A Conservative Agenda: Education (Part One)

All right, let’s talk about the agenda I outlined in my book. As I noted, the idea is to create an agenda that appeals to the public at large, who are not ideologues. The purpose is to spot the things that matter to average Americans and address them in ways that fit with conservative principles so they will see a reason to vote for us. Let’s start with the issue of the cost of college.

Education is one of the top priorities for most Americans, and any successful agenda must deal with this issue and must address both K-12 and college. Today we start with college. College is vitally important to people’s success and to the success of the country as a whole. As I pointed out a couple weeks ago, people with college degrees will do much, much better than the “I never needs no skooling” crowd by as much as $5.3 million over the course of their careers, depending on the degrees they choose. They are also better off in recessions and they recover quicker. Anyone who tells you we shouldn’t be encouraging people to go to college is a fool.

But there is a problem with college: cost. I first outlined this for you back in 2009. Under the current system, students are being weighed down with the equivalent of a mortgage in student loan debt just to get through college. In 1981, the average yearly cost of attending a four-year college program was $3,499 (that’s in 2011 dollars). Today, it’s up to $22,092! That means college is 6.3 times more expensive in real terms today than it was in 1980. Consequently, today’s students will pay around $89,000 for an undergraduate degree and most of that will be debt. Government figures say that students currently owe more than one trillion dollars in student loan debt.

What this means is that these students, the best and brightest among us, are saddled with a debt that will take 10-15 years to pay off. So rather than starting families, buying homes, starting retirement plans, investing, building businesses, etc., they will spend their most productive years paying off debt. That is a huge disservice to them and to our economy. It’s bad for the interior of the country too (red states) because it means the smarter kids need to stay on the coasts where they earn more to pay back their loans.

More importantly, this is an issue that resonates with the public. Parents worry that their kids can’t afford college or will be weighed down forever by this... or they dread becoming co-signers. College kids despise the debt they are being saddled with. And young professionals struggle to pay off their debts for years. Each of those groups are groups the GOP lost in a big way. Why did the GOP lose them? Well, for one thing, because the GOP response to this issue has been offensive and stupid: basically, conservatives have groused that people shouldn’t go to college. Talk about a response that’s guaranteed to lose the public!

So what should conservatives offer? Three things come to mind, each of which is designed to make college more affordable and more accessible:

(1) Free State College for the Top 15%. Conservatives should advocate letting the Top 15% of high school graduates go to any state college anywhere in the United States for free, provided they maintain a 3.2 GPA or higher.

The purpose here is to make sure that the brightest kids can always afford to go to college. It also frees these kids up from student loan debt when they get out so they can act freely within the economy. It also provides an incentive for high school kids and their parents to make sure they do their best to get into that Top 15%. And it will help state colleges attract the kids they normally lose to places like Harvard.

But what about cost? You might be surprised. In 2012, 3.4 million students graduated from high school, so 510,000 students would be eligible for this program. The average in-state tuition at the moment is around $8,000 a year. Thus, the cost of this program would be $4.08 billion if they all participate – which they won’t. This is less than 10% of the Federal Government’s current $41 billion financial aid budget, which we can probably slash in half with our next idea.

(2) Maximum Pricing Provisions. The primary reason college costs have shot up is because student loans act like a pricing mechanism which lets colleges coordinate their rates. The result is that as loan availability has gone up, so have prices because schools know students can afford it. To counter this, we would ideally drop the student loan program entirely and watch colleges dramatically slash their prices to attract the students. But that’s politically impossible and suggesting it would only hurt us. So, instead, we should advocate the government using its market power to set maximum prices. Specifically, we should propose that any institution that wants its students to be eligible to receive federal loans cannot charge those students more than the average in-state tuition charged by state schools nationwide. Further, if the students are required to live on campus, then room and board must be provided at cost to those students. This will slash the cost of college dramatically and immediately.

But wait, how can a conservative argue for a price control? Because this isn’t a price control. An actual price control is an attempt to control a free market. This is not that. This is simply a condition on the receipt of a subsidy, and if a particular school believes this is unfair, then they are free to forgo the subsidy and charge market prices instead. Moreover, keep in mind that this is hardly a novel idea. The government already does this when it issues fixed-fee contracts to contractors, when it imposes “most-favored customer” clauses or unilaterally sets prices under Medicare, and conservatives are more than happy to argue that things like welfare should come with strings attached. It’s disingenuous to say we can dictate terms to poor people but not to rich schools.

And make no mistake, these schools are stinking rich. Harvard’s endowment is more than $34 billion dollars. Sixty-nine colleges have endowments larger than one billion dollars each. All told, colleges hold $410 billion in investments. These schools do not need taxpayer dollars to survive. If they don’t like this change, then they can hope students will keep paying their outrageous prices or they can dig into those endowments to make schools cheaper for students... they can finally face the free market.

(3) Fed Discount Rate Interest Rates. Finally, we need a solution for the people who are already saddled with these debts. The Democrats talk about forgiving student loan debt, but there’s too much to forgive at a trillion dollars. A better plan would be to convert all debts to a repayment schedule of 20 years and charge students the Federal Funds Discount Rate which the federal government charges to the nation’s biggest banks (about 0.75%). Seriously, if it’s good enough for banks, it should be good enough for taxpayers as well.

Think about what this agenda does. First, it promises the people most concerned about education that their kids can get a good college education for free (or very cheaply). It slashes the subsidy that has been ensconced in the law to support ultra-rich schools. It cuts the cost of college probably by a factor of 3 or 4, which will help current and future students. By all but eliminating interest rates, it helps the young professionals who are struggling with college debt. And its costs can be absorbed within the present system. Offering this will go a long way toward winning over the college students, the young families, and the minority families we have lost in record numbers.

Thoughts?

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Let's Move On

Our fringe has become a problem. They offer nothing but ignorance, hypocrisy, and unfocused hate, which they aim at the Republicans. They are disloyal and destructive, and I have been trying to stop talking about them because it’s pointless to engage them and dangerous to humor them. And, frankly, I’m sick of them. But something happened Sunday needs to be called out. Then it’s time to move on.

Our fringe is a problem. They are 6% of the American public (twice as large as gays, half as large as Hispanics or blacks, just smaller than Jews and Muslims) who act like a doomsday cult and the other 84% of the public pretty much despises them. What’s more, they have become obsessed with destroying the Republicans and every conservative who doesn’t foam at the mouth like they do.

Fortunately, everything I’ve seen tells me that they have peaked at something less than 20% of the GOP, and their influence is waning because their own disloyalty makes them unreliable. And I’m seeing a lot of signs that the Republicans are moving on from them, including a lot of big name conservatives like Tom Coburn, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, etc. There are even signs that Rand Paul is avoiding them. The writing is on the wall.

What will probably finish them off is the re-election of Mitch McConnell. For many years, the fringe dictated Republican policy, even as they falsely whined that the Republicans were under the control of secret RINOs. Lately, the Republicans have started fighting back and they seem to have found a formula to defend themselves against the fringe: full and open support of the people the fringe attacks. This is bad news for the fringe. So they, led by Glenn Beck and Mark Levin, have chosen Mitch McConnell as a demonstration of their power. If they can unseat McConnell in the primary, then they believe they can cow the Republicans back into line. But in taking this risk, they are exposing their weakness to the Republicans. If they lose, then their influence will be destroyed within the Party.

My money is on McConnell.

In any event, I am done with them. It’s not productive to whine and scream about traitors and doomsday. It’s pointless to discuss a quasi-ideology that is irrational and can’t even define itself except as requiring the outing of the disloyal. It is dishonest to make up facts, to invent secret truths, and to try to trick people into following you. So from now on, I have no intention of talking about these shits anymore because they are simply not relevant to America’s future.

Instead, I’m going to talk about conservatism, something people like Levin, Savage, Rush, Beck, Hannity, Bachmann, Cruz, and the rest know precious little about. I’m going to start Wednesday by talking about the agenda I wrote about and we’ll see where that takes us. It’s time to talk about America.

But first, there was something that happened this Sunday that needs to be called out. The fringer in question is a local radio host named Jimmy Lakey. Lakey is another Levin/Beck/Limbaugh. He banks on his audience being low-information listeners who simply lap up the lies he spews as he tells them they are superior Americans while he warns them that they can’t verify the things he tells them because some mystery conspiracy won’t let this information out... except to him. Here’s what he did Sunday.

As I was preparing to watch football, I suddenly got a call from a relative. They were deeply worried about “what was happening in DC” and they told me to turn on Lakey. So I did. Here is what Lakey said:

1. There are over a million veterans in DC right now.
2. They are trying to protest something (unexplained) which is bad for Obama.
3. Obama fears them and said something (unexplained).
4. This caused them to start toward the White House to voice their objections.
5. The evil tyrant Obama (with the full support of Boehner... naturally) “called out the riot police.”
6. There are "riot police surrounding the White House right now!"
7. There are reports they’ve fired tear gas into the crowd.
8. But don’t expect to find this on the news because the MSM won’t tell you about this. “Only a couple images have leaked out onto the net.”
9. Then he finished with a gratuitous attack on the Republicans for “being identical to the Democrats blah blah blah” and not supporting the veterans.

Glenn Beck then put this on his website (complete with video) and Drudge linked to it too.

None of this is true.

Based on the photos, there were only a couple thousand people tops... maybe less than 2,000. See below.

What they wanted is not clear and Lakey sure as hell didn’t know. But one thing is clear: the White House does not call out riot police. They don’t have any. What happened is that a group of about eight to ten DC police or Park Police (it's not clear which) came to the fence near the White House to talk to a group demonstrators. They were surrounded by more journalists than protestors. They spoke briefly with the leader of the rowdies and then left.

As anyone who has lived in DC can tell you, this is for show. This is what they always do when protest groups come to town... and Glenn Beck knows it! There are segments of these groups who like to get arrested for fundraising purposes, and the DC police come out and negotiate that so no one gets hurt. It's all for show and only those who want to get arrested. Then everyone goes home. These cops left after less than two minutes. No one fired tear gas... no one even had tear gas. Watch the video and you'll see that the cops didn't even raise their voices.

Lakey's presentation is a lie. It is the same type of lie all these guys keep inventing. They make things up to sell you the idea that they are “genuine” and everyone else is a traitor. They make things up to scare you. They play on your ignorance of the law, of the constitution, of how the government works and of world events to sell you a doomsday version of the world to outrage you. Then they feed you this line of shit that they are the only ones who can tell you the truth because everyone else is trying to suppress the truth. It is despicable.

There is no Republican plot to shutdown Levin as he argues. There is no secret informant telling Beck that the Republicans are plotting against Beck or Freedom Works as he and they claim. The media does not control the net. The media does not control Fox News. The Republicans are not in league with the Democrats. And the fringe has done more damage to the Republican brand with the public in the last few years than decades of Democratic attacks. Seriously, stop believing a word that you hear from these people.

That’s my final word on the matter. Talk radio is dead to me. It’s time to move on to something constructive. It’s time to talk about conservatism. It’s time to take an optimistic look forward, as Reagan did, and ask ourselves how we make America better and help her live up to her potential.

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Conservatism and the City

There are many disagreements among us right-wing nuts about how the demographic picture looks, but one aspect of it has rarely been up for debate: Urban areas suck. Heck, if it wasn't for those inner-city areas, the Democrats would be dead in the water. Can this be changed? Well, probably not, but we can still try.

Why are the cities so bad for Republicans? The most obvious answer: They're full of black people! (This is where I say "Come on, everybody was thinking it, I just said it!") But seriously, American large cities commonly have populations that are minority-majority, low-income, and welfare-dependent: in short, they are reliably liberal voting blocs. And in many cases, such as Newark, Baltimore and America's favorite example of leftist failure, this is a fairly sufficient explanation. But what about other cities, such as Indianapolis or Nashville, which have significantly different compositions and yet tend to vote blue as well? What's the deal there?

Here's the thing. The GOP has, for a very long time, been a party of suburban and rural voters, not of the big cities. Being a rural guy myself, I can't complain too much; but being so composed, I think conservatives have forgotten that urban constituencies have different interests and concerns, especially given the grassroots activism of late. Not that such activism is a bad thing, don't get me wrong; when you're focused on big issues like liberty and faith, though, that doesn't leave much time for the municipal-based issues that determine city slickers' votes. Matters like public transit and gentrification may sound boring to a lot of us--and, okay, they are--but that doesn't mean they're irrelevant. And since these issues seem to imply an expanded role for government, even if on the local level, it's no surprise that the Right's rhetoric leaves urban voters a bit cold. As Russell Kirk put it, so much of conservatism "withers upon the pavements."

So does this mean the cities are tone-deaf to any and all conservative ideas? Well, no, because otherwise I'd have to stop writing, and this article is still pretty short. There are some things that we could do to win support in urban areas. Here's a few.

-Highlight a law-and-order platform. Largely self-explanatory: Run municipal candidates who pledge to push for tougher sentences, letting the police do their job, etc. This is no small concern in many large cities, of course. But don't just offer platitudes; propose specific measures. For example, NYC cut down on crime during the Giuliani era thanks in part to new police structures that devoted resources to high-crime areas and gave more responsibility to local precincts. One could also point to policies of allying with community leaders to improve the cops' image in minority neighborhoods, which has worked in Boston and L.A. Look, I don't actually know what I'm talking about--I read all this in an article somewhere--but the point is, a GOPer running in the city shouldn't just say "I want to get those criminals off the street!" Give actual ideas on how to bring crime down. If nothing else, it shows that conservatives are serious about the problem.

-Public works are your friend. The Republican platform for 2012 attacked, among other things, the government's "exclusively urban vision of dense housing and government transit"--the clear implication being that those are bad. There are good reasons to hold this position. Also, stop saying it. I haven't lived in cities much, but I know that residents like having their bus and train lines and their high-rise apartments. Again, this just makes it sound like conservatives don't care about urban voters. Besides, consider the logic of federalism; a nationally-subsidized Amtrak is one thing, the city-operated subway....not such a big deal. This doesn't mean you can't critique the city services being offered, though--as with policing, the name of the game is how you do it. For example, most people know that transit lines, garbage disposal, etc., while fairly reliable, can also be woefully inefficient and low-quality. Propose letting private companies bid on these services; if they can do better, great.

-Rebuilding the communities. Remember, cities are rarely a sheer mass of people; they're collections of neighborhoods, each with a life of its own. Regardless of political affiliation, the folks who live there care about maintaining them against blight and crime. A conservative agenda can help with that. Encouraging activity in the private sphere gives a spur to all sorts of civic associations and neighborhood organizations, who understand things on the local level better than higher official bodies--this should be pointed out. Also, emphasize the importance of doing away with rent controls. Not only would this go a long way toward solving the housing problem in many cities by freeing up the market, it encourages gentrification and rising property values, acting as a bulwark against decay and giving residents (especially landlords) a stake in the maintenance of their neighborhoods. And civic pride can be a strong rebuke to the liberal policy of victimhood.

Look, I'm not saying that there's ever going to be a day when Chicago and Pittsburgh and Seattle and so on are going to even be purplish. Democrats have a lot of cards to play to keep their voters loyal, and until or unless we see changes in large voting blocs, such as the black population, most large cities will not be in play. But it is possible to build a respectable conservative minority in these blue islands. And when they happen to be located in critical swing states, that could make all the difference.

Other suggestions?

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Agenda 2016+: The Role of Government

Today we continue the Agenda 2016+ series. As I said, this isn’t about winning the 2016 election, it’s about creating an agenda that will permanently win over the public and set America back on course. So let’s start with something basic and vital. Believe it or not, government is needed. Without government, society will devolve into predatory chaos from which will spring a truly oppressive government. But how do we decide what government should and should not do?**

This question is key because it will influence everything we discuss hereafter. What we need right now is a framework for what circumstances would cause us to agree to government regulation and what wouldn’t. As I see it, there are four times when government is needed:

1) To protect the public from those seeking to do intentional harm.
2) To protect those who cannot help themselves.
3) To prevent externalities.
4) To make markets possible.

● Intentional Harm

This one is easy. This is about police powers and protecting against foreign enemies. The principle is simple: it is destructive to society and wasteful to make individuals protect themselves from criminals or foreign armies. The role of the government is to keep people safe in their lives and their property AND the exercising of their rights so that society may function.

● Those Who Cannot Help Themselves

This one comes in two flavors, helping people who genuinely need it and protecting people who cannot protect themselves.

The idea behind welfare and unemployment is that good people will find themselves hitting upon hard times at points in their lives. Those people need help until they can get back on their feet. Helping them is a valid role for government because it ensures the smooth functioning of society. I know conservatives hate this, but frankly, that’s the way the public wants it. Conservatives need to learn to accept that because whining about these programs and trying to kill them will only scare people. Instead, conservatives need to focus on the word “cannot.” This should not be read as “will not.” In other words, conservatives need to tell the public they have no intention of ending these programs, but they want to make them stronger and more fair by designing them to make sure that only those who actually cannot help themselves qualify. Moreover, they need to include incentives to get people off the program again as quickly and as easily as possible. So change the rhetoric from these people being lazy or leaches to talking only about helping those “who genuinely need help” and talking about “helping them get back on their feet again.”

The other half of this is demonstrated by the concept of caveat emptor. Big Business conservatives and some libertarians hide behind this idea like it’s something noble: let the buyer beware. But the public doesn’t accept it, nor should they. The government has a role in stopping deceptive practices. It has a role in stopping abusive and predatory practices as well. This goes back to the idea of the government helping those who cannot protect themselves. It is one thing to say “you bought something cheap, so you have no right to complain when it breaks” but it’s another when the person buys something that is falsely advertised or contains a genuinely hidden danger or creates a hazard of which reasonable people could not be aware.

The problem here is that conservatives conflate frivolous claims with genuine claims and they turn that into a policy of trying to dismantle things like FDA inspectors who should be monitoring the safety of the food supply or the EPA which should be protecting us from polluters, or consumer protection agencies who should be trying to stop scams and predatory business practices. It is an intellectual nonstarter to tell the public they need to do intensive research to know that their beef is safe, that their bank didn’t defraud them or that their car won’t explode. Nor does the public want to hear that a business has the right to poison the air. Conservatives need to accept that the public wants protection, and they need to focus on making the things the government does more reasonable.

● Externalities

This is the hardest for conservatives to accept because they’ve been programmed by Big Business and by misguided libertarians to ignore this. An externality is when a person engages in an activity but doesn’t bear the full price of their actions because they can shift the harm they do onto third parties. Pollution is the perfect example of this. If my factory belches out smoke that makes your land unusable, that is an externality.

If you believe in property rights (or in fairness if you’re a liberal), then you should believe that people should be made to pay the full price for the harm they do through their externalities. Otherwise you basically accept the idea that I can make you pay for my choices. Making sure people pay for their own externalities is a proper role for government. Indeed, where possible, the law should simply allow the aggrieved party to be made whole by the courts. BUT that’s not always practical, and sometimes, its a lot better for society to stop the harm before it happens. In those instances, government regulation is justified to prevent people from forcing others to bear the cost of their own externalities.

As an aside, thinking libertarians should actually be fine with this. For while the lunatics say, “I should be able to do anything with my land,” the reasonable ones will realize that your rights stop when you start taking away your neighbor’s rights.

● The Creation of Markets

Finally, there are times when government regulation is necessary to create a market or to make it run smoothly. This is particularly true where you have a chicken and egg problem.


These four instances are the times when government is good and government regulation is necessary. Conservatives need to grasp this and readjust their thinking. They need to realize that the public wants these things and opposing them will only scare the public. So they need to accept them... get over it... and refocus their policies on making sure these regulations are as narrow and limited and harmless as possible while still achieving what the public wants.

They also need to learn to flip this around. Think about this. Regulations that don’t fit these principles are things we should oppose and we will be on safe ground doing so because we have a clear reason for justifying it: “this does not protect the public.” Similarly, this gives us a framework to attack regulations created by interest groups as “cronyism” because we can point out how the proposed regulations don't help the public, but instead help individual companies or donors.

By adopting a solid philosophical framework for when regulations work, we can control the debate while simultaneously putting and end to the public’s being terrified that conservatives want a polluted planet, unsafe toys, and a public at the mercy of predatory business. Moreover, we can flip this around any time to expose the Democrats as stooges for cronies and fools who can’t protect the public. This gives us a framework for defining when the government should act rather than us always trying to defend Democrats advances.


** If you want to tell me to look at the constitution, then forget it. That ship sailed. The constitution is dead. Moreover, it doesn’t say what you think it says. The constitution has all these little spots in it like “promote the general welfare” and “regulate interstate commerce” which have opened the door to pretty much unlimited power.

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Agenda 2016+: Freedom Always Wins

I said it’s time to get constructive and that’s my plan. I’m starting a new series today which will outline what I think the new agenda needs to be for the Republicans, both rhetorically and as a matter of policy. This isn’t about winning the 2016 election, it’s about creating an agenda and an image that will permanently win over the public and set America back on course. But before we talk policy, let’s start with a point on rhetoric.

Winning public arguments isn’t nearly as hard as you might think, though the Republicans don’t seem to get it. The Republicans make the mistake of treating politics like an intellectual discussion. It’s not. It’s a “yo mama so fat” contest on steroids. Statistics, detailed plans, subtle points of logic... all meaningless. The zinger, the soundbite and the “that sounds great” moment are the keys to victory.

A lot of people on our side don’t get this. They actually think the public will take the time to think through arguments, to consider each side carefully, to examine the long term effects, to do their own research to verify facts, and then to come to a reasoned conclusion. Good grief. Let’s be honest. The public are morons. They don’t know anything. They don’t process. They don’t stop and think. AND THEY DON’T CARE. They want an easy answer.

So what does this mean? It means that we need to learn to present our arguments in much simpler and punchier ways, ways the public can digest immediately and which will tell them how our plan will directly make their lives better.

It also means we don’t need to be as “truthful” as Republicans like to be. There is no reason to go into details on policies or even to explain what we really want. You just need to find the right promise to sell it. Obama never said how he was going to reform healthcare, he just said, “I’m going to fix it. . . I’m going to make sure you have it. . . I’m going to make sure it can’t be taken away.” That was his sales pitch and it worked. It blew away the Republican response of “we’ll remove barriers between the states to allow insurance carriers to compete.” Where in that laughable sales pitch does it ever tell a normal American how this will help them? Obama’s does: YOU will have healthcare. The Republican response doesn’t: INSURANCE COMPANIES will get more business. See the problem? Obama’s plan is easy to understand and has a direct benefit to anyone listening, the Republican plan requires the listener to work out all the missing steps and even then doesn’t actually promise them any guaranteed change. Obama wins.

In fact, the only thing which stopped Obama from winning this debate, believe it or not, was that Sarah Palin found a better zinger to take Obama’s sales pitch apart: “Death panels.” Notice how the argument is simple, memorable, meaningful, and personalized: Obama’s plan will let you die when you get really sick.

And the key word there are meaningful and personal. In other words, AVERAGE people (not bubble conservatives) could understand this, believe it and think it’s important TO THEM. This is why calling Obama a socialist is stupid. For one thing, no one outside the bubble believes it because he doesn’t talk like it and his policies aren’t obviously socialist. For another, it’s not meaningful because no average voter knows what his being a socialist will mean to them and they can’t see how that would change their lives in the least.

Anyway, this is the first lesson: drop the lectures and learn to speak in soundbites that are simple, easy to understand and which are meaningful to the average voter personally. And the big key is to come up with sales pitches that tell people how our policies will directly affect their lives. . . not some vague assurance that it will all work itself out if we do nothing.

Now, here’s the second lesson for the day. If you want to get voters to like you, you need to present an image that they associate with. Right now, the Republican Party likes to project an image from Norman Rockwell. . . a white, nuclear family from the 1950s with a stay at home mom, two smiling kids and a patriotic dad. That’s not how Americans like to see themselves, folks. Americans idolize the outsider. . . the underdog. . . the rebel. . . the free spirit. . . the risk taker. . . the rule breaker. So if you want voters to like you, you need to learn to frame your policies as supporting the underdog, the outsider, the rebel. Avoid sounding stuffy or rigid or status quo.

Now our final lesson. Americans love freedom. If you want to win, you ALWAYS need to frame your argument in terms of enhancing personal freedom. Now you and I know that in our world, you can’t give one person “freedom” without taking it from another. But that’s not the point. The point is that the public will side with the person who can best frame their argument as a matter of freedom. That’s why gay marriage and marijuana laws are inevitable, because they’ve been presented as a matter of personal freedom with no rebuttal about anyone losing their freedom. Americans will always opt for more freedom. . . that needs to be the focal point of any sales pitch.

To sum this up, the point is simple. Before we even get into policy, we need to change the way conservatives deliver their message. Stop trying to win the public with debating skills and instead learn the art of the soundbite and the quip. Sell policies to people as enhancing freedom and make sure they know how this will change their lives. And remember that to be seen as something people want to join, you need to present an image that makes them want to join.

Thoughts?

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