Madoff goes to jail for 150 years. Since he’s a little older than I am, he probably won’t live that long. Sentencing requirements demand that he serve 80% of the sentence. Just incidentally, no matter how long he sits in jail, it isn’t going to get anybody’s money back.
What, it seems to me, was needed ten and even twenty years ago was a little more healthy cynicism. Everybody loves an optimist—and Mr. Madoff was an optimist! Nobody likes a pessimist, especially not optimistic souls who trust their money to people like Madoff.
Wasn’t there one little kid in the crowd who took a good look and decided, out loud, that the emperor really didn’t have any clothes on? (Did the boy in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” who ruined the whole parade by pointing out the obvious spend the rest of his life under a cloud of opprobrium for being such a “nay sayer”?)
We hold the Prophet Jeremiah and Cassandra, princess of Troy, in low esteem because they brought incessant messages of gloom and doom. Nobody seems to reflect on the fact that—whatever else can be said of them—they were correct. Both Troy and Jerusalem fell to their enemies—exactly as Jeremiah and Cassandra predicted.
Would we esteem them more if they had gone around prattling optimistic twaddle as the Babylonians threw up siege works or as the Trojans tore down their walls to bring the wooden horse inside? It might seem that the reason pessimists are so much disdained is that, all too often, they are perfectly correct in their analyses.
Some fools need to be told NO, or DON’T or simply THAT WON’T WORK. Or even THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE. Was there no one wise enough in the ways of investment to realize the Madoff’s miraculous track record wasn’t possible?
Was there no one who, after spending a night with fellow investment bankers chatting or playing poker—no one who began to ask himself, “Where does Madoff do his investing?” If not at this and that bank or these or those brokerages, where does he invest?
There was no one who, in the interest of his own cash—or simply out of morbid curiosity, got on the phone and made fifteen to twenty phone calls? If he had, might he not have concluded that something was wrong here? That something wasn’t real?
Or, if you had enough invested with Madoff, would it hurt to press him—as hard as necessary—to find out exactly where and how he was making all this money in returns? (What’s the worst that could have happened—he might have given you your money back?)
Ten years of spectacular success—implausible success—which resulted in so much scraping and bowing, didn’t that make somebody say, “Wait a minute, that just doesn’t happen”?
(The other day I got an offer in the mail. It came with a $995 check that looked perfectly real. If I would deposit the money in my bank, then I could keep $100 for myself and $15 for expenses, if only I would test out a shipping service by sending a money order for $800 to an address in Canada.
How many optimists do you suppose did just that? My wife, who—God bless her—can be a good bit of a cynic about such things, got on the internet to check for fraud. Oh yes, this was a recurrent scam. By the time the check for $995 bounced, the people in Canada would have pocketed the $880 and run.
The bank would have come after me for the $880 I spent on the money order and, oh what fun.)
Didn’t anybody check anybody, anywhere about Bernie Madoff? Or would that have seemed just too déclassé? I suppose a few million is a small price to pay for having kept your good manners. And what’s a few million dollars if you’ve maintained your optimist outlook?
The Bible says that Christ did not trust people because he knew what people were really like. Think how much money could be saved by merely following Christ in this instance.
Very possibly some people who just read the last paragraph are thinking, “What a cynic”.
How much would the victims who stood up in court before Madoff was sentenced today and actually wept over their losses—how much would they trade now for a touch more cynicism back then?
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
It Was--And Is--A Good Land
Today several churches held services honoring the nation and its 233rd birthday. The preacher I heard this morning took occasion to stress how grateful we should be just to be living in “this good land”. He briefly recounted the story of his immigrant ancestors who left Italy just before Mussolini took over—and prospered very nicely in America.
I thought back on some of my ancestors who left privation in the old country and wound up as prosperous land owners in this country. It was indeed a good land, free from war, major pestilence, starvation and violent internal strife (after 1865).
One does well to take time to be grateful. Even in hard times like this, the great majority of us enjoy a lifestyle beyond the wildest imagination of literally a billion or two of our fellow humans. I’ve seen just enough of the Third World to have vivid memories of mothers who had nothing better to do with a crippled child but to drag him into the street with her and use him as a mute appeal for pity while begging for a few coins.
Or of a mob of ragged urchins surrounding anyone dressed in Western clothing, pleading with us to buy tiny packs of Chicolet gum for a couple of American pennies. I will hear their cries of “Chicolet”, “Chicolet”, “Chicolet” for the rest of my life. However bleak our circumstances appear at this moment, we all have something to be thankful for.
It’s easy to forget this in the midst of our annoyance at this or that unfortunate policy, a badly thought out war, or the failure to deal with an injustice or to right a wrong. It’s too easy to see nothing but the corruption and venality in many aspects of public life.
We are offended by the behaviors of our politicians, our clergy and our business leaders. Sometimes all we can see is the greed and the waste. It is all too easy to forget the sacrifices made by those who came before us and paved our way.
My great grandfather landed in New York with no parents. They died in the miserable, stinking hold of the ship that brought them out of Holland. Their bodies were dumped overboard with a few pious words in English that neither my great grandfather nor his siblings understood.
My preacher grandfather, on the other side of the family, was a skilled hunter until the day he died—often to the astonishment of his parishioners. When he came to Western Michigan, you didn’t just go to the store to buy meat, you hunted it. And you didn’t waste ammunition.
My other grandfather was a man about 5’7’, never over 135 pounds. In his eighties he experienced dementia and his daughter considered placing him in an institution. He didn’t like the idea, and he fought off four large, young orderlies. He won. Handily.
He got those muscles lifting bales of feed and pushing a horse drawn plow. Farming in his day was man-killing work. What hands the man had! I have his wedding ring. Two of my fingers would fit in it.
We owe these people a debt. We also owe men like my father-in-law a debt. As a teenaged sailor he lay on the bottom of his tiny infantry landing boat. He got his hands on an old World War I rifle, and he would fire up at the Kamikazes as they flew over. He told me he was scared to death, but he had to feel he was doing something to hit back.
When the last Kamikaze was destroyed his boat would motor over to a stricken ship and he would get to help scrape up the pieces of dead and wounded American sailors. Having offloaded the troops on the beach, his vessel became a sea-going ambulance.
Ambulance drivers at car wrecks today rarely see anything like the bloody chaos he had to deal with after hundreds of pounds of explosives went off. It took him forty years before he could tell anyone what he had done in the war. All anyone knew is that if a siren went off in his neighborhood after he got home, he would come downstairs screaming—looking for his battle station.
My own dad lost over a year of his life learning how to drive a tank and direct its cannon fire for a war that ended before he could get sent overseas. It took him years to recover from the financial loss that stint in the Army cost him and his family.
Millions upon millions of men—and women—lost lives, limbs, minds or just had their lives turned upside down to keep the shooting away from the rest of us. We do indeed owe them a huge debt of gratitude. July 4th is as good a time as any to remember.
Does this mean we forget the nation’s faults and blemishes and become super patriots? Please God, not. We can—and must—continue disagreeing on policies, even principles. We can legitimately be upset about things we see going on around us and in Washington.
I admit to being startled at the thrill I felt when I was in foreign parts and came around a corner and, all unexpectedly, saw the stars and stripes flying off a legation or embassy. I never want to lose that thrill.
Nor do I ever want to forget that my fathers brought me to a “good land”.
I thought back on some of my ancestors who left privation in the old country and wound up as prosperous land owners in this country. It was indeed a good land, free from war, major pestilence, starvation and violent internal strife (after 1865).
One does well to take time to be grateful. Even in hard times like this, the great majority of us enjoy a lifestyle beyond the wildest imagination of literally a billion or two of our fellow humans. I’ve seen just enough of the Third World to have vivid memories of mothers who had nothing better to do with a crippled child but to drag him into the street with her and use him as a mute appeal for pity while begging for a few coins.
Or of a mob of ragged urchins surrounding anyone dressed in Western clothing, pleading with us to buy tiny packs of Chicolet gum for a couple of American pennies. I will hear their cries of “Chicolet”, “Chicolet”, “Chicolet” for the rest of my life. However bleak our circumstances appear at this moment, we all have something to be thankful for.
It’s easy to forget this in the midst of our annoyance at this or that unfortunate policy, a badly thought out war, or the failure to deal with an injustice or to right a wrong. It’s too easy to see nothing but the corruption and venality in many aspects of public life.
We are offended by the behaviors of our politicians, our clergy and our business leaders. Sometimes all we can see is the greed and the waste. It is all too easy to forget the sacrifices made by those who came before us and paved our way.
My great grandfather landed in New York with no parents. They died in the miserable, stinking hold of the ship that brought them out of Holland. Their bodies were dumped overboard with a few pious words in English that neither my great grandfather nor his siblings understood.
My preacher grandfather, on the other side of the family, was a skilled hunter until the day he died—often to the astonishment of his parishioners. When he came to Western Michigan, you didn’t just go to the store to buy meat, you hunted it. And you didn’t waste ammunition.
My other grandfather was a man about 5’7’, never over 135 pounds. In his eighties he experienced dementia and his daughter considered placing him in an institution. He didn’t like the idea, and he fought off four large, young orderlies. He won. Handily.
He got those muscles lifting bales of feed and pushing a horse drawn plow. Farming in his day was man-killing work. What hands the man had! I have his wedding ring. Two of my fingers would fit in it.
We owe these people a debt. We also owe men like my father-in-law a debt. As a teenaged sailor he lay on the bottom of his tiny infantry landing boat. He got his hands on an old World War I rifle, and he would fire up at the Kamikazes as they flew over. He told me he was scared to death, but he had to feel he was doing something to hit back.
When the last Kamikaze was destroyed his boat would motor over to a stricken ship and he would get to help scrape up the pieces of dead and wounded American sailors. Having offloaded the troops on the beach, his vessel became a sea-going ambulance.
Ambulance drivers at car wrecks today rarely see anything like the bloody chaos he had to deal with after hundreds of pounds of explosives went off. It took him forty years before he could tell anyone what he had done in the war. All anyone knew is that if a siren went off in his neighborhood after he got home, he would come downstairs screaming—looking for his battle station.
My own dad lost over a year of his life learning how to drive a tank and direct its cannon fire for a war that ended before he could get sent overseas. It took him years to recover from the financial loss that stint in the Army cost him and his family.
Millions upon millions of men—and women—lost lives, limbs, minds or just had their lives turned upside down to keep the shooting away from the rest of us. We do indeed owe them a huge debt of gratitude. July 4th is as good a time as any to remember.
Does this mean we forget the nation’s faults and blemishes and become super patriots? Please God, not. We can—and must—continue disagreeing on policies, even principles. We can legitimately be upset about things we see going on around us and in Washington.
I admit to being startled at the thrill I felt when I was in foreign parts and came around a corner and, all unexpectedly, saw the stars and stripes flying off a legation or embassy. I never want to lose that thrill.
Nor do I ever want to forget that my fathers brought me to a “good land”.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
What I Don't Like About Republicans
The biggest thing I do not like about Republicans is that they have lost their roots. An argument can be made that some aspects of the Republican Party go back to the Hamiltonians of Washington’s day. But if they do, the Federalists of the 1790s would not recognize them.
Hamilton was all about balance. He understood that private investment and industry drive national prosperity. He also understood that for this to happen, there must be close cooperation between government and business.
Each should work in its own sphere, but there should be COOPERATION, government making the improvements and even some of the investment to make business grow. Above all, they could not be enemies. The paranoid suspicion the private sector has today of governmental intervention or inter-action would have struck him as destructively insane.
If Hamilton were alive today he would likely be the first to point out that wars cannot be won without the help of private factories, cooperating with government. He would remind Republicans that the railroads that knitted forty-eight states together in a way that could not have happened without them were all built on government money.
The telegraph, that began the era of rapid communication, was stretched across the continent by government will. Our largest steel company was put together at the Navy Department’s behest so we could build a fleet to rival England’s.
The automobile industry—possibly the most heavily subsidized set of businesses in history—owe all of their size and heft to government assistance. (When I say this, students look puzzled. Then I ask them, “WHERE do you drive your car?” On roads and highways. “Who builds them? Where would GM or Ford be if government had not built streets and interstates?”)
Same thing is true of the airlines. Very few 747s or Airbuses land at privately built and maintained air fields. Local governments routinely give tax breaks or modify zoning codes to induce factories to build in their cities and towns.
What would we do without computers? I’m typing on one; you’re probably reading this on it. The whole computer revolution resulted from government investment—from the first one in 1939 that calculated the trajectory of naval shells to the space program that produced the desk top.
We could go on and on. Local government paved my street and forced the power company to put in street lights. The same government plows the roads so I can move in winter and, five years ago—just as my septic system was beginning to die—put in sewers. If, God forbid, there is a fire, the big red engine that responds is owned and manned by government.
Same thing for the police car that will come if I feel endangered. Government money runs the school district that makes my neighborhood as desirable as it is.
And Republicans claim to view all of this as inimical to their well-being as citizens. One can almost hear Hamilton snort in disgust. One can certainly hear the great capitalists of the Nineteenth Century harrumph and shake their heads in disbelief.
This is NOT an argument for Big Government that Democrats are accused of believing in. Not for a paternalistic government that makes us all play nice together. No, it is an argument for a government that sees its role as a servant of all its citizens—corporate as well as private. It is an argument for government that lends a hand when no one can or will.
There should always be tension—a little healthy watchfulness on both parts. Bureaucrats can be as acquisitive and power hungry as businessmen. But the fundamental attitude should be that of cooperation. Hamilton thought so. Republicans have come to believe their own anti-government rhetoric—and forgot this necessity.
Virulent distrust of everything and everyone inside the Washington beltway is not a sound basis on which to build policy—or to run a government. Republican voters, ask yourselves this. If your candidate loathes Washington so completely, what’s the real reason he’s running for office?
I don’t really have to say much about Republican feelings for the “little guy” that Democrats purport to champion. It is not surprising that when times are booming, Republicans—with their promises of lower taxes and unrestrained greed—win. When things go bust, masses of Republicans who now see themselves threatened with becoming little guys, vote Democratic.
The modern Republican Party was born in the election of 1896 as “the party of the full lunch bucket”. So I guess they’ll have to live with minority status when the lunch pail looks emptier. But it is hard to understand why there is such a knee jerk hostile reaction among Republicans at any hint that something might be done for the unfortunate or the calamity stricken.
Republicans might remember how the Biblical writer, James, answers his own question. “What is True Religion?” Yes, he calls for morality—“keep yourselves unspotted from the world”. It might also be noted at this point that most Republican urban reformers back in the 1890s were unfortunately far more concerned with the immorality of the city machines than with picking up their willingness to help the hungry and jobless.
Republicans might finally note that Herbert Croly, the “father of the New Deal” was essentially a Republican Progressive. (He was, incidentally, also a Hamiltonian.) So it is not inconceivable that Republican policy makers take up the cause of “ordinary folk”. It could win them a few elections. They could use that right now.
They should also remember what James says FIRST when he talks about True Religion: It is “to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction”. I would like the party much better if it occasionally did that.
Which leads me, finally, to the Republican stance on religion—or faith—itself. Since Reagan’s election in 1980, I’ve heard a lot of moralistic talk from Republicans. This was immoral, that was unfitting. This ought to be reversed; that ought to be changed.
I’ve seen very little action and almost no results. Were they pandering to people like me or did it just not seem important once they were in office?
Whichever, my attitude toward the Republican Party and its positions on faith and morality have become pretty much what Eliza Doolittle, in “My Fair Lady”, shouted at the feckless Freddy, “Don’t talk at all! Show me!!”
I really don’t much care for either party. I’m not registered as either. But, by a narrow margin, I still have to come down on the Republican Party’s side. Not so much for what they say or even what they actually do—but for what they could be.
Perhaps futilely, I shall keep hoping.
Hamilton was all about balance. He understood that private investment and industry drive national prosperity. He also understood that for this to happen, there must be close cooperation between government and business.
Each should work in its own sphere, but there should be COOPERATION, government making the improvements and even some of the investment to make business grow. Above all, they could not be enemies. The paranoid suspicion the private sector has today of governmental intervention or inter-action would have struck him as destructively insane.
If Hamilton were alive today he would likely be the first to point out that wars cannot be won without the help of private factories, cooperating with government. He would remind Republicans that the railroads that knitted forty-eight states together in a way that could not have happened without them were all built on government money.
The telegraph, that began the era of rapid communication, was stretched across the continent by government will. Our largest steel company was put together at the Navy Department’s behest so we could build a fleet to rival England’s.
The automobile industry—possibly the most heavily subsidized set of businesses in history—owe all of their size and heft to government assistance. (When I say this, students look puzzled. Then I ask them, “WHERE do you drive your car?” On roads and highways. “Who builds them? Where would GM or Ford be if government had not built streets and interstates?”)
Same thing is true of the airlines. Very few 747s or Airbuses land at privately built and maintained air fields. Local governments routinely give tax breaks or modify zoning codes to induce factories to build in their cities and towns.
What would we do without computers? I’m typing on one; you’re probably reading this on it. The whole computer revolution resulted from government investment—from the first one in 1939 that calculated the trajectory of naval shells to the space program that produced the desk top.
We could go on and on. Local government paved my street and forced the power company to put in street lights. The same government plows the roads so I can move in winter and, five years ago—just as my septic system was beginning to die—put in sewers. If, God forbid, there is a fire, the big red engine that responds is owned and manned by government.
Same thing for the police car that will come if I feel endangered. Government money runs the school district that makes my neighborhood as desirable as it is.
And Republicans claim to view all of this as inimical to their well-being as citizens. One can almost hear Hamilton snort in disgust. One can certainly hear the great capitalists of the Nineteenth Century harrumph and shake their heads in disbelief.
This is NOT an argument for Big Government that Democrats are accused of believing in. Not for a paternalistic government that makes us all play nice together. No, it is an argument for a government that sees its role as a servant of all its citizens—corporate as well as private. It is an argument for government that lends a hand when no one can or will.
There should always be tension—a little healthy watchfulness on both parts. Bureaucrats can be as acquisitive and power hungry as businessmen. But the fundamental attitude should be that of cooperation. Hamilton thought so. Republicans have come to believe their own anti-government rhetoric—and forgot this necessity.
Virulent distrust of everything and everyone inside the Washington beltway is not a sound basis on which to build policy—or to run a government. Republican voters, ask yourselves this. If your candidate loathes Washington so completely, what’s the real reason he’s running for office?
I don’t really have to say much about Republican feelings for the “little guy” that Democrats purport to champion. It is not surprising that when times are booming, Republicans—with their promises of lower taxes and unrestrained greed—win. When things go bust, masses of Republicans who now see themselves threatened with becoming little guys, vote Democratic.
The modern Republican Party was born in the election of 1896 as “the party of the full lunch bucket”. So I guess they’ll have to live with minority status when the lunch pail looks emptier. But it is hard to understand why there is such a knee jerk hostile reaction among Republicans at any hint that something might be done for the unfortunate or the calamity stricken.
Republicans might remember how the Biblical writer, James, answers his own question. “What is True Religion?” Yes, he calls for morality—“keep yourselves unspotted from the world”. It might also be noted at this point that most Republican urban reformers back in the 1890s were unfortunately far more concerned with the immorality of the city machines than with picking up their willingness to help the hungry and jobless.
Republicans might finally note that Herbert Croly, the “father of the New Deal” was essentially a Republican Progressive. (He was, incidentally, also a Hamiltonian.) So it is not inconceivable that Republican policy makers take up the cause of “ordinary folk”. It could win them a few elections. They could use that right now.
They should also remember what James says FIRST when he talks about True Religion: It is “to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction”. I would like the party much better if it occasionally did that.
Which leads me, finally, to the Republican stance on religion—or faith—itself. Since Reagan’s election in 1980, I’ve heard a lot of moralistic talk from Republicans. This was immoral, that was unfitting. This ought to be reversed; that ought to be changed.
I’ve seen very little action and almost no results. Were they pandering to people like me or did it just not seem important once they were in office?
Whichever, my attitude toward the Republican Party and its positions on faith and morality have become pretty much what Eliza Doolittle, in “My Fair Lady”, shouted at the feckless Freddy, “Don’t talk at all! Show me!!”
I really don’t much care for either party. I’m not registered as either. But, by a narrow margin, I still have to come down on the Republican Party’s side. Not so much for what they say or even what they actually do—but for what they could be.
Perhaps futilely, I shall keep hoping.
Friday, June 26, 2009
What I Like About Republicans
What I like about Republicans is almost more historical than current. I am not at all happy with much of the political dogma that seems to afflict the party today. But there are a few bedrock principles that still underlie much of the party, making it possible for me to call myself one.
Republicans are under no illusions about what actually supports the entire national and governmental edifice. Private Enterprise. Private businesses that pay TAXES, and pay employees who pay TAXES, all of whom own property which is also TAXED. To paraphrase the song from “Cabaret”, it is TAXES “that makes the world go ‘round”.
If Obama is going to improve education, repair health care, and slog on in Afghanistan—let alone repair roads and other infrastructure across the nation, it is TAXES and only taxes that will pay for it all. The Sierra Club, the Gay Pride outfits, the NAACP, and the AFL-CIO may all contain good hearted and wonderful folk, but they don’t PAY for anything.
They can’t. They don’t EARN. They do not generate money. Business—employers—generate cash. However greedy they may have been, however reckless their behavior, it is business and finance who create the monetary resources with which governments carry out their policies.
We can see what happens when governments or parties lose sight of that reality in the history of 16th Century Spain or 17th and 18th Century France. Both enjoyed military victories and, especially in Spain’s case, huge infusions of capital.
Both nations forgot to invest it in businesses that could grow the money. They saw business as merely a cash cow to be milked for the government’s purposes. Business stagnated, often never took root. Spain fizzled into a third rate power by 1700 and France collapsed into a fundamentally self-destructive revolution in 1789.
Shall we talk about what a governmental stranglehold on the means of production did for the Soviet Union after 1917? We didn’t actually knock it down; it collapsed of its own inefficiencies in 1989. This should be an economic horror story for us to frighten children with for generations.
Look at what the Labor Government of Great Britain did to British industry during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. It nationalized everything in sight—and Britain, long a world class industrial power house, fell into stagnation and decay.
There is the risk that our current Democratic administration, in the guise of correcting excesses, may step too hard on the part of American business that has always paid our freight by growing, hiring and paying a reasonable tax on profits.
Republicans do understand this, better than Democrats. Historically, going back to the Whigs of the mid-Nineteenth Century, often too recklessly, often too ruthlessly, they created wealth. Even in their depredations, they generated the capital that built the society we enjoy today.
Restrain them, regulate them—but be very careful not to cut off the air supply and strangle them! (FDR understood this, even if many of his adherents did not.)
The practical side of me likes the Republicans for the above reason. The religious and moral side of me (while often holding my nose) prefers the Republicans for another reason.
Despite the rampant hypocrisy, the overwhelming number of cases in which moral preachments are honored strictly in the breach, the Republican Party at least pays lip service to the notion that there is a higher morality that supersedes questions of “fairness” and “constitutional rights”.
Whether we like it or not, this nation was founded by men who believed that. Washington and Adams certainly did. In his old age, even Franklin came around to something close to that opinion. And Jefferson, who is the patron saint of the modern day liberal Democrat, could swear “on the altar of Almighty God” when he felt strongly enough.
Jefferson could look at the Compromise of 1820—which secured the future of slavery—and state publicly that “when I consider that God is Just, I tremble for my country.”
I firmly believe that there is other and older and higher law than merely the Constitution, the Acts of Congress and the decisions of the Supreme Court. I support them all; I could take the Presidential Oath and swear to support them—but there is a morality that is higher than they are.
(People like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that. It was at the core of their inner strength. It made them able to endure beatings, imprisonment and official condemnation. I suspect there may be people like that on the streets of Tehran today.)
Republicans more closely sense this reality than do their colleagues across the aisle. As someone who fundamentally agrees with the underlying attitude that enabled King and Gandhi to act as they did, I am—for now—more comfortable in the Republican Party.
I was—and this will horrify many—completely comfortable with George W. Bush’s religious certitude. He made some bone headed decisions; he either took no sensible advice or he didn’t listen well—but the fact that he held firmly onto his Christian beliefs stands to his credit for me.
This is not a popular position; many Republicans repudiate it. But enough do not so that, for this time, I must continue to stand with (and vote for) most Republican candidates.
On the issue of a practical view of business, finance and taxes and on the issue of the existence of a morality that is not dependent on anyone’s view of “fairness”, I remain a Republican.
Republicans are under no illusions about what actually supports the entire national and governmental edifice. Private Enterprise. Private businesses that pay TAXES, and pay employees who pay TAXES, all of whom own property which is also TAXED. To paraphrase the song from “Cabaret”, it is TAXES “that makes the world go ‘round”.
If Obama is going to improve education, repair health care, and slog on in Afghanistan—let alone repair roads and other infrastructure across the nation, it is TAXES and only taxes that will pay for it all. The Sierra Club, the Gay Pride outfits, the NAACP, and the AFL-CIO may all contain good hearted and wonderful folk, but they don’t PAY for anything.
They can’t. They don’t EARN. They do not generate money. Business—employers—generate cash. However greedy they may have been, however reckless their behavior, it is business and finance who create the monetary resources with which governments carry out their policies.
We can see what happens when governments or parties lose sight of that reality in the history of 16th Century Spain or 17th and 18th Century France. Both enjoyed military victories and, especially in Spain’s case, huge infusions of capital.
Both nations forgot to invest it in businesses that could grow the money. They saw business as merely a cash cow to be milked for the government’s purposes. Business stagnated, often never took root. Spain fizzled into a third rate power by 1700 and France collapsed into a fundamentally self-destructive revolution in 1789.
Shall we talk about what a governmental stranglehold on the means of production did for the Soviet Union after 1917? We didn’t actually knock it down; it collapsed of its own inefficiencies in 1989. This should be an economic horror story for us to frighten children with for generations.
Look at what the Labor Government of Great Britain did to British industry during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. It nationalized everything in sight—and Britain, long a world class industrial power house, fell into stagnation and decay.
There is the risk that our current Democratic administration, in the guise of correcting excesses, may step too hard on the part of American business that has always paid our freight by growing, hiring and paying a reasonable tax on profits.
Republicans do understand this, better than Democrats. Historically, going back to the Whigs of the mid-Nineteenth Century, often too recklessly, often too ruthlessly, they created wealth. Even in their depredations, they generated the capital that built the society we enjoy today.
Restrain them, regulate them—but be very careful not to cut off the air supply and strangle them! (FDR understood this, even if many of his adherents did not.)
The practical side of me likes the Republicans for the above reason. The religious and moral side of me (while often holding my nose) prefers the Republicans for another reason.
Despite the rampant hypocrisy, the overwhelming number of cases in which moral preachments are honored strictly in the breach, the Republican Party at least pays lip service to the notion that there is a higher morality that supersedes questions of “fairness” and “constitutional rights”.
Whether we like it or not, this nation was founded by men who believed that. Washington and Adams certainly did. In his old age, even Franklin came around to something close to that opinion. And Jefferson, who is the patron saint of the modern day liberal Democrat, could swear “on the altar of Almighty God” when he felt strongly enough.
Jefferson could look at the Compromise of 1820—which secured the future of slavery—and state publicly that “when I consider that God is Just, I tremble for my country.”
I firmly believe that there is other and older and higher law than merely the Constitution, the Acts of Congress and the decisions of the Supreme Court. I support them all; I could take the Presidential Oath and swear to support them—but there is a morality that is higher than they are.
(People like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that. It was at the core of their inner strength. It made them able to endure beatings, imprisonment and official condemnation. I suspect there may be people like that on the streets of Tehran today.)
Republicans more closely sense this reality than do their colleagues across the aisle. As someone who fundamentally agrees with the underlying attitude that enabled King and Gandhi to act as they did, I am—for now—more comfortable in the Republican Party.
I was—and this will horrify many—completely comfortable with George W. Bush’s religious certitude. He made some bone headed decisions; he either took no sensible advice or he didn’t listen well—but the fact that he held firmly onto his Christian beliefs stands to his credit for me.
This is not a popular position; many Republicans repudiate it. But enough do not so that, for this time, I must continue to stand with (and vote for) most Republican candidates.
On the issue of a practical view of business, finance and taxes and on the issue of the existence of a morality that is not dependent on anyone’s view of “fairness”, I remain a Republican.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
What I Don't Like About Democrats
As I wrote yesterday, one of the most admirable things about the Democratic Party is its often genuine concern for the little guy. However, like all good things, that can have a dark side. Concern for those perceived as helpless can turn into the desire to control their lives for them.
Three bad things can come out of this impulse. One) The “liberal” wing of the Democratic Party seems full of well intentioned folk who apparently feel they are uniquely qualified to act in loco parentis for the rest of us. (It’s not Big Brother, it’s Big Mommy and Daddy.)
They are going to make us joy in our diversity whether we wish to or not. (This is an interesting stance for a party much of whose membership rose out of homogenous ethnic ghettos.) We are going to be taught about the homosexual life style, whether we wish to be or not. In some cases, this includes instilling bias against the military, business and religion.
They protect themselves against views to the contrary with the fervor of the 16th Century Catholic Church’s Holy Office. Their view becomes a religion in its own right. They often march in a lock step that would be the envy of any totalitarian society in history.
This bigotry—and that is what their intolerance for any other view than their own actually is—rises out of their belief that they alone know what is best for mankind. The Ayatollahs of Iran, the Bolsheviks of Russia and the Fascists of Italy held and hold the same world view.
Two) They are still following the preachments of the brilliant 19th Century Democratic Party spokesman for the slave states, John C. Calhoun. He preached against the “Tyranny of the Majority”. He was incensed that a majority of anti-slavery northerners could dare to impose its will on a minority like the southern slave states.
His point of view—that the majority, that any majority is inherently untrustworthy and evil—strikes at the basis of democracy. But, in that very name of democracy, our more liberal friends in the Democratic Party have increasingly been successful in making the majority of Americans feel ashamed of themselves. It becomes a wicked thing to outnumber someone else. You should feel wracked with guilt if you merely are who you are—if you are a member of a majority.
This is a point of view of people whose party gained its power in ghettos full of ethnics who faced discrimination from WASPs and Protestants. I understand that. My own ethnic group couldn't get admitted to the better clubs in Grand Rapids when I was a boy.
We huddled in Dutch ethnic ghettos--with our own churches, businesses and even our own ball fields. Now Dutchmen could buy and sell Grand Rapids and they face discrimination nowhere. It's a rite of passage all Americans have gone through. Now, ho ho, we are part of that "majority". And they want us to be ashamed.
If you are white (we Dutch are), think of all the underprivileged non-whites and be ashamed—simply because by an accident of birth you happen to be in the majority. Ditto if you tend to espouse any form of Christianity that is more rigorous than an occasional attendance at Christmas and Easter.
The same thing goes for sexual preference or public speech. If you disagree with the position of the moment—or if you recommend caution or attention to another point of view—you are guilty of a “hate crime”. Heaven forbid you should dislike a member of an ethnic group.
I have watched elementary teachers exhaust themselves trying to explain to little Susie why she MUST like little Henry. When subbing at that level, I have more than once had a shocked child come up to me and gasp that Janie said she doesn’t like me. Obviously I was expected to deal firmly with Janie.
Instead I told the tearful complainant that it is Janie’s absolute democratic right to dislike anyone, including you. She may not hurt you or injure your interests in any way—but she doesn’t have to like you. The complaining child went back to his or her seat and, in a few moments, they were chattering away with “Janie” like old friends.
You cannot make me like you. I cannot make you like or approve of me. I may not hurt you, but I am entirely permitted to dislike and ignore you. This is a bedrock democratic principle that has lost all currency in the Democratic Party. I still try to live by the old maxim: I don’t have to like you, but all of my rights stop at the tip of your nose.
Three) This concern for minorities can, unrestrained, turn into an absurd and ugly form of pandering. It not only makes smug, bigoted hypocrites out of those who do the pandering, it can inspire great resentment in those who are pandered to.
There was no more effective way of calling a black man the “N word” than by treating him with a form of disdainful condescension in the guise of self-serving pity for his plight and obviously surface deep acceptance of his person—and that, only in public settings.
One reason the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s collapsed—even before King’s death—was that resentful blacks told unctuous (mostly Democratic supporters) to stop fussing about Alabama and go home and integrate their Chicago and Boston suburbs.
I worked with a man with whom I developed a close and honest relationship while in Washington. One weekend I was throwing a party for friends of mine from New York and Washington whom I thought he might get a kick out of meeting. I invited him.
He paused for a long moment. He said, “I don’t mean to hurt you—we’ve been honest enough as friends for a long time. But I’m not coming. As a Presidential aide, there are some things I can’t get out of. I’ve been the nigger at too many parties.”
He told me of White House receptions where, amidst the hors d’oeuvres, there was a platter of fried chicken. (This was the Johnson administration—of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.) It was his job, when a new white official came on board the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to take him into the neighborhood where he was raised and show them the ghetto.
It never crossed anyone’s mind to ask how he felt about doing that. He did it—afterward, I and a few of his friends sat for hours listening to him unwind. Rarely have I seen deeper into a man’s soul than I have on those nights. I couldn’t do that to someone, having known him. Not even to win an election.
And it does win elections for the Democrats. Find a precinct or district where some minority—be it sexual, religious or ethnic—feels put upon. Publicly espouse their cause. Come and stand with the leaders—and you have the votes of their followers.
Some of this is decently motivated; some of it is pure hypocritical pandering by people who may be no more tolerant than the most bitterly right wing radical. But it works. It wins elections.
No. Let me think for myself. Don’t mother me. Let me choose those whom I like to be around. And let me take up only those causes I seriously believe in.
I cannot join in some of the games and gambits I see going down in the Democratic Party. No thank you. Much as I respect and like many members and positions of the Party.
Tomorrow—why I still hang with the Republicans.
Three bad things can come out of this impulse. One) The “liberal” wing of the Democratic Party seems full of well intentioned folk who apparently feel they are uniquely qualified to act in loco parentis for the rest of us. (It’s not Big Brother, it’s Big Mommy and Daddy.)
They are going to make us joy in our diversity whether we wish to or not. (This is an interesting stance for a party much of whose membership rose out of homogenous ethnic ghettos.) We are going to be taught about the homosexual life style, whether we wish to be or not. In some cases, this includes instilling bias against the military, business and religion.
They protect themselves against views to the contrary with the fervor of the 16th Century Catholic Church’s Holy Office. Their view becomes a religion in its own right. They often march in a lock step that would be the envy of any totalitarian society in history.
This bigotry—and that is what their intolerance for any other view than their own actually is—rises out of their belief that they alone know what is best for mankind. The Ayatollahs of Iran, the Bolsheviks of Russia and the Fascists of Italy held and hold the same world view.
Two) They are still following the preachments of the brilliant 19th Century Democratic Party spokesman for the slave states, John C. Calhoun. He preached against the “Tyranny of the Majority”. He was incensed that a majority of anti-slavery northerners could dare to impose its will on a minority like the southern slave states.
His point of view—that the majority, that any majority is inherently untrustworthy and evil—strikes at the basis of democracy. But, in that very name of democracy, our more liberal friends in the Democratic Party have increasingly been successful in making the majority of Americans feel ashamed of themselves. It becomes a wicked thing to outnumber someone else. You should feel wracked with guilt if you merely are who you are—if you are a member of a majority.
This is a point of view of people whose party gained its power in ghettos full of ethnics who faced discrimination from WASPs and Protestants. I understand that. My own ethnic group couldn't get admitted to the better clubs in Grand Rapids when I was a boy.
We huddled in Dutch ethnic ghettos--with our own churches, businesses and even our own ball fields. Now Dutchmen could buy and sell Grand Rapids and they face discrimination nowhere. It's a rite of passage all Americans have gone through. Now, ho ho, we are part of that "majority". And they want us to be ashamed.
If you are white (we Dutch are), think of all the underprivileged non-whites and be ashamed—simply because by an accident of birth you happen to be in the majority. Ditto if you tend to espouse any form of Christianity that is more rigorous than an occasional attendance at Christmas and Easter.
The same thing goes for sexual preference or public speech. If you disagree with the position of the moment—or if you recommend caution or attention to another point of view—you are guilty of a “hate crime”. Heaven forbid you should dislike a member of an ethnic group.
I have watched elementary teachers exhaust themselves trying to explain to little Susie why she MUST like little Henry. When subbing at that level, I have more than once had a shocked child come up to me and gasp that Janie said she doesn’t like me. Obviously I was expected to deal firmly with Janie.
Instead I told the tearful complainant that it is Janie’s absolute democratic right to dislike anyone, including you. She may not hurt you or injure your interests in any way—but she doesn’t have to like you. The complaining child went back to his or her seat and, in a few moments, they were chattering away with “Janie” like old friends.
You cannot make me like you. I cannot make you like or approve of me. I may not hurt you, but I am entirely permitted to dislike and ignore you. This is a bedrock democratic principle that has lost all currency in the Democratic Party. I still try to live by the old maxim: I don’t have to like you, but all of my rights stop at the tip of your nose.
Three) This concern for minorities can, unrestrained, turn into an absurd and ugly form of pandering. It not only makes smug, bigoted hypocrites out of those who do the pandering, it can inspire great resentment in those who are pandered to.
There was no more effective way of calling a black man the “N word” than by treating him with a form of disdainful condescension in the guise of self-serving pity for his plight and obviously surface deep acceptance of his person—and that, only in public settings.
One reason the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s collapsed—even before King’s death—was that resentful blacks told unctuous (mostly Democratic supporters) to stop fussing about Alabama and go home and integrate their Chicago and Boston suburbs.
I worked with a man with whom I developed a close and honest relationship while in Washington. One weekend I was throwing a party for friends of mine from New York and Washington whom I thought he might get a kick out of meeting. I invited him.
He paused for a long moment. He said, “I don’t mean to hurt you—we’ve been honest enough as friends for a long time. But I’m not coming. As a Presidential aide, there are some things I can’t get out of. I’ve been the nigger at too many parties.”
He told me of White House receptions where, amidst the hors d’oeuvres, there was a platter of fried chicken. (This was the Johnson administration—of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.) It was his job, when a new white official came on board the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to take him into the neighborhood where he was raised and show them the ghetto.
It never crossed anyone’s mind to ask how he felt about doing that. He did it—afterward, I and a few of his friends sat for hours listening to him unwind. Rarely have I seen deeper into a man’s soul than I have on those nights. I couldn’t do that to someone, having known him. Not even to win an election.
And it does win elections for the Democrats. Find a precinct or district where some minority—be it sexual, religious or ethnic—feels put upon. Publicly espouse their cause. Come and stand with the leaders—and you have the votes of their followers.
Some of this is decently motivated; some of it is pure hypocritical pandering by people who may be no more tolerant than the most bitterly right wing radical. But it works. It wins elections.
No. Let me think for myself. Don’t mother me. Let me choose those whom I like to be around. And let me take up only those causes I seriously believe in.
I cannot join in some of the games and gambits I see going down in the Democratic Party. No thank you. Much as I respect and like many members and positions of the Party.
Tomorrow—why I still hang with the Republicans.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
What I Like About Democrats
The Democratic Party (Democratic Republicans as they were called back in 1791) as the party of “the little guy”. And, typically, it started out with a very big, rich guy (Thomas Jefferson) leading the party for the benefit of all the little guys. Same pattern today—note Averell Harriman, the Kennedys, G. Menon Williams, etc. All for the little guy.
Under Andrew Jackson, it became very much the party of the once little guy on the make. Get those horrid Whig/Republican institutions like banks off our backs so we can speculate to our heart’s content. Many Nineteenth Century Democrats sounded a lot like late Twentieth Century Republicans.
It also continued as the chosen Party of the pro-slavery South. Even Northern Democrats like Stephen Douglas made sure that his moves benefitted the southern slave holders—note, especially, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Again, it sounds like this era’s Republican Party.
But the heart of the Democratic Party—and here it parts company with all ages of the Republican Party—lay in the ethnic ghettoes of our northern cities. In the Dickensian slums of New York and Boston, Democrats forged an ethos that remains with them today.
It began as practical politics. There was no social security, no welfare, no unemployment, no workman’s comp, no safety net at all. Factory workers made a dollar a day for decades on end. Women made as much as $1.75 a week; kids under ten rarely made a whole dollar in a week.
Needless to say there was no reserve for layoffs, injury and death. The spectre of instant economic disaster hung over every working family. Suddenly there might be no food, no heat, no medicine and an eviction notice on the door.
Democratic Party bosses who faced moneyed Republican opposition found there was one way they could guarantee themselves hundreds and thousands of votes for a relatively small investment. The disaster stricken immigrant worker had only one thing to sell—his vote.
For a bag of coal, some bread, a doctor’s visit, a job for the paterfamilias at city hall—you not only saved lives, but you bought a whole family’s gratitude for generations. Sure the bosses were corrupt—but they kept people alive; that was their power.
Republicans never understood this simple fact—either in dealing with the Democratic big city bosses or with the subsequent New Deal. The issue wasn’t “big government” or “tax and spend”; the issue was food on the table.
(To vote Republican you had to get a good enough and secure enough job to buy a house in the suburbs and never have to worry about where tonight’s meal was coming from. Republicans could afford to buy a week’s worth of provisions on the weekend. They could buy cars instead of trolley fare—it was often very much a simple matter of economics. In the 1950s, we saw millions of Democratic urban ethnics moving to the suburbs and switching party affiliation.)
You bet the urban bosses were corrupt. Moralizing Republicans who harped constantly on the corruption factor had plenty of valid ammunition. But the city voter was in the position of the man I knew who got robbed. He went to the police; they couldn’t help him.
He went to the bookie who fronted for the Mafia. They got his stuff back for him. “So,” he asked me, “who do you think I vote for? The cops? Or the Mafia?” (Safest streets in any big city were for many years those of the local Mafia headquarters. No muggers welcome.)
So, for whom did the urban ghetto dweller vote—the Republican who preached fiscal restraint and moral probity in political office or the Democrat who gave him coal and later food stamps? What would any responsible parent do?
All too often the Republican response to both fecklessness and calamity was that of a once good friend of mine. (His uncle, incidentally, was a Republican Senator.) He was as moral as any man I’ve ever known and, all in all, a decent fellow. But he insisted that if you got ill and lacked insurance, it was your duty to die. Quote, end quote.
Democrats for all their moments of wrong headedness and corruption have never forgotten that they are the party of the “little guy”. No matter how well you pad your own expense account, it remains a duty to make sure that he at least eats.
A lot of the rhetoric coming out of the Democratically dominated Washington of today is based on that fundamental notion. The little guy needs help with medical care, with job security, with protection against calamity; the little guy even needs protection against the biases of society that keep him from jobs and housing. (Whether he be an Irishman in 1850 or an Hispanic today.)
That’s by no means an ignoble motive. It goes to the heart of much of what Christianity purports to be about. For this core, gut principle, I have always liked and admired the Democratic Party. Many times I have wished I could join them.
Tomorrow I shall talk about what I do not like about the Democratic Party—and why I cannot and will not join them.
Under Andrew Jackson, it became very much the party of the once little guy on the make. Get those horrid Whig/Republican institutions like banks off our backs so we can speculate to our heart’s content. Many Nineteenth Century Democrats sounded a lot like late Twentieth Century Republicans.
It also continued as the chosen Party of the pro-slavery South. Even Northern Democrats like Stephen Douglas made sure that his moves benefitted the southern slave holders—note, especially, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Again, it sounds like this era’s Republican Party.
But the heart of the Democratic Party—and here it parts company with all ages of the Republican Party—lay in the ethnic ghettoes of our northern cities. In the Dickensian slums of New York and Boston, Democrats forged an ethos that remains with them today.
It began as practical politics. There was no social security, no welfare, no unemployment, no workman’s comp, no safety net at all. Factory workers made a dollar a day for decades on end. Women made as much as $1.75 a week; kids under ten rarely made a whole dollar in a week.
Needless to say there was no reserve for layoffs, injury and death. The spectre of instant economic disaster hung over every working family. Suddenly there might be no food, no heat, no medicine and an eviction notice on the door.
Democratic Party bosses who faced moneyed Republican opposition found there was one way they could guarantee themselves hundreds and thousands of votes for a relatively small investment. The disaster stricken immigrant worker had only one thing to sell—his vote.
For a bag of coal, some bread, a doctor’s visit, a job for the paterfamilias at city hall—you not only saved lives, but you bought a whole family’s gratitude for generations. Sure the bosses were corrupt—but they kept people alive; that was their power.
Republicans never understood this simple fact—either in dealing with the Democratic big city bosses or with the subsequent New Deal. The issue wasn’t “big government” or “tax and spend”; the issue was food on the table.
(To vote Republican you had to get a good enough and secure enough job to buy a house in the suburbs and never have to worry about where tonight’s meal was coming from. Republicans could afford to buy a week’s worth of provisions on the weekend. They could buy cars instead of trolley fare—it was often very much a simple matter of economics. In the 1950s, we saw millions of Democratic urban ethnics moving to the suburbs and switching party affiliation.)
You bet the urban bosses were corrupt. Moralizing Republicans who harped constantly on the corruption factor had plenty of valid ammunition. But the city voter was in the position of the man I knew who got robbed. He went to the police; they couldn’t help him.
He went to the bookie who fronted for the Mafia. They got his stuff back for him. “So,” he asked me, “who do you think I vote for? The cops? Or the Mafia?” (Safest streets in any big city were for many years those of the local Mafia headquarters. No muggers welcome.)
So, for whom did the urban ghetto dweller vote—the Republican who preached fiscal restraint and moral probity in political office or the Democrat who gave him coal and later food stamps? What would any responsible parent do?
All too often the Republican response to both fecklessness and calamity was that of a once good friend of mine. (His uncle, incidentally, was a Republican Senator.) He was as moral as any man I’ve ever known and, all in all, a decent fellow. But he insisted that if you got ill and lacked insurance, it was your duty to die. Quote, end quote.
Democrats for all their moments of wrong headedness and corruption have never forgotten that they are the party of the “little guy”. No matter how well you pad your own expense account, it remains a duty to make sure that he at least eats.
A lot of the rhetoric coming out of the Democratically dominated Washington of today is based on that fundamental notion. The little guy needs help with medical care, with job security, with protection against calamity; the little guy even needs protection against the biases of society that keep him from jobs and housing. (Whether he be an Irishman in 1850 or an Hispanic today.)
That’s by no means an ignoble motive. It goes to the heart of much of what Christianity purports to be about. For this core, gut principle, I have always liked and admired the Democratic Party. Many times I have wished I could join them.
Tomorrow I shall talk about what I do not like about the Democratic Party—and why I cannot and will not join them.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Conservative--a Really Dirty Word
I have always considered myself to be “conservative”. Not “a conservative”, but simply “conservative”. If a system or an item has worked well for a long time, it is still in good repair, it puts no one at risk due to new circumstances—then let us think long and hard before replacing it merely for the sake of replacing it.
My davenport, for instance was purchased in 1956. It is in excellent condition—it would be hard to find one made as well today. (Doing so would cost thousands.) Why on earth would I buy a new one? I view my politics the same way.
But I loathe and detest what the word has come to mean politically. It seems to have become a synonym for all that is uncaring, greedy and without ruth. The party of the Progressives and Teddy Roosevelt that recommended Social Security and regulation of a raft of industries seems to have vanished.
In the arena of economics, the term has stopped making any sense at all. I recall in 1980, when they were vying for the presidential nomination, George Bush senior called Reagan’s economic plans “voodoo economics”. In the past year, we’ve seen just how much voodoo was involved.
Let’s make no mistake about it—the economic crises of today were caused by people we’ve come to call “conservatives” run amuck. Deregulation, “Greed is good” ethics in business and finance, and a reckless disregard for basic financial principles have brought the house down—not “tax and spend” Democrats..
(One cannot imagine Nineteenth Century Republican business moguls like J.P.Morgan and John D. Rockefeller acting with such reckless disregard for the national welfare or fiscal soundness. The old “Robber Barons” look like models of probity compared to the “conservatives” of today.)
This week’s “Newsweek” quotes an English writer—who lived in and covered American for a quarter of a century—on his impression of the modern American “conservative”. The man, Henry Fairlie, nicely distinguishes between the English Conservative (a Tory) and the American Republican Conservative.
As an English conservative he saw the “government’s role [as being] to preserve tradition and social order , not to speed the accumulation of great power and wealth among the elites… .” “The [American] conservative,” he wrote, “can all too easily drift into a morally bankrupt and intellectually shallow defense of those who have it made and those who are on the make.”
(This article in the June 29th issue, on page 49-51, is well worth the cost of the magazine. I would urge every Republican—and as many Democrats as might like to—to get it and read it.)
In an article for the “Washington Post” during the 1980 Republican Convention—the year of Reagan and the Moral Majority—Fairlie excoriates the conservative Republican delegates he sees. “Narrow minded, book banning, truth censoring, mean spirited; ungenerous, envious, intolerant, afraid; chicken, bullying, trivially moral, falsely patriotic, flag cheapening, God cheapening; the common man, shallow, small, sanctimonious.”
One can imagine the Biblical St. Paul writing that about people whose morality he questioned. And it was written by an English conservative who came to America in the 1960s expecting to meet kindred spirits among American conservatives.
It didn’t happen. American conservatives simply are not conservative in any true sense of the word. They are out to conserve nothing. They seem only interested in amassing. They seem willing to throw any part of the past and tradition out in order to advance that one goal.
They call it “conservatism” when they oppose any measure whatsoever that might put limits on their acquisitiveness. To them it is “conservatism” to oppose any measure that might benefit the indigent, injured or uninsured. A “conservative” is an unrestrained Darwinian who claims to relish the life of fang and claw—so long as no one is permitted bite and scratch back.
That’s not conservative. That conserves nothing—not the good, not the useful, not the time tested. It drapes itself in a spurious patriotism, bellowing loudly that the flag is dishonored if they are in any way restrained from exercising their own greed.
By bellowing their defense of Godliness so loudly that no one can think clearly, they contrive to obscure the fact that their own actions make the Christian Faith a hissing and a by-word among the population at large. I find it infuriating that the moment I identify myself as a conservative Christian, I am immediately tarred with the brush of indifference and lack of charity.
The Christian Spirit that created the Salvation Army and the downtown missions, that followed Livingstone into Africa to stop the slave trade is subsumed in a culture of prodigious consumption and sublime indifference to those who lack the merest necessities. THAT is by no means true conservatism.
But it’s the spirit that elected Reagan, forced the elder Bush and Clinton to the right and finally brought down the man who may be the last Reaganite, Bush the younger.
I remain conservative. I call myself by that name proudly. I thank Mr. Fairlie, with his English perspective for articulating thoughts and concerns that have floated around inside my mind for the past thirty years. It sounds silly to call myself a Tory—but I’m closer to that than I am a Reagan Republican. (I once considered myself an “Eisenhower Republican”—remember those?)
So, if I am this upset with what has become of my Republican Party—why haven’t I followed Arlon Specter’s example (he’s another old fashioned Eisenhower Republican) and become a Democrat?
I’ll deal with that question tomorrow.
My davenport, for instance was purchased in 1956. It is in excellent condition—it would be hard to find one made as well today. (Doing so would cost thousands.) Why on earth would I buy a new one? I view my politics the same way.
But I loathe and detest what the word has come to mean politically. It seems to have become a synonym for all that is uncaring, greedy and without ruth. The party of the Progressives and Teddy Roosevelt that recommended Social Security and regulation of a raft of industries seems to have vanished.
In the arena of economics, the term has stopped making any sense at all. I recall in 1980, when they were vying for the presidential nomination, George Bush senior called Reagan’s economic plans “voodoo economics”. In the past year, we’ve seen just how much voodoo was involved.
Let’s make no mistake about it—the economic crises of today were caused by people we’ve come to call “conservatives” run amuck. Deregulation, “Greed is good” ethics in business and finance, and a reckless disregard for basic financial principles have brought the house down—not “tax and spend” Democrats..
(One cannot imagine Nineteenth Century Republican business moguls like J.P.Morgan and John D. Rockefeller acting with such reckless disregard for the national welfare or fiscal soundness. The old “Robber Barons” look like models of probity compared to the “conservatives” of today.)
This week’s “Newsweek” quotes an English writer—who lived in and covered American for a quarter of a century—on his impression of the modern American “conservative”. The man, Henry Fairlie, nicely distinguishes between the English Conservative (a Tory) and the American Republican Conservative.
As an English conservative he saw the “government’s role [as being] to preserve tradition and social order , not to speed the accumulation of great power and wealth among the elites… .” “The [American] conservative,” he wrote, “can all too easily drift into a morally bankrupt and intellectually shallow defense of those who have it made and those who are on the make.”
(This article in the June 29th issue, on page 49-51, is well worth the cost of the magazine. I would urge every Republican—and as many Democrats as might like to—to get it and read it.)
In an article for the “Washington Post” during the 1980 Republican Convention—the year of Reagan and the Moral Majority—Fairlie excoriates the conservative Republican delegates he sees. “Narrow minded, book banning, truth censoring, mean spirited; ungenerous, envious, intolerant, afraid; chicken, bullying, trivially moral, falsely patriotic, flag cheapening, God cheapening; the common man, shallow, small, sanctimonious.”
One can imagine the Biblical St. Paul writing that about people whose morality he questioned. And it was written by an English conservative who came to America in the 1960s expecting to meet kindred spirits among American conservatives.
It didn’t happen. American conservatives simply are not conservative in any true sense of the word. They are out to conserve nothing. They seem only interested in amassing. They seem willing to throw any part of the past and tradition out in order to advance that one goal.
They call it “conservatism” when they oppose any measure whatsoever that might put limits on their acquisitiveness. To them it is “conservatism” to oppose any measure that might benefit the indigent, injured or uninsured. A “conservative” is an unrestrained Darwinian who claims to relish the life of fang and claw—so long as no one is permitted bite and scratch back.
That’s not conservative. That conserves nothing—not the good, not the useful, not the time tested. It drapes itself in a spurious patriotism, bellowing loudly that the flag is dishonored if they are in any way restrained from exercising their own greed.
By bellowing their defense of Godliness so loudly that no one can think clearly, they contrive to obscure the fact that their own actions make the Christian Faith a hissing and a by-word among the population at large. I find it infuriating that the moment I identify myself as a conservative Christian, I am immediately tarred with the brush of indifference and lack of charity.
The Christian Spirit that created the Salvation Army and the downtown missions, that followed Livingstone into Africa to stop the slave trade is subsumed in a culture of prodigious consumption and sublime indifference to those who lack the merest necessities. THAT is by no means true conservatism.
But it’s the spirit that elected Reagan, forced the elder Bush and Clinton to the right and finally brought down the man who may be the last Reaganite, Bush the younger.
I remain conservative. I call myself by that name proudly. I thank Mr. Fairlie, with his English perspective for articulating thoughts and concerns that have floated around inside my mind for the past thirty years. It sounds silly to call myself a Tory—but I’m closer to that than I am a Reagan Republican. (I once considered myself an “Eisenhower Republican”—remember those?)
So, if I am this upset with what has become of my Republican Party—why haven’t I followed Arlon Specter’s example (he’s another old fashioned Eisenhower Republican) and become a Democrat?
I’ll deal with that question tomorrow.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Happy Days Aren't Quite Here Again
Don’t look now, but the Dow Jones dropped several hundred points in the last week. It seems to have taken the World Bank to bring everybody back to reality. It just doubled what it projects to be the loss in the economy of the entire planet.
I couldn’t see what was making everyone so optimistic back in May. Houses aren’t selling around here—it’s been about a year since one sold, and there are plenty of “For Sale” signs up. Companies that build auto parts are still teetering on the brink of extinction.
General Motors is wallowing in an increasingly contentious bankruptcy proceeding. Chrysler is back on the road again—but only figuratively. I shopped at J.C.Penney the other night—there was one girl to run a four register check out stand. I was tempted to ask if the company expected her to use all four limbs to run the registers at the same time.
There was no need. There were very few customers. There were far fewer clerks on the floor to help find things. My wife and I were recalling the days when men and boys clothes hung on racks by sizes. You knew if you needed a 34 to walk the rack until you came to the section so labeled.
All the brands were there—all the 30s, 32s, 34s, 36s and so on. Life was fair simply even for the least self-sufficient customer. Now it’s all by brand. To see all the 36s, you have to wade through brand rack after brand rack, and you’ll probably miss some.
“Why?” I asked my wife. She’s worked retail so her answer made sense. When they had lots of clerks on the floor to help, they reorganized by brand. Now the clerks are gone—laid off, not hired—and they haven’t bothered to switch back.
An acquaintance of mine had to take a few weeks off for a fairly major surgery. He says it jokingly, but he’s not entirely convincing with his humor—he hopes his company will still be there when he’s ready to go back to work. I can sense he’s rushing the post op schedule without too much regard for his health. This is not a good time to let the boss notice he can do without you.
I drove past what used to be a fairly major shopping area near here the other day. Store front after store front was empty. Enthusiastic—shall we say “optimistic”—investors drove our local gas prices above $3.00 a couple of weeks ago. Now they’re down to $2.61.
Apparently our demand for fuel is not expected to be insatiable any time soon. Airlines are piling on fees—charging for meals, working on figuring out ways to make carryon luggage expensive, and charging as much as $50 for a second bag on international routes.
Consultants hold seminars for airline executives to suggest new sources of fees—a better idea, they feel, than raising fares in a time of shrinking household budgets.
Hotels have gotten into the fee business in a big way. An extra charge if there’s a safe in the room, use it or not. A charge if there’s a pool or an exercise room on the premises. Should you visit the pool and take a towel back to the room with you, that can be an extra five bucks. How much are you willing to pay to go online? And so forth.
Cotton growers down south are switching to food crops because people are buying fewer clothes and there’s less demand. It used to be a no brainer to rent a minivan while traveling—the idea has gotten so popular (fewer flyers?) that it will now cost you $700 a week.
It seems to me, as I take my daily walk, that fewer home air conditioners are in use this year than other years. More windows are open even on warm evenings. The other day there were several garage sales in the new development near me.
One lady was selling formula she got from WIC—which her baby apparently didn’t need. WIC? That’s “Women, Infants and Children” for people with low incomes. This is in a neighborhood of brand new homes, all of which sold for well over $150,000 in the past five years.
As Detroit shuts down, the University of Michigan hiked next year’s tuition 5%. The State, long dependent on auto plants and workers for its revenues, simply has no more money for education. I actually feel sorry for Governor Jennifer Granholm.
She came to the state house in 2003, a Harvard educated lawyer, Democratic after a long Republican administration that cut lots of taxes—does she sound familiar? Like, maybe, another Harvard educated lawyer who took office after a Republican … ?
As she took office, Detroit started its nosedive. The “rainy day” funds were spent. Michigan was (and is) a one industry state—cars. The roof just fell in on her. There simply hasn’t been any good news throughout her two terms. (She only won her second term by blasting her Republican opponent, and Amway partner, for his corporate tax avoidance tactics—and for supposedly sending thousands of jobs to China.)
She’s advocated diversification—based very much on the engineering capabilities of the University of Michigan. But even there the specialization is auto design. Like a skier caught in an avalanche, this attractive (former beauty queen), smart, politically astute governor hasn’t been able to get any traction.
Her approval ratings are past the toilet, in the sewer. She’s no more to blame than the weather man is for a tornado. She just happened to be standing there when the lightning hit. The only good luck she faces may be term limits. She can’t run again so she won’t take the whipping at the poles.
Thumb through “Newsweek”. There are SO FEW ads. What’s paying the bills?
“BusinessWeek” is pretty thin too. Last week, it had an article pointing out that the toxic assets weighing down our banks last winter haven’t gone away. They are kind of buried in the books. But they are still there, festering. They could, the magazine says, lead to the same kind of crisis that killed Lehman Brothers last fall. And more bank bailouts?
Maybe the investors stopped to look at reality.
I couldn’t see what was making everyone so optimistic back in May. Houses aren’t selling around here—it’s been about a year since one sold, and there are plenty of “For Sale” signs up. Companies that build auto parts are still teetering on the brink of extinction.
General Motors is wallowing in an increasingly contentious bankruptcy proceeding. Chrysler is back on the road again—but only figuratively. I shopped at J.C.Penney the other night—there was one girl to run a four register check out stand. I was tempted to ask if the company expected her to use all four limbs to run the registers at the same time.
There was no need. There were very few customers. There were far fewer clerks on the floor to help find things. My wife and I were recalling the days when men and boys clothes hung on racks by sizes. You knew if you needed a 34 to walk the rack until you came to the section so labeled.
All the brands were there—all the 30s, 32s, 34s, 36s and so on. Life was fair simply even for the least self-sufficient customer. Now it’s all by brand. To see all the 36s, you have to wade through brand rack after brand rack, and you’ll probably miss some.
“Why?” I asked my wife. She’s worked retail so her answer made sense. When they had lots of clerks on the floor to help, they reorganized by brand. Now the clerks are gone—laid off, not hired—and they haven’t bothered to switch back.
An acquaintance of mine had to take a few weeks off for a fairly major surgery. He says it jokingly, but he’s not entirely convincing with his humor—he hopes his company will still be there when he’s ready to go back to work. I can sense he’s rushing the post op schedule without too much regard for his health. This is not a good time to let the boss notice he can do without you.
I drove past what used to be a fairly major shopping area near here the other day. Store front after store front was empty. Enthusiastic—shall we say “optimistic”—investors drove our local gas prices above $3.00 a couple of weeks ago. Now they’re down to $2.61.
Apparently our demand for fuel is not expected to be insatiable any time soon. Airlines are piling on fees—charging for meals, working on figuring out ways to make carryon luggage expensive, and charging as much as $50 for a second bag on international routes.
Consultants hold seminars for airline executives to suggest new sources of fees—a better idea, they feel, than raising fares in a time of shrinking household budgets.
Hotels have gotten into the fee business in a big way. An extra charge if there’s a safe in the room, use it or not. A charge if there’s a pool or an exercise room on the premises. Should you visit the pool and take a towel back to the room with you, that can be an extra five bucks. How much are you willing to pay to go online? And so forth.
Cotton growers down south are switching to food crops because people are buying fewer clothes and there’s less demand. It used to be a no brainer to rent a minivan while traveling—the idea has gotten so popular (fewer flyers?) that it will now cost you $700 a week.
It seems to me, as I take my daily walk, that fewer home air conditioners are in use this year than other years. More windows are open even on warm evenings. The other day there were several garage sales in the new development near me.
One lady was selling formula she got from WIC—which her baby apparently didn’t need. WIC? That’s “Women, Infants and Children” for people with low incomes. This is in a neighborhood of brand new homes, all of which sold for well over $150,000 in the past five years.
As Detroit shuts down, the University of Michigan hiked next year’s tuition 5%. The State, long dependent on auto plants and workers for its revenues, simply has no more money for education. I actually feel sorry for Governor Jennifer Granholm.
She came to the state house in 2003, a Harvard educated lawyer, Democratic after a long Republican administration that cut lots of taxes—does she sound familiar? Like, maybe, another Harvard educated lawyer who took office after a Republican … ?
As she took office, Detroit started its nosedive. The “rainy day” funds were spent. Michigan was (and is) a one industry state—cars. The roof just fell in on her. There simply hasn’t been any good news throughout her two terms. (She only won her second term by blasting her Republican opponent, and Amway partner, for his corporate tax avoidance tactics—and for supposedly sending thousands of jobs to China.)
She’s advocated diversification—based very much on the engineering capabilities of the University of Michigan. But even there the specialization is auto design. Like a skier caught in an avalanche, this attractive (former beauty queen), smart, politically astute governor hasn’t been able to get any traction.
Her approval ratings are past the toilet, in the sewer. She’s no more to blame than the weather man is for a tornado. She just happened to be standing there when the lightning hit. The only good luck she faces may be term limits. She can’t run again so she won’t take the whipping at the poles.
Thumb through “Newsweek”. There are SO FEW ads. What’s paying the bills?
“BusinessWeek” is pretty thin too. Last week, it had an article pointing out that the toxic assets weighing down our banks last winter haven’t gone away. They are kind of buried in the books. But they are still there, festering. They could, the magazine says, lead to the same kind of crisis that killed Lehman Brothers last fall. And more bank bailouts?
Maybe the investors stopped to look at reality.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
When Is A Bailout Not A Bailout?
There’s a story a read when I was a kid. A woman, whose husband had recently died, was found going over the bills, the will, the insurance papers and all the other details of his estate. She looked up and murmured, “It’s such a trouble; sometimes I wish George hadn’t died.”
That may be a bit like how the Obama administration feels about our economy right now. It’s one thing to bail out a few industries and banks; it’s another to have your kind and necessary actions threaten to come back and bite you in the tail.
It’s bad enough to have economists and conservatives worrying that the cost of the bailouts could ruin our future economy and/or currency. Now we’ve got a bunch of foreigners claiming that the bailouts constitute an illegal subsidy. And they have a point.
For years we have protested the fact that our unsubsidized industries have been forced to compete against foreign companies that are supported by their governments. We have insisted on—and gotten—specified penalties that we can invoke against such practices.
Now, this may be coming home to bite us. Surprise, surprise. Foreign companies are looking at American firms like General Motors and Chrysler—who are getting billions in government cash as “bailout” funds—and asking what on earth that is if not a subsidy.
Well, we can answer back, if we hadn’t given General Motors a few billion, it would have gone broke and cost lots of American workers their jobs. And the Europeans, for instance, can answer right back that if the French, British and German governments had not supported the development of the Airbus, it could never have competed against Boeing—and would have gone broke and lots of Europeans would have lost their jobs, … et cetera, et cetera.
As the major economies rush to shore up their collapsing industries, more and more smaller, developing nations are yelling, “Foul!” They are taking their case to the World Trade Organization to demand the right to impose sanctions and tariffs on the United States, and possibly Japan and Europe.
Some nations aren’t waiting for a WTO ruling. This past week’s “BusinessWeek” cites a few worrisome statistics. Ecuador has raised tariffs on over “600 CATAGORIES of imports” so far. Malaysia is restricting that number of ports that will accept imports from abroad. Argentina is leading a block of nations into the WTO, asking for a ruling. Are bailouts subsidies?
Or when is a bailout not a bailout? Critics suggest that our bailout packages (as well as European bailouts) were put together in a rush with little or no thought as to what their impact on international trade might be.
One can see how Toyota, BMW or Kia might construe a loan of $35 billion to General Motors—that keeps the company from collapse—as a massive subsidy. I don’t have any trouble seeing their point of view at all. And I confess I never gave the idea a thought last fall and winter.
I remember writing that I thought we were moving too fast, without thinking things through carefully enough. But the thought that it might lead to a tariff war that slowed foreign trade did not cross my mind.
Could foreign banks point to the billions/possibly trillions we’ve committed to keeping financial entities like AIG and Citicorp alive and call that a bank subsidy? Why not? We have long been a leading proponent of sanctions against nations and industries that play unfairly on the field of foreign trade, why shouldn’t they use our own words against us?
If our bailouts result in a trade war—like the one we had in the 1930s that nearly shut down all international trade—that will do us harm on a scale that will render insignificant any benefits the bailouts will offer.
At the moment it lies in the eye of the beholder. Is it a bailout? Is it a legitimate salvage job? Is it a subsidy? The moment somebody like the WTO rules it’s an illegal subsidy, we’ve got a trade war on our hands—and, buster, we don’t need that!
It’s a bit like trying to equalize weight in a canoe. You push it this way or that, you reseat yourself—but the awful moment comes when the miserable thing tips over completely. When is a bailout not a bailout? Or when is a subsidy not a subsidy?
Obviously, when it’s the other thing. Oh boy.
That may be a bit like how the Obama administration feels about our economy right now. It’s one thing to bail out a few industries and banks; it’s another to have your kind and necessary actions threaten to come back and bite you in the tail.
It’s bad enough to have economists and conservatives worrying that the cost of the bailouts could ruin our future economy and/or currency. Now we’ve got a bunch of foreigners claiming that the bailouts constitute an illegal subsidy. And they have a point.
For years we have protested the fact that our unsubsidized industries have been forced to compete against foreign companies that are supported by their governments. We have insisted on—and gotten—specified penalties that we can invoke against such practices.
Now, this may be coming home to bite us. Surprise, surprise. Foreign companies are looking at American firms like General Motors and Chrysler—who are getting billions in government cash as “bailout” funds—and asking what on earth that is if not a subsidy.
Well, we can answer back, if we hadn’t given General Motors a few billion, it would have gone broke and cost lots of American workers their jobs. And the Europeans, for instance, can answer right back that if the French, British and German governments had not supported the development of the Airbus, it could never have competed against Boeing—and would have gone broke and lots of Europeans would have lost their jobs, … et cetera, et cetera.
As the major economies rush to shore up their collapsing industries, more and more smaller, developing nations are yelling, “Foul!” They are taking their case to the World Trade Organization to demand the right to impose sanctions and tariffs on the United States, and possibly Japan and Europe.
Some nations aren’t waiting for a WTO ruling. This past week’s “BusinessWeek” cites a few worrisome statistics. Ecuador has raised tariffs on over “600 CATAGORIES of imports” so far. Malaysia is restricting that number of ports that will accept imports from abroad. Argentina is leading a block of nations into the WTO, asking for a ruling. Are bailouts subsidies?
Or when is a bailout not a bailout? Critics suggest that our bailout packages (as well as European bailouts) were put together in a rush with little or no thought as to what their impact on international trade might be.
One can see how Toyota, BMW or Kia might construe a loan of $35 billion to General Motors—that keeps the company from collapse—as a massive subsidy. I don’t have any trouble seeing their point of view at all. And I confess I never gave the idea a thought last fall and winter.
I remember writing that I thought we were moving too fast, without thinking things through carefully enough. But the thought that it might lead to a tariff war that slowed foreign trade did not cross my mind.
Could foreign banks point to the billions/possibly trillions we’ve committed to keeping financial entities like AIG and Citicorp alive and call that a bank subsidy? Why not? We have long been a leading proponent of sanctions against nations and industries that play unfairly on the field of foreign trade, why shouldn’t they use our own words against us?
If our bailouts result in a trade war—like the one we had in the 1930s that nearly shut down all international trade—that will do us harm on a scale that will render insignificant any benefits the bailouts will offer.
At the moment it lies in the eye of the beholder. Is it a bailout? Is it a legitimate salvage job? Is it a subsidy? The moment somebody like the WTO rules it’s an illegal subsidy, we’ve got a trade war on our hands—and, buster, we don’t need that!
It’s a bit like trying to equalize weight in a canoe. You push it this way or that, you reseat yourself—but the awful moment comes when the miserable thing tips over completely. When is a bailout not a bailout? Or when is a subsidy not a subsidy?
Obviously, when it’s the other thing. Oh boy.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Telling Iran How Naughty It Is
The House of Representatives voted 405 to 1 to tell Iran it was being very, very badly behaved. Shame, shame, shame, 405 times. Along with the vote went a fair amount of criticism of President Obama for not having castigated Iran himself.
Certainly I have a great deal of sympathy for the young voters of Iran who were so completely robbed of their votes. What’s going on offends every democratic impulse most of us have. Armed thugs break into student dormitories and beat sleeping students.
That’s not reaction to a riot. That’s a government inspired riot. A lot of what’s going on over there is purely evil—a repressive regime clamping down on its own citizenry in response to an attempt to create a more responsive and Democratic society. We’re all for that.
But what does a vote in the House of Representatives accomplish toward that end? Quite bluntly, it’s talking loudly and carrying no stick at all. All too often, American preachments are a lot of hot air with nothing behind it. That can be deadly.
Memory takes me back to the early 1950s. Officials from the President on down talked loudly about “liberating captive Eastern Europe”—the Soviet bloc. We held public demonstrations, Congress passed resolutions and our officials made stern protests.
We never stopped to think that some people in Eastern Europe might take us seriously. In October, 1956, thousands of Hungarians suddenly rose and ten year old kids began pelting Russian tanks with Molotov cocktails. The Russians, momentarily overwhelmed, fell back and abandoned Budapest.
The Hungarians went wild with joy. Pictures on the covers of our news magazines showed Hungarian secret police being machine gunned by newly liberated partisans. We cheered. Then the Russians turned around and came back—with the new T-54 tanks designed to be Molotov cocktail proof.
Hungarians expected our verbiage to mean something. They had risen in hope of American help—now they called for it desperately. But President Eisenhower was sitting on a military analysis that recommended that we could and would do nothing to help.
Russians vetoed any action by the United Nations—and the revolutionaries in Hungary found themselves facing massive Russian reinforcements on their own. A few thousand died, a couple of hundred thousand fled west into neutral Austria.
All of our words and resolutions were just that—words. Words that were of very little use against Russian tanks and troops. I suppose the one good thing that came out of the aborted Hungarian Revolution was that nobody in Eastern Europe ever took us seriously again. There were no more casualties caused by empty American talk.
That’s what the 405 to 1 resolution passed in the House amounts to. Empty American talk. And they are angry that Obama isn’t joining in. He’s being sensibly quiet. He hasn’t said or done anything that might suggest to some hot headed Iranian students that substantive American help is at all likely.
(That will keep a lot of them alive.) He hasn’t said or done anything to make the Iranian Regime feel it has to retaliate drastically to protect itself from the “Great Satan”. (That will help keep the government crackdown somewhat restrained—at least it won’t make it any worse.)
But Congress seems to have learned nothing from the tragic results of our toothless posturing in the 1950s. They want to pour more and more inflammatory words onto the fire—a fire we have no intention of doing anything whatsoever to put out.
First of all we haven’t got the extra divisions of troops it would take to quell the Iranian armed forces. We have full plates in Iraq and Afghanistan. (We’re not likely to stir up a hornet’s nest by transporting Israeli troops to do the job for us. That’s the only imaginable source of additional troops we could call upon.)
Secondly of all the United States manifestly lacks the political will to open another major front in the so-called “war on terror”. Can you imagine that same House of Representatives authorizing an extra ten or so divisions of troops (perhaps a draft?) and a third full scale war? Or the people who voted them into power going for this?
Thirdly, we honestly don’t have the money to afford another war. The billions it costs to operate in Iraq and Afghanistan are draining us quite enough now. Where are we going to get the additional billions for a fight in Iran.
And that’s what it would take—if we want to do more than talk—enough troops to force a recount of last week’s election. A lot more body bags, and millions more enemies to shoot at us. (The Iranians would quickly see American intervention—however kindly motivated—as just another invasion, and they would resist it. Just as they resisted Iraq and its poison gas in 1981.)
So we aren’t going to do anything but talk. We’d better be very sure we aren’t going to get a lot of Iranian students and moderates killed with it. A destabilized Iran isn’t going to make anyone a bit safer in the Middle East.
There’s an old saw about words being cheap. Not entirely true—especially if they are ill-advised and entirely empty. They can be really expensive in that case.
Certainly I have a great deal of sympathy for the young voters of Iran who were so completely robbed of their votes. What’s going on offends every democratic impulse most of us have. Armed thugs break into student dormitories and beat sleeping students.
That’s not reaction to a riot. That’s a government inspired riot. A lot of what’s going on over there is purely evil—a repressive regime clamping down on its own citizenry in response to an attempt to create a more responsive and Democratic society. We’re all for that.
But what does a vote in the House of Representatives accomplish toward that end? Quite bluntly, it’s talking loudly and carrying no stick at all. All too often, American preachments are a lot of hot air with nothing behind it. That can be deadly.
Memory takes me back to the early 1950s. Officials from the President on down talked loudly about “liberating captive Eastern Europe”—the Soviet bloc. We held public demonstrations, Congress passed resolutions and our officials made stern protests.
We never stopped to think that some people in Eastern Europe might take us seriously. In October, 1956, thousands of Hungarians suddenly rose and ten year old kids began pelting Russian tanks with Molotov cocktails. The Russians, momentarily overwhelmed, fell back and abandoned Budapest.
The Hungarians went wild with joy. Pictures on the covers of our news magazines showed Hungarian secret police being machine gunned by newly liberated partisans. We cheered. Then the Russians turned around and came back—with the new T-54 tanks designed to be Molotov cocktail proof.
Hungarians expected our verbiage to mean something. They had risen in hope of American help—now they called for it desperately. But President Eisenhower was sitting on a military analysis that recommended that we could and would do nothing to help.
Russians vetoed any action by the United Nations—and the revolutionaries in Hungary found themselves facing massive Russian reinforcements on their own. A few thousand died, a couple of hundred thousand fled west into neutral Austria.
All of our words and resolutions were just that—words. Words that were of very little use against Russian tanks and troops. I suppose the one good thing that came out of the aborted Hungarian Revolution was that nobody in Eastern Europe ever took us seriously again. There were no more casualties caused by empty American talk.
That’s what the 405 to 1 resolution passed in the House amounts to. Empty American talk. And they are angry that Obama isn’t joining in. He’s being sensibly quiet. He hasn’t said or done anything that might suggest to some hot headed Iranian students that substantive American help is at all likely.
(That will keep a lot of them alive.) He hasn’t said or done anything to make the Iranian Regime feel it has to retaliate drastically to protect itself from the “Great Satan”. (That will help keep the government crackdown somewhat restrained—at least it won’t make it any worse.)
But Congress seems to have learned nothing from the tragic results of our toothless posturing in the 1950s. They want to pour more and more inflammatory words onto the fire—a fire we have no intention of doing anything whatsoever to put out.
First of all we haven’t got the extra divisions of troops it would take to quell the Iranian armed forces. We have full plates in Iraq and Afghanistan. (We’re not likely to stir up a hornet’s nest by transporting Israeli troops to do the job for us. That’s the only imaginable source of additional troops we could call upon.)
Secondly of all the United States manifestly lacks the political will to open another major front in the so-called “war on terror”. Can you imagine that same House of Representatives authorizing an extra ten or so divisions of troops (perhaps a draft?) and a third full scale war? Or the people who voted them into power going for this?
Thirdly, we honestly don’t have the money to afford another war. The billions it costs to operate in Iraq and Afghanistan are draining us quite enough now. Where are we going to get the additional billions for a fight in Iran.
And that’s what it would take—if we want to do more than talk—enough troops to force a recount of last week’s election. A lot more body bags, and millions more enemies to shoot at us. (The Iranians would quickly see American intervention—however kindly motivated—as just another invasion, and they would resist it. Just as they resisted Iraq and its poison gas in 1981.)
So we aren’t going to do anything but talk. We’d better be very sure we aren’t going to get a lot of Iranian students and moderates killed with it. A destabilized Iran isn’t going to make anyone a bit safer in the Middle East.
There’s an old saw about words being cheap. Not entirely true—especially if they are ill-advised and entirely empty. They can be really expensive in that case.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Why This Republican Loves Democrats
It’s a wise Republican with enough good sense and enlightened self-interest to love an occasional Democrat. I recall that for years we had Republican governors in Michigan. I voted for each of them each time he ran. Would probably do it again.
But right alongside those governors we had a Democratic Attorney General—Frank Kelly. I voted for him every time, too. I knew that as long as he was in office, there was somebody in Lansing willing to protect my rights as a consumer and an individual citizen.
He had no ideological blinders to convince him that everything business, utilities and banks did was GOOD, and that they should in no way be impeded or forced to consider some other factor than pure profit. Every now and then he would step in and say, “No”.
I benefitted from that—as did every other citizen of Michigan. So I remained perfectly happy to have a Republican governor, Republicans in control of both houses of the legislature, a Republican Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, et cetera, et cetera. I just wanted Frank Kelly there to protect me from what might be called “too much Republican zeal.”
I’m by no means happy to see both houses of Congress and the Presidency in the hands of the Democrats in Washington right now. But every now and then those Democrats do something that makes me truly appreciate them.
There’s a bill that looks like it’s moving toward passage right now that no Republican would have authored, and few may vote for it. But, oh boy, do I love it. The bill would change the rules on how loud television commercial may be.
Instead of being permitted to bring their commercials in at the LOUDEST decibel point the program has, advertisers would be forced to hold their commercials down to the AVERAGE decibel level of the program. What a difference!
Which of us hasn’t had his eardrums assaulted by a commercial that came in at the same level as a burst of machine gun fire, a scream or an automobile crash on the program before? Instead of a quick “crash” or “bang”, the commercials go on and on at that level.
Madly you reach for the remote and look feverishly for that oh so tiny “mute” button. When we sit down to watch TV, someone in the room is always designated as the remote holder. He or she is expected to hit the mute button the instant the show goes off. If he or she is busy on his or her computer and forgets, there is a lot of annoyed bellowing.
(There can be more bellowing when he or she forgets to turn the sound back on as the program continues.) Won’t it be wonderful when the “mute” button won’t be so necessary? I’m looking forward to the glorious day when that happy piece of Democratic legislation goes through!
I first noticed the problem back in 1960 when I lived in an efficiency in New York City. My neighbor had a TV. It never bothered me during regular programming—but then, suddenly, I could hear every word of the commercials.
This seemed, and still seems, stupid to me. Why do they think I am more likely to buy their product if they blast my ear drums and annoy me to tears? If a clerk in a store was that irritating, the same people would see him or her quickly fired. And, today, do they imagine my family is the only one to mute the commercials that they spend so much on?
Anyway, as I said, there are times when this Republican positively loves the folk who sit across the aisle.
My sometimes ambivalence about Republicans and Democrats is by no means unique to me. (It took more than my vote to keep Kelly in office!) For years I have listened to commentators and historians express surprise at why the American people so often put a man of one party in the White House and left Congress in control of the other during the last half of the Twentieth Century.
(Ike with six years of Democratic control; Nixon/Ford with eight years; Reagan with eight years of a Democratic House and six years of a Democratic Senate. George H.W. Bush with four years of Democratic control; Clinton, with six years of Republican control … .)
To me this seemed so obvious! In most cases the American voter is far too pragmatic (and greedy) to be bound tightly by ideology. He was perfectly aware—at least in his subconscious—that one party (the Democrats) would never take away his goodies and entitlements: Pell Grants, Social Security, Medicare and so forth.
The other party (Republicans) would never force him to PAY for those goodies and entitlements by raising taxes. It sometimes played havoc with the deficit, but it has been a wonderful free lunch as long as it has lasted.
Democrats coined the mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid”. It would have been more accurate to say, “It’s the free goodies, stupid.”
Now that free lunch seems to be coming to an unhappy end. It may be necessary either to eliminate a few courses in the American free lunch or to begin charging for them (raising taxes). Now, and in the next few elections, we can ask ourselves, “Which Party Do We Want?”
The Republicans are more likely to take away a few courses. The Democrats are more likely to start charging for them by raising taxes. I myself cannot really answer that question yet. Which will they cut—whose ox will be gored? How much will they charge (I remember days when the highest income tax bracket was 90%).
That will really be crunch time. For the moment, when it comes to little things like tuning down the noise of the commercials, I’m happy to have some Democrats around.
But right alongside those governors we had a Democratic Attorney General—Frank Kelly. I voted for him every time, too. I knew that as long as he was in office, there was somebody in Lansing willing to protect my rights as a consumer and an individual citizen.
He had no ideological blinders to convince him that everything business, utilities and banks did was GOOD, and that they should in no way be impeded or forced to consider some other factor than pure profit. Every now and then he would step in and say, “No”.
I benefitted from that—as did every other citizen of Michigan. So I remained perfectly happy to have a Republican governor, Republicans in control of both houses of the legislature, a Republican Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, et cetera, et cetera. I just wanted Frank Kelly there to protect me from what might be called “too much Republican zeal.”
I’m by no means happy to see both houses of Congress and the Presidency in the hands of the Democrats in Washington right now. But every now and then those Democrats do something that makes me truly appreciate them.
There’s a bill that looks like it’s moving toward passage right now that no Republican would have authored, and few may vote for it. But, oh boy, do I love it. The bill would change the rules on how loud television commercial may be.
Instead of being permitted to bring their commercials in at the LOUDEST decibel point the program has, advertisers would be forced to hold their commercials down to the AVERAGE decibel level of the program. What a difference!
Which of us hasn’t had his eardrums assaulted by a commercial that came in at the same level as a burst of machine gun fire, a scream or an automobile crash on the program before? Instead of a quick “crash” or “bang”, the commercials go on and on at that level.
Madly you reach for the remote and look feverishly for that oh so tiny “mute” button. When we sit down to watch TV, someone in the room is always designated as the remote holder. He or she is expected to hit the mute button the instant the show goes off. If he or she is busy on his or her computer and forgets, there is a lot of annoyed bellowing.
(There can be more bellowing when he or she forgets to turn the sound back on as the program continues.) Won’t it be wonderful when the “mute” button won’t be so necessary? I’m looking forward to the glorious day when that happy piece of Democratic legislation goes through!
I first noticed the problem back in 1960 when I lived in an efficiency in New York City. My neighbor had a TV. It never bothered me during regular programming—but then, suddenly, I could hear every word of the commercials.
This seemed, and still seems, stupid to me. Why do they think I am more likely to buy their product if they blast my ear drums and annoy me to tears? If a clerk in a store was that irritating, the same people would see him or her quickly fired. And, today, do they imagine my family is the only one to mute the commercials that they spend so much on?
Anyway, as I said, there are times when this Republican positively loves the folk who sit across the aisle.
My sometimes ambivalence about Republicans and Democrats is by no means unique to me. (It took more than my vote to keep Kelly in office!) For years I have listened to commentators and historians express surprise at why the American people so often put a man of one party in the White House and left Congress in control of the other during the last half of the Twentieth Century.
(Ike with six years of Democratic control; Nixon/Ford with eight years; Reagan with eight years of a Democratic House and six years of a Democratic Senate. George H.W. Bush with four years of Democratic control; Clinton, with six years of Republican control … .)
To me this seemed so obvious! In most cases the American voter is far too pragmatic (and greedy) to be bound tightly by ideology. He was perfectly aware—at least in his subconscious—that one party (the Democrats) would never take away his goodies and entitlements: Pell Grants, Social Security, Medicare and so forth.
The other party (Republicans) would never force him to PAY for those goodies and entitlements by raising taxes. It sometimes played havoc with the deficit, but it has been a wonderful free lunch as long as it has lasted.
Democrats coined the mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid”. It would have been more accurate to say, “It’s the free goodies, stupid.”
Now that free lunch seems to be coming to an unhappy end. It may be necessary either to eliminate a few courses in the American free lunch or to begin charging for them (raising taxes). Now, and in the next few elections, we can ask ourselves, “Which Party Do We Want?”
The Republicans are more likely to take away a few courses. The Democrats are more likely to start charging for them by raising taxes. I myself cannot really answer that question yet. Which will they cut—whose ox will be gored? How much will they charge (I remember days when the highest income tax bracket was 90%).
That will really be crunch time. For the moment, when it comes to little things like tuning down the noise of the commercials, I’m happy to have some Democrats around.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
TV: Goodbye Analog--Hello To What?
Nearly a week has passd since television went digital. I’ve heard no despairing cries from someone who can’t find his favorite channel. There are hints that the digital age may alter the relationship between the four Nets and their cable competition, but it’s too soon to have an idea.
In any case, analog TV, which started out as a blur of snow on black and white screens and showed movies for most of the day is gone accept for a tiny, remote part of the nation. Before we push it aside and move on to internet news and “Hulu”, let’s look back at how it changed us.
The 1951 Kefauver Crime Commission Hearings suddenly made television something more than an outlet for old movies. It was our first shared national viewing experience. About a year later all of my favorite radio shows either went over to Television or ended.
Drag Net, Gunsmoke and Ozzie and Harriet became something to watch, not just listen to. Instead of putting a radio outside and letting the baseball game drone on (“He checks first base and the runner gets back … .”), you had to sit down and look at it. A single Monday Night television show made professional football the nation’s favorite sport.
Television quickly began to impact who we were and what we lived for. Radio’s “Breakfast Club” became TV’s “Today Show”. “American Bandstand” introduced generations of American teens to the next new thing/person/band in music. It altered and created our culture in a way I’m not sure anything in radio ever did.
Then there was Ed Sulllivan. Who was he; what did he do? He ran a Sunday night variety show that gave us, among many others, Elvis Presley and The Beatles. It’s hard to imagine rock music becoming so dominant without Sullivan. Talk about creating culture.
Jack Paar’s neuroses ruled night time television through the 1950s until 1962 when he finally morphed into Johnny Carson—who with a word (or a refusal to Invite) could make or break an entertainer’s career. Will anyone else in Hollywood ever have such power again?
But it was more than just popular culture—in 1960 analog television became the deciding factor in politics. We elected a president PRIMARILY because he looked and sounded better on television. Not even radio or the press had ever had quite that kind of power.
Your make-up, more than your policies, decided how you ran in the polls. Your entire campaign was reduced to 30 second sound bites. And suddenly the cost of buying television spots became the most important factor in the race.
Before television, sitting presidents and senators could hide their defects. No more. We watched LBJ pick up his Beagle by its ears. He showed us his surgery scar. (We would have seen FDR’s wheel chair.) We saw Kennedy shot, then Oswald. Then Bobby. We watched an entire presidency crash and burn on the televised hearings to impeach Nixon.
(When McCarthy destroyed himself taking on the Army in 1954, I listened to the hearings on radio. The impeachment hearings—1974 and 1999—were watched. And the presidency will never be the same.)
Television made our presidents less godlike, more fallible. The kind of trust people had in Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson will never come again. Televised hearings that showed all their warts and failures helped destroy that forever.
Much of the trust most of us had in our government is lost. Television certainly played a part in that. A certain mystique is necessary to govern well. Television destroys mystique. Only a trained actor like Reagan could master the medium effectively enough to really use it to his advantage.
It did the same thing to war. During World War II the War Department dithered for years over whether to risk showing the American public a single totally non-gory photo of dead GIs floating in the surf at Guadalcanal. Would it be too shocking? Would it hurt civilian morale?
Vietnam came in on the six o’clock news. Body bags, wounded boys, flames and sounds of gunfire. It changed to whole political calculation in trying to keep the civilian population behind a war effort. There is something about seeing it that makes it more real—and terrible.
And Civil Rights. Would there have been an effective Civil Rights movement without television? It was an all seeing eye that made southern sheriffs who might unhesitatingly have killed an uppity Negro like Martin Luther King more cautious.
We watched as Bull Conner turned his dogs and his fire hoses loose on kids, old women and students. A sense of outrage swept the nation. We saw the well-behaved marchers who flooded the Mall in 1963; we watched Martin Luther King talk about the “top of the mountain”.
It is not entirely a coincidence that a year later, Republicans swung into line behind the Civil Rights Act of 1864—uniting with liberal northern Democrats—when their Senate leader, Everett Dirksen, intoned that it finally was “an idea whose time had come”.
There were all the rest of the personalities who affected us during the days when network television ruled the analog airwaves. Newscasters like Huntley-Brinkley, Uncle Walter and John Chancellor. Religious voices like Fulton Sheen, Billy Graham and Robert Schuller. Remember how presidential Ronald Reagan looked and sounded as he hosted, “Death Valley Days”?
Who will ever forget Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom” (“While Jim wrestles the alligator, let’s go back to the truck … .”)? Remember when what seemed like all of America watched Luke and Laura? Or when “MASH” and “All in the Family” forever changed the substance of what we watched?
It changed us. Was it, is it, a “vast wasteland”? Did it jade us? Did it better inform us? Are we more cynical because of it? Whatever or whichever—it did change us as a nation.
Analog or digital, it is today a different medium. The networks have lost place to a plethora of cable outlets. Internet news threatens to bury them both. Advertisers are beginning to question the usefulness of television spots (we are armed with “mute” buttons now—and in my house they get used!)
The six o’clock news is no longer “must see”. Less costly reality shows increasingly crowd out dramas and comedies on the network channels. No one has ever replaced Ed Sullivan or Johnny Carson, let alone Dick Clark.
As it goes away, I remember that for a few short analog decades—for entertainment, news and music, the cultural life of all of us--network television was a kind of Camelot. It united us, informed us, changed the way we thought and viewed the world and now it too “changes and passes away lest one good custom should corrupt all the world.”
The switch to digital broadcasting is symbolic of a deeper and greater change.
In any case, analog TV, which started out as a blur of snow on black and white screens and showed movies for most of the day is gone accept for a tiny, remote part of the nation. Before we push it aside and move on to internet news and “Hulu”, let’s look back at how it changed us.
The 1951 Kefauver Crime Commission Hearings suddenly made television something more than an outlet for old movies. It was our first shared national viewing experience. About a year later all of my favorite radio shows either went over to Television or ended.
Drag Net, Gunsmoke and Ozzie and Harriet became something to watch, not just listen to. Instead of putting a radio outside and letting the baseball game drone on (“He checks first base and the runner gets back … .”), you had to sit down and look at it. A single Monday Night television show made professional football the nation’s favorite sport.
Television quickly began to impact who we were and what we lived for. Radio’s “Breakfast Club” became TV’s “Today Show”. “American Bandstand” introduced generations of American teens to the next new thing/person/band in music. It altered and created our culture in a way I’m not sure anything in radio ever did.
Then there was Ed Sulllivan. Who was he; what did he do? He ran a Sunday night variety show that gave us, among many others, Elvis Presley and The Beatles. It’s hard to imagine rock music becoming so dominant without Sullivan. Talk about creating culture.
Jack Paar’s neuroses ruled night time television through the 1950s until 1962 when he finally morphed into Johnny Carson—who with a word (or a refusal to Invite) could make or break an entertainer’s career. Will anyone else in Hollywood ever have such power again?
But it was more than just popular culture—in 1960 analog television became the deciding factor in politics. We elected a president PRIMARILY because he looked and sounded better on television. Not even radio or the press had ever had quite that kind of power.
Your make-up, more than your policies, decided how you ran in the polls. Your entire campaign was reduced to 30 second sound bites. And suddenly the cost of buying television spots became the most important factor in the race.
Before television, sitting presidents and senators could hide their defects. No more. We watched LBJ pick up his Beagle by its ears. He showed us his surgery scar. (We would have seen FDR’s wheel chair.) We saw Kennedy shot, then Oswald. Then Bobby. We watched an entire presidency crash and burn on the televised hearings to impeach Nixon.
(When McCarthy destroyed himself taking on the Army in 1954, I listened to the hearings on radio. The impeachment hearings—1974 and 1999—were watched. And the presidency will never be the same.)
Television made our presidents less godlike, more fallible. The kind of trust people had in Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson will never come again. Televised hearings that showed all their warts and failures helped destroy that forever.
Much of the trust most of us had in our government is lost. Television certainly played a part in that. A certain mystique is necessary to govern well. Television destroys mystique. Only a trained actor like Reagan could master the medium effectively enough to really use it to his advantage.
It did the same thing to war. During World War II the War Department dithered for years over whether to risk showing the American public a single totally non-gory photo of dead GIs floating in the surf at Guadalcanal. Would it be too shocking? Would it hurt civilian morale?
Vietnam came in on the six o’clock news. Body bags, wounded boys, flames and sounds of gunfire. It changed to whole political calculation in trying to keep the civilian population behind a war effort. There is something about seeing it that makes it more real—and terrible.
And Civil Rights. Would there have been an effective Civil Rights movement without television? It was an all seeing eye that made southern sheriffs who might unhesitatingly have killed an uppity Negro like Martin Luther King more cautious.
We watched as Bull Conner turned his dogs and his fire hoses loose on kids, old women and students. A sense of outrage swept the nation. We saw the well-behaved marchers who flooded the Mall in 1963; we watched Martin Luther King talk about the “top of the mountain”.
It is not entirely a coincidence that a year later, Republicans swung into line behind the Civil Rights Act of 1864—uniting with liberal northern Democrats—when their Senate leader, Everett Dirksen, intoned that it finally was “an idea whose time had come”.
There were all the rest of the personalities who affected us during the days when network television ruled the analog airwaves. Newscasters like Huntley-Brinkley, Uncle Walter and John Chancellor. Religious voices like Fulton Sheen, Billy Graham and Robert Schuller. Remember how presidential Ronald Reagan looked and sounded as he hosted, “Death Valley Days”?
Who will ever forget Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom” (“While Jim wrestles the alligator, let’s go back to the truck … .”)? Remember when what seemed like all of America watched Luke and Laura? Or when “MASH” and “All in the Family” forever changed the substance of what we watched?
It changed us. Was it, is it, a “vast wasteland”? Did it jade us? Did it better inform us? Are we more cynical because of it? Whatever or whichever—it did change us as a nation.
Analog or digital, it is today a different medium. The networks have lost place to a plethora of cable outlets. Internet news threatens to bury them both. Advertisers are beginning to question the usefulness of television spots (we are armed with “mute” buttons now—and in my house they get used!)
The six o’clock news is no longer “must see”. Less costly reality shows increasingly crowd out dramas and comedies on the network channels. No one has ever replaced Ed Sullivan or Johnny Carson, let alone Dick Clark.
As it goes away, I remember that for a few short analog decades—for entertainment, news and music, the cultural life of all of us--network television was a kind of Camelot. It united us, informed us, changed the way we thought and viewed the world and now it too “changes and passes away lest one good custom should corrupt all the world.”
The switch to digital broadcasting is symbolic of a deeper and greater change.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Republicans: Bit' by Their Own Dawg
Showing more of an almost infinite capacity of the Republican Party to shoot itself in the foot, a so-called “Republican activist” in South Carolina said something almost unbelievable the other day. He referenced a news story about an escaped gorilla.
“It was probably harmless,” quipped the appropriately named “Rusty”, “no doubt it was an ancestor of Michelle Obama.” Oh boy.
Two things come to mind immediately. Republicans are paying the price for a decision they made in the early 1950s. The “Roosevelt Coalition” that held the White House from 1933 to 1953 was made up of four parts. Northern urban Immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and southern whites.
In a brilliant stroke, FDR bound together the Ku Klux Klan and everybody it hated in one party. It controlled the White House and Congress for decades. By 1952, Republicans were desperate to break off some part of the coalition and use it to win back the White House.
Truman had bought the Jewish vote by backing Israel in 1948. Catholics and urban immigrants had been with the Democrats since the early 1800s. But the new Civil Rights movement that had began—largely among Democrats—after World War II made southern whites vulnerable to Republican inroads.
They went after them with a vengeance. Within a few decades the Confederate South was as solidly Republican as it had been Democratic after the Civil War. Republicans rode to victory on that cushion in 1952, 56, 68, 72, 80, 84, 88, 2000. They finally took back Congress in 1994.
The Grand Wizard of the Klan was now, vociferously, a Republican. Like it or not, the Klan had become “family” to the Republicans—a black sheep, a cousin to be ashamed of, but nonetheless kin. It has to be an embarrassment. “Rusty” certainly was.
The second thing that comes to mind is how the pro- and anti-slave arguments developed during the first half of the 1800s. When the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776, there were black slaves in all Thirteen Colonies.
Over the next 80 years, attitudes and economic necessities changed. Drastically and uniquely compared to all of human history, Economically: Eli Whitney turned the north toward industrialism and factory labor with his invention of interchangeable parts.
Eli Whitney turned the South toward almost total dependence on slave labor with his invention of the cotton gin—which made it profitable to grow cotton down south. Cotton was desperately labor intensive. Dreams some southerners had of freeing their slaves back in the 1700s went glimmering as the region turned to cotton growing.
The North could abolish slavery because owning slaves as valets, house cleaners and cooks was a luxury that could be done without or replaced with immigrant servants. The South depended on slave labor in the cotton fields as a necessity of life.
Britain freed her slaves. So did France. There was pressure on Russia to free her serfs. Suddenly the mores of the world turned upside down. The slave owning South found that it was no longer in the mainstream of civilized behavior. Slave owning was increasingly seen in the rest of the Christian world as immoral.
(I must stress that this change in attitude and behavior was unique to the Christian World—Europe and the Americas. Slavery continues to this day in much of the rest of the planet. As recently as the 1950s, the UN seriously tried to develop an international legal code for the treatment of slaves.)
The South reacted to this new attitude in the rest of the US and the world by trying to counter it. All right, if enslaving humans is immoral—then black slaves aren’t human. They are subnormal, closer to apes. No one had viewed slaves in such a light before—but the South needed to find some rationale for hanging on to its economic model: slave labor.
Pseudo scientific theory after theory was put forward to prove the evolutionary backwardness of Africans. Slave owners were actually doing society an enormous favor by giving these sub-humans useful occupations—and by keeping them under control so that they did not endanger more elevated white human society. Rather like keeping dangerous dogs penned up.
This attitude continued after the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment. Northerners really had no higher opinion of blacks as free men. They were very content to have most of them stay in the South, working on their old plantations as share croppers—raising cotton.
(It must be pointed out that northerners did not realize the significance of their own industrialization. Our largest export in 1860, the last year before the war, and biggest currency maker was cotton. No one could imagine immediately after the war that industrial exports would soon far outstrip our agricultural exports.
It was widely believed that the only way we could pay our huge Civil War debt was by growing more cotton. To grow cotton took labor. The only people we could force to do it were the freed slaves. We put them back on the plantations--after a brief experiment with reconstruction.
Blacks did not gain their freedom until mechanical devices for picking cotton were invented in 1950. This made the Civil Rights movement possible and acceptable.)
The defense Southerners created for their “peculiar institution”—that blacks were not human and therefore not subject to the new anti-slave morality—is with us yet. It remains an article of faith among Klanners and white supremacists.
Good ol’ Rusty was just putting a new face on an old rationale. Never mind that she is now the First Lady of the United States—and is exuding more charm than anyone since Jackie Kennedy. (Frankly, Michelle seems a bit nicer.)
When Republicans made their bid for the unreconstructed southern whites, they allowed them to bring along a lot of baggage. It could bite the whole Party in the future.
“It was probably harmless,” quipped the appropriately named “Rusty”, “no doubt it was an ancestor of Michelle Obama.” Oh boy.
Two things come to mind immediately. Republicans are paying the price for a decision they made in the early 1950s. The “Roosevelt Coalition” that held the White House from 1933 to 1953 was made up of four parts. Northern urban Immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and southern whites.
In a brilliant stroke, FDR bound together the Ku Klux Klan and everybody it hated in one party. It controlled the White House and Congress for decades. By 1952, Republicans were desperate to break off some part of the coalition and use it to win back the White House.
Truman had bought the Jewish vote by backing Israel in 1948. Catholics and urban immigrants had been with the Democrats since the early 1800s. But the new Civil Rights movement that had began—largely among Democrats—after World War II made southern whites vulnerable to Republican inroads.
They went after them with a vengeance. Within a few decades the Confederate South was as solidly Republican as it had been Democratic after the Civil War. Republicans rode to victory on that cushion in 1952, 56, 68, 72, 80, 84, 88, 2000. They finally took back Congress in 1994.
The Grand Wizard of the Klan was now, vociferously, a Republican. Like it or not, the Klan had become “family” to the Republicans—a black sheep, a cousin to be ashamed of, but nonetheless kin. It has to be an embarrassment. “Rusty” certainly was.
The second thing that comes to mind is how the pro- and anti-slave arguments developed during the first half of the 1800s. When the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776, there were black slaves in all Thirteen Colonies.
Over the next 80 years, attitudes and economic necessities changed. Drastically and uniquely compared to all of human history, Economically: Eli Whitney turned the north toward industrialism and factory labor with his invention of interchangeable parts.
Eli Whitney turned the South toward almost total dependence on slave labor with his invention of the cotton gin—which made it profitable to grow cotton down south. Cotton was desperately labor intensive. Dreams some southerners had of freeing their slaves back in the 1700s went glimmering as the region turned to cotton growing.
The North could abolish slavery because owning slaves as valets, house cleaners and cooks was a luxury that could be done without or replaced with immigrant servants. The South depended on slave labor in the cotton fields as a necessity of life.
Britain freed her slaves. So did France. There was pressure on Russia to free her serfs. Suddenly the mores of the world turned upside down. The slave owning South found that it was no longer in the mainstream of civilized behavior. Slave owning was increasingly seen in the rest of the Christian world as immoral.
(I must stress that this change in attitude and behavior was unique to the Christian World—Europe and the Americas. Slavery continues to this day in much of the rest of the planet. As recently as the 1950s, the UN seriously tried to develop an international legal code for the treatment of slaves.)
The South reacted to this new attitude in the rest of the US and the world by trying to counter it. All right, if enslaving humans is immoral—then black slaves aren’t human. They are subnormal, closer to apes. No one had viewed slaves in such a light before—but the South needed to find some rationale for hanging on to its economic model: slave labor.
Pseudo scientific theory after theory was put forward to prove the evolutionary backwardness of Africans. Slave owners were actually doing society an enormous favor by giving these sub-humans useful occupations—and by keeping them under control so that they did not endanger more elevated white human society. Rather like keeping dangerous dogs penned up.
This attitude continued after the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment. Northerners really had no higher opinion of blacks as free men. They were very content to have most of them stay in the South, working on their old plantations as share croppers—raising cotton.
(It must be pointed out that northerners did not realize the significance of their own industrialization. Our largest export in 1860, the last year before the war, and biggest currency maker was cotton. No one could imagine immediately after the war that industrial exports would soon far outstrip our agricultural exports.
It was widely believed that the only way we could pay our huge Civil War debt was by growing more cotton. To grow cotton took labor. The only people we could force to do it were the freed slaves. We put them back on the plantations--after a brief experiment with reconstruction.
Blacks did not gain their freedom until mechanical devices for picking cotton were invented in 1950. This made the Civil Rights movement possible and acceptable.)
The defense Southerners created for their “peculiar institution”—that blacks were not human and therefore not subject to the new anti-slave morality—is with us yet. It remains an article of faith among Klanners and white supremacists.
Good ol’ Rusty was just putting a new face on an old rationale. Never mind that she is now the First Lady of the United States—and is exuding more charm than anyone since Jackie Kennedy. (Frankly, Michelle seems a bit nicer.)
When Republicans made their bid for the unreconstructed southern whites, they allowed them to bring along a lot of baggage. It could bite the whole Party in the future.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Health Care -- Political Orphan
Tomorrow President Obama begins his big push for some sort of universal health care. Already the pundits are talking 1993 when Bill Clinton lost his bid for health care reform. More people seem to be for it this time, but there’s less money than there was 16 years ago.
The bailouts have left us staggering under debt that no one can even calculate exactly. Trillions. And now Obama is asking for another trillion or so to reform the medical system and pick up the millions who are uninsured.
That has to give more than conservative Republicans pause. The uninsured don’t seem to represent any major voting block, so no one seems to feel threatened as to his re-election prospects no matter what happens to health reform.
That, alone, can drop momentum for a bill to near zero. Certainly nobody’s dropping big bucks in a lobbying campaign for universal health care. What bucks there are are coming from the private health insurers who are terrified of losing premiums under any new system.
That hurts, too. Congress loves to do well by voting for nice causes that have lots of lobbyists behind them. After all, SOMEBODY has to pay for the millions on millions it costs to buy TV ads in order to run a winning campaign. Most members spend their entire terms raising the cash to pay for the last election and to begin the next. Most of it comes from lobbyists.
This leaves Obama pretty much forced to try to get a health reform package through strictly on its merits. Unless someone physically bombs part of the United States or a threat level is so high it puts Congressmen at risk, few bills go through on mere merit!
I don’t envy Obama the job that faces him on health care. He’s going to take flak from the left, the right, the centre, the Republicans, the independents, the Democrats, the liberals, the conservatives—and !!! the American people, even those who are actively scared of losing their jobs and their present health insurance.
This astounds me. It was the scare tactic used in 1993; it’s already on the airwaves now—“Do you want Uncle Sam as your doctor?” “Choice will be dead.”
Millions of Americans immediately recoil in horror at the thought. It’s knee jerk. Uncle Sam is going to take away my doctor (whose name I may not recall, because I’ve only ever seen him for three minutes at a time) and make me go to a low-end, poverty clinic down in the ghetto!
That, more than anything else, will beat health care reform. The commercials that tout this horrific scenario are paid for by the health insurers that are upping your co-pays and your premiums every year. They’ll make money when you say, NO, to government involvement—and you’ll lose.
You’re buying a bill of goods that has neither value nor credibility. Government builds roads—and we drive them coast to coast at 70 and 80 miles an hour, feeling safe enough. Government builds air ports and bridges that some of us use almost daily. It’s government that hires the air traffic controllers who keep hundreds and thousands of aircraft from piling into one another.
Government does a lot of things very well. Take Social Security. I went down to see them right after I turned 65 and they carefully—and accurately, it turns out—explained my options. I chose the one that seemed best for me and, every third of the month for five years, my cheque has arrived at the bank. If there is a holiday, it comes early rather than late.
Medicare pays my medical bills without quibble. I’m fortunate enough to have a Medicare supplement (which people might well go on buying if there were a universal form of Medicare for all Americans) that pays a good bit of what Medicare doesn’t cover.
It seems to me that Medicare is by far the most efficient medical coverage I’ve ever had. I shudder to think of it being placed in the hands of a private insurer. I have to say that, in this case, efficiency lies with the government.
And I’ve yet to meet a physician, hospital or specialist who doesn’t take Medicare. The same would be true for any universal health insurance! Is your physician likely to limit his practice to uninsured illegal immigrants rather than accept you under a reformed medical system?
So how are you going to lose your doctor? Why won’t you have the specialist of your choice? Will he pack up and move to Africa where they can afford to pay a physician in an entire year what he could earn here in a month or less? I think he’ll still be around.
The insurance companies who sponsor those lurid ads on television about having Uncle Sam as your physician are, bluntly, lying in their teeth—and they know it.
But all of that won’t help President Obama after tomorrow. The debt won’t go away—it will be much cheaper to let the uninsured suffer. No one’s going to start dropping major lobbying dollars on behalf of the un-insured or the under-insured. No one will lose an election over what happens to medical reform.
And Americans will go on believing that all their doctors will pack up and leave the country if a universal health care package is ever passed.
It’s pish-tosh. But it’s likely to win the day. No one but the large insurance companies will be the better for it.
The bailouts have left us staggering under debt that no one can even calculate exactly. Trillions. And now Obama is asking for another trillion or so to reform the medical system and pick up the millions who are uninsured.
That has to give more than conservative Republicans pause. The uninsured don’t seem to represent any major voting block, so no one seems to feel threatened as to his re-election prospects no matter what happens to health reform.
That, alone, can drop momentum for a bill to near zero. Certainly nobody’s dropping big bucks in a lobbying campaign for universal health care. What bucks there are are coming from the private health insurers who are terrified of losing premiums under any new system.
That hurts, too. Congress loves to do well by voting for nice causes that have lots of lobbyists behind them. After all, SOMEBODY has to pay for the millions on millions it costs to buy TV ads in order to run a winning campaign. Most members spend their entire terms raising the cash to pay for the last election and to begin the next. Most of it comes from lobbyists.
This leaves Obama pretty much forced to try to get a health reform package through strictly on its merits. Unless someone physically bombs part of the United States or a threat level is so high it puts Congressmen at risk, few bills go through on mere merit!
I don’t envy Obama the job that faces him on health care. He’s going to take flak from the left, the right, the centre, the Republicans, the independents, the Democrats, the liberals, the conservatives—and !!! the American people, even those who are actively scared of losing their jobs and their present health insurance.
This astounds me. It was the scare tactic used in 1993; it’s already on the airwaves now—“Do you want Uncle Sam as your doctor?” “Choice will be dead.”
Millions of Americans immediately recoil in horror at the thought. It’s knee jerk. Uncle Sam is going to take away my doctor (whose name I may not recall, because I’ve only ever seen him for three minutes at a time) and make me go to a low-end, poverty clinic down in the ghetto!
That, more than anything else, will beat health care reform. The commercials that tout this horrific scenario are paid for by the health insurers that are upping your co-pays and your premiums every year. They’ll make money when you say, NO, to government involvement—and you’ll lose.
You’re buying a bill of goods that has neither value nor credibility. Government builds roads—and we drive them coast to coast at 70 and 80 miles an hour, feeling safe enough. Government builds air ports and bridges that some of us use almost daily. It’s government that hires the air traffic controllers who keep hundreds and thousands of aircraft from piling into one another.
Government does a lot of things very well. Take Social Security. I went down to see them right after I turned 65 and they carefully—and accurately, it turns out—explained my options. I chose the one that seemed best for me and, every third of the month for five years, my cheque has arrived at the bank. If there is a holiday, it comes early rather than late.
Medicare pays my medical bills without quibble. I’m fortunate enough to have a Medicare supplement (which people might well go on buying if there were a universal form of Medicare for all Americans) that pays a good bit of what Medicare doesn’t cover.
It seems to me that Medicare is by far the most efficient medical coverage I’ve ever had. I shudder to think of it being placed in the hands of a private insurer. I have to say that, in this case, efficiency lies with the government.
And I’ve yet to meet a physician, hospital or specialist who doesn’t take Medicare. The same would be true for any universal health insurance! Is your physician likely to limit his practice to uninsured illegal immigrants rather than accept you under a reformed medical system?
So how are you going to lose your doctor? Why won’t you have the specialist of your choice? Will he pack up and move to Africa where they can afford to pay a physician in an entire year what he could earn here in a month or less? I think he’ll still be around.
The insurance companies who sponsor those lurid ads on television about having Uncle Sam as your physician are, bluntly, lying in their teeth—and they know it.
But all of that won’t help President Obama after tomorrow. The debt won’t go away—it will be much cheaper to let the uninsured suffer. No one’s going to start dropping major lobbying dollars on behalf of the un-insured or the under-insured. No one will lose an election over what happens to medical reform.
And Americans will go on believing that all their doctors will pack up and leave the country if a universal health care package is ever passed.
It’s pish-tosh. But it’s likely to win the day. No one but the large insurance companies will be the better for it.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Iran: Home of The Naive?
It may be a reasonable supposition that one way you can tell a mature democracy from an immature one is the equanimity with which the former accepts voter fraud. In an immature democracy, like that of Iran, voters tend to bask in the naïve belief that their votes count and that the man with the most actual ballots will win. Right now, this time.
Their disillusionment when it appears to them that fraud has actually occurred is frightening to behold. Rioters lit fires and threw rocks all day long today in the streets of Teheran. They drew logical inferences from the fact that in a country where ballots normally take hours and hours to count, millions of votes poured in during the first few hours, putting the incumbent far into the lead.
Compare this to the behavior of Richard Nixon who actually was robbed of the election of 1960—when Chicago’s Daley held back the city (Democratic) vote until he could see how many Republican votes he needed to overcome in southern Illinois.
Nixon was well aware of the voting fraud in Illinois and Texas—which probably cost him the very close election. He didn’t even bother to protest (although he did possibly overreact in 1972 when he spotted some of the same people working against him and sent in the Watergate burglars to see what they were up to.
Watergate was unfortunate and foolish considering that Nixon had a won election on his hands. But considering his past and the men he was up against, I might have done the same idiotic thing in his place. He was a better man in 1960).
For years Americans repeated the Chicago refrain with a cynical snicker—“Vote early, vote often.” Or regaled one another with stories of the dead rising to vote throughout the city. That was true in Jersey City under Boss Hague, in New York under Tammany Hall—there was even suspicion of it in Grand Rapids during the 1940s.
We could go on with the Pendergast Machine in Kansas City, the FitzGeralds and the Kennedys of Boston, the corrupt Republican machine that ran Philadelphia for decades, Frank McKay of Grand Rapids who bought up all the mayor’s debts—and owned him, and so forth and so forth.
There’s the 1948 election of “Landslide Lyndon”, as other senators snidely referred to Senator Johnson (not in his hearing!). Southern Texas county after county came in with huge majorities for Johnson in 1948. These counties were run by Johnson backers who used gun toting poll watchers to guarantee how Mexican field hands voted.
There was very good evidence that at least 20,000 of these ballots all had obviously forged signatures. Boxes of them were brought into a state court to be opened and inspected. Johnson’s lead was 67 votes at the time. Just before they could open the boxes, a Democratic Supreme Court justice ordered them sealed forever—and Johnson joined the Senate as another Democratic Senator.
There’s the election of 2000 when a Republican Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the disputed electoral votes of Florida, completely ignoring the popular vote of the nation—and possibly Florida. Al Gore sputtered and then went off to make movies.
Most people who wanted to know knew that votes in the hills of Kentucky and West Virginia sold for ten dollars a head in the 1950s and 60s. When John Kennedy’s bag man accidentally lost a whole suitcase of tens during the 1960 West Virginia primary, they had to call Boston and get Joe to send more.
That’s when he wrote the famous telegram, “I’m not buying a landslide!”
We could go on and on. The fact is Americans tend to take a bad call in a football game more seriously than they do a miscalled election. We don’t even dwell on the “what if’s”. What if Nixon had won in 1960? What if Johnson had lost in 1948? What if Al Gore had won in 2000?
Who knows? Who cares? In modern times, I cannot think of a civil disturbance that was caused because of real or suspected election fraud. We same to take it as all part of the game—win some, lose some. Nor can I think of an appeal (as opposed to a recount) or prosecution because of fraud at the polls.
Does that make us blasé—or merely cynical? Have we been sipping too long from the beer barrels that used to stand at polling places (and why bars are often closed on election day today)? Was ten dollars a vote satisfaction enough, no matter who won?
We don’t riot. Sometimes we make a face before returning to business. A few of the more politically active among us rant angrily for a year or two. Then we go on. Nobody burns a stack of tires on a main street; nobody throws rocks at cops—not since Grant Park at least.
But that was not over a bad call on an election—that was war against the entire party system, the draft and the Vietnam War. And that’s only one. No riots in 1960, none in 2000. In a sense it is because we are a mature democracy.
They did us dirty this time—we’ll get them back next time.
That’s because we’re confident there will be a next time. Nixon came back and won in 1968; the Democrats won in 2008. We have faith that eventually the system will work itself out.
The angry voters of Iran have no such assurance. They had a chance this time; they cannot be sure there will be another time. Thus the rage—and despair—of today.
Perhaps that’s not so much maturity on our part as it is faith—faith in the system, faith that someday we will be heard and win. That, even amidst corruption and chicanery, is a very good thing.
I could wish it for the young people of Teheran.
Their disillusionment when it appears to them that fraud has actually occurred is frightening to behold. Rioters lit fires and threw rocks all day long today in the streets of Teheran. They drew logical inferences from the fact that in a country where ballots normally take hours and hours to count, millions of votes poured in during the first few hours, putting the incumbent far into the lead.
Compare this to the behavior of Richard Nixon who actually was robbed of the election of 1960—when Chicago’s Daley held back the city (Democratic) vote until he could see how many Republican votes he needed to overcome in southern Illinois.
Nixon was well aware of the voting fraud in Illinois and Texas—which probably cost him the very close election. He didn’t even bother to protest (although he did possibly overreact in 1972 when he spotted some of the same people working against him and sent in the Watergate burglars to see what they were up to.
Watergate was unfortunate and foolish considering that Nixon had a won election on his hands. But considering his past and the men he was up against, I might have done the same idiotic thing in his place. He was a better man in 1960).
For years Americans repeated the Chicago refrain with a cynical snicker—“Vote early, vote often.” Or regaled one another with stories of the dead rising to vote throughout the city. That was true in Jersey City under Boss Hague, in New York under Tammany Hall—there was even suspicion of it in Grand Rapids during the 1940s.
We could go on with the Pendergast Machine in Kansas City, the FitzGeralds and the Kennedys of Boston, the corrupt Republican machine that ran Philadelphia for decades, Frank McKay of Grand Rapids who bought up all the mayor’s debts—and owned him, and so forth and so forth.
There’s the 1948 election of “Landslide Lyndon”, as other senators snidely referred to Senator Johnson (not in his hearing!). Southern Texas county after county came in with huge majorities for Johnson in 1948. These counties were run by Johnson backers who used gun toting poll watchers to guarantee how Mexican field hands voted.
There was very good evidence that at least 20,000 of these ballots all had obviously forged signatures. Boxes of them were brought into a state court to be opened and inspected. Johnson’s lead was 67 votes at the time. Just before they could open the boxes, a Democratic Supreme Court justice ordered them sealed forever—and Johnson joined the Senate as another Democratic Senator.
There’s the election of 2000 when a Republican Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the disputed electoral votes of Florida, completely ignoring the popular vote of the nation—and possibly Florida. Al Gore sputtered and then went off to make movies.
Most people who wanted to know knew that votes in the hills of Kentucky and West Virginia sold for ten dollars a head in the 1950s and 60s. When John Kennedy’s bag man accidentally lost a whole suitcase of tens during the 1960 West Virginia primary, they had to call Boston and get Joe to send more.
That’s when he wrote the famous telegram, “I’m not buying a landslide!”
We could go on and on. The fact is Americans tend to take a bad call in a football game more seriously than they do a miscalled election. We don’t even dwell on the “what if’s”. What if Nixon had won in 1960? What if Johnson had lost in 1948? What if Al Gore had won in 2000?
Who knows? Who cares? In modern times, I cannot think of a civil disturbance that was caused because of real or suspected election fraud. We same to take it as all part of the game—win some, lose some. Nor can I think of an appeal (as opposed to a recount) or prosecution because of fraud at the polls.
Does that make us blasé—or merely cynical? Have we been sipping too long from the beer barrels that used to stand at polling places (and why bars are often closed on election day today)? Was ten dollars a vote satisfaction enough, no matter who won?
We don’t riot. Sometimes we make a face before returning to business. A few of the more politically active among us rant angrily for a year or two. Then we go on. Nobody burns a stack of tires on a main street; nobody throws rocks at cops—not since Grant Park at least.
But that was not over a bad call on an election—that was war against the entire party system, the draft and the Vietnam War. And that’s only one. No riots in 1960, none in 2000. In a sense it is because we are a mature democracy.
They did us dirty this time—we’ll get them back next time.
That’s because we’re confident there will be a next time. Nixon came back and won in 1968; the Democrats won in 2008. We have faith that eventually the system will work itself out.
The angry voters of Iran have no such assurance. They had a chance this time; they cannot be sure there will be another time. Thus the rage—and despair—of today.
Perhaps that’s not so much maturity on our part as it is faith—faith in the system, faith that someday we will be heard and win. That, even amidst corruption and chicanery, is a very good thing.
I could wish it for the young people of Teheran.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Modern Medicine: Horse and Buggy Delivery
Recently I got a bill for $11.47. A tiny bill for a medical bill. But nevertheless aggravating. Not the amount—the fact that it came at all. If you ever have surgery or execute an estate, you will find nickel and dime bills like that coming in months after the procedure or death.
If you sell a house, you can pay off the last utility bills in reasonable order. You know what to expect, and that’s what you get. If you take your car in for some serious repair, you get one bill. Even if the mechanic had to send the vehicle out for some work he couldn’t do himself—you get a single bill for the repair job.
You don’t, for instance, get a bill for the parts. Then a few weeks or days latera bill for the labor. Then, further down the road, a bill for the paint. And then a bill from the specialist who wielded the paint gun. Or a bill for rent from the person who owns the building. You get one bill.
Not for a medical repair job you don’t. You get bills from the doctor, bills from the hospital and a bill from the anesthetist. Then come the $50 and $75 bills from specialists you never heard of, never met, but you are assured actually entered your room, tut tutted and left—while charging for the nine years in medical school that informed their tut tutting. These bills can trickle in for months.
But you should feel good about them! A perpetual game goes on. The doctor, for instance, bills for $700. The insurance company pays him $425. He adjusts another $200 down and you get billed for a mysteriously arrived at $75 co-pay.
If you call to question this calculation (just to understand it), the physician’s book keeper is liable to wax righteously indignant that you, you lucky fellow, got a $200 adjustment off what the doctor’s customary fee is. You will come away without a clear answer. How dare you question it in the first place!?!
(The uninsured, due to an inspired fit of medical and economic insanity, get billed for the full $700. In the cases where the hospital and physician are forced to write the whole matter off due to indigency, they then tack the full loss onto the bills of insured patients—so the next procedure may cost you $750, less an adjustment, leaving a co-pay of, say, $86.10.)
The entire system becomes madly expensive—and much of its expense rises out of an inefficiency that would make the proprietor of any backwoods auto body shop blush. The brutal fact is that much of the economic (accounts and billing) side of medicine remains deeply mired in the Nineteenth Century.
The business side of medicine is run like a small general store back in the 1880s. Physicians retain the mentality of jealously independent sole proprietors or partnerships back in the days an entire store was the size of a modern grocery’s produce section.
A few of us are old enough to remember when you bought your bread and donuts at a bakery, you bought your meat at a butchers, you bought your vegetables at a produce stand, you went to the drug store for your medicines and you went to the five and ten for your notions.
Then somebody came up with the clever idea of combining much of that into what was called a “super market”. You could buy all of your edibles—and a fair amount of your toiletries—all under one roof. One bill. One check. That was it.
Then a man I knew personally had the clever idea of combining food, clothes, hardware, shoes, automotive supplies, lawn and garden plants and tools, toys, pharmacy and household goods all in the same store—the super store.
He had his problems. No American bank would loan money for such a crazy idea. So he sent his son back to Europe to raise the money there (rumor even had it that it was laundered Mafia cash), and the first super store opened on 28th Street in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1962.
Walmart saw these Meijers stores and tried to buy the chain. Fred said no. So Walmart hired away some executives to learn the knack and took the superstore idea nationwide. You need a hammer? You need lettuce? You need a lawn mower? A dress? Film? A TV? Have to change your oil? It’s all there under a single roof—one bill, one check. You can even buy tires and have them installed.
The medical community hasn’t figured out the benefits of this system yet. Why not the GP, the specialists, the anesthetist, the podiatrist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera under the same “super market” roof? All with one central billing department—one bill, one check.
To say nothing of me not having to get back in my car and drive miles across town to first this specialist, then that medical supply store and then the next specialist a few miles further on! The Walmart and Meijers superstores have been able to bring the price for my food and toys way down with this kind of efficiency of scale—why not the physicians?
Want to start saving money on medical care? Force the MDs into the modern world. Let them share extremely expensive equipment—just like there is one lift truck in my super store that moves cases of soup, boxed TVs and packages of toilet paper.
Bring the hospital into the same medical superstore. As part of one to start with. Let them share the billing system with the physicians and medical supply stores. Let them share the expensive equipment. Then let me walk out with a single bill—and write a single check.
That’s so rational it defies argument. Why hasn’t it happened? Because docs are cussedly independent like old time store keepers. And there’s a bit of snobbery. What urologist wants to share a practice with a mere GP or podiatrist? Or, God forbid, what cardiologist would?
There’s only one way to force this kind of efficiency (I suspect it would have tremendous MEDICAL benefits as well!). You need a single payer system (read government) who could force this change simply by refusing to allow MDs to charge for the luxury of each one having his own little office with his own set of expensive toys. Nope. We (the payer) are only going to pay ONE bill per procedure. If you get left off, you don’t get paid.
I’ve known a lot of physicians in my life (having worked for the US Public Health Service among other places). I’ve liked many of them, respected several. But I can assure you the one thing that can surely move a physician either to tears or action is the thought of losing money.
They’ll team up—and eventually learn to appreciate the convenience and savings—for THEM.
And I won’t get any more bills for $11.47.
If you sell a house, you can pay off the last utility bills in reasonable order. You know what to expect, and that’s what you get. If you take your car in for some serious repair, you get one bill. Even if the mechanic had to send the vehicle out for some work he couldn’t do himself—you get a single bill for the repair job.
You don’t, for instance, get a bill for the parts. Then a few weeks or days latera bill for the labor. Then, further down the road, a bill for the paint. And then a bill from the specialist who wielded the paint gun. Or a bill for rent from the person who owns the building. You get one bill.
Not for a medical repair job you don’t. You get bills from the doctor, bills from the hospital and a bill from the anesthetist. Then come the $50 and $75 bills from specialists you never heard of, never met, but you are assured actually entered your room, tut tutted and left—while charging for the nine years in medical school that informed their tut tutting. These bills can trickle in for months.
But you should feel good about them! A perpetual game goes on. The doctor, for instance, bills for $700. The insurance company pays him $425. He adjusts another $200 down and you get billed for a mysteriously arrived at $75 co-pay.
If you call to question this calculation (just to understand it), the physician’s book keeper is liable to wax righteously indignant that you, you lucky fellow, got a $200 adjustment off what the doctor’s customary fee is. You will come away without a clear answer. How dare you question it in the first place!?!
(The uninsured, due to an inspired fit of medical and economic insanity, get billed for the full $700. In the cases where the hospital and physician are forced to write the whole matter off due to indigency, they then tack the full loss onto the bills of insured patients—so the next procedure may cost you $750, less an adjustment, leaving a co-pay of, say, $86.10.)
The entire system becomes madly expensive—and much of its expense rises out of an inefficiency that would make the proprietor of any backwoods auto body shop blush. The brutal fact is that much of the economic (accounts and billing) side of medicine remains deeply mired in the Nineteenth Century.
The business side of medicine is run like a small general store back in the 1880s. Physicians retain the mentality of jealously independent sole proprietors or partnerships back in the days an entire store was the size of a modern grocery’s produce section.
A few of us are old enough to remember when you bought your bread and donuts at a bakery, you bought your meat at a butchers, you bought your vegetables at a produce stand, you went to the drug store for your medicines and you went to the five and ten for your notions.
Then somebody came up with the clever idea of combining much of that into what was called a “super market”. You could buy all of your edibles—and a fair amount of your toiletries—all under one roof. One bill. One check. That was it.
Then a man I knew personally had the clever idea of combining food, clothes, hardware, shoes, automotive supplies, lawn and garden plants and tools, toys, pharmacy and household goods all in the same store—the super store.
He had his problems. No American bank would loan money for such a crazy idea. So he sent his son back to Europe to raise the money there (rumor even had it that it was laundered Mafia cash), and the first super store opened on 28th Street in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1962.
Walmart saw these Meijers stores and tried to buy the chain. Fred said no. So Walmart hired away some executives to learn the knack and took the superstore idea nationwide. You need a hammer? You need lettuce? You need a lawn mower? A dress? Film? A TV? Have to change your oil? It’s all there under a single roof—one bill, one check. You can even buy tires and have them installed.
The medical community hasn’t figured out the benefits of this system yet. Why not the GP, the specialists, the anesthetist, the podiatrist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera under the same “super market” roof? All with one central billing department—one bill, one check.
To say nothing of me not having to get back in my car and drive miles across town to first this specialist, then that medical supply store and then the next specialist a few miles further on! The Walmart and Meijers superstores have been able to bring the price for my food and toys way down with this kind of efficiency of scale—why not the physicians?
Want to start saving money on medical care? Force the MDs into the modern world. Let them share extremely expensive equipment—just like there is one lift truck in my super store that moves cases of soup, boxed TVs and packages of toilet paper.
Bring the hospital into the same medical superstore. As part of one to start with. Let them share the billing system with the physicians and medical supply stores. Let them share the expensive equipment. Then let me walk out with a single bill—and write a single check.
That’s so rational it defies argument. Why hasn’t it happened? Because docs are cussedly independent like old time store keepers. And there’s a bit of snobbery. What urologist wants to share a practice with a mere GP or podiatrist? Or, God forbid, what cardiologist would?
There’s only one way to force this kind of efficiency (I suspect it would have tremendous MEDICAL benefits as well!). You need a single payer system (read government) who could force this change simply by refusing to allow MDs to charge for the luxury of each one having his own little office with his own set of expensive toys. Nope. We (the payer) are only going to pay ONE bill per procedure. If you get left off, you don’t get paid.
I’ve known a lot of physicians in my life (having worked for the US Public Health Service among other places). I’ve liked many of them, respected several. But I can assure you the one thing that can surely move a physician either to tears or action is the thought of losing money.
They’ll team up—and eventually learn to appreciate the convenience and savings—for THEM.
And I won’t get any more bills for $11.47.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
We've Removed Consequences From The Curriculum
We do our kids no favors when we raise them to believe there are no limits, no restrictions and no boundaries. I came face to face with this fact a week ago when an anguished looking young man came into a room where I was substitute teaching.
He was looking for the regular teacher. When I told him she was out for the day, he looked sicker than when he came in. He mumbled something about seeing her later and stumbled back out of the room. When I saw that teacher later, I asked what was up.
“He just learned that he may not be graduating next Tuesday,” she told me. Of course by then the invitations had been sent, his parents may have gone as far as to reside the house (I’ve known parents who did this for an “Open House”) and all was in readiness. Except the graduate.
I know that school. They spent four years warning him. The warnings got very serious In his senior year. But life didn’t get real to him until the day he looked at his grades and realized the long fantasized ceremony and party weren’t going to happen.
Many times I’ve looked at a particular knot of students who spent an hour with unopened books, leaving their assignment sheets untouched at the end of the hour, wondering what they thought was going to happen. Suggest that they do some work during class and the answer is: lol. They do, they literally “laugh out loud”.
Teachers eventually get quite cynical. They comment very blandly on the third or even half the class that isn’t passing this or that course. No amount of bonus pay for the teacher is going to make the kid who came into my classroom care—until he realizes the party is off. No amount of penalties inflicted on teachers is going to make that kid care—until it’s too late.
It’s time we adults ask, “What on earth have we done to this generation?” If they met an angry lion, they’d try and pet it. If pain is a protective mechanism that keeps us from really hurting ourselves, then certain kinds of fear are equally protective. Many kids have none.
They don’t fear drugs. They don’t fear sexually transmitted diseases (that can render you sterile or even dead). They don’t respect the power of liquor. In some neighborhoods they have no fear of weapons. They have no fear of failure in school. They brag about police records.
We’ve raised them to express themselves, to “feel good” about themselves (no matter what shape they may actually be in), and to believe they are absolute masters of their own fate—no matter how badly they shoot themselves in the foot.
The rights of every citizen are posted on school house walls. I often look in vain for any mention of the duties and responsibilities. The most elementary forms of common sense seem to be off the curriculum for too large a number of students today. (Like the kid in the same suburban school whose pants caught on fire because he stuffed a smoldering joint in his pocket before entering class.)
I cannot help but wonder if the matter of the two American reporters detained by North Korean troops isn’t a bit more of the same. After all, these young women were also raised as part of what has become the “What, me worry?” generation.
Let alone pet a peevish lion, they went to poke a stick in his eye. If you are fool enough to do such a thing, do it from a safe distance. Or at least at a border post where Chinese troops are liable to take a dim view of an incursion by North Korean soldiers.
Could it be that Laura Ling and Euna Lee actually believed the stuff that is written on school house walls about empowerment and entitlement? That the rights of an American to go anywhere and do anything are sacrosanct? That impinging on these American entitlements is unthinkable to anyone?
Are these two more sick looking young people who have suddenly discovered there are situations in which you do not walk away with a diploma? Sometimes the party may be cancelled, no matter how much you have prepared for it? It is not written on the walls of any classroom I’ve been in that sometimes you aren’t entitled to an “Open House” just because …. It should be.
I’m making no book for the North Koreans. They are obviously playing dirty politics with these two young women. Some have called them a “Mafia nation”. They seem to be. Kidnapping is part of their normal diplomacy.
But this reality alone should have warned the young women. It wasn’t just any lion they were annoying –it was a very nasty lion, one that plays by no rules, one that has gone rogue time after time. They should have been especially careful around such a beast.
It is just possible that we may have done them the disservice in our schools of inadvertently teaching them they didn’t have to be careful—around any kind of beast or danger. They are, after all, fully entitled Americans, aren’t they?
They’ve just learned that there are markets where that kind of currency has no value. They are in a market where a human life—a human future—is merely a commodity to be traded for something that is wanted. I suspect neither young women ever dreamed that she could be reduced to the status of a lowly pawn to be traded for something else.
We did them no favor if we didn’t make this clear to them as students. I’m not saying that the victims are at fault—I’m just suggesting that, for their own safety, we should warn potential victims about the very real dangers—and consequences—out there.
If they choose to ignore reality, there really isn’t a lot we can do after the fact—unless you want to send another half million troops back to Asia.
He was looking for the regular teacher. When I told him she was out for the day, he looked sicker than when he came in. He mumbled something about seeing her later and stumbled back out of the room. When I saw that teacher later, I asked what was up.
“He just learned that he may not be graduating next Tuesday,” she told me. Of course by then the invitations had been sent, his parents may have gone as far as to reside the house (I’ve known parents who did this for an “Open House”) and all was in readiness. Except the graduate.
I know that school. They spent four years warning him. The warnings got very serious In his senior year. But life didn’t get real to him until the day he looked at his grades and realized the long fantasized ceremony and party weren’t going to happen.
Many times I’ve looked at a particular knot of students who spent an hour with unopened books, leaving their assignment sheets untouched at the end of the hour, wondering what they thought was going to happen. Suggest that they do some work during class and the answer is: lol. They do, they literally “laugh out loud”.
Teachers eventually get quite cynical. They comment very blandly on the third or even half the class that isn’t passing this or that course. No amount of bonus pay for the teacher is going to make the kid who came into my classroom care—until he realizes the party is off. No amount of penalties inflicted on teachers is going to make that kid care—until it’s too late.
It’s time we adults ask, “What on earth have we done to this generation?” If they met an angry lion, they’d try and pet it. If pain is a protective mechanism that keeps us from really hurting ourselves, then certain kinds of fear are equally protective. Many kids have none.
They don’t fear drugs. They don’t fear sexually transmitted diseases (that can render you sterile or even dead). They don’t respect the power of liquor. In some neighborhoods they have no fear of weapons. They have no fear of failure in school. They brag about police records.
We’ve raised them to express themselves, to “feel good” about themselves (no matter what shape they may actually be in), and to believe they are absolute masters of their own fate—no matter how badly they shoot themselves in the foot.
The rights of every citizen are posted on school house walls. I often look in vain for any mention of the duties and responsibilities. The most elementary forms of common sense seem to be off the curriculum for too large a number of students today. (Like the kid in the same suburban school whose pants caught on fire because he stuffed a smoldering joint in his pocket before entering class.)
I cannot help but wonder if the matter of the two American reporters detained by North Korean troops isn’t a bit more of the same. After all, these young women were also raised as part of what has become the “What, me worry?” generation.
Let alone pet a peevish lion, they went to poke a stick in his eye. If you are fool enough to do such a thing, do it from a safe distance. Or at least at a border post where Chinese troops are liable to take a dim view of an incursion by North Korean soldiers.
Could it be that Laura Ling and Euna Lee actually believed the stuff that is written on school house walls about empowerment and entitlement? That the rights of an American to go anywhere and do anything are sacrosanct? That impinging on these American entitlements is unthinkable to anyone?
Are these two more sick looking young people who have suddenly discovered there are situations in which you do not walk away with a diploma? Sometimes the party may be cancelled, no matter how much you have prepared for it? It is not written on the walls of any classroom I’ve been in that sometimes you aren’t entitled to an “Open House” just because …. It should be.
I’m making no book for the North Koreans. They are obviously playing dirty politics with these two young women. Some have called them a “Mafia nation”. They seem to be. Kidnapping is part of their normal diplomacy.
But this reality alone should have warned the young women. It wasn’t just any lion they were annoying –it was a very nasty lion, one that plays by no rules, one that has gone rogue time after time. They should have been especially careful around such a beast.
It is just possible that we may have done them the disservice in our schools of inadvertently teaching them they didn’t have to be careful—around any kind of beast or danger. They are, after all, fully entitled Americans, aren’t they?
They’ve just learned that there are markets where that kind of currency has no value. They are in a market where a human life—a human future—is merely a commodity to be traded for something that is wanted. I suspect neither young women ever dreamed that she could be reduced to the status of a lowly pawn to be traded for something else.
We did them no favor if we didn’t make this clear to them as students. I’m not saying that the victims are at fault—I’m just suggesting that, for their own safety, we should warn potential victims about the very real dangers—and consequences—out there.
If they choose to ignore reality, there really isn’t a lot we can do after the fact—unless you want to send another half million troops back to Asia.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The Silence of The Court
On the very narrow ground that the Court did not find that the opponents of the sale of Chrysler had met the “burden of proof” standard to merit a full hearing of the Supreme Court, the Court turned down the appeal made by the three pension plans in Indiana.
In other words, the Court has not said which way it would have ruled—or might rule in a GM case if someone does meet that standard. It takes no stand on the question of whether or not there might be a valid case for blocking such a sale or restructuring—only that this particular set of complainants did not make a strong enough case this weekend.
It has merely ducked the issue in what may have been a fit of political and economic wisdom. I take back nothing of what I wrote a few hours ago about the court’s absolute power. It merely chose not to exercise that power in this instance.
The power is no more limited or answerable than it was this morning. The fact remains, one member of the court did block the sale for 24 hours. The full court could well have chosen to intervene and block it either permanently or until the whole issue was moot.
Today’s action was a bit like a man showing you that he has indeed a dangerous weapon in his possession—but he chooses not to fire it, this time. I imagine that the Obama White House is breathing a lot easier tonight.
Chrysler may not survive a merger with Fiat. It nearly didn’t survive one with Daimler-Benz. But at least it has a fighting chance. The Court has allowed it to go on breathing for at least a bit longer
In other words, the Court has not said which way it would have ruled—or might rule in a GM case if someone does meet that standard. It takes no stand on the question of whether or not there might be a valid case for blocking such a sale or restructuring—only that this particular set of complainants did not make a strong enough case this weekend.
It has merely ducked the issue in what may have been a fit of political and economic wisdom. I take back nothing of what I wrote a few hours ago about the court’s absolute power. It merely chose not to exercise that power in this instance.
The power is no more limited or answerable than it was this morning. The fact remains, one member of the court did block the sale for 24 hours. The full court could well have chosen to intervene and block it either permanently or until the whole issue was moot.
Today’s action was a bit like a man showing you that he has indeed a dangerous weapon in his possession—but he chooses not to fire it, this time. I imagine that the Obama White House is breathing a lot easier tonight.
Chrysler may not survive a merger with Fiat. It nearly didn’t survive one with Daimler-Benz. But at least it has a fighting chance. The Court has allowed it to go on breathing for at least a bit longer
Presidents Propose--The Court Disposes
A few weeks ago I reminded you that in picking a replacement for a Supreme Court Justice (Souter, in this case) a president makes one of the most important political choices in his career. Obama has made his choice—Sotomayer—Congress will began the bitterly politicized process of confirming or denying on July 13.
The importance of what is happening was underscored this past weekend. A good part of President Obama’s “bailout and get America’s boat moving again” is predicated on his ability to salvage our auto industry with its masses of high paying jobs and its vast periphera of dealerships and part suppliers.
He and his minions had a deal all worked out for Chrysler. Everybody would take a hit; what was left would be sold to Fiat as a supposedly viable automobile manufacturer. All was ready to roll by June 15—when the Court said, “Not so fast”. And everything stood still.
This is a classic situation in which nine men, unelected, appointed for life, can step in and act with more power than the president and congress combined. They spoke on behalf of three pension funds in one state—Indiana.
The pension funds stood to lose about six million dollars—out of the billions and billions of losses and endangered funds involved in the Chrysler restructuring. A drop. But, they argued, the present Chrysler bailout created and forced by the administration’s carrot and stick use of the Congressionally approved bailout funds, was unfair to small investors and holders of Chrysler debt.
In short, the pension funds felt that they could get more of their money back by forcing Chrysler into total bankruptcy (Chapter seven) in which the company is dissolved and everything is sold at auction. So much for jobs. Instead of a few hundred car dealerships, possibly all current Chrysler dealerships down the tubes. What about Chrysler suppliers?
But the Indiana retirees would receive possibly fifty cents on the dollar instead of half that. (An understandable concern in this age of collapsing retirement funds and endangered pension plans.) So the funds cried foul and the Supreme Court chose to hear their plea.
In an assertion of raw Supreme Court Power, nine men tipped Obama’s carefully wrought restructuring plan on its head and sent everybody back to “Go” without collecting $200.
Now, the Court may choose to allow Obama’s plan to stand as is. It may declare it unfair and force a complete reworking—which could drive Fiat right out of the picture if the terms are less favorable. The point is: no one knows what it will do. It has the power to do anything.
There will be no appeal. Just as there was no appeal back in the 1930s when the infamous (or famous, depending on your political persuasion) Nine overturned facet after facet of Roosevelt’s New Deal. FDR finally became so outraged that he resorted to a desperate tactic.
He asked Congress to create six more seats on the Court which he could then fill with justices favorable to his legislation. Realizing that this was a serious threat, the Court quickly reversed itself and began ruling in favor of New Deal legislation. (The switch in time that saved nine.)
Historically Roosevelt is portrayed as having egg all over his face from this incident (Congress turned him down), but we still have Social Security and the Fair Labor Act today.
The point is that it took that kind of a drastic threat to force the Supreme Court to bend to the will of the elected officials of America—and the American people. Obama is not likely to try another “court packing scheme” no matter what the court does to his proposals.
The Court knows this. It is pretty much free to do as it pleases. Which leaves Obama, Congress and Chrysler (and Fiat) waiting in total uncertainty, an uncertainty no one thought of only a week ago.
And, as everyone is asking, what impact will a court action have on the even bigger General Motors restructuring. Also back to “Go”? When the Court is done, will we have nothing left as an auto industry but Ford? The answer lies in the hands and minds of the Court.
This is the sort of “hard case that can make bad law”. Thousands of concerned and potentially impoverished pensioners in Indiana may be benefitted, but what of millions who depend on the auto industry for income and tax base?
In the ancien’ regime (Europe before 1789), kings had this sort of arbitrary power. The continent was drenched in blood before they were forced to listen to the peoples’ representatives in Dumas, Reichstags, and Assemblies.
Perhaps it isn’t such a good idea to allow one branch (unelected) of government to wield such unrestricted power over the other two branches. It would take courage. In many people’s minds the Court holds a place of respect comparable to that held by Tsars, Kaisers and Kings. To challenge it will risk the disapproval of a large number of loyalists.
But perhaps it is time to think about it.
The importance of what is happening was underscored this past weekend. A good part of President Obama’s “bailout and get America’s boat moving again” is predicated on his ability to salvage our auto industry with its masses of high paying jobs and its vast periphera of dealerships and part suppliers.
He and his minions had a deal all worked out for Chrysler. Everybody would take a hit; what was left would be sold to Fiat as a supposedly viable automobile manufacturer. All was ready to roll by June 15—when the Court said, “Not so fast”. And everything stood still.
This is a classic situation in which nine men, unelected, appointed for life, can step in and act with more power than the president and congress combined. They spoke on behalf of three pension funds in one state—Indiana.
The pension funds stood to lose about six million dollars—out of the billions and billions of losses and endangered funds involved in the Chrysler restructuring. A drop. But, they argued, the present Chrysler bailout created and forced by the administration’s carrot and stick use of the Congressionally approved bailout funds, was unfair to small investors and holders of Chrysler debt.
In short, the pension funds felt that they could get more of their money back by forcing Chrysler into total bankruptcy (Chapter seven) in which the company is dissolved and everything is sold at auction. So much for jobs. Instead of a few hundred car dealerships, possibly all current Chrysler dealerships down the tubes. What about Chrysler suppliers?
But the Indiana retirees would receive possibly fifty cents on the dollar instead of half that. (An understandable concern in this age of collapsing retirement funds and endangered pension plans.) So the funds cried foul and the Supreme Court chose to hear their plea.
In an assertion of raw Supreme Court Power, nine men tipped Obama’s carefully wrought restructuring plan on its head and sent everybody back to “Go” without collecting $200.
Now, the Court may choose to allow Obama’s plan to stand as is. It may declare it unfair and force a complete reworking—which could drive Fiat right out of the picture if the terms are less favorable. The point is: no one knows what it will do. It has the power to do anything.
There will be no appeal. Just as there was no appeal back in the 1930s when the infamous (or famous, depending on your political persuasion) Nine overturned facet after facet of Roosevelt’s New Deal. FDR finally became so outraged that he resorted to a desperate tactic.
He asked Congress to create six more seats on the Court which he could then fill with justices favorable to his legislation. Realizing that this was a serious threat, the Court quickly reversed itself and began ruling in favor of New Deal legislation. (The switch in time that saved nine.)
Historically Roosevelt is portrayed as having egg all over his face from this incident (Congress turned him down), but we still have Social Security and the Fair Labor Act today.
The point is that it took that kind of a drastic threat to force the Supreme Court to bend to the will of the elected officials of America—and the American people. Obama is not likely to try another “court packing scheme” no matter what the court does to his proposals.
The Court knows this. It is pretty much free to do as it pleases. Which leaves Obama, Congress and Chrysler (and Fiat) waiting in total uncertainty, an uncertainty no one thought of only a week ago.
And, as everyone is asking, what impact will a court action have on the even bigger General Motors restructuring. Also back to “Go”? When the Court is done, will we have nothing left as an auto industry but Ford? The answer lies in the hands and minds of the Court.
This is the sort of “hard case that can make bad law”. Thousands of concerned and potentially impoverished pensioners in Indiana may be benefitted, but what of millions who depend on the auto industry for income and tax base?
In the ancien’ regime (Europe before 1789), kings had this sort of arbitrary power. The continent was drenched in blood before they were forced to listen to the peoples’ representatives in Dumas, Reichstags, and Assemblies.
Perhaps it isn’t such a good idea to allow one branch (unelected) of government to wield such unrestricted power over the other two branches. It would take courage. In many people’s minds the Court holds a place of respect comparable to that held by Tsars, Kaisers and Kings. To challenge it will risk the disapproval of a large number of loyalists.
But perhaps it is time to think about it.
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