Tag: Todd Ricketts

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Congratulations Todd on Your Rite of Passage

There are certain rites of passage in life – events like Baptisms, graduations, weddings, and retirement.  These are the moments when you pass from one phase of your life to the next.  At those times, the person passing through the rite of passage might reflect a little on his life.  Others might offer him congratulations.

So I’d like to congratulate my son Todd on his rite of passage this week when The New Yorker magazine wrote a profile about him and his work for President Trump.  Todd joins other conservative leaders who The New Yorker has attacked because they promote different values than the magazine or support political candidates the magazine doesn’t like.  The list includes people like Paul Singer, Charles and David Koch, Peter Thiel, Robert Mercer, and Foster Friess. 

I’m proud for Todd to join this list of principled conservatives and hope he keeps working hard to promote economic opportunity through deregulation and lower taxes.  Congratulations Todd!

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Pride and Reassurance

Photo of Joe Ricketts and family

I’ve written before on this blog about  how Marlene and I raised our children not only to be self-reliant and hard-working, but also to believe in the importance of public service. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone how proud I am that President-elect Trump has asked my son Todd Ricketts to serve in his administration as Deputy Secretary of Commerce.

As far as I am concerned, there is no challenge facing our great nation more pressing than the need to get our economy back on track. The Obama legacy of higher taxes and government interference has been leading us down an unsustainable path that if unchecked would have led to disaster, stifling the engines of economic opportunity and further crippling the middle class. The fact that Mr. Trump has called on Todd to help him reverse this unacceptable drift is not only a source of great pride to me but also a reassurance that the country may once again be headed in the right direction.

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Bleeding Cubbie Blue

Image of Ricketts family on Chicago Cubs field

Watching the World Series, I kept thinking how baseball is a game of moments.  The moment when the pitcher releases the ball.  The moment the batter swings at, or takes the pitch.  The moment the infielder dives for a catch.

How the players respond to these moments produces opportunities and challenges.  And watching all this, I realized it’s a lot like life.

It’s no secret that while my four children and wife are avid baseball fans who bleed Cubbie blue, I’ve never been a sports buff.  But over the past six months, as I watched the Cubs seize opportunities and battle through challenges, as I watched the fans cheer for their young heroes, I felt so proud to be associated with this amazing team and their incredible fans.  And seeing the enthusiasm of the fans and exciting play on the field, I’m proud to say that I’m now a fan of the game, and a huge fan of these amazing Cubbies.

The players, who left it all on the field, and the fans, who have faithfully hung with the Cubs through thick and thin, they are heroes to me.  And now that we’ve finally claimed the prize that has eluded us for so long, I find myself eagerly looking forward to next year because I know Tom, Peter, Laura, and Todd will be back at it, doing everything they can to keep the magic happening at Wrigley.

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Congratulations, Chuck!

Image of Charles Schwab and Joe Ricketts

I’ve said before that I prefer to look forward, so I’m generally not a fan of dinners honoring past accomplishments. But when the Museum of American Finance awarded my friend and longtime competitor Chuck Schwab its Financial Innovation Award, I was happy to be there, along with TD Ameritrade’s current and incoming Chief Executive Officers, Fred Tomczyk and Tim Hockey, and several members of TD Ameritrade’s Board of Directors, including my son Todd. For nearly fifty years now, Schwab and Ameritrade have been at the vanguard of a revolution in personal finance that has empowered countless individuals to take control of their own futures. Congratulations, Chuck!

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The Struggle Continues

Image of Money rolled in a rubber band

I’ve long felt that being a good citizen means not just watching from the sidelines but getting actively involved in the big policy debates of our time. It was in this spirit that I started a non-partisan advocacy group called Taxpayers Against Earmarks back in 2010. Taxpayers Against Earmarks focused on educating the public about the dangers of earmarking, and early in 2011 we were happy to see Congress declare a moratorium on this fiscally irresponsible practice.

With the earmarking campaign behind us, we decided to take on an even bigger challenge — the larger issue of out-of-control federal spending and the crushing burden of government debt it leaves in its wake. We renamed our group Ending Spending and for the past two years, we have been doing what we can to educate the public and help elect political leaders who understand the importance of balancing the budget and reducing the debt.

This promises to be a much longer campaign than the one against Congressional earmarks, but it’s a battle that must be waged. With this in mind, I’m pleased and proud to report that my sons Todd and Pete are coming to work with me at Ending Spending. Given the critical importance of getting our fiscal house in order, it’s more important than ever for groups like Ending Spending to continue making the case for smarter spending and smaller government. And with Todd and Pete’s help, that’s just what we’re going to do.