In case you missed the news, today North Carolina Senator Burr joined 37 other Republicans and voted against funding disaster relief for Hurricane Irene.
Just reflect on what our communities would look like now and in the coming weeks without FEMA and SBA efforts in disaster assistance. What would businesses do in Eastern North Carolina? Has anyone in Pamlico County seen Senator Burr lately? If you do, you might want to ask him what he was thinking about the needs of his constituents.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Jobs? Income?
The poverty and income statistics released today look pretty bad. The headline is that real median income (in 2010 dollars) since 2007 has been pretty much in free fall. Median income peaked at the end of the Clinton administration and went into decline during most of the George W. Bush administration, bottoming out in 2005 and beginning a moderate improvement until 2007. Then free fall. The rate of decline slowed a bit in 2008 and 2009, leading some political figures to prematurely declare recovery at hand. Any economist who joined that chorus should lose his or her economist license (if there is such a thing).
Just a reminder: President Obama was elected in November 2008, but was not sworn in until Tuesday, January 20, 2009.
Just a reminder: President Obama was elected in November 2008, but was not sworn in until Tuesday, January 20, 2009.
Mobsters and Racketeers
My wife and I watch a lot of movies on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). A recurring theme is about criminal enterprises. In 1930's and 1940's movies, the bad guys were into bootlegging and associated entertainment, the numbers racket, gambling and loan sharking.
Bootlegging was mostly done away with by repeal of prohibition, except in states like Mississippi that continued prohibition except for local option beer and wine. (Mississippi figured out a way to capture revenue from the illegal sales of liquor, while maintaining the moral purity of formal prohibition.)
Bootleggers were awash with cash and had to invent other enterprises. Some even invested in legitimate businesses. Joseph P. Kennedy, for example, went into movies.
In the last three or four decades, state governments have muscled into territory formerly controlled by mobsters and racketeers. The numbers game, for example, has been largely taken over by state lotteries. Gambling has migrated to casinos, many on native American reservations. States across the country either have their own ABC stores or regulate alcohol sales to their own benefit.
What's an honest bootlegger to do?
And now banks and other financial institutions regulated by the states and the federal government have moved into loan sharking in a big way. Much of the discussion at last night's Republican Party presidential debate was devoted to a plea for less regulation in order to free financial institutions interested in expanding the loan sharking business.
The struggle between the lending (creditor) class and the borrowing (debtor) class is an ancient one wherever there is a money economy. When you hear people speaking about "sound money," you know the speaker is representing the interests of the creditor class. In the late nineteenth century, the dispute was over use of gold alone or both gold and silver for coinage. William Jennings Bryan's famous "cross of gold" speech addressed the issue.
Today the same class and their lackeys rail against any inflation, no matter how slight, in favor of minimal regulation (if any at all) of financial institutions, in favor of draconian restrictions on bankruptcy and so forth.
It seems we have exchanged mobsters for banksters.
Bootlegging was mostly done away with by repeal of prohibition, except in states like Mississippi that continued prohibition except for local option beer and wine. (Mississippi figured out a way to capture revenue from the illegal sales of liquor, while maintaining the moral purity of formal prohibition.)
Bootleggers were awash with cash and had to invent other enterprises. Some even invested in legitimate businesses. Joseph P. Kennedy, for example, went into movies.
In the last three or four decades, state governments have muscled into territory formerly controlled by mobsters and racketeers. The numbers game, for example, has been largely taken over by state lotteries. Gambling has migrated to casinos, many on native American reservations. States across the country either have their own ABC stores or regulate alcohol sales to their own benefit.
What's an honest bootlegger to do?
And now banks and other financial institutions regulated by the states and the federal government have moved into loan sharking in a big way. Much of the discussion at last night's Republican Party presidential debate was devoted to a plea for less regulation in order to free financial institutions interested in expanding the loan sharking business.
The struggle between the lending (creditor) class and the borrowing (debtor) class is an ancient one wherever there is a money economy. When you hear people speaking about "sound money," you know the speaker is representing the interests of the creditor class. In the late nineteenth century, the dispute was over use of gold alone or both gold and silver for coinage. William Jennings Bryan's famous "cross of gold" speech addressed the issue.
Today the same class and their lackeys rail against any inflation, no matter how slight, in favor of minimal regulation (if any at all) of financial institutions, in favor of draconian restrictions on bankruptcy and so forth.
It seems we have exchanged mobsters for banksters.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Wars and Rumors of War
Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of Al Quaida's attack on two symbols of American wealth and power: the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. There were observances and remembrances all over America.
Let them be the last such observances.
In three months, we will have the seventieth anniversary of Japan's attack on America at Pearl Harbor. I remember that day quite clearly.
Unlike September 11, December 7th was not remembered with a one-month remembrance, a six-month remembrance, annual remembrances and a tenth anniversary remembrance. We were too busy on the home front collecting scrap paper, tin cans, scrap metal, growing food in victory gardens, converting from peacetime to wartime production, freeing resources for the troops in the field by rationing most products, and putting everyone's shoulder to the wheel.
In the six months after Pearl Harbor, Colonel Doolittle led a B-25 raid on Tokyo, our aircraft carriers fought Japanese carriers to a standstill in the Coral Sea, and our carrier task forces sank four Japanese aircraft carriers near Midway, halting the Japanese advance. Before the first anniversary, we built a major army air corps base in New Guinea, started ferrying supplies to China over the hump of the Himalayas and the Burma Road and our submarines took the war to the very gates of the Japanese home islands.
In the meantime our scientists and engineers developed nuclear weapons and a way to deliver them.
Three years and eight months after Pearl Harbor, Japan surrendered at a ceremony on the decks of the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Three months earlier, we had accepted the German surrender in Europe.
By that time, the only celebrations we wanted to observe were V-E Day (victory in Europe) and V-J Day (victory in Japan).
No wonder I don't remember national remembrances of December 7th. A lot of other things were going on.
In 1947 the Truman Doctrine established a policy of supporting "free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Later that year we created the Marshall Plan to speed European recovery. In 1948, we responded to a Soviet blockade of Berlin by the Berlin Airlift. In June of 1950, North Korean troops attacked South Korea across the 38th parallel, and we came to their aid. Later that year, the Chinese People's Republic entered the war.
By the tenth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, we had just recently defeated the Chinese at the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge. No anniversary observance that year, either.
We never pretended that Japan attacked the United States because they hated our freedoms. We understood that The United States stood in the way of Japan's imperial ambitions. That's why they attacked.
Let them be the last such observances.
In three months, we will have the seventieth anniversary of Japan's attack on America at Pearl Harbor. I remember that day quite clearly.
Unlike September 11, December 7th was not remembered with a one-month remembrance, a six-month remembrance, annual remembrances and a tenth anniversary remembrance. We were too busy on the home front collecting scrap paper, tin cans, scrap metal, growing food in victory gardens, converting from peacetime to wartime production, freeing resources for the troops in the field by rationing most products, and putting everyone's shoulder to the wheel.
In the six months after Pearl Harbor, Colonel Doolittle led a B-25 raid on Tokyo, our aircraft carriers fought Japanese carriers to a standstill in the Coral Sea, and our carrier task forces sank four Japanese aircraft carriers near Midway, halting the Japanese advance. Before the first anniversary, we built a major army air corps base in New Guinea, started ferrying supplies to China over the hump of the Himalayas and the Burma Road and our submarines took the war to the very gates of the Japanese home islands.
In the meantime our scientists and engineers developed nuclear weapons and a way to deliver them.
Three years and eight months after Pearl Harbor, Japan surrendered at a ceremony on the decks of the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Three months earlier, we had accepted the German surrender in Europe.
By that time, the only celebrations we wanted to observe were V-E Day (victory in Europe) and V-J Day (victory in Japan).
No wonder I don't remember national remembrances of December 7th. A lot of other things were going on.
In 1947 the Truman Doctrine established a policy of supporting "free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Later that year we created the Marshall Plan to speed European recovery. In 1948, we responded to a Soviet blockade of Berlin by the Berlin Airlift. In June of 1950, North Korean troops attacked South Korea across the 38th parallel, and we came to their aid. Later that year, the Chinese People's Republic entered the war.
By the tenth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, we had just recently defeated the Chinese at the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge. No anniversary observance that year, either.
We never pretended that Japan attacked the United States because they hated our freedoms. We understood that The United States stood in the way of Japan's imperial ambitions. That's why they attacked.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Back Home in Oriental
Just returned from a couple of days training in election matters by the State Board of Elections. Some new developments and some useful reminders of old information.
We may be in hurricane season, but we're also deep into preparing for municipal elections. In North Carolina, odd numbered years are for municipal elections. Odd numbered years also generate more election protests than even-numbered years. Go figure.
We may be in hurricane season, but we're also deep into preparing for municipal elections. In North Carolina, odd numbered years are for municipal elections. Odd numbered years also generate more election protests than even-numbered years. Go figure.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Intimations of Mortality
Some say that modern Americans don't deal well with death and dying. We avoid the subject, they say, and do our best to deny that it will come.
In an earlier time, death was an immanent reality, appearing in children's fairy tales, in childhood prayers, in ghost stories.
When I was three years old, I learned to say my prayers every night as follows:
"Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake;
I pray the Lord my soul to take."
When you think about it, it's a pretty gruesome prayer. It taught children that death might be at hand at any time.
And think about traditional fairy tales. How many featured a wicked stepmother? Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and many others. Remember the Miller's beautiful daughter who had to spin straw into gold in the story of Rumpelstiltskin? Where was her mother? She was apparently deceased.
There are also stories in which the father is absent and the mother is widowed. Jack and the beanstalk, for example.
Not only do these stories deal with death, they deal with danger and peril.
Do we still tell such stories to children?
We should.
In an earlier time, death was an immanent reality, appearing in children's fairy tales, in childhood prayers, in ghost stories.
When I was three years old, I learned to say my prayers every night as follows:
"Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake;
I pray the Lord my soul to take."
When you think about it, it's a pretty gruesome prayer. It taught children that death might be at hand at any time.
And think about traditional fairy tales. How many featured a wicked stepmother? Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and many others. Remember the Miller's beautiful daughter who had to spin straw into gold in the story of Rumpelstiltskin? Where was her mother? She was apparently deceased.
There are also stories in which the father is absent and the mother is widowed. Jack and the beanstalk, for example.
Not only do these stories deal with death, they deal with danger and peril.
Do we still tell such stories to children?
We should.
Monday, September 5, 2011
On Working
Labor Day is a holiday honoring those who work for a living. Laborious Day is a lesser known holiday honoring those who cannot stop talking about their work.
~Lemony Snicket
This particular Labor Day is a good opportunity to remember fourteen million Americans who, in 2007 worked for a living and no longer do so because there are no jobs for them. Why are there no jobs? They have been outsourced abroad, assigned to robots, or abolished by the Scrooges and Uriah Heeps of our day.
This is not good for America.
~Lemony Snicket
This particular Labor Day is a good opportunity to remember fourteen million Americans who, in 2007 worked for a living and no longer do so because there are no jobs for them. Why are there no jobs? They have been outsourced abroad, assigned to robots, or abolished by the Scrooges and Uriah Heeps of our day.
This is not good for America.
Interruptions In The Natural Order
We just returned from laying my sister Sharon to rest in McAdams, Mississippi. Hers was a good life, well lived. But it ended too soon.
I can only feel that Sharon's death interrupted the natural order of things. I remember when she was born during a snow storm in Oklahoma City. Her life was interesting, but anything but stormy. Still, in the natural order of things, she should have eventually joined our other two siblings at my funeral. I'm the eldest, so that would be the fair and orderly way.
A little over a week before her passing, our other sister visited her in the hospital and mentioned how much Sharon looks like our grandmother, especially her blue eyes. Sharon replied with a weak smile, "no, I don't look like Grandma. I look like death peeking out from behind a headstone."
She might have been weak and frail, but still able to share a bit of humor.
We will miss her.
I can only feel that Sharon's death interrupted the natural order of things. I remember when she was born during a snow storm in Oklahoma City. Her life was interesting, but anything but stormy. Still, in the natural order of things, she should have eventually joined our other two siblings at my funeral. I'm the eldest, so that would be the fair and orderly way.
A little over a week before her passing, our other sister visited her in the hospital and mentioned how much Sharon looks like our grandmother, especially her blue eyes. Sharon replied with a weak smile, "no, I don't look like Grandma. I look like death peeking out from behind a headstone."
She might have been weak and frail, but still able to share a bit of humor.
We will miss her.
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