#453 – Dick Bernard: Occupy Wall Street

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As I write, October 13, the Occupy Wall Street initiative seems to be gaining momentum.
Two weeks ago, September 30, I submitted an opinion piece on the issue to my local newspaper at a time when the metro newspapers were ignoring the happenings in New York. I was motivated by the video clip of the folks on Wall Street balconies sipping drinks while overlooking the protestors below. You can view the clip here.
My op ed, “Wall Street Protests Matter to Us”, appeared in yesterday’s Woodbury Bulletin, and speaks for itself.
Tomorrow there is a demonstration in Minneapolis which I will likely try to attend.
The protests are spreading.
But I am reminded of some cautionary thoughts, which seem different, but to me are very directly related.
1) Right or wrong, the Wall Street folks feel that they deserve their excess wealth. This time of year is bonus time “on the Street” and (I hear) $1,000,000 bonuses or more are not uncommon. Folks who get these bonuses are slaves to making money, and labor very hard to make that money for whomever, and have come to expect this wealth, whether deserved or not. If the bonuses are cut somewhat (a likelihood this year), you will hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth all the way out here in the hinterlands.
I recall conversations with a woman about my age at a workshop thirteen years ago. Her daughter was a young analyst on Wall Street, and the previous year had made $800,000. The number sticks in my mind because I was a hard-working guy, in what I felt was a pretty well paying job at the time, and this young woman’s annual take was ten times my own annual salary.
The Mom got some benefits from her daughters success, and who of us can argue when one of our kids makes good? And in our society, the almighty dollar is the usual evidence of making good.
As I say, “right or wrong, the Wall Street folks feel that they deserve their excess wealth.”
(There is nothing intrinsically wrong with money, in my opinion. The ‘devils in the details’ are abundant, however. First is greed, which affects not only aspiring billionaires, but can take root far down the economic ladder as well. As important, if not more, is the lack of long-term vision when it comes to money policy. Wall Street has come to look on this as short-term (annual bonuses for performance, for example); and has imposed even more harsh markers on Business. Talk with anyone in big business, and the “quarterly numbers” will come up. One doesn’t achieve long term goals by being stuck on short-term thinking….)
2) As for protests, they can be good, a means to an end, but they cannot be the end in themselves: (Here is a fascinating column about the New York City Occupy Wall Street group.)
As noted it is possible that I’ll be at the event in Minneapolis tomorrow, but it is unlikely that I will be there for more than that single event. It is a big commitment to drive a distance to such things, and there are competitions for one’s available time and resources.
The protests, which were largely invisible in the national news media when I wrote the op ed two weeks ago, have now become very visible, and they are spreading, and that is good.
But sooner than later they will ebb and once again become invisible on the national media screen. The opposition – the rich 1%ers – know this reality: you simply have to wait out the protests and go on with life as usual.
If the organizers and supporters of these protests are wise they are already planning the next steps beyond the protests.
Next steps include things like I did: submitting a letter or an opinion to the local paper; communicating with others we know, including lawmakers, etc., etc.
The reality is that the ‘system’ we love to hate will ultimately have to create a reasonable solution. Anarchy or the like isn’t a viable option, even though it’s fun for awhile.
3) Finally, there is an argument about “class warfare” out and about.
I don’t doubt at all that there is such a war, and it was a preemptive strike by the privileged 1% against the rest of the population.
But it is important to remember that those 1%ers are not a monolith, all thinking alike.
Always keep in mind the folks like mega-billionaire Warren Buffet who are out there, doing their part as well, and moderate views are an extremely important part of this struggle.
Protests are good, but they are only one tactic in what is a very long term struggle.

#444 – Dick Bernard: "Goldman-Sachs Rules the World"

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UPDATE: If you have not yet read Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, do it….

Tuesday I noted this item on Yahoo news. It includes a remarkable video, worth watching, which at most recent count had been viewed well over 600,000 times on YouTube. You can access the video within the article, or directly, here.
The article and the video speak abundantly clearly for themselves. The person being interviewed is apparently real, and his opinion is informed and apparently quite honest.
Essentially: big money views financial crises like our own, and now the Eurozone, very, very warmly. Crises are big opportunities to make lots of money.
I’m like the vast majority of people: I don’t have money to “play with” in the stock market.
I do have a pension fund, and a 401-k, that are managed by larger institutions, but other than giving them very general directions in the limited ways one has (“be careful”), I don’t watch the fund go up and down. If the markets were to truly crash, I would be in trouble, just like the vast majority of us.
But the Big Boys (and Girls, too), don’t look at financial crises the way I do.
I can offer a very tiny example from my own “real world”.
In the fall of 1987, there was a near catastrophic stock market crash in the United States. I remember it pretty vividly as I was driving from St. Paul to Duluth when the news of it broke so I could listen to it the entire trip. At the time I was a novice in selling securities – mutual funds – and while I was the tiniest of small part-time players, I at least knew the terminology, and I had access to a product – a mutual fund that I was learning about. I knew what they were talking about. But the 1987 was near panic: in relative terms worse than anything that’s happened in U.S. recent history, other than the fall of 2008.
In October, 1987, I had a small savings account in my bank – perhaps $2000. It was making 5% interest – an amount that seems stratospheric today, but then was pretty normal.
I also had a single $50 share of a major public utility. It was a gift, and with the gift came the opportunity to directly buy additional shares in the utility without going through a broker and paying fees.
In a moment of risk-taking – uncharacteristic for me – I withdrew the money in the savings account, and spent part of it on a mutual fund; later I invested the rest in the public utility shares.
Later, in the manner of the times, the utility bought an interest in an automobile auction firm – an uncharacteristic move for a conservative utility – but it made a wise choice. I know how its shares did.
In my small time way, the investments were the best financial decisions I ever made. I had, as the jargon goes, “bought low”, and later I “sold high”. And the results were very impressive. My measly 5% in the bank would have yielded next to nothing compared with much, much higher returns in the market. And utility stocks are generally considered pretty conservative.
I learned that a panic response to a crisis is not very productive. Best not to be stampeded into making some decision one might later regret.
The big players understand this concept; we small-fry don’t. The “too big to fail” near-collapse of the entire U.S. banking system at the end of the Bush administration was a boon to the wealthy bankers, not a crisis at all. I think the rescue was an essential act for we citizens, but the real beneficiaries were the Biggest of the Big Shots in Finance. The same could be said for the later rescue of Big Industry, like General Motors. Necessary, but cynical.
I believe, as the better informed world apparently does as well, that Rastani (the guy in the video) is talking straight.
It may make you mad to see how we small-fry are fodder for the Big Players in Money, but it is useful to see how panic is useful in the short term to the cynical players in the market.
I can only hope that there is some sanity somewhere in the Goldman-Sachs and other towers in the World Markets in New York, London and other places. But these Big Players are, it seems, addicted to the most extreme of Risk-Reward.
In the end the entire money system may well collapse, but at the very last gasp, there’ll be some isolated tycoon out there on some remote ocean island seeing the calamity as an opportunity….

#443 – Dick Bernard: Homeless.

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This morning, as usual, we went downstairs at our church for the usual coffee and donuts. (Our place is the Basilica of St. Mary’s at the near edge of downtown Minneapolis – it is a downtown parish – a place of diverse sorts of people.)
I got my coffee and donut and saw a lady sitting at a table by herself. “Mind if we join you?” I asked. “Fine”, she said. She was well-dressed, looking to be in later middle age, with what appeared to be a nice piece of luggage on one of those portable pull carts.
Making small talk, I said, “it looks like you’re traveling“. It was a somewhat obvious observation. We’re an easy and safe walk to the convention center, and the church gets lots of visitors.
Probably she had been to some conference, and was taking in Mass before catching a cab for the airport….
She didn’t respond to me. She finished her coffee, got up abruptly, and then very angrily said “if it makes any difference, I’m retired and I’m homeless.” Apparently there had been some court case in New York which she had lost. She stormed off to wherever, with no chance for us to say anything, as if she would have wanted us to say anything. There are times when less is best.
Two other people had joined us by then. It was a puzzling happening for all of us.
There is a “profile” of homeless. We see lots of homeless in this social gathering hall after Mass. But they LOOK like homeless are “supposed” to look. Yes, it’s a stereotype, but mostly these folks, mostly men, sometimes a few women, stand out from the usual crowd. This lady didn’t look homeless, not in the least. But apparently she was.
As I write, before noon on this same day, I’m just beginning to process what I just experienced.
In a surface sense, everything in our society, at this moment, looks sort of normal. Even with high unemployment, 91% of us are making a living (85% if you throw in the people who have given up on looking for work.)
It is easy to pretend that there is no underclass, inexorably increasing.
We’re in a family that is experiencing the creeping problem of unemployment within our own family circle. Makes it much harder NOT to notice….
Beyond the rhetoric, somewhere as I type, is this attractive well-dressed older woman pulling her luggage, and carrying a back pack.
It is certain she wasn’t being facetious.
What is her story, I wonder.
Where will she be tonight, this coming week, this winter, next year?
I think I know what I’ll be thinking about on this walk I’m about to take.
What lessons can be learned, and applied to our ever meaner society?

#440 – Dick Bernard: "Class War" and "the American Dream"

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Sometime in 1987, well into President Ronald Reagan’s second term, I was in San Benito TX visiting my father.
One evening, he and I went out to dinner with his good friends, also retirees in San Benito. It was just a night out. I knew them both from previous visits. He was a retired locksmith, and she a homemaker, both originally from Minnesota.
Sometime during the dinner, the talk turned serious. They were telling Dad and I a tragic story. They had just lost their entire life savings – I remember it as $170,000 – in a bank collapse in their community.
This was a time of de-regulation and they had moved their savings from an insured account into an uninsured account that promised much larger returns. The bankers scheme didn’t turn out and they lost everything except their social security, and whatever small property they owned (a trailer home in San Benito, and who knows what ‘up north’).
I’ve watched assorted schemes and scams as they’ve taken place since then, most all of them involving money and greed as twins.
It was called “trickle down” economics in the Reagan years.
George H.W. Bush got in trouble for referring to it as “voodoo”.
In the late 90s there were feverish and successful attempts to regulate regulations of banking out of existence, to ‘let the free market do its thing and bring riches to us all’.
Then came the folly of big (and foolish) tax cuts and huge un-funded Medicare benefit increases (great politics) twinned with big war in the first decade of the 21st century. Three years ago this month, it almost came completely undone with the bank collapse, and the real estate collapse which remains an unmitigated disaster.
But, oh was it fun while it lasted! That’s how it is, living on the credit card.
And here we are, same story, some of the same actors, but some new ones as well. Same insane message.
The Big Lie of the anti-government Norquist generation of lawmakers, state and federal, will bring disaster, but probably won’t be noticed until disaster actually strikes. That’s the way it seems to work in our casual society, where paying attention to policy, and who makes it, is boring to most who are affected by that same policy.
Big Business is run by Wall Street; Wall Street is run by Quarterly Results (the numbers); Wall Streets business is to make money now, not to build a stable economy long into the future.
I muse often about whether there is ANYBODY in those corporate structures or Wall Street Towers who are really paying attention to the implications of destroying the Middle Class. The Middle Class is, after all, the source of their wealth. Their market for their goods.
The Middle Class can turn this around – we are massive in numbers – but far too many of us are shills for the wealthy who, by and large, have no interest in us except what we can do to destroy ourselves.
I’ll do what I can. Each of us has to do what we can….
At minimum, don’t believe the shills who proclaim that there’s “class war against the rich”.
It’s the other way around.
Just look at the long term results.
(The best succinct graphic I’ve seen about the national debt and how and why it happened can be watched here. It is succinct and powerful.)

#425 – Dick Bernard: Wrapping up the weeks news

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Our evening news of choice is CBS with Scott Pelley. Like most folks, perhaps, my viewing is rather casual, not intense. In 30 minutes, there is perhaps 20 minutes of actual “news” and this is broken down into a number of segments. The rest is advertising, which a cynic might say is the only real reason for news programs these days….
But Friday nights program had several segments which drew my attention and seemed directly related and troubling indicators of the disease affecting our country at this point in history. You can watch the entire program at the link in this paragraph.
There was a piece about the U.S. economy at a still dead place: 9 % unemployment; actual rate 16% if you factor in those who’ve given up. This is tied, of course, to President Obama and how it will affect his reelection plans.
Another segment was a small business owner who wasn’t hiring because he wasn’t sure of the future stability of our economy. After all, you can’t hire people just for the sake of hiring them. This has been a repetitive ‘talking point’ about why business won’t step up to the plate in this crisis. Subtext: the business of business is to make money, not save the country.
Worker productivity is way up – 50% higher if I recall correctly; business is awash in cash, accompanied by the same hand-wringing as that of the small business owner.
And a segment about the 17 large financial institutions that are being sued by the government for their complicity in the real estate fraud that was a large factor in nearly bringing our economy down three years ago this month. Of course, they are “innocent until proven guilty”, but their crime is not petty theft, but billions upon billions of dollars which taxpayers have had to cover.
Will justice be done?
When push comes right down to shove, the only one made to wear the hair shirt is President Obama. This is the hardly invisible background noise in all of this. If only he would do this, that or the other, all would be better; as if all of the obstruction and inaction and, yes, fraud, of the political and economic players make no difference in the equation.
It is totally absurd. We sit idly by and take it.
Somewhere towards the end of this news program, came some seconds of coverage of the conflict in Libya, in the process of regime change.
There was a 30 second segment at some port facility in Libya where huge cubes of new Libyan cash had been off-loaded fresh from the printing presses in Britain, the place where Libyan money is apparently minted. It can be seen at roughly 17:20 – 17:50 in the CBS news program referred to.
The reporter Barry Peterson was commenting on this money: it is there to “go into peoples pockets…they get the money, the spend the money, the economy perks up, everybody’s going to feel a little bit better“. His remarks are worth watching.
What a novel idea. Put money into people’s hands – not Qadaffi’s – so that the economy can recover….
Why are we so reluctant to try something like this in the United States, during this time of struggle?

There are, of course, easy answers to this: recovery, people back at work, will make it more likely that President Obama will be reelected. To his enemies, the decision makers in Congress, and the captains of Big Business and Industry as well (which he previously had saved), priority one is getting him out of office. The greater the human cost for American workers and their families, the better for those who want to replace him.
As Labor Day approaches, we remain by far the wealthiest nation in the world.
We are squandering our riches, and we will all end up as big losers.
UPDATE Sep. 4: Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune has a worth-reading column by Johnathan Alter. It is here.

#409 – Dick Bernard: 4 days to Default of the U.S. A highly recommended book to read (or re-read): The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.

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RELATED, the post for August 1, 2011, here.
For some years we’ve had week 30 at a time-share in the Breezy Point complex on Pelican Lake in north central Minnesota. It is ordinarily a quiet and relaxing week, away from computer and the normal hubbub of life. Excepting 2007, when the evening news on August 1 brought us news of the collapse of the I-35W Bridge into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, one can escape.
Relaxation was not as much an option this year.
We left home with the stark newspaper headlines on July 23 (click on photo to enlarge).

July 23, 2011 Minneapolis Star Tribune


The entire week was dominated by the not-funny circus in Washington D.C. which is near impossible to miss. We read about it in the daily paper, and saw the play-by-play on TV news.
I made one excellent choice this vacation week:

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein


I had purchased Shock Doctrine a long while ago – it was published in 2007 long before the name “Barack Obama” was much known outside of Illinois. I thought I knew what it was about, and it languished among the many unread books I own…until this week when I read every one of its heavily foot-noted 587 pages “up at the lake”.
The book covers LOTS of ground – at least 24 countries* in all, including the U.S. (Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, 2005). Succinctly it is the life history of a particularly vicious brand of unfettered free market capitalism.
I read it with the background noise of the looming Default of the U.S. on our debts; the recently ended Shutdown of Minnesota due to a budget impasse; the pending recall elections in neighboring Wisconsin….
The more I read, the more I became convinced that what is happening right now in our own country is directly out of the Disaster Capitalism playbook. Given the experience in the other situations outlined, beginning with Chile (Allende/Pinochet) in 1973, there is no good end for the vast majority of Americans IF the current campaign in Disaster Capitalism succeeds here.
There are many reviews of this book, which was a New York Times bestseller, and it no doubt remains in print. I was particularly taken by this review by Paul B. Farrell, Dow Jones Business News, certainly not a left wing publication: “To more fully grasp this new economy, you must read what may be the most important book on economics in the twenty-first century…The Shock Doctrine is one of the best economic books of the twenty-first century because it reveals in one place the confluence of cultural forces, the restructuring of a world economy as growing populations fight over depleting natural resources, and the drifting away of America from representative democracy to a government controlled by multiple, competing, well-finances, and shadowy special interests.”
Make no mistake, the cabal described in this book is real and still very powerful and United States based. Disaster Capitalism’s fingerprints are all over the present day political shenanigans in the United States, though the original architect is dead (2006), its major proponents are no longer in office and exposed, and the long-term results of its efforts have been proven to be destructive to the societies it has successfully infected.
But Disaster Capitalism’s power can be blunted by persons of good will who use Shock Doctrine to shine a light on a campaign whose only beneficiaries are the already super wealthy.
Do purchase the book. And help spread the word.
* – Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Maldives, Nepal, Nicaragua, Poland, Salvador, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Thailand, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Uruguay,

#407 – Dick Bernard: 12 days till U.S. Default on our debt. How terminally stupid can we be?

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Please see NOTE at end of this post.

I have discovered as I trudge along this path of attempting political conversation that political conversation is virtually impossible, to be avoided like the plague.
People are stuck in believing what they want to believe, and nothing will shake them out of even looking at their individual notion of reality.
This tendency applies, unfortunately, to both left and right, though it is the far right that dominates the media.
Our collective attitude seems similar to what would happen if I ran into the middle of rush hour traffic this morning, steadfast in my reality that I am not going to be killed by some motorist who doesn’t notice that I’m there.
I can believe it is not going to happen, but the odds are overwhelmingly against me.
I will be as dead as the average roadkill.
Yesterday, the Minnesota legislature agreed to end the government shutdown. I thought the final compromise to be reasonable and necessary, and said so. Not settling would just continue the insanity on into the distant future. The composite bills were signed by the Governor. Here’s the newspaper report on the settlement.
The legislative leadership could have done the requisite bargaining back in May or even long before – the Governor signalled from the beginning of the session in January his willingness to compromise. He had numerous official compromise positions on the table, including an offer to mediation to help settle differences between the parties. To my knowledge the opposition stayed entrenched. They had some point to prove, which has now gone unproven (except protecting the wealthiest Minnesotans from a small amount more taxes.)
A key element of the Minnesota settlement is borrowing more money. A new crisis is guaranteed next legislative session.
(In the wings is an unsettled and very controversial proposal to get in the business of building a new professional football stadium. It is a demand of the Minnesota Vikings, backed by a threat that they’ll pack up and move away when their stadium lease expires in a year. That will not be a pleasant debate either. Prediction: the Vikings will get their stadium.)
Predictably, in the wake of the settlement both sides are righteously angry.
We have brought this on ourselves, of course. In our collective stupidity, we elected a Democratic Governor with lots of government experience and a clearly stated set of priorities, and a new Republican legislature dominated by people plenty of whom have never held state office before who had this or that score to settle and were diametrically opposed to the same Governor we had just elected on the same ballot.
It is as if the newbies could race into town, put their pet initiative on the floor, and get it passed in their first six months on the job.
They – We? – believed this nonsense.
So did the Republicans in Wisconsin, who believed that they could re-engineer government in the first few weeks they were in control of all branches of government.
We Minnesotans now have to watch the insane Wisconsin campaign ads on TV as the Recall election campaigns take place, including one a dozen miles from where I type this note. There is nothing smart about recall elections; there is also no particular option to recall other than to roll over and give up if a majority side believes it can steamroller the minority into permanent irrelevancy.
But the issue, now, is not what is happening in Wisconsin, or in Minnesota, but what is happening in Washington D.C.
There is a long but useful summary of what is happening in D.C. accessible here, and I hope you take the time to actually read it through.
The short summary as I see it:
1) the hated national debt is the difference between what the Congress chooses to spend, and what it chooses to pay (tax) for the debts it freely incurs. Only the House of Representatives can initiate spending bills. For almost all of the years since 1994, that House of Representatives has been Republican and it has run up huge debt, for which it now chooses to blame the Democrats, especially President Obama. An incredibly expensive (and stupid) war was “paid” off budget in the eight years post-9-11; Afghanistan is a tragic leftover of 9-11. For a while we lived in a time of false prosperity, on the national credit card. False prosperity is very satisfying, till the debt collector comes calling. Till now, the debt ceiling was simply and routinely raised.
2) A majority of the House of Representatives is unwilling to publicly acknowledge the reality in #1 above, and is holding everyone else hostage. And blaming an enemy – people like me – for the problems it freely created.
3) We Americans elected these people, who are ill-serving us. Polls routinely show that we despise Congress collectively. For some odd reason, we still elect the individuals who comprise Congress, and hold them in higher esteem. Our Congressperson is not like the others, apparently.
Maybe we’ll default on August 2, and the sun will rise, the birds sing, and the weather be pleasant on August 3 and on into the fall and winter.
Maybe not….
NOTE: July 22 there will be a post at this space; then ‘radio silence’ until at least July 31 due to vacation and computer repair. My personal ‘tradition’ is that the computer, e-mail and all, does not follow me away from home. All best wherever you are.

#400 – Dick Bernard: Day 12 of the Minnesota Shutdown; Day 21 to Default in Washington D.C. Whazzup in Minnesota?

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One of the e-mails in my in-box on return from the family reunion in Iowa was this, from someone I’ve known for many years, who lives in a state far away from Minnesota: “I see the belt tightening as a positive but think I might not be in the majority…did you blog on this yet?? I was listening to Pawlenty this morning, more impressed with him than Bachmann.”
To this, I responded as follows: “Pawlenty is a very major cause of the current Minnesota problem.”
I had noticed that, in next door neighbor Iowa, the local Dubuque paper had no coverage (at least none I could find) of the Minnesota situation. Unique as we are, we aren’t on Iowa’s interest radar, apparently.
At coffee this morning, a good friend was commenting about his fairly new neighbor, who has been laid off by the state due to the shutdown. Later in the morning came an out of office reply from someone on a family list of mine: “Due to the shutdown of state government, I am away from work indefinitely. I will return to work when the Legislative funding for the continued operation of the Minnesota Department of _________ is enacted into law. For more information, please monitor news reports or see our website at www._____.state.mn.us.” I don’t know this individual personally, so I didn’t know who she worked for, until the e-mail.
These are the stories, one by one. So goes ‘death by a thousand cuts’…one neighbor, one relative, one working here, one there. That is what the shutdown looks like.
Overnight came this online newspaper article about the “non-essential” State Historical Society library by my good friend and former work colleague Judy Berglund, outlining another one of the cuts due to the inability to settle the issues. I’ve used the History Center Library many times over the years. I’m a dues paying member of the History Center, but it’s still closed.
Of course, these days of message control, it is not hard to assess blame, and assess it convincingly.
But it is hard to find credible sources of information…that are accepted as credible.
In the same in-box with three days worth of e-mails came this editorial from the Winona MN newspaper. Winona is a Mississippi River small city, and I drove by it both coming and going to Dubuque. I don’t know the papers political slant, or that of Winona itself. The fact that it was written locally did impress me. Not only do they get what’s going on, but they’re willing to take a stand on it, publicly, in their town.
Then, yesterday afternoon came a new video from the Governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton. It was apparently just freshly released as it had only 100 views. Here is the video, about three minutes and worth watching, especially if not from Minnesota. Dayton comes from wealth: think Dayton’s Department Stores, later Dayton-Hudson; later Marshall-Fields, then Macy’s too, and Target stores. Depending on point of view, he’s ridiculed; or as a highly principled and committed Governor. I subscribe to the latter view of our Governor.
I don’t know where this will all end up.
What I do know from a long career in negotiations is that “compromise” does not mean that one side must cave in. One side demanding and refusing to budge, is not compromise.
I hope Gov. Dayton sticks with important principles for us all.

#383 – Dick Bernard: The Quandary for Big (and Small) Business, and its impact on all of us.

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This mornings New York Times (NYT) had an interesting article about a St. Paul area business man reluctant to hire workers.
A couple of days earlier the Minneapolis Star Tribune had an equally interesting column by a long time very prominent business executive essentially rebutting the oft-repeated and false argument of conservatives that taxes will cause a drain of business to lower tax places.
The two news pieces are among many similar commentaries these days, but people tend not to read information, particularly that which does not support their own view of reality. So we have the continuation of our economic storm.
Capitalism is, it seems, tying itself in knots.
“The Quandary”? See the end of this commentary.
For some reason, the Times column caused me to revisit a little adventure from several years ago, and this afternoon I jumped in my car to view in the present day what I had first viewed eight years earlier, June 19, 2003, in Fridley MN*.
On the way home I traveled by the company featured in the NYT column. It is a small place across the street from the tony suburb of North Oaks (below, click on photo to enlarge). I’m always curious how such places and people get chosen for news analyses, out of hundreds of thousands of possibilities.

Vista, in Vadnais Heights MN June 10, 2011


I had been at the Fridley company the pleasant June day in 2003 when George Bush visited. The place looks, today, much as I remember it eight years ago:

Micro Control Co. Fridley MN June 10, 2011


That visit by the President of the United States was one of the most tightly controlled events one could possibly imagine. I could understand avoiding protestors with anti-war signs; but even Bush’s supporters were denied even a glimpse of the motorcade, and they were not pleased. Here is what the President said that day in June, 2003, less than two months after we had “won” the war in Iraq (oh, we were naive then…and still). The Presidents message emphasizes tax cuts, along with some bragging about the War on Terror, and assorted other promises. It is worth reading the history in President Bush’s own words eight years ago this month.
The Quandary: The Alliance of Business and Conservative Ideology has won the battle, but simultaneously lost the war…for all of us.

I have no doubt that corporations and government are full of very smart people, and that leaders of organizations of all types are also very smart. But there is all manner of dissonance between what is stated as truth and what is real. Compare George Bush’s dream in 2003 against the reality only five years later, in mid-2008.
Capitalism is a philosophy that thrives on consumption of goods, which generates revenue through spending of money, which generates profits, and something called the multiplier of money (a dollar spent is actually more than a dollar, because it is spent over and over.) But in many ways the contemporary economy has become nothing more than a gigantic Ponzi scheme. People need money to buy goods; if fewer people have money to spend, less goods can be bought. If the money spent is borrowed (credit card) etc., it is actually not money in hand. It is only a debt to later be repaid.
The rich, who were the greatest beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts, generally put most of their money out of circulation (personal savings). It is money for which they have no immediate use. The poor, on the other hand, need to spend all of their money, and even if they spend it foolishly, it goes into circulation. It can be argued that the poor stimulate the economy more than the rich, simply because they spend their money to survive.
During the years of false prosperity in the Bush years, particularly 2001-2008, the Iraq War was financed off the federal budget books – on borrowed money. The borrowed money brought false prosperity, but also a debt that has come due.
At the same time the economy needs to be stimulated, largely by government infusion of capital, while the conservative drum beat is to strangle government, which costs people jobs, and again cripples the economy. Corporations are sitting on mountains of cash, but decline to hire people for one reason or another. In the long run they are hurting themselves and the country.
The only solution is an informed and active citizenry – you and I. Are we up to the task? We ARE, after all, the government.

UPDATE: Overnight came a most interesting commentary that supplements the above. It is worth a read as well.
* – What I wrote June 19, 2003, about President Bushs visit:
Well, I went. Along with quite a few Republicans, I didn’t even see GWB’s limousine, much less the little guy himself.
We were at a sort of non-descript warehouse type of building in the Minneapolis suburb of Fridley, the headquarters of the company at which he was appearing. We thought we were at the right door. About 1:15 pm CDT, I heard what sounded like a muffled cheer coming from within the building, and I think it was then he made his grand entrance through the back door. I guess we should have had a clue when a U-Haul pulled up to the same front door a few minutes earlier to load up stuff. Hope springs eternal. I wasn’t the only one fooled.
The small consolation is that he “stiffed” everybody – including true believers with tickets who couldn’t get in, and were waiting to see their patron saint, and perhaps even press the sacred flesh. They were not inclined to complain…at least not within the group along the roadside with us.
If you had any interest, you saw the lucky true believers on TV, from inside the warehouse. The disciples looked to be basically very well dressed. Apparently a few dissidents got in, but I don’t know for sure.
It was a beautiful day, and I was surprised that there weren’t more people. There was a good enough crowd, but even on a work day I have seen much higher attendance at political events. Somebody said there were a couple of thousand in the building, which seems a bit on the high side. Anyone who was seated in the building had to go through what seemed to be pretty tight security. The rest of us – perhaps a thousand or so – cooled our heels outside.
There were a few peace activists there (good for them), and beside them were a few true red-blooded Americans, most with their “Liberate Iraq” signs. Either the red-blooded American liberators didn’t hear the president’s speech from the USS Abraham Lincoln, when he said that Iraq was liberated; or he’s told them something that he hasn’t told me; or they thought the signs were too good to waste, after all the official war was very short. An hour or two before the Chief was scheduled to arrive, at the front of the liberator contingent was a little girl, perhaps five, waving a flag bigger than she was, and reciting the mantra over and over “God bless America”. A true patriot, doubtless.
At one point, a phalanx of peace activists quietly approached the front lines – where the Republicans who couldn’t get in, and I, were standing. It was a quietly uncomfortable time. One of the well-dressed types asked another “what do the masks signify” (some of the protestors were wearing masks, I guess). There was no answer, except somebody said they were “rabble rousers”. All this happened very gently. “Minnesota Nice” was dripping.
One young lady with a sign talking about 79,000 lost jobs per month during Bush times, was an object of some derision by two well-dressed people, a man and woman. The man wondered if the demonstrator was an exempt or non-exempt employee. No one directly took her on, however.
Some adult lady in my section sang the first stanza of God Bless America, but no one joined in. She went a little ways down the line, and tried again. Still no takers. Somebody said “Star Spangled Banner”, but no one went there, either, including the singer.
Two protestors came through behind us, one chanting “Who is a terrorist?”, to which the other responded “Bush is a terrorist.” A tall well dressed young guy standing near me, who I had thought must be a secret service agent, dark glasses and all, sort of under his breath muttered “Liberals with radical ideas are terrorists”. I guess I am a terrorist…. He apparently was not a secret service agent. Shortly after that, he disappeared.
Actually, I felt a bit sorry for the Republicans who apparently had tickets for the event but couldn’t get in. I don’t know what the snafu was. I had zero interest in going in, so it didn’t bother me.
Right before leaving I visited briefly with three women who were protesting. We had a nice visit. Peace people are peaceful people!
I left with a guy who does independent media stuff, and he suggested a visit to www.twincities.indymedia.org [his work is most likely no longer on-line, though the web address still is active]. Go to “The rest”, click on “Search”, then select photos and Bert Schlauch, and you’ll see some excellent stuff he has posted (and doubtless will post about today). The site is a very good one. So there you have it.
We have a virtual president. The closest I came to actually seeing him today was five mobile transmission towers for the television stations.
Keep the faith. Keep on, keeping on!
Peace.

#361 – Dick Bernard: Atlas Shrugged Part I

/in , , /by

I went to Atlas Shrugged on Monday afternoon at a local theatre.
My only certain prediction: Part III of this apparent three part made-for-the-theater movie will be released just in time to attempt to influence the 2012 election.
This is a hard-edged propaganda film.
It is pretty hard to make ruthless Capitalist Captains of Industry into heroic looking figures, but the film takes a shot at this (unsuccessfully, I felt).
I’d recommend people go see the film for themselves, so I don’t plan to give away much of the ‘story’, except to say that when one woman walked out about an hour in, I was tempted to follow her out the door. But I elected to stay it through. I’m glad I did.
There was no applause at the end from the dozen or so of us remaining.
Other than a waitress, I don’t recall seeing any workers in the film, except that it is clear that workers are slugs, except for a few superstars who are held in check by totally worthless unions whose henchmen (people like I was for an entire career, always men) are anti-progress disheveled gangster types imposing stupid work and safety rules.
Of course, Government itself is obstructive and evil and represented by nefarious types wanting to take us back to the good old days of collective farms. (If they thought it would work, the film producers would probably have used Communist terms like Commissar and the like. Even they must have thought that was a bit much. But they have some pretty good synonyms in both words and images.)
There is a certain audience – I think very limited in size – who will gobble up every word and nuance of this made-for-a-movie novel. They would be people like I sometimes see at my coffee shop, like the two guys after a Bible Study last week who are working stiffs but were complaining about how they dislike unions because they, the complainers, are superior to the shiftless rank and file and particularly union stewards.
While I know there is a tiny element of truth in their complaint, I can’t imagine even these guys taking much of a shine to the Capitalist King-Pins who are the obvious ‘stars’ of this movie.
(A favorite scene of mine is when one of the Tycoons is approached by his “tree-hugger” relative and asked for a handout for some cause or other. It is a Mr. Hard and Mr. Soft scene. In an instant the Capitalist offers $100,000 – one gathers it is a mere pittance for him – tax deductible of course. Tree-hugger demurs, saying that the ‘progressives’ – the word is intentional – he’s working with in Washington wouldn’t want the money to be identified with this specific Capitalist. Couldn’t it be sent another way? The story line is not completed in the film.)
To a certain kind of audience this will play well.
As for Ayn Rand (Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum), whose book “Atlas Shrugged” (1957) brings this to the silver screen, it’s worth learning a little bit about her, too. She had the misfortune of being 12 years old in St. Petersburg (later Petrograd, later Leningrad, now St. Petersburg again) when the Bolshevik Revolution upset her families applecart in 1917. The Revolution began in her home town. She came to the U.S. in 1925.
I’ve been to St. Petersburg (2003, two weeks after President George W. Bush made a visit), and I wondered to myself how things might have turned out differently had young Alisa really gotten to know why the Revolution got its legs in 1917. Revolutions aren’t child’s play, after all. They’re very risky business.
It doesn’t take long at the obscenely rich Peterhof or Catherine Palace outside St. Petersburg to get a sense of the kind of life the peasant class was forced to live in Czarist Russia. We spent several hours in both Palaces.
The run-up to revolution doesn’t seem to register, much, in Rand’s personal narrative. Her bourgeois family was a petty beneficiary of the Czars….
My thoughts went back to leaving Peterhof Palace in June, 2003. We were boarding the bus after several hours in the opulence of the Palace. Across the parking lot came two old hags – elderly women in rags, begging.
I couldn’t bear to take a photograph of them, but the image is burned in my mind…. Talk about compare and contrast.
See Atlas Shrugged Part I. See for yourself.