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.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
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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