Funding Mass Transportation

I decided to get away from the national and international ongoing forever crisis over the economic flop, the war on terrorism, the new Afghan strategy, etc., etc. Instead I find myself deeply concerned about what’s happening in my old home town New York City. I don’t live their anymore, but I have a deep abiding affection for the place I grew up. Yes, it was the Bronx. But like Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island too, they are all part of that great old melting pot called New York.

My father loved the Bronx because we could walk out the door of our 181st street tenement and there was the Zoo. Many Sunday afternoons were spent in and around the Zoo having a picnic and visiting with our “ancestors” in the monkey house. Anyhow, that’s what Papa said. Another great joy was the nickel subway ride to Coney Island for a day on the beach. Papa considered the subway and the beach the greatest gift America could have given us. Papa believed that the City’s greatness was based on its subway, trolley car and bus system that permitted everyone to move around the whole wonderful world of New York museums, theaters and parks for just a nickel. As any of you who have been here know, that nickel fare is long long gone and that’s a shame.

The fares are now $I.50, $2.50, and going up and up. That will have a devastating effect on very many people who will not be able to afford that casual trip to the Zoo or Coney or the Staten Island Ferry. I truly believe that what has made the City great is its huge web of a transportation system that can move millions of people around the place daily at reasonable fares. This is precisely what is now disappearing.

It is because the greatness of the city depends on its transit that the cost of that system needs to be shared by all who benefit from it. Think for a moment what department stores, theaters, museums, Times Square would be without the subways and buses. Nothing. They wouldn’t exist. That’s why the cost of the transportation system in any city needs to be considered part of the cost of running the the place. No different than water, garbage collection, sewerage or road maintenance. Yet the opposite has been happening in New York as well as other major cities around the country.

Some years ago when Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York State, he decided to create some jobs for his friends by creating what is now called the MTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. At its founding it was said that its primary function would be to create coordination between independent agencies. Namely, Long Island Railroad, Metro North Railroad, Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority and the buses.

The MTA bureaucracy now represents multi-millions of dollars spent on duplicating the efforts of each one of its affiliated agencies. But far more important is the simple fact that the MTA never ever did one single thing to create any coordination between its affiliates, the basic reason that it was founded. Why nobody bothers to ask the question is a mystery, and yet I think I know the answer.

When I worked in civil service back in the sixties, as I made my way through the many government agencies it often occurred to me that the issue of waste or redundancy never seemed to come up. Why didn’t it? There was an unspoken sort of agreement that all of us are in this civil service trough together, so lets not make any waves that might suggest that what any of us are doing may not make sense. And so all agencies and jobs become self perpetuating. Okay, that may work where the result does not fall exclusively on the users, as is the case with the MTA. That cost, though it benefits everyone in and around the Metropolitan Area, is stuck on the backs of the users. This is patently unfair and should be treated the same as Sanitation, Police or Fire Departments. It should be considered just another cost of running the city and spread between all who live there
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Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

What to Do With Capitalism?:

It’s to bad that in all the heat and rage over the AIG bonuses a far more important question should be,“what to do about capitalism?” Thats the name of the system that we live under. Focusing on the AIG outbreak of the “Extreme Greed Disease” takes our eye off the far more important matter of what caused it? Here are some thoughts.

Since Bill Clinton and Tony Blair spoke of the “third way” I have thought about their new model for how the capitalist system might work. Unfortunately they never quite got around to telling us how the third way would look. However I believe they had some notion of how globalization was in fact a paradigm shift. Capitalism was being spread out so that a far greater number could participate in its goodies. My own recollection is that during the Reagan years there grew the popular notion that “We Could Have It All.” Thats when the the credit card companies began handing out free cards, no questions asked to kids entering college. Its when many of my friends began buying second vacation homes on Martha's Vineyard and Fire Island. (I had a summer cottage on Fire Island except I paid $4000. and had to rebuild it myself on weekends.)

I recall a comment around that time by Admiral Zimwalt,Chief of Naval Operations, that I thought best expressed a fundamental notion about our system. When asked about people who were criticizing extreme profit taking his response was, “They don’t understand that this whole system is based upon greed. Without that desire to have more capitalism as we know it would cease to function.” Wow, I thought now there’s and honest man. And so what I began to refer to as “the big party” really took off.

The foundation for the, You Can Have It All, was, was based on the notion that one didn’t need money to have it. Just go get it on credit. People were buying houses that clearly they could not afford.Why? Well, in many cases they were going to hold them for a while, maybe 6 months-a year and then make a killing selling them for twice what they paid for them and so on. Remember when you were told about Uncle Harry or Aunt Emma who bought a place in Florida for $150M last year and could now get $300M for the same house? Of course you do because we were all hearing these “now you can get rich quick” tales. And of course some people did.

The problem became systemic because far to many folks ventured into the credit forest and got lost when they found they, “couldn’t make the cut” as they say in golf. In the real world the greed folks who were selling the idea that “you can have it all” began to bundle the unable to pay stuff and sold it to the supposedly smart but greedy bank buddies who were all participating in the the big you can have it all party.

Now to the rescue. Conservative economists still firmly believe that the capitalist market left to it own devices would take care of things and get everything back in balance. Very few of us seem to be willing to go through years of crippling unemployment, housing foreclosures and people going hungry, wild social unrest, while the market gets itself back into balance. It was the depression of the thirties that brought an end to the notion that we will let the market do it. We invented the New Deal. Yes, I hear the charge of Socialism coming from those who don’t want the Government interfering in the natural flow of the market.

The facts are that we have long ago started down the road of government responsibility. Start with public schools, the Post Office, unemployment benefits, public pensions, veterans hospitals, welfare, workmen's comp insurance, health care, highway bridge construction etc. etc. A few blogs back I suggested we might be slouching toward socialism seems much more creditable now.

The Obama folks are having one hell of a time getting around to biting the bullet of nationalizing the ailing banks. If they ever want to get the credit market flowing again they are just going to have to do it and the screams of socialism be dammed. Sure once they get all that credit crap out of the banks and all the regulators put back, from where they never should have been removed, the somewhat altered capitalist system will start to function again. Somewhere down the road the greed factor will rise again and yes there will be another crisis. Thats the history of capitalism.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

Gifts Given: The Theatre

I thought a little reprieve from the economic storm engulfing us might be welcome. So here is yet another piece of prose.

GIFTS GIVEN: THE THEATRE

The Harvey Theatre in Brooklyn,

An old twenties vaudeville house dump

With an outside staircase to “Nigger heaven.”

That’s what they called it back then.

I know never to use the “N” word.

This is now, that was then.

Harvey’s brick walls expose pipes

And plaster for all to see.

A new age place of serious drama.

On a cold 8 degree blustery winter night

Kate and I confronted those steps to heaven,

As if going to the top of Chechen Itza,

The enemy heart cut out for Quertzalpapalotl,

Huffing and puffing up we went.

Surprised that my heart hadn’t just quit, saying

“Man, you gotta be fucking crazy.”

That stage seemed a country mile away.

The house goes dark, the magic begins.

Now comes “The Winters Tale.” I lean forward

To hear every word of Leontes growing suspicion.

His wife Hermione making nice with Polixenes,

Paranoia floods the stage.

A story of cursed suspicions unfolds.

I am intrigued--the language, the story, the time.

Kate offers a tissue for my tears.

We laugh through the joys of the sheep shearing festival.

At Hermione’s trial I want to stand, cheer.

She declares, “To me life can be no commodity.”

I just love that women.

To soon the play is over.

I am screaming my bravos, don’t want it to end.

How come this love affair?

It’s my Papa again.

Papa took his little boy to meet Hamlet.

Thats how he said it, “Lets go meet Hamlet.”

Terrified of the ghost, I am certain

I have seen a score and ten,

All of which I could see again, again.

Nothing has entered my soul as much

As Queen Elizabeth’s language.

Why? I will never know. Maybe because?

“The lark, that tirra-lyra chants,

With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay,

Are summer songs for me and my aunts,

While we lie tumbling in the hay.”

There you have it.

Yet I never stop thanking Papa.


Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.

Obama, Breaking 'From A Troubled Past'

That was the headline in the NY Times Feb. 27th and it was historical. As readers of my blog will recall I have been regularly comparing this economic mess with the depression of the thirties. (Benefit of being a nonagenarian.) There should be no doubt that what Obama proposes are very serious changes He wants to reverse the trend of the last few years in which the rich have gotten richer at the expense of the poor. Obama agenda includes, letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire, universal health care, arrest global warming, reduce the cost of war,eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, slash agriculture subsidies to agribusiness making over $500.M etc. Four billion in subsidies to banks that make student loans etc.etc..Wow this is some agenda.

Obama’s proposals for change represent a “Second New Deal.” The first was under FDR. I don’t particularly like the constant comparison between Obama and FDR. Why? Because the situations are not comparable. Back in the thirties the US was the major manufacturing country. Now, while there continues to be some manufacturing, we have become the major banking and service country. The result can be seen in the people who are losing their jobs. Many are folks who spent their working lives in front of a computer screen. Back in the thirties they were folks who worked in steel mills, hard rock mines, rubber plants and sewing factories. They were very different. They belonged to unions, worked with their hands, and were used to the “class struggle.” That working class world grew into a huge movement of support for FDR’s efforts, such as Unemployment Insurance, Home Relief and most important the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.known as the FDIC, etc. Through the efforts of their unions, the Communist Party, and the mass of Democrats who elected FDR, they were able to build enough grass roots support to assure legislative success of the New Deal. It is important to understand that FDR faced a fierce resistance from the Republicans as well as the nation’s newspapers. Without his grass roots support there would have never been a New Deal.

Another significant difference between now and then is the “global market” nature of the present crisis. The thirties depression was basically the US and Europe. The present crisis is world wide including Asia, Latin America and Africa. This also complicates Obama’s agenda because it makes the US dependent on these other countries to do their part in getting the system working again. “What system?” The Capitalist system of course. Yes, it is true that Karl Marx writing in the 1800’s predicted that capitalism would suffer periodic crisis. But I don’t think that many people are paying much attention to him anymore. Those of us who did pay attention to Marx might have some ideas of what went wrong.

Some economists who have suggested that the present crisis is basically caused by the loss of the credit market. I happen to agree with them. I remember studying the early development of Mercantile Capitalism. The bankers in Amsterdam made credit offers to ship captains. If they took their square riggers to the far east, the bankers would foot the bill in return for forty to fifty percent of the profit from the sale of whatever they brought back. Now without that credit, the ships would have never made it even for a cruise around the Mediterranean. At times it took years for these ships to return to Amsterdam. When they did, the bankers made their money back with generous interest. The critical element here was the trust factor between the bankers and the ship owners. Without that trust the whole arrangement would have never worked That became the heart of how capitalist financing works and it has been expanding ever since. The key word here is trust and I’ll come back to that.

The whole collapse of the credit market is grinding the system to a halt. Without some kind of available credit there is no business. A major problem now is people have lost trust in the system. (Back in the 1930’s FDR. needed the FDIC that insured bank deposits to again create peoples trust in the banking system.) In the present situation people have ceased purchasing or borrowing, and are just hoarding because they have lost their trust in the system.

That leads me to what Obama now has to do to regain that trust. This ain’t going to be easy. He has to boldly nationalize the big major banks because that’s the only way he can quickly get the credit market functioning again. He can do it short or long term. Oh my God, will the Republickcrats scream “socialism!” Obama needs to take that head on and explain to his base why he is doing this and the consequence if he doesn’t. What’s important is that it be done soon. Because the longer the markets are without credit the deeper the recession until we are in a full blown depression.

I do believe that Obama can succeed primarily because we are already in a deep crisis. More important, his major opposition is made up of folks like Rush Limbaugh and Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana, and the rest of the McKinley Republickcrats. They have even managed to disgust people like David Brooks. He said in one of his columns that the Republicans’ don’t have a clue as to how times have changed. But having said that, I believe Obama needs to get ready for a devastating storm of attacks the likes of which he cannot even imagine. He might even think that the South Side of Chicago is a piece of cake compared to what’s coming. If he is to have any success, his support troops will have to find ways to make their collective voices felt. “Fasten your seat belts for the ride ahead.”

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.