Year: 2011

It’s one bad idea after another coming from the state of Texas over the past few years:

First its governor said that Texas had the legal right to secede from the United States and might do it under certain conditions.

Then the state school board mandated inaccuracies be inserted into history texts for school children.

Along the way, various local municipalities have voted to build pleasure palaces of $30 million or more for their high school football teams, while the lone star state ranks 44th among the 50 states on spending per child on education.

And we can’t forget that Texas leads the states in the barbaric custom of executing prisoners. The other 35 states which have the death penalty have killed 789 men since 1976 (an average of 22.5 per state), whereas Texas all by its lonesome star self has killed 472.

The latest bad idea arising from Texas is not feeding its prisoners.  The New York Times reported this morning that since April, Texas has stopped serving lunch on weekends to about 23,000 prisoners in 36 state penitentiaries.  Prisoners in these prisons now have to go without lunch two days a week. 

The action is only part of efforts to save $2.8 million in food-related state prison expenses; these efforts also include ending the practice of letting prisoners about to undergo state assassination select their final meal. 

While some of the cost savings comes from not having to staff two meals a week, the article suggests the only way for this move to save money is if the prisoners get less food.  The article reports that prisoners with money have been purchasing food from the commissary, but low-income prisoners don’t have this option and are going hungry.

We start with the humanistic concept shared by most citizens: I believe that every living human being deserves to be free of hunger or food anxiety.  One goal of government policy should be to ensure that everyone has access to three squares a day, including the most wretched and disreputable of our lot.  We shouldn’t lavish prisoners, to be sure, but we should not exclude them from the human species by treating them inhumanely.

Moreover, consider the fact that there are more than 16,000 people incarcerated in Texas jails for drug possession—not selling, but simply for having drugs.  Now not all of these prisoners are among the 23,000 who have to fend for themselves two meals a week, but some and perhaps many are.  There is no question in my mind that two days per week of reduced calorie intake constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” for those unlucky souls caught holding a bag of pot or a toot of coke.

A standard analogy in public discussions of issues is to say that an action takes the first step in a slippery slope towards some universally recognized evil.  The slippery slope in the case of the move to reduce the calorie intake of Texas prisoners leads to the Nazi concentration camp and ghetto food regime that measured exactly the amount of calories to keep people from starving to death immediately; about 250 calories per day in the case of the Warsaw ghetto.

That $2.8 million in savings that Texas hopes to achieve by cutting a food budget that was certainly already skimpy is only two-thousandths of one percent of the proposed Texas state budget, and a little less than one-hundredth of a one percent of the proposed cuts to last year’s state budget.  This $2.8 million is approximately 11 cents a year for every resident of Texas, and remember that skipping the meals is only part of the cost-savings.  If I lived in Texas I would willingly give 11 pennies a year to make sure that my state was treating prisoners in a humane fashion. 

In yesterday evening’s umpteenth debate between the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney followed all the rules that my public relations firm teaches executives for controlling contentious public situations: He insisted that everyone follow the rules, he was always courteous and respectful, and he wore a broad smile throughout the debate.

And I think it worked.  He and Herman Cain came off as the only two presidential acting candidates.  Santorum looked honest but strident.  Bachmann diminished herself into a “mom candidate.”  Paul came off as an angry dodderer, while Newt seemed to try a little too hard to assume an Olympian attitude.

Rick Perry?  He seemed to be out-of-sorts, as if he were doing the cha-cha while everyone else was twisting the night away.  He seethed with anger and frustration.  He was like a guy who comes to a frat party looking for a fight because he’s just so pissed off and doesn’t even know why. 

And Mittman certainly did act the part of the conciliatory frat president—AKA Chief Executive Officer—when he put his hand on Perry’s shoulder and essentially told him to “cool off.”

There wasn’t much to the debate.  Whether it was Cain’s 9-9-9 plan, immigration or Romney’s stand on health care, all the candidates preferred to toss about words and phrases completely devoid of context or definition.  Whether the pose was studious, earnest or concerned, all actively avoided analysis of specific proposals.  They tended to bicker over minute facts, and in these cases, for example on how much unemployment there was in Texas or if Romney ever hired an illegal alien, both candidates involved tended to lie or misapply.

Although Cain did a great job of looking as if he can run a meeting and energize the people working for him, he made the biggest verbal blunder of the evening.  It was his failure to define his apples-and-oranges analogy.  He kept saying that his 9-9-9 plan and state taxes were akin to comparing apples to oranges, but he never told us why.  The missing piece of information that he assumed we all knew was the fact that the 9-9-9 plan replaces federal taxes only.  If he had said that, even just one time, then he would not have come off looking like a fruitcake with his friendly assurances that apples were not oranges.

Despite this enormous failure to communicate, Cain’s friendly and courteous bearing saved the day for him.  He truly does look and act as if he can run a business.  Of course, a country is not a business and a president can’t just order everyone to start saying “Have a nice day” at the end of all phone conversations, as a CEO can.

In the back of my mind, Cain kept making me think of the Andy Griffith candidate in the Elia Kazan’s old black-and-white movie, A Face in the Crowd.  The Griffith character was folksy down-home southerner, whereas Cain plays the charismatic entrepreneur, but in both cases, their attractive demeanors conceal the fact that they are bought and paid for by an ultra-wealthy cabal that wants to subvert democracy and install policies that would take money from the poor and give it to the rich.  In the case of Cain, whose campaign is bankrolled and run by the ultra rightwing Koch Brothers and their operatives, the policies will also both weaken and pollute our public resources and spaces.  I think Bertram Gross called this approach “friendly fascism” about 30 years ago.

Some pundits are saying the race is down to three, but that’s being kind to the embarrassingly out-of-sync Perry.  The two Republican candidates most likely to snare the nomination at this point are a child of the ruling elite and the current face of the Koch Brothers’ version of friendly fascism.

Meanwhile, the most ideologically chilling moment of the Las Vegas debate came from the moderator, Anderson Cooper, right in the preamble to the main event.  Cooper, child of wealth and privilege himself, said that debate would determine “who should be the next President of the United States.”  The unstated but obvious suggestion was that our current POTUS, Barack Obama, was going to lose (unless you think Cooper was looking ahead to 2016?).

The mainstream news media followed this strategy in the 2010 election cycle, giving all coverage to the Republican primaries and none to the Democratic ones.  The assumption in 2010 was that the Democratic Party’s decisions on who should run were not newsworthy.  This election cycle, the Dems pretty much know who’s going to be at the top of the ticket, so I can understand the focus on the Republican race.  But to assume that it’s the race that counts is just another way to help the Republicans capture control of the country despite having policies favored by a minority of both voters and citizens.  It makes sense that a Vanderbilt heir like Anderson Cooper might want to do that.

Imagine Woodstock 1969 with worse music and more sex and drugs. Many tabloid newspapers like The Daily Mail and The New York Post did just that this week and called it Zuccotti Park.

The Mail story was particularly scurrilous, claiming that lurking prominently among the Occupy Wall Street protesters congregating in lower Manhattan’s financial district were junkies and homeless people.  The headline focused on sex and the photos tried their best to show an orgy of sex-and-drugs.  But the best the Mail could come up with were a couple hugging innocently and another, naked to the shoulders, tousling under a blanket, plus a couple of young ladies who must have lost their way because they looked as if they were getting ready for a slutwalk.  

The Post story followed the Mail model of putting sex in the headline but talking about crime, with one difference: the photos suggested that the protest had become homeless city central for the three-state New York metro area.  

These sex-drugs-and-crime stories represent the slimiest sort of journalism because they use a few isolated incidents and turn them into a false impression that they then serve to an innocent public. There can be no doubt that like in every large gathering of young people some will light up a joint and a few will express their sexuality inappropriately.  And what crowd does not attract its share of pickpockets and other rip-off artists? Marches do, parades do. The Louvre Museum, which is packed all the time, has signs everywhere to watch for pickpockets.  So big deal! There’s nothing different—nor newsworthy—about these occurrences at Occupy Wall Street.

This tabloid press fear mongering plays to the lowest common denominator of public discourse.  The rhetorical strategy is to make those who are afraid of crime, the homeless or sexual freedom come to dislike the protestors and what they are saying.  Studies over the past few years suggest that the very groups most prone to fearing crime, the young and the homeless are also the groups that have been left behind because of the financial machinations against which the Occupy Wall Street protestors have organized. We’re talking about the less educated population, especially but not exclusively in rural areas.

What remains to be seen is if this approach will turn tabloid readers against the Occupy Wall Street protesters.  Will they channel the anger they are rightfully feeling about the growing inequality of wealth and income towards those who have taken to the streets on their behalf?

I have no idea, but I don’t think it’s going to matter.  Without a political platform, the Occupy Wall Street movement will eventually die out.  The Tea Party had a set of action points from day one.

The next step for Occupy Wall Street should be for each local movement to elect someone to a central national committee that would then develop a 10-, 12- or 16-point plan that could be described in one page.  Another next step would be to identify candidates who will run in Democratic primaries as Occupy Wall Street candidates. 

All the movement has to do is imitate the Tea Party to become a political power.  It’s true that the mainstream news media won’t be helping the Occupy Wall Street movement along as it did the Tea Party, at least not until the Occupanti can claim it made the difference in winning a few elections.  The standard for Occupy Wall Street will no doubt be higher at every step of the way than the Tea Party, to be sure.

But if organizers don’t get busy and draft a list of real-world demands, there will be no steps beyond the monotonous thump of the marchers until the weather turns bitter cold and the crowds begin dwindle into tiny pitter patters in the snow.

One of the recurring subthemes in the news lately has been the need for China to develop a consumer economy.  The latest to exhort the Chinese and their consumers about their frugal ways is The New York Times in a front-page article earlier this week titled “As Its Economy Sprints Ahead, China’s People Are Left Behind.”

The argument in the story is familiar: The policy of the Chinese government to keep interest rates low to consumers and feed Chinese industry with cheap state loans has sent Chinese inflation higher than what the average consumer can earn in a bank account. The result is a population that hoards money instead of spending it on raising their standard of living or quality of life. The couple whom the article features saves two-thirds of its income.  The article never points out that the United States faces the same problem of bank interest being less than inflation.

The article then asserts that to keep its economy growing, the Chinese must develop policies that encourage their consumers to spend more of what they make. It warns that if the Chinese consumer doesn’t get off its duff and start buying things then China will go the way of Japan, which has only the third largest economy in the world.  

The underlying premise of the article is that without growth, an economy must suffer.  It’s the basis of most economic text books and all economic planning in the United States.  It’s taken for granted in virtually every political debate and news story. No politician ever leaves economic growth out when talking about his or her plans. Even thoughtful progressive economists such as Paul Krugman often advocate policies based on the idea that the only strong economy is a growing economy.

But in a world of rapid climate change and diminishing resources, continued growth based on fossil fuels will lead to an ecological disaster for the human race.   As a species and as individual nations, we have to learn to manage economies that do not have to grow to thrive. 

While the makers of waffle irons, video games and golf clubs might not be as happy, wouldn’t the world be better off in the long run if the Chinese people maintain their frugal ways, which stem as much from ancient traditions as they do from active government policy?

Isn’t it possible that the Chinese government has peered realistically into the cold hard facts of the looming ecological disaster, instead of swerving away in disbelief as Americans seem to be doing.  After all, the Chinese currently invest far more money into alternative energy like wind and solar each year than any other country. China tried with some success to curb population growth for years by implementing a one-child policy. Throughout the ages, population growth has been the primary but not sole instigator of economic growth.

There is also no doubt that the Chinese are doing their share of polluting, but they spoil the air, land and sea less per capita than we do in the United States.  If the consumer remains frugal, the Chinese carbon footprint could stay fairly small, and get smaller as the country transitions to alternative energy and makes its industrial processes more environmentally friendly.

I hope that the Chinese government eventually rewards small savers for their service to the country’s growth spurt by raising interest rates on savings deposits.  But other than that, I see very little wrong with the current Chinese economic policies.  Chinese politics, internal security and free speech issues—now that’s a different story. 

Our trip to France ended on a dyspeptic note in its very last phase. After enjoying the comforts of French culture, cuisine and superb organizational skills for 16 days, we stepped into the paranoid world of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

We had cleared our passports at the passport control point and our luggage had cleared customs. We were quickly rolling our bags towards the exit when we ran into another line: We had to go through the entire security process once again, emptying our pockets, taking off our shoes, displaying the laptop, passing our bodies through a zone of light radiation and finally putting ourselves back together. When I say we, I mean every traveler on the plane.

Meanwhile, our suitcases chugged through an X-ray machine and into the bowels of the Pittsburgh International Airport’s state-of-the-1992-art luggage transport system. We were told we would find our suitcases in the L section of the baggage claim area. This re-security operation took the efforts of six people.

Now in what way is the United States safer because DHS wasted everyone’s time and spent all that money redoing what the French had already done? Hadn’t the French X-rayed our luggage, given us an extensive oral questionnaire, put us through the security process and checked our passports on eight separate occasions? French security even searched the Delta airline representative who led us on the bus from the gate to the aircraft. Then upon landing, U.S. personnel checked our passports and our luggage.

Why this extra layer? Does DHS think that people have access to their luggage while in flight? Or that a flight attendant sold someone something dangerous or useful to a terrorist attack that he found in the in-flight catalogue? 

It was impossible for any passenger to acquire or store anything that could be construed as dangerous. The French do as good a job as we do, if not better, in managing security at airports. The rescreening is a total waste of money. As far as my experience and research shows, this recheck of security doesn’t happen anywhere else in the industrialized West.

The federal government would be better off ending these senseless additional screenings and reallocating these wasted funds to creating productive jobs, not “make busy” work.

The Occupy Wall Street movement got a big boost this week when organized labor decided to get involved.  Members of several New York unions came out to Wednesday’s demonstrations and national unions expressed their support. 

The intervention of the AFL/CIO means more than just more people protesting and more people getting arrested.  The unions bring two great strengths to the Occupy Wall Street movement:

• Their ability to organize, which could help sustain the protest for many weeks and months.
• The fact that they have an action plan for changing the country’s direction, something that Occupy Wall Street doesn’t yet have.

The movement is also picking up steam in the news media, with coverage every day for the past week.  As late as last week, I saw a lot of Facebook complaints that the news media were ignoring the Occupy Wall Street movement.  I didn’t think it was so then, and it certainly isn’t true now.

And it looks as if our elected officials and candidates have stopped ignoring the Occupy Wall Street movement.  This morning, President Obama said he believes that the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects the current national mode. Amen to the truth!

Until President Obama made his remarks this morning, Democrats have been ignoring or running away from Occupy Wall Street.  Running away would describe the comments of our Vice President Joe Biden, who yesterday compared Occupy Wall Street to Tea-partiers, who in Joe’s version hated the TARP bailout of the financial system.  Of course the easy-to-understand code embedded in Biden’s remark is that both are extremists who have no place in politics.

Now it looks as if Joe Biden’s boss, the POTUS AKA Barack Obama is overruling him and sympathizing with the protestors and unions.  Something else the unions may have been behind since they and trial lawyers are traditionally the two biggest donors to Democratic candidates and the Democratic party.

Let’s hope the Democrats build on Obama’s remarks.  Imagine if Barack Obama or Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi were to speak at an Occupy Wall Street rally and tell demonstrators what the Dems intend to do about the growing inequity of wealth in this country.  A jobs program.  Higher taxes on the wealthy.  More investment in public institutions.  Wouldn’t that energize many of the protestors to volunteer for and vote for Democrats?