The World is Not So Flat

When Thomas Friedman wrote his groundbreaking “The World Is Flat” many felt the way to the future had been defined. Friedman’s basic premise that the economy was exceedingly “macro” and the United States’ economy is increasingly dependent on the world economy. What happens in Redding, California affects what happens in Tokyo and so on.

And, regardless of what we might want, this is a force that is irresistible. Millions of jobs have been exported, as America imports cheaply made goods from China, India; etc.

And, according to Friedman and others this is somehow good. The middle classes of China, Brazil and India for example are growing, poverty is shrinking in developing countries, and American consumers enjoy cheap and quality made goods.

Friedman, to his credit, did warn that political instability in developing countries could hinder the flat world, disrupting communications and distribution. In fact, as we witness Egypt and now Libya, political disruptions indeed can threaten the flat world’s distribution system.

Another, larger threat is growing everyday; peak oil. The days of cheap oil are over!

Japan’s earthquake and the Ipad2 is a vivid example of the weaknesses of the flat world that depends on worldwide distribution and production systems. The earthquake disrupted production of the new Ipad2 chips at the same time the new electronic device was opened for sale. Instantly delivery dates went from a three day turnaround to a three week or more turnaround. Dozens of other electronic devices are likewise affected

As the “Coalition Forces” bomb Libya, oil prices soar. Just the threat of a conflict that could disrupt Middle East oil supplies have shot American gasoline prices up. The damage to the American gluttonous energy economy is dramatic.

The world may be flat, but is not predictable. The United States once was the “arsenal of democracy” precisely because we did have a production and distribution system that was stable, protected at the time by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

America’s political system is another asset that has been discounted in its importance by the Flat World. In fact, a stable political system, where power is transferred without upheavals and uncertainty, is essential to economic stability. If the trains and trucks run on time, products can get to market predictably; and a stable, growing economy results.

The Flat World is not so stable. Global Warming, that Friedman to his credit predicts, offers another destabilizing affect to the world markets. It just so happens that areas of mass production, that use brutally cheap labor to make our electronic miracle devices, are particularly subject to global warming. Many of the production areas are in low lying areas, close to the ocean, that will flood with the rise in ocean levels that are coming due to the melting of arctic ice. Moreover, political instability is the standard in these regions, and stands to increase due to the stresses of global warming devastating the food supplies. Egypt is an example of what happens when the food supply is disrupted by high prices caused by speculation tied to global warming effects.

The rich nations, America included, have put themselves at the mercy of a worlwide, unpredictable and unstable production and distribution system.

Finally, there is the oil (or lack of it). We may think the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans are mere “inconveniences” that hinder distribution, but their vastness means it takes a lot of energy to traverse them. Ships burning diesel travel back and forth on these water highways, much like diesel trucks pass back and forth on America’s highway systems. This wasteful distribution system depends to its core on cheap, accessible energy.

Moreover, developing nations like Brazil for example, are dependent on cheap energy to bring consumer goods to their emerging middle class.

HD TVs are made in Asia for the most part. It takes a lot of diesel to get them to the Americas.

So, as the cost of diesel accelerates, there is no doubt the cost of distribution of cheap Asian made goods will explode; for emerging markets like Brazil and for older markets like the United States.

In one area the Flat World will remain, and that is communications. Satellite transmissions have tied the world together electronically; business can be conducted across vast distances. But talking, planning and working electronically doesn't move product. The product still needs to me moved and it takes energy to move it.

Unfortunately moving an HD TV is not possible through a cell phone. Regardless of science fiction predictions, cellular modulation methods are a long way off to move a TV from India to Topeka.

Japan’s disaster is a wake up call for the United States. The lag in getting an Ipad2 foretells the Achilles heel of the Flat World. Distance is still distance; the energy it takes to move products is becoming less available not more, with permanent oil decline the hard reality. The world is running out of oil!

It is time to start planning to bring the work home. We can still move our products within the United States using the most energy efficient way, trains. We frankly don’t have a choice!

The world is indeed shrinking, but not in the Flat World way. People will not be able to fly all over the world if the price of a ticket is so high they can’t afford it. Ships, solar powered, will become the norm in the near future as diesel supplies dwindle. In a sense the world will collapse upon itself, local will become the best way to organize a production and distribution system.

The more self-sufficient a country is, the stronger it will be. The United States still enjoys the protection of those two huge oceans, and to date a stable political system.

We have to bring the work home now, and products will cost more at first. But in the long run, homegrown production will be the ONLY alternative, because of the huge costs of moving goods across huge oceans.

Energy is now a scarcity. We have a world economy that at its core depends on cheap energy to move products thousands of miles from cheap labor factories to rich countries. The Flat World has a huge problem, it depends for its very existence on cheap oil.

Those days are beginning to end. Another paradigm shift is happening before our eyes, and the Ipad2 delay in delivery is what pointed us to it.

Bring the jobs home before we can’t afford to do so!

Research Shows!

I was interested today in reading that comparative educational system studies show that the single largest indicator of educational success for a system is teacher status and decent salaries.

The United States supposedly has the most expensive educational system in the world, but the lowest teacher status and salaries (that goes for all personnel, Counselors, Administrators, aids; etc.).

So how, I am sure the public is thinking can it be the most expensive?

First, it depends on how you do the study. If you do it per capita, per student, I am sure the United States would probably not be as expensive.

However, we are running three or four educational systems today in the United States. One is at the Federal level, and is the least expensive overall. The federal presence is not large compared to other countries, which have centralized control of their educational system long ago. But with its comparative cheapness comes a lack of control and authority. States can, in cases where no federal grant dollars are at issue, tell the federal government to mind its own business. This happened for years when the federal government attempted to enforce equal educational opportunity statutes in the south for example. It still is happening in scores of instances, where the federal guidance of education is blunted by state law. In short, federalism based on states rights, had NOT been good for educational reform.

The next is the state level. A large amount of money lies here, with little or no connection to the classroom. This is the state bureaucracy that you read about. States have actively resisted national reforms for years.

The next is the county level. This is a left-over of educational organization in the 1800s. County school offices exist to provide services often for very small districts who can’t afford them. County schools offices are another barricade to reform.

Finally, there are the local districts. These can range from single school districts, to multiple schools and mega districts; like L.A. Unified. There are layers of bureaucracies in these districts. Local districts often are ruled by Superintendents and Boards who are more into power than education. Unions have taken over many local districts, standing in the way of reforms that threaten their members.

I did not mention college districts and structures that lie outside of the K-12 system.

This labyrinth of educational organization does indeed siphon funds away from the staff who actually deal with children. This mess also blunts real reform constantly.

California for example, once a shining example of educational progress, has the lowest counselor and administrator ratio to children than any other state. What this means is less help for the children, and less supervision for the classroom. California’s budget mess threatens the very existence of public education.

Teachers love to bash administrators and claim too much is spent on them. The fact, substantiated by the recent study, is that educational leadership is a critical ingredient in student achievement.

The recent panic about teacher effectiveness, calling for the firing of “incompetent” teachers, runs headlong into a system that right now is woefully understaffed with administrators who are charged with evaluating the very poor teacher performance that the public zealots are so concerned with. Evaluations don’t get done when you don’t have the people to do them!

Moreover, without adequate support personnel, teacher’s aides, clerical staff; etc., the classroom environment suffers. The cuts that are going on right now across the United States are rightfully avoiding the classroom as much as possible, but crippling teacher’s efforts, because their support is being obliterated.

So, how do we reform this mess?

First, admit that the job we are demanding of our schools is larger and more complex than we care to admit. United States schools deal with extremely heterogeneous populations. For example, the African American population represents a tremendous challenge due to the nearly three hundred year subjugation which we really began to even address in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act.

Americans expected that in 10 years we could reverse educational inequality that had taken three hundred years to build. That was nonsense and present test scores prove we have a long way to go!

The “War on Poverty” was short-lived, and conservative Presidents stopped forced integration and other efforts to right an educational wrong that Jim Crowe had fostered.

The result is our present multi-tiered educational system, where African Americans consistently score lower on standardized tests than white children. In fact, the test scores have not improved much in the past fifty years, proving that what we are doing now does not work.

Add to this the challenges of Mexican-Americans and language difficulties, plus other immigrant groups, and what are left with is a very expensive proposition.

Therefore, our open society, that encourages upward mobility, and access to America opportunity for all, results in a very expensive system compared to Japan’s for example, with their homogeneous society.

And what has America done? Well, we have answered this challenge with shrinking the resources we dedicate to education. States are right now cutting billions from public schools, starving an already dysfunctional system; and demanding more efficiency.

It won’t happen. The first reason is good teachers will be leaving the system in droves, once the economy gets better. A large percentage will be leaving anyway due to budget cutbacks. Who would want to be the public’s whipping boy?

Competent and talented leadership is shying away. Administrators come from the teaching ranks (they should), any most teachers today who survive the budget cuts say, “No Way” to becoming a boss who everyone hates. When you have to lay off the Kindergarten teacher everyone loves, it is not a nice place to be; when an administrator has to evaluate out a failing teacher who is burned out from dealing with years of recalcitrant students, and it is a horrible experience.

No one likes to fire people; except in the private sector where it is almost considered sport. A school is a tight knit culture, any loss is grieved deeply. Teachers can fail for many reasons and many very decent, caring people fail because the stress of dealing with angry, resentful, and sometimes violent people everyday can wear on the best teachers.

Teaching in many areas of America today is one of the hardest jobs in the world. Unfortunately the American public holds teachers in very low regard, choosing to make heroes of doctors and lawyers in the media. How many T.V. shows are there about teachers these days?

So, we continue to believe that we are paying too much for education, while we admit that we are paying good teachers too little (note the use of the word good), and we blindly cut budgets, which lay off the good teachers.

Now, some brainless hacks are suggesting we lay off the senior teachers so we can protect the good new teachers. This stupidly ignores that it takes at least seven years for a beginning teacher to learn their craft, and many more to become accomplished; like any other profession. If you eliminate seniority in layoffs, in the present broken system, the truly good teachers will be fired primarily because they COST too much, leaving poorly paid and less experienced teachers to do their jobs. In some regressive states, like Florida, this madness is already being done, applying “business practices” to teacher layoffs, resulting in firing the most expensive teachers,

A comparative approach would be to cut experienced surgeons who had a malpractice suit against them and keep interns while trying to save money in the health care system; and then acting surprised when the interns slaughter their patients due to their inexperience.

It is remarkable that the health care system in the United States is way more expensive than the educational system comparatively speaking, but nobody cutting the rich doctors to save costs.

Our dedicated teacher corps stand defenseless against people like the Wisconsin governor who cut taxes then made up the difference with attacks on senior teachers by gutting collective bargaining. Last hired first fired exists for a reason; protecting experience!

The result of all this? The President is right when he says that education will be the prime ingredient to compete in the World Economy. America is failing the test by refusing to reform its hopeless educational bureaucracy and attacking the very people who are making the biggest difference in the future of the country: teachers, counselors, aides, administrators, school nurses, librarians, secretaries, bus drivers and the rest.

It’s the people stupid! People are who make our schools successful. You cut them, you make American unsuccessful. Listening to those who preach the simple solution (fire bad teachers) ignores the underlying cause of the failure.

Here is how to reform:

Federalize the entire educational system in the United States. Enforce nationwide standards. Federalize all educational personnel. Eliminate all state and local school districts. Establish, along other successful country’s guidelines, a federal system of school control, leaving the local schools to be led by Principals. Allow site based leadership to be the norm, not the exception.

Increase teacher pay by 40% across the board as well as support personnel (including administrators).

Improve administrative training in evaluation and remediation of teachers, making it possible without spending millions to release incompetent teachers. Allow for retraining of teachers who fail, so their commitment to teaching is not without some insurance.

Again, teaching is NOT easy; having an Ivy League education is no guarantee a teacher will succeed in south central L.A.

There will be consequences of this action. Thousands of state and local educational personnel will be displaced. There will be some room in the new system, and pushing former administrators back to the schools to supervise will not be a bad thing.

Currently, successful administrators become Superintendents or work for the state department, putting them as far away from teachers and students as possible. We need to keep the competent leadership as close to the classroom as possible.

Establish regional professional Boards, staffed by professional educators with citizen representation, who administer regions of 50,000 students (adjusting for geography). These Board would be responsible for personnel, curriculum; etc. The local school would depend on this bureaucracy for support, but would be free to order supplies and materials on their own as much as possible. School administration, which would be larger than currently, would have site based management of their school. Site Councils would be mandatory, where the stakeholders in the school would have their say.

Unions would still be a factor of course, but would negotiate at the federal representational level. We would try to keep union interference as far away from the local school as possible.

Salary schedules would hence be negotiated regionally, but bands of salary would be enforced, so teachers could transfer all over the country, into any area, and not realize a substantial change in salary. This would end the current practice of rich suburbs getting the best paid teachers. All teachers in the United States would ultimately make over $125,000 as they became more experienced, with full health care coverage. All would pay into social security and Medicare, and would have the same hybrid federal pension system as current federal employees. This would end the local pension system headaches for states and local districts.

Firewalls should be built into the legislation prohibiting Congress from making changes to the system unless strong quantitative testing data showed the need. National testing norms would be established along with other criteria for judging the success of a school. WASC would merge with the federal Boards to evaluate the schools periodically at every level to determine school effectiveness. Schools that were not effective over a reasonable period of time would have staff transfers and changes to change the school culture. This determination would be made by WACS/Federal school evaluators. The same school qualitative review would occur all across the country according to national criteria.

You get the idea. Every other country that is currently embarrassing the United States with their test scores have centralized unified school systems. These systems maximize centralization for process and policy, but minimize it for teaching and children. Site based education works best.

Only the United States continues with a system that is positively a labyrinth of failure. School funding is so complex in most states that even the state department doesn’t understand it. It is no wonder districts go broke.

Our educational system is broken, but not because of the poor overworked teachers, counselors and administrators. The system is broken because it is antiquated and no long fits our modern, mobile, urban society. As long as we continue with the present structure, or better lack of, we will continue to fail our children.

Poverty Flats: Redding, California

My home town has become a study in the deadly stupidity of conservative economic thought.

When I was born in 1947 Redding was a Democratic town. Shasta Dam had recently been completed, beginning thirty years of a succession of reclamation projects, repairing the damage done to the environment and watershed caused by the Gold Rush.

Of course, nobody talked about these projects in those terms. The dams of Northern California were depicted as water conservation projects, saving rainwater for the great Sacramento Valley, aimed at creating an agricultural mother load. However, the damage done to the watershed over fifty years of mindless gold mining had also taken its toll, reducing the Sacramento River to a muddy killer ditch, that overflowed its banks every year, virtually destroying agriculture in a series of killer floods. The floods were caused by the disruption to the water shed due to unregulated mining.

But in the thirties things changed. The nation decided, on the verge of economic collapse, to invest in infrastructure, repair the damage caused by the last surge of frankly stupid, unregulated free enterprise (the gold rush destroyed more than watershed; thousands of native Americans were exterminated because they were in the way).

But the depression changed that. The United States looked over the cliff caused by free enterpriser's run amuck, and decided to change things. Cooperation, through government projects, was stressed to save the capitalist system.

Redding was called “Poverty Flats” at first. Shasta City was the county seat, and the hub of the economy in Shasta County because of the gold mining located there. As the mines panned out, and the streams were raped, people became “dirt farmers”, scratching out a living, waiting for the railroad to bring commerce to the area. My grandfather was one of those “sod busters” who lived hand to mouth, raising eight children barely on a small parcel of land.

Life was not very nice in Redding then. The copper industry, that also blighted the north state until the end of World War I, ended; leaving economic and ecological ruin in its path. The foothills north of Redding, where Shasta Dam is now, were denuded of vegetation, adding to the flood potential of the Sacramento River. So, Gold Mining, and Copper Mining, had poisoned the water, leaving no vegetation or gravel to regulate flooding, and reduced the Sacramento Valley to ruin. All this a direct product of mindless free enterprise economic theory, that dictated a laissez-faire approach, while destroying the natural flow of rivers and streams.

So the few citizens in Redding suffered. Most, when they could afford it, fled. The population dragged along, helped a little by the railroad’s coming, but not much.

The Great Depression dragged the area even further down. The poor got even poorer. My mother told stories of how “we didn’t know we were poor, everyone was poor”. My father, the son of a railroad worker, describes waiting in line for potato soup, since my grandfather had lost his job due to depression railroad layoffs.

Conventional wisdom dictated that government had to balance its budget, cut spending to get out of the depression. Hoover held to this philosophy creating a Hooverville of the United States.

In Redding, this resulted in even more misery. There simply was NO MONEY anywhere; a subsistence economy developed.

Then Shasta Dam came. Suddenly there was a payroll, and people with money. Redding began to recover. After World War II, the housing boom opened the logging industry to in Northern California. More dams were built to the east, as the water reclamation projects culminated over thirty years. Interstate 5 was completed, spanning two decades and providing hundreds of jobs for the local economy.

Redding prospered. Education and medical centers were erected as Redding became the hub of Northern California, eclipsing even Chico in importance.

Then came Proposition 13 and the tax cutting conservative reaction.... The Logging Industry stalled, due to the practice of clear cutting that rewarded sheer volume of timber and reduced old growth forests to practically nothing. Citizens did not blame the companies for their greed, but were fed by conservatives the nonsense that environmentalists were to blame.

Next, thanks to the Reagan Revolution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, many white Democrats swung to the right, alarmed by the blatant economic nonsense that Reagan spouted, and the manufactured outrage aimed at minorities (who practically did not exist in Redding) and revulsion toward the war protesters who were so annoying because they were right!

Redding began a slow slide into conservative obscurity. Progressive families either put up with the conservative crap, or moved to the Bay Area.

From 1963 when John Kennedy visited to dedicate Whiskeytown Dam, a month before he was assassinated, until 2008 when President Obama was elected, Shasta County trended from a blue county to a red county.

Meanwhile the economy trended downward at about the same rate as the conservative majority grew.

There is a large medical community in Redding that serves several rural counties. This medical elite have grown into an aristocracy, making hundreds of times more than the average citizen. ?Rich doctors and their corporations operate behind the scenes to spread the con influence.

Large government projects are gone. And, the ruling powers in Redding are convinced that small businesses without pesky government regulation, will create a economic recovery. Any innovative ideas, like solar panel production for example, are scared away by the repressive and short-sighted economic leadership.

Progressive businesses turn away from Redding now, because the political/economic climate is poisoned by the tea party that has practically taken over the city council.

The Tea Party is very large in Redding. Lately, a majority on the City Council has floated the notion that the city government change from a City Manager organization to a “Charter City” one. This will result in even more of a partisan city government, with high salaries paid to the mayor and the council; and repression of the public employee union.

It is noteworthy that those who most stand to gain from this, are two tea party members whose personal economic situations are tenuous at best. It is also important to note that parallel to the rightward slide in Redding, has been a matching slide of union membership. Redding used to be a union town, with decent middle class salaries. Redding is now an anti-union town, led by retired former union tea party members, who are driving to destroy all unions (public and private).

Today, our local paper published a story that Redding is dead last when compared to other like-sized Northern California and Nevada cities. Dead last!

A representative of economic development , made an inane statement that this is to be expected since Redding is transitioning from an agricultural base to a service one. This is hogwash, and is a perfect example of the mindlessness of the conservative majority in the town.

First, Redding transitioned from an agricultural based economy (dirt farming) to a logging and government project fed economy over sixty years ago. The cluelessness of the economic development representative says it all.

Second, the industrial park that is being pushed to create industry lies miles away from a rail line. The total disregard for the role railroads will play in the next 100 years of dwindling oil supplies is amazing.

Moreover, a council member is pushing for more urban sprawl, with the “idea” of building yet another mall along I-5; completely ignoring the fact that this will destroy downtown commerce, since consumers will stop just off the freeway and keep on going, bypassing downtown Redding completely.

Of course, this same council member was treated to a expense paid trip to Washington D.C. to seek a grant for the mall, by the mall’s developer! That’s right, payola is alive an well in our little town!

We have followed this corrupt, worthless conservative economic philosophy for over thirty years now.

Today, after a very brief relapse due to the election of President Obama, conservatives are again on the march, pushing for spending cuts at every level of government, screaming that government deficits will destroy us all, telling us layoffs of public workers and cuts of their pensions will fix the economy.

Nonsense! Redding is a perfect example of what happens when government spending is first introduced to an area bringing decades of prosperity, then shunned, bringing economic ruin.

When you cease making public investments in the future, your economy dies.

The present City Council is blindly cutting salaries and the workforce of the city, following the tea party goal of attacking and destroying the middle class.

And the result…DEAD LAST IN ECONOMIC GROWTH AND VITALITY.

There is no doubt that progressives have fled Redding in droves. There is no doubt that an aristocracy has grown with rich doctors hoarding their wealth in 7000 square foot houses, fighting tax increases and raising their fees. Redding has one of the highest uninsured population in the state, and a growing homeless population thanks to this huge disparity in wealth distribution.

Meanwhile the idiot tea partiers continue their propaganda as Redding slides into Poverty Flats again.

Eight Miles to a Gallon?

This past week we traveled to Pebble Beach, for the ATT Golf Tournament. The event was interesting, it was fun to see the real golfers up close, and the celebrities were entertaining; especially witnessing their pedestrian approach to golf (a lot like mine).

But, the surroundings were more interesting. Pebble Beach is a public golf course that charges almost $500 a round (some public!)

It shares a spectacular coastline view with several other golf courses, some public, and most private. (Private gold courses, for those of you who don’t follow golf, usually cost more to join than most of us make in a several years).

This year the ridiculously exclusive Monterey Bay Country Club was used as the third course along with Spyglass Hills (another public course that costs over $300 to play).

All this lies on the famous “17 Mile Drive”, a public road that is blocked off by a gate that costs to pass. This is explained away as a “park entrance”, when in reality it is a public access that is treated as a private drive. The coast is owned by the resorts and homeowners; all 17 miles of it, citizens can drive through it, pay ridiculous prices at the resorts, but can’t live there. Only the rich and famous can live there.

This gated community is one of the richest and most exclusive on earth. Of course it is all for the views, that are breathtaking. The stench of money is everywhere, from the castles that stand as dwellings to the $15 dollar drink I foolishly ordered at the Pebble Beach Lodge.

But the 8 miles to a gallon while wallowing in conspicuous consumption is what really got me!

Mercedes Benz had a display at the entrance to the tournament. Several glittering models were on display, and you got a $1000 off coupon if you stopped and looked. As we perused the cars, my wife gravitated to the convertible. The sticker got me, not so much for the price, as for the mpg estimates. It read, “8 miles in town, 14 on the road”. That’s right, 8 miles to the gallon.

This symbolizes why the United States is finished as a world economic power. The conspicuous consumption and mindless squalor of the rich and famous was startling. But what was most startling was seeing that 8 miles per gallon sticker, as we read of $4.00 a gallon prices re-emerging across the nation in a few months.

Meanwhile, as we marveled that so many rooms could be put into one house, with only two people living in it, conservatives are rallying for more tax breaks for the rich and killing high speed trains, and other public transportation ideas.

Cal train, an essential commuter train that runs up and down the peninsula in the Bay Area of California is facing huge cutbacks in service because the counties it passes through cannot balance their budgets. The latest proposal is to close many stations, stop weekend service (the train carries fans to Giants games), and raising fares. This will have the result of putting more cars on Bay Area highways at $4.00 a gallon!

Eight miles to a gallon! This screams at me as I remember the acres of landscaped opulence along the pristine coastline that essentially has been walled off from the poor and middle class. Americans will be cutting back on their commutes, facing absolutely no alternatives because of conservatives cutting public transportation, while the rich and famous drive cars that get 8 miles a gallon.

Everyone, I mean EVERYONE, who looked at those cars, salivated over the idea that they could possibly own one. Of course, 99 percent of us could not even come close to actually owning one, but we all dreamed.

And that is the ultimate tragedy. Americans dream of being like the rich, of owning a car that is polluting the environment and sucking gas reserves into oblivion, the more conspicuous and ostentatious the better.

And then there is Monterey Bay Country Club, referred to by my friend as only accessible in his lifetime because the tournament was being played there.

But, hospitable they were not. There were about a dozen outdoor privies at the entrance to the course, which was at the extreme opposite of the venue, as far away from the clubhouse as possible. My friend and his wife walked to that side of the course, and were told at the guardhouse, that they most certainly could not (the guard sniffed) use the restrooms in the clubhouse (which looked like a castle). There were no other restrooms on the golf course.

The Country Club was no doubt paid thousands for the use of the facility, but the public was treated like dirt. “Let them pee in a cup”.

And, our conservative friends in Congress are working overtime to spread this aristocratic culture all over America. Eight miles a gallon for the rich, nothing for the rest of you.

And what keeps this myth alive, is the pathetic belief in many Americans that they too can be someday rich and famous like the aristocracy that lives along the beaches of Monterey Country Club.

At dinner, the last night of our stay, the restaurant owner visited with us, and gave us a lottery ticket (one lottery ticket), with the hope that we could win and share the prize. He was a nice man, who made conversation and was thanking us for dropping over $150 at his restaurant with a $1.00 lottery ticket.

And we all took it, and laughed and secretly hoped that ticket would be the winner, opening us to the world of the rich and famous we had just visited along the Monterey Coast.

America has become a pathetic bunch of fools, who continue to revel in being conned by rich aristocrats, who hate us and continue to box us into poverty with conservative economic policies that concentrate wealth in the increasingly arrogant few.

The American Dream never intended to concentrate wealth so drastically. But, it is a natural product of the free enterprise economy. The actors and comedians we watched hack their way around the golf courses, benefit from a system that rewards the few lavishly, and the rest get less and less.

I am NOT suggesting we take it all back from the rich, or their talent hasn’t earned them their wealth. I am suggesting that the wealth be redistributed through progressive tax rates, to re-build a middle class. The concentration of wealth so aptly illustrated by 8 miles per gallon luxury cars is what is killing the American Dream, not enhancing it. Sooner or later, ordinary citizens will not be able to afford paying for or driving the 17 mile drive, leaving the beauty to the aristocrats. Of course, the resorts will die, because the middle class is who is supporting them

That is what America is about, supporting an economic elite who live in gated communities, keeping the beauty of America for themselves?

By the way, Pebble Beach Lodge and venue treated us great. The prices were ridiculous, but we were treated as guests. I cannot say the same for Monterey Country Club. It was obvious that the public were needed at Pebble Beach, and should stay away from the Country Club.

I have not even mentioned Peak Oil that means the supplies of oil are finite and decreasing. I have not mentioned the global climate change that petroleum emissions cause, that one day will put Pebble Beach under the ocean. The rich and famous do not have the money to stop the rise in ocean levels caused by climate change. Their mansions will be more waterfront than intended in the near future.

Anyway, I will be thinking of the eight dollar a gas this summer when I am walking to the market which is five miles away to get some milk.

Eight dollars a gallon! Is this a Great Country or What!

Two Contradictions

There are dozens of conservative “think tanks”, well funded by corporations and the oil lobby, that spew out volumes of “credible evidence” supporting the libertarian point of view on the economy. Their views are buttressed by right wing press and media, effectively brainwashing the American people to not believe two basic contradictions that destroy the right’s position.

The first contradiction is that individuals competing in a scarcity environment are more efficient and effective than cooperation and coordination on an organized scale. You hear the comment constantly that “the free market” will solve everything from health insurance failure to rebuilding Iraq.

The contradiction can be found in any cursory study of social science. The contradiction is: Individualism and unregulated competition will work in a plentiful environment, but fails in direct relationship to the scarcity of resources. In short, individualism works in a land of plenty but fail to produce a strong economy in a land of scarcity.

Hence, in America’s first two hundred years, an unregulated economy worked to build a nation; with the nagging exception of course, that slavery and land theft from Native Americans graphically assisted Manifest Destiny.

In an economy of unbelievable plenty, individualism and full competition did result in the acquisition of huge wealth to Americans.

The Great Depression changed all this. Suddenly the laissez-faire approach, allowing economic cycles to self correct and using natural resources at a frenetic pace nearly destroyed the country. Leaving unrestrained competition and selfishness unregulated resulted in massive poverty and despair. Moreover, the lack of regulation resulted in a huge disparity between the rich and the poor, which nearly drove the nation to revolution.

Roosevelt saved capitalism from itself with the New Deal; that conservatives immediately hated (once the danger of rebellion had passed). While judges were being lynched for foreclosing on farms, you could not find many loyal conservatives calling for more laissez-faire.

Today, this contradiction is devastating to the conservative cause. Regardless of the anti-communism of Ayn Rand, rampant individualism has again failed miserably to provide economic success. It is indeed curious that of all people, Ayn Rand, discredited when she was alive, is now a hero of the radical right. Her philosophy of unbridled greed and avarice was a footnote of the anti-communism of the 50s and 60s, read by a few, believed by hardly anyone.

The Wall Street disaster of 2008, coupled with an almost insane Fed Policy of conservative Alan Greenspan, resulted in an economic collapse on the scale of the Great Depression. Only through timely governmental intervention was a depression averted.

Typically, conservatives hated this most recent government intervention, even though it saved their portfolios. The super rich survived the housing bubble just fine, the middle class was crushed. America’s economy is permanently damaged.

Of course, no conservative even likes to talk about this first contradiction; that individualism and unregulated economic competition produces social and economic injustice and doesn't grow the economy. They continue the fallacy, drumming away at what is left of the middle class, who continues to swallow the myth to their detriment. An effective deception tool is the fallacy that tax cuts stimulate the economy; middle class voters keep voting for tax cuts and can’t figure out why huge government deficits are produced; it’s the revenue stupid!

The second contradiction is that socialism is inherently evil, anti-democratic, and damages the economy.

This position again ignores social and scientific evidence.

Countries that combine socialism in applicable areas with capitalism in others are currently out-competing the United States in the global economy, in spite of the current economic damage caused by world recession.

China, Germany, India, Brazil, France, even Japan, are all examples of countries whose economies are outperforming the United States. The global economy, operating in an atmosphere of increasing petroleum scarcity, in fact, rewards planned economies. It is not 1945, when the United States stood alone with massive resources and the rest of the world in ruins. Planned economies, centralized decision making, works to the advantage of global economic performance.

Socialism works well with large scale needs; health care, transportation, defense, and education. It does not work well with innovation and product development. Conservatives have NEVER understood this.

China, with a political dictatorship, has no problem in mixing socialism in some areas with rampant capitalism in others. Any study of China’s economy will note the irony of a “communist” regime, who merrily mixes socialism with entrepreneur capitalism in a way that is devastating the American economy. Why the United States will not do the same is because of conservative fanatical resistance. We are being Wal-Marted to death.

The growing scarcity of petroleum is critical in this analysis. The era of cheap, plentiful oil is over. Unfortunately for the United States, conservatives led by the oil lobby, have tied our economy to the mistaken assumption that cheap oil will last forever and any governmental intervention to mitigate this is “socialism”.

Meanwhile, many Europeans do not need a car to get to work, while Americans cannot work without a car. And, any efforts for to grow public transportation, is resisted like gun control, by conservatives who hate trains, hate hybrids, and proclaim “drill baby drill” is the answer to oil scarcity.

Planned economies, with specific socialism solutions, will prevail in global economic competition because of their strategic visions for the future; taking into account growing scarcities, educational needs and health care for all. In spite of the current problems of deficits in some European countries due to the global recession, mixed economies have a decided advantage over one-dimensional ones; like the United States under conservative leadership.

In a word, the dream of conservatives for a one-dimensional economy along laissez-faire, small government, return to 1890 lines, is leading the United States into third world economic status. The political and economic “purity” of conservative dogma is based on an economic theory that is being discredited everyday by the global economy. The world indeed is “flat” and conservatives don’t get it.

So, two contradictions: one, a fanatical belief that individualism will prevail in the global economy of scarcity; two, that socialistic solutions for certain applicable economic needs is wrong, are leading the United States to economic ruin and ironically the end of American “exceptionalism” .

Failure of Will

Today I read in the Sacramento Bee an article on the increase in gasoline prices. It seems that as the economy improves, demand is once again going up throughout the world and prices are rising. We may see the $4.00 per gallon of a couple years ago.

Meanwhile, the state of California, in a short sighted attempt to raise more revenue, went to a “flat tax rate” on instead of a percentage for its sales tax on gas. This means more revenue right now, but the amount cannot increase as the price of gas goes up.

Unbelievable! In other industrialized nations, gas taxes are very high, and variable. What this means is as the price of a gallon of gas goes up, say from $5.00 to $6.00, the amount of tax goes down so that the actual cost of a gallon of gas stays about the same. As the price of a gallon goes down, the amount of tax goes up, so the price stays about the same.

The trade off for this price stability and relative stable revenues is revenue for mass transportation, highway repair; etc.

Not in California: We see a tax system that actually adds to the volatility of gas prices.

Most countries began taxing gasoline at a high rate thirty years ago. Because Europe does not have native gas reserves, they realized that they simply could not tie their economic vitality to gasoline. So, they taxed at a high rate, working also to stabilize prices, and drove millions away from cars as their primary mode of transportation.

The United States, in contrast, because of access to cheap and supposedly endless petroleum reserves, allowed the price of gasoline for the consumer to rise and fall according to supply and demand.

The results of this were prosperity and convenience at first. But now, as cheap petroleum ends, and world demand goes up due to other economies growing, the prices of gas are damaging the American economy.

Americans were sold on the idea that a forty mile commute, stuck in traffic going 15 miles an hour, was somehow a desirable life style. Moreover, the petroleum industry has morphed into a greedy political and economic giant, refusing to face the reality that the American energy glutton lifestyle must change. It is ironic that the industry’s profits will continue to soar, as world demand goes up. However, the oil lobby stubbornly resists all American progressive efforts to change transportation modes to lessen individual reliance on cheap gas. In short, the oil companies want Americans to stay in their cars on the freeways until they literally bankrupt themselves.

So, California actually cuts their tax on gasoline in the middle of a chronic budget deficit.

California was the leader of the United States in lifestyle advances. The commuter, suburban lifestyle was copied in all but the most densely populate areas. Home buyers thought nothing of purchasing a home a hundred miles from work. Gasoline was cheap and cars were easy to purchase. Urban sprawl has been the standard; shopping centers were located miles from the center of a city, destroying downtown areas, spreading people away from one another.

Bus and train systems were junked in favor of private automobile travel. And, freight transportation was shifted from trains to truck; all in the name of efficiency.

The result of this madness is a system of transportation that relies completely on cheap gasoline and diesel that are running out.

This leaves the United States and an incredible disadvantage relative to the world economy. Other nations have transportation systems that are dramatically more efficient and less reliant on cheap gas. Many Europeans, for example, do not even own cars, but rely on public transportation to get to work. Cities have not sprawled, so commuting to work is often a walk.

Now don’t misunderstand; as fuel prices increase due to dwindling supply, other nations will suffer as well. The diesel to run trains will be more expensive, air travel will suffer; etc. But, the dependency on cheap fuel is so much less, that economic damage will be far less than in the United States.

A dollar increase in the price of a gallon of gas will wreck havoc on the American economy, changing political power, causing unemployment and huge dislocations the American way of life. A two dollar increase, which will happen in the next five years as “peak oil” becomes apparent, will force Americans to look for alternative transportation methods that simply do not exist: passenger train travel is a museum piece in California in most areas.

And, the state government, bowing to conservative anti-tax FANATICS, has actually cut taxes on gas. This has eliminated the best method to force Californians out of their cars and to fund mass transportation.

Americans just don’t have the will to change; and petroleum companies intend to keep it that way.

And, conservative nihilists, who hate government in every form, push to rely on the free market to resolve this dilemma. These fanatics are backed by a petroleum lobby, intent on virtually enslaving Americans to a system that will ruin lives and what is left of the economy.

Do not Tolerate Barbour

Haley Barbour, Mississippi’s presidential hopeful, a few days ago distinguished himself as a cracker, and hopefully disqualified himself from the Presidency.

Mr. Barbour, who is being given credit for the Republican “landslide” of 2010, decided to again rewrite history, as a conservative southern Republican. His rewrite efforts, typical of what we call a southern “cracker” (white southern male, bigoted, white supremest, racist but quiet about it, and apologist for the treason of the south during the Civil War), was centered on his memories as a young confederate loving lad that “things were not that bad” in the ‘60s Mississippi racist society.

He is referring to Mississippi in the 50s and 60s. He is referring to to White Citizen’s Councils, whose history during the Civil Rights struggle was one of violence, segregation and economic punishment, trying to destroy the NAACP and drive “uppity Negroes”, and Jews by the way, out of Mississippi. The White Citizens Councils did not only target the NAACP but any individuals who dare challenge the institutionalized segregation and racism.

Mississippi was the worst, its overt and indirect racism and violence were the most toxic anywhere, according to Civil Rights workers and federal authorities at the time. Medger Evers was assassinated by a member of a White Citizens Council, three Civil Rights workers, one Jewish one White and one African-American, were murdered and buried in a levee, and found only after an intensive manhunt, utilizing federal marshals and finally, troops. Members of the local White Citizens Council, who knew where the young men were buried, kept silent, forcing a week’s long search.

Those responsible were first acquitted, and I still remember the Life Magazine photograph showing the sheriff of the county, who also participated in the killings, chewing tobacco and mocking the court. Eventually some of the perpetrators were brought to justice. Medger Evers’ killer was finally convinced in the 1990s, almost 40 years after the murder! His killer had been free for almost half a century, and his White Citizens Council friends knew he had done it. They knew he was a murderer and accepted him, in fact protected him.

This would be similar to a child molester being protected by a church??? Hmmm..

Lynchings, church bombings, discrimination using firings of “uppity” blacks, and attacks on federal officials who were trying to stop the insanity were the norm, not the exception in Mississippi.

And, today, under Mr. Barbour’s leadership, Mississippi still has a long way to go. The state has one of the worst public education systems in the United States, one of the highest poverty rates, highest unemployment rates, and most of the victims of this economic injustice are still African-Americans. Basically, not much has really changed.

What Mr. Barbour has been able to do, under the guise of conservatism, is to maintain a de-facto society of racial discrimination and injustice that rivals the Jim Crowe era. If you are African-American or a person of color in Mississippi you still are a second class citizen.

Every once in awhile, he slips, and the truth comes out. There is no doubt who is in control in Mississippi, even though there are now African American judges, sheriffs, and even mayors. White Citizen Councils simple changed their names to Conservative Committees.

In 1968, southern Democrats, angry about the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voter Rights Act, abandoned their century long allegiance to the Democratic Party and switched over to the Republican Party. The party of Lincoln, who had led the north to defeat the Confederacy, was joined by segregationists (crackers) under the guise of states rights, local control, and hatred of the federal government.

I can just imagine Lincoln or Grant’s reaction to this, the G.O.P. who had led the destruction of slavery, and whose Radicals had actually tried to help the freed slaves in the post Civil War south to attain some freedoms and justice, now welcome the same bigoted crackers into the party. The Party of Lincoln has now become the Party of Barbour!

The crackers are in the G.O.P. now. They not only belong, but they now run it!

Senate Republicans, with endless filibusters, are aimed directly at destroying an African American President. The Republican Senate leader, from Kentucky of course, has actually proclaimed that the primary aim of his caucus is to destroy the President.

I cannot remember ever an opposing Senate leader making such a statement. Of course, this is a southern Republican Senator.

Both Barbour and McConnell share the same cracker backgrounds. They both don’t think segregation and racism in the south wasn't “all that bad” because they are WHITE SOUTHERNERS!

Barbour represents the racist Republican southern wing, who has taken over the Republican Party. Many current Tea Party leaders are from the south. Mitt Romney, who almost comically tries to be a conservative, has two huge problems: 1. He is a northerner. 2. He is a Mormon. There is no way the southern dominated Republican Party will nominate him.

So, we are looking at a political fight, pitting an African American President against a cracker Republican in 2012.

In a real sense, we are looking at the Civil War replayed politically, because the south has never accepted, still doesn't accept, African Americans as human beings.

That may sound harsh, but it is true. Barbour represents a resurgence of racism in the United States. Every time this has happened the results have been tragic for the United States.

I only hope, that if this does happen, and if the federal government (the north) again prevails, like it has in the past fifty years, that this time we do it right, and destroy the racist south forever. That means jail, punishment of treason by death, and war!

That’s right, war! Barbour and his ilk, know only one thing, and that ultimately is domination and violence. The Radical Republicans in the post Civil War era, wanted to permanently occupy the south, and radically alter the racist foundation of white supremacy. At the end of the upcoming struggle, we need to follow their example.

“Subjugate the south, punish the south, lead a crusade of social and economic justice down on the heads of the southern bigots and traitors, and eradicate their evil forever.”

These are the words of Radical Republicans in the 1870s. Lincoln, and Johnson (a southerner), both sought to reconcile, and “bind the nation’s wounds”. Unfortunately, the south took this as a weakness, and were able to maintain the same injustice that had existed before the war, dooming African Americans to racial inequality not only in the south but also in the north for one hundred years.

The struggles of twentieth century Civil Rights are a direct result of this failure to adequately reform or punish the south after the Civil War.

The Civil Rights Act has proved that racism can be stopped, but only if people are punished under the law. Racism is a crime, and the resulting discrimination and injustice ruins communities and nations. Only by really losing something, like freedom, will a racist stop. Jail has a way of reforming racists, especially when confronted with angry African American prisoners!

Barbour should not be tolerated; he should be destroyed as a viable candidate and hounded until he gets out of public service. Only by being punished will he learn the evil of his ways.