

Cisco Systems boosted the Nasdaq after it laid out its midterm growth strategy on Friday. Its shares were up 2 percent at $ 19.72.

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RIM teases BlackBerry 10 launch with image of first BB10 smartphone

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Black women battle obesity with dialogue, action

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nicole Ari Parker was motivated by frustration. For Star Jones, it was a matter of life or death. Toni Carey wanted a fresh start after a bad breakup.

All three have launched individual campaigns that reflect an emerging priority for African-American women: finding creative ways to combat the obesity epidemic that threatens their longevity.

African-American women have the highest obesity rate of any group of Americans. Four out of five black women have a body mass index above 25 percent, the threshold for being overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By comparison, nearly two-thirds of Americans overall are in this category, the CDC said.

Many black women seem to not be be bothered that they are generally heavier than other Americans.

Calorie-rich, traditional soul food is a staple in the diets of many African-Americans, and curvy black women are embraced positively through slang praising them as “thick” with a “little meat on their bones,” or through songs like the Commodore’s “Brick House” or “Bootylicious” by Destiny’s Child. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Washington Post earlier this year found that 66 percent of overweight black women had high self-esteem, while 41 percent of average-sized or thin white women had high self-esteem.

Still, that doesn’t mean black women reject the need to become healthier.

Historically black, all-female Spelman College in Atlanta is disbanding its NCAA teams and devoting those resources to a campus-wide wellness program. In an open letter announcing Spelman’s “wellness revolution,” president Beverly Daniel Tatum cited a campus analysis that found many of Spelman’s 2,100 students already have high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes or other chronic ailments.

“Spelman has an opportunity to change the health trajectory of our students and, through their influence, the communities from which they come,” Tatum’s letter said.

Jones, who underwent open heart surgery in 2010 at age 47 and now urges awareness about heart disease among black women, was met by an overflow crowd earlier this year when she convened a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation panel on black women and obesity.

“We have to get ourselves out of being conditioned to think that using soft words so we don’t hurt peoples’ feelings is doing them any favor,” Jones said. “Curvy, big-boned, hefty, full-figured, fluffy, chubby. Those are all words designed to make people feel better about themselves. That wasn’t helpful to me.”

Jones once embraced being large and fabulous, at 5 feet 5 inches tall and 300 pounds. But under that exterior, she said, she was morbidly obese, suffering from extreme fatigue, nausea, lightheadedness, heart palpitations and blurred vision. The attorney and TV personality also had gastric bypass surgery in 2003.

Now, she advises women to make simple changes such as reducing salt intake, exercising 30 minutes a day, quitting smoking, controlling portion sizes and making nutritious dietary choices.

Nutritionist and author Rovenia M. Brock, known professionally as Dr. Ro, agrees with Jones. She said getting active is only about 20 percent of the fight against obesity. The rest revolves around how much people eat.

“Our plates are killing us,” she said.

Brock said “food deserts,” or urban areas that lack quality supermarkets, are a real obstacle. She suggested getting around that by carpooling with neighbors to stores in areas with higher-quality grocery options or buying food in bulk. She also suggested growing herbs and vegetables in window-box gardens.

“Stop focusing on what’s not there, or what you think is not there,” Brock said. “We have to get out of this wimpy, ‘woe is me’ mentality.”

While first lady Michelle Obama has encouraged exercise through her “Let’s Move” campaign targeting childhood obesity, the spark for this current interest among black women may have been comments last year by Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, who observed publicly that women must stop allowing concern about their hair to prevent them from exercising.

Some black women visit salons as often as every two weeks, investing several hours and anywhere from $ 50 to hundreds of dollars each visit — activity that, according to the Black Owned Beauty Supply Association, helps fuel a $ 9 billion black hair care and cosmetics industry.

In an interview during a health conference in Washington last week, Benjamin said the damage sweat can inflict on costly hairstyles can affect women’s willingness to work out, and she hopes to change that. She goes to beauty industry conferences to encourage stylists to create exercise-friendly hairdos.

“I wouldn’t say we use it as an excuse, we use it as a barrier,” Benjamin said. “And that’s not one of the barriers anymore. We’re always going to have problems with balancing our lives, but we could take that one out.”

Parker, an actress who starred in “A Streetcar Named Desire” on Broadway earlier this year, understands this dilemma well. Out of personal frustration over maintaining both her workout and her hair, she created “Save Your Do” Gymwrap — a headband that can be wrapped around the hair in a way that minimizes sweat and preserves hairstyles.

“Not just as a black woman, but as a woman, since the beginning of time, beauty has been our responsibility,” Parker said in an interview. Because of that, she said, exercise has become linked with vanity instead of health.

“We’ve turned exercise into a weight-loss regimen,” Parker said. “No. Exercise is about being grateful for the body you have and sustaining the life you have. … Take all the hype out of the exercise and think of it as brushing your teeth.”

With their mutual family histories of diabetes and high blood pressure in mind, Carey, 28, and her sorority sister Ashley Hicks, 29, co-founded the running club Black Girls Run. Carey also considered it a new beginning after a bad breakup and a move across country. Since 2009, Black Girls Run has amassed 52,000 members who serve as a support system for runners.

Black Girls Run has about 60 groups nationwide that coordinate local races in Atlanta, New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C, Houston and Greensboro, N.C. Most groups run at least five times a week. Next month, the national running club will take its first “Black Girls Run — Preserve the Sexy” tour to cities with high obesity rates. The tour includes health and fitness clinics with information on nutrition, hair maintenance and running gear.

“We found that when you want to get healthy and when you want to be active, it’s intimidating,” Carey said. “You don’t know where to start. There’s a little coaxing that has to go along with that.”

Parker said once African-American women place value on their bodies and longevity, everything else will follow. It costs her nothing, she said, to walk around an outdoor track with her husband, actor Boris Kodjoe, or run up and down stairs at home with her headphones.

“One good step breeds another one,” Parker said. “You’re going to have one less margarita, one less scoop of Thanksgiving macaroni … and yet you’re not doing anything fanatical or dramatic.”

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Seeing Through the Fog of ‘Chemo-Brain’

Two weeks ago, Diem Brown, contestant of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge, shared on her PEOPLE.com blog her frustration with her chemo-brain, after having received chemotherapy over the Thanksgiving holiday for recently diagnosed ovarian cancer.

She writes, “Stressed out, overwhelmed and soooo annoyed that your mind isn’t working as it should. This, my friends, is an example of chemo brain!”

Unfortunately, as a surgeon, I have witnessed too many patients get the diagnosis of cancer. If they can transcend the initial shock, there is a desperation to understand what their lives will be like as cancer patients, and what the odds are that they will be cancer survivors.

But for many women, their fear of death is as strong as their fear of chemotherapy, the poison that along with hope, is inseparable from the Hollywood images of the sick, nauseated, thin and bald.

Diem refers to “chemo-brain”, also known as “chemo-fog”, a side effect of chemotherapy that causes problems with memory, information processing, and mood –- effects that can persistent for as many as 20 years after treatment has subsided.

Mental dullness or fatigue and an inability to focus characterized by difficulty organizing thoughts and keeping memories has also been described by patients who suffer from chemotherapy induced cognitive dysfunction.

For years, chemo-brain went largely unrecognized by health care professionals, and those who suffered from it were left without answers to their confusion.

Recently, through the Internet, web chatting and blogging, many women who suffered from chemo-brain realized they were not alone, and over the last few years, several studies have been done giving credit to the condition. But, as they say, you have to see it to believe it.

And now we can see it. In the process of presenting my own research discussing the use of imaging in breast cancer patients at this week’s San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, I stumbled across a presentation discussing how scientists are trying to clear the chemo-fog by imaging the brain.

Dr. Bernadine Cimprich from the University of Michigan, along with a group of scientists from the University of Washington and University of Toronto took the stage in San Antonio Friday to shed some light through the fog, and offer a strategy at prevention.

Since chemo-brain doesn’t affect all cancer patients to the same degree, they asked the question, are some patients who receive chemotherapy predisposed to developing the disease?

Chemo-brain has been studied before, but has been difficult to characterize because so many different types of drugs and regimens are used, and for the most part patient’s memory and cognition are not studied prior to starting cancer therapy.

To help shed some light on the subject, these researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI – a technology that uses magnets to image the brain as it works.

By taking pictures of the brain before and after chemotherapy, they found that patients who suffered from this condition had inherently different function from those who did not before they had even received treatment.

“Brain imaging before treatment showed reduced function in frontal [brain] regions” says Dr. Cimprich, the precise regions that are needed to perform working memory and guide our day-to-day activities, such as remembering the shopping list, our finding our way home.

Identifying patients who may be predisposed to developing chemo-brain can help oncologists alter treatment strategies in efforts to reduce or eliminate the fog.

Who are the patients at highest risk? Dr. Cimprich’s team used surveys to evaluate pre-treatment cognitive function and found that fatigue is a major factor. He suggests that “early interventions targeting fatigue may improve cognitive function and reduce the distress of chemo-brain”.

While the small study involved 98 patients, only 29 of which received chemotherapy, it still lays ground to understand the true nature of chemo-brain, and as Dr. Cimprich emphasizes, identifying the problem early is crucial, because early cognitive problems can become worse over time.

In her blog, Diem suggests making lists as a way to overcome her chemo-brain. And while we all know that stressful times can side track our minds and dull our spirits, until science can give us better answers, research suggests that a deep breath and a little yoga may help do the job of lifting the fog on chemo-brain.

Dr. Christopher Tokin is a surgical resident at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and a resident alumnus of the ABC News Medical Unit.

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The Fiscal Cliff Isn’t the Problem

Early in Bill Bryson’s book A Walk in the Woods, the story of his ill-starred Appalachian Trail expedition, the author’s out-of-shape and impulsive hiking companion, Katz, decides his backpack is too heavy. So he starts throwing out the food they’d packed for the trip: rice, pepperoni, cheese, peanuts, Spam—he even discards coffee filters, which weigh next to nothing.

Panic about the fiscal cliff is threatening to lead Congress into the same short-term thinking. Investments in education, scientific research, and infrastructure—which account for a tiny portion of federal spending but make the economy more productive in the long run—are at risk. Restraining them by spending cap or sequester would be as dumb as discarding coffee filters to lighten one’s backpack. Yet if Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on a budget compromise by the end of the year, that’s what could happen.

A new Bloomberg Government analysis makes clear just how much pressure Washington is under. Instead of needing $ 4 trillion in deficit cuts over 10 years to stabilize the ratio of debt to gross domestic product ratio, negotiators need $ 5.9 trillion in cuts, according to Bloomberg Government’s calculations. In a Dec. 4 interview with Bloomberg Television, President Obama said he’ll fight to protect investments in things like education. He’s right. House Speaker John Boehner says the U.S. needs to grapple with big projected deficits in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. He’s right, too. But their two rights have made a wrong: stalemate.

Illustration by Ana Benaroya

The solution is to figure out what problems need solving on which time scale. The most urgent priority is keeping the roughly $ 600 billion hit to GDP from kicking in. Edward Kleinbard, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, who was chief of staff for the Joint Committee on Taxation from 2007 to 2009, proposes turning the cliff into a ramp. He would suspend the automatic spending cuts and allow the Bush tax cuts to expire in three years instead of overnight. Congress would commit to devote all of the savings from future spending cuts to lowering tax rates, but starting with the lowest brackets, not the highest. Says Kleinbard: “None of this is impossible.”

After that comes a bigger challenge: getting the economy to grow faster and foster innovation to make burdens on future generations as light as possible. Supporting the aged and infirm will be far easier if median household income rises to, say, $ 75,000 adjusted for inflation, rather than remaining stuck at just over $ 50,000. And Medicare and Medicaid expenses will be less daunting if medicine can find cures for killers such as diabetes and dementia.

That’s why it’s foolish to slash public programs indiscriminately to get out of the fiscal hole. It’s up to government to fund growth-enhancing investments that the private sector does too little of. James Heckman, a Nobel prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, has shown that the return on a dollar invested in human capital is highest from birth to age five, lower during the school years, and lowest for adult job training. Yet the budget for Head Start, which helps children from low-income families aged five and younger to get ready for school, is paltry relative to the benefits bestowed on older Americans.

Physical capital is underfunded as well. In 2009 the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the U.S. a grade of D for infrastructure. It’s doubtful that things are much better now; only about $ 100 billion of the Obama administration’s nearly $ 800 billion stimulus program went toward roads, bridges, and other needs. Infrastructure investment would make the U.S. more competitive in the long run while creating jobs in the short run, and since the U.S. can borrow for next to nothing, the financing would be cheap. But Boehner is opposing Obama’s debt proposal—which includes $ 50 billion in infrastructure spending—because it doesn’t cut spending enough. That’s unfortunate.

Where could the U.S. cut that wouldn’t damage its growth potential? The obvious targets are defense and entitlements, which together account for nearly three-quarters of federal spending outside of interest payments. The U.S. spends more on its military than the next 13 countries combined; that would suggest potential for some nips and tucks. Social Security’s imbalance could be fixed by raising the ceiling for wages subject to the payroll tax. The knottier problems are Medicare and Medicaid, whose costs have been driven up by extraordinarily inefficient health-care spending. The U.S. spends 53 percent more on health care per capita than No. 2 Norway while getting worse results. (Norwegians’ life expectancy at birth is a year and a half longer.)

Making benefits less generous is the no-brainer way to close the gap. The forward-thinking way is to conquer diseases that sap America’s human and economic potential, as Jonas Salk’s vaccine did for polio in the 1950s. Medicare and Medicaid alone spend $ 140 billion a year on dementia care, the Alzheimer’s Association estimates, yet the U.S. spends only about half a billion dollars a year researching cures. George Vradenburg, chairman of USAgainstAlzheimer’s, argues that the disease could be mostly eliminated by 2020 with Manhattan Project-size funding; cuts to research could make the problem worse. “This disease could very well become the financial and social sinkhole of the 21st century,” says gerontologist Ken Dychtwald, chief executive officer of the consulting firm Age Wave.

Taxes, too, need to be reformed to amplify growth. Loopholes are a good place to start. The home mortgage interest deduction could be phased out over a long period, since all it does is encourage people to buy bigger houses and take on more debt. Savings incentives in the tax code mostly benefit the rich without actually increasing the rate of savings. But zeroing out all tax breaks would be a mistake. Some, like the one for research and development, enhance growth.

There is, of course, a point at which high tax rates slow the economy. Conservatives argue for holding down rates on capital gains and dividends while preserving all of the Bush high-end cuts on ordinary income. But the U.S. appears to be well shy of the tipping point at which hiking taxes would be counterproductive. The economy grew faster in the 1950s when the highest rate was 91 percent.

What’s limiting business investment and hiring today isn’t the prospect of slightly higher tax rates but the fear that there won’t be enough customers. Weak, uncertain demand is the lasting legacy of the Great Recession and the slow rebound since. In manufacturing, mining, and utilities, depreciation has outpaced fresh investment since the start of the recession in December 2007, leaving the sector with a decline in productive capacity, according to Federal Reserve data. Recessions have lasting consequences: Eroding capacity, they limit the economy’s ability to grow—and generate tax revenue—in the future.

Refocusing the budget debate on the future is something that both conservatives and liberals should support. Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a fiscally conservative Democrat, worries that Congress isn’t taking the long-term entitlements crisis seriously. He says the government should copy the private sector by adopting accrual accounting instead of just measuring each year’s cash in and cash out. Accrual accounting would acknowledge how much the country owes future retirees. It would also differentiate investments in roads, bridges, and Head Start from day-to-day spending on paper clips and electricity. “The government is the last major entity left in America that doesn’t use accrual accounting,” says Cooper. “The business mantra is, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Without that kind of discipline, he says, “Congress has very poor eyesight and won’t necessarily cut in the right place.”

Or, to put it in terms Katz might understand: When you still have 2,000 miles to hike, don’t throw away all of your pepperoni.

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