A couple of items in the Times today caught me eye. First there was a fire at the Morris Park Gym up there on Morris Park Avenue in the North Bronx. I lived two blocks away from that Gym at 586 Morris Park Avenue. (The things we remember.) On occasion I would stop in and watch, mostly Golden Glove hopefuls, working out. Periodically a trainer would ask if I wanted to try a little workout in the ring. I did once, got one good smack in the nose that started to bleed and that ended of my boxing career.
There were many old time boxers who hung out at the gym and dreamed of comebacks. There was old Italian guy who they called “smash” mostly because thats what his face looked like. He would run up and down the street shadow boxing with some unseen opponent. Kids would go find a bell somewheres and when they saw Smash they would hit the bell and he’d come tearing out as though he was in the ring yelling, “where is he where is he?” Kids would point, “he’s over there. Pointing in another direction “No he’s over there.” and this poor old guy would go punching and yelling “where’s the bastard. Wheres that yella sonamabitch.”
One long Spring evening as the game with “Smash was going on my Papa came by and happened to see what was happening. He called me over sat me down on the stoop and asked, “why are you torturing that poor man?” I said I thought he liked the idea of boxing and that’s what he was doing.” Papa disagreed. He said,” the mans brain has been punched so much that he now is punch drunk and can’t do anything else. He is sick and should not be tormented by a bunch of kids taking advantage of his sickness to get a few laughs, that's just cruel.” “But” Papa I said “he seems to enjoy it.” “No” he said, “he just can’t help himself and that's how we know he is sick. So I don’t want you to be part of that anymore. It’s cruel and we don’t believe in being cruel to others or animals like our dog or cat.”
When my Papa left all the kids gathered round the stoop wanting to know what he said? I told them as best I could. They talked about it for a while and then they agreed we wouldn’t do that anymore.Yet periodically I would see Smash running up and down Morris park Avenue shadow boxing with a shadow. I never saw the kids do the bell thing again.
Second piece that caught my eye was an Obituary to Lester Rodney who I had occasion to meet back in the 30ies. He was a sports writer for the Daily Worker a communist newspaper. As the Obit said he was a very early champion of Black athletes in the major leagues. “In 1936, more than a decade before Jackie Robinson broke the major league color barrier, Mr.Rodney pressured the baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and the major league club owners to end baseball’s racial barrier.”
“In recounting the mounting pressures baseball faced to end its color barrier Arnold Rampersad wrote in his 1997 biography of Jackie Robinson that the most vigorous effort came from the “Communist press.” He added, “that if Robinson was perceived by civil rights workers ---and especially Martin luther King as a historical turning point, anybody who facilitated the emergence of Jackie Robinson should be seen as one of the heroes of race integration.” He was referring to Lester Rodney.
It is sad that that the role of the left in the history of the 20th Century is often denigrated to mostly the horrors of Stalin in the Soviet Union. It is the obituaries that periodically we learn of the the Lester Rodneys of the thirties of which I consider myself to be a part. The left in this country was in the forefront of most of the movements for change that had direct bearing on the dramatic improvement of the plight of the working class that nowadays is called the middle class. (With the loss of manufacturing it is rapidly disappearing. (More about that in my next blog.)
I found it interesting that this obituary appeared on XMas eve period of time when the christian world is celebrating the man I believe was the first socialist thinker Jesus Christ. He and my father had an awful lot in common. For that I am so very thankful.
Wishing you all a very Happy Holiday and a Better New year.
Thank you kate N.H.W.Y.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Celebrities
Warning: This Blog is rated “R”. (Need to do this as I have some readers who have who have told me their children shouldn’t hear bad words.) Oh well, what can I say.
Celebrities
I have long been fascinated with our country’s intense interest in the lives of our chosen. These are people in the worlds of entertainment, sports and politics. At a very young age I learned of celebrities like Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey and movie stars like Charlie Chaplin, Tom Mix, Gloria Swanson and so on. They were written about in The Daily News, The Mirror, and most notorious, The Police Gazette. I do remember one Gazette headline, “Crooner Russ Colombo Shot by a Pal?” All the boys in PS 34 thought that was the funniest thing in the world. Fatty Arbuckle, the 350 pound comedian, got on top of some Hollywood starlet and killed her. Now that was almost as much fun as the Colombo thing, but there was that extra zest of sex. We didn’t have a clue what that was about, but we knew it was forbidden fruit.
Than there was the case of Errol Flynn and his encounter with a Starlet on his yacht. In the 30ies and 40ies there were all kinds of law suites that could result from some casual assignation, like “alienation of affection.” This girl friend of Flynn’s sued him for that and so the whole steamy story ended up in the tabloids. The young women described to the judge what happened on the boat. Flynn invited her to come on down to the cabin. Then he got undressed. The judge asked,”Did he have all his clothes off?” “No,” replied the woman, “he kept his shoes on.” Later on in the trial the judge asked Flynn why he kept his shoes on? Flynn replied, “Your honor, you have to be very careful about athletes foot.” Well of course the whole country got a great laugh out of that one. Yes, I know what your thinking, so how come Schrank remembers that so well? I’ll tell you later.
Keep in mind that was all well before television. Radio was just in its infancy. That meant the major source for this stuff came from the tabloids. We would pick it up primarily from our parents or older kids who were reading the tabloids. What was it that made this stuff about celebrities private lives so interesting and engaging?
With the advent of television this kind of celebrity gossip has become a major business enterprise. Which brings me to yes, you guessed it, Tiger Woods. I was sitting in a bar in St Croix. It was sometime around 4.30 and all the blue collar pickup-truck guys were there. The PGA was on the tube and it was Tiger’s first big win. The guys at the bar are pissin’ and moanin’. “Jesus Christ, now the fuckin’ niggers are gonna take over the only white man’s game.” I said, “Well, you got to admit he is one cool golfer.” That of course went nowheres, as I was told how we white folks have lost football, basketball and even baseball, the country’s signature sport. What did impress even the worst of the bar crowd was Tiger’s cool.
So what happened? We seem to have an obsessive need to create these celebrity heroes. We imbue them with all kinds of magical powers. They are not supposed to have any ordinary human foibles. Sports fans buy team jackets and jerseys to wear because, as one guy explained to me, “It makes me feel just like him.” With all this we still have that puritan streak that wants us to think of our heroes as chaste, sincere homebodies. It’s the sex stuff that we really eat up, because all of us have the same desires that we try to tamp down, but so often get the best of us. That’s why I remembered the Errol Flynn story so vividly. So what is going on here?
I need to go back to Walden Pond and Henry David Thoreau, who suggested that “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” If that was true back in Thoreau’s time how much worse must it be now? Back then there was opportunity to gain some identity through individual effort, to make a living and support a family. The mass society that we live in now has very little room for individuals to become much more than another number in the world of people going to work in the office towers of the city or the assembly lines of the factory. It is in that “desperation” that people try to live another life by creating a closeness with a celebrity of their own choosing. We imbue them with the characteristics we admire and feel uplifted because he or she is us and we are them. The fans made Tiger Woods into somebody he obviously never was. It’s as if he was imagined by his fans into this chaste, clean, cool homebody where the word “cheated” would never be heard. Yes, like in “Home on the Range.”
It’s not that Woods went off the track. It’s his legions of fans who were off the track right along. They needed him to be this pure cool golfer who could show the world how great we are. Now he has behaved like so many who live in quiet desperation that we can no longer abide with him. He has really betrayed his fans by acting like so many of them. He broke that hero mold, so what have we got left. Nothing but that dammed old “quiet desperation.”
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Celebrities
I have long been fascinated with our country’s intense interest in the lives of our chosen. These are people in the worlds of entertainment, sports and politics. At a very young age I learned of celebrities like Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey and movie stars like Charlie Chaplin, Tom Mix, Gloria Swanson and so on. They were written about in The Daily News, The Mirror, and most notorious, The Police Gazette. I do remember one Gazette headline, “Crooner Russ Colombo Shot by a Pal?” All the boys in PS 34 thought that was the funniest thing in the world. Fatty Arbuckle, the 350 pound comedian, got on top of some Hollywood starlet and killed her. Now that was almost as much fun as the Colombo thing, but there was that extra zest of sex. We didn’t have a clue what that was about, but we knew it was forbidden fruit.
Than there was the case of Errol Flynn and his encounter with a Starlet on his yacht. In the 30ies and 40ies there were all kinds of law suites that could result from some casual assignation, like “alienation of affection.” This girl friend of Flynn’s sued him for that and so the whole steamy story ended up in the tabloids. The young women described to the judge what happened on the boat. Flynn invited her to come on down to the cabin. Then he got undressed. The judge asked,”Did he have all his clothes off?” “No,” replied the woman, “he kept his shoes on.” Later on in the trial the judge asked Flynn why he kept his shoes on? Flynn replied, “Your honor, you have to be very careful about athletes foot.” Well of course the whole country got a great laugh out of that one. Yes, I know what your thinking, so how come Schrank remembers that so well? I’ll tell you later.
Keep in mind that was all well before television. Radio was just in its infancy. That meant the major source for this stuff came from the tabloids. We would pick it up primarily from our parents or older kids who were reading the tabloids. What was it that made this stuff about celebrities private lives so interesting and engaging?
With the advent of television this kind of celebrity gossip has become a major business enterprise. Which brings me to yes, you guessed it, Tiger Woods. I was sitting in a bar in St Croix. It was sometime around 4.30 and all the blue collar pickup-truck guys were there. The PGA was on the tube and it was Tiger’s first big win. The guys at the bar are pissin’ and moanin’. “Jesus Christ, now the fuckin’ niggers are gonna take over the only white man’s game.” I said, “Well, you got to admit he is one cool golfer.” That of course went nowheres, as I was told how we white folks have lost football, basketball and even baseball, the country’s signature sport. What did impress even the worst of the bar crowd was Tiger’s cool.
So what happened? We seem to have an obsessive need to create these celebrity heroes. We imbue them with all kinds of magical powers. They are not supposed to have any ordinary human foibles. Sports fans buy team jackets and jerseys to wear because, as one guy explained to me, “It makes me feel just like him.” With all this we still have that puritan streak that wants us to think of our heroes as chaste, sincere homebodies. It’s the sex stuff that we really eat up, because all of us have the same desires that we try to tamp down, but so often get the best of us. That’s why I remembered the Errol Flynn story so vividly. So what is going on here?
I need to go back to Walden Pond and Henry David Thoreau, who suggested that “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” If that was true back in Thoreau’s time how much worse must it be now? Back then there was opportunity to gain some identity through individual effort, to make a living and support a family. The mass society that we live in now has very little room for individuals to become much more than another number in the world of people going to work in the office towers of the city or the assembly lines of the factory. It is in that “desperation” that people try to live another life by creating a closeness with a celebrity of their own choosing. We imbue them with the characteristics we admire and feel uplifted because he or she is us and we are them. The fans made Tiger Woods into somebody he obviously never was. It’s as if he was imagined by his fans into this chaste, clean, cool homebody where the word “cheated” would never be heard. Yes, like in “Home on the Range.”
It’s not that Woods went off the track. It’s his legions of fans who were off the track right along. They needed him to be this pure cool golfer who could show the world how great we are. Now he has behaved like so many who live in quiet desperation that we can no longer abide with him. He has really betrayed his fans by acting like so many of them. He broke that hero mold, so what have we got left. Nothing but that dammed old “quiet desperation.”
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Monday, December 7, 2009
The Afghanistan Dither
After many weeks of “dither,” this word seldom heard or used burst into prominence. The right wing accused Obama of dithering, i.e. lacking decision making regarding the war in Afghanistan. I went to Webster to see what exactly it meant to “dither.” “Dither: Trembling, quivering. State of great agitation, excitable confusion. To act hesitatingly or in a disturbed or excited manner.”
There you have it. Now which word is referring to Obama? Well he was not quivering or in great agitation, so I guess he was hesitating. How dare he hesitate when we are supposed to be off to war. Yes, McCain, Beck, Huckabee, et al were accusing the President of the brand new crime of “dithering” over what to do with the war in Afghanistan. The White House insisted that the President was very deeply involved studying his options with all his top advisors. In fact the Sunday Times reported that he had been in constant discussions with 16 of his top advisors, half of whom were military and the others Cabinet members like Clinton, Biden, Rice and Emanuel. That’s who he had been dithering with for weeks trying to figure out what to do about the Afganistan war.
They came to the conclusion that they would send in 30,000 more troops and create some benchmarks to be met for the Afganis’ under Karzai. In exchange for this effort we would start to draw down our troops by 2011. Here’s the thing that drives me nuts. We have this big kabuki gathering of Generals and other high level government bureaucrats. Each plays their role. “I am the General so give me more troops and stuff. I am Special Envoy so I tell Karzai to shape up or else. As Secretary of State I will get support amongst allies,” and so on and so forth.
I don’t believe that any of this had beans to do with the final decision. During the campaign Obama made clear his opposition to escalating the war. Now he’s the President, so what happened? What is missing from the West Point speech and the long newspaper articles is the political considerations that that went into the decision making process.
Here’s how I think it went. First of all, we have this serious economic situation here at home. If we don’t get the unemployment numbers under control by 2010 Obama is going to take a shellacking in the midterms. If he walks away from Afghanistan, the right wing will use the old excuse that the Dems are soft on terrorists and are giving into our enemies. That’s a serious threat to Obama’s chances in 2012. That’s what went into the Administration’s decision to pick up where George Bush left off. Did we already forget that with all the expose of the “phony war” against non-existent WMD, old George won re-election anyway. In my opinion, if Obama wants a second term, he has to follow the Bush strategy. Political lesson: “It is far better to keep fighting a dumb war that will solve nothing in the end than to take action against it and end it.” The politicos are also haunted by the spectacle of poor old LBJ in his last days; a sort of King Lear victim of the Veitnam fiasco. I am also reminded that we nostalgically cling to our myths of wild west frontier where the lone shootemup cowboy is our legendary hero. We want to relive that in every military encounter.
So as we listen to all the Generals, Special Envoys’ Holbrooke or Mitchell, and assorted other experts, keep in mind that what we are seeing is primarily a political decision. It has more to do with what’s happening on the ground here at home than in the hills of Kandahar, Waziristan or Kabul.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
There you have it. Now which word is referring to Obama? Well he was not quivering or in great agitation, so I guess he was hesitating. How dare he hesitate when we are supposed to be off to war. Yes, McCain, Beck, Huckabee, et al were accusing the President of the brand new crime of “dithering” over what to do with the war in Afghanistan. The White House insisted that the President was very deeply involved studying his options with all his top advisors. In fact the Sunday Times reported that he had been in constant discussions with 16 of his top advisors, half of whom were military and the others Cabinet members like Clinton, Biden, Rice and Emanuel. That’s who he had been dithering with for weeks trying to figure out what to do about the Afganistan war.
They came to the conclusion that they would send in 30,000 more troops and create some benchmarks to be met for the Afganis’ under Karzai. In exchange for this effort we would start to draw down our troops by 2011. Here’s the thing that drives me nuts. We have this big kabuki gathering of Generals and other high level government bureaucrats. Each plays their role. “I am the General so give me more troops and stuff. I am Special Envoy so I tell Karzai to shape up or else. As Secretary of State I will get support amongst allies,” and so on and so forth.
I don’t believe that any of this had beans to do with the final decision. During the campaign Obama made clear his opposition to escalating the war. Now he’s the President, so what happened? What is missing from the West Point speech and the long newspaper articles is the political considerations that that went into the decision making process.
Here’s how I think it went. First of all, we have this serious economic situation here at home. If we don’t get the unemployment numbers under control by 2010 Obama is going to take a shellacking in the midterms. If he walks away from Afghanistan, the right wing will use the old excuse that the Dems are soft on terrorists and are giving into our enemies. That’s a serious threat to Obama’s chances in 2012. That’s what went into the Administration’s decision to pick up where George Bush left off. Did we already forget that with all the expose of the “phony war” against non-existent WMD, old George won re-election anyway. In my opinion, if Obama wants a second term, he has to follow the Bush strategy. Political lesson: “It is far better to keep fighting a dumb war that will solve nothing in the end than to take action against it and end it.” The politicos are also haunted by the spectacle of poor old LBJ in his last days; a sort of King Lear victim of the Veitnam fiasco. I am also reminded that we nostalgically cling to our myths of wild west frontier where the lone shootemup cowboy is our legendary hero. We want to relive that in every military encounter.
So as we listen to all the Generals, Special Envoys’ Holbrooke or Mitchell, and assorted other experts, keep in mind that what we are seeing is primarily a political decision. It has more to do with what’s happening on the ground here at home than in the hills of Kandahar, Waziristan or Kabul.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Same Old Capitalism
I hate to admit this but for a very long time I, together with many old lefties, thought that the old capitalism I had fought with had become at least somewhat benign. Let me see if I can explain? Back in the ‘30ies when things were “going to hell in a hand-basket,” we were able to wring enormous concessions from the system. Yes, we were accused by our Trotskyite competitors of being reformists who were busy making the system work instead of destroying it. I do admit to that.
There were a long list of changes that we helped bring about. I was happily busy in the Labor Movement organizing workers to deal with the rawhide kinds of exploitation that robbed them of any kind of a decent standard of living. People worked in sweatshop conditions; no living wage, no overtime pay, indiscriminate firing, merciless speed up, and robbed of all dignity and respect for what they were producing. Wow, how the young militant Labor Movement changed all that. We created that great new “Middle Class” of Americans who now own their own homes, drive fancy SUV’s, and go on Caribbean or Disney vacations. For me the epiphany what we had accomplished came when I happened to be in Venice in the late ‘70ies. There was a bus with an identification that said ”Coventry.” Upon inquiring I was told these were Steel Workers from Coventry, England enjoying a holiday in Venice.
I remember how that news effected me. I sat down on a waterfront bench with tears in my eyes. The symbolism was overwhelming. Venice was a place that aristocrats or the artsy folks went to enjoy the opera and singing Gondoliers. I thought, “My God, the working class has made it.” They could also enjoy this great island of the west’s richest culture. I kept thinking, I wish my class conscious Papa were here to see this. He would have great difficulty believing that we could have achieved this kind of change in a few decades,
I guess you could call that period from the late ‘30ies through the ‘50ies as the “Golden Age of Capitalism.” Then what happened? Welcome to “The Age of Globalization.” It was presented as just an expansion of the capitalist goodies to the rest of the world called the “Third World.” When you think about it, even that’s phony. What are we the first world? And where’s the second and the poverty stricken old colonial world, is that the third? What really happened here was the old “ruling class.” (That’s what we used to call them.) They decided to pack up in Detroit, Ohio, Michigan, and move their factories to Mexico, VietNam, Indonesia, China, Guatemala and so forth; so as to get back to their old profit making ways and away from those stifling unions. Suddenly that new found middle class was disappearing into the third world of no unions, no limits on profits, and no reasons to share in the goodies. So the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.
All the time the profiteers were bellyaching that the government was interfering with their sacred market. With the help of Ayn Rand, they had convinced the hair-brained that the individual can do no harm. Just keep the government away and let the Madoff’s of the world do their stuff.
Then one night last week Kate and I are watching “The Card Game” on Frontline and available on www.pbs.org. Here was yet another story of how the Banks were royally screwing the poor through their credit card manipulations. Give them “Free Checking.” Then run up one kind of hidden fee after another until the poor credit card holders can’t pay off their debts if they paid for the rest of their lives. After watching Frontline, Kate and I both looked at our credit card bills and found fees we never knew were there and ongoing “protection fees” we never asked for.
It dawned on me that if you add this to the mortgage scam, in which people were sold on buying houses they could not afford any more than I can dance like Fred Astaire. My God, I thought, capitalism is alive and well doing the same old stuff they did back when I was on a soapbox complaining about how they were screwing workers in the factory. Once they moved the factories off-shore, they figured out how to screw those of us who are still here through all the new scams from home mortgages to credit card usury and, most magnificent of all, how to go bust and have the government bail them out. Wow! Is capitalism alive and well? You tell me.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
There were a long list of changes that we helped bring about. I was happily busy in the Labor Movement organizing workers to deal with the rawhide kinds of exploitation that robbed them of any kind of a decent standard of living. People worked in sweatshop conditions; no living wage, no overtime pay, indiscriminate firing, merciless speed up, and robbed of all dignity and respect for what they were producing. Wow, how the young militant Labor Movement changed all that. We created that great new “Middle Class” of Americans who now own their own homes, drive fancy SUV’s, and go on Caribbean or Disney vacations. For me the epiphany what we had accomplished came when I happened to be in Venice in the late ‘70ies. There was a bus with an identification that said ”Coventry.” Upon inquiring I was told these were Steel Workers from Coventry, England enjoying a holiday in Venice.
I remember how that news effected me. I sat down on a waterfront bench with tears in my eyes. The symbolism was overwhelming. Venice was a place that aristocrats or the artsy folks went to enjoy the opera and singing Gondoliers. I thought, “My God, the working class has made it.” They could also enjoy this great island of the west’s richest culture. I kept thinking, I wish my class conscious Papa were here to see this. He would have great difficulty believing that we could have achieved this kind of change in a few decades,
I guess you could call that period from the late ‘30ies through the ‘50ies as the “Golden Age of Capitalism.” Then what happened? Welcome to “The Age of Globalization.” It was presented as just an expansion of the capitalist goodies to the rest of the world called the “Third World.” When you think about it, even that’s phony. What are we the first world? And where’s the second and the poverty stricken old colonial world, is that the third? What really happened here was the old “ruling class.” (That’s what we used to call them.) They decided to pack up in Detroit, Ohio, Michigan, and move their factories to Mexico, VietNam, Indonesia, China, Guatemala and so forth; so as to get back to their old profit making ways and away from those stifling unions. Suddenly that new found middle class was disappearing into the third world of no unions, no limits on profits, and no reasons to share in the goodies. So the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.
All the time the profiteers were bellyaching that the government was interfering with their sacred market. With the help of Ayn Rand, they had convinced the hair-brained that the individual can do no harm. Just keep the government away and let the Madoff’s of the world do their stuff.
Then one night last week Kate and I are watching “The Card Game” on Frontline and available on www.pbs.org. Here was yet another story of how the Banks were royally screwing the poor through their credit card manipulations. Give them “Free Checking.” Then run up one kind of hidden fee after another until the poor credit card holders can’t pay off their debts if they paid for the rest of their lives. After watching Frontline, Kate and I both looked at our credit card bills and found fees we never knew were there and ongoing “protection fees” we never asked for.
It dawned on me that if you add this to the mortgage scam, in which people were sold on buying houses they could not afford any more than I can dance like Fred Astaire. My God, I thought, capitalism is alive and well doing the same old stuff they did back when I was on a soapbox complaining about how they were screwing workers in the factory. Once they moved the factories off-shore, they figured out how to screw those of us who are still here through all the new scams from home mortgages to credit card usury and, most magnificent of all, how to go bust and have the government bail them out. Wow! Is capitalism alive and well? You tell me.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Remembering Einstein
Over this last weekend I was brought down by a sudden burst of a hot body with fever running to 104. Kate of course was beside herself trying to convince me to go to the ER. I must admit having been there on far too many occasions and developed a most stubborn resistance. This was Saturday at the ER. It’s sort of High Noon time at midnight. I just figure the triage women has a tough enough job without listening to my bitching. We end up not going.
From my description of symptoms, Kate is in touch with our Internist. He was certain that I was suffering from a bladder or urethra infection and prescribed the antibiotic Cipro for my “plumbing problem?” The Cipro and Tylenol seemed to get the fever down to a point where we could begin to relax.
I’m coming to Einstein, be patient. It was in the early 30ies, I was working at a Power House that fed Montifiore Hospital at the top of the Bronx. It had originally been built as a Tuberculosis hospital, hence up high on top of Gun Hill Road in the North Bronx. I guess it still was a TB hospital when I worked in the Power House. The advent of penicillin pretty much wiped out that scourge I heard as a child referred to as “the consumption.” I was told not to go near a particular person because they were coughing and spitting into a paper cup. My God that was scary, especially when the person died.
It was on a lovely spring day, probably in May, that I was sent to shut down a large water feed pipe on the far western side of the complex. As I walked through the garden grounds with a three foot wrench over my shoulder, there sitting on a bench, easily recognized, was none other than Albert Einstein. I am not certain, but I think it was his wife he was visiting as a patient in the hospital.
As I walked by he said, “Hello son, and what is your job?” I was shocked and surprised that he would bother with someone like me. I hadn’t even gone to High School. As I lowered the wrench from my shoulder, I explained that I was working in the Power House as an apprentice machinist, but I also had to help out with plumbing emergencies when they came up. He thought that learning a real trade was a wonderful idea.
He also commented on how the human body is very much like plumbing. All the tubes and pipes that carry food and water through our systems in many ways can be seen as “the human plumbing system.” He continued, “So you see, you are in the right place to learn your trade. How about the heart as a pump?” His questions began to make me anxious. “How about all that blood the heart has to pump all the time just to keep you alive? How about the pumps you have here?” “Yes,” I replied, “we have dozens of ‘em.” “See,” he said, “there you are. And maybe you can learn some things about that human pump.” He laughed, said a good day and goodbye.
I was so overjoyed I found myself singing and running to my shut-off valve assignment. My boss questioned my lateness. When I told him about my Einstein visit he laughed and said, “Yup, everybody who has passed him out there has had a conversation. Just a great regular guy.”
As you see, I have never forgotten that beautiful moment when the world’s greatest living scientist took a little time to schmooze with a very young man just starting to make his way in the world. That lesson has stayed with me. It was so very helpful in the years I worked with troubled kids on the Lower East Side. Never ever underestimate the importance of recognizing a young person’s effort to make their way in the world. No, you and I are not Einstein. No matter. The generosity of caring is what’s important and that’s what he taught me. Thank you Albert Einstein. Final note, my plumbing system seems to be working just fine again for now.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
From my description of symptoms, Kate is in touch with our Internist. He was certain that I was suffering from a bladder or urethra infection and prescribed the antibiotic Cipro for my “plumbing problem?” The Cipro and Tylenol seemed to get the fever down to a point where we could begin to relax.
I’m coming to Einstein, be patient. It was in the early 30ies, I was working at a Power House that fed Montifiore Hospital at the top of the Bronx. It had originally been built as a Tuberculosis hospital, hence up high on top of Gun Hill Road in the North Bronx. I guess it still was a TB hospital when I worked in the Power House. The advent of penicillin pretty much wiped out that scourge I heard as a child referred to as “the consumption.” I was told not to go near a particular person because they were coughing and spitting into a paper cup. My God that was scary, especially when the person died.
It was on a lovely spring day, probably in May, that I was sent to shut down a large water feed pipe on the far western side of the complex. As I walked through the garden grounds with a three foot wrench over my shoulder, there sitting on a bench, easily recognized, was none other than Albert Einstein. I am not certain, but I think it was his wife he was visiting as a patient in the hospital.
As I walked by he said, “Hello son, and what is your job?” I was shocked and surprised that he would bother with someone like me. I hadn’t even gone to High School. As I lowered the wrench from my shoulder, I explained that I was working in the Power House as an apprentice machinist, but I also had to help out with plumbing emergencies when they came up. He thought that learning a real trade was a wonderful idea.
He also commented on how the human body is very much like plumbing. All the tubes and pipes that carry food and water through our systems in many ways can be seen as “the human plumbing system.” He continued, “So you see, you are in the right place to learn your trade. How about the heart as a pump?” His questions began to make me anxious. “How about all that blood the heart has to pump all the time just to keep you alive? How about the pumps you have here?” “Yes,” I replied, “we have dozens of ‘em.” “See,” he said, “there you are. And maybe you can learn some things about that human pump.” He laughed, said a good day and goodbye.
I was so overjoyed I found myself singing and running to my shut-off valve assignment. My boss questioned my lateness. When I told him about my Einstein visit he laughed and said, “Yup, everybody who has passed him out there has had a conversation. Just a great regular guy.”
As you see, I have never forgotten that beautiful moment when the world’s greatest living scientist took a little time to schmooze with a very young man just starting to make his way in the world. That lesson has stayed with me. It was so very helpful in the years I worked with troubled kids on the Lower East Side. Never ever underestimate the importance of recognizing a young person’s effort to make their way in the world. No, you and I are not Einstein. No matter. The generosity of caring is what’s important and that’s what he taught me. Thank you Albert Einstein. Final note, my plumbing system seems to be working just fine again for now.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Early Crazy Time
I am having trouble believing that we are already starting “Crazy Time” a year before the actual voting begins. Yes, you got it. I’m talking about the upcoming 2010 midterm election. It used to be that we had a period of rest and rehabilitation from the last voting circus. Now the political circus seems to have been made permanent. (Might have to go to someplace out of broadband reach for some R & R.) How did this permanent political fight come about?
There used to be a political balance of left and right wing politics. Each side had a viewpoint that their opposite could disagree with. Through the Congressional Committee process they would find a way to work through differences. A system was created that permitted give and take through debate. There would be amendments and compromises to pending legislation, but in the end we got something better than stalemates.
That system had a way of moving things along in a constructive fashion. Legislation could always be changed or fixed for better or worse with another administration. For example, during the Clinton years the bankers decided they wanted to get into the investment racket, hence the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act that had been passed during the FDR New Deal days. The idea behind Glass Steagall was to keep a distinction between saving or lending from investment. The whole crisis we are presently in would have been averted if Glass Steagall had not been repealed.
What caused the change? There used to be two major political ideological wings that had a strong influence on the political positions of the two parties. At present we are faced with a single powerful right wing ideology. Its fundamental philosophy is that people can take care of themselves and we don’t need government to interfere in how they live their lives. It always struck me as kind of weird to be spending millions of dollars to run for an office that you don’t really believe ought to be there in the first place. I suppose one could argue they were looking to get elected in order to put the wrecking ball to the house they were serving in. No, that never happened. In fact the opposite occurred once the “hate Washington bunch” got to the Capital. They ended up expanding the very institutions they were earlier attacking. What they learned on the way was the power that is Washington is very addictive.
The real problem in today’s politics is there is no left wing to even begin to counter the right wing. The left disappeared some years ago after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The problem was the false identification between what was supposed to be the alternative to capitalism. What existed in Russia was supposed to be Socialism. Let me make it very clear. What existed in the Soviet Union was not even a resemblance to the idea of socialism. It was the Dictatorship of the Communist Party that tried to give itself a more benevolent appearance of being nice by tagging on the word “socialism,” not unlike what Hitler did with National Socialism. No matter. After the Soviet collapse, the idea that there was an alternative to capitalism disappeared off the radar screen. It was also called "the end of history." What we have left is a fierce right wing that is determined to takeover the reigns of government with all its power and destroy anyone who gets in their way. In essence this is what Bill Kristol advised the right to do with Health Care reform, “Just Kill It.” How’s that for a policy? That’s exactly what they manage to do because they can’t even now get it through their heads that we have a middle of the road Black President.
This is why I see crazy time ahead as we begin to move toward the midterm election. Just one final word on Obama’s situation. It’s easy to see that it ain’t good. Why? As I worried during the campaign, he has had some very sad illusions that he could make nice with the Right Wing. Well, it never happened and it never will. They just hate him because he fly’s in the face of everything they believe in, including the color the person’s skin ought to be the same as the house he occupies in the Nation’s Capital.
Unlike the right wing, there is no left wing to support Obama. Yes, there was an upsurge of Internet support as he ran for office. What he does not have is an ideological base that can support him or any other progressive who needs a solid backing that he or she can call on in times of needed support. That’s what is totally lacking as Obama tries to move some of his campaign promises through the legislative maze called Congress. If he is not able to pass the health care bill and do something soon to start to bring down the unemployment rate, it will be a sad outcome in 2010 and even sadder in 2012. That may be the real price of no serious left wing politics in the country.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y
There used to be a political balance of left and right wing politics. Each side had a viewpoint that their opposite could disagree with. Through the Congressional Committee process they would find a way to work through differences. A system was created that permitted give and take through debate. There would be amendments and compromises to pending legislation, but in the end we got something better than stalemates.
That system had a way of moving things along in a constructive fashion. Legislation could always be changed or fixed for better or worse with another administration. For example, during the Clinton years the bankers decided they wanted to get into the investment racket, hence the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act that had been passed during the FDR New Deal days. The idea behind Glass Steagall was to keep a distinction between saving or lending from investment. The whole crisis we are presently in would have been averted if Glass Steagall had not been repealed.
What caused the change? There used to be two major political ideological wings that had a strong influence on the political positions of the two parties. At present we are faced with a single powerful right wing ideology. Its fundamental philosophy is that people can take care of themselves and we don’t need government to interfere in how they live their lives. It always struck me as kind of weird to be spending millions of dollars to run for an office that you don’t really believe ought to be there in the first place. I suppose one could argue they were looking to get elected in order to put the wrecking ball to the house they were serving in. No, that never happened. In fact the opposite occurred once the “hate Washington bunch” got to the Capital. They ended up expanding the very institutions they were earlier attacking. What they learned on the way was the power that is Washington is very addictive.
The real problem in today’s politics is there is no left wing to even begin to counter the right wing. The left disappeared some years ago after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The problem was the false identification between what was supposed to be the alternative to capitalism. What existed in Russia was supposed to be Socialism. Let me make it very clear. What existed in the Soviet Union was not even a resemblance to the idea of socialism. It was the Dictatorship of the Communist Party that tried to give itself a more benevolent appearance of being nice by tagging on the word “socialism,” not unlike what Hitler did with National Socialism. No matter. After the Soviet collapse, the idea that there was an alternative to capitalism disappeared off the radar screen. It was also called "the end of history." What we have left is a fierce right wing that is determined to takeover the reigns of government with all its power and destroy anyone who gets in their way. In essence this is what Bill Kristol advised the right to do with Health Care reform, “Just Kill It.” How’s that for a policy? That’s exactly what they manage to do because they can’t even now get it through their heads that we have a middle of the road Black President.
This is why I see crazy time ahead as we begin to move toward the midterm election. Just one final word on Obama’s situation. It’s easy to see that it ain’t good. Why? As I worried during the campaign, he has had some very sad illusions that he could make nice with the Right Wing. Well, it never happened and it never will. They just hate him because he fly’s in the face of everything they believe in, including the color the person’s skin ought to be the same as the house he occupies in the Nation’s Capital.
Unlike the right wing, there is no left wing to support Obama. Yes, there was an upsurge of Internet support as he ran for office. What he does not have is an ideological base that can support him or any other progressive who needs a solid backing that he or she can call on in times of needed support. That’s what is totally lacking as Obama tries to move some of his campaign promises through the legislative maze called Congress. If he is not able to pass the health care bill and do something soon to start to bring down the unemployment rate, it will be a sad outcome in 2010 and even sadder in 2012. That may be the real price of no serious left wing politics in the country.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
One Year Gone
Between the 20th Anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the 10% unemployment numbers, and the fight for Health Care in the Congress, I am definitely on overload. The Berlin Wall collapse, which was the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union, is a big subject all by itself. Because of my German heritage (both parents from there), I will never be satisfied with the many explanations of what happened in that very troubled land. But that topic will have to wait for another time.
The fight for universal health care goes on and on. No matter the outcome in this round, it still will be far from won. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi pulled off quite a trick in squeaking the bill through 219 to 215. Even at that there were many concessions to the Blue Dog conservative Democrats who neither she nor the President could convince to “come on over.” That leaves us with a bill with lots of garbage like the no abortion amendment and no clear Public Option.
That of course is to bad because the conservatives in the Senate will try their utmost to “just kill it.” Remember, that was the advice from their conservative guru Bill Kristol back in August when he was asked for his advice on Health Care legislation. Yeah, that’s what he said, “Just kill it.” Lest we forget, the Kristol crowd not only hate Barack Obama, they hate the idea of a Black President. And no, they will never get used to it.
Obama became President just a year ago, yet it seems like such a long time. As the campaign was coming to an end, I became deeply troubled by the mountain of expectations that had grown during that time. I knew that Obama was limited in his own knowledge of the kind of problems he was about to come up against. His constant talk of “reaching across the isle” as a way of changing the bitter fighting between the Democrats and Republicans that was going on in Washington was extremely naive.
The fight is about fundamental differences about the role of government. Holding out your hand to people who just want to “kill” a very fundamental piece of legislation that effects the lives of us all is not just naive, but stupid. It has prevented Obama from rallying up his supporters for a real fight. Look at what the Tea Party crowd have done? They understand the role of putting people in the streets to raise hell. They have been effective if in no other way than to scare the pants off the Blue Dog Democrats if they dare vote for the health care legislation. They see themselves as being whacked in the coming midterm election. Heah guys, it don’t matter. The “kill it” crowd are going to go after your ass no matter what you do. Don’t you get it? The ultra right wing nuts just want Sarah Palin as President, in which case they won’t bother to even recognize you. So wake up! It is time to fight, not faint.
The issue that will override all others coming into the 2010 midterm election will be Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Kate just came back from a trip to Minneapolis visiting with old friends. She saw first hand how the issue of finding work is shaping up for many middle class professional people. They are the new middle class successful professionals who now find the job market simply dried up. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the unemployment rate at 10%, it’s an awful lot higher if you count all those folks who have given up looking for work. Count them and your getting closer to the 25% unemployment of the Great Depression. Not a pretty picture for Obama. As I have said in previous posts he needs to find some new economists who can help him figure out how to create jobs instead of how to save Wall Street. He has done enough to bail out Wall Street, except for regulating them. What Obama needs is a modern day nineteen thirties job creator like Robert Moses. There was a man who knew how to create jobs.
Unless Obama does more to create jobs, his dream of a second term will melt like an ice cream cone left out in a Phoenix summer afternoon. Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
The fight for universal health care goes on and on. No matter the outcome in this round, it still will be far from won. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi pulled off quite a trick in squeaking the bill through 219 to 215. Even at that there were many concessions to the Blue Dog conservative Democrats who neither she nor the President could convince to “come on over.” That leaves us with a bill with lots of garbage like the no abortion amendment and no clear Public Option.
That of course is to bad because the conservatives in the Senate will try their utmost to “just kill it.” Remember, that was the advice from their conservative guru Bill Kristol back in August when he was asked for his advice on Health Care legislation. Yeah, that’s what he said, “Just kill it.” Lest we forget, the Kristol crowd not only hate Barack Obama, they hate the idea of a Black President. And no, they will never get used to it.
Obama became President just a year ago, yet it seems like such a long time. As the campaign was coming to an end, I became deeply troubled by the mountain of expectations that had grown during that time. I knew that Obama was limited in his own knowledge of the kind of problems he was about to come up against. His constant talk of “reaching across the isle” as a way of changing the bitter fighting between the Democrats and Republicans that was going on in Washington was extremely naive.
The fight is about fundamental differences about the role of government. Holding out your hand to people who just want to “kill” a very fundamental piece of legislation that effects the lives of us all is not just naive, but stupid. It has prevented Obama from rallying up his supporters for a real fight. Look at what the Tea Party crowd have done? They understand the role of putting people in the streets to raise hell. They have been effective if in no other way than to scare the pants off the Blue Dog Democrats if they dare vote for the health care legislation. They see themselves as being whacked in the coming midterm election. Heah guys, it don’t matter. The “kill it” crowd are going to go after your ass no matter what you do. Don’t you get it? The ultra right wing nuts just want Sarah Palin as President, in which case they won’t bother to even recognize you. So wake up! It is time to fight, not faint.
The issue that will override all others coming into the 2010 midterm election will be Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Kate just came back from a trip to Minneapolis visiting with old friends. She saw first hand how the issue of finding work is shaping up for many middle class professional people. They are the new middle class successful professionals who now find the job market simply dried up. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the unemployment rate at 10%, it’s an awful lot higher if you count all those folks who have given up looking for work. Count them and your getting closer to the 25% unemployment of the Great Depression. Not a pretty picture for Obama. As I have said in previous posts he needs to find some new economists who can help him figure out how to create jobs instead of how to save Wall Street. He has done enough to bail out Wall Street, except for regulating them. What Obama needs is a modern day nineteen thirties job creator like Robert Moses. There was a man who knew how to create jobs.
Unless Obama does more to create jobs, his dream of a second term will melt like an ice cream cone left out in a Phoenix summer afternoon. Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Soren at 8 Months
Till now October 2009 you were a picture.
Many pictures sent through cyberspace.
1917 myself at 8 months. Only box cameras.
Go see one in a museum.
You, mommy, daddy, and the car seat bed
Lit up this sleepy old house
With the burning glow of new life.
William Shakespeare 1475. (The Bard)
Soren, there's a name to remember
Long before others.
He defined who we humans are.
He said, “All the men women merely players.”
Like on the stage.
“At first the infant (thats you)
Mewling and puking in the nurses’ arms.”
No nurses. Just Mama Amrita.
Until you visited, all I heard of Soren was “cute.”
Okay, I can give you that, if you want it?
Your wonderment at the unfolding world before your eyes.
This is not cute.
A reminder to look anew at the magic of the world.
A remarkable little rainbow light on the ceiling
Or the pussycat’s ears revealing its veins.
Great-grandpa’s mustache and ah, yes, his guitar.
Little fingers gripped the strings,
As if hearing the songs we sing.
Old childhood memories. Don’t know if they changed?
“Old Bangum” wild boar hunting would go.
You have to guess what they made of his hide?
Yeh, a nice saddle. “How do you think I begin in the world?
Got me a sow and several other things.”
“Go tell Aunt Rhody her old grey goose is dead.
Died standing on her head.”
Honestly now. What’s this supposed to do for your synapses?
And oh, I forgot, the itsey bitsey spider
Went up and down the water spout. You puzzled?
Soren, you and I.
Remember the Bard? Remember you mewling?
Here’s the old man on the stage of life.
“Turning again toward childish treble pipes.”
Me and you could be in the same place.
You in your first childhood, me in my second.
That makes us brothers under the skin. No?
Thanks most thoughtful Soren.
Thanks Mommy and Daddy. Do come again.
Kate N.H.W.Y.
Many pictures sent through cyberspace.
1917 myself at 8 months. Only box cameras.
Go see one in a museum.
You, mommy, daddy, and the car seat bed
Lit up this sleepy old house
With the burning glow of new life.
William Shakespeare 1475. (The Bard)
Soren, there's a name to remember
Long before others.
He defined who we humans are.
He said, “All the men women merely players.”
Like on the stage.
“At first the infant (thats you)
Mewling and puking in the nurses’ arms.”
No nurses. Just Mama Amrita.
Until you visited, all I heard of Soren was “cute.”
Okay, I can give you that, if you want it?
Your wonderment at the unfolding world before your eyes.
This is not cute.
A reminder to look anew at the magic of the world.
A remarkable little rainbow light on the ceiling
Or the pussycat’s ears revealing its veins.
Great-grandpa’s mustache and ah, yes, his guitar.
Little fingers gripped the strings,
As if hearing the songs we sing.
Old childhood memories. Don’t know if they changed?
“Old Bangum” wild boar hunting would go.
You have to guess what they made of his hide?
Yeh, a nice saddle. “How do you think I begin in the world?
Got me a sow and several other things.”
“Go tell Aunt Rhody her old grey goose is dead.
Died standing on her head.”
Honestly now. What’s this supposed to do for your synapses?
And oh, I forgot, the itsey bitsey spider
Went up and down the water spout. You puzzled?
Soren, you and I.
Remember the Bard? Remember you mewling?
Here’s the old man on the stage of life.
“Turning again toward childish treble pipes.”
Me and you could be in the same place.
You in your first childhood, me in my second.
That makes us brothers under the skin. No?
Thanks most thoughtful Soren.
Thanks Mommy and Daddy. Do come again.
Kate N.H.W.Y.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
In 2010 it Will Still be the Economy
I may be over optimistic but I am now assuming that Obama will get some kind of health care reform. That’s good news as it means that Kristol’s admonition to his Republican stalwarts to, “just kill it” will have been roundly beaten. Now for the bigger problem as we look toward the midterm election.
The danger here is that Obama could easily lose the Congress to the Republicans. I believe the major issue will be the economy. More specifically jobs. How will the Republicans attack ? They will play the populist card saying that the administration bailed out Wall Street and left the double digit unemployed flapping in the wind. One reason they may play this card is the failure of Obama Administration to change that cast of characters running the countries economic engine.
In an earlier blog I argued against having the same guys who orchestrated the economic meltdown back in their same old positions. How can Bernanki, Geithner, Summers et.al. do anything different from what they did before? Mr. President that’s all they know. No matter how much great oratory you put out there if the job market doesn’t turn around you are in deep trouble. So what could you do?
Start by letting some of those economic wizards go on long academic assignments. Start with a new team. When this first came up during the campaign I was sure there were knowledgeable economists out there who could help the President Change course. Remember Change? Okay here’s a suggestion.
It turns out that there was someone in Washington, Chairperson of the Commodities Future Trading Commission, CFTC Brooksley Born a Stanford graduate, who guess what? She not only warned about the coming catastrophe based on all the Derivative speculation but she actually moved to do something about it. Imagine who went after her jugular? Of course the same old gang, Greenspan, Summer Rubin et.al. Mr. President there’s your replacement candidate for the job of Secretary of the Treasury.
What is so striking about Brooksley Born was her ability to stand up to all that “old boys” pressure and stick to her guns. She actually began to move in the CFTC to curb the Derivative abuse. One colleague said, “History has already shown that Greenspan was wrong about virtually everything, and Brooksley was right.” The “old Wall Street boys” went nuts getting the Congress to actually shut her down.
Now Mr. President that’s who you need up there in the economic power chair to begin to get these greedy guys under control. Oh, I don’t know if she would even take the job. Wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. Yet I know from my own Washington experience that it is very hard to resist the siren call from the White House.
Obama, take the economic issue away from the Republicans by showing that you are determined to carry out your campaign pledge of Change. That is long overdue in the “economics department.” Brooksley Born would represent at least a good beginning in curbing the abuses of Wall Street and come up with a real jobs program. The clock is ticking Mr. President 2010 not far away.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
The danger here is that Obama could easily lose the Congress to the Republicans. I believe the major issue will be the economy. More specifically jobs. How will the Republicans attack ? They will play the populist card saying that the administration bailed out Wall Street and left the double digit unemployed flapping in the wind. One reason they may play this card is the failure of Obama Administration to change that cast of characters running the countries economic engine.
In an earlier blog I argued against having the same guys who orchestrated the economic meltdown back in their same old positions. How can Bernanki, Geithner, Summers et.al. do anything different from what they did before? Mr. President that’s all they know. No matter how much great oratory you put out there if the job market doesn’t turn around you are in deep trouble. So what could you do?
Start by letting some of those economic wizards go on long academic assignments. Start with a new team. When this first came up during the campaign I was sure there were knowledgeable economists out there who could help the President Change course. Remember Change? Okay here’s a suggestion.
It turns out that there was someone in Washington, Chairperson of the Commodities Future Trading Commission, CFTC Brooksley Born a Stanford graduate, who guess what? She not only warned about the coming catastrophe based on all the Derivative speculation but she actually moved to do something about it. Imagine who went after her jugular? Of course the same old gang, Greenspan, Summer Rubin et.al. Mr. President there’s your replacement candidate for the job of Secretary of the Treasury.
What is so striking about Brooksley Born was her ability to stand up to all that “old boys” pressure and stick to her guns. She actually began to move in the CFTC to curb the Derivative abuse. One colleague said, “History has already shown that Greenspan was wrong about virtually everything, and Brooksley was right.” The “old Wall Street boys” went nuts getting the Congress to actually shut her down.
Now Mr. President that’s who you need up there in the economic power chair to begin to get these greedy guys under control. Oh, I don’t know if she would even take the job. Wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. Yet I know from my own Washington experience that it is very hard to resist the siren call from the White House.
Obama, take the economic issue away from the Republicans by showing that you are determined to carry out your campaign pledge of Change. That is long overdue in the “economics department.” Brooksley Born would represent at least a good beginning in curbing the abuses of Wall Street and come up with a real jobs program. The clock is ticking Mr. President 2010 not far away.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Thoughts on Turning 92
There is nothing like spending one’s birthday eve with my dear wife and Shakespeare. Last night we watched Jude Law as Hamlet. I have never quiet understood my attraction to Shakespeare. I have a vague memory of going with my Papa to see Hamlet as a very young child. In the haze of my childhood memories Papa repeatedly would tell me that it was very important to understand what Shakespeare was telling us through his plays. I have been in love with Hamlet ever since. In some weird way I have often thought I was caught in the same kinds of issues that bedeviled Hamlet. No, they were not about my murdered father. They might be about my mother, who at times of great grief, I thought was “murdered” by a back alley abortionist.
I was very young when my mother disappeared. It was in my late teens that I thought about finding that murderer and killing him. I even went to the extent of checking the hospital records where she died to see if there was any identification of the perpetrator. Of course there was none. But what if there was? What then?
As a responsible leader in the Labor Movement of the 40ies and 50ies, there were so many times when I was confronted with decisions that could effect the lives of hundreds of people. So, “what to do” would occur again and again. No, they are not that ultimate question that Hamlet asks, “To be or not to be?” But there’s his genius, presenting us with the ultimate question he asks us to think about our “little lives” in terms of this ultimate question. He goes on to ask us “who would fardels (burdens) bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life.” He is suggesting we put up with many of the horrors that we now see, in our lives or on the evening news, because we have real trouble finding ways to deal with them. That’s why I love Shakespeare, because he is always challenging me to rethink everything in my everyday routines. Why am I here and what meaningful thing am I doing with the little bit of life that I have left?
Getting back to being 92. Yes it is wonderful to have retained enough of my senses so that I can delight in my grandchildren and great-grandchild who is just a bunch of pictures sent by computer from LA. Luckily I will see him in person next week. Then there’s the magical world of music from Handel through Brahms to Hank Williams. The latter I can still mange on my guitar. I have recently been rediscovering the beauty of religious music. No, I am not going to turn to the Church for last rites before I go. I find in the music a very soothing balm that seems to sit in the melodies. Somehow that’s reassuring. Why, I don’t know. Then there's the wonders of television, where we pretty much watch movies, especially old ones. I am blessed with wonderful friends. Sometimes we manage to get together for conversation. I believe the latter is dying out, but I am fortunate in friends who like me and love to sit around and schmooze. My dear wife, who might be an introvert from Minn., loves to schmooze with me, especially about the theatre.
The down side of 92 is experiencing the loss of so many of my old friends. Recently I said goodbye to the last friend who worked with me at Mobilization For Youth back in the sixties. It brings up a mixed feeling of being just plain lucky when it came to the distribution of the gene pool; and a gnawing feeling that I may be cheating someone else out of their time here on this good earth.
This brings me to my greatest concern. It has to do with how we are using up the planet. Our great industrial revolution created enormous wealth unheard of, unknown at any time in history on this earth. Having been a very full participant in that exploitation of our natural resources, I have a very deep appreciation for the gifts taken. A list of all the various automobiles I have owned in my long life would be a good measure of my benefits from the industrial revolution. Now we are coming upon the time when the “piper must be paid.” That makes me sad for what the grandchildren will be dealing with. Oh I know there are those who say, “don’t worry, technology will figure it out.” Yes and no. Our roof is covered with solar panels that have pretty much made us “power neutral.” Thats fine. But what about the disappearance of the codfish that have fed most of the western civilization since its founding? That’s just the tips of the icebergs that are melting and will substantially raise the sea levels, leaving millions world-wide homeless and landless.
So there you have my thoughts on my 92nd. And for those of you have asked what N.H.W.Y. mean as part of my sign-off: Thanks Kate “Never Happen Without You.”
I was very young when my mother disappeared. It was in my late teens that I thought about finding that murderer and killing him. I even went to the extent of checking the hospital records where she died to see if there was any identification of the perpetrator. Of course there was none. But what if there was? What then?
As a responsible leader in the Labor Movement of the 40ies and 50ies, there were so many times when I was confronted with decisions that could effect the lives of hundreds of people. So, “what to do” would occur again and again. No, they are not that ultimate question that Hamlet asks, “To be or not to be?” But there’s his genius, presenting us with the ultimate question he asks us to think about our “little lives” in terms of this ultimate question. He goes on to ask us “who would fardels (burdens) bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life.” He is suggesting we put up with many of the horrors that we now see, in our lives or on the evening news, because we have real trouble finding ways to deal with them. That’s why I love Shakespeare, because he is always challenging me to rethink everything in my everyday routines. Why am I here and what meaningful thing am I doing with the little bit of life that I have left?
Getting back to being 92. Yes it is wonderful to have retained enough of my senses so that I can delight in my grandchildren and great-grandchild who is just a bunch of pictures sent by computer from LA. Luckily I will see him in person next week. Then there’s the magical world of music from Handel through Brahms to Hank Williams. The latter I can still mange on my guitar. I have recently been rediscovering the beauty of religious music. No, I am not going to turn to the Church for last rites before I go. I find in the music a very soothing balm that seems to sit in the melodies. Somehow that’s reassuring. Why, I don’t know. Then there's the wonders of television, where we pretty much watch movies, especially old ones. I am blessed with wonderful friends. Sometimes we manage to get together for conversation. I believe the latter is dying out, but I am fortunate in friends who like me and love to sit around and schmooze. My dear wife, who might be an introvert from Minn., loves to schmooze with me, especially about the theatre.
The down side of 92 is experiencing the loss of so many of my old friends. Recently I said goodbye to the last friend who worked with me at Mobilization For Youth back in the sixties. It brings up a mixed feeling of being just plain lucky when it came to the distribution of the gene pool; and a gnawing feeling that I may be cheating someone else out of their time here on this good earth.
This brings me to my greatest concern. It has to do with how we are using up the planet. Our great industrial revolution created enormous wealth unheard of, unknown at any time in history on this earth. Having been a very full participant in that exploitation of our natural resources, I have a very deep appreciation for the gifts taken. A list of all the various automobiles I have owned in my long life would be a good measure of my benefits from the industrial revolution. Now we are coming upon the time when the “piper must be paid.” That makes me sad for what the grandchildren will be dealing with. Oh I know there are those who say, “don’t worry, technology will figure it out.” Yes and no. Our roof is covered with solar panels that have pretty much made us “power neutral.” Thats fine. But what about the disappearance of the codfish that have fed most of the western civilization since its founding? That’s just the tips of the icebergs that are melting and will substantially raise the sea levels, leaving millions world-wide homeless and landless.
So there you have my thoughts on my 92nd. And for those of you have asked what N.H.W.Y. mean as part of my sign-off: Thanks Kate “Never Happen Without You.”
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Cyberspace
Unfortunately there were no takers on my last blog re. the the societal impact of the Internet. I figured if no one out there wants to try their hand explaining at least some of the effects of cyberspace, heck I will. So here goes.
I do not have any recent research in hand that might tell me what has changed as a result of the communication revolution in cyberspace. I am including radio, television, e mail, cell phones, I Pods and all the other gadgets that keep us constantly in touch with one another, as well as advertisers and promoters of all kinds of junk that we don’t really need. The air out there is full of millions of messages floating around. I cannot believe we can still breath without inhaling a commercial. (Now there’s an interesting idea.)
One way for me to approach the impact of the cyberspace revolution is to use my own life experience and look at what has changed. Back in the 20s and 30s even telephones were scarce. As a young child in the 20s my family didn’t have a phone and I don’t remember knowing anyone who did. Contact was primarily through visits or the mail. Sunday afternoon was a time when friends would drop by for a coffee, cake and conversation. The latter was the most critical part of the get together. With some friends there was singing around the piano or a poetry reading. So much of entertainment was self induced.
The first change from what I just described came with the windup Victrola and 78 records. Now we began to be entertained by a machine rather than doing it ourselves. I remember hearing Caruso and Sir Harry Lauder singing. “Bridgett O’Flynn where have you been. This is a nice time for you to come in. You went to see a Big Parade, a Big Parade me eye no big parade would take so long the time just passing by.” And so on. Why do you think I remember stuff like that?
That was the very first breakaway from self entertaining. Next came early radio, It was with the help of a friendly neighbor I built a “Crystal Set.” It was a small unit-- a coil a crystal and a big aerial. It required earphones I remember getting WJZ in the middle of the night and thought I died and went to heaven. Radio had started invading of our lives. After my mother died friends took my father two sisters and me into their home.Evening activity became sitting around the radio listening to Amos &Andy, Jack Burns, Charley McCarthy and on and on. Now we really were entertained and didn’t have to to anything but supply batteries to a radio, And then came the newscasters that would be the beginning of the hyped up news programs.
Before radio our news came primarily from newspapers. There probably was a dozen of them in New York, They went all the way from the sedate NY Times through the Hearst papers ‘The Journal American” to the tabloids The”Daily Mirror” “The News “and oh yes “The Police Gazette.” Reading was then an absolute prerequisite for learning what was in the papers. I believe that reading experience stimulated some thinking. Is that’s why people were motre thoughtful about the news than they are today?
With the coming of television one no longer needed to read anything to learn what was going on in the world. That was the beginning of a fundamental change. I think that something happens when we read about news that disappears when it is spoken to us on television. Why I am not sure but when we read something we have to bring some of our own understanding to the subject matter in order for us to process it. In the case of television we have all these pundits and the viewer has to do nothing but nod in approval. For some reason we think they are smarter than we are because they are on the tube. That’s all that might be to it and that’s what has got us in such deep trouble. We stopped thinking for ourselves because we have all the real smart-alecks on the Sunday morning news programs to think for us.
One of our biggest losers to television was conversation. I grew up in a world of endless conversation. No matter the subject there were always people who could talk about it. In my extended family the conversation was politics, economics, art, music and more politics. There were other people I could converse with about automobiles, radio, and yes plumbing. What is my memory of those endless conversations? They were terrific learning experiences. Even if it started out as a heated argument, “how to organize a factory.” In retrospect,it always turned out to be a way of learning. The learning most often occurred well after the conversation. It was the processing that went on often in the late silence of the night that a ahaa moment that said “maybe this is a new way to think about it?” I believe that with the end of conversation we have also lost an important way to learn. The impact of television spin miesters can be seen as people now tend to make final statements that do not stimulate conversation but in fact end it.
Now the airwaves in addition to radio and television are cluttered with cellphones, IPods, text-messaging and GPS units to tell you when to turn stop and go. So what has all this cyberspace technology done for our quality of life? I do know it sure has speeded things up! In the old days when Air Mail first showed up we were delighted to get a letter across the continent in a day. That gave us some time to think between a reply. Now all replies are instant. Does that make them better? I doubt it. It sure speeds things up and hence we have little or no time to contemplate our thoughts on any given subject.
Maybe it’s just me in my 92nd year, but I have a strong felt sense that we, yes we, are suffering from overload. We need electric circuits that cause breakers to cut out the the line before it sets us on fire. Unfortunately we don’t have built in circuit breakers. In its place we have to find any old way to get some relief from the overload. I experience most people I know or come in contact with as BUSY,BUSY BUSY. Yes there are huge benefits from the age of technology, but at what cost? I do not know the answer to that question. Maybe you do?
Thanks kate N.H.W.Y.
I do not have any recent research in hand that might tell me what has changed as a result of the communication revolution in cyberspace. I am including radio, television, e mail, cell phones, I Pods and all the other gadgets that keep us constantly in touch with one another, as well as advertisers and promoters of all kinds of junk that we don’t really need. The air out there is full of millions of messages floating around. I cannot believe we can still breath without inhaling a commercial. (Now there’s an interesting idea.)
One way for me to approach the impact of the cyberspace revolution is to use my own life experience and look at what has changed. Back in the 20s and 30s even telephones were scarce. As a young child in the 20s my family didn’t have a phone and I don’t remember knowing anyone who did. Contact was primarily through visits or the mail. Sunday afternoon was a time when friends would drop by for a coffee, cake and conversation. The latter was the most critical part of the get together. With some friends there was singing around the piano or a poetry reading. So much of entertainment was self induced.
The first change from what I just described came with the windup Victrola and 78 records. Now we began to be entertained by a machine rather than doing it ourselves. I remember hearing Caruso and Sir Harry Lauder singing. “Bridgett O’Flynn where have you been. This is a nice time for you to come in. You went to see a Big Parade, a Big Parade me eye no big parade would take so long the time just passing by.” And so on. Why do you think I remember stuff like that?
That was the very first breakaway from self entertaining. Next came early radio, It was with the help of a friendly neighbor I built a “Crystal Set.” It was a small unit-- a coil a crystal and a big aerial. It required earphones I remember getting WJZ in the middle of the night and thought I died and went to heaven. Radio had started invading of our lives. After my mother died friends took my father two sisters and me into their home.Evening activity became sitting around the radio listening to Amos &Andy, Jack Burns, Charley McCarthy and on and on. Now we really were entertained and didn’t have to to anything but supply batteries to a radio, And then came the newscasters that would be the beginning of the hyped up news programs.
Before radio our news came primarily from newspapers. There probably was a dozen of them in New York, They went all the way from the sedate NY Times through the Hearst papers ‘The Journal American” to the tabloids The”Daily Mirror” “The News “and oh yes “The Police Gazette.” Reading was then an absolute prerequisite for learning what was in the papers. I believe that reading experience stimulated some thinking. Is that’s why people were motre thoughtful about the news than they are today?
With the coming of television one no longer needed to read anything to learn what was going on in the world. That was the beginning of a fundamental change. I think that something happens when we read about news that disappears when it is spoken to us on television. Why I am not sure but when we read something we have to bring some of our own understanding to the subject matter in order for us to process it. In the case of television we have all these pundits and the viewer has to do nothing but nod in approval. For some reason we think they are smarter than we are because they are on the tube. That’s all that might be to it and that’s what has got us in such deep trouble. We stopped thinking for ourselves because we have all the real smart-alecks on the Sunday morning news programs to think for us.
One of our biggest losers to television was conversation. I grew up in a world of endless conversation. No matter the subject there were always people who could talk about it. In my extended family the conversation was politics, economics, art, music and more politics. There were other people I could converse with about automobiles, radio, and yes plumbing. What is my memory of those endless conversations? They were terrific learning experiences. Even if it started out as a heated argument, “how to organize a factory.” In retrospect,it always turned out to be a way of learning. The learning most often occurred well after the conversation. It was the processing that went on often in the late silence of the night that a ahaa moment that said “maybe this is a new way to think about it?” I believe that with the end of conversation we have also lost an important way to learn. The impact of television spin miesters can be seen as people now tend to make final statements that do not stimulate conversation but in fact end it.
Now the airwaves in addition to radio and television are cluttered with cellphones, IPods, text-messaging and GPS units to tell you when to turn stop and go. So what has all this cyberspace technology done for our quality of life? I do know it sure has speeded things up! In the old days when Air Mail first showed up we were delighted to get a letter across the continent in a day. That gave us some time to think between a reply. Now all replies are instant. Does that make them better? I doubt it. It sure speeds things up and hence we have little or no time to contemplate our thoughts on any given subject.
Maybe it’s just me in my 92nd year, but I have a strong felt sense that we, yes we, are suffering from overload. We need electric circuits that cause breakers to cut out the the line before it sets us on fire. Unfortunately we don’t have built in circuit breakers. In its place we have to find any old way to get some relief from the overload. I experience most people I know or come in contact with as BUSY,BUSY BUSY. Yes there are huge benefits from the age of technology, but at what cost? I do not know the answer to that question. Maybe you do?
Thanks kate N.H.W.Y.
Monday, October 5, 2009
More Thoughts on Fearful Minds
In my last blog comparing the depression of the 1930’s with the present recession, I left out a very important variable that did not exist back then. That of course is the Internet. In the 30’s I was doing my “blog” on a mimeograph machine.
Back then we called them “leaflets.” It required typing out your message on a master gel sheet. It was then wound around a drum of the mimeograph machine where it was also inked. A ream of paper was put in the machine and you cranked away as each sheet was printed. The leaflets were distributed either on the street, in front of a factory gate or in mailboxes by walking around until all the copies were gone. This took hours and hours of work. Even then you hardly ever knew who read them and who dumped them. Wow! How that has changed.
As I sit here at home overlooking the Moriches Bay, I am typing out my blog. Then at the press of a key it goes out to how many people? I really don’t know. Many hundreds, thousands, millions of people are doing the same thing. And then there are the web-sites--The Huffington Post, Slate and on and on. What is the impact of all this, what should I call it--news opinions, thoughts, gossip, information, dribble? I don’t know precisely. I know it is all having an impact, but what that is I don’t know. I need some of my sociology, psychology mavins, or anyone else who has an opinion, to do a guest blog and tell us what is known about the impact of the Internet on our society?
In the meantime I was very much impressed with a David Brooks column in the Times of Oct. 2, 2009. The subject was very similar to my blog re. “Fearful Minds.” Brooks says the following about the right wing nuts on cable--Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, et al. In the last Presidential race they were going after McCain hammer and tongs because he’s not a true conservative. And the result? Comes New Hampshire and McCain wins. Next comes South Carolina and the “jocks” (Brooks’ term, not mine) hammer away at McCain because they want Romney. And Brooks points out again there is no army of followers that these Cable News whackos can produce. McCain wins South Carolina.
Quoting Brooks,”So what is the theme of our history lesson? It is the story of remarkable volume and utter weakness. It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche -- even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as “The Wizard of Oz,” of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain.” Brooks sights many more examples of how these guys just got it wrong.
This is not to say that we should ignore their message of hate. No, we need to react to it forcefully and fast. That’s what John Kerry failed to do on Swift boat allegations and it well might have cost him the election. Yet I believe he would have lost it anyhow because he, like so many other Democrats, just are not at home in the world of Blue Collar working class folk anymore. They used to be the solid support that the Democrats could always count on. No more. Okay, I just wanted to give a smart Republican, David Brooks, his due. He still knows how to conduct a civil argument about issues we may absolutely disagree about. These days I am grateful for that.
Would love to hear some ideas from you regarding the Internet’s effect on society.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Back then we called them “leaflets.” It required typing out your message on a master gel sheet. It was then wound around a drum of the mimeograph machine where it was also inked. A ream of paper was put in the machine and you cranked away as each sheet was printed. The leaflets were distributed either on the street, in front of a factory gate or in mailboxes by walking around until all the copies were gone. This took hours and hours of work. Even then you hardly ever knew who read them and who dumped them. Wow! How that has changed.
As I sit here at home overlooking the Moriches Bay, I am typing out my blog. Then at the press of a key it goes out to how many people? I really don’t know. Many hundreds, thousands, millions of people are doing the same thing. And then there are the web-sites--The Huffington Post, Slate and on and on. What is the impact of all this, what should I call it--news opinions, thoughts, gossip, information, dribble? I don’t know precisely. I know it is all having an impact, but what that is I don’t know. I need some of my sociology, psychology mavins, or anyone else who has an opinion, to do a guest blog and tell us what is known about the impact of the Internet on our society?
In the meantime I was very much impressed with a David Brooks column in the Times of Oct. 2, 2009. The subject was very similar to my blog re. “Fearful Minds.” Brooks says the following about the right wing nuts on cable--Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, et al. In the last Presidential race they were going after McCain hammer and tongs because he’s not a true conservative. And the result? Comes New Hampshire and McCain wins. Next comes South Carolina and the “jocks” (Brooks’ term, not mine) hammer away at McCain because they want Romney. And Brooks points out again there is no army of followers that these Cable News whackos can produce. McCain wins South Carolina.
Quoting Brooks,”So what is the theme of our history lesson? It is the story of remarkable volume and utter weakness. It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche -- even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as “The Wizard of Oz,” of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain.” Brooks sights many more examples of how these guys just got it wrong.
This is not to say that we should ignore their message of hate. No, we need to react to it forcefully and fast. That’s what John Kerry failed to do on Swift boat allegations and it well might have cost him the election. Yet I believe he would have lost it anyhow because he, like so many other Democrats, just are not at home in the world of Blue Collar working class folk anymore. They used to be the solid support that the Democrats could always count on. No more. Okay, I just wanted to give a smart Republican, David Brooks, his due. He still knows how to conduct a civil argument about issues we may absolutely disagree about. These days I am grateful for that.
Would love to hear some ideas from you regarding the Internet’s effect on society.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Changing Fearful Minds
On my last blog, “Departure of Irving Kristol,” there was a comment asking what can we do about “fearful minds” that are being influenced by conservative bigots, falsifiers, and political right wing scoundrels? The hate talk on the televisions right wing-nuts is beginning to take on a far more ominous tone. Open talk about “killing the President” seems to be now acceptable behavior. This is typical example of how “fearful minds” become storm troops against democratic traditions. Having lived through the rise and fall of fascism I wonder if there are lessons that can be useful in the present struggle?
There are some similarities and some important differences between then and now. The present economic crisis, while not as severe, is a similarity. The difference is the present rapid response on the part of the governments to save the economic structure. That saved the banks and Wall Street but has left us with double digit unemployment. This is the root cause of the rising resentment amongst many Blue Collar people who rightly feel that the millionaires have been bailed out but they are the “forgotten.” That feeling is similar to how a much larger population in the 30ies felt about their situation. They were the “fearful minds” the fodder for the legends of fascist organizations that were springing up all over the western world.
Of course the extremes were in Germany and Italy. In the US we had similar but far less successful organizations. Father Couglin in Detroit or Huey long in Louisiana the German American Bund in New Jersey promising the world to the “fearful minds” of those who had lost their livelihoods, their homes and their hope for the future. The Couglin group actually tried to copy the Nazis with their publication of Henry Fords anti semitic diatribe, “The Protocols of Zion.” Did it catch on? Yes with some of the, “fearful minds” who were in dire need of someone to blame for their misfortune. The Jewish Bankers were handy or the Negroes for the Southern “fearful minds.” But as history has shown in didn’t quite catch on her as it did in Europe. The question is why not?
I believe there are a number of factors that played a critical role. First compared to Germany or Italy, there was a far more solid democratic tradition in the US going back to the founding fathers. Second President, F.D.R. was very empathic to those who were suffering the effects of the depression. I strongly believe that empathy grew out of his own struggle with infantile paralysis that left him with two totally useless legs that he needed to hold up with heavy steel braces. Third, he surrounded himself with a group of strong minded people who were determined to make some very critical changes in society. Finally and probably most important was the vibrant and powerful left that literally forced the F.D.R. administration to make serious economic concessions to the working class. The Wagner Act, Home Relief, Unemployment Insurance, Social Security just to name a few created in the 30ies. We now take them for granted. We refer to them as “the safety net.”
What can these lessons of the 30ies teach us for today? First the Obama administration needs to take some real action to help those victims of the recession who are the lowly wage earners down at the bottom of the economic ladder. Second the “new internet left” needs to swing into action to send President Obama a message that he needs to use the same kind of vigorous support he gave the banks to help those folks lower down on the economic scale who are suffering the most. The “fearful mind” folks need to see some leadership that is directing solutions in their direction. The important thing for those of us who believe in equality and fairness is to not cede the political playing fields to the right wing conservatives. They want to take us back to the dark ages of derivative Ponzi schemes that simply put, “make the rich richer at the expense of the working poor.”
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
There are some similarities and some important differences between then and now. The present economic crisis, while not as severe, is a similarity. The difference is the present rapid response on the part of the governments to save the economic structure. That saved the banks and Wall Street but has left us with double digit unemployment. This is the root cause of the rising resentment amongst many Blue Collar people who rightly feel that the millionaires have been bailed out but they are the “forgotten.” That feeling is similar to how a much larger population in the 30ies felt about their situation. They were the “fearful minds” the fodder for the legends of fascist organizations that were springing up all over the western world.
Of course the extremes were in Germany and Italy. In the US we had similar but far less successful organizations. Father Couglin in Detroit or Huey long in Louisiana the German American Bund in New Jersey promising the world to the “fearful minds” of those who had lost their livelihoods, their homes and their hope for the future. The Couglin group actually tried to copy the Nazis with their publication of Henry Fords anti semitic diatribe, “The Protocols of Zion.” Did it catch on? Yes with some of the, “fearful minds” who were in dire need of someone to blame for their misfortune. The Jewish Bankers were handy or the Negroes for the Southern “fearful minds.” But as history has shown in didn’t quite catch on her as it did in Europe. The question is why not?
I believe there are a number of factors that played a critical role. First compared to Germany or Italy, there was a far more solid democratic tradition in the US going back to the founding fathers. Second President, F.D.R. was very empathic to those who were suffering the effects of the depression. I strongly believe that empathy grew out of his own struggle with infantile paralysis that left him with two totally useless legs that he needed to hold up with heavy steel braces. Third, he surrounded himself with a group of strong minded people who were determined to make some very critical changes in society. Finally and probably most important was the vibrant and powerful left that literally forced the F.D.R. administration to make serious economic concessions to the working class. The Wagner Act, Home Relief, Unemployment Insurance, Social Security just to name a few created in the 30ies. We now take them for granted. We refer to them as “the safety net.”
What can these lessons of the 30ies teach us for today? First the Obama administration needs to take some real action to help those victims of the recession who are the lowly wage earners down at the bottom of the economic ladder. Second the “new internet left” needs to swing into action to send President Obama a message that he needs to use the same kind of vigorous support he gave the banks to help those folks lower down on the economic scale who are suffering the most. The “fearful mind” folks need to see some leadership that is directing solutions in their direction. The important thing for those of us who believe in equality and fairness is to not cede the political playing fields to the right wing conservatives. They want to take us back to the dark ages of derivative Ponzi schemes that simply put, “make the rich richer at the expense of the working poor.”
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Departure of Irving Kristol
The obituary on the death of Irving Kristol reminded me of my experience in the Alcoves at City College (CCNY). In my very radical youth years of the the ‘30s, I was working as a Plumber’s helper and spending my nights as a street corner speaker. One night I was asked to come to one of the Alcoves at CCNY to join the arguments going on between the Stalinists, Trotskyites, DeLeonists and other assorted left wing fervent believers. The Alcoves at CCNY, as I remember it, was part of the College cafeteria, a place where you could get food, but mostly you got hot and heavy arguments. Because plumbing work depended on availability, I did have periodic days off. On one of those days, I was invited to participate in the Alcove arguments. I went off to City College. As a Public School graduate with a few semesters of night High School, I was fearful of a world I knew nothing of.
With much hesitation I got involved in some of the arguments regarding world revolution versus the Russian Revolution. The Trotskyite position was that the Russian Revolution would fail unless there was the same kind of overthrow of all the capitalist systems. Back then I believed, if the Russian model could demonstrate its superiority, that would become a model for workers of the world. My arguments became an oddity as word spread around the Alcove that “there was a real worker here arguing the Stalinist position.” That drew a crowd of curious students who wanted to hear a “real worker.” I didn’t admit it at the time, but man with this crowd, was I ever over my head. They quoted stuff I never even heard of. Though I had been assured by many that I did just fine, I left with an overwhelming feeling that I had an awful lot to learn. I suppose I have had that feeling ever since.
It was there that I encountered many Irving Kristols’, Irving Howes’, and others who in later life would emerge as the new world of neo conservatives. Irving Kristol defined a neo conservative as a liberal who had been “mugged by reality.” Well that depends on how one experiences or views reality. In the CCNY Alcove, it was clear to me that my perception of reality as a plumber’s helper was very different from any of the political positions being argued there.
How one perceives what is going on in society depends on one’s “frame of reference.” For example, in my years of working on employment policy, I was often asked if a particular workplace “was a good place to work?” My standard answer became, “Compared to what?” This grew out of an experience I had touring with a group of economists in Europe. They were looking at unique workplaces where workers were participating in controlling their own work areas. In a truck plant in Sweden an economics Professor said, ‘This place is really noisy and stinks.” In fact it was the Taj Mahal of truck factories. I asked him, “Where have you worked in your life?” He replied, “Columbia University. I started there as a student and now I am a full Professor.” I laughed and he said, So what’s wrong with that?” Of course there was nothing wrong. It was simply that his narrow frame of reference gave him no way to understand what was going on in this truck factory.
One more illustration of this. In the ‘80s there was a television program about the anti-poverty programs. A number of the neo conservatives interviewed said they thought the programs were basically failures because they didn’t in fact end poverty. Needless to say, I was furious. Yes, they didn’t end poverty. I never believed they would. My frame of reference taught me to look beyond the immediate reported results. What I found was the emergence of a whole new group of Black and Latino leaders who came out of those programs. That experience helped them to understand the role of leadership. Their emergence has fundamentally changed the political spectrum in this country.
Irving Kristol, and now his son William, see reality as having been “mugged.” I am sure that being part of the mainstream is far more comfortable than being out there feeling mugged. “Mugged by reality,” there may be the fundamental difference. Being “mugged” infers a fear of reality. Others of us experience reality, but do not fear it. That experience may also make us far more empathic with those out there in the “mugged” world.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
With much hesitation I got involved in some of the arguments regarding world revolution versus the Russian Revolution. The Trotskyite position was that the Russian Revolution would fail unless there was the same kind of overthrow of all the capitalist systems. Back then I believed, if the Russian model could demonstrate its superiority, that would become a model for workers of the world. My arguments became an oddity as word spread around the Alcove that “there was a real worker here arguing the Stalinist position.” That drew a crowd of curious students who wanted to hear a “real worker.” I didn’t admit it at the time, but man with this crowd, was I ever over my head. They quoted stuff I never even heard of. Though I had been assured by many that I did just fine, I left with an overwhelming feeling that I had an awful lot to learn. I suppose I have had that feeling ever since.
It was there that I encountered many Irving Kristols’, Irving Howes’, and others who in later life would emerge as the new world of neo conservatives. Irving Kristol defined a neo conservative as a liberal who had been “mugged by reality.” Well that depends on how one experiences or views reality. In the CCNY Alcove, it was clear to me that my perception of reality as a plumber’s helper was very different from any of the political positions being argued there.
How one perceives what is going on in society depends on one’s “frame of reference.” For example, in my years of working on employment policy, I was often asked if a particular workplace “was a good place to work?” My standard answer became, “Compared to what?” This grew out of an experience I had touring with a group of economists in Europe. They were looking at unique workplaces where workers were participating in controlling their own work areas. In a truck plant in Sweden an economics Professor said, ‘This place is really noisy and stinks.” In fact it was the Taj Mahal of truck factories. I asked him, “Where have you worked in your life?” He replied, “Columbia University. I started there as a student and now I am a full Professor.” I laughed and he said, So what’s wrong with that?” Of course there was nothing wrong. It was simply that his narrow frame of reference gave him no way to understand what was going on in this truck factory.
One more illustration of this. In the ‘80s there was a television program about the anti-poverty programs. A number of the neo conservatives interviewed said they thought the programs were basically failures because they didn’t in fact end poverty. Needless to say, I was furious. Yes, they didn’t end poverty. I never believed they would. My frame of reference taught me to look beyond the immediate reported results. What I found was the emergence of a whole new group of Black and Latino leaders who came out of those programs. That experience helped them to understand the role of leadership. Their emergence has fundamentally changed the political spectrum in this country.
Irving Kristol, and now his son William, see reality as having been “mugged.” I am sure that being part of the mainstream is far more comfortable than being out there feeling mugged. “Mugged by reality,” there may be the fundamental difference. Being “mugged” infers a fear of reality. Others of us experience reality, but do not fear it. That experience may also make us far more empathic with those out there in the “mugged” world.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
"Liar"
I have been trying to understand the kind of vicious emotional hatred being expressed by people opposing the Obama Health Care Reform Legislation. I am reminded of earlier experiences around 1943. In the Machinists’ Union I helped the first black machinist get a job at a brewery in Brooklyn. There was no issue regarding his competence to do the job. Everyone agreed that was not a problem. When I asked, “Why are you guys all up in arms over this?”, one of the old timers who had supported me for years as the Local Lodge President said, “Schrank, you’ve gone too far. It’s one thing for us to take Jews in this Local. Now you’re asking us to take in ‘nig---s.’ Next you’ll be wanting to bring in Chimpanzees. It’s over. The answer is no.”
As always, after the meeting I hung around, drank some beer with the guys, and listened to what they had to say. What I found fascinating was what laid underneath the talk. They said things like, “You know, if we keep giving these ‘nig---s’ the same rights as we have, the next thing you know they'll be wanting to marry our daughters. Isn’t that what happened with the Jews?” I began to understand that underneath what appears on the surface of our thoughts and beliefs is a whole basement of prejudice and hate that humans carry around with them as regards their true feelings. This is particularly true of how they view minority groups. Even in the world of German radicals, socialists, anarchists, and freethinkers that I grew up in, when Hitler came on the scene many of these same radicals exploded with vicious anti-Semitism. It lay there all the time just waiting for the opportune moment to let it loose.
I believe this is a result of the demonization of minority groups, who are being used to take responsibility for our personal failures. During the McCarthy years it was the communists who were responsible for whatever went wrong in our relations with the rest of the world. The Hiroshima bomb probably hurt our standing with the rest of the world more than all the communists on the continent. In Hitler's Germany it was the Jews who were to blame for the fiasco of WW1. In the lynch world of the US it was the “nig---s” who were the cause of all our troubles, including droughts, floods, and white women who “don’t love me anymore.” Yes, that is the nature of the stuff we humans carry down below. It’s what Winnie The Pooh referred to as “in an underneath sort of way.” Isaiah Berlin calls it “what we carry below.”
I now believe that this is precisely what is going on as regards our President. I thank Congressmen Wilson for calling it to my attention. Yes Mr. Congressman, I accept the explanation of your outburst as “spontaneity.” That fits exactly what I am talking about. It also explains the hatred and vitriol on the faces of those folks in the Town Hall Meetings who were overcome with their own bitterness towards this “Black” man, who happens to be the President of the most powerful nation in the world. It is driving them crazy.
It makes me sad, but it also reminds me that this is the nature of change. I watched it happen in the Labor Movement, the Civil Rights movement, and the Women’s Movement. Victorious for some, difficult for others. That’s what change around power relationships is about. The election of Barack Obama is one of the biggest shifts in my long life. No wonder Mr. Wilson can’t control himself. All the more reason for us to support the President’s efforts. Never forget William Kristol’s advice to the right wing. He said, “Just Kill It.” And that is exactly what the Congressman Wilsons’ out there are trying to do. It is their best hope of destroying the creditability of the man they hate.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
As always, after the meeting I hung around, drank some beer with the guys, and listened to what they had to say. What I found fascinating was what laid underneath the talk. They said things like, “You know, if we keep giving these ‘nig---s’ the same rights as we have, the next thing you know they'll be wanting to marry our daughters. Isn’t that what happened with the Jews?” I began to understand that underneath what appears on the surface of our thoughts and beliefs is a whole basement of prejudice and hate that humans carry around with them as regards their true feelings. This is particularly true of how they view minority groups. Even in the world of German radicals, socialists, anarchists, and freethinkers that I grew up in, when Hitler came on the scene many of these same radicals exploded with vicious anti-Semitism. It lay there all the time just waiting for the opportune moment to let it loose.
I believe this is a result of the demonization of minority groups, who are being used to take responsibility for our personal failures. During the McCarthy years it was the communists who were responsible for whatever went wrong in our relations with the rest of the world. The Hiroshima bomb probably hurt our standing with the rest of the world more than all the communists on the continent. In Hitler's Germany it was the Jews who were to blame for the fiasco of WW1. In the lynch world of the US it was the “nig---s” who were the cause of all our troubles, including droughts, floods, and white women who “don’t love me anymore.” Yes, that is the nature of the stuff we humans carry down below. It’s what Winnie The Pooh referred to as “in an underneath sort of way.” Isaiah Berlin calls it “what we carry below.”
I now believe that this is precisely what is going on as regards our President. I thank Congressmen Wilson for calling it to my attention. Yes Mr. Congressman, I accept the explanation of your outburst as “spontaneity.” That fits exactly what I am talking about. It also explains the hatred and vitriol on the faces of those folks in the Town Hall Meetings who were overcome with their own bitterness towards this “Black” man, who happens to be the President of the most powerful nation in the world. It is driving them crazy.
It makes me sad, but it also reminds me that this is the nature of change. I watched it happen in the Labor Movement, the Civil Rights movement, and the Women’s Movement. Victorious for some, difficult for others. That’s what change around power relationships is about. The election of Barack Obama is one of the biggest shifts in my long life. No wonder Mr. Wilson can’t control himself. All the more reason for us to support the President’s efforts. Never forget William Kristol’s advice to the right wing. He said, “Just Kill It.” And that is exactly what the Congressman Wilsons’ out there are trying to do. It is their best hope of destroying the creditability of the man they hate.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Labor Day 2009
Here’s yet another Labor Day and I continue to wonder about whatever happened to the militant Labor Movement I was part of for the first third of my working life? I just received an article from Bruce McIver out in Missoula, Montana about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (who I had met on several occasions) and the Wobblies free speech fight. Missoula had refused them the right to speak on a street corner. What did the Wobblies do? They called all their followers in the Northwest to come to Missoula to pack the jails. Did it work? You betcha. With the jails overflowing the local government rescinded the ordinance and free speech was returned to Missoula. That’s the tradition of the American Labor Movement that made me proud to be part of it. So what happened to that tradition?
Labor won huge victories during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The the entire landscape of America’s Industrial Heartland was changed by the passage of the Wagner Act that made it possible to organize and win collective bargaining rights via an election. During this period we saw the emergence of the Steel, Auto, Rubber, Electrical, Textile, and Chemical Workers’ unions. With an overall membership of millions of unionized workers, they became a formidable force in the life of the country and particularly its politics; for example, the election of FDR to four successive terms. At the end of WWII big business decided it was time to put the unions back in a box. Giant corporations thought the unions had gained far to much power during the thirties and forties and they were determined to dramatically change that.
The end of WWII saw one of the greatest strike waves in history. Many of the strikes were Wild Cats that were never approved by the union leadership. Workers resented the huge profiteering that took place during the war, while their wages were frozen. The post WWII strike wave was an attempt to correct that injustice. As President of the Machinists Union in NY State, I was extremely busy running from one major strike situation to another. In a number of instances companies simply refused to recognize existing contracts. The Yale & Towne Lock Company in Stanford CT. was the leader in that struggle.
In 1948 Senator Taft and Congressmen Hartley introduced a bill in Congress called the Taft Hartley Act. At the urging of my members I wrote a pamphlet called “THIS IS AIMED AT YOU -- AN EXPOSE OF THE TAFT HARTLEY PLOT TO BUST THE UNIONS AND HI-JACK THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.” A most critical part of the law was to put the Labor Movement under the supervision of the Government. This was best exemplified by the need of the union leadership to sign an affidavit that they were not communists, nor belonged to any organization on the Attorney Generals Subversive List. John L. Lewis, a dramatic leader of the Mine Workers Union, declared he thought it an insult for him to have to swear his loyalty to the government in order to lead his union. He refused to sign the affidavit; and that is exactly what the rest of the union leadership should have done. It would have made the Taft Hartly Law ineffective.
With the rising tension between the US and the Soviet Union, the union leaders seemed to fall all over each other in their haste to sign up to prove their patriotism. What they proved was the beginning of the end of a militant labor movement. Since that time we have literally seen the withering away of any militancy that once defined the American Labor Movement. It reached its peak when Ronald Reagan fired the striking aircraft controllers and the Labor Movement just snored through the whole event.
It was not by accident that during this period of decline the number of racketeering cases increased dramatically. Why you might ask? Once the “true believers” started to leave the unions, the business trade unionists took over. And who are they? These are people who see the union as a dues collection organization that resulted in major unions falling under the control of the Mafia. They add the additional feature of forcing employers to make payoffs if they want any kind of industrial piece. Are you still wondering why workers have become disillusioned and disgusted with the union leadership?
Is this just a hopeless scenario or is there hope for change? I believe that there are the beginnings of a new emerging voice of labor in the SEIU and a number of other emerging unions. Yes, they seem to be primarily in the white collar world, but one can argue that’s where the future of the job market is. Still it does make me sad to live through another Labor Day and the need to reflect on what happened to a once powerful voice of the downtrodden and oppressed.
P.S. I was one of those “true believers.” It took the Machinist Union leaders three years to get rid of me. They expelled me three times; probably a Guiness record.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Labor won huge victories during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The the entire landscape of America’s Industrial Heartland was changed by the passage of the Wagner Act that made it possible to organize and win collective bargaining rights via an election. During this period we saw the emergence of the Steel, Auto, Rubber, Electrical, Textile, and Chemical Workers’ unions. With an overall membership of millions of unionized workers, they became a formidable force in the life of the country and particularly its politics; for example, the election of FDR to four successive terms. At the end of WWII big business decided it was time to put the unions back in a box. Giant corporations thought the unions had gained far to much power during the thirties and forties and they were determined to dramatically change that.
The end of WWII saw one of the greatest strike waves in history. Many of the strikes were Wild Cats that were never approved by the union leadership. Workers resented the huge profiteering that took place during the war, while their wages were frozen. The post WWII strike wave was an attempt to correct that injustice. As President of the Machinists Union in NY State, I was extremely busy running from one major strike situation to another. In a number of instances companies simply refused to recognize existing contracts. The Yale & Towne Lock Company in Stanford CT. was the leader in that struggle.
In 1948 Senator Taft and Congressmen Hartley introduced a bill in Congress called the Taft Hartley Act. At the urging of my members I wrote a pamphlet called “THIS IS AIMED AT YOU -- AN EXPOSE OF THE TAFT HARTLEY PLOT TO BUST THE UNIONS AND HI-JACK THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.” A most critical part of the law was to put the Labor Movement under the supervision of the Government. This was best exemplified by the need of the union leadership to sign an affidavit that they were not communists, nor belonged to any organization on the Attorney Generals Subversive List. John L. Lewis, a dramatic leader of the Mine Workers Union, declared he thought it an insult for him to have to swear his loyalty to the government in order to lead his union. He refused to sign the affidavit; and that is exactly what the rest of the union leadership should have done. It would have made the Taft Hartly Law ineffective.
With the rising tension between the US and the Soviet Union, the union leaders seemed to fall all over each other in their haste to sign up to prove their patriotism. What they proved was the beginning of the end of a militant labor movement. Since that time we have literally seen the withering away of any militancy that once defined the American Labor Movement. It reached its peak when Ronald Reagan fired the striking aircraft controllers and the Labor Movement just snored through the whole event.
It was not by accident that during this period of decline the number of racketeering cases increased dramatically. Why you might ask? Once the “true believers” started to leave the unions, the business trade unionists took over. And who are they? These are people who see the union as a dues collection organization that resulted in major unions falling under the control of the Mafia. They add the additional feature of forcing employers to make payoffs if they want any kind of industrial piece. Are you still wondering why workers have become disillusioned and disgusted with the union leadership?
Is this just a hopeless scenario or is there hope for change? I believe that there are the beginnings of a new emerging voice of labor in the SEIU and a number of other emerging unions. Yes, they seem to be primarily in the white collar world, but one can argue that’s where the future of the job market is. Still it does make me sad to live through another Labor Day and the need to reflect on what happened to a once powerful voice of the downtrodden and oppressed.
P.S. I was one of those “true believers.” It took the Machinist Union leaders three years to get rid of me. They expelled me three times; probably a Guiness record.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Closing Nummi
As I read about the Toyota decision to close the Nummi plant in Fremont, CA, I get really pissed off. This is the only unionized Toyota plant in the whole USA. Before GM went bankrupt the plant was a joint venture between GM and Toyota. They manufactured the Corrolla and the small pick up truck. GM pulled out and Toyota US chief of operations, Yoshi Inabi, decided to close the Fremont operation. He said it was too expensive to operate, so 4,500 employees will lose their jobs by March of 2010.
Like the rest of the automotive industry, Toyota sales have been down for the last couple of years. All of their new plants built in the US are in the south and are, of course, non-union. They even have a new modern plant built in Mississippi that hasn’t even gone into production. They would probably like to move the Fremont operation from California to Mississippi. You wonder why? In Mississippi they don’t pay taxes, the state trains their workers, and it’s a “right to work state.” That makes it extremely difficult to unionize. In a word, Toyota is pretty free to do as they please down there in old Miss.
California is a different story. First of all the UAW in Fremont has made continuous concessions to the company on wages and working conditions. The UAW is trying its darndest to meet all the Toyota requirements for a free hand in running the plant. Toyota seems not to care a hoot about what the loss of 4,500 jobs will mean to the employees and the whole area around Fremont that supports the car plant. There are probably an equal number of people outside the plant who will also be affected.
Now here comes the real shocker in this story of indifference to where the company is operating. During the recent Cash for Clunker’s program, guess which auto company was the biggest beneficiary? You guessed it, none other than Toyota. The US taxpayer gave them a huge finacial boost You would think that might give them pause as they dump 4,500 employees into the street. Toyota doesn’t seem to understand that this is a humanitarian decision as much as an economic one.
Having said all that, I now have to turn my attention to the UAW and the Labor Movement in terms of how it will respond to the Toyota decision. The precipitous decline of the American Labor Movement, that has been going on ever since the passage of the Taft Hartley law in the late forties has been its inability to respond at critical moments of change; for example, Ronald Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers and the labor movement did nothing. So far, in the Nummi case the UAW leadership is making indignant speeches. That will not mean diddly-squat without some serious action.
Well in my 92nd year, I remember a conversation with the late John L. Lewis, the brilliant head of the Mine Workers Union. A bunch of us young wannabe union organizers were being asked to go South in a drive to organize the Textile industry. Lewis said, “When you are in a life and death fight with the employers and all seems hopeless, it’s time to create a crisis.” That’s what we did in Stanford, Ct. in 1948 after a losing battle with the Yale and Town Lock company. We created a one day General Strike. Man, did that work. The governor stepped in and an arbitrator was appointed. We didn’t win, but neither did we lose. It’s a lesson for the UAW.
Some advice from the poet Dylan Thomas might be appropriate, “Do not go quietly into the night.” Maybe take a few hundred of those Fremont members over to Torrance, the Toyota Corporate headquarters, and have a sit-in until you can have a meeting with Mr. Inabi. See if you can’t change his mind. If you can’t, then stay there and recruit your esteemed Governor to come and join you. This is just one amongst many possibilities. But for God sake, put up a fight in the best militant tradition of the the American Labor Movement. I hope it’s not too late. Go get ‘em UAW.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Like the rest of the automotive industry, Toyota sales have been down for the last couple of years. All of their new plants built in the US are in the south and are, of course, non-union. They even have a new modern plant built in Mississippi that hasn’t even gone into production. They would probably like to move the Fremont operation from California to Mississippi. You wonder why? In Mississippi they don’t pay taxes, the state trains their workers, and it’s a “right to work state.” That makes it extremely difficult to unionize. In a word, Toyota is pretty free to do as they please down there in old Miss.
California is a different story. First of all the UAW in Fremont has made continuous concessions to the company on wages and working conditions. The UAW is trying its darndest to meet all the Toyota requirements for a free hand in running the plant. Toyota seems not to care a hoot about what the loss of 4,500 jobs will mean to the employees and the whole area around Fremont that supports the car plant. There are probably an equal number of people outside the plant who will also be affected.
Now here comes the real shocker in this story of indifference to where the company is operating. During the recent Cash for Clunker’s program, guess which auto company was the biggest beneficiary? You guessed it, none other than Toyota. The US taxpayer gave them a huge finacial boost You would think that might give them pause as they dump 4,500 employees into the street. Toyota doesn’t seem to understand that this is a humanitarian decision as much as an economic one.
Having said all that, I now have to turn my attention to the UAW and the Labor Movement in terms of how it will respond to the Toyota decision. The precipitous decline of the American Labor Movement, that has been going on ever since the passage of the Taft Hartley law in the late forties has been its inability to respond at critical moments of change; for example, Ronald Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers and the labor movement did nothing. So far, in the Nummi case the UAW leadership is making indignant speeches. That will not mean diddly-squat without some serious action.
Well in my 92nd year, I remember a conversation with the late John L. Lewis, the brilliant head of the Mine Workers Union. A bunch of us young wannabe union organizers were being asked to go South in a drive to organize the Textile industry. Lewis said, “When you are in a life and death fight with the employers and all seems hopeless, it’s time to create a crisis.” That’s what we did in Stanford, Ct. in 1948 after a losing battle with the Yale and Town Lock company. We created a one day General Strike. Man, did that work. The governor stepped in and an arbitrator was appointed. We didn’t win, but neither did we lose. It’s a lesson for the UAW.
Some advice from the poet Dylan Thomas might be appropriate, “Do not go quietly into the night.” Maybe take a few hundred of those Fremont members over to Torrance, the Toyota Corporate headquarters, and have a sit-in until you can have a meeting with Mr. Inabi. See if you can’t change his mind. If you can’t, then stay there and recruit your esteemed Governor to come and join you. This is just one amongst many possibilities. But for God sake, put up a fight in the best militant tradition of the the American Labor Movement. I hope it’s not too late. Go get ‘em UAW.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Obama;s Waterloo
It’s probably the worst of times or the best of times for the President and his family to go off to the Vineyard for a vacation. The worst because of what has been happening to his Health Care Reform initiative. The best because it might be a good opportunity to sit on a beach and think through what exactly has happened.
In an earlier blog I expressed a deep concern about Obama’s naiveté regarding “reaching across the aisle” for support of the proposed health care legislation. I thought then, as I do now, that all that inviting the Pharmaceutical guys for a White House” free lunch” was not going to help one bit. For the Pharma guys, when push comes to shove, the only thing that counts is the bottom line.
The insurance folks are just being true to their commitments, which is TO MAKE MONEY. They don’t care if everyone is covered or not. They care about their profits period. If this sounds like “class struggle” talk, well it is. After the world wide financial meltdown that caused irreparable damage to millions of homeowners, as well as job holders, while the bank boys wallowed in huge bonuses, if you don’t see the class angle in all of this, well what can I say. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer now what do you call that? It ain’t a church picnic. Maybe it is the class struggle?
Here’s the giveaway on what the right wing was up to. Early on in the health care debate some Republicans asked their conservative high Priest or should I say Rabbi, Bill Krystal ”what they should do about health care.” Without blinking an eye he said,”JUST KILL IT.” That created the group who are now out there to Kill IT, period. The object of course is the kill the Obama Presidency with it. That is what I think is now at stake.I hope a week on the Vineyard beach will brace Obama for the first really major fight of his Presidency. All of us who believe in a more equal distribution of health care benefits need to see it as our fight not just Obamas.
I hope Obama will go back to his campaign strategy of getting all those cyberspace folks back into action. In order for that to happen he needs to spell out in Power Point fashion exactly what needs to be in the Health Care Legislation. The “KILLER,S” have taken advantage of the fact that there is no legislation pending. There is just lots of ideas that have gotten rolled up into 800 pages of legislative stuff that has been a field day for the opposition. Wading through all those pages permits cuckoos to accuse the President of proposing “death panels for Grandma’s.” Listen it would be funny except there are people out there who are so frightened by the economic melt down that they believe anything scary.
Mr President please compose a list of exactly what your administration is proposing. No lengthy Harvard Law School discussion, just maybe a dozen bullet points of what it is you are proposing. While your are at don’t hesitate to call a lie, a lie, like the death panel stuff.
This is a time for bold leadership Mr. President. just go out there and sock-'em and the country will respond. Have a nice week on the beach and a good Lobster dinner at The Shack.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
In an earlier blog I expressed a deep concern about Obama’s naiveté regarding “reaching across the aisle” for support of the proposed health care legislation. I thought then, as I do now, that all that inviting the Pharmaceutical guys for a White House” free lunch” was not going to help one bit. For the Pharma guys, when push comes to shove, the only thing that counts is the bottom line.
The insurance folks are just being true to their commitments, which is TO MAKE MONEY. They don’t care if everyone is covered or not. They care about their profits period. If this sounds like “class struggle” talk, well it is. After the world wide financial meltdown that caused irreparable damage to millions of homeowners, as well as job holders, while the bank boys wallowed in huge bonuses, if you don’t see the class angle in all of this, well what can I say. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer now what do you call that? It ain’t a church picnic. Maybe it is the class struggle?
Here’s the giveaway on what the right wing was up to. Early on in the health care debate some Republicans asked their conservative high Priest or should I say Rabbi, Bill Krystal ”what they should do about health care.” Without blinking an eye he said,”JUST KILL IT.” That created the group who are now out there to Kill IT, period. The object of course is the kill the Obama Presidency with it. That is what I think is now at stake.I hope a week on the Vineyard beach will brace Obama for the first really major fight of his Presidency. All of us who believe in a more equal distribution of health care benefits need to see it as our fight not just Obamas.
I hope Obama will go back to his campaign strategy of getting all those cyberspace folks back into action. In order for that to happen he needs to spell out in Power Point fashion exactly what needs to be in the Health Care Legislation. The “KILLER,S” have taken advantage of the fact that there is no legislation pending. There is just lots of ideas that have gotten rolled up into 800 pages of legislative stuff that has been a field day for the opposition. Wading through all those pages permits cuckoos to accuse the President of proposing “death panels for Grandma’s.” Listen it would be funny except there are people out there who are so frightened by the economic melt down that they believe anything scary.
Mr President please compose a list of exactly what your administration is proposing. No lengthy Harvard Law School discussion, just maybe a dozen bullet points of what it is you are proposing. While your are at don’t hesitate to call a lie, a lie, like the death panel stuff.
This is a time for bold leadership Mr. President. just go out there and sock-'em and the country will respond. Have a nice week on the beach and a good Lobster dinner at The Shack.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Hubris
Hubris *
I drive by the creek every day,
Boats lazily bump against the dock.
Up on the hill sit others, on cement blocks.
I whiz by as my eye catches,
Is that her? Could it be my old love Hubris?
Forlorn, abandoned, left high and dry
On cement blocks. It’s an indignity!
She and I sailed to the city going west
And to Montauk going east;
Through Shinicock and Moriches Inlets
With the wind whistling in her sails.
Her tiller in my hands I could sing
In full throat my song of joy;
As the water, the boat, the wind,
All in one perfect harmony.
And her name was Hubris.
Slowly but surely I knew,
One day my drive-by would stop.
As I looked across the creek
She kept calling to me for rescue.
Her name was chosen in the face of Poseidon.
He was smashing waves ‘oer her deck.
We were in deep water. What to do?
Snug inside her cabin we waited it out,
Waited for Poseidon to quit his rage.
He raged. The Oday just bounced around
Like a rubber duck in a baby’s bath.
For how long? Maybe an hour, two or three?
Poseidon blessed her heart. He called her Hubris.
No way was she to spend her late years
Rotting away on cement blocks.
To the rescue!
A visit, the sun was setting in a ruby red sky.
Criss-crossed old rail tracks marked
This ancient ruin of a boatyard.
Rubbish strewn cover from banishment.
But Hubris was sound in structure.
I thought, with a little love and a lot of luck
She’d sail the ocean blue yet again.
I went sailing, ass over tea kettle, my face in the mud.
I lay there a while. What to do? What to do?
Cell phone them 911?
What do I say? “I’m in this ancient boatyard
Between the Oday 22 and the Catalina 30?”
What’ll Kate think? “My God, what did he do now?”
No, just pick yourself up, dust yourself off,
Start all over again.”
Wisdom from Frank Sinatra.
But you can’t go home again.
Oh that’s baloney!
Get Hubris back in the water. We’ll show ‘em.
Well maybe after my leg stops screaming.
You stupid idiot! What were you thinking
As you lay in the ruins of an ancient boat yard?
Yeah, yeah, I know, if you could just get hubris back in the water,
You’d be back in ‘82 sailing the ocean blue.
Only you forgot, the man in black is at your back.
Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.
(“Hubris” Greek word,challenging the Gods usually resulting in failure.)
I drive by the creek every day,
Boats lazily bump against the dock.
Up on the hill sit others, on cement blocks.
I whiz by as my eye catches,
Is that her? Could it be my old love Hubris?
Forlorn, abandoned, left high and dry
On cement blocks. It’s an indignity!
She and I sailed to the city going west
And to Montauk going east;
Through Shinicock and Moriches Inlets
With the wind whistling in her sails.
Her tiller in my hands I could sing
In full throat my song of joy;
As the water, the boat, the wind,
All in one perfect harmony.
And her name was Hubris.
Slowly but surely I knew,
One day my drive-by would stop.
As I looked across the creek
She kept calling to me for rescue.
Her name was chosen in the face of Poseidon.
He was smashing waves ‘oer her deck.
We were in deep water. What to do?
Snug inside her cabin we waited it out,
Waited for Poseidon to quit his rage.
He raged. The Oday just bounced around
Like a rubber duck in a baby’s bath.
For how long? Maybe an hour, two or three?
Poseidon blessed her heart. He called her Hubris.
No way was she to spend her late years
Rotting away on cement blocks.
To the rescue!
A visit, the sun was setting in a ruby red sky.
Criss-crossed old rail tracks marked
This ancient ruin of a boatyard.
Rubbish strewn cover from banishment.
But Hubris was sound in structure.
I thought, with a little love and a lot of luck
She’d sail the ocean blue yet again.
I went sailing, ass over tea kettle, my face in the mud.
I lay there a while. What to do? What to do?
Cell phone them 911?
What do I say? “I’m in this ancient boatyard
Between the Oday 22 and the Catalina 30?”
What’ll Kate think? “My God, what did he do now?”
No, just pick yourself up, dust yourself off,
Start all over again.”
Wisdom from Frank Sinatra.
But you can’t go home again.
Oh that’s baloney!
Get Hubris back in the water. We’ll show ‘em.
Well maybe after my leg stops screaming.
You stupid idiot! What were you thinking
As you lay in the ruins of an ancient boat yard?
Yeah, yeah, I know, if you could just get hubris back in the water,
You’d be back in ‘82 sailing the ocean blue.
Only you forgot, the man in black is at your back.
Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.
(“Hubris” Greek word,challenging the Gods usually resulting in failure.)
Sunday, August 9, 2009
I Was Wrong
It was probably Jean Freemen’s comment on my last blog,”Pete Seeger’s 90th,” that got me rethinking what I had said, “The left had given up the class struggle in favor of environmental issues.” Jean suggested that the two are so intertwined as to make them difficult to separate. The poor are and will suffer more from the the environmental catastrophes than the rest of us. That got me thinking it over again, as I have done so many times before. Now I believe I was wrong.
A little background. It is generally agreed amongst historians that the Industrial Revolution started about 200 years ago. That’s when the life of strictly living off the land began to change. It started in England with the invention of the steam engine used to pump water out of the coal mines. The railroad embodies the idea that we can use things found in nature to make our lives easier and richer. The railroads demand on nature included iron, copper, coal and wood. But look what it did in moving stuff and us from one place to another. Then came the cotton gin and most important of all the Internal Combustion Engine essential for all transportation. It required oil for lubrication and gasoline refined from oil to make it run. It created a revolution in farming through the tractor and the transportation of food and the airplane. It gave us very cheap source of power. This was the revolution that changed the lives of millions of people from feudal peasants to skilled industrial artisans. My life was the epitome of that largess. At age 16 I had my first car. I was the, “king of the hill” in my old neighborhood.
Those same very cheap sources of power have kept the lights on and air conditioners running through the use of coal. Now here comes the rub. These resources are finite and we are now at the point of beginning to run out of oil. The effect of our burning fossil fuel is destroying the very air that we breath. So here’s the quid pro quo. Nature gives us all these wonderful things that makes our lives a great historical party. But we foul up the atmosphere with carbon emission, water rises forcing millions to leave their homes, and new deserts are formed.
Yes Jean, I think you are right and I wish to retract what I said about the Sloop Clearwater. If we continue to destroy the planet at the rate we are presently going, there won’t be much of a class struggle to fight over. And yes, the poor are already paying as climate change is mostly effecting the people of Africa and Asia who can least afford it. People living on low lying islands in the Pacific are being moved as the oceans rise from the melting of the glaciers, the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets. The endangered Polar Bears are acting as our Canaries in the coal mines.
Why aren’t people more alarmed by this environmental crisis? My years of experience in the Labor Movement taught me that the average person, overwhelmed with their own day to day issues, feels that there is no way they can go out and do something about the destruction of the very environment that we are dependent on for our continued existence. That’s the present dilemma that we find ourselves in. Thanks Jean for your challenge.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
A little background. It is generally agreed amongst historians that the Industrial Revolution started about 200 years ago. That’s when the life of strictly living off the land began to change. It started in England with the invention of the steam engine used to pump water out of the coal mines. The railroad embodies the idea that we can use things found in nature to make our lives easier and richer. The railroads demand on nature included iron, copper, coal and wood. But look what it did in moving stuff and us from one place to another. Then came the cotton gin and most important of all the Internal Combustion Engine essential for all transportation. It required oil for lubrication and gasoline refined from oil to make it run. It created a revolution in farming through the tractor and the transportation of food and the airplane. It gave us very cheap source of power. This was the revolution that changed the lives of millions of people from feudal peasants to skilled industrial artisans. My life was the epitome of that largess. At age 16 I had my first car. I was the, “king of the hill” in my old neighborhood.
Those same very cheap sources of power have kept the lights on and air conditioners running through the use of coal. Now here comes the rub. These resources are finite and we are now at the point of beginning to run out of oil. The effect of our burning fossil fuel is destroying the very air that we breath. So here’s the quid pro quo. Nature gives us all these wonderful things that makes our lives a great historical party. But we foul up the atmosphere with carbon emission, water rises forcing millions to leave their homes, and new deserts are formed.
Yes Jean, I think you are right and I wish to retract what I said about the Sloop Clearwater. If we continue to destroy the planet at the rate we are presently going, there won’t be much of a class struggle to fight over. And yes, the poor are already paying as climate change is mostly effecting the people of Africa and Asia who can least afford it. People living on low lying islands in the Pacific are being moved as the oceans rise from the melting of the glaciers, the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets. The endangered Polar Bears are acting as our Canaries in the coal mines.
Why aren’t people more alarmed by this environmental crisis? My years of experience in the Labor Movement taught me that the average person, overwhelmed with their own day to day issues, feels that there is no way they can go out and do something about the destruction of the very environment that we are dependent on for our continued existence. That’s the present dilemma that we find ourselves in. Thanks Jean for your challenge.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Pete Seeger's 90th
Watching Pete’s 90 birthday party in Madison Square Garden on PBS brought back a sea of memories. The Garden Party was for the benefit of the sloop Clearwater. It is part of Pete’s campaign to clean up the Hudson River. Everybody who is anybody in the folk music world was there and it was a most joyous occasion for the thousands who filled the Garden and were happy to sing along. Yet it got me thinking. How did we progress down the road from “Talking Union,” one of Pete’s first songs about the class struggle to songs about cleaning up the Hudson River?
Early on Pete, with the rest of us lefties were singing about worker’s rights to organize. “Which Side Are You On,” “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night,” “Solidarity Forever” these were the anthems of struggle. When I was a union organizer I was inspired by Pete to learn to play the guitar as just another tool to help in the organizing campaigns. (You see the picture on my blog.) And indeed singing did help as it was a way of creating a common expression that all could participate in. What I am curious about is how the music changed? (I believe that when the singing ends the movement is over.)
The early days of the folk revival were born out of the WPA project to record as much as possible the songs of Appalachia and other rural areas that were rapidly dieing out. Alan Lomax lead this project for the Library of Congress. Much of the “Folkways” recordings that he made are now at the Smithsonian. A lot of the early protest music was sung by the Wobblies, the IWW. Their “Little Red Song Book” became famous for its songs about the class struggle particularly among the loggers in the Northwest.
Joe Hill took the hymn “In The Sweet Bye and Bye” and wrote these words to it
.
Long haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right,
But when asked about how “bout something to eat”
They will answer with voices so sweet:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, Live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
The whole idea of that singing was to help people understand the nature of the class struggle. Workers and the poor suffered because the owners of the means of production that included the whole banking world were exploiting them for the sake of their own profits. (Song “The Banks Are Made of Marble with a guard at every door and the vaults are filled with silver that the workers sweated for.”)
When Pete came on the scene the class struggle was still a major focus of the folk singing world. That’s when “Talking Union” appeared and so it continued through the 30ies and 40ies. I can’t pinpoint an exact time when it began to change. This will be a rough try. First there was the McCarty era in which we had to fight off the fascist crazies who where preparing lists of people to be rounded up and put in concentration camps for the duration. (I was on that list.)That’s when singing out for freedom was a critical part of holding people together.
I believe things began to change some time after Khrushchev’s speech in 1956 to the Communist Party Convention acknowledging the horrors of the Stalin era. That was the beginning of the end of the utopian “dream of socialism.” Somewhat later with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the “dream” disappeared from the world of alternatives to capitalism.
The coming together of the Viet Nam war protests and the Civil Rights movement is best expressed in the song “We Shall Overcome.” Black folks with the great Spiritual and Gospel tradition sure did sing themselves to many victories. The lefties were very much part of those movements.
The cultural revolution of the sixties was another important turning point. The anti war movement of the sixties pretty much rejected the old Marxist idea of the class struggle. The sixties launched the notion that what we needed to was “love one another.” It was as though “now that the idea of socialism has been pretty much destroyed what can we do to make the world a better place?” Well, loving one and other is not a bad idea it just doesn’t address fundamental underlying problems of society. The epitome of loving through music was demonstrated at the Woodstock celebration in 1969.
It was some time during the Reagan years that I got a sense that a new paradigm had taken over the society. Namely it was okay now to look out for yourself and go forth and make money. In that same time frame the issue of saving the planet began to emerge with increasing reports of the serious erosion of the worlds climate, oceans, air and resources. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring published in 1962 became a best seller and made the fight to save the planet real. No longer having a alternative of socialism this became a new safe harbor for old lefties to move into.
As we were celebrating Pete’s 90th in Madison Square Garden, I couldn’t help but think, have we solved all those old nagging economic problems that society is bereft with? Like the continuous increase in the spread between the rich and the poor? Or have we decided that it is easier to clean up the Hudson River with the help of the sloop Clearwater than it is to do something about the rich growing richer at the expense of the poor? Just more questions than answers.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Early on Pete, with the rest of us lefties were singing about worker’s rights to organize. “Which Side Are You On,” “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night,” “Solidarity Forever” these were the anthems of struggle. When I was a union organizer I was inspired by Pete to learn to play the guitar as just another tool to help in the organizing campaigns. (You see the picture on my blog.) And indeed singing did help as it was a way of creating a common expression that all could participate in. What I am curious about is how the music changed? (I believe that when the singing ends the movement is over.)
The early days of the folk revival were born out of the WPA project to record as much as possible the songs of Appalachia and other rural areas that were rapidly dieing out. Alan Lomax lead this project for the Library of Congress. Much of the “Folkways” recordings that he made are now at the Smithsonian. A lot of the early protest music was sung by the Wobblies, the IWW. Their “Little Red Song Book” became famous for its songs about the class struggle particularly among the loggers in the Northwest.
Joe Hill took the hymn “In The Sweet Bye and Bye” and wrote these words to it
.
Long haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right,
But when asked about how “bout something to eat”
They will answer with voices so sweet:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, Live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
The whole idea of that singing was to help people understand the nature of the class struggle. Workers and the poor suffered because the owners of the means of production that included the whole banking world were exploiting them for the sake of their own profits. (Song “The Banks Are Made of Marble with a guard at every door and the vaults are filled with silver that the workers sweated for.”)
When Pete came on the scene the class struggle was still a major focus of the folk singing world. That’s when “Talking Union” appeared and so it continued through the 30ies and 40ies. I can’t pinpoint an exact time when it began to change. This will be a rough try. First there was the McCarty era in which we had to fight off the fascist crazies who where preparing lists of people to be rounded up and put in concentration camps for the duration. (I was on that list.)That’s when singing out for freedom was a critical part of holding people together.
I believe things began to change some time after Khrushchev’s speech in 1956 to the Communist Party Convention acknowledging the horrors of the Stalin era. That was the beginning of the end of the utopian “dream of socialism.” Somewhat later with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the “dream” disappeared from the world of alternatives to capitalism.
The coming together of the Viet Nam war protests and the Civil Rights movement is best expressed in the song “We Shall Overcome.” Black folks with the great Spiritual and Gospel tradition sure did sing themselves to many victories. The lefties were very much part of those movements.
The cultural revolution of the sixties was another important turning point. The anti war movement of the sixties pretty much rejected the old Marxist idea of the class struggle. The sixties launched the notion that what we needed to was “love one another.” It was as though “now that the idea of socialism has been pretty much destroyed what can we do to make the world a better place?” Well, loving one and other is not a bad idea it just doesn’t address fundamental underlying problems of society. The epitome of loving through music was demonstrated at the Woodstock celebration in 1969.
It was some time during the Reagan years that I got a sense that a new paradigm had taken over the society. Namely it was okay now to look out for yourself and go forth and make money. In that same time frame the issue of saving the planet began to emerge with increasing reports of the serious erosion of the worlds climate, oceans, air and resources. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring published in 1962 became a best seller and made the fight to save the planet real. No longer having a alternative of socialism this became a new safe harbor for old lefties to move into.
As we were celebrating Pete’s 90th in Madison Square Garden, I couldn’t help but think, have we solved all those old nagging economic problems that society is bereft with? Like the continuous increase in the spread between the rich and the poor? Or have we decided that it is easier to clean up the Hudson River with the help of the sloop Clearwater than it is to do something about the rich growing richer at the expense of the poor? Just more questions than answers.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
The President in not a Magician!
During the election campaign I wrote of my concern that Obama was raising expectations way beyond anything that any President could deliver. This is his present dilemma with the unemployment problem. The evidence shows how the Stimulus Package sure helped the banks but so far has done nothing to effect the unemployment rate. This will create a backlash for Obama if it doesn’t start to come down pretty soon.
This is precisely why I was so concerned about Geithner and Summer acting as the point men for the President. Listen all they knew about is Wall Street. That’s where they grew up and hence that’s what made them knowledgeable about the world of bankers. This was their specialty or put another way, that’s all they know. Don’t no beans about how to create jobs. During the thirties FDR and LaGuardia had Robert Moses. Man could he create jobs. Tri Borough Bridge, Orchard and Jones beach, Southern State Parkway etc. etc. Obama needs to find a modern day Robert Moses. That brings me to expectation and health care reform.
Here is another example of magical thinking on the part of Obama people who thought he was just going to march straight through the insurance company linebackers to a touchdown with a brand new health care program for all. The private for profit insurance team said “yeah over our dead bodies you will.” That’s where we now find ourselves.
This is the time for all who favor health care to come to the aid of the President. Obama has made this a major campaign promise. It’s one that urgently needs citizen support. I think the President underestimated the insurance interests in scuttling any interference with their profits. Plain and simple they are in the “insurance business” that is out to make a buck no matter what it takes. Not unlike all the other big buck makers of the past 25 years. They just want the good old days of chucking out the sick and signing up the healthy.
Man is this President learning, (I hope.) Not long ago he was inviting all interested parties to the White House for “Peace Pipe smoking.” And man that’s what it was. yeah sure everyone was on board the National Health Care Reform Special. That was until it left the station. Then it turned out that lots of the Insurance Company passengers were left at the station where they started to whine about how the average American was going to lose their right to choose a doctor.
Republicans were determined to safeguard the Bush tax breaks for the rich. You see in order for Obama to stick with his pledge that the Health Care Bill would not increase the trillion dollar deficit Bush left him he had to find some sources of new revenue to cover the costs. Now many of the same Republican members of Congress who cut the taxes on the rich that helped create that national debt are now fiercely indignant to the idea of raising those taxes to pay for health care for all. None of this should come as a surprise because Obama’s opposition is determined to not let him keep his campaign promise.
What fascinates me is the difference between how these same folks responded to the bank bailout as compared to their behavior on Health Care. When it came to billions to bail out the banks there was a little whining about the deficit but in the end Goldman Sachs and Morgan Chase got the money and now they had a best quarter ever. Go figure? None of that made any difference to the unemployment rate but it did bring back “the good old days” of huge bonuses. Thats what the Wall Street guys did for their old pals.
Before I go any further,it will be interesting to hear what the President has to say about all this in his press conference tonight. So I think I’ll wait to post this after that. It’s now after. Obama, never ceases to amaze me with his ability to handle all the details of whatever subject he is dealing with. I was glad to hear him go after the Wall Street hustlers who came close to bankrupting this country, One other observation. Having listened to a lot of Presidents in my long life it is hard to think of any who could do what he is able to handle. Now FDR was very different. He was knowledgeable but he had a team. That meant that he did not have to go to bat on every important question before the administration. (There was radio but no television back then.) If Obama is the only one who can defend his administration he may be using up his personal capital with the people. How about the rest of his Cabinet?
As this Health Care fight heats up I think we all better get writing to our respective representatives to make sure they are on board. The Republicrats would really like to kill this legislation only because they are about bringing this President down so they can get back to the good old days of Bush and Cheney. Lest we forget.
Thanks Kate M.H.W.Y.
This is precisely why I was so concerned about Geithner and Summer acting as the point men for the President. Listen all they knew about is Wall Street. That’s where they grew up and hence that’s what made them knowledgeable about the world of bankers. This was their specialty or put another way, that’s all they know. Don’t no beans about how to create jobs. During the thirties FDR and LaGuardia had Robert Moses. Man could he create jobs. Tri Borough Bridge, Orchard and Jones beach, Southern State Parkway etc. etc. Obama needs to find a modern day Robert Moses. That brings me to expectation and health care reform.
Here is another example of magical thinking on the part of Obama people who thought he was just going to march straight through the insurance company linebackers to a touchdown with a brand new health care program for all. The private for profit insurance team said “yeah over our dead bodies you will.” That’s where we now find ourselves.
This is the time for all who favor health care to come to the aid of the President. Obama has made this a major campaign promise. It’s one that urgently needs citizen support. I think the President underestimated the insurance interests in scuttling any interference with their profits. Plain and simple they are in the “insurance business” that is out to make a buck no matter what it takes. Not unlike all the other big buck makers of the past 25 years. They just want the good old days of chucking out the sick and signing up the healthy.
Man is this President learning, (I hope.) Not long ago he was inviting all interested parties to the White House for “Peace Pipe smoking.” And man that’s what it was. yeah sure everyone was on board the National Health Care Reform Special. That was until it left the station. Then it turned out that lots of the Insurance Company passengers were left at the station where they started to whine about how the average American was going to lose their right to choose a doctor.
Republicans were determined to safeguard the Bush tax breaks for the rich. You see in order for Obama to stick with his pledge that the Health Care Bill would not increase the trillion dollar deficit Bush left him he had to find some sources of new revenue to cover the costs. Now many of the same Republican members of Congress who cut the taxes on the rich that helped create that national debt are now fiercely indignant to the idea of raising those taxes to pay for health care for all. None of this should come as a surprise because Obama’s opposition is determined to not let him keep his campaign promise.
What fascinates me is the difference between how these same folks responded to the bank bailout as compared to their behavior on Health Care. When it came to billions to bail out the banks there was a little whining about the deficit but in the end Goldman Sachs and Morgan Chase got the money and now they had a best quarter ever. Go figure? None of that made any difference to the unemployment rate but it did bring back “the good old days” of huge bonuses. Thats what the Wall Street guys did for their old pals.
Before I go any further,it will be interesting to hear what the President has to say about all this in his press conference tonight. So I think I’ll wait to post this after that. It’s now after. Obama, never ceases to amaze me with his ability to handle all the details of whatever subject he is dealing with. I was glad to hear him go after the Wall Street hustlers who came close to bankrupting this country, One other observation. Having listened to a lot of Presidents in my long life it is hard to think of any who could do what he is able to handle. Now FDR was very different. He was knowledgeable but he had a team. That meant that he did not have to go to bat on every important question before the administration. (There was radio but no television back then.) If Obama is the only one who can defend his administration he may be using up his personal capital with the people. How about the rest of his Cabinet?
As this Health Care fight heats up I think we all better get writing to our respective representatives to make sure they are on board. The Republicrats would really like to kill this legislation only because they are about bringing this President down so they can get back to the good old days of Bush and Cheney. Lest we forget.
Thanks Kate M.H.W.Y.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
About Robert McNamara
Robert McNamara recently passed away at 93. He had spent the last decades of his life trying to explain his behavior as Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Most people remember him as a prime mover in the Vietnam war. That he was. I remember him as an important influence in Johnson’s war on poverty.
It was sometime in the sixties when I was a Commissioner in the Lindsay administration in charge of Youth Employment. I came to the job via Mobilization for Youth, MFY a pioneering effort to find ways to help troubled youth make useful lives for themselves. Early on at MFY I became obsessed with the reading difficulties of the 400-500 kids we would be working with at any one time. A large percentage were functionally illiterate, others read at the 3,4,5, grade levels. It was clear that they simply could not function in the job market unless we could find ways to improve their reading skills. (Even a janitors job required reading the instructions on the soap cans.)
So began a whole series of experiments in reading programs. On numerous occasions I was asked to participate in research projects designed to demonstrate new reading programs. One of those programs involved the military in Project 200,000. The Army would recruit kids rejected because of lack of reading ability and then subject them to intensive reading remedial program. As a member of the research review panel I asked one of our staff members to spend some time at the Lackland Air Force base in Texas where the remedial program was taking place and report on the progress of the program.
After spending a week at the base she returned with a glowing report of success. The first group of about 500 kids had their reading scores raised 2,3 grades in six month period. Keep in mind we had been reviewing remedial reading programs all over the country. The Army record was far in away the most successful. We were delighted and decided to ask for a meeting with the Secretary to persuade him to increase the program for all the armed services. We also understood the circumstances that contributed to the success, The Army has the kids full time. They feed, clothe and regulate their daily lives. That gives real structure to kids who grew up in a Ghetto where life is a series of of, “anything can happen.”
We went to Washington all puffed up with our great success story and laid it out before Robert McNamara and some of his associates. Well, I will tell you I have hoisted any number of lead balloons in my life but this one took the cake. The most disappointed person in the room was the Secretary as he laid out before us all the reasons the program could not be expanded or even continued. The various service commanders accused McNamara of trying to turn the Army, Navy and Air Force into a “moron army.”
We argued and pleaded but it was to no avail. McNamara had made his mind up and nothing we could say or do was going to change it. As we left I began to understand the rigidity of the man we had tried to just look at the data and see if there wasn’t some way we could continue the program. For Robert McNamara there was absolutely no room for ambiguity. No room for even a chance that there might be some other way to continue the program. There wasn’t.
Of all the unlikely places for McNamara influence to show up was in the Anti Poverty Programs of the Johnson years. At the Ford Foundation I had numerous opportunities to deal with anti poverty community organizations. I began to notice an increasing amount of talk about “Zero Based budgeting as well as PPBS “Planning Program Based Budgeting Systems.” Having come out of the corporate world this was lingo I was familiar with and it set me wondering where it came from? Sure enough I was repeatedly told it was the work of Robert McNamara and hastily added “he had been President of the Ford Motor Company.” In the non profit world there was a glorification of how business functioned. It was as, if they could emulate business they would be just as successful. Of course I thought this was just more baloney about how the world of profit making functioned. The problems of the poor and disadvantaged are in no way comparable to a corporation. In fact corporations avoid those problems with their selective hiring of the best and the brightest.
I had one more brush with McNamra when he was on the Board of the Ford Foundation. My boss at the Foundation said that McNamara was uncomfortable with our spending millions helping community organizations like the California based Watts Labor Community Action Committee, WLCAC without knowing exactly what that accomplished? A few of us on staff spent an afternoon trying to figure out how to satisfy McNamara’s concern. By now we understood his obsession with hard data. So, we came up with an algebraic formula called, “the spin off effect of community investment.” Okay, so A equal investment. B equal how it is spent. C equals local business benefits. D equals how that money moves around the neighborhood equals the multiplier effect. Wow, McNamara loved it said, “that’s the kind of thinking we needed.”
In the documentary ”The Fog of War” McNamara certainly does well in explaining the futility of war but he insists that even when he knew that the Veitnam was was lost he could not say so publicly out of loyalty to the President. In many ways his rigidity and need to be absolute in his thinking is reminiscent of all those who have ever been caught in the vise of a moral dilemma. Right and wrong gets lost in the absolute of loyalty to my Commander in Chief. In his interviews with Charlie Rose he kept insisting that Charlie didn’t understand the atmosphere, the conditions under which he made his decisions. Everybody I ever listened to explaining away a moral responsibility calls up the circumstances that made me do it. Then of course there are those who just said “no I cannot in good conscience do that.” They are the Rosa Parks, the back of the bus lady. The Mandellas, Ghandi’s and Martin Luther King’s of our era and the legends of others who just said “No.” Thank God for them.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
It was sometime in the sixties when I was a Commissioner in the Lindsay administration in charge of Youth Employment. I came to the job via Mobilization for Youth, MFY a pioneering effort to find ways to help troubled youth make useful lives for themselves. Early on at MFY I became obsessed with the reading difficulties of the 400-500 kids we would be working with at any one time. A large percentage were functionally illiterate, others read at the 3,4,5, grade levels. It was clear that they simply could not function in the job market unless we could find ways to improve their reading skills. (Even a janitors job required reading the instructions on the soap cans.)
So began a whole series of experiments in reading programs. On numerous occasions I was asked to participate in research projects designed to demonstrate new reading programs. One of those programs involved the military in Project 200,000. The Army would recruit kids rejected because of lack of reading ability and then subject them to intensive reading remedial program. As a member of the research review panel I asked one of our staff members to spend some time at the Lackland Air Force base in Texas where the remedial program was taking place and report on the progress of the program.
After spending a week at the base she returned with a glowing report of success. The first group of about 500 kids had their reading scores raised 2,3 grades in six month period. Keep in mind we had been reviewing remedial reading programs all over the country. The Army record was far in away the most successful. We were delighted and decided to ask for a meeting with the Secretary to persuade him to increase the program for all the armed services. We also understood the circumstances that contributed to the success, The Army has the kids full time. They feed, clothe and regulate their daily lives. That gives real structure to kids who grew up in a Ghetto where life is a series of of, “anything can happen.”
We went to Washington all puffed up with our great success story and laid it out before Robert McNamara and some of his associates. Well, I will tell you I have hoisted any number of lead balloons in my life but this one took the cake. The most disappointed person in the room was the Secretary as he laid out before us all the reasons the program could not be expanded or even continued. The various service commanders accused McNamara of trying to turn the Army, Navy and Air Force into a “moron army.”
We argued and pleaded but it was to no avail. McNamara had made his mind up and nothing we could say or do was going to change it. As we left I began to understand the rigidity of the man we had tried to just look at the data and see if there wasn’t some way we could continue the program. For Robert McNamara there was absolutely no room for ambiguity. No room for even a chance that there might be some other way to continue the program. There wasn’t.
Of all the unlikely places for McNamara influence to show up was in the Anti Poverty Programs of the Johnson years. At the Ford Foundation I had numerous opportunities to deal with anti poverty community organizations. I began to notice an increasing amount of talk about “Zero Based budgeting as well as PPBS “Planning Program Based Budgeting Systems.” Having come out of the corporate world this was lingo I was familiar with and it set me wondering where it came from? Sure enough I was repeatedly told it was the work of Robert McNamara and hastily added “he had been President of the Ford Motor Company.” In the non profit world there was a glorification of how business functioned. It was as, if they could emulate business they would be just as successful. Of course I thought this was just more baloney about how the world of profit making functioned. The problems of the poor and disadvantaged are in no way comparable to a corporation. In fact corporations avoid those problems with their selective hiring of the best and the brightest.
I had one more brush with McNamra when he was on the Board of the Ford Foundation. My boss at the Foundation said that McNamara was uncomfortable with our spending millions helping community organizations like the California based Watts Labor Community Action Committee, WLCAC without knowing exactly what that accomplished? A few of us on staff spent an afternoon trying to figure out how to satisfy McNamara’s concern. By now we understood his obsession with hard data. So, we came up with an algebraic formula called, “the spin off effect of community investment.” Okay, so A equal investment. B equal how it is spent. C equals local business benefits. D equals how that money moves around the neighborhood equals the multiplier effect. Wow, McNamara loved it said, “that’s the kind of thinking we needed.”
In the documentary ”The Fog of War” McNamara certainly does well in explaining the futility of war but he insists that even when he knew that the Veitnam was was lost he could not say so publicly out of loyalty to the President. In many ways his rigidity and need to be absolute in his thinking is reminiscent of all those who have ever been caught in the vise of a moral dilemma. Right and wrong gets lost in the absolute of loyalty to my Commander in Chief. In his interviews with Charlie Rose he kept insisting that Charlie didn’t understand the atmosphere, the conditions under which he made his decisions. Everybody I ever listened to explaining away a moral responsibility calls up the circumstances that made me do it. Then of course there are those who just said “no I cannot in good conscience do that.” They are the Rosa Parks, the back of the bus lady. The Mandellas, Ghandi’s and Martin Luther King’s of our era and the legends of others who just said “No.” Thank God for them.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Letter to Soren 1
In the autumn of my life I have received this wonderful gift of a great grandson Soren. I would have loved to talk with him about all the things I lived through in the 20th Century. That being not possible I thought the highlights from the time I lived might give him a sense of where he came from. This is the first in a series of the Decades of My Life. Soren I hope you enjoy and it peaks your curiosity to learn more about where part of you came from. Love Great Granpa Roberto
They named you Soren
At last I have a great grandson.
Born early in the 21st century
Like me early in the 20th century.
History builds a platform of your life.
Here is my first decade.
World War one was just ending.
Our troops sang,
”Over There Over There The Yanks are coming.”
Music, song is a mirror of who we are.
8 million died. For what? For what?
A war to end all wars said President Wilson.
Question jingoist propaganda for war.
For you I hope the Iraq war is ending.
Or does it just rollover to Afghanistan?
The 1920’s were called “The Roaring Twenties!
The theme sung,
“In the Morning in the Evening ain’t we got fun?”
The country was Dancing the Charleston, Black Bottom, Shimmy
Drinking bathtub Gin as liquor was illegal.
As in your war on drugs
The Gangsters were in charge then, still are.
Silent movies gave us a saviour.
A dog Rin Tin Tin. Yes, Rin Tin Tin
German Shepherd came to our rescue
Over, under all obstacles put in his path.
Good old dependable Rin Tin Tin.
Russian revolution, workers threw out the Czar
Called it Socialism.
Scared the living delights out of capitalists.
From fear Government raids sent innocent foreigners.
Scurrying for cover. Where was Rin Tin Tin?
You don’t know from women suffrage?
Women not allowed to vote!
Betcha you can’t believe that.
Women marched the souls off their shoes.
Straight to the voting booth of 1920 for President.
The decade gave us,
Wilson, Harding, Cooledge Hoover
That bunch gave us war, scandal, depression.
What were the women thinking?
Oh about the same as the men.
Good old dependable Rin Tin Tin
KKK the Klux Klux Klan under white hoods
Lynching Black men across the South.
Germany defeated in war made to bleed,.
Worthless money sewed seeds of Nazi weeds.
However the world looks when you read this
This was the ideal we were fighting for.
Leave the world a better place then we found it.
I tell you that was not easy.
Soren, I have big trouble
Remembering that world of horse drawn wagons
No televisions, radios, few telephones, no cell phones
And damn few automobiles.
We were uplifted with “Lucky Lindy he’s flying high.”
First non stop to Paris, first Broadway ticker tape parade for me.
Lucky Lindy’s father a Socialist, My Papa liked that.
Everything was Rin Tin Tin until Black Thursday 1929.
The big boom party ended over the cliff in the abyss.
The bottom fell out of bankers heaven called Wall Street.
Our country sank into a disease called depression.
Forgot “Aint We Got Fun” and sang,, “Buddy Can You Spare a Dime.”
Twenty five million out of work and hope.
Central Park crowded with cardboard shacks for the homeless.
Now we all marched for jobs, home relief, health care, social security.
Papa and Mama were part of an extended family of Socialists.
Don’t know if Socialist means anything to you?
These were people who tried very hard
To make the world a better place.
They believed in working people.
Coal miners, steel, rubber and automobile workers.
Yes, garment workers who made the clothes on our backs.
Though we couldn’t live without them
They were “exploited” by factory owners
In conditions we called “wage slavery.”
Paid hardly enough to live on.
My Papa was on a blacklist of people
Called “dangerous” for trying to organize
Working people for a living wage.
And don’t forget Rin Tin Tin
No matter, he was always there for us.
See you soon in the thirties.
Love great grandpa Bob.
Thanks Kate, N.H.W.Y.
They named you Soren
At last I have a great grandson.
Born early in the 21st century
Like me early in the 20th century.
History builds a platform of your life.
Here is my first decade.
World War one was just ending.
Our troops sang,
”Over There Over There The Yanks are coming.”
Music, song is a mirror of who we are.
8 million died. For what? For what?
A war to end all wars said President Wilson.
Question jingoist propaganda for war.
For you I hope the Iraq war is ending.
Or does it just rollover to Afghanistan?
The 1920’s were called “The Roaring Twenties!
The theme sung,
“In the Morning in the Evening ain’t we got fun?”
The country was Dancing the Charleston, Black Bottom, Shimmy
Drinking bathtub Gin as liquor was illegal.
As in your war on drugs
The Gangsters were in charge then, still are.
Silent movies gave us a saviour.
A dog Rin Tin Tin. Yes, Rin Tin Tin
German Shepherd came to our rescue
Over, under all obstacles put in his path.
Good old dependable Rin Tin Tin.
Russian revolution, workers threw out the Czar
Called it Socialism.
Scared the living delights out of capitalists.
From fear Government raids sent innocent foreigners.
Scurrying for cover. Where was Rin Tin Tin?
You don’t know from women suffrage?
Women not allowed to vote!
Betcha you can’t believe that.
Women marched the souls off their shoes.
Straight to the voting booth of 1920 for President.
The decade gave us,
Wilson, Harding, Cooledge Hoover
That bunch gave us war, scandal, depression.
What were the women thinking?
Oh about the same as the men.
Good old dependable Rin Tin Tin
KKK the Klux Klux Klan under white hoods
Lynching Black men across the South.
Germany defeated in war made to bleed,.
Worthless money sewed seeds of Nazi weeds.
However the world looks when you read this
This was the ideal we were fighting for.
Leave the world a better place then we found it.
I tell you that was not easy.
Soren, I have big trouble
Remembering that world of horse drawn wagons
No televisions, radios, few telephones, no cell phones
And damn few automobiles.
We were uplifted with “Lucky Lindy he’s flying high.”
First non stop to Paris, first Broadway ticker tape parade for me.
Lucky Lindy’s father a Socialist, My Papa liked that.
Everything was Rin Tin Tin until Black Thursday 1929.
The big boom party ended over the cliff in the abyss.
The bottom fell out of bankers heaven called Wall Street.
Our country sank into a disease called depression.
Forgot “Aint We Got Fun” and sang,, “Buddy Can You Spare a Dime.”
Twenty five million out of work and hope.
Central Park crowded with cardboard shacks for the homeless.
Now we all marched for jobs, home relief, health care, social security.
Papa and Mama were part of an extended family of Socialists.
Don’t know if Socialist means anything to you?
These were people who tried very hard
To make the world a better place.
They believed in working people.
Coal miners, steel, rubber and automobile workers.
Yes, garment workers who made the clothes on our backs.
Though we couldn’t live without them
They were “exploited” by factory owners
In conditions we called “wage slavery.”
Paid hardly enough to live on.
My Papa was on a blacklist of people
Called “dangerous” for trying to organize
Working people for a living wage.
And don’t forget Rin Tin Tin
No matter, he was always there for us.
See you soon in the thirties.
Love great grandpa Bob.
Thanks Kate, N.H.W.Y.
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