More About the Economy

As we approach the holidays I am sure you are all wondering about the economy. I have a lot to say about this subject but I thought that in a nicer merrier season we might take a look at one of the many reasons we are in deep doo doo. (I am trying to clean up my act.)

I have often wondered what Clinton and Blair meant by "The Third Way." Now I think I have figured it out. The Third way starts out with question 1: Is there some place where we can make this on the cheap without unions and laws protecting workers? Question 2: If there is, will the government be sympathetic and friendly to our wishes? Question 3: Is labor cheap enough and without unions for us to make the change? This is the Third Way.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO OF FORD PLANT IN BRAZIL

Having lived through a depression, and any number of recessions in future blogs I will have some suggestions as to how we begin to think about alternative economic models. Have a great holiday in spite of it all. RS

Luigi, Goodbye

“Luigi stands in wonder of his prowess,”

The last line of a poem back in October.

Our proud, should I say imperious, Luigi.

With reincarnation at work

I do believe

Luigi was at least Tutankhamen.

If not, then Ramses the third.

It was just a week ago.

Suddenly as in a perfect storm

His royal highness was brought down.

His back legs crumpled

 
Like broken wooden sticks.

His eyes glazed over.

I thought I saw his tears.

Oh I know, “cats don’t cry.”

 
How do you know?

Now he stopped eating.

As if to say, “My race through the cat door is done.”

And then it was.

The Vet said, "He wants to leave.

Lets respect that.”

Kate and I cried.

A dear dear friend whose antics

Gave us so much joy.

Our home was his stage.

His grand entrance was always

A thunderous Meowww.

Oh we will miss you Luigi.

Not nearly as much as your brother Aldo,

Who searches endlessly

For his lost friend.

Paradox

Last Sunday night Kate and I watched a documentary, “Inheritance,” about the relationships of individual lives during the Holocaust. Probably because both my parents were German, the story of this most tragic time in the 20th Century continues to haunt me. It was with this terrible dilemma in mind that I wrote a poem about my German father’s struggle with his love hate relationship with Germany. So here it is.

PARADOX

My German Papa

Lived with this terrible paradox.

He ran away

Some time around eighteen ninety,

Or who knows?

Always he would speak of the beauty of the Rhine.

The brilliance of Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller, Marx and

“Thus spake Zarathustra.”

There in my papas pantheon of gods

Lay all the answers.

On July fourth in New York Harbor

He and Bruno, a fellow believer, jumped ship.

Walked their way across Brooklyn.

Found a little Germany in Ridgewood.

I forgot to say,

Somewhere along the way

Papa found Bakunin the Anarchist.

He loved him and Anarchist August Babel.

Oh yes, all those Germans, but now he discovered

Coney Island, the Bronx Zoo,

The Metropolitan Opera and the subway too.

“All those people from all over the world.

Sitting standing quietly next to each other

In a packed subway car.

And not at war. Remarkable!,” he would say.

How he loved Wagner, The Ring,

And of course

The Blue Danube Waltz.

He cut a mean figure on the dance floor.

As the darkness of the “marching idiots,”

That’s what he called them, descended,

Papa’s mood began to darken.

There were five of us by then.

Moma, Alice, Hedda, me and Papa.

Realized much later,

In secret Moma stole away to rid herself of an unborn.

Was that to unburden papa?

Instead--she rid herself of herself.

Germany drifts to the Armageddon.

Three little kids and Papa.

He spent so much time fighting back tears.

His Germany sliding into hell and

Three little kids needed to be fed, clothed and sheltered.

How could Goethe, Schiller, Marx help now?

I often wondered.

Somehow three kids

With the help of many good christian socialists,

They grew up.

Ten days after my twelfth birthday

Came the crash of twenty nine.

What happened to Papa?

The country’s depression now joined Papa’s.

Sadness and remorse like a big old turtle

Crowded inside himself.

Often he had spoken of the coming doom.

His beloved fatherland sinking into disbelief.

Oh he tried and tried to understand it

Yet when the dam burst revealing

The charred bodies of the Holocaust

I hear him murmur Goethe, Schiller, Marx, Einstein.

Where are you when I need you most?

Where did his beloved go?

Hardest of it all, I wondered

How could he still love Richard Wagner?

Did the music portend the abyss?

Auchwitz, Bergen Belsen broke my papa’s spirit.

No, he did not die.

He lived a half life.

Painting lovely landscapes and

Silently taking long walks in the woods.

Lying there his life spent.

His voice a faint whisper.

“I don’t think of that far off land anymore.”

And “Oh yes,

I did not know what your mother was going to do that day.”

Me and General Jones

It was some time in the 80’s. I was invited to be an opening session speaker at a YPO meeting in Aspen Colorado. The YPO is the Young Presidents Organization. It’s membership is made up of presidents or CEO’s under age 40 with companies doing over a million dollars. They come together once a year in what is called a “University” to expose the youngin’s to any new ideas that might help their development. Got it?

I had participated in a few of these Universities to explain the new ways that managers might work with their employees. My subject matter included getting along with unions, how worker participation can boost the bottom line, and managing self managing work teams. This invitation to Aspen was the first time I was asked to participate as an opening day presenter. My subject was about new developments in how to manage a more participatory work place. (I am reconstructing all of this from memory so forgive me if I miss some details.)

I arrived in Aspen the day before the meeting started and ended up with a severe altitude headache. The local doctor suggested I get out of the altitude. He did give me something to get me through my presentation. I hadn’t paid much attention to the opening session until that morning over coffee. I looked at the program and sure enough there was the name of the opening speaker, General Jim Jones, Commander of NATO. As I remember it his subject was something about an adequate defense policy. Keep in mind this was still very much the cold war era.

My God, I thought to myself, how am I going to compete with this guy all tucked out with ribbons and all. This is one of those numerous situations in life when one asks himself the question, “how did I ever get into this”? I thought maybe I could just be sick and leave. No, I never liked playing chicken. So I decided to go ahead with the speech I had planned.

General Jones turned out to be a far better speaker than I figured a General could be. His talk revolved around the importance of a national defense policy with a strong emphasis on our relations with the NATO countries. I was surprised by the intensity of the question answer period. The Young Presidents had a real interest in what was going on in the rest of the world and that was beginning to eat into my allotted time. I thought, “Oh well, you don’t get four star Generals too often at meetings, so these folks really are intrigued with him,” and in some ways so was I. He was forthright, acknowledged what he didn’t know, and repeatedly emphasized the importance of diplomacy as a better approach than a shooting war.

After the Generals standing ovation and a short intermission, I was introduced as the author of “Ten Thousand Working Days” and “a guy who knows a lot about work from the shop floor up.” Recognizing the fact that I was just a guy from the Bronx, and feeling like a Karaoke singer who was just asked to follow Elvis Presley, I shared some of my union vs. company “war experiences” with them. That got a solid laugh. I figured “Okay, I can get through this”.

I spoke of the many new labor management developments that were playing out at the time--quality circles, self managing work teams, employee ownership, and the development of democratic workplaces. All of which was nicely received. There was an extensive question and answer period during which time I noticed that the General had stayed for the whole session. That was another one of those eye opening moments when you realize that your prejudices just caused you to underestimate a person. Happened to me on any number of occasions. (Including a meeting with Senator Taft of Taft Hartley fame.)

After the session concluded to a polite applause, the General made a point of shaking my hand. He said he had really learned a lot from what I had to say and thought at least some of the ideas I spoke of could be applied to the military.

General Jim Jones is Barack Obama’s nominee for National Security advisor.

Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.

Thanksgiving Thoughts

In the many past economic disasters that capitalism is heir to, Thanksgiving was always particularly troubling. It’s a day of supposed feasting with friends and loved ones. If there isn’t enough money to put the feast on the table, people feel particularly defeated. As old Marxists we felt better than most because it was the rotten system that was failing, not us. It resulted in families banding together and making a feast out of whatever we could contribute.

My German father was a great herring fan. Many a 1930’s dinner, including Thanksgiving, was made up of a variety of herrings and potatoes. I remember him going to the lower east side to buy a small barrel of matjes herring, together with a huge round pumpernickel, and bringing them home on the subway. The celebration part of the dinner was some kind of cake that the women seemed to magically cook up.

I believe we avoided the kind of depression and anxiety that I see in this present crisis precisely because we experienced the crisis as being just another sign that capitalism was collapsing. That made it a joyous occasion as we saw our future Jerusalem of socialism right there over the horizon. Now I must admit that while I don’t see any new Jerusalem over the horizon, I do think we will all live through these rough times a little smarter and less willing to accept the hype that “we can have it all.” Yes, this party is over until the next one.

I have often written about how we radicals of the thirties, unbeknownst at the time, ended up saving the capitalist system. We did it by demanding all those reforms that became known as the New Deal. Man! We marched, picketed, protested at every City Hall and all the way to Washington raising hell for new benefits for the working stiffs of America. And boy did we get them. That’s what saved capitalism and it will probably happen again. I would credit the election of Barak Obama to the growing resentment of the electorate over the present economic crisis.

So far I am unimpressed with the selection of Obama’s team. There is a difference between people who know the Washington bureaucracy, and people who have new ideas. I believe there are capable people outside of the Washington insiders. There are bright young people who were the heart of the Obama campaign who can be quick studies for the politicking that goes in the nation’s capital. I spent a year there as a lobbyist representing a union, and I don’t think it took me longer than a month of lunches and dinners to understand the workings on Capital Hill. The people who elected Obama are the people who organized these grass roots campaigns throughout the country. They represent the new political force. He was elected by young political activists. It is essential that people from that group be highly represented in the new administration.

What I would love to see is somebody organizing all those Obama campaigners into a new organization of Youth for a New America. Whatever the title.

Lastly, as the government continues the process of “bailing” the sinking ship, maybe my notion of public advocates on the Boards of all the bailout banks and companies seem to be emerging in a number of different places. That might just be us “slouching to socialism.” Happy Thanksgiving.

Thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.

What is to be Done?

It’s winter here now and we are busy battening down the hatches as we prepare for the cold. Kate is busy cutting the ornamental grasses and Rosa Rugosa. I am putting the riding mower to bed for the winter and closing up as many openings as possible. Our Solar roof panels are working just great, so we are looking for additional ways to cut down on oil consumption. We are looking for advice on how to store the sunshine that floods our living room all day. Any suggestions?

Now to the title question: What is to be done? We are still in the glow of the Obama victory and reality is just beginning to hit. Paulson continues to whine out explanations about the 700 billion bank bailout that seem to satisfy no one. Why aren’t the banks starting to lend? Wasn’t that the purpose of the bailout? The automobile lobby wants in on the 700 as do lots of other corporate screw ups and my hunch is that all this mess will just be left for the incoming President. Isn’t that generous of the Bushies.

I am not at all certain what Obama’s thinking is regarding how to deal with a “crisis of capitalism.” I know that phrase has long lost its popularity, yet I believe that’s what we are experiencing. One way to know that is the argument between the free marketeers and the Keynesian tinkerers. The marketeers are insisting that if everyone would just mind their own business and leave the market alone, it will do just fine in getting itself back to some kind of equilibrium. The problem with that idea is that it leaves the rich richer (like the Hedge Fund scoundrels) and the poor poorer (as the thousands loosing their jobs each month). The middle class is in the process of being launched back into the out of work, unemployed poor. So what’s Obama to do?

He needs some fresh thinkers who really are CHANGE people. So far I am unimpressed with his choices for the Change Team. Looks to me like far too many holdovers from the Clinton “third way” crowd. I am not sure what Obama’s ideas are when it comes to the economy. Yes, I do remember his mentioning redistribution of wealth, but how we do that is a very tricky question. Taxing the rich. Great. Increasing entitlements, universal health care, unemployment insurance, stabilizing social security--all good things. But one big problem remains. Jobs. How to create jobs?

FDR spent a lot of money on Public Works that built the Triborough Bridge, Jones and Orchard Beach, many of the Lodges in the National Parks, etc. People who never lifted a shovel in their lives were out digging drainage ditches along the Bronx River Parkway. I don’t think that would be applicable now. We simply have come too far for people to be sent back to shoveling. I just don’t see that happening.

Now Ronald Reagan had a great idea. His expansion of the military budget created thousands of well paying jobs in the defense industries. I thought of it as a great new WPA. And because these were Federal contracts, the workforce included minorities on a scale never seen in private employment. The Federal non-discrimination clauses in all the contracts meant really well paying jobs, for example, black welders at the Electric Boat Company building atomic submarines. As we get out of the Iraq nightmare I have no doubt that the military is going to want to rebuild. That means there will be an all out push pull between the infrastructure rebuild folks and the military. How Obama will come down on that I don’t know. What I do know is that the infrastructure needs a lot of rebuilding. Problem is, that work is highly automated like paving roads, or very specialized like rebuilding bridges. It doesn’t lend itself to hiring lots of people on an assembly line to build military Hummer’s or tanks.

All of this is to say that Obama needs to find ways to use the talents of at least some of those wonderful people who got him elected. They are young, energetic, and I am sure have a lot of new ideas as to how we can make this a better world. That energy needs to be harnessed and used to help find new and different solutions to old problems.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

Here Comes the Hard Part

Back in July of 2008 I wrote a blog, “Cool It on Obama.” At the time there was a lot of criticism from the left that he wasn’t fighting hard enough and needed to take off the gloves and so forth. His campaign strategy was to present himself as someone who could be trusted with his fingers on the trigger of the planets very existence. And guess what? I believe that’s exactly what worked. With the world in an economic meltdown he was seen as the good steady hand needed at the tiller. The economic meltdown was probably the number one issue that got him elected. The number two issue was the idiocy of Sarah Palin and her dumb-speak. As one Republican reporter put it, “How could McCain possibly see her as a President?” That did it for him. Andrew Sullivan was going to vote for Obama.

The expectations that ordinary people have about what the Obama victory means to them has me concerned. Elevated expectations can lead to very serious social unrest. I am reminded of the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty. At that time I was Deputy Manpower Commissioner for Youth Employment during the Lindsey years. I had a first hand involvement with people in the Ghettos.They really expected that poverty and all its horrors was somehow going to end. And when it didn’t, as their frustration boiled over, I watched their anger erupt in the streets. I was glad to hear Obama say that change will take time and even a second term. That’s good, but I sure hope that message gets to those whose expectations are way up there.

There have also been numerous comparisons of the present situation to previous recessions and the great depression of the thirties. In some ways the solutions offered in the thirties were easier than those offered today. To begin with, there were no safety nets. That meant we could organize and agitate for Home Relief (now called Welfare), Unemployment Insurance, the right to organize into unions, and Old Age Insurance (Social Security). All of that helped F.D.R create “The New Deal.”

Obama has far less choices. And based on his campaign promises he has a huge agenda. He needs to sift out a couple of priority issues and concentrate his efforts. He can’t spread himself too thin or nothing will happen. Yes, of course his administration can extend Unemployment Insurance. He can help people stay in their homes through a “Reconstruction Finance Corp,” another New Deal invention. But what does he do about banking, auto, credit card, health care, and the rising unemployment crisis? These are complex issues and not subject to easy solutions. His administration will control the House and almost control of the Senate. This will give them an opportunity to create a whole new role for the government in running the economy.

The Bush Administration has been bailing out the banks in order to keep credit markets functioning. Okay, that’s just fine, but that bailout should result in the Government sitting on the Board of the bank it bails out in exactly the same way as if Warren Buffett or Carl Icahn bought a couple of million shares. After all, it is the taxpayers’ money and they should have a say as to how the bank spends that money.

That brings me to the crisis in the auto industry. If we were to follow the ideology of the free marketeers, we would let them sink or swim the best they can. That would make General Motors a sick patient heading to the bankruptcy ward. My concern is for the thousands of GM employees who, through no fault of their own, would be the ones to suffer the most. GM’s top executives and managers have already milked that golden calf to assure their own lifetime security is lived in the manner they are accustomed to. It’s the poor guy or gal on the assembly line or the retired auto workers who are really going to get the shaft. Again, through no fault of their own. It’s not the auto workers who decided to make Hummers while Toyota was making the Prius.

I believe the Government should make every effort to keep the auto companies in business as they did in the banking crisis. If there is any meaning at all to the talk about saving manufacturing jobs, the two million jobs in the auto industry should be a top priority. These are some of the best manufacturing jobs in the country. If Obama is serious about helping the middle class, these are the folks most in danger of losing that status. (They used to be called “the working class,” but people did not like that designation so we changed their designation to “middle class.” I am not quite certain who is now left in the working class?)

So what should the government do? As in the banking or housing crisis any money the government puts up should give them that many seats on the board of GM, Ford or Chrysler. When Ross Perot bought a bunch of GM stock, he got himself on the Board and raised a lot of hell. The free marketeers will go berserk when they hear such a proposal. It violates their ideology of letting the sinking free-market boat float to eventually right itself. And well it might, but in the meantime it will be the hourly employees who will do the drowning. And of course there will be the right-wing nuts who will accuse the administration of drifting toward socialism. Well, if every time the government steps in for a rescue it’s considered socialism, then we are pretty far down that road already. For example, here are some of the institutions that are totally run by the government: the military, the fire fighters, the postal service, Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration, etc., etc. Maybe that’s what we are doing, “slouching to Socialism.” What a great idea.

I was glad to hear that the Obama’s are going to take a new puppy to the White House. Another great idea. Maybe all of us just need a puppy to help us through some tough days ahead. The trouble is that puppy also needs to eat. Okay, second thoughts. How about a Gold Fish?

Thanks Kate. N.H.W.Y.

Thank You Sarah?

Yes, I know you might be thinking the boy has gone cuckoo. But hold on there. She has helped us to reintroduce the idea of socialism. Some day, not in the far too distant future, when a candidate for President is accused of a socialist idea he or she may say “absolutely, and it is the best solution to our present crisis.” Let me go back a little here.

During the great depression of the thirties I was a teenager and did a hell of a lot of marching, picketing and protesting. We were demanding social justice. The key word here is SOCIAL. And very close to it is the whole idea of socialism. I might describe it as an economic system based on social and economic justice for all. In our present system of dog eat dog capitalism, the biggest share of the economic pie goes to the top two percent of the population. Socialists, including Jesus, believe that is an unfair distribution of the wealth.

Back in the thirties, as a result of our marching, singing, and protesting, we were able to achieve a little bit of socialism and it is called SOCIAL SECURITY. There were other pieces of our social agenda, including unemployment insurance, home relief, and a Wagner Act that guaranteed the right of workers to collective bargaining. I think these socialist programs saved the capitalist system from its own destruction. The Social Democratic governments of Europe have been on this path since the thirties. They have learned that the best way to avoid social unrest is to achieve some economic stability via the road to socialism. That has given them the best universal health care systems in the world. Would I characterize these countries as socialist? No, I think not. What they offer is a willingness to compromise the “free market” notion of capitalism for some socialism, as needed.

In the present economic meltdown, low and behold the government jumps in to give a little economic support to the banks in order to keep the system afloat and avoid an explosion of social unrest. It’s the social unrest phenomena that scares the daylights out of the powers that be. So they try a little socialism to keep things under control. Sarah Palin, yapping that Obama sounds like a socialist, doesn’t have a clue what she is talking about. Any politician promising government intervention, be it Medicare, Medicade, or prescription drug payment, is talking socialist ideas. That brings me back full circle to Social Security. Remember when George Bush, Cheney, et al were going to privatize it? They learned pretty quickly from the reaction of seniors that there was going to be no fooling around with this great socialist idea.

Assuming Obama is our next President, I would hope that he borrows handily from the tool bag of socialist ideas about how to deal with the present crisis. Of couse it would be even greater if we had a functioning Socialist Party in this country that could actively educate the public about what socialism is all about. I know there are a lot of historic reasons why this hasn’t happened in our recent history. I do believe this period may be coming to an end. The present crisis is going to have profound effect on how our existing system works. The current worldwide intervention in the free-market system will make the market less and less free.

PS. Best news for Tuesday is that the bookmakers out of Las Vegas are giving the odds to Obama to win.

Thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.

About Plumbers

All this talk about Joe the plumber could not help but remind me of my plumbing past. I mention this only to give me some credibility to comment on the new fifteen minute hero from Pennsylvania.

Anyone who read “Ten Thousand Working Days” will surely remember the chapter “Plumber.” The year was 1934 and we were in the depths of the depression. I was one of the few lucky kids to have a job. Since that time I have gone on to many things but never lost my plumbing skills. Ask my wife if you don’t believe me. So wherever I have lived I made friends with the local plumbers. The thing about plumbers is they know some of our best secrets. Like for instance, everybody defecates, and it all stinks--rich, poor, old, young, and even Hollywood beauties. I remember going to fancy apartments in NYC. Some very embarrassed young women would point me to the toilet, then hide in shame for the rest of my time there.

Because of this fundamental knowledge of the human condition, most plumbers I have known have a very low tolerance for bullshit, except in cases as the local plumber once said, “if he is a bullshitter himself.” So here we meet McCain’s man from Pennsylvania. Plumbers, who have their own philosophy, would have immediately spotted the fact that he did not have a license. Second, that he “owed taxes” meant he was taking cash for at least some of his work. Any of you living in a small town and who hire locals know this is not an uncommon practice by local craftsmen. Joe Plumber may need a new career once his 15 minutes is over, as the locals may be wondering about his tax problems? Oh I could go on about plumbers, but enough of that for now.

Here we are in the last weeks of the most historic election campaign that I have lived through. (Just turned 91.) As expected, the right wing nuts are going crazy just thinking about Obama winning, so all the stops are out. My hope is that all those young “warriors” that have joined the Obama crusade will be able to pull it off. “God I wish I could have joined them. The most memorable days of my life have been spent in crusades marching and singing and speeching. However this comes out, I just love those new recruits to the band of happy warriors who have made the world a better place and helped make it possible to have a candidate like Obama. That’s what people have done through the years to win the struggle for a better and more equal society.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

What's Eating John McCain?

Watching the last debate I began to wonder out loud about where the John McCain of the year 2000 went? Kate and I recalled that we even toyed with the notion that he wouldn’t be that bad as a president after all. He was a maverick and he was okay on Roe V Wade and was certainly not your die hard right wing Republican nut. In fact, when asked in 2000 about the abortion issue, he said while he did not favor abortion, he would not look to overturn Roe V Wade because of the harm that it would do to so many women. We thought that wasn’t so bad. So it occurred to me last Wednesday, what happened to the McCain of 2000?

Having watched him through the debates, I have always had a feeling for his discomfort. He seems to be playing some kind of a weird role that makes him itchy in his skin. His thrashing about on the bailout suspending, the campaign, then rushing to Washington and rushing back to the debate showed a man in confusion. The weird choice of Sarah Pailin as VP had many sober Republicans wondering “what on earth is he thinking?” She was the final sop to the devils on the right.

Then came this Greek chorus of people, mostly Republicans, who were complaining that “he should just let loose and be the old John McCain.” In the Wednesday night debate, when asked about Roe V Wade, he said he would be in favor of its repeal. That’s what sent me wondering what happened to the “old John McCain?” Ahaa I thought, he had made a Faustian bargain with the right wing devils in order to ease their concerns about his “maverickisms.”

In the Faust legend, Faust makes a deal with the devil for one supreme moment in a life that would go on forever. Of course the bargain doesn’t work out that way once the the Devil, Mephistopheles, takes control and Faust is doomed. For McCain, his supreme moment in life would be the Presidency. His bargain with the right wing nuts of the party will make him their prisoner. No matter how the election turns out, this could be his doom. Even if elected, I don’t believe he would be able to cancel the deal he made with the right wing and thus would remain their prisoner. Not a very assuring scenario considering the problems the next President will be confronting.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

October

Being sure you really don’t want to hear any more about the melting financial bubble or the election, I thought I would switch over to another poem. I might add that October is a tough month for me. Both a joyous and sad day have come together. My very dear Papa died an hour before the day I was born. While I enjoy the birth, my most blessed life is a reminder of our mortality. Try as I might, I find them hard to separate. When emotions become confused I find it’s a good time to retreat to the woodworking shop or maybe to a poem that is waiting to be written. And with that I send you what I hope is a gift of another poem about one of my most favorite friends.

Luigi

Is a very big cat.

Stretched out before the fireplace

He appears as Buffalo rug

Head and all.

He watches the world outside

Where a Doe and two Bambies

Take a stand and stare back.

Neither seem to know

What the other is doing here.

Luigi makes a move to the outside.

The Doe five times his size

Breaks and bounds over the hedge

With the Bambies in tow.

Luigi stands in wonder

Of his prowess.


Thank you Kate. N.H.W.U.

Socialism as a Dirty Word?

Talk about things turning into their opposites. I grew up in a world of “utopian socialists.” The key word here is “utopian.” We believed that if the world could be “owned by labor,” it would be a real life utopia. No need to wait to die to go to heaven. We could have heaven on earth. Like many true believers, we not only believed it but we sang about its wonders at every opportunity.

One of my best memories of that kind of singing was in the early fifties in London. Arthur Horner, the President of the Welsh Miners Union and a member of the Communist Party, invited me to their convention. The intense discussion of the coal crisis in Britain was the central issue before the convention. The deeper down the Welsh mines had to go, the more expensive their coal. As a result, Polish coal was cheaper and Welsh mines started to shut down. There was a real crisis looming. No matter. At every opportunity the whole convention would burst into song. My memory of the songs was the sounds of hope for a better world.

That better world that we demonstrated, marched, and sang about was socialism. It was our version of religion. Not “pie in the sky” as in that old Wobbly song, but a heaven right here on earth in our own lifetime. I think that utopian vision was the engine that drove the idea of socialism. A central problem for the left in todays world is the lack of any kind of utopian vision for our future. Our politicians try to fill that human need with their constant repetition of how American exceptionalism creates an opportunity for all of us to go from rags to riches, just like Google’s entrepreneurs. In my youth it was Andrew Carnegie or Henry Ford. That’s how capitalism captured the market for utopian dreams. My immigrant father told how in the early part of the last century in Europe people spoke of the streets in America as being paved with gold. Now the the worst thing a conservative Republican can say about the bailout is that it smacks of socialism. The very word “socialism” has become the hell word to describe government intervention in the bailout crisis.

So here we are in yet another severe economic crisis of capitalism. The tragedy of our time is the lack of any serious discussion regarding an alternative the the existing system. We have been repairing and fixing it since the great depression of the thirties, and God knows we probably saved it from itself. It was all those marches and demonstrations in the thirties demanding government action in the face of the hardships that gave us the safety-nets that we depend on today to get us through this crisis. And who organized all that resentment into common causes? It was the left. The communists, socialists, and a whole assortment of radical groups all seeking some form of socialism as the antidote to the capitalist crisis. That is precisely what is missing today. There is simply no organized force out there that can channel all the rage and resentment into a mechanism for change.

I attribute the loss of any semblance of an organized left today to the downfall of the Soviet Union. Though it never was a truly socialist country, the Soviet Union somehow managed to capture the idea of socialism. With its collapse went any possibility of resurrecting the idea. That leaves us with no real alternative ideas for dealing with yet another capitalist crisis. Yes, we will find some ways to get us through this mess. The system, fearful of social unrest, will make some more imperfect adjustments until the next crisis. I hope to see the emergence of a new left before I depart this planet.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

Old New Yankee Stadium

I should be commenting on how the Bush Administration has gone socialist for the banking industry. Can anybody not remember how these same folks kept yapping about NEVER INTERFERE WITH THE MARKET! Wow, talk about bailing out Bear Stearns, Freddie, AIG and the rest of the 40 thieves. It’s totally okay. The real strategy however is a continuation of Rove. If you want to make sure there is no money for any of our social programs, like Universal Health Insurance, create the biggest debt in the country’s history. Then we ain’t got money for anything. Oh this stuff is getting boring. Let me write about the old Yankee Stadium.

As old Yankee Stadium goes to the wreckers’ ball, I am reminded of growing up in the Bronx and thinking of the Stadium as just another ballpark to play in. I grew up in the northeast part of the Bronx next to the Zoo. My family’s constant attendance at the Zoo had a great influence on how I think about the human condition. My Papa never ceased in pointing out the similarities between us and our distant forbearers in the monkey house. The major activity of the Baboons, Chimpanzees and Orangutangs was to compete for being in charge. We haven’t made much progress on that score.

Because the Bronx was a working class community, we were mostly Giant fans. But the Harlem River was a barrier between us and our favorite team. The problem was that we could make it over to Yankee Stadium on our bicycles, but getting to the Polo Grounds, where the Giants played, would put us in “strange territory.” That included more black people than we were used to seeing. They were strangers to us, therefor to be avoided. That left us with the Yankees.

There was no such thing as night games back then. All games were in the afternoon sun. That created a very different atmosphere, more like a picnic in the ballpark. After school we would get on our bicycles and ride over to Yankee Stadium, drop our bikes by the right field bleacher doors, and start banging on the doors. Sometimes it took a little while but eventually the doors would open. Standing there was our friend Babe Ruth saying, “Now get in there in a hurry and behave yourselves or I’ll throw you all out the same way you came in.” It was somewhere around the 7th inning and we’d run into the bleacher seats, put our feet up on the rail, and puff ourselves up like we were the “Kings of the Stadium.” We loved the Babe for being our pal and so we had to love his team as well, even though our true friends were across the river in that “foreign land.”

Now here comes the new stadium in Macombs Dam Park. That’s where we used to take part in the P.S.A.L. games (Public School Athletic League). I ran in the 100 yard dash, the 220 relay, the Shot Put and the broad jump. That Park is now gone.

The new Yankee Stadium is reflective of the era in which we are now living. It is the time of “The Dude.” It is for the new masters of the universe who are going to pay in the thousands for golden boxes, fancy martinis, special entertainment areas that will cost a mere few thousand to rent for a game. The whole orientation of the new Yankee Stadium is the antipathy of how Babe Ruth saw a bunch of working class kids who could not afford even the .25 or .50 cents to come in the front gate, and whose grown-ups drank beer and ate hot dogs.

I had the rare opportunity of meeting Lou Geherig on a number of occasions. I was 18 working at the Packard Service Station on Fordham Road in the Bronx. Geherig owned a 12 cylinder Packard Roadster and periodically I would get to service it. He always had some baseballs with him and would toss them to guys working in the garage. He gave me one. Stupid me, I gave it to a far more ardent fan than I ever was. (At the time I was an ardent fan of the U.A.W. and was subsequently fired for trying to organize the place. That became case number one before the New York State Labor Board. I lost the case and my job.)

How about the $1.4 billion cost of the new playground? You guessed it. That will be born by the taxpayers of New York. The very people who won’t be able to afford the $29 to park the car. Season tickets, forget it. The whole place is designed for the new rich. They are always the worst because they can’t stop letting the world know, “look at me with my Rolex watch, my Lamborgini, or Bentley. Ain’t I great.” What a far cry from what that place used to be. Babe, Lou, and Hank, the kids in the Bronx are sure gonna miss you guys and the old ballpark.

Thanks Kate. N.H.W.Y.

Palin's Diversion

I said I would wait a week before commenting on the Palin VP choice. I don’t see any need to talk about what has already been revealed about the Bridge to nowhere scam, as well as the rest of the Alaskan Arctic fairy tales--hunting moose, Russia’s neighbor, and so forth. What’s really important here is to understand the strategy.

The McCain campaign was confronted with an inability to wake up the Republican base primarily because the base didn’t trust him. He did have a record way back when he really was a “maverick” going his own way on many issues like illegal immigration. The right wing just didn’t trust him. Now the campaign is in trouble. So what to do? They decide to bring in Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protege. (Bush’s nickname for Rove is “Turd Blossom.” Very appropriate, especially if you leave out “Blossom.”) McCain at this point is thinking of naming Lieberman as his running mate. Schmidt, Limbaugh, et al go berserk. They say, “You can’t do that. You’ll lose the whole right wing crowd as well as the election.”

Meanwhile, Limbaugh has been promoting the idea of the Governor from Alaska for VP. A right wing darling, she even believes in intellegent design. She’s against choice. The right wing will love her. Far more important, it will refocus the whole campaign off McCain and onto the Vice Presidential nominee.

That was exactly the strategic move, and so far it’s working. The Schmidt strategy is to make any questioning of Palin’s ability to be VP look anti-feminist. Wow! Republican feminist fighters. This is equal to Rove’s brilliant idea of WMD destruction as a way to go to war with Iraq. Rove’s influence during the 7 years of the Bush administration is one of deceit, lies and division. I don’t recall anyone in my 70 years of observing our politics that has created so much distrust and division as this guy.

Obama has one major task ahead of him if he is to win this election. He has to make crystal clear that, if we elect McCain and Palin, we get four more years of exactly what we have had for the last seven. Bush has one of the lowest approval ratings of any President. Obama needs to remind the country that McCain’s voting record has been 95% in support of Bush. Don’t leave him off that hook. The people are fed up with the Bush, Rove crowd. That is the issue, not the lady from Alaska. She’s a very very clever bait that we should not fall for.

Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.

"Rich Man's Burden"

I originally thought about doing a piece on the new Republican VP candidate, but looking over the coverage she already has gotten, I figured I would leave well enough alone and go to something requiring more thought than the air head from Alaska. She is were she is because of the need for the McCain folks to put a “Fountain of Youth” next to a potentially dead candidate. The enthusiasm over Palin at the Republican Convention proved my point. “At last we got a live one.”
Back to the “Rich Man’s Burden.” That was the title of an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times Sept. 2nd. The article is about how so many professionals can’t even take Labor Day off. They may not go to an office, but they are wedded to their laptops and Blackberries 24-7. What interests me about the piece is how over the past few decades the definition of “work” has changed.

The writer, a New York University sociologist, quotes Max Weber, an early 20th century German sociologist, who described what he called the Protestant ethic. There was a religious imperative to work hard, spend little and find a calling in order to achieve spiritual assurance that one is among the saved. I might add that the basic idea expressed by Weber was very much part of Martin Luther’s philosophy, as well as Freud’s notion of Lieben and Arbiten as being fundamental to good mental health. All this from a bunch of German authoritarians. The article was a plea for understanding the “rich man’s burden.” As you might have guessed, I am having some trouble with that notion.

So much of my own life’s labors was concerned with how society gets its work done. Who does what and how are they rewarded for their efforts. In the world of socialists, anarchists and freethinkers that I grew up in, the only people who really mattered were those who actually made something that benefitted society as a whole. Coal miners were primary as we depended on them for electricity; bakers, for without them there would be no daily bread, and so on. My father referred to people who sat at office desks all day as “bloodsuckers” living off the labors of others but producing nothing themselves. Okay, so you can see why I still have some problems with feeling sorry for our present day professionals who are stuck on their laptops and Blackberries.

So what is my dilemma? I know that the nature of work has changed radically over the last century, and yet I am not sure how to redefine it? In my time the generally accepted definition of “work” was “the application of energy to an object in order to change it.” I am aware of the concept of “knowledge” as a commodity to be created, marketed and sold, but it doesn’t easily fit into my old definition. I still have some difficulty getting worked up over some “poor guy” sitting at a Spa in South Florida with laptop or a Blackberry manipulating numbers and calling that work. And as the article says, he or she may be doing that continuously day and night.

Remember, as a very young man and for most of my life, I did get very worked up about people being exploited at the workplace. So why am I not worked up, as the Op-Ed writer in the Times is, about modern day professionals stuck at their laptops? Is it because I am not sure exactly what they are producing, if anything, besides smoke and mirrors? And yet I wonder, have I missed something along the way that radically changed the nature of “work?” Does that something have a far more reaching definition then in the days of physical labor? In our world of Cyberspace, how do we define work? I’d like to hear what you think.

Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.

Hampton Classic Again

Unfortunately I am not celebrating my Labor Day marching in a parade. There is none. Instead I am rerunning the “Hampton Classic” story. In the face of all the absurdities out there, in some way it fits right in. Happy Labor Day.

It is now Hampton Classic time out here on Long Island and I had another memory jolt. The horses reminded me of an early Sunday morning in Mexico City. I was at the stables of the Presidential Palace for an early breakfast. You are wondering, “What on earth was he doing there?” I was too.

It was probably 1965. I was in charge of Youth Employment programs for the City of New York. John Lindsey, the Mayor, asked if I would be willing to go to Mexico to evaluate a youth employment training program called “Instituto Nacional La Juventud,” National Institute of Youth. It was wintertime and I could not be more delighted to leave the City for whatever reason. (Mayor Lindsey sometimes referred to my job as “keeping the city from burning.” We did that by employing as many as 50,000 kids in summer jobs.)

Once in Mexico City I was treated like royalty, with chauffeured car and airplane at my disposal, to be able to visit any one of dozens of cities and towns that had Youth Training Programs. I would visit the programs, spend a day or two observing, and make notes. Getting back to the Horse Show.

On Friday evening my host, Sergio Alvarez, Director of the Instituto, announced, “Sunday morning we ride with Mexico’s National Equestrian Team at the Presidential Palace in a practice jumping session.” You have to understand that Sergio, a small highly energetic man, spoke in proclamations that came out as major facts that simply could not be denied. Yet I valiantly tried saying, “Sergio, I know how to ride a horse, but for God sake, I would not think for a moment I could ride with Mexico’s best riders. Besides, I know absolutely nothing about jumping a horse over a hurdle, and I have no riding clothes.” That last was a desperate attempt to get out of this impending disaster. To Sergio it mattered not. “Roberto,” he announced, “we have all your sizes and your clothes and boots will be waiting for you at the arena.” And so I gave in to Sergio’s determination that this was going to happen.

Early Sunday morning there was Sergio all decked out in boots, jodhpurs, tailored riding jacket, and helmet, assuring me that the very same outfit awaited me at the stable. We arrived at the great hall where dozens of men where already eating breakfast of eggs rancheros. There was no silverware and I noticed people were using there rolls as a way of scooping up the peppers and eggs.

I was greeted as a dignitary from Estados Unidos who will “honor us by riding in our La Pista.” I was still hoping that the riding outfit wouldn’t fit and that would be my way out. At this point Sergio was insisting that it would be a real insult if I were to withdraw. “Roberto,” he exclaimed, “do you want to insult us by being disdainful of our riding ability? No Roberto, for the sake of the relations between our two great countries you must ride.” Sergio was what some Mexican friends described as a “declamador,” who declaimed as though he was addressing the multitudes. There was nothing to do but put on the outfit (it fit amazingly well) and make the best of it.

We proceeded to the riding hall and again it was announced that Roberto Schranko from Estados Unidos would be riding with the equestrian team. As I watched these fabulous riders and their horses go over the hurdles from a foot off the ground to what appeared like six feet, I was in awe of the grace and the ease with which they managed the ride. I did not have a clue regarding how they were being judged. It was getting to be late morning and I thought, “Oh well, they probably forgot about me,” when Sergio came to remind me it was time to “mount up.” Back to the stable. There was a beautiful horse held in check by a groom who very graciously, with a movement of his hand toward the horse, suggested I mount; which I did. Once up in the saddle, it seemed to me this was the tallest horse I had ever been on.

Adding to my overwhelming anxiety and prayer that this horse would know what to do, since I didn’t, was the fact that I was sitting on an English saddle instead of a nice Western with that great knob up front you could hold on to when things got hairy. Everything from here on out was now in the hands of the Gods, or the horse, or both.

The groom led us into the La Pista and sent me and the horse off to the very first hurdle. I gave the reigns a little lift, which is what I thought was a signal to the horse to jump. Once past that first hurdle there was a round of applause from the audience. I thought, “Well heck, that wasn’t so bad.” Then came the next and the next and the next, and after each one a loud applause. As I approached that final six-footer I thought, “Man, just hang on here or for sure you will be dumped.” But this dear sweet horse just took it in stride and over we went. Now there was thunderous applause. Sergio came forward to congratulate me on my great spirit. He generously said I had sacrificed myself to make the Mexican’s feel good by knocking down every single pole from the first to the last. “Roberto, you are a great friend of Mexico and we will never forget what you did here today.”

When the trophies were handed out, I was given a silver belt buckle with a Road Runner bird on it. I thought that was a perfect portrayal of me at the “Hampton Classic” in Mexico City. This was yet another case of “never look back,” for if I had I would have realized how absurd this whole episode was. I thanked the horse for getting me through the hurdles without a single refusal to jump.

Globalization & the American Dream

With the Beijing Olympic fireworks show over, are we ready for the next big “dog and pony” show at the Democratic Convention in Denver? I swear, sometimes I think I am back in the days of the big Coliseum shows in Rome with the Roman Empire in all its glory. Of course the difference then was that Nero did not pretend that anything serious was about to take place. It was just entertainment. I wonder, is this what we are going to be treated to in both Denver and St. Paul?

The Sunday Magazine of the Times is devoted to Obamanomics. This was an interesting read. Obama went to the University of Chicago. There he was heavily exposed to the Milton Friedman notion that, left alone, the market will eventually take care of everything. Obama seems to be struggling with how much to trust the market, ala Milton Friedman, or are there times when Government intervention is absolutely necessary, as in the time of the Great Depression?

One of the most dramatic changes that influences this debate is the globalization of the economy. I am reminded of a tense negotiation between G.M. and the U.A.W. back in the fifties. G.M. was not budging on the wage issue and Walter Reuther, then President of the U.A.W. said to the President of G.M. something like, “Look, if you want your employees to be able to buy your cars, you got to pay them a living wage.” That notion suggested that, if the system was going to continue between the balance of wages and profits, profits had to be shared with workers. What has happened with that idea since globalization?

I believe it is precisely because manufacturing has been moved out of the U.S. that the wage and profit ratio has gotten completely out of hand. With manufacturing done in very low wage countries, profit ratios for most major companies have gotten out of hand. If these companies were manufacturing in the U.S., the unions would long ago have been able to keep up with their share of the profits. But because the manufacturing is off-shore, the unions lose their power in trying to maintain a wage/profit ratio. That’s why so many economists keep saying that the middle class has not been able to stay even with inflation, no less move ahead. (Somehow over the years the term “middle class” has gotten to include blue collar workers.)

Further evidence for my argument comes from Robert Reich in the New York Times, Feb. 13, 2008: “The underlying problem has been building for decades. America’s median hourly wage is barely higher than it was 35 years ago, adjusted for inflation. The income of a man in his 30s is now 12 percent below that of a man his age three decades ago. Most of what’s been earned in America since then has gone to the richest 5 percent.”

This is at the heart of why the rich have gotten richer while the rest of us just keep treading water to keep from drowning. That is precisely what is happening right now in this economy. The middle class trying to improve themselves, a very noble American tradition, are being swallowed up by debt. Oh sure, one can argue that it’s their fault that they bought houses they can’t possibly pay for on their income. But how about the responsibility of the hustlers who sold them a bill of goods knowing there was no way in God’s world they could pay those mortgages. Now it’s just fine for the Government to jump in and save Bear Stearns and soon Freddie Mac and his cousin Mae, but many of the middle class folks are stuck holding the bag for mortgages they can’t pay. And we all may be paying for Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac to stay afloat.

It is this new configuration that tells me that Obama is absolutely right when he says we have to rescind the tax breaks for the wealthiest people who have been making a huge killing on the Global economy. If Obama proposes to redistribute wealth someone wants to call wealth redistribution via the tax system, that’s just fine. The point is we are living in a Global Economy and the average middle class American has to have a way to get in on the goodies, otherwise the system is in serious trouble.

Finally I do certainly agree with James Carville when he says it’s time for Obama to get mad. Obama needs to show more intensity about the everyday needs of his constituents.

Enjoy the spectacle and we’ll touch base again when it’s over.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

P.S. As we consider Friedman’s admonition of letting the market work, it might be good to recall President Reagan’s economic stimulus package. He doubled the defense budget, creating millions of good blue-collar jobs.

Every Action Has a Reaction

It is a basic law of physics that every action has a reaction. It seems strange that our Secretary of State, a Stanford graduate, just doesn’t seem to get it. Now as for our president, well forget about that. Here’s the case.

Over the last couple of years the US has been shopping around Europe for places to install anti-missile based radar stations. The Czechs agree, as did the Poles. Now while it is not directly comparable, this did remind me of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of ‘62. Remember? The Russians were installing missiles in Cuba 90 miles of our coast. Now did they really think there would not be a very serious reaction? (Every action has a reaction.)

Man did we react! First we setup a naval blockade. Then we told the Russians we would never permit their missiles on our doorstep; or put another way, in our “sphere of influence.” Any superpower worth its weight in salt clearly has a sphere of influence. Then there was the exchange of communications where an agreement was reached for the Russians to eliminate the Cuban missiles and we would do the same with our missiles in Turkey. Each superpower preserved their spheres of influence as well as saving face. More significant was both parties willingness to back off in order to avoid a nuclear confrontation.

If we learned anything from the Cuban Missile crisis, it should have been “every action has a reaction.” It is now 46 years later. What is doubly puzzling is the fact that Condi Rice is supposed to be a Russian specialist. How could she not know that we are just baiting the Russian Bear when we stick it to them with anti missile radar tracking within their sphere of influence.

That brings me to the present US-Russia crisis over Georgia and the region called South Ossetia. I believe the Russians needed a way to show the US that it is not going to stand idly by and watch us put anti-missile radar bases within their spheres of influence. Not much difference than our reaction to Cuban missiles in our sphere of influence.

This is just another example of the Bush Administration’s notion that they can wander around the world deciding what and where they will alight to support or undermine various countries or its parts. This, of course, is policy that begets disasters as it does not take into consideration all the other variables that will arise and slap the “intruders” smack in the face. If we have any sense of reality, we need to recognize our need to find ways to coexist in a world that has lots of nuclear bombs laying around and is not necessarily being run along our lines of governance. That’s what made it possible to keep the peace between the two great nuclear powers in the years of the cold war. I do look forward to an administration that will engage with others in the world and not feel itself anointed as the worlds super-state in charge of deciding who stays and who goes.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

P.S. As I warned some time ago, the attacks on Obama are going to make the attacks on Kerry look like child play. Well here they come with Mr. Corsi, same slime-bag who did Swift Boat stuff on Kerry, with a book on how Obama will turn the country into an Islamic state. Not pretty, but why should those folks change color now? Lets all be hitting back as hard as we can.

More Thoughts on Blue Collars

In the last blog I wrote about the declining number of blue collars jobs, hence the decline in blue collar workers. I have thought some more about men who think of themselves as “blue collar” and those who are the “Good Old Boys” macho guys. The former were men who worked in industrial plants; union men who derived a sense of who they were from they were work. The latter are principally guys for whom the macho image is critical to their self definition. Their image is domination of the female and their role as the almighty voice of the father. There have been many changes in the last 3-4 decades that have threatened the macho image, hence its emergence as a campaign issue.

I start with the emergence of women in the workforce, together with the feminist movement that appeared as a direct challenge to the lofty position of the family breadwinner and also to the macho male. The emergence of the white collar work-world created a real dilemma for the old boys macho world. As I shifted from blue collar to white collar work places, it became perfectly clear to me that in these new workplaces there was no payoff for being a “big strong macho man.” When I had worked as a plumber’s helper, being big, strong, and tough was part of the job description. Being strong and tough would not have gotten me in the front door of the Ford Foundation unless I was sent to clear a stopped up toilet line.

With this background in mind, I began looking at who the media and Hillary were talking about when it came to the blue collar issue. Who of the candidates can be most macho? That’s what they are talking about, not men actually working at blue collar jobs. This is a whole other world that was best exemplified this week by John McCains journey into the Dakotas for the yearly gathering of the country’s bikers. And there was McCain up at the podium telling a huge crowd of Harley Davidson nuts to Vroom it up to show they are America. And Vroom Vroom they did; using up a lot of gas while contributing to fouling the air.

“Oh Schrank, that’s all smart-ass college graduate talk. We’re the old boys who really count cause we drink beer, fart a lot and don’t give a shit what some dumb-ass college graduates like you think of us.”

This is who the media and the McCain people are talking about; definitely not the old factory blue collar guys. They were the heart and soul of the Democratic Party that elected FDR four times. The Dems. began to lose them in the Reagan years. That was caused by a number of important shifts in how the society gets its work done.

During the 2000 election, when Bush first showed up on the screens, I said to Kate, “What we have here is Forest Gump for President. And he will get elected.” The opposition, together with the full support of the media, is determined to give the macho male his power by electing one of them to the most important job in the world. That’s what we have had for the last 7 years. And if McCain gets elected, that’s what we’ll have some more of. And the Bikers can go Vroom Vroom Vroom because they're man is back in power and so maybe they get to share some of that. It might even bring us back to those good old days when “Daddy, the breadwinner, knew best.” Dream on old boys, dream on. Those days are over and they ain’t coming back no matter who is in the Big House, no I mean the White House. “Vroom Vroom on baby.”

Having said all that I would very much hope that the Obama folks would find a way to communicate with the blue collars who are out there. They often suffer from the sense that they are no longer relevant and so nobody cares about them. Obama better care or it can cost him the election.

Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.

Where Have the Blue Collars Gone?

I meant to get this blog out much sooner, but some work on my chest pump delayed things a bit. My 90 year old arteries needed some plumbing work to clean them out, and that’s what Dr. Lawson did. Okay, lets get on with it.

Barack Obama goes to Butte, Montana for the 4th of July parade. The headline in the Missoulian, the local paper, reads “Obamas hit the town.” A great front page picture shows the Obama family waving to the crowds. I can not for the life of me understand what on earth he was doing in Butte?

I have very fond memories of Butte back in the fifties when I was a Representative of the MIne Mill & Smelter Workers Union assigned to win back the union from decertification. At that time there were about seven thousand miners in Butte and a couple of thousand smelter men in Anaconda, about 50 mikes away. It was a blue collar place. Now the mines and the smelter have been shut down and the place is slowly but surely being gentrified. So Obama, what are you doing in Butte? Someone on his staff must have thought Butte is a good place to get Obama connected to the blue collar folks that he needs to get elected. Ah, now here’s the question. Where have the blue collars gone?

Look at the declining membership of my old union, the International Association of Machinists (the IAM). It is down to 300,000 from over a million a few decades back. The same is true of the United Auto Workers (the UAW). It has about the same membership loss. Some of that loss is strictly attributable to the failure of many unions to attract blue collar votes. The UAW has not been able to organize the Toyota, Nissan and BMW plants opened in the South. But another part of this story is simply the loss of blue collar jobs to cheap labor outsourcing. So where are the blue collars?

(This is where living in the boonies makes it difficult to get data. None of the local libraries had a copy of the Labor Department's “Handbook of Labor Statistics.” I tried to get the data on line, but just couldn’t find it.)

My hunch is the blue collar vote constitutes a large number of retirees. The UAW’s “30 and out” created whole Florida villages of retired auto workers. Many of the unemployed in places like Ohio are blue collar workers whose jobs have gone to globalization. To me that’s a fancy term for a modern version of imperialism. So what’s Obama to do to appeal to this group of people?

Having spent many years toiling in the vineyard of retraining the unemployed, the answer is there is no simple answer. There are a whole variety of variables that impinge on what the answers might be. One variable is geography--for example, in Butte the primary job market for almost a hundred years was dominated by the mining industry. That’s where the jobs were. What’s there now? Nothing much in terms of employment opportunities. An employment policy has to consider factors like age, relocation, and retraining. Age because people who are over 50 are going to find it very difficult to find jobs, even with retraining. That leaves us with a large number of people who have had to skid down the job market and take much lower paying jobs in the service industries. The really good blue collar union jobs were the path to the middle class. These are the jobs that have been going overseas or been outsourced. You can see Obama’s dilemma.

There is no simple solution to the blue collar policy issues. Politicians try to find fast fixes in their appeals to various groups. Election campaigns have become more about image than substance; witness Hillary Clinton in a saloon drinking whiskey with the boys, John Kerry on his motorcycle, or Obama shooting hoops with the troops in Iraq. That’s nice, but I would hope Obama doesn’t continue down that road because the McCain, Rove, Bush Boys crowd are gonna keep chasing him down a dead end alley. Try as he will, he won’t be able to prove he’s just another blue collar Joe off the assembly line. And why should he be? What’s that got to do with being President? Nothing. Obama, don’t let the Carl Rove crowd create your agenda. If you do, you will get lost in their dark woods from which there is no escape. Stick to your agenda for the future. It’s yours and our only hope.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

Another Memory Jolt

This week there was a story in the NY Times about the Schiavone Construction Company. It turns out they are still under the influence of “the mob.” The key word here about Sciavone is “still.” It is as if somehow over time the mob sort of goes away, then shows up again. Periodically we have Gangbusters like Tom Dewey or Rudy Guiliani who proudly make announcements such as, “these arrests will deal the death blow to organized crime in this city.” Horns and trumpets should accompany these declarations as they are meant to assure the public that the District Attorneys have once and for all rid us of the scourge of the mob.

Until Schiavone was sold to a Spanish conglomerate last year, it was headed by Raymond J. Donovan, who was Secretary of Labor in the Reagan Administration. In 1987 he was indicted for stealing 7.4 million dollars from a subway contract. He was finally acquitted of the charges, but in the course of the trial a key witness testified that the Schiavone Construction Company was part of the Genovese Crime family. The present indictment charges them with setting up ghost organizations that are supposedly owned and run by women as part of affirmative action on Federal Contracts. As I read this stuff I wondered if we will ever learn that the mob business will never ever go away as long as there are ready and willing corrupters.

In massive construction contracts, such as the new fresh water filtration plant that is being built 10 stories down in the bedrock under Van Courtlandt Park, the price is now figured at about 3 billion dollars having started at 660 million. Hows that you ask? Quite simple. Every truck load of waste from the project is to be dumped in New Jersey. And guess what. It costs the project an extra 40 bucks per truck to get “yard clearance” in Jersey. The price starts to escalate.

In the Reagan years I was at the Ford Foundation. My major responsibility at Ford was employment. That inevitably lead to regular meetings in the Labor Department. It was during Donovan’s term at Labor that he invited me to a meeting in Virginia on minority employment. Because of my concern regarding his ties to organized crime, I figured I better check with my bosses Mike Sviridoff and McGeorge Bundy as to the advisability of my attending. As I said to them,”We have got enough problems being accused of stirring up Blacks with our voter registration drives. I don’t think we needed to be seen as connected to the mob.” Bundy laughed and thought he would trust my judgement as to what I might commit us to. Anyhow off to the meeting I went.

I was used to fairly regular meetings with Labor Secretaries in the Johnson and Carter Administrations, but I was never given the reception I received from Mr. Donovan. He wanted to make sure I was satisfied with the accommodations, and assured me, emphasizing “if you needed anything, anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask.” It seemed apparent to me that he was looking for the imprimatur of respectability from the Ford Foundation. And most likely more. It reminded me of my dealings with the Mafia in the Labor Movement, who also had a way of assuring someone who they wanted as a friend with, “If you need anything, just let me know.” I knew they weren’t just being polite.

After the meeting in Virginia I received my first Diploma from a government official simply for attending a meeting. Donovan couldn’t help being forever grateful that I even came to his meeting. My point of this story is simply to tell how corruption will never go away until there are no corruptees to accept the payoffs from the corrupters. Those will only be people who are motivated by something else besides making money. How do we achieve that?

Cool It on Obama

I have received a number of concerned emails from friends regarding Obama’s slide to the right. Being a political animal I have often been caught up in delirious enthusiasm for a candidate who seemed to be the “saviour” I was looking for. And yet in the course of the campaign I watched my saviour slip into the the robes of just another politician. Why does this happen?

I believe it reflects where the country is at at the time of the election. As suggested by Hamlet, people overwhelmingly want to stay with the troubles they know rather than move on to others that we know not of. What then makes for real change? When faced with a serious crisis that effects our everyday lives we begin to accept the notion of serious change. Our present day health care crisis is an example of a universal problem effecting an overwhelming number of citizens. But even the health crisis might not be enough to get us to accept the idea of a singular government-run system.

Obama made it plain for all to see that he was not going to lead a Nadar type campaign that might make some of us feel good, but not be electable. Now there’s the rub. Would we rather have a candidate say all the right things that the left would like to hear, or would we prefer that he or she get elected and then see how far one can push a left of center political agenda?

I remember FDR’s efforts at pushing a left of center agenda. What he learned early on was the need to prepare the country for changes to come. His fireside chats were his bully pulpit from which he tried valiantly to move his agenda forward. When the Supreme Court started to nullify some of the New Deal legislation, FDR tried to increase the number of judges. It became known as “packing the court.” It failed to win popular support. FDR gave up that idea, but continued his effort for change.

What is severely missing in our nations thinking is a program on the left that countervails the impact of the right wing juggernaught that has been in control for most of the last 25 years. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, and unfortunately with it the idea of socialism, there has not been serious discussion regarding an alternative to the present idea of Global Capitalism. I think this is what makes any serious discussion about alternatives to the present system untenable. This is why Obama has to walk on eggs in order not to appear as though he is a little to far left of center. As a candidate he can talk of “Change” until the cows come home, but here’s the rub. When it comes to having to cast his vote as a Senator, he has to get real. What does getting real mean? It means will his constituents, not just Illinois but the whole country, be willing to accept his position. His decision on wire tap legislation was probably to show that he is not a wimp when it comes to terrorism. Unfortunately, the Bush Rove Fox News crowd still have the electorate scared stiff over the terrorist threat. The latest bombardment is the Iran WMD Missile testing fever.

My paranoia does get the best of me at times like these. Just as the Iraq war seemed to be dying down a bit, a new “scarem” seemed to be needed. Here comes Israel with a fly by exercise in the Mediterranean as a warning to the Iranians. “Heah, we got the stuff to reach those nuclear sights.” Now the Iranians comeback with, “Oh yeah, watch our missiles fly over the sea.” We are once again being treated to the harem scarem formula to win an election. Obama has to walk a real tightrope in order not to look weak in the face of serious threats.

It is still a little early to see how this will play out on election day four and a half months from now. Lots of things are going to happen between now and then, some of which might even checkmate the WMD scarem stuff. Remember, we are a country that primarily reacts to “the economy stupid.” The home foreclosures, gas and food prices, bank failures, and G.M. stock at 10 bucks a share may very well take precedent over Iranian scarem with WMD stuff.

Okay, so this is the field that Obama is running in. Lets just all admit that it “ain’t gonna be easy.” At every turn there are minefields. That requires Barack Obama to be “Jack be nimble. Jack be quick. Jack jump over the candlestick.” Barack be nimble, Barack be quick, can not come across as weak on terrorists. Lets just hang in there with him as he makes his way through the minefields.

The last Blog asked for additional comments on what the next President will be confronted with. In case you missed them, here they are:
- Global climate change
- Structure, funding and delivery of universal health care
- Afganistan
- Food crisis, stemming in part from population growth
- Energy crisis

P.S. Can you believe the Bush administration folks asking the Congress to pass some laws regulating the banking industry? Good example of how things change in face of fiscal crisis.

Thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.

Paul Krugman Wake Up!

It is becoming increasingly difficult for me to read people who I thought were pretty smart and then watch them get dumb. Krugman, in the Times June 30th ’08, is asking whether Obama can outdo Ronald Reagan as a President of change? He sets up what my research professor called a “banana onion comparison” and, guess what, it didn’t compute. That is exactly what Krugman is doing in comparing what Reagan or Clinton had to confront on becoming the President with what Obama will be looking at.

Both Clinton and Reagan had a waltz compared to what Obama will face if elected. Clinton was preoccupied with “moving to the center.” Reagan was concerned with introducing the “new conservatism.” Okay, so in case you forgot what the next President will be confronted with, let me start with my list. All readers are invited, no encouraged, to add their favorites to what might be called “the list from hell.”

The Iraq war and how to bring our troops home

The Iran nuclear weapons crisis (Bush, Cheney, and Israel cooking up a “bomb’em” solution.)

The mortgage crisis and how to stabilize the housing market

The energy crisis, including the $5.00 a gallon gasoline and home heating oil

The Medicare prescription crisis that is doubling and tripling in yearly costs

The Social Security crisis with millions of Baby Boomers about to retire (The SS trust fund has been raped in order to pay for the billion dollar a day Iraq war.)

The economic downturn as a result of the loss of consumer spending (That was Bush’s idea of how to support the war effort. Now you got to admit that was original. This will also start to effect the various State Pension Plans which, guess what, are underfunded by millions of dollars?

The three trillion dollar national debt that President Bush will leave his successor

Our crumbling infrastructure like bridges, roads, levees, fire problems, subways, sewers, just to name a few.

These problems are exactly the type of socio-economic issues that can lead to massive social unrest. So honestly Paul Krugman, what are you talking about? The last President to face this kind of general crisis was FDR; not Reagan, Clinton, Carter or Nixon.

I want to remind my readers to add to “THE NEXT PRESIDENT’S CRISIS LIST.” Click “Comments” at the end of this blog. Type your comments in the “Leave you comment” box. If you have trouble with Google sign in, put your name in “Leave your comment” box (if you want) and hit “Anonymous” under the “Choose your Identity column. Then hit “PUBLISH YOUR COMMENT”. Or just send us an email and let us know if you would like us to put it on the blog for you.


Thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.

Recognizing a Problem

I am inspired by Jean Freemen's comment to "Lifetime Social Justice 6/9/08  regarding when do people recognize that a problem exists? That is a question that has confounded most thinkers through the ages. My own 90 years has taught me that we don’t respond to any predicted catastrophe until it is on top of us. Take the floods that are drowning the cities all along the Mississippi. They were supposed to be brought under control by the “Army Corps of Engineers.” For a long time that title made people feel comforted that this group of very smart engineers who can conquer and bring old mother nature to her knees. That has been the dream of human beings since the beginning of written history. After all, that would mean humans win this great undeclared war.

Jean Freeman rightly asks “shouldn’t we be talking once again about population issues?” That’s not an issue that directly effects us daily. By contrast, the increase in the price of gasoline or home heating oil smacks us directly in the pocketbook and we are ready to bring our politicians to their knees in demanding “solutions,” like eliminating the tax on gasoline and diesel fuel for the summer. Is that a solution? Of course not. It’s not even a band aid. It does not address the problem that is called “the US addiction to oil.” We simply refuse to recognize the finite nature of fossil fuels. To do so would force us to make fundamental changes in the way we live.

In a number of casual conversations with locals about the oil crisis, I was told “not to worry. The scientists and techies will come up with a solution.” I have thought about that answer and it amounts to nothing more than classic “denial.” Somebody somewhere out there is going to figure it out and everything will be just honky dory. Dream on, dream on. But that dreaming keeps us from ever looking into the abyss. So we go happily on until food prices go out of this world and somebody makes the observation that we have so many people on this planet and it can’t feed us all. I call it, “The Planet Hits Back.”

There are a whole number of areas where The Planet Hits Back phenomena is taking place. The food shortage brings up the population explosion, but it also raises the issue of water, an essential for all living things. In my youth it was a common element. I remember cold water springs all over the countryside. We used to just stop and have a nice cool drink. First water became polluted. Then the natural springs slowly dried up as the aquifers supplying the springs became overused and drained. The reaction back then was the same, “We just have to drill deeper wells. There’s plenty of water down there.” Now we have learned how to desalinate ocean water. And since the oceans are big enough, “what’s to worry about?” It takes a lot of energy to desalinate water. That’s what to worry about.

 I do believe that future wars may well be fought over who gets the water. Here in the US we continue to expand housing in the Arizona Nevada desert. The issue of water not only for crop irrigation but for all those golf courses and swimming pools will emerge as flash points. Developers in the Southwest want to tap the Great Lakes for all that fresh water just sitting there being used to move ships around. “The Planet Hits Back.”

With global warming comes changing weather patterns. Floods where there used to be droughts and droughts where there used to be floods. Tornadoes where there never were any and forest fires in places that never heard of them. The Arctic and Greenland ice melting, raising the worldwide ocean levels. The first hit are poor people living in low lying areas where nobody should have lived in the first place.

 Okay, so here’s an example of forward looking people. The Dutch, who have had considerable experience with the ocean water as a threat to survival, have decided that people living in low lying coastal flood zones will be moved to permit natural flooding to take place. Wow, what can the rest of us learn from that? Well, in fairness to the Chinese, they have been trying to hold down their population with the one child limit to a family. That has not worked too well as they mostly want boys. There will be a severe imbalance between the sexes in years to come. It’s a great example of unintended consequences. (Chinese boys can come visit the US where there will be a great number of Chinese girls from all the adoptions that have taken place these past many years.)

I really wish I had something more encouraging to say to Jean Freemen in her wish for a more rational world. In many ways we humans remain slaves to our evolutionary inheritance. As individuals we really do think that if we outwit everyone else “me and mine can survive no matter what.” It is only when our thinking becomes a group phenomena, as it has in Holland at least around the rising ocean problem, that we can address these problems with some level of rationality. We all hope for leaders who might effect the kind of changes needed to face up to our rapidly changing world. We don’t see much of them, largely because we are not receptive to news that requires serious change in our collective behaviors.

 My friend Hugh Jones, who wrote the guest blog “Peak Oil,” has never in his life planted a seed. He now has a “victory garden” from which we ate a delicious salad last Thursday. If the price of eggs keeps going up, we will seriously consider a couple of hens for our own egg supply. This may be the trick. As things seem to be sliding down hill, try to develop your survival strategy together with your neighbors, like group car rides to the supermarket or solar panels on your roof to cut your dependence on oil.

We would love to hear any ideas. Click “Comments” at the end of this blog. Type your comments in the “Leave your comment” box. If you have trouble with the Google sign in, you can put your name in the “Leave your comment” box (if you want) and just hit “Anonymous” under the “Choose Your Identity” column. Then hit “PUBLISH YOUR COMMENT.” Or just send us an email and let us know if you would like us to put it on the blog for you.

Thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.

Internet and the Brain

In August 2007 (On Becoming a Blogger) I wrote about my joys of discovering all that the Internet could do for me. I also expressed some concerns about the effects of the rapid fire responses of Google, Wickopedia, etc. My concern was and is the impact of instant information on real learning. Being an old Geezer I wondered, does learning require some hard work on the learners part or can it be just a few strokes of the keyboard away? I continue to worry about that. Now comes a very revealing article in the July-August issue of the Atlantic Monthly titled “ Is Google making us Stoop-id? Subtitle “What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” by Nicholas Carr.

As I have enjoyed my journey into the cyberspace world I have also had an underneath queasy feeling that I was losing something. I could not be more specific but there it was. Maybe it was just missing those seemingly endless hours in the library stacks looking for some obscure article about work in the 14 century Manchester England. A successful hunt in the stacks for some obscure piece of knowledge seemed to be a victory of learning over ignorance.

Carr relates his Internet experience, “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone or something has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry reprogramming the memory.” Further he says, “I am not thinking the way I used to think.” Carr is concerned that he has lost the art of reading a serious long book and thinking about what it has to say. My experience has been a far less effort to read understand, and make my own critical judgments. It is now so easy to get all the answers off the Internet, No need to read the whole thing just go to Wikopedia and Bingo you can get the answer to anything. Yes, just about anything. So what’s the matter with that? I am not sure. But let me guess.

I use to tackle big books as an adventure of discovery of learning and critical judgement. Most important was the latter as it was an exercise in thinking. That’s what made you wade through a bunch of ideas, facts, notions, hypothesis, and the authors conclusions. If I were to pick out the single most important exercise it was critical thinking. You were forced to figure out your own analysis of what was presented. Therein lies the great divide between now and before the Internet BTI. The internet is our new knowledge source as against the old musty smelling library stacks with their independent thinking and conclusions.( I really do miss that musty smell.)

Carr quotes Maryanne Wolf a developmental psychologist at Tufts. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the Internet is a style that puts ”efficiency” and immediacy” above all else. It may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex prose commonplace. When we read on line, she says we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Finally she suggests that, “Our ability to interpret text to make the the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.”

There is much more in the Carr article of interest. Like the impact of the invention of the clock on our lives. How that machine made us slaves to the clock that told us exactly what to do and when. For those of you who are concerned, puzzled or just curious, I suggest reading the whole piece.

I will certainly continue to use the Internet, but with more suspect regarding the information I am given. That at least might send me into my own little stacks of reference sources in my home or the local library. The all engrossing affect of the spin factor may be how we got to where we are in the information explosion. Stop and think how does your mind processes information as a result of the Internet experience? A good exercise might be to take a little time to comment on this blog.

Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y. (especially on your birthday.)

Lifetime Social Justice Award

Friday I attended a Conference at Stony Brook University on “How Class Works.” Under the leadership of Professor Zweig, this has become a biennial international event. I participated in a panel discussion of the Labor Movement After WWII. That same evening at a banquet I was given an award for “Lifetime Contribution to Social Justice for Working People.”

In my many years in a variety of organizations I have been given awards, but never paid much attention to them. Why? Because I always had a strong feeling that my accomplishments were highly dependent on those around me who made my achievements possible. This award was different as it reflected on a whole lifetime of social action.

My old friend Stanley Aronowitz spent many hours on a Friday night traffic crawl to get to the Conference to introduce me to the attendees. He cited my book, “Wasn’t That a Time,” MIT Press, for those interested in my life story in the struggle for social justice. Stanley and a group of new social justice fighters are working on a new Left Manifesto. I sure look forward to that.

In accepting the award I told a very enthusiastic audience that my social action consciousness came from my German Anarchist father who jumped ship to stay in the US, specifically Brooklyn NY, to avoid service in the Kaiser’s army. Growing up in a world of socialist dreamers taught me the importance of seeing social injustice wherever it was, and the need to take action against it.

I told the audience of my earliest experiences of sitting on my father’s shoulders while welcoming Eugene Victor Debs when he came out of prison; of the 1927 candlelight vigil in Union Square for Sacco and Vanzetti who had been put to death that very night; of my time in the UAW; the TUUL Plumbers Helpers Local; the International Association of Machinists from which I was expelled three times; and in Montana for the Mine MIll & Smelter Workers.

In looking at our present situation, my plea to the gathered was for all of us to recognize the emerging energy crisis and its implications for working people. The Independent truck drivers road blocks protesting over $5 a gallon for Diesel is just the tip of the iceberg. The cost of all commodities that are oil dependent are about to go sky high. This will bring severe deprivation for those who can least afford it. Gasoline, food, heating oil, kerosene for cooking, plastics, medicines, and so many other everyday things are dependent on oil.
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If we don’t find constructive ways for people to direct their bitterness and rage over the skyrocketing cost of living, they will turn on each other. This is precisely what we witnessed in South Africa in the last few weeks. Black Citizens of South Africa turning on Blacks from Zimbabwe, Malawi, and other neighboring countries to vent their rage over their own frustration on innocent people who are also in desperate straights trying to find a place to make a living.

It is our responsibility to develop ideas about how to deal with this emerging crisis. Organizing people in support of those ideas is the social justice agenda for our time. To my pleasant surprise that brought the whole hall to its feet in applause. For a brief moment I thought I was back in 1938 making a speech to the unemployed on a street corner in the Bronx.

I thank the “How Class Works 2008 Conference” for that opportunity. And I do so heartily hope we can rise to the occasion.

I especially thank Kate for her support of the conference logistics. N.H.W.Y.