Dystopian Paradox

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.

November 6, 2008

The ten day period culminating in November 4, 2008, is one of the two most profound episodes in my life. The other was a trip of about the same length to Kenya in 1994.

What I got to see in 1994 was an example of the results of nineteenth century European imperial colonization of sub-Saharan Africa: the destruction of much of its environment, overpopulation and squalor, and the elimination of who knows how many indigenous cultures.

From October 26 through election day, I had the privilege of working with a group of like-minded people in Roswell, New Mexico, to help in the effort to elect Barack Obama president of the United States. What I learned from my experiences there will take more than 30 words to relate. But I’ve got to start somewhere or not at all.

Perhaps one of the most meaningful aspects of the experience was working with a group of people from Austin, El Paso, New York, Kansas and California that included entrepreneurs, electrical engineers, nurses and lawyers who were more than willing to work in the trenches. We canvassed door to door day after day and made phone calls seeking support for Obama. Volunteer groups with similar makeups were doing the same thing in all battleground states for weeks before the election.

This type of work is not fun. We gave of our time doing things we did not enjoy doing for a cause we strongly felt was in the best interest not only of our country, but of all living things on our Mama Earth.

But each day, we had good feelings when we talked to people who were going to vote or already had voted for Obama. At that instant, there was a connection and warm feelings between strangers.

I heard no rhetorical questions like “why don’t the locals do all this volunteer work?” I discovered a long time ago that a very small percentage of the population gets involved in political campaigns. 2004 was my first time and because of that unpleasant experience, I thought at the time it would be my last.

But Obama came along and I knew after reading Dreams from My Father that I would help in his campaign for as long as he was in the running. Growing up in Indonesia and visiting his siblings in Kenya provided Barack with a world view essential to deal effectively with the challenges we now face.

And then we won. That’s the way Obama would put it. It’s about us and not Obama. It’s about all of us. He made that clear Tuesday night when he said that he would be the president not only for his supporters but also those who did not vote for him.

Abraham Lincoln was the white man who emancipated our African American slaves. We now have an African American president who hopefully will lead us all to freedom from the bondage of our arrogance, hubris and greed.

There is nothing providential about the United States or its people. All that defines us as citizens are having been born within its geographical borders or becoming such by a naturalization process. We have no god given right to our parasitic way of life, and the rest of the world has no obligation to provide it to us. Nor do we have the right to dictate how the rest of the world should live or govern themselves, or to assume the role of the world’s police force.

My hope is that we Americans regain some humility (if we ever had any) and accept the reality of our limits. We are not exceptional, and the pretense we are has resulted in the economic crisis and a planet in peril.

There is no free lunch. The many we thought were free were on credit which has now come due.

A great thing happened to me today. My good friend and law school buddy Don Cuba practicing in San Antonio called me this afternoon with one thing on his mind which we finally got to after an hour. The first hour we talked about the election and where things were headed.

Don was a Hillary supporter while Don’s wife Nan, who is also a great friend of mine, was for Obama all the way. Like so many Hillary supporters, Don came on board the Obama bandwagon.

I was telling Don about going to Roswell to work. Don, who is very much self deprecating while lavishing praise on others, told me he rented a bus Tuesday and drove over 400 people to vote. Don and Nan got 100 percent bang for the buck. It made me fell great that they had participated in this way and to have them as my friends.

Sunday, November 2

Yesterday was my seventh day canvassing and time is going fast. Only today and tomorrow to canvass and then a bunch of work on election day.

General Wesley Clark is staging a get-out-the-vote rally today at 11 am at the MIA-POA Park. What’s amazing is that after the rally, he will be canvassing for several hours along with the rest of us. My theory has always been that to be a great leader, you have to be willing to do the grunt work along with those whom you lead.

Some would classify General Clark as an overachiever because he’s risen to the top of every venture he’s ever been involved in. To me, an overachiever is someone who finds themselves in a position they are aren’t qualified for. George W. Bush meets my definition of overachiever.

By contrast, General Clark and Barack Obama are people who continue to realize their potential. They are leaders who attract me. I’m willing to follow them and with enthusiasm.

It’s becoming more and more fun out here as time grows short, even though most of the day is spent in the trenches. But everytime I meet an Obama supporter at their front door, I get a great payoff that makes the work seem more than worthwhile.

Yesterday was the hardest yet. Because I’ve got a gps, Robert gave me the mission of making sure that the town of Lake Arthur would go Obama. It’s 30 miles southeast of Roswell and in the same county. Geographically this is a big county, but the population is well under 100,000 people.

There’s more chihuahuas in this county than people. Every household has two or three of the little ankle-biters.

Lake Arthur has about 20 square blocks laid out in a grid over maybe 640 acres. I figure there’s max 6 people and 24 chihuahuas per acre so the human population is less that 150. My guess is we’ll take Lake Arthur based on my canvass.

The rest of the day was a semi-wild goose chase in the countryside. I drove over every type of road known to mankind arriving at twenty homes in an area of 40 square mile. I was carsick after four hours. Each place had several chihuahuas and some with junkyard dogs. Most were unaccessible. Several addresses were raw land so someone’s playing the voter rolls. I talked to only one or two people and did see some Obama signs. I saw even more McCain signs.

McCain and wife Cindy are showing up Monday afternoon for a big rally at the airport. If they want to get some more votes, each should have chihuahuas under both arms.