Last week Alan Greenspan confessed to having too great a faith in the market’s ability to regulate itself. In reading the article about his testimony, I also learned that he was a devotee of the late author, Ayn Rand. At first this meant little to me.
As a student, back in the Eisenhower years, I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead like any other student remotely interested in American literature. Working from a Calvinistic philosophy in which man is NOT the measure of all things, I dismissed its fierce individualism as a quaint conceit and moved on.
It never crossed my mind until last week how much damage such a philosophy could do in the hands of a powerful believer. Not until a huge financial house of cards and bad paper came crashing down this month. We have one more—very legitimate—thing to blame: the philosophy of Objectivism.
Most especially if that philosophy profoundly influenced the man who for two decades held our financial fate in his hands – the most powerful central banker in the world. The whole planet bowed to his wisdom, not least, Presidents and Congresses. His ideas were emulated around the globe.
Mr. Greenspan was not just a casual reader of Ayn Rand, someone who became enamored of a book. He was a member of her inner circle. When she formed her intimate circle in 1950—to discuss philosophy and promote her philosophy, young Greenspan was a charter member.
From these discussions he drew his own philosophy that government has no legitimate role in regulating businesses or men who are in pursuit of their own wealth and aggrandizement. Reason could be the only proper moral guide, reason and rational (ized?) self interest.
Pursuit of one’s own happiness is the only proper morality. Government exists only to protect this rational man seeking happiness through its police powers, military forces and courts – which operate only by reason, not by a standard of justice and certainly never by mercy.
Mercy (pity, ruth) had no place in Rand’s cosmos. Laissez faire (the economic philosophy that led to the debacle of 1929) must be the proper rule of government. It has no business giving aid to anyone under any circumstances. The very concept of charity was highly suspect to Ms Rand. The world, as she viewed it, was essentially a ruthless place where only self-interest had any standing.
(One can be somewhat sympathetic to her point of view remembering that she endured the horrors of the Communist Revolution in her native Russia as a young woman. She saw all government control as the dictates of a commissar.)
While one can be sympathetic to her own visceral reaction to what went on in the Soviet Union after the fall of the Tsar, it’s slightly appalling that these same negative feelings about governmental supervision or control became an integral part of the makeup of the man who was to have the biggest say in regulating greedy three year olds on Wall Street.
The Federal Reserve—or for that matter the SEC—are not Bolshevik expropriators. We had a man running the former and influencing the latter who saw it that way. The market, Rand and Greenspan believed, is rational, run by rational men who will supervise themselves.
“I had too much faith in the market’s ability to regulate itself,” Greenspan told Congress last week. He might have remembered that his old mentor had no use for faith of any kind. Where was your rationality, Mr. Greenspan?
I all but forgot Rand’s books because I did not share her rosy view of unregulated humans. I grew up knowing William Henley’s poem, “Invictus”. “… I thank whatever gods there may be For my unconquerable soul. … I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”
That—published in 1875—sums up the view of life of the characters in Rand’s books, written decades later. It’s proud, it acknowledges neither right nor need for any regulation of the “captain of my soul.” But Mr. Greenspan and the fallen titans of Wall Street might have paid a bit of attention to a parody of that poem that I’ve always liked.
I am master of my fate; I am captain of my soul. But I—and many stockholders—had more fun when I was cabin boy.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Eeny, Meny, Miney,Moe--Red Vote, Blue Vote
The election season is nearly over. Character assassination will soon be put back on hold. Outright lies will be forgotten—and we may never know which they were. Sarah Palin and Barrack Hussein Obama have been the two major lightning rods.
She, as every good Democrat knows by now, is a total incompetent. She has cheerleader looks and (to coin a stereotype) cheerleader brains. The Republicans spent way too much on her clothes, and she’s a drag on the ticket anyway.
Hussein—Hussein, why does that name sound familiar? Must be some kind of Muslim radical. The Christian right insists that if Obama is elected most of us won’t have the right to own guns, and we’ll live in a totally homosexualized America with the institution of marriage forever destroyed.
Some of these statements might be true (as former Soviet Premier Gorbachev put it: “I have a thousand economic advisors. One of them has a good idea. I don’t know which one.”). Some are indubitably false. I love the way they accuse Obama on the one hand of being Muslim, on the other of belonging to a Christian Church that puts down America.
Even if he wanted to destroy the institution of marriage, I’m not sure his wife and the mother of his two girls would let him. I have no doubt he favors “choice” in the matter of abortion. But both Bushes and Reagan ran against abortion and changed absolutely nothing. What will Obama change?
Sarah Palin has decided (CNN report printed on AOL news) that the McCain staff did a lousy job of introducing her to the American people. She seems to feel that by micromanaging every twitch of her hairdo and every syllable of her comments, they have made a fool of her.
She’s starting to speak out on her own. She’s disagreeing publicly with McCain on tactics like pulling out of Michigan. “She takes no advice from anyone,” gasps a McCain advisor. Well, considering the press she got while listening to them, why should she listen now?
The advisors complain that she’s gone “rogue” and is thinking only of her own future. However true this may be it certainly suggests something more than an empty-headed cheerleader. She must have had some skills to get elected governor of America’s largest and climatologically most diverse state.
Maybe they should have remembered what some of Reagan’s closest friends tried to tell his handlers—“let Reagan be Reagan”. Let Palin be Palin. Let Obama be Obama. We often lose that in the fury of a campaign. Desperate attempts seem to be made to keep voters from ever seeing the actual person.
My pastor this morning had some words of advice for believing Christians – Republican or Democrat. (He reminded the congregation that there are believers in both camps.) “Whoever wins,” he said, “God remains in control.
“It is up to Christians to pray.” That –rather than in political organizational rallies or by labeling this or that candidate as God’s chosen, or by warning us that all the tenets of our faith are forfeit if this or that candidate does not win.
“Pastors,” he said, “belong in the pulpit, leading their people in prayer.” He suggested that they do actual harm by leaving them for political activism. God is in control and, if He is in control, He can manage just as well without politicized clergy. Politicians and Pastors, while both may be fervent believers, have different callings.
In any case, he kept saying, the future of America belongs in God’s hands not just in the hands of those who hold office. It was a good reminder for me.
I’m aware that I really don’t know any of the four candidates this year. I haven’t been allowed to know them – just as I have no idea what is actually in a hot dog under the casing. So let’s just vote – Christians pray and vote; non-believers cross your fingers and vote. As Wellington put it, “The battle is joined; the event is in the hands of God.”
She, as every good Democrat knows by now, is a total incompetent. She has cheerleader looks and (to coin a stereotype) cheerleader brains. The Republicans spent way too much on her clothes, and she’s a drag on the ticket anyway.
Hussein—Hussein, why does that name sound familiar? Must be some kind of Muslim radical. The Christian right insists that if Obama is elected most of us won’t have the right to own guns, and we’ll live in a totally homosexualized America with the institution of marriage forever destroyed.
Some of these statements might be true (as former Soviet Premier Gorbachev put it: “I have a thousand economic advisors. One of them has a good idea. I don’t know which one.”). Some are indubitably false. I love the way they accuse Obama on the one hand of being Muslim, on the other of belonging to a Christian Church that puts down America.
Even if he wanted to destroy the institution of marriage, I’m not sure his wife and the mother of his two girls would let him. I have no doubt he favors “choice” in the matter of abortion. But both Bushes and Reagan ran against abortion and changed absolutely nothing. What will Obama change?
Sarah Palin has decided (CNN report printed on AOL news) that the McCain staff did a lousy job of introducing her to the American people. She seems to feel that by micromanaging every twitch of her hairdo and every syllable of her comments, they have made a fool of her.
She’s starting to speak out on her own. She’s disagreeing publicly with McCain on tactics like pulling out of Michigan. “She takes no advice from anyone,” gasps a McCain advisor. Well, considering the press she got while listening to them, why should she listen now?
The advisors complain that she’s gone “rogue” and is thinking only of her own future. However true this may be it certainly suggests something more than an empty-headed cheerleader. She must have had some skills to get elected governor of America’s largest and climatologically most diverse state.
Maybe they should have remembered what some of Reagan’s closest friends tried to tell his handlers—“let Reagan be Reagan”. Let Palin be Palin. Let Obama be Obama. We often lose that in the fury of a campaign. Desperate attempts seem to be made to keep voters from ever seeing the actual person.
My pastor this morning had some words of advice for believing Christians – Republican or Democrat. (He reminded the congregation that there are believers in both camps.) “Whoever wins,” he said, “God remains in control.
“It is up to Christians to pray.” That –rather than in political organizational rallies or by labeling this or that candidate as God’s chosen, or by warning us that all the tenets of our faith are forfeit if this or that candidate does not win.
“Pastors,” he said, “belong in the pulpit, leading their people in prayer.” He suggested that they do actual harm by leaving them for political activism. God is in control and, if He is in control, He can manage just as well without politicized clergy. Politicians and Pastors, while both may be fervent believers, have different callings.
In any case, he kept saying, the future of America belongs in God’s hands not just in the hands of those who hold office. It was a good reminder for me.
I’m aware that I really don’t know any of the four candidates this year. I haven’t been allowed to know them – just as I have no idea what is actually in a hot dog under the casing. So let’s just vote – Christians pray and vote; non-believers cross your fingers and vote. As Wellington put it, “The battle is joined; the event is in the hands of God.”
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Why Should Anybody Care?
“Why do you care?” It wasn’t a particularly hostile question. It reflected a bit of puzzlement, a touch of boredom, perhaps an ounce of honest curiosity. He looked straight at me – there was perhaps a touch of contempt on his face. “Why do you care?”
I had passed out the assignment, explained that it was due at the end of the hour. This young man pushed the pages aside, left his book shut and took out his cell phone. That’s a major no-no in this school. I looked at the defiance on his face and decided that as a substitute I didn’t need to fight a losing war for possession.
I just said, “I didn’t see that phone; I don’t want to see it,” and I began to walk toward him. He looked at me and decided he didn’t want the battle either. He flipped it shut and closed his hand over it. I accepted a half victory and looked away.
He casually stood up and began walking around the room. “Sit down!” I said. He looked at me, then he turned and walked back to his seat, slipping the phone in his pocket. He just sat at his desk, looking bored. He was a coiled disruption just waiting to spring.
I called his name. “Would you please open your book and start your work?”
That’s when he looked back at me and asked the question. Why did I care? Why should he care? I’m sure the regular teacher (I know her) had warned him about flunking and all the possible academic consequences of doing no work. This leaves kids like him unfazed.
Middle class school, middle class expectations—which are slipping lower and lower. I don’t know what parents of these kids think they are going to do for a living. I don’t have an idea what the kids themselves think they’re going to do to pay their cell phone bills. If he didn’t care, why in the world should I or any other teacher care?
When I handed out the assignment, I saw another kid pick up the assignment and heard him say, not quite so sotto voce—the art of the whisper is almost completely lost in the modern classroom, “I ain’t gonna do this.” There were murmurs of assent all around him.
At the end of each hour that day, I found untouched and unused copies of the assignment lying on top of desks. During the hour they might sit there with the book open and the paper next to them, but at the end many had done nothing. I looked at several during the hour and asked them to start. Some said “Okay”, others gave an excuse why they hadn’t begun yet, a few ignored me.
Of course, in every class, there are as many as ten or so who sit quietly by themselves and work quietly all hour. They have completed assignments to hand in. But they are increasingly—whatever district I’m in—becoming an ever smaller minority.
I often feel guilty as a “sub” when I hear how loud the room is. Kids talk about sex, drugs, alcohol and rap music. They even plead to have the music turned on—“Our teacher always lets us”—and she or he probably does. I hear enough music from other rooms. When it’s on they just yell over top of it so I mostly leave it off. That’s less loud.
I also hear enough loud talking from other rooms when the door is left open. (Kids often ask to shut the door so their noise won’t be heard in the hall.) So I suspect that it isn’t just me. This is confirmed when one of the good students comes to me and asks to work in the hall. Mrs. Jones, I am informed, always lets me. “It’s too noisy in here.”
Occasionally another teacher is in the room to “team teach” with me or the regular teacher. Yesterday, the team teacher said to me, “I’ve never heard this room so quiet.” So I’m doing something half right.
But the question remains. Why do I care? Why should the regular teachers care (I hear them talk among themselves about thirty, forty, fifty percent failing)? If the kids don’t care, their folks don’t care, why should anybody care?
These are tomorrow’s voters, workers, leaders. That’s why we should care – and we’d better start soon. It’s a competitive and increasingly hostile world out there. They certainly aren’t going to care.
I had passed out the assignment, explained that it was due at the end of the hour. This young man pushed the pages aside, left his book shut and took out his cell phone. That’s a major no-no in this school. I looked at the defiance on his face and decided that as a substitute I didn’t need to fight a losing war for possession.
I just said, “I didn’t see that phone; I don’t want to see it,” and I began to walk toward him. He looked at me and decided he didn’t want the battle either. He flipped it shut and closed his hand over it. I accepted a half victory and looked away.
He casually stood up and began walking around the room. “Sit down!” I said. He looked at me, then he turned and walked back to his seat, slipping the phone in his pocket. He just sat at his desk, looking bored. He was a coiled disruption just waiting to spring.
I called his name. “Would you please open your book and start your work?”
That’s when he looked back at me and asked the question. Why did I care? Why should he care? I’m sure the regular teacher (I know her) had warned him about flunking and all the possible academic consequences of doing no work. This leaves kids like him unfazed.
Middle class school, middle class expectations—which are slipping lower and lower. I don’t know what parents of these kids think they are going to do for a living. I don’t have an idea what the kids themselves think they’re going to do to pay their cell phone bills. If he didn’t care, why in the world should I or any other teacher care?
When I handed out the assignment, I saw another kid pick up the assignment and heard him say, not quite so sotto voce—the art of the whisper is almost completely lost in the modern classroom, “I ain’t gonna do this.” There were murmurs of assent all around him.
At the end of each hour that day, I found untouched and unused copies of the assignment lying on top of desks. During the hour they might sit there with the book open and the paper next to them, but at the end many had done nothing. I looked at several during the hour and asked them to start. Some said “Okay”, others gave an excuse why they hadn’t begun yet, a few ignored me.
Of course, in every class, there are as many as ten or so who sit quietly by themselves and work quietly all hour. They have completed assignments to hand in. But they are increasingly—whatever district I’m in—becoming an ever smaller minority.
I often feel guilty as a “sub” when I hear how loud the room is. Kids talk about sex, drugs, alcohol and rap music. They even plead to have the music turned on—“Our teacher always lets us”—and she or he probably does. I hear enough music from other rooms. When it’s on they just yell over top of it so I mostly leave it off. That’s less loud.
I also hear enough loud talking from other rooms when the door is left open. (Kids often ask to shut the door so their noise won’t be heard in the hall.) So I suspect that it isn’t just me. This is confirmed when one of the good students comes to me and asks to work in the hall. Mrs. Jones, I am informed, always lets me. “It’s too noisy in here.”
Occasionally another teacher is in the room to “team teach” with me or the regular teacher. Yesterday, the team teacher said to me, “I’ve never heard this room so quiet.” So I’m doing something half right.
But the question remains. Why do I care? Why should the regular teachers care (I hear them talk among themselves about thirty, forty, fifty percent failing)? If the kids don’t care, their folks don’t care, why should anybody care?
These are tomorrow’s voters, workers, leaders. That’s why we should care – and we’d better start soon. It’s a competitive and increasingly hostile world out there. They certainly aren’t going to care.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Dissing Michigan
Out here in Michigan, we’re getting kind of lonely. The phone never rings; there are no rallies or breathless announcements from our local anchorpersons that Obama or Bush or McCain is coming. We’re enjoying the silence of a backwater whose vote has already been decided – and we’re not worth the nickels it costs to visit.
You’d think we were Nevada, North Dakota or Rhode Island—not a great big bundle of sixteen electoral votes. (Relax friends, as the auto industry collapses and more people start running for the exits, we’ll have fewer electoral college votes in four years. Will we even rate an occasional TV spot then?)
They’re fighting over Virginia. Ohio is a “battleground state”. McCain just loves New Hampshire, he says today; and everybody wants a piece of Florida. Pennsylvania looks iffy; Missouri might go this way or that. Obama goes to Hawaii to visit grandma. Poor, ignored Michigan.
Obama has raised so much money this year that he can and is outspending McCain about four to one. ABC News reports that Obama outspends McCain eight to one on TV ads. (Remember the good, old days when Republicans were supposed to have the campaign money – and the favor of the old Press Lords?) He is reported to be surging everywhere.
Yet poll after poll shows McCain hanging in at close range, sometimes down by as little as a statistically insignificant one or two percent. Both candidates are campaigning hard in a race that they obviously feel isn’t quite over yet. Obama enjoys the enthusiasm, but somebody must love McCain.
The question is validly raised is this stubborn Republican support indicative of an endemic racism? There may well be instances of people saying they’re not racist and then acting out in way that suggests they lied. But McCain support certainly isn’t all racism.
I, personally, am torn on this issue. For well over forty years I’ve looked for the day when a black American could prove himself fully equal at the highest level. If that were the only issue in this race, I’d pull the lever for Obama myself. But there truly are other issues that sway me more.
I am against gay marriage. I go with the historic Christian point of view that marriage is very much for the propagation of children. (I have no objection to a civil union that confers legal rights.) I am viscerally against granting homosexual unions marital status. I am scarcely alone in this.
I am also against unrestricted abortion, late term (nearly live) abortion , and the right of legal infants (persons under eighteen or twenty-one) to get an abortion without parental approval. They couldn’t get an aspirin in school without a parental okay. But an abortion? Come, come. Again, I’m not alone.
There is excellent reason to believe an Obama administration would support positions that I find morally reprehensible. Not only that, but it can be expected to appoint Supreme Court justices with similar views. I cannot support this no matter who the person is or what his other positions may be. There are, I suspect, many people in this nation equally torn.
A lot of people like me may explain why McCain is hanging in even though in states like Virginia, Obama’s paid staff outnumbers McCain’s four to one. In Ohio, McCain can afford staffed offices in a handful of crucial counties. Obama has them in all counties.
Obama is probably going to win. (The Republic will survive – I discovered that when Truman won by lunchtime the day after election day in 1948.) This is, after all, the man who found a dozen ways to take down the Clinton machine in the primaries. He kept nickeling and diming his way to the number of delegates needed for the nomination. Give him that, he doesn’t quit.
He also has awesome resources. Republican strategists who talk about the Obama money machine sound a lot like awed World War II German generals describing a superbly equipped allied attack. “My front,” gasped a Nazi general after a thousand plane allied assault, “looks like the face of the moon.”
Obama will very likely roll on to victory. But the reason it isn’t already a rout has more to do with issues than with hidden pockets of racism. It is possible to like the man and loath his policies. That pretty much sums up my feelings about the Senator from Illinois.
I can understand that McCain can’t afford to campaign in Michigan – but couldn’t Obama show up just to say, “Hi”? It’s strangely lonely with no canned messages asking me to vote one way or the other. It could give us an inferiority complex. We’ve got enough grief with a collapsing auto industry.
You’d think we were Nevada, North Dakota or Rhode Island—not a great big bundle of sixteen electoral votes. (Relax friends, as the auto industry collapses and more people start running for the exits, we’ll have fewer electoral college votes in four years. Will we even rate an occasional TV spot then?)
They’re fighting over Virginia. Ohio is a “battleground state”. McCain just loves New Hampshire, he says today; and everybody wants a piece of Florida. Pennsylvania looks iffy; Missouri might go this way or that. Obama goes to Hawaii to visit grandma. Poor, ignored Michigan.
Obama has raised so much money this year that he can and is outspending McCain about four to one. ABC News reports that Obama outspends McCain eight to one on TV ads. (Remember the good, old days when Republicans were supposed to have the campaign money – and the favor of the old Press Lords?) He is reported to be surging everywhere.
Yet poll after poll shows McCain hanging in at close range, sometimes down by as little as a statistically insignificant one or two percent. Both candidates are campaigning hard in a race that they obviously feel isn’t quite over yet. Obama enjoys the enthusiasm, but somebody must love McCain.
The question is validly raised is this stubborn Republican support indicative of an endemic racism? There may well be instances of people saying they’re not racist and then acting out in way that suggests they lied. But McCain support certainly isn’t all racism.
I, personally, am torn on this issue. For well over forty years I’ve looked for the day when a black American could prove himself fully equal at the highest level. If that were the only issue in this race, I’d pull the lever for Obama myself. But there truly are other issues that sway me more.
I am against gay marriage. I go with the historic Christian point of view that marriage is very much for the propagation of children. (I have no objection to a civil union that confers legal rights.) I am viscerally against granting homosexual unions marital status. I am scarcely alone in this.
I am also against unrestricted abortion, late term (nearly live) abortion , and the right of legal infants (persons under eighteen or twenty-one) to get an abortion without parental approval. They couldn’t get an aspirin in school without a parental okay. But an abortion? Come, come. Again, I’m not alone.
There is excellent reason to believe an Obama administration would support positions that I find morally reprehensible. Not only that, but it can be expected to appoint Supreme Court justices with similar views. I cannot support this no matter who the person is or what his other positions may be. There are, I suspect, many people in this nation equally torn.
A lot of people like me may explain why McCain is hanging in even though in states like Virginia, Obama’s paid staff outnumbers McCain’s four to one. In Ohio, McCain can afford staffed offices in a handful of crucial counties. Obama has them in all counties.
Obama is probably going to win. (The Republic will survive – I discovered that when Truman won by lunchtime the day after election day in 1948.) This is, after all, the man who found a dozen ways to take down the Clinton machine in the primaries. He kept nickeling and diming his way to the number of delegates needed for the nomination. Give him that, he doesn’t quit.
He also has awesome resources. Republican strategists who talk about the Obama money machine sound a lot like awed World War II German generals describing a superbly equipped allied attack. “My front,” gasped a Nazi general after a thousand plane allied assault, “looks like the face of the moon.”
Obama will very likely roll on to victory. But the reason it isn’t already a rout has more to do with issues than with hidden pockets of racism. It is possible to like the man and loath his policies. That pretty much sums up my feelings about the Senator from Illinois.
I can understand that McCain can’t afford to campaign in Michigan – but couldn’t Obama show up just to say, “Hi”? It’s strangely lonely with no canned messages asking me to vote one way or the other. It could give us an inferiority complex. We’ve got enough grief with a collapsing auto industry.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Iron Law of Wages
The Iron Law of Wages seems to be back. We thought it died a final death when Henry Ford doubled the wages of his factory workers in a single stroke back in 1914. He wanted (for perfectly selfish reasons) to be sure his workers could afford to buy the Fords they made. It made him rich.
Today millions of Americans handle, sell and build merchandise they cannot afford to buy. Half of all working Americans (says Dobbs on CNN TV) work for less than $500 a week. Minimum wage (retail, fast food, meat packing) doesn’t add up to anything like that.
Trust me, the clerk in Saks or J.C.Penney’s that you bought a dress from last week could not afford that same dress –and to eat too. The same was true for American laborers for most of the Nineteenth Century. The system that guaranteed their impoverishment was called “The Iron Law of Wages.”
It worked very simply. You flooded the labor market with an endless stream of illiterate and desperate immigrants. If anyone wanted a raise, he was free to leave his job. He could be instantly replaced by another immigrant or illiterate farm hand.
There was no minimum wage (no benefits either). Men worked twelve or more hours a day for six days a week for One Dollar a Day – for decade after decade. Women worked the same hours for about $1.75 a week. Kids as young as six got about a dollar a week.
As long as there were new immigrants, a steady flow of native Americans who had neither skills nor literacy, children of families so impoverished there could be no thought of educating them, the Iron Law continued to enforce itself in the American workplace. Decade after decade.
As recently as 1956, Tennessee Ernie sang a song about miners – “You load sixteen tons and what do you get? A day older and a deeper in debt. … St. Peter, don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go—I owe my soul to the company store.” When my wife quit a job at JCPenney a few years ago, her credit card was deep in debt. It wasn’t worth her working. She was surrounded by people who needed the tiny income to survive. Their hours were cut to eliminate the need to pay benefits.
Today we have a continuing flood of illegal immigrants. Our high schools are cranking out thousands upon thousands of unskilled and illiterate “graduates”, not to count those who simply drop out. We have a rising flood of downsized workers desperate to take any work they can find.
I have substitute taught for nearly a decade. Gas and all costs (including fees) have more than doubled in that time. There have been no raises. Why should they? Retirees like me, laid off teachers, recent graduates flood the substitute pool. For substitutes, retail, unskilled jobs and – increasingly—professional and white collar workers, the pool keeps filling up.
Wages fall or stagnate. There is often no more hope of improvement than there was in the 1800s. An Iron Law seems to have fallen across the nation. Business Week magazine, in the current issue, points out that the productivity increases and rising standard of living we have enjoyed the past few decades have all come from borrowing – from home equity and credit cards.
In other words, there has been no real improvement in a long time. Masked behind leveraged luxury homes and expensive automobiles on credit, even the upper middle class is mired by an Iron Law. My physician told me recently that his income had declined 40% in the past five years.
American Express is troubled. The people on the upper East Side of Manhattan are said to be eating out less and wearing last year’s dresses to charity balls. Even that level of society seems to be touched by the general angst.
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but for millions of Americans, the Iron Law of Wages is back.
Today millions of Americans handle, sell and build merchandise they cannot afford to buy. Half of all working Americans (says Dobbs on CNN TV) work for less than $500 a week. Minimum wage (retail, fast food, meat packing) doesn’t add up to anything like that.
Trust me, the clerk in Saks or J.C.Penney’s that you bought a dress from last week could not afford that same dress –and to eat too. The same was true for American laborers for most of the Nineteenth Century. The system that guaranteed their impoverishment was called “The Iron Law of Wages.”
It worked very simply. You flooded the labor market with an endless stream of illiterate and desperate immigrants. If anyone wanted a raise, he was free to leave his job. He could be instantly replaced by another immigrant or illiterate farm hand.
There was no minimum wage (no benefits either). Men worked twelve or more hours a day for six days a week for One Dollar a Day – for decade after decade. Women worked the same hours for about $1.75 a week. Kids as young as six got about a dollar a week.
As long as there were new immigrants, a steady flow of native Americans who had neither skills nor literacy, children of families so impoverished there could be no thought of educating them, the Iron Law continued to enforce itself in the American workplace. Decade after decade.
As recently as 1956, Tennessee Ernie sang a song about miners – “You load sixteen tons and what do you get? A day older and a deeper in debt. … St. Peter, don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go—I owe my soul to the company store.” When my wife quit a job at JCPenney a few years ago, her credit card was deep in debt. It wasn’t worth her working. She was surrounded by people who needed the tiny income to survive. Their hours were cut to eliminate the need to pay benefits.
Today we have a continuing flood of illegal immigrants. Our high schools are cranking out thousands upon thousands of unskilled and illiterate “graduates”, not to count those who simply drop out. We have a rising flood of downsized workers desperate to take any work they can find.
I have substitute taught for nearly a decade. Gas and all costs (including fees) have more than doubled in that time. There have been no raises. Why should they? Retirees like me, laid off teachers, recent graduates flood the substitute pool. For substitutes, retail, unskilled jobs and – increasingly—professional and white collar workers, the pool keeps filling up.
Wages fall or stagnate. There is often no more hope of improvement than there was in the 1800s. An Iron Law seems to have fallen across the nation. Business Week magazine, in the current issue, points out that the productivity increases and rising standard of living we have enjoyed the past few decades have all come from borrowing – from home equity and credit cards.
In other words, there has been no real improvement in a long time. Masked behind leveraged luxury homes and expensive automobiles on credit, even the upper middle class is mired by an Iron Law. My physician told me recently that his income had declined 40% in the past five years.
American Express is troubled. The people on the upper East Side of Manhattan are said to be eating out less and wearing last year’s dresses to charity balls. Even that level of society seems to be touched by the general angst.
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but for millions of Americans, the Iron Law of Wages is back.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Arresting Grandma
Whoa. The police handcuffed an eighty-nine year old woman in Ohio for confiscating a ball that landed in her yard. (AP report, AOL news—10/21/08) This wasn’t the first time. Kids have been kicking and overthrowing balls into her yard for some time, according to police sources.
She said, “I would have given it back to them eventually, but not now.” The police said, “Now”, and put the cuffs on her, put her in a squad car and arraigned her. She faces a judge next month for “petty theft” with a possible fine of $1000 and 90 days in jail.
At first I laughed. Incredulously. I grew up in middle class suburban neighborhoods where any one of my neighbors would have felt entitled to confiscate a ball that landed on his property. As a kid, I certainly would not have felt free to retrieve such a ball without going to the householder and asking permission to enter his yard. My parents –and our neighbors—enforced that.
I knew one man, only twenty years ago, who lived near a school. He had an garage full of balls he had picked up off his yard. He had taught in the school next door for decades; he was just sick of balls landing in his lawn and garden.
I’ve got a ball-size dent in the vent of my shed from next door. I don’t believe I returned that ball. Petty theft? Jail time?
Edna Jeeter has simply lived too long (maybe I have, too). She grew up in an era where it was the absolute obligation of the child –and his parents—not to hit balls onto someone else’s property. Jeeter was back in that time. Today, the parent called the cops on her. I suppose this makes her an atavist.
There is a much bigger issue at stake here than who gets the football. (Let’s not talk about a generation of children raised to believe there should be no significant consequences for any action or failure to act. That makes them very scary and totally unprepared for the real world.) Let’s talk about the more fundamental issue of property rights.
Unlike continental European democracies, ours was founded on the Right to Property. The men who wrote our constitution understood that it was a fundamental right (if not the most fundamental right) of a free man: to own and enjoy property with a total right to peaceful usage thereof and the guarantee that it could not and would not be trespassed upon.
That’s what the kids did. Use the ancient term: they trespassed. She didn’t; they did. And the parents and police arrested her to preserve the right of someone else (a child in this case, but that fact is essentially irrelevant) to trespass.
Bluntly, she will face a judge because she refused to allow trespass.
Again, whoa. Take away private property and the right to its unfettered (and untrespassed upon) use, and American democracy quickly goes away.
I said “American democracy”. If you prefer the continental variety of democracy, stand by for instability and constant changes of government. There is the joke that Italy, for instance, changes prime ministers about once a week. France has had at least 20 different styles of government since our constitution was written. You like governmental chaos, take away the absolute right to private property.
The constitutions well understood that ownership of property not only vests you in your own homestead but also in the entire body politic. That is why, at first, only property owners were permitted to vote.
Now some might argue that Ms Jeeter was a crab – that she was the antithesis of a cookie making, neighborhood grandmother. (I have no way of knowing.) But even if she was, her temperament in no way diminishes her right to peaceful enjoyment of her own property – free from footballs landing in the geraniums.
Crabs have as many constitutional rights as nice people. There is no legal imperative to be nice. There is—or used to be-- an imperative that you must stay off my lawn without my permission. If we’ve lost that, we have lost something huge.
She said, “I would have given it back to them eventually, but not now.” The police said, “Now”, and put the cuffs on her, put her in a squad car and arraigned her. She faces a judge next month for “petty theft” with a possible fine of $1000 and 90 days in jail.
At first I laughed. Incredulously. I grew up in middle class suburban neighborhoods where any one of my neighbors would have felt entitled to confiscate a ball that landed on his property. As a kid, I certainly would not have felt free to retrieve such a ball without going to the householder and asking permission to enter his yard. My parents –and our neighbors—enforced that.
I knew one man, only twenty years ago, who lived near a school. He had an garage full of balls he had picked up off his yard. He had taught in the school next door for decades; he was just sick of balls landing in his lawn and garden.
I’ve got a ball-size dent in the vent of my shed from next door. I don’t believe I returned that ball. Petty theft? Jail time?
Edna Jeeter has simply lived too long (maybe I have, too). She grew up in an era where it was the absolute obligation of the child –and his parents—not to hit balls onto someone else’s property. Jeeter was back in that time. Today, the parent called the cops on her. I suppose this makes her an atavist.
There is a much bigger issue at stake here than who gets the football. (Let’s not talk about a generation of children raised to believe there should be no significant consequences for any action or failure to act. That makes them very scary and totally unprepared for the real world.) Let’s talk about the more fundamental issue of property rights.
Unlike continental European democracies, ours was founded on the Right to Property. The men who wrote our constitution understood that it was a fundamental right (if not the most fundamental right) of a free man: to own and enjoy property with a total right to peaceful usage thereof and the guarantee that it could not and would not be trespassed upon.
That’s what the kids did. Use the ancient term: they trespassed. She didn’t; they did. And the parents and police arrested her to preserve the right of someone else (a child in this case, but that fact is essentially irrelevant) to trespass.
Bluntly, she will face a judge because she refused to allow trespass.
Again, whoa. Take away private property and the right to its unfettered (and untrespassed upon) use, and American democracy quickly goes away.
I said “American democracy”. If you prefer the continental variety of democracy, stand by for instability and constant changes of government. There is the joke that Italy, for instance, changes prime ministers about once a week. France has had at least 20 different styles of government since our constitution was written. You like governmental chaos, take away the absolute right to private property.
The constitutions well understood that ownership of property not only vests you in your own homestead but also in the entire body politic. That is why, at first, only property owners were permitted to vote.
Now some might argue that Ms Jeeter was a crab – that she was the antithesis of a cookie making, neighborhood grandmother. (I have no way of knowing.) But even if she was, her temperament in no way diminishes her right to peaceful enjoyment of her own property – free from footballs landing in the geraniums.
Crabs have as many constitutional rights as nice people. There is no legal imperative to be nice. There is—or used to be-- an imperative that you must stay off my lawn without my permission. If we’ve lost that, we have lost something huge.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Bush: Did He Lie or Was He Fooled?
The question of Iraq has seemingly gone away this election season. But it shouldn’t. The question is much broader than one relatively small nation. It casts doubts on the whole Bush doctrine and it reminds us that the next president will still have a tiger by the tail.
I know that lack of credit, Wall Street’s agonies and rising unemployment have pushed it out of mind recently. But it’s still there, they’re still shooting and progress is very, very fragile. An interview with Donald Trump, of all people, brought it sharply back to my attention last week.
Trump very bluntly says President Bush should have been impeached for invading Iraq. The interviewer pressed him on why. “He lied”, snapped Trump. He was asked if he really meant that – as opposed to bad intel or general confusion. “He lied,” repeated Trump.
I’m no fan of Trump or his television persona. But it crossed my mind that this is a man who has made big money and done a lot of high flying business deals in his career. You don’t do that successfully if you are not a very good reader of people – unless you can be pretty sure when they are bluffing or lying.
I’ll listen seriously when Mr. Trump insists someone is lying. Needless to say if a president lies and then sends thousands of boys to be shot up or killed, he should be impeached. One cannot imagine a higher crime or misdemeanor. But, even if Trump is mistaken, we’ve still got a nasty situation on our hands – with no real solution in sight.
Before the next president feels forced into invading somewhere else, we’ve got to sit down and figure out why we did what we did and how either not to do it again or how to do it more intelligently. That is probably as urgent as bailing out our banking system.
Let’s look at Iraq. Before Churchill cobbled its three regions into one “nation” in 1921, it had never been or seen itself as a single entity. It had been called “Mesopotamia” –the land between the rivers – for time out of mind. It had been part of an Assyrian Empire, a neo-Babylonian Empire, a Persian and Parthian Empire, the Roman Empire and, finally a succession of Muslim/Turkish Empires.
The Turkish Empire collapsed in 1918. Suddenly, for perhaps the first time since the Biblical Abraham, Mesopotamia was ruled by no one. (This “freedom” didn’t come about until the fighters of Mesopotamia wiped out an invading British army in 1916. It lasted until Britain was given a mandate over the area as spoils of war.)
Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill was aware that there was oil in that area. After all, he had used the British oil wells in Iran (Persia) to convert the British navy from coal to oil ten years before. But his immediate problem was that Britain was broke and it cost money to maintain the imperial presence in what is now Iraq. He had a money saving idea back in 1921.
Take Prince Feisal of Arabia (he was played by Omar Sheriff in “Lawrence of Arabia”), create a “kingdom” out of the three regions and hostile populations – Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites – and let Feisal figure out how to run it with minimal British support. It would cut costs enormously.
By 1930, Iraqi resistance had become so stiff that the British withdrew entirely. Feisal was on his own. His family managed to last until 1958 (despite Nazi coups and war with Israel) when his son, Feisal II, and his entire family were machine gunned to death for their pro-western policies. They dragged his body through the streets behind a jeep. So much for John Foster Dulles’s Baghdad Pact.
This is an area that has a history of anti-British and anti-western attitudes, reinforced with effective violence. But it does not mean it was a terrorist state. Not everyone who doesn’t like us is a terrorist. Not every nation that opposes us is worth invading.
We pushed them out of the Kuwaiti oil fields in 1991 with some validity. But to invade them when they had become militarily enfeebled in 2003? What was the sense of that? (And the British went in with us!? Had they forgotten 1916 and 1930?) Did we really think they would lie down and hand us their oil?
They’ve kept their oil. They just want us to rebuild what we blew up and go home in relatively few years. What have we gained? No more than the British did in the 1920s. Our whole national prestige is on the line and we have nothing to show except ruinous cost in blood and money.
Far more terrorists are to be found in Iraq today than Saddam Hussein ever allowed to run about in his era. He was vicious, he may have been nuts, but he had a practical streak. We’d be better off if he were still there –living with the concern over what might happen if we ever invaded.
Maintaining his concern would have cost us little money and less blood. Nor would we have such an ugly black eye in the international community.
So, why did Bush go in with an army that was too small to be effective? Why did he go in at all? Was he dreaming of oil? Was he lying? Was he just getting back at Saddam for taking a shot at daddy? Whatever the reason, we must never again start a war so foolishly.
I know that lack of credit, Wall Street’s agonies and rising unemployment have pushed it out of mind recently. But it’s still there, they’re still shooting and progress is very, very fragile. An interview with Donald Trump, of all people, brought it sharply back to my attention last week.
Trump very bluntly says President Bush should have been impeached for invading Iraq. The interviewer pressed him on why. “He lied”, snapped Trump. He was asked if he really meant that – as opposed to bad intel or general confusion. “He lied,” repeated Trump.
I’m no fan of Trump or his television persona. But it crossed my mind that this is a man who has made big money and done a lot of high flying business deals in his career. You don’t do that successfully if you are not a very good reader of people – unless you can be pretty sure when they are bluffing or lying.
I’ll listen seriously when Mr. Trump insists someone is lying. Needless to say if a president lies and then sends thousands of boys to be shot up or killed, he should be impeached. One cannot imagine a higher crime or misdemeanor. But, even if Trump is mistaken, we’ve still got a nasty situation on our hands – with no real solution in sight.
Before the next president feels forced into invading somewhere else, we’ve got to sit down and figure out why we did what we did and how either not to do it again or how to do it more intelligently. That is probably as urgent as bailing out our banking system.
Let’s look at Iraq. Before Churchill cobbled its three regions into one “nation” in 1921, it had never been or seen itself as a single entity. It had been called “Mesopotamia” –the land between the rivers – for time out of mind. It had been part of an Assyrian Empire, a neo-Babylonian Empire, a Persian and Parthian Empire, the Roman Empire and, finally a succession of Muslim/Turkish Empires.
The Turkish Empire collapsed in 1918. Suddenly, for perhaps the first time since the Biblical Abraham, Mesopotamia was ruled by no one. (This “freedom” didn’t come about until the fighters of Mesopotamia wiped out an invading British army in 1916. It lasted until Britain was given a mandate over the area as spoils of war.)
Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill was aware that there was oil in that area. After all, he had used the British oil wells in Iran (Persia) to convert the British navy from coal to oil ten years before. But his immediate problem was that Britain was broke and it cost money to maintain the imperial presence in what is now Iraq. He had a money saving idea back in 1921.
Take Prince Feisal of Arabia (he was played by Omar Sheriff in “Lawrence of Arabia”), create a “kingdom” out of the three regions and hostile populations – Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites – and let Feisal figure out how to run it with minimal British support. It would cut costs enormously.
By 1930, Iraqi resistance had become so stiff that the British withdrew entirely. Feisal was on his own. His family managed to last until 1958 (despite Nazi coups and war with Israel) when his son, Feisal II, and his entire family were machine gunned to death for their pro-western policies. They dragged his body through the streets behind a jeep. So much for John Foster Dulles’s Baghdad Pact.
This is an area that has a history of anti-British and anti-western attitudes, reinforced with effective violence. But it does not mean it was a terrorist state. Not everyone who doesn’t like us is a terrorist. Not every nation that opposes us is worth invading.
We pushed them out of the Kuwaiti oil fields in 1991 with some validity. But to invade them when they had become militarily enfeebled in 2003? What was the sense of that? (And the British went in with us!? Had they forgotten 1916 and 1930?) Did we really think they would lie down and hand us their oil?
They’ve kept their oil. They just want us to rebuild what we blew up and go home in relatively few years. What have we gained? No more than the British did in the 1920s. Our whole national prestige is on the line and we have nothing to show except ruinous cost in blood and money.
Far more terrorists are to be found in Iraq today than Saddam Hussein ever allowed to run about in his era. He was vicious, he may have been nuts, but he had a practical streak. We’d be better off if he were still there –living with the concern over what might happen if we ever invaded.
Maintaining his concern would have cost us little money and less blood. Nor would we have such an ugly black eye in the international community.
So, why did Bush go in with an army that was too small to be effective? Why did he go in at all? Was he dreaming of oil? Was he lying? Was he just getting back at Saddam for taking a shot at daddy? Whatever the reason, we must never again start a war so foolishly.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Sarah Palin as Lightning Rod
The fall winds are driving the leaves off the political tree. They are falling, falling, falling into the Obama camp – just like the well orchestrated chorus of endorsements during the late primary season. Colin Powell, The Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times … .
What bothers me, more than just a bit, is the steady drumfire of comment that comes with these endorsements. One of the latest is from the LA Times, which labeled McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as “irresponsible” and a good reason not to support him. Powell echoed the sentiment, saying it raised questions of [McCain’s] “judgment”.
Excuse me. Exactly what sort of experience prepares someone to be President of the United States? We’ve had people with years of experience as governors, senators, generals and diplomats who made awful presidents – both John and John Quincy Adams, Warren Harding, Jimmy Carter, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, William Taft, Herbert Hoover, to name a few.
Then we’ve had people like Andrew Jackson who liked to shoot people he disagreed with, who launched a completely unauthorized invasion of Spanish Florida – that nearly involved us in a major war with Russia, Spain, France and Prussia (and England), which we were in no way prepared for. Incidentally he married his wife before she got legally divorced, thus making him a bigamist.
Irascible, with a “damn the law” attitude, a participant in standup gunfights in bars – can you imagine what the LA Times would say about him if he ran today? Yet most historians rate him as a pretty fair president. (Even though, as President, he told the Supreme Court to go enforce its own law in a decision he disagreed with.)
Then there was a ward boss from Illinois, a backwoods, circuit riding lawyer who loved to tell ribald jokes. He was prone to deep depressions. He got himself elected for a single term to Congress before the electorate repudiated him. His mere election to the presidency (and we knew this would happen before the vote) caused half the country to secede and launch our bloodiest war.
He teamed with abolitionists to win it, but did everything he could to prevent the abolition of slavery. This included offering the South a chance to re-enter Congress and vote down the Thirteenth Amendment two months before Lee gave up and surrendered.
What had prepared Abraham Lincoln to be President? What prepared a rich, sickly, absentee senator from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy?
Sarah Palin’s resume looks thin compared to John Quincy Adams, Warren Harding or US Grant’s, true. But it looks about as good as Lincoln’s. In some ways it’s better than Kennedy’s. So how irresponsible was it to nominate them?
Governor Palin has simply become a convenient whipping [girl] for people who are sick of George Bush. Fine, be sick of him. Most of us [Republicans] are. But don’t say that you’re repudiating the Republicans because of Sarah Palin’s inexperience.
It’s been said to the point of tedium that she has way more executive experience than Senator Obama. It’s true. She does. Lincoln, with all his warts and backwoodsiness, became a giant when the guns began to shoot. That was impossible to predict. It’s also impossible to predict what a governor from Alaska might do when faced with necessity.
I still believe a large part of the hostility toward her lies in the fact that America has become deeply suspicious of people who adhere too publicly to a religious faith, of whatever kind. Palin talks it and seems to believe it.
This has made her suspect from the outset. Only a nut could really believe, right? Since there are a lot of “nuts” out there who do believe, it’s safer to attack her inexperience than her God or her beliefs.
For McCain to balance his ticket with a woman is no more irresponsible than for a Senator from the East Coast to balance his ticket with a senator from Texas – or a candidate from California to balance his ticket with a governor from Maryland. That’s standard procedure.
Let’s cut the comedy. Talk about what really bothers you about Palin.
What bothers me, more than just a bit, is the steady drumfire of comment that comes with these endorsements. One of the latest is from the LA Times, which labeled McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as “irresponsible” and a good reason not to support him. Powell echoed the sentiment, saying it raised questions of [McCain’s] “judgment”.
Excuse me. Exactly what sort of experience prepares someone to be President of the United States? We’ve had people with years of experience as governors, senators, generals and diplomats who made awful presidents – both John and John Quincy Adams, Warren Harding, Jimmy Carter, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, William Taft, Herbert Hoover, to name a few.
Then we’ve had people like Andrew Jackson who liked to shoot people he disagreed with, who launched a completely unauthorized invasion of Spanish Florida – that nearly involved us in a major war with Russia, Spain, France and Prussia (and England), which we were in no way prepared for. Incidentally he married his wife before she got legally divorced, thus making him a bigamist.
Irascible, with a “damn the law” attitude, a participant in standup gunfights in bars – can you imagine what the LA Times would say about him if he ran today? Yet most historians rate him as a pretty fair president. (Even though, as President, he told the Supreme Court to go enforce its own law in a decision he disagreed with.)
Then there was a ward boss from Illinois, a backwoods, circuit riding lawyer who loved to tell ribald jokes. He was prone to deep depressions. He got himself elected for a single term to Congress before the electorate repudiated him. His mere election to the presidency (and we knew this would happen before the vote) caused half the country to secede and launch our bloodiest war.
He teamed with abolitionists to win it, but did everything he could to prevent the abolition of slavery. This included offering the South a chance to re-enter Congress and vote down the Thirteenth Amendment two months before Lee gave up and surrendered.
What had prepared Abraham Lincoln to be President? What prepared a rich, sickly, absentee senator from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy?
Sarah Palin’s resume looks thin compared to John Quincy Adams, Warren Harding or US Grant’s, true. But it looks about as good as Lincoln’s. In some ways it’s better than Kennedy’s. So how irresponsible was it to nominate them?
Governor Palin has simply become a convenient whipping [girl] for people who are sick of George Bush. Fine, be sick of him. Most of us [Republicans] are. But don’t say that you’re repudiating the Republicans because of Sarah Palin’s inexperience.
It’s been said to the point of tedium that she has way more executive experience than Senator Obama. It’s true. She does. Lincoln, with all his warts and backwoodsiness, became a giant when the guns began to shoot. That was impossible to predict. It’s also impossible to predict what a governor from Alaska might do when faced with necessity.
I still believe a large part of the hostility toward her lies in the fact that America has become deeply suspicious of people who adhere too publicly to a religious faith, of whatever kind. Palin talks it and seems to believe it.
This has made her suspect from the outset. Only a nut could really believe, right? Since there are a lot of “nuts” out there who do believe, it’s safer to attack her inexperience than her God or her beliefs.
For McCain to balance his ticket with a woman is no more irresponsible than for a Senator from the East Coast to balance his ticket with a senator from Texas – or a candidate from California to balance his ticket with a governor from Maryland. That’s standard procedure.
Let’s cut the comedy. Talk about what really bothers you about Palin.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Joe the Plumber as Kulak
Joe the Plumber, what have you done? Merely scratch the scab off an eight century old sore in western society. Right there on camera – with millions watching and John McCain ready to pounce.
Not that Joe turns out to be a great exemplar for the social class he represents. He isn’t even a licensed plumber, he may not have the money to buy a business, he owes taxes on his home and he may be a bit more talk than do. But he opened up an ancient divide, in plain sight, forcing us all to look at it.
It’s as old as the founding of the first European university; it’s as new as the current presidential campaign. It goes to the core of the liberal/conservative divide. It lies at the root of town and gown, it’s why people call Obama and Hilary elitists. It provides both socialist and capitalist their political ammunition.
Joe brought up the division between the owner class and those who make their living by salary, commission, hourly wage and profession. Those who make their living by drawing a fee as a professional (lawyer, physician, professor) and those who do unskilled labor of the meanest sort stand united in their fear and distrust of those who, merely by money, own the business.
Joe dreams – out loud and in Obama’s face—of stepping into that owner class. He said so – on camera—in the face of a man who epitomizes the non-owning class. Obama is a professional man, educated at one of our finest universities.
Contempt for people like Joe the Plumber is bred into the bones of a man like Barak Obama –or any other well educated political liberal. It’s as if touching the deed to one’s own small business would hopelessly soil the hands.
(Once a business becomes as large as, say, the Kennedy holdings, Averell Harriman’s or Jay Rockefeller’s, it doesn’t matter. Holdings their size become the American equivalent of a dukedom and are more than respectable in liberal circles. It’s the petite bourgeois that are despised. That’s Joe’s crime – he aspires to become a small business owner.)
It’s an attitude we pick up from Medieval Europe –when a student whose only claim to attend a university came from his daddy’s money, not his title or land holdings was disdained. If he was at university merely because he could pay tuition, he was given the official label of “without nobility” or (Sine NOBilis) and held in appropriate low esteem.
If daddy held a title (duke, baron, earl, so forth—in modern times, a profession or high salaried job as opposed to a plumbing shop) you were respectable.
That’s a strange point of view for an American. It was precisely the ambition of men like Joe the Plumber that created the American empire and the American standard of living. People like Joe created the myth that American streets were paved with gold.
In fact the United States represents the first group of people to come out of Europe in over a thousand years who valued themselves in terms of money – not birth or professional status. For good or ill, that’s who we really are –a society driven by those with money and those who want to get it.
We are, like Joe the Plumber – and John McCain’s wife– a money economy.
Our hourly laborers, our professionals, our salarymen (to use the expressive Japanese term) often unite with political liberals to view the “owner class” as an enemy. John McCain understood that in Wednesday’s debate. As Napoleon sneered about England, we truly are a nation of shopkeepers.
Barack Obama isn’t at all comfortable with that. His discomfort shows – when he’s face to face with Joe or when he makes snide remarks about “small town Americans”. That’s why some people think he is an elitist. No more so than anyone else who despises small businessmen.
And, thankfully, he’s closer to a socialist who merely feels that small businessmen should be penalized for their ownership by extra taxation. He’s nowhere near the point of Russian communists who felt small business and land owners (Kulaks) ought to be executed en masse.
Just be aware, at the core of the liberal democratic program Is a real form of socialism. You may approve of it or not, you may feel that socialism of one sort or another is an idea whose time has come--just recognize it for what it is.
Not that Joe turns out to be a great exemplar for the social class he represents. He isn’t even a licensed plumber, he may not have the money to buy a business, he owes taxes on his home and he may be a bit more talk than do. But he opened up an ancient divide, in plain sight, forcing us all to look at it.
It’s as old as the founding of the first European university; it’s as new as the current presidential campaign. It goes to the core of the liberal/conservative divide. It lies at the root of town and gown, it’s why people call Obama and Hilary elitists. It provides both socialist and capitalist their political ammunition.
Joe brought up the division between the owner class and those who make their living by salary, commission, hourly wage and profession. Those who make their living by drawing a fee as a professional (lawyer, physician, professor) and those who do unskilled labor of the meanest sort stand united in their fear and distrust of those who, merely by money, own the business.
Joe dreams – out loud and in Obama’s face—of stepping into that owner class. He said so – on camera—in the face of a man who epitomizes the non-owning class. Obama is a professional man, educated at one of our finest universities.
Contempt for people like Joe the Plumber is bred into the bones of a man like Barak Obama –or any other well educated political liberal. It’s as if touching the deed to one’s own small business would hopelessly soil the hands.
(Once a business becomes as large as, say, the Kennedy holdings, Averell Harriman’s or Jay Rockefeller’s, it doesn’t matter. Holdings their size become the American equivalent of a dukedom and are more than respectable in liberal circles. It’s the petite bourgeois that are despised. That’s Joe’s crime – he aspires to become a small business owner.)
It’s an attitude we pick up from Medieval Europe –when a student whose only claim to attend a university came from his daddy’s money, not his title or land holdings was disdained. If he was at university merely because he could pay tuition, he was given the official label of “without nobility” or (Sine NOBilis) and held in appropriate low esteem.
If daddy held a title (duke, baron, earl, so forth—in modern times, a profession or high salaried job as opposed to a plumbing shop) you were respectable.
That’s a strange point of view for an American. It was precisely the ambition of men like Joe the Plumber that created the American empire and the American standard of living. People like Joe created the myth that American streets were paved with gold.
In fact the United States represents the first group of people to come out of Europe in over a thousand years who valued themselves in terms of money – not birth or professional status. For good or ill, that’s who we really are –a society driven by those with money and those who want to get it.
We are, like Joe the Plumber – and John McCain’s wife– a money economy.
Our hourly laborers, our professionals, our salarymen (to use the expressive Japanese term) often unite with political liberals to view the “owner class” as an enemy. John McCain understood that in Wednesday’s debate. As Napoleon sneered about England, we truly are a nation of shopkeepers.
Barack Obama isn’t at all comfortable with that. His discomfort shows – when he’s face to face with Joe or when he makes snide remarks about “small town Americans”. That’s why some people think he is an elitist. No more so than anyone else who despises small businessmen.
And, thankfully, he’s closer to a socialist who merely feels that small businessmen should be penalized for their ownership by extra taxation. He’s nowhere near the point of Russian communists who felt small business and land owners (Kulaks) ought to be executed en masse.
Just be aware, at the core of the liberal democratic program Is a real form of socialism. You may approve of it or not, you may feel that socialism of one sort or another is an idea whose time has come--just recognize it for what it is.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The Last Debate
Had I dropped down from Mars – never having heard of OBama or McCain or even George W. Bush-- I probably would have given the edge in tonight’s debate to Barack OBama. Obama spoke more fluently, he gave more specifics of what he wanted to do, and his smile didn’t look like he really wanted to bite his opponent – as McCain’s did.
I’ve been a partisan Republican since 1948, but OBama simply outtalked McCain. Unlike Kennedy in 1960, OBama didn’t seem to be bloviating. He sounded as if he had put some thought into what he was saying, and gave reasons why for each point he made.
Let’s not even go into whether OBama can actually accomplish all the wonderful and miraculous things he plans to do. As I’ve said before, Presidents propose; Congress disposes. The power of Congressional politics remains local in its orientation – that means an earmark for a crucial constituency in a given state is going to outweigh the needs of the Republic in most sane Congressional minds.
If cutting back a “wasteful” government program is going to hurt most voters in Iowa or Oregon, guess which way the delegation from either state is going to vote. If one of those Congressmen is chairman of an important committee, he’s going to have the power to influence a whole lot of other votes in the House. Ditto the Senate.
Such considerations are going to have far more impact on the next President’s domestic agenda than any campaign speech or party platform plank. Congress will work more change on his programs than any alchemist ever worked on base metal.
We haven’t even talked about the power of a lobbyist to change Congressional minds by waving campaign cash in front of their noses. But, as I said, OBama’s ideas were better articulated, and he sounded better thought out.
McCain’s basic theme seemed to be, “No more taxes”. No how, no way, by no means. Many of us remember the senior George Bush making the same pledge in 1988 – he raised taxes two years later. With an unthinkable deficit, a war to fund, an unimaginable amount of money needed to bail out our financial system, who could possibly believe such a promise?
But that’s mainly what McCain had to offer. When the moderator referred to a non-partisan study that said both the Republican and the Democratic program would add $200 billion to the budget deficit (on top of the $500 billion to a trillion currently projected—and the $700,000,000,000 bailout just voted) both candidates – both of whom promise tax cuts—just sort of stammered.
Neither had a decent answer to the moderator’s question, “What would you cut?”
Then, “Joe the Plumber” got into the act. Actually he was brought in by McCain. Joe is a guy in Ohio who accosted OBama on a campaign stop. He pointed out that if he bought the plumbing business he wants to buy, OBama’s proposed a tax on incomes over a quarter of a million would hurt him and his ability to grow the business.
McCain kept telling him, “Joe, I won’t raise your taxes.” OBama kept sniffing, “Five years ago, when you didn’t have the money to buy the business, my plan would’ve helped you.” I suspect that was small comfort to Joe. No doubt he will vote Republican in November.
But Joe kept popping up. One of the commentators after the debate suggested he was on stage for approximately two thirds of the debate. I cannot say that he really helped McCain all that much.
When they talked about education, OBama fingered parents as having at least some responsibility for underachieving students – which delighted me. But for McCain, the issue was all rewarding competent teachers and getting rid of the incompetent ones. Both liked charter schools and competition and McCain, who favors vouchers more than OBama does, called for giving parents the same choice in picking a school that he and the OBamas had.
Tonight’s debate was the best of the four. The candidates sat only a couple of feet apart at the same table like set with the moderator. It made the engage one another, which they did.
McCain’s best line was, “I am not George Bush; if you wanted to run against him, you should have run four years ago.” Nice line. But the fact that both he and President Bush are members of the same party is a weight McCain cannot rid himself of.
I’ve been a partisan Republican since 1948, but OBama simply outtalked McCain. Unlike Kennedy in 1960, OBama didn’t seem to be bloviating. He sounded as if he had put some thought into what he was saying, and gave reasons why for each point he made.
Let’s not even go into whether OBama can actually accomplish all the wonderful and miraculous things he plans to do. As I’ve said before, Presidents propose; Congress disposes. The power of Congressional politics remains local in its orientation – that means an earmark for a crucial constituency in a given state is going to outweigh the needs of the Republic in most sane Congressional minds.
If cutting back a “wasteful” government program is going to hurt most voters in Iowa or Oregon, guess which way the delegation from either state is going to vote. If one of those Congressmen is chairman of an important committee, he’s going to have the power to influence a whole lot of other votes in the House. Ditto the Senate.
Such considerations are going to have far more impact on the next President’s domestic agenda than any campaign speech or party platform plank. Congress will work more change on his programs than any alchemist ever worked on base metal.
We haven’t even talked about the power of a lobbyist to change Congressional minds by waving campaign cash in front of their noses. But, as I said, OBama’s ideas were better articulated, and he sounded better thought out.
McCain’s basic theme seemed to be, “No more taxes”. No how, no way, by no means. Many of us remember the senior George Bush making the same pledge in 1988 – he raised taxes two years later. With an unthinkable deficit, a war to fund, an unimaginable amount of money needed to bail out our financial system, who could possibly believe such a promise?
But that’s mainly what McCain had to offer. When the moderator referred to a non-partisan study that said both the Republican and the Democratic program would add $200 billion to the budget deficit (on top of the $500 billion to a trillion currently projected—and the $700,000,000,000 bailout just voted) both candidates – both of whom promise tax cuts—just sort of stammered.
Neither had a decent answer to the moderator’s question, “What would you cut?”
Then, “Joe the Plumber” got into the act. Actually he was brought in by McCain. Joe is a guy in Ohio who accosted OBama on a campaign stop. He pointed out that if he bought the plumbing business he wants to buy, OBama’s proposed a tax on incomes over a quarter of a million would hurt him and his ability to grow the business.
McCain kept telling him, “Joe, I won’t raise your taxes.” OBama kept sniffing, “Five years ago, when you didn’t have the money to buy the business, my plan would’ve helped you.” I suspect that was small comfort to Joe. No doubt he will vote Republican in November.
But Joe kept popping up. One of the commentators after the debate suggested he was on stage for approximately two thirds of the debate. I cannot say that he really helped McCain all that much.
When they talked about education, OBama fingered parents as having at least some responsibility for underachieving students – which delighted me. But for McCain, the issue was all rewarding competent teachers and getting rid of the incompetent ones. Both liked charter schools and competition and McCain, who favors vouchers more than OBama does, called for giving parents the same choice in picking a school that he and the OBamas had.
Tonight’s debate was the best of the four. The candidates sat only a couple of feet apart at the same table like set with the moderator. It made the engage one another, which they did.
McCain’s best line was, “I am not George Bush; if you wanted to run against him, you should have run four years ago.” Nice line. But the fact that both he and President Bush are members of the same party is a weight McCain cannot rid himself of.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
What to Believe about God
Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Interesting sermon this morning – centered around that thought. Before you can “come to God” you have to believe he exists. And, secondly, you have to believe that he will reward you for coming.
I suspect a lot of atheism, a lot of rejection of Christianity, has to do with one of those two points. A good many people – in a moment of desperation or fear – come to God. (No atheists in foxholes they used to say.) They plead for something without really believing anyone is there.
How would you respond to a neighbor or co-worker who came to you for a favor, but the whole time he talked at you, he didn’t really act as if you were present? You might want to wave your hand in front of his face. “Hey, look at me, notice me, pretend I’m really here.”
Finally you’d walk away – without doing the favor. Would this be proof that you did not exist? Or, getting on to the second point, that you weren’t a nice enough person to do anybody a favor?
The second point is that he rewards people that come after him, believe he exists – and, as part of being a diligent seeker, shut up long enough for him to answer. This means you believe that he is fundamentally good.
That’s harder to believe that about God in America than we might think. We live in a society where every disaster or major loss is immediately labeled an “act of God”. I watched an episode of “Gray’s Anatomy” the other night where a man who was having medical problems kept repeating, “God hates me”.
We’re very quick to imagine ways God has shown hostility or indifference toward us. We often see him as malevolent. Then we come to him and ask for favors. Is it surprising that he may feel there are other issues to settle first?
Is it shocking that he chooses not to reward people who don’t like him, believe he doesn’t like them? He says, “Let’s make up our differences first.” He makes it very clear throughout the Bible that he favors those who like and trust him. Who doesn’t?
Without the belief (“faith”) that he exists and is willing to do you the favor you ask, it is impossible to please him. So says the verse.
You don’t have to keep rules. He doesn’t evaluate you on the size of your church contribution or your good behavior. He evaluates you on whether you have enough faith to believe he exists and cares enough about you to help – if you talk to him as if he were real.
There are wives and husbands all over this planet who feel the same way about their mates.
For some people it may simply be easier to decide he just doesn’t exist. That way they never have to get real with him. They never have to set aside the skepticism that says, “He’d never do that for me.”
I know people who feel that way. I’ve had trouble with that issue myself. It’s really hard sometimes to trust a friend or a mate that much. It isn’t any easier to trust God.
But just because you don’t like or trust him, don’t tell me he isn’t really there.
Interesting sermon this morning – centered around that thought. Before you can “come to God” you have to believe he exists. And, secondly, you have to believe that he will reward you for coming.
I suspect a lot of atheism, a lot of rejection of Christianity, has to do with one of those two points. A good many people – in a moment of desperation or fear – come to God. (No atheists in foxholes they used to say.) They plead for something without really believing anyone is there.
How would you respond to a neighbor or co-worker who came to you for a favor, but the whole time he talked at you, he didn’t really act as if you were present? You might want to wave your hand in front of his face. “Hey, look at me, notice me, pretend I’m really here.”
Finally you’d walk away – without doing the favor. Would this be proof that you did not exist? Or, getting on to the second point, that you weren’t a nice enough person to do anybody a favor?
The second point is that he rewards people that come after him, believe he exists – and, as part of being a diligent seeker, shut up long enough for him to answer. This means you believe that he is fundamentally good.
That’s harder to believe that about God in America than we might think. We live in a society where every disaster or major loss is immediately labeled an “act of God”. I watched an episode of “Gray’s Anatomy” the other night where a man who was having medical problems kept repeating, “God hates me”.
We’re very quick to imagine ways God has shown hostility or indifference toward us. We often see him as malevolent. Then we come to him and ask for favors. Is it surprising that he may feel there are other issues to settle first?
Is it shocking that he chooses not to reward people who don’t like him, believe he doesn’t like them? He says, “Let’s make up our differences first.” He makes it very clear throughout the Bible that he favors those who like and trust him. Who doesn’t?
Without the belief (“faith”) that he exists and is willing to do you the favor you ask, it is impossible to please him. So says the verse.
You don’t have to keep rules. He doesn’t evaluate you on the size of your church contribution or your good behavior. He evaluates you on whether you have enough faith to believe he exists and cares enough about you to help – if you talk to him as if he were real.
There are wives and husbands all over this planet who feel the same way about their mates.
For some people it may simply be easier to decide he just doesn’t exist. That way they never have to get real with him. They never have to set aside the skepticism that says, “He’d never do that for me.”
I know people who feel that way. I’ve had trouble with that issue myself. It’s really hard sometimes to trust a friend or a mate that much. It isn’t any easier to trust God.
But just because you don’t like or trust him, don’t tell me he isn’t really there.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The Wages of Hubris
We went to see a local performance of Sophocles’ “Antigone” tonight. (Hadn’t seen it performed in over fifty years.) The play was written in ancient Greece about two and a half millennia ago. It may be a subtle political statement like Arthur Miller’s “Crucible”.
In any case the story centers around an extremely stubborn and arrogant ruler whose unwillingness to change his mind or his policy results in horrific destruction. King Creon of Thebes has determined to heap disgrace on the body of a fallen enemy (Polyneices). His corpse is to be left for the wild dogs to tear – anyone who buries him is to be executed.
Of course Polyneices’ sister, Antigone, goes out and buries him. She is a princess and the fiancé of King Creon’s son. Despite warnings from the gods (through a prophet who has hither to for been Creon’s man), from Theban elders and his own family, Creon persists in his plan to inflict a horrible death on Antigone for defying him.
His stubbornness results in Antigone’s death, his son’s death and Creon’s wife’s suicide. Creon is a horrified and shattered man at the end of the play. His hubris has ruined his life.
It struck me that the past fifty years have seen entirely too many Creons in the White House. We have had more than our share of stubborn, wrongheaded and arrogant presidents. We have paid a terrible price in blood and treasure for their hubris. They have paid, too.
Lyndon Johnson leaps to mind. Here was a man so determined to carry out his own narrow view of how America must stop a Communist threat that wasn’t ever really there, that he shattered the morale of the American military for years to come – and lost anyway. In the end, the man who won the White House by the biggest landslide ever resigned without daring to run again. He died soon after.
Then came Richard Nixon. “I am not going to be the first American President to lose a war,” he declared. So he piled more and more chips on the table. He lied, he twisted, he spent blood – and he lost anyway. Caught in his own lies, he became the first president ever to resign in midterm. His disgrace will probably never be effaced.
We could include the Carter/Reagan era – not so much blood, but the roots of our present economic disaster. They slashed regulation and cut taxes – without cutting programs or making up the revenue shortfall. Their legacy is best articulated by the present vice-president, Dick Cheney, “Deficits don’t matter”. (Oh yes they do.)
Clinton was far more pragmatic. He really never committed himself to something he had to back away from. We tend to look back, understandably, at his administration as a golden age. His only real hubris came in reference to his sexual appetites, and these did not damage the country itself, only his own reputation.
Next came the pig-headed hubris of our current president. He was noted for his sarcasm and his derision of anyone whose opinion disagreed with his. When he decided to make a move, no wisdom or set of facts could change him – neither militarily nor economically.
As he trudges –reduced to a non-factor in his own administration – toward the end of his presidency, he faces the lowest approval ratings of any president in our history. His own party runs against him as it seeks to retain the White House. (Al Gore merely ignored Clinton; he didn’t run against him.)
Two points: evaluate this year’s presidential candidates in terms of their potential for flexibility. Anyone can be wrong, especially in volatile times. But, like FDR, can they change their minds before disaster strikes? That should be a major consideration. I don’t hear anyone talking about the premier characteristic of the truly great: flexibility.
Second point: One reason it isn’t talked about is that voters tend to punish flexibility. They seem to want leaders who come to the office with great certitude. If a candidate admits to having changed his mind, he is seen as vacillating, insecure, and unfit for office.
A classic case is that of the senior Romney who, while running for the Republican nomination in 1968, admitted that the military command in Vietnam had deceived him. Realizing the facts, he said he had reversed his attitude. The media covered him with derision, and he was done.
Perhaps we should change our minds about the virtue of a candidate who can change his. Otherwise we are sure to be stuck with more Creons, Nixons, Johnsons, and Bushes. Certitude without limit can lead very quickly to hubris.
In any case the story centers around an extremely stubborn and arrogant ruler whose unwillingness to change his mind or his policy results in horrific destruction. King Creon of Thebes has determined to heap disgrace on the body of a fallen enemy (Polyneices). His corpse is to be left for the wild dogs to tear – anyone who buries him is to be executed.
Of course Polyneices’ sister, Antigone, goes out and buries him. She is a princess and the fiancé of King Creon’s son. Despite warnings from the gods (through a prophet who has hither to for been Creon’s man), from Theban elders and his own family, Creon persists in his plan to inflict a horrible death on Antigone for defying him.
His stubbornness results in Antigone’s death, his son’s death and Creon’s wife’s suicide. Creon is a horrified and shattered man at the end of the play. His hubris has ruined his life.
It struck me that the past fifty years have seen entirely too many Creons in the White House. We have had more than our share of stubborn, wrongheaded and arrogant presidents. We have paid a terrible price in blood and treasure for their hubris. They have paid, too.
Lyndon Johnson leaps to mind. Here was a man so determined to carry out his own narrow view of how America must stop a Communist threat that wasn’t ever really there, that he shattered the morale of the American military for years to come – and lost anyway. In the end, the man who won the White House by the biggest landslide ever resigned without daring to run again. He died soon after.
Then came Richard Nixon. “I am not going to be the first American President to lose a war,” he declared. So he piled more and more chips on the table. He lied, he twisted, he spent blood – and he lost anyway. Caught in his own lies, he became the first president ever to resign in midterm. His disgrace will probably never be effaced.
We could include the Carter/Reagan era – not so much blood, but the roots of our present economic disaster. They slashed regulation and cut taxes – without cutting programs or making up the revenue shortfall. Their legacy is best articulated by the present vice-president, Dick Cheney, “Deficits don’t matter”. (Oh yes they do.)
Clinton was far more pragmatic. He really never committed himself to something he had to back away from. We tend to look back, understandably, at his administration as a golden age. His only real hubris came in reference to his sexual appetites, and these did not damage the country itself, only his own reputation.
Next came the pig-headed hubris of our current president. He was noted for his sarcasm and his derision of anyone whose opinion disagreed with his. When he decided to make a move, no wisdom or set of facts could change him – neither militarily nor economically.
As he trudges –reduced to a non-factor in his own administration – toward the end of his presidency, he faces the lowest approval ratings of any president in our history. His own party runs against him as it seeks to retain the White House. (Al Gore merely ignored Clinton; he didn’t run against him.)
Two points: evaluate this year’s presidential candidates in terms of their potential for flexibility. Anyone can be wrong, especially in volatile times. But, like FDR, can they change their minds before disaster strikes? That should be a major consideration. I don’t hear anyone talking about the premier characteristic of the truly great: flexibility.
Second point: One reason it isn’t talked about is that voters tend to punish flexibility. They seem to want leaders who come to the office with great certitude. If a candidate admits to having changed his mind, he is seen as vacillating, insecure, and unfit for office.
A classic case is that of the senior Romney who, while running for the Republican nomination in 1968, admitted that the military command in Vietnam had deceived him. Realizing the facts, he said he had reversed his attitude. The media covered him with derision, and he was done.
Perhaps we should change our minds about the virtue of a candidate who can change his. Otherwise we are sure to be stuck with more Creons, Nixons, Johnsons, and Bushes. Certitude without limit can lead very quickly to hubris.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Never Mind How -- Just Build It!
What an absolutely marvelous, perfectly rational suggestion. What an absolutely sensible way to solve the energy crisis that underlies whatever else is bedeviling this country. It’s at the core of an approach to energy solutions printed by Newsweek Magazine this week.
They’re quoting, of all people, a Congressman. Rep. Bart Gordon, Chairman of the House Science & Technology committee, calls this crisis another “sputnik moment”. He recommends another major government led effort like the ones that created atomic energy, sent us to the moon, developed the Internet and launched the computer revolution.
Only government, he points out accurately, can create and lead such a program. I’ll add that you would never have had a big enough steel industry, a coast to coast railroad or an automobile revolution if government hadn’t led and paved the way – with tax breaks, land giveaways and outright subsidies.
We have the finest brain pools in the world – to name Stanford, MIT, University of Michigan and Harvard as just a few. There’s still some competent R&D going on in the private sector. Only government can pull the best of the best together and get them working on a single project – as it did with the Manhattan Project during World War II.
That, says Congressman Gordon is exactly what we need to provide a real solution to the energy problems we face. He’s right. Only government can afford to take the risk of telling a group of brain heavy scientists: This is what we need you to do; you figure out how.
The private sector has to know pretty much where it is going and how before it can put vast amounts of money into a program. Only government can say, “We’re going to the moon in ten years. We have no idea how or with what, but you’re going to figure that out and get us there.”
That wouldn’t fly in a board room. Their constraints would lead to the “incremental change” that Mr. Gordon says we don’t need more of. What we need is “revolutionary breakthrough” -- the kind that only becomes apparent once you’ve got enough Ph.D.s and equipment in one place, and they have the freedom to play around, to experiment at will.
Go build something that will fit inside a plane and obliterate a city when dropped. We’ve never even figured out how to set off a chain reaction, but you just work on it and build. And, should it result in nuclear powered electrical plants and submarines that can say submerged almost forever, that’s a nice by-product. Boy, do government programs produce profitable by-products!
The Manhattan project hasn’t stopped delivering yet. The sputnik-inspired moon flight gave us the entire computer revolution, from Apple to Microsoft, desktops and laptops – all because a large number of very bright people were handed a few billion and told to figure out how to do something.
Only government could have pulled them all together – taken the risk, funded the risk and let what happens happen. I remember when I was in Washington over 40 years ago there was a lot of talk about government research into ways of disseminating data electronically between universities. They did it – and we have the Internet as a result.
Enough American innovation and enough resources and they’ll come up with an energy solution. (How about cars that run on water? Hydrogen and oxygen are both combustible, and neither should create polluting exhaust.) This is the kind of end result we need – you guys figure out how to make it.
During World War II, It was noted that the American GI was particularly effective in a situation where he had no officers around and no written plan. He just innovated. Other armies floundered without orders from the top; GIs used their native ingenuity and did what was necessary.
We still have that skill. Even our Ph.D.s and professors have it (think how many businesses have been started by academics near major American universities!) Let’s do like the Congressman suggests and pull together another Manhattan Project or NASA.
Won’t it be nice when the Arabs and the Chinese want to buy energy from us?
They’re quoting, of all people, a Congressman. Rep. Bart Gordon, Chairman of the House Science & Technology committee, calls this crisis another “sputnik moment”. He recommends another major government led effort like the ones that created atomic energy, sent us to the moon, developed the Internet and launched the computer revolution.
Only government, he points out accurately, can create and lead such a program. I’ll add that you would never have had a big enough steel industry, a coast to coast railroad or an automobile revolution if government hadn’t led and paved the way – with tax breaks, land giveaways and outright subsidies.
We have the finest brain pools in the world – to name Stanford, MIT, University of Michigan and Harvard as just a few. There’s still some competent R&D going on in the private sector. Only government can pull the best of the best together and get them working on a single project – as it did with the Manhattan Project during World War II.
That, says Congressman Gordon is exactly what we need to provide a real solution to the energy problems we face. He’s right. Only government can afford to take the risk of telling a group of brain heavy scientists: This is what we need you to do; you figure out how.
The private sector has to know pretty much where it is going and how before it can put vast amounts of money into a program. Only government can say, “We’re going to the moon in ten years. We have no idea how or with what, but you’re going to figure that out and get us there.”
That wouldn’t fly in a board room. Their constraints would lead to the “incremental change” that Mr. Gordon says we don’t need more of. What we need is “revolutionary breakthrough” -- the kind that only becomes apparent once you’ve got enough Ph.D.s and equipment in one place, and they have the freedom to play around, to experiment at will.
Go build something that will fit inside a plane and obliterate a city when dropped. We’ve never even figured out how to set off a chain reaction, but you just work on it and build. And, should it result in nuclear powered electrical plants and submarines that can say submerged almost forever, that’s a nice by-product. Boy, do government programs produce profitable by-products!
The Manhattan project hasn’t stopped delivering yet. The sputnik-inspired moon flight gave us the entire computer revolution, from Apple to Microsoft, desktops and laptops – all because a large number of very bright people were handed a few billion and told to figure out how to do something.
Only government could have pulled them all together – taken the risk, funded the risk and let what happens happen. I remember when I was in Washington over 40 years ago there was a lot of talk about government research into ways of disseminating data electronically between universities. They did it – and we have the Internet as a result.
Enough American innovation and enough resources and they’ll come up with an energy solution. (How about cars that run on water? Hydrogen and oxygen are both combustible, and neither should create polluting exhaust.) This is the kind of end result we need – you guys figure out how to make it.
During World War II, It was noted that the American GI was particularly effective in a situation where he had no officers around and no written plan. He just innovated. Other armies floundered without orders from the top; GIs used their native ingenuity and did what was necessary.
We still have that skill. Even our Ph.D.s and professors have it (think how many businesses have been started by academics near major American universities!) Let’s do like the Congressman suggests and pull together another Manhattan Project or NASA.
Won’t it be nice when the Arabs and the Chinese want to buy energy from us?
Never Mind How -- Just Build It!
What an absolutely marvelous, perfectly rational suggestion. What an absolutely sensible way to solve the energy crisis that underlies whatever else is bedeviling this country. It’s at the core of an approach to energy solutions printed by Newsweek Magazine this week.
They’re quoting, of all people, a Congressman. Rep. Bart Gordon, Chairman of the House Science & Technology committee, calls this crisis another “sputnik moment”. He recommends another major government led effort like the ones that created atomic energy, sent us to the moon, developed the Internet and launched the computer revolution.
Only government, he points out accurately, can create and lead such a program. I’ll add that you would never have had a big enough steel industry, a coast to coast railroad or an automobile revolution if government hadn’t led and paved the way – with tax breaks, land giveaways and outright subsidies.
We have the finest brain pools in the world – to name Stanford, MIT, University of Michigan and Harvard as just a few. There’s still some competent R&D going on in the private sector. Only government can pull the best of the best together and get them working on a single project – as it did with the Manhattan Project during World War II.
That, says Congressman Gordon is exactly what we need to provide a real solution to the energy problems we face. He’s right. Only government can afford to take the risk of telling a group of brain heavy scientists: This is what we need you to do; you figure out how.
The private sector has to know pretty much where it is going and how before it can put vast amounts of money into a program. Only government can say, “We’re going to the moon in ten years. We have no idea how or with what, but you’re going to figure that out and get us there.”
That wouldn’t fly in a board room. Their constraints would lead to the “incremental change” that Mr. Gordon says we don’t need more of. What we need is “revolutionary breakthrough” -- the kind that only becomes apparent once you’ve got enough Ph.D.s and equipment in one place, and they have the freedom to play around, to experiment at will.
Go build something that will fit inside a plane and obliterate a city when dropped. We’ve never even figured out how to set off a chain reaction, but you just work on it and build. And, should it result in nuclear powered electrical plants and submarines that can say submerged almost forever, that’s a nice by-product. Boy, do government programs produce profitable by-products!
The Manhattan project hasn’t stopped delivering yet. The sputnik-inspired moon flight gave us the entire computer revolution, from Apple to Microsoft, desktops and laptops – all because a large number of very bright people were handed a few billion and told to figure out how to do something.
Only government could have pulled them all together – taken the risk, funded the risk and let what happens happen. I remember when I was in Washington over 40 years ago there was a lot of talk about government research into ways of disseminating data electronically between universities. They did it – and we have the Internet as a result.
Enough American innovation and enough resources and they’ll come up with an energy solution. (How about cars that run on water? Hydrogen and oxygen are both combustible, and neither should create polluting exhaust.) This is the kind of end result we need – you guys figure out how to make it.
During World War II, It was noted that the American GI was particularly effective in a situation where he had no officers around and no written plan. He just innovated. Other armies floundered without orders from the top; GIs used their native ingenuity and did what was necessary.
We still have that skill. Even our Ph.D.s and professors have it (think how many businesses have been started by academics near major American universities!) Let’s do like the Congressman suggests and pull together another Manhattan Project or NASA.
Won’t it be nice when the Arabs and the Chinese want to buy energy from us?
They’re quoting, of all people, a Congressman. Rep. Bart Gordon, Chairman of the House Science & Technology committee, calls this crisis another “sputnik moment”. He recommends another major government led effort like the ones that created atomic energy, sent us to the moon, developed the Internet and launched the computer revolution.
Only government, he points out accurately, can create and lead such a program. I’ll add that you would never have had a big enough steel industry, a coast to coast railroad or an automobile revolution if government hadn’t led and paved the way – with tax breaks, land giveaways and outright subsidies.
We have the finest brain pools in the world – to name Stanford, MIT, University of Michigan and Harvard as just a few. There’s still some competent R&D going on in the private sector. Only government can pull the best of the best together and get them working on a single project – as it did with the Manhattan Project during World War II.
That, says Congressman Gordon is exactly what we need to provide a real solution to the energy problems we face. He’s right. Only government can afford to take the risk of telling a group of brain heavy scientists: This is what we need you to do; you figure out how.
The private sector has to know pretty much where it is going and how before it can put vast amounts of money into a program. Only government can say, “We’re going to the moon in ten years. We have no idea how or with what, but you’re going to figure that out and get us there.”
That wouldn’t fly in a board room. Their constraints would lead to the “incremental change” that Mr. Gordon says we don’t need more of. What we need is “revolutionary breakthrough” -- the kind that only becomes apparent once you’ve got enough Ph.D.s and equipment in one place, and they have the freedom to play around, to experiment at will.
Go build something that will fit inside a plane and obliterate a city when dropped. We’ve never even figured out how to set off a chain reaction, but you just work on it and build. And, should it result in nuclear powered electrical plants and submarines that can say submerged almost forever, that’s a nice by-product. Boy, do government programs produce profitable by-products!
The Manhattan project hasn’t stopped delivering yet. The sputnik-inspired moon flight gave us the entire computer revolution, from Apple to Microsoft, desktops and laptops – all because a large number of very bright people were handed a few billion and told to figure out how to do something.
Only government could have pulled them all together – taken the risk, funded the risk and let what happens happen. I remember when I was in Washington over 40 years ago there was a lot of talk about government research into ways of disseminating data electronically between universities. They did it – and we have the Internet as a result.
Enough American innovation and enough resources and they’ll come up with an energy solution. (How about cars that run on water? Hydrogen and oxygen are both combustible, and neither should create polluting exhaust.) This is the kind of end result we need – you guys figure out how to make it.
During World War II, It was noted that the American GI was particularly effective in a situation where he had no officers around and no written plan. He just innovated. Other armies floundered without orders from the top; GIs used their native ingenuity and did what was necessary.
We still have that skill. Even our Ph.D.s and professors have it (think how many businesses have been started by academics near major American universities!) Let’s do like the Congressman suggests and pull together another Manhattan Project or NASA.
Won’t it be nice when the Arabs and the Chinese want to buy energy from us?
Never Mind How -- Just Build It!
What an absolutely marvelous, perfectly rational suggestion. What an absolutely sensible way to solve the energy crisis that underlies whatever else is bedeviling this country. It’s at the core of an approach to energy solutions printed by Newsweek Magazine this week.
They’re quoting, of all people, a Congressman. Rep. Bart Gordon, Chairman of the House Science & Technology committee, calls this crisis another “sputnik moment”. He recommends another major government led effort like the ones that created atomic energy, sent us to the moon, developed the Internet and launched the computer revolution.
Only government, he points out accurately, can create and lead such a program. I’ll add that you would never have had a big enough steel industry, a coast to coast railroad or an automobile revolution if government hadn’t led and paved the way – with tax breaks, land giveaways and outright subsidies.
We have the finest brain pools in the world – to name Stanford, MIT, University of Michigan and Harvard as just a few. There’s still some competent R&D going on in the private sector. Only government can pull the best of the best together and get them working on a single project – as it did with the Manhattan Project during World War II.
That, says Congressman Gordon is exactly what we need to provide a real solution to the energy problems we face. He’s right. Only government can afford to take the risk of telling a group of brain heavy scientists: This is what we need you to do; you figure out how.
The private sector has to know pretty much where it is going and how before it can put vast amounts of money into a program. Only government can say, “We’re going to the moon in ten years. We have no idea how or with what, but you’re going to figure that out and get us there.”
That wouldn’t fly in a board room. Their constraints would lead to the “incremental change” that Mr. Gordon says we don’t need more of. What we need is “revolutionary breakthrough” -- the kind that only becomes apparent once you’ve got enough Ph.D.s and equipment in one place, and they have the freedom to play around, to experiment at will.
Go build something that will fit inside a plane and obliterate a city when dropped. We’ve never even figured out how to set off a chain reaction, but you just work on it and build. And, should it result in nuclear powered electrical plants and submarines that can say submerged almost forever, that’s a nice by-product. Boy, do government programs produce profitable by-products!
The Manhattan project hasn’t stopped delivering yet. The sputnik-inspired moon flight gave us the entire computer revolution, from Apple to Microsoft, desktops and laptops – all because a large number of very bright people were handed a few billion and told to figure out how to do something.
Only government could have pulled them all together – taken the risk, funded the risk and let what happens happen. I remember when I was in Washington over 40 years ago there was a lot of talk about government research into ways of disseminating data electronically between universities. They did it – and we have the Internet as a result.
Enough American innovation and enough resources and they’ll come up with an energy solution. (How about cars that run on water? Hydrogen and oxygen are both combustible, and neither should create polluting exhaust.) This is the kind of end result we need – you guys figure out how to make it.
During World War II, It was noted that the American GI was particularly effective in a situation where he had no officers around and no written plan. He just innovated. Other armies floundered without orders from the top; GIs used their native ingenuity and did what was necessary.
We still have that skill. Even our Ph.D.s and professors have it (think how many businesses have been started by academics near major American universities!) Let’s do like the Congressman suggests and pull together another Manhattan Project or NASA.
Won’t it be nice when the Arabs and the Chinese want to buy energy from us?
They’re quoting, of all people, a Congressman. Rep. Bart Gordon, Chairman of the House Science & Technology committee, calls this crisis another “sputnik moment”. He recommends another major government led effort like the ones that created atomic energy, sent us to the moon, developed the Internet and launched the computer revolution.
Only government, he points out accurately, can create and lead such a program. I’ll add that you would never have had a big enough steel industry, a coast to coast railroad or an automobile revolution if government hadn’t led and paved the way – with tax breaks, land giveaways and outright subsidies.
We have the finest brain pools in the world – to name Stanford, MIT, University of Michigan and Harvard as just a few. There’s still some competent R&D going on in the private sector. Only government can pull the best of the best together and get them working on a single project – as it did with the Manhattan Project during World War II.
That, says Congressman Gordon is exactly what we need to provide a real solution to the energy problems we face. He’s right. Only government can afford to take the risk of telling a group of brain heavy scientists: This is what we need you to do; you figure out how.
The private sector has to know pretty much where it is going and how before it can put vast amounts of money into a program. Only government can say, “We’re going to the moon in ten years. We have no idea how or with what, but you’re going to figure that out and get us there.”
That wouldn’t fly in a board room. Their constraints would lead to the “incremental change” that Mr. Gordon says we don’t need more of. What we need is “revolutionary breakthrough” -- the kind that only becomes apparent once you’ve got enough Ph.D.s and equipment in one place, and they have the freedom to play around, to experiment at will.
Go build something that will fit inside a plane and obliterate a city when dropped. We’ve never even figured out how to set off a chain reaction, but you just work on it and build. And, should it result in nuclear powered electrical plants and submarines that can say submerged almost forever, that’s a nice by-product. Boy, do government programs produce profitable by-products!
The Manhattan project hasn’t stopped delivering yet. The sputnik-inspired moon flight gave us the entire computer revolution, from Apple to Microsoft, desktops and laptops – all because a large number of very bright people were handed a few billion and told to figure out how to do something.
Only government could have pulled them all together – taken the risk, funded the risk and let what happens happen. I remember when I was in Washington over 40 years ago there was a lot of talk about government research into ways of disseminating data electronically between universities. They did it – and we have the Internet as a result.
Enough American innovation and enough resources and they’ll come up with an energy solution. (How about cars that run on water? Hydrogen and oxygen are both combustible, and neither should create polluting exhaust.) This is the kind of end result we need – you guys figure out how to make it.
During World War II, It was noted that the American GI was particularly effective in a situation where he had no officers around and no written plan. He just innovated. Other armies floundered without orders from the top; GIs used their native ingenuity and did what was necessary.
We still have that skill. Even our Ph.D.s and professors have it (think how many businesses have been started by academics near major American universities!) Let’s do like the Congressman suggests and pull together another Manhattan Project or NASA.
Won’t it be nice when the Arabs and the Chinese want to buy energy from us?
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
How Fast Would You Drive?
At the risk of being tedious, I am basically going to repeat myself tonight. Maybe the fix we and Wall Street and our mortgages and IRAs need goes deeper than just liquid credit and restored confidence. Maybe there’s a moral component here that needs to be addressed.
Since the late 1800s most Americans have worked from the moral assumption that people are basically good. For many it has been an article of faith that, given a choice between good and evil, most people would choose the good.
As I have said before, this goes to the bottom of many assumptions our schools and social institutions are built upon. Against all logic and all experience, most educators hold that students are fundamentally good – and that what they need from schools and social agencies is empowerment to arrive at the good choices they would naturally select.
That assumption lies at the root of Reaganomics. Just get the government off the back of business (deregulation) and, unfettered, business and businessmen will invariably choose the good. (As they did at Enron or when they made up these packages of subprime mortgages.)
Paulson urged this. Greenspan was an advocate. So were treasury secretary after treasury secretary – and presidents from both parties over the past 30 years. The wonderful folks who brought you the Moral Majority seem to have believed this. Next only to godliness was their belief in deregulation.
Regulation is really nothing more than acceptance of the reality of how humans will behave – as three year olds and as adults – if left unsupervised and unchecked. When teaching college history, I often raised the issue of human behavior.
Most students reflexively thought that people will indeed do the right thing when given the opportunity to make the choice. I would respond with one question. If you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that all police officers had been pulled off the road, how many of you would drive home tonight at anything like the legal speed limit?
I’d wait. The smiles would begin to come. Point made.
Over the last thirty years, we’ve pulled the cops off Wall Street and out of the corporate board rooms. Nobody running an IRA, a company, or a bank was driving at anything like a legal – and safe – speed limit. Such a crash we’ve had.
“Disregard of risk” they call reckless driving in banks and stock markets. But it’s really the same thing as “reckless driving” on the public streets. The only thing that keeps more drivers from doing it on our roads is the presence of the police. (Ever notice how traffic slows down when a cop car comes into view? Many drivers drop even below the legal speed limit.)
Want to stop reckless driving on Wall Street (or “disregard of risk”)? Obvious – put the cops back. (Incidentally schools that advocate empowerment and the essential goodness of kids – how come so many of them have an armed policeman on duty all day long?)
(NO! It’s not to protect the school from outside shooters. They are primarily there to protect faculty and students from students who act with “disregard of risk”. Believe me, I’ve seen officers called upon in that capacity many times! I was once one of four people it took – two of them policemen – to hold down one irate and violent student.)
The people who put this country together – and fought a revolution against England – were under no illusions about human nature. The Constitution is not written in accordance with any belief that citizens will choose the good if only empowered.
Under the Federal Constitution, citizens are granted relatively few rights – only those that they can be expected to exercise safely under supervision (regulation, if you will). No American citizen has ever been allowed to vote for a President or a Supreme Court justice. It took a century and a quarter before we were permitted to vote for senators.
This was deliberate. The founding fathers were all too aware of what most people, left unregulated, would choose. (They knew what they would probably choose.) And they created a system of governance that has endured for centuries – while other governments more concerned with “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” have collapsed over and over.
Maybe before we cobble together some fixes for our banks and businesses, we need to take a second look at our underlying assumptions. Maybe it’s unreasonable to expect little atoms of self-interest to choose everybody else’s good.
After all, how fast would you drive?
Since the late 1800s most Americans have worked from the moral assumption that people are basically good. For many it has been an article of faith that, given a choice between good and evil, most people would choose the good.
As I have said before, this goes to the bottom of many assumptions our schools and social institutions are built upon. Against all logic and all experience, most educators hold that students are fundamentally good – and that what they need from schools and social agencies is empowerment to arrive at the good choices they would naturally select.
That assumption lies at the root of Reaganomics. Just get the government off the back of business (deregulation) and, unfettered, business and businessmen will invariably choose the good. (As they did at Enron or when they made up these packages of subprime mortgages.)
Paulson urged this. Greenspan was an advocate. So were treasury secretary after treasury secretary – and presidents from both parties over the past 30 years. The wonderful folks who brought you the Moral Majority seem to have believed this. Next only to godliness was their belief in deregulation.
Regulation is really nothing more than acceptance of the reality of how humans will behave – as three year olds and as adults – if left unsupervised and unchecked. When teaching college history, I often raised the issue of human behavior.
Most students reflexively thought that people will indeed do the right thing when given the opportunity to make the choice. I would respond with one question. If you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that all police officers had been pulled off the road, how many of you would drive home tonight at anything like the legal speed limit?
I’d wait. The smiles would begin to come. Point made.
Over the last thirty years, we’ve pulled the cops off Wall Street and out of the corporate board rooms. Nobody running an IRA, a company, or a bank was driving at anything like a legal – and safe – speed limit. Such a crash we’ve had.
“Disregard of risk” they call reckless driving in banks and stock markets. But it’s really the same thing as “reckless driving” on the public streets. The only thing that keeps more drivers from doing it on our roads is the presence of the police. (Ever notice how traffic slows down when a cop car comes into view? Many drivers drop even below the legal speed limit.)
Want to stop reckless driving on Wall Street (or “disregard of risk”)? Obvious – put the cops back. (Incidentally schools that advocate empowerment and the essential goodness of kids – how come so many of them have an armed policeman on duty all day long?)
(NO! It’s not to protect the school from outside shooters. They are primarily there to protect faculty and students from students who act with “disregard of risk”. Believe me, I’ve seen officers called upon in that capacity many times! I was once one of four people it took – two of them policemen – to hold down one irate and violent student.)
The people who put this country together – and fought a revolution against England – were under no illusions about human nature. The Constitution is not written in accordance with any belief that citizens will choose the good if only empowered.
Under the Federal Constitution, citizens are granted relatively few rights – only those that they can be expected to exercise safely under supervision (regulation, if you will). No American citizen has ever been allowed to vote for a President or a Supreme Court justice. It took a century and a quarter before we were permitted to vote for senators.
This was deliberate. The founding fathers were all too aware of what most people, left unregulated, would choose. (They knew what they would probably choose.) And they created a system of governance that has endured for centuries – while other governments more concerned with “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” have collapsed over and over.
Maybe before we cobble together some fixes for our banks and businesses, we need to take a second look at our underlying assumptions. Maybe it’s unreasonable to expect little atoms of self-interest to choose everybody else’s good.
After all, how fast would you drive?
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
They Came, They Talked -- is it over yet?
Against a backdrop of a DOW that has fallen 33.3% from its all time high, one year ago, a two trillion dollar loss to American retirement accounts (remember when it was a “billion” that was hard to wrap your mind around?), the candidates came to jaw and poke at each other.
Charlie Gibson of ABC News is on a bus touring the Midwest. Everyone he talks to is scared – students are afraid for their college loans. (Incidentally, the kids don’t believe there will be anything left in the Social Security pot by the time they get to it.) Adults are sweating businesses, jobs and retirement.
The first guy to move into the development across the street from me five years ago moved out Sunday. He’s college educated, had a job in the health field. Now he’s working part time and living with his in-laws. This is the America that OBama and McCain talked to tonight.
This is the Michigan they talked to – where what’s left of the auto industry needs huge federal loans just to retool for the next selling season. Who’s buying? The nation’s largest Chevy dealership folded up and quit this week. The silver lining, we are told, is that a lot of now superfluous Big Three dealers may be driven out of business by the downturn. (Hate to meet the dark part of that cloud.)
Business Week Magazine tells us in the current issue that the Pentagon is so strapped for cash it is buying used computer chips (from twenty year old technology) from China for its weapon systems and planes. If a chopper crashes in Iraq, it might just be a chip – sold as new – with the old model numbers scraped off. Then there’s the “back door” to our most secret devices that such chips may have embedded on them. Get hold of that article. (And we thought milk was a problem.)
The Chinese sneer and say, “Hey, you came to us because we are cheap. What did you expect?”
In the midst of all this, the candidates quickly segued to a long discussion of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Darfur, and the defense of Israel. Should we tell Pakistan that we are going to attack them – or should we attack them without telling them? (Talk softly and clobber them with the big stick.)
It is undoubtedly easier to launch bombers and discuss whether or not to allow our options to be limited by the United Nations (both candidates said a resounding “no”) than it is to figure out how to jump start a panicked economy. Or, God forbid, to discuss the future of entitlements like Social Security under the straitened circumstances foreseeable in the future. (Came up briefly, very briefly.)
A member of the audience started off the night by pointing out that you are the people who screwed up the economy in the first place and then asking, “Why should we trust with our money to fix it now?”
Both candidates answered soothingly, “I understand your frustration and your cynicism.”
Was it cynicism – or a very fair question? Is it cynicism to ask why we should trust Al Capone to enforce prohibition? Or the Ku Klux Klan to police anti-discrimination legislation? But, very gently, they assured her they understood her cynicism.
Both then quickly spelled out ambitious programs to end the mortgage crisis, reliquidify the national economy and fix the entire economic mess with only the fuzziest reference to what this might cost – and whether any of it had the faintest chance of passing Congress intact.
Everybody is ignoring that 1800 pound gorilla – getting any fix through Congress (look at the earmarks it finally took to get the bailout through, on the second vote). Tonight’s debate was no exception.
Then, off to Iraq, Darfur and who’s a better Commander in Chief. Much, much safer ground.
After the debate, a commentator for ABC summed it up pretty well. McCain came in behind – he had the most work to do. They basically tied. Since OBama came in ahead, that’s a tie in his favor.
Charlie Gibson of ABC News is on a bus touring the Midwest. Everyone he talks to is scared – students are afraid for their college loans. (Incidentally, the kids don’t believe there will be anything left in the Social Security pot by the time they get to it.) Adults are sweating businesses, jobs and retirement.
The first guy to move into the development across the street from me five years ago moved out Sunday. He’s college educated, had a job in the health field. Now he’s working part time and living with his in-laws. This is the America that OBama and McCain talked to tonight.
This is the Michigan they talked to – where what’s left of the auto industry needs huge federal loans just to retool for the next selling season. Who’s buying? The nation’s largest Chevy dealership folded up and quit this week. The silver lining, we are told, is that a lot of now superfluous Big Three dealers may be driven out of business by the downturn. (Hate to meet the dark part of that cloud.)
Business Week Magazine tells us in the current issue that the Pentagon is so strapped for cash it is buying used computer chips (from twenty year old technology) from China for its weapon systems and planes. If a chopper crashes in Iraq, it might just be a chip – sold as new – with the old model numbers scraped off. Then there’s the “back door” to our most secret devices that such chips may have embedded on them. Get hold of that article. (And we thought milk was a problem.)
The Chinese sneer and say, “Hey, you came to us because we are cheap. What did you expect?”
In the midst of all this, the candidates quickly segued to a long discussion of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Darfur, and the defense of Israel. Should we tell Pakistan that we are going to attack them – or should we attack them without telling them? (Talk softly and clobber them with the big stick.)
It is undoubtedly easier to launch bombers and discuss whether or not to allow our options to be limited by the United Nations (both candidates said a resounding “no”) than it is to figure out how to jump start a panicked economy. Or, God forbid, to discuss the future of entitlements like Social Security under the straitened circumstances foreseeable in the future. (Came up briefly, very briefly.)
A member of the audience started off the night by pointing out that you are the people who screwed up the economy in the first place and then asking, “Why should we trust with our money to fix it now?”
Both candidates answered soothingly, “I understand your frustration and your cynicism.”
Was it cynicism – or a very fair question? Is it cynicism to ask why we should trust Al Capone to enforce prohibition? Or the Ku Klux Klan to police anti-discrimination legislation? But, very gently, they assured her they understood her cynicism.
Both then quickly spelled out ambitious programs to end the mortgage crisis, reliquidify the national economy and fix the entire economic mess with only the fuzziest reference to what this might cost – and whether any of it had the faintest chance of passing Congress intact.
Everybody is ignoring that 1800 pound gorilla – getting any fix through Congress (look at the earmarks it finally took to get the bailout through, on the second vote). Tonight’s debate was no exception.
Then, off to Iraq, Darfur and who’s a better Commander in Chief. Much, much safer ground.
After the debate, a commentator for ABC summed it up pretty well. McCain came in behind – he had the most work to do. They basically tied. Since OBama came in ahead, that’s a tie in his favor.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Try God
I have an acquaintance who builds handmade furniture somewhere in the wilds of New England. He sells it from Boston to Chicago for thousands of dollars. During the last couple of recessions I’ve had the chance to talk to him – and ask him how the downturn was affecting him.
The answer has always been: “The people who buy my stuff don’t stop buying in recessions. They seem to be immune.” The same has been true on Rodeo Drive and Fifth Avenue. There has always been a stratum of society that just never seems to get laid off or cut back.
Maybe not this time. Happened to catch something on the internet this morning – before the DOW took its 800 point dive today. It was a list of stocks that have been hammered recently. It included American Express, Tiffany’s and Walt Disney, especially the theme parks.
Those, especially Tiffany’s and AmEx, are money names. Their customers fly first class and shop Fifth Avenue from limousines. Ouch. When those people start to cut back, and the stocks of companies that cater to them take major hits, something real is going on out there.
Let’s talk about Disney theme parks for a moment. The last time I visited Disney World – it was during the off-season in February – I started taking a count of foreign visitors I met. In one day, I met a family from Japan who were there for two weeks. There was a couple from England there for the second time in two years. A Spanish family. A bevy of girls from Argentina for their Sweet Fifteenth birthdays.
On top of that I’ve forgotten how many American states were represented – in just my brief conversations. It was a large slice of affluent (not necessarily rich) America and the rest of the planet. Disney World, Disney Land, Euro-Disney and all the rest are universal draws.
Tens of thousands of people who could afford to fly or drive there and stay for the better part of a week or more. In the off season. Now they are holding back – in large enough numbers to depress the stock.
Speaking of travelers who no longer do – the Wyndham Hotel group (include Ramada, Days Inn and Super 8) took a sobering hit, right in the stocks. They have 6,550 hotels in fifty-nine countries. That’s a lot of business travel that isn’t happening right now.
The bailout is signed. It’s in place. All the markets in the world went down today--in large and unpleasant numbers. The DOW dropped 800 points before gaining about half of it back at the end of the day. But it was still below 10,000 at closing.
Okay, what’s next? The bailout hasn’t restored confidence. Five houses across the street from me are still for sale – one of them has been listed for over a year. In another one, the family just moved in last year. The sign went up two weeks ago.
What does George Bush do now? What does Barack Obama or John McCain recommend? What do we all do now?
I thought of Walter Hoving this evening. He’s the man who took over Tiffany and Company in 1955 when it had sales of $7 million a year. (It also had Truman Capote and Audrey Hepburn – but I doubt if they ever did serve breakfast.) When Hoving stepped down in 1980, sales were $100 million.
He knew how to do something right. When President Kennedy wanted to reward the staff that worked with him during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he wanted to give them all a nice Lucite Calendar Memento. Hoving said, “Tiffany’s doesn’t do plastic.” So Kennedy went silver.
He made the country go silver. Gold. Diamonds. He made one exception to his rule about selling no silver plate, only sterling. He sold a little pin that had a favorite slogan of his on it. He wanted this to be mass market. He also had the motto mounted and placed on his desk. This might be a time to remember Mr. Hoving’s little suggestion.
“Try God.”
The answer has always been: “The people who buy my stuff don’t stop buying in recessions. They seem to be immune.” The same has been true on Rodeo Drive and Fifth Avenue. There has always been a stratum of society that just never seems to get laid off or cut back.
Maybe not this time. Happened to catch something on the internet this morning – before the DOW took its 800 point dive today. It was a list of stocks that have been hammered recently. It included American Express, Tiffany’s and Walt Disney, especially the theme parks.
Those, especially Tiffany’s and AmEx, are money names. Their customers fly first class and shop Fifth Avenue from limousines. Ouch. When those people start to cut back, and the stocks of companies that cater to them take major hits, something real is going on out there.
Let’s talk about Disney theme parks for a moment. The last time I visited Disney World – it was during the off-season in February – I started taking a count of foreign visitors I met. In one day, I met a family from Japan who were there for two weeks. There was a couple from England there for the second time in two years. A Spanish family. A bevy of girls from Argentina for their Sweet Fifteenth birthdays.
On top of that I’ve forgotten how many American states were represented – in just my brief conversations. It was a large slice of affluent (not necessarily rich) America and the rest of the planet. Disney World, Disney Land, Euro-Disney and all the rest are universal draws.
Tens of thousands of people who could afford to fly or drive there and stay for the better part of a week or more. In the off season. Now they are holding back – in large enough numbers to depress the stock.
Speaking of travelers who no longer do – the Wyndham Hotel group (include Ramada, Days Inn and Super 8) took a sobering hit, right in the stocks. They have 6,550 hotels in fifty-nine countries. That’s a lot of business travel that isn’t happening right now.
The bailout is signed. It’s in place. All the markets in the world went down today--in large and unpleasant numbers. The DOW dropped 800 points before gaining about half of it back at the end of the day. But it was still below 10,000 at closing.
Okay, what’s next? The bailout hasn’t restored confidence. Five houses across the street from me are still for sale – one of them has been listed for over a year. In another one, the family just moved in last year. The sign went up two weeks ago.
What does George Bush do now? What does Barack Obama or John McCain recommend? What do we all do now?
I thought of Walter Hoving this evening. He’s the man who took over Tiffany and Company in 1955 when it had sales of $7 million a year. (It also had Truman Capote and Audrey Hepburn – but I doubt if they ever did serve breakfast.) When Hoving stepped down in 1980, sales were $100 million.
He knew how to do something right. When President Kennedy wanted to reward the staff that worked with him during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he wanted to give them all a nice Lucite Calendar Memento. Hoving said, “Tiffany’s doesn’t do plastic.” So Kennedy went silver.
He made the country go silver. Gold. Diamonds. He made one exception to his rule about selling no silver plate, only sterling. He sold a little pin that had a favorite slogan of his on it. He wanted this to be mass market. He also had the motto mounted and placed on his desk. This might be a time to remember Mr. Hoving’s little suggestion.
“Try God.”
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Another Bullet Dodged
What I sense in the country –from listening to news, listening to people, reading blogs and papers – is that a big, heavy object has just missed us. There’s a nasty hole in the sidewalk where we were standing a moment ago, but we made it. The bailout has passed and been signed into law.
Everyone who cares to comment or write about it admits we have no idea exactly what effect it will have on our lives, on the country or on the world economy. But it passed and, somehow, we weren’t under it when it landed. Time to start breathing again.
Don’t expect any improvement before late next year at the earliest. Unemployment will definitely get worse to much worse, we are assured. Housing prices are still going down. But the bailout has passed and panic is assuaged.
That, we may take as a given, is a good thing. Getting rid of panic, if that’s all it’s done, may possibly be worth three quarters of a trillion dollars. As Frank Herbert writes in his book, Dune, “Fear is the mind killer.” Now we can think again.
We can return to our normal, petite worries like how to pay for the mortgage, college, gas, groceries, the new hybrid automobile, and so forth. We can even try to figure out which presidential candidate offers the most likely cure for our economic malaise.
Which one has the magic? Which shell is the pea under? Obama or McCain? Biden or Palin? Who can be trusted to lead us into the promised land? Does either of them have even the faintest glimmer of an idea as to what’s going on or what to do?
I listened to a pastor preach this morning. He warned about the crippling effects of fear. He insisted that it is not Christian to give way to fear. From a Christian point of view, he said, there is a God who controls even the economy and the markets.
That is a comforting thought for those who believe in such a God. Unquestionably our founding fathers were closer to that belief than most of us are. Sarah Palin, according to what she professes to believe, should share that belief.
There are Christians who would suggest that rather than looking to a political party or candidate for economic salvation, we should look to the “God of our Fathers” (if anyone remembers that old patriotic hymn). Maybe this is a time to look back to Irving Berlin and Kate Smith.
Berlin wrote “God Bless America” in a time of crisis, during World War I. He sensed that that crisis was not sufficient so he tucked the manuscript back in his trunk. In 1938, with an unending Depression upon us and Hitler looming over us, he brought it back out. Finally, a big enough crisis.
Are we in a big enough one now? Is it time to ask the one of whom we used to sing, “My country ‘tis of thee” to bless and guide us now? It wouldn’t be politically correct – it wouldn’t meet the standard of diversity. But it might be comforting.
And, if as many of our forefathers believed, it is true, it might be far useful than fear – and far more helpful than trying to guess what this or that candidate might do.
Everyone who cares to comment or write about it admits we have no idea exactly what effect it will have on our lives, on the country or on the world economy. But it passed and, somehow, we weren’t under it when it landed. Time to start breathing again.
Don’t expect any improvement before late next year at the earliest. Unemployment will definitely get worse to much worse, we are assured. Housing prices are still going down. But the bailout has passed and panic is assuaged.
That, we may take as a given, is a good thing. Getting rid of panic, if that’s all it’s done, may possibly be worth three quarters of a trillion dollars. As Frank Herbert writes in his book, Dune, “Fear is the mind killer.” Now we can think again.
We can return to our normal, petite worries like how to pay for the mortgage, college, gas, groceries, the new hybrid automobile, and so forth. We can even try to figure out which presidential candidate offers the most likely cure for our economic malaise.
Which one has the magic? Which shell is the pea under? Obama or McCain? Biden or Palin? Who can be trusted to lead us into the promised land? Does either of them have even the faintest glimmer of an idea as to what’s going on or what to do?
I listened to a pastor preach this morning. He warned about the crippling effects of fear. He insisted that it is not Christian to give way to fear. From a Christian point of view, he said, there is a God who controls even the economy and the markets.
That is a comforting thought for those who believe in such a God. Unquestionably our founding fathers were closer to that belief than most of us are. Sarah Palin, according to what she professes to believe, should share that belief.
There are Christians who would suggest that rather than looking to a political party or candidate for economic salvation, we should look to the “God of our Fathers” (if anyone remembers that old patriotic hymn). Maybe this is a time to look back to Irving Berlin and Kate Smith.
Berlin wrote “God Bless America” in a time of crisis, during World War I. He sensed that that crisis was not sufficient so he tucked the manuscript back in his trunk. In 1938, with an unending Depression upon us and Hitler looming over us, he brought it back out. Finally, a big enough crisis.
Are we in a big enough one now? Is it time to ask the one of whom we used to sing, “My country ‘tis of thee” to bless and guide us now? It wouldn’t be politically correct – it wouldn’t meet the standard of diversity. But it might be comforting.
And, if as many of our forefathers believed, it is true, it might be far useful than fear – and far more helpful than trying to guess what this or that candidate might do.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Herbert Hoover Redux?
Palin didn’t do anywhere as near as badly Friday night as the Republicans feared she might and the Democrats hoped she would. Her comeback skills exceeded what one might have expected from merely good handling. She showed she has some brains and grit of her own.
Does that help her ticket? Not a lot. John McCain is in the kind of trouble that no one speech, no one debate, no one gaffe can overcome. The focus of the campaign has changed. As long as the primary issue was Iraq and who makes a better Commander in Chief, it was neck and neck.
Very few – if any – parties in power have lost an election because of a war going on. Look at the election of 1864. The war was going on forever. Casualty lists were huge. No end was in sight. The opposition was appealing to a strong peace movement. But Lincoln won, despite all that.
Look at the election of 1944. “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream” cried the Democrats – who were running Roosevelt for the fourth time! He was too sick to campaign, worn out and ready to die -- and he won anyway. He came as close to emulating El Cid (whose corpse was suited up in armor, mounted on his horse and sent into battle) as we want to think about.
You may point to 1968 – but there was a significant difference. Johnson had withdrawn from the race, and since we had to “switch horses” anyway, people picked an entirely new horse. Could LBJ have won if he’s stayed in? No one knows. He had more cunning than Hubert Humphrey – he might have been a match for Nixon.
But give Palin credit. She held her own against a man Barack OBama picked to be an attack dog. One can complain about things Palin said and didn’t say in the debate, but she did not come across as an idiot.
Biden wisely played the role of the restrained, hoary headed Senate veteran. His smile seemed genuine, and when he invoked Mike Mansfield (a hero of mine), he almost made me want to vote for him. He may actually have won on issues, but the edge for presence and style goes to the lady from Alaska.
But the issues had changed. She wasn’t in the same game she might have been in two weeks before. In football they call it “momentum”. In a game you can see it change. In 1960 when I had a job at the Photo Morgue of the now defunct New York World Telegram and Sun, I watched it change.
I handled hundreds of photos a day. Most were of the campaign. Sometime in October, I could see from looking at the pictures that things were swinging to Kennedy. (How, I cannot say, but you can see it.) Momentum changed – right there in the photographs.
This year’s issue became the economy about two weeks ago. Big time. When the DOW drops 750 points in a day, major banks collapse, people can’t get credit for cars and houses, this gets the voters attention.
It’s always the total fault of the man in the Oval Office. No such thing as an Act of God when my IRA drops precipitously. “He” did it!!! That kind of economic catastrophe tends to paint the incumbent party into a nasty corner.
You could say to John McCain, “Welcome to Herbert Hoover country” – or to George W.H. Bush country, or to Benjamin Harrison (1892) country. Or to Martin Van Buren country (1840).
It’s just not a good place for a political party – or its candidate—to be. There doesn’t seem to be any good way out of that box. That may be fair – presidents take credit when the DOW goes up; I guess they deserve the hit when it goes down. But when it does go down, there’s no place to hide.
No matter how good Palin might have been Friday night – and even if Biden had been dreadful – it probably wouldn’t have made much difference in the polls. The leading political indicators in this country remain the paycheck and the portfolio.
Palin was funny when she chided Biden, “There you go again, looking back … .” But that’s exactly where a voter who fears for his wallet looks. Right back at the political party on whose watch things got so dicey. It’s too late for her to become a Democrat now.
Does that help her ticket? Not a lot. John McCain is in the kind of trouble that no one speech, no one debate, no one gaffe can overcome. The focus of the campaign has changed. As long as the primary issue was Iraq and who makes a better Commander in Chief, it was neck and neck.
Very few – if any – parties in power have lost an election because of a war going on. Look at the election of 1864. The war was going on forever. Casualty lists were huge. No end was in sight. The opposition was appealing to a strong peace movement. But Lincoln won, despite all that.
Look at the election of 1944. “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream” cried the Democrats – who were running Roosevelt for the fourth time! He was too sick to campaign, worn out and ready to die -- and he won anyway. He came as close to emulating El Cid (whose corpse was suited up in armor, mounted on his horse and sent into battle) as we want to think about.
You may point to 1968 – but there was a significant difference. Johnson had withdrawn from the race, and since we had to “switch horses” anyway, people picked an entirely new horse. Could LBJ have won if he’s stayed in? No one knows. He had more cunning than Hubert Humphrey – he might have been a match for Nixon.
But give Palin credit. She held her own against a man Barack OBama picked to be an attack dog. One can complain about things Palin said and didn’t say in the debate, but she did not come across as an idiot.
Biden wisely played the role of the restrained, hoary headed Senate veteran. His smile seemed genuine, and when he invoked Mike Mansfield (a hero of mine), he almost made me want to vote for him. He may actually have won on issues, but the edge for presence and style goes to the lady from Alaska.
But the issues had changed. She wasn’t in the same game she might have been in two weeks before. In football they call it “momentum”. In a game you can see it change. In 1960 when I had a job at the Photo Morgue of the now defunct New York World Telegram and Sun, I watched it change.
I handled hundreds of photos a day. Most were of the campaign. Sometime in October, I could see from looking at the pictures that things were swinging to Kennedy. (How, I cannot say, but you can see it.) Momentum changed – right there in the photographs.
This year’s issue became the economy about two weeks ago. Big time. When the DOW drops 750 points in a day, major banks collapse, people can’t get credit for cars and houses, this gets the voters attention.
It’s always the total fault of the man in the Oval Office. No such thing as an Act of God when my IRA drops precipitously. “He” did it!!! That kind of economic catastrophe tends to paint the incumbent party into a nasty corner.
You could say to John McCain, “Welcome to Herbert Hoover country” – or to George W.H. Bush country, or to Benjamin Harrison (1892) country. Or to Martin Van Buren country (1840).
It’s just not a good place for a political party – or its candidate—to be. There doesn’t seem to be any good way out of that box. That may be fair – presidents take credit when the DOW goes up; I guess they deserve the hit when it goes down. But when it does go down, there’s no place to hide.
No matter how good Palin might have been Friday night – and even if Biden had been dreadful – it probably wouldn’t have made much difference in the polls. The leading political indicators in this country remain the paycheck and the portfolio.
Palin was funny when she chided Biden, “There you go again, looking back … .” But that’s exactly where a voter who fears for his wallet looks. Right back at the political party on whose watch things got so dicey. It’s too late for her to become a Democrat now.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
If Obama Loses -- "Welcome to the NFL"
Oh my. Where have I heard this before? Newsweek Magazine ran a piece this week called, “What If Obama Loses?” It quotes various individuals in the black community asking, How should we react? How should we feel? The magazine calls the concern “acute”.
It quotes a twenty-one-year old construction worker from California: “I’m going to be mad, real mad, if he doesn’t win. Because for him to come this far and lose will be just shady and a slap in black peoples’ faces. I know there is already talk about protests and stuff if he loses, and I’m down for that.”
Oh boy, does that bring me back – to the days when I was active in the “movement”, forty years ago. There was so much talk among my black acquaintances – You sent all those black kids over to Vietnam and taught them how to shoot and blow things up. Wait ‘til they come back here!
Watch out in the streets when the trained black warriors return! Or, how about the time I stood on my mother-in-law’s porch in a neighborhood that was changing from white to black and the shout came from a passing car, “You’re in the wrong neighborhood, white man! Get out of here or we’ll shoot you!” That was in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I got the identical warning from a black kid on the street when I bought a brownstone in a precariously balanced neighborhood near Brooklyn Heights in New York years before. I don’t like having someone try to make me afraid for doing something perfectly licit and conventional.
Years ago, when I was leaving the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington and moving to New York, I was offered a job by Chase Manhattan Bank. They flew me to New York and gave me quite a rush.
I looked down at my bearded, tweedy self – and then looked at the slick young man from the Ivies, fresh from a posh assignment in Frankfort – and I asked, “Why do you want to hire me?”
“Simple,” he replied. “In the past four years there have been major [black] riots in Harlem and Newark. We are the world’s financial capital; all of our lines of communication run through those two points.” (This was before satellites.) So open a center in Harlem, pump money in, and turn away the wrath.
Somehow I couldn’t quite hack that. I was tempted. Prestigious firm – nice offer – fantastic on the resume, all of that. Flattered, even. But – they’ve scared you. You haven’t gotten religion or any real concern for opportunities and equality. You’re just reacting to fear. I said “No”.
Hey, guys. Losing elections comes with the territory. (Right now, today, it doesn’t even appear that Obama is likely to lose.) Even having an election stolen is part of the old American political dance. They didn’t say “Vote early, vote often” in Chicago for fun. There’s the wonderful story of the ward boss who called downtown in a panic, “Get here, fast! They’re voting any damned way they please!!”
Dick Nixon probably had the 1960 election stolen out from under him, all fair in square in the American political game. He didn’t riot. He didn’t even ask Republicans to protest. (What he did do, unfortunately, when he faced some of the exact same people in 1972, he sent some unbelievably clumsy burglars into the Watergate to see what they were up to this time. Major mistake. He had the election won no matter what they might have done.)
Al Smith got pounded in 1928 because he was a Catholic in a nation historically hostile to Catholics. They said ridiculous things about him. He was killed at the polls. Nobody rioted or protested. We just waited a few more elections and ran Jack Kennedy. He got the gold ring.
Harry Truman spoiled Tom Dewey’s party unbelievably in 1948. No one rioted.
Don’t try to frighten me. I admire a lot about Obama. Part of me will be pleased if he wins. (Another part will probably vote against him for a couple of issues on which we disagree.) The threat of violence in the streets is not going to make me change my mind and vote Democratic this year.
Newseek ends with a final quote –a black man saying, “…I’m not sure how I’ll handle that if it doesn’t happen [if Obama doesn’t win].” Like a seasoned voter, I hope. Perhaps even like an adult.
It quotes a twenty-one-year old construction worker from California: “I’m going to be mad, real mad, if he doesn’t win. Because for him to come this far and lose will be just shady and a slap in black peoples’ faces. I know there is already talk about protests and stuff if he loses, and I’m down for that.”
Oh boy, does that bring me back – to the days when I was active in the “movement”, forty years ago. There was so much talk among my black acquaintances – You sent all those black kids over to Vietnam and taught them how to shoot and blow things up. Wait ‘til they come back here!
Watch out in the streets when the trained black warriors return! Or, how about the time I stood on my mother-in-law’s porch in a neighborhood that was changing from white to black and the shout came from a passing car, “You’re in the wrong neighborhood, white man! Get out of here or we’ll shoot you!” That was in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I got the identical warning from a black kid on the street when I bought a brownstone in a precariously balanced neighborhood near Brooklyn Heights in New York years before. I don’t like having someone try to make me afraid for doing something perfectly licit and conventional.
Years ago, when I was leaving the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington and moving to New York, I was offered a job by Chase Manhattan Bank. They flew me to New York and gave me quite a rush.
I looked down at my bearded, tweedy self – and then looked at the slick young man from the Ivies, fresh from a posh assignment in Frankfort – and I asked, “Why do you want to hire me?”
“Simple,” he replied. “In the past four years there have been major [black] riots in Harlem and Newark. We are the world’s financial capital; all of our lines of communication run through those two points.” (This was before satellites.) So open a center in Harlem, pump money in, and turn away the wrath.
Somehow I couldn’t quite hack that. I was tempted. Prestigious firm – nice offer – fantastic on the resume, all of that. Flattered, even. But – they’ve scared you. You haven’t gotten religion or any real concern for opportunities and equality. You’re just reacting to fear. I said “No”.
Hey, guys. Losing elections comes with the territory. (Right now, today, it doesn’t even appear that Obama is likely to lose.) Even having an election stolen is part of the old American political dance. They didn’t say “Vote early, vote often” in Chicago for fun. There’s the wonderful story of the ward boss who called downtown in a panic, “Get here, fast! They’re voting any damned way they please!!”
Dick Nixon probably had the 1960 election stolen out from under him, all fair in square in the American political game. He didn’t riot. He didn’t even ask Republicans to protest. (What he did do, unfortunately, when he faced some of the exact same people in 1972, he sent some unbelievably clumsy burglars into the Watergate to see what they were up to this time. Major mistake. He had the election won no matter what they might have done.)
Al Smith got pounded in 1928 because he was a Catholic in a nation historically hostile to Catholics. They said ridiculous things about him. He was killed at the polls. Nobody rioted or protested. We just waited a few more elections and ran Jack Kennedy. He got the gold ring.
Harry Truman spoiled Tom Dewey’s party unbelievably in 1948. No one rioted.
Don’t try to frighten me. I admire a lot about Obama. Part of me will be pleased if he wins. (Another part will probably vote against him for a couple of issues on which we disagree.) The threat of violence in the streets is not going to make me change my mind and vote Democratic this year.
Newseek ends with a final quote –a black man saying, “…I’m not sure how I’ll handle that if it doesn’t happen [if Obama doesn’t win].” Like a seasoned voter, I hope. Perhaps even like an adult.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Wrong War, Wrong Lesson
Newsweek Magazine quotes John McCain, in a 2003 speech, as saying: “We lost in Vietnam because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting, and because we limited the tools at our disposal.”
It’s amazing how something can be so true and so wrong. Yeah, we had the power to win in Vietnam – it would have taken at least another million men, huge expenditures of blood and treasure, risked a shooting war with China’s human sea armies, and won us – what? So we finally said, “Nuts”, and went home.
Let’s face it, there aren’t that many countries we couldn’t beat if we made an all-out effort. But that’s not the issue. Especially not in Vietnam. Let’s take a quick look at the history of the area we call Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Historically it is an area China has dominated when it felt militarily strong. The people of these modern nations have deep suspicion and fear of China, Communist or not. Looking at America’s long view after China fell to Mao in 1949, Vietnam would make a logical Titoist ally – with China as the common enemy.
Like the Serbs under Tito, the Vietnamese are dangerous fighters. They fought the Japanese for over three years during World War II. They fought and whipped the French from 1948 to 1954. When the French artillery commander at Dien Bien Phu realized Vietnamese capabilities as the battle began, he went into his tent and blew his brains out.
The Geneva Accords of 1954 divided Vietnam into North and South to save face for the French. Ho Chi Minh got the North; he was promised free elections in the South by 1956 (which everyone knew he would win hands down, being the George Washington of his country).
The Americans watched wrathfully and fearfully. Far from thinking of an alliance with the more nationalistic than communistic Ho Chi Minh, we saw RussiaChinaVietnam as one huge block of evil that had to be stopped – or all the dominoes might fall.
We had reason to think Ho might be favorably inclined. He approached Woodrow Wilson in Paris in 1919 and asked for help liberating his country from the French. When a war for independence from France broke out in 1948, he approached Truman for help. He even based his revolution on the American Declaration of Independence.
We had other fish to fry. French Catholic Vietnamese fled south from Hanoi – where some of them had worked in the colonial government for generations – in late 1954. Life magazine publicized their plight. More than that, the most powerful Catholic prelate in the world at the time, Cardinal Spellman of New York (along with Joe Kennedy) got on the phone to President Eisenhower.
“We must create a homeland for these two million Catholic refugees!” Eisenhower agreed. He located a Vietnamese national living in a monastery in upstate New York (who was tutoring pupils of my mentor at Georgetown University in French) and made him “president” of a brand new country, South Vietnam.
American aid and advisors poured in. Ho Chi Minh kept waiting for his election. It never came, it never would come. By the late 1950s, Ho began sending guerillas south. He had as allies nearly the entire 15 million South Vietnamese natives. The Americans had only the two million Catholics from the North.
More guerillas. More American advisors. Still no elections. Ho gave up and sent still more guerillas; the Americans were authorized to return fire. The South Vietnamese Army, dominated by Northerners, was no match for the guerillas (who had already licked the Japanese and the French).
By 1965, we sent in thousands of infantry to fight them ourselves. We transported by helicopter and truck; they used bikes, loading each with 500 pounds of gear and walking it south. We had masses of artillery and bombers (dropping more tonnage of bombs on Vietnam then we dropped in all of World War II); they dug tunnels and owned the roads at night.
We fought them until 1973. Nearly 60,000 dead Americans, who knows how many dead Vietnamese – and finally we just quit. Needless to say the once possible anti-Chinese working alliance never happened – there’s something about bombing people that makes them less friendly.
Ho was forced into the Communist camp – after all if you are going to fight for your countries and there are only two sources of what you need, and one won’t sell to you (us) you have to go to the other hardware store (the Soviets), and he did.
McCain is right. We could have won in Vietnam, just like we won in Iraq – at enormous cost and with an everlasting guerilla war on our hands. But he’s wrong. We never should have gone in. He must not let all the horrors of the Hanoi Hilton obscure this fact.
Sixty thousand dead – McCain’s own horrifying story – all to prevent an election that would not, in any case, have hurt us. Not if you take the long view.
It’s amazing how something can be so true and so wrong. Yeah, we had the power to win in Vietnam – it would have taken at least another million men, huge expenditures of blood and treasure, risked a shooting war with China’s human sea armies, and won us – what? So we finally said, “Nuts”, and went home.
Let’s face it, there aren’t that many countries we couldn’t beat if we made an all-out effort. But that’s not the issue. Especially not in Vietnam. Let’s take a quick look at the history of the area we call Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Historically it is an area China has dominated when it felt militarily strong. The people of these modern nations have deep suspicion and fear of China, Communist or not. Looking at America’s long view after China fell to Mao in 1949, Vietnam would make a logical Titoist ally – with China as the common enemy.
Like the Serbs under Tito, the Vietnamese are dangerous fighters. They fought the Japanese for over three years during World War II. They fought and whipped the French from 1948 to 1954. When the French artillery commander at Dien Bien Phu realized Vietnamese capabilities as the battle began, he went into his tent and blew his brains out.
The Geneva Accords of 1954 divided Vietnam into North and South to save face for the French. Ho Chi Minh got the North; he was promised free elections in the South by 1956 (which everyone knew he would win hands down, being the George Washington of his country).
The Americans watched wrathfully and fearfully. Far from thinking of an alliance with the more nationalistic than communistic Ho Chi Minh, we saw RussiaChinaVietnam as one huge block of evil that had to be stopped – or all the dominoes might fall.
We had reason to think Ho might be favorably inclined. He approached Woodrow Wilson in Paris in 1919 and asked for help liberating his country from the French. When a war for independence from France broke out in 1948, he approached Truman for help. He even based his revolution on the American Declaration of Independence.
We had other fish to fry. French Catholic Vietnamese fled south from Hanoi – where some of them had worked in the colonial government for generations – in late 1954. Life magazine publicized their plight. More than that, the most powerful Catholic prelate in the world at the time, Cardinal Spellman of New York (along with Joe Kennedy) got on the phone to President Eisenhower.
“We must create a homeland for these two million Catholic refugees!” Eisenhower agreed. He located a Vietnamese national living in a monastery in upstate New York (who was tutoring pupils of my mentor at Georgetown University in French) and made him “president” of a brand new country, South Vietnam.
American aid and advisors poured in. Ho Chi Minh kept waiting for his election. It never came, it never would come. By the late 1950s, Ho began sending guerillas south. He had as allies nearly the entire 15 million South Vietnamese natives. The Americans had only the two million Catholics from the North.
More guerillas. More American advisors. Still no elections. Ho gave up and sent still more guerillas; the Americans were authorized to return fire. The South Vietnamese Army, dominated by Northerners, was no match for the guerillas (who had already licked the Japanese and the French).
By 1965, we sent in thousands of infantry to fight them ourselves. We transported by helicopter and truck; they used bikes, loading each with 500 pounds of gear and walking it south. We had masses of artillery and bombers (dropping more tonnage of bombs on Vietnam then we dropped in all of World War II); they dug tunnels and owned the roads at night.
We fought them until 1973. Nearly 60,000 dead Americans, who knows how many dead Vietnamese – and finally we just quit. Needless to say the once possible anti-Chinese working alliance never happened – there’s something about bombing people that makes them less friendly.
Ho was forced into the Communist camp – after all if you are going to fight for your countries and there are only two sources of what you need, and one won’t sell to you (us) you have to go to the other hardware store (the Soviets), and he did.
McCain is right. We could have won in Vietnam, just like we won in Iraq – at enormous cost and with an everlasting guerilla war on our hands. But he’s wrong. We never should have gone in. He must not let all the horrors of the Hanoi Hilton obscure this fact.
Sixty thousand dead – McCain’s own horrifying story – all to prevent an election that would not, in any case, have hurt us. Not if you take the long view.
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