August 2010 Archives

Dear America,

The White House has let it be known that The President intends to importune, if not brow beat Congress into passing the $30 billion small business assistance bill that he has been advocating for months as the next logical step in precipitating the economic recovery that we are all looking for. He has already chided the Republican Party for its obstruction of that legislation and appears set to ascend the bully pulpit to apply public pressure to the recalcitrant Republicans, with whom I admit only with considerable dismay that I agree on this particular point, albeit for different reasons. Recent data suggest that business is awash in capital, though it has monolithically declined to invest that capital in either new physical plant or the production of new inventory so that jobs can be created, contrary to the Republican conservative complex's (Rcc) claim that business is the cynosure of American prosperity and that its largess will trickle down on all of us. The only segment of business that may not be enjoying cash reserves is that portion of the business community in which business models have failed thus far to produce results, and lending to them is counterintuitive in my opinion, especially in light of the fact that we are trying to get out of a financial crisis largely attributable to lending to those who cannot repay. But all of this aside, it seems to me that the time has come for us to recognize what is happening in the viscera of our body politic and our society. It comes to this. Reaganomics is dead, and our experts should come back from the supply side to the side of the force: the consumer. But it isn't happening.

In this weeks N.Y. Times Magazine there was an article by Roger Lowenstein, a long time financial writer and financial industry insider currently associated with the Sequoia Fund, one of the large mutual funds that has largely succeeded over the past decade or so, most probably because one of its largest holdings is Berkshire Hathaway.  You can't really go wrong betting on Warren Buffet. Mr. Lowenstein makes the point that just as there was "irrational exuberance" before the recent collapse of our financial model, there is now irrational pessimism that has led to an imprudent turn to bonds as an investment rather than stocks, or "equities" as they are called in financial circles. He points out that stocks generally earn their share value every twelve years today, which translates into a return of about 8.5% per year whereas bonds yield a paltry one to two percent. He thinks that investors should be looking at stocks as a bargain and investing in them but that they are instead drawing down their investments in mutual funds in particular and directing their money to interest bearing instruments, for the most part government bonds. And I would agree with him but for one fact, and it is at the heart of all of our woes. Stocks today may return their value in growth over the next twelve years if investors invest for the long term, current valuations are realistic and all goes according to plan with our economic recovery. But how likely are we to go three for three. The answer is not at all.

The problem with the stock market is the same as it has been for about thirty years, but over the past two years, many of the people who were the losers in the game realized it. They saw that all it takes for years of savings to be lost in the course of a few hours is for some punk who calls himself an analyst to opine that corporation X will not meet his expectations for the next quarter. They saw that executives were taking eight and even nine figure bonuses, sometimes as they left companies whose decline they had just presided over, all while the dividends shareholders received were nil to nothing and the profits of the corporation were being misappropriated for corporate perquisites or invested in buying other companies rather than building capacity from within and thereby stimulating the very economy that would consume the goods they produced. Investors now recognize the role that speculation plays in determining the price of a stock, rendering the issue of value a matter of almost pure chance. In short, the stock market in which we all thought we could get rich over the past twenty to thirty years has been exposed as a Ponzi scheme run by those who already have most of the money, and thus complete control of the game.

When I read things like I have just written I worry that I am becoming the anti-Beck-- not necessarily a bad thing, but probably an irrational one. If my reasoning is on a par with Glen Beck's, and the juxtaposition of Beck with reason is an oxymoron in my opinion, I shouldn't be writing to you. I should be seeing a therapist. But I have said many times that I believe that speculation is at the root of the dysfunction of our economic and financial systems, and I continue to believe it, now more than ever. What frustrates me is that there continue to be true believers in the system that rewards sheer speculation without ever acknowledging its essentially parasitic role in our modern version of capitalism. As I have pointed out before, if people who add nothing of value continue to take a share of all wealth that is produced, the system is doomed to spiral downward like an engine whose fuel is being siphoned away. It is the return of wealth to the system, primarily in the form of consumption by the workers who produce the goods, that keeps the goose laying the golden eggs-- a notion that I am not alone in believing.  Just look at the writings of Robert Reich, to whom I have referred before. But apparently a lot of people don't need to, because their willingness to go back to Wall Street to ensure their own prosperous futures seems to be fading into oblivion where it belongs. And I suspect that people will not return to Wall Street until something fundamental changes, but in the interim, we are witnessing the birth of a new order of things.

We common men have given our share to the welfare of the moneyed class already, and now with what little we have left, we want to preserve our own weal. So Congress can pass all the bills it wants so that businesses can borrow money. It will be to no avail. Until business deploys what we have given them already to stimulate demand, nothing is going to change. To paraphrase what the man said, "we're mad as hell, and we're not going to give them anymore," are we America.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The saga of Afghanistan's ingrained corruption continues unabated. The New York Times reported this weekend that Afghan president Hamid Karzai is not only criticizing the investigation of corruption within his administration, he is actively interfering with it. The Times reports that President Karzai has now dismissed one of the lead prosecutors within his administration, and the prosecutor tells the Times that his efforts with regard to at least five top governmental officials have been impeded by Karzai's refusal to sign authorizing documents. All the while, the president takes to the media whenever he gets the chance to pose with an indignation reflecting the butter supposedly going un-melted in his mouth. But there is too much smoke about Mr. Karzai and his inner circle for there not to be a fire, and in this instance, a raging inferno. Yet despite its suddenly overt nature, all of this is not news. There has been a tacit acknowledgment and acceptance of the Afghani way of doing things since the war in that country shifted from its original mission of finding Osama Bin Laden to building a western style, twenty first century society there. At the same time, there has also been a glaring dichotomy between what is needed to accomplish that goal and what the Afghan people, particularly those running the country at all levels of what can only euphemistically be called government, are willing to give and do. Now, we are at the point at which we should be saying enough is enough, but we aren't.

Of course, the strategy considerations that we are urged to contemplate before we take action purport to be complex. There is first our image with our allies: can the United States be relied upon when adversity rears its head. It is an argument that has been raised over and over again since I have been paying attention to such things, and that has been since before the Vietnam War ended. Yet, at the same time, we take no notice of the concomitant criticism of this country that if anything significant in the world goes as we don't like it, we will intervene, even militarily if necessary, and our leaders don't seem to mind that. The result is an exchange of our reputation for reliability as an ally for the characterization of our foreign policy as imperialistic, paternalistic and culturally arrogant that does not inure to our benefit. Next is the message we are supposedly sending to our adversaries when we withdraw from a conflict that is as yet unresolved. The Republican conservative complex (Rcc) always takes the stance that we must remain committed for fear that the threat of American intervention will become meaningless. But perhaps that should be the case when we are discussing intervention in the internal affairs of any sovereign nation, though it is arguable that Afghanistan was not a sovereign nation when we invaded the country in that its government by the Taliban was not internationally recognized, with the exception of one country as I recall. But be that as it may, Afghanistan was a foreign nation with no capacity to wage international war, and as such it was no threat to us in the conventional sense. So in deference to the policy of persistence no matter what, we continue to be mired in a war we cannot win, relying on a pretext, the "Afghanization" of the war, to excuse our withdrawal as if the world will be fooled by it as it was not when we left Vietnam. In light of how little, if anything, we have to gain in Afghanistan, that is another exchange that does us no good.

We could have continued the search for Bin Laden by a means other than conventional war if we had only recognized him and his network as the reprehensible criminals that they are and pursued them as a criminal conspiracy, which is what they are. We would then have been able to observe the constitutional requirement that no war can be waged without a congressional declaration of war and we could have probably mounted a campaign against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda that was subtle, manageable and sufficiently sub rosa that its prospects for success would not have been so often compromised by the kind of public moral departures that seem to characterize every war. If we had chosen that course we would not have alienated so much of the Muslim population of the world, which has seen on the nightly news how poorly we have coped with the human rights issues that war inevitably raises. But George Bush wanted a war, which generally virtually guarantees reelection, and that's what he got. All of that being the case, it is apparent that we as a nation have not learned the lessons that should have become apparent to us in Vietnam, Somalia, and Iraq, and so we are once again failing to learn them in Afghanistan.

The policy that the Obama administration has avowed is to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan next July, but as time has passed it has become apparent that the administration is reserving its option to alter that position if the situation in Afghanistan militates against it. And in the interim, there will be an election in November that will be to some extent colored by our policy in Afghanistan-- an election in which there is a great deal for us to lose as a nation. It is not time to cut our losses; it is time to acknowledge that the loss belongs to the people and government of Afghanistan. It is time to acknowledge that the fabric of the eastern Islamic world is not the same as that of the western industrialized nations. It is time to acknowledge that the way in which the Bush administration chose to pursue our goals in that region of the world were conceived in error at best, and for all the wrong reasons, some of them personal in my opinion. Our youth should not be dieing because of timorous policy making in the aftermath of incorrect policy making. The deadline for withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan should be reaffirmed and it should be rigid. And if others ask us to justify our departure from the fray, we should refer them Hamid Karzai. The Taliban may be our adversary, but Karzai is the enemy, not just of the American people but of the Afghani people as well.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

California is on the map for two reasons tonight.

First, a California judge recently ruled that the "proposition 8" ban on marriage between consenting homosexuals, effectively created by a referendum, was unconstitutional. Despite the fact that there is a substantial constituency within the state, a majority in fact, that opposes granting to others the rights that they enjoy themselves in this regard, the state government has declined to appeal the decision, so a particular community is appealing to the federal appellate court. Within the coming weeks or months, that court will determine whether the appellants have what is called "standing" in the law. And oddly enough, this issue will decide a broader principle that is of significance to all of us: does society have the right to bar people from engaging in conduct that is private and has no impact on others. After all, that is what the furor over "gay marriage" is all about. It is not as if those who object to it are upset because they are going to have to marry homosexuals. They simply don't like the idea that the same things make all people happy, homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and that homosexuals are people just like everyone else. They don't like the fact that what is good for the goose is also good for another goose, and the gander as well. And this decision will be a line that will either protect us all or make us all vulnerable to the tyranny of the majority.

As I have said before, those who believe that the constitution protects the right of the majority to prevail, and that is the tack that the appellants in this case are taking, fail to understand the constitution entirely. It was not propounded, written, signed by all the states extant at the time and protected from assaults of one kind or another mounted by the sanctimonious and arrogant for over two hundred years so that they could prevail in the end if they mustered enough votes. The constitution is the essence of freedom, not just for the majority, but for all, and for the minority in particular even if it is a minority of one. I predict that this case will go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court-- not much of a gamble given the fervor of the zealots who want to mind not just their business but everyone else's as well. Our newly configured court will then have to decide: does the constitution protect us all or doesn't it. And it will be the conservatives on the court who find themselves on the horns of that dilemma. Either the constitution is to be strictly construed or it isn't, not just now but forever. This case will sort the owls from the chickens, and it will make the most historic law since African-American children were guaranteed the right to attend the same schools as their white neighbors did. So pay attention, America, whether you are a homosexual, a heterosexual or you have no particular preference, this one's for you.

The second reason for California's prominence tonight is a recent determination that ratings ascribed to all of the public school teachers in the state will soon be published, barring some intervening event, in newspapers. The teachers have raised all kinds of objections based on what they claim to be the best interests of the students. Of course, self-interest doesn't enter into it if you ask the teachers, but I'm not inclined to do so. I do however have a suggestion for them. I'm not sure whether their objections are sound or not, but there is one thing that is certain. If teachers' qualifications for their jobs should be public, so should their doctors' qualifications. And while we're at it, so should their lawyers', and for that matter, their clergymen's. Why not add their judges and their law enforcement personnel as well. I guess what I'm saying is that another principle that affects us all is raising its perhaps ugly head in California: to what extent are we entitle to privacy when it comes to competency. Should we be able to find out how well every othropedic surgeon does his job before we let him or her cut us open? Should we know whether our clergyman is competent to advise married couples before we go to him for advice on the most intimate of issues? Should we know how often the cops on our respective beats have been complained about for their brutality or their cupidity?

It seems to me that this is another goose and gander situation. Either the State of California is going to have to protect the bad teachers from exposure, or it is going to have to expose the bad doctors, lawyers, cops and judges as well. What is happening in California on these two fronts is something that we should all observe, and then we should decide. But before we make that decision, we should take into consideration that the shoes in which teachers, doctors, homosexuals and judges walk are the same ones the rest of us wear. Either we are all free or no one is. Either we are all responsible to be competent or no one is. The choice seems clear to me, America.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

It has been some months since the experts announced that the recession is over, and now those same experts are warning of the possibility of a "double dip recession." But when I consider all I hear on the news, all I see all around me, how I feel and the news in general, I fail to see the difference between the recession, the recovery from the recession and the prospect of a double dip recession. You may be experiencing the same disparity between your understanding of what you are being told and what is actually happening in the world as you know it. The reason is simple: the experts speak to us only in code, and in the end, they don't really mean what they seem to be saying.

A recession is classically defined as two or more consecutive quarters of a year in which the gross domestic product (GDP) shrinks rather than grows. That makes sense. If the economy is "receding" rather than "proceeding," defining such an advent as a "recession" makes sense. But what does it mean if the GDP shrinks? What is the GDP anyway? That is where the experts deceive us. It is by glossing over the manner in which GDP is calculated that the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) and the plutocrats convince us that we are all suffering when in fact, we are but they aren't. There are three accepted means of calculating GDP, but none of them reflect the world we ordinary people see, which is why the term recession means nothing for us. What we experience is "hard times," and they've been going on for two or more years regardless of what the experts say about "the recession."

The three means of calculating GDP are the "expenditure approach," the "product approach," and the "income approach." Two of the three constitute measures of wealth among those who control production of goods and services, and the third is based on total expenditures on goods and services, but it also includes expenditures by governments-- state, local and federal-- venture capitalists and the rich, who are having a hay day right now. Let me be more specific.

In totaling expenditures under the expenditure approach, consumption is added to investment, government spending and net exports, that is exports minus imports. Consumption is what we spend, but it is also what the owners of the manufacturing plant in this country spend, to which is added what they invest in their own businesses, what the government spends, which is being increased dramatically during this period of economic distress by the financial recovery act, and exports, which we never see the money from-- manufacturers get it directly. Thus, under the expenditure method, what we are all earning and thus spending is a minor part of the picture. Then there is the product approach in which the total value of the goods and services produced is the measure of GDP. But that figure-- the value of what we produce-- is no reflection of what we get for the labor we gave to produce it. It only reflects the amount that the owners of the manufacturing facilities in this country are going to get for what we produced, which includes not just what they pay us, but the profit they take as well. And the third approach is the income approach: that is the income received by all producers is counted-- producers, not workers.

In the final analysis, it comes to this. The amount we earn dictates the amount we can spend without borrowing. But the GDP is not a reflection of what we earn. It reflects what we buy with our earnings plus what we buy with borrowed money, plus what the owners of the factories in which we work buy, not just to consume but to expand their assets, and hence their wealth with, plus what they invest in each other's businesses, and what the government pays them to buy what they produce too. The GDP does not reflect our well being America, it reflects the well being of American business and industry and the people who own it. So why is that significant?

Well, it has come to light in the past month that "mergers and acquisitions" are booming. That means that companies are buying other companies like crazy, all while money is supposedly scarce. That is where the GDP issue comes in. Our money is scarce, not theirs. It turns out that business has more capital than it can use, hence the mergers and acquisitions, but no new jobs. It is cheaper to buy someone else's company than to expand your own it seems. So business, which the Rcc touts as the savior of us all, business to which the Republican Party wants to give extended tax cuts, is not really saving us. It's saving only its money. When it could be creating jobs with the proceeds of our GDP, it is only creating more wealth for itself. That is why our lives are not getting better. It is not some mystical and intractable force. It is no mystery at all. Those with money are sitting on it. Business and its owners are hoarding the wealth we produce with our labor. It's that simple, and it's that Republican.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The Sunday talk shows demonstrated that the Islamic center planned for a site two blocks from the old World Trade Center buildings that were brought down in the 9/11 attacks is neither rational nor transitory. The debate continues, but now it is focused on the most identifiable person involved, the imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who is the prime mover of the Islamic community center in question. I understand the popular sentiment and the provenance of those feelings, and to some extent I agree. I might not have chosen to put the community center a mere two blocks from the place where such egregious acts of terror played out less than a decade ago. And even as I write to you now, I do not know how the choice of this site was arrived at, so the prudence of the choice continues to be at best questionable to me. However, as the furor continues it becomes ever more apparent that ulterior motives among the politicians who are keeping the tumult alive are responsible. That became eminently clear on On Meet the Press.

Senate Minority Leader McConnell led off with an unveiled criticism of The President in which he questioned The President's decision to address the matter even though all Mr. Obama did was to remind the public that construction anywhere on private property is a matter of right as long as operative law was observed. And when asked in the context of the same set of questions why 31% of Republicans still believe that President Obama is a Muslim, McConnell answered that Mr. Obama says he is a Christian and that he, McConnell, "takes the President at his word"-- a sly way of saying that he takes no position himself on that point and that he really doesn't want to discourage those who harbor that erroneous belief. And then in the next segment of the program, New York gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio, the Republican who is behind in the race more than two votes to one, insinuated that Mr. Rauf is a Muslim extremist because he said when 9/11 occurred that the United States was complicit in the attacks, though Lazio left out the reasons why Imam Rauf took that position. A remark like Lazio's is inflammatory in light of all that wasn't said to put it all in context, and for that reason, I feel compelled to add some perspective to it for all those who are tempted by Lazio's kind of ad hominem approach to politics.

By conincidence, the New York Times provided its readers with a profile of Mr. Rauf yesterday, and the comment made by the imam was actually shown on ABC's Sunday program, This Week, where the imam's wife was appearing. She was asked to clarify the remark as even ABC did not show it in context, and she said that her husband was saying something that I myself have said before. The U.S. armed Osama Bin Laden and the Mujahadeen in the short sighted belief that the enemy of our enemy was our friend, a doctrine that has been disproved over and over again. And I don't expect you to take my word for that, nor the imam's, nor even his wife's. There is no need. All you have to do is watch a movie.

A year or two ago, a movie was made about a Texas congressman, Charlie Wilson: an infamous womanizer, partygoer, narcissist, self-promoter and probably worse, who took it upon himself to go around the CIA's appraisal of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and implement foreign policy on his own by supporting bin Laden in his insurgency. In the movie Charlie Wilson's War, the CIA was shown to have resigned itself to the benefit of the mutually destructive conflict between the Soviet army and the radical Afghan rebels in the belief that the attrition that was being suffered by both sides weakened two enemies of the United States at the same time. There was collateral damage from that war of course, and Wilson was moved to give aid to the refugees, certainly a noble cause. But he also decided to go outside of official channels and fabricate and implement a network of sources from which he could marshal the resources to arm and train the rebels as well. They became Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and now, at least in part thanks to Charlie Wilson, here we are. That was Mr. Rauf's point, and it is indisputable. But not to Mr. Lazio.

The desperate gubernatorial candidate, most likely attempting to cultivate support through demagoguery in light of the fact that his political positions have been rejected by New York's electorate, impugned imam Rauf by elliptically citing that remark, the validity of which should be an object lesson to Americans rather than the provocation that Lazio wants to make it. And that is why we are still discussing the Islamic community center today. There are people in our political arena who view themselves as players in a game in which winning is all that counts; public service gets only lip service from them. They will say anything, no matter how self-serving, dubious, prevaricative or just plain untrue in order to win office for themselves. McConnell's sly disclaimer regarding President Obama's religious affiliation and his evasions regarding the issues of the deficit vis-à-vis the Bush era tax cuts for the richest 5% of Americans are another example of that kind of political pseudo-polemics, but the kind of thing to which Lazio has stooped is not just devious, it is catalytic of hatred and division among loyal Americans, millions of whom are Muslims. It is the kind of cynicism that has despoiled American politics and undermined true democracy just as the facile patter of McBoehnell (McConnell and Boehner) has done, but it is so much more sinister. McBoehnell's obstructionism and casuistry in the name of pure political purpose are one thing, but precipitating hatred for one's own personal political gain is another. For that, there is no excuse. Shame on Mr. Lazio. Fortunately, it appears that the voters of New York saw him coming.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

About two weeks ago, it was reported in the New York Times that President Karzai of Afghanistan, who has promised to root out corruption in his country's government, was angry that one of his top aides had been arrested by an anti-graft unit supported mainly by the United States. The aide was caught on tape soliciting a bribe to impede an investigation of an organization that was suspected of moving large amounts of money out of the country. In response to the news, Karzai launched an investigation of the investigators, implying that the arrest was somehow a function of an impropriety on their part. His specific complaint was that the investigators were violating the human rights of suspects and the sovereignty of his nation in that Americans, the very same people who are fighting his war against the Taliban and dieing in the process, played a primary role in the investigation. Notably, Congress is withholding $4 billion that was promised to the Afghanistan government in consequence of another case closely related to the one in which Karzai's aide was arrested. The investigative units were set up with President Karzai's blessing, including the fact that American law enforcement personnel from agencies like the FBI were integrally involved, but apparently he thought that the American effort would be as haphazard and half-hearted as the steps he claims to have taken in his own putative attempts to thwart the rampant corruption that is a part of governance in Afghanistan. But that is not all the Afghanistan news that is fit to print.

A few days later, the Times and other news agencies reported on an Afghani sortie against the Taliban that resulted in a disastrous rout of government forces with many casualties. It took days to extricate the troops from the ambush that was set for them, and the imputed significance of the event was that the Afghan army has far to go before it will be both willing and able to take initiative in pursuit of the goals of the war against the Taliban and in that case, Al Qaeda. Between the lack of adequate intelligence and the ineptitude of the planned action, credence for the notion that the Afghan army will be ready to fight their war in July 2011 when American troops begin to be drawn down was dealt a savage blow. And that kind of doubt was further fostered by news about a week ago that ten aid workers-- doctors, nurses and the like-- were kidnapped and murdered in an admittedly dangerous part of Afghanistan, and that the Taliban had taken "credit" for the heinous murders of seven men and three women who had no purpose in mind but to help the Taliban's own people.

It all reminds me of the 1972 presidential election in which Richard Nixon campaigned on what he called his "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War. After the election it was revealed that the plan was called "Vietnamization." What that meant was that Vietnamese troops would be trained to perform the military functions then being performed by approximately 500,000 American military men and women so that when the Americans left, the war could continue without any loss of effectiveness in the forces opposing the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army. At the same time, Henry Kissinger was negotiating, at first secretly and later more openly with the North Vietnamese for an end to the war. Both the negotiations and the Vietnamization continued until the United States withdrew in 1975. The news footage of the last day of our participation in the war told the story. The capital of South Vietnam, Saigon, fell the very day our last forces left. So much for secret plans and Vietnamization. The troops trained to defend the country didn't last an hour before the North Vietnamese marched into Saigon, and South Vietnamese citizens were so desperate to get out that they hung like pine cones from the runners on the bottoms of the last helicopters out of the embassy. Our legacy to the South Vietnamese was not a formidable fighting force. It was bedlam and retribution.

I raise the issue of Vietnam, which I have done before, because it seems indisputable that we are headed to the same outcome that we saw there with the war in Afghanistan, and quite possibly in Iraq as well. In Afghanistan it started for us as more of a police action than a war: an attempt to capture, if not kill, the dastardly engineer of the deaths of 3,000 Americans on a single day to which the world refers simply as 9/11. Our forces thought they knew where he was, but despite that knowledge, that abomination of a human being was never captured. Still, the war went on and it was gradually transmogrified into what it is now: a war against what was at the beginning of the war the governing entity within Afghanistan whether we liked it or not, whether it was legitimate or not. At some point, the quest to find Osama bin Laden became the attempt to bring American democracy to a country that has never been exposed to such a thing. As we have done in other places, most recently in Iraq where new acts of terror are beginning to proliferate again now that the only American forces are support troops, at least in theory, we have assumed that everyone in the world will be better off the more they are like us. We want to save them all in spite of themselves, but at some point, we must recognize that our ambitions for others may be less altruism than hubris, and if President Karzai is any indication, less their choice than ours.

Nearly 4,500 American lives have been lost in Iraq, and while the number in Afghanistan is much lower, the pace at which our troops suffer casualties is quickening. With all those lives and the tens of thousands more that have been ravaged by injuries sometimes unspeakable in their horrible effects, I fear that we will once again have squandered them when we finally leave both places completely. What a tragedy that would be, as if there hasn't been enough tragedy already.

I'll see you Monday, America.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been in the news for the past couple of weeks like the bad political pennies that they have always been. I turned sixty four yesterday, and I remember the Vietnam era vividly, though I was never in the military, which makes all of that bad news uncomfortably ominous. I was in fact a conscientious objector, and my perspective on Vietnam was my inspiration. But as the Selective Service required for the issuance of CO status, I was then opposed to all war, and as my perspective on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ripens with the passage of time and the never ending grind of the news of those wars, my conviction in that regard has hardened, and I am opposed to war now more than ever, though my reasons continue to evolve and broaden. With the passage of time and the advent and proliferation of the tens and hundreds and thousands of personal tragedies that these wars have caused, and considering that we chose these wars rather than having them thrust upon us, I find myself pondering how little has changed.

In the Vietnam era, the war was a political issue as well as a moral and ethical one, and such was the case for a myriad of reasons. There was conscription of young men to serve as fodder for the war effort, and for at least some of the duration of the war, they could not even vote. It was the sixties and the early seventies, and our culture was reorienting itself in many respects from the focus on material wealth to the roles of religion and social mores in directing our lives. There was anti-materialism, sex, even unheard of extents of tonsorial and sartorial freedom-- bell bottoms and long hair for men. Our mass opposition to the Vietnam War succeeded and we thought we were life-long rebels and that the world in which we would live to our dotages would be different. But then Haight-Ashbury became less a bastion of free love and more a haven for dopers. Ten years later there was AIDS, perhaps to some extent a consequence of both. We were thereafter steeped in a reality that had escaped us as teenagers and young adults as we realized that, as my mother's mother used to tell her, love makes the world go 'round, but it takes money to grease the axle. Events roiled the times in which we made our bones, and for better or worse, we came out of that era as we are today: the baby boomers eating up the social security trust and sitting on our porches witnessing what may be the end of the best time any generation ever had. We lived through interesting times; whether we are the better for it or not I cannot say. But this I think is certain: the wars in Iraq and to a somewhat lesser, but none-the-less profound degree, Afghanistan were misadventures that have gone largely ignored primarily because those who have served in them and died, been maimed and come home less than whole did so as "volunteers."

I will have more to say about Afghanistan on Friday. There has been some especially disturbing news about it lately, and I for one am becoming impatient with the failure of our government, even our president for whom I voted once and will most likely vote again, to see it for the pointless folly that it is and abandon the effort while we are only as depleted by it in every respect as we are now. But the wars suggest to me something else: a failure that we as children of the sixties, baby boomers, flower children, pacifists and economic and social radicals must face; we did not change the social structure that sends young, poor men to war never to return because we did not imbue our society with the social justice that, after all is said and done, was at the heart of our movement. Our generation-- my generation-- has spawned the tea party movement that abhors ensuring that everyone will have access to health care. Many of our number oppose the concept of marriage for any two people who want to commit to each other for life regardless of sexual preference and government guarantees of equal rights in general, and they probably harbor a host of other sub rosa ignominious beliefs as well that we rejected as young college students and social free agents. I am sorry to have to acknowledge that we failed in our revolution, even with the Beatles at our side.

It may be blithe optimism for me to think as I do that I will live another twenty years that will be active, productive, and by comparison to the same period in my mother's life, satisfying: years of which cancer deprived my father entirely. My generation lives longer than any before it and has enjoyed the spotlight in our society for its entire duration. We have always been the largest market for goods and services. We dictated the course of style, custom, norms and acceptable behavior standards. We have been in control for more than sixty years in one way or another, but as far as I can tell, nothing is better for anyone except us, despite the massive power we have wielded. Tom Brokaw wrote a book about the generation that fought World War II, and he called it "The Greatest Generation." I am sorry to say that my generation, the scion of that previous era of greatness, has largely failed. Perhaps the next generation, not President Clinton's-- he is almost exactly my age and with regard to my generation his life is like the picture in Dorian Grey's attic in many respects-- but President Obama's can redeem the promise that we made to our elders and our posterity. There is hope that America can become what it was intended to be. It's just that my generation did not manifest it, much less leave it behind as our legacy.

My generation owes you something, America. I owe you something. So in lieu of the rallies I didn't attend, the marches in which I didn't march, the envelopes I didn't stuff for candidates who might have been the agents of the change I advocated, for my silence at moments when I should have taken a stand, I will write to you three times a week, even though the older I get, the more I learn how little I know. While I would not presume to tell you what you should think, perhaps by writing to you to tell you what I think I can at least participate now in the debate that I merely listened to for the better part of my life. It is the least that any of us can do to repay the nation that gave us all that we have and made us all that we are.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The ABC Sunday morning talk show, This Week, was focused on two issues yesterday: the economy and President Obama's position on the Islamic complex planned for a site across the street from the empty spot created by the 9/11 explosions at the World Trade Center. The debate on the economy raged on with the same issues being gummed by the experts as they have worn their teeth down to nubs masticating and re-masticating the subject. They put the usual party political spin on the topic, but it was more of the same predictions about who was in trouble with the voters ending with the implicit caveat that we will all discover the reality together in November-- dull stuff. But the Obama position on the Muslim center at "ground zero" is new, and thus "hot," and so it was the main ingredient in the quest for entertaining news content. The thirst for controversy in the media-- something of a long running disgrace in my opinion-- has to be satisfied, this issue being only the latest iteration of their shameless pandering to the television watching public. It demonstrates only one thing, and it has nothing to do with President Obama. The media will do anything to create interest in their own air time. While Meet the Press had an all-Afghanistan issue, This Week paid lip service to the waffling economy but was in reality focused on President Obama's reminder that the constitution must be followed, and that it mandates that property belongs to the owners-- that the government cannot tell them what to do or not to do with that land with only certain very narrowly circumscribed exceptions generally known as zoning laws. He said that twice in as many days, but the members of the This Week panel couldn't use that, so they insisted that it was different each time.

On CNN, they touted a poll that they had taken demonstrating that 68% of the public feels that the Islamic center planned for the site in question should not be built there, and somehow, they translated that into a 68% disapproval of the position that President Obama had taken, even though the President never said that he approved of the construction planned but merely asserted the right that we all enjoy in this country, America, when we own real estate. On ABC, at least one of the political experts insisted that the President had changed positions, which suggests to me only that she either doesn't understand the English language or she is from the create-controversy-if-you-can school of journalism. Another insisted that the President was parsing his statement when he reiterated his position on Saturday, even though he said exactly the same thing both times only once at length and once more concisely: that the owners of the site had the right to do as they saw fit within the law, whether it was politic, sensitive and prudent or not. And while there was some disagreement on this imputation of meaning to President Obama's two remarks, the cumulative gravamen of the discussion was that the President had done himself political harm, with only one dissenting opinion from the panel of four. It was a shameless display of pseudo-analysis from people who get paid to do the real thing: analyze.

The irony of all of this is that if you put Samuel Alito-- you may remember him as the negative-nodding Justice of the Supreme Court at the State of the Union Address who expressed his displeasure with the President's characterization of the Citizens United decision-- on the spot with regard to this issue, he would say the same thing as the President said with regard to property rights. So would McBoehnell (aka Mitch McConnell and John Boehner), the Tea Party Movement, Rush Limbaugh, Presidents Clinton and both of the Bushes, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. There is no controversy in what the President said, unless of course you are in the press and you need something to stir up interest in your readership or your audience. In fact, the closest to a controversial remark that President Obama made was to say that he takes no position on the issue of how the land at ground zero is going to be used after he said that it is not the right of government to take a position on how the land at ground zero is to be used. Shame on him: he followed the mandate of the Constitution that he had just reiterated. Is that politically foolish or what.

We cannot legislate discretion or competence in the media. We have to rely on the professionalism and insight of these people for the selection of the news that is fit to present to us, the sources of that news they choose to believe and their precision and judgment in telling us what they have found out. But if what we have seen lately is the best they can do-- their narrow, tendentious coverage of the spill in The Gulf, their "polling" of the American polity and derivation of dubious meaning from the results, their elliptical selections of sound bites to make the most controversy that they can-- maybe we need some kind of control over what they do. Unfortunately, the freedom of the press requires that there be no "prior restraint" on what they say, write or print, so I guess we will just have to make do with what they are giving us. I believe in a free press. Is that politically foolish of me?

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Two things have come to my attention over the past two days that at first blush may seem unrelated. First, I got notice from a company in which my family owns a few shares of stock: Eagle Rock Energy Partners. You should be aware that it is very few that we own as the stock market crash of 2000 turned about $45,000 into $5,000-- my fault, I admit, as I saw everyone else getting rich quick and I wanted to do the same. So what we own now was purchased with what little was left of our savings and it is supposed to generate income. The company recently sought stock holder approval for a series of transactions in which it would buy the company that was the general partner running it along with some other companies, purportedly transactions that were good for the company, and by extension, us shareholders too. I didn't get what they were doing, so I didn't cast our votes, but the majority of the shareholders did, so we now own the general partner that used to control us, at least that's how I understand it. But yesterday, I got another notice of a shareholder's meeting, this one about an incentives program for employees, which really means executives if you read the prospectus. Unfortunately, the prospectus doesn't specify how much these incentives are going to be or how they will be calculated: another pig in the same poke they sold the shareholders just a couple of months ago. I suspect that the purchase of the general partner was for the purpose of giving its employees access to the resources of Eagle Rock so that they could take more of them as compensation, but I don't know that for a fact.

Then, today as I was driving home I heard that Calloway Golf is closing down the golf ball plant they bought years ago in Chicopee, Massachusetts, which employed a thousand people back then but employs only about three hundred fifty now. They are going to take two hundred fifty of those jobs to a new facility they are apparently building-- in Mexico.

At first, the connection may seem somewhat obscure. Two companies in different industries, one trying to boost executive pay and the other moving its plant. But in reality, both are essentially one kind of move: an attempt to make more money for a few people who already have plenty at the expense of a lot of people who don't have very much. Calloway will save $12 million by moving to Mexico, which the town of Chicopee could not match, though they did offer about $1 million as an incentive to stay. But Calloway does have assets-- more than half a billion dollars worth, and I'll bet its executives make pretty good money too, though the shareholders are getting dividends of less than 1% now. And just for the sake of perspective, Calloway made about $25 million in net profit, that is after all expenses including executive incentives, this year so far. As to Eagle Rock, I bought the stock somewhere around $15 per share about two or three years ago and it's $6 per share today, which is up from its recent lows, and the 12% or more dividend for which I bought it is now 1.6%. How executives are justifying incentives at Eagle Rock I don't know.

Here's my point. These people at the top who are making the decisions that the rest of us are living with are not doing such a great job. Just look at the cause of the mess we are in economically, which was caused by the decision of a rich few. At a time when the stock market had rebounded, Eagle Rock's management managed to drive the company's stock price down. And as to Calloway, at a time when jobs are scarce, they are taking a few and sending them to Mexico so as to boost profits, which do not seem to be reaching the shareholders, leading me to believe that executives at Calloway are doing pretty well too. So, I would like to make a proposal with regard to a new law regulating executive compensation at public companies, that is, companies whose shares are owned by the public: us, America. This is it: the total of executive incentives cannot exceed 10% of gross profit or the total amount of shareholders' dividends, whichever is less. That's it. Shareholders get no dividend, executives get no bonuses. And if shareholders do get dividends, executive compensation is limited to a small percentage of the total capital growth of the company. Seems fair to me.

Oh, and here's another one. No one is allowed to buy golf balls from any company that is moving jobs out of the country at a time when the country is in a recession and people are losing their houses. I don't think that second suggestion will become law, but I'm going to abide by it anyway. How about you, America.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

If the Democrats suffer the rout that the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) is predicting, John Boehner will be the next speaker of the House of Representatives. And while that is not necessarily something for the average independent voter inclined to vote Republican to think about, it is significant, and possibly worth considering. Boehner has been the voice of the conservative contingent in the Congress, running in tandem with Mitch McConnell in the Senate toward the goal of resurrecting the Republican majorities in both houses. The question is, do you, America, want either one of them in a leadership role of any kind that allows them to wield the power of the U.S. congress. In contemplating the answer to that question, with regard to Boehner in particular, we might want to consider his command of the facts.

Sunday morning, I saw him interviewed on one of the national current events programs, and among the questions he was asked was whether he supported the moratorium on deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. It has become a political issue more than an environmental one because of Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and the reliance in his state on the oil companies when it comes to jobs. If my recollection is correct, Jindal has stated that 100,000 jobs are at stake, and Boehner seems to want to jump on that band wagon as the moratorium is an executive decision made by President Obama, who as we all know is a Democrat. Both Jindal and Boehner think that they can indict the entire Democratic Party for the President's decision, and thus gain political capital that they can cash in in November. And so, when Boehner was asked about the moratorium, he said that the number of jobs that it will cost makes it prohibitive and inappropriate in the context of the risk that deep water drilling represents-- a minor risk in his mind, apparently. In support of that position, he said that there are 40,000 oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico, implying that the moratorium affects them all, and presumably that is the basis on which he concluded that so many jobs are at stake. But even if he is correct that there are 40,000 oil wells down there, how many jobs are being lost in consequence of the moratorium? With that many wells being affected, assuming that only 10% are in Louisiana's waters, Jindal is projecting about twenty five jobs per well, but the average rig has about 300 workers on it. That would cause a job loss of over a million, and you can bet that Jindal would have said so, but he didn't, and there are two reasons why.

First, according to my own research, there have been something on the order of 27,000 wells drilled in the entire history of drilling for oil in The Gulf, starting in 1896 when the first well was drilled in eighteen feet of water (the Deep Water Horizon was drilling at over 5,000 feet). And the vast preponderance of those wells are either abandoned or are now unmanned, producing oil with automated systems. As of now, the number of oil rigs in The Gulf is not approximately 40,000, it is approximately 4,000, and of those, less than forty are involved in the deep water drilling that the moratorium covers. At 250-300 jobs per rig, that is probably where Jindal got his number. Even though few of those rigs are in Louisiana waters, there are jobs that are peripheral to the oil industry that may be lost ultimately, so the figure, while it may be preposterous is at least rational. But what about Boehner's rationality?

Boehner has based his position on the moratorium on two claims: first that there are ten times the real number of wells in The Gulf, and second, by implication, that jobs will be lost on all of them. Neither is correct, or even near it. If there are forty deep water rigs to which the moratorium extends and each has three hundred personnel, that is 12,000 jobs across the whole U.S. Gulf of Mexico region, not just in Louisiana waters, so Jindal is exaggerating at the outset as well. But as for Boehner thinking that there are ten times the number of oil rigs as actually exist in the Gulf of Mexico, that is a significant mistake if you are going to base energy and economic policy on that number. In addition, even if there were that many wells in the Gulf, only a handful are covered by the moratorium on deep water drilling, so is he trying to mislead the public or is he just inept. Neither speaks well for him. But then there is the fact that Boehner seems to be saying that the safety concerns that inspired the moratorium in the aftermath of the biggest oil spill in history do not merit the loss of 12,000 jobs for six months, if it even takes that long for the oil companies to develop plans that meet the need for caution, safety and the ability to remediate any failure. That would be a questionable conclusion for him to reach even in the face of his own set of inaccurate presumptions.

The fact is that I know how Boehner made his mistake. I heard another Republican make the same claim about the number of wells in The Gulf, though I frankly can't remember who, and apparently if a Republican says something, Boehner believes it. Add that to the qualities I don't want in a Speaker of the House. What about you, America.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Recent reports relating to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico indicate that seventy-five percent of the oil that erupted into the water after the explosion of the Deep Water Horizon was either collected, burned, or disbursed either by chemical means or natural forces. Some oil has reached land, but it may be the case that as serious as the spill was, its consequences may be minimal, or at least much more manageable than was initially feared. So now, the question is, what will be the ultimate aftermath of the spill, not just in nature, but in politics as well. We have a moratorium on deep water drilling in place, but it is a political maelstrom in the making, impacting Louisiana jobs by attempting to avoid another impact on the state's shoreline. And of course, we have Bobby Jindal, hardly skipping a beat between ranting about the deficiencies he claimed were characteristic of the federal and BP responses to the spill and now railing about the loss of jobs out of an abundance of caution that he is characterizing as excessive. It is hard not to ask how this politician is always able to both eat his cake and have it, but in Louisiana, oil is apparently king. Still, there are questions that he will have to answer if the electorate of Louisiana is at all aware of its own best interests.

I speak now about specifics. Jindal was vocal and loud about his concern for his state when the spill began, claiming that only he seemed to understand the needs of the State of Louisiana. But no one ever took him to task for the fact that his state, about which he cared so deeply, was allowed by him to be almost entirely unprepared for the BP spill, for which he was in some sense responsible in that he was one of the clarion voices favoring deepwater drilling: jobs over prudence as it turns out. And now, he continues to promote what he sees as Louisiana's priorities in just the same way: jobs now and concern for how to cope with the dire consequences of deep water drilling failures later. Well, perhaps jobs are that important, but what about the burden on the people of Louisiana that may have been created by Jindal's peremptory decision to abandon the process set up under the Oil Pollution Act. What about his claim that the command center comprising elements of federal and state government along with the best that the company causing the spill can offer was not acting as he thought it should. Set aside the fact that he is not an engineer or an oil spill expert and consider nothing more than the fact that the central elements of the Louisiana incident response plan that federal law mandated was not inclusive of a means of dealing with a spill like the BP spill. And then consider this.

At Jindal's behest, and in response to his constant public badgering, the federal authorities responsible for containing the spill agreed to Jindal's plan to build hundreds of miles of sand bars to keep the oil off Louisiana's shores-- not beaches but swamps and other wetlands. Granted, those areas are vital to the wildlife of the region and they constitute the natural habitat that Louisiana's coastal population thrives on both culturally and practically, but did what Jindal advocated and ultimately got at the cost of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars actually preserve any of that...or anything at all. Frankly, I don't know.

Jindal also got on national television to promote the use of makeshift oil vacuuming devices that were capable, he said, of collecting three hundred gallons of crude on the waters of The Gulf every day. He wanted funding to build them and deploy them, even though the amount of oil that they could collect was so insignificant as to defy quantification in terms of percentage points. Did he get the money to build them, and if so, were they deployed and at what cost, and did they do anything worthy of acknowledging-- anything about which he can brag. Frankly, I don't know.

The bottom line is that at Bobby Jindal's behest, hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars were spent because he thought that he knew better than anyone else what Louisiana needed, but I have yet to hear that his demands stemmed one drop of the tide of oil. And now he wants to ignore the consequences of his initial misjudgment as well as Louisiana's official insouciance regarding planning in advance for the kind of risks that seem obvious in retrospect, at least partly on his watch, presumably because deep water drilling produced enough jobs that it was worth the risk. But I think it is now time for an accounting, at least it would be for me if I were a citizen of Louisiana determining whether to vote for Jindal again. The good governor seems willing to fly into action anytime there is a voter to be courted, but whether such snap judgments, based on nothing but supposition at best and possibly on nothing but a desire to extricate himself from his own political misjudgment, are the kinds of executive actions that best serve a state of the union is at best an open question. Mark Twain is attributed, perhaps apocryphally, with what has become an adage. He is alleged to have said that "For every problem there is always a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong." It is a human failing to leap to such conclusions, but the question in Mr. Jindal's case is this: do we want someone prone to such misjudgments to be in charge of a whole state.

What do you think, America? How 'bout you, Louisiana?

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

As all of you know, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced yesterday that the "Medicare Trust Fund" will be solvent for a few more years-- until 2029 the trustee now says-- because of the new health insurance reform law. And Social Security will also be solvent, until 2037, though the "Social Security Trust Fund" will begin losing money this year: similarly, Medicare in all its forms is approaching that kind of reversal threshold but later on down the road. Still, the talk of the town, Washington, D.C. that is, is that those programs will cause the deficit, that is the shortfall of revenue to cover any one year's budget expenditures, to grow based on one proposition: Social Security and Medicare account for one third of all federal expenditures. What's wrong with that statement?

What's wrong is that Social Security and Medicare benefits are not federal expenditures. They are our expenditures, America. Those benefits are paid out of the trust funds I just mentioned, which we endowed as individuals with our money, dedicated to one purpose only: the funding of our retirement income and elder health care needs. The money is not just earmarked; it is ours. The federal government writes the checks, but they are drawn on our trust fund, just as the retirement needs of our plutocrats are funded by their trust funds, only not only did daddy fund our trusts, we funded them too. So how does our drawing on our trust funds increase someone else's, that is the federal government's, deficit? Here's the answer: it doesn't. True, the federal government borrows every dollar we pay into the trusts until one of us becomes eligible under the terms of the trust and wants to collect his money, but the money itself, the IOU from the feds, belongs to us, not them. So, if the Rcc wants to claim Social Security spending as a problem, the first thing they have to do is to convert Social Security from a program funded by its own trust to a general fund program funded by tax dollars. I am in favor of that by the way, but until it's done, the Republicans and the Rcc have to keep their hands off our money. They can't both claim the right to confiscate some of our benefits and force us to be the only ones to endow a "trust" from which those benefits are paid and which they don't supplement when it runs dry. In other words, they can't both eat our cake and have it too.

My point is that the Republicans and the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) are constantly ranting about reducing federal spending by cutting entitlements. That's code for cutting Social Security and Medicare benefit eligibility, among other things by increasing the retirement age. But they never explain how reducing our rate of expenditure of our money helps to mitigate the national debt and the budget deficit. They are not talking about borrowing that money-- they've already done that. So what do they mean? Well, my guess is that they are just using Rcc speak to say that they don't want to contribute to those programs anymore: they want to keep their money and manage for their own retirements and old age, you know, like they didn't do before The Depression, which necessitated the New Deal and Social Security in the first place. They want to privatize Social Security and Medicare so that we can all be rich in our old age. They want us to invest in big business, like in the stock market for example (can you imagine where we would be if we had all had money in the market instead of in the Social Security Trust Fund). But most of all, they want to blame someone other than themselves for the mess we are in-- it's misdirection, my friends, misdirection, and a red herring in the bargain. Reducing "spending" by reducing Social Security benefits in particular will serve no purpose but to take money out of the stream of commerce-- we have less to spend so less gets spent. They never mention that back half of the proposition, and presumably, if they get their way and benefits are reduced, they will find another source of the common man's weal to take so as to undo the next financial catastrophe born of greed. And there will surely be one because that one third of federal spending about which they complain goes directly into the chain of commerce: for the most part, people on Social Security don't have the resources to bank their monthly stipends. They spend the money, albeit on frivolities like food, clothing and shelter, but they spend it. So, once again, what the Rcc is advocating is the very petard by which we will all be hoist one more time if they get their way: a bullet aimed not just at their collective foot but at ours as well.

It is remarkable that people who have such an interest in money, particularly their own, have no idea where it comes from. In a recent article written for The Nation, an admittedly liberal journal, Robert Reich, the bearded, diminutive economics gnome who was the Labor Secretary under former President Clinton, opines that the problem with our economy is that the rich are too rich. The money they count does not go into the stream of commerce the way that unemployment benefits, average earnings, the fifty bucks grandma gives your kids when they graduate from college, and yes, our Social Security benefits do. That is an observation more than a theory. It's only common sense. No jobs come from a rich man stashing more money in the trust fund for his soon-to-be rich kids.

So, I have but one song to sing to the Rcc, and it's about self-preservation-- their self-preservation as well as ours. It is not the supply side that drives the economy. It is demand, stupid. Please join me in the chorus, America.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I come to you now contritely.  This morning, I made a mortifying error when I wrote to you.

Linda McMahon is running for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut being vacated by Chris Dodd. But Ned Lamont and Dan Malloy are not running for the Democratic nomination, at least not the Democratic nomination for the Senate. They are running for the gubernatorial nomination, and the way I found out was that I was flipping through the channels and came across a debate among Republicans running for governor. That caused me to look at the other PBS stations in Connecticut, and sure enough, on the third one I found Ned Lamont debating Dan Malloy, which I had no idea was occurring.

The catalog of my errors stunned me, though it shouldn't have because I have been totally alienated by the campaign process-- inexcusably, I might add-- and I have paid no attention to the candidates, resolving instead not to vote for any of them (hence not to vote in the primary at all) because I detest their tactics. I felt justified in doing so, but having seen the conceptual errors I made in consequence of my indifference, a thing that I abhor and have often ranted against in the electoral process, I realize that my responsibility as a voter is greater than that of the candidates. They are pursuing self-interest, and I know it. But in the interest of my fellow citizens and me, I should exert the effort necessary to differentiate among them and cast my vote for the best of them, or at least the least of the evils. I didn't even take the time to confirm the spelling of Lamont's name, all of which is embarrassing to the point of being mortifying, as I said at the outset. I still don't know who the Democratic candidates for Senator are, though I must say, Chris Dodd still looks pretty good to me. I will certainly check that out tomorrow.

In my defense, I asked my wife, who was sitting on the couch beside me, if she was aware that there was to be a series of debates tonight, and she said she was not either. Then, when the spate of ads came on during the evening later on, I noticed that the only way to know what office the candidates were smearing their opponents for was to read the funding attribution in the small print at the end of the ad; they seem quite indifferent to the task of educating the electorate in any way. Mind you, my own lack of dedication to the task of being an informed voter is something for which only I am culpable. And believe me when I tell you that it discomfits me no end. I have been lax about something that is important to me, and that is important to all of us. I am chastened, and I hope permanently reformed. Let my mortification be a lesson to all of you, who I am sure are much more responsible than I. Politics is an ugly game, but somebody has to do it. No, we all do.

Your sheepishly apologetic friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Here in Connecticut, we are having what is probably the same run-up to the November elections that is playing out all over our country. Primaries are being held on August 10, just a few days from now, and the political ambitions of the candidates for the various constitutional offices, both state and federal, are waxing into frenzy, the U.S. Senate candidates in particular. On the Democratic side are two main candidates who are both businessmen. Each is running what they are calling "telephone town halls" or something on that order in which I assume an open line to the candidate is established with all of those taking part, and he answers questions one at a time. Of course, it could be something else as I have chosen not to participate each night when one or the other candidate's canned offer to subject himself to the procedure comes on the telephone just as we sit down to dinner. There is a sense in which my refusal to participate is hypocritical in that I always say that we should inform ourselves, and there would be no better way to learn about a candidate than to talk to him...maybe. But in this instance, I am so alienated by what both candidates are doing on television that I trust neither to tell me what he really thinks. The desperation with which they are accusing each other of irrelevant moral and ethical breaches is bordering on obscene, but the problem is that those tactics seem to be working. If they weren't, there would not be this constant political parry and riposte scene for the rest of us to endure. It is disheartening.

One of the candidates for the Senate on the Democratic side is Ned LaMonte. Many people all over the country might recognize his name as he is the man who ran against Joe Lieberman for Lieberman's Senate seat in the Democratic primary a couple of years ago. Lieberman styles himself an independent, and I suppose that is fair, but he is conservative in his politics overall, and he is included in the Democratic caucus in the Senate only because they need the vote. He is not a kindred spirit; that is why he lost the primary. LaMonte on the other hand seemed an outsider David trying to knock off an insider Goliath: Lieberman is a former state attorney general and multi-term Senate fixture in Connecticut, but LaMonte took the stands on issues that Connecticut Democrats, a primarily liberal constituency, wanted their senator to take. He was a hero even though he was handily beaten by Lieberman in a state that fancied itself not just Democrat leaning, but liberal, the latter being nothing but a canard it turns out. Now, LaMonte is running for the other Senate seat, the one vacated by Chris Dodd, another fixture in Connecticut politics, who is not seeking reelection after being tagged as a banking industry shill because of VIP treatment he got when applying for a mortgage some years ago. It seems a minor transgression in retrospect, but it was explosive news, even nationally, because Dodd is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. I was a little skeptical of his integrity myself when it all happened, but next to the LaMonte we are seeing now, he looks pretty good.

The problem with all of this negative campaigning is not so much how distasteful it is, nor is it even the dastardly elliptical nature of the allegations each candidate makes. In the case of the Connecticut Senate campaign, both of the candidates are businessmen who have succeeded, and neither of them looks to be as much the Mother Theresa of his industry as he does the captain of its Black Pearl. My guess is that both have cut corners that would deter any of us from inviting them over for dinner, but maybe that is all we can get in politics these days. Given that that is probably so, I am willing to overlook what appears to be a "scruples gap" and just vote on them for their professed principles, but I have no idea what they are. That's the problem that this finger pointing creates. All of their money, and both have plenty of their own to spend on their new hobby, is being spent on ads on television that make sly references to areas of each other's business practices that suggest deviousness and lack of principle. None of the money is being spent to tell us how they intend to get us more jobs or stem the tide of foreclosures that is still sweeping this state like most others. Neither has said a word about Afghanistan or financial regulation as far as I know, much less health care, at least not in a television ad, and if there have been televised debates, they haven't spent nearly as much money telling us when we can see them as they have telling us the hateful things that the other one has done.

What it comes down to is that I have to choose between these two businessmen about whom I know nothing that commends them, or vote instead for Linda McMahon, the wife of Vince McMahon and the corporate CEO of his wrestling empire, whose opponent in the Republican primary is characterizing her as a liberal, even though she wants to reduce taxes for the rich and find ways to lend them more money just like the other supply-siders want to do. She gets on television and dons her smarmy smile, spouting the prototype Republican conservative complex (Rcc) babble about knowing how to fix our economy because she ran a successful business-- wrestling mind you-- and that even though business got us into the mess we are in, she knows how to give us more of the same and fix it all. I am left with only one thing to say: Chris Dodd, where are you now. If you throw your hat in the ring again, I'll vote for you.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

This was a big week for the Republicans, foot-shooting wise. First, in the Senate they took the side of big corporations that meddle in electoral politics as if they rather than their executives held opinions. Because of the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, the campaign reform bill cannot, and does not prevent such abuse of the power of shareholder wealth but merely makes corporations admit that they are doing it, but still it was stymied by the Republican minority. Now, they don't even have to vote against a thing, they just have to threaten a filibuster and they can prevent action, even though they are only the minority party. The Democrats have done what they can about it in that they have promised to bring the bill up over and over again, rubbing the Republicans' collective nose in their allegiance to the very institutions that have brought us plutocracy, financial ruin and a moral code reminiscent of the worship of Mammon that Moses encountered when he came down off the mountain with the ten commandments. But now the Republicans in the House of Representatives have taken a page from the Senate Republicans' book, and a congressman named Weiner has taken the initiative that the Democrats have to take over and over again between now and November if they wish to prevent the resurgence of the Republican Party and with it the reemergence of hypocrisy and the return to primacy of wealth over humanism.

Anthony Weiner is a Congressman from New York. He worked for now-Senator Chuck Schumer when he was a Congressman and in 1999 won the seat from the ninth district in New York for himself. Last week, the Democrats in Congress brought to the floor, or tried to bring to the floor, a bill to aid those 9/11 first responders who have ongoing health problems traceable to their service at that time, and the Republicans in Congress employed parliamentary tactics similar to the Republican use of the filibuster in the Senate, avoiding the issues and avoiding declaring themselves on those issues at the same time, thus insulating themselves from criticism for their position because they haven't taken one. Weiner got up before the members of The House and excoriated their stalking horse on the issue, New York Republican Pete King, who had just pleaded with his party to support the bill, but then, in case that didn't work, accused the Democrats of setting his party up on the issue, and he certainly knows how that is done after watching his fellow Republicans' political tactics. Weiner effused righteous indignation over the demagoguery of Congressman King's attempt to eat his political cake and have it too, and in a confrontation that evoked memories of the Ali-Frazier fight faced Mr. King nose to nose, refusing to yield either the podium or his acrimonious condemnation. All of America saw Weiner's tirade on the internet, and later on the national news, but I am not sure that its significance was understood. The Republican response should be instructive in that regard, but it is strangely lacking in relevancy.

Congressman Weiner's anger was not precipitated primarily by the Republican opposition to the bill, though it seems certain that he would have called them to task for it if the bill had gotten that far. But since the Republicans in Congress prevented debate with their tactics, that ploy was the focus of Weiner's condemnation. In the days that followed, the Republican response seems to have been to characterize Mr. Weiner as a volatile crackpot, and for all I know, he is, but they have missed the point. His rancor was not a function of the Republican opposition, which may even have been shared by the Blue Dog Democrats, and possibly even others. No, his vituperation of the Republicans, and of whoever else was involved in their evasion of responsibility for their position on the matter, was over their pusillanimous refusal to go on record by allowing a vote. Weiner directed them, and us, America, to look at themselves and decide whether they were standing on principle or political expediency in their choice to avoid taking a position on the bill and just killing it anonymously instead. For the first time since the Republicans in the Senate began using parliamentary procedure to control American politics from a minority position, someone called the thing by its right name. He called it cowardice because it was cowardice.

Weiner's outburst took place last Thursday and was on the news that night. But that was the last I heard about it, though I don't pretend that all of the news flows through my consciousness every day, and I may have missed something. But Mr. Weiner, right or wrong, left or right, made a point that we should all be making, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, supply side economists and humanists alike. We are entitled to know our congressmen's positions on the issues, and we should be insisting on it. If this is truly a battle of principles-- this confrontation between the Democratic majority in congress and the Republican minority-- neither side should fear wearing their politics on their sleeves and going public with their beliefs. But if what the Republicans are doing is really only a sham intended to hide them from their constituents' scrutiny and prevent their views from becoming public knowledge, then principle has nothing to do with it, and government as they would have it will turn out to be nothing but ideological corruption and philosophical bankruptcy. Weiner's is the real battle cry that should be on all of our lips. We need to force the Senate to change the sixty vote cloture rule. We need campaign finance reform. We need healthcare, financial reform and all the rest. But fundamental to the process of getting what we need is knowing who our representatives are, and more importantly whether they are doing our business as we want them to. This is not a Democratic issue or a Republican one. It is an American issue in these times of trouble for our nation. And it is a moral issue in that we claim to bring democracy as we know it to millions of people in the rest of the world. So for those who are reading these lines, I implore you to make this demand of your Congressman and your Senators regardless of your party affiliation: tell us how you intend for our nation to proceed. Tell the congressmen you elected to cast their votes for or against a law, not for anonymity, regardless of party-- regardless of self-interest, political or otherwise. Tell them all, regardless of party, to show a little integrity for a change. That is the true nature of American democracy: it is not just electoral politics about winning and losing. It is about-- in those immortal words-- truth, justice and the American way. Will you do that America, in your own best interest? Will you demand that of them?

Your friend,

Mike