Trav Trivia

Volume 4, Number 38

December 29, 2008 -- Many years ago somebody wrote a little satirical piece in the New Yorker Magazine about the day the law of averages broke down, and, among other things, the entire population of New York City tried to cross the George Washington Bridge at the very same time. Perhaps I’ve become too jaded, but it seemed to me this was a week in politics when the law of averages broke down, in that nothing of any consequence happened, which is against all odds.

There was president-elect Obama taking a break where the state dinner would be a Luau. Reporters who followed him to Hawaii were delighted not to be in Crawford, watching Bush cut brush (as much as I revere my native state, there is not much in it that resembles Oahu). Without hard news to deal with they resorted to things like the Obama workout schedule, a routine that would give a professional athlete a run for his money. The man has gone to a gym 48 days in a row, for about 90 minutes a visit. He lifts weights about four times a week, spends time on the treadmill and plays pick-up basketball. The weightlifting is half of his workout, the other half devoted to cardiovascular rotation stuff like the treadmill, stationary bicycle, and elliptical machine. It makes politics look like his spare-time hobby.

Many of the high-profile columnists have taken time off over the holidays. Most of those who remained on duty used their space to chastise us for our behavior which led to the state we find ourselves in now. Bob Herbert wrote a column in the New York Times entitled “Stop Being Stupid” that pretty much summed it up. We’ve indulged in: tax cuts we cannot afford … bailouts of wealth-destroying companies … energy policies or lack of same that have not encouraged alternative sources or diminished our craving for foreign oil … lack of national education standards … immigration policies that allow us to educate foreign students then make them go back to their own country to put these new skills to good use. NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman says to look in the mirror; we as a country have become General Motors as a result of our “national drift" and “We need a national makeover.” And you thought that was just for the metrosexuals.

On the bailout front, the Associated Press contacted 21 banks that have been the recipients of at least $1 billion from the stimulus kitty and not a one of them could, or would, tell what happened to the funds given to them, of course, by you and me for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. There is no oversight whatsoever. This fits well with Herbert’s “Stop Being Stupid” column. It shouldn’t, and doesn’t have to be that way. Nobel Prize economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman points out that under the Franklin Roosevelt, New Deal oversight was built into the programs from the beginning. There was a powerful, independent “division of progress investigation” watching over the Works Progress Administration. All we have is Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and he is more like the hounds joining up with the fox.

Obama is still taking his lumps for inviting the Rev. Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration. As NY Times columnist Frank Rich put it, “Fighting AIDS is not a get-out-of-homophobia-free card.” He quotes a writer at Time Magazine: the president-elect is “a very tolerant, very rational-sounding sort of bigot.” It doesn’t go down easily for people like Timothy McCarthy, of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, who served on the Obama campaign’s National Lesbian Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Leadership Council. They believe Warren should “recant his previous statements about gays and lesbians, and start acting like a Christian.” I don’t know about that. Asking a televangelist to “act like a Christian” is asking a lot.

The line between broadcast and politics is a thin one. Fred Thompson, the sometimes senator, sometimes actor, is taking over for Bill O’Reilly on radio, a two-hour show. How will he handle it without a script? As I recall, he didn’t do all that well in the Republican debates. Moving in the other direction, from entertainer to politician, Al Franken now has a stunning lead of 47 votes in the recount of his race against the incumbent Senator from Minnesota Norm Coleman. If he is declared the winner he can claim the nickname earned by LBJ in his first statewide race in Texas: “Landslide Lyndon” Johnson. And yes, the Franken audience for his old show on Air America Radio did have a larger audience than 47. Ex-governor and ex-presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, in addition to his FOX News television program, has landed his own radio talk show, just up his alley, since he started his career in broadcast.

New careers await those about to be cut loose from the White House, and some of them received little gifts from under President Bush’s Christmas tree. Secretary of State Rice was given an appointment to the John F. Kennedy Center’s board of trustees. No money, but a lot of nice perks. Others received appointments to the board of trustees of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations, and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. It means those wonderful people who have given us these last eight years are let loose to work their magic in other areas.

Meanwhile what Timothy Eagan writing in the New York Times called “the White House no-regret fest” continues, Bush looking at history’s rear-view mirror. In something like 11 exit interviews he manages to blame everything that has happened on someone else. Several years ago when I stepped up to a Mac G4 it came with a female voice that shouted out, every time I made an error, “Not My Fault.” It almost drove me mad until I finally got someone to get rid of it, and thankfully when I went to the G5 it left that shrew behind. Bush reminded me of that episode. “Not My Fault” indeed.

This is the time of the year for reflection on what occurred during the previous 12 months. Humorist Dave Barry probably has the most entertaining take on the events of 2008. If you haven’t read it, it is a little long, but here it is:

http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/dave-barry/v-fullstory/story/826965.html

Blame Calvin Trillin and his new book on politics in verse for this. Just because he does it well doesn’t excuse the encouragement it gives the rest of us.

As one year ends another wends its way into or view

Let us reflect on things we’d like to see the New Year do.

 

Of course we hope to fix those crises hovering over head

But in addition there are a few more things I’d like it to be said.

 

For O’Reilly and Sean Hannity those mouths that roar at Fox

Say I on both your houses may there come to be a pox.

 

May Cheney, Dick, be sent to Carnivores Anonymous

To extirpate the sense of guilt of what it is he’s done to us.

 

May President Bush grasp at last what all the polls expose

Like in the tale the boy spoke up “the king’s not wearing clothes.”

 

May the two famed body builders Vlad P. and Barack

Vie only over chiseled pecs and don’t threaten to attack.

 

May Nancy Pelosi wield at will a useful shepherd’s crook

To ensure the Dems in Congress all play nicely by the book.

 

As for Iran’s Ahmadinejad let us tell him this

We’ll treat you as our brother … once you’ve gone and had your Briss.

 

Let’s lift our glass in hope, this New Year’s Eve

To toast “Good Health,” a national plan that Congress will achieve.

 

May Wall Street scavengers of wealth soon come to be

Convicted and be forced to live in abject penury.

 

May Rumsfeld, Kristol, Pearle all hawks of Iraqi war

Be treated as war criminals which is what they are.

 

For you and me I say it’s time to come and fill the cup

The bad dream of the past eight years at last is finally up.

 

So pour the bubbles, wear funny hats, and give a rousing cheer

For this, a new beginning, make ’09 our great new year.

Volume 4, Number 37

December 22, 2008 -- On the week before Christmas Obama picked his team …

Eight who went to state schools

Seven Ivy Leaguers

Six are from the Midwest

Five of feminine gender

Four African Americans

Three who are Hispanic

Two are good Republicans

And a preacher, anti LGBT

That last choice of Rick Warren to make the inaugural invocation had a unifying effect, bringing together progressives and conservatives alike each to object to it fervently, one group saying how can you give a gay-bashing, pro-life, anti-science evangelical that national exposure with your approval, and the other side saying how can a social conservative pro-life minister give his blessing to an administration that is pro-choice? Obama only said he would try to unite people, he didn’t say they were going to like it.

Warren represents the new breed of young evangelicals who believe the overriding issues should be the fight against poverty, about the only thing he and Obama have in common. He puts his money where his mouth is. Admirably, instead of reveling in the usual mega-church big perks with donated funds, he spends 90 percent of his resources on fighting poverty. However, he still holds life begins at conception, opposes plan B birth control, stem cell research, in-vitro fertilization, and rallied his congregation to work to defeat the California Proposition 8 banning gay marriage. Is he homophobic? Of course not, he says. When “those people” came to us to protest we gave them water and doughnuts. The Dunkin’ Doughnuts way to salvation. Ezra Klein, at American Prospect, says be tolerant of Warren‘s intolerance.

Former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack is the pick for Secretary of Agriculture, which NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof calls the “weakest selection yet” because of his “longstanding ties to agribusiness interests.” Kristof, like many others, believes in reforming agriculture so that we “stop subsidizing corn that ends up as high fructose corn syrup inside soft drinks.” It looks like New York State will slap an 18 percent tax on non-diet, sugary soft drinks. Twenty-four million Americans now have diabetes. The idea is to save lives, and if we raise a little money to boot, shouldn’t hurt.

To shoe, not to boot, certainly made international news last week, and it wasn’t at the Italian fashion expos. President Bush ducked the shoes thrown by the Iraqi journalist, but could not duck the insult, which is considered grave in the Near East. I remember New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, when on the campaign trail, telling the story of meeting with Saddam Hussein, turning his foot over and exposing the dirty sole only to discover that he had perpetrated an insult. Just from exposing his shoe sole. I have a feeling if it had been John McCain he would have ripped off his $550 Italian loafers and thrown them back at the guy. I question that Bush could have kept the shoes. It might have been construed as a gift from a foreign government.

Replacements for people Obama is taking out of the Senate to join his cabinet continue to stir up the madding crowds. Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich insists he is innocent and will not resign. It’s kind of the “I did not sexually harass that Lady, I only asked to sleep with her, I didn’t actually sleep with her” defense. The late Molly Ivins always called Rick Perry of Texas “Governor Good Hair.” Oh, would she were here today to comment on Rod the Clod.

Caroline Kennedy wants to be the next senator from New York, and it gives New York Governor Paterson something of a problem. She hasn’t earned her dues, some say, and conservative columnist Kathleen Parker believes she could be called the Democratic Sarah Palin for lack of experience. But unlike Palin, she has a law degree from Columbia and has co-written two critically acclaimed books about the Bill of Rights.

But do we want political dynasties? Not particularly, but consider this: Chris Dodd (son of Tom), Evan Bayh (son of Birch), Mitt Romney (son of George), Jeb Bush (son of George), Mary Bono (widow of Sonny), Lincoln Chafee (son of John), Nancy Pelosi (daughter of former congressman Thomas D'Alesandro Jr.), Jesse Jackson Jr. (son of Jesse), Andrew Cuomo (son of Mario), Richard Daley (son of Richard), Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (daughter of Illinois House speaker Michael Madigan, and Caroline's own Uncle Ted. She is 51, competent and intelligent. But she needs to be seen and heard to show how she thinks and acts. From the Democratic Party point of view, whoever Patterson picks should be able to be elected when the appointed term is up in 2010.

It is too bad New York Governor Patterson can’t appoint Elliot Spitzer. Yes, I know, but look at it this way. He already has his scandal behind him, and I always thought, before his little eccentricities (paid for by his own money, not the people’s money) came to light, that he would be a great asset in national politics. Kind of Henry Waxman without the mustache. And I believe I read that some of the money from the family charity evaporated in the $52 billion Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme. Jay Leno has already flogged this, but you can’t help but question who is paying for him to live in his $7 million apartment waiting for trial? You are not supposed to deprive him of his lifestyle until proven guilty. It can’t be cheap to live in that apartment. There must be dues, assessments, servants, expenses of all kinds for which we, the people, are footing the bill. NBC news man Brian Williams pointed out that the $50 billion said to have vanished is “roughly three times as much as the proposed Detroit bailout.”

Actually, what NY Times columnist Roger Cohen calls “Grand Theft Auto” is no longer proposed. General Motors and Chrysler took their tin cups to the White House. On Friday, President Bush announced emergency loans would be available to the auto industry. As NY Times columnist Bob Herbert put it “He looked like a boy who had been forced to eat his spinach, or drink his castor oil.” Ford said no thank you, we will go it alone. Stiff upper lip and all that.

We can only hope this bailout will work better than the financial bailout seems to have been doing so far. AIG, the company whose executives were caught spending $442,000 on a weeklong retreat at a California beach resort, has gone through most of the $123 billion bailout funds they have been given. Congress can’t get straight answers on how the $700 billion is being spent. It seems that the Treasury is doling out billions without trying to monitor the use of funds provided to specific financial institutions. NY Times columnist Frank Rich says the Bush administration “gutted" the modest restrictions on executive pay. So far Henry Paulson, in charge of the bail-out, wants us to trust him and have faith that everyone is doing the right thing. So far nothing seems to be working, and nobody knows how the money is being spent. I get the feeling handing Paulson $700 billion was like giving your teen-age son his first credit card.

It must be a bitter pill for conservatives like the Bush Administration to swallow in having to interfere with the free market system. As John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, put it: “The Democrats usually support free minds but not free markets, while the Republicans usually support free markets, not free minds.”

China seems to be developing some kind of managed free market, but I read in Sunday’s paper that, despite the communist idea of all for one and one for all, it has no real Social Security, health insurance, or unemployment insurance. Sounds Republican to me. I also read that we have 16 different intelligence agencies. Is it intelligent to have 16 intelligence agencies?

A little language question I have been wrestling with cropped up today in William Safire’s Sunday NY Times column: how to address your e-mail recipient. Letters once always began “Dear Somebody or other." Safire says "Dear Sir" is dead. Nobody sends e-mails like that anymore. Except me. And when I do I ask myself, should I do that? Does that sound right? I never get a “Dear Trav” e-mail. If there is a greeting at all, it is usually a simple, cheery “Hi.” Nothing wrong with that. I’m happy to get them that way, I just don’t feel comfortable sending them that way. Coming from me it sounds flippant. I don’t do cheery well.

In the School of Business at the University of Texas in the forties the most dreaded required course was the one on Business Letter Writing. The man who taught it was much reviled, a martinet, stickler for perfection both in content and in form, the latter being particularly difficult in the time of the manual typewriter (younger persons may have to have someone explain what that was. It’s like when I was in Fort Worth working for a Tandy company and I mentioned to a guest who was a respected Tandy engineer that my old stereo system was on the fritz and he said “no problem, let me look at it” but when he did he said in horror, “My God, that thing has tubes.”) I worked hard on the Business Writing course, pulled a decent grade and say begrudgingly it was the only course I ever took that actually taught me something about writing advertising copy. But left me constitutionally unable to begin a communiqué without a salutation beginning with “Dear,” yet that now comes off as “stuffy.” Still. what else is there? “Greetings” sounds official. “Yo” looks like you’re trying to be with it, as would “Hey, Dude.” I may settle for a straightforward “Listen Up.”

Of course, same problem at the mail’s end;. “Yours truly? “Cordially?” “Best Wishes?” “Ten Four?” Or the old PR news release -30- ? I believe I will settle for a word used a time or two by the late E.B. White, in his honor if for nothing else, although a little ancient Roman, I like the sound of it: VALE.

As this is written on the day of December 21st it is the Winter Solstice for 2008 and is the beginning of Hanukkah. With all of that in mind, may I say to Wickens everywhere good wassailin; to the celebrants of Hanukkah, May there always be a plethora, of candles for your Menorah; and for Christians Merry Christmas with much frankincense and myrrh for your stockings, and to all ...

Volume 4, Number 36

December 15, 2008 --

Chicago, Chicago, That Peddling Town

Chicago, Chicago Where You Lay Your Money Down

Pay A Guy Top Dollar You He’ll Choose You

Can’t Lose In Chicago, Chicago

The Governor Is Such a Tawdry Clown

This State Seat, The Senate Seat, You Just Have To Pay

If You Want’a Go Down To The Great Beltway

Say You’ll Have The Time

The Time of Your Life If You Put Up The Cash

And Play Your Cards Right In Chicago

That No Ethics Town

 

It’s an old song, but appropriate when updated. As the whole world is now well aware Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich ushered in a week of extraordinary revelations of spectacular fraud by being arrested for blatantly trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama. What takes you breath away is how publicly he went about it. He wanted money, he wanted a job, he had something of value and he was not about to just give it away. However, you would think a man brought up the culture of Chicago and Illinois politics, famed for what Texans who travel in Mexico know as “Mordida” … the pay off, the bribe. We might call Chicago the Mexico City of the North.

Jacob Weisberg of Newsweek magazine says “more than 1,000 people have been convicted in political corruption cases since 1971, including an astonishing 30 aldermen.” And as even late-night talk show host report if (or when) “Rod the Clod” goes to jail it means four of the last eight Illinois governors will have done time. I guess it’s tradition.

Jonathon Alter, columnist and senior editor for Newsweek, says it isn’t Lincoln who is spinning in his grave. It is the “dearly departed swindlers, bag men, con artists and assorted ward heelers who would have been spinning in their mausoleum vaults at how poorly Blogojevich played their game.” Following up on politics as a musical farce, some lines in the lyrics of “Master Of The House,” the innkeeper’s song in “Les Misérables” come to mind. “Ready with a handshake and an open palm.” Or “Nothing gets you nothing every thing has got a little price.” And “Do whatever pleases Jesus do I bleed ‘em in the end.” And Rod the Clod ran as a reformer.

The man just wasn’t very slick. I expect my con artists to be a little more polished. On a wire-tap recording he said about Obama: “Unless I get something real good, s--t, I'll just send myself [to D.C.]. …. the mother f----r's not willing to give me anything but appreciation." A poll shows 84 percent of Illinois voters believe that Rod should resign, which leave s me wondering where the other 16 percent have their heads.

Of course, like every American the man is innocent until proven guilty, even though he is right there on tape violating the law, and even though he has asked for bribe money right in front of witnesses. United States Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, he who nailed Cheney’s pal Scooter Libby (but missed on Karl Rove) has made sure everybody has access to the evidence, which might be a problem. There is no way Blagojevich can get a fair trial in the legal sense of finding jurors who never heard of him and have no preconceived opinion on his guilt Illinois and Louisiana have long vied for “most corrupt” honors and it looks like the Lincoln state has won (eat your hearts out Huey Long followers). The Pelican State has a lovely little word, “lagniappe,” that means a little something extra and I know I’m using it in the wrong context, but it’s such a lovely sounding word it ought to stand in for Mordida.

On the subject of bad guys from Chicago I would include Sam Zell, who NY Times columnist Frank Rich calls the “magnate who bought and maimed the Tribune newspapers,” which includes the L.A. Times and several others he has driven them into bankruptcy. In my long ink-stained-fingers career I did business with at least thirty-five or more daily newspapers, and despite an advertisers adversarial relationship I loved them, and the people in them. For years I flipped through about five newspapers every day, including the L.A. Times, and the New York Times. They are all now in trouble, and if they go what will replace them? No other media has so many reporters, covering so many stories, in depth. A reporter for the L.A. Times might spend two or three months on an assigned story. Of course broadcast gives you moving pictures, and audible dialogue, but the only cover the surface. In a satirical piece published in the New Yorker in the thirties about the rise of digests, like the Reader’s Digest, spoofed they reduced a complete Hemmingway novel to the one word, “bang,” the comparison to broadcast to print is valid. We need both.

The real version of the tune “Chicago” has a line that is no longer valid - in Chicago “they do things they don’t do on old Broadway.” In this, the week of fraud and swindle came the report of the largest investor swindle pulled by one man, in history. Bernard Madoff, a trading powerbroker for more than four decades, is said to have confessed to a fraud that will cost his wealthy investors at least: $50 billion! Now I can see how you can spend and lose millions, maybe, but $50 billion? Had to be a Ponzi scheme; keep taking in money, pay your old investor’s money you promised with money coming in from new ones, and finally you run out of new suckers. As a result, it is said an extraordinary number of people once wealthy, living the high life in condos and expensive apartments in Manhattan and Florida, are suddenly destitute. Will have to try to sell the condos and apartments just to eat, and good luck on that in the current real estate blowout.

This week it is like fraud is catching, spreading like the plague. A story in Sunday’s New York Times reads Marc S. Dreier’s “brazen swindle of some of New York’s savviest investors by one of New York’s more accomplished lawyers.” The man faked and sold promissory notes. This is a man who employs 250 lawyers, has offices in five cities.

At least $35 million in escrow that was to have been held by the firm seems to be missing and the firm can not make its payroll today of $2.6 million. The total amount of the swindle is said to be as much as $380 million. Now here is my question: where do you hide $380 million? Even living as high as the man is said to have lived, you would be hard pressed to spend it. Where did it go? Too much to stuff under a mattress. I want to hear more about this one. Lawyers, swindle, it could be a novel by Scott Turow.

I wish we could get out of money scandals and return to the old fashioned sex scandals. Think Eliot Spitzer, Jim McGreevey, Mark Foley, Ted Stevens, Larry Craig, Bob Ney, William Jefferson. So much more fun to read about.

Corruption is one of the three important things Obama will have to deal with, according to NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Corruption in Kabul, that is. “Many Afghans don’t want to buy our politics, or, more precisely, the politics of our ally, the corrupt government of President Hamid Karz.”

His other two issues are banks (he believes we should find out what the major banks are worth, decode if they have a viable chance of survival, and let that rest go down, about a 1,000 he thinks), and cars. “For far too long, Detroit made too may cars that people did not want to buy”, he says. “Bring in some visionaries and completely restructure.” Detroit claims they build cars people want. What they need to do is build cars people don’t really know they want until they see them. He was happy with a Sony Walkman and did not know he wanted an iPod until Job told him he did. Same with cars. You don’t see Buicks on college campuses.

The problem with the auto industry is so complicated it makes the head hurt. Arch conservatives always want to bust unions but wages are not the core of the problem. The $75 an hour claim is completely bogus. Raw costs per hour comparisons are very close. Foreign auto makers have a number of advantages going in. They went to the Southern States who were eager to find new jobs, new revenue, and willing to award enormous tax abatements and other perks like building new roads, then they built new state-of-the-art plants flexible enough to retool easily and quickly, hired a new and younger work force which cuts the cost of health care and does not have the burden of retirement benefits as yet. So how do we bail out Detroit? Retroactive tax abatements? Pick up a part of the tab for health care? Do the same for retirement benefits? Build them new factories? Looks hopeless. The Republican senators who shot down the bailout plan this week are from the South which been enriched by foreign auto makers coming in to their states. They could care less about Detroit, except as the home of the Supremes. If wages were the problem, whereas we were exporting manufacturing to countries with cheap wages, now we are importing the cheap wages instead. The Swedish government is preparing a $3.5 billion bailout for Saab and Volvo. Perhaps we should just assign our Big Three over to them and be done with it.

On the language front, the word “stimulus” is being replaced by the Obama transition team with the word “recovery.” Or as William Safire reports in the New York Times Sunday Magazine one headline writer wrote “Recovery Is In; Stimulus Is So Seven Months Ago.” You’ve got to get the words right.

Slate’s Ron Rosenbaum and I share a concern about Obama. He says once in the White House, he will not smoke. There goes the famous even temper and calm nerves for the man who has his finger on the “nuclear trigger.” This is no time for Obama to quit smoking. Hide it from Michelle. If Bill Clinton could hide Monica, you ought to be able to hide a cigarette or two. As one who smoked over four packs a day for over thirty years, I am surprised I am still alive after quitting. With my personality change it’s a wonder someone didn’t just kill me that first year, either because they couldn’t stand my new persona or just to put me out of my misery.

Whether this comes under fraud or swindle, you be the judge. Thomas Eagan reports in the New York Times that the Administration has opened over 200 million acres of public land to oil and gas leasing in what the columnist calls a “plunderfest.” Even if all the accessible oil and gas were taken from federal land it would have zero impact on the price of oil. Forget the environment, let’s just give a little parting gift to our friends.

As for how the Bush Administration should leave the White House with ceremony. I suggest a little musical performance for the White House correspondents, based on a scene from “The Sound of Music.” Key figures sing in unison, as well as step forward to do their part.

[All, in unison]

There’s a glad sort of cheering

From the floor of the House

And the halls of the Senate, too

And over at the Post there is a Bob Woodward guy

Who like a bird pops out to say Cuckoo, toddle loo

Regretfully they tell us it’s our cue

And firmly they tell us that we’re through

Toodle loo

To say goodbye

To you

[Vice President Cheney]

So long, goodbye, auf Wiedersehen, farewell my reign, it ends, but didn’t it go well

[Karl Rove]

So long, farewell, goodbye, and adios Indict … not me … although they did come close

[Rumsfeld/Gonzales/Brownie/Liddy/Ashcroft]

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye We’re gone … though missed … like a finger in your eye

[Condoleezza Rice]

So long, farewell, au revoir, auf Wiedersehen Affairs … of State … I left are just insane

[President Bush]

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu I go, because, the Lord has told me to

[Administration members]

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye

[Guests: loudly in unison]

Good Riddance

Volume 4, Number 35

December 8, 2008 -- The Broadway Musical “Pajama Game” included one number rendered by a time study and efficiency expert that began:

“When I go to sleep, I don't undress.

That's right, I sleep in all my clothes.

I must confess.

Sure it's a strange way to behave.

And I will admit that the suit gets mussed and it gathers lint and it picks up dust,

but think of the time I save.”

Could be the theme of the Obama Transition Team, hitting the decks running now to save time once the administration is on GO and to look for efficiency. They have dispatched teams of experts to conduct efficiency studies of the various agencies and to look at how contracts are being awarded under the current system. Simple. You just pass them out to buddies.

This period in politics feels like Spring Training. The team is being pulled together. Strategy is developing while we await the start of the new season of play. There is general agreement that competence is valued over ideology by the new administration, a shock to the nervous system after eight years of being Bush-whacked. Imagine the thought of smart, capable people advising the president and carrying out his policies. Considering the strong personalities being chosen for the new team expect “vigorous debate” among the top advisers in contrast to the Bush years. According to journalist Bob Woodward, Bush never liked debate, avoided sitting in on discussion meetings preferring to go with his gut, another way of describing his Moses complex, except rather than getting his orders from above on tablets, he got them in his gut.

With people like strong-willed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Republican appointed Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, former Marine commandant General Jim Jones, a buddy of John McCain, as National-Security Advisor, and neither Eric Holder (probable Attorney General) nor Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual being exactly wusses, the air around the White House may turn blue from “vigorous debate.” Obama is going to need a strong constitution to hold that little group together.

Columnist Frank Rich weighed in on this subject in Sunday’s New York Times about “eight years of a presidency that valued cronyism over brains (or even competence) … embraced an anti-intellectualism apotheosized by Sarah Palin.” However, as a caveat, Rich made note of “the difference between intelligence and wisdom.” No doubt these people are smart. How wise they are remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, we’ve got a couple of months before they get their chance to save the economy, save the auto industry, and save the world from Barbarism.

Barbarism is the right word to use when talking about terrorists. Ex-moderate Republican Congressman from Iowa, Jim Leach, now a professor at Princeton, says “the Mumbai catastrophe underscores the importance of vocabulary … consider the Mumbai attack not as an act of ’war’ but as an act of ‘barbarism’ … the former implies a cause: a national or tribal or ethnic rationale that infuses a sacrificial action with some group’s view of heroism; the latter is an assault on civilized values, everyone’s.” He is right. Words matter. What we have is not a “war,” but a police action against barbarism. It is civilization, all of civilization, against barbarism.

If all civilized countries of the world can look at terrorism this way we may have a better chance to a united front. As it is, the “coalition of the willing,” originally composed of 45 countries, is now down to 18 and most of them will be leaving Iraq before the end of the month when the U.N. mandate expires. The willing have become more unwilling.

Continuing to run down the “to do” list we come to the economy, and bailing out Wall Street. Despite Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson handing out some of his $700 billion like Henry Ford in the old days used to pass out dimes, it can not be said so far that the economy is stimulated. I know I don’t feel “stimulated.” Reports are that banks have been using the funds to shore up their balance sheets and to make acquisitions rather than lending money. Congress needs to get a grip on Paulson who does not seem to have a plan, or follow what Congress told him to do. He is just like a balding Santa Claus.

One way to stimulate the economy would be to turn Gov. Sarah Palin loose again on another shopping spree. I know, I know, she claims she had nothing to do with it, it being the campaign who did it, but that doesn’t fly since she sent low-level aides out to make purchases at places like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Brooks Brothers, Toys ‘R Us, and Victoria’s Secret. Official campaign filings show her fashion stylist was paid $54,900 by the Republican National Committee. The newest report appears to show about $23,000 in additional charges labeled as “campaign accessories” from a variety of stores. Her makeup artist was paid more than $110,000 for roughly two months of work. Palin, the campaign, what were these people thinking? And the CEOs of the big three auto makers are going to work for $1 a year?

Corporate profits have doubled since November 2001, employee productivity has risen more than 15% and Americans have been working harder (now the hardest working people in the world, beating out Japan), yet the average wage for the typical American worker has edged up just 1% (after inflation). And now the typical American worker is lucky just to have a job. If you have a job, will you be able to send your kid to college? Tuition and fees increased 439% from 1982 to 2007, while median family income rose 147%. But not everyone is hurting. Take Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon. He received a $4 million bonus in 2008 plus 225,000 shares of restricted stock. He will be making $2.06 million a year base salary next year as he gets a 10% increase. The man did such a fine job of getting the price per barrel of oil so high we paid up to $4 a gallon at the pump that he deserves it.

One couple who are losing their home will still come out well anyway. George and Laura Bush have purchased a home in the Preston Hollow area of Dallas, joining other such notables as Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and Ross Perot, onetime presidential candidate. They will not have to suffer the indignity of proving their ethnicity since this neighborhood of fine Americans got rid of the neighborhood covenant in the year 2000 that read "Said property shall be used and occupied by white persons only except these covenants shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of different race or nationality in the employ of a tenant.” In this country, as late as the year 2000? How could Perot get away with that while running for president? Perhaps he did not live there then, but just belonging to a segregated country club was political suicide then I thought. Reading the covenant, there was probably one out. If one of Cuban’s multi-millionaire players on his team had wanted to live there, they could have hired white servants and publicly faked a role reversal. That might have made a TV sitcom.

As for a rescue of the automobile industry, it is hard to see how that can be done without establishing universal access to health care. Labor costs only make up 8% to 10% of the cost of a vehicle, so tearing up union contracts won’t make a dent. Companies like Toyota and Honda benefit from Japan’s universal health care system giving them a big competitive edge. What would happen, I wonder, if Congress said to the auto industry O.K., we will pick up the health care costs, but you take it in from there? And stop the lobbying, on which you spent nearly $50 million in the first nine months of this year, not to mention the $15 million in campaign contributions. Didn’t do you any good in the end, I’m afraid.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote “I think we should be talking about ‘bail,’ not ‘bailouts,’ regarding the people running the Big Three car companies and the lawmakers who "mindlessly protected them for so long.” Like many observers, he wants to tie in the use of new sources of energy to any kind of rescue plan. Thinks it would not only be good for the planet but the source of many new jobs and a boost to the economy. The country might as well get something for their money.

Possible new sources of energy pop up every day. Some chemical engineers at the University of Nevada are reporting that they've made a high quality bio-diesel fuel from coffee grounds. They believe about 340 million gallons of bio-diesel can be produced from coffee grounds world wide, and about $8 million in profits could be made from Starbuck’s grounds alone. Drink up, and save the world.

If the world is to be saved, more and more women seem to be jumping in there to try to do it. In Maine, women have been sworn in as Senate president, House Speaker, and has elected its first female Attorney General. In business, we used to talk about executives as “the suits.” Now I suppose we will be saying “the Pants Suits.” On the subject of the feminine gender, writing in “Slate” Emily Yoffe asks "Isn't it time for Hillary Clinton to get a quickie divorce from Bill?” That’s like a female friend of mine who was upset because a fellow she knows is getting a divorce, which means he will be let loose in the singles bars, a prospect that she finds appalling. The staff of “The Weekly Standard” are pro-Hillary, considering her to be a Hawk, and call her “The Great Right Hope.” The "Susan B. Anthony List" claims Clinton, as Secretary of State, will "promote abortion" around the world. That would be from what conservative syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker calls the “oogedy-boogedy” branch of the Republican Party. A male version would be the conservative state senator in Utah who proposes to mandate that all retailers must use “Merry Christmas.” All you Wicken retailers, you are on notice.

Writing in the New York Times Timothy Egan is upset because Joe the Plumber has a book coming out this month. A waste of paper, he says, a waste of advance money. I don’t know, Eagan, Cicero said "A room without books is a body without a soul." Even Joe the Plumber has a soul. Not much else, but at least a soul.

Olivia Judson in the New York Tims reports that “the woolly mammoth has had its genome sequenced, and is the first extinct animal to have done so.” Which means someday it could be cloned. In fact, it mans that some day perhaps a Neanderthal could be cloned. No, that would be redundant. We already have members of the Bush Administration in the White House.

Volume 4, Number 34

December 1, 2008 -- A man with a long beard has a decision to make when he retires for the evening. Does the beard go outside on top of the covers, or beneath them? In all of those years when I wore three piece suits there was always one uncomfortable moment when buying a new one; a little man would pop out from behind the wall somewhere holding chalk to mark fitting changes and a tape measure to check your inseam who would ask for an answer to a question calling for a decision similar to that required by the fellow with the long beard, “do you dress left, or dress right?” I was never comfortable with that.

Neither am I comfortable with all of the discussion taking place now about governing center-right, or center-left. Those on the right have always been convinced that Americans in general are center-right … until now, when they worry that the election indicates a shift to center-left. Those on the left are concerned that the choices Obama is making for high level positions in his administration indicate a shift to center-right. Conventional wisdom has always been that Americans believe they are center-right, tend to vote center-right, yet want the safety net and programs provided by center-left. People, what happened to just plain old center? The government is not a pair of pants.

The best indication of how an Obama administration will govern lies in the appointments being made. So far they do not appear to be hewing to any kind of strict right or left ideology, but seem to be jelling into a team of highly skilled pragmatists, which is getting pretty good press even from right wing commentators.

In keeping with the Santa Claus tradition, “Now Axelrod, Geithner, now Barnes and now Holder. On Favreau, on Summers, on Volker on Romer.” (Senior Advisor, Treasury Secretary, Director of White House Domestic Policy Council, Attorney General, Director of Speechwriting, head of the National Economic Council, serve on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory, and chair of the Council of Economic Advisers).

How many economists does it take to change an economy? Apparently, quite a few. Dealing with Wall Street financiers and Detroit auto makers as “visions of sugar plums danced in their heads” is going to take a lot of economist brain power.

Go for short term fix, or painful long term solutions? Ah, there’s the rub. Many on both sides of the aisle believe a big overhaul is needed in the financial market, and in the way we govern.

New York Times columnist David Brooks, though conservative, writes that the “U.S. has an inadequate rate of reinvestment in science and technology … American workers do not have a credible safety net.” He also wrote:

-pursue a course of major counter-cyclical spending, public investment and strong new regulation.

-public investment and a refurbished social safety net.

-wealth and income gains from the easy availability of credit were highly concentrated in the hands of a fortunate few.

Says Joe Conason in The New York Observer: rather than the “old ideologies of deregulation and budget-balancing, rather than government intervention and public investment” he calls “for a strict new regulatory regime and measures to ensure that the nation’s future prosperity will be broad-based and inclusive.”

Will the new administration concern itself with the equitable distribution of economic benefits as well as living standards of families with average incomes? Maybe we could stop throwing money at the top of the income ladder and move it down a few rungs.

No word on how to go after health care reform as yet. You can wait to solve the economic problem first, but health care is part of the economic problem. Here are some figures by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and reported by The Progress Report: Between 1999 and 2008, "premiums have increased 117 percent for families and individuals and 119 percent for employers” and “15.3 percent of Americans lack health insurance”, 23 percent forgo necessary care every year due to cost, and “22,000 uninsured adults die prematurely each year as a direct result of lacking access to care.". If they all dropped dead at one time in one place we might notice it, and perhaps even hard-right fearful of “socialism” might say we ought to do something about this.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is busy winding down or, as Jane Hamsher put it in the Huffington Post, “the BushCo crooks are holding their final heist.” They have about 20 controversial rules they plan to issue in their last few weeks. Rules to make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job; rules to give states authority to charge higher co-payments for doctor’s visits, hospital care, and prescription provided to low income people under Medicaid; rules to protect health care workers who refuse care on religious or moral grounds; and rules to allow coal companies to dump rock and dirt from mountain mining into nearby streams and valleys. More “compassionate conservatism.”

They’ve already left this legacy what the late historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called “the most dramatic, sustained and radical challenge to the rule of law in American history.” You can just hear them now in the White House, “Yes! We are number one.”

Even in grave time there is room for wit. At random, here are a few choice remarks that surfaced this week:

• “Is It Too Soon to Start Talking About the Failed Obama Presidency Just Because He Isn’t President Yet?” The working title for a piece conservative humorist P.J. O’Rourke is finishing for The Weekly Standard. Of course not. Why wait when the right-wing conclusion is forgone?

• “Will it be slander to say Obama's a carbon-based life form?" Jonah Goldberg, National Review editor-at-Large, on how unpopular it is to satirize Obama at the moment. I wouldn’t worry, Jonah. Brickbats will come.

• “Less a lame duck than a cooked goose.” Columnist Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post on President Bush.

• “Being smart is good; education is good; being a good father is essential. Being an egghead is cool.” Jeff Gedmin, president of Radio Free Europe, on “Obama is a weapon of mass attraction.”

• “Michelle is June Cleaver with a law degree.” Kathleen Parker, conservative syndicated columnist.

Hair has always been an annoying little personal problem of mine. The stuff on top of my head has always gown fast and unruly and I’ve always seemed to be out of fashion; in the crew-cut era I wore it very long, when long hair came back I switched to a crew cut, but the half dozen years or so I tried that were very unsuccessful. The hair on the back of my head grew twice as fast as the hair on the front of my head, so after a trim within five or six days I was wearing my own self-grown yarmulke. I did not attempt facial hair until up in years after an extended stay in the hospital. They had me up and walking down the hall, wearing a robe and what amounted to sandals, pushing the thing holding the catheter which looked like a crook, and it occurred to me that with my long white hair if I just had a white beard to go with it I could step into one of the rooms looking like an old testament figure and scare the hell out of somebody.

Since that time I have grown facial hair and it looks like I am about to be back in step with society. The Washington Post’s Reliable Source says the mustache is back after years and years of naked upper lips in Congress. I would give credit to Rep. Henry Waxman, who has now taken over as chairman of the important House Energy and Commerce Committee. His aggressive grab ‘em by the throat style has earned him the title of "the Mustache of Justice." There is something about that mustache of his that looks ominous. If you think he looks funny now, try to visualize him with a bare upper lip. Eric Holder, believed slated to be the next Attorney General, will not only be the first black to hold that office but also the first one to ever wear a mustache. Unlike Waxman’s, the mustache of Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod is described as “sad, droopy” and even, according to Britain’s Telegraph, as “lugubrious.” Which brings me to mine. In one word? “Raucous?” Or “Rampant?” Perhaps Untenable?” I used to say if you’ve seen my desk, you’ve seen my yard. Conditions are the same. If you have seen my mustache, you’ve seen how my mind functions. And it’s not a pretty sight.

The Bush Administration should throw itself a going away party as it leaves the White House.

You are invited to send suggestions here for a theme, what to call it, and appropriate activities and they will be included in travtrivia next week.