Jobs, Technology, and Population... It’s Not the Economy, Stupid

Jack Bellis

In a Feb. 4 story, “Layoff notices sent to 115 of 144 Atlantic City casino inspectors,” the layoffs were in part justified by “significant technological advancements.” Never mind that in this isolated story the ‘advancement’ seems to be phone calls to a central location(!), the theme is most definitely not isolated: every day it takes fewer people—and jobs— to produce the same goods and services. This one unrelenting and accelerating trend is the overriding phenomenon that will dictate the prosperity or misery of our children’s world.

The loss of the casino inspection jobs, despite the politics at play, is instructive of the larger story. The jobs might have finally been eliminated because of the economy, but it was technology that made them unnecessary in the first place. To use a weather analogy, we tend to blame storms for knocking down tree limbs but most of the limbs that fall are already dead or overextended. This downsizing has been occurring for a century and it didn’t hurt us too badly. One reason was that we had 40 trillion barrels of oil to burn, to expand the economy and outpace the job losses with what is now obvious as busy work. Our head-in-the-sand reaction now is that the economy will improve. We’ll grow our way out of it.

But the peaks and troughs of our economic cycle are more pronounced than ever. And growth is not the solution. In fact, growth is not just unsustainable, it is the very opposite of sustainability. We have grown to 7 billion people and are destroying the environment at a rapid pace. In the 70’s population control was a topic in the public discourse; now it is as if it’s taboo. But it’s time to talk about it again before technology—with the catalyst of a bad economy—strips away jobs in ever-increasing waves.

If you think the current wave of unemployment is bad, you’re not getting it. Here are some of the possible losses we will soon see. The US Postal Service could be decimated in a flash… much faster than you think. After we have perhaps two more rounds of college graduates (I call that 4-year period a ‘technologic generation’), all that may be left of daily mail will be junk mail. Vaporized: 500,000 jobs. Telecommunications: when wifi is everywhere, all that will be left of the ‘phone companies’ will be cell towers and fiber-optic trunks and the mechanics to maintain them. Disappeared: 300,000? Think ahead to when commercial (truck) transportation is finally reengineered to a low-friction, remote-contolled rail system very similar to amusement park roller coasters. Unnecessary: 1.5 million drivers. Perhaps you’ll like this one better: when the economy finally forces the government to pare down the IRS by merely simplifying the tax code, about 100,000 of what might be the ultimate in busy-work jobs will disappear.

Will innovation save us? Ironically not. Innovation will create different new jobs but invariably reduces the need for labor. In the 70’s Buckminster Fuller postulated that efficiency could afford us vast population and wealth simultaneously. Well, bad news: we’ve already surpassed his prediction of 6 billion people. And industry, while it might bring us efficiency, just as often delivers efficiency along with downsizing, Enron, the housing bubble, Wall Street greed, and ustoppable oil well failures. Ultimately, we must match our population more closely to our environment and our willingness to distribute wealth… called ‘jobs.’ The run-up was fun, but it’s time to face the real issue. It’s up to you, kids.

It's Not the Economy, Stupid

Now that unemployment is the lead headline every day it's time to realize that this is no longer about 'the economy'; it's about technology and population. Yes, we've had a veritable parade of fiscal hurricanes—offshoring, Enron, banking and housing insanity, and trillion-dollar wars—but those are merely storms. And in the same way that storms knock dead wood off trees, it's not the storm that kills the tree, and it's not the economy, or even China, that takes jobs away by the millions.

Every day it takes fewer people—and jobs—to produce the same amount of goods and services. This is far-and-away the dominant force in our employment picture. (The only way we'll get those jobs back from China is if we somehow have 1.3 billion people and they have 300 million. Be careful what you wish for.) Every day that we continue to expect an upturn in the economy to solve our unemployment problem is a day lost in working toward a real solution. No number of cars or homes sold can solve this problem because, it turns out, growth is precisely the opposite of sustainability. Thirty years ago we talked about population but not any more. If we continue to attack the problem solely with increased production and consumption, the peaks and valleys of economic peril will only get more pronounced.

10 Ways for America to Burn More Oil

10 Ways for America to Burn More Oil

The sight of oil and gas being intentionally burned---to no energetic purpose---atop the gushing Gulf of Mexico oil disaster has reinforced for me the notion that energy really must be free in America. How else can you explain so many examples we see every day of energy being wasted so thoughtlessly? It must be because energy, despite all the Chicken Little 'peak oil' talk and whatnot, is apparently so plentiful we must find ways to dispose of it. So here's what you can do to help burn off this embarrassment of riches.

1. Put video advertising screens everywhere... at every gas pump, department store clothing area, and highway roadside. LCDs for everyone.
2. Require every household to have one of those inflated, illuminated, motorized lawn globes, year-round. If you don't like the one with Santa and the blowing snow, perhaps you can find one of Osama and Halliburton hero Dick Cheney arm-in-arm doing the Hora as oil rains down on them.
3. Keep the lights on in every office building all evening while people are cleaning a few offices at a time. And in those office buildings, put a new plastic trash bag in every cubicle's trash can every day, for the few pieces of paper discarded.
4. Whatever you buy in a store, however small, insist on getting a bag, plastic if possible. Or better yet, a paper bag inside a plastic bag!
5. Make those suburban lawns as big as can be. And buy a riding mower. The bigger the better.
6. Keep spending every penny we have on private transportation. Buses and trains don't waste nearly enough oil.
7. Flush a gallon of water down the drain every time someone uses a urinal... it made sense 100 years ago so it must still make sense. Think of the energy it takes to treat and deliver water.
8. Put up toll booths at the midpoint between every current roadway toll plaza. Stopping traffic twice as often will burn huge amounts of oil. And when they're built, double the number again. It's a lose-lose winner.
9. Make more babies. Ultimately our only strategy to burn this oil as fast as BP spews it is population. Pop, baby, pop.
10. And finally, just keep letting that BP well run until every last fish and fowl is killed. Don't funnel it to the surface with a stack of concrete or steel cylinders. Don't trap it with a big tube or the world's best pumps. Just let it gush.
America has never failed to rise to a great challenge and there's no reason this should be the first time. Just because we don't seem to be able to build cars fast enough to burn all this ugly black goop doesn't mean we can't solve this problem. We can burn this oil if we're all willing to sacrifice and work hard. God bless you all and God bless the United States of America.

Archeologists Unearth Remains of America

July 8, 9710: Archeologists yesterday announced they have found fossil remnants that may explain the demise of the land once known as America. It appears the 'Great Experiment' didn't collapse in any sort of sudden cataclysm but slowly decayed, almost rotting to death. The Americans seem to have perished...
...waiting in line at the airport, grandmotherly and baby terrorists alike, some in their underwear, all with their shoes off. A separate breed, almost another species, appears to have had their brains removed, identified by uniforms with the letters TSA on them. All were smiling cooperatively.
... tearing up credit card solicitations. By the countless billions.
... saving money on car insurance in a pathetic tail-chasing reenactment of Xeno's paradox, they were saving so much money that car insurance companies would have had to be paying them, were it not just another scam of a commerce system gone berserk.
... submitting rebate forms. Apparently all goods and services were free-after-rebate, and almost all money exchanged hands in reverse, through coupons and rebates. Those items that weren't free after rebate were simply advertised as free... after, of course, the 12-year monthly contract. Some 12 million of the fossilized Americans were found reading their communications bills, trying to figure out what company they came from. Many had kitchen implements thrust in their eyes, apparently self-inflicted to make the bill-reading less painful by comparison.
... in toll booth lines and in front of casino machines. In a desperate bid to save patronage-bloated systems, a war of non-productive taxing went berserk. States bet on millions of slot machines and local authorities put up toll booths everywhere. By the end, only six people actually succeeded in conducting commerce and manufacturing.
... frozen in front of their computers, 'surfing the web' as it was called, trying to find for 'sex tapes.' (This was in the days before politicians and celebrities had to submit their video sex transcripts to the public.) Those millions who succeeded in finding the tapes died of something called 'reality television,' similar to flesh-eating bacteria it turned their brains to a slimy gelatin that oozed out of their ears. The closest evidence, found in relics called newspapers, traces the phenomenon back to a mythical white bronco.
... turning to stone in hospital waiting rooms; these were the lucky ones that actually had health insurance. As near as the researchers could tell, those without health insurance were condemned to push wheelbarrows full of green paper bricks back and forth between hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. In perhaps the strangest twist, the doctors didn't actually perform medicine but simply followed the uninsured around and charted their movement of the wheelbarrows. It seems as if medicine in those days had been brilliantly reduced to numerical accounting... reminiscent of ancient Egypt's precocious use of geometry to build pyramids in honor of their leaders.
But in America, the monuments seem to have been erected for those who can hit a ball or leap the highest with one. These 'athletes' must have been the ones with political power; it couldn't have been the posturing figureheads in the seat of government, who were all found crushed under huge tomes that simply enumerated favored corporations. This sort of 'exception' methodology seems consistent with the financial mechanism of the rebate system.
The real deity however seems to have been jobs (or Jobs?). Fifty million died praying for jobs, whereas the rich people with jobs prayed to Jobs... apparently spending every last dollar on "i" devices, never able to satisfy their self-indulgence. Scientists are still trying to work this all out.
Only one thing in our current society seems to have survived all this time, a weather broadcaster on Comcast-Chinamerica channel 2794, a man by the name of Dick Clark. In other news, computer programmers have discovered a diabolical new problem that they are calling Y10K.

Ten Things We Must Do to Fix the Economy

Ten Things We Must Do to Fix the Economy

While we're waiting for our retirement savings to evaporate completely, and we continue to argue over how much the President can actually improve the economy, here are things we can do to stop the waiting and begin doing. Some are immediate actions, like legislation. Others are broad, country-wide undertakings that will take many years. There is a common theme, however: they all focus on authentic and long-term values that provide value to society.

Make congress live by the same rules as the citizens.

Until we remove our lawmakers from the protection of the fairytale land in which they live, we are unlikely to get things changed substantially. One doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to be concerned that our legislature is broken. To start with, they need to pay for healthcare. (I'd say "... like everyone else," but that's also a problem. Until we separate healthcare from paychecks it's more complicated than that.)

Eliminate the profit in day trading (tax same day profits at 100%).

After all the Enrons, Milkens, and Madoffs (and even whipping boys like Martha Steward) do you understand yet that the stock market is no longer the authentic economic engine that it had been? Whereas it started as an investment system, then tranformed into an auction house, the electronic age completed its change into a manipulation machine for capital companies. The Internet boom proved that, yes, it is a wonderfully efficient means for driving capital to a technological opportunity. But the Internet bust showed that it needs to be reined in just a bit. You should be able to take short term risks and get rewards; you shouldn't be able to get in every morning and out every evening to game the system. Simple solution: tax same-day (or even same-week) profits 100%.

Eliminate adjustable rate home loans.

The home loan business has created as large an economic catastrophe as we've ever known. Get it back to reality by eliminating loans that are so tricky no one knows how much they cost. Try to get a mortgage company to give you a table showing exactly what an adjustable loan's minimum and maximum possible amounts will be and you'll realize how we got into the $700 billion-dollar bailout dilemma we have now.

Invest 1/3 the cost of the Iraq war in solar and wind power.

Somehow we've lost the ability to frame problems and solutions in rational
—meaning ratios expressing proportions—terms. Here's a good example. Instead
of ranting about how we can't afford to invest in alternative energy,

Nationalize the preventive portion of medical care without waiting for a more comprehensive solution.

If we can't move fast enough on single-payer healthcare, perhaps the first step is to try to convert just preventive care. This will ensure that the portion of the problem that has the greatest return on investment is enacted.

Convert to the metric system.

This is the ideal combination of an idea that increases efficiency and creates productive business. Huge amounts of business infrastructure and materials will be rebuilt, renewed, and reprinted. In the end, we’ll have better, easier coordination with the rest of the world’s physical goods. If we change all road signs to meters immediately it will only take about six months for everyone in the US to understand what a meter is. Mr. President, you want economic recovery? Stop looking for pure fiscal manipulations and mandate the metric system now.

Require credit card companies to use PIN numbers.

The notion that most of our financial fraud is substantially one of "identity theft" is an outrageous lie. Rather, the problem is "credit card fraud," plain and simple. And if the only solution is for the credit card companies to be sued until they change their behavior, then so be it for the "litigious society"; our lawyers are asleep at the wheel. Credit cards need stratified levels of security features, first-and-foremost being PIN numbers. If you want a card with as little security as today's cards, fine; you'll just have to pay the highest annual and interest rates. Otherwise, on the lowest price cards we need photographs, PIN numbers, and various caps depending on how anonymous the purchase is. This problem is not hard. It's just that the credit card companies don't want to solve it because it cuts into their business. Think about it. Despite all their "spin," they probably want the fraud. The fraud that they catch they simply pass expenses on to us as a whole. The fraud they don't catch, we simply pay the bills... often with interest. What business would stop that?

Tax gasoline for public transportation.

Every sensible person in America seems to understand that the recent drop in gas prices from $4 to $2 is a great opportunity to tax gasoline for the greater good of future generations. How about $0.25 per gallon this year, followed by $0.25 raises each year. Businesses do not care about costs... they only care about the ability to plan and a level playing field.

Restore respect for truth in advertising.

Closely related to the problems of adjustable rate mortgages is the general problem of false, misleading, and indecipherable advertising and business terms. This includes everything from the seemingly harmless "small print" on TV shipping and handling charges, to the outrageous license agreements on the Web. This is a balance-of-power shift in our whole legal system. We need to shift back to an expectation that businesses cannot simply run roughshod over the consumer with no repercussions.

And what of that question, how much can the President improve the economy? If you ask me we just proved that the President is so influential he can very nearly destroy the American in just two administrations. The converse, while not as easy, should be no less conceivable.

Was the Surge a Success?

No copyright claimed. Quite the contrary, everyone is required to repeat this information.

How should sane people answer this loaded question, particularly when asked in talk show interviews and presidential or vice-presidential debates? Thanks for asking:

"The outrageous fallacy of calling this a success any more than calling our first few weeks a 'mission accomplished' is that we will never know how many lives would have been saved or more successful results obtained with a plan based on making the Iraqis responsible much earlier.

Do you think the word success is used by the families of the 1000 (get the exact number since Feb 07?) American soldiers killed since the surge began?

Do you think it's success to the countless thousands of American businessmen and women, policemen, firefighters, and just plain moms and dads who are in their fifth tour of Iraq duty in the US Reserves?

Is it success to the Iraqi people whose cities are in shreds?

Are we supposed to be so gullible that we believe in this success in the same way as "mission accomplished?"

Will it be a success the minute we withdraw, or only after the Iraqis themselves sort it out no matter how long we're there?

When you finally do something you should have done 6 years ago, is that what you call success?

Is it successful enough that you'd want to visit Iraq?

If you call all those things success, then this administration has succeeded in lowering the bar like never before."

Do not allow yourself to be talked over when you answer this question.

If you reword the last line, make sure you think about possible retorts. Do not include the word "failure." The tiresome retort---suggesting that failure would mean nuclear annihilation at the hands of terrorists---should focus on the fact that that threat was escalated, not diminished, by the war.

The End Is Near (and It's Still the Economy)

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Short Version: As the economy becomes the focus of the election, the key question is whether the undecided, "hard-working" voters will come to realize that Democratic values fuel the economy and Republican values do not. The Clinton years might have been helped by the Internet boom but we've gone from surpluses and a great economy to the worst deficits ever and looming financial calamities because of decisions that don't work. To fuel the economy again, we just need to find a good cause to invest in, one that spreads the wealth around and ideally builds wealth in the process. The answer is plain as day, energy.
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... the end of the election, that is, and once again it will boil down to the economy. Except for only the most moralistic issue of all, abortion, almost every other issue can be traced back to economics. Oil, energy independence, global warming, Islamic maniacs, healthcare, housing, mortgage banking, college cost? Make the American economy relatively sustainable, stable, and robust and all of those problems become less so. Some disappear entirely others change from calamities to management problems.

As voting time nears, the great masses of the newly-labeled "hard-working" Americans will choose the candiate to fix the economy. If you watch TV, you'd think the choice will be based not on potential for economic success but on skin color, ugly US-Vietnamese history, lapel pins, speaking style, pandering, and sex.

But it really comes down to only one thing: do conservative, blue-collar Americans really think that Republican values drive the engine of our economy? Did you notice that during the Clinton years we had the best job market ever, and a national treasury surplus(!), and a booming housing market? And now we have the biggest deficit ever and collapses in virtually every financial sector? How long will you pretend to think it was all explained by the Internet boom (for Clinton) and 9/11 (for Bush)???

This is not that hard, folks. Our economy is fueled by pushing money/prosperity/wealth/work DOWN to the huge masses. No less a capitalist than Henry Ford understood this when he distributed his wealth back to his workers to create a market for his cars. Yet all of the Republican values favor not distribution of wealth to the little guys but concentration of wealth among the wealthy. Tax cuts for the rich and the constant harangue of "leaving small business alone" won't do anything. They are somewhere between flagrant lies and pandering lip service that has been known to win elections when the electorate is gullible.

Despite all the damage done to our economy in the last eight years, fixing it is still straightforward even if it's not simple. Yes, in the Clinton years, the Internet was a huge economic engine, but we could re-create a new one at the push of an Oval Office button: declare an Iraq-scale war on private commuting in America's 20 biggest cities, and invest every bit of available capital in solar and wind energy. (Sustainable energy, even though it cannot solve our energy problem because it is mathematically insufficient, is financially magical because it recovers wealth every minute instead of consuming it.)

Of course this is a matter of the dreaded "government programs," which Republicans would have you believe are outright socialism. As long as you buy this non-stop, simpleton rhetoric, the problem will only get worse. The sad and continuing irony in this dilemma is that it will will be the blue-collar folks (the so-called "values voters") who will suffer first and worst if they choose the Republicans who pander to them. The progressive liberals, like me, who argue for more leadership, in the form of distribution of wealth, are in jobs that are one more step removed from the most direct damage to our economy. But only one more step, November is looming for all of us.

Why Didn't Experts See It Coming?

In my local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, three of the September 9, 2008 stories wrote about our surreptitiously collapsing economy. General Motors was asking for billions of dollars, the largest mortgage holder in the country was being bailed out, and a short blurb in the business section mentioned a financial expert who wrote a book about impending financial doom.

I'd like to help the newspapers out when we're all out of work (journalists are first) and there won't be anyone to write the following story, so Mr. Tierney (the new and very promising Inquirer publisher) will have the copy ready when he's running the presses all by himself:

"Dateline, Washington, D.C., February 2009: Why Didn't Experts See It Coming?

Now that collapse of the US auto industry, the mortgage banks, the job market, and the retail banking system have finally pulled the legs out from under Wall Street as well, everyone is finally (!) asking how did we miss the warning signs? Well, "we" didn't, just the experts and the press who we count on to call them out. For the last eight years, every decision and indecision has directly caused it. Regulation has been relegated to impotence; short-term values have trumped long-term at every Oval Office choice; borrowing has become infantile obsession; and intelligence—military, scientific, and common sense—has been ridiculed off the front page and dinner tables. Anyone with their eyes open realized that from Keating Five to Enron to trillion-dollar-Iraq to subprime to GM to Fannie/Freddie, we've been solving every problem by printing money in one way or another. The warning signs were loud and clear, and we got what we bargained for... superficial, lip-serving leadership that constantly told the people what they wanted to hear until there was nothing of substance left."

We're not dumb and the press has been cowed into covering it as margin copy.

Why Republicans Can't Help "Hard-Working People" with Jobs, College, or Healthcare

Have you noticed how often in this election campaign you've heard the phrase "hard-working" people or "working class?" Can you remember when everyone was presumed to be the working class and the mere notion that we needed to especially distinguish them from the rich folks was unnecessary? The answer is simple... after 8 years of this complete vacuum of leadership, Americans have to work harder than ever... and do so for less financial security than we've ever had.

A New Logic of Efficiency

Now that Americans are living with $4 gasoline, many things are coming into a sharp new focus. While for some, this means blaming a conspiracy against drilling more U.S. oil, or squeezing more oil from rocks, most—hopefully—dig deeper. Reasonable people are accepting that stored energy is limited, carbon-based fuels will destroy our grandchildren’s Earth, and oil and gas are precious gifts from the past... too important to send up in smoke. The effects on our economy are starting to appear, as billions of dollars that once floated us in prosperity are now sent to other countries. Only time will tell how deep the cracks will go before we shore up the structure.

A schoolgirl recently asked Barack Obama what he would do to immediately reduce gas prices. As a political candidate in our short-attention-span, sound-bite media crucible (media-crity?), we've put him in no position to tell this truth: genuine solutions to the fossil fuel situation can come only from long-term and mass-market change. Yes, we desperately need leadership to steer the ship in a new direction, but the right actions are completely unrelated to immediate relief.

Aside from inspiring people to change their ways—which great leaders will do— government only has two direct tools: taxation and legislation. Attempting reduce the price of gas with any fiscal chicanery is doomed to backfire. We will just burn more and make the problem worse. We can argue about the merits of laws such as vehicle mileage requirements, but there is no likelihood that legislation offers immediate relief.

While there is no short-term fix, there is plenty we can do immediately to start paying less for energy. In a peculiar twist of fate, America’s saving grace is that we waste so much energy in this country, we can simply start harvesting that waste. It's time to concentrate our political will on a new logic, one of efficiency.

Consider just some examples from my own day. I drive to work, 13 miles that I could attempt to bike if there were any space in which to do it. I wait at one particular traffic light where cars line up 1/4 mile on one side of the intersection while there is zero cross traffic... because there is no electronic sensor yet.

The office in which I work probably consumes three times the energy it needs. There are so many unused lights on that you would swear energy was actually free to this very day. There are public lights no on knows how to turn off; there are personal lights no one chooses to turn off; there are mysterious lights no one can turn off. There is no public stairway, despite its being only three floors so everyone uses an elevator unnecessarily. As with most American office buildings, there is no way to use cool or warm outside air when it would help.

I drive to the gym at lunch because there are no sidewalks in my office park on which to walk, even to the shopping center three blocks away for lunch. At the gym there are at thousands of watts of lights on immediately beside floor-to-ceiling windows... next to a 25-foot whirlpool that remains on every minute, all day no matter how empty. In the locker room, when I turn on the wall-mounted fan to dry off, it always pumps out heat even when I don't need it in the summer. And the 2000-watt unit stays on irrespective of how long I'm in front of it.

The examples go on endlessly for all of us, all day. I estimate that we might be using five times the energy we need in America. Some use the term conservation, as if we're trying to keep something, but that doesn't sound quite right to me. There’s no saving energy… just using it smarter. And I’m all for alternative energy by any means. But the closest thing we have to an instant solution is right in front of us.

If we would just convert our unbelievable waste into money, we will dramatically reduce the demand for energy which in turn will drive down prices as quickly as any other measure... immediately. If we start converting our old-fashioned devices with timers and sensors… building sidewalks, stairs, and bike lanes, and opening windows. It must start with a new mindset in which all Americans understand energy efficiency, and inefficiency when it is burning all around them.

America's Most Effective President Ever?

Americans now wake up every morning—amidst the reports from Washington that the economy is great—and anxiously check the news to find out what new financial shocker will be added to the house of horrors that we call our economy. Will it be a run-of-the-mill stock market plunge, sub-prime funny business that will turn our houses into big retirement savings sponges, runaway CEO and corporate greed, or just a past-due notice for a trillion-dollar war? (What color envelope will that come in, radioactive pink?) And what of our dependence on oil? Can we add that to the list, or do we have to wait until it completes its transformation from military grief to economic disaster?

In the latest installment of "it's the economy, stupid," the neo-con legacy will finally be measured in terms and actions blunt enough to cut through the tough talk and moralistic smokescreen. When the dust settles Americans will see that eight years of ass-backwards values have trashed our economy to an extent never imagined. While the current presidential primaries continue their misdirected obsession with race, gender, soundbites, and idiotic moralistic tokens, the real story continues to be the fiscal difference between liberal and conservative values.

And here they are. For eight years we have seen...

• short-term values instead of long-term;
• consolidation of wealth instead of distribution;
• promotion of consumption instead of efficiency;
• cultivation of corporate greed instead of responsibility;
• distancing of the global community instead of participating in it;
• abhorrence of governance instead of improvement of it.

Sure, the moralistic differences between the Democrats and Republicans matter, but not when the pocketbook is on the table. No, no, no. Abortion, guns, school vouchers, who cares?

Our economy is a juggernaut—it takes a lot to get it down. But eight years of backwards values, combined with the X factor—the end of cheap oil—are proving to be enough. If you're a conservative and you think that electing a Republican back to the presidency will turn this thing around, you need to think about this more carefully.

The Clinton years were prosperous because of values that promoted long-term interests, spread the wealth around, and regarded government as a productive sector of the economy. Spreading money to the little guys is what fanned the flames of the economy. It wasn't just the Internet boom that made the late 90's the most prosperous period we might ever see. It was values in the right direction. It's almost impossible to screw up this economy... but sadly, Dick and George have shown the way. Borrow $1 trillion from our grandchildren and give it to the halliburtons of the world; allow the automotive industry to lead us to the oil trough indefinitely with no real alternatives; give corporations enough freedom to melt down housing and finance; and do nothing to control runaway healthcare or college costs.

No one knows where it will end, but when the bill comes due, people will know who to point the finger at. This is not 'bortion, guns, or vouchers we're talkin' 'bout folks. Fin'ly.

$100 Oil... Immutable Truths Facing America's Young People

Now that oil has hit the symbolic but all-too-real threshold of $100 per barrel, perhaps people are ready to take the problem of fossil fuel depletion more seriously. Although the painful truths of oil, coal, and natural gas should be of concern to leaders and consumers alike, there's a chance that current leaders will fail miserably and only young people will be forced to take the matter seriously. For their sake, let me spell out some facts. Mastering these facts and strategizing against them, or failing to do so, will spell the difference between economic pain and pleasure for the next 50 years.

1. Fossil fuels are limited. I learned in college, in 1977 that they would start running out somewhere around the turn of the century. Some new techniques in drilling have stretched the supply a little, but there is no more to be found. The last major find was over 20 years ago.


2. Prosperity in China and India are radically acclerating the consumption of what little oil is left. Picture that in less than 100 years we've used almost all of the globe's oil, and for 75 of those years we barely consumed anything compared to our current rate. Do the math.


3. Radical alternative mining techniques, such as tar sands and coal shale are environmental disasters once you have a firm grasp of the logistics... the huge amount of energy we consume, vs. the material that must be harvested. Do you understand that unlike oil and gas, which spew almost unaided from the ground, these alternates NEED HUGE AMOUNTS OF ENERGY JUST TO HARVEST?


4. Current alternative "fuels" such as ethanol and fuel cell cars are a mirage . Ethanol, while having some merits, takes substantial energy to create. Whether there's a net positive energy yield is apparently debatable. Fuel cell cars run on hydrogen. Do you know where the hydrogen comes from? Again, unlike oil, it does not spew forth from a hole in the grould. As described in Consumer Reports magazine, current techniques use natural gas to produce it.


5. Pure sustainable energy, such as solar, geothermal, wind, and ocean currents, are great and should be maximized but if we exploit them to near perfection, they do not come close to meeting our current consumption. For the next 50 years we desperately need to safely use nuclear energy. Fear over its use, while once excusable in the face of corporate shortcuts, is no longer an option.


6. Our energy consumption is about 2/3 industrial and 1/3 consumer. No matter how efficient we try to be as individuals, it won't solve the problem. Only when the price of fuel goes way up will individuals or businesses radically cut back on consumption. If we double the mileage of gasoline cars, there will be twice as much driving. (In fact, be prepared for twice as much car traffic because of the constantly increasing wealth of society and the durability of cars.)


7. If we are fortunate enough to produce inexhaustible, clean energy, such as nuclear fusion, biomass, or genetically controlled bacteria, the global warming problem may ultimately occur.. The unanswered question will be "How much pure heat can we continue pump into the ecosphere?"


8. Oil and terrorism, whether you like it or not, are simply two sides of the same coin. The problems of the Middle East are now occurring in Nigeria where American oil company employees are kidnapped because of our activities there. The world is no longer ours to do with as we please.

My message boils down to this: developing alternative fuels, while attractive, is a distraction from the action we need to take. The next three generations will learn this the hard way or the easy way. We must stop presuming that the goal is to find other energy-producing methods to bolster our energy-burning ways. Instead, we must learn to live with a sustainable amount of energy consumption. In the meantime, we must hoard more oil, for national defense and for the production of critical goods that only oil can produce. We already do, but we need to reevaluate it.

Except for the damage already done to the environment, this challenge does not have to translate to hard times or economic peril. The collective wealth of our society is many times greater than our average standard of living. All we have to do is ensure that the activities needed to solve the problem are translated into jobs, not corporate handouts.

Sunnis and Shiites... A Young Person's Guide to America's Cultural War

Conservatives and liberals in current day America have grossly disparate views on almost all moral and ethical topics and the debate is rather fascinating in its severity. Each side accuses the other of hypocrisy and dogma. When an argument gets to the point where each side thinks the other is hypocritical, that's an ugly fight... one that probably has no reconciliation in sight. But that's what we've got now. It's almost identical to the differences between Sunnis and Shiites... only it's right here in the Good 'Ol US of A!

I thought that I might write this article with the pretense that it was unbiased, since the original premise was to lay out for my children the main political issues facing Americans. But who's kidding whom? If there's a nice conservative provacateur out there who would like to write the story from the other side, that's probably more valuable.

The key disputes in 21st century America that are defining our social fabric are:

1. Global Warming (no, not 'climate change" or even precisely "the environment")

Liberals believe that it's likely we are seriously damaging the world and we should do something without waiting for incontrovertible proof. Conservatives don't know what incontrovertible means. Or at least their entire reaction to this issue seems to be one of anti-science, its-not-for-real, head-in-the-oil-sands denial.

2. The Environment (fooled you, eh?)

Liberals believe that we are already "paying" for damage to the environment and 1) making everyone share the cost is simply a matter of survival, never mind that it's fair; 2) Adding the long-term cost of environmental damage to immediate prices of all energy consumption is simply a smart adjustment to supply-and-demand; 3) environment-enhancing activity doesn't decrease business growth proportionately, it increases it geometrically. We hear over and over that conservatives think environmentalist causes are laughable impediments to economic growth.

3. Guns

Liberals believe that American gun laws are based on a time long-since past, when the fear of tyranny was perfectly justified. Although the prospect of tyranny is still conceivable, it is not as substantive as the fact that guns have proven, in inner cities in particular, to make homicide so easy that children do it... and even our founding fathers would acknowledge when it's time to change the constitution.

Conservatives think that guns have nothing to do with the problem and we can solve the problem by just putting all the gun abusers in jail.

4. Abortion

Conservatives think there's some cosmic moral imperative that lets them decide what other people should do with their bodies.

Liberals believe that abortion might be ugly but it's not your body. This sort of ugliness happens countless millions of times a day in the natural world, human and animal alike. The fact that we would like to think of ourselves as better than animals is nice but has nothing to do with this issue. Making the abortion issue part of American politics is a totally selfish, pointless, and misdirected position. We have desperately important issues to deal with where our neigbors' business IS our business. Abortion is not one of them.

5. Welfare

Conservatives think that lazy, cheating, ignorant people are ruining the country and that all government spending encourages the cycle of laziness and corruption.

Liberals think that there are lazy, cheating, ignorant people in the upper and lower classes in roughly equal proportions. Managing progressive programs requires good work no matter how much or little cheating there is.

6. Capitalism and Socialism

This is the oft-unspoken undercurrent upon which much of the debate rides. Liberals believe that competition alone does not solve all problems. Capitalism left entirely to its own devices will not react quickly enough to save the environment, and will continue to concentrate wealth in fewer people. And that government spending, while it might require a constant battle against corruption, and a balancing act between entitlement and self-sufficiency, is our strongest tool for improving society. I personally think that the US Government---despite all the jokes about its inefficiency---is the most accomplished organization in the history of the world, welfare notwithstanding.

Conservatives are simply scared by the word socialism. Not a thought is running through their minds other than repeating over and over again that all socialist regimes fail. They don't happen to understand that the highways they drive their Hummers and pickup trucks on are our "socialist" goods... and that managing where to draw the line is a never-ending choice, not a black-and-white issue.

7. Immigration

This is one of the trickier issues. I don't know if the diametric extreme points of view represent liberals or conservatives accurately. Liberals believe that we should try to let people from other countries into America as much as possible since so many Americans are themselves immigrants. All but "native" Americans are immigrants. Conservatives think immigration is out of hand. But I think you'll find a lot of liberals, who think as I do that our borders should be completely controlled... especially now that the world has gotten it into the lack-of-security state it has. And if our society is based on taxation to support our social infrastructure, then clearly all immigrants should be working in the tax system. One thing's clear: it's hypocritical to have tolerated the entry of millions of immigrants and let employers hire them with impunity, and now act as if it's the immigrants' fault.

8. The Death Penalty

When you can figure out how to make the legal process infallible, let's talk. Until then there's no issue here. (My personal position is this: I'm not totally against the death penalty. I think that the criteria for it should be stronger than "reasonable doubt." There should be three components corresponding to "past, present, and future" criteria: a past life dominated by crime, a present crime of "inconceivable doubt," and a future marked by little potential for contributing to society.)

9. Homsexuality

Everything that was stated about abortion is exactly the same for homosexuality. No matter how much it might offend you, it is not important. If you want to live in a country where such matters are state policy, go to a fascist regime. The real issue is that the government should get out of the business of providing tax incentives or legislating insurance technicalities based on marriage. People should be able to declare their benficiaries and guardians irrespective of marital laws. Tax incentives, if any should be based on declaring others as dependents; nothing else.

10. Drugs

    There have always been and will always be intoxicants and people to complain about them. Get over it. What matters is whether our society offers its people enough alternatives to a life of drug sales and addiction.

That's it. When we're not aghast at the barbarity perpetrated by Sunnis and Shiites against one another, we mock them for the seeming monstrosity of their entrenched differences. But we're quickly on our way to such a rift ourselves. Are you a Sunni or a Shiite?

Great Economy or Greatest Failure?

The economy is great... on Wall Street, and some would argue on Main Street, too. If you have health insurance and a job, and look at only certain statistics, who could argue? I'll tell you who:
People who will pay the countless trillions of dollars borrowed from our children.
People who don't have healthcare.
People who've been giving up more pieces of the American dream than ever before.
People who know the environment is being bartered away in the name of short-term greed.

It's an interesting question especially for the fortunate among us, like myself, who have healthcare, an upper middle class job, and just enough security to pretend that all is well. But the national debt, the destruction of our environment, and the increasing disparity of wealth are enough cause to ask the following question: Is the current economy proof that George Bush is doing a great job or proof that the American economy is strong enough to absorb even the worst abuses and mismanagment it's seen in its 200+ years of existence?

Sadly, the answer is the latter. There won't be any proving it; it will be left entirely to our perceptions. But make no mistake, the balance of judgment will eventually demonstrate that the current administration is just spending every bank account that we've built up over our entire history.

Our country is incredibly strong. In terms of economic and industrial might, our country has just hit its stride. Technology and resources are perfected and powerful to an unprecedented extent and nowhere moreso than in the good ol' US of A. But it is only through our country's huge reservoir of talent, resources, cash, international goodwill, and military might that the outrageous blunders of W are absorbed at all, let alone converted into net gains. The Bushies aren't geniuses with their tax cuts, quite the contrary. They're breaking the bank one day at a time and hiding the damage with good spin, sucked up by a populace that apparently is 49% ignoramuses... Paris Hilton before her jailhouse epiphany.

Fueled substantially by the Cenezoic (?) era's oil deposits under the Middle East, we've spent the last 60 years paving suburban, private-motorized sprawl... training China how to manufacture enough goods to cover the entire surface of the planet ten times over... burning every drop of fossil fuel on earth... conquering outer and cellular space... wiring the world, from Al Qeada to Mountain View without censorship... and arming every militant to the teeth in the name of Liberty. Gold bless America.

Now all that history isn't George's doing, but he's the one steering the ship right now and at every turn he's choosing self-interest over society, wealth over distribution, dominance over interdependence, and moralism over morality.

What If Dem's Failed to Chase Bin Laden?

Apropos only of yet another anniversary for an ignorantly conceived, hideously executed, and irresolvable "war," I shudder to imagine the vitriolic invective that would spew forth from the John Wayne-ish conservatives if it were instead the Democrats who had failed so miserably to even try to bring to justice the man who openly boasted of killing 3000 Americans and committing the greatest onshore atrocity in our history.

Scripted Answers for Democrats

Why did you support the war?

1. I supported the Executive Branch....
2. I supported the power and decision making of American Presidency, whatever action was needed, and gave the President my faith...
3. I did so because in situations where we must choose between only bad options, the brilliance of our founders in creating a powerful executive still shines through to this day...
4. In the wake of the unprecedented attack on America, granting such faith seemed a straightforward decision...
5. If the action was to be war, I accept responsibility for choosing it, just as each American whether one voted for a particular President or not, must accept ownership of his Presidency. He is my President as much as those who voted for him, and we own the decision together...
6. But time after time he has failed to answer my faith...
7. He failed to protect the explosives stores that continue to shatter American soldiers' limbs and lives...
8. He failed to maintain the Iraqi army or replace it with enough American troops, undermining all civil order...
9. He failed to provide enough equipment to protect American bodies...
10. He failed to protect the honor and future safety of our military, earned by the blood of generations, squandering it in one day with the torture at Abu Ghirab...
11. He failed to protect the goodwill of America, earned over centuries, by not really intending to repair the damage of our bombs, let alone succeeding in doing so...
12. He failed to protect the wealth of our grandchildren by mortgaging their economy to today's special interests...
13. Finally, he failed may faith in the most unimaginable measure, even after I granted him the power to prosecute the war against terrorism however he saw fit.... by failing to capture Osama Bin Laden. (What would the Republicans be asking, what vitriol would be spewing forth from their lips if the Democrats failed so miserably? I can't even imagine.)
14. He proved me wrong and I am sorry.

What is your plan for Iraq?

1. Through the worst strategic blunder in our history, the President created a situation in which there is no right answer...
2. So don't get sanctimonious and suggest that our lack of a magic solution has any bearing on the situation or the debate.
3. Irrespective of how we forewarn or otherwise negotiate the situation with the Iraqi government, we need to withdraw to the borders, and let the Iraqi people fight it out.
4. Whether any of us like it, the net result of President Bush's failed war is to have empowered the Iraqi people to fight openly for their interests. While this is commonly viewed for its negatives, it is partly a just thing whose violence is simply proportionate to how long it's been suppressed.
5. It is already proven that there will be no stopping it. Believing otherwise is monstrous self delusion... ignorance in the name of saving face. Continuing to spend American lives in its belief is irresponsible to the point of being impeachable.
6. The Shiites will win and the Sunnis will be left with whatever power remains at the time they realize that suicide bombing is not mathematically practical.

The Olbermann Award

What's better than receiving an award? Having it named in your honor. He doesn't even know it yet, but here is... The Olbermann Award.

Selfish Moralism

Welcome to SelfishMoralism.com.

In the aftermath of Vice President Cheney’s hunting accident, some have questioned why the liberal response was over the top. After all, it was a private incident, right?

The answer is as painfully simple as a muzzle full of buckshot to the cheek. It’s because this is just another in an endless chain of hypocritical expectations, but one that has clearly broken the proverbial camel’s back. Cheney’s bad aim is as much a private incident as was President Clinton’s sexual bad aim, if you will. Yet one resulted in someone’s heart attack and lifelong scarring while the other was an indiscretion that happened 100,000 times in the last 24 hours… between consenting adults. Hiding one we’re supposed to allow; hiding the other—not the act, the hiding of it—was impeachable. Yeh, right.

We’re sick of the hypocritical judgment. Judgment that’s being sold to the public as a superior set of values when in fact it is nothing more than pandering to peoples’ lowest values and motivations: self-preservation, self-righteousness, greed and fear. And the pièce de résistance of this political spinmanship? This pile of lowbrow logic has been successfully marketed to Middle America as morality. Bravo Cheneyrovebush!

What the other 49% of us are upset about is that it is not morality. It is selfish moralism, and on a presidential scale. Make that a global scale, a scale that has eroded, in one decade, 200 years of American leadership in morality… eroded honor and humanity that were present even in war… eroded our sharing of wealth and progress despite our insatiable engine of consumption… eroded our global goodwill despite our mistakes.

We’re sick of the sanctioned limbaughism, that in which being a moderate is labeled as a failure to take sides, a failure of commitment, a failure to have guts or worse, to think. Yes, terrorists acting like barbarians are rightly labeled extremists, but think about labeling moderates as cowards. If such venomous spewing is not the very definition of extremism… the seeds of Fascism, I can’t imagine what is.

We’re sick of the anti-science, the anti-intellectualism, the fear mongering, and the way you pronounce “nucular.” We’re sick of the ignorant, macho war that “didn’t cost $200 billion,” which now costs 450. We’re sick of an administration that doesn’t believe in—and can’t successfully manage—programs in America, yet has put itself in the peculiar position of having no alternative but to succeed rebuilding a hostile land.

We’re mad as Hell and yes, we’re going to take it for another two years, but that doesn’t mean anyone should expect us to be nice or fair or God forbid, moral about it.

***

Please copy this and send it to everyone who needs to learn the phrase "selfish moralism" as a way to properly label the hateful, destructive politics that it is.

Executive Branch and Job Creation

For all the years of the Bush administration the drumbeat has sounded that the economy—or more precisely the supply and demand for jobs—is a puzzle, but I'll tell you otherwise. A Feb. 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer front-page story asserted that the executive branch is powerless to influence the quantity of jobs available in America, what with the influence of offshore outsourcing, an intractable Congress, and the impenetrable logic of long-term business cycles.

Some would have us believe that we are at the mercy of an immovable force, but nothing could be further from the truth. Hardly a powerless pawn, the executive branch is actually the single most important means for the US to surmount such challenges. To liberals this was abundantly proven during the last administration, as record surpluses were amassed; to its detractors, the last administration was simply the beneficiary of the Internet boom… a once-in-all-history financial windfall.

Believe whichever version of reality you wish, but the bottom line is this: the conservative values that are currently determining our country’s direction are unsuitable—counterproductive actually—to the new global dynamic of international competition among countries. In recent years, with the unrelenting trend toward global free trade, the rules that govern corporate competition increasingly apply to countries… but conservative policies fail in the heat of this competition.

In contrast to the notion that the administration is only a fringe player in the game of job creation, its guidance determines three key factors in steering the ship toward either more jobs or fewer. The presidency, more than either the legislative or judicial branches, chooses between 1) short-term and long-term goals, 2) self-interest or shared, synergistic interests, and 3) conservative or innovative directions. Let’s examine each item.

The single most important value judgment made by any administration is its bias toward either short-term or long-term values. Short-term values mean plundering our natural resources and employing fiscal devices that sell our future short in the hope of quick pain relief. These very strategies, mainstays of the current administration, would be dismissed as financial suicide in today’s corporate boardroom. Liberals by contrast believe that every dollar—tax dollar—directed toward protecting the environment or using it more efficiently, repays itself many times over.

On the count of choosing between self-interest and shared interests, the conservative agenda has recently shown itself to fall decidedly on the mean-spirited side, casting a distinct vote in favor of not being “our brothers’ keepers.” Increasing the gap between haves and have-nots might have been a bearable strategy during the late 1900’s but this is a new millennium. Just as companies have learned that synergy is the magic oil that makes capitalist organizations hum smoothly, so too must we as a country. For instance, the liberal point of view is that we are all paying for healthcare no matter who writes the checks, rich or poor. Not coincidentally, the single most important thing we can do to foster job growth—no, it’s not the elusive myth of retraining—is to get employers out of the healthcare business. Only the executive branch can provide the leadership to effect such change by rallying the whole of government toward comprehensive healthcare coverage. (I personally believe that healthcare must be split into three problems [prevention, acute care, catastrophic/long-term care] because it's too big to be solved as one.)

Finally there is the balance between conservative and innovative forces. Conservative leadership offers a federal government that leads only militarily (and when it serves its purposes, moralistically). Liberal leadership, on the other hand, is associated with “programs,” known by other names such as activism or progressivism. Though not identical to the business world’s notion of innovation, these liberal values inarguably result in new things happening… new things that enhance everyone’s health, pull the poor up from the bottom, and push business to new levels of safety. While it’s nice that these things make the world a better place, the importance is that they return more wealth to society than they consume, keeping us at the forefront of global competition despite automation and offshoring.

Deride this as idealism if you want, but that is exactly what the executive branch was created for. Only individuals can have ideals, and our founding fathers knew enough to place one at the top, for tough times such as these that call for nothing less

Fossil Fuel

Thu, Aug. 24, 2006, LAGOS, Nigeria - Kidnappers freed six foreigners, including an American boat captain, who had been abducted in a nightclub raid in Nigeria's southern oil region, the government said.

The Philadelphia Inquirer on ran this AP story, barely noticed among the top stories, of the kidnapping in Nigeria of some Americans. Three days later a lead business story told of efforts to make a gasoline substitute from plants. Both stories are about our obscene addiction to oil.

The circumstances of the kidnapping might be obscure to most readers, but they are perfectly predicted in a multi-part Chicago Tribune story by Paul Salopek about oil, and how the same problems of the Mid-East are playing out around the globe, wherever we buy oil. In Nigeria, where the people live on pennies, the inequity is rapidly feeding social upheaval.

Although alternative fuels will be a component in solving the long-term dilemma, focusing on them really misses the point. For both the short term and long term we need to eliminate the excessive need for fuels, particularly fossil fuels. First of all, fossil fuels are so valuable that we need to stop burning them. Never mind that burning them destroys the only home we have, they are much more important for producing goods that can only be made from petroleum.

For the short term, we need a strategy that offers the potential to reduce oil consumption by an order of magnitude. Our greatest proportionate use of gasoline, in a single category against which we can strategize, is commuter travel. This is an immense problem that we’ve spent 50 years creating, leaving public transportation to decay and commercial suburbs to proliferate.

Carpooling is nice, but individual efforts won’t forestall a problem this serious; only leadership and creativity can. Only by solving the commuting problem, not by hoping for some miraculous oil substitute, can we wage a decent battle.

Then we can worry about the longer term war.

Will the Real Root Cause Please Go Away?

The incessant, divisive vitriol from Cheney-Rove-Bush Republicanism has convinced many that the mere use of the term "root cause" is equivalent to snivelling, pandering—treasonous even—defeatism and weakness. But the conversation will have to go on until things get better.

Oppression... or even the perception of it, that is the root cause of our problems. Unpopular in the extreme to talk about, it is hard for many to acknowledge and harder still for affluent white Americans to understand, but let me try to explain it.

In the days shortly after 9/11, two black men called a local radio station and independently expressed the same sentiment, one that lays bare the feeling deep at the heart of the Arab revolution now upon us. It is a sentiment ugly to many, but the callers were forthright and courageous to voice it even in relative anonymity: they said they could understand how the terrorists did what they did. They were quickly dismissed by even the moderate moderators as frivolous, incendiary statements.

Yet they were anything but frivolous. Their point was that they understood how maddening it is to be oppressed, and how deep is the hatred it breeds. There’s a common denominator here with the phenomenon of the O.J. Simpson trial in which his guilt seemed secondary to the power struggle. For supporters of both OJ and the terrorists, immediate justice was immaterial… their symbolic victories gave the big, bullying US a black eye and a greater justice was served at the expense of even innocent lives—the same logic we now use in Iraq.

We are not imperialist. Through our success, staggering natural resources, and the course of 20th century history—events forced us to be dominant—we simply influence, control, and now police the world. Nor do we seek to oppress… our oil policies in the Middle East have simply resulted in as much. The sheiks and Saddams of the world might be the executioners, but the American industrial behemoth is the oppressor, the wizard behind the curtain, to whom we think the world should pay no attention.

I didn’t invent this notion that it boils down to our policies, I am simply suggesting the precise target, in focusing on oppression. Newsweek explained brilliantly “Why They Hate Us,” (Oct. 15, 2002): our oil thirst has been quenched by striking deals with oppressive tyrants. And the Thomas Freidmans and Trudy Rubins of the press have made quite clear that anti-modern thinking, poverty, and our own diplomatic bungling have put impoverished young Arab men over the tipping point.

I seek root causes because I believe that long-term problems can only be remedied by striking at the proper target. Targeting terrorism alone cannot and will not rid the world of, well, terrorism. Though there certainly are some outright evil-doers on the loose, most of the terrorism we are seeing is simply the last resort of desperate people. Perhaps if you or I were down to our last resort, we would write a pamphlet or live a life of quiet desperation. Perhaps not.

But we should not fear the terrorists, for our enemies can only kill us. We, on the other hand, the industrialized nations with our ever-increasing fossil fuel combustion habit, can leave the world fit for only insects within 50 years; many Americans talk about, acknowledge, and understand this. It is time for our leadership to, as well. And to address the root cause of terrorism, our next battle must be to use our influence, not our fists, to modernize—if not democratize—the strangling sheikdoms that we have nurtured.

Why the Republicans Can’t Create Jobs

If like me, you’re wondering where the jobs are going or if your retirement savings will inevitably dwindle down to nothing, you must be concerned about our country’s economic guidance. It’s really not my desire to engage in partisanship, so let me offer this as a question: Is it possible that Republican values are simply unable to solve our current economic downturn? (And remember, when one says ‘economy’ one usually means “Do I have a job?”) I see five reasons why this may be the case.

Reason #1. War is now much, much smaller than our economy. President Bush, in thinking that the best defense is a good offense, is also hoping that war is good… financially, that is. Wrong. War, at least the kind we have now, is so much smaller than the current American economy that it barely makes a dent. The Second World War might have been big enough at its time, but things are very different now. To start with, we already have the machinery of the next war built, probably three times over. And no significant growth of the research-and-development world will be spurred by any upcoming war. Yes, many new military inventions may have money heaped upon them, but the logistics will hardly fuel our economy.

Which brings us to Reason #2: the age of resource consumption is over. The military buildup of previous wars involved huge physical generation of materials—metal, ore, chemicals, and so on. Yes, war and other commerce still takes plenty of natural resources, but our economy—job growth—is no longer driven by the amount of material we harvest and move. Job creation now is more closely tied to creative and commercial activities than material-intensive industries. The administration’s strategy of unfettered corporate access to natural resources might lead to some jobs but not to meaningful or stable economic growth. Even while we seemingly still have natural resources to plunder in the name of jobs, there is a reason that it doesn’t translate well to jobs.

And that is Reason #3, automation. In the 70’s we all wondered if automation would sweep away jobs in huge, painful swaths. The answer now is clear. No, the phenomenon will occur surreptitiously with each downturn in the economy, so we won’t even notice the relationship to automation. The telecommunications collapse is a good example. (If you aren’t aware, telecommunication workers describe their industry as an employment catastrophe.) The economic crest of the Internet boom enabled huge ranks of workers to temporarily join a service industry that has very little true need for labor. When the dollars of the boom years disappeared, countless thousands became unemployed. Our economy as a whole absorbs the shock, but not so for the individuals.

The Republican value that “what’s good for business is good for the economy” won’t help a lot of those unemployed individuals because of Reason #4: business is no longer busy-ness. The strength of our commerce is solving problems by creating goods and services, and there’s still more of that going on here than anywhere but China. But, left entirely to its own machinations, as Republican values seem to espouse, American business is increasingly focused on mergers and monetary manipulations. From Enron to Worldcom there’s pressure on all businesses to concentrate less on creating productive activity—busy-ness—than playing the money game. The rules are so lax and our values are so skewed to short-term “paper results” that we can barely detect where the manipulation has occurred. We need to force business back to basics… that’s neither liberal nor conservative, socialist nor capitalist, it’s just good business.

And finally, Reason #5 is that the Republicans, despite chest-thumping “we’re pro-business,” don’t believe in the biggest business on the face of the planet. It’s the most accomplished organization civilized society has ever seen, having created more jobs, provided more services, and fostered more health than any other business. It’s the American Government, and however much we all love to bash its red tape and bureaucracy, you can’t deny its record. The first stated purpose our Constitution’s is to “create a more perfect union,” and the fifth is to “promote the general Welfare” but the current administration wants to dismantle 200 years of gains in the public sector. This is ostensibly in the name of efficiency but really from a philosophical aversion to federalism… this after the most affluent 15 years in American history. Like it or not, the government is our largest job engine, not just for its direct payroll but for the money it disperses more widely than the free market alone would do. Yes, every few years we need a belt-tightening—not just in the private sector but the public sector—to weed out waste, but the current diet is seeing the patient wither away. Simply pushing all social responsibility to the states destroys the gains that have been made and squanders our country’s greatest advantage against all opponents, social or political… economy of scale. We’re throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Getting to the true root cause of job creation ultimately boils down to two items: creating wealth and spreading it around. With each passing day it seems, less and less of our financial news centers around creating wealth. Instead we suffer endless circular news about the value of the dollar or investor confidence. These are results of wealth, not the causes. For causes, look to technology, alternate energy, health improvement, education, environment-saving, and peace-making! As for spreading the wealth around, this gets to the taboo “S-word,” socialism. As we tighten our economic belt we are increasing the gap between the haves and have-nots. It is a purely political choice how wide we want the gap to be, generally driven by whether “I” have a job, how strongly one supports the fifth purpose of the Constitution, and what type of country you want us to have.

We need a war to fix our economy, but it’s one against fossil fuel consumption (not just where we get it from). Most Americans seem to understand this but it’s something Republicans are loathe to do. Now that’s a war that’s big enough to help our economy.

Olbermann's "Beginning of the end of America"

On Wednesday, October 18th, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann said exactly what approximately half of America feels about the hypocrisy and danger of our present administration.

"Your words are lies, Sir.
They are lies that imperil us all...."

Read this incredible, gutsy speech at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15321167

I keep an archive copy of this great work. If it's ever inaccessible, just ask.

What this Country Needs is a Well-Regulated Militia

By the time you read this, another toddler will probably have killed his sibling, daycare-mate, teacher, or entire family with a gun... not just any gun, but a handgun. In fact, that’s likely to be the very reason you're reading this, as we struggle for answers… answers to the latest tragedy that secures, for a few more years, the United States' position in the Guinness Book of Records for "statutory stupidity."

How such a tragedy can happen will not be answered in the psychologist's office or our jails. The immediate answer is simple: it is too easy to kill people with handguns—so easy a four-year old can do it. There's more than enough pent-up aggression in our society to spark the flame of gunfire, no matter how well adjusted most of us are. Mankind has a million-year heritage of ferocity to call upon when he needs to pull the trigger on someone… it won't easily go away. But that's only the answer, not the much more difficult solution.

Finding our way out of this nightmare has eluded us because our strategy has been weak—much too weak to counteract a Constitution that has gone unchanged through industrial revolution, and three or four other revolutions for that matter. We must target the Second Amendment wall behind which the National Rifle Assn. hides our millions of handguns, by working through and into the wording, not around it:

"A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

I'm not a staunch advocate of the so-called anti-tyranny defense, but one must at least understand it to effectively build a successful ploy against handguns. In Cambodia, millions were killed by a fascist regime, a story indelibly etched by the movie The Killing Fields. Second amendment advocates argue that we need guns to prevent such uprisings here, whether by our government becoming too heavy-handed, or any other insurgency. Unseating this logic will be difficult because, at the core, it bears merit. That's why the wording in the Constitution is so broad and incontrovertible: literally taken, that word infringe means we can't even control, track, or improve guns if the purpose is to limit them in some way.

So what we must do is facilitate the militia itself. We must get all the gun nuts together, far from any metropolis, to play with their guns. After all, we need their protection. We should give them the best assault weapons. If they want to keep their handguns at these militia outposts, let 'em. By securing our free state with these well-regulated militias, we can then fairly impose the following sanity on our metropolitan areas: NO HANDGUNS IN A 50-MILE RADIUS OF METROPOLITAN AREAS. Exactly what penalty we impose on violators is secondary, but there's a nice logic to one solution: break the law and you are banished to serve your country with ten years at our well-regulated militia. Notice I don't suggest limiting rifles—even assault weapons—anywhere. We must make this concession to have a chance of enacting the legislation. The recent onslaught of senseless killings is not from assault weapons or rifles, and our abhorrence of their proliferation is a distraction from the goal.

This is not meant to be a frivolous suggestion. Rather, it is a shrewd strategy against a frivolous but deadly antagonist. Only by working toward a well-regulated militia, and respecting the anti-tyranny defense, can we get the handguns out of our towns and deliver our children from handgun hell.

Keillor's "We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore"

Garrison Keillor's "We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore"
The following article is the most perfect statement of the disappointment, disaffection, and frustration felt by all those who object to the recent direction of our country. Every time I read it I laugh out loud.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/979/

I keep an archive copy of this great work. If it's ever inaccessible, just ask.

Vacationing in Republicanville

For our vacation this year, I’m taking my family to a place of unimaginable beauty, prosperity, and bliss, Republicanville, USA. In Republicanville, global warming is unheard of, despoilment of the environment is unseen, and disparaging remarks of any sort are unspoken. It’s hear no–, see no–, and speak no evil in Republicanville… there’s just hope, happiness, and carefree consumption.

In R’ville (as in “our-ville” not your-ville to the locals) everyone agrees with one another. Well, there were some who disagreed, but they turned out to be unlawful combatants and we “disappeared” them—er, I mean they disappeared. Oh yes, and there were some treasonous complainers. They used to be called liberals or Democrats, but like that Republican hero, Archie Bunker did to his bleeding-heart wife, Edith, they were stifled out of the county. Different points of view are a good thing in R’ville as long as you agree with me.

In this tranquil, isolated little corner of the world, business is business and business is doing just fine, thank you. For instance, corporate abuse, which seems rampant in the liberal press, isn’t an embarrassment at all. In R-ville it just plain works. Companies merge with cheerful abandon and jobs for CEOs are plentiful and prosperous. In fact, one computer company runs the whole world and that’s a good thing, because it’s an American company. For the techies out there, this means that all of the software viruses can be both spawned and killed from one lucrative site.

But wait, it gets better. Deregulation has made air travel the cheap, safe adventure of which the Wrights could only dream. Privatization has fulfilled the promise of reliable, environmentally-sound energy because the hot air blowing over R-ville goes right to Europe, apparently to France. And with the states now free of that insidious federal red tape and economy of scale, they have become the lean, mean, social progress machines we knew they could be. And money? No problem! It’s absolutely unlimited; it can be borrowed indefinitely from young R’villers who will simply print more of it. That’s futuristic thinking, R’ville style.

In fact, things are so wonderful in R’ville that the only problems are those caused by the previous leaders.

Division

I can't recall our country being so decidedly divided in philosophical terms, as it is now between Democrats and Republicans.

Republicans believe in self-reliance, guns, jails, fetal rights, military dominance, unfettered capitalism, and minimal governmental control (except as it concerns intoxicants, faith-based initiatives, corporate tax breaks, protectionist economics, and so on).

Democrats believe in the public welfare, general healthcare, women's freedom over their bodies, affirmative action, environmental welfare, workers' rights, and so on, however much governance it takes. Beyond that, Democrats—liberals—don't seem to agree as easily with one another or have a common stance on issues as Republicans seem to. I can olnly attribute that to one thing: when you're simple-minded, it's easy to agree.

Is there a common theme here, a greater logic that explains what this deep river is that divides us? Perhaps it might be short-term versus long-term values. Is that any more accurate? And if it is, is it any better? I accuse Republican minds of valuing short-term interests at the expense of our future. We are currently mortgaging our kids futures and the environment to corporate greed. Economists of every stripe seem to agree that recent policies are just plain unaffordable.

Is the difference how we value safety? Or security? We can kill every zealot out there and there will be plenty more where they came from, whether they are disenfranchised Americans or Arabs. We will be making more every day until we start dealing with the root causes, ... underemployment and oppression (?).

Or is it independence and responsibility that Republicans believe in? That's why background checks for gun ownership is so offensive?

Sadly, I think the river is selfishness. That's the only conclusion I can come to. I've looked for other, more politcally correct names for it, more constructive names for it, but I can't find any. Someone please tell me I'm wrong, and how.Tell me that Republican ideology isn't just plain selfish.

Bush’s Legacy

What will be the legacy of George Bush?

Is it that he has borrowed half a trillion dollars from our children, with no intention of paying it back? No, we’re OK with borrowing money in America.

Is it that he has undertaken the biggest civics experiment in the history of the cosmos—building a democracy within a dictatorship amidst a thousand-year tribal hatefest? This, from the man and party that have naysay-ed nation building lo these many years. No, we’re OK with hypocrisy in America. That’s why wach of us is given a mouth with two sides.

Is it that he has blasphemed the election process, accusing his opponents of cowardice when it is he who evaded service, let alone combat? No, we’re OK with hideous deceit in America, as long as you wrap it in a macho voice. (On a side note, this neocon skill of accusing your opponents of your own greatest weaknesses has set the bar for political strategy to a record height that will not be bettered for a long, long time. This will indeed be part of the Bush legacy, but not the object of this essay.)

Is it that he decimated 40 years of environmental protection progress? No, Mother Nature is resilient in the extreme, the very definition of resilience. Even if we swamp the continents, the cockroaches and sharks will survive to merrily continue the cycle of evolution—I mean intelligent design—over again. At least there’s intelligence somewhere.

Is it that he alienated us from the community of nations, laughing at international treaties and finding no reason to at least act like a united nation?

Is it that he made it much more discouraging for Americans to travel freely, by his preemption doctrine, rather than enlisting the support and adulation of the world with more inclusive and justifiable strategies? No, we hired him as our PR guy. We get what we paid for. Those who didn’t vote for him must accept the cards that were dealt.

Is it that he dishonored—and commensurately endangered for the next two generations—the American military to an extent like never before, with the torture in Iraqi prisons? Well, yes, that’s a legacy but only within the secret community of the military. And they’re conscripted, not by draft, but by healthy adjustment of mind to ignore any monumental blunders of the Commander in Chief. So he gets a Get-Out-of-Abu-Girab-Free card on this count.

Is it that he nurtured our addiction to oil by refusing to be a leader and press for legislation such as higher fuel economy? Puh-lease. Would you people stop it with this global warming crap? We can always use nucular.

Is it that he talks about improving education…with butchered grammar and diction? Not legacy-worthy, just funny.

Is it that he failed to protect our soldiers adequately, in many ways? I think this might be one of his gravest failings, but only a couple of thousand families will long remember this.
Is it that he blundered miserably at disaster preparedness and response? Pshaw! He didn’t cause that hurricane.

Is it that he has undone decades of social progress, and attempted to erase words 26 through 29 of the Constitution, “promote the general Welfare”? No, “those people” are sucking the life out of this great country.

Is it that he was “at the wheel” when our country had perhaps its most substantial attack ever? No… many, many Americans failed to prevent this. I was once told a wonderful aphorism that applies here: mistakes of omission are generally shared.

Or was it that he failed to punish the attacker? Hmmm. In the future light of “popular history,” perhaps this will be his legacy. Cartoonists will draw him searching in the night, with a candle against the wind and rain, looking under rocks for WMD and OBL.

Was it lying about WMD to avenge what he perceived to be his father’s unfinished legacy? No, lies are just another name for politics or even diplomacy… take your pick. He thought that the best defense was a good offense. If you thought that he really cared about WMD then the only lying was the lying done between your own ears and your brain. Sorry, but he wasn’t a liar so much as you were a fool.

Was it completely ignoring his father’s advice not to unseat a dictator and create an untenable situation (AKA quagmire). No, who doesn’t struggle with his own father’s advice. Now, if Barbara had told him to be nice and not fight, the world would be a different place today, eh?
Was it that he skirted one of our most sacred rights and wiretapped without asking permission? Well, that’s pretty bad, but he stayed one quarter-inch away from being indictable on this one because of the “foreigner” component. We’ll award one special dispensation here (and a gold star for technique).

Was it that he outed a CIA agent? Naaah. Technicality. Too many unprovables here, despite the fact that they knew exactly what they were doing and did it. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Another gold star, but definitely not history book… not even an asterisk.

Is it that he’s catered to peoples’ basest motivations, selfishness and greed, by continually promising tax cuts? Or fomented hatred and divisiveness by appealing to moralistic “wedge” issues? That’s not a legacy, that’s a craft. I call it “the seeds of fascism.” To appreciate those seeds in full flower, listen to talk radio, where you can hear “moderates” derided as those who “can’t decide.” By providing leadership that itself stoops to such a level, he has legitimized this sort of ignorance. Legacy, definitely, but too subtle for textbooks.

When you look at this laundry list of blunders, bombast, and bombs, I’m reminded of that phrase often attributed to the Hippocratic oath, “Do no harm.” Mr. Bush would not make a good doctor. But damn, does he have good bedside manner. (Let me give you this nice, leather “Mission Accomplished” jacket with that prosthetic, young man!)

So, which one is it? The answer: none of the above. George Bush’s legacy and principal crime against the heritage and people of America is the trashing of due process. No special dispensation for national security, or doing it offshore at Gitmo, or even the phantom CIA jails in Europe, though that’s pretty slick. And no slack for invoking the “enemy combatant” rule.

In fact, if you read very, very carefully the Bill of Rights (that’s the first ten amendments to the Constitution, George), you’ll notice a fascinating and subtle difference between the fourth and fifth amendments. The fourth (against unreasonable searches) begins with the phrase, “The right of the people…” whereas the fifth begins, “No person…” The fifth is where it goes on to promise due process, and the founders specifically avoided narrowing the matter to “the people.” Now constitutional scholars might argue that it says the right of due process is only for “criminal” cases, but at this point we move from interpretation to intention. If you think the founders would allow anyone to be locked up and deprived of due process simply by saying it’s not a criminal matter, then we’re all subject to incarceration… we’re no better than Argentina where thousands of citizens were called “the disappeared.”

To clarify, even the disgusting scum, José Padilla and Zacharia Moussaoui, must be given due process. If you and I don’t fight for their right to due process, what right do we have to protect that right for ourselves? If they did something suspicious or wrong, there must be some evidence or justification, however meager, for rounding them up. If we simply swept up people in the midst of a conflict, and that’s the only basis for confinement, then a lawyer has a right to obtain that sole fact and argue its merits to a court of the people. If the evidence was collected in an illegal fashion or is so vague as to be inadmissible, well, that’s the cost we pay for liberty.

A recent letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer, from Vincent Mallardi of the Canadian-American Chamber of Commerce used a great expression to characterize this wealth of Bush foibles… “crude indispositions.” Well, many of them could be generously labeled indispositions, but stealing from us due process is more. It is an outrageous affront to the very essence of our nation. That is not liberalism. That is liberty, the very word that George Bush waves like a flag, yet undermines as no president has done before. And that is his sad and dangerous legacy.