MARSHALL PLAN – II (HOW TO STOP LOOTING)

Thursday, 5/21/15 The Lakeville Journal

Two weeks ago we outlined in the very broadest terms possible one way in which America could put her nose to the grindstone and come back as the strongest, most influential entity on the globe. The Plan was not an American First offshoot of pre World War II days. It was rather a Plan for which America could be responsible for rebuilding those component parts that had been allowed to rust, wash away, die. And it tried to explain simply how this turn around could happen.

Unremarkably, we did not convince the world. Remarkably the world seemed to change within a five day span.

Howard Schultz of Starbucks announced a plan to assist his “baristas” into college programs. Then Stephen Colbert offered more than eight hundred thousand dollars to his home state of South Carolina to meet the needs of its teachers. And finally, Warren Buffett decided to invest in the future of Atlanta.

One of our first thoughts was that the nation as a whole had lost its patience and had decided to plunge into improvements without waiting, or even hoping for, any Congressional approval, consent, or debate.

But then it occurred to us that our Plan required nothing from Congress to begin with, although legal oversight of individual blueprints as they developed might be required from various benches around the nation.

The Plan is simplicity itself. Those industrial giants sitting on idling cash (and you know who you are) could invest in the needs of a collapsing city or town for an extended promissory length of time. Beginning with an identified area’s first grade students, all students there would receive an “allowance” of one dollar a week – in second grade, two dollars; in third grade, three, etc., through high school.

Simultaneously the Donor industry(-ies) would be teaching its targeted kids about itself, what it does, how it benefits the world, and how employment in it can be exciting and worthwhile. Donor industries would generate a public relations bonanza, as well as training kids in its program for positions at all levels so that a well-prepared and able work force will be created for the future.

Who, at this moment, needs this p.r. blitz more than Shell Oil? And who better can afford it?

The American Model

Who says the US of A doesn’t have any influence internationally?

For forty years we’ve heard how much other nations fear the incursion of American values in their food, their habits, their language, their customs. Stronger civilizations have fought back (France); weaker ones have given in (Japan.) McDonald’s and Burger Kings abound across continental divides; American films have always influenced those of Germany and Latin America. American cars still patrol Cuba; American fashions are worn by kids throughout the world.

Now we discover, much to our own dismay, that many other American customs have been translated and transplanted in nations around the world, as well.

Take, for example, the American purposeful ignorance of other peoples’ health and welfare, indeed of their safety. Think how many corporations – besides General Motors – have “sinned” and made the pearly gates anyway.

Of course, we’re talking about Toyota. We’re not bashing only Toyota. Years ago we owned two, one a five speed stick shift during the gasoline crunch in the early 70s. We followed that up with a Toyota station wagon, kept alive and running for nineteen years until a neighbor wanted to de-accession an Audi. We bit. The car was at the very tipping point, and did: we learned that every repair on that model Audi cost $600, no matter what.

What concerns us now is the idea – right in line with GM and other US firms of all kinds (think JPMorgan Stanley) – that it’s easier to pay a fine than admit wrong-doing. It’s easier to pay a fine than be involved in a series of long court battles that will eat up far more than the proposed fine.

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

Podcast 1/17/14 BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

What do you do when your secret midnight fears are being discussed on national television, radio, and in newspapers and you seem to have no control over these nightmares?

Not being smarter or really that much better informed than anyone else in the country, we begin to get a little nervous about the future of the country.

There seem to be too many moments of déjà vu in our daily lives. And we don’t want to repeat the old chestnut about those who cannot remember the past are condemned therefore to repeat it.

But, folks, it begins to look as though that’s what we have to do.

From too many quarters, from too many people, from too many commentators and wise men are coming the beginnings of recognition that life in January 2014 resembles too much other periods in our recent national history to ignore.

For example, remember the term “irrational exuberance,” uttered by Alan Greenspan just before the crash of 2006?

Looking at Dow Jones, Nasdaq, and Standard and Poor’s in these past few weeks recalls that understated warning. What, on the trading floors of New York, Chicago, London has happened to make traders and institutions so ridiculously happy that they would be thrilled to buy, buy, buy when in fact just holding for a time might be the better part of valor?

A Different Approach

12.4.13

Different Approach

Maybe we’ve been going about this whole thing with Congress the wrong way. Rather than getting dyspeptic, angry, tremblingly frustrated with its antics, or lack thereof, maybe we should try just sitting quietly knee to knee, and explaining to its members what exactly they ARE doing by doing nothing.

Which is to say the entire country seems to have finally sighed, decided that nothing good can come of its opposition, and may as well wait until the autumn of 2014 to make its voice heard. That would be fine with us if we believed that the voters of our country could remember for more than a few weeks at a time the injustices, stupidities, slights, and laziness of the 535 men and women inhabiting the halls of Congress, being paid an average of $174 thousand dollars a year just to smile at the cameras and laugh at the idea of any meaningful action.

Representative Charlie Dent, a Republican from Pennsylvania, says, “Washington is clearly broken.”

Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, asks his colleagues, “Why are they here?”

What is now taking place, by inaction only, is damage from which millions of Americans will not soon recover.

If Congress leaves D.C. at the end of the year without, for example, acting on just two items on its agenda, the pain, financial depression, emotional exhaustion that will follow will be gigantic.

What Who Learned

10.18.13 podcast

What Who Learned

Fine. We’re breathing again. For how long is anyone’s guess.
The government has been re-opened. There will be no international catastrophe about our debt ceiling default. (But I advise all those interested to keep an eye on CBS-TV Evening News and on PBS for peeks at what other nationalities read as the American expertise in economics and good government.)
We’re not placing blame. Actually, we think we will.
Here is a necessarily truncated list of men and women who should have learned something in these past three months:
President Obama, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, former senator Jim Demint. And Mario Rubio, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz.
To the old P.T.Barnum line about a sucker being born every minute, we can only say Amen.
The Tea Party seems to be made up of only suckers, men and women who believe what they want regardless of what reality tells them. How else to explain (short of the usual lemming analogy) the millions of voters who believed enough in the tales spun by Ted Cruz to create a vocal army for just going ahead and burning down Washington? How else to explain Ted Cruz himself who announced that, in effect, there was a Holy Grail and that he alone knew how to get to it? This, from a man on the job for a scant seven months before kidnapping the Congressional spotlights. He had no legislative experience, no paper trail of trying to do something beneficial for the country, no service record of any kind. This is a man who would be king, IS king in his own mind, demanding that his troops hold the line or die as he stands above the fray on his parapet watching.
Worse, as far as we can see, we are fated to go through this same obstacle course again and again.

PLEASE. LISTEN CAREFULLY…

PLEASE. LISTEN CAREFULLY…..

 

Which is what I wish I could say to the newest members of Congress. Those who are heldovers from the 112th are already too encased by their party lines.

On Wednesday night last, the day after we avoiding going over the Fiscal Cliff, we were told that included in the new bill were earmarks for industries and causes that had little or nothing to do with the immediate problem.

My own reaction was actually physical. I felt sick. What astonishingly selfish yet uninformed Tea Partier, or denizen of the Senate, or brilliantly connected lobbyist, would take advantage of slipping these things into a bill designed to help our citizens continue the economic recovery we may or may not be having?

How could politicians not understand that these earmarks were a slap in our faces, a way of telling us that while we may hope for the best, the future contains no changes in how Congress operates. At all. Probably worse is the secondary information offered: the next two months are going to be intolerably partisan since some unknowns are determined to “get theirs” and the rest of us be damned.

Beginning long before the 2007/2008 economic meltdown on Wall Street, honesty had been fading from fashion. One look at the whoppers dreamed up during the last election cycle only confirms this. Further, no one ever seems to be apologetic about making false statements, or, worse, about defrauding his or her neighbors’ financial security.

I agree we’re in a terrible fix…of our own making, or rather, actually, of Congress’s…with our assent.

As I understand it — and I am not an economist — the national debt has been dramatically increased by “grants in aid” promised by Congresses to various organizations and causes over the years. The remainder may be somehow divided between allotments for social programs (also approved by Congresses past), wars (again, approved by Congresses past), the necessity from time to time to borrow money from others for our own excessive expenses of all kinds and on which we pay interest.

Which is why I am so disheartened by “The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.”

To pass it was necessary I agree.

What wasn’t necessary are the earmarks that amounted to more than 100 million dollars, and probably a good deal more, that went to NASCAR racing facilities; extended credits to green-energy vehicles; more tax credits for the biodiesel industry; not to mention asparagus producers, Hollywood film-makers, and rum producers in Puerto Rico.

Now, here’s where I want our representatives to pay attention. By granting these earmarks, and others through the ages, the US is guaranteeing payment to those generally less than needy recipients by using our tax dollars.

Another way of saying the same thing is that the income the treasury might have expected from these beknighted groups disappears, and in its place are the dollars we spend being true to our earmark promises.