November 9, 1989 – The Fall of the Wall

All the news about the 20th anniversary of the fall of Der Mauer, as the Germans called it had me thinking about where I was that day.

I had lived in Germany in the late 1970’s working both as a technician and with a side job. The job took me all over Europe, which I loved. I would occasionally have to go into East Germany or Czechoslovakia, and saw what communism was all about. It wasn’t pretty and it  was evil and huge armies stood on each side of the German border waiting for Armageddon and sometimes the Cold War wasn’t so cold. There is a small army of anonymous dead on both sides.

Later, after I came home, my job would take me back to Germany, sometimes several times a year, but always every other November to Messe Muenchen for a massive electronics trade show. I’m a factory junkie, so I would always visit suppliers and customers before and after the show.

Since I had spent time in the East, the protests in Leipzig and Dresden that began in early Fall were stunning. The GDR simply did not allow freedom of expression. But Poland had already seen a loss of control by the state as President Reagan, the Pope and Margaret Thatcher had both overtly and covertly supported Solidarity, and then Gorbachev enacted Glasnost. The Poles were never the best of communists, and nationalism was strong but suppressed in the East Bloc.They were the first to fall away, even before Glasnost.

East Germany was more communist than Stalin, they used to say. The Stasi were everywhere and the country was Orwellian in its dedication to communism with a German face. So when the demonstrations broke out and nothing happened there was some slight hope for greater freedom there as well. What happened next stunned the world.

As the rest of Eastern Europe began to liberalize, the East German people began to leave. Thousands were escaping to the West via Hungary, and that border was closed. Others went to Prague. The border with the West was the most heavily armed and patrolled real estate on the planet at the time and so was no outlet. Huge fences and razor wire and machine guns. Passing through the check points was scary for the Westerners who did so, and there was very little traffic the other way except Westerners going home.

The pressure within East Germany had risen, but no one expected the protests. First a few thousand and then more. Honecker was losing control. In mid October, Gorbachev visited Honecker who had had issued shoot to kill orders, which were never carried out. Gorbachev actually had to pressure Honecker into allowing some reform. The old Cold Warrior wouldn’t change though, and was replaced by Egon Krenz, nothing more than an apparatchik in the right place at the right time.

3 Weeks before November 9th, he took over. The protests kept on growing and there was a sense of change, but even then no hint of what would happen. The protests continued until the government called a special session of the Politburo, where things started to go to hell and 2/3 of the members resigned on the 7th. It was anyone’s guess what would happen next.

The radio in Europe generally sucks. When driving I would usually flip the dial every few minutes trying to find something, anything, to listen to.  Germany is a funny place. A very high population density, but on certain autobahns on a weekday morning there’s not much traffic. I had a big Benz on the morning of the 9th and was probably cruising at 110 and the highway to Boeblingen, near Stuttgart, was empty. I had to be at Hewlett Packard by 11 for an engineering meeting, and then IBM afterwards.

It was probably 10:00 or so when I dialed in Westdeutsche Rundfunk or another channel and heard an announcement that Krenz was speaking to the Politburo. I had a feeling it was very important, as did the radio network obviously. It wasn’t an especially long speech, maybe 15 minutes, but I had to pull over because I began to cry for a moment. I could not believe my ears. Krenz announced that he was opening the border effective as soon as possible. German is not my native language, so I had to listen to the announcer confirm what I had just heard.

To someone who had seen the Cold War up close and knew  the implications of a hot war in Germany, I was simply stunned. I realized, “It’s over and we’re still alive”. There were times when it was close. The Army kept the ammunition close at hand and the trip wire units were always ready to go. The Air Force planes that you saw on the rare clear day were sometimes armed and there were planes sitting on runways across Europe armed and crewed and ready. One phone call could set it all off. Large numbers of civilians and military would die very quickly and in the worst possible manners. And it was over. East Germany was the last possible pillar of aggression, and one man had made the decision to turn his back on the past.

I walked into HP half an hour later, and told everyone I met what I had just heard. No one believed me. I got to IBM later in the afternoon and got the same reaction. I got to the airport that night and the Avis desk clerk knew nothing. By the time I got to the terminal, I was seriously thinking of flying to Berlin to watch what happened next, but I had business in London the next day and got on the plane. It was eerie, even spooky.  The Germans I met simply could not comprehend what Krenz had just done. It was impossible, unbelievable.

By the time I got to my hotel and turned on the television sometime around 10:00pm, the scenes from Berlin were on CNN and BBC. Massive crowds of West Berliners and Easterners were tearing the wall down with their hands or a hammer or even heavy construction equipment. It was a spontaneous and joyous and riotous and somewhat (or maybe a lot) drunken celebration of freedom and repatriation. Family members on each side sought each other out, East German soldiers and border guards joined in and everyone was yelling or crying or both. The Russians quietly stayed in their Kasernes.

We must never, ever forget. The world got lucky that day. Great and good things do come out of nowhere sometimes.

Another friend lost

I got an e mail this morning that my friends had lost another man on the line in Afghanistan. Spc. Julian Berisford, a man from  West Virginia, was killed by  RPG and small arms fire on Wednesday. C Co. 3/509 at FOB Salerno has been out on the line since February, and have been doing their jobs every day in close contact with fundamentalists at war with moderation. He was 25 and had seen the elephant and was okay with it.

I didn’t know Julian, but I ended up on his MySpace page. He was a typical 509er; brash and self assured; a good man and competent. I got a big kick out of some of his posts. He was someone I would have liked to have known and a man we can all be proud of. He had a daughter just about to celebrate her first birthday. It hurts a lot of people that he is gone now.

Down in San Antonio at Brooks Army Medical Center, they have Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who turns out to have been a whacked out fundamentalist, on life support at a cost of probably $30,000/day. Major Hasan walked into the health services building at Ft. Hood and cold bloodedly murdered 13 infidels and wounded another 32 and they caught him in the act. Now he will get a fair and proper trial and probably use the insanity defense.

The President says don’t jump to conclusions and the media call Hasan the “alleged” shooter. He was caught in the act and shot 4 times by a cop. It makes me sick.  There is something seriously wrong with our society when a hero like Julian is ignored and our President and our media act like craven cretins.

Forgive me if I’m a little bitter tonight.

Acting Presidential

This morning former President George W. Bush visited the people wounded in the Ft. Hood Massacre at Darnall Medical Center on base. The current President is on his way to Camp David for the rest of the weekend.

After the President Obama’s  performance the other day in barely recognizing the severity and horror of the crime, and his odd plea not to jump to conclusions, we are coming to know more and more the content of his character, and it is of deep concern.

His detachment has become a common thread among his critics. There is an abnormal distance and a disturbing dissonance in his actions and reactions that should have us all worried.  Whether it was his inappropriate comments on the Cambridge Police/Gates case or his demonization of his opponents or his inappropriate gifts to foreign heads of state or his dismissal of allies and friends or his sudden trip to Copenhagen amidst pressing affairs at home, there is a breathtaking lack of depth and common sense.

Hillary may have been prescient with her “3:00 AM” ad during the campaign after all.

Contrast our current President with his predecessors. The phrase “acting Presidential” comes immediately to mind, and too many times now, the current occupant of the office has not.

Dances with Pundits

Today, Jake Tapper of ABC reports, the President lunched with:

Mike Allen – Politico

David Brooks – New York Times

Chris Cillizza – Washington ost

Gail Collins  – New York Times

Howard Fineman – Newsweek

David Gergen – Media Whore

Mara Liasson – NPR

Josh Marshall – Talking Points Blog

John Meacham – Newsweek

Cynthia Tucker – Atlanta Journal Constitution

Andrew Rosenthal – New York Times

With his Journo List and the use of the National Endowment for the Arts for propaganda purposes, we have never seen a president waging all out propaganda warfare in this country. To Obama, Obama is the Message. As we see Paul Krugman advocate Weimar monetary policy, it would seem that much of the punditocracy have lost all critical perspective, and perhaps some of their common sense as well.

The President has used these lunches and dinners to communicate his message, which is then interpreted the pundits. No one discussed the religious aspect of yesterday’s massacre, I’m sure, just as no one questioned the foreign policy fiascos that are racking up like frequent flyer miles as the president’s strategies on Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Honduras, and Central Europe go awry. No one, I am sure, brought up the monstrosity of the Health Care bill before the house tonight.

No, these are party line affairs meant to co-opt his friends and neutralize or win his opponents. The hard questions go unanswered as they build up day by day. The announced unemployment rate is 10.2%. The structural rate including those who have given up on their searches for jobs is closer to 14% or 15%. In parts of the country unemployment is above the levels of the Great Depression.

As the President and his staff have, in an unprecedented manner, waged war against Limbaugh and Fox News, everyone had a nice lunch and oh so interesting conversation. Thomas Jefferson said ” were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter”. He also said “the force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed”.  Obama’s co-option of the message is unprecedented, and if anyone should be wary, it is these very pundits.

 

 

 

Krugman Faces His Anzio

Paul “Absurdo the Wonder Clown” Krugman today makes the comparison between Obama’s loss of face in Tuesday’s elections and the bloody assault on the Anzio beachhead in January 1944. Apparently, the President’s economic policy isn’t enough, and we need to spend more. This from a Nobel Laureate in Economics.

Anzio was an attempt to break a stalemate in the Italian campaign. Thousands of Allied soldiers had been killed in the attempt to take mountain range after mountain range as the German Army dug in on the high ground. Anzio was to be the key to Rome. Instead, the Germans rushed in every available soldier to try and drive the Americans back to the sea. It was an undermanned invasion from the beginning and the risk of failure was high. It turned into one of the hottest beachheads of the war. In 2 days, the Germans had 40,000 troops on the line to the Allies 38,000. General Lucas, the commanding officer on the Allied side, was relieved of command for a lack of aggression, which is Krugman’s point in the analogy, but the truth was that a rush from the beach would have led to the piecemeal destruction of the entire army. It is still a controversial call.

Mr. Krugman, acolyte of Keynes that he is, figure that if some government spending is good, more is better. Except that trillions upon trillions have already been spent; under the Auto Bailout, TARP’s I and II, and then the Stimulus Bill. This does not include defense and other government spending which are at record highs, nor the extension of unemployment benefits nor 100 other programs.

That we simply do not have the money and our creditors are at the door does not register with Mr. Krugman, and even to a Keynsian, the bill comes due one day. That there are signs the economy is slowly reviving also doesn’t seem to register. Nor does the truth that the vast bulk of the Stimulus money has not yet hit the economy. He wants more.

So with our system awash in dollars and the presses running overtime and interest at all time lows Mr. Krugman’s answer is to use the Weimar Option. There are a number of famous photos of Germans paying for a bag of groceries with wheelbarrows full of Marks back in the late 1920’s. Mr. Krugman’s analogy really should be “it’s the economy, stupid!”, because our government has mismanaged itself into a mess.

Perhaps Mr. Krugman should look at the way our manufacturing base has hollowed out and how to stabilize and revitalize the creation of real wealth through the four pillars; manufacturing, construction, natural resources, and agriculture. Even Keynes would have understood this. And all the while inside the bubble they play the blame game.

The Age of the Mediocre

Has anyone noticed how mediocre society has become in the past 20 years?  Fine art, music, film, literature, politics, radio, television etc.,  really are in a doldrum.  The postwar flowering of New York as the world’s cultural center has turn now into a monolithic mass of mediocrity. The same people reading the same newspapers watching the same television eating at the same restaurants with the same friends discussing the same things put out the same piles of junk every day. We have squeezed our children into the same politically correct, sterile boxes and wonder why they turn their backs on us in favor of video games or the internet.

It starts with education. 40 years after the experimentation began, the bureaucrats of the education establishment have figured out how to teach absolutely nothing in the most efficient and painless way possible. Any flavor or zest for education is sterilized and homogenized to be taught in the same standardized manner that anesthetizes the student and retards the learning process. Grade inflation has led to reduced expectations and a dumbed down society.

Media went through incredible consolidation in the 1980’s and 90’s. Clear Channel, Time/Warner, Fox, and others all went on merger and spending sprees, with the result that we now have a velveeta media. The same squishy, uninformative feel good groupthink from all sides. Scandals are manufactured and celebrity for the sake of celebrity is celebrated. All the while, the hard news is minimized or trivialized until it blows up. Kiplings five friends are instead discarded in favor of pushing slanted agendas with sloppy or inaccurate reporting. There’s no wonder the major media is dying on the vine. With their incredible bias to the left, they have managed to alienate close to 50% of their available audience. Thus we see the New York Times, the LA Times, the Rocky Mountain News, and Seattle Post Intelligencer all falling by the wayside. In New York and LA especially, the Times have become nothing more than soapboxes for provincial ideologues ranting to the like minded.

In Hollywood, you have a choice of blow ‘em up mind garbage, ultra dysfunctional self involved vanity projects, or some twisted version of cops & robbers. Until the 1960’s, Hollywood churned out a  diverse product with perhaps 10 new films hitting the theaters weekly. Now all rides on $100 Million in special effects. In music, Elvis has left the building. It has become a mindless drone unless one seeks out the truly unique in hidden niches. Much of the best music is being written in places like Brazil or Mexico, with the occasional African or Middle Eastern artist thrown in. Otherwise it seems to be overproduced, dishonest crap. Frank Zappa wrote about television in the early 1970’s;

” You will obey me while I lead you

and eat the garbage that I feed you

Until the day that we don’t need you

Don’t go for help, no one will heed you

Your mind is totally controlled

It has been stuffed into my mold

and you will do as you are told

Until the rights to you are sold”

Pretty prescient. High culture has been abandoned to its own shrinking ghetto in favor of bling. Back in the 1930’s, Frank Capra described helots as graspers and takers; people who had and cared for things and only things and the world is basically being run by them to the exclusion of all else now. The ancient Spartans described helots as slaves who were ritually mistreated and degraded. That sounds like a complementary description these days. Those on the inside will foist the lowest common denominator garbage on the rest of us simply because they can get away with it.

Open a book, listen to something outside the box, read foreign newspapers on the internet, seek out the weird and wonderful and offbeat. Break the stranglehold of the mediocre on our country.

Deflecting Blame

The AIG scandal sums up the Washington game today. Slip in an earmark or special favor, get paid handsomely, and blame someone else. It’s political 3 card monty and special interests have been playing the game for years. Wall Street contributed billions and played both the Democrats and Republicans in their effort to grease the path to profit. The unions on the other side get nice fat pork projects. ACORN, Obama’s pet organization, gets hundreds of millions to organize and spread their gospel, and GM gets billions to continue in their moribund ways. It’s a matter of who you know and how much you buy a favor for. The rumor is that certain congressmen have price lists.

The corruption is worse than at any time in history. Even during the Hayes administration, there was some decorum. These days it is a formalized industry with K Street at the nexus. Goldman Sachs simply sends another Treasury Secretary to replace the last one, and their interests are covered for the next 4 years. They pit interests against one another to keep the volume up and misdirect attention from their deals, all the while creating paper tigers to scare their constituents.

People can no longer trust the media. Secret listserv sites coordinate the liberal propaganda machine and commentators paid by the networks coordinate in secret with White House staff every morning to determine today’s message. Slime the opposition, change topics every day, and push as radical an agenda as they can seem to be the operative philosophy. It seems that 1984 was just a few years late in coming.

The New Fascism – AIG episode

What we are seeing now with the pile on at AIG is an attempt to open up class warfare. Executive compensation is absurd today in many sectors. Boards of directors have been supine and shareholders have allowed top management to dictate far beyond the reasonable checks and balances normal to corporate governance. And yet we now have a lynch party getting ready to hang a bunch of executives who were legally compensated to stay at a failing institution to clean the place up before they turn off the lights. Sometimes in business, you need to do these things, much as you might not like it.

The issue of ridiculous compensation  seems to go back to Michael Eisner in 1992. Just before Bill Clinton came into power with a promise to raise taxes, Eisner gave himself a $200 Million bonus, perhaps the largest in history until that time. Eisner, one of Clinton’s top supporters, wasn’t stupid. He got his as best he could as fast as he could, but what a hypocrite. Since then, it’s been Sally bar the door. Welch, Kozlowski, anyone at Goldman Sachs, and thousands of other senior executives suddenly decided they were absolutely critical to their companies success, or rather that they could get away with it too. Instead we got a bunch of 2 bit MBA hacks who knew little about their companies core competencies and made their money through M&A in most cases. The investment houses egged them on, with all those juicy fees (and bonuses) as the payoff. So today, we have a debt loaded corporate sector where core capabilities have been outsourced and offshored. In a technology based global economy, our leadership class has sold us out for 30 pieces of inflation adjusted silver.

And now while  a dollar/year CEO who just started and a bunch of people are trying to unwind the biggest rats nest in American economic history, the real crooks; the ones in Congress and left wing special interests, have identified AIG as the new Louis XVI. “Off with their heads” is the rallying cry for the new sans culottes at Harvard and Yale and HuffPo and ACORN. As they eat their arugula salads and drink Fiji water they rant against the unfairness of it all and “sticking it to the Man” like some bad 1960’s B movie. Check out Hollywood and entertainment compensation if you want to see some real economic crimes.

The United States was built upon al foundation that we are all equal under the law. However, today, there is an philosophy of entitlement at the upper levels of our society that protects the rich and powerful. We are at risk of a permanent oligarchy who will maintain their privelidge by any means necessary. But it is not the AIG executives in this case who deserve our censure, but rather their predecessors and enablers on Wall Street and in Congress. For clearly the fault lies squarely on Capitol Hill. Campaign contributions lubricated favorable legislation, and Obama and Geithner and Dodd are in this up to their necks. They have been  duplicitous in their denials. AIG is simply a convenient distraction. A shiny, noisy bauble to distract the rubes as the oligarchs try to shove more statism down our throats and cover up their criminality with fiat rather than constitutionally sound law.

9-11 changed a lot of things in our society. We need more security today, and with technology, some of this means a very careful monitoring of the threat posed by real enemies using advanced technology. New technologies have been put into place that can easily be abused by those with no moral quandaries. While the Left called Bush fascist, I never really worried about my own personal freedom or privacy or that of the vast majority of us because I trueted him to do the right thing. That is rapidly changing. There is evil afoot, and it is not just external threats. I become very afraid when I can no longer trust my government or corporate leadership to do the right thing. There is far too much opportunity now of an accrual of power to those who would abuse it in their own personal interests. We have already seen what happens when greed and hubris combine with the means to pry open the safe.

In Italy in 1922 and Germany in 1932 it was the industrialists and bankers who backed the fascists. Without the Krupps and Thyssens, there would have been no Hitler. If we allow AIG to be singled out in this manner, is there that much difference? They are the convenient patsy. The full power of the state is a terrible weapon, which is why our Constitution is such a powerful document. It cleary limits such conduct. And yet Congress in its wisdom has decided to tread along the edge of a slippery slope. Too many times, I have heard excuses that we the people are powerless. We the people are being used, and we the people have become very lazy. It is at times like these, when despite their unpopularity, we must defend the rights of those who are unfairly singled out. There is a systemic problem that must be dealt with according to the rule of law, the rules of good corporate governance and of moral conduct. Allowing a bunch of power drunk crooks to use AIG to cover their own malefactions is not the answer.

3 Card Monty

The Chinese government has just spoken. They do not trust the United States government to maintain the value of the Dollar and have outlined the skeleton of a plan for the IMF to implement a new global reserve currency based on Special Drawing Rights (SDR’s), a basket that in the past consisted of a mix of U.S. Dollars, Euros, Japanese Yen, and Pounds Sterling. This has all been brought about by the absolute irresponsibility of the U.S. government in maintaining the integrity of the dollar. The immediate effect could well be the onset of significant inflation. Most currencies today are back only by the creditworthiness of the country issuing them, and the global consensus seems to be that Uncle Sam has become a deadbeat.

50 years of budget games have led us to this precarious position. Taking Social Security and Medicare off budget and then using fiscal 3 card monty to move many other hugely expensive programs including the Iraq war off budget has created an untenable position. When factoring in underfunded pension obligations, state budget shortfalls, etc. we simply will not have the money to pay down these obligations, perhaps within our children’s lifetimes. How they can hold to the same standard of living is a dire question.

The Republicans blame the Democrats and vice versa, but the reality is that it has been a shell game from the beginning. The people in power want to stay in power, so they buy off special interests and the American people with more and more expensive programs. Well, the Chinese are going to put a stop to all of this. Just like borrowing from the bank, the Chinese are now our bankers and they will be ready to foreclose if we continue down this path. We have to get our financial house in order as best we can as fast as we can.

What we cannot do under any circumstances is to have repeated Trillion $ programs to bail us out. Wall Street has been insulated and has been milking the crisis. The money under TARP 1 was promptly redeposited back into T Bills while the central problem, toxic mortgage debt, has still not been addressed. Even more money flooded in under the stimulus bill and then the budget. Suddenly, U.S. debt has exploded by $4 Trillion+. Tomorrow, Treasury Secretary Geithner is preparing the same old Washington remedy; throw money at the problem. Sooner or later we must fix the problem rather than treat the symptoms.

I will try to post some ideas on fixing the crisis, but I know it will take an objective, non-partisan solution. It’s not about faction. It’s about the continuing viability of our country.

We Gotta Get Out of This Place!

If that’s the last thing we ever do, as the song goes. The world is mired in recession. Leadership has basically come up with 2’s, 3’s and 12’s in their dealings with the crisis. World markets are laughing at the U.K., and the U.S. is right behind them in the clown show that is their excuse for an economic recovery plan. The two leading capitalist nations are on the brink of meltdowns, and yet massive spending programs have done little to nothing in relieving the crises which began the meltdown. In the UK, the money has gone primarily to support the banks. Here in the USA, President Obama has used the shotgun approach and is funding every liberal democrat’s wet dream as if he won the golden ticket in the Willie Wonka movie.

The problem is, though, that the cupboard is bare in both London and Washington. Instead of exercising fiscal restraint and common sense, both Gordon Brown and Obama propose to spend their way out of the crisis with money they don’t have and won’t have under their ongoing plans to stifle their economies. While proposing increased taxes on the “rich”, Obama somehow thinks that the producers will rise to the occasion and somehow lift us all miraculously out of the mire. Yet every prior recession and depression ended only when business began to recover and industry got back on its feet. That will not happen if taxation is oppressive. The rest of the world is almost done financing our debt, and the bill is coming due. The loss of the dollar as the benchmark currency is a symbol of the fall of America.

And yet there are alternatives. Past economic trends clearly indicate that industry and technology are the path forward. Whether the Industrial Revolution or Renaissance or Internet revolution, it is science, industry, and knowledge that help all boats rise. The problem is that today, our Western leadership has hocked our technology inheritance overseas to Japan and China and Taiwan in the interest of cheap consumer products. Government and corporate management consist of lawyers, marketers, and MBA’s who have little or no understanding of technology and who do not value the means of production. Rather, they prefer mergers and acquisitions and a management style that benefits the very few insiders at the expense of their employees, shareholders, suppliers, and customers. The big names in technology in North America; Apple, Hewlett Packard, Motorola, etc. really don’t make anything anymore. Rather, they package a few ideas and have someone else do the manufacturing. How can one understand the opportunities if one doesn’t understand the processes that lead to those opportunities? A few companies still understand this vital key to the puzzle.Look at Intel and Cisco for example.

In government, even key organizations such as DARPA have forgotten enabling technologies in favor of flashy programs with short term payoffs. The basic research organizations; Bell Labs, PARC, SLAC, and even Livermore and Sandia are either gone or focus on the high profile. Science and technology are done in the weeds in our modern world these days. There is little low hanging fruit in terms of discovery.

Aviation, rocketry, electronics, and medical technology all began modestly in small labs or garages or small factory floors. Today, we need to reexamine our priorities. For all the talk of green energy, the boom will be short lived, and the economics are still prohibitive without heavy government subsidies. Once the base is installed at @ 15% of total energy production/consumption, there will be little requirement for the high paying jobs our leadership now tout as the way forward. But it will be the men and women working in small organizations who are willing to risk it all on their dream who make the real difference in the long run. There are vast new horizons out there. We just need to get out of the way, make sure there is a reasonable degree of safety, and let our basic American inventiveness take advantage of the opportunities.

Obama’s European Vacation

Well it seems our president had a really good time in Europe. He got to meet the Queen, discuss important matters of state for @ 10 hours at the G 20 photo op and sort out the world’s problems. He went to Strasbourg, a lovely city, to both receive the adulation of his admirers and meet with the NATO heads. But what was really accomplished?

The whole G 20, including China, Japan, Germany, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and the rest came up with a whopping $1 Trillion for economic troubleshooting. Since neither the U.S. nor the U.K have much left to contribute these days, perhaps that’s all anyone was willing to commit beyond their own borders. Right now, it seems like economically it is every country for itself. The rumblings of nationalism and protectionism are still out there, and little else was agreed upon or discussed.

At the NATO summit, Obama was promised 46 French policemen and a player to be named later when he needed combat troops to fight the Taliban. Not the kind of success he was hoping for, I think.  In the meantime, he also mentioned that he would like to eliminate nuclear weapons, which is a nice thought when you’re at home smoking a joint, but try selling that to the Pakistanis and Iranians. The thing is that membership in the nuclear club is expensive and these folks really think they need the things. The whole India/Pakistan thing, the Iran/Israel thing, and yes, even the US/Russia thing are all dead serious Armageddon scenarios that any chess player knows end in checkmate for both sides, which is one reason MAD theory works. We are living in an asymetric world, and when North Korea is helping all sorts of tin pot mullahs and dictators  arm themselves with the very best in dirty bomb technology, it’s just a bit of a problem for the world’s superpower to willingly relinquish that power. Kumbayah is for the Girl Scouts, not national policy.

Otherwise, trading kisses with the Sarkozys does not qualify as a successful presidential trip. This was a photo op, nothing more. At home, Congress is battling on everything from a pork filled budget to carbon offsets to card check, with clearly socialist policies in the ascendence. We used to have a Constitution in this country which was honored. Today, it seems it is honored in the exception rather than the general. So come on back, Mr. President and chastise some more bankers or auto execs or other capitalists. After all, with your deep and comprehensive grasp of industrial policy, economics, and technology, you should be able to lead us all to the promised land.

Die Walkurie – Opera Review

The other night I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Opera with my beloved in Los Angeles, seeing Wagner’s Die Walkurie. Opera can be amazing; uplifting, tragic, sublime, but my impression of Wagner was of some proto Nazi thug with a lot of Nietzschean and Freudian overtones. Well that part is correct, but he could write a hell of an opera.

Placido Domingo is getting on a bit. It happens to us all, but as a performer it must be especially cruel to have to husband one’s gifts. By all accounts he has been a tremendous boost to culture in Los Angeles. Without a lot of fanfare, LA has become one of the leading arts cities on the planet. Mr. Domingo played Siegmund, the doomed male twin in the incestuous and adulterous relationship that is at the core of Die Walkurie. This is the second of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and lays the groundwork for the balance of the Operas, which will all be performed next year. Domingo’s Siegmund was a wonder; devastated, conflicted, rapturous, joyous, and doomed. All of this was sung and acted at a level which is very rare to experience. The other singers; Vitaly Kovalov, Linda Watson, and Michelle DeYoung all found the heart of their characters; Kovalev as the amoral and deeply conflicted Wotan;  Watson as a deeply moving Brunnhilde, and DeYoung as the wronged wife of Wotan, Fricka, confronted with the fruits of his infidelities and as the guardian of marriage and hearth the moral heart and prime agent of the heartbreak and despair to follow. It is her rectitude and will that propels all that follows.

Wotan must find a pure and free paragon to regain the Rheingeld or Valhalla will fall. His son, Siegmund, is, he thinks, that agent. However, in Sigmund’s love affair with his twin sister Sieglinde, who is in a loveless and desperate marriage to Hunding, he breaks moral bonds and as Fricka demands, must pay the price for his sins. Wotan must remove his protection, and Siegmund must face his enemies alone. Anje Kampe as Sieglinde is magnificent. Desperate, emotionally terrorized and despairing, she is fatefully reunited with her twin in a doomed affair.

Achim Freyer’s production is spectacular and to the point. Surrealist, Freudian overtones define the characters and action. There are dwarves, giants, demons and monsters in this world. The gods are oversized and incredible. Brunnhilde is swathed in a massive cloak of feathers that take three to operate. Swords become light sabers, and all the while, the sands of time inexorably trickle away towards an inevitable conclusion. The scale is massive, appropriate for Wagner, and yet very human. A simple bench at the center of the stage becomes much more as Wotan confronts his own despair and the betrayal of his mortal son. Brunnhilde knows her fathers heart and must obey him without question, and yet in her love of her half brother she chooses to support Siegmund and Sieglinde to her own inevitable doom. Ms. Watson does a masterful and entrancing job in both singing and acting the role of a demigod.

The conclusion is foreordained. The Walkurie abandon their sister, who is cast into a a deathlike sleep. It’ s a short summary, but it is the journey that is magnificent. In a world where high culture seems to fade from view at an ever faster rate as even artists commoditize and monetarize their product, Die Walkure stands as a masterpiece. I can only hope that next year’s Cycle meets this very high standard.

Pirates, Arrgh!

It’s hard to believe that the nations of the world are countenancing piracy on the high seas. Somalia, perhaps the most screwed up place in the world, is the home to a bunch of desperate thugs who will to go far out to sea to hijack huge container ships along with anything else that looks like a target of opportunity. We know who the pirates are and where they live and still do nothing.

In 1802, President Jefferson ordered the U.S. Navy’s U.S.S. Constellation, Chesapeake, Constitution, Enterprise and Intrepid to stand off the coasts of the Barbary states (Morocco, Tripoli, Algiers, and Tunis)and engage the pirates, whose business had been good for hundreds of years predating on ships of many nations. The Koran apparently allowed this conduct against infidels; murder, slavery, and ransom were all a part of it. It was a business and business was good. The suppression of piracy  was one of the first tasks of the new U.S. Navy, and they were very successful, leading to a treaty in which Jefferson agreed to pay $60,000 ransom.

Piracy was another story elsewhere. In the Caribbean, it depended most upon national interests. Spanish, British, and French pirates were another instrument of state, with Letters of Marque to offer legal protection in the home country of many privateers. If caught by the other side, however, justice was swift and painful. Hangings, keelhaulings, auto da fe’s etc were common. Even today, the Straights of Malacca near Singapore still harbor the occasional pirate, but strong anti piracy measures by the regional governments have kept this in check.

Now, we have the most powerful country on earth  indecisive and clueless on what to do in the face of a new threat. We seem to be able to fight two wars, but a bunch of reckless tribesmen with AK-47’s, 12.5mm machine guns, and RPG’s, all considered light weapons, are holding the world’s merchant fleet hostage. Two days ago, several pirates were killed and captured by French commandos on a private yacht that had been commandeered. One hostage died. Unfortunately, the only thing thugs understand is force, and with it, the threat of annihilation.

There is really only the one solution to stop this bad joke. Sink all their boats, kill enough of them to dissuade them, and perhaps then destroy their homes and goods pour encourager les autres as the French say. We have the technology to find them and track them, and more than enough to militarily defeat them. Sometimes it does become necessary to use maximum force. But until the Europeans and Filipinos and others show some spine, it will be a thankless task. People will die, including hostages and our own, but what is the alternative? The Taliban has been funding themselves with the proceeds of drug trafficking, and now the Somalis will be able to purchased bigger and better guns. To allow it to go any further is to allow another nest of viperous enemies to grow stronger and hurt us even more.  The attacks have been made by Muslims against infidels and thus the Islamic world either doesn’t care or approves of the pirates actions; Europe seems to be incapable of action. The Chinese have sent several ships to protect their own merchant fleet and we have heard almost nothing of Chinese vessels being boarded. It is American, European, and smaller states whose ships and crews are most at risk. One thing I do know is that the Navy can and will gladly do the job if so ordered. It’s in their DNA. Decatur and Bainbridge are two of the most hallowed names in Navy history and both relished such a fight.

Welcome to 1984 – 25 years late

The Department of Homeland Security recently released a report, “Rightwing Extremism – Current Economic & Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization & Recruitment”. The report is the product of the Extremism & Radicalization Branch of DHS and was sent to federal, state, and local authorities around the country on April 7 with the goal of deterring and preventing terrorist attacks against the United States.

First, there is no specific information for such a report of domestic right wing terrorist activity. The cause for this radicalization, they say, is the economic downturn and the election of an African American president. The report states that right wing extremist groups are using these issues as recruiting tools. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and harsh economic circumstances in the 1990’s are cited as historical antecedents. The possible restriction of firearms sales and return of military veterans are also cited, as is the murder of three Pittsburgh police officers by an individual expressing racist ideology and antigovernment  beliefs last week. Illegal immigration is also identified as a flash point. However, the evidence cited is very weak.  Another example is proposed legislation for mandatory gun registration, tagging, and ammunition control. The last statement is of deep concern, as it has not yet appeared on any news or other media outlets. Who is doing the proposing? Where has this legislation been introduced?

Somehow, the communists and “one world” government are thrown into the stew as well, and then disgruntled military veterans are identified as one group to watch. At the same time, the report notes that after the Oklahoma City bombing, membership in militia groups dropped significantly. The report cites the internet and availability of information on the tools of the soldier’s trade as sources for information.

Overall, this is a dog’s breakfast written to obtain a specific end; greater control by Homeland Security. Somewhere along the line, government took leave of its senses and now sees a threat under every rock and bush. One of the primary concerns of many citizens has been the possible effect of restrictive gun legislation and as a result they have reacted logically by purchasing more guns and ammunition. At the same time, the administration has proven to be remarkably consistent in maintaining the Bush Administration’s secrecy, wiretapping and other security prerogatives while now seeming to expand those restrictions further. Why? The timing is very suspicious. Tomorrow, April 15, Tea Parties will take place throughout the country to protest out of control spending and fiscal irresponsibility at both state and federal levels. If you are an accountant or loan officer, the state and Federal governments would basically would have been cut off from credit markets long ago. It’s not about emotion, it’s about numbers. Could the Department of Homeland Security be afraid of the Tea Party movement?

Think about the various restrictions that have been put in place since 2001; increased surveillance and wiretapping; an oppressive and sometimes arbitrary TSA; militarization of police forces, and now a significant and unpopular political shift  to the left of what most of us expected. Statism is resurgent as the United States Government attempts to gain control of banking, insurance, and the automotive industry. This has never been done before in our history and is diametrically opposed to the founding principles of the Constitution. And yet there has been little discussion of these great seismic events.

We can of course slough these issues off and go back to watching television or playing video games, or we can discuss them as adults. Socialism and Naziism are really two sides of the same coin. Each wants to control society, by force if necessary. Orwell was a committed socialist until his participation in the Spanish Civil War opened his eyes to the evils of left wing socialism… where he saw the true face of socialism. In Spain, a movement that was portrayed as democratic and liberal was transformed by ideologues into the mirror image of their Fascist opponents. Thousands were murdered for not being socialist enough as determined by the Comintern.

In 1984, Winston Smith’s job was to falsify and expunge records that conflicted with the regime’s propaganda. Government surveillance and indoctrination were pervasive and language was redefined to further the regimes goals.  The Ministry of Truth is actually a Ministry of Lies. Informers are everywhere, and the Thought Police enforce conformity with terror and death. The Ministry of Love is in fact the agency for torture and execution. The cult of Big Brother, the all knowing, all powerful leader is enforced with the gun and imprisonment.

Unfortunately, there are too many parallels today for us to ignore the significance of 1984. London has become to most surveilled city on the planet, while a culture of fear has arisen, despite the fact that crime in America is at historic lows. To date, government has done little or nothing to assuage the fears of those who might feel their civil liberties and economic futures are in jeopardy. Corporatism rules, and the Administration is clearly playing favorites. And yet our Constitution is clear in that it is a document that exists to enfore the rights of the individual, not government or large corporations. These are all deep concerns.

Bruce Springsteen is a Putz

Bruce Springsteen played the other night in Los Angeles to a crowd of over 12,000 adoring fans. He brought a message of hope and perseverance to Los Angeles, at least those who could afford tickets that went up to $500/each. Very proletarian. $40 T shirts, $100 sweatshirts all whizzing off the shelf as the merchandising machine gobbles up every available dollar as he preaches the virtues of the common man.

Back in 1972 – 73 Bruce would play the local high school and Villanova beer blasts and up and down the Jersey Shore and had an electricity that bound us up in his dreams.  In 1975 we stood on our chairs screaming with delirium at the Bottom Line as he roared into full blown rock & roll  stardom. But then, sometime thereafter, something changed. The lyrics became darker. The music more reflective. The politics more apparent. There was a populism and sympathy for the working man; the same high school kids who partied and roared back at him a couple of years earlier now grown older and perhaps care worn with the burdens of responsibility and perhaps this was reflected  in his own hegira. Years of touring tend to burn one out after a while and even if the money’s good and the lifestyle is a teen dream, perhaps one does begin to think of higher things. But the music got darker, and every now and the he would come out with a rock & roll classic, but somewhere back then he lost me.

I have seen the good and the bad here in America and overseas. I have seen real poverty and suffering. I’ve seen death both violent and peaceful. I’ve seen the pain people, often the ones closest to each other, inflict on each other. But somehow, I have always had hope and dreams not of darkness on the edge of town, but of light, of opportunity, of the incredible love we can have for one another. Where Mr. Springsteen sees hopelessness and despair, I see people trying to change their lives, not giving up or giving in to self pity. I see people trying to step in, sometimes not successfully, to help those in dire need. I see faith in action and the difference it makes to our society as a whole.

It’s a screwed up world. Always has been, and probably always will be. We can be a part of the problem or part of the solution. Either way, we have to look at the facts objectively and determine our best course of action. And we have to be true to our principles. Bruce is, I’m sure, true to his. But I have a real problem being lectured by people who have my best interests at heart and want me to do what they tell me. 70% of the time they’re wrong anyway, and I’m an ornery cuss who can think on his feet and do just fine for myself. I really don’t like the very wealthy who have successfully insulated themselves from the rest of us then calling themselves the common man and telling us that socialism is the way forward. It stinks of hypocrisy. He got his. I just want mine. Fair & square, but one of the cornerstones of this society is opportunity. Bruce got his shot and made the most of it. There was no state radio as in Europe dictating playlists of Udo Juergens or Heino in the late 70’s as the Germans did. He had American free form radio where a DJ could go into the studio and play the same song over and over because he loved it and had faith and got his audience to buy into the craziness. The German kids would listen to AFN to find out what was really good. And yet Bruce’s  “progressive” politics would usher in more control, more “fairness”, more uniformity in an industry which has become almost completely homogenized.  Well going back a few years, Huey Long was not especially fair once elected, and as Orwell said and we found in Eastern Europe from 1917 – 1989, some pigs are more equal than others. And if today’s Democratic leadership is the benchmark, it’s okay to lie,  evade taxes, take bribes, steer funds to political supporters for “apolitical” work, and 20 other sins. Sorry Bruce, I ain’t buying.

There is a  trend in the country today to be “counter culture”. The reality is that the counterculture has become the culture. Tats, piercings, gangsta lean, left wing politics, and self entitlement have converged into a mess of muddled thinking. The herd differentiates itself identically. We all want more of the pie, but don’t want to work for it. The kids who studied engineering and built things went into financial management and MBA programs and create nothing except vapor and go to Springsteen concerts to validate their bonafides. Hey, the music is great, but the reality is that it’s a dream, a diversion.

So Bruce, when your CFO comes in with next week’s box office and swag numbers and you step onto your G4 remember to think of the real working men and women. The ones who go to church and join the Army and pay their taxes and struggle to do the best for their children. Who don’t complain and feel sorry for themselves or entitled. Who can’t afford Bruce Springsteen tickets. Who fought and died and won in Iraq as you and your leftist buddies said the war was lost. Who are the ones who donated hundreds of millions for the Tsunami or Katrina and do so again and again even as our ruling class bankrupts the country with sophistry and corruption. You’re a part of the problem, not the solution. As another band wrote.

“same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was.”

Energy Hypocrisy

I remember the first Earth Day, back @ 1972 or so. Fairmont Park in Philadelphia was wall to wall with kids who had ditched school for one of the largest free concerts in the city’s history. All of us were committed to building a better world, and 30 years later, in many ways, we have. Pollution in North America is much lower, and rivers that were environmental nightmares in 1972 have thriving fish populations today. As we understand more, we can act more effectively.

Today, we are faced with energy and environmental hypocrisy on an unprecedented scale. The science would be laughable if the effects were not so evil. Cap & Trade has been demonstrated in Europe to have no significant effect except to make insiders rich. EU directives such as the lead free initiative and RoHS show little or no understanding of scientific principles or the true environmental cost of bureaucracy directed legislation. And recent news reported in Australia, but not here, has clearly shown that rather than shrinking, the Antarctic and Arctic icepacks have been growing, partially as a result of the holes in the ozone layer. Sunspot activity is at a historic low.

Our president today visited a windmill factory to promote his vision of energy independence. He called for a new era in energy exploration. This after closing the Yucca Flats nuclear storage site, shutting down much of the oil shale exploration in the Upper West, shutting down further exploration in Alaska and offshore, and stating clearly that coal fired plants would be put out of business.  A very curious energy policy indeed.

The plant the president visited used to employ 15,000 workers making Maytag refrigerators. Today it employs 90 in an industry where manufacturing will fade rapidly once the infrastructure is built out. This leads us into a new and glorious future? He called for each of us to replace one incandescent bulb with a fluorescent bulb. This is energy policy? It is idiocy, and what is amazing is that is being reported with a straight face by the media.

Apparently, this week’s nostrum is wind power. There’s only one problem with this. It is an irregular energy source and is both expensive and very difficult to build to generate high volumes of power. Driving past the Palm Springs wind power farm for the past 30 years, I am struck with how often the majority of the windmills are idle. Same with the field at Altamont up north. Either the potential usage for the power generated doesn’t match needs, or the price offered is too low to make it profitable for the owners to run them. The problem is similar to that facing the natural gas plant near my house which only runs when the price is right. The advantage with gas, however, is that it’s an instant on, constant volume source. These fields have been in operation for 20 years or more, so what’s the advantage, exactly?  The issue with wind and solar is that they are irregular sources of power. If Obama’s plan for electric cars is to succeed, the demand for electricity will soar, and the infrastructure, already on the brink of failure, will collapse.

We are being hoodwinked on energy policy. Nothing has been done to either reduce our reliance on fossil fuels or gain energy independence. Changing lightbulbs, checking our tire pressure,  and adding windmills does not a national energy policy make. Whether you’re reading science fiction or scientifically analyzing industrial policy, one of the key factors for building cities of the future or going to the stars is cheap energy. The current policies are doomed to failure.

California Dreaming

There will be an election in mid May to determine the future of California. In all likelihood, only 20-25% of the electorate will turn out, as it is a special election on proposed tax hikes, which according to California law must be approved by referendum.

Several weeks ago, a kabuki drama took place in Sacramento. With a budget shortfall for 2009 approaching $40 Billion (yes, Virginia, billion), the state legislature, which has been dominated by the Democratic party for the past 50 years, voted with the help of three sacrificial Republicans to raise car taxes, the income tax, sales tax, and other taxes to the highest overall tax rate in the country. Not a penny in spending cuts was proposed. To further exacerbate the issue, California had record revenues for the prior 5 years from a hot economy where housing was turning over every 18 months at record prices. The legislature managed to spend 125% of that income as well. In the legislative vote, the Republican leadership apparently conspired with the Democrats to pass the budget and tax increases. Only a very few voices, among them Chuck DeVore, called “bullshit” on both parties and tried find an honest solution.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected on the recall of Gray Davis, he promised us a top to bottom review of state revenue and expenditures and with great fanfare called it the “California Performance Review”. He hired Donna Arduin, an experienced Wall Street analyst who had great success in Florida and elsewhere in balancing budgets, to run the state Department of Finance and get to the bottom of the trouble. The CPR was due approximately 1 year after that announcement.

I ran into Donna about that time and asked her when the report would be released, and she told me in a few weeks or month. Two weeks later she resigned to go back into the private sector. Nothing has been heard from her since, and since that time, the CPR has been  a black hole. Repeated requests to the Governor’s office, the Department of Finance, and state legislators have turned up no sign whatsoever that this document even exists. With the state facing bankruptcy, one would think that an objective financial analysis of the balance sheet would be at the top of the list of things to do. Instead, we are faced with the Wizard of Oz. “Don’t look behind the curtain!”, “Ignore the man pulling the levers!”. How have we become so completely irresponsible? How have our leaders gotten away with this? The LA Times, the John & Ken show, and the Orange County Register apparently have zero interest in pursuing the story.

As a businessman, I am faced with the most difficult economy I have seen in 30 years, and have had to take measures to ensure the health of the company. Pay cuts, reduced overhead, reduced travel, and reduced investment are all part of what is necessary to survive. Everybody sacrifices so we can all survive. I guess the exception is government. There have been no pay cuts, no reviews, no cost cutting. In fact, this is the time of year when budgets get blown out. One of the little secrets of government budgeting is “use it or lose it” at the end of the fiscal year. As a government manager, if you don’t spend your budget by the end of the fiscal year, it will theoretically be reduced next year. Thus Caltrans catches up on maintenance work, the city police helicopter gets extra hours to burn the gas budget, and agencies hold training seminars and off site meetings to ensure the money gets spent, wisely or not. Look it up or ask any state manager. It doesn’t matter whether the funds are used wisely; they simply have to be used. This is not conducive to good planning and budgeting.

So our legislature has punted on the budget issue, and can then blame those terrible voters if they get shot down. In the interim, they have coopted every special interest group they can find to fund their “Yes on 1A” campaigns. If there’s slops in the trough, the special interests want their piece of the action. In the meantime, the people of California are taking it on the chin.  Taxes for an average family of 4 making $75,000/year will go up $1,000 – $1,500. For people making more, the hit will be much worse. And yet our state services rank at the bottom of the nation. Education, infrastructure, and other critical functions of a state government have fallen by the wayside as the politicians give lip service to improvement.

Come May 19, we will vote, and a lot of people are very unhappy with the fiscal irresponsibility. If the measures are voted down, California will be in technical bankruptcy. $16 Billion (yes, Billion) of the Federal government’s bailout money will be allocated to the budget shortfall, but this is not enough. And what will happen then? My guess is that the politicians will blame the voters and dither and lie as the state’s credit rating is shredded and real cuts must finally be made. Earlier this year, I received a promissory note from the state Controller for my tax refund. I paid my taxes, but then they have the nerve to tell me they’ve spent the money I loaned them for 9 months and can’t pay it back. How is this right? How can we trust such a spendthrift bunch of grifters? And where are the reporters? The republicans? Anyone standing up for common sense and doing the right thing? Have we sunk so low?

Socialism in Our Time

I woke up this morning to read that the proposed bailout deal for Chrysler would give the United Auto Workers 51% of the company, while at GM, they are proposing that the UAW get 41%. This seems like rewarding the fox for ravaging the henhouse. I am somewhat amazed that there has been little outcry. Between the auto industry power grab and what the government is doing to the banking industry, it has become clear that rather than adhering to the Constitutional principles of our country, the current administration has an aggressively socialist agenda. This is, simply, the greatest challenge of our time. There seems to be no debate, no national conversation as Obama continues his predations on capitalism and his policy to steer the country left. Most of the media is silent or quietly egging him on.

My first experience with the UAW was when I was a boy.  My father’s company sold materials to the auto manufacturers, and I learned that the company salesmen always drove the car from whatever manufacturer they were dealing with, and by God, never a foreign car. To park in a Big Three parking lot driving an import invited vandalism and mayhem. Later on, I began working with a wide range of subcontractors as well as the Big Three, and found out how things work today. An example. We recently installed a machine at a Big Three plant. Normally (including the Japanese auto manufacturers), it takes one of our technicians and a customer technician 3-4 hours to install a machine. At the Big Three plant, it too a carpenter and helper to uncrate the machine; a rigger and helper to place it; an electrician and helper to wire it; a plumber and helper to run the compressed air line, and two engineers to supervise the process. No one cared, and no one took ownership of the project, and it took 3 days just to hook up a machine. This is the daily reality of a UAW run plant. Workers leave dirt on the floor during the week so that they can claim overtime cleaning up on Saturdays instead of cleaning as they go. Simple things one does at home become sagas in the interest of overtime. Then, if a UAW worker gets laid off, they really aren’t laid off. They maintain full pay. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

Recently, a study was done of a Ford plant in Germany and another in the UK. The German plant had flexible work rules and a cooperative attitude between workers and management. The cost/hour for labor was higher than in the UK. The UK plant had an extremely adversarial relationship between management and labor, and restrictive work rules. The German plant produced 20% more cars per day with 20% less labor with an overall manufacturing cost @ 30% below the UK plant. This is the reality of the U.S. auto industry as well. Gross inefficiency, and everyone knows the reasons. In a global economy where manufacturing has migrated to China because of reduced costs, how can we ever expect these companies to be competitive?

GM’s latest plan is to borrow $11 Billion in addition to the $15 Billion already borrowed from the government and then give the government 50% of the stock in the company and the UAW 39%. This leaves the shareholders and bond holders with 11% of a company that is pretty well doomed to failure. That senior management is complicit in this travesty is simply amazing. That there is no discussion of fundamental changes in compensation or work rules is criminal negligence. At Chrysler, the proposal is 55% for the UAW, 35% for FIAT ($8 Billion investment) and 10% for the bondholders and government. For this, the UAW has agreed to forgo cost of living adjustments (which were built into the contract at exorbitant rates), their Easter Monday holiday, and overtime will only be paid for work beyond 40 hours/week.

Thus shall ownership of America’s largest industry pass into the hands of the workers. A central tenet of Marx is the ownership of the means of production by labor, so how can this not be Marxist? As several banks who were originally forced to take TARP funds to cover up the weakness of others, now try to repay those “loans”, they are finding that the federal government will not accept the money back, and instead wants to convert these loans into equity. Sounds like a rigged game to me. That many of the bondholders are recipients of TARP funds is also of concern. Are these companies being forced to acquiesce to government pressure? Who are the bondholders? How much are they giving up? what is the real deal behind the scenes? There sems to be an awful lot of self dealing on the part of the government in this handover.

This power grab goes well beyond even Roosevelt’s social programs of the 1930’s. Never before has our government both tried to steer ownership of a key industry into the hands of it’s donors and supporters, and at the same time tried to coerce another key industry into handing ownership over. This reeks of 1920’s Italy or 1930’s Germany. Even the Bolsheviks were more honest in their aims. Congress, the Republicans, and the media are so far silent. Can we give up our most deeply held principles so readily? Can we transform the United States into a socialist state simply by government fiat? Where are the constitutional scholars protesting this? Where are the outraged reporters investigating cui bono? When we were promised hope and change, I do not believe this is the hope and change most of us expected.

Bait & Switch at Chrysler

So Chrysler is scheduled to enter into a 60 day miracle bankruptcy where the government injects another $6+ Billion,the UAW gets 51%,  Fiat gets 30%, the government gets the balances and the creditors get screwed. On top of it, Obama is angry with the hedge funds for crying out as they’re getting screwed. This deal is a stinkeroo for the shareholders, for the taxpayers, for the creditors, and ultimately for the UAW as well.

Chrysler has several good brands but are in a dormant market at present. Until the economy turns around, they will be challenged to meet payroll. We all know the problems, and #1 on the list are the union contracts and underfunded retirement mandates. And yet so far, despite the dire state of both GM & Chrysler, the UAW has basically refused to make any concessions. This is like the crew refusing to man the lifeboats on the Titanic.

Chrysler operates under the laws of the United States and in a bankruptcy, the law is well defined. The judge and the receiver/trustee have clearly defined fiduciary responsibilities. Creditors have a place in line as secured and unsecured. there is precedence and order. But what we now have is a president directly involving himself and dictating the form of the reorganized company. How does this jibe with our laws? In addition, it is assumed that several of the bondholders were recipients of TARP bailout money, further complicating the issue and the potential for conflicts of interest. Will the government exert undue pressure as they seem to have with TARP? Is the government pushing a political agenda rather than an equitable one? To think that this can be resolved in just 60 days is just plain nuts. Delphi, GM’s former parts subsidiary, has been in bankruptcy for over 3 years with far fewer complexities.

The proposed ownership is also out of whack. While it is true that the obligations by Chrysler to the UAW are considerable, contracts are normally open to be renegotiated by the receiver, so those obligations would be modified considerably, perhaps to a point where the company can make a profit once more. So why the push for 51% for the UAW? They have been absolutely uncooperative in their negotiations. They are a root cause of the problem in the first place, and they are receiving preferential treatment. Is this simply another political payoff?

Commercial negotiations are sensitive and confidentiality is required. However, the government seems to be using this excuse to gain advantage for their supporters. Rather than being postpartisan, this government has demonstrated itself to be hyperpartisan. In too many cases to date it has been found that they simply lie when the facts disagree with their conclusions. As they redefine the lexicon, we are entering the grounds of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. Chrysler was in reasonable shape when it was sold to Daimler Benz and bad mistakes were made, but putting the fox in charge of the henhouse in the form of  UAW ownership is not a viable solution for the company’s long term survival.

For the good of all parties concerned, the negotiations must be honest and make the most sense for all parties concerned. Right now, it doesn’t seem so.

Pompeii and the Roman Villa – LACMA

The new exhibition at LACMA previewed the other night, and it was sensational. Focused on the lifestyles of the rich and famous 1,940 years ago, it illustrates the sheer magnificence and beauty of the ancient Roman lifestyle if one were lucky enough to be of the upper classes. An eclectic mix of donors to the museum got first chance, and by the look of it the show will be very successful.

The colonies around the Bay of Naples (Neapolis) hosted a number of emperor’s villas as well as those of senators, generals, and the great families. Rome in summer is miserable, and even today, Naples and the Amalfi Coast are a wonderful getaway. The eruption of Vesuvius encapsulated Pompeii and Herculaneum, a smaller and wealthier enclave, near the base of the volcano. When one sees the actual distance the ash and lava had to go, the magnitude gets to you.

The exhibition selected @ 150 pieces from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, The Scavi (excavations) museum, The Louvre, the museum in Baia, another local city, and many others around the world. If not the cream of the crop, the pieces in the exhibition highlight the greatness that was Rome in a way few other exhibitions have been able to convey. Rome in its earlier days was a bit like Puritan New England. Frugality, duty, and virtue were the highest callings. The historian Livy was quoted thus 150 years after the fall of Pompeii:

“no republic was ever greater, none more virtuous or richer in good example, none into which luxury and avarice entered so late, or where poverty or frugality so honored. For it is true that the less wealth there was, the less desire there was. More recently riches have imported avarice and excessive pleasures with a craving for luxury and wantonness to the ruination of ourselves and everything else”.

So the seeds of decline were sown  as seen by Cato, Plutarch, and others of civic virtue as the Empire accreted the wealth of conquest. Pompeii was The Hamptons of its time, with similar extravagance and decadence. As such, the art that is left behind has a magnificence that only Rome itself exceeded. The pleasure palaces were an escape from the mundane frugality of the metropolis.

Pompeii was a city of perhaps 20,000, lively, earthy, and living the good life. The exhibition centers around the villas, of which there were quite a large number. The context of many of the pieces does not come through, as the location and surrounding artifacts would have given a better feel for the piece. They must be viewed in an artistic rather than archaeological context, which is appropriate since LACMA is an art museum.

The first pieces one comes upon are busts of several emperors and dignitaries. Those of Julius and Augustus Caesar convey gravitas and are magnificent. Another of a young Caligula hints of dissipation, decadence and evil. Nero’s buts depicts a wastrel. Flabby, egotistical, and with his own brand of malice. Another bust, of Gaius Cornelius Rufus is a magnificent exposition of the sculptor’s abilities.

Deeper into the exhibition are marvels of sculpture, painting, and artisanal excellence.  Wall paintings carefully removed and framed convey a richness of experience and wonder at the diversity of Roman life. Whether a mosaic of Plato and his students or a drawing of a centaur caught in the act of kidnapping a Greek girl or the frescoed walls of villas, all are rich, lively, and engaging even 2,000 years later. One magnificent discovery was a gladiator’s helmet detailed with the Fall of Troy. the metalworking is magnificent, and it hard to reconcile such a work of art, as it even then would have been considered, entering the ring of violence and death. Basins and tables and other furniture show a rare level of craftsmanship. A skyphos (deep wine cup) of obsidian inlaid with gold and semiprecious stones depicting Egyptian gods and themes is stunning in its elegance and freshness. Was it made in Egypt or locally?

There are more than 100 other pieces, all of them magnificent to see. For a taste and feel of Rome at its height, the exhibition is an elegant and well laid out guide to some of the most beautiful treasures ever to be collected in one place.

Fix It Again Tony

With all due courtesy, I still do not understand how FIAT makes any sense whatsoever in the Chrysler deal. It seems they are getting 20% of the company for nothing, and what do they really bring to the table? An excellent distribution and service network in Italy? FIAT has been clear that there is no cash or even commitment involved for their percentage of Chrysler. How does this deal make sense?

The trio of the UAW, FIAT, and the federal government owning and running Chrysler sounds like Moe, Larry, and Curley Joe at their best. FIAT is the Italian automobile industry, and own Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Maserati and of course, Fiat.  It is intertwined with the Libyan and Italian governments. In 2005, an agreement to sell the Fiat automobile marque to GM was cancelled, with Fiat receiving a $2 Billion cancellation charge. That says something about their core holding. Now we are expected to believe that FIAT will create a new, low cost manufacturing base for Chrysler in America. When the biggest problem is union wages and work rules, I think this is doomed from the outset.

The accusation that the Obama administration has issued threats against Chrysler’s bondholders is also very disturbing. Since when has an administration resorted to thuggery to ram through a business deal? Since when do they have the authority to do so? Last I looked, there an entire body of bankruptcy law that governs the Chrysler case. It is best for government and FIAT to step out and for Chrysler try to void some of the contracts that have been strangling them for the past 40 years and put their operating costs in line with non union manufacturers, who have been doing just fine, thank you, without government handouts.

California – What Next?

The polls indicated that Propositions 1A et al will be going down to defeat. What next? Technically, the state cannot go bankrupt, but it can and will be in default on much of it’s debt. The credit rating will immediately plunge as the state does not have the revenue to pay its bills and meet its commitments. IOU’s will start going out again almost immediately. How much longer the banks will accept these is one of the questions that will have to be answered.

But what does our legislature plan as a back up position? So far, there has been little or no discussion of spending cuts. California’s expenditures outpaced revenue by 20-25% in the good times, and the state is still spending at the same rate. Since Schwarzenegger’s election, the state has added 50,000 additional employees. The legislature is spending $25 billion more than they receive. This year’s budget deficit is $42 Billion because of the revenue drop off.

The state employee’s unions are the primary culprits. The inmates have taken over the asylum. Our prisons cost twice as much per inmate to run as any other state.  Our teachers are the highest paid in the country, by 25%, and yet California has one of the worst records on education in the country. To top it off, it is virtually impossible to fire incompetent or even criminal teachers. The largest political contributors in the state are the unions, and our legislature has become “pay to play”.

So what do we do? A general recall of all politicians? The debacle that led to these propositions showed how even the Republicans have gamed the system. The state’s voting districts have been gerrymandered to ensure Democrat dominance with nice, safe Republican seats for the permanent minority. Schwarzenegger has mentioned the possibility of a constitutional convention in order to subvert spending caps and mandates. Perhaps it may be in order, but not for his reasons.

The fallout economically across the world will be significant. In addition to California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Ohio are on the brink. This could be the last straw. The federal government, while it has the ability to print money, can no longer finance its own debts. Our largest creditors are turning off the taps as the try and figure out how we will ever repay the trillions of dollars owed as two of the largest sectors of the economy, banking and automotive, collapse and are nationalized. This doesn’t take into account high risk debt overseas, which is barely under control as well. The lending windows are closing all over the planet.

So far, most of the pain of the recession has been carried by the individual and the investor. Government has been exempt and is growing at an unprecedented level. This is not the prescription for economic recovery. To pay for the huge deficits, government needs tax revenue, which comes from as many people working as is possible. Companies make money. Companies pay taxes. Same with individuals. But if government  raises taxes, especially with unemployment over 11%, this kills economic growth. California needs to re-learn this lesson. For too many years, the sense of entitlement by government here has led to an ever increasing burden on the people of the state. They make sure we pay through the nose for the priviledge of living here. Reagan had it right. His tax cuts did stimulate the economy while increasing government revenue. His ideas on shrinking government, applied properly, reduce the burden on the taxpayers. And for goodness sake, we all should be paying taxes. The top 10% pays 90% right now, and the bottom 35% pay nothing. Everyone needs to pay to ensure they have chips in the game. It’s very easy to vote to raise other people’s taxes. It’s also unfair.

Major cost cuts, renegotiation of union contracts, and the reduction of foolish legislation must all be at the top of the list if California is ever to recover from this debacle. otherwise, we might as well rename it Alta California, because it will be just as bad as in Mexico.

Obama’s Economy Takeover

So it’s now shaping up that the President is rewarding his supporters at the UAW with 55% of Chrysler and 40% of GM through no real effort on their part. This is the single largest and most damaging political payoff in history. And it’s being done with little or no consideration or discussion of the consequences. This also represents approximately 20% of our entire economy, and the largest segment of the manufacturing sector left in North America.

This follows the president’s takeover of the banking industry. When the TARP funds were disbursed, there was little discussion of securitization or how the funds would be accounted for. Now we find out that the administration is thugging its way into controlling interest of several of the largest banks and many other financial institutions. Undue pressure has been applied already in the Chrysler bankruptcy, and we can expect the same when GM is reorganized. There has been no accountability on Wall Street as well to date, and the people who scammed us seem to have disappeared into the woodwork. Since so many Wall Streeters supported the president, this should come as no surprise. Banking & financial services represents another 20% of the economy.

Then we come to health care, where the administration and its allies in Congress are preparing to ram through a single payer health care system, taking over another 20% of the economy. Again, there has been little discussion.

The administration is also strong arming some of the states on the use of the bail out funds. In California, one example is the strong arming of the state government to restore pay cuts for unionized health care workers. otherwise the state will lose $7 Billion.

Lastly, the administration has moved the Census office from the department of Commerce to the White House, the better to be able to manipulate the results to political advantage.

So what we have so far is the government mugging 60% of the total economic output of the country, mugging the states, and mugging the constitution.

Section 8 of the Constitution is pretty clear on the responsibilities of the federal government. It has been far exceeded by government fiat over the years. But under the 4th Amendment, we are protected from unlawful  seizure, while under the 14th Amendment, the government must respect all of the legal rights of the individual (or corporation) according to the law of the land. Under the 5th Amendment, individuals are protected by due process as well. And yet it seems that there have been violations of all of these constitutional guarantees have been violated in the rush for Obama’s control of the country.

60%…….wow….the government is trying to rip off 60% of our entire economy….They are, in giving ownership of GM and Chrysler to the UAW fulfilling one of Karl Marx’s prime goals, ownership of the means of production by the workers. This can only be called communism. And our Congress is whistling while they deprive the people of our country of their fundamental rights. Homeland Security gets stronger and issues declarations that those whop do not agree with the Democratic Party agenda must be monitored. This is not Orwell. This is not the Soviet Union. This is happening today right here in the United States and the press is silent. We are marching lockstep into our own shackles of incompetence, favoritism, and sloth.

I  believed in Obama’s good intentions at one time, but I can do so no longer. The same man who promised a new era in integrity has appointed far too many crooks and insiders. His chief of staff acts more like a mafia don, and his minions vilify and threaten and degrade their opponents for simple differences of opinion. His colleagues in Congress are clearly guilty of felonies and yet sit immune to prosecution. The Speaker of the House lies about her knowledge of harsh interrogation tactics. These facts have all been documented. Corruption is rife. The media are simple whores to the id. This is a situation where the combined deceased predecessors of Mr. Obama must be rolling in their graves at 78 RPM. Maybe he can harness that energy in his green initiatives. Obama is pushing the country as far left as he can as fast as he can.

The country is at a crossroads. We have more crises looming on the horizon and as P.J. O’Rourke once said, “giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys”. We can do better. We must do better. For our own survival, we must, at this time, just say no.

White Houseology

This weekend’s Wall Street Journal introduces a new academic discipline to the world, namely White e. In an analysis by Elliott Abrams entitled “The Power of the First Impression” he studies the nuances of the upcoming  meeting between President Obama  and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, much as a corps of analysts used to study the inner workings of the Kremlin. Who appears with whom; what is both said and unsaid, and who is standing where on the podium on May Day have all become deeply relevant to the understanding of the workings of today’s United States government, rather than that of the Soviet Union for 70 years.

This follows on to an accretion of power to the White House that has never before been attempted. In the first 100 days, the president has appointed special “czars” and new offices at an unprecedented pace, in many cases bypassing his own Cabinet. He has politicized the Office of the Census by bring this into the White House. He has an  Auto Czar who is attempting to hand over the controlling interests in both Chrysler and General Motors to the president’s supporters in the Unions, and he has a special health care task force that has remained completely under the radar until the time comes to spring his plan on a pliant Congress.

There is no transparency. Geithner, Richardson, Daschle,  et al put paid to that prevarication. Tax cheats run the Treasury while the Automotive czar seems to have a pall over his activities related to pension funds and a penchant for bullying. There are rumors of thuggery in the White House’s dealings with the Chrysler creditors and threats to those who ask the wrong questions or oppose the president on principle.

These are not the actions of an American government. These are a cross between Chicago and Argentina and the Soviet Union. The apparatchiki go to the exclusive stores like G.U.M. while the rest of us are figuratively on the bread lines. If you’re an insider, you’re golden. The law is for everyone else.

So now we must read the tea leaves to discover our real national policy. Our president’s first call when elected was to Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine, surely a strange choice in a world dominated by global economic crisis and the War on Terror (conveniently renamed). His “Blame America” tour of Europe went over like a lead balloon with no gain to show for it. Why? The White House wants to nationalize banks and the automotive industry and health care.  Much of this is going on behind closed doors as the dimwits who call themselves the Republican leadership bicker about ideology instead of recognizing the challenges of providing a counterweight to such an audacious program.

So perhaps at some land grant college or a private university, a chair will be endowed in White House Studies to try and understand how an individual elected with only 52% of the vote socialized the bastion of democracy. As our principles of freedom and enterprise are turned on their ears, perhaps those academics will be allowed to publish freely to explain to us how and why it happened. Perhaps not. Because right now, no one seems to care.

The Age of Specialization and its effect on our National Discussion

I would believe that most people would agree today that we have been in an age of specialization for the past 60 years or so. The old adage “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist” has been replaced in many fields with “it does”. The drive to excel and to comprehend the diverse fields of human existence, whether science or medicine or to succeed at the top of ones profession takes a single minded devotion to ones specialty, and society is the weaker in the long run for this in some ways.

At one time I was very involved in Olympic level sports and came into close contact with many champions. The most common characteristic I saw was a single minded dedication to ones discipline. Swimmers and skaters probably had it worst. 2-3 hours in the pool or on the ice before class, 3-4 hours afterwards, and somehow trying to stay eligible academically takes up all of ones waking hours. One of the other characteristics of many of these people was also a very limited intellectual or social outlook. At the same time, professionally, I have met some of the most brilliant scientists and engineers on the planet. The same habits exist among many in these professions. The same can be said for doctors, Wall Street analysts, and many other disciplines. Talk to a college or professional coach sometimes. When the job requires ultimate focus, peripheral matters suffer, whether its family or current affairs or sometimes personal habits a la’ the nutty professor.

The stakes have grown higher . The pressure to perform across the spectrum has never been higher. But we are losing some very important values in the process. Perspective, a more rounded world view, conversation, free inquiry. Today, more people rely on received wisdom than ever before, and yet the purveyors of that wisdom are themselves constrained by economics or political faction, as Washington once expressed it,  so that a diversity of opinion is lacking. Thus, the herd mentality is reinforced at the expense of critical thinking. Hannah Arendt proposed the theory of the banality of evil, where there is a tendency for ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without thinking about the results of their inaction or action. It is a rejection of personal responsibility. Both because of the pressures of modern life and the subtle manipulation of emotion and opinion by those seeking to promote one agenda or another, we are once again faced with momentous events with little real debate on the merits of proposed fundamental changes in the way we live.

There has never been a greater need for understanding than today. There has never been a greater need for discussion and dialog on the hard issues facing us than now. As one faction or another claim advantage, the reality is that the house of cards that has been the Western economic system is in real danger of collapse. Somewhere along the way, our “leaders” forgot that life is based on the facts, not on what you want them to be. In America, the government is printing money out of control while our creditors have told us clearly that they will no longer loan us the money to finance this deficit spending. The government, business, banking, and economy have been based upon manipulation and accounting tricks. We now have hard dates on the bankruptcies of Medicare and Social Security and yet nothing is being done to ameliorate the problems. Government, notoriously inefficient, is now poised to take over the automotive, medical, and banking sectors. This is not a recipe for recovery. It’s a recipe for disaster.

Think for yourself. Read. Talk to people. Do not rely on one or even a few sources of information. Listen to opposing views. And then think “what is good for our country”. The answers will be inevitably painful, but if we are to survive, we must confront the issues honestly and openly and with all the facts. And we must also recognize that we have laws and a Constitution that we must also follow. This seems to have been forgotten in a headlong rush to avoid disaster.

Printing Funny Money

In case no one has noticed, the U.S. Dollar is about to lose its status as the world’s reserve currency after almost 70 years. This is a cataclysmic event in terms of both confidence and monetary policy. For many years, the United States has relied on the debt markets to finance our economy.  As a part of this compact with our debtors, the government and Federal Reserve, as their part of the bargain, agreed to maintain a prudent fiscal policy that would support the value of our money. But as our trade deficits grew, we ran up larger and larger debts to our creditors, both foreign and domestic.

At the same time, the whole world has watched as first Bush and then Obama have run up incredible deficits at a time when we are running out of money and credit. The most recent news is that both Social Security and Medicare, which are now 50% of the country’s budget,  are estimated to be completely bankrupt by 2037 and 2017 respectively. In personal terms, basically everyone under the age of 50 is screwed. Congress knew this was brewing for Social Security when looking at the statistics as far back as 1955. Medicare has been on life support almost from its inception.

While Bush ran up his own deficits at an alarming rate, under Obama TARP and the profligate and completely misnamed Recovery Act blew the doors off of all previous spending records to the tune of some $3-4 Trillion ($3,000,000,000,000 -$4,000,000,000,000). All the while, Congress added more and more gasoline to the fire in the form of pork. The Administration has de facto nationalized the banking sector and has begun the same for automotive. Health care is next. I am sure productivity and innovation will rise immediately. In terms of foreign exchange and the dollar, the pressure is unsustainable.

The country faces other economic crises. California, New York, Michigan, New Jersey, and Ohio are our very own Nigeria’s, Zimbabwe’s, and Haiti’s. I hate to say it, but the issues are in many ways related to systemic corruption  in our country as well. There has been no accountability on so many levels, and the unions have become the new privileged class, with gold plated benefits and guaranteed no trade contracts as the rest of us scrape by. All the while, the people who got us into this mess; the politicians, the Wall Street wunderkinds, and the corporate elite got theirs already and have run for the hills, leaving the rest of us to hold the bag. In Congress, “play for pay” is an everyday reality.  Our society operates on  “who you know” rather than “what you know” on a grand scale. As Midnight Oil once said “the rich get richer,  the poor get the picture”.

Monetary policy is not rocket science. It’s about trust more than anything else. Our dollar is backed by the “Full Faith & Credit of the United States”. The problem is that very few people have  Faith in the U.S. government any more. They do not trust the government to maintain a stable currency. 3 years ago, the Iranian, Venezuelan, and Russian governments proposed an alternative to the dollar using a weighted basket of currencies, specifically for oil transactions. These countries do not have our best interests at heart. Later, when the recession started and China was already holding over $690 Billion ( as of 12-08) in American debt, a specific warning was delivered to our government by the Chinese not to devalue their investment. Then we passed a $2 trillion+ budget. The Chinese have now warned us three times publicly and probably feel they have done all they can. Today, the Financial Times reports that the Chinese will do business in RMB Yuan and Brazilian Reals. The devaluation and eventual irrelevancy of the dollar has begun.

The cost of imports will go up at a time when the US has never before been more reliant on imports. The cost to borrow will skyrocket, placing tremendous pressure on the Treasury and the government, and making doing business even more difficult. More U.S. debt is being offered than at any time in history in a debt market that has shrunk precipitously and has grown wary of the US exporting inflation. The Fed will be forced to buy our own debt, fueling inflation. The buying power for the consumer will drop precipitously. These are all economic realities and will leave us broke and beaten down. The good news would be that American exports will be very competitive, except the only thing we seem to export any more is debt. The printing presses with continue to run 24/7, and at some point the debt monster will see us printing $1,000, $10,000, and $100,000 bills for general circulation. The lessons of Weimar Germany will have to be repeated for a whole new generation.

There are answers, but first we must place our house in order. 60 years of financial recklessness must be rectified, and we must learn from our mistakes once again. As Ortega y Gasset once said, “those who do not study the past are doomed to repeat it”.

Integrity

It seems every day now we hear of one politician or another, or someone else in the leadership class blatantly lie to us. The New York Times latest plagiarism case, where Maureen Dowd stole the ideas of a blogger and called them her own, is only the latest in both admitted and denied cases at the Times that stretch back 10 years to Jayson Williams. They have repeatedly spiked stories that disagree with their narrative, and published stories that are factually inaccurate despite knowing the truth. Today, Jon Chait, a liberal blogger stated that reporting is overrated. In the network news, you can pick your political slant, and with it their spin on the news. The facts don’t seem to matter if they do not agree with the narrative.

Unfortunately, the problem goes all the way to the top. The current occupant of the White House has corrected himself or retreated on so many promises at this point that it has become difficult to take what he says seriously. This is very dangerous for the world. Whether it was his promises to have the most ethical and transparent administration in history, or his stance on enhanced interrogation techniques or his promises of fiscal restraint, the man is basically a liar of the first order. The Speaker of the House has been caught in an indefensible position on her knowledge of waterboarding and yet continues to deny the truth. In Congress, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Charles Rangel, and several others have all been caught stealing or taking bribes and nothing has been done. Are they immune to prosecution? In the Stevens case, while his conduct was reprehensible, the prosecution lied to nail a conviction. These are simply the daily headlines these days.

Madoff, Mozilla, and a host of other crooks simply say “oops” as they have tanked our economy and stolen  billions of dollars of the nation’s wealth. Corporate presidents cut the hearts out of their companies and outsource/offshore in the name of “maintaining profits” when the reality was that they were doing so strictly to line their own pockets and run for the nearest tropical island. In California, the propositions voted on were known to be lies. Our own legislature and governor point blank lied to us.

And yet there has been no discussion of ethics or morals. Why did this occur? Why did they decide to take the easy way out? Why did they lie so blatantly? Who the hell do these people think they are? Why are there no consequences?

And yet if you are reasonably decent and moral and pay your taxes and go to church, you are classified as a right wing religious nut. Obama, who not only is a proponent of partial birth abortion, but who has also now forced doctors, nurses and hospitals (many religiously affiliated) to perform abortions against their moral principles, spoke at Notre Dame, and many in the Catholic hierarchy finally said enough is enough. Obama stated that reasonable people can disagree, but partial birth abortion is inherently unreasonable and we all know this. Who is the real nut?

And yet, it seems there may be some push back building. The Tea Parties have been an honest response by ordinary people to the abuse of power. These have been denigrated by the left, and yet the people who have attended are those most ordinary (or perhaps extraordinary) of people; retirees, teachers, small businessmen, housewives, students, and kids. The salt of the earth, basically. They have said “I’m tired as hell and I’m not going to take it any more”.  We need more discussion around the dinner table of what is right and wrong. The churches need to preach to the faithful. The pundits must spread the word. Words have meaning, and we will not be lied to. Our country is in a world of hurt right now, and it is time to work towards some basic reforms.

Obama vs Cheney – The Rumble on the Potomac

After reading the speeches of both the president and former vice president, a few things stood out. First, Obama stated ” for the first time, we are providing the resources to take the fight to the Taliban and extremists in Pakistan”. Well gee, I wonder how all those who have served there for the past 8 years feel about that? More taking credit for policies already underway under Bush. He then went on at length about his own background, and proceeded to blame the prior administration once again for Guantanamo and torture. He then states his opposition to waterboarding and how it was illegal. And yet there were clearly strong legal arguments for the tactic to be used, and the policy was debated at the very highest levels at length. The methods were not used without some incredible soul searching, and were believed in good faith to be the only way to obtain critical information to protect the country. Remember, it happened to three individuals on three occasions each. One of them, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was the mastermind of 9/11 and personally beheaded Daniel Pearl. In any court in the world, he would have received the most serious of penalties. In many countries, including our own, his life would have been forfeit. This is the guy who said he couldn’t wait to get to New York and talk to his lawyer. He thought he was already gaming the system when he was arrested. And Mr. Obama condemns these practices despite the opposition of the current and 4 (FOUR) prior directors of the CIA. I always thought one hired the best people available and listened to their advice. But I digress.

The president then went on the show his fundamental misunderstanding of our enemy. He spoke of waterboarding as a recruiting tool for the enemy, and the maltreatment of our troops because of it. And yet we are dealing with one of the most evil enemies the country has ever known. Even the Nazis observed the Geneva Conventions in the West. The Taliban and Al Quaeda, and Muslim terrorists in general, were using assassination, suicide bombing, beheadings, and terror even before we entered the fray. Much of this Muslim fanaticism goes back over 100 years. It has nothing to do with our niceness and goodness and desire to be seen as the good guys. They simply hate everyone except those who believe in their apocalyptic vision. These terrorists are murdering far more of their coreligionists than Americans.

The president then went on to discuss Guantanamo and its failings, and yet only 2 days ago he authorized the resumption of military tribunals. No other country will take these prisoners, and the recidivism rate is 1 in 7. These people really hate us and will go right back to killing Americans if given the chance. So the president contradicts himself once again. Only yesterday Congress spoke very clearly and refused to authorize funds to close Guantanamo both because they do not want these bad guys in the country, and because there is no plan. How can we take the president seriously with these facts in evidence? It’s all talk. The president calls all of these “abuses” a rallying cry for our enemies, and yet they need no rallying cry beyond “death to the infidel”. You simply cannot get along with people who have no desire to get along with you. Ask Jimmy Carter.

The president calls his opponents fear mongers, and yet these are serious policy issues where the president and his supporters have been left in the unenviable position of being caught out in significant misstatements of fact. On the one side you have Nancy Pelosi, Arlen Specter, Harry Reid and the president. On the other are the aforementioned CIA directors, most of Congress, and the professionals at the CIA and Justice Department. The president further clouds the issue with his selective release of documents while withholding others that could provide some clarity. Pure politics.

The president then somehow rationalizes first his decision to release photographs of Abu Ghraib and then to withdraw his decision. When one’s SecDef, his Joint Chiefs of Staff, his National Security Advisor, and his CIA chief and his predecessors all say the same thing and he still has doubts, it’s obvious we have a president who is either very naive, very stupid, or who has his own agenda. I would bet on the latter. His trope of “strict legal tests” just doesn’t fly in face of his actions to date. He has been far too casual already with the law he says he will uphold. Look at the Chrysler mess. Lastly he asks that we rise above politics while blaming Bush. Pure lawyerly BS.

On the other hand, Cheney’s remarks were concise, to the point, and well organized. His purpose was to set forth and defend  the strategic thinking behind the Bush Administration’s policies.  He briefly reviewed the state of the nation before and after 9/11, the horrible events that led us to engage our enemies, and the rationales for what the Bush Administration did. He  factually leads us through the discussions and debate on the issue of waterboarding and other EIT’s, and the moral arguments that took place. I truly believe that these discussions would never have even taken place in such a structured manner in any other country. Most other countries, with the exception of the Vatican, are much more cold blooded, and even the Vatican had its Borgias and Colonnas.

Cheney points out where he feels the president has done the right thing, and where he feels the president is mistaken. The is little rancor and little partisanship in his speech. Rather, he defends the record of the Bush administration. He challenges the president where he feels it is necessary.  He points out the fallacy of Obama’s elimination of certain terms such as “enemy combatant” and “Global War on Terror”, and yet it it is not simply semantics, but rather a fundamental reversion to the pre 9/11 thinking of our battle with extremists as legal, rather than military. Try selling this concept to the Army Ranger being shot at with a .50 cal or RPG. “You have the right to remain silent”….BLAM!

This was Point/Counterpoint at the highest level, and as such is good for our national debate. But yet so much of the debate revolves around posturing that it has become a farce. So much seems to be overturning policies that worked simply for the sake of doing so. And yet the president has been forced to back down both by his advisers and by Congress.  This is good for the country. But there is a failing in gravitas, and far too much willingness to “Blame America”. One of our cardinal principles has always been not to start fights, but to finish them, and that fight began in earnest on 9/11.  The sooner we take away the rhetoric and the political element in our national defense policy, the better. I would rate this a unanimous decision for Cheney on this one.

Bankrupting the Country and How to Fix It

Today, President Obama was interviewed on C Span and was held to account for once. In the interview, he admitted the United States Government is out of money.Yup, we’re broke. Busted.  This week, the Treasury will auction $100 Billion in T Bills. That is the rub. If my president tells the whole world we’re out of money, why would I then buy American debt? This could be the flash point for a new economic crisis. The idiocracy is firmly in place.

We are in a deep recession of our own making. There is plenty of blame to go around for the causes, but the country seems to have forgotten that you don’t spend what you haven’t got and that you plan for a rainy day. Obama somehow blames our health care policy in his interview. How about unchecked government spending and the most corrupt spending/stimulus bill in our history?  $1.7 trillion in bank relief funds. Poof! gone. $700 Billion in Pork…Poof! and yet no one says a word. He can try to blame his predecessors, but in just a few months, he has taken ownership of the crisis lock, stock and barrel.

Supposedly the UAW has offered concessions in the Chrysler and GM reorganizations, and we have no idea what they are. 25% of the country’s already beleaguered manufacturing sector melts down and there is no transparency from a president who took it upon himself to involve his office directly. A president who promised transparency. What is left of American manufacturing? Military? Aerospace? Medical? Telecom infrastructure? That’s about it, folks. and that does not make for a healthy economy.

The only way to get out of such a recession is to work our way out. To invent, to apply elbow grease and put in more hours and work harder than we ever have before to set things right. To put our manufacturing sector back on track and build value and well paying jobs. The old warning about ending up doing each others laundry has come true. What use is a financial sector if no one has any money? What value is a “service” sector if no one can afford those services?

We have a government that is utterly out of touch with reality. They are enacting carbon offsets, forbidding oil drilling, making the automotive industry even more inefficient, and pretty much doing all they can to throw a monkey wrench into our ability to save ourselves. Nationalizing the banks only makes matters worse, as does socialized medicine. On top of it, they want to tax us as never before. This is a recipe for disaster.

The perspective from Taiwan and China is interesting. Times are challenging in Asia as well, but they are reacting differently. They are investing in the future, building nuclear power plants, building necessary infrastructure, making their industries more efficient, and carefully navigating the financial markets. The Taiwan stock market is up based upon their leading indicators that the world will still demand notebook computers, cell phones and all of the other electronic paraphernalia of modern life. In contrast, HP, IBM, and 50 other American companies gave up on manufacturing in favor of reaping short term profits. Now it will bite them right in the read end. Who needs HP or IBM or Apple? They’re just labels. the intellectual property and know how reside in Taiwan, China and Japan.

Recovery in the United States will be significantly delayed because of the bad decisions of our management class and political leadership. However, there is hope. We must invent and make and take back what until the 1990’s was  American leadership in technology and manufacturing. We must generate cheap energy. Green technologies are for the most part highly subsidized. We must find better and more cost effective ways, or until we can, hold off on chasing foolish chimeras. This is a time for hard headed decision making and a ruthless attention to following through. The highly adversarial nature of business must be placed in check so that the best decisions for all of the stakeholders are made. Pride and vanity must be put aside.

Mr. President, please stop shooting our country in the foot every other day. Focus on what is going to get this country back on it’s feet again instead of some cockamamie socialist vision of a kumbaya world. Otherwise, we will end up a very poor client state of China in record time.

Our Economical Dilemma

The other day, Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury stated that the “era of complaint politics has ended” just prior to his trip to Beijing to discuss monetary policy with the Chinese government. Last week, I saw Nancy Pelosi’s jet on the ground in Beijing where she had remarkably cordial meetings with Chinese leadership and mentioned nary a word on human rights or trade. Welcome to the new paradigm. In a few short days, the new administration managed to a – blame Bush, b-succumb on human rights, and c – kow tow to Chinese economic sensitivities. The Chinese hold over $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds at a time when we must market another $2.5 Trillion plus to finance our reckless recovery plan. In banker talk, this is called having ones client by the throat. The fundamental paradigm of U.S. – China relations has irrevocably changed.

The Chinese are facing their own deep problems. Their economy is dependent upon exports in a world that has reduced consumption precipitously. Up to 200,000 factories have closed and perhaps 20,000,000 industrial workers are unemployed. The stock market is down 60%+, and predictions for economic growth that had reached 15% have been revised downwards to 6-7%.  The rumor is that should growth fall below 6% and unemployment rise further, regime change could be in the air. China graduates over 6 million students from college alone every year, and must create huge numbers of jobs just to maintain equilibrium. They have announced their own $600 Billion stimulus package.

The difference is that in China you’ll see new bridges and ports and real infrastructure while in America you’ll see a high speed rail link between Disneyland and Las Vegas (one which was repeatedly voted down by the electorate, by the way). Otherwise, it’s all sort of nebulous, but you will know it’s being spent from the special Obama signs each project will have. In China you’ll see Hope. In America something else.

America has been financing a consumer economy that can no longer stand on its own. Nations arise and fall because of their industry, and yet America has become a land where we produce little of what we consume. Inflation was kept in check by low priced goods from overseas, but even with this brake on inflation, consumption has dropped precipitously, putting even those companies who supplied the unending demand in danger. Wall Street will remain in quietude for some time to come as banks try to recover and our government fiddles with the knobs trying to prevent another melt down.

In reading of the 17th Century, something similar happened. During the wars between the French and English, both countries basically at one point ran out of money. An amazing state of affairs, but true. Economic activity ground to a halt for years, and only renewed when the British Government founded the Bank of England and established common sense economic policy. The maturation of natural philosophy into science and industry occurred at the same time. Then, the engines of growth took off once again and didn’t slow down for centuries.  The Industrial Revolution began and wealth proliferated. All boats rose. We need to lay the groundwork for a new Industrial Revolution.

Look around you. We are living in a derivative society. A society of the mediocre. Our films, our literature, our art our culture all have reached the lowest common denominator. The only endeavor that has reached an apogee is bullshit. In politics, art, banking, and across the spectrum, we excel as never before in touting our own greatness. Instead we need to get a dose of humility, and that may be the blessing of this crisis.

One of the common threads throughout the build up to this crisis has been a loss of morality and of God. Anything goes. Pundits, because one can not call them philosophers because they have no philosophy, declare God dead and Darwin triumphant, and yet they offer no coherent vision of man’s place in the universe. And yet we come ever closer to understanding Isaiah’s words, written 2,700 years ago by a man who had very little understanding of the world around him in a world lit only by fire. Perhaps a shepherd or even a learned man of his time, nevertheless, he had no concept of the deep complexity of the world around him, and yet he wrote that God had spoken to him saying “as the heavens are higher than the Earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts”.  There is a certain part of us that takes its challenge from this, I believe, and continues to struggle for knowledge.

And yet, as we delve deeper and deeper into the subatomic level and as we reach further and further into our universe, we see the incredible truth of these words. It is a never ending quest. And for the majority of humanity, we have made tremendous accomplishments.  Lifespans have increased, and with them a greater demand on our resources and so thus our responsibility to each other to wisely use them.

This crisis is, I think, pointing us in the right direction. Crisis clarifies the thinking and wipes away the cobwebs to allow us to consider the important things. In the past 100 years, man has tried to reinvent himself as something he isn’t. False constructs abound. The desire to overturn the old rules simply for the sake of the id or the ego is slowly drowning in its own ennui.

In the meantime, its about survival, and that means trial and hard work. Economically, it will require creativity, trust, and innovation. The old values will see one through. There are mixed signs ahead, and there may be many more challenges, but we must redefine our goals and our methods. It may be months or it may be years, but with the knowledge we are learning every day, I think the best is yet to come.

A Nuclear Iran?

Yesterday, our Dear Leader stated his opinion that Iran should be able to have it’s own nuclear power industry. On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with this, but reality is very different indeed. The Russians have been assisting Iran in building it’s nuclear power industry, which after Chernobyl should allay any concerns. Of course the spent fuel would never be used for improper purposes.  Lots of assumptions there not based in fact.

Iran now has over 10,000 centrifuges running 24/7 to separate out U-238 into U-235, the stuff that makes nuclear weapons go bang. Of course Mahmoud only has the best of intentions for this. He tells us at Friday night prayers every week. Interspersed with the obligatory “Death to America” chants are his threats against Israel, a hallmark of his administration. If it walks like a nuke and it quacks like a nuke and has a half life like a nuke, it’s probably a nuke.We must take his rhetoric seriously. He does.

Now good friend Mahmoud doesn’t just have issues with the Israelis. He is ecumenical in his ambitions. There’s no love for the Gulf Arabs or Iraq, and he’s been meddling in Afghanistan for quite some time as well. The hell of it is that with the prevailing winds and those wonderfully competent Iranian rocket scientists and Israeli Patriot missiles, the odds are that any device launched would detonate or break up somewhere over the West Bank or Jordan. Since our friends at Hamas are so friendly to us and to their neighbors, as they say in Brooklyn, my nose bleeds for them.

And what of our Dear Leaders’ words and actions in the Middle East to date? His first call when sworn in was to Abbas, and now that Mahmoud is running around the Middle East acting like the cock of the walk. Not a lot of compromise there these days. But then again, Abbas has his own issues with Hamas, who pretty much hate everyone except their own except when they’re having a vendetta of some kind or another over someones lack of dedication to suicide bombing or pointless rocket attacks. Obama in the meantime paid homage to King Abdullah as keeper of the Holy Places recently, and is today doing a meet and greet in Riyadh before his stump speech in Cairo.

The Israelis, realizing they are basically screwed, have hardened their line as well. The settlements are going forward and a new breed of conservative hardliner is in the ascendancy. Remember, their backs have been to the wall repeatedly in the past 60 years, and it was only US assistance that helped them defeat 6 invading armies in 1973. Now that assistance from the U.S. is no longer a foregone conclusion,there is an opening for Assad in Syria and Hezbollah and the rest, who I am sure Obama can reason with.  And if anyone can smell a drop of blood on the sand, it’s an Arab. Any signs of weakness or an opportunity for a cheap shot and it’s “game on”. The war clouds will gather, and once again the jezzails will come out and the stories will be told sort of like Baghdad Bob’s bedtime tales, but hey, who’s really paying attention? They will see an opening and try to exploit it.

And all the while, the puppeteers in Iran, who have been running the convoys containing rockets into Gaza and guns and advanced weaponry to Hezbollah, will be seeing another patsy just like Jimmy Carter. Mind you, it is not the Iranian people necessarily who have the beef. It’s just the men with guns.

And back in America, between carbon offset cap & trade, highly subsidized and inefficient solar and wind power, reduced on and offshore exploration and drilling, Ted Kennedy’s invisible windmill farms off the Cape, clown cars, shuttered coal fired power plants, etc. we will be just fine and dandy, thank you as we slouch back to a 19th century lifestyle. Nuclear power plants are okay for Iran, apparently, but not for us.

President Obama’s Fiscal Irresponsibility

It was reported  that President Obama was on Capitol Hill this afternoon admonishing the Congressional Leadership to enact “pay as you go” legislation to control spending. He was quoted as saying “the reckless fiscal policies of the past have left us in a very deep hole”. Associated Press in a separate article then reported that he has also asked for $2.5 Trillion in exemptions in spending limits to pay for his new health care bill. Watch what the man says and then what he does. To date he has either signed legislation or proposed such as follows:

$2.5 Trillion in Recovery Funds

$787 Billion in Stimulus Funds

$1 trillion in TARP Funds

$ 100 Billion in Auto Bailouts

$2.5 trillion in his new exemptions for Health Care

_______

$6.887 trillion

…..in just 5 months

Never before in our history has a president spent so recklessly. And his comments come during  a  news cycle where more and more newspapers, businessmen, economists and others are recognizing that his efforts are simply not producing the desired results. Rupert Murdoch, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Chinese bankers, and many others are all saying “enough”. Instead of these fiscal actions easing the financial markets, the specter of inflation is rearing its head and unfortunately, economic history tells us it’s going to get worse. The president stated ” we have done more than ever, faster than ever, more responsibly than ever, to get the gears of the economy moving again”. And yet his “Buy American” provisions are rankling our allies and threatening to initiate a repetition of the effects of the Smoot Hawley Act of 1930, which was generally acknowledged to have deepened the Great Depression into the worst in history. Taken together, his actions, and they are his alone, forebode bad economic times for our country just when the signs of global recovery have begun to sprout. Will it affect the global system? You bet.

In Asia, Taiwan, China, Korea, and Japan are slowly digging themselves out of the financial mess. Western Europe is also recovering. This is all now endangered by our reckless fiscal policies. The inflationary monetary policies of the United States are in danger of being exported globally, and at the same time, markets for materials and goods manufactured or produced overseas will dry up as the United States can no longer afford them. As our manufacturing sector has been especially hard hit, this will only compound the economic damage. We must to an extent export and work our way out of this recession.

And yet our president continues to blame his predecessors to what purpose? While it is true that between Social Security and Medicare and deficit spending our finances have been unsound for some time, Mr. Obama is accelerating this trend at an unprecedented rate. He seems to acknowledge the issue, but then continues to spend like a drunken sailor. His passive/aggressive fiscal policy seems destined to ripsaw our economy into client state status in record time. His drive to nationalize health care can only promise even greater deficits as evidenced by self evident data of the Medicare fiasco. The results are out there for any of us to see, but no one seems to be paying attention.

Quietly, the leaders of nations as disparate as Russia, Germany, China, India, Brazil, and Japan are all consulting with each other on how to react to an unprecedented financial event. The reserve status of the Dollar is in great doubt, but what will replace it? What does one do when the economic powerhouse of the world endangers itself with self inflicted wounds? How does one react to the potential for a meltdown of unprecedented proportions? How do you get a raging alcoholic to stop drinking? One who one day admits his problem, and then next denies it? The first thing is to take away the keys so they don’t drive over a cliff. Then get them into rehab. We must face the facts and make common sense decisions. Maybe someone out there is listening, but so far, I see little evidence.

The $9 Trillion Dollar Man

” Obama’s Spending Plans May Pose Political Risks”

So says today’s Washington Post, one of the decidedly more liberal newspapers in the country. They have Obama’s stimulus spending at some $9 Trillion (not my number…the Post’s ) now over 10 years, rather than the $1.7 – 2.5 – 3.0 Trillion that was originally bandied about when the bill was being considered. Funny how the truth comes out afterwards. Think about it. Nine…Trillion….Dollars....that you and I, and our children, and our children’s children, and their children unto generations unknown will be saddled with. That is if there’s much of a country left by that point. We may be broke as the Balkans and just as fragmented by then if this continues.

The Republicans told Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party leadership no. The bankers told them no. The tea parties told them no. The Chinese and other lenders told them no. And yet they went ahead and did it anyway.

The article repeats once again Mr. Obama’s quote from his speech last week to Congressional leaders…. “The reckless fiscal policies of the past have left us in a very deep hole”. No Mr. President, it is your reckless fiscal policies that have left us in the hole. It was bad before, but under your plan, it’s impossible.

And what will the money spent accomplish? No one really knows, but hey, it’s all good. Except the money won’t be worth a Continental when The President done. Way back when our country was founded, the Continental Congress, printed their own money with no backing. It quickly became worthless. There was runaway inflation and the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 inserted Article 1, section 10 into the Constitution that made gold and silver the only legal tender in the United States for this specific reason. We are rapidly headed once again down the slippery path.

The President is the ultimate hypocrite. His lecturing Congress on fiscal responsibility is like  Madonna lecturing Cher on chastity ( the virtue) and good taste. Kent Conrad (D-ND), that noted fiscal conservative and head of the Senate Budget Committee said ” The second five years is where we’re on a completely unsustainable course”. Should I laugh or throw up?

The Post article speaks of desperation and utterly meaningless gestures such as trying to save $100 million back in April. Finally the Post, that media bulldog, is putting Obama’s new math together. It is and always was a fiscal Potemkin Village.

The good news is that much of this can be fixed. There are actually signs the economy is beginning to pull out of the nose dive. The global freakout of last November is being replaced with a sense that life does go on, and in many sectors, people and companies are doing their best to work harder and live within their means. Automotive is and will remain a wreck, and those sectors touched by Obamania will feel the effect, but even this has its limitations and we will find a way forward.

Congress, on their part, can reverse the damage if they have the guts. It’s doubtful, but there is hope. Rahm Emmanuel is hoping for tax reform and Medicare and Medicaid reform. How about some common sense and getting the mobility walker and penis pump/erectile dysfunction scams put to bed for a start?  Gee whiz, just think of the possibilities if it wasn’t a politically driven slush fund. Emmanuel’s definition of tax reform, by the way, is soak the rich who aren’t Obama supporters. Tax cheats and frauds abound in the new administration and that’s the way they’ve run things so far, so why think they’ll change?

This isn’t about Republican or Democrat really, because Republicans like Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins all voted to approve this fiscal insanity, and truth be told, a lot of the “moderate” Republicans simply hid behind the bushes to save their seats and didn’t do their job in speaking out against it. There is little to no fiscal sensibility in Washington, or for that matter on Wall Street these days. It’s been all about greed and who you know for the past 20 years. The ethical rules no longer apply. But if we are to reverse this train wreck, they must.

But out here in the hinterlands, many of us know you don’t spend what you don’t have. It’s funny, because this philosophy holds true mainly in the Red States. California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan have been run in an utterly irresponsible fashion and are on the brink. All of them vote Blue.  QED, Mr. Watson!

The first step in a 12 step problem is recognition that there is a problem. Just perhaps, this is beginning to happen. there is much more to be done, and there are many policies that just don’t make sense. But this one is front and center now.

Media Bias Crosses Another Line

The world today is a curious place. Depending on where you get your information,the same story can be reported in  black or white. Politics seems to inform articles that have no political content, and the agreed upon objective standards that informed the political dialogue at one time seem to have been completely trashed. The media rank with Congress (< 20% approval) in their public approval ratings, and our country suffers from a lack of objectivity.

Thirty years ago I remember reading about Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow bureau chief in the 1920’s and 30’s. At the time, after the First World War, there was a love affair with the Soviet Union. The staid, Christian nation states of Central Europe had to a great extent engaged in a meaningless war that betrayed their core values and killed a generation of their young men. Communism was an attractive alternative, and it attracted many. Many people turned their backs on the past in the search for new meaning and political stability. Duranty was one of these. His reports from the Soviet Union were glowing with promise. As the civil war wound down, he found himself at the nexus of the society of the new man, and like John Reed, became a flack for the regime. Stalin was consolidating his dictatorship, and between pogroms, the Ukrainian holocaust, and purges, it was the advent of a new, terrible dictatorship. And every week the readers back in New York and Washington and Boston believed Duranty’s reports as true. Except they weren’t. 5,000,000 kukaks were starved to death, many thousands of political opponents were sentenced to the gulags or shot in the back of the head at the Lyubyanka, and later on, virtually the entire officer corps was exteriminated on the brink of World War II. And not a word was said. Everything was glorious in the worker’s paradise.

Duranty was only the most egregious case, but there were many others. Politics has informed the reportage of the New York Times for the past 60 years. But there is a difference between what is on the editorial page and what is on the front page. People expect and deserve the facts. Kipling’s 6 honest serving men; What, Why, When, How, Where, and Who, are the glue that allows people to believe the basic truths of the news. When these facts are slanted, whether in Hearst’s penny press or today’s Times, we all suffer.

This bias is not exclusive to the Times, but rather pervades what many call the mainstream media these days. Whether the television news or weekly magazines or large city press, there is a lockstep to the left, it seems, the exceptions being Fox News and a few openly political organs such as National Review and the Weekly Standard. Limbaugh is vilified it seems, almost as often as the preacher condemns Satan at Sunday Meeting. What is odd is that there seems to be no concern that the free exchange of ideas takes place. There is no desire to arrive at an objective truth. A liberal associate wrote to me the other day and said  “It all goes back to Plato and the view that most people are stupid, except for that wise elite who should have the power to rule”,  implying that somehow this is a modern conservative viewpoint.  And yet this educated person should know his Plato better. Plato wrote The Republic as a Socratic dialog with opposing viewpoints competing in the arena of ideas. The issue of the masses has always been difficult, especially in hierarchical societies, and there has always been a need to balance short term, perhaps more visceral, decisions with those grounded in the long term. This is why in our country we have the House and the Senate.  But the attitude of my correspondent is indicative of much of the problem. There is a need today to demonize one’s opponents and count coup at every turn. At the same time, the way Washington works is to create straw men and then raise as much money as possible for one’s cause while maintaining a polite distance from the ideologues and ensuring the invitations on the cocktail circuit continue to arrive in the mailbox. It works this way on both sides of the aisle. These days it is fashionable to be on the Left. The use of the term “progressive” is back in vogue. Progressive = leftist in the political dictionary, just to be clear. And in the media today, we are seeing this in spades.

Last week, David Letterman took a  joke too far and implied a highly inappropriate relationship between Alex Rodriguez and Sarah Palin’s 14 year old daughter. Andrew Sullivan, a purported conservative, has been reprehensible in his innuendo on the subject. Katie Couric the CBS Evening News anchor, and reportorial descendant of Walter Cronkite, the Apollo of American newsmen, in a “comedic” speech at Princeton just last week called first for a more moderate dialog and then savaged Palin.  Cronkite doing such a speech while still at CBS would have been unthinkable. He was a newsman first and last and certain lines were not crossed.

Today, ABC News announced that they would be broadcasting from the Blue Room at the White House, focusing on the upcoming health care debate. This has been arranged by Linda Douglass, the White House communications director for health care and a former ABC reporter until 2006, and the broadcast will include a Town Hall event with the president. We can almost be sure that Time and Newsweek will chime in with their own “objective” studies. A couple of month back, it was revealed that there is a teleconference every morning of reporters and other media to discuss talking points for the day run by Rahm Emmanuel. Participants have included George Stephanopoulis and James Carville, both of whom somehow have reporting jobs with ABC and CBS respectively. The top management of General Electric, who own NBC and MSNBC,  has been accused with at least some cause of muzzling criticism of the administration to conform with their politics. Notice a trend?

The Washington Post admitted on Sunday that the estimated cost for the stimulus bill over 10 years will be over $9 Trillion, and yet this has been reported nowhere else in the mainstream media. I will repeat it again, because it flabbergasts me…Nine Trillion Dollars. And no one says a word. Why? Paul Krugman states the case for foreign exchange balancing out the inevitable rise in interest rates through the foreign exchange mechanism. This used to be called devaluing the currency. Again, a very strange idea taken as wisdom within a fashionable bubble.

These are no longer political issues, but rather existential ones. They cross party lines, because if we do not balance our budgets, the country will be broke and very bad things will happen. Our cost for food, or imported oil, or that new television will skyrocket, and the disestablishment of the middle class will accelerate as we all end up in the poor house. Our nation may never rcover, and the great experiment that is America will have failed. And our media are leading the many into this maelstrom, playing the magic flute leading us to our demise.

The Appearance of Impropriety

Over the past several months, we have all watched as the Obama administration has taken shape. There have been a number of very disquieting developments in this period.

In November, the president-elect was said to have raised over $744.9 Million (George Washington University – presidential campaign finance) in his election campaign. Earlier in the year, he promised to abide by campaign spending limitations, a promise he broke when he saw the large pot of gold he could tap into. Of greater concern were the sources of this funding. It was reported at the time that some donors were using debit cards, which in many cases are untraceable, with names like Saddam Hussein, Mickey Mouse, and Superman. Obvious pseudonyms. Because Obama opted out of matching Federal funds, he had no obligation to report his sources of income. The FEC’s hands were tied and the FBI was uninterested in pursuing the matter. Part of this was his unprecedented use of the internet, but there is a deep concern where that kind of money comes from. To put this into perspective, the U.S. donations for the 2004 tsunami were $1.874 Billion, and Katrina $3.574 Billion (IUPUI Center on Philanthropy). Those were two of the worst disasters in history and donations crossed all lines. This was a lousy political campaign, and during hard times no less.

Mr. Obama then promised the “strictest ethics rules ever applied” on November 12, and banned lobbyists from his transition team. This turned out to be untrue as well, as that team was riddled with lobbyists. He then nominated over a dozen appointees for cabinet level positions who had either failed to file income taxes or outright evaded them (Geithner). Avoidance is acceptable, but evasion is criminal. Geithner is the Secretary of the Treasury, to whom the IRS reports. Clearly a conflict of interest, but “it was for the good of the country”.

The president has also consolidated power within the White House in unprecedented fashion. Instead of having his Secretary of State as the primary representative of the United States overseas, he has special representatives for almost every major region and issue, few of whom coordinate or cooperate with the State Department. There are “czars” for all sorts of issues, and policy is discussed and formed behind completely closed doors. This is true for the GM & Chrysler deals, the TARP bailout, health care and other key issues. When Hillary Clinton tried this in 1992/1993, lawsuits were fild opening these discussions. Obama learned from this and acted accordingly. Nevertheless, it is still most likely illegal. His refuisal to allow reporters to view White House visitor’s logs also has direct bearing on the matter.

The president’s disrespect of the rule of law is also an issue. In the case of both TARP and the auto bailouts, strong arm tactics were used by the White House and the Chrysler deal especially seems to be crafted out of whole cloth. The UAW, one of his biggest supporters and the primary cause of many of the auto companies difficulties in the first place, ends up with controlling interest, and somehow FIAT ends up with 20%  of the company and access to government funds. The shareholders, the bondholders, the dealers and their employees, and the white collar employees,  not to mention the taxpayers, were all, to put it bluntly, screwed and undue, and possibly illegal pressure was used by the White House to do it. In exchange, the UAW was supposed to grant concessions, but we still don’t know what those are.  Basically it’s a multi billion dollar payoff.

The White House also moved the Census Bureau under their control. The census determines the political landscape, and in itself could be considered a political plum with hundreds of thousands of short term jobs. Jiggering the Census results could result in a permanent Democratic majority. ACORN has been linked to this effort, and are already being investigated in several states for voter fraud. Are these the people we want determining the political landscape for the next 10 years? To my knowledge, no president has ever been so blatant in their grab for power. The Justice Department also dropped an airtight case against the Black Panthers in Philadelphia for voter intimidation. In this case there were witnesses and the incidents were recorded on video, but somehow it just wasn’t worth pursuing. So much for freedom to vote in North Philly.

The Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorists has also been a legal and political football. It now seems the president is slowly dispersing prisoners, a few to Bermuda, some to Palau, a couple to Italy. On the terrorist charges, the president has all but stopped any action, and the families of the victims have become furious. We have in our custody the masterminds for both the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and the 9/11 attacks and yet they have not faced justice after years of delays. Any way you look at it, this is not just.

Lastly, the president has fired three Inspectors General of federal agencies under dubious circumstances. The first, for Americorps, was investigating misuse of funds by the St. Hope Foundation, a charter school program in Sacramento, CA  This IG obtained an agreement to restitute 50% of the $800,000 funded on the basis of misuse of funds. This was then followed by the accusation by the executive director of St. Hope, that the founder, former NBA star and Obama supporter Kevin Johnson, deleted hundreds of e mails related to the case to avoid investigation. The president has already come under heated criticism for this. Unfortunately, this was then followed by the firing of Neil Barofsky, the Inspector General for the TARP program at the Treasury Department, who was appointed only a few months ago by this same president to act as watchdog on over $2 Trillion in federal expenditures to Wall Street, those paragons of virtue. The IG of the International Trade Commission, where cases like dumping and tariffs are determined, has also been summarily dumped by the president.  In all three cases, the White House has been stonewalling requests by both Democratic and Republican members of Congress.

Whether in law or in government, the appearance of impropriety is normally enough to trigger both alarms and investigations. In the case of the Obama administration, we are seeing neither so far. If it walks like a duck and it smells like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. There has been a trail of ethical lapses that is unmatched in presidential hstory. The accusations against Bush and Cheney were unmatched in their vitriol, but here, where we have a clear trail of evidence, not a word is being said. This is politics Chicago style squared, and our country is the lesser for it.

Democrats with their hands out and Republicans with their pants down

What is going on with our political system today? It is as if, as Mugatu said in that film classic, Zoolander, they are all taking crazy pills. The president is stage managing the news while we have a significant number of politicians on the Democratic side either raving mad dog looney or on the take. On the Republican side, it seems they just can’t keep it in their pants or come up with a coherent ideology. Their time seems to consist of chasing other men’s wives or conspiring with their Democratic colleagues as in California, to continue the spending spree that generates the money in bribes and payola for these reprobates to indulge in their sybaritic pastimes. Dodd has his “cottage” in Roundstone, Ireland and Sanford flew all the way to Buenos Aires for some tail. There’s your global warming problem in a nutshell. John “Ramses XIV”  Murtha builds  monuments to himself in the outer reaches of Pennsylvania while thinking no one is paying attention, and John Ensign comes clean because his aide’s hubby is trying to shake him down. What kind or world do we live in?

Perhaps it is  time to move the federal government someplace honest and clean, like Las Vegas or Baghdad, and turn Washington into a combination of Williamsburg and Six Flags. The  Congressional office buildings can be turned into a house of mirrors .  We could maintain the architectural integrity of the Capitol and build the rides around  and under the facades. This way to the Teapot Dome! Use the insidious Disney line strategy to sucker the bumpkins into Murthaworld (which sounds much like the Underworld of Greek mythology). Everyone rides in a little electric car and gets paid off as they pass the PMI cave where  trolls hand out fools gold. GM and Chrysler can build that one. Old Fiat 500’s would be perfect if for some reason Chrysler can’t put something together for a few years. At least that way we’d get something back for the 20% of the company Obama gave away. The whole thing could be staffed by the UAW, but would only be open for 4 hours/day and don’t go on Mondays or Fridays because the wheels will fall off. Every hour on the hour, the statue of Lincoln in his Memorial could be wired to zap the hiney of some miscreant politician. People would line up for that one, I think. Up by Union Station, they could build Barney Frank Land; adults only of course, and equal opportunity. As part of the educational aspect of the park, Geithnerworld where the Treasury used to be could teach creative accounting.

The reality is that between the venality of Congress and many state legislatures and the mendacity of a president intent on  “Chicago Rules” our country is in deep trouble. The news is being manipulated on an Orwellian scale and the ideas being brought to the table, without open discussion and debate mind you, are cockamamie and clearly deleterious to the welfare of our country. Our leaders are betraying us every day and debasing themselves and their offices. The Boomer Generation and their successors are found wanting. We have met the enemy and he is Us, as Walt Kelly wrote.

Contrast this with the Founding Fathers, who put their lives and sacred honor on the line for the sake of a philosophy; freedom under God, and that all men are created equal. Pretty simple. We are squandering our inheritance. We are screwing up any legacy left for our children and their children’s children. The noble ideas which have seen the country through invasion and civil war and holocaust, and which fundamentally delineate not our own basic human rights, but those around the world, are being whored to the highest bidder. It was France who looked to America in 1789, and then the world.  Our constitution has been the model for many others. These simple ideas were the light of the world. And without the sacrifices of the Continental Army and the willingness of Washington and Jefferson and Franklin and Adams and so many others to take a stand for what is right, the world today would be a very different and much darker place. Today we are edging closer and closer to that reality for the most base of reasons. Sex and money. Is this how future historians will write of us? Will selfishness and greed be our epitaph?

These issues cross party lines and it doesn’t matter whether one is Republican or Democrat. The hemorrhaging of our culture has to stop, and we must act like adults. The signposts of history are clear. The pendulum has swung too far. Hard work, right conduct, and common sense must be applied. Deconstruction, revisionism, and hedonism must abate. The false gods of vanity and envy and nihilism must be put aside. We must elect officials who truly embody the citizen/servant ethic and then all of us hold ourselves to a higher standard.The Renaissance occurred because  the works of Aristotle and Plato and Ptolemy, in the arts and philosophy and science were rediscovered and built upon. It seems we must rediscover some of these basic principles once again.

Tom Wolfe wrote about the arts in the middle of the 20th century that “New compounds began succeeding each other in a berserk rush”. It was the flavor of the month in art, in philosophy, in sexuality, in conduct, even in monetary theory. Wolfe said about music that composers had become so exquisitely abstract that “no one from the outside world had the slightest interest in, much less comprehension of what was going on”. This translates across society today. there is a reason things are called “classic”. They translate across the ages. As we try to rebuild our society, we must keep this in mind.

A Trillion$ here, a Trillion$ there – The Health Care Fiasco

Senator Max Baucus (D- Montana) the head of the Senate Finance Committee, threw a $1 Trillion/year price tag for his proposed health care bill onto the table this morning to see how others would react. Having done this, we should all know by now to double or triple the number because these folks just can’t seem to play it straight. Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, a faction of the Democratic Party is trying to ram through a climate change bill that would be the largest tax increase in American history. It seems that they just can’t seem to help themselves from grabbing other people’s money.

The fact that Medicare has been predicted to be bankrupt within the next 8 years by the Congressional Budget Office phases them not in the least. With one massive program going down the tubes, why not propose an even larger and more out of control program? In addition the Veteran’s Administration medical program has been terribly administered and is broken, and Walter Reed Hospital, which used to be one of the crown  jewels of the military medical system, was just recently closed because it had fallen apart. So what exists is a broad spectrum of federal medical care programs having broken down at the same time.

In the meantime, Medicare now approves scooters and Viagra. From a common sense perspective, it would seem a much better idea to limit funding to what really matters if an organization is facing financial problems. Instead, Medicare has become an arena for political favor as vendors angle for contracts. And now the Democrats in Congress and the President want to expand this into a whole new level of federal expense just as government is breaking the bank with TARP, stimulus packages, auto bailouts, and continuing resolutions loaded with pork. This makes no sense at all.

So let’s go over the costs again. Remember, this is all new spending, and the cupboard is already bare:

$ 750 Billion      TARP

$      1 Trillion    Stimulus Spending cost per year

$150 Billion     Cap & Trade Costs per year

$ 1.5 Trillion    Universal Health Care Bill cost/year

$100 Billion    Auto Industry bailout

Remember, the money for the stimulus, auto industry, and TARP  is already on the books and is being spent. So in 2010, according to these generally accepted numbers, we will be saddled with another $2.75 Trillion in spending. The total federal budget for 2008, Bush’s last year, was $2.9 trillion. In other words the president’s proposals will double our federal budget at a time we can ill afford to keep pace with 2008’s spending. Where will the money come from?

From a care standpoint, it is quite obvious that service and treatment will suffer. Such a large program cannot help but compete with the private health care industry, so it will eventually have to cut into this sector to find revenue, further accelerating the demise of the world’s best health care system. We will be left with a national health care network more akin to the nightmare county hospitals in large urban areas where patients are left in the hallways and emergency treatment can take hours. Is this the change we voted for?

The crazy part is that in most cases, the people in Congress don’t even read the bills they are voting on and only find out the details afterwards. It’s all a con conceived in back rooms and rushed through so the rubes can’t see how they’re being fleeced. And then, to add insult to injury, Congress is exempt. They will still have access to the best care available, on our dime of course, as we line up for our 5 minutes with a doctor. There has to be a better way.

The Great Climate Change Legislation Ripoff

The House Democrats did their best to bury the climate change bill as deep as possible under the cover of night yesterday. A 1,200 page monstrosity was hidden from view before the vote, and then between pork and earmarks to get certain legislators on board, and buyoffs for the coal and energy companies that distort the economics even further, we have one of the most poorly thought out pieces of legislation in history instead of a common sense approach to our environmental problems. Cap & Trade has already proven to be a scam in Europe, but the beneficiaries are the big financial houses and multinationals gaming the system, not the environment. Germany “wants us to do more” according to Frau Merkel, and yet they have been shuttering their nuclear power plants as they grow more reliant on Russian natural gas for their needs. This is the twisted path we are crafting for ourselves. Tying ourselves into pretzels as we do very little to actually improve the environment.

When you have Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and the National Association of Manufacturers and U.C. Chamber of Commerce on one side, and the multinational corporations who are gaming the system on the other, you get the idea. One congressman was bought of by calling already subsidized industrial byproducts biofuels so that they can qualify for double tax credits….another congressman got a hurricane research center and Bobby Rush, the Chicago congressman from the Black Panther Party got some funding for low income households, but what is simply amazing in reading The Hill or Politico or the New York Times or the Washington Post at 2:00pm the day after, almost 24 hours after the bill passed, neither the legislators who voted on the bill nor the sycophantic press nor Al Gore nor Barack Obama nor do we the people know what the hell was really in it! Nancy Pelosi is ecstatic it passed, but doesn’t seem to know. Henry Waxman, it’s prime sponsor, doesn’t seem to quite know either. So then when it blows up in their faces in 2-3 years, they can say “gee, we didn’t know!”. This is the height of irresponsibility, and the Republican leadership should be just as ashamed they did not use every legislative tactic to force an open discussion and examination beforehand. This is not the Soviet Union or Ruritania. Or is it?

My job is involved more deeply every day in green technologies. We get under the hood and see how it all fits together and works. The solutions being discussed in that field are not definitive, nor are they even well developed intermediate answers yet. Using the technical term, they are half assed. In photovoltaic, or solar energy, the reality is that it can only ever account for perhaps 15% of the overall grid demand. It works only when the sun shines and because of things like clouds and seasons, even when gauging the efficiency of cells/modules, results vary with operating conditions. It will work great to help meet peak demand during the summer, but cannot help at night in the middle of winter. There is already a clear history of these limitations in Spain, where there was a huge surge, and then a precipitous fall in the photovoltaic industry. So we know what we are getting into. Wind, wave etc are all marginal sources at best.

One of the other issues we have to look at are electric cars. Nice idea, but where will the power come from? Same thing with those science fiction movies and Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill. All of these goals require abundant, cheap electricity. Cap & Trade does nothing to get us there. Zero, zip, nada. It is meant to force us to improve efficiencies, bt you can’t get blood from a stone nor cheap, clean electricity out of thin air.

There are two solutions out there, but no one seems to want to talk about them. The first is nuclear energy. The second is the transmission system.  The very first thing a conservationist looks at is, you guessed it, conservation. The current grid was built out  in the 1960’s at a time when utilities were government regulated and owned the lines. The first thing to be jettisoned when deregulation came to the power industry was the transmission system; the wires. They are expensive to maintain and don’t generate much revenue. So as a result, power loss across the lines themselves, because of lack of maintenance has risen from @ 5% 15 years ago to close to 10% today. This is a simple maintenance issue. However, the longer the current has to travel, the more that gets lost in transmission as well. This can be improved by adding more lines at greater efficiencies but is expensive and companies don’t want to bear the cost. That’s why the federal government gave utilities monopolies in the first place.  So they could afford to build the infrastructure and amortize it over 20-30-50 years. Now we’re back in the same boat again. The Smart Grid will  be a significant factor, as will having photovoltaic closer to the place of use. This may improve efficiencies by say, 25 or 30% best case. That’s pretty amazing. But the problem is that demand growth already outstrips supply by 25% per year and has done so for many years. Think again about all those electric cars and the burden they will place on the grid. We will need huge amounts of electricity at a time when Cap & Trade is shutting down coal fired plants across the country.

The elephant in the living room is nuclear power. Under Bush, 50 new plants were being submitted to the regulatory process. Today, they are to an extent in limbo. President Obama, who pushed for Cap & Trade, has offered no solutions to date that meet the reality check. Nuclear power is the cleanest, most efficient, lowest cost solution, and as the technology progresses problems such as supply ( there’s not a lot of uranium out there), and safety (so far the only fatal major accident was Chernobyl, and that was a horrible design flaw issue) will be further improved as will generating efficiency, reducing costs even further. The Chinese get it and are building plants. The French rely on nuclear for 40% of their needs. Here in the US of A, our legislators would rather enrich those same Wall Street dirtbags who got us into the financial mess by creating a whole new Ponzi scheme.

Well, at least you know where I stand on the subject.

Obama, Chavez & Castro

Honduras is faced with an unusual problem this week. The democratically elected president tried to force a referendum on holding a new constitutional convention in contravention of Hondura’s 1982 constitution. The Honduran Congress voted Mr. Zelaya out of office and a new president, the head of the Congress, was immediately appointed to serve out Mr. Zelaya’s remaining term.  The Supreme Court affirmed the decision. Mr. Zelaya was flown out of the country to exile in Costa Rica.

President Obama joined with Hugo Chavez, the dictator of Venezuela, and Fidel Castro, the most repressive dictator in the Americas for the past 50 years, in condemning this “coup”. Mr. Chavez has been busy for the past few weeks trying to close Venezuela’s last opposition television station so that he can control the news while Cuba only last week detained more dissidents.  AP and others are reporting the array of leaders in the Americas condemning this state of affairs. But we must ask ourselves another question. Why after stating his noninterventionist policiy in Iran is Mr. Obama so quick to speak out forcefully on much more opaque situation?

Mr Chavez has, since 1999, amassed power and curtailed human rights in his own country while subsidizing leftist parties throughout the Americas. In August 2007, two Venezuelans later identified as government agents, were arrested in Argentina at the Buenos Aires airport carrying a suitcase destined for the election campaign of Claudia Kirchner, the leftist candidate. A week before, another $800,000 was allowed through by another Argentinian official, who was later forced to resign. Other payments originating in Venezuela totaled hundreds of thousands more. Ms. Kirchner won the election and aligned her country with Venezuela immediately. The same thing has happened in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia,  Paraguay, and it is believed by most Hondurans, in Honduras. Venezuelan influence and money have funded the elections of leftist leaders in all of these countries as the Bush administration was otherwise engaged and seemingly did not care. The political landscape is once again favoring statists and dictators, and when a reaction to the onslaught on the rule law occurs our president comes  down on the side of the bad guys.

Chavez think’s he’s  Fidel for the 21st century and idolizes his mentor. His goal is to outshine Simon Bolivar himself. His allies include Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Belarus, and Russia, some of the most repressive regimes in the world. Under his leadership, crime and economic inequality have skyrocketed in Venezuela and yet his desire to create a cult of personality is unique in its audacity in face of the facts. Repression and intimidation rule now in Venezuela. And don’t be fooled. Chavez has been reading Marx since he was 10 years old and has a messianic complex.

There is a mentality prevalent in Latin America that governments, not the markets, create and manage wealth. This crosses ideologies. It can be seen in Peronism in Argentina or Chavismo in Venezuela or the transnational Bolivarian empire which Chavez is trying to build. Markets, capitalism, and  religion are the enemy. To the Left, Jesus is a Marxist revolutionary. To them Juan Peron is a nationalist liberal, not the fascist dictator who destroyed one of the wealthiest countries in the world. There is a worship of thugs and crooks who as long as they spout the ideological diatribe of the populist, get away with wholesale theft and oppression. At the same time, the oligarchies are probably the strongest in the world. They use the Church as a shield for their plunder. The middle road of moderate capitalism is thus the exception rather than the rule.

So in Honduras there is a clash between the Constitution and the desire of the president to rewrite that constitution in the Bolivarian idiom. The reality seems to be that the goal is a dictatorship similar to that in Venezuela. With the Statists, you get one free election and then the darkness. Honduras barely has its head above water. It has the MS 13 to deal with and one of the highest murder rates in the Americas. Zelaya was actively trying to shut down the opposition media and replace it with his own. There were massive protests in the streets against him, and the two other pillars of government decisively opposed his actions.

So where does President Obama stand? Why of course with Castro and Chavez. What else would one expect from a community organizer? It fits his own world view. While the Europeans have called for mediation, Obama has taken a hard line. He has called the coup illegal despite the actions of the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court. This is the same president who 2 weeks ago cautioned for nonintervention in Iran, where the election was fraudulent and the regime repressed demonstrations violently. So far in Honduras, the rioting and protests have been limited. So why the aggressive stance now? Hillary Clinton has stated that the United States believes the situation has “evolved into a coup”. If the Congress and e Supreme Court have ruled decisively against the president, what then is supposed to happen? The Congress was discussing impeachment proceedings. Shouldn’t we allow the Hondurans to sort this all out first before acting precipitously? Hugo Chavez stands ready to invade and the Cuban Army are no slouches. These are  ideologically driven stormtroopers still. How will President Obama react then? Could the Hondurans count on American support, or perhaps we’ll just leave them dangling in the wind.

Back in the 1990’s a wonderfully titled book called “The Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot” was published. It tore into the hypocrisy and venality of the power structure throughout the continent. I sense today that it’s authors might want to focus their efforts a few degrees of latitude north. Obama’s statements should be worrisome for anyone who truly values freedom.

Dependence Day

We Hold these Truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”.

Pretty simple, and stunning its simplicity,  beauty, and truth. Read it to a villager in Niger or China or South America, and it has the same impact. The same basic yearnings unite all of us. And yet today in the country of its origin, we seem to have forgotten the opportunity given us by our forefathers. In the interest of comfort and safety the American people have slowly conceded many freedoms in increments and ceded critical thinking to others. In the interest of  power, some would limit these freedoms. In the interest of greed, others would coopt these freedoms. all of this from within, not without. These are issues we ourselves must discuss and debate, and yet there is little of the philosophical discussion of man’s place in the world and our duties and responsibilities, only rights we seem to invent as we go along.

The punk band The Clash wrote of a right not to be killed. Not a bad idea. But we don’t have the right to color television or a new car or to expropriate our neighbor’s stuff. We have freedoms and then some clearly outlined rights. Too often these days, everybody knows their rights, and these get kind of weird at times (ask any 12 year old) but not their responsibilities and duties. These go hand in hand.

We live in a world of dependence; on our parents when we’re young, on each other where we work and live; on the value of the money we earn; on our most basic services. But beyond this it’s all dependent on the choices we make, and we have to make these from knowledge, not ignorance. Responsibly, knowingly, and considering all of the options. It’s called free will. We were endowed with this gift by our Creator. It allows us to choose our path and build cathedrals or skyscrapers or write symphonies. It also allows us to hurt ourselves or enslave others. The Declaration outlines the grievances of the colonists against tyranny and liberates them. But it does not liberate them from responsibility. Rather, it very clearly calls on that responsibility to their Creator to act in a certain manner they felt was unassailable. With respect, with charity, with tolerance for one another within certain clearly outlined modes of conduct. This was dismissed by the adage “times change”. It is true, but they should change for the better and it is for us to do this using our better instincts.

Today we are risking what independence we have left. We are battered financially and our leaders don’t seem to have done a very good job in presenting us with viable alternatives to help us regain our standing. Greed rules, and “what’s in it for me” are the operative philosophies. Morality and gravitas are mocked openly, and pseudosciences are replacing the wonder of opportunity and invention and creativity. We are presented with a rapidly expanding picture of our universe, and we are watching “Dancing with the Stars” instead. Cults of celebrity and the absurd have more credence than the fundamental truths. Deconstructionism and revisionism in the face of the facts dominate intellectual discourse. The Id takes precedence.

The signposts are still there though. The Declaration can never be erased, but as Ronald Reagan said “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States when men were free”.

It all goes back to the basics in the end. The same philosophies that propelled Western Civilization are those that will propel us into a better future. This is not a time for sophistry or cant, but for common sense, hard work, and a rededication to the principles of our fathers. No one ever said it was going to be easy, but the beauty is that we have a road map in the Declaration and the Constitution and the founding principles.

In defense of Sarah Palin

I think we were all stunned today when the governor of Alaska announced her resignation. Obviously under pressure, she outlined her accomplishments as governor and left a mystified Alaska press corps. What we do know is that she has been vilified beyond any public figure in recent memory by much lesser people than herself for no reason except that she was a threat to the established order.

It didn’t seem to matter whether it was from the right or left, the Beltway elite and their sycophants descended like carrion birds on Ms. Palin and her family. Even the Mafia doesn’t go after spouses and children. And despite this; despite the 50 ethics charges and the unprecedented legions of opposition researchers that descended on Alaska like dung beetles, nothing was found. And the vilification continued anyway. The most vile things were said by people who should certainly know better; television personalities, news anchors, politicians. It should be remembered that these kinds of things can have a funny way of biting you in the ass later on.

What ever happened to the American sense of fair play? What happened to our common decency? What happened to our respect for getting out there and getting involved and getting things done? Are we jackals simply ripping each other into bloody shreds now? For there are no lions left… only mangy, sadly twisted buffoons crawling out of their ratholes on the Upper East Side and Georgetown and most of the statehouses in the country conning the rest of us with a cacophony of lies.

As our president lies to us again and again… As our Congress’ approval rating descends below zero. As scandal after scandal bares the lies and venality and whoredom of Pelosi and Reid and Ensign and Sanford and Rangel  Congress has the gall to pass an$800 Billion stimulus bill overloaded beyond comprehension  with pork and a  multi Trillion dollar sham of a climate change bill without reading them and the press gives them a hall pass and then vilifies someone who actually gives a damn and steps up to do what she thinks is right.  It’s like having the country club set golf clapping as the looters carry off anything not nailed down. What the hell is the matter with us?

Those same values of Ms. Palin go back 10 generations and were the ones that got this country through a revolution and a civil war and the struggle for civil rights. She embodies the philosophy of “do the right thing”. Have our values skewed so badly?

Was Harry Truman brilliant? FDR didn’t think so. Grant was considered a drunk and a fool and a failure. Dwight Eisenhower was buried at the Pentagon in the shadows when his country called upon him. The United States Army was 10 million strong and great leaders arose from the ranks to carry us through our darkest days. It’s funny and it is exceptional that in this country leaders arise from the mundane to accomplish great things. It is what separates this country from all others.

Ms. Palin has done some great things already. Streamlining state government and cleaning out the detritus is not an easy thing. One automatically makes enemies in the bureaucracy and the gravy train. She stood up to some of the most powerful businessmen in the world and helped build a pipeline that would otherwise probably not have been built. In Alaska, environmentalism means making peace with the bears and the moose in your backyard. I have found people who are dealing with nature every day much more practical and solution oriented than theorists sitting behind desks 4,000 miles away. When you depend upon that environment for your livelihood, you respect it.

Taking up the gauntlet of a presidential campaign is a scary thing. As Truman said, ” if you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen”. But when is enough enough? I think we have reached a tipping point. I think we must all, regardless of our political beliefs, say “no more will we countenance the vile and disgraceful blood sport politics has become”. I may or may not vote for Ms. Palin if and when she  runs for office. But I will judge her on her actions and deeds, not some twisted propaganda.

But we must now hold all our leaders and ourselves to a higher standard. The nuclear warfare politics have to stop. We must say “enough’ to the jackals. As they say, “speak now, or forever hold your peace”.

A Bloody Honduras?

So Mr. Zelaya’s plane was not allowed to land at Tegucigalpa airport as had been reiterated several times by the interim government. Zelaya’s supporters tried to rush the fences and shots rang out, killing at least a few. The Nicaraguan army  is rumored to be mobilizing towards the Honduran border. And this could all have been averted with a measured response from our president.

Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s president, is an avowed communist and ally of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. None of them have much respect for the rule of law or human rights. He has few illusions about Mao’s dictum about political power. Now, faced with a crisis in which perhaps hundreds or thousands may die, and in which all of the branchs of President Zelaya’s government including his own party are aligned against him, Mr. Zelaya has returned to Managua vowing to try again tomorrow.

Common sense seems uncommon these days. But to me, it would seem that the United Nations, the OAS, Mr. Obama, and his allies might want to prevent bloodshed rather than encouraging it.

AP quotes the director of the Latin American Studies Institute, Harley Shaiken,  one of the most leftist academics in the country, as saying about the interim regime “they miscalculated. I think they thought it would play as a constitutional change, as the Supreme Court and Congress were involved. But that’s not how it played. He called it “a combination of arrogance and isolation fueled by the traditional oligarchy in Honduras”.

Now if my president allied himself closely with Hugo Chavez and tried to hold an election, as Zelaya did, in direct violation of the Constitution, I would be deeply worried about that president’s intentions whether in Honduras or anywhere else. If I were in the Senate or Supreme Court I would consider taking action. If then that same president then took to the streets with a mob to try and steamroller the issue, again against the law, would that constitute a valid reason for the Hondurans to remove him from office? Mr. Shaiken’s analysis reveals his own  bias. Unfortunately, these are the kinds of people AP and the media go to on a regular basis.

Honduras, and common sense, are at the brink. The blood will not be on the hands of the Honduran people and government, but on those of Mr. Zelaya, Mr. Ortega, Mr. Chavez, and Mr. Obama.

Iran’s Descent into Fascism

Seemingly unnoticed by many, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced that they had taken over the nation’s security and warned political opponents that there is no middle ground. This is a dangerous new development in the aftermath of the recent elections.This is being portrayed as a takeover of the country, which in essence means that the democratic facade of Iranian politics has now been cast aside and what is left is a dictatorship.

The Guard’s support for Ahmedinejad is absolute, as he was formerly a high ranking member. A major crackdown is underway, with some of the allied mullahs calling for executions of dissenters. They also immediately threatened Iran’s opponents with retaliation for any criticism. This was not the government. It was the Army.

The opposition is preparing to commemorate those killed in a 1999 attack by government thugs on students in dormitories of Teheran University in which dozens of students were beaten, some quite severely. That incident was the result of student protests of harsh new censorship laws at the time. It resulted in protests across the country for 5 days afterwards.

Today the lines have been drawn sharply. The Revolutionary Guard are in charge and have warned the dissidents clearly that they will maintain control by any means necessary.What we are seeing is the crushing of any remaining dissent within Iran, and the emergence of a blackshirted dictatorship with no pretence of dissent. This is the nazification of Iran. We will know more on Thursday, but when one side has all the guns, they usually win.

Obama’s Big Mistake on Honduras

New information has been published about the genesis of the Honduran political crisis that contradicts the policies undertaken by the OAS, U.N., Obama, Chavez, and Castro. All of them have been calling the situation in Honduras a coup and are attempting to force Mr. Zelaya upon the country, and yet it seems that the decisions of the Honduran government  have  perfectly legal underpinnings  based upon their Constitution.

In this document, Title II, Chapter 3, Article 42 clearly states that “la calidad de ciudedano se pierde – por coartar la libertad de sufragio, adulterar documentos electorales o emplear medios fraudulentos para burlar la voluntad popular”. In English this translates to “the quality of the citizen is lost if ” they limit the freedom of suffrage, adulterate electoral documents, or to use fraudulent means to deceive the popular will.” This would seem to be a reasonable and clear case of Mr. Zalaya adulterating electoral documents.

Why did our State Department’s experts on Latin American law not translate something so fundamental to the underpinnings of the president’s decision to join in the condemnation of Honduran government? Why the rush to judgment? Why the continued support of a populist whose own people have renounced him and who is supported by our enemies?

Shoddiness and a roughshod interpretation of the law, whether ours or those of other countries, is a hallmark of the current administration. There is a deeply disturbing lack of respect for the rule of law. To Obama, a lawyer, the law means what he wants it to mean and his interpretation is far to the left of the American public. He is clearly wrong on this one.

Suicide California Style; Driving the bus off the cliff in Sacramento

California is in the midst of the worst budget crisis in its history. The state is $41 billion in the hole and the State Assembly still dithers onwards putting the hard decisions off till October. The major banks, according to the Wall Street Journal, have informed the state that they will not accept the state’s IOU’s. This is a very bad thing. It is the height of irresponsibility in itself, but when considering the seriousness of the crisis, the leadership should be tarred and feathered.

To give one a sense of the outright crazo stupidity of the leadership, one must consider Karen Bass (D – Wilshire/Los Angeles) the Speaker of the Assembly. Remember, the state has already cut many employee’s salaries and forced many  to take furloughs as well as an interim measure, and yet Ms. Bass, when asked by Tavis Smiley on June 15 the simple question “we know that today is the deadline for a balanced budget and  obviously it’s not going to happen today” responded:

“well actually in fact we have a budget that is in place”

Today, July 11, there is no budget in place. When asked why the State legislature did not cut their own salaries and budgets when cutting others,she replied that she had two children in college, a non sequitur.  Ms. Bass should realize that a lot of us are making similar sacrifices. She, on the other hand, is driving the state over the side of a cliff while enjoying all the perks and entitlements of the office.

So far, the state has taken only very limited half measures, and the latest fantasy of the Left seems to be that it was all the fault of Prop 13 . This is patently false. When enacted, Prop 13 limited the property tax  on residences to 1% of the full cash value of the property at the time of sale. The Democrats argue that this has crippled the state. However, California also allows a 2% annual assessment increase, and has the highest turnover of residential sales in the nation. Thus every time the property sells it is reassessed and property taxes levied accordingly. In addition, hundreds of thousands of new homes have been built in the state, and under Mello-Roos legislation, most areas with significant construction levied a 2%+ tax for a fixed period of time, usually 5-10 years, in order to pay for infrastructure, so those costs have been covered.

The reality is that California has experienced record state tax revenues from all sources for nigh on 20 years, and in the past several years has managed to outspend this by 20+%. In 2008, when the state was faced with a $20 Billion imbalance, the difference was 25%. Since Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected, the state’s population has slowed growth considerably, and yet the state government has added over 100,000 jobs. Whole new classes of employees such as home health care providers (unionized by the SEIU) have been created.

But it gets worse. California has 12% of the nation’s population, but over 30% of it’s welfare recipients. To top it off, the Democrats in the state legislature refuse to allow any investigatory function to probe fraud and abuse of the system. That same refusal holds true for the home health care sector, where suspicions of abuse are rife. There is simply no accountability for most programs today. California has become a magnet for graft. And the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsome, who wants to run for governor, announced that he wants all the food in San Francisco government facilities under his jurisdiction to be organic. This is not fiction. It is our reality.

The Central Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the  world, is being starved for water by the decision by a Federal appellate judge to turn off the floodgates to protect the Delta Snail Darter, a potentially endangered fish that may or may not be indigenous to the Sacramento River. As a result, orchards that take 20 years to bear fruit are dying, and the agricultural industry has crashed. The official unemployment rates in Fresno and Bakersfield and Modesto are 15-20%, but the casual rate, after the unemployment runs out, is over 30%. And this is hitting hardest those who can afford it the least. Family farms and farm workers. Life is tough enough in the Valley. Now some judge in San Francisco has made it impossible. Where are the United Farmworkers on this issue?

Drive through the business parks in Southern California. The most common sign in many now is “For Lease”. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost, especially in manufacturing. Fishing grounds have been closed because of overfishing. The forests have been closed for logging. Even slant drilling for offshore oil has been blocked as the price of oil has risen.  But Senator Dianne Feinstein recently got an exception from the Interior Department that will allow a company in which her husband has a significant financial interest in to mine gold in Northern California. Where are the LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle on this story?

If you have studied economics, it is well understood that wealth is only created by four industries; manufacturing, real estate, natural resources, and agriculture. Everything else is a service industry. The state government of California has created a perfect storm that has brought all four pillars of our economy to their knees. Basic wealth is what pays the taxes for government and for schools and for doctors and for transportation and for laundries and for the movie industry. Much of our economy is built on disposable income, and without the fundamentals it will all eventually collapse.

Go to Sacramento and speak with our legislators and you will find so many one note Charlies it’s scary. Whether it’s gay rights or protecting developers or environmentalism or the unions, so many of our legislators have either been bought or have such a limited range of knowledge we may never get out of the mess we’re in. California is fighting for its life. There are common sense solutions, but far there is little common sense being applied. Do we stand and watch as the bus tumbles end over end down the side of the cliff or do we act?

If Shepard Fairey Can get Away With It

July 9, 2009 – Protests in Iran

Today marked the 10th anniversary of the violent suppression of student protests at Teheran University in 1999 against the closing of opposition newspapers and the arrests of reporters and editors. Several people were killed and hundreds injured and arrested that day and in the riots in the days after.

Today, opponents of the Ahmedinejad regime again took to the streets to commemorate that event and renew their call for greater freedom. The protesters are mainly students and the people one would see on the street any day of the week; old men, housewives, workers, small businessmen. They live in a society where they have already been warned of dire consequences for their peaceful protests. The videos that have come out show people marching and chanting. There is little violence on the part of the protesters both today’s protests and in the aftermath of the recent election. And yet, to quell these demonstrations, the regime has used dogs, clubs, and guns. It has also been reported that many of the Basiji, the paramilitaries most responsible for the violence, do not speak Farsi. The police have fared better in public opinion, but not much.

In The Guardian, a doctor working in a large hospital in Teheran paints a dark picture. While the official death toll from the recent protests is listed at 20, the doctor’s hospital had recorded 38 riot related deaths, while a colleague at another hospital nearby reported 10. The Basiji have been confiscating the identification cards of the dead and wounded. Medical staff are under pressure to hide the casualties, and one doctor committed suicide. Many of the victims had multiple gunshot wounds and the downward trajectory path through their bodies indicates that the shooters would probably have been at an elevated location such as rooftops. this was premeditated state terrorism.

Video on the web shows thousands of protesters today. Not nearly the numbers seen in the recent demonstrations, but with the threats by the government of the most severe consequences, this is not a surprise. Dozens of known activists have been arrested in the past week to prevent the movement from growing, and cell phones and computers are being confiscated to examine call and e mail histories.Government agents are searching Facebook and Twitter to identify their opponents. The opposition has grown from the supporters of Mousavi to include a broader spectrum of Iran’s population more concerned with the direction of the government.

In response, the government has undertaken an Orwellian propaganda campaign to both crush dissent and promote their version of the truth. The aforementioned doctor wrote something about the state of government pervasiveness and control that must be repeated.

” Whoever you are in Iran and whatever you do, it is easy to doubt yourself. Many of us who witnessed this state aggression watch Iranian news and listen to the authorities and start to question what we saw. The bias is so great you begin to feel isolated, question what you have witnessed. At night, the Basiji swept the riot zones and cleared away evidence. They want us to think nothing happened. They want us to be blind.”

This same philosophy of government holds true today in many countries, including the United States and Britain. Whether in Teheran, or London, or Tegucigalpa, or Washington, we must hold our leaders to account for the truth and for the defense of basic human rights. In the meantime, watered down statements by the G-8 leaders guarantee the killings and oppression will continue until the unlikely event Iranians rise up against their dictator. Far more likely in this world of prevarication and appeasement, the jackboots will do their best to crush the human spirit. We are seeing the flowering of Islamofascism. Soon will come the uniforms and rallies once again unless we give both moral and concrete support to the basic human dignity of the least among us.

Does Cap & Trade Doom our World?

Jim Hansen, the director of of NASA’s Goddard Flight Center in Maryland is one of the country’s primary researchers on the causes of climate change. His work is grounded in science, and he’s very worried about carbon levels and their effect on global weather and water. He wrote an article posted on the Huffington Post today that caught my attention. One of the primary issues with the climate change debate has been the scientific underpinnings. There is considerable disagreement over cause and effect, but I for one am always willing to listen to a logical argument. Mr. Hansen’s topic this morning was the absolute worthlessness of the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade bill. I agree. He points out several inconvenient truths about the bill, including:

. It guts the Clean Air Act, removing the EPA’s ability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants
. It sets meager targets – 13% less CO2 emissions in 2020
. It sabotages carbon reduction by providing fictitious offsets by which others are paid to preserve forests, while logging and deforestation will simply be moved elsewhere.
. It has no provisions for preventing insider trading by participants.
. It provides no pricing structure for carbon, which allows no foundation for an understanding of the mechanisms for carbon reduction and cost/benefit analysis
. It is “astoundingly inefficient”

What has been passed is clearly a profiteer’s paradise with literally no benefit to the environment. Mr. Hansen then goes on to discuss setting a specific carbon fee which would be the equivalent of perhaps $1.00/gallon of gasoline. He discusses greater efficiency in the devices consuming energy. He then discusses  a dividend for carbon reduction. I can agree with much of this as well.

I strongly agree that we must  become much more efficient in our consumption of the world’s resources. Whether it is fisheries or minerals or forests, we now live in a time where we know for certain the earth’s resources have hard limits. We must dig and drill deeper to find minerals and materiel, and we are overfishing our oceans.  We are throwing away as much as we consume. These are facts, not politics. As a matter of common sense and at the very least, we must ensure that the lungs of our planet, the forests and phytoplankton and bacterioplankton, are preserved in order that life on the planet may continue.

As the global population increases or even if it stabilizes, the demand for resources simply because of the transition of so many economies into higher technology and better living conditions cannot be accommodated for much longer unless we become more efficient. Look at computer technology. The cost drops exponentially as we implement better and lower cost manufacturing methods and materials. But even there, many of the environmental dictates make little sense because they were driven not by hard data, but by bureaucracy and politics similar to Cap & Trade.

Let me use an example. In the 1960’s and early 70’s certain chlorinated solvents were used in the manufacture of electronics as cleaners and developing solutions. They were highly efficient, safe and could be recycled, but there was a concern because of atmospheric damage. These materials were slowly phased out under the Montreal Protocols. The replacement was first milder solvents, and then water based solvents, and with each changeover, the chemical efficiency was reduced substantially. Instead of releasing chlorinated hydrocarbons into the atmosphere, greater and greater quantities of energy and water as well as other materials which have their own deleterious effect on the environment, were used. The characteristics of those original solvents are well known. They are the most efficient and lowest cost technologies in this case. Would it not be better to make the original process much more efficient and improve recycling? At a 10X efficiency improvement? 20X? Sometimes innovation can be both more cost effective and better for the environment. We need to do better.

Cap & Trade will, along with the growing energy demands of our world, put a huge strain on power generation. The use of coal has gone from 1485 million tons in 1965 to 2929 million tons in 2005 (source: BP). Cap & Trade can only eventually force the closure of the most inefficient plants in a logical world. However, the world is not logical. The developing world overwhelmingly uses coal and is not about to stop any time soon. The two largest users, China and India, refuse to have anything to do with Cap & Trade. So where does that leave us? That is the crux of the issue. Even under aggressive timetables carbon dioxide reduction goals will not be met under this legislation. But someone’s going to get rich, which I am sure was the intention all along. You see, the oligarchs in Washington and on Wall Street really don’t care as long as they get theirs. The planet may die but they will be seated in the First Class lounge of the Titanic.

The shift to alternative energies will place a massive demand increase on the electrical power grid. For the long term, this is the only solution. The increase in demand by electrical devices alone will ensure this, and if personal transportation goes electric, the demand and strain on infrastructure will increase exponentially. We need more efficient energy and we need it fast. Nuclear is the only real option long term for the world’s infrastructure. It is also the cheapest technology. Nuclear can also generate hydrogen cheaply as an alternative to oil from a virtually limitless supply of water, and hydrogen burns clean. And yet little has been done to accelerate implementation of the technology. It is clearly the the best solution, and with accelerated work on safer, more efficient new technologies we can meet the need to reduce carbon missions and increase the overall available power to the requirements necessary to build a better world. But in Washington, Bonn, Rome, London, and Moscow, there is only silence.

When I see an old airplane taking to the skies I stand in awe of the men who built it. It’s durable, and like they say, they just don’t build them like that anymore. But planned obsolescence is part and parcel of commerce today. The environmentalists talk about recycling and green materials, but the reality is that in most cases this construction simply reduces the durability of the product and we throw it away more quickly. Look at a Weber barbecue built 10 years ago and one built today. The more recent vintage will almost certainly end up at the dump much sooner. Better product quality and lifetime is another area for improvement.

Politics is driven by knee jerk response in many cases. Mass propaganda machines whether in commerce or politics stand ready to sell a product or candidate and the facts and relative merits are immaterial. Many campaigns have become Orwellian in their deception. Cap & Trade is one of these. The Chinese and Indians understand this and will have no part of it. If Mr. Hansen’s numbers are correct, we may all die as a result. The G 8 meeting this week only stands the United States up to ridicule for our sophistry.

President Bush began the process of rebuilding and adding to our nuclear infrastructure. It takes 10 years to complete a plant, and there are only a few in the early stages. In most cases ground has not yet been broken or permits obtained. It will be years before we see a single watt of clean cheap power. In the meantime, under the new administration, nuclear power has fallen out of favor. Nary a word has been said.At a time when there is urgency for a number of reasons, our Congress is enacting legislation that is both venal and ineffective. The same hucksters responsible for the mess on Wall Street have another opportunity to cash in.

We have a defining moment ahead of us. Do we use common sense, hard work and ingenuity to find the solutions or do we leave it to the sophists and market speculators? We need a new Manhattan Project. We need a sense of urgency that we can gather around as a country. We are in the midst of the worst recession in decades and Congress is pissing away trillions of dollars on vapor and pork. A clean efficient energy infrastructure and common sense invention will benefit the planet and our economy, leaving a better world for future generations.

The recession isn’t over yet

Here in San Francisco, the signs of the recession are all around us. Attending the SEMI show, the world’s premier venue for the semiconductor industry, the halls are quiet and the outlook gloomy. Semiconductors are the leading indicator for the electronics industry, which is just about anything these days, and this does not bode well for the overall economy.

Walking the streets and visiting restaurants, as one does on these trips, there is a curious lifelesness. Restaurants and small businesses are closed with “for lease” signs, and the activity on the streets seems subdued. The restaurants we have visited seem to be only partially full, and when asked, owners and waiters say business is off considerably.

In California’s Central Valley, farmers have erected “Congress’s Dustbowl” signs to protest the lack of water caused by the damming of the Sacramento River waters to the Valley because of the Federal injunction protecting the Snail Darter, a fish which may or may not be endangered. You can see the dead groves of almonds and fallow fields as you drive up I-5 from Los Angeles. It’s much worse in the foothills of the Sierra, where irrigation makes all the difference.

July is the time when business starts picking up again. The car companies are building new models and orders for tools and materials pick up. Business ramps up until October, when it begins to tail off until the end of the year. This year is different, though. July has been quiet. Volumes are not picking up. There is no buzz in the manufacturing sector.

The deficit numbers look good for the moment, but the reality is that oil imports are way down and while exports of grain and raw materials are up, manufactured goods exports are stagnant. The airlines are hurting, and a couple may not last till the end of the year. This will then hurt Boeing, especially, America’s prime technology exporter. Delays on the 787 are not helping them either. By the way, this export profile more closely resembles America’s role in the mid 19th Century, when our manufacturing industries were immature and natural resources and agriculture were our primary exports.

Management, especially in the manufacturing sector, are like deer in the headlights. Frozen, unsure of what to do next. Conserving cash is the operative mode. This further stalls the economy. Reinvestment in plant & equipment is critical to a modern economy and provides its own spur to productivity.

While Wall Street has been positive recently, the underlying signs are not good. The next big surge in real estate foreclosures will be in the higher end homes in the $600,000 – $1,500,000 range. This is the heart of the economy in some ways. These are the people who had the disposable income. Now, with higher taxes and falling incomes, they are being hit just as the middle class was hit last year.

The Cap & Trade bill will certainly be a brake on the economy. Some say it will cost every household up to $2,000/year. Now, Congress wants to raise taxes to pay for their poorly thought out health care bill.  Has anyone actually read it yet? The president is trying his best to ram this through as fast as he can while he has a majority, but once again, no one is seeing the details. The burden from this bill will even further weigh on the economy as the best medical care system in the world deteriorates. That is a stone cold guarantee, by the way. Fewer and fewer breakthroughs, because managed care will be the order of the day. Look how well the government runs Medicare (bankrupt in 2017) now and you’ll get a peek at health care in the future.

So where are the bright spots? The stimulus money has not even hit in most sectors, and much of what has been spent has gone to the states with the most out of control spending. The only sector growing is the public sector, which does absolutely nothing to spur the economy. The TARP funds disappeared into the accounts of the banks to make their balance sheets look better. Little of this money is being loaned out. If one looks at the facts objectively, so far, over a trillion dollars has been paid out to those who have acted most irresponsibly in our society; reckless banks, reckless states, and reckless borrowers. And the rest of us are still being asked to knuckle down and pay more. The government is about to create a “right to health care” out of thin air which we cannot afford even under the best of circumstances. So where does the money come from? How is this even Constitutional?

The sycophants in the press tell us that the recession is ending. Not from where I sit, and somehow, being in manufacturing and out on the road in the real world, I have the feeling that perhaps the people in the bubble might want to look around and see what is really going on. Whether it’s San Francisco or Michigan, where unemployment is hitting 20%, or Florida, this country is still hurting badly and needs to begin the recovery.

We can turn this thing around. But we have to have the common sense and willpower to work hard and make sacrifices and act for the long term. This is still the greatest country on earth, and we have the resources and talents to learn quickly from from our mistakes and capitalize on that knowledge.

Two Deaths in Afghanistan

Up close against the Pakistani border provinces of North and South Waziristan is Paktika province in Afghanistan. My friends are there now spread across some of the more Godforsaken real estate on the planet. The area is like the foothills of Southern California without the charm and more altitude. Combat Outpost Zerok is one of the more “picturesque” outposts of our military in Afghanistan. There’s a single rough track they call a road that runs miles in from another dirt track. The resupply crews call it “Ambush Alley”. Think about Gunga Din and lose the illusion. Aggregate carboy walls and sandbags and shit burning details, some Conex containers to offer some cover from the elements and very small arms fire, and a couple of generators to run the lights and radios, and you get the idea.  Lots and lots of sandbags and razor wire.

On the 4th of July, like many others, I read of an attack on an outpost somewhere in Afghanistan that killed two American soldiers. The AP reported that the Taliban had launched a coordinated attack first with a suicide truck bomber to try and blow the gates (which failed), and then with coordinated mortar, machine gun, and RPG fire, raking a quiet FOB Zerok. Over 200 Talibi hit pretty much at once from 2 sides with everything they had.

The American paratroopers on the base reacted quickly and their training took over. The machine gunners, infantrymen, and mortarmen all went into action as all hell broke loose. Medics set up an aid station for the casualties, both theirs and ours. Funny how Americans are like that. We’ll rain hell down on our enemies and then go out and police the area and take extraordinary measures to save their lives after we’re done. It’s a Judeo Christian thing.

One of the mortarmen, PFC Aaron Fairbairn, 20, of Aberdeen, WA was hit by shrapnel from a mortar bomb. His team member, PFC  Justin Casillas, 19, of Dunnegan, CA lifted Aaron over his shoulder and ran towards the aid station. They did not make it. Another mortar bomb exploded, and both of them were mortally injured. 7 other soldiers were wounded in the attack. The attack went on for hours with air and Apache support that helped keep the base from being overrun.

Our soldiers devastated the enemy. Dozens were killed, and the bloodstains leading back across the border to the safe haven for the Taliban were many. These were murderous thugs trying to impose the worst sort of degradation on their own people, and their sole goal was to take as many American scalps as possible on our most sacred civic holiday for the glory of Allah and Sheikh Sirajuddin Haqqani.

PFC Casillas was buried yesterday back in the central Valley where he grew up. He always wanted to be a soldier, and he paid the soldier’s price. He was met by his family and friends and the Patriot Guard at the airport, and the Woodland and Dunnegan Fire Departments and CHP provided an escort and honor guard. Yesterday they and other public safety officers did the same again as they laid him to rest. It seems that across the country, mainly in the small towns, we reach out now to the families to honor these kids, and some old men sometimes too, who pay that price. People were lined along the streets in respect as PFC Casillas was taken to his final rest , holding flags and covering their hearts with their palms.

PFC Fairbairn was met with a similar escort when he arrived at the Hoquiam, WA airport out on the coast south of Seattle at the base of the Olympic Peninsula.  He enlisted in early 2008 and this was his first deployment. He will be buried tomorrow.

These young men knew their duty and did it in the face of death to protect all Americans. As we had our barbecues and picnics and parades, and as we ate too much and drank too much, these kids died for our freedoms to say and think and do as we pretty well please. We don’t see this in the suburbs and cities. Death is distant, hermetically sealed off. It’s in the small towns that we see the price of war more clearly.

We must respect the  sacrifice of these young men and so many others who have paid that price and demand more of ourselves in return. It’s called keeping the faith. May God rest their souls and comfort their loved ones and buddies back in Afghanistan.

Fixing California

Just after Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected, he hired a woman named Donna Arduin to help sort out California’s budgets and expenses. She had come from Florida and prior to that, Michigan and New York, where she had worked for other  governors in balancing budgets. Her job was to review the budget and then perhaps fix same. The California Performance Review actually only reviewed the states operations and administration, with 1,200 recommendations for streamlining government. It did not tackle the underlying issues, but it was a start. Unfortunately, not a lot of it was implemented because of political and ideological turf battles. Almost all of the consolidation measures recommended were trashed, and the government continued to grow like Godzilla when the poor Japanese government officials found out the hard way he liked being zapped with laser beams. So that didn’t work, and the state added 100,000 employees along with who knows how many local governmental jobs. It seems no one really has a good handle on the whole thing.

Well I have a few, humble ideas that will help.

1. English Only in Schools – ESL has been proven not to work. There is a huge bureaucracy that a – fails in its mission to mainstream students, and b-redirects resources away from fundamental education in the basics.

Start when the children are 5. They are little sponges for knowledge at that age. Classes for basic English can be a part of the curriculum. I believe that class can be called, “English”. This represents billions of dollars in savings. We need to build togetherness, not otherness, and a common language and values are critical to our future as a nation. Studies done in the 1920’s showed that mainstreaming is critical to the successful integration of immigrant communities.

2 – Get rid of 50% of the education bureaucracy – The LAUSD has well over 100 administrators making over $150,000/year with a year round car and driver to boot. What they are administrating I am not sure, as the drop out rate is over 50% in Los Angeles, so cut back by 50% since they are obviously not doing their jobs.

3 – Restore order to the classroom – give the teachers the authority they used to have and cut out the BS. Catholic school teachers regularly have 30-35 students/class. Why? because there is order and a focus on learning. Couple this with more truancy enforcement and parental penalties. Maybe they can pick up street trash like they do on the highways. We’re all for a cleaner California. This will cut more costs.

4 – California has 12% of the country’s population but 31% of it’s welfare cases. We have no fraud investigation. None. Don’t you think there is some connection there? Where is workfare? Are we paying for welfare for illegal immigrants? Sorry, we can’t afford that anymore.

5 – Stop paying for Viagra and other discretionary medicines. We’re broke, get it. We can’t afford to pay for Grandpa to make whoopie, much as we’d like to. Review the whole process.

6 – Get rid of unnecessary litigation. Prop 65 and the ADA are plaintiff’s lawyer’s goldmines. Silicon Valley has been crippled by the plaintiff’s bar. Medical litigation is like winning the lottery. There are legitimate cases, but when a doctor is paying more than half his income in insurance costs, that is crazy. Litigation costs are driving business… you know, the people who provide the real jobs that pay the taxes, out of state. It hasn’t gotten any better, and all the while certain legislators are trying to reopen the Worker’s Comp Pandora’s Box, the single success of the Schwarzenegger administration.

7 – Everybody pays income tax. Right now, the majority does not. That isn’t fair. Not a lot in the lower income brackets, but some. We all buy into the system then.

8 – Bring back manufacturing – the reason manufacturing has left California is the cost of doing business. Regulations, taxes, and legal costs are all way above most any state in the Union. California used to be called the land of opportunity. Let’s make it so again.

9 – Build nuclear power plants – They’re greener than anything else and provide the lowest cost power.  The state is chronically power short. We have to pay market prices for imported power.  Make it cheap and plentiful and business will come and living costs will drop.

10 – Take a page from Sheriff Joe – Prison is prison and Sheriff Arpaio has had some good ideas for cutting costs. Not all, perhaps, but many.  Gavin Newsome, on the other hand, wants to serve only organic food in San Francisco. Take your pick.

11 – Fix the Ag mess. California is the world’s breadbasket and yet we are killing it off. As the world needs more food than ever before, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.

12 – Get rid of the junk in the university system. How many departments and course are just plain dumb? Get back to the basics.

These are just a few ideas. If people want to make them left or right that’s something else. To me they’re common sense.

The Pressure Ratchets up on Honduras

The Financial Times reported on the 17th that Hugo Chavez, on a visit to Bolivia, stated that Manuel Zelaya was heading for Honduras, threatening civil war. This week, Zelaya has stated that he is prepared to begin resistance this weekend if talks are not successful. As Chavez has had a massive influx of small arms into Venezuela over the past 3 years, if war occurs, the likelihood is that the arms for Zelaya’s forces will have come from Venezuela. Chavez has also been accused of sending agitators into Honduras. Mr. Chavez, who on July 9 contacted the United States State Department ’s Undersecretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Thomas Shannon, to discuss the situation in Honduras, is now accusing the United States government of backing the Honduras “coup”. he recently stated “The cruel and beastly hand of the Yanqui Empire, trying not only to overturn democracy in Honduras, will next come for all of us who are trying, with the people, to implement the processes of democratic change”. In an article in today’s Caracas “El Universal”, it was reported that Chavez stated that “the coup was perpetrated by the U.S. Department of State” and he does not trust “the empire which is behind Obama”. Chavez had only recently accepted the exchange of ambassadors with the U.S. after Chavez had expelled the American ambassador.

In San Jose, Costa Rica, both sides ended discussions on Sunday on finding a solution in talks mediated by  President Oscar Arias, who has already won the 1987 Nobel Prize for his work brokering peace agreements in Central America, after mutual antipathy prevented the principals from even sitting in the same room. Mr. Arias had proposed that Zelaya serve out a term shortened to October and that all parties form a reconciliation government with a general amnesty. The United States supports the idea of a unity government. The Micheletti government accepted a number of these proposals but remains firm in its desire to see Zalaya face some form of justice or stay out of the country. The recent discovery of computers in the presidential palace with data that seems to indicate that the results of the referendum proposed by Zelaya that started the crisis had been falsified in favor of the former president prior to the election has complicated matters further. Both sides are saying that they will continue discussions, possibly as early as tomorrow.

In Tegucigalpa, it was reported that hundreds of Zelaya supporters protested in front of the Congress building. The Honduran government has  petitioned the State Department to send observers  in response to statements by Zelaya’s supporters of heavy civilian deaths in the aftermath of the coup. There have been no reports of political violence as the Army and police have been actively trying to maintain calm. 4,000 protested in Tegucigalpa last Friday, with smaller protests in other cities.

In the meantime, the United States ($16.5 Million in military funding) and European Union (65 Million Euros/all aid) have cut off some aid to the interim government, and organizations including the OAS and United Nations have suspended  programs. Venezuela cut off oil deliveries, while Nicaragua refused access to their air space for Micheletti’s trip to Costa Rica. The U.S. maintains its threat to cut off another $180 million in development aid and loans from the World Bank and Inter American Development Bank have been suspended.   Today, the International Transport Workers Union has called on its membership to boycott Honduran flagged ships.

Mr. Zelaya has ratcheted up the rhetoric, repeatedly accusing the United States of complicity in the coup as well, and has appealed across Latin America for support.  But the reality seems to be that the only sticking point now seems to be Mr. Zelaya’s return.

Sources:  NY Times, AFP, Reuters, Financial Times, Inside Costa Rica, LA Times

UPDATE – The Washington Times reports this morning that video footage from the Central Bank of Honduras shows Enrique Flores Lanza removing the equivalent of US$2.2 Million on June 24, just prior to the circumstances which led to President Zelaya’s deportation. The funds were said to be destined for use by the president in the referendum on presidential term limits that is at the center of the dispute.

A Matter of Justice

The saga of Professor Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley continues to make headlines around the United States as we explore the nature of race relations in the 21st Century. What seems to have been a minor altercation now involves the President of the United States and is being scrutinized under a microscope not for the facts of the matter, but for intentions and reactions. The question seems to be “where do you stand?”.

This is part of our ongoing national dialogue regarding race, ethnicity, and privilege. After 40 years of affirmative action,  we still don’t know quite where we are. There’s a funny song though from the Broadway play Avenue Q called “Everyone’s a little bit Racist”, that I think applies here. Whether we admit it or not, it’s who we are as human beings. We all have biases and rather than deny it must deal with in the context of our own relations with others. What is of much greater concern is that there are those in power who use this tool to divide and conquer us.

The power structure has always been one that tries to perpetuate itself. Whether it is the fact that  Congress does not abide by many of the laws it passes, or that virtually none of the crooks on Wall Street who created the greatest financial meltdown in history have been held accountable for their actions, or the reaction to performance enhancing drugs in sports is “so what?”, we seem to have lost an honest sense of fairness and morality.  The rules simply are not enforced for the powerful, and money buys justice and people just don’t seem to care.

Congress has been acting in a criminal manner for the past several years with no accountability whatsoever. This is bad for all of us, regardless of party. A president who ran on transparency and candor is neither. Let’s look at the record so far:

1 – High Crimes & Misdemeanors

Christopher Dodd (D – Conn) – bank fraud

Kent Conrad ( D- ND) – bank fraud

John Murtha  (D – PA) – widespread corruption & bribery

Barney Frank (D – MA) – refused to enact checks & balances at Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac

Rod Blagojevic (D – IL) – corruption and selling of political offices

Anthony Rezko – (D – IL) – developer close to the president convicted of fraud & corruption

Charles Rangel – (D – NY) – tax fraud, corruption

Peter Visclosky – (D-OH) – campaign fraud

James Moran – (D – VA) – campaign fraud

William Jefferson – ( D – LA) – bribery, corruption

Timothy Geithner ( Sec Treasury) – income tax fraud

Bill Richardson – (D – NM) – under investigation for campaign fraud & corruption

Sam Adams ( D – OR) – Mayor of Portland caught in affair with teenager

Kwame Kilpatrick – (D – MI) – Mayor of Detroit convicted of corruption

2 – Personal Pecadillos

Elliot Spitzer ( D-NY) – prostitution scandal

Ed Rendell (D – PA) – prostitution scandal

Mark Sanford ( R – SC) – marital infidelity

John Ensign ( R – NV) – marital infidelity

Larry Craig – (R-MN) – homosexual encounter at airport

What seems to differentiate these two lists? It seems the Democrats are doing real damage to the Republic and its values, while the Republicans are entranced by the trappings of power. Which is more serious? The Republicans are paying in the court of public opinion, while most of the Democrats have been immune to prosecution to date.

Whatever our background, the reality is that we are much more alike than different. We were raised with similar values. The Ten Commandments covers a lot of ground for a lot of us despite the differences in religion and color.

The country is in bad shape and we need to pull together, not apart. A first step might be to stand up and say “No More”. Don’t let them distract us with shiny objects and tabloid scandals. Look for the real transgressions. The pendulum has gone far to one side when it comes to ethics. They trot out the phrase “judge not lest ye be judged” as they steal trillions of dollars from us and laugh all the way to their offshore banks. It’s time we get involved.

Democrats Blame Insurance Companies, Special Interests, and the Media on Health Care

It is interesting to note the dismay of the Democratic Party leadership over the health care bill going into the August recess today. It seems that the finger pointing has turned into a circular firing squad.

Leftist leaders are blaming the Blue Dog Democrats, the more conservative party members. Many of these members of Congress were recruited as moderates by Rahm Emmanuel to break the Republican hold on the House in 2006, and were specifically chosen for their fiscal and legislative moderation. And yet Maxine Waters was on television yesterday making veiled threats against them by backing more liberal opponents in next year’s primaries if they do not fall in line. Henry Waxman, the congressman from West Hollywood and chair of the Energy & Commerce committee, froze out moderate Democrats and the Republicans when crafting the bill behind closed doors, and then presented a 1,000+ page bill stunning in its complexity. 45 Democratic party moderates wrote Waxman a letter stating ” We don’t want a briefing on the bill after its written. We want to help write it”. Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) said of the bill yesterday  “the members don’t even understand what’s in it”.

The Congressional Budget Office, staffed by Democrats, has issued three reports to date. The first stated that the Senate version of the bill would increase Federal budget costs by $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years. The second said that any savings engendered would at most be 0.2% of the overall health care budget. The third stated that health care costs will increase significantly as the various provisions of the bill  take effect. And yet the proponents of the bill are still trying to say that it is revenue neutral. When your own accountants disagree, that’s a problem.

In the meantime, as Congress recesses, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are blaming the media for having set an August deadline for passage while the president has been trying to lay blame at the door of the Republicans. So far, most of the damage has been self inflicted. Nancy Pelosi has already called the health insurance companies “Villains” in her attempt to demonize them, while the Democratic House leadership issued a memo yesterday outlining their media strategy for doing the same for the next 2 months, which, in cooperation with the White House, the AARP, and the Unions , will spend tens of millions of dollars. They will introduce a “Hidden Tax Clock” similar to the National Debt Clock, to try and turn the public against the insurance companies.

The president went on national television last week and said about doctors “you come in and you’ve got a bad sore throat, or your child has a bad sore throat and the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself “you know I make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out”.  This is an insult to the medical profession. This is the rhetoric we can expect for the next 2 months.

So far, it would seem that the bills themselves have been poorly crafted by a very few ideologues with a very specific agenda. Congress has also gotten into the habit of voting on legislation they have not read. Now Reid, Pelosi, Waxman, and Obama are trying to bum rush what is clearly a very poorly crafted bill through Congress to take over another 20% of the economy. Perhaps they should listen rather than dictate policy. Blaming insurance companies, doctors, the Media, and Special Interests is not the answer. How about some common sense and some common cause for a change?

Getting America’s Mojo Back

In a recent Rasmussen poll, 49% of the respondents said they thought America’s best days are behind us.  Wall Street has ripped us off. The government is run like a private piggy bank for insiders, and the economy is cratering. The housing markets are dominated by foreclosures and short sales, and at least here in California, the Ag sector has been crucified by the water spigot being turned off by a Federal judge. And yet  we can work our way out of this if we’re smart.

The Harvard Business Review published an article entitled “Restoring American Competitiveness” in which the central thesis is that U.S. industry has outsourced themselves out of a job. I have been seeing this in the electronics industry for the past 20 years, yelling from the rooftops trying to get someone, anyone, to pay attention without success. The HBR article goes on to point out that we have lost much of the infrastructure and makes a number of recommendations. The president tells us that the key to the future is innovation. So if the smart guys are telling us this it must now be true. So why not take some of the trillions of dollars we are wasting in boondoggles to help revive innovation? Not a whole lot. $100 billion will do.

One of the industries I work in is printed circuits. The United States used to dominate this industry. Companies like Cray Research and Univac and HP and IBM and Motorola all built the best technology in the world. Today, some are history and the others are mainly shells of their former manufacturing selves. And yet the same people who built this stuff are still out there. They didn’t get dumb. They got laid off. Today the American printed circuit industry builds legacy product. Yes there are few companies building prototypes for the next generation Apple or Cisco product, but even these companies will die unless they adapt the news technologies available and innovate quickly.The same holds true across many industries.

I have worked in Asia for 30 years and watched as the Japanese and Taiwanese have moved up the technology curve to a place where today most American printed circuit engineers cannot even understand the complexity of some of the product being built. If you get over there and go to the shows and talk to the engineers, it’s all there to see and available and they’re working on the next generation.  I am very lucky in my friends. Some of them were the engineers who built the factories or introduced the technology or invented the fundamental processes we rely on today, and we talk a lot. We’re frustrated because we see the same things. We see an ocean of opportunity in new technologies and no one in this country with the vision or the the pocketbook to reignite a new industrial revolution. Because it’s there for the taking if you dare. Truly.

American leadership and management have commoditized us to within an inch of our lives. The hardware doesn’t matter. In business, it’s all supposed to be about the software or intellectual property. Well there ain’t much IP in breakfast cereals or beer or whatever the latest video game is. They have misdirected our resources. It’s all about the Id to those people. We are simply numbers or tools to be used or rubes to be fleeced in the latest con game. In manufacturing and technology, we invent the application here and then immediately export it to save a few bucks. In the 1970’s it was oops, we just lost the television industry. In the 1990’s, oops, those darn personal computers are a commodity now.” Leave it to the Taiwanese and the Chinese. They’ll undercut us anyway.” Bull! These were bad management decisions in the interest of short term profit. Intel waves the shiny ball to distract us as they skim the cream, but it is about the hardware just as much as the software, for without it, nothing changes.

Real product innovation in America is at an all time low. One of the reasons the Intels and Ciscos and Apples don’t use North American suppliers anymore is that they feel they are talking to simpletons when they discuss new technology with suppliers here. The suppliers are short handed and not investing for there is no profit. The exchange of ideas is slowly dying on the vine. And our own government has encouraged the flight of manufacturing with inane rules and an uneducated and unfriendly ear.

And yet right now in my industry, there are convergences of technology that are complete game changers. In printed circuits, it is High Density Interconnect (HDI); embedding both active and passive components within the circuit board; Meso -MEMS (micro electro mechanical systems); and organic light emitting diodes (OLED’s). These are enabling technologies and are already entering widespread use. Every GPS system has some of this. So does your WII or your car. It’s in the digital camera you use or your cell phone. In science and medicine, the term “lab on a chip” is entering widespread use. But there are so many more possibilities, and there is no reason not do it here in America. Companies worry about their intellectual property. Why not put the chip inside the circuit board where people can’t get to it? The reverse engineering time would at least be doubled.  A simple concept. If you don’t want to export your industry, it’s one way to prevent it from happening.

Whole new product categories are there for the taking. We still have the best minds in the world. We were just told that manufacturing isn’t cool and that we would all get rich trading tulip futures or make “miyyions” day trading. Well that obviously didn’t work out, so we had better get back to the basics.

Nanotechnology is a similar virgin forest. Biotech is another. We are facing a crisis in our oceans. We’re running out of fish. The Chesapeake Bay is becoming a desert as is a good part of the Gulf of Mexico. And we will keep on abusing these God given resources until we run out. More sensible would be to use some of these technologies to extend our basic resources. Same with oil, coal and gas. We burn it up like crack addicts when we know we will need these finite resources for other things; medicines, plastics, chemical intermediates. We need to make better use of what we have, and we have to make it profitable.

We need to take the money our government has appropriated for pork and payoffs to political favorites and reallocate it to what will pull this country back out of it’s funk. Government cannot give money to other governments (states, cities) and somehow expect this to lift our economy. It doesn’t work that way. We need to revive our applied laboratories and the blue sky stuff. We need to bring back Bell Labs and PARC and the Skunk Works. NASA isn’t sexy these days, but it was one of the single most important drivers in 100 fields for 30 years before we got bored with space flight. Nuclear power can reduce our costs. Our engineers are delivering 300HP cars with 27 MPG now. We can do these things if we put our minds to it. But we have to put the old politics aside and make common sense decisions based on the facts, not passions or greed or BS. “Feel Good” decisions don’t work in hard times.

Too much leisure is a curse and we are paying that price as well. People have forgotten to think for themselves and we’re lazy. Stress clarifies the issues wonderfully and need breeds invention. We are in a time and place where we have the the tools available. We have the option to move forward or to watch our country descend into a second rate has been. If enough of us start thinking like this, we can move the world and have fun and help others in doing so. But it’s not a 9 to 5. It’s a challenge. It will require discipline and hard work.

Archimedes of Syracuse said in the 3rd century BC “Give me a place to stand, and with a lever I will move the whole world”". We have many levers. We just have to use them wisely.

Community Organizers versus Right Wing Zealots

There is a strange phenomenon occurring across America. We are seeing small and not so small outbreaks of grass roots protests against a number of the governments recent decisions and policies. The Tea Party phenomenon seems, especially with the debate on health care to be growing stronger, not weaker.

In the past few days since the Congressional recess, Congressmen/women and Senators have been confronted in their home states across the country at press conferences, town hall meetings and other venues by these protesters who have a grab bag of issues; the stimulus package, government bailouts, TARP, health care, and Cap & Trade. The protests seem to be strongest in the Midwest, but also Long Island and even in Boston recently. Today, here in California, Senator Barbara Boxer and her tool, Chris Matthews, attacked the “Brooks Brothers” protesters as “stooges of the health care industry”. Yesterday, the Democratic National Committee issued a press release stating that “mobs of right wing extremists” are being incited by K street lobbyists and bussed in to the demonstrations.The DNC will be running a series of attack ads to this effect across the country in their efforts to help pass the health care bill in the Fall.

The White House had Linda Douglass, their communications director for the health care initiative  say in a Youtube video that ” if you get an e mail or see something on the web that seems a bit fishy, send it to us at www.whitehouse.gov”. Doesn’t this ring  of Big Brother?  Organized reporting on people is simply un-American.  It goes against our fundamental beliefs as a society. The president was videotaped several years ago stating his absolute support for a single payer health care program, which has been posted on the Drudge Report and other web sites. And yet the same White House talking head protested that this was taken out of context. And yet the statement stands completely on its own. Did the president or didn’t he say it?

Back oh, 4 years ago, Barack Obama’s profession was listed as “community organizer”. He took pride in grass roots level political action.  How could he and his staff object to others doing the same thing he himself was paid (and very well paid) to do? This again is highly dissonant.What is going on here when the president himself is organizing a smear campaign against his opponents?

During the AIG furor 7 months ago, a couple of half busloads of paid community activists were dropped off outside the front porches of some of the AIG executives who were receiving huge bonuses while the government was bailing out their employer. Every major network had reporters and camera crews using tight focus capturing the vilification of these Wall Street capitalists while disguising the paucity of the crowd. Perhaps 20 or 30 paid protesters were on site, but to the average viewer, it looked like hundreds. Just another dirty little secret of the mainstream media. This has been going on for 20 years, whether it be union protests, the Code Pink loons, or a dozen other left wing propaganda machines. They take Alinsky very seriously and have media directors, press officers, and e mail lists targeted at the political class and the media. The medium, after all, is the message and there’s nothing like klieg lights and stunts to get on the 6 o’clock news.

And yet the tea party crowds are very, very different. I know because I attended two of them out of curiosity. On April 15th, a protest was held against TARP and the Stimulus bill. The anger was directed at the waste and unaccountability of the programs and the extraordinary debt in which the government had placed the taxpayers. There were no organizers. Just someone who got a permit and set up a small stage and microphone and people talked. There were 2-3,000 people there, but the press did not cover it and then reported 2-300. I cannot argue with what my own eyes saw, and the people were pretty much a cross section of Orange County. White, Latino, Vietnamese and a wide range of ages. Most were dressed neatly and many carried homemade signs. Is this one of Barbara Boxer’s mob of Brooks Brothers dressed lackies? They looked more like housewives and small businessmen and retirees and college kids to me. On a weekday afternoon on a beautiful day, they chose to try and make their voices heard. I would have to say that is pretty grass roots democracy to me.

The unions can mobilize thousands when they choose to. The May Day rallies in Los Angeles 3 years ago were a good example. Color coordinated t shirts, huge banners, and a whispered prohibition on Mexican flags. “Don’t scare the media”.  Compare this with the tea party advocates. Compare the messages, more importantly. Save Money- Be Responsible versus the tired politics of progressivism. The country is broke and the government is spending money it never has and most likely never will have the way they’re going. Conmmon sense would seem to indicate the time honored values of thrift and hard work rather than ideology.

So once again the forces of polarization will come into play. Accusations of bigotry and racism and class warfare will be hurled at political opponents who in some cases are the same race and even poorer that the ones hurling the epithets. Straw men will be set up to be knocked down on network television. And our country will once again be ill served.

Political Art as Theater

The above  images are meant to illustrate the nature of political art. In the context of the manufactured outrage ofy the LA Weekly and Washington Post regarding the alleged racism of the “Joker” image, I felt that it was useful to compare Shepard Fairey’s own political art to a single fleeting image photographed in Los Angeles this week. Fairey sold thousands of his images for hundreds of dollars per piece while the Joker image seems to have been meant as cutting political protest by an anonymous artist.

There was  no lack of passion over the Bush Administrations policies from 2001-2008. From the inauguration, there was a vocal and very angry opposition. After 9/11, this moderated but again came to the fore @ 2005. In 2006, there was an outcry from the Left Wing to withdraw from Iraq which saw many impassioned pieces by world renowned artists. Botero’s images of Iraqi prisoners and Bush come to mind.

There is a romance on the Left, especially by artists, writers, and musicians with dictators, whether it was Stalin & Lenin in the 1920’s and 30’s or Fidel and Che in the 60’s or Hugo Chavez today. For some reason, based from what I can read and interpret as what they say, rather than what they do, leftists idolize murders and oppressors much more so than  purported right wingers. It seems to me there is a direct connection between the id of the artist and the id of the dictator that is congruent when their political beliefs align. After all, one of the attractions of the bohemian lifestyle is the lack of rules, and which rules have Stalin, Che or Chavez ever followed? The power, when expressed as the will of the people, is an aphrodisiac.

Fairey made his reputation on the streets of Los Angeles with his tongue in cheek “Obey” stickers and posters featuring Andre the Giant. He appropriated the symbology of socialist realism very successfully to caricature modern iconography. He has made millions doing so with his posters, originals, skateboard decks, and other merchandise. He is living the American capitalist dream. His “Hope” image is pure political art Contrast this with his images of Bush. More importantly, contrast it with the image of the “Joker”. From the time of the Romans and Greeks, graffiti has been part and parcel of the political landscape. from the walls of Pompeii and Rome to London broadsheets to the exhortations of Mao Zedong in China, caricature has been integral to the dialog. The political cartoons on the editorial page are a perfect, if you will excuse the pun, illustration. Let it continue without the freight of racism and false offense.

The Democrats versus America

Today, Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Sten Hoyer published an op/ed article attacking the recent tea party protests as unAmerican. This has been the unifying message of the entire Democratic Party leadership since the Senate recessed on Friday. Over the past wek, the tea party activists and all protesters are being called stooges of the insurance companies, Nazis, and “Brooks Brothers”  activists.

At meetings across the country this week, protesters confronting their representatives have been shouted down by some of those legislators and assaulted in one case in St. Louis by union organizers. Accusations of protesters being bussed in have been made, and yet there is not a shred of evidence to this effect.

The White House is just as deeply involved, with presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissing the protesters as astroturfers and Linda Douglass, the health care communications czar presenting a non-denial denial of the presidents unequivocal support of single payer health care, one of the roots of the current protests, on video in 2003. The video of the president is clear. Ms. Douglass’ rebuttal is highly opaque. Front page articles and op/ed pieces carry the same untruths.

These protests are not isolated. They are taking place throughout the country, and many Democratic lawmakers are in many cases now in hiding from their own constituents.  What gives?

The first protests I can remember occurred in Fullerton, California to rally against the duplicity of both Democratic and Republican legislators in Sacramento trying to ram through a tax increase rather than applying common sense solutions to the state’s budget crisis. With TARP ($1.7 Trillion), the Stimulus ($900 Billion), the auto bailout ($50 Billion) and now the health care bill, which no one in Congress had even read last week as they were trying to pass something, many citizens tolerance for the incompetence in Washington grew into action.

These are not your typical activists. They are the people you see at church or the grocery store or the VFW. They are the ones who bought into the system. Pay your taxes, go to war, obey the law.

Frank Rich in today’s  New York Times said something interesting. He quoted from last week’s Washington Post, where a Virginia real estate agent said “nothing’s changed for the common guy. I feel like I’ve been punked”. While I differ with Mr. Rich’s conclusions, I believe this is the underlying feeling in our country today. People are sick and tired of a government that has gone off the tracks.

Whether it was in Iraq, where mismanagement was rampant, or the banks and mortgage lenders acting completely irresponsibly, or corporate America outsourcing and offshoring jobs, the majority of Americans voted for change in 2008. And now the change being offered has not really changed anything except to make things worse.

We are not reconstituting our manufacturing base and creating real jobs. The TARP and Stimulus programs are being seen more and more as political payoffs, and with a secretive cabal of leftist legislators and a president who is seen to be talking out of both sides of his mouth, no one trusts them to make the right choices on health care.

The Republicans are no better. There are no solutions being offered on their side either, not that they would be listened to by the majority. But there is also a fundamental loss of the principles of that party today by its leadership. This  angers their constituents.

The CBO reported today that deficit in July was $1.3 trillion, a $181 Billion rise over last year. Between the loss of tax revenues and the recession, there’s no money in the till. Eventually, the dollar will come under assault for the Fed’s inflationary policies and it will get worse. People sense this. They sense that we are in a crisis while Nero fiddles. We need answers and leaders and instead we get grifters, con artists, flim flam men and Nancy the insult dog.

This is the summer of our discontent. This is not manufactured emotion. It is real and it deeply held based upon the fundamental principles of fairness and common sense, and of our Constitution. For our leaders to dismiss and ridicule these people is an insult that will result in a political upheaval in the next elections. For they are not attacking just their political opponents. They are attacking all of us.

Paid Community Organizers vs. Astroturfers

Several blogs in the past 2 days have found a plethora of Craigslist ads for paid advocates and campaign managers for the president’s health care agenda at rates from $9 – $14/hour to $500/week. Some of the locations I found with a brief search were:

California  – sacramento, Berkeley, San Francisco – www.jobsthatmatter.org -  an associate of CalPIRG

Washington  – Washington Community Action Network -

Chicago – www.jobsthatmatter.org – The Fund for the Public Interest

Atlanta – The Fund for the Public Interest

Philadelphia – The Fund for the Public Interest

Philadelphia – PennPirg

These are all Liberal/Left organizations and are all advertising specifically for foot soldiers in the battle to pass the Democratic Party health care agenda. In some cases, they are funded with public monies.

And yet we have Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Hoyer demonizing the insurance companies for doing the same, but with no evidence whatsoever. Go on Craigslist and type in “campaign” under Jobs and see for yourself. I would challenge them to identify similar campaigns among those protesting their policies.

I am no friend of the insurance industry. they make their money by restricting care in many cases and denying options. But overall, the system is not a bad one and our medical care is good. It can be better. It must be better. But until the country has an honest dialog about tort reform and other equally important components to the issue to both make the system more efficient and more responsive, any plan will go nowhere.

In Oregon, if a patient has less than a 5% chance of survival, medical benefits can be denied under the states public insurance option. These are the most vulnerable stakeholders, and there are significant cost constraints. In my own family I have seen the limitations of the National Health Service in the UK. The first time it was in the 1970’s when an uncle had a stroke and lay in an indigents ward undiagnosed for days. The second for a relative with multiple illnesses who was denied care because of her age. She died recently.The Democratic leadership does not like to be reminded of the failures of single payer systems overseas, but this is exactly what so many of the protesters fear.

These are some of the realities we must face. But first, we have to remove the smoke and partisanship and maskirovka* from all sides. This isn’t about politics and it isn’t about the special interests, and the fact is that our resources are more limited than ever before. Our representatives seem to have forgotten this.

* Russian military term meaning the artificial creation of the fog of war. Deception, Misdirection, Disinformation.

Creating Jobs

In an Op/Ed piece entitled “A Scary Reality” Bob Herbert in today’s New York Times points out a disturbing trend; where are the new high paying jobs going to come from? July’s job losses were 247,000, and it must be remembered that first, these jobs are not being replaced, and second, they are the kind of jobs that pay the bills for so many other parts of our society. These are the “first tier” manufacturing, knowledge, and equity jobs that have been lost that create the wealth our economy depends on.

Unemployment among men between 20-24 years old is 35%. We have lost 6.7 million jobs in this recession. The country has the same number of jobs as in 2000, which was not the best of years with the Internet meltdown, and yet there are 12 million unemployed. The casual and partial unemployment rates are in the same category, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. During the Great Depression, some workers went into their jobs regardless every day because they had nowhere else to go. We really don’t want to get to that point. We have it a lot better than that, and there are answers. But we cannot wait for long.

To date, most of the Stimulus money has not been spent. Some is going to balance state budgets, some is going to long term projects, and some is going to maintain employment in the public sector. We have to redirect some of the money budgeted from the Stimulus into creating real jobs that will help our economy grow in the long term. Manufacturing, energy, and natural resources will do this. The fact is that our government has treated manufacturing, once the central pillar of our economy, as a red headed stepchild for far too long. This must change.

Much of our manufacturing sector is on life support and is technologically outdated. We need to upgrade and retool and revive invention so that American manufacturers can compete for their fair share of the global market. Outsourcing and offshoring have left many of America’s largest technology companies nothing more than labels.  Management and leadership pursued higher margins while they let their manufacturing operations to rot on the vine or closed them to save 5 or 10%. This has to change.  We also need to incentivize the customer base to buy American, not with protectionism, but with better quality at competitive prices.

We have replaced quality and development and manufacturing engineers with supply chain managers. Walmart, Sears and others have squeezed every penny from their suppliers both here and abroad, and what we have left are minimum wage jobs and products that fall apart after a couple of years. Those products simply fill our dumps with more waste, much of it hazardous in today’s electronic age. As to the jobs, even some of those will go as demand spirals downwards.

Regarding infrastucture, the high voltage lines cannot carry the KvA of an industrial economy any more, nor do we have the power capacity required to recharge the electric cars we are being promised. If we don’t act quickly, it won’t matter that we have wonderful green cars. We won’t have the juice to keep them running or the ability to move that electricity over long distances. We need cheap, clean energy and to rebuild our power infrastructure and we need to do it now. Nuclear is the answer, but no one seems to be asking the right questions.

As workers and citizens, we must understand that more will be demanded of us. Longer hours, perhaps, but we can also do more by making intelligent decisions instead of the easy ones. No one outperforms the American worker for productivity and creativity.This has been proven in study after study. No one invents like Americans.  Americans do not shirk from challenges. There are new technologies that can guarantee intellectual property so that it cannot be easily copied overseas. We need to adopt these so that we can keep jobs here.

Hard times clarify thinking to the essentials. Our government must rethink its priorities as conditions have changed considerably. Of the trillions spent to date very little has made its way into the economy. The banks are hoarding. The auto companies  received a massive bailout, but then shuttered factories as they received another several billion dollars in the Cash for Clunkers program. None of this will help us rebuild our economy. It only prolongs the stagnation and pain. The Fed’s monetary policy will inevitably be inflationary, making the Dollar worth less. We should prepare now to take advantage of a weak dollar, improve our trade imbalances and work our way out of the recession.

When Does Political Speech Cross Over into the Pathological?

I was deeply disturbed today the watch the President of the United States lie openly not once, but twice today at a Town Hall event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Twice he stated that the American Association of Retired People (AARP) supported his health care bill. This is simply not true.

He then went on to attack primary care doctors and surgeons who might elect to perform amputations on diabetes patients in order to collect $30,000 – $40,000 instead of less expensive treatments. This is similar to his unsubstantiated accusation of doctors performing unnecessary tonsillectomies to garner similar fees 10 days ago during his nationally televised speech on health care. This is the rhetoric of the rabble rouser.

Nancy Pelosi was caught on camera stating that the protesters against health care have been carrying swastikas, implying that they are Nazi zealots, when  she neither had the evidence nor any other information on any such instances. She and her colleagues have also accused the K Street lobbyists and the insurance industry of busing protesters to Town Hall events, all without a shred of evidence.

Add to this the presidents promises of the most transparent administration ever; his promise that lobbyists would not be hired by his administration; and his promise that he would hold his administration to the highest ethical standards. In each case, these have been untruths quickly and publicly proven on the front pages and at the newsdesks of multiple media outlets. We are approaching Nixonian ethical dissonance and we are only 6 months into the new administration.

This is not just politics as usual. This represents something much deeper. This is what Orwell feared. The lie repeated again and again until it became the truth. We are entering Alice’s rabbit hole. We’re not there quite yet  but at the same time, never in our history have we seen such a blatant disregard for the truth. Neither Nixon nor Bush, who was vilified by the Left for his actions, came out with major whoppers that could so easily  disproved. On policy, even the president’s most ardent supporters have become disappointed as he has said one thing and done another.

Politicians are not known for their truthfulness. Facts and platforms become distorted as a candidates steer left and right to win the primary and general elections. But once elected, we expect more of them. Reading back through Adams and Washington and de Toqueville and Lincoln and Roosevelt and Truman, one reasonably concludes a high regard for the American discourse. Of course it has always been rough. There were duels fought and canings on the House floor. We were a pioneer people with massive disagreements over fundamental issues. But today our leaders act like the Roman elite carrying sophistry to a new level.

And yet with the internet, it is so easy to roll the video or read the underlying documents. We can let the principals and politicians speak for themselves. And unfortunately they are doing themselves no credit at all. the electorate is more deeply offended on both right and left. We need arguments based on principle and the facts.

The Mother of all Bureaucracies

A British Member of the European Parliament, Daniel Hannan, recently pointed out that UK’s National Health Service with 1.4 Million employees is the 3rd largest employer in the world behind China’s Red Army and India’s National Railroad. The UK has a population less than 1/3 that of the United States. In addition, more than 50% of those employees are administrative and have nothing to do with health care on a daily basis.

Today, the Department of Health & Human Services has 67,000 employees. The Medicare Administration, a part of HHS, employs  4,100 of that 67,000.  One thing we know for certain is that the government is very good at is creating bureaucracies. The TSA, which did not exist 8 years ago, now has 45,000 screeners  and a $6.8 Billion budget.

Regardless of which plan under consideration is signed into law, the bureaucracy created would dwarf these numbers. We will be looking at the single greatest increase in the federal payroll in our history. The number of administrative staff would increase exponentially with absolutely no effect on the quality or availability of care. If what the president says is true, we would not only have that governmental payroll to deal with, but the existing system as well.

The CBO has already stated that there would be significant cost increases based upon the expansion of treatment. What about the administrative costs? We are thus discussing not only a massive increase in direct spending, but a massive increase in overhead. And  I thought the problem we had  that brought up this whole mess was dealing with runaway costs.

North American Manufacturing – How To Fight Back Against the Odds

I.

In a recent meeting with senior engineers at one of America’s remaining technology companies, one of the managers stated that the North American electronics industry is stuck building legacy product. This company is buying hundreds of millions of dollars of components in Japan and Asia, and feels they can no longer even find the capabilities to manufacture advanced technology at home.

In the Harvard Business Review’s July/August issue, Professors Gary Pisano and Willy Shih write in the feature article on “Restoring America’s Competitiveness” that decades of outsourcing has left the United States, in particular, without the means to invent the next generation of high technology products. It is an issue on which I have written for over 15 years, so I have some familiarity with the problems. The West has made the terrible mistake of abandoning applied engineering, and if we are to rebuild our economy, manufacturing must be integral to that recovery.

Tom Bartlett, whom I have known for many years, in a recent New York Times article blamed Chinese currency manipulation as a part of the problem that led to the demise of his manufacturing company in Chicago. This was one cause. Another was a complete disregard for the means of production at the highest levels of American business. Another was the lack of reinvestment when times were good. What Hewlett and Packard and Noyce and Durant and Ford knew in their bones was forgotten by two generations of American managers more interested in personal gain and that of their largest investors. There was no longer a focus on building long term value.

In government, the word “manufacturing” is anathema, and virtually the entire power structure of our country today has no understanding of making things or Research & Development. It’s all magic. FDR certainly knew manufacturing. Kennedy knew it when he battled the steel companies. Johnson was responsible for NASA as Vice President. Today our space program is an orphan. DARPA in the past 20 years has become a short term applied technology organization rather than the blue sky visionaries they once were. Bell Labs, PARC, and other practical (and sometimes blue sky) organizations have simply disappeared as their corporate owners pared costs. In those intervening years, fewer and fewer of our leaders had a real grasp of the process of making things because they had collectively forgotten the fundamentals.

The technology companies have not helped themselves either. They have pulled back and cut costs at every level for the most part. Even industry organizations bear some responsibility. So many of these were originally the vehicles for the development of standards and process guidelines. At one time the entrepreneurs and businessmen who owned the company were directly involved because they needed those standards and technology guidelines. Networking was critical to understand the next big thing, and they needed that information “yesterday”. With the de-emphasis on manufacturing, organization staff became the driving force, and while competent, it takes being on the firing line to understand the intrinsic issues of technology. Manufacturing has atrophied. But we must get that spirit back. The old dictum that success has many fathers but failure is an orphan has been turned on its head. This failure has many fathers. And yet I am an optimist. We can fix this. The United States has been the economic engine of the world for 100 years and we can continue to do so.

II.

Why has Japan succeeded so spectacularly? Fewer and fewer North American engineers and managers from the manufacturing side visit every year and yet Japan has leapt forward in technology, especially in electronics. The Japanese have been disparaged as consumer driven, and yet their technology is some of the most sophisticated in the world. They sell Billions of dollars of product and keep millions employed doing so.

The Japanese approach manufacturing as a master craftsman would have approached making a samurai sword 200 years ago; layer by layer, process by process, honing each step to perfection. They study and study until they absorb the fundamental concepts, refine them, and then execute. Most of the electronics technology was invented in America, but has morphed beyond recognition. Our labs are still the best, but the rush to commercialize has led to losing long term benefits in favor of short term gain as researchers and technologists look for a quick payday. One also sees in Japan much more collective effort on technology. Companies form themselves into associations to create an infrastructure for a particular product type. In many cases the technologies within a given field compete quite aggressively. In the long run, most companies benefit from that next technological/product step to further their competitive advantage. There is much less of this in North America. American companies can simply buy the end products. But what happens then to the fundamental understanding of the way things work?

Why has Taiwan succeed so well? From my observations, there was a massive application of capital coupled with intense government support and a raucous cross pollination of ideas and technology, most of this taking place within a 75 mile radius. Taiwanese manufacturers have move up the chain rapidly to a point where they dominate certain key technologies. The Koreans have their own intense drive to excel, while in China the focus on becoming the world’s factory is the policy of state. The West’s loss has been Asia’s gain.

Der Spiegel reports this week that it is manufacturing that is leading Germany out of the recession. The demand for German machinery overseas, and their advances in integrating information technology with hardware to create demand for whole new product categories such as RoboCoasters for amusement parks, driverless forklift trucks, and robotic self service milking machines for dairy cows. Germany leads the world in making the equipment and materials for many green technologies.

III.

Crisis generates opportunity. It clarifies thinking when there are no options but survival. There are macroeconomic issues where manufacturers must work more aggressively together. Our government has appropriated $800 Billion in Stimulus funds. The American technology base is obsolete. Capital equipment in many cases is 20-30 years old and must be replaced to compete on the global stage. We must retool for the new technology. Our infrastructure must be upgraded, especially if we are to see a transition to electric cars. We need the transformers and transmission lines and power plants to power our economy not in the nebulous future but now. We need nuclear power to reduce costs and greenhouse gases. A portion of the Stimulus funds must be redirected into  both macro and micro manufacturing infrastructure. It is an investment in the future and will pay off handsomely. American manufacturers can work together to achieve these ends for the good of the country.

Next, we must look at technology overseas without condescension and learn from those we originally taught. We must study the new processes and products closely and master them once again. We have thousands of engineers and workers who would like nothing better than to do what they were trained to do. If nothing else, Americans are the most productive workers and most inventive people on the planet. As engineers, we must ubnderstand the new technologies and make them available to our customers. So many times, we have invented and then abandoned key technologies. Now, even the OEM’s don’t understand the possibilities.

Just imagine putting key components and code withing a printed circuit board. Try reverse engineering that. It would give any company at least an additional 6 months to a year or longer in intellectual property protection, and yet many managers do not understand this fundamental advantage. New combinations in the electronics field such as MEMS, Meso-MEMS, embedded components, electro-optical circuit boards, and other technologies will lead to a reinvention and renaissance in products, but first one must understand the possibilities. These possibilities cut across industries and product categories.

IV.

We must reevaluate our relationships with our stakeholders. Our employees and customers are the reason for our success, and this seems to have been forgotten. Today most companies give lip service to partnerships, but the reality on the factory floor or in dealing with customers is very different. Relationships do matter. If we are to survive and grow in hard times, we must rely on teamwork at every level. Ask the elite military units or championship athletes. Success is not achieved in a vacuum.

Today, most companies do little to cross pollinate sales, engineering, and applications. Each of these functions contributes towards long term success. Process development no longer exists at most manufacturing companies and yet the workspace is if anything becoming more complex. Close cooperation with suppliers and customers is critical in ramping up rapidly, and helps the manufacturer to become an indispensable contributor to their customers success, improving volumes and profit margins.

V.

Commoditization is perhaps the cardinal sin in manufacturing today. The global economy has become dependent on the China price. And yet we throw away and return more product for defects than ever before. One of the dirty secrets of the electronics manufacturing industry is the Repair Center, where products that should have been built properly the first time are replaced. These have become significant profit centers in the contract manufacturing industry.Ask Microsoft the cost of the X Box fiasco. More to the point, this represents a terribly inefficient use of resources. manufacturing yield improvements drop directly to the bottom line, and in a world demanding green solutions this is one of the greenest.

The primacy of the accounting and purchasing departments cannot dictate long term corporate decisions on manufacturing and technology. They are integral to any corporation, but must be subsidiary in long term policy considerations. This must be understood throughout the supply chain. Quality and technology do matter.

Today many of the West’s leading names in the technology sector are simply labels, and most of the wounds are self inflicted. The manufacturing sector has been the engine of our economy since the Industrial revolution, and is vital to our future as individuals, as families, as industries, and as nations. We must recognize our mistakes and correct them. There is a window of opportunity open, but it will take all of us to effect change.

De Toqueville wrote in Democracy in America of our country’s unique character of enlightened self interest. He said that Americans voluntarily join into associations to further the interests of the group, and thus their own. We must remember this once again and take it to heart. We are living in times of ferment and fear. It is up to each of us to work across boundaries for the sake of us all.

The Corporate Health Care Sellout

One of the most offensive aspects of the health care debate is how a number of the major corporations in America are angling for their own interests in the face of the greater good.

The pharmaceutical industry have promised $80 Billion in ill defined cuts, while they have also pledged $150 Million in advertising for the president’s agenda. This would seem to be an illegal quid pro quo. Or is it just the Chicago style?

Wal Mart and other large companies have also embraced the single payer option as it relieves them of billions of dollars in health care costs. We are seeing more and more instances of the large corporations getting behind another of the most poorly thought out pieces of legislation in history.

They don’t know what it is, but if they can weasel out from under a major cost of doing business, they’re for it. Of course, senior management will always be able to get the medical care they need regardless of cost. We are once again seeing the “insider” game where they well connected and amoral grab all they can and leave the rest of us to the wolves.

These same multinationals accrue huge benefits in lobbying for contracts and programs while playing one country off against the other to cut costs and responsibility. These same companies are the ones paying their executives obscene bonuses, for what?  Why for cutting costs of course.

This is not an issue of Democrat versus Republican, it is an issue for all of us together. There is no patriotism or motivation for the greater good at most of these companies today, and we must hold them and the grifters in Washington accountable for their actions.

The Etch a Sketch Presidency

Today, we have the spectacle of the White House reversing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius weekend statement  saying that the public option may not be necessary to their plans to reform health care. Saturday, they dropped the idea of end of life care decision making panels despite their denials that the idea ever really existed. He said last week that he does not believe in single payer health insurance, and yet he is caught on video saying the opposite in 2003. What new surprises will tomorrow bring? We are entering an Orwellian level of newspeak.

His statements on employing lobbyists, when we now have more them working in the White House than in any previous administration, are at odds with reality. On transparency, he has somehow made Bush look Teddy Roosevelt.  Obama’s decision making process is as obscure as the Kremlin with “czars” working behind the scenes establishing policy with virtually no input from either the Departments or Congress.

Our president cautioned fiscal responsibility while doubling our national debt in 6 months. He then told us he would reduce pork barrel projects, and yet signed the most corrupt and bloated “Stimulus” bill in history  full of payoffs to his supporters. He stated his concerns for fairness in the auto bailouts, and yet the only beneficiaries seem to be the UAW and Fiat.

In watching Robert Gibbs field the occasional difficult question at press conferences, I am waiting to see whether he eventually has a seizure or if his head will explode first. Despite the softball questions from most reporters, he manages to make absolutely no sense whatsoever while defying logic completely at times. One sees the cameras occasionally pan to show reporters looking at each other and whispering “what the heck did he just say?”.

The left is just as unhappy with the president, feeling that he has abandoned them on too many issues, whether Iraq or gay rights or cap & trade. There is widespread dissatisfaction that the president has “not done enough”. Even Paul Krugman has been highly critical. Too many times, the president seems to have turned over the etch a sketch and erased his previous statements and positions. For an administration that is only 6 months old, this could prove fatal.

From Guantanamo to the PGA

Friday’s Bermuda Sun reports that the Uighers recently released from Guantanamo are having a smashing time in Bermuda. They are integrating into island life well and have joined the local soccer league, where they play for the X Road Warriors. Sounds somehow appropriate.

After 7 years at Guantanamo, freedom is sweet. All four are now working as assistant groundskeepers at the Port Royal golf course, a long  way from their past lives in the arid environs of Western China. Khalil Mamut said “It’s beautiful. It feels like we are working in a garden”.  They play golf on the Wii, and hope to one day try the real game. For now they are still learning the ropes of greenskeeping. Rule #1, “don’t shoot all the golfers”. From being a baker  and a candy maker and a merchant and a teacher in Western China in their past  lives, the transition to Bermuda has been amazing for all of them.  From the confines of prison to the country club set is simply amazing. I wonder if they’ll be allowed to use the swimming pool on Caddy Day?

According to Robert Trent Jones, Port Royal is the best work he’s done outside of the United States. Y.E. Yang, who won $1.3 Million+ by beating Tiger Woods in dramatic fashion for the PGA Championship at Hazeltine Country Club in Chaska, MN yesterday, will play Angel Cabrera, Stuart Cink, and Lucas Glover, the winners of this years other major tournaments. Woods will be sitting this one out, unfortunately.

In a world of conflict and dissonance, the mere fact that these men have been placed on a tropical paradise working to prepare for a major golf tournament is perhaps a sign that not all is so bad after all. Maybe we will see them wearing neon Bermuda shorts or plus 4’s riding the links in style next. It’s a strange world out there and who knows where it may all end up.

Mortgage Crime

There’s a fellow I know here in California whose story I would like to tell you. For the sake of his privacy, I’ll call him Bill.  I am not sorry for him. He made his own bed. But he was also taken advantage of by people who knew better and did it anyway.

Bill is in his late 80’s, a retired actor. Not a famous one, but he invested wisely enough to build his dream house on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean back in the late 60’s, where he lived joyfully for 30 years before his wife passed away. Since then he has been lonely, and as he got older, more vulnerable. Bill made some investments, some of them quite successful and some not so successful.  As he got older, the successful ones, which produced steady but boring returns, were supplanted with riskier projects. Bill enjoyed the attention as the new, important investor. It made him feel good to have skins in the game and go to meetings and appointments.

Bill started running out of money. He lived frugally and owned his home outright, a prime property in a unique location, but his bad investments were draining his wealth away.  So when he got a call several years ago at the height of the real estate market from a major bank regarding refinancing his home, it was too attractive a deal to refuse. He really didn’t have to worry because the bank would take care of all the paperwork and even send someone out to have him sign and notarize the documents. It was a major bank, so he trusted that they knew what they were doing.  That is, after all, why they call them “Bank & Trust” companies. He had the expectation that they would act within the law and in a reasonably ethical manner. Somehow, somewhere along the way, someone neglected to note that all of Bill’s income came from his social security check. He had been living off of his principal for years, selling off bits and pieces as he needed money. The loan was in excess of $2 Million. In making this loan, someone committed  fraud.

Naturally, Bill could not keep up with the payments. He invested most of the money, and then made payments from what principal remained. Last year, he ran out of money. The bank began sending dunning notices and then began foreclosure proceedings. Bill’s back was against the wall, and yet no one from the bank seemed to realize or care that they were dealing with a very elderly client who might not have understood what was happening.

At that point a neighbor stepped in and realized that Bill had less than 30 days before being evicted. They began a short sale process,and got the eviction delayed as they tried to sell the house. The house sold for perhaps $2 Million less than it would have been worth if not sold under duress, and the bank got every single penny of the money it had loaned plus all of the interest they had collected until that point.  The purchaser knew of Bill’s distress, and made private terms with him to purchase some assets so that Bill had at least a grubstake to get himself back on his feet. Bill doesn’t need a lot. Just a little respect and attention, really. He’s living in a trailer now and has his few friends, but his past life is gone.

I know of several other cases similar to Bill’s. People who should  never have qualified for the loans, but yet somehow ended upside down on houses they had lived in most of their lives. Good, hardworking people who never took anything from anyone that they had not earned honestly. But somewhere along the way, the financial industry lost any good sense or even enlightened self interest.  Money was cheap and flowing like a river. Developers were building huge tracts, and as long as prices went up, it held together with chewing gum and baling wire. Gardeners became landscape designers in order to qualify. The thinnest reed of hope became a field of clover on loan applications. And all the while, the banks and mortgage lenders made billions, not millions. Insult was in many cases added to injury, when low income borrowers or minorities found themselves with higher interest rates, sometimes for good reason, but in many cases because the lenders knew their marks and that they could get away with it. Sometimes, it was even family members taking advantage of relatives.

In contrast, last year President Bush loaned the banking industry $700 Billion under TARP to keep them solvent in the face of nonperforming loans. The TALF program  injected another $1 Trillion dollars, while in March the Fed was authorized to purchase up to $750 Billion in mortgage backed securities. Addition measures to improve liquidity total hundreds of billions more. And yet the banks have not loaned this money out as the government originally intended. This money is the lubricant that was supposed to help get us out of the recession. Most of it is sitting in AAA investments such as T Bills and government backed securities to help protect the banks balance sheets. Part of this is to cover loan losses from the mortgage implosion, but the reality is that prices are down nationally approximately 20%, so the banks are making most of their money back. The huge write downs will eventually turn into pure profit as assets are liquidated. The banks will once again report huge profits.

And people like Bill will continue to end up on the street, whether the home was $100,000 or $1,000,000. Companies will continue to lay off employees because they cannot get loans to keep themselves going through the hard times. The recession will continue because the jobless can’t spend and companies can’t invest. And we will all suffer as individuals and as a nation.But the well connected and the banks will do just fine. Senators and Congressmen will get their insider deals. Their contributors for the right price will be allowed to wallow at the public trough. This is the way it works these days.

Months ago there were headlines and outrage and investigations promised, and yet today, there has been no change. No one has gone to jail. Not one person. Congress held a few show hearings and then promptly forgot about the matter. And yet frauds were committed on a massive scale in the billions of dollars. This crisis has brought our country to its knees and there has been no accountability. If you are not more than a little outraged, you should be. When we live in a society where, with all of the laws and and regulations one can imagine, the criminals can still take advantage of the weak and walk free, something is deeply wrong with our morality and our methods. We don’t need more laws, we need to enforce the ones we already have. This is an offense against all of us.

The Banality of Evil – The Health Care debate takes a dangerous turn

This evening the New York Times is reporting that the President and Congressional leaders plan to go it alone on their health care bill. Since this leadership includes Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, and we have seen their hysterical response to the growing concerns of many in the electorate with the various bills introduced so far, I am deeply concerned. Despite massive and growing resistance and incontrovertible declines in the popularity of their positions, they plan to take the gloves off and pass something, anything to be able to declare victory. For that is what this is all about now. Better, more widespread health care is not the issue any more. This is the most craven of partisan politics.

In 1962, Hannah Arendt, in writing about Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution, tried to understand the phenomenon of  pure evil. Having been a good German who lived under Hitler until her life was threatened, she escaped the Holocaust. These were her people who did this thing.  She was desperately trying to understand how the German people would participate in such horrors. “The Banality of Evil” was her description of the way in which ordinary people accepted the orders of their leaders and committed such crimes. The  defense of “following orders” was disallowed by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremburg, who stated that following illegal orders was not a valid defense provided a moral choice was possible.

So what does this have to do with health care? Please allow me to relate a true story. Today seems to be my day for such if you have read my earlier blog.

I had a relative in England who died less than three months ago. I will relate her story. She was never in the best of health, but contracted tuberculosis a few years ago in her late  50’s. Since treatments are weighted in the National Health Service, it was determined that her care would not have a high priority. Her children were grown and did not need a mother’s care. TB treatment is expensive, and there is a limit in the UK of GBP 45,000 per patient per year excepting extraordinary cases. Someone somewhere sat down at a desk and factored in all of these variables. This treatment was delayed as are many kinds of treatment in the UK. Then 3 years ago, in a weakened state, she contracted cancer. Once again, the actuarial tables were consulted, and she received only limited care. At that point it was only a matter of time. She survived much longer than anyone would have expected. Other illnesses attacked her body. And then, one day, she finally passed on.

There were steps in this process. There were procedures and guidelines. And decisions made to limit treatment. In the United States, she would have had immediate and aggressive treatment for tuberculosis by government order. She probably would have stood a much better chance of surviving much longer with a reasonable quality of life.

The fact is that today, our government is highly constricted in its financial options. We have already indebted ourselves to a point where we can no longer finance that debt. Medicare, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which is controlled by the abovementioned leadership, will go bankrupt in 8 years. Social Security is predicted to do the same in the 2030’s. The CBO also has calculated that any of the bills now under consideration would cost as much as $1 trillion. So we have the two largest safety net programs yet undertaken by our government bankrupted by irresponsible government borrowing and poor management, and Congress own accountants predicting runaway costs.  The president cited the Post Office as a comparison in speech to his undefined health care proposal in Portsmouth, NH last week. How can he and our leaders fail to see the analogies? How can they fail to see the potential for collapse and the terrible pain it might cause? This should be one of the most serious discussions of our time and there is no discussion.

The warning signs are all around us. We are faced with a health care system that needs reform. So many issues have been identified in the public debate that serious, measurable reform may now be possible. Ideas are coming from all sides. And yet we are faced with a pigheaded, partisan leadership that is basically preparing to tell the rest of us to go to hell and ram through another highly defective piece of legislation without scrutiny and without debate. The  financial system bailouts and Stimulus Bill and Cap & Trade bill all point clearly towards where this will end up.

The Administration and its supporters have vilified the concerns of many about end of live panels, and yet this is a fact of life in the UK already. Somewhere far removed,  bureaucrats make life and death decisions based on the numbers. With all of its faults, our current system values life much more highly. One of the chief theoreticians they seem to be listening to, Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, the White House Chief of Staff’s brother, has openly discussed the “life value” of infants and the elderly, noting that a child is not really self aware until the age of two. This is a very, very dangerous discussion.

One of the fundamental virtues Americans have always held is the value of life. Whether it is in the care for sick infants or the billions spent on AIDS research or the heroic measures in the operating room on an inner city gunshot victim, or on the battlefield where our troops are indoctrinated with “no man left behind”, or our fundamental obligation under Medicare for the care of our elders,  we have almost always managed to do the right thing. We make herculean efforts to do so. There is a preferential option for the weak in our culture that we must never lose that is based upon our humanity and our faith.

Or do we, like Eichmann, simply shirk responsibility by saying we were only following orders?

Obama’s messianic demonization of his opponents

I have been traveling for the past few days, and so have been out of the loop. What I did catch sort of amazed me. Our president, on a conference call on the Health Care bills, lectured some of America’s leading Rabbis on the Bible. He said that “we are God’s partners in matters of life and death”. This betrays a fundamental arrogance and flawed thinking in man’s relationship with God, and yet no one said a word. No one was allowed to, as the teleconference was more of a speech with several questions submitted beforehand. There was no dialog. Moses had spoken from the mountain.

One of the first things we learn as People of the Book is that God is paramount in all matters. He is God, after all. We are but a mote in His eye, according to the Bible. So how a mere mortal who professes the Christian faith make such a terrible mistake? This is not about the president’s rhetoric. It is dogmatic. Our president would be guilty as a Christian of the sins of hubris and vanity if nothing else. Martin Luther King would never have said such a thing, nor would most of our leaders today. If one is to lead a moral crusade, one must first be moral. One must have humility and deep faith. I see neither in the advocacy of the Health Care bills.

He then called for “40 Days” of action, recalling Jesus’ 40 days and 40 nights in the desert. For a deeply flawed health care bill on which the nation is deeply divided? His analogies defy faith. He uses sacred rhetoric for the most base of purposes.

The president and his advisors have demonized their opponents to a degree which we have not seen in 100 years, with the exception perhaps of the hatred of the hard Left of Nixon and Bush. But this time it is our leaders doing the demonization, not bloggers or protesters. I cannot remember in our history when a president has stooped so low. Lincoln loved his opponents as a Christian. Most others who may have despised their opponents kept their mouths shut.

But this is a demonization of Mom and Dad and Uncle Joe. Pelosi has said so. Reid has as well. Somehow this is the Left’s version of a “communist plot” of 50 years ago, but is being propagated by people who should know better. Pelosi calls herself a good Catholic, but supports extreme abortion rights. Reid professes to be a good Mormon. Obama calls himself Christian, but sponsored the most aggressive defense of third trimester abortion in the land when an Illinois state senator. This is the height of hypocrisy. Whether one is a believer or not, the dissonance is jarring. It short circuits logic to an Orwellian degree.

The funny thing is that this time, these people are way out on the perimeter of the political discourse. Secularists will concede a certain logic to our ethical framework, but our president and his allies seem to defy that logic, all in the name of their political agenda. They set up straw men to knock them down, and cannot seen to even get this right. Our country deserves much better.

The New Two Minute Hate

Over the next few weeks, I believe we will see a new phenomenon in America. The President and his allies have amassed a war chest of $250 million to propagandize the most unpopular legislation perhaps in the country’s history.

In the face of logic and the voters, it is their plan to generate enough smoke and cover to enact a health care bill that includes the leeway to eventually enact a single payer system and expand government control. Nancy Pelosi has told us this is her plan, and the President is on record with his unambiguous support dating to 2003. Mr. Obama has now set the stage for the major media and his allies to take a no holds barred initiative against those opposing this legislation.

Across the country in both liberal and conservative districts we have seen a phenomenon that is distinctly American and which occurs only in times of great ferment. In town hall meetings across the country the message has been clear that citizens are opposed in principle to the current health care proposals based upon several key points:

. Cost – With the likely implosion of Medicare and Social Security and a staggering economy, how can we afford trillions more in expenditures at a time when we are almost bankrupt?

. Coverage – restricted care is likely with the fiscal constraints necessary to extend health care coverage.

. Control – Who will control our health care system? Bureaucrats? Physicians? Accountants? Patients?

Credibility – With so many backtracks and lies to date from our leaders, how can one trust what one hears?

While Pelosi and Reid and Obama and their allies blame insurance companies and the Republicans and lies and astroturfers, we are treated to the sight of Trailways buses unloading SEIU members in Portsmouth, NH and stacked crowds at photo opportunities and our representatives turning to their cell phones in order to tune out the opposition. Do we believe our own eyes or Axelrod’s poll tested, Plaintiff’s Bar Big Pharma funded propaganda?

We have learned that the Democratic Party talking points are to get in the faces of their opponents, accuse the Republicans of inciting angry mobs, and demonize the opposition. The President is now using Biblical phrases to cast this as a “Light versus Darkness” issue in which he will deliver us from evil.

At the cost of hundreds of millions, the advertising industry uses incredible tools to craft the most effective message. They in many ways put Goebbels to shame as they have far more modern resources. Be prepared to see any of the President’s opponents, the elderly, small businessmen, libertarians, and Republicans subtly and not so subtly be vilified. The President’s tactical plan is already on record. He has telegraphed his punch.

Our country has a history of raucous political discourse. From the time of Jefferson and Adams to Andrew Jackson to Lincoln to William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold, hyperbole has been writ large on our political landscape.

Except this time there are very few true believers in the President’s plan. The support is at best tepid and must be ginned up with large doses of cash and payoffs and Union and special interest applied outrage. Look for the identical placards with the union made imprint on the corners. Even the AARP is seeing huge pushback this time from its individual members across party lines. This is the Big Guys versus the rest of us.

This time the plan starts with Alinsky’s dictum that success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The ends justify the means as long as you win. The morality of a means depends only on whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory. This is called situational ethics by most and was the rationale developed and expounded upon by Lenin, Trotsky, Goebbels, and Mao Zedong. By any means necessary to achieve the goal. This is not the ethical structure historical to America.

Alinsky said “If you push a negative hard and deep enough,it will break through into its counterside”, a variation upon the Soviet’s “Big Lie” theory in repeating the lie until it becomes truth. This is the reality of the coming health care push.

The President will use his opposition’s tactics against them while ridiculing them and demonizing them as best he can. He and his allies have already started the big push. Black will become white. Words and terms will be redefined into Newspeak.

Doubletalk will confuse the issue. Legislation will be defined by what is left out and not what is defined to allow redefinition at a later date. And his supporters will be called upon to vilify their opponents rather than debate them in an objective manner. We will have taken another step towards 1984.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine and the Health Care Debate

One significant question raised in the health care debate is funding for medical research. I would like to illustrate a simple point and ask for comment on the effect of the current health care proposals on medical progress.

Nobel Prize for Medicine 1945 – 2008

By Country

United States 84
United Kingdom 21
Germany 8
France 7
Sweden 7
Australia 6
Switzerland 5.5
Belgium 2
Italy 1.5
Argentina 1
Austria 1
Denmark 1
Portugal 1
South Africa 1
New Zealand 0.5

One of the primary reasons for this disparate result is the availability of funding, whether for governmental, private, or university based research in the United States. It is obvious from these statistics that the American system works better than any other by a margin of 4:1 over the closest nation, the United Kingdom, and by a substantial margin over all other systems combined. Intellectual freedom, capitalism, a willingness to dream great dreams, and a commitment to the greater good all converge to create the circumstances for success.

We are now being asked to modify this system substantially. We do not know the consequences of the proposed health care initiatives, but we must, by all that is good in our world, maintain our commitment to excellence. If there is any chance at all that proposed reforms might be detrimental to the role of research and medical progress, that legislation must, without question, be voted down. For the time will surely come once again when we will need those minds and resources to fight new disease and illnesses. This is perhaps our greatest legacy to future generations.

Obama vs. Cheney – Round Two

ABC reports this evening that the CIA has released redacted copies of the reports requested by former Vice President Dick Cheney regarding enhanced interrogation techniques. They report that the information gleaned did in fact save many American and foreign lives. They also affirm President Bush’s  statements that terrorist attacks were in fact thwarted.

According to these reports, one of the plots revealed by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind who was waterboarded two of the three times the technique was used according to other CIA reports, was to obtain and use anthrax spores and disperse them in heavily populated areas. Another was to commit another 9/11 event by flying hijacked airliners into London’s Heathrow airport. Other information gleaned was extremely valuable in identifying and mapping Al Quaeda’s financial network and hierarchy.

So where now are Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Silvestre Reyes and Alcee Hastings and Maxine Waters and Jan Schakowsky and Adam Schiff and Anna Eshoo, who all castigated the CIA for what amounted to a a great big ball of nothing a few months ago? Their dark suspicions and accusations crashed and burned, and now we find that the President’s assertions, when he knew the facts all along, were an outright lie to the American People. So he responds with a witch hunt.

“Plausible Deniability” has re-entered the lexicon once again. As the president leaves town, Eric Holder, the Attorney General, appoints a special prosecutor to investigate “CIA terror tactics”, according to AP. Four former directors of the CIA, as well as current Director, Leon Panetta, have emphatically expressed their objections to such politicization of national security issues.

The President himself has said repeatedly “he wants to look forward not back” and yet Mr. Holder, who works expressly upon the president’s orders, has gone ahead with his inquisition. How can anyone think the president didn’t know of this beforehand and approve?

The issue has been investigated repeatedly and state secrets leaked by leftist members of Congress, and yet now, being criticized  from all sides for many of his policies, the President and his Attorney General decide to pour gasoline on the fire of an already alarmed electorate.

What is very strange indeed is that this President has embraced wholesale the tactics of his predecessor. On rendition, on Guantanamo, and on interrogation tactics