To have been on the mountaintop

In the hope we never forget why we have a holiday tomorrow, nor why it matters today, tomorrow, and forever ....

In memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., and more important, his work, I offer these links to his final speech, the one popularly known as his "Mountaintop Speech." He gave it the night before his assassination, speaking in support of striking sanitation workers of Memphis, Tennessee. It is memorable for it captures well his views on non-violence; on the importance of economic freedom, economic injustice and economic rights; and on history and his role in it. The speech is also known for his prophetic view of his own mortality, so cruelly realized the next day.

The text of the speech, from (quite fittingly) the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, AFSCME: “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A video of the speech, from the series Great Speeches, volume 6th, published by the Educational Video Group, and to be viewed for educational purposes only: Martin Luther King, Jr: "Mountaintop" speech full length.

Plan B: the big yellow box

I had mentioned that I was laid off in the summer of 2010, and that I wasn't very optimistic about prospects in my profession.

Alas, that proved true, and despite a year of searching I wasn't able to find any position within my field. There weren't that many to begin with, and what there were paid far less than what I had been making. The few interview opportunities I was able to obtain seemed to end the moment I walked into the room, with the unmistakable look of "Oh my god, it's a geezer" spreading across the interviewer's face.

The best chance I had was with a small town library in a remote part of the state, working four full days and two half days each week, for less than half my previous salary and with just two weeks of leave annually. I was grateful for the confidence the interviewer had in me and was impressed by the library, but it was a mistake to have even applied. I suppose I'm stuck in my ways, but taking the job would have meant never seeing my college-age daughter or my very elderly father, save by splitting those two weeks, and never taking a trip just for my own sake. It also would have meant scrimping each and every day, but I knew that was to be my future under the best of possibilities.

So I finally opted for Plan B, in earnest. And landed a job driving a school bus for a suburban county on the outskirts of the metropolitan region. The pay is lousy - about half of that library position that was less than half of my "real" job. But the work is oddly satisfying and generally pleasant, and in many ways I'm far happier at the wheel of my bus than I ever was working where I had been. And I get summers off.

But more on that anon. Suffice it for now just to say that I'm a school bus driver, and consider myself fortunate for that fact.

A little act to save jobs

More and more stores around here have installed self checkout counters. On the surface, that seems sort of interesting, an attractive and maybe even intriguing use of technology.

But don't use them.

Think about it. What's going on here? Go into a store with self checkout counters, and what else do you notice? Fewer cashiers. Which is to say, fewer employees. Which is to say, people who used to have jobs as cashiers, don't.

What you don't see are lower prices. The prices are the same whether you use self checkout or go to a cashier. The prices are the same whether you're in a renovated store with self checkout counters, or in one of the same company's older stores which don't yet have them.

So ask yourself: In whose interest is self checkout? Obviously not the employee's; more machines and fewer humans mean more people struggling to find jobs, more people desperate to make ends meet, more misery in the midst of a terrible recession which has brought unemployment and underemployment to millions. It's not in the customer's interest either. Do you get a price break when you use self checkout? No - any money saved goes to the corporation. Do you get a person on the spot who can quickly resolve any glitch that develops during checkout? No - you have to wait until some employee notices. Is it faster? Doesn't seem so, from what I can see - fairly often, in fact, I see customers confused by the process, or stumbling over one sort of problem or another. So who benefits? The store, only the store. And they don't pass their benefits back to either the consumer or the employee.

On the other hand, if you go to a cash register operated by an employee, you're doing your part to keep that person employed. You're doing your part to tell the management that they need to continue employing cashiers. You're even doing a little to combat this terrible recession. And you aren't paying a penny more than you would if you were in the other line.

Send a signal to the corporations. Do what you can to keep people employed. What goes around comes around ....

White bread GOP debt panelists

Okay, I realize that the Republican Party isn't very inclusive, and especially not at its top levels, but the best that Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell could come up with for the joint debt committee were a bunch of white guys in ties?

Nobody expects that members of Congress will be poor or homeless or unemployed, but let's face it: the people who will be most adversely affected by the cuts to be imposed by the panel will be poor or homeless or unemployed, just as they're the ones who have suffered the most from the long-running financial crisis left to America as a key component of George W. Bush's legacy.

But Boehner appointed Jeb Hensarling, Dave Camp and Fred Upton, while McConnell appointed Patrick Toomey, Jon Kyl and Rob Portman. Hensarling is a middle-aged wealthy white business executive from Texas; Camp is a middle-aged white lawyer from Michigan; Upton is a middle-aged white political drone from Michigan; Kyl is a middle-aged white lobbyist from Arizona; Toomey is a white financial wheeler-dealer and business executive from Pennsylvania; and Portman is a white political staffer from Ohio. Not exactly representative of the people suffering from our economic problems.

The Democrats on the panel are obviously not poor, homeless or unemployed either, but two are women, one is Hispanic, one is African American, one was a community organizer, one is a decorated combat veteran, one is the son of working class immigrants, and one is a former high-school teacher. Something tells me that they will bring to the debt discussions a greater intuitive understanding of the plight of ordinary Americans, and a greater awareness of how this unending recession is hurting them far more than it is hurting the moneyed classes so ably represented by the Republican members of the committee.

The Washington Post seems to have noticed the same imbalance: "Debt Supercommittee’s Membership Dominated by White Men."

The rich need jobs

There has been a fair amount in the press of late about the anger of the rich, both articles and columns. The rich, the people whose incomes put them in America's top 1%, seem to be increasingly upset about historically mild attempts to reign in some of the advantages they enjoy, steps like letting the Bush II tax cut for the top echelon expire, or limiting the bonuses paid to the top executives of the companies bailed out by the taxpayer, or closing tax loopholes for hedge fund executives, or levying the same Social Security tax on their wages as are levied on most workers, or even - horror of horrors - taxing some of their unearned income at rates corresponding to those levied on the sweat of the working man's brow.




The irony is that what the very rich need more than anything else is political stability. In the final analysis, their wealth and their way of life depend on the great mass of people less affluent than them being sufficiently satisfied with their lot to support the political, social and economic structures which permit the wealthy to exist, and to enjoy their wealth.

But persistently high unemployment and underemployment, increasing disparities in wealth, increasing poverty and increasing hopelessness imperil that stability. It is in the interests of America's very wealthy to support economic and social reforms and policies which would dampen such threats to stability, and they're not doing it.

Too many Americans need jobs, and they need them now. Allowing the Bush II tax cuts for the wealthy will not stimulate the economy or produce jobs. What will work is getting the unemployed back to work, and to do that, we as a nation need to start creating jobs, and the best way to do that would be to start investing in the infrastructural improvements, new technologies and new markets that can keep us competitive in the 21st Century.

Unless we create those jobs, more and more people will become increasingly desperate, and desperation brings enormous risks to stability. I don't wish to sound alarmist, but America is today approaching a point where all bets will be off, and political chaos could be a distinct possibility. The wealthy, just as much as the rest of us, have a vested interest in getting Americans back to work, and restoring hope and optimism throughout our land.

And now I am one

Back when the Obama administration was taking form in the midst of the Bush-era financial debacle, there was considerable discussion of the appropriate scale for a federal stimulus package. The new President opted for a timid approach, perhaps because he didn't want to imperil his chances for bipartisanship, perhaps because he thought he could come back for a second installment if necessary, or perhaps because he thought his timid package would prove adequate. Some political leaders, several prominent economists, and a few progressive pundits thought that Mr. Obama was wrong on all three counts; the Republicans were not interested in bipartisanship, the political consensus needed to pass a stimulus package would soon unravel, and that the package being promoted would prove woefully inadequate.

Sadly, the skeptics were proven right on all counts. The Republicans became the party of "No," much more interested in thwarting President Obama than in helping America. The opportunity proved very short-lived, withering in the face of Republican obstructionism and a sustained rhetorical assault by the right wing -- an opposition unwittingly aided by a curiously detached White House. And the stimulus has proven so inadequate that the county appears to be locked into a long term period of stagnation in which millions upon millions of Americans will suffer as high unemployment numbers remain unchanging and the unemployed slip into long-term unemployment and lives of hopelessness and increasing levels of misery. Meanwhile, America's political leaders seem apathetic to the sufferings of their constituents and astonishingly removed from the realities Americans face.

All along, I've been siding with the progressive skeptics. All along, I've favored a much more aggressive stimulus package (coupled with a rapid drawdown in our pointless and expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a roll-back of the lopsided tax cuts given to the nation's affluent by the Bush administration). All along, I've sided with those who saw this terrible recession as an opportunity to embark on economic development strategies which would improve American competitiveness, address the growing problems of climate change and foreign petroleum dependence, and provide unemployed Americans with modern jobs that would help build our collective future.

But I never thought I was arguing in favor of what I personally would need.

Wrong.

Laid off. In a field which is dying. And of an age where the few prospects available to younger unemployed are unavailable to me.

These are dismal times for our nation. And now they're dismal times for me.

Dismal times, and very humbling. I entered the job market during a recessionary period when jobs were hard to find, and job scarcity has characterized most of my career. And here I am, still years from retirement but with no prospects.

One hopes hope will come, but it seems awfully distant now.

Tax now

Bought gas the other day. Back on June 28, I paid $4.06.9/gallon. This past Wednesday it was $1.59.9. Pretty good, huh?

I don't think so. The last thing we need is to once again be lulled into complacency about energy costs and revert to our taste for gas-guzzlers and gas-guzzling ways. Already the fevered calls for energy efficiency are dying away, and one suspects that sales will soon be picking up for SUVs, big pickups and other super-sized low-efficiency vehicles.

Let's not fool ourselves. The cost of fuel has plummeted because the economy has plummeted. Once the economy gets rolling again, fuel prices will rise again, and we will be staring at $4.00 gas and worse, probably much worse. There aren't any major new sources of oil out there. We simply cannot drill our way out of the inevitable crunch. It is not be possible to drive down the road to our future in gas guzzlers.

Nor do we want to. Global warming is real, and really dangerous. We must do whatever we can to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and one of the best ways is to wean ourselves from our addiction to fossil fuels. We may already be out of time; at the very least, we're running out of time.

Many options are before us; some focus on conservation, others on developing alternatives. Both basic approaches must be employed, but one of the simplest, quickest and most effective was demonstrated pretty convincingly when consumers reacted to the skyrocketing gas prices last spring by curtailing their driving and shifting towards more fuel-efficient vehicles; sharp increases in energy costs promote conservation effectively and quickly. To put it crudely, we need high fuel costs to break our addiction to gasoline.

Right now, gas prices are low. This is the time to bite the bullet and increase gas taxes. Nobody likes taxes, but backtracking to wasteful driving habits would be worse. Even a dollar per gallon tax would not bring prices at the pump back to the levels we've seen over the past year and a half, but it would ensure that real incentives to conserve would remain in place.

One of best the arguments against such an increase is that it would disproportionately affect low-income drivers who need their cars to get to work but cannot afford modern, fuel-efficient vehicles. However, there is a way around that dilemma: a targeted tax rebate to low-income wage earners to offset the cost of the new tax. Even better, such a rebate would encourage further conservation, because eligible taxpayers would qualify even if they changed to more efficient forms of transportation.

The time to enact this tax is now, while the cost of gas is abnormally low. The initial adverse impact on family budgets would be small, and consumers would have time to adjust their habits by the time prices reach for the sky again. If we let this moment pass, it will be much harder to do in the future ... and for the sake of our future we cannot afford to delay any longer.

Sixty-seven years ago we were complacent as Japanese bombers approached Pearl Harbor. This time the danger is even greater, our adversary is fully apparent, and there is far less excuse for complacency.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 7 December 2008

Don't kick the dog

Whenever large corporations totter on the edge of bankruptcy, the first reaction of most corporate leaders and most pundits is to recommend forcing labor to bear the lion's share of the burden, usually in the form of reduced wages, reduced pensions, and reduced benefits, as well as the more easily justified layoffs. Perhaps that may be necessary, but before we advocate punishing workers for GM's problems, we should remember several key principles:

1) Labor did not create GM's problems; management did. The workers did not design a product line manifestly unsuited to the needs of consumers and unable to compete with the likes of Honda and Toyota. When GM was producing vehicles consumers were buying, the company was profitable and workers were doing well. GM's workers can still build vehicles; the problem is that the vehicles they are building are not the vehicles consumers are buying. The fundamental problem at GM, Ford and Chrysler is a product line unsuited to the times and a corporate inability to respond quickly to the changing needs of consumers. We should not punish labor for management's mistakes.

2) Retirees in particular shouldn't be punished. They played by the rules all their working lives, producing cars for consumers and profits for the company. Now they're old, they deserve the retirement they've earned, and they're vulnerable to cynical efforts at post hoc rule changes. So the solution should be to turn on them now, changing the rules when they're too old to adapt? I hope not! That would be an enormous injustice.

3) Domestic car manufacturers operate at one significant and substantial disadvantage compared to imports. In the rest of the industrialized world, worker health care, like everybody's health care, is provided through a national health care system. That puts foreign car makers at a considerable competitive advantage over domestics; some estimate the difference can amount to $1500 per vehicle. The answer isn't cutting health benefits for American workers and retirees, however. The answer is nationalizing health care costs, so every American is guaranteed quality health care while American manufacturers are operating on a much more level international playing field. Strangely, this issue isn't getting much attention, but it should, and not just in the automobile industry.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 25 November 2008

Are we panicking yet?

The Dow Industrials have surged well past 10,000 as I write this -- it's now at 9,786 and falling precipitously, already down 5.22% for the day. In exactly one year, it has fallen 4,492 points, or 31.5%. The story is essentially the same in markets around the world. And credit is freezing up everywhere. Where's the slide going to stop? More to the point, what will the landscape look like when it does?

Several conclusions seem obvious.

We're heading into a recession, quite possibly a deep and long one. Yet another legacy of the Bush years, another consequence of Ralph Nader, a few dozen hanging chads, a twisted Supreme Court decision, and popular indifference to the suborning of the republic. Elections do matter.

McCain's chances, and the Republicans' generally, look dismal. It's an ill wind that blows no good, one is tempted to say, except that it's hard to envy President Obama and the new Congress for the tasks awaiting them. The ability of the federal government to mitigate the effects of the looming recession, let alone prepare for the future and deal with such major problems as alternative energy development and global warming, are hamstrung by three decades of neocon domination of our government and especially by the current administration's mammoth deficits and ruinous Middle Eastern wars.

The fatal weakness inherent in the drive to privatize Social Security lies exposed for all to see. It's bad enough the retirees with 401(k) and similar "defined contribution" retirement plans are watching their income evaporate, but think what would be happening to them if Social Security was tied to the market. At least Bush was stymied on this.

Workers who have watched -- largely indifferently, and largely in ignorance -- as defined contribution plans have been substituted for the defined benefit plans their parents knew are now looking at their own old age with growing alarm and even fear. Workers whose employers eviscerated their traditional pension programs with the willing acquiescence of successive right-wing governments should be especially angry, although they have not as yet created the political tsunami that this connivance of capitalists and neocons should have produced. Score this as the next wave of voter anger, a grey wave which has to potential to reshape the shoreline of our political continents.

Hold on, folks, this ride is only going to get scarier.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 7 October 2008

The proposed bail-out plan needs to be fixed

The proposed financial bail-out plan is a bad deal for American taxpayers and should be opposed unless several changes are made to protect the taxpayers' interests and the well-being of ordinary Americans.

The financial assistance should take the form of an equity interest in the distressed companies. This is essentially the same approach taken to the bailout-out of AIG, and other bail-outs before then. Why change the model now? The current plan apparently envisions federal purchase of toxic debts at prices high enough to bail out those companies, but that will likely result in the federal government -- the taxpayer -- paying too much for them, and getting gouged in the end. An equity interest would inject the necessary capital while giving the federal government a realistic chance to recoup the taxpayers money. It would also give the federal government greater say in guiding the behavior of the companies that got us into this mess. After the economy has recovered, the equity interests could be sold at a profit for the taxpayer.

Any financial assistance provided to the companies which spawned these toxic mortgages and the ensuing crisis should include relief for the millions of Americans facing foreclosure. At the very least, bankruptcy judges should have the power to modify the terms of their mortgages. This power exists in most forms of corporate bankruptcy; why not extend the same principle to ordinary citizens?

Financial corporations should be required to pay into an insurance system to protect us against any recurrence of such problems in the future.

Any bailout should not go forward unless it has true bipartisan support. Conservative Republicans will otherwise use this hugely unpopular measure to castigate Democrats who are, after all, going to provide most of the "heavy lifting" on this bill. In particular, the Democrats should make the whole-hearted support of the package by Senator McCain a requirement for passage.

Yes, this approach would be a high-stakes gamble. But this crisis is the product of the very people now resisting its resolution, and they should be forced to become part of the solution as well.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 29 September 2008

Buddy, can you spare me a dime?

Sixty thousand of them, in fact.

You ought to.

You just loaned Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG that much. Each of you did. So did all your friends and neighbors and family and fellow citizens. So why not me? I've got bills to pay and I'm just as deserving. C'mon, pony up; I'm waiting. I'm sure America doesn't want me to renege on my debts, either ....

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 17 September 2008

Our military budget is stealing our future

The U.S. Senate recently passed a defense appropriations bill of $460 billion, and that's not counting another $200 billion or so for our ruinous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To put these figures in context, it's useful to compare the U.S. defense budget with the rest of the world. In 2006, even though the Cold War was but a fading memory and our deadliest active enemies were armed with little more than aging assault rifles and surplus artillery shells, our defense budget accounted for over 40% of all military spending in the world. It was almost five and a half times greater than the next largest military budget, and was 12% greater than the rest of the top ten military budgets combined.* Of those other top ten, all are countries which which we have mutual defense treaties, military cooperation agreements, and/or strong bilateral trade relationships; in other words, all of the other countries with large defense budgets are our friends.

In a recent op-ed in the Baltimore Sun the retired commander of America's second fleet, Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan notes that "national security involves far more than unrealistic defense spending," asking "how many more hundreds of billions of dollars will it take before we step back and say, 'Enough'?"

The numbers involved overwhelm the imagination. But it suffices to note that defense spending consumes over half of the discretionary funds in the federal budget, preventing us from effectively addressing such diverse and pressing needs as health care, education, transportation, homeland security, disaster relief, energy independence and environmental degradation.

We should recall the words of Dwight Eisenhower, who commanded the largest army this country ever assembled and led America through the darkest days of the Cold War:

"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."**

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* The Military Balance 2006 (London: Routledge, for The Institute for Strategic Studies, 2006), p. 398-403
** Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953


Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 15 October 2007