Dystopian Paradox

Ridge Dickey Jan 2009

Last fall I finally broke down and got satellite tv mainly for minute to minute election news updates. Now about the only thing I watch on satellite that I couldn’t get on antennae is Turner Classic Movie. Man, Hollywood made same great movies over the years.

Two days ago, I recorded The China Syndrome from TCM which was released in 1979 just days before a combination of human error and equipment malfunctions resulted in a a partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island. Although the accident resulted in no immediate loss of life, it was responsible for the precipitous decline in new nuclear power plants coming online in this country.

The plot in the China Syndrome may have exaggerated the dark side of human nature in that the top management of the nuke plant killed a whistleblower and tried to kill his accomplice. However, that loss of life and injury were negligible in relation to what would have happened but for the whistleblower.

In the movie, one of the players described the China Syndrome as hyperbole for a meltdown that eats all the way through to China. As a practical matter it hits groundwater first which blows and spews radiation over a wide area a la Chernobyl.

We have seen expediency result in the space shuttle Challenger and Columbia disasters of 1986 and 2003. I haven’t heard of NASA killing any whistleblowers, but its managers’ incompetency killed 14 people and caused the victims’ families immeasurable pain.

And here we are living out China Syndrome II. Dick Cheney on Meet the Press in early January denied any responsibility for the meltdowns of the financial system and the world economy. Host David Gregory asked Cheney whether he or some one in the Bush administration saw it coming, and Cheney snickered back, “No, did you?”

Well folks, lots of people did. A couple of months ago I was listening to an NPR interview of Ann Pettifor originally aired in 2006. She was explaining in most precise and articulate language how the glut of United States debt and other first world countries came to be and the coming disaster resulting from this debt. I ordered her 2006 book The Coming First World Debt Crisis from Amazon and read it.

Ann Pettifor was aware of the dangers of our profligacy and so were many others. Read Jim Sinclair’s blog Mineset and articles and quotes from Jime Rogers and George Soros.

And guess what folks. The dynamics involved aren’t rocket science. Spend more than you got and there will be a day of reckoning.

So why call our financial and economic meltdown China Syndrome II? Because China has been buying US government debt instruments and keeping the exchange rate of its currency pegged to the US dollar constant which along the US Dollar being the world’s reserve currency has allowed us to buy oil and cars to burn it and to buy the crap that China, Korea and other Asian countries make with cheap labor.

Now the straw that broke the camels back wasn’t our indebtedness to China but rather the ideology of free markets that ignored greed as a powerful aspect of human nature which resulted in banks leveraging assets to unsafe levels and issuing and investing in unregulated mortgage backed securities and other more exotic over the counter derivatives that were either off the books or carried at dubious values from the git go and which have fallen all the way to groundwater resulting in investment and commercial banks closing or receiving ineffectual bailouts and with balance sheets that no one can trust including other banks.

But even if we get through the mortgage backed and other unregulated securities debacle, we’re still looking at how to ween ourselves off all this debt to China and others.

Understand this problem really got going post WWII in the sixties with the cost of the Viet Nam war and the war on poverty. Then Nixon declared in 1971 that the US would no longer redeem any part of the US government’s obligations in gold but would instead issue its creditors US treasury bills and notes. That’s worked all these years because the US dollar has been the world’s reserve currency since WWII.

The postwar presidential administrations of this country partnered with a congress on the take and a constituency that views material wealth as an entitlement has got us where we are today. Push the problem into the future until it finally blows and hope it doesn’t happen on your watch.

Three Mile Island was inevitable as were both Challenger and Columbia and Chernobyl. And so is China Syndrome II which is not hyperbole.

By Ridge Dickey

December 26, 2008

Christmas Eve 2008 was to be a quiet one this year. Mom and I decided early in the day to kill two birds with one stone. Have dinner at Trinity Terrace where she lives and I would pick up a point-n-shoot camera UPS had delivered to her apartment the day before.

I called her mid-afternoon to see if she would like to go to a church service and she said no. That was more than ok with me. Then she called a short time later and said she would like to go and that there was a service across the street from her at the First Presbyterian Church at 7pm. Oh well.

We had a fine meal and I shot the first picture with my new camera of Mom, the best looking 94 year old on the planet. We made it across the street Mom pushing her walker and then up an elevator two floors and parked the walker both of us taking a candle with a paper petticoat handed to us as we entered the sanctuary and we set in a pew near the side door we entered and Mom said to me after we sat down that was what happened to Pati the candle she and Dad brought home from church and she explained to me that it was the candle that my sister four year old Pati lit from the stove and dropped onto the organdy tutu she was wearing and I was nine at the time.

The crowd this Christmas Eve was larger than I expected since the church was holding several services beginning in the afternoon with one or two after the 7pm service. The congregation and choir sang Christmas carols, the combined voices pretty much drowned out by the pipe organ. I set there or stood if required with a blank mind while the singing was going on and the bible readings and the sermon. The music and oratory all background sounds to my blank mind. The music was familiar Christmas carols but I didn’t listen to the lyrics nor the music too much. I surmised that the spoken words must have had something to do with Christmas.

And then the sermon was over, which meant that the service would soon be over and we could leave. But the ushers must have been taking up the offering when two women young looking to me from the choir came forward standing together facing us and sang sometimes duet and sometimes solo and their voices of a quality I did not know existed in Fort Worth and the voices standing out so pure that only once when I made the effort did it register with me that the organ was accompanying them and the voices filling the large sanctuary with no amplification and the music familiar but the name I know not what and as beautiful as Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli signing Time to say Goodbye which would have been a wonderful selection given what happened next.

Then the music was over and I was glad I came more than just because I knew Mom wanted to be there and they turned down the lights as the choir moved into the center aisle in twos front to rear facing the front and lights were dimmed as the choir and congregation began to sing Silent Night and our candles were lit from an usher’s in the center aisle and the first in the pew whose candle was lit passed the flame on to the next until all candles in the sanctuary were aflame the candleglow dominating other light sources and as I looked down at the candle I thought of that spring afternoon when I was nine and I was in the garage playing with my chemistry set when I heard the screams and somehow I knew what was happening because I had taught Pati how to play with matches and I hesitated before going in the back door through the kitchen and into living room and I could see from there that Pati was running water in the bathtub and Mom told me to turn it off and to call Dad because she couldn’t because her blackened skin from her arms and hands was dangling loose but still attached and they were that way because Mom reached into the blazing organdy and tore the tutu off Pati and so I called Dad and I think he called an ambulance and he was there so fast and hurtled a large hedgerow as he ran in the house and then they were all gone with the ambulance and the underpants of the tutu smoldering on the front porch and I a nine year old feeling nothing at the time.

And as I looked in the candleflame as Mom and I sat in the pew with lights very low and I thought of those who had gone before us my older sister Mary Ann 30 years before and she never to see her sons Frank and Guy full grown or to know her two grandchildren Charlie and Josh and Dad twenty years gone and Mom’s mom Nanny we called her 35 years gone whose presence I could feel when I walked into the room several hours after she had passed and been taking away and so many others I had not said goodbye to except my father on the day he died and then Silent Night was over and we walked backed to her apartment and we knew we had shared a bittersweet experience together in her 94th year remembering many of the same things and did not have to tell each other so.

I don’t remember anything about last Christmas or the one before and so many more but I do remember the one when Santa brought my daughter Carol then six years old a bicycle and I was helping her balance it as she tried to ride it which she didn’t want to do and I let go because I was determined she was going to ride it because after all I had when I was her age and then she fell and with a painful injury and we took her to Cook’s Children’s Hospital and I was small.

This Christmas day I was reflecting about Christmas Eve and I remembered that my father all night for several nights after Pati was burned held her under her arms with his arms outstretched so her legs with third degree burns so painful I can’t imagine would touch nothing and that Pati had almost died and had been horribly scared and had to endure the stares and taunting from young schoolmates and wondering if I could I have endured seeing my child going through such horror.

I don’t think of these things often but they are as much a part of me and the memories as precious to me as the birth of my children and their children and so maybe I will begin thinking more about reaching out to family and friends making sacrifices at times like being there even though I don’t want to be because soon it may be too late to be there and just as soon it will be time to say goodbye.

Pati’s comment:

Wow, quite a night I’d say. It’s a beautiful story all around. If my ‘tragedy’ brought you to a better place, then I’m happy about that. It’s funny Ridge but as horrible as it was, and as many times as I have wished I didn’t have these scars, they are so much a part of who I am, I’m not sure who I would be without them. Maybe the same person; maybe not. Thanks…love p

Marti’s comment:

Wow to both of you. Yeah, I think of that day sometimes. It’s a surreal memory. I was down the street at a neighbor’s house. We heard
the siren, and I was excited that an ambulance was actually coming down my street. I ran outside to see where it would go. It stopped in
front of my house. I didn’t want it there. I stood frozen as I watched a man carry Pati under her arms, her little legs pumping like crazy. I
had to stay with these people for several nights, at least that’s what I recall. I remember waking up crying at night believing a man was
coming after me with lit matches. And I missed my family, especially my little sister. I was 7 at the time.

Pati, your response is as beautiful as Ridge’s written experience. If anything that happens to us helps another person reach out to those he
or she loves then, I don’t know, it’s a gift we can’t refuse. Thank you. And I don’t think you could be a better person scars or no scars.
Maybe you would be different, but I can’t imagine having you be any different than you are now.

Love, m

Mom’s comment Sunday December 28:

Ridge left here a little while ago and I spent time trying to find a good piece of paper to write on. Finally did = but first, Marti and Pati - You can probably imagine how I’m feeling - no, that is not important. I shall sit down and write out in long hand how deeply full of wonder I feel after reading what you three have written. So I will try to express my feelings but can do it better if I just sit down and write. I am used to writing feelings in a notebook = OK?

I am amazed = no, I’m not really surprised how beautifully you have added to the story. I hope I can express my thanks to you three. Love, Mom

The new theme of this blog pertains to being of service, to giving back. There’s a whole lot of things I can do to give back, but many of them don’t appeal to me. But others do. Different strokes for different folks.

When I became an adult, I put away childish things. Like selfishness and self-centeredness. For me, that’s an ideal as opposed to a constant reality. But it’s amazing what thinking about the other person a little bit does for my mental health and thus the quality of my life and those around me.

What I’ve discovered is that we can do so much for other people by telling our stories. Tell our stories and we establish a positive emotional connection with many who hear it. We also become vulnerable. But no risk and no reward. Keep our light under a bushel and it’s of no use to anyone including ourselves.

Our stories follow the pattern of the hero archetype story: separation, initiation and return. Each of us has lived that story numerous times. Everything’s going good, then hardship sets in providing an opportunity for initiation into a higher spiritual state by meeting the challenges. We return to more serene external circumstances.

Telling our stories of overcoming hardships is a means of giving hope to those who are now going through their own hardships.

By surviving our struggles, we encounter the dystopian paradox, which is that lasting peace will be with us irrespective of external circumstances. The peace that passes all understanding.

If ever we attain that peace, we will truly have become adults. We have looked at ourselves and the first vision is dim but becomes clearer as we come nearer this peace.

And then we can truly love. Our love will not be conditioned on getting our way or always feeling good. It will be conditioned on nothing because it is a spiritual state that needs neither space nor time to exist. It transcends all things material.

The first story on this blog is a family story entitled A Christmas Story. The heroes of that story are my mother Ann, my deceased father Hub as he was called growing up, and my sister Pati.

The next meeting of Tarrant County Bridge to Change is this coming Sunday January 25 from 6pm to 8pm at Diane Jay’s home in Ridglea Hills. You may sign up here. Diane is in D.C. and should have some great pictures of her adventure to show us Sunday evening.

In his inaugural speech, President Obama put the ball in our court to share the responsibility for our destiny. It’s easy to buy into cynicism, but we who do have bought into a bill of goods. Government can’t do it all nor do we want it that way. If we pass the buck, it will stop at failure. As Obama said in a news conference last week, “America doesn’t fail.”

We must answer to our kids and grandkids and future generations now and with action. That action is service to our communities.

Service work is more than just a responsibility. It’s a privilege, a gift from those who’ve gone before us and sacrificed even their lives to provide us the continuing opportunity to have a say in our own destiny.

Come join us Sunday evening.

The Office of the President Elect at its website Change.Gov has invited us all to submit our stories and ideas in the effort to bring about change for the better in the USA. Diane Jay, who is an Obama Fellow and the facilitator of Tarrant County Bridge to Change, said at our first meeting last month that they (meaning the people at Change.Gov) are waiting on our input and that they will read our submissions. Below is my submission:

I’m Ridge Dickey, a semi-retired attorney who lives in Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas. A short version of my story ending at a house meeting at Diana Jay’s home on December 14 appeared in the Fort Worth Star Telegram on Sunday, December 28. The unabridged version was posted on the local blog West and Clear a week before that. To make a long story short, I campaigned for Obama in the primary and the run against McCain, canvassing and phone banking in Roswell NM the last ten days through November 4. My primary agenda in becoming active in the campaign and continuing with the post-election grassroots effort is concern for my kids and grandkids and your kids and grandkids. I want them to have a future that provides them with opportunities to fulfill their potentials.

I’m not sure where Chicago is headed with the grassroots effort. I do believe it has the potential to organize the community that is the United States of America, organize local communities throughout the United States, and bring to main street the opportunity to actively participate in the country’s governance. Below is my concept of a structure to facilitate the process.

A Proposed Structure:

(Good governance is good politics)

Purpose of Organizational Structure. To put in place a grassroots organizational structure composed of individuals and organizations that reaches all the way to Washington and supports a process to identify challenges in our local and national communities, to aid in finding the solutions to the challenges, that works with the local and national community that is the United States of America to implement the solutions, that continuously inventories itself for the purpose of improving the process, and that is organized to survive decades beyond Obama’s presidency (the “Process”).

An objective of the Process is to leverage financial resources by tapping into the talent pool which is the United States of America, with the Process providing to all those willing continuing opportunities to participate actively in the Process.

An objective of the Process to restore governance to main street and to curtail the influence of special interest groups.

The Process will operate in keeping with the strategy of non-violence in rhetoric, will be non-partisan, and will respect the rights of all to have and share their opinions.

Organizational Structure. The primary structure is a network of three substructures and all others whom the three substructures work with and serve. The three substructures are:

1. At least one field office of the Obama administration in all fifty states (each referred to as an “FO”).

2 A parent 501(c)(4) and local member 501(c)(4)s (referred to as a “4 organization” or just “4″);

3. A parent 501(c)(3) public charity and local member 501(c)(3)s (referred to as a “3 organization” or just “3″);

Instead of a conventional hierarchical organizational chart, the vision is a globe with lines connecting all participants to other participants, looking similar to a globe with lines depicting airline routes to hubs around the world and then to regional hubs etc, with this globe supported by a three member base, each member representative of the three substructures (FOs, 4s and 3s) that support and merge with the globe. The surface of a sphere has no center.

The idea is that communication among the participants in the Process is as unrestrictive as is the Internet allows. The Internet makes such an organizational structure possible. The structure provides an environment in which its constituent parts via the Internet will self-organize like the brain of an infant seemingly empty at birth that develops an exponentially increasing set of connections that ultimate produces self awareness and functionality of the individual.

The 4s and the 3s will be non-partisan and will promote no ideology beyond an inclusive democracy wherein all our citizens have the opportunity to achieve their potentials and to participate actively in the Process.

Purpose of the Field Offices. Not only did the fifty state Obama campaign strategy win most of the battleground states and secure the blue states, its presence in the states that went red put pressure on opposition resources. Furthermore, the effort in the red states increased Obama’s national popular vote.

Just as important, the Obama supporters in red states felt that were included in the campaign because we were in fact included. Now we have the opportunity to take part in the governance our local communities, our states and the nation.

The Obama administration establishing an FO in all states sends the message that main street will have a direct line to the White House just as our nascent Tarrant County Bridge to Change has a direct line to Chicago through Diane Jay. Each FO will liaison with local 4s and 3s and possibly local governmental entities (local means a whole state down to a municipality depending on circumstances).

Purpose of the 501(c)(4)s. There will be a parent 4 and any number of local 4s. Unlike a 3 organization, treasury regulations allow a social welfare 4 organization to be an action organization, that is, it may influence legislation and participate in a political campaigns on a partisan basis. However, if it gets involved in political campaigns its a 527 which is taboo. Therefor the organizational documents would prohibit using funds or resources for an exempt function within the meaning of Section 527(e)(2).

The parent 4 would come-up with a pro forma set of organizational documents for the local 4s. The parent 4 will provide guidance to the local 4s. The local 4s can be active in local and state legislation, including proposing and promoting new laws and codes and changes to existing ones, all for the betterment of the social welfare of the community. The local 4s can be member organizations so that dues will in part provide the funding. It can network with and support other local organizations with common interests.

Purpose of the 501(c)(3)s. There will be a parent 3 and any number of local 3s. The parent 3 will be have to be a public charity under 170(b)(1(A)(vi) to qualify it to receive income tax deductible contributions and to avoid private foundation status. Qualifying as such shouldn’t be too difficult because of the grassroots base and hopefully hundreds of thousands of members of 4s who will make contributions to the parent 3.

The parent and local 3s will be involved in doing good works. They can receive grants from government entities and from private foundations. I think of the parent and local 3s as being hope based as opposed to faith based. Faith connotes an allegiance to religious ideologies whereas hope has universal spiritual connotations.

The local 3s will be support organizations of the parent 3 within the meaning of 509(a)(3) which automatically exempts them from private foundation status. That also means the local 3s don’t have to meet the public charity test to qualify them to receive income tax deductible contributions. 170(b)(1)(A)(viii).

The local 3s will be able to network with other 501(c)(3)s including churches, temples and synagogues and other religious organizations. An objective will be to gain their trust rather than to be perceived as a threat to their turf.

The local 3s will be networking with the local 4s and the local FOs, which means direct communication with the White House.

When thinking through brother-sister 4 and 3 organizations, I was concerned that the IRS would see the two so closely related that the activities of the 4 would be attributed to the 3, which would torpedo the concept. I knew that the Sierra Club (SC) is actively engaged in influencing legislation so I took a look at its tax exempt status. The IRS revoked its 3 status in the 60s as a result of its fighting the feds on proposed dams in the Grand Canyon so it morphed into a 4. At that time, the SC set up a 3 named the SC Foundation which is a public charity. So there is precedent for a brother-sister 4 and 3.

Summary. Having FOs in all states provides main street with face to face contact with the White House. The local and parent 4s can provide a feedback loop to the White House. However, it will take time for a local 4 to gain credibility in the local community. Main street may see local 4s as primarily a continuation of the Obama’s political campaign for reelection in 2012. That has been asserted in blogs already.

The local 4s provide local citizens the opportunity to get actively involved in the solutions to the challenges we face. The parent 4 provides a means of keeping the local 4s in focus.

The parent and local 3s will also provide solutions. They can seek funding sources not available to the 4s.

Finally, an operating principle of the Process has to be to work with the elite (e.g. elected officials, CEOs, government agencies, churches) and not outflank them; even though the Process is grassroots, it’s not populist. Instead of trying to displace institutions in the community whose roles and objectives are in common with ours, the Process must be as much a facilitator as it is an implementer.

Ridge Dickey
Fort Worth, Texas

Note: We will hold our second meeting on January 25 at Diane Jay’s home in Ridglea Hills from 6pm to 8pm. You can sign up here. The weekend of our first meeting on December 14, supporters of this grassroots movement organized over 4000 similar meetings in 2,000 cities and in all 50 in states, each group adopting whatever name it chose.

The following by Ridge Dickey
December 16, 2008

Early this year, I began working in the effort to get Barack Obama elected president of the United States. Like millions, I made small contributions in response to the Obama Internet money raising campaign. I followed and worked in the Democratic primaries and the race against McCain. I checked pollster.com and fivethirtyeight.com several times daily the last month or so of the campaign.

I worked the last 10 days through November 4 in Roswell canvassing door to door. Grunt work. But other than the birth of my two children, participating in the New Mexico effort was one of the two most profound experiences of my life. The second was a trip to Kenya on a camera safari in 1994.

By electing Barack Obama as our next president, the nation gave birth to an historic moment. I had the privilege of not only witnessing history, but also participating in it. Every eligible voter who voted, whether for Obama or McCain, participated in making history and should be proud for having done so.

And then it was over. Postpartum depression set in.

But I began getting emails from the Change.Gov website of The Office of the President-Elect. Then the first of December, an email said “attend an event.” There was one to be hosted by Diane Jay at her home in Ridglea Hills last Sunday evening December 14. She is an Obama Fellow and spent four months in Las Cruces New Mexico working for Barack’s campaign. I had no idea what the agenda was to be Sunday evening, but twenty people including me showed up.

There was an agenda and it was from the Obama camp headquarters in Chicago. The agenda was for us to identify the biggest challenges facing our country and thus our community, and what we as a group can do to in our community to help bring about the changes necessary to overcome those challenges.

Diane Jay did a super job of facilitating the meeting. Two hours later through our interaction and not by edict from Chicago, we identified by consensus what we felt are our toughest challenges and how to proceed. We also decided that as a first effort, to contact friends to join with us in donating to the Tarrant Area Food Bank. We will be delivering what we collect to the Food Bank Monday afternoon December 22.

We also came up with a name for our group which is Tarrant County Bridge to Change.

We intentionally left Obama out of the name of our group. I’ve learned that Barack is a pragmatist rather than being an ideologue. As he said to America and the rest of the world on the evening of November 4 from Union Square, he will be the president of all Americans whether or not they supported him in the election, and his presidency will not be about him but rather all of us.

He is not bringing to the presidency his personal agenda or the ideological agenda of any one segment of our society. Just as his agenda as president of the Harvard Law Review was to produce the best publication possible, his pragmatic agenda as president of the United States is to lead the effort to make America the best place for our citizens and future generations to live and to have the opportunity to realize our potentials.

Tarrant County Bridge to Change is about all of us in our community. For us to be successful in overcoming the most daunting challenges since World War II, we must set aside our ideologies express of implied and attendant to being or calling ourselves Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, Libertarian, progressive, populist, religious or whatever. Our willingness to deal effectively with each other must now take priority over our desires to advance our respective ideological agendas. We must take advantage of the opportunity presented to us by unprecedented challenges to join together and build the bridge to change.

Democrat and Republican congressmen alike have stated that they will be reaching across the aisle to address these challenges. We the members of Tarrant County Bridge to Change will be reaching out to all members of our community, including private citizens, elected officials and public and private institutions. We want and need others who support our purpose to become a part of our group and work with us irrespective of differing ideologies. A group composed solely of those who think alike and don’t consider differing views becomes inbred. It is a breeding ground for monsters.

The Obama effort is transitioning from a campaign to get him elected to a grassroots movement to organize the community which is the United States of America for the purpose of bringing about necessary change for the betterment of both our local and larger communities. The success of this movement will produce a result that will be the most important asset we will have at hand in our foreign policy. This most valuable asset is success at home. Who are we to tell others how to behave when we can’t take care of ourselves? That question is not rhetorical.

The weekend of our first meeting, we were one of more than 4000 initial house meetings of supporters of this grass roots movement. Supporters organized these meetings in 2,000 cities and all 50 states. Will be working in our communities to bring about positive changes for us all. A lasting change is that it won’t be politics as usual.

Trickle-down economics and politics, however well intentioned, haven’t worked. A renaissance of a vital society requires a joining together of us at the grassroots level with those in positions power at the political, economic, charitable and public service level. The result will be a true democracy. Together we can make it happen.

My postpartum depression has lifted. Now I must keep my euphoria in check and channel that emotional energy toward becoming a small but effective part of the effort to improve the lives of all members of our community.

Maureen Dowd in her NYT column today bemoaned to the offshoring of domestic journalism including reporting. I posted the following comment to he article:

The USA will soon be a third world country unless the government takes back control of the generation of US money (read “dollars”). Private money generated by private financial institutions is accounted for with a dollar sign. Deregulation of the private financial sector combined with Nixon’s announcement to the world in 1970 that dollars will be redeemed only in Treasury debt has resulted in what we see today: the deterioration of our industry and the financial credit (debt) crisis.

Globalization has resulted in the inflation of non-productive assets, that is, assets that don’t find their way to fund increased industrial productivity. Interest income does not equate to increased productivity but only accumulation of dollars for those who own the assets that produce the interest. That has meant stagnation for those who work to make a living, including journalists.

Displacement of US industry with offshore facitlites and labor is but one result of our unregulated international financial system. Get your brighter investigative journalists to educate themselves about the interworkings and dynamics of the international private financial system.

Use the power of the pen you now hold to advance the well being not only of domestic journalism but rather all aspects of American industry. Get educated and then educate your readership before the owners of the NYT take your pens away from you.

I checked and my comment has been published (number 128 on the sixth page) but it didn’t make the editors’ selection list. Maybe the NYT management has on its editorial board the equivalent of a KGB political officer who serves side by side with military officers to keep them in line.

The Group of Twenty published a Declaration on November 15 at the summit meeting in Washington. It describes the cause of the crisis as follows:

3. During a period of strong global growth, growing capital flows, and prolonged stability earlier this decade, market participants sought higher yields without an adequate appreciation of the risks and failed to exercise proper due diligence. At the same time, weak underwriting standards, unsound risk management practices, increasingly complex and opaque financial products, and consequent excessive leverage combined to create vulnerabilities in the system. Policy-makers, regulators and supervisors, in some advanced countries, did not adequately appreciate and address the risks building up in financial markets, keep pace with financial innovation, or take into account the systemic ramifications of domestic regulatory actions.

4. Major underlying factors to the current situation were, among others, inconsistent and insufficiently coordinated macroeconomic policies, inadequate structural reforms, which led to unsustainable global macroeconomic outcomes. These developments, together, contributed to excesses and ultimately resulted in severe market disruption.

As to the world financial crisis, the primary culprit is our unwillingness to accept reality. President Reagan egged us on to our profligate ways and we bought into it: prosperity with no accountability.

Carter had warned us in 1980 in his state of the union speech:

Our material resources, great as they are, are limited. Our problems are too complex for simple slogans or for quick solutions. We cannot solve them without effort and sacrifice. Walter Lippmann once reminded us, “You took the good things for granted. Now you must earn them again. For every right that you cherish, you have a duty which you must fulfill. For every good which you wish to preserve, you will have to sacrifice your comfort and your ease. There is nothing for nothing any longer.”

In part because of the Iran hostage crisis, Carter had zero political capital by that time. Reagan won a landslide. Enter huge deficits, deregulation, opportunists, greed, corruption, arrogance, irresponsibility, and perverted ideologies clothed in religious garb.

There is no free lunch and there is no free shopping spree in reality. The IOU has come due.

Obama inherits this horror show and starts out with some political capital. Let’s hope he invests it wisely so that it grows, giving his administration the power to tackle effectively the environmental crisis and render fear-based politics ineffectual .

Ridge Dickey

While having little use for any Republican presently holding office, I don’t automatically support the Democrats on every issue. Obama and Pelosi are calling for a Detroit bailout, which I don’t support.

My view is that the present management of Detroit and its present shareholders should disappear. They chose a parasitic agenda- short-term profits while the host dies. They must be accountable for the consequences of their choices.

Let Detroit either expire or morph through Chapter 11 proceedings. If it emerges from Chapter 11, then hopefully the process will have turned a syphilitic spirochete into a butterfly.

Once in Chapter 11, the fed can come in with funds with lots of strings attached, including strict criteria on vehicles powered by something other than carbon fuels, and the cost of USA produced parts being the majority with final assembly here.

Corporations are suppose to hold the public trust. Greedy management, shareholders and government leaders have conspired to destroy this concept in our collective public consciousness. We must make the term “public trust” a part of our daily lexicon in the context of our present economic woes. The constitution neither mandates nor sanctions monopolies of wealth and power.

GM, Ford and Chrysler are examples of corporate and shareholder greed sucking the blood out of the future economic potential of this country, resulting not only in our own loss but that of future generations.

And the financial industry should be no more sacrosanct than Detroit. As to their management and shareholders and government officials who support them including Henry Paulson, let them all eat dirt.

It’s been almost 15 years since I got a new pair of glasses. Monofilament nylon that runs in a grove on the bottom of lightweight plastic lenses secures them in the wire frame. Two times I’ve had to have the monofilament replaced.

The day before the election, the left lens fell out because the monofilament broke. I’m legally blind without my glasses. I figured there would be no one in Roswell who could provide a fix.

Wrong. Second phone call is to a locally owned eyeglasses place who knew what I was talking about and said they could fix them while I wait.

Ten minutes later I’m there. It’s in a strip mall. I walked in and they have frames on display and I could her a lens being ground by a machine. This place was its own lab.

A lady in her thirties said she would be with me in a minute. Off to the right was a baby in a carseat who was obviously the child of lady and her mate, who was behind the counter working on something.

I was embarrassed to show her my glasses they were in such sorry shape. I built a fiberglass airplane in those glasses and there is a glob of epoxy on one of the lenses. The wire frame had broken in one place and were so wobbly even with the monofilament in good shape, I had superglued the lenses in the wire frames to keep the thing together. Over the years, the nose piece disappeared and the plastic ear pieces wore through to the bare wire.

The lady didn’t look down her nose at me nor did she make any condescending comment. Rather she asked if I wanted to her to try to find another frame that the lenses might fit into. I said no, that I just needed to get these patched up so I can get back to Fort Worth.

After showing them to her husband, she came back out and asked if she should look for a new nose piece and ear pieces. I said yes.

Ten minutes later her husband brings the glasses to me, and like his wife, without any sort of patronizing behavior. He said it would be $7.00. I gave him a $10 and told him to keep it. He said, “Are you sure.” I said absolutely.

That sort of experience would have been great anywhere, but to have it happen while eight hours away from home and without a backup pair of glasses made it special. People like that will be the salvation of our country and the world.