Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 2802: Forgivable Debt

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“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.“

Most everyone rushed to get in line for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).  This was the purpose: “The Paycheck Protection Program is a loan designed to provide a direct incentive for small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll. SBA will forgive loans if all employees are kept on the payroll for eight weeks and the money is used for payroll, rent, mortgage interest, or utilities.”  Not everyone made their application or got approved before the money ran out.  Hopefully, by the time this is published, Congress will have expanded and extended the program as this “bridge” might be the only think that keeps a business open and their employees getting paid.  These kinds of programs are hard to evaluate and even harder to administer and they create political fodder for years to come (like TARP or the auto-bailout). But, this is what government is there for, to be a provider when we need protected.

The feature that made the PPP so attractive was the 100% forgivable part of the loan.  This means that Federal Government pays the debt off for us. Someone else paying off our debts doesn’t happen often and when it does, we should be crying tears of joy (literally), humbling ourselves to be so grateful and most of all, telling others how they might get the same gift.  You know where I am going here, right?  Jesus forgave it all for us, paid off the debts of our sin and would do it again for us, but He doesn’t have to do so, as He did it for all of eternity. The question we need to ask ourselves today is what has been and what should be our response to that Good News?

Reference: Romans 13:8 (New Living Translation)