The Danger of China and our TVA Moment

Not too long ago, rice paddies reigned where today amazing well-laid out factories with armies of workers eat, sleep and mass-produce stuff in almost every shape, size, color, taste and crumbling wall. Massive and modern cities have arisen from the paddies in just 25 years. Where an ox pulled a cart in 1989, today a tram is being hauled over sleek, new tracks.

At the same time, our country has shed "useless", low-technology job after job to China and most recently to India and Brazil. In 1987 or so, I used to argue at Rutgers and with my father about how the US economy was shedding those jobs because "who needs these harmful and mind-knumbing industries anyway?" My father told me that these were jobs Americans were losing and I said, "yes, but, they will be replaced with new technologies."

He was right and I was wrong

Oh, How wrong I was...

Sadly, when my father and I were battling over this, it was at the time when the Reagan mantra of "governmnet IS the problem" was taking hold. This was the time when suddenly confronted with a collapsed Soviet Union, our hubris overcame us and instead of using our so-called "peace dividend" to reinvest in America's then-crumbling infrastructure, we continued along the same path that had been blazed by Reagan: we cut taxes, cut taxes, demonized government and deregulated banking and Wall Street.

The core of my naivety, if it had been supported by spine-less politcians, would have resulted in a powerful, sound and booming American economy. We would have been glad to have had China take up those "meaningless" jobs for us; to produce our doilies, thingamajigs and whatjamacallits. Harmful manufacturing would have been their domain and life-advancing technologies would have been ours.

Sadly though, with the deregulation came "quick return addiction (QRA)." In 1925, when taxes were cut for the owners, they plowed much of this money back into the sprawling American infrastructure/manufacturing base. WWII made the US economic power we all knew and loved entering Vietnam and the heralded profits were invested all over the US and world for the sole benefit of the United States tax base.

Reagan was fed on this belief, of American economic greatness, and his belief was for the most part a real one. Yet, the Republican tendency then as it is now, was to say "screw the poor and working poor." If you can't make enough money to support yourself in this "booming America" then you must be lazy or weak and so you must suffer the consequences. If you aren't supporting yourself then you are simply not working.

Well, things have really changed since those axioms were applicable to our nation: China changed, India changed, Asia changed.

Boom Times

When Clinton came to town and boom times came shorly afterwards, the anti-government movement was alive and well. Tax cuts were a reality and record ones were enacted by W (whilst waging a two front war, nonetheless). Now, here is the difference between 1925 and 1995: then the super wealthy had places in America to invest in to make crazy returns, today there is nowhere to invest to make crazy returns but in crazy, unregulated and scantily-taxed Wall Street ponzi schemes.

The super rich, with freshly-minted tax cuts in hand, realized that the hyper-saturated US market demanded ever larger and larger initial investments (entry costs) in order to get even fair returns over many years. The conclusion drawn from the Reagan "revolution" is that it was an anti-America one. It has denied America a future and made the military industrial complex our only advancing and old-fashioned American industry which employees millions--directly or indirectly. The seeds for a banana republic were planted under Reagan and have been harvested under W. If we are not invading and waging war or selling war, than we have almost nothing left to offer.

The Reagan, anti-regulation, me-first revolution rewards myopic corporate decision-making all so the quarterly profits--not annual, not 5-year--can be maximized. How do you maximize a quarterly profit? Don't invest in your workers or your infrastructure or make really low-quality products. The quick-return-addiction has decimated our economy.

This QRA has led so-called patriot, American businessmen to relocate all of their businesses to China or India. This means that the jobs are there also. This means that the second largest employer after the military industrial complex is Wal-Mart! Wal-Mart: the purveyor of low-quality crap, bad meat and processed foods; literally, everything that is wrong with America today can be summed up in one word: Wal-Mart.

If we combine all retailers, then most Americans are working in some capacity for large, box-stores. And, the Chinese are pumping out the endless streams of crap to fill those stores. We have become drones to their whims.

The Danger of China

The worst thing for the Chinese government is to have unemployed Chinese people. The Chinese love to work and when not working, they are not eating. And a hungry mass of 100,000,000 unemployed is enough to send the Chinese government packing and then hanging from trees. So, what they do? They lower the value of their currency and order the factory bosses to start churning out even cheaper shit than before!

The struggling American worker who cannot buy Christmas gifts suddenly realizes that things this year are cheaper than a mere 3 months ago; and, by as much as 20%! Yes, Christmas will be had this year! Who can blame this family? Not me! They have kids and the kids expect Christmas.

Because the Chinese are producing these luxuries at below-cost prices and so cheaply, no American business, big or small, can possibly ever compete! Meaning that the no new job will be created because the Chinese have taken our principles of capitalism and "manufacture and conquer" and are now today enacting them better than we are.

President Obama has come to town promising to make our government more progressive, more pro-active in solving many of these problems. He wants to and has tried to launch an economic revolution based on the investment in green technologies. These technologies would take us off of our dependency for foreign gas and oil. It would permit us to create millions upon millions of new jobs all throughout our nation.

These jobs would offer careers to people, to families. These would be the kinds of jobs that father and mother would pass to son and daughter--precisely the kinds of jobs that over the past 20 years have been replaced by retail jobs, service-industry jobs. Stuck in this hyper-consumption model of economic development, if we want a modicum of economic well-being, then all Americans are forced to consume, consume and consume 24/7.

And even now, formerly a day when stores were closed for family, rest and relaxation, Thanksgiving has become yet another day to feed the family processed foods so as to make it to the front of the line at the Best Buy or Wal-Mart before other T-Day revelers can awaken from their turkey-induced naps. The cult of consumption not only has destroyed our formerly inherent American ingenuity, it now threatens one of our last and most truly national of all holidays.

Perhaps more tax-cuts will do the trick--NOT

Republicans will tell us that the problem with our nation is that goverment spending and taxes are killing us. Their medicine for making our nation less retail-oriented and more, in this case, focused on starting a green revolution, is to cut taxes for the super rich. The added money in their pockets will permit them to invest in the new technologies.

What's wrong with this formula? Look at the 4000 and rising dead fighting men and women in Iraq. Chosen by Cheney and his coterie of pug-uglies to supply our troops with the means by which they would carry out the illegal invasion of that sovereign nation, these companies chose to sell the most expensive, highest-margin items which the troops--in interview after interview confirmed--didn't need. The low-margin stuff like body-armor was deemed by the boards of directors and Cheney as "unnecessary."

And, this attitude toward our nation's troops, all hid in bunting and draped behind words of "Praise Jesus," was at a time of the greatest tax-cuts in our history--run through by the GOPCON Congress under the precedure we now know as "reconcilation:" Dems never had a chance to stop the theft from our nation's future!

Big Business, when granted more untaxed returns than ever before did what? Nothing. It did not invest in new technologies, it did not create new jobs for Americans but instead gave out larger bonuses, invested in super-high-return derivatives and watched as our nation plummeted. Today, the only player who can be counted on for investing in our nation's future, in an infrastructural grid which will enable us to become not just competitive again but the world's economic leader is the Federal Government.

Yet, while they accuse Obama of bankrupting our nation, the dumbing-down of our nation, the retail-oriented approach to economic growth, the budget-busting tax-cuts which are actually more "hidden" spending--called opportunity cost--than anything Obama has done to date, all happened on the watch of Republicans and Conservatives.

It is time to stop thinking all Americans should be drones in a retail-store saga playing the roles of consumers by day only to step into a phonebooth and come out again as workers by night in that same Wal-Mart. The desertification of our national industrial work base must stop. President Obama and the Democratic Congress must fight the good fight and direct our dwindling national wealth toward the following:

Wind-technologies, grid development which will make it affordable for getting wind and sun energy into cities and communities that need it, inexpensive and safe batteries for electric cars, solar panels for homes throughout the nation (the panels will be made where...in the USA!), no-tillage technologies for farming, high-speed rail systems, to name a few areas. If federally backed today, within 5 years there will be over 10 million jobs directly created and another 15 or so indirectly created. America will be booming for another 100 years or so and we will be doing good for the environment.

However, in order to do these things, we must fight the ingrained powers of yesterday: big oil, big coal (undoubtedly the NRA will be opposed to this approach), Republican ideas of less government and no taxes and sheer stupidity as our nation has come to believe that a $30 big-screen TV is better for us than capturing the suns rays and lighting your home so you can watch that TV.

A Commentary on Birthdays

Today is my birthday. 43 years ago, shortly after Thanksgiving dinner, instead of getting up to wash the dishes after the meal as was common for women to do at the time, my mother took the "easy way out": she went to the hospital and a few hours later, at 9:32 PM, gave birth to me.

It seems her avoidance to washing dishes that day, and perhaps her "guilt" at having left the other women with the task (grandmother and 2 aunts), instilled in me a passion for washing dishes. I love washing them and I feel so good, complete after I have knocked off a pile of dishes; day over, dishes done, now I can put the feet up and watch 60 Minutes or the Waltons (shows which have created a "lifereel" of sorts for my life).

"The Sound of Music" has also shaped my life and honestly, I never feel better as when I am near the Alps--except when I am sitting at Sweet Lew's in Freehold enjoying a breakfast with family, friends will be at a table nearby or just alone with a newspaper and hopefully another Yankee's victory or another Rutger's loss!

Lessons Incomplete

Amazingly, everything I was so sure of when I was 20 has now been disproven by me, my studies and time. Even some of my beliefs have embarassed me in their naivety. I remember sitting with friends on a porch on Main Street in Freehold arguing how it would be best to not have sex until you are married. We all agreed. A year or two later, we all forget about that agreement.

I couldn't cook anything when I was 27 and now I can cook or bake anything I see, taste or like. I have come to really not like eating in restuarants and have learned that any fanatical obsession with eating, exercise, not drinking, smoking or just any attempt to believe that I am better than then others always results in a "smack down" by life. So, although I don't eat sweets, today I will bake a pumpkin cheesecake pie and eat a piece! (Only one though.)

I am flawed and screw up everyday and every year and many a time during a day or a week or a month, I will ask myself, "idiot, why did you do that?" The idiot never knows but somewhere inside me the answer echoes: because you are the same, troubled, stumbling, ready-to-fight, bad tempered kid, one of 5, who was born 43 years ago, and you feel you must prove to somone something. What that "something" is and to which "someone"? Don't know. Just don't know (Sadly, most of those I should've proved something to are now gone. Yet, I know one thing, they were all happy with me when alive.)

Despite those years and a lot of knowledge I have gained, book and practical, I am still the same person in almost all respects. I still hear echoes of my thoughts, whether it be playing war with my friends in the cemetary on snow days when I imagined I was on some front in Belgium during The Battle of the Bulge; or, be it my excessive "homerun hitting" in the backyard against my brother who really hated baseball, I am still striving toward that great moment when I too will be able to extract minutes and hours of greatness from time's ordinary passage.

Fortunately, what I just realized last week was that there isn't one day, one moment, one place to which we should strive. So many times, I have left the gym after a good workout, gone to another country or spent some amazing moment at some party meeting famous people, and thought, "one day, when I am older, I will be sitting around on a porch with my guitar in my hands telling all of these tales to my kids, grand-kids and whomever else will listen."

It then dawned on me. Those people too will be living their lives and thinking the same things that I think. I suddenly realized that the life I am building is not so I can tell about it but so that I can be ready should someone ask. And, should someone somewhere need a bit of guidance as they are struggling to figure out this short stop on earth, in ways that I have been guided, I too must might find the right resources, words, examples to assist them as they go forward.

It took 43 years, but, after a nice weekend in my third hometown of Munich, sitting around drinking beers with the locals and talking for hours on end about everything--in the beer halls you can sit where there are free seats so often you sit with strangers--I came to the conclusion that I no longer need to strive for that one moment of greatness--that Reggie Jackson moment in the '77 World Series.

After 43 years of life, believe it or not, I have calmed considerably. I am ready for the next 63 years and I feel that my approach to this part of life is sounder. But, then again, in 20 years from now, these words too will seem naive and probably embarass me a bit.

And despite having so many times over the last 43 years felt like I was lost for good and would never find my beloved "Bedford Falls", someone, something, some song or some sky would snap me back on course and the snow would start falling again, some random "Bert" would recognize me and Zuzu's petals would be right where I left them.

I have no complaints, just make sure my beer is cold and that it has a nice, frothy head.

Happy Birthday to everyone on this day and the other 364.

The Daisy Spot and Sean Hannity

A young girl is playfully counting as she pulls the petals off of a daisy. She is counting incorrectly. Suddenly, a man's voice starts a count-down of his own: 10-9-8-7 and so on until zero. At the end of count-down, we see a horrible mushroom cloud and hear: "Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd. The stakes are too high."

Run by the committee for the re-election of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and against the arch-conservative and father of today's conservative movement, Barry Goldwater (Ronald Reagan was not the father of this neo-fascist movement,like many want to believe, but rather merely its offspring).

Produced by the advertising pioneer Tony Schwartz, the ad immediately created an uproar amongst Republicans. They feared the images would too accurately show Goldwater for what he was: a man of extreme views and liable to act without thought as opposed to being a moderate, as they were trying to sell him to the American public.

Image Manipulation

The soundtrack for this ad, the images, the allusion that if Goldwater were elected we could expect nuclear war, were next to genius. They were primitive and straight-forward assaults upon the emotions of the viewers: tactics very common at the time. A billboard in Pittsburg, PA in 1959 showed the hand of a black man in a menacing, reaching pose, fingers curled as if ready to pounce and a white woman with a purse is reacting in horror supposedly seeing this hand. Beneath this imagery are the following words: "Vote Republican on November 4th."

Wow!

Although it seems we have been evolving away from such outright manipulation, such overt racist abuses in political ads, we should not forget Republican abuses like the Willy Horton ads run by George Bush I. I want to hope that that was the exception, really, and that even the win-at-any-price, earth-scorching Republicans know not to abuse black-white tensions so openly--not to say that it still doesn't happen.

This new era of high-tech manipulations, putting people in photos when they weren't there, putting in soundtracks that come from completely different situations, splicing in video in :03 seconds chunks and bits interlaced with venomous so-called "news-reporting/commentary" harkens back to clumsy and historically obvious cuts and purges of photos during Soviet times.

An entire exhibition in Moscow a few years back showed how Russian/Soviet history had lost figures from prominent photos only to see them reappear in the same photos some years later when the "lost person's" standing was renewed: the Soviets proved that the manipulation of journalistic history for control sake, for victory was a valuable tool; a tool in a society that is run by corrupt and evil-doing dictators. As a result, today few Russians put any stock in photos or video for they all know that it can be manipulated and doctored to sell any "present or historical truth.:" reality is in the eye of the editor.

The Republican Party's Propoganda Station: Fox TV

No one can ever accuse Fox-"News" of being journalistic. Truth and facts are not issues they seek to report but rather simplified and emotional versions of the former and latter. A less diplomatic person than myself would call what they report as "news", outright and blatant lies.

Many Americans tune into this channel for their daily dose of news. Sadly, the vast majority who thrive on the Kool-Aid ladled out by Fox-"News" don't seek to back up their information with other more reliable and factual sources: the Associated Press being the least opinionated of them all. The average Fox-"News" watcher doesn't read books on history or political histories. He doesn't have the time, desire or inclination to study these things and that is his free-choice. More power to him.

My beef is not so much with the arguably lazy Fox-"News" viewer as it is with the creators of the reality they pass off regularly as facts. These people are abusing a privilege they have earned from the blood, sweat and tears of generations of Americans who came before them. The boys who assualted the beaches at Normandy would be the last ones to lie or embellish the reality of their accomplishments of that "longest day." As was so sappily brought to my attention recently, the ideas for which our flag stands are ones of honor, truth, goodness, fairness and America.

Sean Hannity's abuse of journalistic principles, his open and obvious manipulation of video footage to create news where news was void, is heinous, irresponsible and should result in castigation. The fact that the ever-vigilante and real-left John Stewart caught this "mistake" should not draw our attention away from Fox's abuses of modern technology.

Fox regularly manipulates and bends the truth via video and audio technology in order to destroy any fair chance democrats--Obama--can have at properly and sanely governing our nation through hardship. Fox was the biggest cheerleader on the race to the illegal invasion of Iraq. They spliced and split and lied to provide "factual news coverage" to the viewers who use this news medium as their sole and gospel one. So many still believe that bombs of mass destruction were found and that Al Qaeda was funded by Saddam Hussein, all thanks to Fox and their support of Bush's lies.

Fox-"News" is not a news organization. It is mouth-piece of the GOPCON Party. It is the propaganda bureau of the GOPCON Party. Fox-"News" is no better than ITAR-TASS--the official "news" organ of the communist party in days gone and now the United Russia Party.

Nevertheless

Sean Hannity and his abuses will go unpunished. Fox-TV will actually gain viewers thanks to this scandal. GOPCON'ers will actually express delight about the fact that they are being duped, entertained by the likes of Hannity. In the vein of Limbaugh, these lazy and dangerous followers of propaganda geniuses on par with Goebbels, will become more boisterous and more anti-America than ever before.

And, as the problems fester and the calls for more tax breaks and less governance increase thanks to lies and abuses of journalistic rights, rights which have been guaranteed thanks to the spilled blood of soldiers past and present (and future), Fox and Hannity will keep laughing their way tot the bank as their viewership increases and the advertising dollars pile up.

The Daisy ad was genius as it mastered the subtlety of allusion. The Daisy Spot was a paid-for political advertisement. Fox-TV pawns off this mockery as factual news coverage or somewhat biased commentary; commentary, however, they claim based on facts. Like the Swift Boat scandal, which was proven to be all lies after the election was "won" by W, the Republicans continue to demonstrate that they will stop at nothing to denigrate Democrats and our president.
And in attempts to hide these despicable tactics, they drape themselves in flags and the memories of battles fought by soldiers in whose ranks they never stood. They cry patriotism when they fail to realize that their tactics for maintaining power are anti-America, anti-small town values, anti-freedom. They too become the walking, living lies that they listen 24/7 on the channels led by the likes of a drug-addicted fat-ass, Limbaugh, and Mr. Hannity.

Journalism is dead, long live journalism!


http://www.pbs.org/30secondcandidate/timeline/years/1964b.html

Communist Baseball!

Given that it seems like good sense and America-first thinking will prevail and healthcare reform will be passed sometime soon, I figured it was time to address something that has been bothering me for some time. How is it that the great American past-time, the greatest sport to have ever been conceived by man, could fall prey to communist (really, socialist) precepts?

If we were to toe the line and quote the words of some of the past and present leaders of America and our economy (Reagan and Greenspan), we should all be living and dying with the belief that "government is the problem;" and, that "the markets will correct everything, even fraud." In other words, keep your hands away from the market and in a Maradona-esque way, the hand of "God" will always balance the scale and ensure fairness for all.

Profit-sharing

In 1923, the New York Yankees opened their own stadium at 161st in the Bronx and that same year they won the World Series. Back then, the Yankees were nowhere near being the wealthiest club in baseball. The teams of inner-America, of St. Louis and Cincinnati, Pittsburg and Chicago and Detroit were the original powerhouses of Major League Baseball. The New York Highlanders (from 1913 on the Yankees) were not founded until 1903. And success was not immediate with the first World Series victory only coming in 1923, 3 years after acquiring Babe Ruth.

Through a mixture of luck and great baseball, the Yankees would go on to win another 20 WS titles before hitting the drought of the 60's and 70's. In 1972, George M. Steinbrenner would purchase the team and an era that still lives today was born. Steinbrenner was a successful businessman who despite his promises that he would not interfere with the team, did interfere and has driven the team crazy and to even greater baseball feats: 7 World Championships have been come thanks to him and his teams.

And, then, Steinbrenner and the Yankees were penalized for their shrewd business decisions and for their greatness. Whereas other owners were cutting investment from their teams, keeping them as perpetuals losers never able to win pennants, Steinbrenner and his team were ever thinking of new ways to make the Yankees better. Mr. Steinbrenner wanted to please the fans and he new that nothing less than a World Series trophy would do.

We Didn't Buy Greatness

One fine day, in 1997, a bunch of whining really wealthy and cheap whitemen (and one woman) gathered to say it was unfair that the Yankees and other so-called "big market teams" were making so much money while they were losing so much money. In other words, these team owners were admitting that a) they were losers; and b) that they fans were not loyal and at best were fair-weather ones: "if my team is winning I will come out and watch but if not, then I won't...wah."

If I make bad business decisions, am I not to suffer for them? If my company is being mismanaged and poorly run and I lose revenue as a result, why should expect my well-to-do competitors, many who have wisely and freely invested in making their businesses better, give me hand-outs to make me more competitive? And then, when I win, it is because I am playing true baseball and when the Yankees win, it is because they "bought another World Series." To quote the 101st Airborne's acting commander Brigadier General McAuliffe when asked to surrender to the Germans at Bastogne: "Nuts!"

We Didn't Buy Nuttin!

The New York Yankees are the greatest team in any sport because their are the best at what they do. They play baseball. Yankee owners maximize the resources they have the best and this guarantees them a run almost every single year! Yet, despite the massive amounts of investment that is put into this team, we have not won the World Series 59 times. And, there have been droughts as long as 18 years! From 1978 until 1996, the Yankees were spending more than everyone else yet also losing more than most others.

Putting a winning baseball team on the field is not easy--ask the other 29 teams. Ask a Yankee fan. Yet, we, the fans, pay what we do and obsess the way we do, like many other fans, yet the owner of our team respects us and therefore invests in greatness for us. As a result, the whining, cheap capitalists, the first ones to beg for a tax-cut from the government and to change the toilet paper from two-ply to sandpaper in the men's bathroom, all to save a dime, sold their souls. These criers of capitalist conjecture with their "I love Barry (Goldwater)" tatoos on places seldom seen by non-loved-ones, went commie!

Marxist-Leninist Baseball

No one really knows what it says in these Marxist tomes lying on the bottom of the dustbin of history (today being the 20th anniversary of that system's almost total death), but one thing is for sure: if you take from the rich to give to the poor then you are exacting the same kind of revolutionary tactics which ruined the country struggling for life just beyond the window at my back: Russia, in other words. Penalizing people for being great, for working hard, for investing their money so as to make their lawns look nicer and their yards bigger, for example, is communist; it is socialist; it is not American.

Baseball, one of the finest things we have given parts of the world, so bizarrely became communist. What is even odder than that is that so, so many of the people who think Reagan a god and Greenspan a genius, never even blinked when their losing teams became the recipients of the distributed wealth of their greater, better and more successful breathren.

Having said this, I will say it again, the Yankees are the greatest franchise in any sport because they are the best at what they do: playing baseball and running their business. All the other recipients of our largesse can either pack their bags and head to China, the last beacon of communist rule; or, they can simply admit that the Yankees are great because they are great.

Say we bought it and you admit you are a commie.