Congress to the Head of the Line!

The Sequester, one of this nation's stupidest legislative moves in history, finally made its mark on large numbers of the public.

Up to this point, the mindless cuts only effected the poor, and children. Oh, I forgot all the service men and women in the country. They also get to be the sacrificial lambs to the arrogance and stupidity of austerity.

The cuts are already being deeply felt by those who actually serve their country, but they don't count I guess.

But, furloughing 10% of the Air Traffic Controllers, causing rolling flight delays across the nation, now that's another matter. The cuts started to be felt by the upper middle class. This suddenly brought the crisis home! Gee, privilege has its reward.

Especially when Congress is about to take a week vacation.

So, the brave conservatives, whose solution to our economic problems, which are decreasing (but that's another matter) is austerity for everyone but THEM!

This comes as a graduate student, whose only sin was doing a term paper, uncovers a host of errors in the "study" from two Harvard Economists, that purported to prove that large deficits ruin modern economies.

This "thesis" was so riddled with basic spreadsheet errors, and left out several countries (the most prominent Canada which is the most like the United States) that the whole thing has been discredited. And, the basis of their stupidity was that no nation could grow an economy with a 90% deficit to GDP ratio.

Now, it is dumb to compare macro-economics to micro-economics, I have already written on that, but if you applied this nonsense to a home budget, like cons do all the time, we all would be ruined.

Everyone has debt over 90% of their income, at least everyone who has a home mortgage, owns a car, has a credit card; etc. The entire American economy is based on people walking around with a debt load of 100, 150, 250 percent of their income. And most of us do quite well thank you.

Cons: find a quiet place, quit drinking cheap beer for a day, and THINK ABOUT IT!

Not to mention: The European Union that is stupidly trying austerity and ruining their economies. Read about Spain!

U.S.History, that once saw a deficit much greater that GDP in 1946, due to WWII; but the economy did quite well in the post-war boom, the greatest expansion in history.

We did not pay off WWII until 1976! The nation still prospered at a record rate.

That is because most government spending, and taxing, redistributes wealth to a certain extent, benefitting everyone. The concentration of wealth, is what harms capitalist economies. And, the rich, who scream at marginal tax rates, NEVER HAVE LOST THEIR PRIVILEGED POSITION DUE TO EXCESSIVE TAXATION!

Go ahead, find me an example, in a capitalist economy, where the rich actually lost their privileged position. Most benefit from a growing economy, even though they are paying a 90% marginal tax rate (look it up). A marginal tax rate does not mean all income is taxed at that rate.

Tax and spend has become a dirty phrase. But it is the way we all run our own lives, we invest in the future by buying homes on credit, cars, travel, with faith that we can make the payments. If all Americans went to cash only, the economy would stop. This is called repressing demand. Austerity represses demand and makes economies stop!

Those cons, who probably slept through Econ I, never get this basic economic fact!

The austerity crowd, whose President actually caused the deficit in the first place, (remember Clinton had the budget almost balanced) is not to be dissuaded, won't raise taxes and make reasonable cuts AND continue spending; and so we have the sequester. The Party of NO says no!

Look at California. For years (Reagan to 2012), California led the nation in tax cutting, austerity if you will, supposedly to "grow the economy". This policy has landed the Republican Party as an afterthought in California politics.

"Take money from the do nothing public sector and put it into the private and the economy will boom": that was the con promise.

And it boomed all right. And it busted, in meltdowns in the mid 1980s, the Dot Com implosion, the energy meltdown in the early 2000s, and finally that grand time in 2007-2009 when the wheels really came off the wagon.

Meanwhile, California's world class educational system fell apart, opportunity dwindled, the middle class suffered immeasurably; etc.

Now, as California has some REVENUE, suddenly we are seeing the economy rebound big time, housing values going up again; etc. Gee, is there a correlation here?

But, I digress. The tax cutter, government spending crowd has finally blinked: yes, by GAWD they have finally found something that is worth saving in government......an on time plane ride home!

So, damn the veterans, they must sacrifice; damn the primary school children, they must sacrifice; damn the servicemen and women; no raise for them; damn the government disaster aide workers, damn all of them, cut them, they need to sacrifice: JUST KEEP MY DAMN SEAT WARM IN FIRST CLASS!

The President should veto this joke, (he won't) as the House, who hasn't done a thing in months, suddenly finds the energy to pass a law, shifting funds that allegedly will tip the nation into a depression if the government is bailed out, to fund the Air Traffic Controllers so Congress can go home. This is the same Congress who can't pass reasonable gun legislation, who can't get immigration reform out of committee...but a plane ride home....priceless!

The only hope we all have, is that the bastards cannot get back to Washington!

The Production Model Paradigm

Today, minding my own business, I read the front page of the Sacramento Bee.  A local interest article was there, dealing with the slow recovery of the housing "industry" in Sacramento.

Like most communities, Sacramento's housing "market" was devastated by the housing bubble. 

California, unfortunately, like many states, loosened mortgage rules and regulations, allowed many "liar loans" and suffered severely from the busted housing bubble.

I was struck by the language used in the article. "Industry", "inventory", "production"; etc., were used by real estate representatives to describe their production of the product of selling or buying a house.

I could accept using these terms some, if they were only talking about  building new houses and selling them.  A new house is a product, I suppose, like an automobile; it is property to be bought and sold.

But, the trade of real estate, buying, selling, fitting people to locations , I cannot link to industrial production.

It seems to me, we are suffering from a paradigm identification problem. Where is the basic anthropology of human beings? 

The industrial revolution was a monumental change in the human condition.  Millions of people moved from the agrarian lifestyle, to cities, and worked on assembly lines.  Industries grew almost overnight, fossil fuels were discovered and harnessed, and production and consumption defined the economic paradigm for over a hundred years.

There was very little consideration for what this ultimately would do to the human condition; and sweatshops, child labor, and slavery (in the United States) was an indirect result.  People were poor when then worked as peasants in the agrarian society, they were basically slaves when they joined the industrial revolution. 

There was, and is, a paradigm modality that glorifies production of goods, and their consumption.  Modern economics still uses industrial revolution terms to describe economic activity.

And that is the problem.  The world is now in a post industrial paradigm.  No longer do great masses of workers sit on assembly lines for ten hours a day.  Robots do that work.  No longer is assembly line work that common.  Technology has pushed industry into a  post assembly line paradigm.

But production and consumption still goes on.  The technological revolution is still in full force, as we move from rust belt type production, to innovation, communication, and "information" age economics.

But we still use industrial revolution language.  The paradigm is stuck with us, even though very few people actually produce anything anymore.  Most workers, in post industrial economies, manipulate data, innovate using technology, but don't produce a real product.   

Housing is a good example.  I can still remember the 50s and 60s, when the baby boom was created, and millions moved from the cities to the suburbs.  The automobile fueled this shift, from the industrial worker based economy, to the suburbanite.

Unfortunately,  cities sprawled, but real estate was still depicted as a product, with inventories, production goals; etc.

But most of those terms, and the associated economic behaviors they support, no longer apply to the new economic and social paradigm.

They really never have!  People are not widgets!

I would suggest this is one major reason for the housing bubble and economic collapse it engendered.

Lewis Mumford wrote in the thirties and forties, he analyzed urban developments, and their social, economic, and even psychological ramifications.  He warned that urban sprawl and the suburban lifestyle ran counter to basic human anthropology; especially relative to the need for human beings as primates to have complex social contacts to survive.

And he was right.  The suburban paradigm has resulted in housing bubbles, a real estate and connected financial industry that quite frankly has lost their legal and moral compass.  It also produced a massive reduction in basic human community.

Where people live and how they interact with others is a most human thing, not an industrial model.  People are not widgets, that get turned out by an assembly line.  To refer to real estate as an industry is ludicrous. 

Everyday we see the incredible damage this lack of community does.  Today "consumers" buy the "inventory" of houses, with profit and money the primary motivator of the "industry" that is perpetrated on all of us.  Housing developments follow the industrial model, stacked on top on one another, or spread out; creating castles of loneliness and despair. 

Mortgage Banks simply ripped off hundreds of thousands to reduce their "inventory" of houses.  Financial behavior similar to bank robbers was the norm, as millions lost everything, without a pang of remorse by the "industrial bosses" of the mortgage "industry".

The middle class in America was just about destroyed by this massive shift of wealth; many losing their homes, their families; and are now homeless.

And what is the paradigm's reaction, why, it is just good industrial behavior; just like child labor was over 100 years ago.

And what is the result for the happiness  of "consumers"?  The misery index of the country is at an all-time high.  Those who were wealthy enough  to survive the housing bubble, live in massive homes, behind gates, and drink or dope themselves in their loneliness.

 The middle class is busted, and the American Dream is in tatters.

Lewis Mumford warned us...

Why don't we Nazi Up?

Facebook is a rotten vehicle for political commentary sometimes. I have a "friend" (not anymore) who recently posted a bloody picture of the atrocity in Boston, and ranted that we need to "nazi up" and throw all Muslims into concentration camps.

His "post" was laced with obscenities.

Meanwhile, on EVERY channel, the news machines went over ever sordid detail of the bombing. We were "entertained" with countless re-showings of the explosions, the sirens, the screams.

And then, "experts" were interviewed, endlessly guessing as to the criminals who set off the bombs.

Meanwhile, political pundits were interviewed, conjecturing who or where the perpetrators came from.

And hours of coverage, in every detail.

On and on..until I turned it off.

I suggest you all turn it off as well. We were spooked by 9-11 into acting like a bunch of nervous cowards. We bought tons of clear plastic, to insulate our homes from anthrax. We panicked. We attacked Muslims. We attached Iraq.

And afterward, we looked back and realized how foolishly we acted.

Look, terrorists (if that is who did this) deal in terror. By flying off the handle, by covering every aspect of the act, the news medial simply reinforces the terrorists' (or madman's ) motives.

Terror works when you give in to being afraid. The way to stop terrorism, is by stopping being afraid.

I wrote a blog a few weeks ago, that questioned the basic character and bravery of Americans today.

Upon further reflection, I doubt if we as a people are any more or less brave than we were in 1941. But I do know we were not bombarded with news accounts, that served to only terrorize and antagonize.

In 1941, there was lots to be afraid of; real stuff, not terrorism that has a 1 in a million chance of hurting you. The odds of being a victim of international terrorism today are ridiculously low. The odds of being invaded by Germany or Japan in 1941 were more real. We did incarcerated hundreds of thousands of loyal Japanese Americans, and we still are apologizing for that!

The odds of doing something stupid, or making a fool of yourself, by over-reacting to overblown news accounts, can do as much damage as the terrorists themselves!

Once again, as I watched the video of the bombings, I saw first responders running TOWARD the carnage and danger; there were many who did that, just like the brave firefighters during 9/11. Once again, I marveled at the coolness under fire and the maturity law enforcement showed in their initial reactions.

We all need to consider the national motto, "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave", turn off the T.V., trust our elected officials and police to deal with the wackos, and CALM DOWN!

And, we certainly do not want to jump to conclusions as to who did this despicable act.

Alternative Education?

I was transferred to Alternative Education by a Superintendent with whom I did not agree. In educational circles, that is the typical solution to a philosophical difference between administrators (as long as it is not irreconcilable).It also means the virtual end of the Alternative Education administrator's career.

Regular education hates Alternative Education and Special Education. Since I was but a few years from retirement, I accepted the transfer, got a little raise for it.

And I found real education.Look, regular education students, especially advanced ones, are not hard to educate. Usually they have parental support, are stable, have goals, can read, and anyone can teach them. We have ceremonies for teachers of the year all the time, and 90 percent of the time, they are college prep or advanced placement teachers.I am not saying they don't know their subject matter, I am saying, from 35 years of experience, they teach students that WANT to learn. But a continuation school student, or an adult ed student who is an ex-felon; forget about it.

A teacher, and administrator have to work at it. You have to have alternative educational strategies, have to have the patience of a saint, and never quit. And, you usually have a success rate below 50%.This was hard for my not so friendly superintendent to accept.

So, he "reformed" alternative education, cut day school opportunities by over 50%, started an Independent Study Charter School, shuffled hundreds of at risk students into it; thus hiding the high drop out rate of the district that ensued.Essentially, in Shasta County, one of the poorest counties in the state, he was a hero, because he "cracked down" on at risk youth (and adults), and saved the district a few million dollars.

Independent Study is a very frugal, and ineffective program. One teacher has a case load of about 30, gets paid way less than a regular teacher, with no buses, no cafeteria, and no classroom.

But, as with most things, cheap is not necessarily good.

The result? Well, last week our local paper wrote an editorial describing the ridiculously low average income tax paid by county residents (most don't pay any because they are unemployed). Shasta County was recently proclaimed by the San Jose Mercury News as "the Gun Capital" of California. It also is running an unemployment rate chronically above 10%.

And as for the Superintendent? He recently retired after "spiking" his salary and had a gym named after him.

And the poor get poorer!

Obstruct Obstruct Die

It was on page five or six of the Sacramento Bee.  The article was not long, but devastating.

It seems that Chemotherapy costs will not be completely covered by Medicare due to the sequester.  Private physicians, in whose offices chemo usually is administered have been cut 2% by the sequester. 

According to  physicians, this cut is too much to bear, so they are refusing to administer chemo to Medicare patients in their offices.

This means the patients must be admitted to a hospital, as out patients, to get their medicine.

In some cases this could mean four or five hour drives.

And who is to blame for this?

The god damned Republicans, that is who. 

They, as usual, are stalling obstructing, posturing, grandstanding, anything to destroy the Black President.

The facts are that national debt is declining rapidly, without the sequester.  Withdrawing from Iraq, where George W. literally pissed trillions down the drain while cutting taxes, has resulted in a slow shrinking of the deficit.  Afghanistan will have the same result.

As the economy improves, and it is in spite of heroic Republican efforts to wreck it for political advantage, the deficit will decline even further.

Does that satisfy a party that has declined into a nay saying bunch of ideological fanatics?  NO!

Everyday, they rant, they posture, they whine, and they obstruct.

Now, cancer patients will die thanks to the nonsense of the GOP.

It brings back the horrible memories of my wife, traveling to the doctor's office for chemo.  It was very different going to the doctor's office, than to the hospital; although in her case, the traveling distance was minimal. 

But to  the cancer patient in Burney, California, the impact could be pronounced if they had to drive to Redding to get treatment.  Can you imagine the stress, especially on an elderly patient, to be driven (most chemo patients are in no shape after treatment to drive), hundreds of miles to a hospital, retching all the way home?

Have the Cons no shame at all? 

 Next of course, will be the cuts to Pre-schools, then  cuts to the defense department, just as North Korea is rattling its sabers.  Sounds just like 1940, when the same pack of idiots foolishly voted in mass against the draft, as Hitler ran rampant in Europe.  If we had not won that fight, we probably would be speaking Japanese!

But, they still obstruct, to get their way, to protect the rich, and to attack social programs like Medicare and Social Security that do need rational reform to be sure, but not wholesale cuts.

The Party of Defeat, the Party of No!  The Party of inhuman callousness toward their fellow human beings..

They make me sick!  And now, they are killing the sick!

MBA Government...MBA Business Administration????

Today a con friend of mine sent me a conservative rant. This one started in on Health Care and postulated (with colored fonts and BIG font) that the United States health care system is the best in the world and is particularly better than socialized medicine models. Of course, this kind of contrasted markedly with the recent expose in Time Magazine, "Bitter Pill", that ripped the health care system in the United States as the greed based abomination that it is.

The second, and the rant warned most important, was a "study" of the number of people from private business that occupied positions in Presidential Administrations from Teddy Roosevelt to President Obama.

And, guess what, President Obama according to this "objective analysis" had the smallest percentage of business types. And, of course, this was used as "proof" that the Obama Administration is the least effective for the past 125 years.

How this supposition was arrived at was not explained of course, other than the quantum leap in logic that somehow the number of private enterprise backgrounds that are in an administration, the better the government.

Really? Really. Hoover was one of the leaders. And he almost blew the whole thing. Harding was one of the leaders, had a large percentage of business types, and ran one of the most corrupt administrations in history.

George W. Bush, who is NOT doing well as historical perspective sharpens, was our first MBA President. And, he appointed "Brownie" to FEMA and then there was Katrina. Oh, don't forget the brilliant leadership in Iraq, that decided to disband the bureaucracy and the army, and stood dumbly by as the country quickly plunged into Civil War; from which it still has not recovered.

Oh, don't forget the great economic success George W. Bush led us through, plunging the nation into a near depression and a financial meltdown that almost ended the whole ball game.

Conservatives amaze me with their rants, and their large font and colors even; and the total lack of any evidence, facts, or even reason.

Here is some reason: The fact that the Public Administration and Business Administration departments at college (that is a place people go to learn how to do things for some of my con buddies who have stopped reading and reasoning about 40 years ago) are separate; is because there is a (gasp) difference between public and business administration.

I was in the public administration sphere, and have a Masters in it. I spent 35 years in school work, with the balance in administration. I wince when I hear from my con buddies, that business people could do a better job running local government and schools.

The record does not prove this. Business leaders have tried school administration, with less than stellar results. In fact, most have failed miserably. Business leaders do not do well running governments!

That is because there is a difference between business models of organization and public entity models of organization.

Most business of any size are corporations, and corporations have Board of Directors, with one of them the CEO (or separate depending on the model) who are held responsible by their company's stock holders. No where, I mean no where, is the public interest considered. No where is any requirement for democratic decision making. In fact, many corporations are run like plutocracies.

Public administration is much different. At the top of all organizational flow charts is a big cloud labeled "The People", and a board of trustees, or legislature sits as representatives of the People. From there a Superintendent or City Manager runs a bureaucracy that delivers services to the school or city residents. Running through all of this is legislation enacted by representatives, that the administrator much follow, with check and balances throughout. And, in every part of this mix, is democracy, access to process, freedom of the press (Brown Act in California); etc.

Very different from the business model! No plutocracy here; nothing but democracy!

So, why, with this marked difference, do cons claim that President Obama's administration that apparently has government administration trained people in a majority, is somehow not qualified to run a government? And why do fools listen to this chasm of logic?

Look, good government does not just happen. Bureaucracies do not just happen, they must be recruited, trained, and led. They are the backbone of good government.

I would postulate, that MBAs, have no clue how to develop effective bureaucracies; none.

And this also implies that if a Public Administration trained person tried business, the results will more than likely be the same, as the lost MBA in government; ineffective leadership and disaster.

There is a reason why a MA in Public Administration is different from Masters in Business Administration: they are different!

So stop the bullshit that what government needs is to be run like a business. It isn't a business!

Three Years?

Today, in the San Jose Mercury News, was an article concerning Governor Brown's excitement to approve fracking to mine the "Monterrey Shale". Part of the article concerned the Governor of Colorado, who has imposed strict regulations on fracking in his state; even drinking fracking water that adheres to the regulations to prove it is safe. I heard his hair turned green!

We all hope Governor Brown adds those regulations in California, and then it will be alright to purge the ground of its black gold right?

We will then be able to fuel our cars for hundreds of years, leaving our automobile culture intact forever; right?

WRONG. The article explained that the Monterey Shale deposits, which are the largest in the United States, will provide the nation with three (3) years of gas!

Three. That is two less than five. That is 97 years less that 100.

And, the potential fracking area sits right on top of several earthquake zones, that have the potential to flatten huge population areas.

Three years! What!

A couple years ago we visited the Science Museum in Chicago. The Petroleum Institute, had a display, touting the wonders of oil and gas (and none of the damage). A sign caught my eye. It said, "We have 40 Years Left of Oil". And then, under the sign, were listed the wonders a plentiful energy supply was bringing the world.

Forty years (40). That is 60 less of 100!

So, lets see...assuming the oil shale deposits back east and in Canada are viable, and assuming Monterey's is viable, adding them together gets us to what 9 or 10 years?

Nine or ten years! Wait a minute, where is the bonanza? Where is the discrediting of peak oil?

YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT WE WILL FRACK THE HELL OUT OF THOUSANDS OF MILES OF EARTH, SETTING OFF EARTHQUAKES, RUINING WATER SUPPLIES, AND IT WILL YIELD A DOZEN OR SO YEARS OF SUPPLY!

What!

Ok, here it is again. We have hit Peak Oil in the early part of this century. Sweet crude oil is almost a thing of the past. The world demand is exploding, exactly as the supply declines, and will accelerate in its decline. Once the easy to get sweet crude is gone, all we will have left is the shale, and it is much harder to get, much more expensive, dirtier, and there is not much of it.

Think of this. If the oil shale was so easy, profitable and plentiful, why didn't the petroleum companies mine it and save more of the sweet crude for later?

They didn't because the shale is much more expensive to get, and dangerous to mine, and there is not much of it compared to world demand.

Americans are once again being lured into a false sense of security by the oil industry, that brought us the Valdez Oil Disaster, countless spills, global warming, and finally the Gulf of Mexico. Through all this, they incredibly have maintained a strict silence about the overall supply, and in fact have attacked clean energy supplies like solar and wind.

In short, profit has trumped common decency and certainly common sense.

The world sits on the precipice of the worst energy crisis in history. We are building huge urban centers, ruining agricultural lands, spreading populations out in far flung suburbs, with a dependence on an energy supply that will be gone in less than 100 years.

That's right folks, GONE.