Sunday, April 27, 2008

"Disney Land" at Riverhead

Let me explain this blog. Kate and I live in about the middle of Long Island. Twenty-five miles east of us is a town called Riverhead. A few miles beyond it is the Hamptons, the summer playground of the rich and famous. For Kate and I it has become a boundary line of class.

There is a proposal to build a “Disney Land” at Riverhead on 775 acers, once used to build military aircraft and now proposed as yet another great party playground. What we don’t seem to recognize is the fact that “the party” of cheap fuel is over. In face of this simple fact, a 360 foot indoor ski jump is an absurd notion. This is a letter I am sending to a local newspaper called “The Press.”

“Disney Land” at Riverhead

To the Editor of The Press

Riverhead Resorts is proposing to build a 360 feet high indoor ski mountain, eight resort complexes each with its own hotel totaling 2,200 rooms a 100,000 square foot convention center, 2,050 time share units and a 92 acre artificial lake. So far the environmentalists have weighed in heavily calling it, “Humongous and horrendous.”Causing severe traffic problems, increased air pollution etc. All of that I certainly agree with. Yet there is another issue at play here. We, as responsible “caretakers” of the environment for future generations, need to start considering the effects of todays decision on those who come after us. What with our minimal concern for global warming, and probably far more immediate impact of using up of the earth’s greatest gift to us, fossil fuel, we have been very poor custodians of our children's future.

Stop and think for a minute what Riverhead Resorts will require in energy to create the “humongous” project? If I had more details I am certain I could tell the readers exactly what we are talking about in terms of how much oil, coal, natural gas or nuclear energy it’s going to use up to make this thing work? Add to that the amount of carbon dioxide it will create so some folks can go indoor skiing? It is mind boggling to think that in a time when oil has peaked and the price is heading to $4.00 a gallon we don’t seem to get the connection between the supply and demand of cheap energy.

This Riverhead Resorts proposal reminds me of what the environmentalists were saying back when Nelson Rockefeller proposed the building of the World Trade Center. They pointed out that the 86 story buildings with all their elevators, escalators and lights would use more electricity than the whole city of Syracuse N.Y. Was anyone listening? I don’t think so. That was then, this is now and we ought to know better as we approach the end of the great party of cheap oil. (By the way, Governor Rockefeller needed the support of the construction unions in a pending election hence the WTC idea.)

As I write I am reminded of an observation Lee Iacoca’s made some time ago. He asked, “Where are our leaders?” It is simply amazing that not one person in that large crowd of would be leaders in Washington has had the courage to step up to the plate on the diminishing supply of oil. The party that sparked the industrial revolution that started about 150 years ago is coming to an end. We can start recognizing that fact by husbanding the energy we have left and not blowing it away on an indoor ski resort and all the rest of the overdevelopment being proposed. Of course I understand the temptation of the number of jobs it will create and the new taxes for Riverhead etc. But stop and think about what it will take to make it work as well as the environmental impact and therein is the trade off. Today versus our children's future. You decide.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y. In future blogs I will be spending considerable time on the developing end of the cheap oil catastrophe.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Gender versus Race

Trying to multi-task in the Spring has made me late on my blog. Sounds like the name of a song. If you live in the country and on the water there are numerous chores that fall into the “must do” category comes Spring. This morning for instance we were out cutting and raking the Spartina patens, our barrier plants that keep the waves that come over our bulkhead in the storms from taking our dirt out to sea.

Governor Spitzer’s prostitute bruha and the guys shouting ”go iron my shirt” at Hillary brought the gender issue up again. I say “again” because I got my credentials for speaking out on male-female warfare as a result of an article I wrote for the Harvard Business Review in 1977. The article, “Two Women, Three Men on a Raft,” was a sort of epiphany for me. It revealed how men consciously or unconsciously bond together to deprive women of positions of power. (There was many a man who asked me, “Schrank, do you really believe that bullshit you wrote?”)

On an Outward Bound trip down the Rogue river five of us shared the responsibility of each taking turns as helms-person. Whenever a women assumed the position the men, without ever saying a word to each other, would make sure her efforts failed. The article became an HBR Reprint record breaker and was published again 15 years later. OK, that’s my credential for speaking up again on the gender problem. When the second edition of the piece came out there were a number of comments from women insisting that “much progress had been made” since the article first appeared. I questioned that. I acknowledged progress in the lower ranks of management, but not in the top positions where the real power resides. For instance, a random check of the Business Round Table, a very prestigious management organization made up of CEO’s, has 156 members. Six are women.

In an article in the Sunday Times on March 16th, “Postfeminism and Other Fairy Tales,” Kate Zernike attempts to understand what has happened to women since the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies. The Dems primary campaign has brought the issue back to the front burner. History and politics are rarely predictable. We are confronted with a choice between a women or a Black man for President of the United States. Between the Spitzer prostitute episode, a bunch of knuckle heads yelling at Hillary “go iron my shirt”, and Obama having to make a major speech on understanding racial issues, the Dem. primary voters are clearly between a rock and a hard place. The Zernike article raises an interesting question, “Is it harder to overcome racial bias than gender bias?”

In one of the few discussions I had with Betty Friedan, I asked her why women would be different than men once they achieved power? Remember Freidan and I are both products of an earlier radical world. Betty assured me that, precisely because women were not as obsessed with power as men, they would bring about equality through social change. I believed that, whether it is women or men in leadership, the essential is a firm ideology and the ability to implement it. So far, even in present time, where women have assumed some measure of power, I have not seen much difference.

I have come around to the point of view that men are from Mars and women from Venus. I think men have too much of the Baboon male dominance gene in us to stop behaving the way we do towards women. I am reminded how different men behave in meetings when there are no women present and how the Baboon gene comes into play as soon as a female shows up. Whether in the Union or the Ford Foundation, the preening behavior is the same. And when it comes to giving women power, I was back on the Rogue river. In that article I suggested that if women thought men in high corporate positions are going to roll over and make room for them, they are whistling Dixie. Hence we are now at the “glass cealing.” Kate reminds me there are exceptions as in the case of Paul Allaire at Xerox who did focused on bringing talented women into the leadership, one of whom is now CEO. Yes, I agree, but the exception may prove the rule.

Now to our “rock and a hard place” and why I have great reservations about Hillary. The primary campaign so far has very distinctly put Obama on the defensive regarding race. How did that happen? It was Bill Clinton who injected the race question when he intimated that Jesse Jackson couldn’t win in North Carolina, inferring neither could Obama. Innocent Bill, whom I absolutely do not trust. Then came the suggestion that the poor Black man wouldn’t know what to do if the phone rang at 3AM in the White House. (Now the Obama folks could have responded to that by suggesting to the Hillary people that it might be Monica Lewinsky calling for Bill. But they didn’t.) Up until now the Obama people have been careful not to play the gender card. So here we are.

I think it may be easier to deal with race than gender simply because race is not something we have to relate to on a intimate daily basis. It also does not trigger the Baboon gene for male dominance. White folks can accept the black celebrity entertainers or sports people as the greatest. That is different than experiencing the daily intimacy that males and females deal with in every day life.

What we need to do now is to encourage our candidates to get on the issues confronting the American people. And STOP trying to undermine each other based on race or gender. This will only happen if enough of us keep raising hell about the race or gender sniping until this sad campaign is over. Footnote. Any race or gender baiting only helps elect John McCain. Don’t forget to enjoy the Spring.

Thanks Kate. N.H.W.Y.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Dems. Keep Doing It

First the Obama misstep. It makes me very sad to watch how Hillary is doing Obama in. What exactly did he say. “Pennsylvania voters bitter over their economic circumstance cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” as a way to explain their frustration.

I am reminded that Obama was a college professor who taught constitutional law. What he or his advisors slipped up on was that a political campaign in modern day America cannot tolerate throwing out an interesting idea simply for consideration. In a classroom, yes. In politics, never suggest something people might “think about.” The last person to try to raise the level of political debate was Adlai Stevenson in 1956. He also won the popular vote, but not the Electoral College. You see what happened to him.

When I was State President of the Machinists Union my own experience with the gun issue would have very much supported the Obama idea. Yes, workers in upstate New York in particular saw their guns as a hedge against all threats including the economy. Many a member told me,”Look, if I have to I’ll go hunt or fish for food for my family.”

Since the advent of television with its masters of spin we have seen the dumbing down of America. The tragedy in this situation is the role of this same dummying down in the primary season. Through all this awful sniping, McCain and his handlers are having a ball watching how the Democrats are helping to establish him as a steady, trustworthy, old hand at the helm.

Second, I received a 36 page document called “Left Turn: An Open Letter to U.S. Radicals,” a draft manifesto being circulated for comment. The authors welcome responses at group15@gmail.com. The term “manifesto” can’t help but remind me of another one I read as a very young man that changed my life, as it has many others from the time it was written in the 1850’s. If you are curious you can get a copy off the website above. I have held a strong opinion that the decline of any kind of ideological left is a major reason for the emergence of the powerful ideological right in our political system. I wrote a piece some years ago, “The Vacuum on the Left,” that argued as a result of the downfall of the Soviet Union, as well as Socialist Yugoslavia, the ideological left, without a vision of the future, turned itself primarily into mechanics trying to find ways of humanizing the existing system with no ideas regarding an alternative, Maybe what is lacking is an idealistic utopian view of how a better world might look. Oh I can’t get into that now, but I will do a separate blog on the role of the “utopian vision” in political-economic change.
Thanks Kate. N.H.W.Y.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

You Want to Talk "Change"?

I have finished my guitar stand and am back into the blog. A “stand” makes it easier to just grab the guitar and start playing and singing; and that’s good for my soul. If it’s packed away I tend to forget about it; and that’s bad. Now on to “change.”

A few days ago Charlie Rose had the President of Shell Oil, Mr. Hofmeister, as his guest. Hofmeister had interesting things to say about the impending energy crisis. He acknowledged that we are in the time zone of peak oil. He talked of Shell’s extensive effort at finding new sources. He acknowledged that there is oil, but the cost of extraction will continue to contribute to increased cost at the pump.

Hofmeister did not hesitate to accept Charlie’s suggestion of $4’s a gallon. He went on to say that all oil products would go well beyond the $4 mark to $5’s and $6’s a gallon. Keep in mind that Diesel is already well beyond $4’s and the independent truckers are blocking roads in protest. He added that people will have to learn to “drive less and find more fuel efficient vehicles.”

For the first time in a long time I heard a major capitalist player use the phrase “social unrest.” The President of Shell Oil said he had real concerns that higher oil prices could lead to social unrest that could be a real threat to society.

In Sweden, back in the fifties, the phrase “social unrest” was very much part of the thinking of Swedish capitalists. I had been in Sweden at the invitation of the Work Institute looking at some of their experiments in self managing work teams. The Swedish government’s economist, Mr. Meisner, had asked me to go up north to spend some time with the miners in Lulea as they were having production problems. Upon returning to Stockholm I spent an evening with Meisner. I reported my impressions of the miners’ dissatisfaction as quite normal considering the kind of work they do. His position was that the government could not afford to have social unrest in one of its critical sources of energy. And so began a lengthy discussion of the social unrest phenomena.

Meisner thought that American capitalists were less concerned with social unrest because of their distance from the Soviet Union. He believed that Europe’s fear of social unrest grew out of the events that lead up to the Russian Revolution.

My own experience with social unrest comes from the great depression in the thirties. We had almost daily examples. There were marches on Washington, demonstrations that occupied Union Square on a regular basis, unemployment sit-ins at welfare bureaus and in the labor movement, and sit down strikes that occupied factories. People were marching--250 thousand in a May Day Parade. There were mass demonstrations that could turn out thousands on a day’s notice. Now that was social unrest on a grand scale, and it scared the life out of the ruling class. That’s what brought about all those New Deal changes--unemployment insurance, home relief, social security, workers compensation, etc.

I do indeed agree with Hofmeister that social unrest is what scares the life out of the system. I probably have said this before, but the problem for now is the lack of an organizing catalyst to funnel the discontent into organized actions. As I watched the independent truckers block highways over the high cost of diesel fuel, I saw the first signs of Hofmeister’s concerns regarding the rise of social unrest. I believe that kind of protest will wake up the need for change. Nothing short of a heavy dose of fear will move those in power to begin to make the changes we dream of. But it will not happen unless there is action that forces it. So as peoples’ homes are foreclosed, gas and food prices rise, and people can’t afford heat, we will see more signs of unrest. As a famous movie actress descending a staircase observed, “Fasten your seat belts. We are in for a rough ride.”

Thanks Kate. N.H.W.Y.