It’s that time of the year when we become reflective making New Year’s resolutions promising ourselves that we will do better in those areas where we see reform is needed. As we watch the news unfold revealing one negative event after another, perhaps our country needs to make some New Year’s resolutions.

Wall Street and Washington share responsibility for our nation’s financial meltdown. It’s a chicken/egg call to determine which came first Wall Street’s greed or Washington’s see no evil/hear no evil pose. What’s clear is that Washington schemed to make the economy look better than it was, and Wall Street saw the caper as an opportunity to make its numbers too.

For many years the folks on Wall Street have justified ridiculously over-compensating their leaders with the notion that shareholder value justifies the practice. Now when there is no shareholder value, they still insist that the bonuses are needed to retain those who led the downfall. Haven’t they seen Christmas Vacation which teaches us those bonuses should not be totally discretionary?

Baseball, America’s pastime shows some of the same lack of integrity as it allowed the use of steroids to make the game more exciting hoping to fill seats. They, too, see no connection between salaries and excellence paying lots of 240 hitters millions. The New York Yankees, Wall Street’s team, have made over-compensation an art form. They exceed the salary cap annually accepting a 23 million dollar fine from the league as a cost of doing business. The new Yankee Godfather dismissed the practice saying, it’s our family business, and we’ll run it as we see fit.

Pro football, America’s other love, has a new sheriff running the show. There are so many criminals and thugs in football that he has come to town with a new “We’re not going to take it anymore” stance. Meanwhile coaches spy on each other and owners continue to hire more thugs. Jay Leno quipped that the penitentiary has enough pro football players to win the Super Bowl.

College athletics has become such a big business that colleges like the Military Academies, Stanford, Notre Dame and others where the concept of student athletes still remains, can no longer compete with the semi-pro programs. As you would expect, the coaches who deliver millions to the University are compensated with the shareholder value/Wall Street model.

Even in our personal lives cheating is the order of the day. The Divorce rate is at an all time high in America and spousal cheating is the chief cause. Of course, even our government officials have affairs and cheat on nearly everything. They build bridges to re-election, cozy up to lobbyists and choose party loyalty over loyalty to the country and solving its problems. Church membership is down probably because we don’t like weekly reminders of rules we should consider following.

It would seem that I’m suggesting that we are an ethically bankrupt society on a one way trip to oblivion. That’s not what I believe. I believe that the information age is bringing us the wrong information. We are a basically good country made up mostly of decent folks.

We just need a few changes to get back on track….Perhaps some New Year’s resolutions.

Think back for a minute back in the day, when integrity was more evident. We were under the care of parents and teachers who had stricter rules. They made sure we understood the rules. They taught us that winning was also about winning with integrity.

We also understood the consequences of breaking the rules. A trip to the office probably included a whack or two with a sturdy paddle and double jeopardy when word of the misdeed got to our parents. It’s highly unlikely in the day that the Government would decide that the rules governing war prisoners didn’t apply to us because we were all about rules. Businesses employed internal auditors to insure that the company complied with the accounting rules. Now even external auditors have become business consultants focusing on making the numbers rather than auditing them.

So I’m suggesting that America set some new standards or rules and spend some time and energy changing our course as it relates to integrity. So here are my New Year’s resolutions for our country.

1. As citizens we must tell our leaders we expect integrity to be the center of their values and operations. Punish companies who cheat and throw out politicians who fail to put the country first.
2. In our personal lives let’s make honesty, including self-talk, the “way we roll”
3. Reject the lunatic fringe ideas that get undo publication; favoring instead ideas that support balance and are grounded in our belief that we are the United States of America

HAPPY NEW YEAR AMERICA