The Angry Middle

Nine Eleven

2011-09-10T22:03:00.003-04:00

"Is there so much love in the world that we can afford to discriminate against any kind of love?" Father Mychal Judge, FDNY, "Victim number 0001" September 11, 2001

Let’s face it. For 97-98% of us, we’ve done nothing to deserve the sacrifice of those who charged into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2011. Those heroes (whose brethren in the language of today are probably referred to as union thugs) as well as the victims of 9/11 have been given nothing by most of the people of the United States.

Sure, we’ll remember tomorrow, post some random patriotic Facebook status, watch some well made programming with bad music selections, make some random comments to others about how much the world has changed, etc. But mostly, we’ll just go on, like every other day since September, 2001. And I’m just saying if there was a President of the Haven’t Done Much to Help Out Since 9/11 to Change the Discourse and Path of America, I’d likely be a strong candidate.

We all have our 9/11 story, I was driving to Norwood to attend a Superintendents' meeting, heard on sports radio that it appeared that a small plane had hit one of the Towers, it was very confusing of course. And shortly after beepers (yes, beepers) and cell phones started blowing up, the meeting quickly split up, the drive home very stressful and my now wife for some reason was kept at work as everyone else headed home to figure out what the hell was going on. Rumors were everywhere, and we went to dinner where everyone was attached to CNN and then to church to reflect on the day's events. Strangely, we were drawn to the Catholic church in Malden, which just seemed a natural place to turn to. My mother was in Lower Manhattan, and the cell traffic was crazy there, and it took several hours to realize that yes, she was not celling umbrellas in the financial district and was at the Javits Center instead. Of course, she said she was worried about us, as if I had made a quick trip to Logan to fly out to California, but such is a mother's way. But for most, we were observers in a crazy affair. Meaning a history changing crazy affair.

Certainly there are the under 1% of the population who have served overseas, and their families who have sacrificed. Certainly those who were widowed/orphaned that day have sacrificed, but for most of us, it’s a time for us to celebrate the concept of American exceptionalism. This exceptionalism is mostly undeserved, but seen as some kind of birthright regardless of any particular effort to make this country a better place. We are the beneficiaries of our own zip codes.I’ve written about his before, http://theangrymiddle.blogspot.com/2007/09/beautiful-day.html,

I generally abhor the idea of patriotism. Not that I don’t love this country, it’s the best political organization ever, and in no country ever would someone like me ever have the opportunity that I do and have taken advantage of. Nor do I not appreciate those that have sacrificed so much, so that I could sit on my fat ass on Sundays and watch football, go to the polls a couple times a year to decide on my leaders, and have all the very real blessings of liberty.

However this bumper sticker patriotism cheapens the sacrifice of what all have done over the years.Instead of building on and appreciating the sacrifice of those on September 11th, we have instead become a bizarre collection of folks. We have grown-up’s who believe in crazy, conspiracy theories. I do understand that there is real evil in the world, and certainly people like Osama Bin Laden and Mohammed Atta were true purveyors of that evil. However, no where in Al-Qaeda’s wildest dreams was there an idea that there would be Sharia Law in the United States or that Massachusetts would become part of some North American caliphate. While I’m certain that may have been used in the recruitment of some Saudi teenager, in the same way you would recruit an 80’s American teenager with visions of Heather Locklear, it was certainly not part of the goals and objectives in the cave in Kandahar.

What was? The idea that America would become confused, coming out of a bar swinging at the first target that it saw, like a drunk with it’s nose bloodied. The initial targets were obvious and righteous, to root out terrorism where it was and where it was supported. Everything after that became blurry, and as much as I hate to say it, at this point, maybe the terrorists have won. We have become a security state, with limitations of civil liberties, we have become more intolerant of difference; one might say that this is the product of war, but we may be in a war that may not have a foreseeable end. In WWII we did incarcerate Japanese citizens and other parts that are in retrospect of course, disagreeable, however of course, this war came to an end, and it was not a permanent state of affairs. Our country has become divided, a place where thinking that not so many years ago would be extremist has become the mainstream of one of the parties, and to ignore it on the other side, a candidate would do at extreme peril.

So on this day, we will reflect, some will pray, and my hope is that all of us will think about what this day did to us, and ironically how it divided us. Those who went up the stairs in the towers, didn’t care what race you were, what class you were, whether you were a citizen, a visitor or an “illegal immigrant” hired to clean the 99th floor. They were there to serve and protect. It saddens me today that we have cheapened that legacy of service.

Tomorrow, I’ll put out my flag, hoping that this day, perhaps in the same way that one bargains with the unknown in a state of illness or dying, that we as a nation will create a new discourse. A discourse that understands that a victory cannot be won solely by counterinsurgency tactics, a security state or in the most primitive words “nuking them”, it is instead a grand strategy of regaining the idea of that “City on a Hill” not because of our amazing military power or the power of our economy but instead on being the country where one is free and as that a beacon to the world and with a people able to create and achieve the level of accomplishment based on effort and ability. That is where the American dream appears to have been abandoned; we have become a nation of “nattering nabobs of negativity”. One hopes that as usual as a people we will rise above, or else the terrorists have won.

Education Month

2011-09-06T20:23:00.003-04:00

To all kids, adult students and teachers and other educators returning to school, my wishes for a great school year. America's greatest investment in its future is in public education. A much maligned system but the system that has made America great through access to a pathway to the American dream. It is your bridge to being a life long learner and the most valuable of intergenerational gifts. If there is a teacher that lit this fire, try to figure out how to pay homage to their legacy.

So it's just easier to multitask and start with my Facebook post but being that it's September and the beginning of school, I just wanted to reflect on education for a couple of minutes. Now, as I said I work in education so I usually steer away from it so this is more of a tribute to school.

I'm a man of many words who is enchanted by the sound of his own voice. I'm intellectually arrogant and very thankful for those who have brought me down this path, because, my friends once you get into middle age, there is nothing more annoying than a dumb@ss, ignorant, f#ck. I'd rather have someone says something crazy that they made up instead of just parroting something idiotic that they heard somewhere else.

So just a couple teachers to think of. Not necessarily the best but memorable nonetheless. There was a series of teachers in junior high and high school who seemed more concerned with some weird code of discipline than if any learning was taking place, organizing kids, sorting them out, sometimes by academic achievement, sometimes by sports talents or who their parents were. Wanting you to memorize prepositions or some other nonsense instead of spending time on learning and critically thinking. But good or bad, these are experiences that build us and if you can reflect critically and clearly can help you to figure alot out, the greatest gift of age is reflection.

First from Maury Elementary School in Alexandria, Virginia, Mrs. Smith, I can barely remember her but I remember being pulled out of Elementary school classes for something called CLC. So instead of Mrs. Gill making you hold a trashcan over your head in punishment (because I guess that's what they do in Korea) we interviewed people, got to make announcements for Black History month over the loudspeaker (where I learned about Harriet Tubman)and put together a newspaper. And read whole books, not just little kid crap.

Next I can think of Mrs. Francis, famous in Harwich Public Schools as the meanest teacher ever. Fireball Francis scared the hell outta kids, she would throw the classes papers onto the ground if they were unalphabetized, and generally just make kids lives hell. However once when I asked her why some Indian slums had television attennas, she said to me "well Nyal, some people would rather have a hot dog on a silver platter than a piece of roast beef on a chipped plate". Stuff like that just sticks with you.

High school is a mess. For us boys, we seemed more concerned with throwing stuff at each other and general horseplay and mischief than anything else. We went through 4 9th grade earth science teachers including a green beret reservist before they find someone who could actually make it, and that was a 22 year old female UMass grad. I admired the former Ms. Farrell who left being a nun to teach English to us, Mr. Lynch who handed me one of my favorite books Man's Search for Meaning as a 13 year old 9th grader (which is difficult to reconcile with the same kids who were tossing wax peeled off from lab tables at each other)but ultimately it was Mr. Larson, a 12th grade government teacher who inspired all. I'm not sure how he ended up there at Harwich HS. Hippie, Deadhead graduate of Berkley who just blew everyone's mind by making you think and learn. Read 1984 and discuss current world politics, there are few kids you'll meet who weren't completely blown away by this man, no matter where you were in this highly tracked system, his NEED TO KNOW tests were stoppages in time, where every senior would actually study, this in a high school where few needed to bring home books, and homework was usually done on the bus, during study hall or wherever you could crib and cram quickly.

There's people I have to thank on the College level, Sally Polito at CCCC who told me I didn't really know how to write and then remarkably, taught me how to do it. Roberta Roberts at Framingham who taught me how to research, Catherine Walsh at UMassBoston who taught me about teaching and ultimately Sonia Nieto at UMass Amherst who exemplified what it was to be a Latino educator.

It's difficult to illustrate what a great educator is, our educational experiences are the sum of these educators, the books and other media we consume, the students we study with and those self-guided explorations of life and education outside the schoolhouse. Much of what I think we learn is in the context of those life experiences, work, love, friendships, travails, etc. But in the exploration of our common experiences, particularly those of us in public education we must appreciate the gift that we were given. It is the best investment we will ever make as a society.

Generations of Americans have come here searching for this opportunity. In fact, in the greatest of repressions against African Americans, during and after slavery, education, even the most functional literacy education was denied to African Americans. It is so shameful to see those that today will push those opportunities away after so many have suffered and struggled.

So, in my few last attempts to be serious before I start haranguing on the Republican clown car. Thanks, teachers. Thanks for everything.

Return of the Angry Middle

2011-09-06T19:26:00.003-04:00

Wow, it's been a while, been doing genealogical research, combing through primary sources on line, etc. Having kids, growing tomatoes, working etc. Going to give it another try, to discipline myself to write a little again.

I've been thinking about it for a while, as I watch this political mess. Any dream that I would be anywhere in the middle, a moderate is odd. The right just keeps moving further to the right, so much that what were once plain vanilla liberals are labeled as "socialists", ideas that the Republicans had 20 years ago are now labeled leftist. All but two of the major candidates at this point for the Republican nomination would have been laughed out of any big money GOP events even 10 years ago for their extreme views.

But ultimately the person who got me to sign back in was Matt Noyes. Yup, the NECN weatherman. Recently during Tropical Storm/Hurricane Irene, Matt continued to give the most measured forecasts, using this crazy thing called science. For many in New England, outside of Vermont which suffered greatly and week long power outages in other places, the storm led to mostly inconvenience and the usual grumbling about it being malpredicted and hyped. Matt Noyes on the Braude show commented on the Narccisistic nature of Americans, if it didn't affect them than what was the big deal, he attacked his own profession for engaging in the same Narcissitic behavior when they overhyped aspects of the storm and fear mongered. But what was most impressive about Mr. Noyes is how he illustrated the science of meteorology, the progress in the prediction of weather, yet how much still needs to be learned.

So what impressed, me and affected me the most is that people have become hyper selfish, arrogant and meanspirited, particularly with the anonymity and ubiquity of the Internet. Read the comments on any news article on the Internet, listen to political talk radio and there is a diatribe of hate everywhere. Thinly veiled racism, homophobia, sexism, and just general meanspiritedness fill the electronic packets and airwaves.

That being said, it's in my nature to make fun of people and things. I don't want to come of as a hypocrite, but occasionally I'm going to poke fun at someone's lack of intelligence, funny shirt or comment, etc. So bear with me, I'm going to give this another shot.

Vote Coakley!

2010-01-17T15:58:00.002-05:00

Coakley for Senate

Just blasting out an email to people on my list, sorry if you haven’t heard from me recently but that’s a whole other thing. I want you to encourage everyone you know to get out the vote for Martha Coakley for Massachusetts Senate on Tuesday, January 19, 2010. Even you Republicans and especially you independent thinkers who may think that this is the way to send a message to Capitol Hill and the White House.

OK, let me first say this, I’m voting strictly on the “D” for this one, no disrespect for Martha Coakley, I’m sure she’ll do a good job, the state Democratic party has sputtered during this whole race as has the candidate herself, they just counted on the legacy of Senator Kennedy to pull them through, counting on the Senator who has served the Commonwealth (whether you liked him or not personally) and had a special place in his heart for the poor, the disabled and the elderly, generally those who had least among us.

I got nothing against Scott Brown personally, he serves in the Guard, I’m sure he’s a great dad, raised a daughter who’s a helluva ballplayer and from what I hear a good singer. Hell, if it came down to it, I’d rather have a beer with him than Martha. (I think we’ve been down this road) But I’m not too fond of the company he keeps. He’s the candidate of Rush Limbaugh and of this weird, reactionary, contrived, “revolutionary” tea party bowel movement. He stands together with the party of “no”, the party that will paralyze government for at least the next three years if elected, the party that is party first, America second.

He’ll tell you he’s an independent, a person of the people, yup he’s got a truck with a bunch of miles on it and can bring his camera crews to Southie and Dorchester to shoot some ads but look where that money comes from, as he rails against special interests and lobbyists, looks who’s paying his bill, right wing extremists and the folks that brought you those eight wonderful years of Bush-Cheney. Hey, the candidate of the US Chamber of Commerce? they must be on the side of us working folks and small investors. He’ll fit perfectly into the backbench role in the Senate, he’s used to saying no to everything and not having to come up with a specific policy recommendation or good idea from his time in the Massachusetts Senate in the back seat of the Republican clown car.

I know you all are pissed, hell you should be, but remember who you’re pissed at, this is not a vote for protest, it’s a vote for paralysis in a time where government needs to work well. People are impatient for change and want to rise out of this economic debacle, but remember who the party was that brought you here. If you want the party of plutocrats and a return to the policies of George W. Bush, by all means vote for Brown.

So, if no one has asked you yet, I’m asking, please vote for Martha Coakley on Tuesday and encourage everyone you know to vote!

Thanks, Nyal
If you don’t know where to vote or someone else doesn’t know please go to http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.php

Back from Vacation

2009-10-20T19:11:00.003-04:00

LIFE IN THESE UNITED STATES

I read a lot of stuff, sports, news, politics, history, cereal boxes, whatever, I'm an information junkie. I can't watch Independence Day without trying to think about the physics of stuff or whether having the President actually fly a plane without a succession plan was really a good idea. Honestly, it could have led to a coup by the guy who was in My Bodyguard.

The initial thought for this blog was actually a book, just for people who were annoyed as I was about the edges of politics that ranged from the pedantic to the pedestrian, from the moronic to the extreme left fan fiction of ivory tower elitism. But what it really was all about was Reader's Digest.

My grandparents, likely because their first language wasn't English but still had a library had a very large collection of Reader's Digest books, the condensed version of every crappy book you could possibly imagine. They also had many actual Reader's Digest magazines, where possibly my fabulous sense of humor came from; from such wonders as Life in these United States and Humor in Uniform, it probably sent me on my lifelong love of Parade Magazine, where every Sunday I return to the Howard Huge of my youth.

But more importantly they had a set encyclopedias, I'm unsure of the encyclopedia thing but I imagine there were some nice fellas that made a fortune selling encyclopedias to new immigrant families, as the license to do well in America. An access to the knowledge of everything. My father later bought us our own World Book encyclopedia. Education is the gateway to the American dream.

So here we are in 2009 with access to the greatest information source of all time, the Internet. Yes, we are still "malinformed" about just about every issue. There is a conspiracy theory for every stripe in the political spectrum, but little discussion, all vitriol, stupidity and rumor. The left wing does some stupid stuff, don't get me wrong but the right wing has invented all kinds of stupid. However what usually gets left out is data and logic. It appears that neither party wants to do much but feather their own personal nests and perhaps some bacon for their districts, but fails to want to look at the huge issues down the road for an America that has been so financially promiscuous without taking the prophylactic processes of paying for what we really want, which is in fact guns (we spend more than every country in the world combined on "defense"), and butter (the elderly being active voters are getting/will be getting huge entitlements in which they have not put in enough to fund them for 40 years of shuffleboard and complaining about their taxes)

The political ponzi scheme will soon come to an end, with either decreased entitlements and a decrease in the US military's footprint in the world or much higher taxes. Likely a combination of all of these. No party wants to be holding that hot potato, but every day that we do address these issues, we choose to fail. The recent financial meltdown has left the government with little non-Keynesian resource, this is the time you run deficits, recessions and national emergencies.

But soon and sooner than everyone thinks it will be time to pay the piper. I may be the only person in the country asking for a tax increase. And I think it's time for everyone to pay a bit more, 3 or 4 in ten don't pay a penny in federal taxes, while I don't want to balance the budget on the poor and working class at the same time everybody's got a cup and they ain't pitched in. Certainly the wealthy pay most of the taxes and have benefited the most from a pro-business and pro-wealth government that has protected a great deal of their income and in fact assets from being seized.

We've got spoiled, generations of politician selling snake oil, running up deficits, cutting taxes during wartime, understanding that Americans, other than a small few in uniform were not willing to sacrifice that in fact, someone else would pay the bills. It's understandable as our own lifestyles started to exceed our income, using cheap credit and the equity on our homes, as the US government appeared to draw on the equity of it's own reputation.

Certainly there are taxes that can be directly tied to usage and become more fee-based than taxes per se. For example, a gasoline or other energy tax attached to roads and alternative energy development, and social security and medicare taxes will need to go up to pay for the longer lifespans and the increased price of medical care. But mostly it will be income taxes, enough to move towards some control of the deficit along with budget cuts.

Nobody likes budget cuts or higher taxes. People always talk about cutting government waste, etc. "Why is my money being paid for this", etc. But honestly what most individuals pay in taxes for a year wouldn't cover the cost of one patrol in Bagram, it is in fact a partnership of the people, taxes pay for the things that we can' t buy as individuals. One person's waste is another person's livelihood or essential program. It becomes a difficult process, ending a government program is like leaving a great party, you don't want it to end because you know you're just going to be hungover later. Cutting government means cutting services, or making some of those services fee-based. On a local level for example, everybody expects that once the snow stops falling, even after a New England blizzard that they have some God given right to get right out on the road and drive on a perfectly clear street, this call for services is expensive.

But taxes are the worst option, they are pretty much treated with disdain by everyone. It is seen as an instant paycut, as restricting innovation in business. It's perhaps the hardest sell of all. During WWII there was a top tax rate of over 90%, essentially due to the national emergency the government was confiscating all high income. In fact, these very high tax rates existed for years after the war was over. While I'm not suggesting going back to these extremely high tax rates that likely encouraged hiding income in tax shelters, the reality is that for all of us, taxes will go up.

There are not likely going to be a lot of letters going to members of Congress asking to raise taxes, there will be fewer members of Congress who will likely take a stand to take a bite out of your wallet so don't be concerned. It will be left to further generations, our children and our grandchildren to tackle this debt monster.

Quick Ideas on State Government

2009-09-22T20:09:00.002-04:00

Quick Ideas on State Government
Usually the liberal answer to government is just throw more money at it, the conservative answer is just cut the program just not the one in my district, etc. Republicans in this state are fairly lucky, they can vote and complain about waste without anyone in their districts actually losing a dime of services.

A primary theme of this blog is that people love government services, sure they'll complain about government but they love what it brings, so much that sometimes I think they just take it for granted, road plowing is a great example, how quickly it gets done and how ready people are to race right out and get back to business even after three feet of snow that would have paralyzed the city for days if not weeks in the past have fallen. But the second part of that is that people hate to pay for these services, I know people on MassHealth who complain about their income taxes, people with three kids in public schools who complain about their property taxes. The fact is that most people just assume they are getting screwed.

The Commonwealth as many states is in a bad place economically. We have grown accustomed to growing budgets that would absorb the increased costs of health care, energy, general inflation and salary expenses. This is not just Massachusetts of course, there has been a decent safety net funded by federal largess but this too is unsustainable. There are very simple things that would save a lot of money, the so-called fat in government, the procurement issues, the redundancy, the constant covering of your ass and lack of supporting innovative programming and staff that prevents government improvement and cost saving but those are more leadership and governance issues .

So here is my initial framework for some of the Commonwealth's issues, as usual, mostly unresearched, some somewhat far fetched, may some that would require legislation and a few that may be plain illegal, just some ideas. Hell, some of these ideas probably hurt me in the pocketbook.

1. The GIC-all municipalities receiving state aid (OK, so all) whose health care costs exceed that of the GIC per person are required to participate in GIC, certainly this is very controversial to some local unions who have been blessed with very low premiums and co-pays or have more gold plated health plan. These changes will go against the long ingrained ideas of local control, likely something that is coming to pass as we get involved in much more high professionalized workforces in police, fire, DPW and other important city functions. (including schools obviously)

2. Regionalization
Some schools have already done this, and below I would encourage further regionalization of school functions, this is often treated as some sort of "Death Panel" argument of education, like all local elementary schools are going to be closed and they are going to ship my kid from Swampscott to New Bedford. But there are other functions such as fire and police dispatch, and specialized functions of government that are usually too expensive for one district that isn't Cambridge or Boston to fulfill. For example, I'm unsure if a single part-time veteran's agent (required under state law) serves our veterans better that an experienced regional, multi-town agent who isn't a local VFW denizen could provide. My feeling is that regionalization would help to move away from the local, often parochial hiring of "life long residents" who may not be as qualified for the job to a further professionalization of the workforce.

3. Casinos
I'm going here. They likely aren't as good as some people will say they are revenuewise and certainly not as evil as those that are against them are. I'm more pro-casino because of my libertarian streak, if you don't like them, don't go. I can do the math, I know "gaming" is stupid economically and morally it is a tax on the stupid, the old and the desperate. But lets face, folks are going to spend their money on something and even with Foxwoods, etc claiming economic issues, I still know dozens of folks who descend on these resorts to gamble. There are immediate licensing, construction and design dollars that would come out of these projects and some permanent jobs and tax income as well. I'd rather see some nice resorts than the inevitable panic of building big Quonset Huts filled with slots lined with buses filled with senior citizens during our upcoming continuing economic crisis. Certainly there are enough "Gateway Cities" that would welcome a little economic energy.

4.Education
I usually don't write about education because it is where I work, and I just don't want to represent my organization, since I don't set policy. However perhaps the biggest things I would advocate for are 1. Regionalization of particular school functions and governance 2. A statewide teacher contract for all of the Commonwealth's teachers 3. Full vertical articulation of our early childhood, K-12 and higher education system 4. Merit teacher pay for teams of teacher in underperforming schools.

5. Health
Education and health care are the two most expensive pieces of state government. I know very little about health care except that I have great health insurance (it cost me more out of pocket for lunch after my little girl was born than paying for the entire prenatal care and birth) and that I've been blessed with pretty good health all things considered. Massachusetts took the amazing but likely unsustainable step of universal health care. It was a good first step. The state will have to take step to work on tort reform, more options for lower and middle income people, likely built on higher co-pays and possible development of local non-profit co-ops run by health care professionals for health care professionals. The state will likely have to take steps to improve people's long term health through encouraging prevention and interventions for people with chronic disease, unsure that happens. The other big piece is to look at the health care system in a different way, nurses and nurse practitioners who are the heavy lifters in the system are more than qualified to do most than the most complicated medical procedures and come at a much cheaper price. More could be done to build the pathway to these positions that will serve our aging population as well as empower these professionals to do the work that they can do.

6. Business One-Stops
This may have happened already but these would be an extension of One-Stop Career centers that would focus on business development. These folks would work through permitting processes that often get held up locally, acting as ombudsmen or liaisons with local governments, working on permitting and licensing issues, etc. Working with local universities as economic incubators to build innovation, people don't come to Massachusetts for the waters. They come for the brainpower.

7. Collective Bargaining
I'm a union member. In fact it seems that a time may come where government employees are the last remaining major union the way things are going. This is probably some dangerous ground but I got to say that public employee unions and teacher unions are doing the best they can to mimic the United Autoworkers Union (also a former local UAW 2322 member here) in burying their workforce. I imagine that the image of public employee unions may be slightly better than Congress right now, seen as protecting our worst employees, standing in the way of real change, etc. There is something to be said for those accusations, there are many employees who judge themselves by seat time instead of performance, position rather than competence. (and many higher ups who feel the same way) But in fact there is a large majority of public employees who put public service first and are looking for the same economic security everyone else in the free world is looking for. I look for my own union leadership to negotiate in good faith with a strapped Commonwealth, unsure how this happens. Creation of career ladders for successful employees, more rapid and welcoming hiring and HR systems that support employees and a union that's more responsive to cleaning it's own house. OK, maybe this one is the biggest pipedream of them all.

8. Law Enforcement and Crime Prevention
First the Quinn Bill and the whole use of details are a joke and don't prevent crime or keep us safer. The cost of construction and utility projects grows higher and in fact police departments can pretty much require a higher level education or it's military training equivalent as a matter of pre-service for hiring. These are huge issues for the boys in blue, leading to huge salary cuts from the hundreds of cops in the Commonwealth earning over 100,000 a year. I realize that being a cop is hard job, but public employees have to realize that with the promise of relative job security and a pension and good benefits is the balance that you're not going to get rich doing it. Again regionalization of some law enforcement and the increase of specialized units and the state police would be helpful. To use a firefighting example, the fire chief of our city was asked when the last time they put out a fire without mutual aid was and he quite honestly declared, "I don't know, but I'm sure the fire engines were pulled by Clydesdale's". This mutual aid idea needs to be formalized more, not just for firefighting but for fighting gang violence and other specialized functions. The Crips and Bloods don't really care if they are gangbanging in Lynn, Revere or Chelsea, these issues quickly cross our quaint municipal borders. Certainly there are other complex issues of law enforcement and public safety that are analogous to this.

9. Zoo's and Pools and Rinks
I like state parks and likely they could be added to this list but maybe a primary function of the state should be recreational areas, but when it comes to zoos, pools, and rinks, I'm unsure if these are core functions of a state government that is having difficulty housing homeless kids or putting social workers into the lives of kid's whose very reality is falling apart. In this case, I think the development of non-profits or actually selling off of these assets to private or local public entities is necessary. I love the bears at Stone Zoo, just don't think it's a government function, although I think a beer garden at Stone Zoo would be really cool, I don't think the government's going to be trucking in Hefeweizen anytime soon.

So just a few quick ideas, I'd like to get into the complexities of transportation issues, but I got nothing, I just want to see some discourse about these and other issues other than we need to cut! or we need to raise revenues!

The Empire Strikes Back

2009-09-15T19:20:00.007-04:00

A BIT OF A ELITIST, EGGHEAD, NORTHEAST INTELLECTUAL RANT

I try to be a moderate, well OK politically. It's hard sometimes for me, I'm very liberal on social issues, I don't care what you do that doesn't affect me or the general welfare. Don't care who you love, who you sleep with, who you marry as long as it's consensual. Don't care what you drink, eat, smoke whatever as long as you're not driving my bus or sitting in a firehouse or something. In contrast, I would like to make abortion as rare an event as possible, I lean towards pro-life tendencies but am aware enough to know that sometimes women have to make this terrible choice and I want it to be safe, I'm pro-soldier and pro-national security as long as we pay for it, and pretty much think that long weapons (rifles and shotguns) should not be abridged. I think parents and students should be the focus of schools allowing for charters and choice. I believe in personal responsibility but also the second chance. I'm an investor in stocks and think people should be allowed to invest, innovate and get rich. Also I tend to be a fiscal conservative, but lean towards tax increases to pay down debt versus tax cuts that just make the problem worse. So I guess this basically makes me a tax and save libertarian.

I haven't been an political extremist for a long time, in fact as most, I tend to get a little more conservative as I get older, jaded by life experience and as a father a little more protective and paranoid of outsiders. I do however try to remember where I came from and all the opportunity, choice and second, third and fourth chances that I got.

So currently, I'm really struggling. For the past 30 years the right has been pretty organized, oh there were bouts of real weirdness but they figured out their talking points and starting fighting battles in school board meetings and on the local level. The strategy was brilliant, building a national political machine that built itself on post-Vietnam malaise, declining industrialism, evangelical Christianity and the perception of declining family values. The battles ended up securing a conservative majority in the Supreme Court, electing 12 years of Bushes, 8 years of Reagan, 8 years of a largely centrist Bill Clinton whose administration was often tagged as liberal, immoral and corrupt by the same right and a fiscal ponzi scheme that allowed a nation to have lower taxes, high economic growth, and even more government services such as social security, medicare and a military budget that equaled the rest of the world combined.

Then finally the wheels came off the bus for the right. 8 years of George Bush, constant war and an economy that sunk to the bottom hit the conservative movement hard and moderates and independents began to think that President Obama despite the unfortunate name and skin color would make for better leadership than the old crazy guy and the moose hunting ice princess from Seward's Folly.

There were always populist elements among the right, the footsoldiers outside abortion clinics for example but they were always pawns of a bigger well oiled machine. Now it's as if a train full of zombies has jumped the track spilling it's contents across the nation. There are voices of the rabble who have waited for the opportunity to serve a buffet of strange information to the masses, the undereducated DJ's turned political leadership of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other self taught demagogues with easy to repeat sloganry and catch phrases. Imagery that can somehow simultaneously evoke Nazism, Socialism of all kinds and Communism in some odd manner and some (certainly not all) evoking thinly and sometimes not veiled images of racism and nativism.

Many of the crowd feel that they are modern versions of the founding fathers, vestiges of a better time at the birth of a nation, they see themselves as a vanguard (some) and others has representing "real America", you know the America that we saw on TV in the fifties, the nostalgic fantasy of the Reagan era even. You know when Norman Rockwell walked you home from school and the only black people around were Sidney Poitier and Nipsy Russell.

The signs and actions are disturbing, cartoonish even and the gatherings are of a lot of really pissed off white people. I'm not sure what they are so pissed off about, you seem to look at the crowd and there are a lot of old and fat people there. So if you're fat, than you must not be starving, hell you can still hit up the breakfast buffet at Shoney's and the Sizzler on Saturdays. Chances are you're going to end up needing some ObamaCare eventually. And the elderly, hey wait don't all you old folks have some of that delicious socialized medicine that we call medicare? How are those social security checks treatin' ya?

Conservatives will argue, "well Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink, MoveOn, etc", OK if Cindy Sheehan jumped off a bridge would you jump off a bridge. I thought their actions were stupid too, it's like those people who go to church and then go home and beat their kids and treat people like crap all week. The people who come armed and are supporting militias are among the scariest, they are the intimidators, but most are just harmless buffoons who think that their country has gone down the tubes in the last 8 months. (God only knows where these people were for the past eight years)

I do fear the Lone Wolves in the group, the people that take it to another level, the homegrown right wing equivalents of SDS or the Weather Underground or Black Guerilla Army. Most of these folks will go home, get pissed off, watch Fox, pick up their social security checks, unemployment checks or other government aid and head down to Walmart for some crappy Chinese imported stuff. It's harmless likely except to the political discourse that feeds off theater instead of reality and data. It's much easier for media, particularly with the dearth of print and serious journalism to bring some cameras than do analysis of complicated issues that are actually going to cost people money and have them make difficult choices.

I want to analyze these Tea Parties in detail among the different issues that they are attempting to address, there does not seem to be the same hatred of Wall St. and the big financiers that helped to create most of the fiscal mess, as you may have seen during the Great Depression. It is again, a considerable part of the population that seems to be venting their anger at a government that has been somewhat forced into a situation of large Keynesian deficits. Dissent is healthy of course and I mean in no way to stifle anyone's right to expression, but we really don't have to listen? Do we? Is this truly the best way to run an airline? Will the Republican Party draw it's energy from the mob?

Seven Months

2009-09-09T19:19:00.008-04:00

I went into hibernation for seven months. Lots of stuff, working, my daughter looking at maps, gardening, brewing beer, all sorts of stuff. The election and Inauguration killed me mentally. I really started to realize that I have a life long love/hate relationship with politics. I find them fascinating, the ultimate chess game, or perhaps more accurately the largest demonstration of game theory possible. So much give and take, so many variables. I vacillate between my love of rhetoric and writing of politicians and the idiocy and absurdity that it breeds.

Lots of stuff going on. A president with over 200 days experience that has not pleased the left but certainly really pissed off the right and kind of left the middle saying, "what the hell is going on."

HEALTH CARE IS OTHER PEOPLE
Joint Session of Congress

8:02 Michelle Obama really looks good, she's a beautiful woman
8:03 Here comes Hillary, she's air kissing everyone, that's a damn red pantsuit
8:07 Hillary gets a little time on camera, better start talking about Bill
8:11 Switched over to Fox to watch the right wing scroll on the bottom
8:12 My 2 and a half year old daughter is yelling Obama and waving an American flag, unprompted by the way, she asked for the flag. Maybe the right wing is right, we are creating a nation of toddler Obamabots
8:13 Mitch McConnell apparently left his chin in another suit, the President whispers in Hillary's ear, hopefully saying "damn, sister I hope this goes better than Hillarycare in 1994"
8:15 Pelosi tells the President where to stand, I bet that woman can tell water to boil.
8:17 "E, you have to go to bed soon", "AFTER OBAMA!"
8:20 "He's talking about babies and medicine and doctors?" OK, my toddler has a better understanding of this than half of the general public.
8:21 Drops TR's mantle on the session and then old Johnny Dingell who I believe participated in the charge up San Juan Hill.
8:24 Yeah, dummies it's about the middle class. Now for the love of God talk about small business, talk about sole proprietors and family businesses who don't have access to health care, please. The people that drive this economy.
8:25 The President cannot pronounce "metastasized" so he avoided a Bushism and said grew larger in size. Whew, he brings up entrepreneurs....
8:26 Yes, the fact is this health care system is unsustainable fiscally, even if you are the most selfish bastard this side of Ayn Rand
8:28 My daughter has now changed sides and is calling the President a "pig", maybe she heard about the death panels. Wait she's clapping now. She seems pretty pleased with the lack of a cap
8:30 NO MONEY DOWN! OK, I'm a wonk I need details.
8:34 Gotta get old man McCain on board, he's the magic man, crazy mf'er but the magic man
8:36 Ah, the details need to be ironed out
8:38 Someone yelled out during the illegal immigrant thing, seriously Mr. President, just walk up, knock one of them out and it's smooth coasting for the next 3 and a half years.
8:40 BEAT ON WALL ST, BEAT ON WALL ST. Obama hates plutocrats.
8:44 The look on Eric Cantor's face says "f#ck you Barry and you're work together"
8:46 OK nothing to the deficit, now or in the future, interesting, must be magic
8:48 Medicare, yup untouched, it must be magic
8:53 900 Billion, "now that's a lot of meatballs!"
8:56 The Teddy Kennedy personal touch
9:00 F#ck you and your civility, it got lost somewhere around the corner of Gridlock and Partisanism

Republican Response: Agree on some stuff (the nice stuff everyone likes), too expensive, tort reform

Then Fair and Balanced FoxNews goes right into a right wing political commercial about health care without missing a beat

THE END OF AN ERA

Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely. Ted Kennedy eulogizes RFK

The Republicans loved to hate Ted Kennedy, at least when they were fundraising. The image of the heavy, non-repentant liberal with the tarnished past played great in the red meat districts in the west and south while at the same time using his political abilities to strike bipartisan bargains and get the job done. It was interesting to see the eulogizing for Teddy, Orrin Hatch's story, the unlikely pair who served for decades together in some of the most disagreeable settings putting judges on the bench.

Ted Kennedy was liberal in only the way really rich people could be liberal. He owed nobody anything. He never had to worry about ending up having to lobby for drug companies or chase K Street blackbag jobs. Sometimes I would find some of his largesse with the federal pocketbook to be somewhat over the top, a commitment to a welfare state that would give many of us who grew up working class a time for pause, without thinking of what it actually brought us and that was humanity. I could disagree with some of the proposals, but they actually were rooted deep in the Irish Catholic politics of Boston. The Kennedys were just a generation removed from the city wards and machines that built themselves on largesse and aid to immigrants and the impoverished.

I think about what Teddy brought to me. Student loans? An access to an education that may have not been able to a person of my means. As a kid when we had nothing, AFDC and food stamps? And those are just the selfish tangible things. I had a great sadness, like losing an uncle when Teddy died, we had come to take him for granted, we laughed at his families foibles and showed great disdain at their greater failures. He was a public being. I think of what he brought to the poor, the elderly and the disabled. A promise to protect social security, medicare, and medicaid to those that couldn't speak up for themselves. Teddy was always there for them.

It's a helluva seat to fill, as we speak the machinations in Massachusetts begin. How do you replace a giant? How does a future back bencher fill the hole in the Senate. Likely, Ted Kennedy will be the last real liberal every elected to the Senate. Certainly there will be Democrats with a progressive tilt but never of the intellect and drive for social change that Teddy brought with him.

Getting it on the Road

2009-02-09T20:32:00.005-05:00

Whew. Back from Inauguration, just a quick warmup post as we move into stimulus territory. More to follow.

DEAD CAT BOUNCE?

At some points for some of us "small investors" it just seems like a bad joke. A really bad joke. Save your money, but it in equities and bonds, the best place you're ever going to put your money. The American dream, work hard, buy a house, pay your bills, take care of your property. All seemed like it was working well for the middle class. Even those that chose to get overextended on credit cards had some modicum of control, pay it off with your home's equity.

We even began to buy into an ownership society, almost entertaining some craziness of letting social security go into the stock market. Wow, what a difference a year makes. I don't want to compare loss of home price, losses in retirement funds, losses in mutual fund or other brokerage accounts with someone in danger of losing their home or had lost their job or even worse is homeless, slapped in the face by a "changing economy." There are true victims here, a lot of us middle class folks will be working a few more years or cutting back a bit but for many they are truly be left behind.

It's hard to find out where the bottom is. Are we here? The wrangling of blame is insane, who caused this crisis? Big financial companies who created crazy, impenetrable instruments and derivatives? Folks who overspent and overcharged and overbought homes, assuming they would always keep going up, using their homes as ATM's to live Vanderbilt lifestyles on Lucy Ricardo incomes? An overspending, taxcutting government who gave itself little room to respond to a financial crisis during wartime and instead creating an even bigger deficit and debt when times were good? Was it Barney Frank (play your favorite right wing race card here) whose mean, bully government cruelly made banks make loans to people who couldn't afford them? Is it an economy that has become too focused on services and consumer spending and not industrial capacity? Don't know, maybe it's just Clinton's fault.

So what's the way back out? No economist knows for sure, my buddy clubba always said, "why do you invest in stocks, why not savings bonds." And to think I laughed at him. I'm not a rich man but with the money I lost, I could be driving a Range Rover.

THE STIMULUS

There's only one thing I know, my grandfather knew more than any of these economists. He saved his money, had a stack of savings bonds thicker than an unabridged dictionary on his desk, tons of liquidity. Once the bank said he missed a mortgage payment, he went down and paid the small mortgage off rather than deal with someone who would be so disorganized with his money. On his deathbed, he talked about my own interest rates with me, well that and about Pedro getting in a fight with the Yankees. He had what few of us have, control over his own financial life. Few of us do because the economy has become much more complicated. We're squeezed by debt, student loans, consumer debt, high mortgages. By energy bills, child care, elder care and then funding our own retirement.

So when the "perfect storm" of economic distress hit, a credit crunch, stock market crash, real estate crash and even more damaging unemployment very few of us feel safe. A local police chief got laid off. Who's ever heard of that? And so comes on the federal stimulus package. The public is scared and at the same time very angry. They see huge amounts of money going to TARP funding with the stories of huge, politically tone deaf executive bonuses being a part of it. They don't perceive any benefit, it is very vague if this money is trickling down to alleviate the credit crunch. So how does some nearly 800 BILLION dollars in spending affect the American economy.

800 Billion is an incredible amount of money. More than the entire defense budget. It's enough for a bunch of tax cuts to pay off people who do have jobs to feel like they "got their bailout," pay for food stamps and unemployment, some infrastructure and a some aid for states, etc. In some ways, there is something for everyone. Suddenly, some Republicans have found some fiscally conservative roots that they lost for the past eight years. Now I actually agree that the bill is making OMNIBUS really OMNIBUS and probably should be seven to eight different bills covering important physical and non-physical infrastructure but hey let's welcome back those fiscal conservatives from wandering the wilderness since Billy Clinton graced the South Lawn.

It's hard to tell if these Republicans are just being political, trying to reposition themselves as having an actual position or if there is general concern about this spending. Or maybe just being jackasses thinking that there is a good chance to say "I told you so" when the stimulus has little effect but a bandaid. Most of these conservatives come from states that are really hurting and ironically these states tend to be poorer and get more net dollars from government than they pay in.

I don't like the idea of having our grandchildren and children pay for our mistakes of today. I personally don't like tax cuts when you're running a huge deficit. I've never understood this Reaganomics construction. It's not like I like to pay taxes but people want services, they want good schools, they want a strong military, they want their roads plowed, they want an ambulance to pick them up when they have a heart attack, a cop to come when they feel threatened, all this stuff shockingly costs money, all these services happen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In these times, once you cut taxes, it's hard to have the political stones to raise them back again, so the debt grows and grows.

I'm a strong believer in infrastructure. It's what government is intended to provide. But in the same way it is difficult for my wife, myself, my siblings and their spouses and hell throw in all my buddies to build a bridge over a river, it is also difficult to provide other essential modern infrastructure such as health care or education. People tend to scream at "socialized medicine", some of those actually benefit from government provided healthcare. Very few poor people are against "socialized medicine". It's difficult to pay for an MRI with a chicken and some fresh milk as much as Ron Paul would like it so. If this is in fact, an infrastructure bill, I guess you could buy that these types of things are added in. In fact, the nation would have been better off with this as separate transportation bills, health care reform and education reform bills.

The key to the bill is confidence. Part of this confidence is that government is back for the people. Not invisible TARP funds, but money going into research and roads and buildings. Funding is there so mommy or daddy will be able to collect unemployment and not lose their homes or have to take that $8 an hour job and lose his healthcare at the same time. It's a quick fix, a bridge to something better. A shot of whiskey before the bar fight. It's certainly not going to get the job done, there is no magic Obama wand.

There are many steps after this. Regulation that works for everyone, business and the investor, a sense of transparency. Wealth will always be built on risk, but that risk should be known. Capitalism should serve democracy and not the other way around. There are some that will cry "socialism" and I imagine in just a few years, Wall St. will be screaming for the government to get off their back. There is great opportunity in crisis.

The MetaNarrative

2009-01-21T19:38:00.001-05:00

Back on the AMTRAK and headed home. After five days of running around the cold, chasing history wherever we could, history of the past, history being made and a historical prelude to the future. First the travelogue piece of the narrative, we ate at the Georgetown Grill last night, nice enough place in a fancy hotel. There are few cheap meals in DC that don’t come out of a cart or fast food joint. I had a jones for a cheeseburger before it’s back to reality and a normal, middle aged guy diet, also had some lobster bisque, which is nothing like the lobster bisque in New England, they also had Manhattan clam chowder on the menu, call it clam tomato soup or whatever but don’t call it chowder you heathens. Becky had a nicer meal, but I just wanted that damn burger and beer. Not sitting well with the lingering stomach flu. I can’t believe I went my entire vacation without once touching whiskey, damn digestive system.

We went to take the early train out of DC, lugging around all of our stuff and our child. Union Station was crowded, for those of you who are traveling with toddlers, always take the first, front seat in the train. There are no trays, but definitely more room to “run” around. This train was packed, a post-Inauguration train out of town. People are overloaded with their Obama gear. So we slowly and methodically leave DC, the land of the self-important, the pinnacle of power, where the local news in the news making capital of the world ironically is 90% traffic and weather.

I’m trying to get some collective thoughts together, most of this again if for my two year old, so we can somehow remember this week. And for my wife who engineered this whole extravaganza. What I really want to write about is the speech. I love rhetoric and often feel like I’m playing chess with the speaker and speech writers and overanalyze. I’d like to see the first and former drafts and find out what the initial direction was. The time to note where the Scripture was used and why, to understand all the hidden messages. Unfortunately we heard the speech through speakers walking away from the ceremony to the bus due to a sick child, I need some time to read the text and sit down with a glass of scotch and watch it on c-span.

Going Home
Like everyone else, I’m often asked “where you from?” and like most people who have lived in different places there are different answers. If I’m out of state, I usually tell people I’m from Boston; it’s a common reference even though I’m about 8 miles from the city itself. For work friends, colleagues and folks like that I usually say I’m from Melrose, but I grew up on the Cape, lived in Framingham, Somerville and Malden as well. For people who are looking for a familial context, my mother’s family is from Massachusetts and the Bronx and my father’s family is from Puerto Rico. But really my young childhood was spent in Northern Virginia, Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax County to be precise and most of my school vacations, etc were spent at my grandparents’ house down there.

When we were at dinner Inauguration night, the waiter asked us where we were from, when Latino people ask you that (he was Honduran), it usually means what country did your family come from, but in this case we said the usual, Boston (since there were folks in town from all over the country), but then I remarked but I was born right over here on Pennsylvania Avenue in the District. “Wow”, he remarked, “you’re only the second person I’ve met that was actually born here, the other one was my daughter.”

DC is quite remarkable in its mobile population, certain there are Washingtonians who have lived here for generations, but mostly and particularly in the Northwest part of the city, there is a constant churning of the population. You are as likely to be born in Tegucigalpa, Denmark or Nairobi as in Columbia Hospital. Being born in DC, meant that I really only spent the first three days of my life here before being taking home to Virginia. I do have some roots in the DC area, still a Redskins fan, but as time has gone by in my life I have become more disconnected. I tried living down here for a while after college, thinking it would be a good start to a professional career but it lasted about 10 months, I ended up going back to cooking over the summer and then into graduate school and living in Somerville to never look back. Since my grandfather moved to Florida and later passed away, my connections weakened even more, to the point that now I’m just a tourist.

So, home is now Boston, or Melrose technically, it’s where my heart lives, it’s where I’ve buried the stakes of my life. Washington is now like it is to most people, a center of power, and a center of history. A nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Color, Caste and Class
On every news broadcast from Fox News to American Pravda Weekly, the inauguration of the 44th President was announced as “historic”. And that is that nobody ever thought that a dark complected individual would ever be President. Certainly this is a man that can negotiate many cultures, a White culture in which he was raised by his mother and grandparents, an immigrant and specifically African culture by blood, an African American culture by context and surely the culture of the corridors of power, greased by Harvard and access to the best education. What lies underneath this talk of a “historic” inauguration is a lack of conversation on color, caste and class and whether truly this “historic” event has knocked down the vestiges of racism and classism.

It is hard to talk about race. It is often easier to talk about class or even “caste” which to me is the institutionalization of class. . You are maligned as either a “racist” or on the other end of the spectrum being “too PC”. The argument is that we should really talk about class, meaning we have de-racialized the entire discussion. To me this is a coward’s way out; you can’t talk about one without talking about the other. Today, for example, schools are more segregated then ever, but ironically one of the biggest destructive mechanisms to the black middle class in the south was desegregation, which cost thousands of jobs for middle class African American adults who were employed as teachers and administrators in segregated “black only” schools. While “Jimmy Crow” ended for the youth, “James Crow” locked out a lot of adults from decent paying jobs in “desegregated” schools, but I digress…

In nowhere but DC is the range of color, caste and class so apparent. As I noted above there always seems to be few people who were born in the wealthier part of the city. However in southeast and other parts of the city there are people who have lived there for generations, perhaps descendants of freemen or even folks who were auctioned off as little as 200 years ago in the district itself.

Most of the African American population in the District is the “underclass”. This very term is hard to define, I’m not an economist and can’t tell you what the actual income levels would be but suffice to say for my purposes it’s the poor, both working and non-working, on public assistance or not that are struggling day-to-day to make ends meet. For some of these families, people may have been on public assistance for generations, many of the folks are ill-educated, underserved by DC public schools in the past, large numbers of males (and growing numbers of females) have been institutionalized in prisons, so prison culture begins to match that of the streets and vice-versa. It’s a depressing scene, for the very poor; the homeless it is even more extreme, particularly in the cold and particularly for those homeless people that are severe substance abusers and/or mentally ill, it is extremely difficult for these poor folks to access the most rudimentary social services such as food and clothing. I am sad to say I saw a man with flip flops on, no socks, walking by and in a moment that I could have given him my own socks, embarrassingly just passed him by, not my best moment but my fear of possible mental illness and the threat to my family caused this lack of charity.

Meanwhile, less than a quarter mile away, one could spend over five dollars for a single cup of fancy coffee. A mile or so away, a celebration for a new President cost tens of millions of dollars. I believe in capitalism and the right of all to rise to the best of their abilities but certainly this fella should have a pair of socks when it’s ten degrees out.

Many of the poor have had a terrible shot at the American experience. The best and brightest have always risen to the top, particularly those that were blessed by strong families and teachers who led them down a path of success. But many continue to be cursed by multi-generational poverty and general lack of access to the good parts of capitalism, be chewed up and spit out by life. In many ways, Obama never had this experience, the experience of the urban cycle of poverty as a child, the legacy of slavery, not to say that there wasn’t racism at every turn but not the type of virulent institutional racism that faces many urban African Americans. As a community organizer in Chicago he worked in these communities, but his scars are not as deep. Nonetheless he is a hero and an icon to those that live in these communities and I think more so in those communities that have risen above it.

The amazing part about this trip to DC was the turnout of these folks. The amazing numbers of African American families that came out for celebration. And when I say families I mean multiple generations of families, grandparents (maybe even great-grandparents) parents, children, aunts, uncles, close family members that came from all over the country. All with a certain level of affluence to take time off there jobs, get everyone together and travel. I felt for the southerners and Californians who had no idea of the concept of layering clothing and discovered on the fly that many layers of Obama gear would help to keep them warm.

I could see Dr. King smiling amongst these hordes of people, but I was wondering, was he truly smiling on seeing the President himself standing there, feeling the same pride I felt as he snapped salute after salute to passing military honor guards? I was wondering, was he truly looking at John Lewis and other veterans of the civil rights movement that had gone beyond the fire hoses, birdshot and police dogs to the very highest levels, the corridors of power? Actually, I think Dr. King was looking down on the Mall far beyond the Capitol from the same spot where he gave one of his greatest speeches at a horde of successful people both African American and not, sometimes literally hand in hand to mark an enormous change in America. At a place where a shantyville was build by the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968 where King had merged his racial justice movement with that of an economic justice movement, Americans of different colors, classes and creeds had come together to celebrate the unshackling of part of their former selves.

To adapt Winston Churchill’s quote about the battle of El Alamein, “certainly this is not the end, or even the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning.”

Is the US Government the only people who buy US cars?
While watching the parade I started to think, are federal, state and local governments the only people who buy American cars? Outside of rental agencies, most American cars I see have government plates of some kind. A lot of these security vehicles are SUV’s, limos or high horsepower police vehicles and for more pedestrian state employees, Malibu’s, Taurus’s and the particularly brutal Chevy Aveo. With the cap values of these American car companies being greatly exceeded by the current and future government bailouts (I think Avon at this point is worth more than General Motors, which was once the most valuable company in the world) would it make sense for the government to take the ultimate step of simply adopting these company, nationalizing them into some wing of the Pentagon.

Wes Clark, who I usually side with on most issues but disagree on this, argues that to let these companies fail, to diminish American industrial capacity is a national security issue in the same way that pre-WWII (read Depression) capacity hurt the initial buildup of US force infrastructure. If had not been for some recovery governmental spending and the roughly two years before the US became involved in the war officially, the argument is that the Arsenal of Democracy would have flunked the test, and that the industrial support particularly of the Red Army who turned the Nazis back would have been diminished greatly. I’m not one to argue with a Rhodes Scholar and a national security expert but this seems not to be fighting the last war, but probably 4 wars ago. I’m trying to envision a scenario in which the US would have to produce that level of tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc., would it be WWIII, a land war in Asia, a return to fighting the Russians across the Fulda gap?

I’m no national security expert but this seems to be a very weak argument for not letting these companies fail. Certainly this industrial capacity if necessary could be developed in current auto plants in the south that are building smaller, more efficient cars. If not then there is a case for nationalizing these plants and drafting car makers into a reserve component of the armed forces, OK sounds crazy and it is.

Message to Elena
On Christmas, your mama engineered this whole trip to DC. I had half joked about going, but knowing my grand opposition to crowds and spending money, I didn’t think it would actually happen. How crazy one may think, bring a toddler in the middle of the winter to stand outside in the freezing cold, never getting a chance to actually “see” the event. Well, baby, I guess 90% of life is just showing up and you were a part of history this week.

You won’t remember anything about this, which is why I tried to write a bunch of stuff down and take some pictures, we’ll tell funny stories about how horrible we were as parents to take our girl with stomach flu all over the city in the cold and how you threw up on my back. How I taught you Lincoln’s house and Obama’s house. We even made sure to include some embarrassing photos of you eating crackers in bed with just a diaper on, that I’m sure to show every first date that you have and maybe if I’m so lucky use it as an 8 by 10 as your wedding photo.

So there you were in Lincoln’s house looking down on the crowds watching the end of the Bush administration. It was the end of an era as well as the beginning of another, it had been a run of Reagan/Bush and Clinton for 28 years, not far removed from Nixon and a 4 year outlier by a peanut farmer from Georgia, at a time when people would have voted for an outsider, any outsider unblemished by Watergate. At this point we have rolled the dice with a young man (relatively by political standards) from Hawaii via Illinois. It’s hard to say what kind of President he’ll be, “historical” yes, but so was Andrew Johnson.

He’s got a rough trail ahead of him. An uncharted trail filled with hazards, both foreign and domestic. Not only a “War on Terror” and an economy that seems to be broken but also the image of America in the world as a bully and not a “City on the Hill”. Not only crumbling infrastructure, meaning physical infrastructure such as bridges, roads, and buildings but human infrastructure such as education, health care, and retirement. I’m not sure there’s a roadmap for this. The traditional Democratic roadmap of “relax, government will take care of everything for you” seems as flawed as the Republican roadmap of “every man for himself”.

How to regulate but not over regulate? How do you get the right people in government, not only elected officials but those that execute the orders of the legislative and executive branch? How do you run a government that is not so small and ineffectual that “you could drown it in a bathtub” but also not so big and arduous that it runs every aspect of everyone’s life and stifles opportunity for wealth and production?

OK, a two year old likely isn’t going to understand this or answer these questions. In fact the hundreds of think tanks and politicians have yet to figure this out. But my challenge is for you to answer these questions and to grade President Obama not on his transformative nature but on his execution. He does not have the benefit of being a caretaker president, the train for the most part has jumped the tracks, and this is not to say that the tracks and the train don’t exist, but the engineer has got to get things in gear.

Inauguration Day

2009-01-21T19:12:00.001-05:00

The long awaited day, a new chance, a new start. Now the right wing has played up that Obama is being played up as the Messiah and after being in Washington for a few days among his most fervent followers, I can’t say I disagree with them. I’m all about being optimistic but one man doesn’t make a miracle worker outside of the movies.

People need to realize that the new President really is in a world of you know what. Putting out the fires that exist today while promising “change” for the future. It is hard to make change, turning the ship of federal bureaucracy around while getting sniped at from the right and the left on every possible move that he makes. Right wing radio has already ripped Obama’s “socialist” policies and I have said before there is just not enough revenue to fulfill the left’s dreams of more social services and aid to education and the environment. I’m unsure if the polarization of the past 16 years is reparable, I think we are a nation with way to much pressure from the edges, this pressure causes intellectual paralysis. Will an Obama administration with a frustrated middle in Congress of both parties be able to overcome the gridlock, to make real change and home and abroad. Wow, now that would be a real American revolution.

Another Sickie Morning
Elena was sick again in the middle of the night, she seems to throw up and then feel better. It’s still touch and go with her digestive system but we’re off to inauguration. It’s cold this morning in DC, colder than yesterday with a wind. We got on a crowded bus, again people don’t really understand public transit and of course don’t understand their surroundings, one woman said that Elena could sit in her lap, and even as a guy who believes in the kindness of strangers, we’re not about to hand over our daughter to some weird lady in a fur coat talking into a voice recorder. A woman finally gave her seat to Becky and Elena, preventing them from falling down on the metro bus. We got off on Washington Circle and started down 23rd towards the Lincoln Memorial. For some reason, taxis were still allowed down this road but not the buses. So it was just some bicycle rickshaws, taxis and National Guard humvees. People were pouring out of the GW/Foggy Bottom stop into a ad hoc flea market that had been set up outside with Obama merchandise. No McCain merchandise to be seen anywhere. The only merchandise that I found really annoying were the American flags with imagery on them. The American flag stands for us all and should not be used for personal gain or celebration, burning a flag is one thing, it makes a statement, but adding one’s personal touch is an insult to us all.

We managed to leave Georgetown a little after nine, TV reported that people were arriving long before dawn. Our objective was to be somewhat realistic; you just can’t spend that much time out in the cold with your toddler and I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be close enough for a clear sight anyway. We were happy with the jumbotrons and set sites for the Lincoln Memorial.

The Crowd and Setting
I love the Lincoln Memorial. The idea of Lincoln keeping the country together in reality and his seeming overlooking of the Capitol and the country as a whole in some sort of eternal marble vigilance. Also as the place where King made amongst his greatest of speeches in a place of one of the greatest of gatherings. A lot of people had the same idea as we had and took a seat along the steps, we spent sometime and took some photographs among the Lincoln Memorial and then headed down into the throngs of people around the Mall. There were some nice volunteers in red knit caps wishing everyone a good morning with a smile that I later deemed the prozac patrol.

The beauty of DC is despite a million, two million people whatever, there was still enough space available to move around, as long as you didn’t need to have your face pressed up against the window upfront. Where we were going, security was limited, meaning while there were hundreds of guardsmen around and other security folks, you could carry bags, strollers, whatever. A couple of smart people had actually brought chairs and as much as I know could have had flasks of bourbon (taking notes for my next historic DC event). There were some bottlenecks of barricades and people who are either electronically or intellectually distracted and didn’t really understand the nature of crowds and that they did not move at their whim. Also for the tens of millions that were spent on security, 100 sheets of Xeroxed paper with some arrows point where you could and couldn’t go would likely have been helpful. I can save that for my after action report.

The crowd had an amazing energy and incredible diversity. I would estimate that 40% or more of the crowd consisted of African American families from all around the country, as contrasted with the large underclass of Black people in the District itself it was amazing to see these extended groups of families and friends, students from HBCU’s, sororities and fraternities joining in the celebration. It looked beyond King’s dream to Cosby’s creation. When Elena started to cry, she was offered cookies by a father of twins with Down syndrome, it was a crowd that was ready to cheer, as if a heavy weight had been pulled off them. As I have said the cult-like adoration was somewhat disturbing but if this enthusiasm can be channeled into work and service then maybe this country has a fighting chance after all.

By this point about a half hour or more before the swearing in, Elena finally had enough, it wasn’t that she was cold but “her belly”. And just starting uncontrollably crying. Nothing we could do about it, there were a bunch of folks around but still room for people to move around. Kids were playing, people stomping their feet to keep warm, walking around, some stupid people who had brought bikes through the crowd, stupider people who had brought dogs, and a stupid guy who was rollerblading. The jumbotrons were cool, but we had a sightline through a leafless tree in exchange for more room to wander around. The sound was great, occasionally picking up on live mikes just general chatter on the stage.

The Ceremony

Slowly dignitaries, including the living Presidents (OK, bringing Lincoln himself would have been kind of gross) were introduced getting jeers and cheers by an overwhelmingly Democratic partisan crowd.

Rick Warren came out to do the prayer. Rev. Warren has been under some fire for his homophobic tendencies, many of which are shared by many of his evangelical flock. I’ll say this, outside of this, I do like Rick Warren. He reverse tithes, giving 90% of his money to the church and is concerned about economic and environmental justice issues. I’m not nearly conservative enough to join his church but I like to hear him speak. He gave a fairly long prayer and a Christian prayer at that which may be disturbing to our non-Christian friends but Rick Warren and his followers can be a positive if unlikely ally to the Obamamaniacs. He stresses service both to God and to his fellow man. Certainly there will be a great deal of disagreement between progressives and evangelicals but both of them have some common views on a few important issues. Evangelicals make up 20% of the US population, anointing Rick Warren despite his views on homosexuality pay homage to those folks and maybe a bended ear to the Oval Office by a leader of the Evangelical community, some may call it pandering and some a reach across a dangerous chasm of misunderstanding. There was limited reaction in my area to this, some sneers from some of the more “progressive looking” folks but mostly just listening in anticipation to the main event.

The swearing in of VP Biden brought a small clamor from the crowd and Aretha Franklin really warmed them up. Then came the main event, the swearing in of Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States. Wow, people just started going crazy, the equivalent of Elvis or the Beatles, or just hundreds of thousands of people celebrating. I was as if the Sox had won the World Series in front of 1.5 million people live in 2004.

Unfortunately Elena’s crying had become crazy and we had to leave as the President made his speech. (More comments on that tomorrow). I carried her back up past GW to the bus, as efficient as the buses were getting people in, is as confusing as getting people out, the buses and stops lacked appropriate marking, showing the focus on the complicated instead of the simple like signage. We made our way back and were able to warm-up nap and watch the parade on television, how sweet it was to see Barack Obama snap out those first salutes as commander in chief.

Day 4

2009-01-20T14:16:00.000-05:00

Uggh. Damn stomach flu, why, why now. Seems to be a quick spin through the body, but pretty darn brutal, Elena as I said threw up on my back in the backpack and we’ve had to do several loads of laundry (ok, Becky has). Becky had it and then it hit me hard, I was pretty depressed but then I rallied. We caught our favorite Circulator bus got off at GWU and took the train over to Arlington National Cemetery.

Arlington National Cemetery
As I have said in a pervious post, http://theangrymiddle.blogspot.com/2007/05/on-behalf-of-grateful-nation.html Arlington is an incredible place. Not only for members of my family obviously but for thousands of other families. Today, Arlington was a mob scene of buses and people. Thousands coming to “see the sites”. I still have never seen the eternal flame or the changing of the guard, my visits are personal and to my grandparents. As much as I’d like to see these things, I’m usually ready to go on my way.

Going through the throngs there are few people that are actually seem there to visit loved ones, most are there to see the sites, and pay their respects to those who have served in a more general sense. There was a small group of 82nd Airborne troopers in loose formation, who I imagine were in the city on some type of security duty and I later thought probably there in the cemetery to visit someone that they have loved and lost. The soldiers are so young, so many of them look like they are a couple days out of high school, not having felt a razor to their face but likely visiting a lost friend.

Elena got to meet her great grandparents, or in the least a monument to their memory and we got to visit a monument to America’s greatness, or actually the greatest of its people and specifically its warriors.

Walking the Mall
Washington has become on odd place since the days of my youth. Well, I guess it was always a little off, as any place that it the seat of government of the free world would be. A certain sense of self importance by a set of residents that tend to not be long time denizens of the city, brought back and forth by political winds of change. However, today, unlike the days of my youth it is a fortress.

Security since 9/11 has been tantamount, to the point that our Department of Justice looks like something out of a dystopic, post-apocalyptic nightmare. Flowerboxes serve a dual function, the vessel for plant like and also to protect from suicide bombers. Including at some places that I’m unsure if al Qaeda, Baader Minhoff gang or Earth First would ever consider attacking. One thing though it the NEA ever becomes the terrorist group that the former Secretary of Education insisted it may be, it is one of the few buildings that a F-350 could get a good hit of pavement to hit.

The security changes are not only the physical walls and barriers but the absolute exponential growth of security forces, both public and private. You can’t go anywhere without seeing an armed security guard of some kind and often turning in different directions you will see representatives of many different law enforcement organizations. This weekend security of course was at an extreme but on a usual day the capital is an armed camp. Curiously, the National Guard present (estimated at over 10,000) was unarmed, unsure if that is due to posse comitatus or not. Also somewhat concerning was the physical fitness of some of our guardsmen, which was fascinating in these days that the guard is so frequently used in active duty.

The Mall is America’s backyard. When I was little there would be dozens of football games, soccer games, whatever being played upon it. It also is a place of history, with protests and celebrations that have provided the flavor for the vanilla that DC can often be.

We walked the entire mall after walking over from Arlington, it seemed a balmy 35 degrees at that point, it was impossible to get up to the Lincoln Memorial as they had all the stuff still up from Sunday’s concert. Walking through the throngs of people and vendors to the Capitol where the cold started to take over. We got a passing glance at Soledad O’Brien through the crowd, I was shocked, she was like a rock star. I’m just glad I’m taller because I wouldn’t have had a shot. The plethora of Obama gear is still amazing to me, and people are just scooping it up

The on-demand Sesame St. Elmo is a good relaxer for Elena, and gets her to downshift through her stomach issues as we drag her around town, she managed to fall asleep in the backpack for a couple of hours. She got to visit baby Nate this evening and Carrie’s cats Marbury and Madison.

Day 3: The Stomach Flu

2009-01-19T16:52:00.002-05:00

We tried to get an early start this morning but during our bagel trip, Elena threw up so we came back to do some laundry. Met a fellow Red Sox fan at the bagel store, a young kid from DC, the nation grows. We tried to make it out again and Elena threw up again in the knapsack and all over my back. OK, today looks like a washout, it may just be NFL football in someone else’s basement. But he has a 50 inch TV so it may not be a washout altogether. And they sell Yuengling at the Safeway. Hopefully everyone will be healthy enough that I can start that million person “USA, USA” chant. NOTE: Now we all have some version of the stomach flu, hopefully we’re all healed by Tuesday.

Obama: Cult v. Substance

There is something discomforting and odd to the Obama phenomena. He has been the darling of the liberal press, first because the mainstream press while not likely “liberal” itself consists of mostly liberal (at least in the classical sense) people outside of Fox and talk radio. Liberal meaning a constant interest in change and accepting difference, a certain curiosity in life as opposed to the more accurate leftist/socialist label that is put on the press by the right wing. This press was interested in Obama because he was interesting, not only a good narrative but smart, well educated and the ability to communicate beyond soundbites and clichés. McCain had a great narrative as well, and was the only Republican with a chance to win but he ran away and took bad advice to go to the right, rather than the vital center that had fed his whole career.

Outside of the press adoration there was a strange public adoration by Obamamaniacs. For people of color it was a transformative candidate, beyond the poverty pimping and race card playing to a man being judged by the content of his character, his intelligence and talents. For left liberals there was a change from the odd last eight years of administration and for those far to the left (that saw Clinton as a conservative) a possible end to some 40 years of conservative presidencies (outside of the Carter outlier). For the young and even Generation X it was the potential election of one of their own.

But like I said for many of the deciding votes that put Obama over the edge it was just the change that people felt was needed. A sinking economy was what put people over the edge and the seeming addled commentary by McCain and his followers that the economy’s fundamentals were strong. We who lean to the left should always remember that it was a single digit swing that led to the Obama victory and that the tough decisions that will need to be made will lead to further defections from this vital middle.

My initial observation is that there are too many people who are putting their faith in the man, rather than the management and leadership of the system. The number of folks with Obama wear and jewelry is incredible, albeit the inauguration is a celebration of a historic event and not the kickoff of a cult of personality. There are more images of the leader than any other leader this side of Pyongyang. I mean, t-shirts, hats, necklaces, sweatpants, sweatshirts, etc. I’m a man who holds on to clothes for a long time, and it’s hard for me to think of my Obama knit cap during a future Jeb Bush administration. There is a tremendous amount of Obama gear around the city, including Obama/Biden earrings. I’m holding out for the Biden story telling doll.

I’m afraid of people’s disappointment. That a President Obama will not be able to pull the magic that people think he will be able to do. I face the same frustration with some Christians who will pray for money or for God to help them through some magic or miracle, rather than praying for the strength or wisdom to make these decisions. It will take some fierce effort and wait for it, some sacrifice to help make things change. After everything is swept up and the port a johns are put away the work begins. There likely will be millions of disappointed people, frustrated with the speed of change, the seeming same old same old in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a deepening economic recession based on some real issues.

The father of the Red Sox fan had flown in from overseas on business. He commented that at the airport he had never seen so many overseas visitors and that most were here to see Obama inaugurated, now that’s something. You have a whole world, well at least those with the money to travel to the US who may be thinking the same thing, that’s a lot of weight on one man’s shoulders.

Listening to the right wing radio already talk about the failure of the Obama administration, you hear the other side. The frustration with the anointed Obama, the frustration of looking at a man who some authentically feel to be too inexperienced, too liberal/socialist or more disgustingly too black, too foreign or too Muslim.

I feel that Obama has the substance to get the job done, the willingness to listen to other smart people and make the right final decision, the understanding that his constituency is the entire United States of America and in fact the world. The world is going to have to be patient, these growing pains of globalization and misorientation of resources towards the extreme wealthy are going to take time to iron out. All the brilliant rhetoric in the world won’t help.

The Coming Wage Deflation

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. The auto industry has come hat in hand to Congress making some political missteps along the way. What kind of auto industry doesn’t understand the right political move here, a convoy of their products heading through various states and having various events in factories in the states where they make their products. Oh, I guess the type of auto industry that makes crappy products that no one wants to buy.

You’ll hear everyone screaming about the UAW and the onerous contracts that make each car $1800, $2200 or $3 million dollars more expensive than their Japanese equivalent. Most of these are due to “legacy” costs, the costs of health care and pensions of those damn retirees who just keep living longer. Of course, all these contracts were made in good faith (Disclosure: As a grad student I was a member of the UAW) but made at a time where no one could see that Americans would go and buy Hondas and Toyotas that were more reliable. The US companies continued to make SUV’s and trucks that were great, but since few of us work on farms and we continue to drive farther and farther for work, these options didn’t make the sense of buying a Civic and knowing it wouldn’t be in the shop 6 times a year.

Recently some Republican legislators by Bob Corker (dooshbag-Tenn.) have come to say that there should be no bailout unless the unions agreed to terms similar to those of the Japanese companies that are running factories in you guessed it, Tennessee and other southern states. So essentially, you have a Republican senator leading a movement to have American wages determined in the boardrooms of Tokyo. It would make one wonder which side of the desk the winning side was on the USS Missouri in 1945. It’s enough to make your head swim.

I’m not one to say that these agreements don’t put American automakers at a competitive disadvantage but to blame the terrible planning and implementation on workers is just insane. And the fact is, they signed the contracts. What is scary is not so much these companies going the way of horse glue factories, but the effects that good, strong unions and high pay have had on the rest of the working public. The benefits and pay levels that many Americans now take for granted came from competition for workers with these companies that are now coming to pass.

So the economy retools in the next few years, there is the potential for wage deflation, that is fewer benefits and less pay for the same or equivalent positions that may actually require more education and qualifications, for most gone are the days you could walk out of high school and get a good job for the rest of your life.

What the danger here is, is the threat to the whole middle class. A class of people who have already overextended themselves to overreach to the class above will now likely have to stretch farther to own homes, get health care, care for both their children and their parents. We lose sight of this as we get frustrated with what seems the outrage of unions that protect the worst employees and continue to get high wages on the taxpayer’s dime while the layoffs continue across the country in other businesses.

Let’s remember that during this crisis, the big banks and the big moneyed class are starting to restructure themselves as well, using huge taxpayer bailouts and the gun to the head of the American government to fiercely protect the ultra rich, likely at the hands of the middle class.

Day 2: The Cold

2009-01-17T22:04:00.001-05:00

This should be interesting. I mean it’s fricking cold. I mean February northern New Hampshire cold, cold as a witch’s teat, cold enough that gasoline freezes, cold enough, well you know where I’m going fellas.

There are people coming from all over the known world. We met a woman from LA today, where it was 87 degrees. People aren’t used to this. Like I said yesterday, people here dress to look good. You see the certain crazies, people running, and of course people who ride bikes, but they actually appear to prepared for the weather, along with the bicycle rickshaws.

It struck me as obvious things often do, to look at the poverty around the opulence here in DC. The wealth in DC is concentrated in Northwest, the Capitol area and then through Georgetown on up. Seeing the homeless and beggars within the shadow of the White House and the other circles of power is quite striking. This is nothing new of course, but it made me wonder of other national capitals and whether the contrast is as amazing.

The sign of three homeless folks, waving happily at my daughter was incredible, people who have nothing, having a nice moment with my little girl. Sigh, ok time to put my head back into the sand for a while.

MASS TRANSIT

“Public transportation is for losers” Homer Simpson

I’m not sure that public transit will ever work in this country. First, we are all too fat, lazy and uncooperative. If we have to do anything at all that will inconvenience us then we just don’t want do it. It’s hard to tell a date, “yo, meet me down at the bus stop, I’ll be moving by on the 106, just check the schedule.” And often frankly, it’s just not convenient or doesn’t go where we want to go.

The other issue is that it is sometimes just so nonnegotiable unless you grew up with it. If you have never taken buses in a city for example, you have no idea where they go. Before the Internet you needed the Rosetta Stone of buses, that being a 47 year old woman who grew up in Somerville to figure out how to get anywhere. You could sit on the side of Mass. Ave and chronicle the goings on, write your anthropological master’s thesis and still have no idea what’s happening. Or you learn the essential buses, which doesn’t help if someday you need to do something you ordinarily don’t do. You know an MRI or something, because the best time to figure out how to get to Beth Israel is when you’ve torn your ACL and there is three inches of ice out.

The Internet has made it somewhat easier with rider tools and whatnot but that 47 year old woman is still going to tell you “that’s retarded” because she knows the bus driver from the 62 bus is hooking up with a girl from the Newtowne Grill and always takes his time on that route.

So that’s what I’m trying to say, there is absolutely no consistency even within one city when it comes to public transportation. Washington, DC who has exactly 892 people who actually were born and have lived in the District all their lives and actually leave their own neighborhoods is a prime example. The major issue is, I don’t know that 47 year old woman from Southeast who help me out and lets just say that as a government employee I know that the worst gov’t employees go to work for transit. Why? Because it’s one of the few places left where you’re uncle’s friend’s city councilman can still hook you up. If you are in the capital of the free world you should be able to explain how the system works, but mostly it’s not their fault. They just keep building stuff on top of itself, there are like 12 different types of machines with the same functions, to sell you a card so you can take various type of transport. And God forbid you rip a flimsy little card, because you’re going to take half a day to fix it and we’re only going to have one teller on the biggest weekend ever. OK so between my wife and I’s multiple advanced degrees we eventually figured it out but still I have two different cards, because God forbid you could transfer the huge sum of 17 dollars to a new card.

So my answer is standardization. Like EZ pass or whatever. Use the same damn system across the country. You take federal dollars you use the same system taking people’s money. You use the same way of communicating how the hell you get somewhere. You don’t need NASA to help you to put up a sign telling what bus that 90% of the people want to go on goes to and where it picks up. The thing is with transit is that it is extremely expensive, fares cover only a small piece of the pie, you gotta fill those trains and buses to make it worthwhile.

That being said the Metro for all of it’s typical Washington area “flavor”, that being boring, sterile and confusing is very clean and efficient. The no food thing could be annoying on a regular basis, but damn compared to Boston it’s like being on a Finnish airliner. And they make up with bus service to where people want to go at the cheapest prices. The circulator was great, no thinking to it the perfect tourist bus. Once of course you consulted the Oracle to find out where it went.

Smithsonian History Museum

There is no better gift to the nerdy American public than the Smithsonian. OK, so you rook my wallet for the Farm Bill, knock some of my bucks away to fake a moon landing and give out some nice corporate welfare to some fatcats, but I can see the Hope Diamond for free so let’s call it even.

The history museum was closed for about two years. I can’t really tell the changes but I do love this place. So much cool stuff. If I was an eccentric Bond billionaire it’s the type of crap I’d have in my carved out volcano. They do a good job in kind of finding regular people and put them into the entire historical picture. You know the kind of thing that pisses some people off, the kind of people who think that Napoleon conquered half of Europe by himself with only the assistance of a well trained horse and a flintlock pistol.

Elena really liked the trains, maybe because she has been on some type of public transport for most of the last 30 hours, for some reasons I don’t think toddlers understand the significance of Lincoln’s signed documents.

At first, there didn’t seem to be that many people in DC. Maybe people were just showing up, maybe people thought it was too cold, who knows. We managed to get to MetroCenter, consult with the Oracle of the Metro and get our SmartPasses, although at first she would only let me buy one. I asked her if my wife and I had to make separate purchases and eventually she let me slide. I’m thinking that she may have actually been holding people up in getting to spend money in the city.

There was a guy who was dressed as Lincoln, a dead ringer and a guy dressed as Jefferson and as Washington. I was looking for the guy dressed as Andrew Johnson. How cool it would be to be an Andrew Johnson recreator. I also voted for him in the survey as best president ever. Why? Because it was a stupid survey, a survey of people dorky enough to stop and answer an electronic survey of best presidents ever.

The crowds started getting larger. A lot of youth and their chaperones, chaperoning has got to be one of the most thankless jobs ever. I would say it is the equivalent of working in a chicken factory, everyone loves chicken but nobody wants to process them for 10 hours a day. We had a thirty dollar lunch that likely had the markup of Peruvian cocaine, I have no idea why everything in DC costs so much, particularly food, food seems to be about 1 and half times the amount of any in Boston, which is an expensive city in itself.

A good history trip though. Stuff about Jewish immigration to Cincinnati that seemed kind of random that I’m excited to tell my friend Josh about. Also a gorgeous Indian motorcycle and an M-1 carbine that I’d like to add to my Bond villain collection.

The Rest of the Day

We had planned on making our way to the Natural History museum but time was running short. Instead we walked up to the White House. On the way, I thought that we should try to have our pictures taken with random strangers from as many states as possible. When we got to the Second Division memorial we took our first one then realized that we didn’t have any paper to record who was who. So that’s a mission for the next few days.

The amazing thing about DC today compared to my youth is the level of security. While this weekend obviously has a heightened level, it still is amazing. It is difficult to walk in a straight direction to go anywhere and the presence of the various different public security forces is astounding. We made our way to the White House, which Elena has termed as “Obama’s House”, although she could have been talking about the Washington Monument actually, who knows. We’ll go with her bring precocious if not premature. Our bid to walk to the Lincoln Memorial at this point was brought back by the cold and the understanding that we were terrible parents for keeping our child out in bitter cold for hours at end. We made our way for another 20 minute walk to the Circulator or what I would like to call the best bus in the world outside of the bus that takes John Madden to football games.

The baby backpack is an amazing thing but damn are my shoulders hurting. After a little Elmo time, we got a chance to go out for some pizza and beers in Glover Park at Kavanaugh’s or what I would call Newtowne Grill at twice the price. Ah, it hit the spot though.

No Arlington today. And I didn’t here from my cousin. Maybe Monday. Tomorrow it may hit 40, maybe I’ll wear shorts. Initial pics are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/nyalfuentes/InaugurationPics#

Blogging Our Inaugural Vacation Part One

2009-01-17T17:20:00.001-05:00

It’s been a while since I’ve written, the post-election downshift in energy, the lame duck period in political blogging despite very weird and exciting things happening, Blago, the continuing economic downturn, a somewhat commitment by President-elect Obama to Clinton 2.0. So the following few posts are about our family’s trip to DC for Inaugural/MLK Weekend. Mostly for my daughter, to remember and anyone else that may be interested.

There may be a bunch of political content based on we are going to the biggest political milestone in a long time. Certainly the changes of 9/11 was the last, preceded by the death of American left liberalism on Jan. 20, 1981 but this has special appeal to a lot of people. As I have said previously it’s a day where we can honestly tell our children that if you work hard and are smart you can rise to the top. Certainly Bill Clinton was among those, but as a southern white Democrat with moderate leanings he had a certain “in” with many voters.

Senator Obama is different. Young, the son of a mixed marriage and from modest means (although I’ve always hated the term, “mixed”) who came out of nowhere. I can understand the nervousness of many people. Untested and coming from a strange coalition of people to elect him, certainly the Bush bashing activists, but also those who were scared for the financial future, for the future of their children and mostly lets be honest in a country where people really have no choice but the old albeit likable war hero from Arizona from the party that couldn’t shoot straight in administrating the world’s strongest government or the other guy. Let’s never forget that Obama could have never won without the coalition of those who to them picked tweedle-lesser of two evils.

Nonetheless, I’m focusing more on the transformative nature of the next few days rather than the future of the nation. The future of the nation begins with a Congress that will attempt to wrest a little power from the growing Imperial Presidency. And a lot of folks that will let the political get in the way of the rest of the country.

So here we are off to DC.

Out of My Brain on the Train 1/16/09

9:30 AM from the Amtrak Coach

On our way down the eastern seaboard to DC. Washington, DC, specifically Columbia Hospital on Pennsylvania Ave. is where I was born, so I’m headed back to my roots. Family lore says my uncle took my mother to the hospital in a stolen car (later returned by my young uncle).

For Xmas, Mrs. AngryMiddle surprised me with train tickets to DC and secured a rental from a friend of a friend in Georgetown. Quite a surprise actually, I had half considered going but generally as a misanthrope I hate crowds unless I’m actually speaking in front of them. The other issue is that my daughter just turned two. The prospect of traveling to DC, being in an overwhelmed city with a toddler can seem somewhat insane. So we’ll see how it goes. It’s a historic moment for all of us, growing up, I could never imagine that a president could be anyone but a really old, white guy and that generally these things were handed down to the next person in the aristocracy who’s turn in was to rule or at least the proxy of this person. I imagine my little girl won’t be fazed by Vietnamese-American senators, Dominican corporate titans and WASP dishwashers, which I suppose is the whole purpose of America.

Despite their growing wealth and regrowth to power if not superpower status, few people move to Russia or China for opportunity. is a beauty in the American dream, work hard, get educated, get economic success. But in America there is not just the possibility of economic success but with it, freedom. The freedom of expression, the freedom to live your life how you wish, the freedom to dream and the freedom to fulfill those dreams. For all my problems with the American system, it is the best place on Earth at any time on Earth. I will always have a constant quarrel with my country, but it’s a lover’s quarrel, one which will never be fully resolved.

We started the morning early and it’s damn cold here in Boston. -2 was the temperature when we woke up. Getting to the train in South Station is a little bit of a feat. Gone are the days when I could back my “markie” bag full of “health and beauty needs” and some clean underwear and make my way or even the more recent days where my wife and I would pack a couple little backpacks. Now it includes diapers, extra clothes, a backpack to carry my little girl, cameras, food and of course winter wear to spend hours outside, etc. Oh yeah and this laptop, oh yeah and some homemade stout. I felt like a Sherpa carrying likely 120 lbs of unbalanced luggage and bags while my wife carried my daughter.

My little girl has never been on a long trip. We’ve been to Rhode Island and the Cape, etc but never anywhere for an extended range of time. While the mass transit in Boston is good, we still have to take the commuter rail for a couple of stops, take the T and then switch trains before we get on the Amtrak. Fortunately it’s rush hour we are trying to negotiate. Tenzing Norgay was fit and could carry a lot but he never had to bash through rush hour commuters. I was done with being polite and eventually just knocked through the horde.

My wife hates flying and yesterday a plane crashed into the Hudson so today would have been quite a day to fly. The train takes a while but is somewhat civilized once you’re on. This is the non-Acela so there is no wireless access so my references will likely be misspelled because it’s tainted human memory and not Wikipedia. The issue with the train is like a lot of transit,(ok a lot of things) if you don’t do it very often, you feel confused.

I’m hoping the weather in DC will cooperate, a friend of mine (quoting someone famous) once said that DC has the speed of southerners and the politeness of northerners. It also has the fear of weather. Cold and snow cripples the DC metro area. Cold and snow that people from Massachusetts (at least it seems until very recently) just see as a part of their being, nothing that a hoodie, some gloves and an extra layer can stave off. Give me 32 degrees and no wind or rain on Inauguration Day and we’re good to go. Georgetown for better or worse is kind of a hike from all the activities. We have no tickets and my goal is to make it to the jumbotron at the Lincoln Memorial on Tuesday. The security would likely be hell to us with a backpack and baby sundries anyway.

CLINTON INAUGURATION 1993

In Jan. 1993, some 16 years ago, I had graduated from college and I was living in Northern Virginia. To me, Northern Virginia has all the charm of a crappy suburban strip mall and all the history of a Kohl’s Department store. The positive highlights included a really good used bookstore out past Manassas, seeing my friends’ bands tour through DC, meeting Ian McKaye at a Fugazi rally for the homeless, and of course Bill Clinton’s inauguration. There were a ton of events and music tents at that time, my sister, now brother-in-law, Chez and I attended a bunch of events before and on inauguration day itself, Chez and I attacked DC.

It was a good time for young, progressive folks, some 12 years of Reagan-Bush had come to a close and there was some hope coming out of that early 90’s recession. So obviously it was time to set the record for malt liquor and southern comfort consumption for the city. 42 cent drafts at bars and masses of people we had never seen before stretched across the Mall. Working no collar jobs for lawyers sucking the blood out of America was not the best way to spend all your days, so a day off of drinking and celebrating was something.

Yup, all the details are a little sketchy. Drinking 22’s in Dupont Circle and a host of other youthful activities that this father of a toddler will likely not participate in this time, nonetheless, I have hope for a similar post-inaugural feeling of a positive future.

Back to the Train

As my wife says, we New Englanders are scruffy folks, the manner of dress that is, and once you kind of cross into the New York side of Connecticut you sense the change, people tuck in their sweatshirts, and mainly dress for cleanliness and fashion and not function and warmth. Let me remind you, my ripped UMass sweatshirt is warm as hell and when it’s near zero and no one is paying my to look and talk nice, I’m all done with any rudimentary sense of fashion. Once you cross the Bridgeport Line, people also become infatuated with cellphone communication, I mean everyone was jibber jabbing about everything.

The train is fairly slow but efficient, you started to sense some security action in Wilmington, setting up for Saturday’s train trip for Biden and Obama, likely checking every bridge etc. for the potential of an attack. Going through Baltimore is generally depressing, I mean these buildings have been boarded up for years, and some buildings seem half missing, like it is on the Hezbollah side of Beirut. Very odd for someone from the northeast to think that there would be any vacant housing, pretty depressing.

To DC

We arrive in DC and it’s cold here, too. Colder than I ever remember it as a kid or in any of the visits in the past 30 years. Union Station is packed, it’s around rush hour and a Friday to boot on MLK/Inaugural weekend and we’re carrying said huge load of stuff. Elena has been pretty damn good up to this point and I’m actually much crankier than she is.

Public transit in general is confusing. (more about this tomorrow/later) but in a nutshell, everywhere you go is different, there is no universal theme to public transportation. The Metro is clean and organized, so organized that the doors shut before the train is even full. In Boston, someone would break a window if that happened. We get a train to Dupont Circle crowded in by commuters, tourist and city residents alike, people don’t seem to be used to the crush of crowds on the train which in Boston is a daily occurrence. Then we switch over to a bus, Becky’s card got ripped and of course the bus didn’t take this particular card anyway, the bus driver waved us on and we got to Georgetown to Becky’s friends house.

We are renting a mother in law apartment from Becky’s friend’s friend. My mother was a cocktail waitress in Georgetown as a younger person. It has the funky feel of Cambridge if it were located outside London with a touch of Manhattan, very upscale. We ate Turkish food takeout and went to the apartment, nice place, a little chilly as I don’t think DC homes are prepared for this kind of cold. The owners had left us a bottle of expensive champagne and apparently donated half our rent to a homeless shelter. And then smartly left for the Bahamas.

Off to bed, and then attack tomorrow.

Two Weeks In

2008-11-18T20:10:00.003-05:00

So two weeks after the election the euphoria starts to wear down and it's down to business. A very exciting day filled with bourbon, glee and excitement and a new day in America. There is so much possibility, so much hope that could come out of it and indeed I'm proud of a nation that can see past it's racism filled past and present, it's fear of immigrants and change to look at the face of a new America. Seeing President-Elect Obama on 60 Minutes was amazing, the sharp intellect, the youthful image of a wife and children, but now it's down to business. Whatever sea change you compare it to, perhaps not Reconstruction, or the Great Depression but certainly comparable. Two active hot wars going on simultaneously, a "cold war" against terror, an energy crisis, an environmental crisis, the growing pains of globalization and not to mention an incredible international financial and economic crisis. Yikes.

So, as proud as I am of you and I am, it's time to get down to work.

My Letter to President-Elect Obama,

Dear President Elect Obama,

It is with incredible pride and patriotism as an American that I welcome you as my President. It is amazing that 40 years after Dr. King was shot down in Memphis that a man of color has taken the reins of this great country. It sets an amazing example for every young American that truly someday they could be President. That hard work and intellect can take you to the greatest heights.

And that and a buck and a quarter will get you a small coffee. The previews are over and it's time for the main attraction. America is in a weird place right now. Americans have been intimidated over the past eight years with fear both real, perceived and intimated. A certain darkness has come over the nation in many elements, not crushing the American spirit but certainly making it less prevalent and sweeping. Our hopes that working and saving would bring us towards the American dream are much less encompassing, wiped out by fear of losing our retirement funds, our jobs, our homes and in fact our future.

And this is just one of our major issues, there is the general image of American greatness abroad, which has gone from the beacon of world freedom in many eyes to that of an uncaring bully unbridled by world opinion, a drunken cowboy trying to get our way. Simultaneously we have weakened the great fighting force of all history through a constant war with undetermined objectives, taking some our nation's best men and women, junior officers and NCO's leaving the service, leaving us less prepared for our next conflict(s).

And that doesn't even get us started on the issues we had before that, energy and environmental issues that have been ignored by a generation of oil soaked lobbyists and politicians. Mr. President Elect you've got yourself in a tough fix. But I think I have some solutions for some of our internal problems.

RAISE THE GAS TAX
Oh yeah, people are going to go fricking nuts, the right wing will scream about taxobamics, but hear me out. First, you're going to take abuse from the right anyway, regardless what you do, so you may as well do the right thing. Gas prices have dropped over the past few months due to the economic slowdown so it won't be the pain we felt over the past year or so but in fact, gas in this country is too cheap regardless. I'm not suggesting a European style gas tax that would stun and freeze our economy which is built around highways, long commutes and suburbia but a reasonable 50-60 cent increase per gallon. (about 180 billion gallons/year for all vehicles, 74 billion for autos in 2005) Now this money doesn't go overseas but instead to help rebuild America. Of these funds I would suggest that 50% of the funds go into an infrastructure bank, funding highway, bridge and transit projects that meet 21st century standards and are based on proper needy projects and not general pork, 25% would go into alternative energy production, based on an angel capital venture fund model from the federal government with the government have the capacity to retain some capital from successful projects, the remaining 25% would be divided among a new GI bill to fund the veterans of recent wars including COBRA type coverage of TRICARE for military families (perhaps 5%), and the remaining divided amongst deficit reduction and a large, competitive contract for American auto companies to build buses and other municipal vehicles based on plug in hybrids, fuel cells or other alternative energies for use in American cities.

BUILDING CONFIDENCE IN THE ECONOMY
70% of the economy is based on consumer spending. It why despite the 2001 attacks and the tech bubble that the economy sputtered but did not collapse. What wrong now is that we have this conflagration of the credit crunch, a lack of consumer confidence, a recession and a general lack of regulation from the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

Here's where the issue lies, I do think that just the change of administration and a commander in chief that is engaged with the issues and doesn't talk like he's in the chorus of a spaghetti western will help build some confidence but it's a tight rope to walk. Particularly when it comes to regulation. You have to get people to wade back into the market, whether it be the supermarket or the stock market. Wall St. and their sycophants in and out of the administration and in media have been holding a gun to the head of the American economy in a manner that can only be compared to Somali pirates and sea traffic off Mombasa.

WHEN IT COMES TO THE MONEYCHANGERS: TREAT THE TAXPAYER'S NICKELS LIKE MANHOLE COVERS

Taxpayer money used to bailout companies must be accounted for, where's it going, what's it doing, is it going for Xmas parties and big bonuses? Or is it going to grease the skids for the American economy. Business has frequently said to get government off it's back but those days at least for now are over. The federal government is a partner and stockholder in what used to be some of America's greatest companies. My boy Clubba doesn't seem to understand what the hell is going on, why the hell would you give all this money to failing companies. My comparison would be giving your friend who just ran his car drunk into a tree, the keys to your car so he can drive that one into a telephone pole. Clubba would suggest, if you need to get the capital out in the economy why not give it to healthy, existing regional banks.

Now I don't think Timmy's going to be getting that call to Stockholm anytime soon but that just makes sense. You're going to have to hire the best and the brightest to oversee this lovely transfer of wealth from working and middle class Americans to the ruling Wall St. class regulating this use while at the same time making sure that you don't choke the capital that will assist regrowth of the economy.

ALTOGETHER NOW: FIXED RATE IS FIRST RATE

Second step are mortgages and housing. Damn, it pisses me off as the guy who got the standard fixed mortgage and keeps up his house, to see these foreclosures of sub prime mortgages, flippers and people that just got over their heads buying housing that cost way too much. Arggh.... Too much blame to go around, so how do you save the housing market and have people stay in their homes as well. So I guess it's fixed mortgages for 40 or 50 year periods. Now sure this is complicated and you'll have most people who are basically renting from their bank while building up a ton of equity but there has to be some modicum of control here to protect people from themselves.

I'm unsure whether it would be an FHA arrangement or through a GSE but for people who seem to have the potential to stay in their homes and pay a mortgage and have decent credit this could be an option and still maintain a free market image in the mortgage market.

These opportunities would also allow recent college graduates, working class as well as those transitioning from the military to get into decent housing and rebuild neighborhoods, these deeds would be protected from speculators by requiring that houses sold for more than a certain percentage higher than the initial cost of the home for a particular period of time have a very high capital gains tax.

PUBLIC WORKS ARE PUBLIC WORK

The third piece is to get the American people back to work. An economic stimulus bill, you know like the Bush checks isn't going to do much good. Some of us will pay off our debt, other squirrel it away for an even rainier day. The stimulus unfortunately (maybe) is going to have to go through states with it's inherent bureaucracy. With this being said, on top of the infrastructure building projects mentioned under the gas tax proposal, these funds can be "earmarked" for additional public works projects similar to New Deal projects targeted towards particular empowerment zones.

The strings need not be chains, but there must be some connections to particular needs of that community to help employ the unemployed but also serve a particular service to the community.

So there's my first few shots of advice, more to follow as we move into Jan 20th.

I'll Take Her

2008-11-04T12:55:00.003-05:00

This morning, Elena, my wife and I got up earlier than usual to vote. We got there around 6:30 or so and a couple of people were waiting in line. Elena was a little fussy in her stroller so she got her way and I got out, I picked her up a muffin and coffee, Becky and I's little tradition is to get coffee afterwards and some breakfast but everything was kinda rushed, like everything is.

We couldn't get Elena to say vote or as Becky wanted "exercise your franchise". People started to line up behind us, a small wave of humanity waiting to exercise that franchise. I thought today of the billions around the world who can't vote, or vote in fixed elections and thought about our responsibility today as Americans. Casting a vote for the most powerful person in the world. Now that's really something, that power, that responsibility of putting so much power in the American people's hands, from the daughter of an ex-slave http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/story?id=6153625&page=1 to a soldier filling out an absentee ballot, an investment banker, an 18 year old kid in the 'bury getting his first shot at the process, whoever that American might be.

We shuffled up in line as the polls opened, Elena with her mama, me trying to maneuver a cup of coffee, a muffin and a stroller filled with everything my little girl could possibly stow away, a blizzard could come and we'd be prepared,even though it was a 5 minute walk away.

I have no idea who will be elected President tonite, and if that person is elected, what kind of President he will be. I know that there are a lot of men and women who got me up to this vestibule, these cube of democracy. Some of them wore a uniform, served in the sands, forests, jungles and mountains defending our country and making the world safe for democracy. Some of them weren't in uniform and fought the war at home for civil rights and for social justice, some of them fought to put food on our table, clothes on our backs and roofs over our heads, but alas I stand on the shoulders of these giants, casting my vote for the future of our own country and perhaps of mankind on earth.

Wow, so much responsibility. I was never one of those educators who told every kid they could be President. How trite it seemed to say that to a kid who struggled to get to school everyday for whatever reason, usually not a fault of their own. How trite is seemed to tell a kid growing up in OP, Jefferson Park, or Mattapan that one day they may walk those hallowed halls. All of a sudden, maybe I was wrong.

Obama was not my first choice for President, all those things, inexperience, naivete, etc. bothered me and the fact that the Democratic Party would nominate a Black man with a funny name for the post. Typical I thought of my party in it's usual suicidal manner, going with the liberal guy instead of the vital center. As I often say, I shed a tear when Obama gave his speech in 2004 at the Convention. An amazing rhetorician, in fact, that speech is printed out and hangs outside my daughter's door, along from some quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt who inspired Elena's first name. (her middle name is Nieves, my grandmother as I lay tribute to two of the most dominating women of the 20th century)

We made our way up to the polls, and got the ballot. I told my wife, "I'll take her." This was quite a life changing experience voting for Obama and I wanted my daughter to see that. She'll never remember unfortunately, it will be my own selfish pleasure. I voted for all ballot questions first, all the lower ticket items leaving the Presidential unchecked. Elena got to touch the pen before I filled in that final circle. And then the circle is complete.

My mother donated to the Obama campaign, the first time in her life that she donated to a campaign. There is something transformative going on. My hope is that it's good transformation. These are tough times and the next President is not going to cut taxes, is not going to make it easier on people and is going to have to make tough choices for a nation that has been living on fluff and credit for years. It's a scary choice, maybe people later today will avail themselves of the safe choice, McCain.

But I had an opportunity to vote for transformation, not because of the color of his skin but the content of his character. That a man that came from limited means with a dedication to education, intellect and hardwork could make himself at the pinnacle of the most difficult and greatest job in the world.

And you know what, I had a chance to take my little girl with me. While I'll never be President, I can honestly look at Elena Nieves Fuentes and tell her, "baby, you can be President."

And then she'll say "papi, kitty". OK, so it will take some time.

The Eye of the Tiger

2008-10-15T22:32:00.003-04:00

The Final Debate
I'm lost without a clue
So how can I undo
The tangle of these webs I keep weaving
I don't know if I should be believing
Deceptive perceiving
But if you don't mind
I don't mind- The Buzzcocks

So the question is, how does McCain take the initiative? Does he go the Ayers/Rev. Wright route and totally sell out any principles he has left. I mean Obama is prepared for that, isn't he, it's like walking into an ambush.

Or does he start going down the foreign policy/national security road? Now this is very important territory but it may be kind of like worrying if your kid is going to drown in the river, while in actuality the house is on fire. It's the economy more than ever stupid, and I imagine that John would rather have Romney on his team right now rather than Sarah Moosenidiot.

Sarah Palin visited New Hampster today. They had a woman on the radio talking about that she was a hockey mom too and it was great to have a "regular" person going to the white house. Now we want regular people for one of the most important jobs in the world, the second for the most important job in the world. I'm sick of regular. I want amazing, I want intellect. You can have empathy for the common man, the regular guy, remember where you came from etc. without having to dumb everything down. Geez.

My favorite quote of the day from my sister about the economy, "wow, this is one of the few times that I feel good being poor". (meaning she hasn't lost anything)

9:00 PM Wolf Blitzer is the Brent Musberger of news, shows up everywhere and you wonder how the hell he has a job. Chuck Hagel's wife is attending with Michelle Obama, damn, think that dude is job searching?

9:03 PM He comes the best part of the debate, it's Xmas for everyone and costs no one anything. Does Obama go into 4 corners here, a little curly neal dribble or does he try to take it to the hoop. This debate is a battle for confidence, Americans need confidence.

9:08 PM Well, John you could always leave the Senate and go into plumbing. The BIG LIE of this campaign is that either taxes will be raised and/or entitlements will be cut. Just stop lying, both of you.

9:15 PM Random back and forth about cutting programs that don't work, etc. McCain needs a soundbite or two for someone to grab onto. He shouldn't refer to the Depression so much, it seems like he actually was there. He really hates that projector. He must have some bullets in his gun, he must.

9:23 PM This is really boring. Again without the whiskey. McCain has disappointed me so far, rehashing the same ideas. I've always liked McCain, is he trying too hard to remain calm, to not be the old angry guy?

9:30 PM Obama has the advantage of just being calm, who is the more medicated candidate. Joe the Plumber is back. It's about John Lewis and Joe the Plumber. And talking about the rallies. Wow, this is really stupid. Can we just give each candidate a two minute timeout.

9:36 PM Wow, a Republican bringing up voter fraud. Does anyone cares about Bill Ayers? I mean other than people who wouldn't vote for Obama anyway? People who think Obama is a socialist?

9:46 PM Hopefully Bob doesn't really want to talk about Climate control. Terrible question, "how many barrels?" John doesn't understand the fungibility of oil and the global economy. Ohio loves clean coal, so does Pennsylvania. Obama also doesn't understand the fungibility of oil either. Or this 700 billion dollar figure, we just want to toss huge sacks of money around.

9:53 PM Obama needs to go to South America. And was just compared to Herbert Hoover.

9:58 PM Is the Entitlement question coming up? Wait, John's gotta talk to Joe the Plumber again. And Barry's concerned about Joe thinking he's a socialist, too.

10:03 PM Would you leave Joe the hell alone? 47 million (who knows) without health care and we're worried about Joe paying a fine for healthcare? Every one of these interviewers/newsreaders/moderators has been terrible, anyone who talks about the federal budget and doesn't follow up on defense, medicaid, social security, medicare or debt service is just an idiot.

10:09 PM What does Joe feel about Roe v. Wade? Lily Ledbetter and Joe the Plumber. McCain is going to adopt all the babies.

10:16 PM The standard centrist education answer from Obama, finally smartening up to know that the teacher's unions aren't going to run out and vote for McCain en masse. TFA gets a shout out from Johnny! I start to stare into space when they talk education.

Thank God, this is the last debate, to me, a tie, but McCain had to win, he still looks angry and annoyed, which is fine if you're me, but not for the big job. Looking forward to writing about something besides debates.

Battle in the Bible Belt

2008-10-07T22:43:00.000-04:00

The Battle Begins
I imagine it's a celebration of the working and middle class tonite. It's not your fault, it's the fatcats in Washington/Wall St. Town meeting style, so I imagine all the questions will be about traffic and weather. Or the price of gas and bringing back not existent well paying factory jobs that require only an 8th grade education and pay a living middle class wage.

There is a certain economic October surprise coming up for the first time in the history of the Ownership Society people will be opening up 401K and other retirement accounts in the next couple of weeks and literally see nest eggs that have evaporated by 15-20% even in conservative investments. What is this effect?

9:00 pm Who are these 80 undecided voters? Man, it's going to take them a long time to order pizza.

9:04 pm southerners? An hour and half, as slow as they talk, they're going to get through about 3 questions. Drink every time a candidate says "middle class", if they add family, drink twice. Apparently, the bald are a major percentage of undecided voters.

9:09 pm OK, so we're cutting taxes and taking on bad mortgages at the same time, awesome. Everybody loves Warren Buffett. I do to, Warren Buffett is not walking through that door.

9:13 pm I'm not sure the who took more money from Fannie/Freddie but all these guys are dirty and loaded with financial sector money and supporters. Unsure why Obama hasn't dropped the Hooveresque "fundamentals are sound" line on McCain's head.

9:23 pm McCain has a secret plan to fix the economy. McCain's "my friends" is Obama's "let's be clear". Obama knows gas prices but nobody, nobody wants to talk about entitlements other than we have to work together, the Congressional equivalent of "yeah, I really do need to lose some weight and exercise"

9:28 pm Some of these lines are getting tired. The 4 billion in tax cuts for oil country for one. Sacrifice? Whoa, good question. McCain hates overhead projectors. Apparently those are causing 500 billion dollar deficits. Nobody is going to answer the sacrifice question. Never mind, in theory it was a good question but no one is answering this question clearly.

9:35 pm WhooHoo, McCain's giving away money!!! And Obama agrees, everybody's getting rich and everybody's getting laid! Another attempt at the entitlement question. Obama skates around it, McCain is getting around a table with deceased Irish American politicians from both sides. OOOOOH, a blue ribbon commission........

9:43 pm Not to stereotype but young sister, are you really a young Black woman for McCain? Everyone loves nukes now. Because it's "clean" energy. More of the voted 23 times, 74 times bullshit, give it a rest, how about some details.

9:47 pm Barack, "the chant is drill, baby, drill." Sorry had a mild Palin flashback. Obama loves Bush and Cheney, my friends. And wants to vote for their pork laden bills.

9:51 pm My second debate in a row without whiskey, I totally forgot. Damn these two candidates are underwhelming. John, don't make me do math. Oh, good Lord, he's starting to sound like my wife's grandmother, I'll agree with you if you just stop talking.... Anything you want.

9:59 pm Good line by McCain about on the job training for commander in chief. One thing about these debates, at the beginning of debates can we all agree to agree that we all appreciate the service of our soldiers and that we are the greatest country on earth? It just starts to sound trite and insulting.

10:04 pm The Obama Doctrine, Tom, slow the hell down. Hmmh. An Angry Middle doctrine, I like it.

10:14 pm I don't want a friend, I don't want joe six pack, for the love of God somebody show some leadership! OK, maybe I want to really see a debate by the candidate's advisers. Nice use of the word apparatchiks but this should be the last debate, it's just getting repetitive.

10:21 pm McCain "OK, Professor Obama, it's time for me to take you outside and kick your ass. OK, it's back to who loves Israel more time.

10:31 pm Here is Obama's strength, rhetoric on the American economic experience as opposed to McCain's narrative as an American war hero. Both strong, but unsure if in the next 4 weeks that national security will take the upper hand. The Republicans are focusing on fear, things can get much, much worse without a steady hand, The Democrats have some of loose "hope" thing going on.

I have Obama on points on this one. McCain is OK, but he did come across as old. Wolf is a dooshbag,McCain has "disdain" for Obama, take your lazy non journalistic ass to US magazine.

Biden Time for Palintology

2008-10-02T22:34:00.001-04:00

The Battle at WashU
Luke, it's a trap-Star Wars

Pregame Comments: Until I got old, my passion was pickup hoops. Anywhere, anytime. We'd play in the heat of the sun and chip ice off the courts to play in the winter. Between working the morning shift and night shifts at restaurants, whatever. I played with a lot of big guys, tall guys, generally where I used a lot of elbows and shoulders and pushing around. Of the probably thousands of pickup games I played, I played maybe a dozen or so with girls/women that were actually competitive games. Not shooting around with your girlfriend or sister but actually competitive games.

There is nothing worse than having to guard a woman playing hoops, particularly a woman who can play. I go back probably to the early 90's playing a game on the Cape. As the luck of the draw would have it, I was guarding a girl. Oh, but this girl was good, she could sink jumper after jumper, she was a college (D3) player. Eventually, you had to play your game, go to your strength, despite how embarrassing it may look to push a girl around.

Here's the issue that Biden faces tonite, he could be stepping into a trap underestimating his foe. Certainly the bar has been set very low for Sarah Palin here, any modicum of success will look like victory, Jumbly Joe need to go for every rebound, every put back tonite. Joe has got to be the knowledgable adult, not make up any stories and be prepared for the attack dog. My bet is that Palin's strategy is to come out with 4 or 5 zingers or soundbites for the next six weeks. To be repeated and drilled into people's heads. Outside of that, Palin needs to just cede her time and let Biden talk himself in circles. This debate is Biden's to lose, unless Palin just says something crazy.

AND WE'RE OFF
9:00 pm: Gwen shows her bias, a blue shirt Gwen, a blue shirt? "Can I call you, Joe?" See she's just a regular person. Governors are just like us, they call people by their first names.

9:06 pm: See a regular person, go to a soccer game. Right now the Governor looks scared and just keeps saying "John McCain". The Senator applies the "out of touch" retort

9:08 pm Palin celebrates the American worker again. "A team of mavericks?" Is that even possible, is that like an army of anarchists?

9:10 pm Palin celebrates the American worker again for being swindled by evil predatory lenders. Joe Six packs and hockey moms need to band together. Never again will we be taken advantage of. Okay that's a direct quote, that stuff is just awesome.

9:15 pm Fifteen minutes in. Palin keeps on the standard Republican talking points, Biden is attempting to bore people to death. Palin wins the flag contest, and gets extra points for the family service star.

9:17 pm Is there any particular reason that I'm not drinking whiskey, I feel like an in an AA meeting at a Grateful Dead Show. Everytime anyone mentions the middle class the CNN Ohio voters survey shoots up.

9:20 pm Biden is also middle/working class just so you know there are 100 US Senators and 50 state governors, regardless of income none of y'all would be considered middle class. I'm thinking of looking to see if there is a zoning board meeting on cable access, I'm on a charisma jones.

9:23 pm Say it Sarah, say it, say straight talk, say straight shooter. For the love of God.

9:28 pm It's the Wonk against the Hockey Mom. I'm pre-quoting Ed Rollins on CNN, "What the Governor said really resonated with the middle and working class those that are really struggling, she really knocked it out of the park" Look, Ohio voters, oil, cheap shiny oil (paraphrasing Mrs. Angry Middle)

9:31 pm The Sarah Palin science hour. Nice, we are legislating by chant now. For what it's worth, Biden seems to have disappeared and Palin is just swinging all over the place, hitting occasionally. Biden's pancake makeup seems to be taking over his face.

9:37 pm Biden uses the "m" word around same sex benefits (marriage). He's either an idiot, a maverick or is setting a bigot trap. Okay nobody likes gay marriage.

9:40 pm Obama hates America and hates the American troops. Barack Obama wants to wave a flag of surrender. OK, lets be real, no one is cutting off funding for the troops, geez.

9:48 pm More Kissinger love. "They hate freedom" is back.

9:53 pm OK, we all love Israel, let's move on. It's like kissing your sister.

9:55 pm I wish I had an Ed Rollins cam right now, 5 bucks he can't keep his hands off himself. Sarah is tripping all over her words about nuclear weapons, she has to go back to her notes about Afghanistan and building schools for children. Biden can't put her away on foreign affairs, he's got no killer instinct. Throw the elbow, get the rebound, Joe!

10:02 pm Biden starts to talk about his McCainesque travelogue. Finally 64 minutes in, Palin uses the "straight talk" line. Oh did you know she's an outsider and has a state that is rich in resources?

10:09 pm A team of mavericks. Sweet. "Say it ain't so, Joe, dog gone it" Wow, she's a fricking nut. I want to get hammered with her at a BC-University of Alaska hockey game.

10:16 pm This is my last whiskey-less political event. Hey, Joe take Article I and stick it up your @ss, D. Cheney. Sarah Palin is the stepford governor.

10:24 pm Joe actually shows a little energy and reminds me he hasn't overdosed on Lieberman's charisma medicine.

10:30 pm Fighting for average families, like those of a state governor? Is freedom going somewhere? Did I miss the memo?

Debate 1

2008-09-26T22:46:00.000-04:00

SPINNING AWAY
The first debate, a rainy night in New England, a delay in a meaningless Red Sox-Yankees game in the middle of a fiscal crisis. After yet another inspiring Presidential speech on Thursday night, I'm on a true leadership bender.

8:46 PM Johnny Walker Red is kind of like the Old Thompson's, RC Cola or Mohawk Vodka of scotches, not your first choice but good to have around for occasions like this

8:52 PM Interesting but disturbing PBS NOW on the financial crisis, what a clusterf$ck. I wish some of our social security money was locked up in this well run free market. So what direction does this debate go in? Does it stay foreign policy? Or is it about the elephant in the room. But more importantly, who has the bigger flag pin, hug or handshake?

8:58 PM Where the hell have they been hiding Christiane Amenpour and Michael Ware? Are they starting to bring out actual journalists for this one? Campbell Brown is starting to impress me, all she has to do is throw Wolf Blitzer to the ground and pummel him and I'll be happy. Wolf just cleared up that the University of Mississippi is in Mississippi.

9:01 PM My US magazine report for Jodie. Jim Lehrer's shirt looks like a JC Penny's standard oxford. Barack wins the handshake with the extra grab. Barack has a little five o clock shadow, small flag, standard red tie in a four in hand not. Could get his eyebrows done.

9:05 PM Obama's first mention of Bush as McCain, also drops in trickle down economics. McCain drops a little thing about Teddy K. in, shows some humanity. Tie looks like windsor knot, more of a mavericks tie with a funky design. Flagless. More maverick like dress. Uses paraphrase of "end of the beginning" speech from Churchill post-Battle of El Alamein.

9:10 PM Eisenhower is the "new black" in American politics. Eisenhower would lead a military coup if he saw the American government like it looks like today. I really like both these guys, I wish both of them would stay in the Senate and lead. Time for the American worker love, I imagine it will soon be followed by the love of the American warrior, right before we try to screw both of them.
am
9:14 PM Score for McCain, earmarks as a gateway drug. Obama won't do it, but he should lead with "dude, there's like 18 people in your state, what the hell would you earmark, a cactus juice farm?"

9:16 PM First of Obama's favorite discourse marker "Let's be clear" Gets a paycheck everyday? Next McCain-Bush reference. Second "let's be clear" clocks in three minutes later.

9:20 PM If I were Jim Lehrer my next question would be "what's your favorite Barry White song, could you sing a line or verse?" Then I would ask why are either of your f#ckers talking about cutting taxes, aren't we giving away 700 billion dollars or about what the federal government spends on education in 14 years?

9:28 PM "What are you going to give up", Obama lists 100 things he'll want to spend on, uses the cut waste argument. McCain drops the "L" word on Obama. McCain goes anti-ethanol and starts talking about reform of defense contracts, well played.

9:31 PM I wondering if there is a way I could watch the Alaskan senate debate with Ted Stevens. Obama drops in the first internet reference Google for Gov't. McCain suggests a spending freeze on everything except where we spend all of our money, defense and entitlements. McCain quotes Pickens Plan commercial.

9:34 PM Nuclear power as an option. 35 new nuclear plants, interesting. Obama "orgy of spending". McCain mentions himself as a maverick, as well as his new partner. McCain seems calm, doing well, unsure why Obama isn't trying to push him off balance a little bit.

9:47 PM Obama hates the troops, he wants them to drive around in K Cars with slingshots in Baghdad. I think he hates America. There are only 4 countries in the world, the US, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Talleyban?

9:57 PM McCain's first I love Ronald Reagan mention but still disagreed with him. Both the candidates have bracelets with soldier's names on it.

10:03 PM Iran is a country as well, so is Israel. Can't allow a second holocaust. McCain steals "let's be clear" discourse marker. "League of Democracies", all I can envision is Thomas Paine with a cape on and a big D on his chest. Obama brings in China and Russia to the conversation, well done.

10:08 PM McCain ain't talking to anyone, he ain't even going to say his name right, I'll call him Teheran Ted if I want to, he and Caracas Carl get sit on their oil and eat crap. Obama will go talk to anyone and bring Michelle's shrimp dip with him. North Korea is also a country. So is it the League of Democracies v. the Axis of Evil?

10:12 PM McCain takes a shot at Obama's seal. Mentions Dr. Kissinger again, who's next Talleyrand, Otto von Bismarck? South Koreans are taller than North Koreans, saw it at the Pyongyang basketball championships. He's known Dr. Kissinger for 35 years. McCain likes Israel. And Dr. Kissinger.

10:16 PM Finally Russia! Nice line from McCain, looked in Putin's eyes and saw a K, a G, and a B. Well played. If Leonid Brezhnev rises from the grave, we got the guy to oppose him, Dr. K and Big Mac. McCain has been everywhere. There has actually been some nice pronunciation going on here. GW would be drooling and rolling around on the floor talking about Texas at this point.

10:26 PM Another disagreement with the administration, bringing on the 9/11 Commission. Safer. Obama intimates that America is the greatest country on earth. Likes veterans. McCain is trying to remember some of the Yiddish that Dr. Kissinger taught him, trying to encourage Boca Raton to have a foreign policy. McCain strikes back, calling Barry stubborn and comparing him to the current administration, touche Senator McCain.

10:35 PM Obama quotes himself from DNC 2004 speech. McCain likes veterans more than Obama.

Debate over. Unsure how Barack managed to not mention that he was at Ole Miss some 4osome years after it was integrated. Let the spin begin. Don't think this debate made much of a huge difference amongst the undecideds.

How to Win

2008-09-23T20:57:00.001-04:00

WINNING THE RACE
I know people read the Angry Middle but I rarely get comments, mostly because my very clear points need very little clarification and my readers are quick to fall in line and spread my musings across the free world. I am the left center Rush Limbaugh.

My buddy Jon posted an interesting comment and a really nice description albeit written from his political point of view (although I do agree with him) and it made me think, what would the Democrats have to do to actually pull this election out. And I mean a strategy that wouldn't make me want to register for the Prohibitionist party. So I try to answer the question, what can the Democratic Party do to show that they are the party of moderates?

Most of my answers entail not playing defense all the time. Democrats always seem to be waiting for the next move and look like they have never seen or anticipated what is now a tired Republican playbook. Come up with some new ideas, don't be afraid to piss a few people off, particularly in your base, your base, except for the crazies are not leaving. You need to find the soccer moms, the security moms, the Reagan Democrats to lean your way to win the election. Here are a few issues I would hit, I know they're issues, not something the media really wants to cover or talk about because that would require reading and research but let's roll with in anyway.

It is amazing to think that such a disaster of an administration would leave even a potential for that party to retain the White House, of course part of this that I've been hammering away at for months is the Democratic selection of one of the only two candidates who could possibly lose this election despite their personal intelligence, skill or charisma, while the Republicans managed to nominate the only Republican who could possibly win. Obama needs to explain a simple ugly fact, before one bridge is built, Title I funding sent to a school, national park cleaned up or energy/agricultural subsidy is put out, 70% of the budget is already spent on defense/medicaid/medicare/social security and the national debt and all these are eating up bigger percentages every day, an ugly fact but people need to know, as abhorrent as senseless earmarks may be, they don't touch the big money.

So here's a couple to start with.

National Defense
Always a tough row to hoe, especially with a war hero candidate. The Republican argument will be that (as of Sept 23, 2008) there has not been a terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11. I would also argue that no one in my hometown has been attacked by a polar bear either. The anti-war crowd is yours already, no need to knock on Code Pink's door hoping for an Obama endorsement. You need to work on those who may have supported the war initially by hammering away at the lack of intelligence (both military/political and cerebral) on the part of the administration when the decisions were made and then quickly run to solutions while at the same time dousing soldiers, sailors, marines and airman alike with well earned praise.

Some major issues I would hit on is developing an exit plan for Iraq by talking to, wait for it, both allies and foes alike on how to solve the situation. Obama has got to sell the country on the idea the unilateralism is stupid, and expensive in blood, treasure, and international political capital. It is amazing to think that a country, more an idea really that has been put on a pedestal for so many years by billions of people around the world can now be seen as the biggest bully on the block. This makes some Americans happy, the idea of a whiskey soaked John Wayne walking into a bar and taking no guff and shooting everyone in sight is an attractive fantastic notion, but a little prodding and straight talk (yeah I said it) could make Americans see a different way, a President not afraid to use force when necessary, but sees it not as the first option. I still think there are people that think a Democratic president would have sent flowers to the Taliban asking them to tuck in Osama for them, folks have to be convinced when push comes to shove, the commander in chief will not hesitate to use the greatest armed force in the history of the planet.

A Democratic candidate also has to have a plan on Afghanistan complete with our NATO allies while at the same time looking forward to new threats, a growing China and an increasingly bizarre but petrodollar infused Soviet ehhr... Russia that seems expansionist while we're tying down our best brigades in Baghdad and beyond. These are realistic threats, realistic threats that become bigger as we start to lose junior officers and NCO's as they leave the service in frustration after multiple deployments that seem endless in nature. Obama needs to accentuate the fact that a military independent of political entanglements but strong civilian leadership is important. Officers must have the ability to speak truth to power without losing the prospect of promotion or career.

Good Government
OK, this is the boring one and probably the most self-centered as I am a public servant. The Republican argument is a great one, government sucks, ruins everything. It's a great argument because you can't lose, if the government does well, it's the Republican leadership, if it does poorly it's the entrenched bureaucracy. So how does government revolutionize itself, how can you get high quality empowered employees with great leadership. Government can be transformational, it is the only organization that can do the huge infrastructure projects and in fact can do government's biggest potential job, wage war. There are images both real and imagined of government bureaucrats as being useless, but sometimes it's because they are terrible and sometimes it's because they are hamstrung by political priorities that are not true policy priorities or by who can hire the best lobbyists or lawyers.

Obama needs to trumpet the need for an effective, honest and public service driven government and have ways on how it will be administered from Pentagon procurement to a ranger at Yellowstone to the clerk at the local social security office, government is a huge enterprise, how can it be taken from the power of lawyers and lobbyist to an organization that serves the people. Ensure that you will hire the best people and the best managers and leaders to get the job done.

Be prepared for the Republican response that Reagan "elegance" that government is the problem but lets say with elements like the current financial crisis that that ship has sailed.

OH YEAH, THE FISCAL CRISIS
OK, I own 110 shares of Freddie Mac, which has lost 99% of it's value. Yup, that's the point of investing, it's a calculated gamble, at one point last week I spent more money filling my gas tank than my entire Freddie Mac stock portfolio was worth. But investing is wins and losses. So now we bring ourselves to the current crisis, I broke my first rule, I have no idea how Freddie Mac makes money. The assumption was simple, back up some loans, take a cut, kind of like some cut rate Somerville bookie hanging around Virgie's. But no, that would actually be honest thievery. I can't explain this fiscal crisis and neither can anyone else. That's the problem, all these credit swaps, collateralizing, securitization and the mother of them all derivatives made everything so confusing and intertwined that Hank "the hammer" Paulson, new American overlord, requested one trillion dollars, no strings attached to try to clean up the mess. I have no idea what corner the President was hiding in at the time, but last I looked he won the election, and if I'm going to ask for hundreds of billions of dollars, it's probably a better idea that I ask for it myself.

The fiscal discussion is actually for my next post, I haven't really figured out what the hell they are doing and frankly it's Democrats and Republican fingerprints all over this, with the Republicans dusting off the old "it's Clinton's fault" thing. In fact some regulation is good, and this is a perfect example. Obama needs to hammer away on the need for adults to be in charge, the fact that it is not a good idea to have lobbyists making policy for the regulation of their own businesses but walk that narrow line of explaining that regulation will be able to temper an uncontrollable free market while at the same time saving the potential for the market to innovate and grow. Markets are good, when they are transparent and regulated and honest. I personally hate these bs derivatives and shorting and crap, to me they are all market manipulation. I may be old school, but if you like a stock, buy it, if you don't sell it, why does it have to be anymore complicated than that. If I want to buy a hotfudge sundae, do I have to sell the frozen hotdogs from the back of my freezer to hedge that purchase?

It's a tough line to walk for Democrats, to suggest more regulation but I think there is a good way to tap taxpayer anger here. The taxpayers who are paying their boring, vanilla fixed rate mortgages on time, looking at the huge amounts of interest they are paying over a lifetime and being not able to understand, how the hell the mortgage market could get so screwed up when they are paying so much damn money. (I'm sliding in between the third and first person here in my own frustration) There are the homeowners and others who are living in communities filled with foreclosures in key states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania wondering why some Wall St. fatcats are getting a bailout while their communities and home values continue to suffer.

These are tough questions for Obama to approach, certainly the first and easiest approach is to attack the problem with more government largess, but the real way is to stop the bleeding and say it won't happen again. The markets are already crying that the inability to short stocks is hurting financial stock growth. Hold on sister, if your kid crashes your car while drinking, you'll probably wait a while until he can borrow one again, and even longer until he gets to drive it alone at night.

Obama has to be convincing that this bailout money and process will be well managed and feed and prime the economy and not just the hedgefunders with balloon payments in the Hamptons. There is a large populist movement just below the surface that is fed up with the concentration on Wall St. instead of Main St. Obama needs to focus on this populist surge with real, tough talk on economics and not let the uberrich kleptocracy dominate the field of play.

Here are three zones where the Democrats could make some hay, attacking on traditionally Republican issues, veering away from the voting blocs that will already vote for them and may be of interest to the "Reagan Democrats" it takes to win.

PreElection General Musings

2008-09-15T21:37:00.002-04:00

MY FATHER, THE LIBERAL?

It's funny but I don't usually think of myself as a liberal. I used to be pretty leftist, but that was until I owned a house and stocks. (little joke there) I'm not hiring Pinkertons to knock the Red's heads in yet but I'm pretty conservative about some things. I wonder how if will look in my daughter's eyes, born in the fear stricken, angry America as opposed to the America of hopes and dreams that I grew up in. (the current stupidity makes Reagan's America look like the Paris Commune)

But then again, on somethings, I'm not conservative at all. I wonder if someday liberals will be almost extinct, I mean there will be some wacky Cambridge types protecting geese and stuff but not necessary liberal families that pass down their values to their children. Some day will my daughter just look at me like I'm crazy and wonder what the hell is going through my head as I talk about things like civil liberties and civil rights and progressive taxation and crazy things like that. It will be a nation that is conquered by the fearmongers and the selfish and self absorbed.

I'm a strong believer in civil liberties, all of them not just the second amendment and those portions of the first amendment that are convenient at the time. I may disagree with people, but generally the basic building principle of this country is free speech and free press. Which makes me wonder about what happened in St. Paul with journalists being arrested while covering demonstrations (sometimes violent stupid demonstrations).

I'm a strong believer in support of other people, a concept that while a ownership society is nice in theory and hard work and innovation should be rewarded but at the same time there are many that do not have the opportunities that others do, and as the richest country in the world, we should be able to provide some modicum of health care, a decent education and access to housing. I guess my concept is that their should be some floor in life, but no ceiling.

I wonder if in my daughter's world, there will be any concept of this. There is currently an income tax repeal in the Commonwealth, brought by small government Ayn Rand type idealists, but likely to be voted on by good meaning people, people fed up by the corruption of government, both real and perceived. Government does a terrible job of "selling" what they do, and certainly there is waste, corruption and laziness, probably like any business. As a government employee it disgusts me more than any one, but there are many, many people who have chosen a life a public service, true believers, who believe in the power of government to positively transform the country.

So I guess this makes me a liberal, a capitalist one who watches his stock holdings pretty closely, is anti-abortion, fiscally conservative, even pretty conservative on security issues, but there are things that government can do (collectively) that individuals cannot. I believe that governments are responsible for the infrastructure that can make all of it's citizens successful, certainly the physical infrastructure, roads and bridges, but also the other things that make this country tick, health care, education, public safety and perhaps equally as important the regulations and rules to keep both corporations and individuals alike and protect the long term interests of the nation from the short term greed and avarice.

So, I guess I'm a liberal. Being American should be expensive. All blessings are expensive.

A NEW AMERICA
I choose not to write about education, because it is my field and it's the only way I could possibly get in trouble blogging about. But this is more about the idea of education as infrastructure. Which is one of my things. My access to public education gave me great things, social mobility among its greatest gifts but also curiosity. Things I will always appreciate. Access to a good education regardless of background whether it be of genetic or situational continues to be a major civil rights issue, and I think regardless of political background you would find agreement on this. Education is the silver bullet. But I digress, the point is not education as a civil rights issue in this section, but instead economic and workforce development.

America is in a weird place in its economic development. The old cradle to grave manufacturing jobs are gone for the most part and we are all puzzled about what the great next thing is. One thing we have figured out from the credit crisis is that we aren't going to all get rich by ripping each other off or just waiting for house prices to keep going up, up, up. An integral part of this is certainly going to be education and workforce development. Not the current structure of education that is preparing us for the industrial and agricultural jobs of the 19th century, but a system that allows us to innovate.

One might say that the greatest economic growth in the history of this country if not the world came after World War II. One argument may be it was the almost confiscatory nature of taxation during WWII and the ensuing Cold War that drove this development. Advocates for education will argue (and it may be hard to disagree) that such efforts such as the response to Sputnik and the National Defense Education Act, or even NASA efforts.

But, I really think the biggest effect was the people themselves. I have a theory on the post war effect of military service on economic growth, not only discipline through service and understanding a common goal but how military service even for enlisted men and NCO's provided them to ironically be independent thinkers, willing and able to take leadership roles within complex systems and an ability to lead when left or given the opportunity. These are some of the integral qualities of the so-called Greatest Generation, and in fact these qualities also were in the women who didn't serve in uniform, who had to work in defense plants etc, in non-traditional roles. Also you had "older youth/young men" who were able to access education on the GI bill, likely a much more serious student than the 18-19 year olds of today. A student who had served on foreign battlefields or even in rear echelon situations with a common cause has a great advantage over a student whose greatest challenge maybe finding a fake ID or not getting the dorm room they want.

So barring the challenges of another Great Depression or a third World War, how can the education system help to replicate the innovation in industry of the WWII and postwar economic boom (particularly the executive functions of innovative leaders) while utilizing the technological advances of the early 21st century? Here is the essential question for me. The vaunted 21st century skills to many appear to be access to technology, mostly because those are skills that 20th century folks are migrating too and having difficulty to understand, not completely wrong of course, but a great deal can be learned by having a common cause and understanding the interdependence of humanity that comes from striving towards this common cause.

So Thomas Friedman in his new book would argue (and I would tend to agree with him) that the greatest challenge of this generation is energy. It is not the Nazis marching on Natick or the Japanese attacking Pittsfield but it is an issue that can and will effect the American way of life in the next century. And not only the American way of life, but improvement of life across the earth as the struggle for energy continues while the rest of the world tries to move up to an American style of middle class with its requisite energy usage.

So the challenge is set. Can the education establishment step up and take to this challenge? Or will it become a self serving institution, much more concerned about the adults involved than the young people or the future of the nation. No, I can't compare this to the freedom of all peoples, there will be no liberation of evil but an evolutionary change in how we do business. Much of this challenge is on the students as well, can we engage them to see themselves as agents of change? With education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics being their weapons against certain environmental degradation and almost as certain warfare over dwindling fossil fuels? The die is cast. Drill, baby, drill may be a stupid if short lived concept, that may bring some short term relief to the adoring fossil fuel sycophants but it is a Pyrrhic victory.

The Day That No One Laughed

2008-09-11T22:13:00.003-04:00

September 11th came and went, and becomes more distant in our memories. I always remember as most the exact place I was when I heard about it. I think about it as one of the few days I can remember that the sound of laughter was gone, a day without humor, probably the only day I can remember. Here's last year's entry if anyone is interested.

http://theangrymiddle.blogspot.com/2007/09/beautiful-day.html#links

Randomness

2008-09-01T21:21:00.002-04:00

Welcome to the Palindrome
Didn't see this one coming. Who did. As my departed friend Tim Bartley would coyly say "interesting". There is a lot going on right now, a hurricane hitting the beleaguered city of New Orleans is distracting, the delay of the Republican convention and the pick of Sarah Palin being a little off the books for the GOP candidate.

Part of it is very interesting, actually all of it. The choice of a conservative woman from a non-consequential state with a huge history of corruption and graft. And a couple days later, we find out that her teenage daughter is pregnant. (so much for the ole abstinence education) And the left wing starts tripping over itself trying to make points off of it.

So what's the deal? This isn't a Mondale can't possibly win so I'll pick the crazy lady from Queens, this is a major candidate in a very close election. The idiot's (read media) analysis is that all the "18 million voters" will run to the female candidate, as if all these intelligent ladies who put money to Emily's List and pro-choice causes will suddenly fall to the moosemeat eating creationist, anti-choice governor of America's last frontier. But maybe it's smarter than we think. Maybe folks will like the youth to go along with McCain's experience. The comely Palin brings a certain life to a party that has been polluted by a very boring set of circumstances if not dynastic progression of Republican candidates both in the number one and number two spots. If it wasn't the conservative of the week, it was the next millionaire.

So along comes a woman that speaks to the American woman. A young, attractive and active woman with one older son, due to enter the nation's service, an infant with special needs, a couple of middle kids and coming to a nursery really far from you, a daughter that is due to give birth outside of wedlock. One might say, including myself for the 17 year old expectant mother, damn lady, were you taking care of business while trying to count the money coming out of the US treasury for the state? But no, every family in the country can identify with the miscreant nature of youth and certainly the GOP can spin this to their advantage. "What are supposed to kill your mistakes?", certainly a certain pride can be found in every issue of Parade magazine for a vice president as grandmother taking her infant grandchild into her own care in the United States naval observatory.

It's an interesting pick on McCain's part. The refrain across America from us liberals, was what an idiot, why would you choose a woman from a backwater state, having no real experience outside what is considered to be outside of Louisiana one of the most corrupt states in the nation to be part of a ticket? However this works right into McCain's former and beloved maverick roots. A standard Republican would take the next man in line, Romney, a young but stalwart conservative Republican governor, whoever was next in the receiving line, but McCain went off the map, making people wonder, maybe this is McCain 2000, not huggy McBush eating cake on Air Force One, but a real leader.

Some will fret at the thought of an anti-science, anti-choice, inexperienced governor being in the second seat of a former PoW, cancer surviving 72 year old candidate. But many are brought to action, to energy, by someone who "shares their values", a woman who lives a real life, a large life, outside the confines of many of us in the continental United States. It seems funny to me as a crazy, elitist, progressive egghead here on the Eastern seaboard, but maybe John McCain has cast his dice in a way that will re-energize "his base" and bring Reaganism yet another victory in the national election.

EL LOBO
Television journalism is an oxymoron. In fact, I'm not sure it even exists. With Russert gone, a certain

bottom dropped out. Glimpses of journalism can be found, of course Christiane Amenpour is a leader in the field that is frightfully underexposed and there are numerous other sideline reporters that seem to have a good head on their shoulders.

But mostly, it's a bunch of crap. Even with people I used to like. Lou Dobbs, of course, has gone off the deep end, supporting an odd nativist/independent/populist/anti-immigration/Luddite agenda, trying to somehow think he convince the world that globalization is a stoppable force. Lou has become a cartoon character, but you know what you are getting.

The "announcer" who makes me the most crazy is Wolf Blitzer. I seem to remember Wolf as a responsible journalist during Gulf War I, giving out what seemed like solid information and analysis. Suddenly he has morphed into a post-dementia version of an illiterate news reader. To say aloof insults those that are truly aloof. His perfect coiffed beard and hair seem to be his prominent characteristic along with his seeming disengagement with the topic at hand. The issue is that there seems to be some talent around him, such as Suzanne Malveaux, but it's the equivalent of having Butch Hobson managing the Red Sox.

I'm still waiting for journalists to ask the tough questions, to stop acting like they are working the Academy Awards for E or something.