Tolerance and Love

We must recognize at the outset that there is a difference between tolerance and tolerate. Your gracious tolerance for an individual does not grant him or her license to do wrong, nor does your tolerance obligate you to tolerate his or her misdeed. That distinction is fundamental to an understanding of this vital virtue.

Neighboring factions, whether they be identified as groups or gangs, schools or states, counties or countries, often develop animosity. Such tendencies make me wonder: Cannot boundary lines exist without becoming battle lines? Could not people unite in waging war against the evils that beset mankind instead of waging war on each other?

Risks of Boundless Tolerance

An erroneous assumption could be made that if a little of something is good, a lot must be better. Not so! Overdoses of needed medication can be toxic. Boundless mercy could oppose justice. So tolerance, without limit, could lead to spineless permissiveness.

The Lord drew boundary lines to define acceptable limits of tolerance. Danger rises when those divine limits are disobeyed. Just as parents teach little children not to run and play in the street, the Savior taught us that we need not tolerate evil. “Jesus went into the temple of God, and … and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers.” Though He loved the sinner, the Lord said that He “cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.” His Apostle Paul specified some of those sins in a letter to the Galatians. The list included “adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

“Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, … wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

“Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.”

To Paul’s list we might add the regrettable attitudes of bigotry, hypocrisy, and prejudice.

“We call upon all people everywhere to recommit themselves to the time-honored ideals of tolerance and mutual respect. We sincerely believe that as we acknowledge one another with consideration and compassion we will discover that we can all peacefully coexist despite our deepest differences.”

Taken from “Teach Us Tolerance and Love” by Russell M. Nelson. 

Complete discourse available at:

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1994/04/teach-us-tolerance-and-love?lang=eng

February 2016

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Discipline Becomes Dormant In The Absence of a Dream.

Everyone has motivation inside of them. The challenge though is that most don’t have goals that truly inspire them.

Think about it this way: the amount of our endurance is directly proportionate to the clarity of our vision.

If we have a crystal clear vision for our life, then there is naturally a strong connection between the sacrifices we must make today to have our goals met in the future.

If we don’t have a clear vision of our life then there is no reason for those short-term sacrifices because there is no pay off that we can see.

Discipline becomes dormant in the absence of a dream.

So as a leader, we don’t have the power to motivate people. What we can do is help people clarify their vision. If we can focus on their vision and help them create a plan to get them where they want to be, it’s more likely that they will become motivated because of it.

Help create a vision for somebody, help them accomplish that vision, and revisit that plan regularly and you will find that their motivation has come alive.

Someone once criticized Zig Ziglar by saying “Mr. Ziglar, the problem with all of this motivation that you provide people is that it doesn’t last.”

His response: “Well neither does bathing. That’s why I recommend it daily.”

Tax Inversion (Diverting Tax Dollars) - The Fault Lies With The U.S. Government, Not U.S. Companies.

Consequences from the inability of Congress to function come in many forms, and one of the most glaring emerged again with the $160 billion merger of two giant drug companies to avoid U.S. taxes this month.

The reverse merger of Pfizer, the maker of Viagra and Lipitor, and the significantly smaller Allergan, maker of Botox, so that Pfizer can relocate to Dublin and pay the lower corporate tax rate there is the latest and biggest example of what is called tax inversion — a legal tail wagging the dog trick that takes place mostly on paper.

It results in the U.S. losing billions of dollars in tax revenue each year – and U.S. shareholders taking a capital gains hit.

It also undermines the reputation of the U.S. as a place to do business and in the longer term will inevitably divert the relocated company's investment and job creation outside the U.S.

The Pfizer-Allergan deal is particularly provocative because it comes just days after the U.S. Treasury Department issued a second set of directives designed to block just this kind of inversion.

It seems likely, however, that this deal will slip under the wire of the various thresholds in ownership and revenue set by Treasury and evades these efforts to limit the benefits of this kind of relocation for tax purposes.

It shows once again the limits of what regulation can do to solve a fundamental problem that requires legislation.

As Treasury Secretary Jack Lew ruefully acknowledged in introducing the new rules last week, "There is only so much the Treasury Department can do to prevent these tax-avoidance transactions," he said in a statement. "Only legislation can decisively stop inversions."

In a conference call with reporters, Lew added hopefully that Treasury would continue to work with Congress "in a bipartisan manner to reform our broken business tax system and to eliminate inversions for good."

The reason companies like Pfizer take this drastic step is because U.S. corporate taxes are way too high, well out of line with the rates in other industrial countries. The top U.S. tax rate is 39%, for instance, while the tax in Ireland for most corporate income is 12.5%.

While all those famous loopholes that every politician promises to close reduce the effective tax rate in the U.S., it is still much higher than in other countries.

So the solution has been obvious for some time — reduce the U.S. corporate tax rate. The Obama administration proposed such a measure in 2012, but it got caught up in the partisan wrangling that has marked every such measure in recent years.

The timing of the Pfizer-Allergan deal seemed to show corporate America thumbing its nose at Treasury, and the fact that Allergan itself is now based in Dublin due to one of the original tax inversion deals only underscores the flagrant disregard for the government's efforts to rein in the tactic.

But these companies are only doing what companies do — maximizing profit by minimizing costs, including taxes.

They are essentially voting with their feet, to the detriment of U.S. business and employment.

But it is not their fault. The fault lies with lawmakers who fail to grasp the simplest facts of a global economy and get so involved in the political scrum that they lose sight of the goal.

Which is why President Obama missed the point in a weekly address last year when he accused these companies of being "unpatriotic."

Corporations may well be "people" in some senses of the word, but in a global economy they can hardly afford the luxury of being "patriotic."

Comparing them to individuals, as Obama did in his address, who should not be able to pick and choose what rules they follow, shows a failure to grasp some of the basic fundamentals of an open global economy.

And introducing a putative moral element into the mix only distracts from what really needs to be done – a legislative tax reform that enables U.S.-based companies to remain competitive internationally.

So while presidential hopefuls scrambled to condemn the new deal, they carefully avoided placing the blame where it belongs — on themselves, to the extent that they are or have been members of the U.S. Congress.

If politicians are serious about stopping this drain of economic resources, they would come together and finally get corporate tax reform done.

*Best article I've read on the subject: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/11/24/inversion-pfizer-allergan-taxes-merger-congress/76316110/

Our Greatest Happiness In This Life Will Come As We Follow God’s Commandments And Obey His Laws!

God’s commandments are not given to frustrate us or to become obstacles to our happiness. Just the opposite is true. He who created us and who loves us perfectly knows just how we need to live our lives in order to obtain the greatest happiness possible.

The commandments were God-given. Using our agency, we can set them aside. We cannot, however, change them, just as we cannot change the consequences which come from disobeying and breaking them.

May we realize that our greatest happiness in this life will come as we follow God’s commandments and obey His laws!