Monday, December 15, 2008

Former Governors Make Better Presidents? REALLY?

MONDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2008

It is widely known that people who have served their state as governor make better presidents than those who have not been executives in either state government of commercial business. This is because those people have experience in executive decision-making and administration building, staff leadership, direction and control.  But has this been true? Let’s check it out.

In retrospect, it seems that the effectiveness of presidents really turn on their mastery of "governing skills" rather than any "executive skills".  Being president of the United States is considerably different from being governor of any state or president of any large commercial enterprise, this primarily because the US president has to work so closely with congress to accomplish anything truly significant.  

Let’s look at some of our recent presidents, using those since World War II ended and leaving out Eisenhower because he served neither as governor or state legislator.

John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Truman and Nixon were senators prior to becoming president. George H. W. Bush and Gerald Ford were former members of the House of Representatives.

Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton  and George Bush (43) came in as governors.   

The former governors all brought large numbers of their former state staff members with them because those were the people they were familiar working with.  But – that also meant there were many people who had to learn the D. C. procedures. The former congressmen however, all had many surviving relationships with other current congressmen, additionally they were all familiar with preparing issues for presentation to the president so they knew well the type of input they should expect - and demand - from congress. 

All the congressmen, and especially Truman, Johnson and Ford - took over from presidents who died in office or resigned.  They came into office at a time of great national trauma and national crisis. Nonetheless, they were able to immediately govern effectively. These former congressmen all had been well prepared to govern as president from the beginning of their administrations. 

On the other hand, the former governors in this period were unable to perform their duties well during the first two years of their service.  Carter, Reagan, Clinton and George Bush 43, all came into Washington and took office during times of relative peace. Yet the first two years they were in office they floundered. Those were years in which they and the large contingent they brought in from their home states learned the ways of D.C.

If past is to be prologue, then it appears that you wouldn't want to let any former governor move into the presidency, especially during periods of crisis.  Historically, they have not been able to function at the beginning.  Former members of congress, on the other hand, have moved in smoothly and began serving the nation well from the first day.

So, when you ponder who should be selected to run for the presidency, whether for a primary selection or the actual November vote, don't just take my word for it but look back over what has actually happened in the past.  Then we can all make a better choice. 


© John Womack, 2008. All rights reserved.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Auto Bailout?

The rational for letting them go into bankruptcy is that if they can't compete in the free market they deserve to go under. Senator Sessions says no need to subsidize companies that can't operate on their own.

Problems with that: Yes, the companies can and probably should go bankrupt but a lot of their workers will have to go bankrupt too. It is a lot easier for companies to go through that procedure that for individuals. The companies get rid of their pension plans, health care provisions, seniority rules and a lot more. Individuals also get rid of their their pension plans, health care provisions, and seniority also, plus their jobs, income, and houses too.

More problems: It's not just the companies being unable to compete in a free market. And it's not just the case that government IS the problem, as Reagan so impudently proclaimed. He made that statement when the auto industry was "struggling" under CAFE standards. Those laws would probably by now have American cars running 30 to 50 mpg, and probably burning only American-produced gasoline.

There's a lot more. Just remember the Bush tax rewards for buying a gas guzzler for your "business". You could buy a Hummer or a 4-door diesel pickup truck for almost ZERO dollars when you factored in the tax break for buying those vehicles. And while those are only two of the Roadside Bombs the republican party planted in the path of the American automobile free market, you can get the idea.

Sure government can't really run a large auto company, but it can regulate those things. Above all, it can do the ONE MAIN THING those companies themselves never will be able to do - that is to work for the long range good of the American people instead of simply chasing the big profit for the current quarter.

© John Womack, 2008. All rights reserved

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Blagojevich and His Prize.

Well, after six long years it appears the hell-hole on Cuba known as Guantanamo may finally be closed down. But now - along comes Blagojevich.

Maybe, just maybe, we could keep it open for a while longer. Blagojevich might be held in solitary confinement there but he would not be alone - at least not in the larger sense. We could fill the whole thing up. There's his predecessor, Ryan. And there's Cunningham too, and William Jefferson. Ted Stevens would probably enjoy the change of climate from Alaska. Gonzales might find the quietness a good place for reflection. Larry Craig wouldn't have to worry about tapping his foot anymore because they both will be shackled.

The U. S. Navy might have to add another wing or two to accommodate the flood of desperadoes. There would have to be room for Kilpatrick, Libby and Foley. Jim Wright and Gingrich could be roommates. Bob Livingston, Bob Ney and Bob Packwood could begin the "Bob wing". Adam Clayton Powell would probably be heard in endless monologues and Charles Keating and Neil Bush could try to finagle their respective ways out of here too. Dan Rostenkowski would make a good counsellor, and Tom DeLay could be the chaplin.

And the rest of the world could watch all this in awe. And envy.

© John Womack, 2008. All rights reserved.

Monday, December 08, 2008

Guilty at Guantanamo?

Five men held at Guantanamo announced they wanted to plead guilty to terrorism and other charges associated with the 9/11 attacks. Really? And on the very day that Obama won the election for the American presidency?

The old weekly magazines, from time to time, used to have cartoons which read: "How Many Things Can You Find Wrong In This Picture?" Remember? Well, it's no cartoon that is taking place at Guantanamo now. It is deadly serious - and not just for any foreigner who might be killed - because what has already happened there will result in the deaths of innumerable American servicemen captured by enemy forces for the next one-hundred years. Sunni and Shiite factions are still fighting each other over events that happened 1400 years ago.

This all smells strongly of Bush. It seem just one more feather for his personal cap, one more draught deeply drawn into his righteously-intoxicated brain cells. One more star to hang in his own texas heaven to hover there forever above crawfordville. Never mind that it could also promote this group of five men into their own "heaven" of martyrdom.

This also makes unimportant that these five men are all probably guilty indeed of some "evil doing". But whatever they might have done pales into unimportance compared with America abandoning its rich heritage of rights and laws, admitting smugly that it was all just a joke. It is the final gift of George Bush to the world that as he swaggers away from the corpse of American Ideals, he returns one last time to defecate and urinate upon the remains before he abandons them to whomever might come along later.

@ John Womack, 2008. All rights reserved.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Palin

The stories are now beginning to come out. They are not good. They make Palin look like a total loser. But it is important to remember that the blame for being so close to becoming president of the United States is not Palin's fault. And the real problem is not by any means the amazing amount of money she spent on clothes - we need to forget that and focus on the important part.

To a substantial degree the fault is John McCain's. He screwed up. Bad. This means he was even LESS qualified to become president than even I thought he was. We can only infer from this that had he been elected, Palin would have been only one of many incompetents placed in positions of power to play games with, to irritate and try to outsmart each other. At least most of those others - cabinet members and department heads would have been subject to approval by congress.

That brings us to that problem referred to earlier: the REAL problem. And that is the constitution itself. It has never known how to handle the vice-president. The founding fathers awarded it to the person who came in second in the election. If that had endured, today Obama would be the president and McCain would be the vice-president. That would not work. Apparently George Washington - first president - and John Adams - first vice-president - did not get along much better than Obama and McCain would. That was taken care of by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution. But the result of it all now has become that the person chosen by his or her party to represent them as their choice for president can simply pluck out of the bucket anyone who strikes their fancy. Hence Palin who did not know the VP did not "run" the Senate, or that Africa was a continent, or . . . well, let's skip the rest!

So, what to do? Well, the whole process is badly screwed up. Neither the president or vice-president of the United States is required to pass any type of mental or physical examination. You can't drive a bus or fly an airplane or practice medicine or be in the military without passing a series of qualifying standardized examinations. So if you should fail any or ALL of those, you could still become president. There is not any kind of a review board who can examine the legal history of the individuals selected by their party to represent them for the most public of all positions.

There is more. A LOT more. But this is a blogpost not a completed paper. Yet it remains for a fact, that no military officer can have any kind of access to nuclear weapons without EXTENSIVE medical, mental, background checks, while the person who might tell them to "bomb, bomb, bomb" some country could just fly in off of a wall if he or she could temporarilly lie to or somehow fool enough people. Plain's problems only serve to shine a bright light on this problem.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

The Republican Wasteland

The Republican Party is in shambles. It’s last president, George Bush was soundly repudiated. Now he’s going out with two wars raging and the economy in shambles. Guantanamo is still stinking, the specter of special renditions remains, and the nation is virtually an outcast among the international community. The cowboy rides away into the sunset. Alone.

Its last standard bearer, John McCain is clearly beyond the age limits to be considered again. His final tally in his only presidential campaign was less than half that of his opponent. His only lasting legacy to his party will be that he claimed to be a “maverick” and had “fought his party leaders”.

His vice-residential choice, Sarah Palin of Alaska, certainly does not have a strong base even in her own small and isolated state. Her only claim to Republican Party fame is that she appeals the the far right Christian extreme elements. She can’t name any magazines, remember the three countries in North America, or find Africa.

Rudy Giuliani is forever pinned to a 9-11 mentality, Mitt Romney cannot escape the Mormon Church label - probably worse for him because of the Republican Party being in bed with the extreme far right Christian base. They won’t do Morman.

Gingrich is considered to be a clown, even by republican standards, Tom Ridge is still stuck on Duct Tape, Tommy Thompson never got the joke. Mitch McConnel and Boehner are just plain mean. Stevens is gone whether he leaves or not.

So there are still possibilities like Crist or Jindal and others too. but there’s also the specter of Jeb! Bush to run sometime soon (it’s now his turn?). The republicans have lost a big opportunity by supporting Bush. If you thought New Orleans was ravaged, just look around - look all around. He has let the entire nation collapse just like its roads and bridges. Right now the Republicans biggest hope appears to be that the democrats will do the same thing they did.

But they have chased out the moderate and progressive members of their party and replaced them with the extreme Christian right, and those Christians are not really concerned with the traditional interests of the Republican Party. Like Palin, they have seen that God has partly opened a door for them and they are going to “punch through it!”, as she said in a recent interview.

© John Womack, 2008, All rights reserved

YES!

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

The Great Divide

Once again America stands at the Great Divide. A doorway or threshold of sorts which divides the future from the past.

We were here during the election of Gore vrs Bush. Then the future was not seen so clearly and the past was more comfortable than it seems today.

We came here again after 9-11. The door to the greatest opportunity the world had ever had for peace was flung wide open and the rest of the world beckoned to us to come in. The Bush Administration slammed the door in their faces and even threatened them if they would not turn back with us.

Now again today, election day, November 4, 2008, America goes back to that great doorway. The choice is more clear than it was with Gore or even after 9-11. McCain wants to “Fight! Fight! Fight!”, and Palin looks forward to the return of the days of the frontier. Biden, regardless of what one might think of him, is a negotiator, a reconciler, a communicator. Obama, as Powell described him, is clearly a transformational person.

To me the choice seems clear. A vote for McCain is to fly back into the flame. A vote for Obama is a passport to a new world.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Can the Republican Party Change?

No longer a party that supports individual rights, it now seeks to impose almost parental power over people, reading their mail, snooping in their bedrooms and implementing radical new forces to keep the great corporations of America growing in power.

After Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Addington, McCain, Palin, McConnell, Stevens, Falwell, Boehner, Gingrich, and others, there's not much left in how it can reasonably hope to achieve anything constructive in today's world. These vengeful angels appear ready to drag down the ship of state if they can't get their own way which means no discussion, no debate, no new ideas and no compromise.

The Republican Party has always been a party of power. Now, with one war in Iraq, another in Afghanistan, and continuing drive-by shootings by American military forces taking place in Sudan, Syria, Pakistan, and maybe elsewhere, the party seems committed to long-term international policies involving pre-emptive political and economic force over other nations - more and more including our traditional allies. War and bombings seem to be always a ready alternative to solve all problems . The rest of the civilized world is trying to veer away from war, and now we wonder if the republicans can live in that kind of world? Will the American Repubiclan Party even allow such a world to develop?

In order to stabilize its quest for power the party has been forced to seek help from other groups. Religion has answered the call and is already moving to take charge. Which religion? Well, that won't be clear for some time. They will call it Christian, but it will be based on power just like the military and economic forces it plans to use. It will know Jesus' wishes and will intend to bring them to the entire planet, again by use of force if necessary.

So the Republican Party which emerges after this election will be "conservative" in political philosophy, but like its religion, that meaning will also require explanation on the part of its leaders. It will clearly attempt to take us back to what the new leaders of this movement think our founding fathers were trying to do when they wrote the constitution.

Economically, the new party will insist on the "Gospel according to Adam Smith". It will be raw capitalism - uncontrolled by any government. If the new economy should ever need governmental help, it will tell the government what to do, and when and how much it needs.

There will be no place left for intellectuals, or any form of "progressive republicans". This new Republican Party will be a construct of the 19th and 20th centuries, and will attempt to establish itself as the rightful leader in a world of military power, economic force and God with a cross, and America will be its supreme ruler, world policeman, inquisitor and punisher.

So now the election. If McCain wins, America will be in for a very long and disastrous period. There will almost certainly be a democratic majority in both the house and senate, and they will feel the call of a mandate for change. McCain and Palin will be firmly rooted in the past as the rest of the United States and the rest of the world move into a new era of international relationships.

If Obama wins there will be new challenges, new opportunities and perhaps a very different world will emerge. Sarah Palin apparently sees herself as the "republican winner" if McCain loses the election. But it seems clear that she will pull a large part of the most fanatical republican base out of the party.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Syria

Once again the Cowboy strikes. One more time he slaps down the blackguard who should have known better than to tweak his omnipotent nose. Syria has to feel the consequenches for insulting the Great One, and there is nothing they can do about it! America will strike again into sovereign soil and leave the blood to sink into the barren land. Once again the American president waves his stupidity into the air and shouts "I am the Leader of the Whole Wide World!" Then he retires smugly back his ranch. Well, we'll see. Again.

When will we ever learn? We think we can strike anywhere we want and kill without regard to law. No need to negotiate when we can kill at will and with ease and we think they can't do anything about it. And when they do we are always stunned.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

The Corporate Contract

Like the old Social Contract, in which concept mankind allegedly surrendered some of his individual rights to a local sovereign in return for social order and collective protection, there has existed for the last one hundred years or so in this country a Corporate Contract. This Corporate Contract began with people offering to become company workers who surrender a number of their individual rights to a specific corporation and in return receive prizes of great value. The rights they surrender include the right to work elsewhere or at times they would prefer to work, or to receive a higher rate of pay than the corporation was willing to pay, or agree to be transferred to another part of the country. In return the workers would receive from the corporation a regular paycheck both in regard to amount and regularity of payment, medical care, vacation or time off from work with pay, even sick leave with pay, and ability to negotiate with the company in union with other workers. Most corporations had a provision called "seniority" under which a worker, after working a specified number of years with the corporation, could receive protection against layoffs and transfers, and then after thirty or so years of constant work, they would receive "retirement", a regular paycheck for the rest of their life without ever having to work again.  In truth, this "retirement" was supposedly a portion of that worker's weekly paycheck that was withheld and invested in a retirement fund by the corporation, so that the "retirement" pay was actually a portion of the wages already earned buy not yet paid.

And there was more. The workers remained in the country and so did the corporation, and so did the jobs. A great benefit that many workers realized was the thrill of finding employment for their own children at the same company they had worked at for the greater part of their lives. Large numbers of corporations prospered in this environment, and together they, and their workers made the nation stronger. And the nation became a more powerful, capable and respected member of the international community. Also, if war came to the nation, there was ready workforce able to quickly retool into the defense industry.

Now this contract has changed dramatically. It began to change as the civil rights protests and the war against Vietnam also pitted ordinary citizens against their governments. There was a subtle shift that also began to take place in the Corporate Contract fundamentals. The Carter administration was unaware of this shift and the Reagan administration began inserting new provisions into the old Corporate Contract - provisions that began shifting the cost/benefit relationship between corporations and their workers to "agreements" between the corporations and the US government. Today, most new corporate workers receive a temporary job at reduced pay. The health care they receive is whatever they purchse with their own money, so are their retirement provisions and most workers are less concerned they might be transferred to another state than that their company might transfer itself to another country.

Corporations have long enjoyed a special place in America. They have been defined by the US Supreme Court as a "person", with all rights and privileges pertaining to all other people. The only rights denied to them are the rights to marry and vote. They have protection provided by the government, tax relief denied to their own workers, and bankruptcy procedures that allow them to sluff off many of their obligations when they need to, and continue to operate. They still can't vote, but they can "hire" their own representatives, senators and even presidents by providing enormous "contributions" to the candidates of their choice. A corporation can feed money to someone running for representative in another state helping that candidate to win and then provide supporting legislation friendly to that corporation which is in another state. Many corporations use their state charter as a den from which they can roam the United States and the rest of the world as they are able to penetrate -truly citizens of the world, yet beholden only to regulations of the state in which they are chartered, and they compete with each other in a cannibalistic market, cutting expenses as well as services and product. Their workers are used as necessary and older workers and retired workers are shaken off when they become too expensive to the corporation.

Now governmental officials need the money of the corporations more than it needs the votes of the citizens (workers) so the "Corporate Contract" lives on - but as an agreement between the American president, senators and representates, and the corporate world. It reads something like this - "You pass the laws we need, and enforce the ones we want and we will give you the money you need to run for office - if not, we will withdraw our monetary support from you and provide it to someone else who will represent us."

Thursday, October 09, 2008

End of an era.

It is obvious that a great era is ending. The capitalistic market has become a great spectre arriving just just a little early for Halloween. As it dies worldwide though, it is still sucking vast amounts of money from the people of many nations into hidden pools of unmeasurable wealth. The term "deregulation" has become a synonym for "gotcha", and now the survivors are having to figure out how to "bell the great cat".

The very concept of a free enterprise system requires a free market. Without a free market, there can be no free enterprise. No market can possibly be free if it is dominated by a single organization or a small number of very large organizations. No free market can exist in any economic system unless there is adequate governmental regulation and enforcement to protect it and keep more powerful companies from seizing that market and reshaping it for their own purposes. A free market is not a market that is free FROM governmental regulation but a market which is free BECAUSE it is strongly regulated by the government. It makes no essential difference whether a market is dominated by a communistic, dictatorship, or theological government or by a cartel of capitalistic corporations, in any of those cases the free and competitive market ceases to function and begins to serve its master.

It is not enough to simply pass strong regulatory laws and enforce them rigidly. There must be significant enforcement as well. If a poor man robs a 7-11 store and gets $13, the police will pursue him, and if found and convicted he may serve years in jail. However, if a rich man robs thousands of people of millions of dollars, no police will pursue him, he will not be tried for anything, and the worst that will possibly happen to him is that he will have to spend the rest of his life in luxury.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

A New World

The next president of the United States will confront a very different world from the one George Bush used to vacation in eight years ago. The new congress will be heavily democratic, our international allies will be very suspicious of us and the rest of the world will watch every move we make with grave interest. Meanwhile, the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression will be rearranging the foundations of the world’s economies.

Our new president will have to help build a new world. Many of the old traditions can be salvaged, modified and used in different ways. Many new traditions will have to be created though, working with a heavily democratic congress and nations in Europe in Asia and the Middle East. This work will require leadership from people who possess skills in organizing and communication, and who have experience in reaching across many different aisles and oceans.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden seem to possess these understandings and experiences. On the other hand, John McCain would bring his belief that war actually works, an admitted ignorance of economic matters, and a trust in the ability of markets - like finance, healthcare, armament, energy, education and all the others, to regulate themselves. And if he dies or is assassinated, the former mayor of Wasila, Alaska, will have to work with the democrats in congress and our allies abroad, and those other people too, in a world that never existed until now.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Trickle Down Peters Out

The great idea behind the old “Trickle Down” theory was its prediction that if the people and government of the United States took care of the large corporations, those corporations would, after they had taken care of their own needs, take care of their workers and then all the rest of the people of America. There would be no need for a “new deal” of any “cards,” instead the great national economic “pie” would be increased so large that everybody would eat cake all the time. 
But the Reagan, Gingrich, Bush-Bush bit has tested that theory very thoroughly from the 1970s to the beginning of 2000. We found the pay of CEOs rose during this great Trickle Down Development Period from about 45 times that of the average worker to 300 to 400 times, even now passing through 600 times, that of the average worker. The “average workers” meanwhile, found out that what was really trickling down was their standard of living. They found that even two “average” incomes were not able to keep up with increasing costs as they experienced increasing personal debt, decreasing personal savings, and an income that by 2002, when adjusted for inflation, had actually fallen since the 1970s! (More Trickle Down!) 
The great CEO’s of the great corporations increased their profits by laying off workers.  Some of the more successful ones absorbed (“merged with”) some of the smaller corporations, thus “greatly improving service to customers” and laying off thousands of workers.  Some corporations declared bankruptcy, then “reorganized” (discarding their previous obligations to former workers in the form of retirement benefits and medical payments). Other great CEOs of the great corporations blew their bottom line beyond the realms of glory when they out-sourced the jobs of their American workers to Mexico, then to South Korea, then to Philippines and onward to China.  The “pie” became as large as the moon, and just as inaccessible to American workers who saw themselves falling out of the middle class as their retirement benefits vanished, their medical care was converted to an insurance game, and their pay dwindled in indirect proportion to the new hours of work then began to encounter.
So if anyone ever tries to tell you again, like John McCain did in 2008 for example, about how great the “Trickle Down” theory is, you could just tell them that after thorough testing it has been found to be an exact copy of what the military used to call the old “Slide Down Hill” theory, or without having to explain all those ramifications, you might just say that Trickle Down has Petered Out.



© John Womack, 2008. All rights reserved.

Saturday, October 04, 2008

VP Debate, 2008

My first impression from the Biden-Palin debate was that the media has failed us again. I have always liked and respected Gwen Ifill, and considered her to be a good interviewer. But she dropped the ball again and again tonight. I wound up feeling that any member of the audience could have been chosen as the debate began and would have done as well as Gwen Ifill did.

Palin acknowledged that she can’t answer the questions AND she was saying that it just doesn’t matter. Her "opponent" was the only participant in the “debate”, trying to answer sometimes difficult and meaningful questions while she gave her stump speech, leaped into her memorized talking points and used numerous clichés and innuendo. The moderator did not try to hold Palin accountable for these practices. Palin twice referred to General McKiernan as General “McClelland”, and that was not picked up on by Ifill either, nor by Biden for that matter.

Palin falls back on her energy “expertise” ~ why no questions about that? what is her background on “energy”? what is her education, engineering qualifications, experience in distribution, pricing, dealing with pollution, etc.? No questions, just a general acknowledgment that Palin truly IS an expert on energy.

Palin Played the “sex card”. Winking, flirting. I personally found that insulting. It also led me to wonder how touched other people, like King Faisal, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown, Hu Jintao, Kim Jong-il, or Mugabe, among others, might be affected by such hustling behavior. Or maybe she would just reserve those irresistible flashes for Pelosi or Biden or maybe the CEOs of Exxon-Mobile, Shell, BP and other easily swayed people like those.

She referred to expanded powers for the VP, especially legislative powers! Wow. How will that play in truly conservative circles? And why didn’t Ifill pick up on that and ask her to elaborate?

Palin probably played well to her conservative base, but her unfortunate references to comments by Reagan (Morning in America, Shining city on a hill, etc.) only served to remind us how far she falls short of even that pathetic figure.

And as far as Biden goes, I got the feeling that Biden is there and always WILL be there. Regardless of what might happen, Joe Biden seems to be a steady performer and a person with a lot of contacts on both sides of the congressional aisle and beyond our shores. He looked very reassuring to me and I felt better about him after the debate than I ever had before.

John Womack.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Fey/Palin

The debate tomorrow night between Biden and Palin have already been skewed. This by Tina Fey's parodies of Palin's performances. People who never could have possibly seen Palin on the news responding to questions by reporters, although few in number, have certainly seen Fey's parodies on late night shows. So that is how many people know Palin - as an intentionally daffy, poorly informed and absolutely clueless mayor of a town of 4,500 people out on the far extreme end of America.

Tomorrow night when she speaks and performs as a normal human being - although still not by any rational means qualified to run for the position of vice-president of the United States - she will almost certainly look human, professional, knowledgeable and compassionate which will leave people in the country amazed.

As a result of Fey's amazing performances and Palin's debate, Palin will wind up looking amazingly good to the
American people even though she will not have earned the rating which will have been given to her by Tina Fey.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Darshan on Candidates

Listed alphabetically:

Biden: River pilot. Reads the currents. He comes along for the long haul, nothing quick, slow and steady, always ahead of where the ship is - no real destination, just navigating the current current. Master of digression; loves the slow, easy whirlpools. Keeps things ship-shape and upright.

McCain. Monk. Hidden. Withdrawn. Underground. Roots traveling deeply and slowly underground. Concentrating on old sounds. Distracted by current happenings. Vibrating to stillness - ready to lurch and attack. Swatter. Stomper. Clencher. Mad.

Obama: Child of the school. Educated man. Friend of people. Strangely clear vision - sees around corners - lives outside the box but comes back inside for friendship. Smiles sweetly as he talks, but keeps thinking and looking at "places" that don't yet exist.

Palin: Killer. Quick. Thrives in confusion. Loves chaos, especially her homegrown versions. While others try to think and understand, she strikes. Creature of great power. power based on speed and quickness and insight during distress. Knowledge? Important only if it can lead to confusion. Alarm bell ringer. Screamer. Face biter.

© John Womack, 2008. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Fiorina the CEO Goes Down Again

Carly stepped on her - well, toe I guess. Poor gal; she’s clearly missing something or other. We know it can't be her brain, she’s smart, never any question about that, maybe her latest observation only goes to prove she's too smart for her own good. Of course I’m talking about her comment today that Palin is not qualified to be CEO of a big corporation.

OK, no problem - so far. Most people would agree with Carly Fiorina at this point. Seems a reasonable comment. Sarah Palin would probably shoot and field-dress half of her staff on their first meeting, and most people would probably agree with that too. Only problem is that Fiorini was considered a likely vice-presidential candidate to run with John McCain before he picked Palin. So, most people smiled, attributed it to sour grapes, yawned and turned the page.

But then. Fiorini “clarified” her comment. To show she bore no ill will against Palin, since they are in the same political party, she added that John McCain was not qualified to be a CEO of a big corporation either. She then added that Barrack Obama and Joe Biden couldn’t run a big corporation either. Of course, Carly Fiorina’s last job (before she was fired) was the CEO of Hewlett Packard.

Theoretically, there should be little difference between being CEO of any large corporation, a state, a church or a nation. All these people, after all, are Chief Executive Officers. They all are presiding officers who have staffs - accountants, finance people, lawyers, administrators, advertisers, and operational personnel who each have leaders who meet regularly with the CEO to provide advice, ask questions, give and receive briefings. This is the old (and now discredited) “McNamara Doctrine”. McNamara’s error was in not understanding that the Operational People have to be the ones who provide the critical guidance. It DOES make a difference whether it is the Ford Motor Company, the Catholic Church or the DOD.

But where McNamara, Fiorina, and all the others who contribute to this mess are on shaky ground is that they seem to be making the assumption that the CEO actually does run the organization. Most organizations I have seen, governmental or commercial, choose a “CEO” as someone who can "appear" to lead the organization. The CEO may even believe that he or she is really “the decider”, but that is only because they have been told that they are. Actually, the strings of power are pulled by people who are not “presidential” enough for public scrutiny - no one would ever vote for or select a person like that (Rove, e.g.). As long as the CEO does what he or she is "supposed" to do, they are kept in power, preened and paraded. If they won’t play their role they get booted. They can be fired, even killed, or simply left to rot in office as the action moves on.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Silence on 9-11?

Well, why not? That's what we got from our government on 9/11/01. All except from Rudy. Poor guy, but it was his day. This year it falls on an election year, so not too much silence. In an election year silence is not golden, talk is. That's why I think George Bush should read to the nation every year on 9/11 the story of "The Pet Goat".

Saturday, August 30, 2008

No Party for the Grand Old Party?

McCain says he may shorten or even opt out of the Republican Party convention in Minneapolis as hurricane Gustav aproaches New Orleans, because it seems wrong to be engaging in festivities when "people are suffering".

Apparently he hasn't heard yet about the 46,000,000 Americans who have no health insurance, meaning they can't get any health care. He must have missed the bit about the home foreclosures being the highest in even his long lifetime. He probably isn't even aware of the fact that between wage restraint and inflation that American take-home pay is lower than it was in the 1970s. Probably he doesn't connect the problems foreshadowed by the number of people in this country who smoke cigarettes and also that the high-school drop-out rate continues to increase. He must have missed the bit about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and certainly no one has told him about the sad fate of many of the returning servicemen.

Well, there's more - a lot more, but to cut to the chase, now that a hurricane appears to be approaching New Orleans again, he seems to be looking for a way to get George Bush and Dick Cheney off the hook this Monday because they would be the ones hitting Minneapolis as Gustav hits New Orleans.

Pretty Penny.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Contempt of Congress?

So now Karl Rove is in "contempt of congress", right? Well, I never thought I would ever be on the same side with Rove, but there are an awful lot of Americans right now who are also in "contempt of congress".

And like many other Americans, I suspect, I am also in contempt of the ENTIRE administration, the supreme court, and most of the American press. Guys, you gave it away. You wanted to impress the president and you took it all in and laid it at his booted toes.

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Jesse Helms

Jesse Helms died yesterday. Big man? Yes. Good man? Great man? Well. . . .

I must admire Helms for one thing. When he didn’t like what was going on he wrote about it, he got on the radio and talked about it and when it still didn’t go the way he thought it should he ran for office. That’s the heart of the American way, the way prescribed by the great political philosophers. So that is the good that I see in Jesse Helms. The problem I see is that when he was elected he represented only a part of his constituency, and rather than support and defend the constitutions of the State of North Carolina and the United States, he waged battle against both of them. He accumulated personal power and used that to accomplish his narrow tasks and abandoned both his authority and his duties.

Part of the reason that the democratic process is important is that it is the way in which civilization can hope to improve itself and learn from the mistakes of the past. People like Jesse Helms represent powerful forces which pull all of us backward into the darkness. Except for his change towards the treatment of AIDS, he seemed to be virtually the same person when he died as he was as a young man. In short, he didn’t seem to learn as he went through life, and remained the same man he had been programmed to be in his twenties and thirties.

As we close the door on Jesse Helms presence now, let us remember him for what he has to teach us.

© John Womack, 2008, All rights reserved.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Presidential Physicals - More Junk food?

All these presidential physical exams are just more junk-food for the American electorate. They are released at carefully chosen times in the selection process and usually by their own family doctors. John McCain even went so far as to restrict access to his records to a few people who could not record any information they saw, and they could only see the documents which were presented, and that release was only for one three hour period, the day before a major summer holiday.

It’s not like we haven’t had problems with presidents that physical exams might have detected before the voters were asked to cast their ballots. That’s been a fairly common occurrence over the past several occupants of the White House.

This is not a problem unique to politics. Any one aspiring to military service is required to pass a standardized physical exam. So are our policemen and firefighters. Bus drivers and airplane pilots are other jobs requiring standardized physical exams before the aspirant can even qualify to apply for those positions.

Being president of the United Sates is arguably at least as important as being a policeman, firefighter, bus driver or airplane pilot. It seems amazing that our country doesn’t have proper requirements already in place and require all candidates to submit themselves to such examination by qualified and INDEPENDENT physicians.

Dare we go further and suggest mental and emotional examinations? Why not? The military requires comprehensive physical, mental and emotional examinations (and passing them!) for any officer whose job will be connected with the delivery of nuclear weapons. All that “delivery”, by the way, is totally dependent upon an order from the ONLY member of that chain of command who has not passed such examinations.

Obviously we can’t put this is place before this election, not now, but we could begin such a national interest safeguard and require that it be in place some time in the future. The year 2012 might be good, or even 2010 as a trial run. We could even grandfather those already in office, but we do need to begin the process. Finally, should this be extended to members of congress and Supreme Court Justices? Why not? I like the idea.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Does the "R" Word Depress You?

The basic “Economics for Dummies” definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters in which the value of the Gross National Product does not grow. But what that REALLY defines is a “Corporate Recession”, and it’s occurrence depends very much on the spending habits of the consumers who pay for the goods and services the corporations provide for them to buy.

Let’s look at another kind of recession, one that's never talked about: a CONSUMER recession. If we use the same parameters as we used in the Corporate Recession then a Consumer Recession would begin when two consecutive quarters pass in which the value of our own individual Gross PERSONAL Product does not grow.

Let’s begin with wages. Wages are usually measured in dollars. But since we’re not talking about “income” we received, but the product we can buy with that income, then we have to measure the value of the products (and services) we can purchase with the dollars we have “produced” by our work and investing.

For example, we may be buying more gasoline and food than ever before. But that’s only if we measure those purchases in dollars. When you look at the AMOUNT of gasoline and the amount of the food we use, that can go down even as our expenditures in dollars goes up. In short, our cosumption in dollars could increase at the same time the “personal product” we realize is decreasing.

Managers though, don’t speak just about “wages”, usually they like to talk about “wages and benefits”, or “a wage and benefits package”. Can we compare the value of our wages AND benefits over the years? First, we can show that the average American's wages, once they are adjusted for inflation have actually decreased slightly since about 1970.

Now, what about those benefits? Benefits traditionally included retirement and medical care. These have decreased significantly over the past several years. Meanwhile the cost to the individual to buy or use any of these “benefit packagess” (i.e. medical insurance and retirement) on his or her own has soared. That means our actual wage and benefit package has decreased even before we compare what they will "produce" for us.

Another “benefit” consumers have received are various government programs which have provided money or services of value to the individual. These, of course, have also diminished over the past 30 years or so, and we find more and more programs being “privatized”, which means that the cost of those programs will always continue to rise while the services and products provided will always decrease.

Now, against the “income” of our total wages, benefits and governmental services, we subtract the “costs” we incure in procuring these items. these costs include purchases, debt and taxes. Let’s look at each of these.

Cost of purchases has gone up – really has to – that’s the basis for the American GNP, remember? Then there are the twin demons of inflation and cost of living adjustments (COLA). This is like the ancient battle between Good and Evil. In this battle, inflation always wins. Ever notice how the COLA is always called a “raise”, as if the recipients were being rewarded with “more” product? Actually, the COLA increase is always late, and always less than the increase of inflation. Therefore the COLA is always a loss.

Then there is the matter of debt, which does represent a product, however it always results in paying more dollars to secure a good or service that the original cost.

Lastly (for this discussion), there is the matter of quality. Do the things we buy last as long as they used to? Do they become obsolete quicker? Probably depends on what you buy, but if you find yourself buying more products to achieve the same level of satisfaction you used to get with fewer purchases, then you have encountered another decrease in the value of the product you buy with your income.

And what about "Imputed Taxes" - those contributions we have to make to lobbyist groups to represent us in congress. These keep going up, too. Our representatives are “supposed” to represent us. We “shouldn’t” have to hire “congressional mercenaries” to represent us to our own represenatives. But here is another place we are in competition with corporations. They spend much more money than we can to influence our representatives, and they use the money we have paid them to buy the goods and services they produce for us that we buy. Therefore, their payment to their lobbyists are also part of their expense of “doing business” therefore we pay that their lobbyist's costs as well as our own.

Well, if you figure all this out, and agree with me, then it is obvious that we are IN and HAVE been in a recession for some time. And if you look into these figures closely, they you may WELL feel a depression coming on.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

True Fact.

So ~ the Clinton camp says that the only reason Obama is tied with Hillary is because he is a black male, right? I think they ARE right! My take on it is that if Obama were a white male, he would be WAY ahead.

And to think on the matter a bit longer, if Clinton were a white male, she would have been dumped along with Biden, Dodd, Richardson and the others a long, long time ago. Also, if her name wasn't Bill Clinton's Wife, she would have had to buy all the attention she has been given.