“Vanity Fair” never seems to learn. It got into the polling business many decades ago and predicted noisesomely that Alf Landon would defeat Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. (Landon did carry two states.) Even my Republican dad admitted to voting for FDR that year.
So “Vanity Fair” went out of business—a rare instance of something actually dying of embarrassment. It came back a few years ago and now it’s back in the polling business—and is expressing shock at its own poll results. It seems that just about half the people who took the poll think Walmart “symbolizes American today”.
“Vanity Fair” sputtered that “only a cynic would really THINK that.” “Vanity Fair’s” problem is that doesn’t get off Manhattan Island (located far off the coast of the United States somewhere). I’ve lived on Manhattan for years—loved it. But I tried never to lose sight of reality.
Periodically I would find myself looking for a particularly American product, not available on that island. I would apologize for my persistence, explaining, “I was raised in a foreign country.” To the inevitable question, which one?, I would answer, “The United States.”
What the editors and poll takers at “Vanity Fair” don’t really understand about this nation is that its culture and life style are built on LOW PRICES. This precludes a lot of shopping at places like Bergdorf’s, Tiffany’s, Gucchi’s, Georg Jenson and the like.
Long before Walmart, there were discount stores on Fifth Avenue—E.J.Korvette’s was just a couple of blocks down from Saks in the 1960s. The America we know and live in was built on stores like Korvette’s, K-Mart, Costco and Walmart, to name a few.
They enable us to own luxuries, look prosperous and faintly stylish with an outlay that leaves us enough for groceries. A comparison between French female secretaries and their American counterparts that I read years ago makes a good point about this country.
The Parisian women owned three or four outfits—all stylish, well made and enduring. They thought nothing of wearing the same outfit twice in a week, knowing it bespoke quality. The New York secretaries wouldn’t have been caught dead in the same outfit twice in a week—even twice in two weeks.
They bought much cheaper outfits and lots of them. Their closets were FULL of variety without undue quality. Reminds me of a young woman I knew years ago. She went to Kmart and bought a new winter coat nearly every year—for about $69.00 each.
I suggested to her that if she went to a better store in this area and bought a coat for, say, $175, it would last her for five, even ten years—a clear savings. She was horrified. She lived for the variety, the change. Walmart, when it came along, was designed for her.
Lee Iacocca, an icon in America for style and dash in his automobiles, was never accused of building QUALITY into his machines. No one ever mistook a K-car or a Mustang for a Mercedes. The buyer just wanted something that might look a bit like a European equivalent. And cost less.
They are right. Walmart symbolizes America. It’s not cynicism; it’s reality. Walmart above all allows us to be what we like to imagine we actually are (I doubt if the French girls are under nearly as many illusions about themselves).
However that may be, Walmart R Us.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Iran, Missiles and Pride
Iran is scaring the daylights out of lots of people these days. Rockets that could hold nuclear missiles and reach Israel and/or American troops in the neighborhood—ouch. The more we protest and issue threats the faster their nuclear program seems to go.
Hardly a man is still alive who can remember when the Iranians were our pet allies in the Middle East, no threat to Israel, a reliable source of fuel oil (after all, Iranian wells were where it all began about a century ago), governed by a pliant Shah.
During World War II, we and the British took over the southern third of Iran, the Russians took over the northern third, and the middle third was left to the Iranians. It became a vast highway for us to pump Lend Lease supplies into Russia to use against Germany.
When the Shah held a celebration of Iran’s first twenty-five hundred years as a world power in 1972, everyone else snickered. His leash was too obvious. But Iran HAS been around for thousands of years. Its people are terribly proud of their history.
They are aware that it was Persia that helped bring down the Assyrian Empire, squashed Neo-Babylonia and drove Marc Anthony into the sea and scared Cleopatra witless. They took Jerusalem and nearly wiped out Herod’s family a few years before Christ was born.
When Iranian Magi (high priests/astronomers/astrologers ) showed up for Christ’s birth, even the Bible admits they scared the wits out of their old enemy, Herod, and came with a large enough army to block his secret police from traveling six miles to Bethlehem.
Then there was a seven century cold/hot war with Rome, fought on respectably equal terms. During Europe’s Dark and Middle ages, great empires rose and fell in what is now Iran.
I’ve watched an Iranian embassy employee nearly spit over the term, “Gifts of the Greeks”. Iranians feel that what Greece gave to the West was largely what came to them from Persia—what they didn’t vandalize and destroy. Agree or disagree, that’s pride.
In fact the blond, blue-eyed Greeks of antiquity sprang from the same blood stock—as did the tribes who went north and destroyed the Roman Empire in Western Europe. Just change the Iranian tribal name, “Kerman,” through a lingual shift to “German” and you’ve got it.
Iranian becomes Aryan—“the noble”—or the “master race”. When Hebrews and Christians cast around for a way to describe their deity, they couldn’t come up with much better than the ancient name for Persian/Iranian kings: Shah an Shah (king of kings) and Aryan of the Aryans (lord of lords).
In case you’re missing my point, this is a PROUD people, even arrogant. Now that they are out from under the Western thumb, it would be silly to think that they would accept a world in which some other nations held monopolies on nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
Such weapons, in their minds, BELONG to a people that ground Roman legions underfoot as well as a whole lot of other first class troops. How annoying they find it when other nations who already have atomic arsenals tell them to be good world citizens and renounce their rights.
Iranians are no more likely to listen to such preachments from American officials than the United States would have listened to anybody who tried to limit us from our destiny back in our history. Remember when London tried to take away our dream of a coast-to-coast empire back in 1767? We took on the whole British Empire to make it happen. We were ready in 1821, 1846, 1864 and 1895.
Whatever we want to DO about Iran, we better figure we’re dealing with a people a lot like us. They have our kind of pride and they’re not easily going to be persuaded to quit. Nasty thought—Britain backed down in all four years listed above. Did they know something we refuse to see?
In any case, we’d be wise to take a better look at what and whom we are dealing with.
Hardly a man is still alive who can remember when the Iranians were our pet allies in the Middle East, no threat to Israel, a reliable source of fuel oil (after all, Iranian wells were where it all began about a century ago), governed by a pliant Shah.
During World War II, we and the British took over the southern third of Iran, the Russians took over the northern third, and the middle third was left to the Iranians. It became a vast highway for us to pump Lend Lease supplies into Russia to use against Germany.
When the Shah held a celebration of Iran’s first twenty-five hundred years as a world power in 1972, everyone else snickered. His leash was too obvious. But Iran HAS been around for thousands of years. Its people are terribly proud of their history.
They are aware that it was Persia that helped bring down the Assyrian Empire, squashed Neo-Babylonia and drove Marc Anthony into the sea and scared Cleopatra witless. They took Jerusalem and nearly wiped out Herod’s family a few years before Christ was born.
When Iranian Magi (high priests/astronomers/astrologers ) showed up for Christ’s birth, even the Bible admits they scared the wits out of their old enemy, Herod, and came with a large enough army to block his secret police from traveling six miles to Bethlehem.
Then there was a seven century cold/hot war with Rome, fought on respectably equal terms. During Europe’s Dark and Middle ages, great empires rose and fell in what is now Iran.
I’ve watched an Iranian embassy employee nearly spit over the term, “Gifts of the Greeks”. Iranians feel that what Greece gave to the West was largely what came to them from Persia—what they didn’t vandalize and destroy. Agree or disagree, that’s pride.
In fact the blond, blue-eyed Greeks of antiquity sprang from the same blood stock—as did the tribes who went north and destroyed the Roman Empire in Western Europe. Just change the Iranian tribal name, “Kerman,” through a lingual shift to “German” and you’ve got it.
Iranian becomes Aryan—“the noble”—or the “master race”. When Hebrews and Christians cast around for a way to describe their deity, they couldn’t come up with much better than the ancient name for Persian/Iranian kings: Shah an Shah (king of kings) and Aryan of the Aryans (lord of lords).
In case you’re missing my point, this is a PROUD people, even arrogant. Now that they are out from under the Western thumb, it would be silly to think that they would accept a world in which some other nations held monopolies on nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
Such weapons, in their minds, BELONG to a people that ground Roman legions underfoot as well as a whole lot of other first class troops. How annoying they find it when other nations who already have atomic arsenals tell them to be good world citizens and renounce their rights.
Iranians are no more likely to listen to such preachments from American officials than the United States would have listened to anybody who tried to limit us from our destiny back in our history. Remember when London tried to take away our dream of a coast-to-coast empire back in 1767? We took on the whole British Empire to make it happen. We were ready in 1821, 1846, 1864 and 1895.
Whatever we want to DO about Iran, we better figure we’re dealing with a people a lot like us. They have our kind of pride and they’re not easily going to be persuaded to quit. Nasty thought—Britain backed down in all four years listed above. Did they know something we refuse to see?
In any case, we’d be wise to take a better look at what and whom we are dealing with.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Longer School Year? First Stop Boring Us!
Rumor has it that President Obama is thinking about substantially lengthening the school year. It’s not a new idea. Every since the Russians beat us into space in 1957, we’ve been trying to think of new ways to crank out more and better engineers.
Some countries have longer school weeks and years. Charter schools hold summer and Saturday sessions. Obama points out that our current school year was essentially designed around the farm schedule so boys could be home to help with the crops.
That, admittedly, is not a particularly valid reason for keeping the present school year—since the majority of Americans (and kids) have been urban since the 1920 census. In west Michigan, which depends heavily on the tourist trade, it is useful to have the kids available to work the resorts between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Losing them would hurt.
It might be helpful in the inner city to have a place for kids to go during the long, hot summers, far from any beaches or middle class summer vacations and activities. Increasingly, Americans of all classes depend on school as a baby sitting service while they work.
It would cut back on day care expenses if school were held on more days. The lady next door to me runs a day care center; she sees how frantic parents become when there are unscheduled days off from school for weather—and she cannot legally take more children during school hours.
It is also quite true that kids can forget a lot of algebra if they are away from it for three solid months. In Europe they shorten the summer vacation and give longer vacations in the spring and winter. This helps to avoid the problem we have here where teachers often complain about the amount of time they spend each fall reviewing what was taught in the spring.
There are good arguments for lengthening the school year; good arguments for not. Possibly it is a matter that should be considered district by district—so that the kids in west Michigan can work to keep the resorts open—and the kids in Detroit can have some place to go in the summer where there are meals, activities and academic reinforcement.
Some people are going to object to that, saying it’s undemocratic or discriminatory. But there really are different situations in this country and, possibly, we are going to have to react to them differently.
A lot of kids in inner cities don’t have the chance to go to Yellowstone or Europe in the summer—or to gain useful work experience. They don’t go to soccer camp, basketball camp or baseball camp. They don’t do family camping trips or spend summers at a cottage.
Around here they do. It seems a shame to deprive them. But I have another issue. Before we decide to shorten summer vacation, let’s make sure “more school” isn’t “more of the same school.” We’re boring the living daylights out of our kids.
When I substitute I watch the boredom on their faces. I remember when I graduated from high school—and reflected on the previous twelve years I’d spent in school. I suddenly became very angry—realizing that I had wasted six out of the last twelve years.
They could have taught me everything they taught me from K through 12 in no more than six years. I could easily have been in college by age fourteen or so. So could most of my friends. The school system wasted YEARS of my time. Trying to imagine several more weeks a year of the same repetitious and almost pointless drivel leaves me aghast even now!
If and when we open schools for additional weeks, let’s make sure we have something that captures the imagination of the captive students. Maybe we could give teachers acting lessons. It’s all well and good to know the subject—but also make it INTERESTING!
My field is history. Most kids who hate it have never been taught it well. I suspect that’s true in nearly every field. Kids stay interested in computer classes, art classes and even music classes—they could be induced to stay interested in math or English literature. If we just taught it as something exciting and interesting.
If you’re going to bore me, stick to 39 weeks. Even less. Above all, Mr. Obama, make sure the new and longer classes are INTERESTING. Enough methodology. Enough droning. Reread Hamlet’s advice to the actors—teach like that!!
Some countries have longer school weeks and years. Charter schools hold summer and Saturday sessions. Obama points out that our current school year was essentially designed around the farm schedule so boys could be home to help with the crops.
That, admittedly, is not a particularly valid reason for keeping the present school year—since the majority of Americans (and kids) have been urban since the 1920 census. In west Michigan, which depends heavily on the tourist trade, it is useful to have the kids available to work the resorts between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Losing them would hurt.
It might be helpful in the inner city to have a place for kids to go during the long, hot summers, far from any beaches or middle class summer vacations and activities. Increasingly, Americans of all classes depend on school as a baby sitting service while they work.
It would cut back on day care expenses if school were held on more days. The lady next door to me runs a day care center; she sees how frantic parents become when there are unscheduled days off from school for weather—and she cannot legally take more children during school hours.
It is also quite true that kids can forget a lot of algebra if they are away from it for three solid months. In Europe they shorten the summer vacation and give longer vacations in the spring and winter. This helps to avoid the problem we have here where teachers often complain about the amount of time they spend each fall reviewing what was taught in the spring.
There are good arguments for lengthening the school year; good arguments for not. Possibly it is a matter that should be considered district by district—so that the kids in west Michigan can work to keep the resorts open—and the kids in Detroit can have some place to go in the summer where there are meals, activities and academic reinforcement.
Some people are going to object to that, saying it’s undemocratic or discriminatory. But there really are different situations in this country and, possibly, we are going to have to react to them differently.
A lot of kids in inner cities don’t have the chance to go to Yellowstone or Europe in the summer—or to gain useful work experience. They don’t go to soccer camp, basketball camp or baseball camp. They don’t do family camping trips or spend summers at a cottage.
Around here they do. It seems a shame to deprive them. But I have another issue. Before we decide to shorten summer vacation, let’s make sure “more school” isn’t “more of the same school.” We’re boring the living daylights out of our kids.
When I substitute I watch the boredom on their faces. I remember when I graduated from high school—and reflected on the previous twelve years I’d spent in school. I suddenly became very angry—realizing that I had wasted six out of the last twelve years.
They could have taught me everything they taught me from K through 12 in no more than six years. I could easily have been in college by age fourteen or so. So could most of my friends. The school system wasted YEARS of my time. Trying to imagine several more weeks a year of the same repetitious and almost pointless drivel leaves me aghast even now!
If and when we open schools for additional weeks, let’s make sure we have something that captures the imagination of the captive students. Maybe we could give teachers acting lessons. It’s all well and good to know the subject—but also make it INTERESTING!
My field is history. Most kids who hate it have never been taught it well. I suspect that’s true in nearly every field. Kids stay interested in computer classes, art classes and even music classes—they could be induced to stay interested in math or English literature. If we just taught it as something exciting and interesting.
If you’re going to bore me, stick to 39 weeks. Even less. Above all, Mr. Obama, make sure the new and longer classes are INTERESTING. Enough methodology. Enough droning. Reread Hamlet’s advice to the actors—teach like that!!
Friday, September 25, 2009
Afghanistan -- Crunch Time
Boy, would I hate to be the chap who makes the decision on Afghanistan. Go or stay? More troops; fewer troops? Back Kharzai, shoot Kharzai (ala Diem in South Vietnam), abandon Kharzai? Very likely the decision maker will find he is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
First of all we’re talking about a nasty piece of landlocked real estate. To get so much as a single cup of water or a single bullet to our troops there, we are dependent entirely on the kindness of “friends”. Like Pakistan, Turkmenistan or Tajikistan. (The latter two require an interesting over flight near Iran and Russia).
So, hoping that everyone stays friendly enough that we can get our troops back out is a small but actual consideration. We’re also dependent on the willingness of NATO to send its troops into harm’s way. This hasn’t always worked so well in the past.
We’re up against a nation of Hatfields and McCoys. For centuries the inhabitants of that prohibitively mountainous land have made a habit of shooting at anybody on the road in the valleys. Al Qaida found a home here partly because its world view isn’t all that different from that of the Afghanis over the past centuries.
The ancient Silk Road (running from Damascus to northern China) often veered north of Afghanistan to avoid the larcenous tribesmen. Alexander the Great briefly conquered the area, then he pulled back to a string of forts designed to pen the Afghani in. This was safer.
The British lost a whole army to the Afghans in the 1840s (Kabul still has buildings pock marked with bullet holes from that battle). It became a no-man’s land during the long cold war that went on between Britain and Russia in the Nineteenth Century.
The British got nominal control over Afghani foreign policy during a second war with Afghanistan in the 1870s. In 1919 a third Afghani war cost Britain all control over Afghanistan and left it, again, an independent group of tribesmen feuding with each other.
The British built enduring governments and nations in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They had no such success in Afghanistan. In the 1980s the Russians had their go at controlling Pakistan. We supplied people like bin Laden with modern weapons, the Russians conceded defeat and, somewhat as a consequence, the Soviet Union collapsed.
The only man who ever made a serious impact on Afghanistan was Genghis Khan. He depopulated whole areas of Afghanistan—rarely in history has there ever been a man who was so whole-heartedly into mass slaughter. Nasty, but it worked.
This was a language Afghanis understood—and the whole area was well behaved for nearly a century—allowing Marco Polo to travel all the way to China! But that’s what it took to bring peace to the area. Depopulation. Nation building? Good luck.
These historical precedents are not encouraging. The British, Macedonians and Russians couldn’t cut it militarily. Can we? In those mountains? Do we have the political stomach to do it Genghis Khan’s way?
I doubt it. I rather hope not. Is this, as it was for Russia twenty years ago, another Vietnam sucking in whole units of troops?
What horror if we walk out and al Quida walks back in with a vengeful Taliban? Will any building in New York be safe? Have we tried so much and only grabbed the tail of the tiger? If we go, if we stay—the question isn’t “which will be better?” but only “which will be worse?” Find a good option if you can. Ask Alexander or the British or the Russians. Talk to the Great Khan.
How much do we want to spend? In blood and cash? I’m so glad I don’t have to make that decision. Cuss out Obama if you will—but find a solution first.
First of all we’re talking about a nasty piece of landlocked real estate. To get so much as a single cup of water or a single bullet to our troops there, we are dependent entirely on the kindness of “friends”. Like Pakistan, Turkmenistan or Tajikistan. (The latter two require an interesting over flight near Iran and Russia).
So, hoping that everyone stays friendly enough that we can get our troops back out is a small but actual consideration. We’re also dependent on the willingness of NATO to send its troops into harm’s way. This hasn’t always worked so well in the past.
We’re up against a nation of Hatfields and McCoys. For centuries the inhabitants of that prohibitively mountainous land have made a habit of shooting at anybody on the road in the valleys. Al Qaida found a home here partly because its world view isn’t all that different from that of the Afghanis over the past centuries.
The ancient Silk Road (running from Damascus to northern China) often veered north of Afghanistan to avoid the larcenous tribesmen. Alexander the Great briefly conquered the area, then he pulled back to a string of forts designed to pen the Afghani in. This was safer.
The British lost a whole army to the Afghans in the 1840s (Kabul still has buildings pock marked with bullet holes from that battle). It became a no-man’s land during the long cold war that went on between Britain and Russia in the Nineteenth Century.
The British got nominal control over Afghani foreign policy during a second war with Afghanistan in the 1870s. In 1919 a third Afghani war cost Britain all control over Afghanistan and left it, again, an independent group of tribesmen feuding with each other.
The British built enduring governments and nations in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They had no such success in Afghanistan. In the 1980s the Russians had their go at controlling Pakistan. We supplied people like bin Laden with modern weapons, the Russians conceded defeat and, somewhat as a consequence, the Soviet Union collapsed.
The only man who ever made a serious impact on Afghanistan was Genghis Khan. He depopulated whole areas of Afghanistan—rarely in history has there ever been a man who was so whole-heartedly into mass slaughter. Nasty, but it worked.
This was a language Afghanis understood—and the whole area was well behaved for nearly a century—allowing Marco Polo to travel all the way to China! But that’s what it took to bring peace to the area. Depopulation. Nation building? Good luck.
These historical precedents are not encouraging. The British, Macedonians and Russians couldn’t cut it militarily. Can we? In those mountains? Do we have the political stomach to do it Genghis Khan’s way?
I doubt it. I rather hope not. Is this, as it was for Russia twenty years ago, another Vietnam sucking in whole units of troops?
What horror if we walk out and al Quida walks back in with a vengeful Taliban? Will any building in New York be safe? Have we tried so much and only grabbed the tail of the tiger? If we go, if we stay—the question isn’t “which will be better?” but only “which will be worse?” Find a good option if you can. Ask Alexander or the British or the Russians. Talk to the Great Khan.
How much do we want to spend? In blood and cash? I’m so glad I don’t have to make that decision. Cuss out Obama if you will—but find a solution first.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Obama -- A Fallen Messiah?
Last November, I remember warning that Obama was coming to office with way higher expectations than he could ever hope to fulfill. I warned that when the crowd hails someone as a “Messiah” he can go from Palm Sunday (“Crown him!”) to Good Friday (“Crucify him!”) in a trice.
People expected Obama to walk on water, heal the sick and raise the dead. Well…, Afghanistan looks more dead today than it did last fall; a sensible health care bill looks beyond healing, and while Obama may not have fully fallen into the water with his Wall Street reforms, he is certainly up to his knees—and sinking.
The Independents have abandoned him; the Democrats are growing restive; and the Republican Right with its non-stop, drum fire of hatred has pulled itself up to the point of being a real threat in 2010. Obama doesn’t have a lot of reliable friends beside his dog and his kids.
Obama is limping from wounds that came from both sides. He allowed—partially in response to Republican complaints—his own health care bill to reach a thousand pages in length. That’s reading “War and Peace” just to get a hospital bill paid. Isn’t going to fly well.
Then his Democratic friends (very much acting on Obama’s own beliefs) larded the bill with provisions guaranteeing federal funds for elective abortions (killing the kid because he or she is inconvenient rather than because he’s a medical threat to mom), hitherto for illegal.
That motivated the daylights out of the Republican and Christian right—who, admittedly, would rather see a thousand babies die of medical neglect than one be aborted. This one provision is making the whole bill anathema to all sorts of people who might otherwise favor health care reform.
A sensible politician would have recognized that just to get health care reform passed initially, you leave things like elective abortions for later. You get the do-able done. Then you try for the moon. Watching Obama stumble on health care has encouraged banks and other institutions facing new regulations to start pushing back.
Nothing is going terribly well for Obama right now. Friends and foes are starting to call him “wishy-washy” as he backs and fills in the face of new objections and realities. I don’t think he’s so much a waffler as I think he’s a product of an elite law school.
That’s where they train you to argue all day and, like reasonable men, go out with your opponent for a drink in the evening. That’s how lawyers work. It may breed cynicism, but it keeps life sane. But it is no training for a man who must face uncompromising hatred from his opponents. That’s what’s permeating our political life right now. Obama wasn’t prepared for it.
Political hostility hasn’t been this bad since Joe McCarthy ran amok. It comes out of a basic flaw in the American character. We have a tendency to see our opponents not as someone to be convinced or compromised with but rather as persons SINFUL and to be DAMNED. Right or left.
I’ve used this historical comparison before but here goes again. When the British abolished slavery in their empire (c.a. 1830s), not a shot was fired. They recognized that, for all its moral undertones, slavery was primarily an economic and political issue.
The slave owner was simply a businessman caught in a changing economy. So they paid him for his slaves, educated the free men, and got on with new kinds of business. In America, slavery became a SIN, a “covenant with Hell”, and the owners were SINFUL beyond redemption.
The attitude cost us over 700,000 dead and left sections of the nation ruined to this day. The hatreds that came out of that war are with us yet. (Some of those are directed at Obama personally.) They don’t train you at Harvard Law to deal with such. Or how to gracefully slip from the role of “Messiah” to mere human being without getting nailed to something.
It’s poisonous out there.
People expected Obama to walk on water, heal the sick and raise the dead. Well…, Afghanistan looks more dead today than it did last fall; a sensible health care bill looks beyond healing, and while Obama may not have fully fallen into the water with his Wall Street reforms, he is certainly up to his knees—and sinking.
The Independents have abandoned him; the Democrats are growing restive; and the Republican Right with its non-stop, drum fire of hatred has pulled itself up to the point of being a real threat in 2010. Obama doesn’t have a lot of reliable friends beside his dog and his kids.
Obama is limping from wounds that came from both sides. He allowed—partially in response to Republican complaints—his own health care bill to reach a thousand pages in length. That’s reading “War and Peace” just to get a hospital bill paid. Isn’t going to fly well.
Then his Democratic friends (very much acting on Obama’s own beliefs) larded the bill with provisions guaranteeing federal funds for elective abortions (killing the kid because he or she is inconvenient rather than because he’s a medical threat to mom), hitherto for illegal.
That motivated the daylights out of the Republican and Christian right—who, admittedly, would rather see a thousand babies die of medical neglect than one be aborted. This one provision is making the whole bill anathema to all sorts of people who might otherwise favor health care reform.
A sensible politician would have recognized that just to get health care reform passed initially, you leave things like elective abortions for later. You get the do-able done. Then you try for the moon. Watching Obama stumble on health care has encouraged banks and other institutions facing new regulations to start pushing back.
Nothing is going terribly well for Obama right now. Friends and foes are starting to call him “wishy-washy” as he backs and fills in the face of new objections and realities. I don’t think he’s so much a waffler as I think he’s a product of an elite law school.
That’s where they train you to argue all day and, like reasonable men, go out with your opponent for a drink in the evening. That’s how lawyers work. It may breed cynicism, but it keeps life sane. But it is no training for a man who must face uncompromising hatred from his opponents. That’s what’s permeating our political life right now. Obama wasn’t prepared for it.
Political hostility hasn’t been this bad since Joe McCarthy ran amok. It comes out of a basic flaw in the American character. We have a tendency to see our opponents not as someone to be convinced or compromised with but rather as persons SINFUL and to be DAMNED. Right or left.
I’ve used this historical comparison before but here goes again. When the British abolished slavery in their empire (c.a. 1830s), not a shot was fired. They recognized that, for all its moral undertones, slavery was primarily an economic and political issue.
The slave owner was simply a businessman caught in a changing economy. So they paid him for his slaves, educated the free men, and got on with new kinds of business. In America, slavery became a SIN, a “covenant with Hell”, and the owners were SINFUL beyond redemption.
The attitude cost us over 700,000 dead and left sections of the nation ruined to this day. The hatreds that came out of that war are with us yet. (Some of those are directed at Obama personally.) They don’t train you at Harvard Law to deal with such. Or how to gracefully slip from the role of “Messiah” to mere human being without getting nailed to something.
It’s poisonous out there.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
What Price Respectability?
Nothing corrupts like Respectability. We will do anything to gain it; we will do anything to keep it. There’s an old saw that “every man has his price”. Some people who couldn’t be bought for any amount of money will all but sell their souls for a place at the table with the “adults” and the opportunity to look like they belong there.
It’s at the core of what went wrong with the revolution in Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. Revolutionaries the world over, once they have gained power, seem to have no further ambition but to become respectable heads of state with all the appropriate trappings.
Take a guerrilla fighter out of the jungle and he will work like a dog to become as close to being the people he fought against as possible. He will put on a uniform or a suit he would not have been caught dead in during revolutionary days just to fit in.
The same thing, I was reminded, seems to have happened to American union organizers. I tuned in to Bill Moyers this morning. He had as guests two union gurus in their middle or late years talking about what happened to unions in America.
They did rather offer something of an answer to the question my wife has been asking ever since she worked a couple of years at JC Penney’s early this decade. She watched employee after employee get cut from full time with benefits and vacation days to part time with no insurance, no sick days, no paid time off.
Zip. You come in one day and your $8.00 an hour job has been cut from 40 to 29 or 24 hours, just under the limit for benefits. Now you work four hour shifts, so you use the same amount of gas to get to work, and you get fewer paid breaks. You still have two kids to support and are expected to dress nicely. (it’s not just the military that’s eligible for food stamps while working.)
Why, my wife has often asked, don’t the unions come in and sign these people up? I’ve often felt that the people who staff our retail establishments are not all that different from the factory workers who fought to raise their pay above a dollar a day.
The difference, Mr. Moyer’s guests made clear, was that the factory workers eighty and more years ago had dedicated union leaders who fought for them. They were NOT respectable. They got arrested. (Cops in Detroit used to marvel about Jimmy Hoffa. You could take rubber hoses and beat him half to death and he never made a sound. He remained contemptuous of respectability until someone finally had to kill him.)
During the late forties and early fifties, the union guru’s made clear, we were able to gut American unions of their willingness to fight for serious social issues. On one hand, the stick. We threatened to label them as Communists if they didn’t stop being obnoxious.
No more big causes like Social Security or forty hour weeks—an occasional strike at a steel mill or an auto company might be okay—but let’s not have any talk about “classes” in America. They got scared and started to behave (a little bit like Obama backing down on health care).
(Anyone who thinks there aren’t social classes in America has never dealt with the very wealthy. I have. They are very polite, but you come away knowing you are nowhere in the same social class that they inhabit. The president of General Motors is as different from an hourly laborer on the floor as a peasant was from a duke.)
Then, the carrot. As in “Animal Farm”, the top union men got invited to sit at the management table—with the guys in the really expensive suits. For behaving, they even got to wear pretty nice suits themselves. They were as respectable as a corporate executive vice president. They loved it.
The lady with 29 hours and two kids to feed is on her own. Union organizers and leaders wouldn’t like to lose their respectability by getting down in the muck and becoming obnoxious in their fight to give her a living wage. The paneled doors in the executive suite might swing shut on them again.
So what if union membership has gone down by 50% in the past decade or two? The union leaders are still at the “adult” table. They like it there—and nobody shouts, “Communist!”.
It’s at the core of what went wrong with the revolution in Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. Revolutionaries the world over, once they have gained power, seem to have no further ambition but to become respectable heads of state with all the appropriate trappings.
Take a guerrilla fighter out of the jungle and he will work like a dog to become as close to being the people he fought against as possible. He will put on a uniform or a suit he would not have been caught dead in during revolutionary days just to fit in.
The same thing, I was reminded, seems to have happened to American union organizers. I tuned in to Bill Moyers this morning. He had as guests two union gurus in their middle or late years talking about what happened to unions in America.
They did rather offer something of an answer to the question my wife has been asking ever since she worked a couple of years at JC Penney’s early this decade. She watched employee after employee get cut from full time with benefits and vacation days to part time with no insurance, no sick days, no paid time off.
Zip. You come in one day and your $8.00 an hour job has been cut from 40 to 29 or 24 hours, just under the limit for benefits. Now you work four hour shifts, so you use the same amount of gas to get to work, and you get fewer paid breaks. You still have two kids to support and are expected to dress nicely. (it’s not just the military that’s eligible for food stamps while working.)
Why, my wife has often asked, don’t the unions come in and sign these people up? I’ve often felt that the people who staff our retail establishments are not all that different from the factory workers who fought to raise their pay above a dollar a day.
The difference, Mr. Moyer’s guests made clear, was that the factory workers eighty and more years ago had dedicated union leaders who fought for them. They were NOT respectable. They got arrested. (Cops in Detroit used to marvel about Jimmy Hoffa. You could take rubber hoses and beat him half to death and he never made a sound. He remained contemptuous of respectability until someone finally had to kill him.)
During the late forties and early fifties, the union guru’s made clear, we were able to gut American unions of their willingness to fight for serious social issues. On one hand, the stick. We threatened to label them as Communists if they didn’t stop being obnoxious.
No more big causes like Social Security or forty hour weeks—an occasional strike at a steel mill or an auto company might be okay—but let’s not have any talk about “classes” in America. They got scared and started to behave (a little bit like Obama backing down on health care).
(Anyone who thinks there aren’t social classes in America has never dealt with the very wealthy. I have. They are very polite, but you come away knowing you are nowhere in the same social class that they inhabit. The president of General Motors is as different from an hourly laborer on the floor as a peasant was from a duke.)
Then, the carrot. As in “Animal Farm”, the top union men got invited to sit at the management table—with the guys in the really expensive suits. For behaving, they even got to wear pretty nice suits themselves. They were as respectable as a corporate executive vice president. They loved it.
The lady with 29 hours and two kids to feed is on her own. Union organizers and leaders wouldn’t like to lose their respectability by getting down in the muck and becoming obnoxious in their fight to give her a living wage. The paneled doors in the executive suite might swing shut on them again.
So what if union membership has gone down by 50% in the past decade or two? The union leaders are still at the “adult” table. They like it there—and nobody shouts, “Communist!”.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
America The Baffling
Americans baffle me. (And I was born one, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’ve lived here all my life.) I have understood Arabs, many tribes of Europeans, black Africans, some Orientals and a few Australians. I’ve even met a few Frenchwomen I liked. (Moderately.)
I confess I do not understand Americans. There is something about our society that has always left me feeling like an outsider looking in—in total bemusement. It may have something to do with my inherent Calvinism—and the fact that this nation has not only tried to expunge its Calvinist roots but now lives with the guilt of feeling there’s something back there we’re forgetting.
I often sense, for example, that I understand the Constitution better than our Supreme Court justices do simply because I was raised as much a Calvinist as most of the writers were. (Don’t be fooled by labels such as “Deist” or even Anglican—the former were all raised Calvinists and the latter was shot through [since Elizabeth I] with Calvinism—and the guy who came up with the Virginia Plan that was mostly followed was educated as a Presbyterian Divine.)
But , if the Constitution doesn’t baffle me, Americans do. Two instances come to mind, both having to do with our attitude toward government. One has to do with health care, the other with the new electric light bulbs.
We’ve known for years that fluorescent lights are not optimum for eyestrain and health. We tolerate them in schools and offices because they are cheap. But we all know that if one breaks, poisonous gases flood the air—and you’d better not get cut by the broken glass.
We use incandescent bulbs at home because they are far safer and more eye-user friendly. Yet when the government mandates that we MUST all switch to fluorescents in every light socket in the country, we don’t even peep.
Europeans were stuck with the same regulations, and they practically rioted in protest. Stores sold out of the last stocks of incandescent light bulbs in days. People stocked up for years to come. (I’m stocking up, too.) Cost trumps safety and health every time.
(Remember how auto manufacturers screamed and whined at the cost of putting in seat belts and air bags? They might save a few thousand lives—we lose more on the road each year than we’ve lost in most of our wars. But, the cost! Oh, my, the cost! Better a cheaper Chevy than a live driver, such seems to be the accepted reasoning.)
Then there’s health care. Unlike Europeans who accept health care as a government cost of doing business—just as we accept unemployment insurance, disability insurance, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for the elderly as government costs and responsibilities—we shriek at the very thought of having that same government involved in health insurance.
Government runs our schools, our state colleges and universities, plows and paves our roads, provides the police and public health services that protect us, keeps our libraries open, and determines whether we shall have digital or analog TV, etc. etc. etc., and we don’t protest.
But, oh woe, oh dearie me, let government suggest ways of cutting our medical costs and insuring even the unemployed, and how we bellow! (If I were Obama I’d be tempted to say, Okay we’ll pull government out of your health care.
We’ll delete Medicare as a government cost. You pay your own premium. That way government will “keep its hands off [your] Medicare”, just as you asked. Want to watch an entire major strata of voters do an about face with bone shattering suddenness?}
No one would dare suggest THAT!!. (It’s such a good thing I’m not president!) So we’ll continue in our own bizarre version of double think. The amazing thing is that it didn’t take a Big Brother to make us this way. We got here by ourselves.
I confess I do not understand Americans. There is something about our society that has always left me feeling like an outsider looking in—in total bemusement. It may have something to do with my inherent Calvinism—and the fact that this nation has not only tried to expunge its Calvinist roots but now lives with the guilt of feeling there’s something back there we’re forgetting.
I often sense, for example, that I understand the Constitution better than our Supreme Court justices do simply because I was raised as much a Calvinist as most of the writers were. (Don’t be fooled by labels such as “Deist” or even Anglican—the former were all raised Calvinists and the latter was shot through [since Elizabeth I] with Calvinism—and the guy who came up with the Virginia Plan that was mostly followed was educated as a Presbyterian Divine.)
But , if the Constitution doesn’t baffle me, Americans do. Two instances come to mind, both having to do with our attitude toward government. One has to do with health care, the other with the new electric light bulbs.
We’ve known for years that fluorescent lights are not optimum for eyestrain and health. We tolerate them in schools and offices because they are cheap. But we all know that if one breaks, poisonous gases flood the air—and you’d better not get cut by the broken glass.
We use incandescent bulbs at home because they are far safer and more eye-user friendly. Yet when the government mandates that we MUST all switch to fluorescents in every light socket in the country, we don’t even peep.
Europeans were stuck with the same regulations, and they practically rioted in protest. Stores sold out of the last stocks of incandescent light bulbs in days. People stocked up for years to come. (I’m stocking up, too.) Cost trumps safety and health every time.
(Remember how auto manufacturers screamed and whined at the cost of putting in seat belts and air bags? They might save a few thousand lives—we lose more on the road each year than we’ve lost in most of our wars. But, the cost! Oh, my, the cost! Better a cheaper Chevy than a live driver, such seems to be the accepted reasoning.)
Then there’s health care. Unlike Europeans who accept health care as a government cost of doing business—just as we accept unemployment insurance, disability insurance, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for the elderly as government costs and responsibilities—we shriek at the very thought of having that same government involved in health insurance.
Government runs our schools, our state colleges and universities, plows and paves our roads, provides the police and public health services that protect us, keeps our libraries open, and determines whether we shall have digital or analog TV, etc. etc. etc., and we don’t protest.
But, oh woe, oh dearie me, let government suggest ways of cutting our medical costs and insuring even the unemployed, and how we bellow! (If I were Obama I’d be tempted to say, Okay we’ll pull government out of your health care.
We’ll delete Medicare as a government cost. You pay your own premium. That way government will “keep its hands off [your] Medicare”, just as you asked. Want to watch an entire major strata of voters do an about face with bone shattering suddenness?}
No one would dare suggest THAT!!. (It’s such a good thing I’m not president!) So we’ll continue in our own bizarre version of double think. The amazing thing is that it didn’t take a Big Brother to make us this way. We got here by ourselves.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Where Have All The Foundries Gone?
Every so often I drive along the south shoreline of Muskegon Lake and worry a bit about this country. Abandoned jetties poke out into the lake like fingers all along the shore. In the 1880s each held a saw mill where millions of board feet of timber were cut into lumber to rebuild Chicago.
When the trees were gone, the sawmills went with them, out to the forests of the West Coast. In their place, over time, came foundries making use of the Lake Michigan beach sand and the largest deep water port on Lake Michigan.
During World War II, trainloads of tanks rolled through Muskegon. The tracks ran next to the loading docks of all these foundries; a new engine block was dropped into each tank or truck and sent on its way to battle. So huge was the level of production that Muskegon itself was sometimes called “the arsenal of Democracy.” Without towns like Muskegon the war might well have been lost.
Towns all over America, with their gritty factories and foundries and mills made America the unchallenged manufacturing giant of the planet. The wages they paid made us the richest, most consumer oriented society on any continent. We rebuilt much of the world after the war—with stuff coming out of those same foundries.
Today those fingers into Muskegon Lake are mostly barren. Humps of earth, a few pilings sticking out of the water. There’s a park here, a recently abandoned office building there, the local YMCA struggles to make a go of it on another jetty. But there are no foundries.
“We’re a service society”, I’m told. “We deal in data and computers.” A little voice in me asks, in the next major war, do we roll up hard copy from our printers and fire that at the enemy? It also asks, where did all those high paying jobs go?
Not to worry, I’m told. We do the brain work and let all those other third worlders do the scutt work in the hot and sooty factories. I remember when they packed up whole factories full of machinery and sent it overseas where people earned a tenth what an American was paid.
(Then suddenly the brain work went overseas to huge research facilities in China, Ireland and India, to name a few. What happened to all the guys who could speak English while they fixed my computer—and who lived in places like Oregon and Georgia? They didn’t limit their solutions to “Please reinstall your operating system.”
It became fashionable to snicker at “the rust belt” as factory after factory was pulled down to be replaced by expensive homes and malls. I used to wonder as I drove past, don’t we really need factories and foundries anymore?
This week’s “BusinessWeek” suggests that all of a sudden we’re finding that maybe we do. “Can the Future Be Built in America?” (9/21—p.046). There’s a high tech company in California that has a reasonable hope of revolutionizing electric lights, cutting the cost to a fraction of today's cost.It would like to keep its manufacturing in the US—if only to protect its trade secrets.
But large government subsidies in places like Singapore, China and Malaysia make it almost suicidal to build another plant here. We have the highest taxes on manufacturing in the world.
We’ve sent high tech business after high tech business overseas (federally funded research created most solar cell technology—we now hold five percent of the $30 billion business). Congress views subsidies for manufacturing as “welfare for the rich” and will have no part of it..
By now we don’t even have the infrastructure, trained people and suppliers left in this country to make high tech work in many areas. So I guess Muskegon isn’t alone in having bare ground where once there were producing factories. (Can Walmart hire all of us?)
Congress has a choice. Put its money into people and plants that provide jobs—as it did with computers and, before that, the steel industry—or put its money into welfare for the unemployed. That might be just as important as health care.
When the trees were gone, the sawmills went with them, out to the forests of the West Coast. In their place, over time, came foundries making use of the Lake Michigan beach sand and the largest deep water port on Lake Michigan.
During World War II, trainloads of tanks rolled through Muskegon. The tracks ran next to the loading docks of all these foundries; a new engine block was dropped into each tank or truck and sent on its way to battle. So huge was the level of production that Muskegon itself was sometimes called “the arsenal of Democracy.” Without towns like Muskegon the war might well have been lost.
Towns all over America, with their gritty factories and foundries and mills made America the unchallenged manufacturing giant of the planet. The wages they paid made us the richest, most consumer oriented society on any continent. We rebuilt much of the world after the war—with stuff coming out of those same foundries.
Today those fingers into Muskegon Lake are mostly barren. Humps of earth, a few pilings sticking out of the water. There’s a park here, a recently abandoned office building there, the local YMCA struggles to make a go of it on another jetty. But there are no foundries.
“We’re a service society”, I’m told. “We deal in data and computers.” A little voice in me asks, in the next major war, do we roll up hard copy from our printers and fire that at the enemy? It also asks, where did all those high paying jobs go?
Not to worry, I’m told. We do the brain work and let all those other third worlders do the scutt work in the hot and sooty factories. I remember when they packed up whole factories full of machinery and sent it overseas where people earned a tenth what an American was paid.
(Then suddenly the brain work went overseas to huge research facilities in China, Ireland and India, to name a few. What happened to all the guys who could speak English while they fixed my computer—and who lived in places like Oregon and Georgia? They didn’t limit their solutions to “Please reinstall your operating system.”
It became fashionable to snicker at “the rust belt” as factory after factory was pulled down to be replaced by expensive homes and malls. I used to wonder as I drove past, don’t we really need factories and foundries anymore?
This week’s “BusinessWeek” suggests that all of a sudden we’re finding that maybe we do. “Can the Future Be Built in America?” (9/21—p.046). There’s a high tech company in California that has a reasonable hope of revolutionizing electric lights, cutting the cost to a fraction of today's cost.It would like to keep its manufacturing in the US—if only to protect its trade secrets.
But large government subsidies in places like Singapore, China and Malaysia make it almost suicidal to build another plant here. We have the highest taxes on manufacturing in the world.
We’ve sent high tech business after high tech business overseas (federally funded research created most solar cell technology—we now hold five percent of the $30 billion business). Congress views subsidies for manufacturing as “welfare for the rich” and will have no part of it..
By now we don’t even have the infrastructure, trained people and suppliers left in this country to make high tech work in many areas. So I guess Muskegon isn’t alone in having bare ground where once there were producing factories. (Can Walmart hire all of us?)
Congress has a choice. Put its money into people and plants that provide jobs—as it did with computers and, before that, the steel industry—or put its money into welfare for the unemployed. That might be just as important as health care.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Mad Dogs And Englishmen
We’re coming to the end of summer. The leaves are showing yellow, nights are getting cool, and the fashionable young men and ladies still show tan. And I am waiting for two biopsy reports on skin cancer.
Nothing new for me. When the dermatologist examines my face and neck, he mutters to himself the medical code for “precancerous growth” over and over.
He repeats it as he goes over the rest of me—which hasn’t been tanned in more than a decade. “This,” he assures me has built up over years and years.” So nice to know.
Didn’t have a clue when I was small and we went to the beach for whole days at a time. No one used sunblock back then. We turned into lobsters and wore our starched collars to church the next day. It was a rite of summer, somewhat like flagellation.
When I was a teenager, I routinely turned a shade of red that startled my friends. When I had a job in construction for the summer, my shirt went off with everyone else’s. We were so buff and brown.
I recall a black friend marveling. “You white folk are so strange. You work all summer to get what we were born with.” He just shook his head. He’d probably still shake his head if he knew I’ve had several growths removed surgically over the past few years—at least one of which was actually cancerous. Nothing buff about that.
The kids today, especially the young ladies, look so healthy and brown. Especially after a full summer of working on it. Many started in early spring.
Years ago I took a date to Jones Beach in New York on a COLD Memorial Day. I, and every male on that beach, was dressed in jeans, khakis, jackets, sweat shirts. Every female was in a bikini. Talk about reversing the normal! But obeisance must be paid to the sun god.
And the young people do look attractive in their tanned skins. Alas their turn will no doubt come when some future dermatologist mutters the same code words as he examines their fried epidermis.
It brings to mind the words from a satirical song Noel Coward wrote in 1932 about white people’s propensity to want to change color every summer. “Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the Midday Sun.” I’ll quote a few choice lines:
“In tropical climes there are certain times of day
When all the citizens retire,
to tear their clothes off and perspire…
“The natives grieve when the white men leave their huts,
Because they're obviously, absolutely nuts --
“Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The Japanese don't care to, the Chinese wouldn't dare to,
Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one,…
At twelve noon the natives swoon, and
no further work is done -
But Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
“Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The toughest Burmese bandit can never understand it….
In Bangkok, at twelve o'clock, they foam at the mouth and run,
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
“Mad Dogs and Englishmen, go out in the midday sun.
The smallest Malay rabbit deplores this stupid habit.
In Hong Kong, they strike a gong, and fire off a noonday gun.
To reprimand each inmate, who's in late. …
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.”
The impervious English were so delighted with the song they invited Coward to Hong Kong in 1936 to fire off the noonday gun. No doubt they then all went out to enjoy the midday sun.
I’m done with all that, thanks.
Nothing new for me. When the dermatologist examines my face and neck, he mutters to himself the medical code for “precancerous growth” over and over.
He repeats it as he goes over the rest of me—which hasn’t been tanned in more than a decade. “This,” he assures me has built up over years and years.” So nice to know.
Didn’t have a clue when I was small and we went to the beach for whole days at a time. No one used sunblock back then. We turned into lobsters and wore our starched collars to church the next day. It was a rite of summer, somewhat like flagellation.
When I was a teenager, I routinely turned a shade of red that startled my friends. When I had a job in construction for the summer, my shirt went off with everyone else’s. We were so buff and brown.
I recall a black friend marveling. “You white folk are so strange. You work all summer to get what we were born with.” He just shook his head. He’d probably still shake his head if he knew I’ve had several growths removed surgically over the past few years—at least one of which was actually cancerous. Nothing buff about that.
The kids today, especially the young ladies, look so healthy and brown. Especially after a full summer of working on it. Many started in early spring.
Years ago I took a date to Jones Beach in New York on a COLD Memorial Day. I, and every male on that beach, was dressed in jeans, khakis, jackets, sweat shirts. Every female was in a bikini. Talk about reversing the normal! But obeisance must be paid to the sun god.
And the young people do look attractive in their tanned skins. Alas their turn will no doubt come when some future dermatologist mutters the same code words as he examines their fried epidermis.
It brings to mind the words from a satirical song Noel Coward wrote in 1932 about white people’s propensity to want to change color every summer. “Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the Midday Sun.” I’ll quote a few choice lines:
“In tropical climes there are certain times of day
When all the citizens retire,
to tear their clothes off and perspire…
“The natives grieve when the white men leave their huts,
Because they're obviously, absolutely nuts --
“Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The Japanese don't care to, the Chinese wouldn't dare to,
Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one,…
At twelve noon the natives swoon, and
no further work is done -
But Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
“Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The toughest Burmese bandit can never understand it….
In Bangkok, at twelve o'clock, they foam at the mouth and run,
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
“Mad Dogs and Englishmen, go out in the midday sun.
The smallest Malay rabbit deplores this stupid habit.
In Hong Kong, they strike a gong, and fire off a noonday gun.
To reprimand each inmate, who's in late. …
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.”
The impervious English were so delighted with the song they invited Coward to Hong Kong in 1936 to fire off the noonday gun. No doubt they then all went out to enjoy the midday sun.
I’m done with all that, thanks.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Discrimination--Not So Easy to Get Rid Of
The “Newsweek” article I referenced yesterday raised another point in my mind. “See Baby Discriminate” was an interesting title—but it failed to raise the issue that racial, class, tribal and religious discrimination is a very ancient—and once indispensable—survival mechanism.
Discriminate and live—fail to discriminate and die. There were situations in ancient times—and still are in some parts of the world today—where discrimination was and is vital to life. This is true, in very real part, because humans lack the ability to read minds—to be absolutely sure what a stranger or even someone we know is really thinking.
Ever look at your wife, your boss or a stranger in a dark alley and wonder, “What are his or her intentions?” You don’t really ever know. (Until perhaps he puts a gun in your face and demands your wallet—in which case you become quite sure. Or possibly your mate finally tells you there was a small incident with the car, or your boss closes his office door, pulls out an envelope and says, “Joe, it’s been great having you on staff here … .)
We rely, more than we know, on what Poker players call “tells”. A “tell” tips you off to what kind of a hand a player has. For instance, a player may pull on his left ear lobe when he has a lousy hand. He may slump in his seat when he’s sure he’s going to win. People skilled at reading “tells” tend to go home with money in their pockets. People who can’t sometimes need to hock their watches to buy gas for the trip home. Same thing in Blackjack or whatever.
To read a “tell” with any assurance of accuracy, you need to either know the individual well or come from the same tribe. When you meet a person from a different tribe or even with a markedly different set of facial features, you suddenly cannot be sure of the “tells”.
In days when, in fact, the world was full of rival tribes—many of whom had no scruples about killing you for the food you were carrying, or even deciding to eat you to ward off starvation—you could not be sure of strangers. “Discrimination” as we call it today was crucial.
People from your tribe—people whose “tells” you could read with some assurance—were welcome. People whose “tells” you didn’t know you dared not welcome. At best you kept a sharp eye on them, weapons at hand.
At worst you killed them before they might possibly kill you. It’s that same ancient instinct for survival that has created the discrimination that bedevils our society today. Many of us were raised among our own kind. I, for one, was raised in a solidly Dutch immigrant neighborhood.
We had our own churches, we frequented Dutch businesses, we dated and married Dutch girls, plucked from our own parochial schools. Even though I have long left that community, I am immediately more at ease when I meet someone from it. These are what our black friends call “homies”—I can read their “tells” even if I may not like them personally.
I am not entirely comfortable even when I am among non-Dutch Caucasians. When I am in a room with Asians, black Africans or even Hispanics from Mexico and south, I am often a bit at a loss as to what is going on or who means what. Personal liking has little to do with it.
It’s entirely tribal. It’s as old as “fight or flight”. It becomes as physical as adrenalin. It’s going to be very, very, very hard to squeeze out of us—no matter how well educated we are or how practiced at dealing with a diverse society.
I remember my father suggesting how I might vote the first time. “You vote for the Republicans at the partisan end of the ballot; at the non-partisan part, you vote for the Dutch names.” Had I been born millennia ago, my father would have said essentially the same thing. (In Boston, it would no doubt be the Irish names.)
Discrimination is one of the woes of our society—but getting rid of it is going to be as tough as eliminating the “fight or flight” reflex. It’s built into us from thousands of years of trusting no one but our own tribe.
You bet babies discriminate. They come from breeding stock that discriminated well enough to survive for thousands of years. We can teach diversity and tolerance, but eliminating ancient survival mechanisms is likely to take a few more centuries. God help us.
Discriminate and live—fail to discriminate and die. There were situations in ancient times—and still are in some parts of the world today—where discrimination was and is vital to life. This is true, in very real part, because humans lack the ability to read minds—to be absolutely sure what a stranger or even someone we know is really thinking.
Ever look at your wife, your boss or a stranger in a dark alley and wonder, “What are his or her intentions?” You don’t really ever know. (Until perhaps he puts a gun in your face and demands your wallet—in which case you become quite sure. Or possibly your mate finally tells you there was a small incident with the car, or your boss closes his office door, pulls out an envelope and says, “Joe, it’s been great having you on staff here … .)
We rely, more than we know, on what Poker players call “tells”. A “tell” tips you off to what kind of a hand a player has. For instance, a player may pull on his left ear lobe when he has a lousy hand. He may slump in his seat when he’s sure he’s going to win. People skilled at reading “tells” tend to go home with money in their pockets. People who can’t sometimes need to hock their watches to buy gas for the trip home. Same thing in Blackjack or whatever.
To read a “tell” with any assurance of accuracy, you need to either know the individual well or come from the same tribe. When you meet a person from a different tribe or even with a markedly different set of facial features, you suddenly cannot be sure of the “tells”.
In days when, in fact, the world was full of rival tribes—many of whom had no scruples about killing you for the food you were carrying, or even deciding to eat you to ward off starvation—you could not be sure of strangers. “Discrimination” as we call it today was crucial.
People from your tribe—people whose “tells” you could read with some assurance—were welcome. People whose “tells” you didn’t know you dared not welcome. At best you kept a sharp eye on them, weapons at hand.
At worst you killed them before they might possibly kill you. It’s that same ancient instinct for survival that has created the discrimination that bedevils our society today. Many of us were raised among our own kind. I, for one, was raised in a solidly Dutch immigrant neighborhood.
We had our own churches, we frequented Dutch businesses, we dated and married Dutch girls, plucked from our own parochial schools. Even though I have long left that community, I am immediately more at ease when I meet someone from it. These are what our black friends call “homies”—I can read their “tells” even if I may not like them personally.
I am not entirely comfortable even when I am among non-Dutch Caucasians. When I am in a room with Asians, black Africans or even Hispanics from Mexico and south, I am often a bit at a loss as to what is going on or who means what. Personal liking has little to do with it.
It’s entirely tribal. It’s as old as “fight or flight”. It becomes as physical as adrenalin. It’s going to be very, very, very hard to squeeze out of us—no matter how well educated we are or how practiced at dealing with a diverse society.
I remember my father suggesting how I might vote the first time. “You vote for the Republicans at the partisan end of the ballot; at the non-partisan part, you vote for the Dutch names.” Had I been born millennia ago, my father would have said essentially the same thing. (In Boston, it would no doubt be the Irish names.)
Discrimination is one of the woes of our society—but getting rid of it is going to be as tough as eliminating the “fight or flight” reflex. It’s built into us from thousands of years of trusting no one but our own tribe.
You bet babies discriminate. They come from breeding stock that discriminated well enough to survive for thousands of years. We can teach diversity and tolerance, but eliminating ancient survival mechanisms is likely to take a few more centuries. God help us.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Serena Williams -- Bias or Bad Shot?
I have often felt that I would be woefully inadequate in parenting a black child in America. I would not know how to handle the reality of the world that child was going to face. This week’s “Newsweek” had an interesting article called, “See Baby Discriminate”.
The article quoted a study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that evaluated how well black kids did when their own parents warned them of discrimination. They found that “some preparation for bias was beneficial, and…necessary.”
The study went on to warn that constantly (“often”) hearing warnings of future bias (“rather than just occasionally”) made black kids “significantly less likely to connect their success to effort, and much more likely to blame … failures on …teachers—whom they saw as biased against them.”
How often I have experienced (as a white teacher) this in black pupils!. I’ll never forget the first time. I moved the seat of a particularly loud and disruptive young man to another area of the room. He glared at me: “You just doin’ this ‘cause I’m black!”
I had the wit to reply, “No, I’m moving you because you are the loudest and most disruptive person in this room.” He had the grace to see my point, shut up and got down to business. A couple of years ago a young lady marched down to the school office to protest my racism.
I was giving a lesson on some phase of the Civil Rights Movement (in which I participated) and used the term “blacks”—which we were directed to do by our black cohorts who no longer wanted to be called by WEB Du Bois' preferred term, “Negroes”.
This girl’s hand shot up. “WE,” she announced, “prefer to be called “African Americans. It is racist to call us ‘blacks’.” I realized she had absolutely no knowledge of the history of slavery, Africa, Africans or blacks in America, so I looked at her and asked,
“What’s an ‘African-American?’” After her attempt at an answer, I pointed out that I had several African American neighbors. Some were of sub-Saharan black derivation. One was pure blooded French—born in Africa, now a naturalized American citizen. I further pointed out that the wife of the 2004 Democratic candidate for president was an African American—pure blooded Portuguese.
One of my best friends married a woman born in Morocco, pure blooded French. I’ve met pure-blooded Englishmen, Dutchmen, Egyptians and Moors who fit the term. How, I asked her, does the term “African-American” designate that the person in question is or is not black?
Confronted with something she did not understand—coming from a white person—she immediately assumed racial slur and marched down to the office. The principal (black) and I were pretty good friends and he had once sat for nearly an hour listening to my lecture on the history of slavery in Africa and the United States. He knew me.
He took her to his computer and gave her a short course on black Africans in America and the various names they have been called. Then he shipped her back to class. He was laughing when he saw me later, “I knew that was you.”
The study in “Newsweek” warns “that frequent predictions of future discrimination ironically become as destructive as experiences of actual discrimination.” (p59/9-14) You cannot help but wonder if Serena Williams recent blow-up at the U.S. Open came out of the same feelings that sent the young girl to the office—as angry as Serena was.
Was Serena assuming a racial bias that may not have existed? After all, she was having a bad tennis day overall, not just on that one call. No matter how skilled, every rider eventually gets bucked off a horse. Babe Ruth struck out a lot. At that second, Serena couldn’t see it.
How could I—or anyone—as a parent find that middle road that teaches a kid he or she may face real discrimination while NOT conditioning him or her to believe that no failure is really their fault? The very notion daunts me. I wouldn’t even try to ask Serena.
The article quoted a study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that evaluated how well black kids did when their own parents warned them of discrimination. They found that “some preparation for bias was beneficial, and…necessary.”
The study went on to warn that constantly (“often”) hearing warnings of future bias (“rather than just occasionally”) made black kids “significantly less likely to connect their success to effort, and much more likely to blame … failures on …teachers—whom they saw as biased against them.”
How often I have experienced (as a white teacher) this in black pupils!. I’ll never forget the first time. I moved the seat of a particularly loud and disruptive young man to another area of the room. He glared at me: “You just doin’ this ‘cause I’m black!”
I had the wit to reply, “No, I’m moving you because you are the loudest and most disruptive person in this room.” He had the grace to see my point, shut up and got down to business. A couple of years ago a young lady marched down to the school office to protest my racism.
I was giving a lesson on some phase of the Civil Rights Movement (in which I participated) and used the term “blacks”—which we were directed to do by our black cohorts who no longer wanted to be called by WEB Du Bois' preferred term, “Negroes”.
This girl’s hand shot up. “WE,” she announced, “prefer to be called “African Americans. It is racist to call us ‘blacks’.” I realized she had absolutely no knowledge of the history of slavery, Africa, Africans or blacks in America, so I looked at her and asked,
“What’s an ‘African-American?’” After her attempt at an answer, I pointed out that I had several African American neighbors. Some were of sub-Saharan black derivation. One was pure blooded French—born in Africa, now a naturalized American citizen. I further pointed out that the wife of the 2004 Democratic candidate for president was an African American—pure blooded Portuguese.
One of my best friends married a woman born in Morocco, pure blooded French. I’ve met pure-blooded Englishmen, Dutchmen, Egyptians and Moors who fit the term. How, I asked her, does the term “African-American” designate that the person in question is or is not black?
Confronted with something she did not understand—coming from a white person—she immediately assumed racial slur and marched down to the office. The principal (black) and I were pretty good friends and he had once sat for nearly an hour listening to my lecture on the history of slavery in Africa and the United States. He knew me.
He took her to his computer and gave her a short course on black Africans in America and the various names they have been called. Then he shipped her back to class. He was laughing when he saw me later, “I knew that was you.”
The study in “Newsweek” warns “that frequent predictions of future discrimination ironically become as destructive as experiences of actual discrimination.” (p59/9-14) You cannot help but wonder if Serena Williams recent blow-up at the U.S. Open came out of the same feelings that sent the young girl to the office—as angry as Serena was.
Was Serena assuming a racial bias that may not have existed? After all, she was having a bad tennis day overall, not just on that one call. No matter how skilled, every rider eventually gets bucked off a horse. Babe Ruth struck out a lot. At that second, Serena couldn’t see it.
How could I—or anyone—as a parent find that middle road that teaches a kid he or she may face real discrimination while NOT conditioning him or her to believe that no failure is really their fault? The very notion daunts me. I wouldn’t even try to ask Serena.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Obesity--A Thought
Being a tad overweight myself (some might say about 80 pounds or so), I take notice of all the publicity obesity is getting these days. Too much fat, too much grease, too many golden arches, too many French fries, portions way too big, too little exercise … .
All valid. But I’ve lifted weights strenuously for over an hour, I’ve swum laps, three and four times a week for a year without losing weight. I still walk and ride my bike. I’ve been on the Adkins Diet for months (Gadfrey, how you can learn to hate roast beef!), comes right back.
There are obvious problems with the American life style. Food is too easy and too cheap to get today. Our ancestors might walk miles to find a game animal to kill—and when they finished eating it they might not eat again for days. For us it’s just a run to the nearest store.
Two thousand years ago, in the Roman Empire, a daily meal might be nothing more than a couple of small loaves of Pita bread and a dried fish (tiny) or two. Some days you might not get that. Feast days meant just that—a few days a year you might get to eat the way Americans eat every day.
There would be luxuries like meat, cheese, honey (sugar wasn’t all that common until Columbus discovered the Caribbean) pastries, veggies and fruit. That was a feast day—in Roman times and in the Middle Ages. Then there were days and days of hard physical labor to burn it off.
We eat a “good breakfast”—often out of McDonalds—and then we go off to sit at a desk or stand at a machine. (Neither is great exercise.) Then comes lunch—anything from a thick sandwich and some cookies with a coke to a pizza. When we get home, the biggest meal of all, dinner—and an evening watching television. With a snack.
The real wonder is that anyone is NOT obese. However, I keep reading that obesity has become a increasing problem over the past few years. What changed just recently? I attended a lecture on obesity recently and suddenly realized there was one factor neither the physician, the dietician nor the exercise maven thought to mention.
Smoking. I was a chubby child. In 1957 (seven years before the Surgeon General’s “Report on Smoking and Health”) a friend advised me to take up smoking instead of snacking. It worked. Boy did it work! I had a cigarette instead of a snack; I lost weight.
A few years later a well dressed man on NYC’s Fifth Avenue stopped me to ask where I bought my clothes. (It wasn’t so much the garment as the fact I was thin enough to wear it well.) In 1973, for good and sufficient health reasons, I quit smoking.
Just a pound or two a year—I don’t binge eat and I do exercise—adds up in a few decades. A whole LOT of us have either quit smoking since then or never started. (I recall one of FDR’s sons was told to quit smoking by his MD about that time. In six months he had put on so much weight, his physician told him to go back to smoking—for his health.)
When we no longer had the ancient life style to keep us thin, smoking helped. A cigar, pipe or cigarette and a cup of coffee beats dessert every time, weight-wise. The vast—and needed—campaigns against smoking may just be another example of unintended consequences.
Light up—or chow down. Either may kill you.
All valid. But I’ve lifted weights strenuously for over an hour, I’ve swum laps, three and four times a week for a year without losing weight. I still walk and ride my bike. I’ve been on the Adkins Diet for months (Gadfrey, how you can learn to hate roast beef!), comes right back.
There are obvious problems with the American life style. Food is too easy and too cheap to get today. Our ancestors might walk miles to find a game animal to kill—and when they finished eating it they might not eat again for days. For us it’s just a run to the nearest store.
Two thousand years ago, in the Roman Empire, a daily meal might be nothing more than a couple of small loaves of Pita bread and a dried fish (tiny) or two. Some days you might not get that. Feast days meant just that—a few days a year you might get to eat the way Americans eat every day.
There would be luxuries like meat, cheese, honey (sugar wasn’t all that common until Columbus discovered the Caribbean) pastries, veggies and fruit. That was a feast day—in Roman times and in the Middle Ages. Then there were days and days of hard physical labor to burn it off.
We eat a “good breakfast”—often out of McDonalds—and then we go off to sit at a desk or stand at a machine. (Neither is great exercise.) Then comes lunch—anything from a thick sandwich and some cookies with a coke to a pizza. When we get home, the biggest meal of all, dinner—and an evening watching television. With a snack.
The real wonder is that anyone is NOT obese. However, I keep reading that obesity has become a increasing problem over the past few years. What changed just recently? I attended a lecture on obesity recently and suddenly realized there was one factor neither the physician, the dietician nor the exercise maven thought to mention.
Smoking. I was a chubby child. In 1957 (seven years before the Surgeon General’s “Report on Smoking and Health”) a friend advised me to take up smoking instead of snacking. It worked. Boy did it work! I had a cigarette instead of a snack; I lost weight.
A few years later a well dressed man on NYC’s Fifth Avenue stopped me to ask where I bought my clothes. (It wasn’t so much the garment as the fact I was thin enough to wear it well.) In 1973, for good and sufficient health reasons, I quit smoking.
Just a pound or two a year—I don’t binge eat and I do exercise—adds up in a few decades. A whole LOT of us have either quit smoking since then or never started. (I recall one of FDR’s sons was told to quit smoking by his MD about that time. In six months he had put on so much weight, his physician told him to go back to smoking—for his health.)
When we no longer had the ancient life style to keep us thin, smoking helped. A cigar, pipe or cigarette and a cup of coffee beats dessert every time, weight-wise. The vast—and needed—campaigns against smoking may just be another example of unintended consequences.
Light up—or chow down. Either may kill you.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Nine Eleven
Was it really eight years ago that I sat riveted to a TV screen that showed the World Trade Towers smoldering. They kept replaying a picture of an airplane flying into them. Peter Jennings (ABC) was so shaken he went back to smoking.
That would make him one more casualty of 9/11. Then there were reports of a plane hitting the Pentagon. Later we heard of a plane that went down in Pennsylvania. The President was flown from Florida where he’d been reading to a bunch of kids to somewhere in Missouri.
The Vice-President and a lot of other vital types were put somewhere underground. All planes were grounded. Military planes flew over the continental United States with orders to shoot. A kid in a small town West Michigan school asked me, “Are we all going to die?”
I told him the towers were 800 miles away and his tiny town was not a big enough target to warrant a bombing—not to worry. He wasn’t alone. My wife was due to begin a job that afternoon in a mall about twenty miles from that school. It closed after two hours that day. So did the big malls in Grand Rapids.
We went into national shock. As we consider trying people who tortured prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, we must remember the mood of the nation that day, the shock and fear—and the sense of urgency to find out who did this and where might they do it again.
Remember, after we were bombed at Pearl Harbor, we locked up all the Japanese-Americans in California, and nobody got tried for that. In fact we made the man who did it Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court and he wrote “Brown vs Board” later on.
The people that locked up the Japanese got away with it because a really big and threatening war broke out and lasted for years. The threat to our malls and buildings seemed to go away after 9/11. Nobody protested torture or imprisonment after 1942 or immediately after 2001. It might be a bit hypocritical of us to do it now..
It’s been eight years. They set off a few bombs in Madrid and London. A few hopelessly inept people were arrested here. We have to put our wallets and keys in baskets in order to get on a plane or into a county building. But nothing has gone boom here.
It’s been eight Years. Iraq has gotten boring. Afghanistan seems to be heating up, but it’s far away—except for the GIs on the ground there. The big story in this week’s “Newsweek” is: “Is Your Baby a Racist?”
Obama just had to fire his “Green Tzar” because the man says he thinks the United States Government blew up the towers. Movie actors are insisting we must have done it ourselves. Palestinians always thought so. If there is the remotest chance that Bush or Cheney did such a thing, then I would suggest the country is beyond salvaging. Hitler did burn the Reichstag himself, but he gained a lot by doing it. What did BUSH/CHENEY possibly gain? Convince me—with lots of facts.
It’s churlish of me, but I keep looking at pictures of the buildings and remembering how much we New Yorkers detested them when they were first designed and built. They were—and remained—ugly. It was a final act of hubris by Robert Moses--like “Rockefeller’s Folly” in downtown Albany.
Hubris built the towers. I remember thinking to myself as I watched them fall from here in Michigan—was it a kind of hubris that brought them down? In eight years I haven’t been able to formulate an answer.
Whatever brought them down, let’s not go off half-cocked and decide to punish those who tried to work fast—to prevent another attack—and were told, “Methods, constitutionality be hanged! Find them!”
Punish them and you might have to dig up the bones of some OSS assassins and burn them along side the 9/11 “villains”.
After all, WE told our agents to hurry up and find out.
That would make him one more casualty of 9/11. Then there were reports of a plane hitting the Pentagon. Later we heard of a plane that went down in Pennsylvania. The President was flown from Florida where he’d been reading to a bunch of kids to somewhere in Missouri.
The Vice-President and a lot of other vital types were put somewhere underground. All planes were grounded. Military planes flew over the continental United States with orders to shoot. A kid in a small town West Michigan school asked me, “Are we all going to die?”
I told him the towers were 800 miles away and his tiny town was not a big enough target to warrant a bombing—not to worry. He wasn’t alone. My wife was due to begin a job that afternoon in a mall about twenty miles from that school. It closed after two hours that day. So did the big malls in Grand Rapids.
We went into national shock. As we consider trying people who tortured prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, we must remember the mood of the nation that day, the shock and fear—and the sense of urgency to find out who did this and where might they do it again.
Remember, after we were bombed at Pearl Harbor, we locked up all the Japanese-Americans in California, and nobody got tried for that. In fact we made the man who did it Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court and he wrote “Brown vs Board” later on.
The people that locked up the Japanese got away with it because a really big and threatening war broke out and lasted for years. The threat to our malls and buildings seemed to go away after 9/11. Nobody protested torture or imprisonment after 1942 or immediately after 2001. It might be a bit hypocritical of us to do it now..
It’s been eight years. They set off a few bombs in Madrid and London. A few hopelessly inept people were arrested here. We have to put our wallets and keys in baskets in order to get on a plane or into a county building. But nothing has gone boom here.
It’s been eight Years. Iraq has gotten boring. Afghanistan seems to be heating up, but it’s far away—except for the GIs on the ground there. The big story in this week’s “Newsweek” is: “Is Your Baby a Racist?”
Obama just had to fire his “Green Tzar” because the man says he thinks the United States Government blew up the towers. Movie actors are insisting we must have done it ourselves. Palestinians always thought so. If there is the remotest chance that Bush or Cheney did such a thing, then I would suggest the country is beyond salvaging. Hitler did burn the Reichstag himself, but he gained a lot by doing it. What did BUSH/CHENEY possibly gain? Convince me—with lots of facts.
It’s churlish of me, but I keep looking at pictures of the buildings and remembering how much we New Yorkers detested them when they were first designed and built. They were—and remained—ugly. It was a final act of hubris by Robert Moses--like “Rockefeller’s Folly” in downtown Albany.
Hubris built the towers. I remember thinking to myself as I watched them fall from here in Michigan—was it a kind of hubris that brought them down? In eight years I haven’t been able to formulate an answer.
Whatever brought them down, let’s not go off half-cocked and decide to punish those who tried to work fast—to prevent another attack—and were told, “Methods, constitutionality be hanged! Find them!”
Punish them and you might have to dig up the bones of some OSS assassins and burn them along side the 9/11 “villains”.
After all, WE told our agents to hurry up and find out.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Recession: Whose Numbers?
The Federal Reserve today announced that the U.S. Recession is over. Everything, nearly everywhere, is stabilizing or even going up. I’m sure my contractor friend whom I just spoke to last evening will be glad to hear that. His experience suggests, “Everything is still really slow.”
My engineer acquaintance who works in the auto design/parts industry says he’s still got his job but he doesn’t ever expect to see back the wage cuts he’s given up in the last two years—or the involuntary furloughs. Those wages are gone forever.
A lot of people who are still working seem to be in that boat. No raises, reduced pay, days without pay—but the economists cheerfully list those folks as “employed”. That’s not going to help the retail sector—which needs to be a HUGE part of any economic boom.
Speaking of retail—have you walked into a store and tried to find a clerk lately? My wife took a job in J.C. Penney’s back in 2001. (She started on 9/11, an interesting omen.) She worked in the catalog department where orders are delivered and picked up.
When she began, eight full and part timers worked in catalog; at busy times often there were three of them on duty. Three people worked in the watch repair section next to it. The store had a full time telephone operator. They soon remodeled so that watch repair and catalog were manned by the same staff, getting rid of several people.
They laid off the phone operator and had catalog answer the phone—which got to be tricky while you were repairing a watch and trying to locate a recently arrived order from the catalog, and the phone rang. You absolutely were NOT allowed to put the phone down while attending to an in-store customer. Two or three extra arms might have helped.
She quit working there several years ago when it became too hectic. The other day we went into the store to pick up something from the catalog. One girl was there—to do it all. Walk through Walmart or any other large store—see if you can find a body to answer your questions.
The other day I chatted with the man who quit being grocery manager at Meijers (the chain from whom Walmart took most of its ideas about big stores). I asked why. He told me how many tens of thousands more items he was now supposed to keep stocked—and how many fewer people he had to do it with. He found the smaller produce section more congenial. He actually got to go home.
Many of those missing clerks don’t appear on unemployment lists. They were already working less than the twenty hours needed to apply for unemployment—or get any benefits. My wife watched clerk after clerk get cut from full time with benefits, to part time with none. These are the quiet little people who just disappear. They don’t buy a lot, either.
Around here another house sold, second this year amid all the signs. He sold it for what he paid for it five years ago—and he had to write a cheque to pay for the buyer’s closing costs. (The buyer had asked for help with the down payment. This he refused to do.) It was the only offer he had.
Whose number does the Fed use when it says a recession is over? Do they just look at numbers or do they ever talk to real people? I got an insight a few years ago. At the time I was helping out by doing a lot of the grocery shopping.
Washington kept saying there was little, low to none, inflation. Every week I’d go in the store and find this had gone up a dime, that item was now six ounces instead of eight (same price), and my total bill was up. What do they mean “no inflation”?
Then one day I read that grocery items aren’t included on the list of goods whose prices determine the amount of inflation. Oh. Why? Because food is too volatile.
Translation: Food inflates too much. Putting it on the list might just make somebody look like a liar and a fool. Rejoice! The Recession is over. Ignore next week’s paycut.
My engineer acquaintance who works in the auto design/parts industry says he’s still got his job but he doesn’t ever expect to see back the wage cuts he’s given up in the last two years—or the involuntary furloughs. Those wages are gone forever.
A lot of people who are still working seem to be in that boat. No raises, reduced pay, days without pay—but the economists cheerfully list those folks as “employed”. That’s not going to help the retail sector—which needs to be a HUGE part of any economic boom.
Speaking of retail—have you walked into a store and tried to find a clerk lately? My wife took a job in J.C. Penney’s back in 2001. (She started on 9/11, an interesting omen.) She worked in the catalog department where orders are delivered and picked up.
When she began, eight full and part timers worked in catalog; at busy times often there were three of them on duty. Three people worked in the watch repair section next to it. The store had a full time telephone operator. They soon remodeled so that watch repair and catalog were manned by the same staff, getting rid of several people.
They laid off the phone operator and had catalog answer the phone—which got to be tricky while you were repairing a watch and trying to locate a recently arrived order from the catalog, and the phone rang. You absolutely were NOT allowed to put the phone down while attending to an in-store customer. Two or three extra arms might have helped.
She quit working there several years ago when it became too hectic. The other day we went into the store to pick up something from the catalog. One girl was there—to do it all. Walk through Walmart or any other large store—see if you can find a body to answer your questions.
The other day I chatted with the man who quit being grocery manager at Meijers (the chain from whom Walmart took most of its ideas about big stores). I asked why. He told me how many tens of thousands more items he was now supposed to keep stocked—and how many fewer people he had to do it with. He found the smaller produce section more congenial. He actually got to go home.
Many of those missing clerks don’t appear on unemployment lists. They were already working less than the twenty hours needed to apply for unemployment—or get any benefits. My wife watched clerk after clerk get cut from full time with benefits, to part time with none. These are the quiet little people who just disappear. They don’t buy a lot, either.
Around here another house sold, second this year amid all the signs. He sold it for what he paid for it five years ago—and he had to write a cheque to pay for the buyer’s closing costs. (The buyer had asked for help with the down payment. This he refused to do.) It was the only offer he had.
Whose number does the Fed use when it says a recession is over? Do they just look at numbers or do they ever talk to real people? I got an insight a few years ago. At the time I was helping out by doing a lot of the grocery shopping.
Washington kept saying there was little, low to none, inflation. Every week I’d go in the store and find this had gone up a dime, that item was now six ounces instead of eight (same price), and my total bill was up. What do they mean “no inflation”?
Then one day I read that grocery items aren’t included on the list of goods whose prices determine the amount of inflation. Oh. Why? Because food is too volatile.
Translation: Food inflates too much. Putting it on the list might just make somebody look like a liar and a fool. Rejoice! The Recession is over. Ignore next week’s paycut.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Neo Liberalism: a Last Word on an Evil System
The Crash of 2008 might have been a bit more than the conservatives of 1952, 1980 or 2000 wanted, but like the story of the boy who kept asking for “Creamed Angleworms on Toast”—and finally was served it for dinner—it’s what they kept asking for. They wanted to starve the governmental beast, and it keeled over, nearly taking everything with it.
To a very real extent, they may well have what they say they wanted—less government and vastly reduced public services. They are already cutting back snow plowing and police in my neck of the woods. Michigan Medicaid has eliminated dental care and podiatry for all adults. Can Medicare be far behind?
A parking sticker at the local suburban high school has just gone up from five to twenty dollars. The district didn’t have enough reams of paper on hand to print all the exams last spring. You can point to a calendar and show the dates when Social Security and Medicare will go broke.
The New Deal will never be repealed—but it may be driven into insolvency and allow some of its programs to slide into Chapter 7 (liquidation). That will be a triumph for Neo-liberal ideology. So will the defeat of health care reform.
Neo-liberalism is a cruel political philosophy. As a conservative Republican friend of mine (his uncle was a conservative senator), said to me decades ago, “if you cannot afford health insurance, you should die.” This is why 47 million uninsured Americans do not concern them.
Do not appeal to their heart or their pity. At best they will merely fail to understand what you are talking about. I gained a real insight into their thinking when I borrowed a text from my son who is studying to be an urban planner. “The Neoliberal City, Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism.” By Jason Hackworth, Cornell U Press.
He studies the impact of Neo-liberalism or classical liberalism just on our inner cities. (The study is eye-opening.) He defines Neo-liberalism as “an ideological rejection of egalitarian liberalism [people like Ted Kennedy and Obama] … and the Keynesian welfare state” [think New Deal or LBJ}. P. 9.
Neo-liberals, he says, are very concerned that government not interfere with the market place (a rule broken by Bush Jr. when he didn’t let ALL of Wall Street go broke last fall). Hackworth also points out that after Thatcher and Reagan, Neo-liberalism and Neo-conservatism came to be identified as one and the same thing in Britain and America.
The affect on American cities has been, he notes, to withdraw federal resources from cities in the guise of allowing them the “freedom” to go their own way. The American worker was, please note, given the same “freedom” with his retirement plans and there was a real effort to give him similar “freedom” with his or her Social Security.
“I’m giving you your freedom, son. You are no longer permitted to eat and sleep in this house. Nor can you expect any more allowance or assistance. You are free to make your own way.” You can die of that kind of freedom. I am not and will not be this kind of Republican. I leave it to men like Jefferson, Jackson, Hoover and Bush Jr. I remain one of that dying breed, an Eisenhower Republican or a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. (My dad admitted to voting for FDR in 1936. Shhhh.)
When I think of “Christians” who still identify with a Darwinian, Reaganesque society at its most vicious, I am tempted to remind them of what the Biblical writer, St. Paul, says in Second Timothy, vv 1-5. He could almost have been writing about last fall.
“1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power.
He ends with the suggestion, “And from such people turn away!”
To a very real extent, they may well have what they say they wanted—less government and vastly reduced public services. They are already cutting back snow plowing and police in my neck of the woods. Michigan Medicaid has eliminated dental care and podiatry for all adults. Can Medicare be far behind?
A parking sticker at the local suburban high school has just gone up from five to twenty dollars. The district didn’t have enough reams of paper on hand to print all the exams last spring. You can point to a calendar and show the dates when Social Security and Medicare will go broke.
The New Deal will never be repealed—but it may be driven into insolvency and allow some of its programs to slide into Chapter 7 (liquidation). That will be a triumph for Neo-liberal ideology. So will the defeat of health care reform.
Neo-liberalism is a cruel political philosophy. As a conservative Republican friend of mine (his uncle was a conservative senator), said to me decades ago, “if you cannot afford health insurance, you should die.” This is why 47 million uninsured Americans do not concern them.
Do not appeal to their heart or their pity. At best they will merely fail to understand what you are talking about. I gained a real insight into their thinking when I borrowed a text from my son who is studying to be an urban planner. “The Neoliberal City, Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism.” By Jason Hackworth, Cornell U Press.
He studies the impact of Neo-liberalism or classical liberalism just on our inner cities. (The study is eye-opening.) He defines Neo-liberalism as “an ideological rejection of egalitarian liberalism [people like Ted Kennedy and Obama] … and the Keynesian welfare state” [think New Deal or LBJ}. P. 9.
Neo-liberals, he says, are very concerned that government not interfere with the market place (a rule broken by Bush Jr. when he didn’t let ALL of Wall Street go broke last fall). Hackworth also points out that after Thatcher and Reagan, Neo-liberalism and Neo-conservatism came to be identified as one and the same thing in Britain and America.
The affect on American cities has been, he notes, to withdraw federal resources from cities in the guise of allowing them the “freedom” to go their own way. The American worker was, please note, given the same “freedom” with his retirement plans and there was a real effort to give him similar “freedom” with his or her Social Security.
“I’m giving you your freedom, son. You are no longer permitted to eat and sleep in this house. Nor can you expect any more allowance or assistance. You are free to make your own way.” You can die of that kind of freedom. I am not and will not be this kind of Republican. I leave it to men like Jefferson, Jackson, Hoover and Bush Jr. I remain one of that dying breed, an Eisenhower Republican or a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. (My dad admitted to voting for FDR in 1936. Shhhh.)
When I think of “Christians” who still identify with a Darwinian, Reaganesque society at its most vicious, I am tempted to remind them of what the Biblical writer, St. Paul, says in Second Timothy, vv 1-5. He could almost have been writing about last fall.
“1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power.
He ends with the suggestion, “And from such people turn away!”
Monday, September 7, 2009
Bush's Game of Duck, Duck, Goose Ends
With both Congress AND the White House solidly in the Neo-liberal corner, the conservative Republicans enjoyed an exceptional opportunity to impose their philosophy on the nation. Under Reagan, they had been restrained by a Democratic Congress; under Clinton, by a Democratic president; George H.W. Bush’s heart was never with them and he had a Democratic Congress.
But now—in 2001—with the younger Bush in the White House—a man both friend and foe called more of a Reaganite than Reagan himself—their day had dawned. They pushed through a massive tax reduction—over a trillion and a third in revenue would be denied the federal government each year. You couldn’t repeal the New Deal, but you could starve it to death.
There was no way federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other manifestations of what they called a welfare state could be maintained with so little tax money. They offered more and more inducements to privatize pensions and health care.
They even attempted to make it necessary for citizens to be responsible for investing their own Social Security money. “Look,” they said, “the stock market has gone up ten thousand points in just a few years—had you invested that money in the market, your Social Security would be worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars more”.
Nobody made much of a point of the fact that the huge stock market gains basically stopped under young Bush. The irrational exuberance for technology stocks that had come a cropper in 2000 was now transferred into real estate. Repeal of Glass Steagall Act under Clinton allowed banks to take risks that would have imposed conservatorship on a private individual.
This was good. Republicans had become Jeffersonians. “That government governs best which governs least.” Away with regulation—just another part of big government. Government is bad; greed is good. It was like tearing the bottom out of a boat when you are miles out to sea.
Americans bought it. They mortgaged themselves to houses at prices they could not afford—we’ll all be rich bye-and-bye! They took out second mortgages to finance one of the largest spending sprees in history. To remodel a kitchen cost the price of a very nice house less than fifty years before. They poured their retirement hopes and dreams into an all but unregulated stock market that they believed could only go up. (Ah, where were Jim Fiske and Jay Gould?)
Oh yes, as if it were a gift to conservative Republicans, there came the bombings of 9/11. This led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—however necessary or unnecessary—that cost billions and billions more on an ever declining federal revenue base.
Then, in fall, 2008, someone tore up the last layer on the bottom of the boat. Water gushed in. Someone realized there were no life preservers (regulations) and trillions worth of dreams, homes and retirement funds were lost in months. It seems Wall Street had been full of Jim Fiskes and Jay Goulds, after all.
The only thing a lot of people still had to be thankful for is that Congress had stopped short of privatizing Social Security. For the rest of the market, nobody has yet counted how many bad loans banks are sitting on today, how long the Chinese will go on supporting the dollar, how long the Fed can afford printing money and buying treasuries.
The cost of the recession cannot be computed merely in jobs lost—what about pay cuts, slashed hours—all of these impinge dangerously on a market 70% driven by consumer spending. The boat is sunk; we are all swimming; how far?
More later.
But now—in 2001—with the younger Bush in the White House—a man both friend and foe called more of a Reaganite than Reagan himself—their day had dawned. They pushed through a massive tax reduction—over a trillion and a third in revenue would be denied the federal government each year. You couldn’t repeal the New Deal, but you could starve it to death.
There was no way federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other manifestations of what they called a welfare state could be maintained with so little tax money. They offered more and more inducements to privatize pensions and health care.
They even attempted to make it necessary for citizens to be responsible for investing their own Social Security money. “Look,” they said, “the stock market has gone up ten thousand points in just a few years—had you invested that money in the market, your Social Security would be worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars more”.
Nobody made much of a point of the fact that the huge stock market gains basically stopped under young Bush. The irrational exuberance for technology stocks that had come a cropper in 2000 was now transferred into real estate. Repeal of Glass Steagall Act under Clinton allowed banks to take risks that would have imposed conservatorship on a private individual.
This was good. Republicans had become Jeffersonians. “That government governs best which governs least.” Away with regulation—just another part of big government. Government is bad; greed is good. It was like tearing the bottom out of a boat when you are miles out to sea.
Americans bought it. They mortgaged themselves to houses at prices they could not afford—we’ll all be rich bye-and-bye! They took out second mortgages to finance one of the largest spending sprees in history. To remodel a kitchen cost the price of a very nice house less than fifty years before. They poured their retirement hopes and dreams into an all but unregulated stock market that they believed could only go up. (Ah, where were Jim Fiske and Jay Gould?)
Oh yes, as if it were a gift to conservative Republicans, there came the bombings of 9/11. This led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—however necessary or unnecessary—that cost billions and billions more on an ever declining federal revenue base.
Then, in fall, 2008, someone tore up the last layer on the bottom of the boat. Water gushed in. Someone realized there were no life preservers (regulations) and trillions worth of dreams, homes and retirement funds were lost in months. It seems Wall Street had been full of Jim Fiskes and Jay Goulds, after all.
The only thing a lot of people still had to be thankful for is that Congress had stopped short of privatizing Social Security. For the rest of the market, nobody has yet counted how many bad loans banks are sitting on today, how long the Chinese will go on supporting the dollar, how long the Fed can afford printing money and buying treasuries.
The cost of the recession cannot be computed merely in jobs lost—what about pay cuts, slashed hours—all of these impinge dangerously on a market 70% driven by consumer spending. The boat is sunk; we are all swimming; how far?
More later.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Newt Gingrich's Modest Proposal
I made a reference to author Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” in the last blog. Some may not recall what this was about. It was written in England around 1700 at a time when there was hunger and privation in the English province of Ireland.
English upper classes had no more desire to actually assist the hungry and the poor than do most middle and upper class Americans today. They fretted and tutted about the problem—and opined concerning the low moral standards of the Irish that caused the problem, but did nothing significant to help alleviate it.
So Swift took a critical look at the actual situation. Two things stood out: Too many Irishmen; too little food. (It may not have helped that most large farms in Ireland were owned by absentee Englishmen who shipped the produce home to sell for profit),
How do you deal with too many people, too little food? Mr. Swift came up with what he called his MODEST PROPOSAL. Tongue in cheek, he suggested that the Irish cook and eat their extra children, thereby solving both the problem of starvation and excess population.
The fustudious (my word) English lacked the wit to recognize satire—but did at least have the grace to be outraged at the notion. In fact Swift took quite a bit of heat for what he wrote. Alas, even those who accepted his explanation did little to help the Irish.
I compared the conservative Republican (‘liberal”) manifesto—Contract with America—of 1994 with Swift’s Modest Proposal. Unfortunately, of course, Newt Gingrich and his fellow Republicans in 1994 were dead serious when they spoke of cutting off food to mothers of illegitimate children to prevent children from being born out of wedlock.
They utterly failed to recognize the Swiftian irony in their proposals. (And they may also have missed the Biblical passage, James 1:27. 27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.)
Conservatives in 1700 AND 2000 were good at yammering about the last half the verse while ignoring the first half. It does very little good to remind them of the first half at all. Newt Gingrich’s come the same in all centuries.
(Swift is also author of the “children’s book” Gulliver’s Travels, which like the modern Wizard of Oz is also a political satire. He realized that when writing biting satire, it is wiser to make it sound like a book for kids.)
Unfortunately, in 1994, the Democrats lacked anyone with the cleverness to retaliate with a good satire of their own that might have reduced the Republican Contract to its inherent silliness. So the conservatives got away with their proposal (which they lacked the smarts to understand was almost self-parodying} and took over Congress and, eventually, the White House.
(Incidentally, there were historical reasons why a lot of Irishmen—including Ted Kennedy’s father—backed the Germans against England in World War II. We had to send troops and threaten to invade to make them stop. Their own modest proposal?)
More later.
English upper classes had no more desire to actually assist the hungry and the poor than do most middle and upper class Americans today. They fretted and tutted about the problem—and opined concerning the low moral standards of the Irish that caused the problem, but did nothing significant to help alleviate it.
So Swift took a critical look at the actual situation. Two things stood out: Too many Irishmen; too little food. (It may not have helped that most large farms in Ireland were owned by absentee Englishmen who shipped the produce home to sell for profit),
How do you deal with too many people, too little food? Mr. Swift came up with what he called his MODEST PROPOSAL. Tongue in cheek, he suggested that the Irish cook and eat their extra children, thereby solving both the problem of starvation and excess population.
The fustudious (my word) English lacked the wit to recognize satire—but did at least have the grace to be outraged at the notion. In fact Swift took quite a bit of heat for what he wrote. Alas, even those who accepted his explanation did little to help the Irish.
I compared the conservative Republican (‘liberal”) manifesto—Contract with America—of 1994 with Swift’s Modest Proposal. Unfortunately, of course, Newt Gingrich and his fellow Republicans in 1994 were dead serious when they spoke of cutting off food to mothers of illegitimate children to prevent children from being born out of wedlock.
They utterly failed to recognize the Swiftian irony in their proposals. (And they may also have missed the Biblical passage, James 1:27. 27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.)
Conservatives in 1700 AND 2000 were good at yammering about the last half the verse while ignoring the first half. It does very little good to remind them of the first half at all. Newt Gingrich’s come the same in all centuries.
(Swift is also author of the “children’s book” Gulliver’s Travels, which like the modern Wizard of Oz is also a political satire. He realized that when writing biting satire, it is wiser to make it sound like a book for kids.)
Unfortunately, in 1994, the Democrats lacked anyone with the cleverness to retaliate with a good satire of their own that might have reduced the Republican Contract to its inherent silliness. So the conservatives got away with their proposal (which they lacked the smarts to understand was almost self-parodying} and took over Congress and, eventually, the White House.
(Incidentally, there were historical reasons why a lot of Irishmen—including Ted Kennedy’s father—backed the Germans against England in World War II. We had to send troops and threaten to invade to make them stop. Their own modest proposal?)
More later.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Clinton hands Congress to the Neo-liberals
Bill Clinton was one of the smartest men ever to sit in the Oval Office. On top of smarts, he had a real interest in the minutiae of government. As they said, he was a “policy wonk”. Unlike Eisenhower and other presidents who had aides boil all the world’s affairs down to single page each day, Clinton actually read the stuff that landed on his desk.
Then he talked about it. He had a brilliant, collegial financial team to talk to about national and international finance. Not since Alexander Hamilton “dined alone” has there been so much brilliance at a treasury meeting as when Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Alan Greenspan sat down with Bill Clinton to talk financial policy.
You may feel their policies were wrong headed or even disastrous in some measure, but no one can deny their brains, background and experience—with matters like nation-wide currency crises, major recessions throughout the globe, and deficit spending.
Their backgrounds were Wall Street, Washington and Harvard—plus Clinton’s experience as governor of a state for twelve years. They took a look at the spending and non-taxing (on the wealthy) policies of the United States and concluded that it could not be sustained.
One suspects Reagan felt the same thing, only he welcomed the prospect of a national train wreck that might return us to a simpler time. The impending train wreck had no appeal for Clinton. In 1993, he proposed a tax increase.
It was quite modest. It raised the tax rate on the top 1.2% of American earners to 39.6% (it’s 35% today under Bush tax cuts), while cutting rates for the bottom 15 million wage earners and cutting taxes on 90% of all small businesses.
Had conservative Republicans merely been interested in cutting the deficit or balancing the budget, they could have had minimal problems with this bill. It certainly worked to balance the budget—for the first time since the Eisenhower Administration. But that seems not to have been the Republican issue.
They stood in the aisles of Congress jeering “Goodbye” to Congressmen and women who voted for Clinton’s bill. A year later the conservative Republicans were proven right. Clinton, like George H.W. Bush before him, was to be savagely punished for his tax increase.
Right before the 1994 Congressional Elections all but two sitting Republican Congressmen signed the “Contract With America.” Among other things it promised to cut product liability laws (protecting business from responsibility for defects), to cut off food supplies to teen age mothers of illegitimate children, thereby cutting down on illegitimate births—and various other measures Jonathon Swift seems to have forgotten in his “Modest Proposal”, and generally reduce the size of government.
The Contract worked. The Republicans—the CONSERVATIVE Republicans—had control of Congress for the first time since 1954. They would basically keep it for over ten years. They could and did override some Clinton vetoes. They had power they had only dreamt of.
Clinton, a very bright man, fought them where he could, and basically let them have their head. In 2001, Republicans would add to their arsenal the most “conservative”—or “liberal” President this nation had seem since the 1920s.
In 2008, we would see the consequences. More later.
Then he talked about it. He had a brilliant, collegial financial team to talk to about national and international finance. Not since Alexander Hamilton “dined alone” has there been so much brilliance at a treasury meeting as when Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Alan Greenspan sat down with Bill Clinton to talk financial policy.
You may feel their policies were wrong headed or even disastrous in some measure, but no one can deny their brains, background and experience—with matters like nation-wide currency crises, major recessions throughout the globe, and deficit spending.
Their backgrounds were Wall Street, Washington and Harvard—plus Clinton’s experience as governor of a state for twelve years. They took a look at the spending and non-taxing (on the wealthy) policies of the United States and concluded that it could not be sustained.
One suspects Reagan felt the same thing, only he welcomed the prospect of a national train wreck that might return us to a simpler time. The impending train wreck had no appeal for Clinton. In 1993, he proposed a tax increase.
It was quite modest. It raised the tax rate on the top 1.2% of American earners to 39.6% (it’s 35% today under Bush tax cuts), while cutting rates for the bottom 15 million wage earners and cutting taxes on 90% of all small businesses.
Had conservative Republicans merely been interested in cutting the deficit or balancing the budget, they could have had minimal problems with this bill. It certainly worked to balance the budget—for the first time since the Eisenhower Administration. But that seems not to have been the Republican issue.
They stood in the aisles of Congress jeering “Goodbye” to Congressmen and women who voted for Clinton’s bill. A year later the conservative Republicans were proven right. Clinton, like George H.W. Bush before him, was to be savagely punished for his tax increase.
Right before the 1994 Congressional Elections all but two sitting Republican Congressmen signed the “Contract With America.” Among other things it promised to cut product liability laws (protecting business from responsibility for defects), to cut off food supplies to teen age mothers of illegitimate children, thereby cutting down on illegitimate births—and various other measures Jonathon Swift seems to have forgotten in his “Modest Proposal”, and generally reduce the size of government.
The Contract worked. The Republicans—the CONSERVATIVE Republicans—had control of Congress for the first time since 1954. They would basically keep it for over ten years. They could and did override some Clinton vetoes. They had power they had only dreamt of.
Clinton, a very bright man, fought them where he could, and basically let them have their head. In 2001, Republicans would add to their arsenal the most “conservative”—or “liberal” President this nation had seem since the 1920s.
In 2008, we would see the consequences. More later.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Neo-liberals Show Their Muscles & Their Colors
During his time in office, Ronald Reagan RAISED taxes some thirteen times. How he got away with this is something for future biographers to ponder. He was, verbally, the champion of low taxes, of the “less government is better” wing of the Republican Party.
For one thing, his final ante in the Cold War poker game in which he forced the Soviets to fold and leave the game cost money. So he had an excuse that could pass at least some form of muster with conservative Republicans.
Over the duration of the Cold War, conservative (Neo-liberal/small government) Republicans had come to accept the idea that intercontinental ballistic missiles changed the international equation. Isolationism was no longer practical. This time, unlike World War II, there really was an enemy out there who could damage us at home.
On top of that there was the question of domestic subversion. To the conservative, the Nazis weren’t so awfully bad. They at least allowed the well-to-do to keep their goodies. The Communists threatened to take them all away. Most affluent Americans would allow you to spend almost any amount of tax money to prevent Reds from coming to power—just as the wealthy did in Germany.
This made Reagan’s derelictions forgivable. Along with the fact that he TRULY had a Teflon coating—not only to shield him from his political enemies but from the outrage of his political allies. Like Eisenhower, Reagan had a grin that could turn away all wrath.
So Reagan could preach tax cuts, raise taxes and survive politically. George H.W. Bush was not so lucky. He preached tax cuts, promised no tax raises—and then found himself in the midst of a recession. He also had a war breaking out in Kuwait (wars do cost money, you know). Bush was confronted with a dilemma.
At the 1988 convention he had promised “no new taxes—read my lips”. In 1990 he was confronted with a (then) large deficit and inadequate revenues. The Democrats (who controlled Congress) insisted on raising taxes. Republicans insisted on cutting spending (programs).
Bush, who was by no means a “small government” Neo-liberal, agreed with the Democratic point of view more than he did the Republicans (after all he had accused Reagan of being guilty of “voodoo economics” in the primary season of 1980).
He agreed to higher taxes. Outraged conservative Republicans (whose ultimate goal was to starve government into loosing heft) never forgave him. Even when he won his war in Kuwait inside of one hundred hours—with few casualties—he did not gain forgiveness.
Election time in 1992 came and the Democrats put up Bill Clinton, a man who talked like a moderate and promised to reduce federal welfare expenditures (which he did). Bush didn’t seem to sense until the votes were counted that he was a dead man walking.
The Christians who had backed Reagan so fervently had no reason to love Bush. The secular conservatives who had felt betrayed by Bush’s failure to keep his 1988 promise on taxes didn’t kill themselves to re-elect Bush either. People were so frustrated that 19% turned to independent candidate Ross Perot. Clinton won with 43% of the vote to Bush’s 38%.
Conservative, Neo-liberal, Republicans lost the White House, but since 1980 they had gained the power to punish those who opposed them—as Bill Clinton would learn two years into his own presidency. More later.
For one thing, his final ante in the Cold War poker game in which he forced the Soviets to fold and leave the game cost money. So he had an excuse that could pass at least some form of muster with conservative Republicans.
Over the duration of the Cold War, conservative (Neo-liberal/small government) Republicans had come to accept the idea that intercontinental ballistic missiles changed the international equation. Isolationism was no longer practical. This time, unlike World War II, there really was an enemy out there who could damage us at home.
On top of that there was the question of domestic subversion. To the conservative, the Nazis weren’t so awfully bad. They at least allowed the well-to-do to keep their goodies. The Communists threatened to take them all away. Most affluent Americans would allow you to spend almost any amount of tax money to prevent Reds from coming to power—just as the wealthy did in Germany.
This made Reagan’s derelictions forgivable. Along with the fact that he TRULY had a Teflon coating—not only to shield him from his political enemies but from the outrage of his political allies. Like Eisenhower, Reagan had a grin that could turn away all wrath.
So Reagan could preach tax cuts, raise taxes and survive politically. George H.W. Bush was not so lucky. He preached tax cuts, promised no tax raises—and then found himself in the midst of a recession. He also had a war breaking out in Kuwait (wars do cost money, you know). Bush was confronted with a dilemma.
At the 1988 convention he had promised “no new taxes—read my lips”. In 1990 he was confronted with a (then) large deficit and inadequate revenues. The Democrats (who controlled Congress) insisted on raising taxes. Republicans insisted on cutting spending (programs).
Bush, who was by no means a “small government” Neo-liberal, agreed with the Democratic point of view more than he did the Republicans (after all he had accused Reagan of being guilty of “voodoo economics” in the primary season of 1980).
He agreed to higher taxes. Outraged conservative Republicans (whose ultimate goal was to starve government into loosing heft) never forgave him. Even when he won his war in Kuwait inside of one hundred hours—with few casualties—he did not gain forgiveness.
Election time in 1992 came and the Democrats put up Bill Clinton, a man who talked like a moderate and promised to reduce federal welfare expenditures (which he did). Bush didn’t seem to sense until the votes were counted that he was a dead man walking.
The Christians who had backed Reagan so fervently had no reason to love Bush. The secular conservatives who had felt betrayed by Bush’s failure to keep his 1988 promise on taxes didn’t kill themselves to re-elect Bush either. People were so frustrated that 19% turned to independent candidate Ross Perot. Clinton won with 43% of the vote to Bush’s 38%.
Conservative, Neo-liberal, Republicans lost the White House, but since 1980 they had gained the power to punish those who opposed them—as Bill Clinton would learn two years into his own presidency. More later.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Neo-liberalism: Rage of the Unempowered 4
Now it was the Christians’ turn to feel rage at their lack of empowerment. After all, they felt with some justification, Reagan could never have made it into the White House without them—and now they were being politely ignored in matters dearest to their hearts.
Tele-evangelist Pat Robertson made a major move shortly after Reagan’s re-election in 1984. No more, he decided, would Christian conservatives support secular conservatives! They would have a candidate of their own—himself. He would use his television audience of Pentecostal, Charismatic and evangelical Christians as a base.
He began by calling it an “educational” movement. I attended an early rally in Grand Rapids back in the mid-‘80s. The earnest young man who was introduced to us as the state leader of this “educational” campaign in Michigan, assured me over and over that Mr. Robertson “has no intention of running for president.” These meeting were strictly to inform voters.
We-e-ll, if it waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims around in water like a duck, I tend to think of it as a duck. I’ve seen too many political rallies, fund raisers and smoke filled rooms in my life not to know an office seeking movement when I’m in the midst of one.
I smiled and stepped back—what’s the point of calling an eager young chap a blatant liar and getting mobbed for it when he may merely be naïve or stupid? I looked around and noticed that the young leaders were doing nothing to make nice to the handful of press who were there.
So I did them a small favor. As an old hand at government PR, I latched onto the bemused chap from the “Grand Rapids Press”, answered as many questions of his as I could and led him over to the severely non-alcoholic refreshment table. (No unfed reporter is EVER friendly.) No one else that I saw there even spoke to him. The media, remember, is the enemy.
A year or so later, Robertson took the gloves off and began publicly running for the Republican nomination in 1988. I almost felt sorry for some of my pathetically certain Christian friends. “I’M going to help nominate the President of the United States,” a devout and earnest middle aged business woman assured me as she went off to a Robertson state convention.
Of course when primary season rolled around, the (very secular) Bush people simply pounded the Christian eager beavers into the ground. Robertson had as much chance of getting elected as I had. By trying—and failing—to go it alone, the “Christian Right” had demonstrated their political impotence in broad daylight.
Their votes were still useful—crucial in some states—but their position in the conservative Republican Party was now similar to that of blacks in the Democratic Party. They were the margin of victory in several cities and states, but they could be taken for granted and all but ignored in serious policy making. After all, where else had they to go?
George H.W. Bush, an old fashioned eastern style Republican won the White House that year. Within two years he would violate the most sacred tenet in the conservative/classic liberal/neo-liberal Republican canon and would be savagely punished for it. More later.
Tele-evangelist Pat Robertson made a major move shortly after Reagan’s re-election in 1984. No more, he decided, would Christian conservatives support secular conservatives! They would have a candidate of their own—himself. He would use his television audience of Pentecostal, Charismatic and evangelical Christians as a base.
He began by calling it an “educational” movement. I attended an early rally in Grand Rapids back in the mid-‘80s. The earnest young man who was introduced to us as the state leader of this “educational” campaign in Michigan, assured me over and over that Mr. Robertson “has no intention of running for president.” These meeting were strictly to inform voters.
We-e-ll, if it waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims around in water like a duck, I tend to think of it as a duck. I’ve seen too many political rallies, fund raisers and smoke filled rooms in my life not to know an office seeking movement when I’m in the midst of one.
I smiled and stepped back—what’s the point of calling an eager young chap a blatant liar and getting mobbed for it when he may merely be naïve or stupid? I looked around and noticed that the young leaders were doing nothing to make nice to the handful of press who were there.
So I did them a small favor. As an old hand at government PR, I latched onto the bemused chap from the “Grand Rapids Press”, answered as many questions of his as I could and led him over to the severely non-alcoholic refreshment table. (No unfed reporter is EVER friendly.) No one else that I saw there even spoke to him. The media, remember, is the enemy.
A year or so later, Robertson took the gloves off and began publicly running for the Republican nomination in 1988. I almost felt sorry for some of my pathetically certain Christian friends. “I’M going to help nominate the President of the United States,” a devout and earnest middle aged business woman assured me as she went off to a Robertson state convention.
Of course when primary season rolled around, the (very secular) Bush people simply pounded the Christian eager beavers into the ground. Robertson had as much chance of getting elected as I had. By trying—and failing—to go it alone, the “Christian Right” had demonstrated their political impotence in broad daylight.
Their votes were still useful—crucial in some states—but their position in the conservative Republican Party was now similar to that of blacks in the Democratic Party. They were the margin of victory in several cities and states, but they could be taken for granted and all but ignored in serious policy making. After all, where else had they to go?
George H.W. Bush, an old fashioned eastern style Republican won the White House that year. Within two years he would violate the most sacred tenet in the conservative/classic liberal/neo-liberal Republican canon and would be savagely punished for it. More later.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Neo-liberals: Rage of the Unempowered 3
Angry Christians who felt the country was being taken away from them united with equally angry economically and politically conservative Republicans to take back the White House for the first time in nearly fifty years.
It was a lousy marriage. Christians, harking back to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries wanted to restore Christianity to its once pre-eminent place in government and school. They wanted pornography stuff back into its bottle. They wanted prayer in classrooms. They wanted abortion outlawed. Like the Sunni Muslims in Iraq after 2003, they were unable to believe or accept that they were now in the minority in most of their positions.
They’re conservative political allies were much more aware of this reality then they were. Thus there was no big push from the White House for the Christian agenda. Conservative Republicans had their own agenda, and it had little to do with religion.
They wanted the New Deal rolled back, as much as it could be. They wanted government shrunk to a much smaller size. They, too, were unable to achieve the goals for which they had united with Christians to vote Reagan into office.
For one thing, Reagan was also a realist. He knew he faced a Democratic House (and Speaker Tip O’Neal) that was as pro-big government as any member of Roosevelt’s “kitchen cabinet”. Furthermore, Reagan was too laid back, too good humored, to commit himself to any radically immediate course of action. He committed himself to a few things he felt he could change and became a master at waiting. Both in foreign and domestic policies.
He disliked big government as much as any man alive. But he chose to strike at it not through losing Congressional battles over repeal of this or that program—rather he chose to starve what he and his allies regard as an apocalyptic beast.
Tax cuts were his chosen weapon. They’re always popular. Americans especially like to receive governmental benefits but, since the 1760s, have hated paying for them. Lots of conservative Democrats who would have voted passionately against repeal of any New Deal Legislation, were perfectly willing to support Reagan in cutting of their food supply by slashing taxes. Victory wouldn’t come until 2008.
In foreign affairs, he perceived the Cold War as a poker game that had been played for a very limited ten dollar ante. He sensed that while we were the ones holding back, the Russians could afford nothing more. He dumped several billion on the table in a final bet. A year after Reagan left office, the Soviets folded and had to leave the game. It was a brilliant move.
His successes would leave millions of Americans convinced that Reagan’s way was THE way. The next three presidents after him would have to sail into the wind he created even if one was an eastern Republican and another a Democrat.
Meanwhile the Christian conservatives, with their vastly different agenda, were growing disillusioned. Early in Reagan’s second term, fundamentalist Christians gathered behind their own candidate, making delirious plans to take over the Republican Party in 1988. More later.
It was a lousy marriage. Christians, harking back to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries wanted to restore Christianity to its once pre-eminent place in government and school. They wanted pornography stuff back into its bottle. They wanted prayer in classrooms. They wanted abortion outlawed. Like the Sunni Muslims in Iraq after 2003, they were unable to believe or accept that they were now in the minority in most of their positions.
They’re conservative political allies were much more aware of this reality then they were. Thus there was no big push from the White House for the Christian agenda. Conservative Republicans had their own agenda, and it had little to do with religion.
They wanted the New Deal rolled back, as much as it could be. They wanted government shrunk to a much smaller size. They, too, were unable to achieve the goals for which they had united with Christians to vote Reagan into office.
For one thing, Reagan was also a realist. He knew he faced a Democratic House (and Speaker Tip O’Neal) that was as pro-big government as any member of Roosevelt’s “kitchen cabinet”. Furthermore, Reagan was too laid back, too good humored, to commit himself to any radically immediate course of action. He committed himself to a few things he felt he could change and became a master at waiting. Both in foreign and domestic policies.
He disliked big government as much as any man alive. But he chose to strike at it not through losing Congressional battles over repeal of this or that program—rather he chose to starve what he and his allies regard as an apocalyptic beast.
Tax cuts were his chosen weapon. They’re always popular. Americans especially like to receive governmental benefits but, since the 1760s, have hated paying for them. Lots of conservative Democrats who would have voted passionately against repeal of any New Deal Legislation, were perfectly willing to support Reagan in cutting of their food supply by slashing taxes. Victory wouldn’t come until 2008.
In foreign affairs, he perceived the Cold War as a poker game that had been played for a very limited ten dollar ante. He sensed that while we were the ones holding back, the Russians could afford nothing more. He dumped several billion on the table in a final bet. A year after Reagan left office, the Soviets folded and had to leave the game. It was a brilliant move.
His successes would leave millions of Americans convinced that Reagan’s way was THE way. The next three presidents after him would have to sail into the wind he created even if one was an eastern Republican and another a Democrat.
Meanwhile the Christian conservatives, with their vastly different agenda, were growing disillusioned. Early in Reagan’s second term, fundamentalist Christians gathered behind their own candidate, making delirious plans to take over the Republican Party in 1988. More later.
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