Nothing Major Happened, But It Was A Big Decade

Here goes the last of the ought’s—for another century or so—and on to the second decade of the Twenty-first Century. For the past three centuries those second decades have been particularly bloody. Maybe this century will be different.
The most significant fact about the first decade of this century is the change in world perception of the United States. In 2000, nobody questioned the fact that the United States was the “world’s only super power”. Somehow, after 911, after being defied successfully by the nascent nuclear states of North Korea and Iran, we don’t look so invincibly dominant.
We’re pulling down the war in Iraq to something close to a draw—thanks to the active help of the people we called—and attacked as—enemies for most of the decade. After eight years in Afghanistan, no one is saying, “Mission Accomplished”.
Our vaunted economic system—envied and emulated without question only two years ago—has shown size seventeen-triple wide feet of clay. Instead of being seen as the engine that pulled the rest of the world up, we are cursed in many quarters as the weight that drags it down.
Sometimes the out-of-touch bankers in New York, with their squabbling over the right to multi-million dollar bonuses—presiding over a stock market that, right now, is 10% lower than it was ten years ago, remind me of Hitler’s henchman vying over the trappings of Third Reich power during the final week before Unconditional Surrender.
The Asiatic markets are where the IPOs are now. Turkey is booming. China is growing. The government is pouring more billions into GMAC in another desperate measure to keep it afloat. Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Saturn are gone. Chrysler, dropping closer and closer to flat line, hasn’t a single vehicle among listings of quality cars—except for one huge Dodge Truck.
Realtors warn that you can’t market a house that needs repairs. Today’s buyers simply do not have the available money to fix anything. The number of “For Sale” signs in my neighborhood is creeping up; nothing has moved since August.
That’s the big thing about this decade—it’s as if someone took a flag and washed it in very hot water. It still flies. It still has fifty starts and thirteen stripes. It just looks a bit smaller. We’re still the most powerful nation, the biggest economy, it’s just that we’ve lost a couple of steps on the guys right behind us—and, maybe, there are more of them.
More and more I sense in local school districts, county and state governments, in the national government, that the leaders there are facing something no living American has ever seen before. There is a real LACK of what Woody Guthrie called the “dough-re-mi, boys”. They don't know how to handle it.
Even in the Depression the Government(s) could borrow, print or somehow come up with the cash to build, develop, put millions to work on the PWA, WPA and CCC and create a huge new navy, from destroyers, battleships and carriers on up. Today shocked school boards, county road commissioners and on up are finding out the cupboard is actually bare!
I fear that, speaking as a Republican, Obama has probably done about as well as could be expected—in that he really had little to work with. After a year in office, things are sort of so-so normal—Democrats are still mostly for him, albeit with less enthusiasm than a year ago.
Republicans are ag’in him as much as they were last years. Independents are swinging away from him—but if they didn’t do that, would they really be independent?
Another year, another trillion or so—onward.

The Women's Gospel

The Second chapter of Luke has been listened to, glanced at, referred to by and even read by millions of people during the last few days. It is, as many know, THE Christmas Story. It’s about Roman taxes, a stable, a child in a manger and some shepherds visited by angels.
But it’s also the beginning of the only (if you count Luke and Acts as one book) book in the entire Jewish and Christian Bible written by a non-Jew. In the introduction to the book, the author makes it clear that he has interviewed eyewitnesses and is putting down their story.
Very much as a consequence of its Gentile flavor, the book could also be called “The Ladies Gospel”. Even though Luke was a friend of the Pharisee-trained Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul), he was not in sympathy with the standard morning prayer of the Pharisee’s—“Thank you, oh God, that you did not make me a woman.”
After all, when a nervous Israeli commander begs a prophetess to go with him for good luck, she warns him that her presence will rob him of his glory (Judges 4) and that the enemy general will be killed by a mere female. It works out just that way.
The Greek author, Luke, of this most complete gospel has nothing of such an attitude, even if his patient and colleague, St. Paul, does. Luke begins with the story of a man—who is so doubtful of what an angelic visitor tells him that he is struck dumb for the duration of his wife’s miraculous pregnancy. He only gets his voice back when he finally does exactly what Gabriel told him.
The rest of the chapter is about his wife, Elizabeth, and her cousin Mary. Both women are mysteriously pregnant (Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Mary’s fiancé was ready to dump her), and the reaction of both is quoted at length as John the Baptizer is born.
Second chapter moves right on with the birth of Mary’s son, Jeshua (Joshua in English, Jesus in Greek), and emphasizes HER reactions to the shepherds’ story, the blessings in the temple, and the twelve year old who stayed behind to challenge the wisest teachers of his day.
Tempting to suggest she’s just being a good Jewish mama—until chapter eight comes. The rest of the Jewish-written gospels (Matthew, Mark and John) sort of leave us to guess how Jesus made a living as he led a peripatetic school through the byways of ancient Palestine, always with at least twelve followers to feed.
How? With what money? An inheritance? Highway robbery (very common in the area)? Luke the Gentile tells us right out—he lists several wealthy women “and many more” who paid his way out of THEIR resources.
A rabbi who allowed, let alone admitted, that he let women support him! This was a long, long way from Judges 4! Mama isn’t listed here—these women weren’t family. (John 19:23-24) points out that his clothes were top quality.
Luke 10, v.41, quotes Christ as saying that the woman who chose to listen and educate herself had actually made a better choice than the one who stayed in the kitchen to serve dinner—a notion that was still radical long after the American Declaration of Independence!
Luke 24 points out that it was the women who noted where Christ’s grave was—and who actually discovered the tomb was empty. When they told the male disciples they were not believed. Finally one of the fellows decided he at least ought to check it out.
In the past half century, I’ve heard a lot of women denigrate Christianity for its treatment of women—there is no doubt we could have done better. For all of its deficiencies, which American woman would really want to live among the Muslims or Hindus?
I have quoted Rhett Butler (“Gone With The Wind”) to more than one class when talking about Christianity and women. As Rhett and Scarlet were trying to escape burning, rioting Atlanta, she becomes impatient with the retreating Confederate Army.
“Don’t be in any hurry to see them go,” advises Butler, “with them goes the last law and order in Atlanta”.
I believe that of Christianity—especially as it declines. If I were a modern, free-spirited American women, I might reflect on it. And on Luke, where so much of her freedom began.

The Twelve Days of Health Care

At 7:16 this morning, the world of American health care changed forever. Or did it? I’m torn between any of three reactions: something is better than nothing, the Senate bill—sans a government option—is a lousy bill, and they’ll never reconcile House and Senate bills.
If you like this bill—or are just happy to have anything—this Christmas Eve vote is a fine present. The Senate doesn’t often hang out for business until December 24. It must have exhausted everybody—the Washington Post reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got mixed up and nearly voted “No” to a burst of laughter in the chamber.
The Democrats—as Reid amended—got their sixty votes, just that. Not a Republican backed the idea of universal health care. It sounds as if a lot of Republicans, like my friend’s Republican Senator uncle, nearly fifty years ago, still feel that if you cannot afford health care, “you should die”.
I still wish Obama had gotten on the phone—ala Lyndon Johnson—and fought for the public option, but posturing in Copenhagen seemed to trump that. Copenhagen worked out like driving a sleigh across a snowless roof, but it was more important than health care.
Apparently Harry Reid deserves the credit for this one. For one thing, just keeping the Senate in session until Santa got his sled loaded is no mean feat! You have to credit Harry with fighting for a public option until the bitter end.
That’s when ex-Democrat Joe Lieberman announced that he would vote against health care if there were any public option in the bill. (He reversed his position on that since early spring when he was for it—the insurance industry is powerful in Connecticut—his state.)
Threatening to scuttle the whole health care bill to protect Connecticut’s insurance giants, Lieberman got the single payer, private option tossed out. That this would be the only meaningful way of controlling medical costs was incidental.
So Harry did what he had to and bit the bullet. You simply cannot make a dollar out of sixty-five cents. Sometimes you just have to admit that you really don’t have enough for the fare. Reid bowed to reality and eliminated the public option.
Of course it is still in the House bill. If the House gets sticky about it (the House bill only passed by five votes), will Lieberman torpedo the whole thing in the final vote? He could allow the Republicans to shut down the whole bill while they filibuster until next Christmas—all very possible without Lieberman’s 60th vote.
Obama is expressing optimism that the process of reconciling the House and Senate bills will go swiftly and smoothly. Others are not so sure. There are trip wires and land mines in both versions—things the House has vowed not to vote for in the Senate bill and things the Senate won’t be happy with in the House version.
It’s a bit too early to cheer—but I won’t begrudge the Senate its eggnog—with a wee drop of something celebratory in it.

Emphatically--This Way or That

When I was first taught about Constantine’s dream in yesterday’s blog, the inscription had no particular emphasis. When I learned the history behind it, suddenly there was a significant change in the way I understood the words Constantine saw. It might be fun to pass along a couple of more familiar historical quotations with the new emphases I’ve learned.
“I shall return!!” brings to mind the image of a vainglorious, arrogant and even defiant general who disobeyed presidents and got us into a major war with China. But that’s not the way MacArthur said it back in 1942. (We both like to imagine and snicker at heroic words.)
He had been effectively exiled to the Philippines and had spent most of the 1930s warning that the islands were dangerously undefended. When the Japanese attack came, he wisely took his tiny forces to a narrow peninsula—Bataan—where they held out for months.
Finally, out of ammunition, out of food and supplies, he was forced to call for surrender. He fully intended to surrender with his men and endure captivity with them. At the last moment, Roosevelt contacted him personally and ordered him to escape from the Philippines.
He refused—until FDR promised that a vast American fleet and military force awaited him in Australia and that he would soon be on his way back to liberate the islands. He, his staff, his wife and young son took off in a lone DC-3, with no weapons, no escort, through enemy airspace.
He left everything he owned behind. After hours of tense flying through Japanese space, he finally arrived in Australia, gaunt from months of short rations, exhausted after nearly 24 hours on the way; he learned that Roosevelt had lied. There was no fleet at Australia; they were expecting a Japanese invasion themselves.
He knew that rumors would spread that he had deserted his men—that he had loaded his plane with personal effects and run. Stunned at the reality of his situation, desperately tired, he faced reporters. An idiot type (the kind who asks you, after you’ve watched your entire family die in a fire, “how do you feel about that?”) of a reporter asked him what he was going to do now.
He answered with a bitter murmur, “I came through and I shall return.” The press turned it into a bombastic statement of godlike defiance. It surely wasn’t.
Then there’s the wonderful story of John Paul. He trained to be an officer in the British Navy; his hot temper and emotional instability led him to murder a crewman. He escaped to the colonies. When the Revolution broke out in 1775, he was nearly the only man the Americans had who was trained as a naval officer (and he had real talent for fighting—with the enemy and his superiors).
They sent him to France. He was to raid British shipping in the Channel. When John Paul (he had added the name Jones to duck the murder rap) came to inspect his force, he was horrified. His own ship was ancient (repainted and renamed the “Bonhomme Richard”), unseaworthy.
Its cannons looked unsafe to fire. The commander of his French escort ships was a true nut case. Jones set sail nonetheless. As soon as he got into the Channel, he found himself up against the newest and most dangerous ship in the British Navy. BOOM! He fired a broadside; half of his guns simply blew up. He was unarmed.
BOOM! The British ship replied. All the seams on the Good Man Richard tore open and it began to sink. His French escort vessels fired one broadside into Jones and fled. The volleys kept coming from the English ship. A shot tore away his flag so that it fluttered to the deck—normally a sign of surrender.
Feeling pity for the helpless wreck in front of him, noticing that Jones’s flag was gone, the British captain called out, “Have you struck (surrendered)?” Feeling intense frustration (and none too stable to start with), Jones screamed back in stilted 18th Century English, (Think Miss Piggy from the Muppets on a bad day), “Surrender? Surrender? I haven’t even had a chance to start fighting yet!!”
He ordered his crew to throw out grappling hooks and pull their dying vessel next to the British warship. They swarmed over the English frigate with a mania born of desperation. They took it—as the Bonhomme Richard sank.
Jones sailed the “Serapis” back to France, refitted it and used it to do as much as any other unit in that war to win our Independence. He drove British insurance rates on Channel shipping out of sight until all the bankers and merchants in London demanded peace.
But his cry of “I have not yet begun to fight” was never as heroic as we like to imagine it.

The Solstice Is Come And So Is The Son

The Solstice is upon us—the shortest day—the day when gods were born and the Invincible Sun was reborn. Officially winter, only four days from the beginning of the ancient Christian Christmas season, it is a day that has had significance throughout human history.
The best scholarship assumes Christ was actually born in the spring—based on the fact that shepherds were in the fields at the time—but the movement he began found its deadliest rivals in the Eastern Mystery Religions that worship Mithras, born at the Solstice.
Mithras—the soldier’s god—became a favorite in of the legions in the fading Roman Empire. Roman troops, pressed on all sides by Persian incursions, German invasions and Arab raids, wanted an invincible god to champion their failing cause.
Legend had it that Mithras could never die—that he was reborn every year at the time of the Solstice—some legends say from a virgin. He was the “Sol Invictus”, the Invincible Sun. The new faith swept through the faltering empire like a wildfire in the Third Century. The very existence of Christianity—the “slave religion”—was threatened by its spread.
Not only were there foreign invaders in the Third and Fourth Centuries, there were innumerable civil wars. The Empire itself was split into four parts—two under men with the title Caesar, two under men with the title Augustus. Needless to say, ambitious men who held these titles, chaffed at holding only a small part of a once vast imperial realm.
One such chap was an able soldier named Constantine. A fervent worshipper of the soldier’s god, he set out to reunify the empire with a soldier’s arts. The Invincible Sun gave him victory on every hand until he had only one rival left to defeat.
This was not a sure thing. The other guy was good, too. As he lay sleeping on the night before the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine dreamt. He saw Mithras, the bright and blazing sun, shining in the heavens above him. On TOP of the image of Mithras, he saw a cross and the words, “In HOC signo vinces!” Or “In THIS sign, conquer.”
He woke up in the morning and informed his army that they were all Christians now. They won. Initially he granted Christianity tolerance (something it had never had before—since Christians refused to swear allegiance to the Empire by worshipping the Emperor). Then it became the official religion.
Mithraism disappeared shortly after that. December 25, the first day that ancients could notice a longer period of sunlight, ceased to be celebrated as Mithras’ birth day and became, instead, the date of the Christ Mass. Constantine himself probably actually became a Christian.
Christians wrote books to celebrate the faith of their own martyrs who had been thrown to the lions in the Roman arenas. No one wrote a book to celebrate the faith of pagans whose turn it now became to be torn apart by wild beasts.
Once in power, Christians showed themselves to be no more (and no less) virtuous than those who had preceded them. A decade after the Battle of Milvian Bridge Christians were happily using the Roman army to settle doctrinal differences.
All too quickly they forgot what their founder had said to the Roman official who was about to execute him, “My kingdom is not of this world. IF IT WERE, then would my followers fight for me.”
They outlasted the pagans, took over Rome and much of its pagan symbolism, and the Pope still bears one of Augustus Caesar’s proudest titles, “Pontifex Maximus”, high priest of Rome. Christians established churches that have indeed stood against “the gates of hell”.
But it might behoove Christians to remember that December 25 no longer commemorates the birth of an invincible soldier’s god, but rather one who came among us as a servant, and didn’t even have a proper place to be born.

Oh Come All Ye Who Cannot or Do Not Sing

I am not happy about what’s happening to Christmas carols. I’m not talking about the fact that a lot of them have gone secular—“Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer”, “I saw mama kissin’ Santa Clause” or “Chestnuts roasting”. They don’t offend me.
It’s perfectly understandable that folk who have no belief in Christ or the Christian message and find themselves caught in the undertow of a worldwide “holiday season” phenomenon write and listen to songs that have no Christian overtones. There’s logic to that.
I’ve known several Jewish friends, for example, who thoroughly enjoyed the whole holiday: songs, trees, lights, presents, all the trappings and even the traditional carols. Yesterday I went shopping and a Jordanian shopkeeper wished me a Merry Christmas—as did a Hindu from India when we bought some of her wares.
After all, the angel said to the shepherds, “…behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to ALL people.” That’s not an exclusive pronouncement; how it is received may be an eventual problem for some, but the pronouncement is intended for everyone.
My complaint is with conservative Christians—especially Pentecostals and core deep Baptists have done to Christmas singling. (I deliberately do not use the world “caroling”.) The musical lawnmower is being reinvented for no good reason I can see—and I’m not pleased.
I was raised on seasonal music that included Handel’s “Messiah” and traditional carols like “Joy to the World,” “The First Noel,” “Angels we have heard on high”, “Lo, how a rose e’er blooming,” “Oh come, oh come Immanuel” (okay, that’s an Advent carol, but the two seasons are by now hopelessly mixed up), “We Three Kings,” and “Adeste Fidelis”.
I also love older carols: “Good King Wenceslaus,” “The Boar’s head,” “Good Christian Men Rejoice,” “My Dancing Day,” “I Saw Three Ships,” and “The Holly and The Ivy”. I love Harry Belafonte’s Caribbean carol, “Jehovah, Hallelujah, the Lord will provide.” And I am delighted that Joan Baez introduced me to “The Cherry Tree Carol” long ago.
Much of the planet recognizes many of these songs as having to do with Christmas—and there are many other traditional carols unique to specific ethnic groups around the world. But my dear conservative friends, the Pentecostals, have seen fit to jettison these for “music”—I guess it’s music—that sounds like a cross between the Andrews Sisters and soft Rock.
They have not chosen to give us in replacement something that fits right in the canon like “The Little Drummer Boy” or “Can you see what I see?” No, they stock their pulpits with a performing (not accompanying—but people performing, as in a concert) band, sing unsingable songs and expect the bemused congregation to mumble along.
One problem may be that Americans, Christian or not, are no longer taught to sing. I remember my mother holding the hymn book down where I could see it and tracking the notes with her fingers until I learned how to follow them.
We’ve done the same thing to our National Anthem (which was the theme song of a London Drinking Club back in 1760—“The Anacreontic Song”). When everyone learned to sing out of hymnals or even around campfires, it was not a problem.
Today I wince as everything from Jazz singers to Heavy Metal groups change that traditional folk tune to fit their own métier, thereby butchering it. It was what it was; either learn how to sing it—or change our anthem to a different tune.
Sing about the Joy of Christmas in a way the whole world recognizes—and most Methodists and Episcopalians still do—and accept that fact that many congregations will need to be taught how to sing again, or give it up. Let the commercials, the department store music and a few street groups celebrate Christmas. Let those who don’t know how – stop.

Keeping Christmas

‘Tis the season—to locate the tarp, the chain saw and gas, the high boots and go trudging off into the woods looking for a tree to cut. (I used to do it with a hand saw; have to admit that a chain saw is much, much easier.) Tie it on top of the van and drive it home.
Once it’s home, you realize the thing is a foot or two taller than the living room—so you cut some more. In nature, trees look much smaller. Then all hands haul it inside and mount it in the tree stand. Add water and a few aspirin (so that it drinks more)—time for pizza.
We’ll keep doing this, no doubt, as long as we can find a friendly farmer willing to part with a nine foot blue spruce for under ten dollars. I know what people pay at lots—and if we get to that point I shall militate strongly for an artificial tree. The farmer where we cut our trees has an artificial one—and so does his daughter next door. For now, still, we have the scent of pine.
Of course the saw and fuel have to be put away in the shed along with the tarp and the rope. My wife puts the lights on and we settle back for our first look at this year’s Christmas tree. It’s a German custom, even a pagan custom, but it’s as much a part of Christmas as Dickens “Christmas Carol” and Tiny Tim.
That story, as everyone remembers, is about keeping Christmas and keeping it well. I admit to seasonal grouchiness at this time of year, but there is a point to talking about keeping Christmas well. Take a look at the Biblical story as it is told in the Gospel of Matthew.
Christ was born into a land where terrorists made the roads impassable at night. Bethlehem was on the border of the DMZ between Rome and Parthia. There was a momentary truce in effect between these enemies who fought one another for seven centuries. When three old Parthians showed up at the gates of Jerusalem, no wonder there was consternation.
First of all, Magi—with priceless gifts--were too important to be left to travel alone through bandit infested desert. It is extremely likely that the Magi had more troops with them than Herod had. They had enough troops to keep Herod’s spy network—the best in the Roman Empire—from following them six miles to see which house the Magi went to.
Herod had experienced Parthians before. Thirty five years before, they had killed his daddy, both of his brothers and come within an inch of catching Herod and his mom. As Jerusalem fell to Parthia, Herod had been forced to run for his life—as had his friend, Marc Anthony.
Now they were back—taunting him, it must have seemed, about some new King of the Jews. He waited until they lifted their screen of cavalry. (Roman legionnaires were far away in Syria and Egypt.) Had the Bethlehemites kept Christmas a bit better, their story would be no doubt happier.
They stuck Mary and Joseph in a barn where the animals were kept. Richer, more prominent, folk had come back to Bethlehem to be counted and pay their taxes. No one in town seems to have paid any attention to them then—or years later when their son was preaching in the area. No one is recorded as having any memory that Jeshua of Nazareth had ever been in Bethlehem.
Herod was, for all practical purposes, on his deathbed at the time the Magi came. Had Bethlehem kept Christmas better, no doubt he would not have lived to kill every baby in town. But he was allowed to live long enough to do mass murder—on those who did not keep Christmas well.
“Peace on Earth to men of good will” the angels sang. Bethlehem showed no good will at all. Joseph and Mary and their son vanished, just before the murders, having been given enough gifts by the Magi to support them in Egypt and then for dad to buy a business back in Nazareth.
Bethlehem leaves us with a promise—of Joy and Peace on Earth. Most celebrants prefer not dwell on the fact that it also leaves us with a terrible warning and threat. Keep Christmas well or something worse than what happened to Scrooge may happen to those who don’t.
And don’t forget to add water to the tree.

Obama in Copenhagen--Hickory, Dickory, Dock.

Hickory, Dickory, Dock—the mouse run up the clock. The clock struck one and down he run. Hickory, Dickory, Dock! And so the captains and the kings (and the mice) depart from Copenhagen today. Hickory, Dickory, Dock.
I remember the first time I ever applied that nursery rhyme to an American political situation—in 1967, immediately after the first anti-war march on the Pentagon in Washington. Thousands of Vietnam War protestors were expected in Washington for the march.
Word went out that homes were needed to put up marchers. My first wife volunteered our house just north of Georgetown. About a dozen Canadians from New Brunswick showed up, led by two expatriate American professors to sleep on my living room floor.
In the morning I decided to go along with them “to the demonstration to get my fair share of abuse.” Thousands strong, on a beautiful, sunny autumn Washington day we gathered around the reflecting pool to hear speeches. (Get your hands on Norman Mailer’s fictionalized account of that day in “Armies of the Night”. It’s good; it’s accurate. A few months later I spent an entire trans-Atlantic flight reading it and comparing it to my own experience.)
Then we got up to cross the bridge behind the Lincoln Memorial and march to the Pentagon. Helicopters cross-crossed the skies above us—someone said the F.B.I. was photographing all of us. There were anti-war posters and banners everywhere. My favorite screamed, “Pull out Johnson, like your father should have!”
I followed my guests into a larger group of Canadians marching under the flag of Quebec (I still tell people I am the only American I know to have stormed the American Pentagon under a foreign flag). We got to the Pentagon and my guests rushed up the stairs toward the doors.
I held back. I worked for the “Office of the President”, and it didn’t seem sensible for me to be found duking it out with American troops at a military installation. Sure enough, paratroops poured out of those doors and all of my guests got tear gassed.
We backed up, stood around for a few moments and very, very slowly began to walk back to the bridge. I walked back more quickly than most of the marchers. As I passed group after group, I sensed a universal mood among the retreating demonstrators.
At first I couldn’t identify it clearly—then the words of that old nursery rhyme came to mind. As I recited, “Hickory, Dickory, Dock—the mouse run up the clock … and down he run” to each group, I got unhappy nods from them all. We had gone up; we were coming down.
I should have loved the opportunity to walk out behind the Copenhagen delegates today and recite the rhyme again. I might well have gotten a lot of nods. The conference was billed as a New Christmas, a Second Coming, a birth of hope for all mankind.
Didn’t quite live up to that. By noon of the last day, it looked like there’d be no agreement at all. Then President Obama got busy (the way he should have about health care months and months ago) and conducted the most frantic bout of personal diplomacy since Henry Kissinger helped prevent WWIII in 1973-4 by stopping the Israeli’s from capturing all of the Soviet Union’s military secrets from the trapped Egyptian Third Army on the Sinai.
(Henry got his Nobel Peace Prize for that—he earned it. We’re all still alive.) All Obama got was a paper that everyone agreed to sign while clearly understanding it was in no way legally enforceable. It is comparable to having Tiger Woods sign a non-binding statement that suggests that fidelity to one’s wife would in most cases be a nice thing.
Now he gets to fly back to Washington in time to watch Democrats, Republicans and independents sink his health care bill in the Senate—or will he pull out another meaningless declaration? While he watches the blizzard that’s churning toward Washington—he can count the Congressional mice as down they run.

Obama--No Change, No Fight, No Wins

As has always been true in Congress, what you can’t kill with votes, you can kill with procedure. Today a Republican Senator demanded that a 700 page amendment to the proposed health care bill be read aloud. The amendment would have re-introduced a government run health care benefit as an alternative to private insurance.
After the voice-weary clerks had read for three hours, the Democratic senator who had introduced the amendment withdrew it. So it goes with health care. Obama vowed to tax “Cadillac Health Care Plans” that allow for lower co-pays and better benefits. When Congress realizes this tax on people with decent benefits can raise billions—it is likely that anyone with decent benefits will be taxed.
So much for no new taxes on the middle class—remember Obama’s promise last year? It just seems to me that Obama fights for very little that he promises. If a senator yells loud enough, the President seems very willing to water down or withdraw anything that offends.
Presidents certainly have always had to compromise with Congress. The most effective have never gotten everything they wanted. But Obama doesn’t seem to care to fight for anything. Let’s look what Presidents who fought have actually gotten.
Reagan rammed through startling tax cuts in the face of a hostile House of Representatives. George W. Bush did the same thing with a very slender Congressional margin. LBJ brought the minority Republicans along with him as he passed unprecedented Civil Rights bills, on top of Medicaid, Medicare, Great Society legislation and a huge anti-poverty program, while funding a major war.
George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton both got tax raises through Congress—at great cost to themselves politically—but they got the raises. Fight for something, especially in the first two years of your presidency and you’re liable to get at least some of it.
If you don’t fight and win at least something in those first two years, you aren’t likely to do any better—or anywhere near as well—in the next two or six! So far Obama hasn’t gotten much of anything through Congress that George W. Bush wouldn’t agree with.
More troops in Afghanistan and a slow, oh so slow, drawdown in Iraq. Then a TARP plan that Bush began that rescues banks and large corporations, while people get evicted. So much for “change”. (Maybe we misunderstood him—he was talking about SMALL change?)
Oh, and Congress has approved another term for Bush’s choice of Chairman of the Federal Reserve. And notice that Bernanke not only got another shot at the Fed, he made “Time Magazine’s” Man of The Year for 2009. All Obama got was the Peace Prize.
But if Obama is doing NOTHING to move health care forward, the Republicans have become masters of hypocrisy. This week’s “Newsweek” (Dec. 21, p.30) points out that Republicans rammed through their Medicare prescription drug plan six years ago that looks a lot like the bill before Congress now.
It created an expensive entitlement for a limited number of people—Medicare help for drugs for folks my age and up. The Republicans threatened to fire Medicare’s chief actuary if he dared even hint to Congress what the drug plan would really cost.
As “Newsweek” columnist, Jacob Weisberg writes, “Simply stated, [the drug plan] is complicated as hell, costs a fortune, still isn’t paid for, and doesn’t do all that much… .” He insists that the cost of the Republican drug plan “dwarfs the … cost of the [current, Democratic] senate bill.”
He suggests that your attitude on health care depends entirely on the political party that is currently proposing it. There’s certainly nothing new about that. So what has Obama to lose if he rolls up his sleeves and fights? Right now he’s just letting them get away with it.
Or isn’t that the way things are done by someone who cut his teeth in the Chicago machine. Take a page out of Truman’s book. He was raised in the Pendergast machine. But, boy, did he know how to fight. And sometime’s win.

When God Laughs... .

It’s been another week to make God laugh. Obama accepts his Peace Prize by excusing war, offends his hosts by not showing up at the proper receptions, and the Norwegians wind up wondering how and why they ever gave him the Prize in the first place.
Relax, guys, we’ve been wondering that for weeks. Obama’s behavior suggests he wonders, too. Having bowdlerized Health Care Reform, the Senate busily scurries about trying to find enough Democratic Senators to vote for what’s left of it (yes, I said, Democratic).
We have conditioned our whole response to the Afghanistan War on the current Afghanistan administration eliminating corruption. (That’s like telling Al Capone he may have the South Side of Chicago, but only if he stops running booze.) AND,
If the Afghani army and police whip themselves into shape so they can take on the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and a raft of hostile tribes in the various parts of the nation. Why not throw in another, perhaps more reasonable demand—that they increase national rainfall levels?
(Does remind one of the Russian tank commander trying to train Egyptian tankers during the bad old cold war days. He started explaining to the Egyptians how, should there be a fixable equipment failure in your tank during battle, you stop the vehicle and get out.
He tried to explain how you might fix this or that outside the tank, but he was interrupted by howls of laughter from his Egyptian trainees at the very thought of getting OUT of a nice, all steel tank during the midst of a battle. He never succeeded.)
We are observing a phenomenon in Iraq that may possibly mystify the planners in Washington, the surge—read lots of armed troops ready to shoot—goes in and car bombs get fewer and fewer. The surge comes back out and car bombs start to go off again.
One hopes our war colleges aren’t going to waste a lot of time trying to figure this out.
Alas, poor Tiger Woods. He succumbed to all the temptations available to a billion dollar golfer; it turns out he’s been succumbing happily since he first came on the scene—and in an attempt to save his marriage quits the one thing he’s good at: golf.
This is going to make him happy enough to make him a nicer, more faithful husband? Why not do the sane thing? She says to him, “We’re hiring some nannies and I’m going on tour WITH you”. That forces good behavior on him—and gives him the fastest and fullest amount of restoration possible, by letting him win tournaments—something his psyche will always need.
Right now, like the army in Afghanistan, they’re setting themselves up for the worst of all worlds. Doesn’t she see that—or is she just setting him up for the big pre-nup payout?
I remember several European friends of mine who routinely referred to such developments as “comedies”. They seemed to have an acute understanding of the ancient Greek notion that comedy is simply the flip side of tragedy (remember the two masks?).
There’s the operatic character, Pagliacci the clown, who stabs his faithless wife and her lover in front of a full house and then turns to the horrified audience on stage and says—in one of the few spoken lines in opera, “The comedy is finished”.
Incredulous laughter is sometimes the only way to deal with life on this earth. (As a child, during the height of the Cold War, I recall thinking, “This is such an interesting planet to watch. I only wish I could watch it from some other planet.”)
The Jewish psalms say that even God, who “sits in Heaven, shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision.” We are too often stupid and silly enough to merit the laughter. God help us.

The Lady's Not For Burning

Last night there were two items in the local paper that caught my eye. The first told us that Grand Rapids, Michigan, was laying off twenty-two firefighters, effective midnight. This would save the strapped city about nine million dollars.
It reduces the city’s fire fighting force about ten percent. They’ll go from 206 firemen (for a city of approximately 175,000 souls to 184. That’s a meaningful drop in fire protection. It leaves you wondering—at what point do insurance companies take note of the drop?
There’s very little question that the city had no choice. Its general budget is millions more in the hole, state unemployment is at more than 15%; Detroit is close to 30%. The money for more firemen is unlikely to come out of anybody’s hat. Maybe Obama will come down the chimney with new stimulus money; maybe not.
Now comes the second article. No doubt it is total coincidence (and may actually be) but it is the kind of coincidence the “Godfather” would not have liked. When the old fire chief retired not long ago, a female battalion commander was made acting chief.
The same day the department lost 10% of its manpower, they gave Laura Knapp the job of being Grand Rapid’s first female fire chief. (Nobody mentioned what she’s earning—compared to chiefs in other cities of comparable size. What do you bet … .)
So a woman is handed the job of chief of a department that has been given an almost impossible job—do the same, or even more, with less.
The same thing has been going on in private industry for years—but your house isn’t liable to burn down if General Electric or GM falls behind on its paperwork. I guess, if you live in Grand Rapids you pray that more than three major fires won’t break out at the same time.
The laid off guys probably won’t pitch in to help. The same article said they were looking for other jobs—kids to feed, that sort of thing. When I was a kid I lived in a small suburb that had stayed with a small volunteer fire department. One Christmas day a wealthy lawyer stood and watched as his expensive home burned down. He had the clout—and the money existed—to put in a full time, professional department within a year.
That kind of instant, drastic improvement isn’t likely to happen in Grand Rapids this year. We are sailing into waters that no living American has experienced—where there actually is a REAL SHORTAGE of money. And Laura Knapp gets to take the first shift.
If something really goes to smash under her watch, will it all be her fault? Will there be a few smug or even angry whispers that a woman simply wasn’t up to the job? Great opportunity for Knapp to “prove” it, isn’t it?
Jennifer Granholm, Governor of Michigan since 2003, would probably feel for Knapp. Democrat Granholm replaced Republican John Engler who slashed taxes, spent rainy day funds, did no maintenance on infrastructure and walked away looking wonderful.
She just happened to be standing there when the roof fell in. (Rather like Coolidge and Hoover.) For the first few years as the auto industry merely teetered, she had a lot of people’s sympathy. She even won re-election in 2006 against a Republican she cleverly accused of creating jobs in China—never letting him make the point that creating those jobs was the ONLY way he could save 4,000 Michigan jobs—making products to export to China. Fearful Michiganders, hearing only the word “China”, voted her back in.
Now the roof and the walls have caved in on her. (To use an analogy for Knapp, now there’s a really, really BIG fire—and fewer firemen.) GM and Chrysler have gone bust. Their sales still aren’t back to where they can pay Michigan’s freight, and never will be.
By now everybody knows it’s all Granholm’s fault. See? She destroyed the real estate market, nearly broke the American financial structure and, for good measure, singlehandedly extended the war in Afghanistan. All by herself! See what happens when you put women in charge?
Good luck to Laura Knapp.

Copenhagen--More Fun Than Real Work

Anyone who has lived as long as I have has seen the science on almost any major subject do a few back flips as new data is discovered and new theories promulgated. Science, like women’s fashion, goes in and out with its theories, like rising and falling skirts.
A few decades ago, the aging Einstein was seen by his colleagues as a sad case of a once brilliant physicist slipping into his dotage. Today his final pronouncements are seen as brilliantly prescient and very up to the minute science. Just wait fifty more years.
So it goes in the world of science. I often think that the brightest of us are barely precocious three-year-olds pottering around in a universe we cannot see to the end of—that was made by an ancient deity with an IQ measured in the trillions.
That’s why I’m not too excited about the big meeting in Copenhagen this past and coming week. They will entertain each other by reading erudite papers expounding this notion and that (half of which, I can PROMISE you, will be overturned by new “evidence” within decades)
Is the world getting hotter? Is all of this polar warming a precursor of an ice age? Are we doing it? Is it part of a normal global cycle—like earth quakes and hurricanes? The current fad is for scientists to believe that we’re heating up and my car and furnace are causing it.
“Tomorrow”, whenever it comes, we will perceive some new cause, some new dire consequence. We humans love to scare ourselves to death over some unprovable, future calamity that science has just discovered to our immensely enjoyable consternation.
It’s more fun to do this instead of becoming realistically concerned about the very likely consequences of, say, an Israeli airstrike on Iranian nuclear facilities, or a nuclear exchange between them. We talk and threaten that after New Year’s Day we are going to slap Iran with more sanctions (like those that kept Japan and Mussolini out of World War II). A few days at Copenhagen would be well spent coming up with some kind of solution to that situation.
How much will they talk about the vanishing oxygen generators on this planet? (We do kind of need the stuff.) We destroy crop lands to building housing with half acre lots—then we cut down trees and bushes all over the globe to replace the farmland.
Save a tree by recycling typing paper? How about saving a few hundred trees by building one less housing development each year, one less mall, one less parking lot? (Save oil, too, as people didn’t have to commute so far.)
How about the dead zones in our waterways? The one at the bottom or Lake Michigan where road salt has polluted the water (what was wrong with sand on an icy road—it doesn’t become slipperier than salt in really cold weather, either) or the one outside of New York harbor where they dumped garbage for so many years?
I live a few miles from a creek so polluted by industrial waste that kids on field trips itch badly after just putting their hands in it. The lake it flows into is beautiful—but not swimmable. It, in turn, flows into Lake Michigan from which Chicago, Milwaukee, Gary, Green Bay, Grand Rapids and lot of smaller communities get their drinking water. Believe me it’s not the only such lake along Lake Michigan, all pumping poison into one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world.
That’s something for Copenhagen to really try to do something about. How about something real like serious planetary water shortages? The Aral Sea is basically gone—sucked dry by irrigation. Lake Victoria may be gone in 30 years, same reason. There’s talk of sucking dry the Great Lakes to meet the need for lawn watering in the South West. Here’s madness for Copenhagen to talk seriously about—we know human beings are doing this foolishness.
Ah, but the politics! Whose industry will be gored? What about waterways shared by different political entities. How do you talk a sovereign nation like Brazil into stopping slash cutting their forests? That’s hard work. Much easier to listen to papers on what my car may or may not be doing to sunlight every time I start it.
Copenhagen is easy. It’s much more fun than stuff we really, really need to do—NOW.

Urban Sprawl--A Problem We CAN Fix

Yesterday we talked about a man-made catastrophe that humans have caused, are causing—and have the actual capability of stopping. It’s a whole lot more fun to sit in Copenhagen and discuss how to stop the sun from shining so warmly—after all, there’s a good chance you can’t do anything about it anyway. But we can, and had better, start dealing with urban sprawl.
After all, urban sprawl is caused by persons, corporations and (mostly) local governments. The nearer a city gets to a farm, the less likely that the farmer can 1) afford the higher taxes on his land or 2) resist the huge money he is offered to sell his high tax land.
So the rural space that used to exist between Baltimore and Washington back in Lyndon Johnson’s day is now swallowed up in urban living spaces. They don’t produce oxygen anymore; you can’t get food from them any more. All they do is generate municipal taxes.
You can’t eat those; you can’t breathe them. Not in Baltimore, not in New Jersey, not in Grand Rapids, not anywhere. I just mention those few because I lived near them and watched the trees, fertile soil and unpolluted water die—in my lifetime.
We’ve pushed so far into the wild lands of California that the mountain cats have no place left to retreat—joggers become their natural and new prey. Houses in Arizona have gone so far into the desert that commuters wake up to rattlesnakes all over their patios.
Even field mice are displaced—when they built the new development in the woods across from me, the mice had no place to go but the houses on my street. For the first time in twenty-five years, we suddenly had mice. They would run inside when we opened the door.
Of course we’re not even talking about the chemicals we use—on farms and on the lawns that replace them. They shoved a water line down my street three years ago because the lawn fertilizer had made the best water in this county unsafe to drink anymore. No more ground water—treated Lake Michigan water.
There are now so many septic systems, so close together, that I and my neighbors are all tied into the city sewage system. When there’s a major rain storm, or when the pipes break, all the sewage rushes into Lake Michigan instead of leaching into the ground relatively harmlessly.
Shall we talk water? I spent a year living in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Something about driving around the city made me nervous. I finally figured out what. I grew up in Michigan where there’s a lake, stream or river every couple of miles.
I would drive miles in LA and see NO water. (Just the ocean which isn’t drinkable.) I never saw any water flowing anywhere! That made me very uneasy. What comes out of the tap you don’t drink. You buy a stand and they deliver a five gallon jug of water every couple of days or so. Water trucks are as common as mail trucks. They need to be.
What water they get—to fill the swimming pools, water the lawns in desert dryness, and to be filtered into water that people buy to drink—all comes through the mountain pipes from the Colorado River and northern California streams.
Millions of people—all dependent on water pipes that flow hundreds of miles through earthquake country. Now there’s a lethal disaster just waiting to happen. From Tucson to Vegas, millions of Americans are moving into land that has no natural source of water to maintain them.
A little less rainfall in the mountains, an earthquake—and the southwest joins collapsed civilization all over the planet that simply ran out of water. More and more people keep coming to use less and less water. That sprawl could potentially kill thousands or more in moments after an earthquake disrupted the flow. That won’t be brought up in Copenhagen.
Farmland gone forever, water supplies stretched to the breaking point—these are proven dangers that we can do something about. It’s more fun to talk about melting polar icecaps that no one has an idea how to stop right now—but we’ve got real problems to talk about that we CAN cure. Maybe the kind of greening we should do has more to do with moving people off the desert while not destroying farm land. As my Dutch friend seemed to be saying, cities don’t have to spread so far into the country.
Let’s hold another summit—and deal with problems we CAN deal with. More tomorrow.

Urban Sprawl--Deadlier Than Global Warming?

Whether or not humans are completely responsible for global warming is still a maybe. The whole thing could possibly be part of a cycle that hits us every few thousand (or million) years. I’ve heard enough scientific pronouncements to know they don’t really know either.
We don’t want to think about the last possibility because it’s too scary—if it’s part of cycle we are truly helpless and there isn’t much the savants at Copenhagen can do. But there is a problem (and a big one) we humans really ARE responsible for—and it could kill us.
I got my first sense of it back in 1956 when I was asked to chauffer a visiting Dutch artist from Rotterdam around the city of Grand Rapids. He kept exclaiming to me how BIG Grand Rapids was compared to his home town in Holland. This startled me because I knew Rotterdam had several times more people than Grand Rapids had.
He explained that Americans spread their cities out much more than Europeans do (or did). Lawns, parking lots, mega-stores, and four to six lane streets all mean that a quarter as many people take up several times the space.
I kept that in mind as I watched Grand Rapids sprawl miles and miles further. Twenty-eighth Street, which became the busiest street in Michigan by the 1980s, was a two lane road with truck farms and nurseries along it in 1956. Some of the richest farm land in the world bordered that street—vegetable muck land.
Today it is all stores and parking. The food producing muck is gone forever. East of Kalamazoo Avenue, there was nothing but open farm land, for miles and miles. Today that land is gone, too, as malls, restaurants, used and new car lots, motels and what all stretch for miles and miles.
There was an intersection several miles north of Twenty-eighth Street and east of Kalamazoo. In 1960 it was bordered by four wheat fields that stretched as far as you could see. In a few decades, there was a mall on one corner, an apartment building on another, office buildings on the other two—and the houses and lawns stretched as far as you can see.
By now 28th Street is worn out. Empty store fronts and signs of decay are everywhere. They’ve just opened a new highway, parallel to 28th Street, miles to the south. That’s where everyone is moving now –far out in what only recently was country. No one doubts that this will replace 28th Street as the commercial center of the city within a decade or two.
If my Dutch friend was startled in 1956, he would be stunned now. Grand Rapids isn’t alone. When I moved into my present house in 1981, I was in the country. No paving, no street lights, not even gravel. I was told that we lacked the housing density to merit cable TV.
Boy, have we got it today. I really cannot count the number of new developments that use this (now paved and lit) street to get to the highway and work. This used to be farm land and forest land not that long ago. (Every now and then a raspberry bush pops up in my backyard to remind me of what once was and will never be again.)
In 1962, I stood at an intersection within the corporate limits of New York City—like the intersection in Grand Rapids, it had four farms bordering it, as far as I could see. That’s all houses, lawns and stores today. No one will ever grow food there again.
I visited a friend in Caldwell, New Jersey, in 1971. He took me to a nearby mall. As we stood in the parking lot all we could see was new housing and lawns. “This,” he told me, “was all farm land only about six or seven years ago.”
In 1966 when they completed the beltway around Washington, it was such isolated farm country that the government installed a phone every mile for the use of broken down motorists. Have you driven it lately? Miles of buildings have replaced the phone booths.
Let’s take a further look at this really man-made disaster tomorrow.

Education--Boring Us To Death

A substitute teacher gets lots of opportunity to observe high school students in their natural habitat. I sit at the desk and let my eyes rove over the classroom until I am reasonably certain the assigned work is liable to receive at least promissory glance from a majority of the students.
As I look at the twenty to thirty faces in front of me, the dominant expression and emotion is one of sheer boredom. Whatever grade, whatever school, whatever subject—we are boring our kids to distraction—and spending billions to do it.
One serious reason we aren’t producing more and better scientist (or graduates that can identify George Washington or read and write) is that at some point the teacher’s droning monotone got so soporific, at least mentally, that we put whole classrooms to sleep. God help us, some stay that way for the rest of their lives.
(I remember being furious at the time of my high school graduation. I looked back over thirteen years and realized they could have taught me everything they had in not much more than six years. The school system had WASTED nearly six years of my life.
(That’s a loss even at eighteen! They wasted my life! There is no possible way I can calculate the number of lectures [and sermons] I have slept through. In my case, teachers and professors were largely content to let sleeping dogs lie. I didn’t put my head down—I propped it up and made a pretense of holding my pencil over my work. Today’s kids just nod right out.
(In college, I routinely skipped dull classes. Once an irate professor accosted me, berating me because he hadn’t seen me in a month. Sensing I might be in trouble, I asked, “Would you really rather I were there?” He shook his head and walked away mumbling.
(Had I not slept or skipped, I would have gone mad with boredom. To avoid that fate, I would sidetrack the instructor, raise an unanswerable question, and generally find ways to entertain myself. That’s not really the best way to get the most out of your tuition dollar.)
Kids today aren’t that different that I was. Possibly I was bolder in expressing my boredom. (I also had the advantage of knowing enough that it was relatively easy to manipulate many of my teachers.) But for those poor kids who cannot or are no longer interested enough to make a classroom interesting for themselves, I feel their boredom.
We bore smart kids, we bore dumb kids, we bore everyone in-between. We spend a vast fortune doing so—and we make prospective teachers spend five years in college before being hired and then we demand they go for a masters while teaching. They are spending all of that time and all of that tuition just so we can teach them to be appropriately (professionally) boring.
Many of them actually aren’t when you catch them outside of class and just chat with them. Many are downright intelligent and know a lot of interesting things. It’s a pity that we force them to spend so much time becoming boring—all in the name of being “professional”.
One cannot catch the imagination of every child. But it struck me the other day that there is something we could do to make our classrooms more interesting. Throw out some of the theory. No theory of teaching math or English ever caught the interest of any child, dull or bright.
Make them act. Train them in speech. Don’t allow anyone to become a teacher (of whatever subject or grade) who cannot project well enough to earn a place in a local civic theatre cast. “Trippingly on the tongue,” Hamlet said. Make it dramatic, bring it alive.
I’ve taken history at all levels of education. One of the teachers I remember best was my eleventh grade European history teacher. To this day, when I think of Italian or German unification in the 19th Century, I can hear Jack Boelem’s voice, see his face. His illustrations were to the point and interesting. His delivery could stand up to Ronald Reagan’s.
Tell stories. Go for the occasional shock value. Talk about the unusual or even the bizarre. Eventually some students will begin to believe—and even wake up. I never slept through Boelema’s class. I was never bored.

Education--The Knack of It

More thoughts on mainstreamed education—and the underlying notion that all students (people) are cookie cutter made, identical and equal in every way. Yesterday I called this idea diabolically cruel. It is that and more.
By assuming that everyone is capable of identical academic achievement, it sets up everyone who may not be equally capable in all areas of academic work for assured failure. It blinds itself to the fact that a student may do 4.0 work in three or four areas and yet be baffled by a fourth or fifth area. He may do superbly in math and science and, for instance, abominably in economics.
Pretending this is not so—which “No child left behind mainstreaming does—is supposedly a logical extension of democracy. Nonsense. That’s not democracy! Democracy merely presupposes a level playing field in which each individual is free to perform to the level of his ability. It NEVER guaranteed everyone an equal result for his efforts.
Having everyone take the same classes no matter what his abilities is a mindlessly cruel way of denying that differences really do exist. Some of us really do have a knack for one thing; some of us have a knack for another—blasphemy to the writers of “No child left behind” legislation.
I realized this years ago when I was teaching night classes at the local community college. A lot of nurses with RN degrees were finding it necessary to go on for their BSN degrees. American history was a requirement for the advanced degree.
These were bright ladies, charge nurses, supervisors, so forth (these are the ones who save your neck when a physician makes a mistake). They knew their anatomy, their pharmacopeia, and a whale of a lot about medicine. But history was throwing many of them.
That got me thinking. I fell into history when I was ten years old—because it was so easy for me. What did I see/sense that these ladies did not? When I was in school, many very bright fellow students had no taste for the subject. Why did I have no trouble? What was the knack?
It hit me. My knack was very like that of an artist—who senses form, color and design. I see time in three dimensions. I thought about my nurses and my history hating friends. They saw time on a two-dimensional flat plane. For them, 1492, 1776, 1865, 1066 all smudged up in one unarticulated blob on a flat plane that they saw as historical time. They couldn’t sort it out.
I perceived time as something that flowed from a point far beyond me toward me. Way out there was 4000 BC. Closer was 3000 BC. Closer yet was 1000 BC. It was easy to see how something in 2000 BC could relate (and be causative) to something in 1000 and 500 BC.
As time gets closer to me and more data is available it becomes easy to see that there could be no Constitutional Convention without a victorious Revolution, no President Washington without a ratified constitution and so forth and so forth. The ladies didn’t see that.
I, in turn, have no knack whatsoever for grasping how and why A + B = C2 ! It made no sense to me in the Ninth Grade; it makes no sense when my wife—who aced college algebra—tries to explain it to me. I even took a community education course with no comprehension.
I can do regular math, computer math (you can see the variables DOING something) and even basic (non algebraic) geometry. But algebra itself is simply a fuzzy blob on a two dimensional plane to me. Force me to take more algebra and you doom me to failure. Several nurses were at similar risk in history. It’s a cruel thing to do. (Nothing I’ve ever done in real life has EVER required algebra. I suspect the nurses will never find anything about the Civil War useful in saving a life.)
So why not do as the English do? After a basic eighth grade education, they start to specialize in things they can do well and will actually work with. What a clever idea! Let me stick to history and literature; let the nurses stick to anatomy and physiology.
Why insist that we experience failure?

Reality On The Educational Front

Another cruel bit of economic reality on a par with the one I brought up two days ago-- I recently spent a couple of days substituting in a room specially designed (and legally required) for kids with learning disabilities. They are the kind of rooms regular teachers can only dream of—about six to twelve students.
In that particular high school there are several rooms for these kids. There are in most high schools around here. Under the proclamations that have come out of Washington—written by people in Congress who have never spent a day in a room like this in their lives—these kids must be educated up to the standards required of normal, college bound kids.
It cannot be done. To expect these kids to pass the ACT or the SAT with rigorous demands in Algebra and science and essay writing is both stupid and cruel. They often call themselves dummies because they know they cannot do the work in front of them.
They have been “mainstreamed” into precisely those academic endeavors they are unable to perform. Talk about convincing a kid he or she is a failure! “No Child Left Behind” was diabolically well designed to do just that.
Many would make excellent mechanics or capable nurses’ aides, performing economically and socially useful functions while supporting themselves at a decent level. Why in Heaven’s name do they have to take Algebra Two or Geometry? Or study American history from a text book inches thick, written for college bound students?
What was wrong with vocational education for those who would not or could not perform up to college prep expectations? “Mainstreaming” is allowing democratic theory to run amok. Academically, we simply are not all born equal. You can make fifty thousand a year if you’re good at repairing autos or other devices we depend on. But if you’re aimed at the algebra you cannot do, you’re liable to wind up flipping burgers for a lot less.
I certainly was never the equal of an athlete (should I have been democratically mainstreamed into an athletic scholarship at the University of Michigan?). I stand in awe of the magic a decent mechanic can work. I’m not his equal, but that doesn’t make me feel inferior.
At the same time we are mainstreaming kids away from what they COULD do well, we aren’t doing much for the kids we are depending on to create the jobs and technology of tomorrow, or the future physicians, engineers, lawyers and dentists in regular classrooms.
Teachers don’t get to meet and challenge those kids in rooms with six to twelve students. They too are mainstreamed into classes of thirty or more where their gifts may never be noticed or encouraged. That is when ALL of us lose.
I remember the first year I taught—junior high English. In one room alone I had five kids whose I.Q.’s were off the chart. They read what they could (kids still read books back in 1962) but neither the school nor the town had a library.
I suggested to several of these very bright kids that I would stay after school and establish a “lit club” for them—that I would procure challenging books for them to read and discuss. They were enthusiastic. But the principal got wind of my plan. He was horrified.
There was true shock on his face as he called me into his office and demanded that I abandon my plans. “It would,” he insisted, “be SO undemocratic!” He’s had a lot of company over the years. But how “democratic” is it really to leave the kids we depend on for our very future prosperity with nothing to work with that helps them grow?
(AP classes—I’ve been in a few—work at the level a normal classes did in the 1950s.) It is not economic sanity to throw so many of our educational resources into the battle to mainstream those who will never be able to grow our economy and IGNORE those who show real promise of doing so.
Brutal reality—Bill Gates was worth more of my tax dollars than a kid who will never be able to plot a workable algorithm. It’s not democratic, but it’s real.

Obama's Star Power at Copenhagen

Oh joy. Winter snow has come, and Obama is off to Copenhagen to save whales, trees and snail darters from pollutants from cars, coal fire and bovine flatulence. An ABC commentator assured us last night that all will be well because Obama is bringing his “star power”.
I thought about that for a moment. Presidential star power. That and fifty cents is liable to get you a local phone call—from an international conference. I’m still not totally sure global warming is the sole consequence of human action, but I have some thoughts on “star power”.
The first president to go abroad glorying in his star power was Woodrow Wilson, on his way to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, bearing his fourteen points. Common folk cheered him throughout his tour of the western allies.
He should have been warned. The French Premier, Clemenceau, made a comment Wilson should have listened to—“God gave us Ten Commandments; we didn’t do well with them. We shall see how we shall do with Mr. Wilson’s fourteen.”
The serious power brokers—Orlando, Lloyd George and Clemenceau—shredded the Fourteen Points beyond recognition and, when Wilson got back to the States, an angry Republican Senate finished the job by refusing to ratify the bowdlerized treaty in any form.
Wilson spent his last four years totally incapacitated by the stroke that knocked him down while he made one last effort to use his star power and do an end run around the Senate by going to the people. So much for star power.
Kennedy took his (and Jackie’s) star power to Paris in 1961 to meet Russia’s Khrushchev. The old Russian (who had personally ordered the deaths of more people than Himmler ever did) was unimpressed. If you had access to a photo morgue, as I did, you could see the contempt on Khrushchev’s face as they talked.
He went home and built the Berlin Wall—something he had wanted to do, but never dared, throughout most of the Eisenhower Presidency. (Ike had serious star power. Along with his grin came the reputation for killing half-a-million women and children in a single bombing raid. That’s star power even the most cynical and vicious pay attention to.)
Reagan had a kind of star power too. Yes, he was a movie actor and, yes, he knew how to play an audience—but he also had all sorts of scientists and military types hard at work on a space weapons platform that everybody thought we just might build.
When he went to talk to the Soviets, they made nice to him. He was charming, but he was also dangerous. Cassius Clay/Mohammad Ali had star power—and he left a trail of unconscious people behind him. You didn’t mess with him.
And, we have a recent demonstration of just how much Obama’s star power is really worth. Oh, they cheered him (like Wilson) when he arrived in Europe during last year’s campaign. After all, he wasn’t Bush and he was promising to cease fire in the Middle East and close down Guantanamo Bay Prison—so they threw the confetti.
A couple of month’s ago both he and Michelle flew to Olympic Heaven to get the games for Chicago. He neglected to bring the fifty cents. The Olympics are on their way to Rio in 2016. Oh well, he tried. What will they talk him into in Copenhagen?
If a majority of the 191 other players there decide to do something absolutely against our interests, will Obama’s star power—that’s rushing health care through Congress right now—enable him to force a compromise or a better deal? Wanna bet?
ABC didn’t comfort me a bit last night.

Legalizing Narcotics--a Puzzlement

One of the most vexing conundrums ever to cross my mind is the question of legalizing narcotics, marihuana only or perhaps even some others (which ones is a major part of the riddle). The other day I was in a history classroom taught by a relatively conservative young teacher—and I could tell he was just as much at sixes and sevens as I am.
His lecture began with the subject of Prohibition—a miserable failure at legislating morality in its own right. It left as with a thriving, nationwide criminal mob and with a major drug problem. After all, the mob had to find a new source of income when the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed. We obliged them by making all narcotics (except caffeine and nicotine) illegal, making them bigger fortunes than illegal liquor ever had.
We wind up with more prisoners sitting in American jails than inhabit jails in any other democratic or civilized nation. This is a massive cost—talk about tax dollars! Release the felons in prison for drug related offenses and you cut government costs significantly.
I haven’t smoked a joint since the early 70s—it was hip to do then, and everyone knew that the government was lying when it said they were dangerous, after all it had lied about Vietnam, hadn’t it? But I have a hunch that if I wanted to, I could locate a source in hours.
My son—who attended the local high school a few years ago—tells a funny story. A classmate was so stoned that when the bell rang, he stuck the joint in his pocket still lit. It smoldered in his pocket, filling the room with a fragrance everyone recognized—except the young teacher. She hadn’t a clue as to what was making that smell. This kid was not a rare aberration!
I can tell you about this high school where they drive off campus at noon to take a few tokes, or that high school where I’ve personally watched the deals go down, or the next high school where the occasional student enters too out of it to function.
It’s with us, boys and girls. Making it illegal has NOT made it go away or made it more inaccessible. If anything it’s given it more cachet than it might have if it weren’t forbidden. It is probably safe to suggest that drug prohibition has failed as miserably as liquor prohibition.
Kids routinely get arrested for having a few joints, a lid or an ounce in their possession. If he’s bought a “key” to split with friends, that makes him a “big time dealer” and he’s liable to spend years in prison. (Key—kilo, over two pounds. I’ve done it.)
Their lives are ruined for literally “doing what everybody else is doing”. Then there are communities along our borders where the drug wars are so hot that Mexican officials buy homes on the US side hoping to be a bit safer.
As long as it’s illegal, there’s enough drug money to tempt every cop south of the North Pole with a bribe. The drug cartels have enormous power that they enforce with ruthless killings the Mafia would never have countenanced. They can buy many, many politicians—and do.
By making narcotics illegal we have created enormous criminal wealth and power—that we could wipe out with the stroke of a pen. Just legalize and slap on the kind of controls we put on liquor. The dealers and their killers simply go away—with a single change in law.
We make it available at real, legal prices and we don’t have streets full of people waiting to rob our homes and mug us just to get money for the next fix. (I’ve lived among those people in a couple of different large cities.) It’s tempting; it seems so reasonable.
Would we have more addicts if it were legal? Were there more falling down drunks after Prohibition went away—I really don’t know. Does anyone? That’s a major, major part of the riddle. Is it moral to make something as potentially destructive freely available?
Is cutting costs and murder a valid consideration when talking about the often ruinous effects of narcotics? What we’re doing now is definitely not working. So where do we go with it all? As Yul Brenner sang in “The King and I”—“Is a puzzlement!”

Dollar Power -- Slipping, slipping ...

Years ago, when I was in high school (and Eisenhower was President), I got to thinking about the true source of American power. No doubt SAC (Strategic Air Command) was a significant part of it, as were the carriers, escort cruisers, tanks and troops.
But what was the actual core of American power? It quickly became obvious that the real basis of America’s status as a superpower was the dollar. Stacks of “Eurodollars” sat in foreign government vaults as backing for their currencies. The gold was in Fort Knox.
Our dollars absolutely controlled most small Caribbean nations—Cuba, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and so forth. Dollars, in the form of Marshall Plan grants, stopped West Europe and Japan from voting Communists into power—and guaranteed our control of those nations.
More importantly, dollars PAID FOR the mighty bombers and ships that projected American military power throughout the globe. Dollars built the factories and shipyards that produced these things and so much else that made up the American lifestyle.
Dollars bought oil (as well as the allegiance of dictators all over the world). Others paid five dollars a gallon; we paid thirty cents. Dollars built the fantastic super highways that produced the most awesome distribution system in the world.
Dollars made Wall Street the center of world finance. Dollars built the finest universities in the world and created the awesome technological revolution that made TVs and personal computers essential for a civilized society. There lay the true power. Atom bombs, hydrogen bombs and delivery systems all came from a surfeit of dollars.
Last week’s “Newsweek” published an article called “An Empire At Risk” –“we won the cold war and weathered 9/11. But now economic weakness is endangering our global power”. I’m delighted somebody else sees this!
It isn’t just foreclosures, unemployed Americans or faltering car companies; everything goes down if the dollar falls. It’s like giving Sampson a haircut. And our foolishness has placed the dollar at risk. That should concern us all, perhaps more than anything else.
The biggest danger, according to “Newsweek”, is that as the national debt increases, interest rates go up as people who buy our governmental bonds (who loan the money to us) start to ask for higher rates of interest if they are to continue holding those bonds.
Higher interest rates just add to the sheer cost of maintaining the debt (look, for example, at the amount of interest your credit card company charges you for a balance you don’t pay off in 30 days; think what happens to your payment if they raise the interest rate from, say, eighteen percent to twenty-nine percent).
Governments get hammered just like you do. “Newsweek” offers a sobering list of previous world powers that found themselves paying so much just to service their indebtedness that they lost the ability to project power and collapsed.
Spain, the ultimate superpower of the 1500s, was forced to default on its debts 14 times by 1696—and it hasn’t been a serious world power since 1700. Before the horrors of 1789, France was spending 62% of government revenues just on interest.
The Ottoman Empire saw the cost of debt service go from 25% to 50% in 25 years—and earned the sobriquet of “the sick man of Europe”. Forty years later the empire disintegrated. After World War I, England paid 44% of her budget to service her debt. She was a “dead man walking”, just waiting for a strong wind like World War II to blow her away.
“Newsweek” calls it “the fatal arithmetic of imperial decline”. We owe trillions now—and we’re on the hook for a whole lot more. At some point somebody’s going to raise the rate on our national credit. Then who pays for carriers, highways, rockets, or planes?
With the dollar goes the dream of what we have come to call the American Standard of Living. Pay attention!

How Do We Get Back To Hiring?

Understanding HOW we get back to hiring mode is, unhappily, not as simple as understanding why they stopped in the first place. The human I referred to yesterday who fell into deep water is easily treated. Towel him down, light a fire, dry his clothes and get him to shelter.
Doing the same for a corporation is a tad more complex. 1) Simplest way—everybody go out and buy something, buy lots of things. Not so likely. Ten percent are unemployed and a good share of the remaining 90% are scared to death. (They watched their neighbor’s house get foreclosed or his car repossessed. Huh uh.) A lot of them aren’t working full time.
What’s two? Extend credit madly. Raise the limits of those whose credit card limits got cut recently back up to where they were and beyond. Loan to small businesses without regard to credit worthiness. Open lots of new accounts.
Isn’t this where we all came in? Plenty of banks are already sitting on bundles of paper that may or may not be worthless (they don’t want to know in many cases). They have no desire to add to their risk right now. Many of their credit card customers no longer have any way of repaying. Nor can they borrow on the equity of their underwater homes.
Let’s go on to three. The Fed could print more money, lots and lots more money. (They used to call paper like that “watered stock” back in the Nineteenth Century when they sold stocks and bonds that had no value. Remember Fisk and Gould?)
Just how long do you suppose a dollar would be worth ANYTHING LIKE a dollar today? Might give you a short fever burst of buying power, but then—probably sooner rather than later—comes the kind of inflation that turns your retirement fund into a week of groceries.
How about four? We could default. Sorry China, Japan, Europe, Saudi Arabia—can’t pay you. We’re tapped out. We’ve done that before. On occasions we’ve all but bankrupted several large national investors from Europe—1819, 1837, 1857, 1873 and ’77, and 1891.
Not a good idea—and morality or honor has nothing to do with it. Right now, one of the reasons we Americans live so well is that we are the reserve currency for the world. You buy oil in dollars and a lot of other things as well.
Default and the dollar all but goes away. It has the value on the international market of an Argentine Peso or a Greek Drachma (which traded for the euro at 340 to one in 2002). That’s going to seriously impact our lifestyle—especially those of us who have a taste for foreign foods, foreign built cars and tools, etc. Unbelievably.
Is there a fifth? War. Big war. Like the really big one that ended the Depression of the 1930s. Be warned—not every war is economically beneficial. They have to be fought on somebody else’s property, you have to win it decisively, there has to be something you can take home afterward that’s worth real money.
World Wars One and Two qualify—for us. They RUINED Russia, Germany, Japan, France, England—destroying the Turkish and Austrian Empires as well. We were the only ones who lucked out. We didn’t do as well in Vietnam, Korea or Iraq (which merely cost us money).
You’ve GOT to make money out of a war. That’s a rare trick. G.W.Bush talked about paying for Iraq with oil revenues. That hasn’t worked out at all. A huge percentage of all wars are money LOSERS. No guarantee that a war—anywhere—is going to bail us out as it did in 1917 and 1941.
Six, you can turn on the Federal spigot and build tons of roads and bridges. We do need them. But the 1930s teach us that the moment the faucet is turned off, everything goes right back down again.
Can somebody come up with seven? I don’t hear it coming out of Washington or Wall Street—do you? Getting back to 2007 levels of employment (when corporations feel safe and warm) may take a long time this time—no matter how many job conferences we hold.

When Do They Start Hiring Again?

There’s a lot of talk lately about how employment may not come roaring back after this recession. Yesterday President Osama held a “jobs conference” to see how more jobs might possibly be created, sooner rather than later. It’s actually a rather simple question.
If you want to know when corporations are going to start hiring, you have to realize what a corporation actually IS. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, a corporation is “a legal creation authorized to act with the rights and liabilities of a person.”
In other words, a corporation is a PERSON with all the survival instincts of a regular human being. And that is how it acts. Let’s create a somewhat simple example to illustrate my point. Let’s imagine a human person, bundled up for winter, who falls through ice into deep water.
If he keeps the boots, heavy coat, hat and sweatshirt on, he’s going to drown. Being a person with survival instincts, he immediately kicks off those impediments so that he can swim to a safe shore. Think employees when we say boots, heavy coat, etc.
The financial collapse of October, 2008, was very much like a fall into deep water for many of America’s major—and minor—corporate persons. Floundering and gasping for air, these persons kicked off as many human beings (boots and coats) as they possibly could. The alternative for many was corporate death—corporations DO die.
A corporation laying people off is not really a soulless machine, or even a mean spirited one, cackling with glee as it sloughs off loyal workers. (I’ve fired people; it’s an absolutely miserable job—I cannot think of many other things I wouldn’t rather do. Almost anyone who has ever fired anyone feels exactly the same way—ulcers, sleepless nights, anxiety are common occurrences among exec’s who have to fire—one person or an entire staff.)
Just as a drowning human being is dangerous to be around, so is a drowning corporation. It reacts with desperation and violent motions. It really isn’t thinking about the value of the boots and shoes it is kicking off—just being able to breathe.
Expensive boots are lost that way—perhaps boots or coats you cannot really afford to replace. Experienced employees with skills that cannot be immediately (or ever) replaced are lost that way. You may never get them back. It can be like amputating your own arm to escape from a cave-in. It may be the only way to go on living.
So when do you go out and replace your boots and coat? When you feel safe, when you’re dry and warm again, and when you can afford to. That’s precisely when corporations start to hire again. How very much like the rest of us they really are!
“Feeling safe” comes when “business picks up”—simply, when somebody starts buying again. Step one, the corporation starts to repay back taxes owed (nasty consequences if you don’t), pay suppliers so you can produce, repay old debts so you have credit again.
“Warm and safe” comes when you can put all your part timers back on 40 hours a week. Maybe you pay some overtime to the people who are still with you. If you still aren’t sure, you take on a few temporaries who don’t cost an arm and leg to lay off.
When debts are paid, taxes paid and everybody’s got as many hours as they want, then comes “can afford to”. That’s when you hire.
That’s when you hire. When someone spends, you dare to take on more overhead. (You believe the ice is thick enough to support you AND your coat and boots.) It’s that simple. Ask anyone who has fallen through the ice. Or survived a meltdown like last year’s.
We’ll talk about how we get back to that feeling of “warm”, “safe”, “dry” and “can afford to” tomorrow.

Imagine! Jews Claiming Jerusalem!

Horror of horrors, Israel is laying claim to Jerusalem as its capital. They made it their capital three thousand years ago, but that’s irrelevant. Nineteen hundred years ago, when they revolted against the Roman government that had proscribed their religion and destroyed their temple, they were slaughtered and driven out of the city.
From AD 135 to the end of Roman rule over Judea (around AD 700), it was officially illegal for a Jew to set foot in his own capital city, the center of his religious observances. The Muslim conquerors allowed them to sneak back into the city in a little quarter of their own.
For over 1,200 years, observant Jews prayed that next year’s Passover would be held in Jerusalem—whether they were in Poland, Spain, North Africa, New York or Zimbabwe. It was a foundation of their faith—that one day David’s City and Solomon’s Temple would be theirs again.
In 1948, the United Nations granted Jews—who had moved back into a Galilee and Judea that had been denuded of its vegetation and largely abandoned by its Muslim overlords—a tiny sliver of those two ancient Jewish provinces.
But now that the Jewish settlers had found water and made the land productive again, the Arabs wanted the land back. Five armies attacked the infant Jewish state the day it was born. To everyone’s astonishment the Jews fought back—and won.
They even enlarged their territory. But they failed to take Jerusalem away from Jordan’s British trained and commanded Arab Legion. Eight years after firing the British commander of the Legion, Jordan made the foolish mistake of declaring war on Israel.
This time, without British command, the Jordanian troops were chopped to pieces and for the first time since AD 135, the Jews had their capital back. THIS year, Jerusalem. But the United Nations refused to recognize Israel’s right to the ancient capital it had so unjustly been stripped of.
Jordan gave up all claim to the city and handed its pretensions to a new entity called the Palestine (a rename for Israel foisted on it by the vengeful Romans in AD 135) Liberation Organization. The leader of that group—the nephew of one of Hitler’s top SS commanders—declared that Jerusalem was to be the capital of his new state.
The United Nations agreed. The European Union agreed. There is pressure on the United States to agree. (No one is suggesting that Paris be stripped from France and handed over to its Muslim suburbs as their capital—or London from England.)
An international consensus is building that under no circumstances are the Jews in Israel to be allowed to have their ancient capital as a permanent possession. The European Union is on the verge of recognizing Jerusalem as the official capital of the Arab state of Palestine.
So the Jews are inducing Arab inhabitants of the old city—who, after all, have no claim on the city older than thirteen hundred years—to leave, so that it becomes a Jewish City. This is viewed with horror by Europeans and many Americans.
Why don’t they make a sympathetic gesture toward Israel by, say, giving up Stockholm or Washington? They could show Israel the proper way to do it. For myself, I rather favor allowing the Jews to hang on to their ancient city.
After all, they’ve been worshipping at Jerusalem (Salem) since the days of Abraham, before there were any Arabs.

Afghanistan--Mr. Obama's War

It’s now President Obama’s war. He cannot blame anything that happens from here on out on anyone else. Last night he officially put his brand on the thing. As far as he’s concerned, we seem to be starting all over again.
That isn’t what most Americans wanted to hear. It certainly isn’t what our European NATO allies wanted to hear. Many of those countries who actually have a couple of thousand troops in Afghanistan want them home again—soon.
Congress certainly wasn’t happy to hear it. Obama’s own party asked some of the nastiest questions. Why? What’s the game plan? Is this trip necessary? What about bringing the troops home again? And, again, why?
Everybody seems to want to know why our Secretary of Defense, Gates, is telling us there will be a reassessment of the situation in December, 2010, and Obama is telling us that we will definitely start pulling troops out the following July. Why bother with the reassessment if we’ve already decided what we are going to do?
Did Obama say anything new last night? Did he say anything he hadn’t already said during the Presidential campaign last year? Fewer troops for Iraq; more troops for Afghanistan. Yes, we’ve heard that. What’s the bottom line—what do WE get out of it?
Protection from Muslim radicals who want to bomb more targets in the US. That’s nice—but don’t those radicals now have all of their bases in Pakistan. Oh, but we’re going to assist Pakistan too. How? If Pakistan folds up and collapses or has a hostile government change, do we send troops in there like we did in Cambodia in 1970?
There’s a can of worms for you. Do nothing and risk watching Pakistan fall—do something and have a really serious war on our hands, with nukes possibly in play.
Admittedly, as I’ve said before, we have a tiger by the tail. NOBODY can predict the outcome if we let go or if we hang on. I’m so glad I don’t have to make this decision. It could so quickly become a no-win situation for us—and our troops over there.
I stopped to buy a pair of shoes this afternoon. The salesman—a bright man—and I got to talking about last night’s speech. He shook his head, thinking about all the nations that have tried to tackle Afghanistan, and wondered aloud if the only solution might be to go in full tilt and kill lots and lots of the people over there, Taliban and potential Taliban.
I reminded him (as I have my readers in previous blogs) that the only person to really subdue Afghanistan and its hostile sects was Genghis Khan. He did it with brute force. If a city of 100,000 became a problem, he slaughtered everyone in it.
The peace he left behind was that of the grave. I suggested we did not have the stomach for that—and that probably we are a better people for not having it. But neither of us could think of a workable alternative for pacifying Afghanistan and its mountains.
A surge that worked in Iraq with its highways, flatlands and clearly defined ethnic and religious groups we could play off against each other is one thing. Trackless mountains and tribal/religious relationships we don’t even understand are something else entirely.
I find myself feeling about Afghanistan the way I felt about Iraq—if we were going to go in at all, we should have hit hard, ruthlessly and fast; then we should have gotten out leaving so much destruction behind us that the maddest mullah of all would decide to go pick on somebody else next time. Not nice, politically incorrect, but historically a workable strategy.
Now all we have is a man who repeats himself, utterly lacks passion and conveys no conviction in his wooden tone, trying to articulate a policy no one really thinks will work. I fear that we may remember this speech the way we remember the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
That started out as Mr. Johnson’s war; then it became Mr. Nixon’s war—and we lost it. This one started out as Mr. Bush’s war; now it is Mr. Obama’s war. It looks even less winnable.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs--When?

So just when will the job recession end? Wall Street is going great guns; Goldman Sachs executives are buying guns to protect themselves this holiday season when they get their big bonuses (some spoil sports who lost retirement money are still peevish).
Toyota and Ford are beginning to sell cars again and a few more houses are being sold now. People who claim to know tell us the recession actually ended last summer. Sunday’s paper—which covers a county of 140,000 folk—listed about eight jobs available.
Several were for nurses and medical workers. That is a field, we are told, of guaranteed continuing growth. I know of at least one husky young construction worker who is now working as a nurse’s aide. With health care reform coming, what can the field do but grow?
Ask that question of guys who used to build television sets in the US—or who used to do customer service for your computer in this country. (Whatever happened to the guys who lived in the woods of Oregon or northern Michigan and could do a workman like job of getting your computer to perform as it was meant to?
They’ve been replaced by people in far off places whose only English seems to consist of the sentence—no matter what your computer problem may be—“You must reinstall your operating system”. The guy in Oregon or Georgia could fix it without drastic measures that wiped out your data and your updates, putting your computer three or four years behind where it is now. But these replacement folk seem to have no other options available.)
But health care, that’s secure, right? Oh? It has dawned on insurance companies—and some uninsured patients as well—that the same procedure you can have done here for as much as $90,000 can be done in India for as little as $12,000 including air fare and rehabilitation. Rooms contain beds for a traveling companion, computers, cable TV and a sitting area.
The quality of care? Physicians are trained in the United States or Australia—and the operations work. What insurance company in its right mind wouldn’t rather schedule you for Bengalore instead of Columbia Presbyterian or the Cleveland Clinic at that kind of saving?
(Incidentally, procedures done here in America are oftener and oftener done by people with very foreign names, trained—just like their classmates in India—in American medical schools. It’s just they cost less over there.)
So just how secure are American healthcare jobs? Oh, and don’t look for health care reform to improve things much. Even those who think it will be enacted admit it won’t lower costs—it may well raise some. So it won’t do what needs to be done. And, hospitals are consolidating like crazy; every time they do, it costs more jobs.
“BusinessWeek” had an article in its most recent issue about why job growth won’t be sufficient to put all the unemployed back to work any time soon. They tracked re-employment back to the 1970s when it took about a year after a recession ended to put everybody back to work.
That time got longer and longer through 1982, 1991, 2001—when it took over 30 months to get everyone back on the job. Companies now have so many workers on a part time basis (who WANT full time work) that it won’t be necessary to hire for awhile after new orders come in. “BusinessWeek” quotes experts who predict as much as five years to get everybody back to work.
Other, more pessimistic sources, suggest as much as ten years. After all, we have to generate 150,000 jobs a month just to employ new kids who reach job hunting age. Will the auto companies help? GM just sold more cars in China than in the US! They didn’t build those cars in the states!
Houses may sell; cars may sell (after all, 90% still have incomes), but that doesn’t mean we’re back. Are we entering a time when large numbers of people who once had good incomes while just spiral down (almost invisibly) to a subsistence level of living?
That’s too possible not to be scary. When enough people fall through the cracks, they can drag all sorts of things down with them. Henry Ford understood this.