From time to time this odd nation gives birth to what in other places might be called a leader or a prince or a king, a goddess-like thing; an odd human being, one that encourages us to be more than just human but to be what only Americans can be. We have just given birth to one. These are very precious and very vulnerable creatures. Let us not just go back to work today as if nothing had happened. We have a new President to make into a great President, for none has ever done it themselves and none ever will. It is what they awaken in us that make them great, if they are to be great.
Let us wrap ourselves around this frail young man, all of us. Let us protect him and lead him, for we Americans need no leaders. It is not in our nature to be led. But it is in our nature to be great. In the end, that is why we selected him, those of us with the vision and skill to do that. We saw in him that rare sense of knowing who we really are and asking us to be just that. Today we have a new job ahead of us. Let’s get right on it. We have a new President to lead, he has asked us to do that, that is his gift, and we must respond. That is the job before us, and it is a job for us all, for each and every one of us, to take this opportunity to be as great as we really are.
Today we can leave smallness behind us. And, as the world has noticed and feared, we have been very small indeed. It was not George Bush who was small; it was us. We could have saved him from himself and the world from him, but, to our great shame, we failed both him and ourselves. Let us never do that again. We have a strange nation here, one that is, by careful design, precisely what we, its people, make of it. Nowhere else and never before has there been such a thing.
-Karl Francis-
The California High Desert
5 November, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
Next
Noting that the Alaska Permanent Fund just took a ten billion dollar hit, with more to come, I am motivated to consider once again the ramifications of the world financial woes. What we are looking at is the collapse of a very large and very diverse bubble and the return to reasonable evaluations. The Alaska Permanent Fund was never worth what it seemed. It was just so much paper, invested in things not worth what they were priced at. So we are reaching from some semblance of proper evaluation. And we are not there yet. A large part of this comes from the fact that the United States in particular has gone from a productive economy, i.e, an economy that produces real things like beets and bulldozers to an economy that produces very little but instead appears to gain wealth by inflating the value of everything, from real estate to corporate executives. Our gross national product has been largely smoke and mirrors. The mirrors are now being shattered and the smoke blown away and we are for the first time in a long time looking reality straight in the face. The good news? This is happening while there is still a chance for recovery. The bad news? It will be a brutal one, especially for those whose perspective has long been clouded, who have come to think that their homes were worth more than they are, their pension plans worth more than they are, and their work worth more than it is. This is especially true for those who produce nothing, like investment firms or HMO's, the middle men who have taken the bulk of the false profits to themselves. It is less true for those who actually produce. Indeed, their part in this has been undervalued, and so they may well be on the rise. They are in a position to rise. They actually offer something of real value, their productive capability. I trust the unions will find some relief and with that relief the ability help see to that.
Now add to this the evidence that the presumptive next President will be a centrist. Barak Obama is hardly the screaming socialist the right has labeled him, nor is Nancy Pelosi nor Harry Reed. Indeed, there are few leftists in the government. The government is about where the American people are, center right to center left and never far from the center. It is the leftists and progressives who will be disappointed in the next administration. We are not going very far to the left. That is the beauty of American government, it is anchored by division. Nobody has enough power to go anywhere weird, the notable exception being the present administration, which took so much power to itself that it drowned in it. That is more typical of parliamentary systems. Except that the parties in most parliamentary systems are not so stupid or arrogant as this one. They know they will suffer for it if they are. So for any who thought we might be entering an era of progressive government, I am sad to report, you will have a long wait. For one thing, the Republicans, as they always do, have bankrupted the country. We have no means by which to progress and will not have for a very long time. The best we can do is repair a few bridges and pave a few roads, maybe even fix some schools.
What we can do though, and must do, is economize, which is to say reduce the excesses to non-producers and create a safe environment for both entrepreneurs and workers. Among other things, it is essential that we fix the health care system by sharing the burden. Our companies can not compete with companies whose health care is provided by the state, which is to say all of the people. That has killed or nearly killed General Motors. I never understood why anyone would expect corporations to bear social burdens. All I want from them is profits for their share holders and obediance to the law. That is why we have government, to bear social burdens.
Economy will also take us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We can not and never could afford such useless and/or senseless adventures.
The long and short of it is that I am pretty optimistic, at least for the longer term. It will be hell for awhile though, hell few of us have ever seen.
Also grateful for the gift of the Bush Administration, the lessons it taught the country about the costs of foolishness. I trust eveyone is now smarter about politics and perhaps more careful with their votes. I am especially encouraged by what I am hearing from the right. They seem to be looking forward to working with President Obama. After all their silly rhetoric about his radical nature, they have suddenly seen him for what he is, a rather mild and well considered moderate, and a blessed relief from the radicalism we are soon to leave in the past. Should anyone still ask why Bush's ratings are so low, it is because he is a radical and the country is not. That he is also stupid probably helped, but that is not what turned people away. It was his craziness.
Oh, should John McCain come from out of the dust to surprise everyone? Well, he is also a moderate. Except for not being as mild, smart and attractive as Obama, and infuriating the entire universe if he were to pull it off, that would do this Democrat's heart good, to see a sort of Republican have to clean up this mess, and get blamed for failing. I am entirely ready for that kind of irony. And just mean enough to enjoy it. O.K., John, here is the manure pile, and here is the pitch fork, two of them. You can put the lady on the south side of it. When she is done, she might just be up to the job. She might also want to change her clothes. But even that would not advance her career. She would be dead meat. Left standing, God only knows where she will go. Surely not back to Alaska, which will be a blessing for them.
Don't forget, vote early and vote often. As I have done. I too once lived on the south side of Chicago.
Next week we can find something else to do.
Now add to this the evidence that the presumptive next President will be a centrist. Barak Obama is hardly the screaming socialist the right has labeled him, nor is Nancy Pelosi nor Harry Reed. Indeed, there are few leftists in the government. The government is about where the American people are, center right to center left and never far from the center. It is the leftists and progressives who will be disappointed in the next administration. We are not going very far to the left. That is the beauty of American government, it is anchored by division. Nobody has enough power to go anywhere weird, the notable exception being the present administration, which took so much power to itself that it drowned in it. That is more typical of parliamentary systems. Except that the parties in most parliamentary systems are not so stupid or arrogant as this one. They know they will suffer for it if they are. So for any who thought we might be entering an era of progressive government, I am sad to report, you will have a long wait. For one thing, the Republicans, as they always do, have bankrupted the country. We have no means by which to progress and will not have for a very long time. The best we can do is repair a few bridges and pave a few roads, maybe even fix some schools.
What we can do though, and must do, is economize, which is to say reduce the excesses to non-producers and create a safe environment for both entrepreneurs and workers. Among other things, it is essential that we fix the health care system by sharing the burden. Our companies can not compete with companies whose health care is provided by the state, which is to say all of the people. That has killed or nearly killed General Motors. I never understood why anyone would expect corporations to bear social burdens. All I want from them is profits for their share holders and obediance to the law. That is why we have government, to bear social burdens.
Economy will also take us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We can not and never could afford such useless and/or senseless adventures.
The long and short of it is that I am pretty optimistic, at least for the longer term. It will be hell for awhile though, hell few of us have ever seen.
Also grateful for the gift of the Bush Administration, the lessons it taught the country about the costs of foolishness. I trust eveyone is now smarter about politics and perhaps more careful with their votes. I am especially encouraged by what I am hearing from the right. They seem to be looking forward to working with President Obama. After all their silly rhetoric about his radical nature, they have suddenly seen him for what he is, a rather mild and well considered moderate, and a blessed relief from the radicalism we are soon to leave in the past. Should anyone still ask why Bush's ratings are so low, it is because he is a radical and the country is not. That he is also stupid probably helped, but that is not what turned people away. It was his craziness.
Oh, should John McCain come from out of the dust to surprise everyone? Well, he is also a moderate. Except for not being as mild, smart and attractive as Obama, and infuriating the entire universe if he were to pull it off, that would do this Democrat's heart good, to see a sort of Republican have to clean up this mess, and get blamed for failing. I am entirely ready for that kind of irony. And just mean enough to enjoy it. O.K., John, here is the manure pile, and here is the pitch fork, two of them. You can put the lady on the south side of it. When she is done, she might just be up to the job. She might also want to change her clothes. But even that would not advance her career. She would be dead meat. Left standing, God only knows where she will go. Surely not back to Alaska, which will be a blessing for them.
Don't forget, vote early and vote often. As I have done. I too once lived on the south side of Chicago.
Next week we can find something else to do.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Bad News
You can read bad news in different ways. One way is to think of it as a call to action, things that need fixing, interesting jobs, as it were. And there are lots of those this morning. We live in a pretty good but imperfect nation in a world of hurt. So there is much to do. One simple and easy job is to fix the American electoral system. It is simple and easy because all the solutions are in plain sight, many of them tried and proven elsewhere. I am not the one to do that, but I could lay out the plan for fixing it right here, in under 800 words. I would not be surprised to learn that someone is already at it, that we shall see their plan will be on the Sunday op-ed pages. Let’s hope so.
We could also fix American racism, which does intrigue me. It is not as simple a task, but it is surely do-able. I would start in western Pennsylvania or maybe Idaho, where it lurks in dark corners and moldy wood piles. Flush it out of there, and you can flush it out of anywhere.
The economy, of course, needs fixing, The main reason it has not been fixed, the same as the reason it is broken, is that we assign the task to experts, in this case economists, none of whom, by virtue of educational brain damage, have any sense of it. Perhaps I should explain that. On the farms where I grew up we understood and saw a great deal of that kind of brain damage. We even had a name for it; we called it book learning, which we held in great disdain. We would send a kid off to college, to agricultural school say, and he would come back brain damaged, knowing nothing about how to run a farm but full of stuff we once loaded into manure spreaders. It was a terrible thing we did, taking a perfectly fine kid and making him useless if not dangerous. What we had done, of course, was remove him from any reality having to do with making a living on a farm and instead filled his head with the odd notions of professors who had never come close to a real farm, let alone shoveled manure or pulled teats, cow teats that is, as we used to do.
Now I am going to leave Joe the plumber in the clutches of the media, where the silly fool belongs. I used to be a plumber, and real plumbers know to keep their mouths shut about things they don't understand. But I will turn to real plumbers and real farmers and real motorcycle dealers and real waitresses and real realtors and real doodlebuggers (something to do with finding oil in the ground), people on the cutting edge of our economy, people who feel it when something goes wrong, people whose intellect I know and respect. They saw this thing coming months if not years before it hit. And they told me why it was coming. Unlike economists, they got it right because they were right where it was happening. What they could not do is figure out how to stop it, or if they did, then nobody would listen to them. Instead we listened to people with book learning.
Mind you, I am not licensed to speak with much authority on this. I was one of those kids they sent off to college, which I did with such relish that I became a professor. What license I do have I got from being submerged in all that book learning and professing. I can tell you why the experts have gotten it wrong. I know all about experts. I was one. But I also worked in steel mills and slums and oil fields and logging towns and on farms and trap lines and trot lines and firing lines. And some of that got into me, at least the ability to hear what people in such places have to say. These are the people we should be listening to and listening carefully. These are the people who understand economies; they live in them.
So when we get ready to fix the economy, when someone gets to it, I hope they will look to some of that wisdom out there where it is happening. I trust we will not leave it to the bloody experts who got in this mess.
Let's see. What else needs fixing? Oh, yes, we have to fix the world or at least find our place in it, which is probably not in the sands of Arabia or the guts of Asia or the heart of Africa. Having once been a sort of spook I have long been of the persuasion that a sharp knife and a sharp mind do a far cleaner job of it than a plane load of bombs. So that too can be fixed. But not by the experts, who are much too taken with pyrotechnics. For this I would turn to butchers and farmers. That would also help fix the economy, knives being much less of a drain on it than fireworks.
So many neat things to do. With just one quick read of today's news, and I have not yet gotten to the funnies, where most of the wisdom lies. Such an exciting world we live in with so much fun yet to be had. Thank God I did not pick up the paper this morning to discover that everything was just fine. What a huge bore that would have been.
We could also fix American racism, which does intrigue me. It is not as simple a task, but it is surely do-able. I would start in western Pennsylvania or maybe Idaho, where it lurks in dark corners and moldy wood piles. Flush it out of there, and you can flush it out of anywhere.
The economy, of course, needs fixing, The main reason it has not been fixed, the same as the reason it is broken, is that we assign the task to experts, in this case economists, none of whom, by virtue of educational brain damage, have any sense of it. Perhaps I should explain that. On the farms where I grew up we understood and saw a great deal of that kind of brain damage. We even had a name for it; we called it book learning, which we held in great disdain. We would send a kid off to college, to agricultural school say, and he would come back brain damaged, knowing nothing about how to run a farm but full of stuff we once loaded into manure spreaders. It was a terrible thing we did, taking a perfectly fine kid and making him useless if not dangerous. What we had done, of course, was remove him from any reality having to do with making a living on a farm and instead filled his head with the odd notions of professors who had never come close to a real farm, let alone shoveled manure or pulled teats, cow teats that is, as we used to do.
Now I am going to leave Joe the plumber in the clutches of the media, where the silly fool belongs. I used to be a plumber, and real plumbers know to keep their mouths shut about things they don't understand. But I will turn to real plumbers and real farmers and real motorcycle dealers and real waitresses and real realtors and real doodlebuggers (something to do with finding oil in the ground), people on the cutting edge of our economy, people who feel it when something goes wrong, people whose intellect I know and respect. They saw this thing coming months if not years before it hit. And they told me why it was coming. Unlike economists, they got it right because they were right where it was happening. What they could not do is figure out how to stop it, or if they did, then nobody would listen to them. Instead we listened to people with book learning.
Mind you, I am not licensed to speak with much authority on this. I was one of those kids they sent off to college, which I did with such relish that I became a professor. What license I do have I got from being submerged in all that book learning and professing. I can tell you why the experts have gotten it wrong. I know all about experts. I was one. But I also worked in steel mills and slums and oil fields and logging towns and on farms and trap lines and trot lines and firing lines. And some of that got into me, at least the ability to hear what people in such places have to say. These are the people we should be listening to and listening carefully. These are the people who understand economies; they live in them.
So when we get ready to fix the economy, when someone gets to it, I hope they will look to some of that wisdom out there where it is happening. I trust we will not leave it to the bloody experts who got in this mess.
Let's see. What else needs fixing? Oh, yes, we have to fix the world or at least find our place in it, which is probably not in the sands of Arabia or the guts of Asia or the heart of Africa. Having once been a sort of spook I have long been of the persuasion that a sharp knife and a sharp mind do a far cleaner job of it than a plane load of bombs. So that too can be fixed. But not by the experts, who are much too taken with pyrotechnics. For this I would turn to butchers and farmers. That would also help fix the economy, knives being much less of a drain on it than fireworks.
So many neat things to do. With just one quick read of today's news, and I have not yet gotten to the funnies, where most of the wisdom lies. Such an exciting world we live in with so much fun yet to be had. Thank God I did not pick up the paper this morning to discover that everything was just fine. What a huge bore that would have been.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Process
Noting the dismal economic news this morning, I am reminded that this was set in motion early in the Bush administration, indeed even earlier by Ronald Reagan. It is a process that leads invariably to the results we are seeing now and the even more dismal circumstances ahead. Interesting too to watch the pundits fail to get it. They are not process people but fact followers. And so they are always after the fact, as they are today, seeing what has just happened but not before and not what is going to happen. For that you must understand process, or, if you will, theory. You can only predict from the abstract, not from any given realty. All this is contrary, of course, to the conventional wisdom, fixated, as it is, on the silly notion that theory and abstraction are somehow ethereal and irrelevant.
Keep in mind that we got to the moon and back on theory and very little fact (we had never been there). Obsolescent theory at that, at least so fools would suggest, Newtonian physics and a pre-Copernicus earth centered universe. The test of theory is not if it is true but if it works. And it worked to put the earth at the center of the universe.
But I stray. This morning the important thing is that what we theorticians saw some years ago, that we were then and remain in a crashing economic dynamic, fed not only by loss of any pilot or police but also by the sucking of energy from the producers, the people who work and the people who buy. Not to mention the squandering of our resources on the idle rich and in death and destruction abroad. Some (notably lately Fareed Zakaria) contend that the British Empire was felled by the Boer War, a small incident in itself, but critical by virtue of the timing. Let us hope the timing of the Iraq War is not such.
That aside though, we are heading into a very dark abyss. I trust you are all prepared. Christmas promises to be bleak and perhaps so for years to come. While electing John McCain will clearly make it worse, electing Barak Obama will not solve it, not for a very long time. The damage has been done. And it will take some time to repair it. Let's hope it only takes time.
Oh, for those of you of a conspiratorial bent, I'm sorry to disabuse you of that. Stupidity is the sole culprit here, stupidity coupled with mendacity and short-sighted greed. Conspiracies are just too demanding. This is the simple product of fools.
I was reminded of this as I watched the few parts of the Republican National Convention that I could stand. What a gathering of blind and self-congratulating sycophants. Swamped in evidence that utterly defied every word they had to say.
-Karl-
Keep in mind that we got to the moon and back on theory and very little fact (we had never been there). Obsolescent theory at that, at least so fools would suggest, Newtonian physics and a pre-Copernicus earth centered universe. The test of theory is not if it is true but if it works. And it worked to put the earth at the center of the universe.
But I stray. This morning the important thing is that what we theorticians saw some years ago, that we were then and remain in a crashing economic dynamic, fed not only by loss of any pilot or police but also by the sucking of energy from the producers, the people who work and the people who buy. Not to mention the squandering of our resources on the idle rich and in death and destruction abroad. Some (notably lately Fareed Zakaria) contend that the British Empire was felled by the Boer War, a small incident in itself, but critical by virtue of the timing. Let us hope the timing of the Iraq War is not such.
That aside though, we are heading into a very dark abyss. I trust you are all prepared. Christmas promises to be bleak and perhaps so for years to come. While electing John McCain will clearly make it worse, electing Barak Obama will not solve it, not for a very long time. The damage has been done. And it will take some time to repair it. Let's hope it only takes time.
Oh, for those of you of a conspiratorial bent, I'm sorry to disabuse you of that. Stupidity is the sole culprit here, stupidity coupled with mendacity and short-sighted greed. Conspiracies are just too demanding. This is the simple product of fools.
I was reminded of this as I watched the few parts of the Republican National Convention that I could stand. What a gathering of blind and self-congratulating sycophants. Swamped in evidence that utterly defied every word they had to say.
-Karl-
Friday, August 22, 2008
DAMN THE DEMOCRATS
DAMN THE DEMOCRATS
Damn the Democratic Party and every single Democrat, starting with me !!! We Democrats gave the country to George Bush and Dick Cheney and their mob of retards, both in 2000 and 2004, just handed it to them. Now just look at the horrors, what it cost us and the entire world. Now we have another fine candidate, not the best, but still a Democrat, someone who can run the country responsibly, and now we seem dead set on handing it back to the same venal bastards who did this to us. Republicans may not know anything else, but they surely know how to take crippled and dangerous candidates and snatch elections from the far superior candidates we put up. Or more to the point, we know how to lose elections that only fools could lose.
Democrats once were the party of the people, of red necks, like me, working people and surely the poor and everyone decent and sensible. The Republicans used to be the Party of the Rich and Powerful, the arrogant, the Yankee party, people who bought elections if they won them. Democrats also used to fight, because there were things worth fighting for, like the rights of all human beings, for women and children, the poor, working people and people of color. And we fought like hell. We knew it was a matter of fighting or starving and dying, and so we fought.
Now we have this hoity-toity bunch with not a drop of fight in them. Words, clever words, professorial words, but not one ounce of fight. Nor one ounce of common sense, not one word that resonates with the people I grew up with, the people I worked with in the steel mill and the oil fields, on the ranches and farms and crabbing boats, the people down at the union hall and the pool hall and the bowling alley. These dumb bastards have lost the people. They don't know how to talk to the very people they are supposed to serve. Instead they talk to themselves, as if the world were composed of Ivy League puritans.
Damn, I hate this sorry excuse for a party. Almost as much as I fear the other ... well, not that much but a lot. I hate and will hate forever Al Gore and Ralph Nader, who, against all odds put this vicious and stupid mob in office, as I hate John Kerry, who was too busy being right to fight, too gentile to do the gutting that had to be done. As I suppose I should hate Adali Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, Michael Dukakas, and maybe especially Jimmy Carter who managed against all odds to get Ronald Reagan elected, who then started us down this wretched track. Still, I have reserved a soft spot for Stevenson and Humphrey. There was some excuse for their losing, none for the rest. And they were both serious politicians, who understood that you have to fight or die, or worse watch your people die.
Yeah, I wanted Hillary, with Billl in the wings, not because I like either of them --- that is not the point --- but because I knew they would never take a knife to a gunfight, except as back-up. But instead we have a candidate who will make a far better president, as would have John Kerry, as would have Hubert Humphrey, as surely would have Adlai Stevenson. We have a candidate for whom the entire world is rooting and who could only lose this election if he really put his heart and soul into losing, as he apparently has done. The Republicans, knowing this, didn't even try to put up a winning candidate; they were just going to pass on this one. Never could they have imagined they could beat Barak Obama, not this time, not after these damages to everything in sight. So they paid off an old debt, ran a ringer as they did with another damaged war hero, another good man, just tossed him in to be eaten by the wolves. If nothing else, the Republicans know how to use war heroes, use them, but never stand among them.
Not knowing and not even suspecting that the wolves would not have the stomach for it, that they would just wimper and walk off, that this damaged old hero might just win against all odds. But he is not running against Bill Clinton, who ate war heros for breakfast.
Damn it, this is a fight, not a college debate. Sure, we will have the college crowd, the intellectuals, if they care enough to vote, but last time I looked, like yesterday, most of America was not that priveleged. And these folks do vote. Often wrong ... if we let them. And if we let them, then it is our fault, not theirs. They are just ignorant, not dumb, just ignorant; we do not have that excuse. We know what needs to be done; we are just too spineless to do it ... perhaps too far removed now to reach our own people.
Thank God the Republicans have not yet found their Adoph Hitler ... not yet. Well, maybe they did and just stuck him in the Naval Observatory. Just imagine if Cheney had been as eloquent as Hitler, or even as Reagan. No. Let's not.
This is serous stuff, folks. Scary stuff.
-Karl-
Monday, August 18, 2008
This note to my sons...
This note to my sons, but assume it might be of some value to others.
I am reminded by articles in yesterday's L.A. Times of both the dangers and opportunities in today's job market. Bottom line is this. Not in your lifetime and barely in mine have we seen anything even approximating what we are seeing today. This is reality check time. The notion that one can have and deserves to have their personal, perfect career, that is no longer part of any reality, if indeed it ever was more than a myth imparted on naive students by mindless and/or irresponsible teachers. In today's world you have to take what you can get and take it quick. Even imperfect jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate. It is going downhill fast, and it is not coming back for a very long time. I have been saying this for months, if not years now, and there is only increasing evidence I am right.
One article points out what I have been saying about government jobs. The scary part is that now everyone who reads the L.A. Times knows what I have said. And the rush for those jobs is surely already on. The subtitle to the article is "L.A. is home to a variety of high-earning --- and often recession-proof --- government jobs." I expect the same is true for San Francisco.
As anyone who has worked in Washington knows, government jobs, especially in the regulatory areas, are the pathway to much more lucrative industrial jobs. Or once were. But now those government jobs are beginning to look like keepers.
I urge you not to develop your careers based on your own necessarily limited experience. You have never seen times like this and surely not times like those ahead. You have to go back a good deal farther for meaningful reference to today's economic dynamics.
One small story, if you will. I was trained to find oil in an era when that was about as fine a job as you could get. It paid well and it took you to exotic places, something that sounded great to me. And geologists were cool. That was up to about the time I was a junior in Penn State's College of Mineral Industries (learning there, by the way, that oil was not a mineral). Then suddenly we were awash in oil, thanks to those cool geologists a few years ahead of me. When I got my degree and licence to go find oil, there were no jobs anywhere. The industry was dead. So I became a soldier and did ice instead. And did pretty well, but never as the petroleum geologist I was trained and intended to be. Ever thereafter I took whatever I could get. And had all the fun and high adventure I could have wanted. But not chasing oil and seldom in the company of the geologists I once so admired.
Never project the future from the past, at least not from any past you know. The future will do its own thing, and you may not like where it goes. But you can survive if you are crafty and agile. That's how how we all came to be, as descendants of crafty and agile critters, right up to our own parents. The rest died.
Plus a bit of vision, which is simply connecting the dots.
Oh, and never think you can fall back on MacDonalds or Walmart. Those jobs are going faster than all the rest. I talked recently to a MacDonald's manager who said they were no longer giving those jobs to kids, only to heads of families, as a matter of conscience. That is where you get the real economic news, off the street, off real streets, not Wall Street. As the truly smart people on Wall Street understand.
-K-
I am reminded by articles in yesterday's L.A. Times of both the dangers and opportunities in today's job market. Bottom line is this. Not in your lifetime and barely in mine have we seen anything even approximating what we are seeing today. This is reality check time. The notion that one can have and deserves to have their personal, perfect career, that is no longer part of any reality, if indeed it ever was more than a myth imparted on naive students by mindless and/or irresponsible teachers. In today's world you have to take what you can get and take it quick. Even imperfect jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate. It is going downhill fast, and it is not coming back for a very long time. I have been saying this for months, if not years now, and there is only increasing evidence I am right.
One article points out what I have been saying about government jobs. The scary part is that now everyone who reads the L.A. Times knows what I have said. And the rush for those jobs is surely already on. The subtitle to the article is "L.A. is home to a variety of high-earning --- and often recession-proof --- government jobs." I expect the same is true for San Francisco.
As anyone who has worked in Washington knows, government jobs, especially in the regulatory areas, are the pathway to much more lucrative industrial jobs. Or once were. But now those government jobs are beginning to look like keepers.
I urge you not to develop your careers based on your own necessarily limited experience. You have never seen times like this and surely not times like those ahead. You have to go back a good deal farther for meaningful reference to today's economic dynamics.
One small story, if you will. I was trained to find oil in an era when that was about as fine a job as you could get. It paid well and it took you to exotic places, something that sounded great to me. And geologists were cool. That was up to about the time I was a junior in Penn State's College of Mineral Industries (learning there, by the way, that oil was not a mineral). Then suddenly we were awash in oil, thanks to those cool geologists a few years ahead of me. When I got my degree and licence to go find oil, there were no jobs anywhere. The industry was dead. So I became a soldier and did ice instead. And did pretty well, but never as the petroleum geologist I was trained and intended to be. Ever thereafter I took whatever I could get. And had all the fun and high adventure I could have wanted. But not chasing oil and seldom in the company of the geologists I once so admired.
Never project the future from the past, at least not from any past you know. The future will do its own thing, and you may not like where it goes. But you can survive if you are crafty and agile. That's how how we all came to be, as descendants of crafty and agile critters, right up to our own parents. The rest died.
Plus a bit of vision, which is simply connecting the dots.
Oh, and never think you can fall back on MacDonalds or Walmart. Those jobs are going faster than all the rest. I talked recently to a MacDonald's manager who said they were no longer giving those jobs to kids, only to heads of families, as a matter of conscience. That is where you get the real economic news, off the street, off real streets, not Wall Street. As the truly smart people on Wall Street understand.
-K-
The Limits of Power
Keep an eye peeled for Andrew J. Bacevich's new book: The Limits of Power, in case you missed Bill Moyers' interview. It ain't a pretty picture, but it is real, all too real. We have some serious fixing to do. This book is a good place to start. Here is my plan:
I trust you noted that this fits no preconceived philosophical model. I would just call it the American Model, or maybe the Guns and Roses Model, or perhaps the Straight Down the Middle Model. You name it. Let's just do it.
-Karl-
- Impeach Cheney. Then Bush. Then try Lynn Cheney for crimes against humanity. Bush might just get off on grounds of mental incompetence. But not the Cheneys.
- Reinstate the draft. This nation was never intended and surely not suited to have an army of professional mercenaries. And restrict the National Guard to guard the nation. And the Reserves to be there in reserve, not sent over and over again on weird missions into wierd places. If there is any killing to be done, then we should all share that burden. Killing is serious stuff, best handled by well-trained amateurs, not by paid professionals.
- Then beef up those professionals. So they can tell the amateurs how to do it.
- Tax the shit out of the tax-dodging, non-working rich.
- Eliminate corporate taxes, which are just a way the non-working rich avoid taxes.
- Eliminate corporate rights as citizens and as shields for criminal behavior. So that the justice system can get at the criminals.
- Outlaw lobbying by non-citizens, which would include corporations.
- Free all non-dangerous prisoners. It makes no sense for taxpayers to feed and house them. Instead, find useful and legal work for them. Check out the prison systems that are into job training. Some of these people might also make good soldiers. I served with a bunch of guys whose only other option was prison. Most of them turned out ot be reasonably good killers.
- Make some kind of deal with Raul Castro to take back Guantanamo. One that works for us. That thing is just too crazy for words. Maybe for some luxury hotels in Havana. To rehab our wounded. When I was a kid, Atlantic City worked well for that. You need an upbeat place for that sort of work.
- Eliminate sales taxes, which are the most aggregious and regressive of all taxes, hitting the working poor harder than anyone else.
- Require all ear-marked taxes (e.g., gaming to schools; gas taxes to highways) go where they are intended and no place else.
- Tear down all the fences between Mexico and and the U.S. They are both dumb and useless.
- Create a decent work permit system for all people wanting to work here, based on whether they are really needed, i.e., not just displacing American workers to profit corporations.
- Legalize and regulate recreational drugs. And wean our people off them. As we did with cigarettes. As we led the world in doing. That would kill the Mexican gangs, among others.
- Give every illegal who is not a criminal one and only one chance to sign up for citizenship. That would require they pass an English language test, for their own good. Then catch and kill the rest, focusing first on the Canucks and the Irish and the Russians.
- Make fluency in one foreign language a requirement for high school graduation, as it was for me.
- Make some modicum of knowledge of American history and institutions a requirement for high school graduation, as it was for me. That would include some grasp of why we separated religion and government, as well as the weird way our government is run by our people and why, like no other, it is designed to be inefficient and why we should worry when it ceases to be so.
- Honor the Second Amendment, perhaps the strongest vote of confidence in our people in the whole document.
- Make some modicum of knowledge of the world a requirement for high school graduation. And/or one year of service in a foreign country.
- Restrict imports not to exceed exports, to each and every nation, like every intelligent nation does.
- Balance the budget.
- Open the 1002 and put the Inupiat in charge of industrial regulation within their homelands and waters. Including the OCS.
- Build a gasline from Prudhoe Bay up the Mackenzie to Chicago, the short and only way it can ever be done. Imperial Oil has the plans on file to do that.
- Outlaw all advertising that is deceptive or dangerous to the well-being of our citizens. That would include all pharmaceuticals and all professional services and all alcoholic beverages. In short, go back to where we once were.
- Beef up the regulatory agencies so they can protect the public, as they once did.
- Rebuild and intelligently reconfigure the nation's infrastructure.
- Make education available to everyone who can handle it.
- Forgive and preclude all future educational loans. Replace them with grants coupled with public service.
- Make medical care available to all who need it. Follow the Dutch model, where they spend far less than we do and get far greater benefits. E.g. babies are born at home, not in disease-laden hospitals. Pregnancy and birth are not medical conditions but normal human functions for which the female body was cleverly designed. And drugs only where needed, not as prescribed by the drug companies.
- Rebuild our military so it can do the job it was designed to do, protect us from foreign aggression. Rip out all the parts that do other stuff. It is still a damned good military, bloodied but good. The best in the world and the best in human history. But it needs help, help from the citizens it serves and relies on.
- Starting from scratch, build an American intelligence system that works, so we cease to be blind-sided as we have been since we disbanded the OSS. Why in God's name are we spending money on monstrous agencies that miss such things as the fall of Iran, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian invasion of Georgia, and the likely results of invading Iraq? Not to mention knowing where Osama bin Laden is and how to kill the bastard. Build it, as Bill Donovan built the OSS, on people from the places we need to understand, blood-thirsty professors and the like with funny accents.
- We can still kick the shit out of Russia, by the way, and we should make that abundantly clear. And that we will damned well do it if they do not get their silly, obsolescent tanks the hell out of Georgia. Then wrap NATO around them and explain to the Gemans and the French that they have a problem only we can fix. Or they can try it on their own. And we just step back and let Putin take them, as he clearly intends to do.
I trust you noted that this fits no preconceived philosophical model. I would just call it the American Model, or maybe the Guns and Roses Model, or perhaps the Straight Down the Middle Model. You name it. Let's just do it.
-Karl-
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Democratic Politics and the 2007 Stanley Cup
As I get older, things seem to get simpler... or maybe I am just prone to see more patterns; patterns I recognize.
First off, let me state that in Presidential politics, Hillary is my gal. This is the case for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that I've yet to find one person, including the most ardent Obama supporter who thinks that he'd actually make a better president. Like any Democrat, he's surrounded himself with incredibly intelligent staff and would make an excellent president on that basis alone. My only reservation in pulling the lever for Hillary will be the realization that I am voting against Zbigniew Brzezinski, of whom I'm a big fan.
But I'm here today to talk about hockey.
After yesterday's primary, there has been a lot of talk about the downside of a prolonged Democratic slug-fest and the implications for the ultimate nominee. Here's my take:
The 2007 Stanley Cup playoffs (that's the SuperBowl of hockey for the non-Canadians) pitted the Ottawa Senators (no relation, but an interesting coincidence) against the Anaheim Ducks (awful name for a hockey team). The Ducks beat the Senators despite, in my humble opinion, the Senators being a much better team.
Sure the Ducks had better individual players. They had a pair of insanely talented brothers, a Finn who was willing to die to win the cup and one bruiser who belongs in a Moosejaw prison... but Ottawa had a team. A beautiful, cohesive team the type of which the NHL hasn't seen since Gretzky and Kurri led the Oilers. But the Ducks still wailed on them.
Why, you ask? History. Ottawa was so good that they walked through the semi-finals with the Buffalo Sabres, then took 10 days off. Anaheim, on the other hand had to fight their way through the Detroit Red Wings, 10 time champions and one of the most consistently dangerous and talented teams in the NHL, then turn around and play Ottawa two days later.
You see where I'm going? The best thing in the world for the Democrats is some blood in the water. I am overjoyed to see John McCain taking his 10 days off; getting a massage from his trainer after a quick cardio workout; using the nautilus rather than the free-weights. And equally overjoyed seeing Barack and Hillary sharpening their teeth on each other.
Brzezinski would love it and so do I. Tell me politics isn't the ultimate contact sport.
Makes me wish I was running.
First off, let me state that in Presidential politics, Hillary is my gal. This is the case for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that I've yet to find one person, including the most ardent Obama supporter who thinks that he'd actually make a better president. Like any Democrat, he's surrounded himself with incredibly intelligent staff and would make an excellent president on that basis alone. My only reservation in pulling the lever for Hillary will be the realization that I am voting against Zbigniew Brzezinski, of whom I'm a big fan.
But I'm here today to talk about hockey.
After yesterday's primary, there has been a lot of talk about the downside of a prolonged Democratic slug-fest and the implications for the ultimate nominee. Here's my take:
The 2007 Stanley Cup playoffs (that's the SuperBowl of hockey for the non-Canadians) pitted the Ottawa Senators (no relation, but an interesting coincidence) against the Anaheim Ducks (awful name for a hockey team). The Ducks beat the Senators despite, in my humble opinion, the Senators being a much better team.
Sure the Ducks had better individual players. They had a pair of insanely talented brothers, a Finn who was willing to die to win the cup and one bruiser who belongs in a Moosejaw prison... but Ottawa had a team. A beautiful, cohesive team the type of which the NHL hasn't seen since Gretzky and Kurri led the Oilers. But the Ducks still wailed on them.
Why, you ask? History. Ottawa was so good that they walked through the semi-finals with the Buffalo Sabres, then took 10 days off. Anaheim, on the other hand had to fight their way through the Detroit Red Wings, 10 time champions and one of the most consistently dangerous and talented teams in the NHL, then turn around and play Ottawa two days later.
You see where I'm going? The best thing in the world for the Democrats is some blood in the water. I am overjoyed to see John McCain taking his 10 days off; getting a massage from his trainer after a quick cardio workout; using the nautilus rather than the free-weights. And equally overjoyed seeing Barack and Hillary sharpening their teeth on each other.
Brzezinski would love it and so do I. Tell me politics isn't the ultimate contact sport.
Makes me wish I was running.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Been wondering why there has not been more of this:
How to Hate Barack Obama - by Mark Moford
Historically, of course, the left always did the best satire, if only because they held an edge on brains. Satire from the right, while effective with the mindless AMEN crowd, left much to be desired in terms of facts and logic. Kind of school-yard giggly stuff.
My question though is whether this is satire or just unvarnished reportorial observations. The Hussein bumper stickers are already out there, and how can you argue with a bumper sticker? Serious Obama supporters should give more thought to bumper stickers.
And a bit more attention to real satire, of which I offer this note as a model. Satire, after all, allows you to lie, at least by innuendo.
How to Hate Barack Obama - by Mark Moford
Historically, of course, the left always did the best satire, if only because they held an edge on brains. Satire from the right, while effective with the mindless AMEN crowd, left much to be desired in terms of facts and logic. Kind of school-yard giggly stuff.
My question though is whether this is satire or just unvarnished reportorial observations. The Hussein bumper stickers are already out there, and how can you argue with a bumper sticker? Serious Obama supporters should give more thought to bumper stickers.
And a bit more attention to real satire, of which I offer this note as a model. Satire, after all, allows you to lie, at least by innuendo.
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