It is hard for me to escape this issue of California state workers having to take pay cuts. My wife is a State worker bee and we have seen much in the way of deteriorating pay and forced furloughs. I recognize that these government workers are but pawns in the large budgetary chess battle now going on in Sacramento. As I mentioned yesterday, someone has to pay the bill for public services;there is little hope for additonal revenues give the sorry state of the job market.
Still, the furloughs are not a bad idea on certain levels. First, taxpayers have less access to public services and there is an implied you-get-what-you-pay-for message for tax cheapskates. Second, workers have extra time for that part-time job at Target!
San Diego voters are going to possibly be looking at two ballot measures coming this fall that will actually raise taxes. The proposed half-cent sales tax increase and the $98 per house(and $60 per apartment unit) is quite a shift of direction from the spirit of Proposition 13, enacted in 1978. We decided then not to pay for government services. Instead we rolled the dice and hoped that economic expansions would provide enough tax revenue to keep the municipal ship afloat.
This variant on the trickle-down theory worked well enough for several years, at least it appeared so. But the real truth was we just engaged in a giantic shell game. Governments just deferred maintaining the services and the infrastructure that had made California an economic gorilla in the post-war period.
Now the bill is coming due. The over-generous public pension system does not help matters. Like the Greeks, public servants are going to have to learn to work past the age of 55.
Either that or raise taxes. This should be a very interesting election.
I was watching the Sunday morning show on CBS and was taken aback by the network’s scanty coverage of the death of Daniel Schorr. Like his rough take-no-prisoners style or not, this guy was a giant in electronic journalism. Their brief three minute bio-pic was an insult in my view.
I remember him most vividly during the Watergate affair but listened to him on NPR very recently. I hope when I am 93 I can sound as lucid and convincing as he did when I last heard that unmistakable voice. You know that voice, always with tinged with incredulity; somehow he communicated to us with his prose and timbre this point, “can you believe what they are trying to sell us?”
As the Goldman Sachs drama unwinds it brings to mind another famous Senate hearing, the Army-McCarthy hearings that were held in 1954. In a single moment, Senator McCarthy was destroyed politically along with his political movement. For those not familar with the Senator from Wisconsin, he was the political leader in the fight to root out domestic communists and their sympathizers. In taking on the Army and its chief counsel, Joseph Welch, he unwittingly set the table for his own demise. (You can view this electric exchange on this link: YouTube)
I think the Goldman Sachs hearings, while lacking the one dramatic exchange, will have the same political impact. I believe these executives perfectly laid the ground work for a meaningful financial reform bill. I thought after the bruising health care debate there would be little stomach on the Hill for the President’s proposals. But the Goldman boys tilted the playing field. You can see this as the GOP is in full retreat on this issue. I am sure the calls and emails to their offices have been clear and concise. The public relations ineptness of this group of highly-paid executives is astounding. They provided a plethora of juicy sound bites that I am sure we will see in a few political ads this fall.
American history provides a mother lode of dramas such as is now occurring on the Hill. For those not following the news too closely, Congress has hauled in several miscreants from Goldman Sachs for a serious finger-wagging session. When it was all over, Goldman’s heavies left town, no less richer but with the knowledge that the game was going to change, slightly. Senators made sure they got a good tongue-lashing.
There was excellent theatre with Senators dishing up huge amounts of umbrage and outrage for the Goldman lackeys to swallow. But something was accomplished. The rock-heads in the GOP finally realized they were on the wrong side of the financial reform discussion. By allowing debate on the President’s financial reform bill in the Senate, Republicans were in full retreat, probably prodded on by the cavalier attitudes exhibited by the Goldman Boys. They were a PR disaster for the cause of less regulation. The GOP flip-flop was not motivated by moral outrage but by hard politics. November is looming and the GOP has been a bit feisty, feeling the tailwinds of public support. After the show on the Hill, they were determined not to give the Dems a golden opportunity to resurrect the ghost of Father Coughlin.
because The Hurt Locker is a film and not a hybrid movie-cartoon. I saw Avatar in 3D and thought it spectacular entertainment. It was a magical experience and would see it again on the big screen. But that attribute alone does not mean it was a great movie worthy of Best Picture status.
Judging from the box office, the public does not fully appreciate the genius of The Hurt Locker. People who have been in war zones, like the screenwriter and this writer, probably view this film differently that those who have not. The complex relationship between the three leads is what this movie is about, not the riveting action scenes. To be sure, a series of missions are the narrative heart of the movie. Critics may see this as repetitive and unnecessary, yet they are needed to illustrate the evolving and abrasive relationship between the three men. The portrayal of the war itself is apolitical although many argue otherwise; the power is in the relationships, not the action narrative.
The small part set in the supermarket is a rare instance of pure cinematic wonder; powerful and complex in what it conveys yet so simple. To me it rates along with my all time movie scene favorite in the war genre, the scene in the taxi and the front lawn in the opening moments of The Best Years of Our Lives. If anything, just watch the first 30 minutes of this film, you will not be disappointed.
The reason this film has grossed only $15 million thus far(Alice in Wonderland grossed over $100,000 on the first weekend) is that it is an unsparing and dark film about an unpopular war. As during the Great Depression, fluff movies were generally very successful for obvious reasons. Do yourself a favor and see this movie. I watched it in the theatre and at home on a large flat screen and it was just as powerful the second time around.
I was driving along Mission Gorge Road Sunday past and drove by a store that was advertising a deli sandwich for $1.99. While this may appeal to stretched consumers, the idea of pricing-to-survive troubled me. The Dow closed Friday over 10,500 and I presume will continue a slow march toward prosperity, no matter how ephemeral.
The two numbers speak volumes about where we have landed. I know I am fortunate enough to be in the lifeboat; but I am not so short-sighted to believe the drownings going on around me do not have the possibility of swamping my boat.
The health care debate sharply illustrates this divide. Those who have versus those who do not. No matter the scope of a final bill, which I believe will come to pass, the health care issue is a proxy for a larger question, deeply rooted in the past century. Since the end of World War II, domestic social and economic policy decisions have really been an ongoing struggle over the scope and survival of the New Deal. This country has never adequately framed a permanent national consensus on the Fed’s role in our daily lives.
Some New Deal policies are firmly institutionalized such as unemployment benefits and Social Security. The New Frontier added Medicare to the mix and I can imagine the howling amongst the GOP faithful if that program went away.
So why is it that legions of recipients of New Deal and New Frontier largess are charter tea-baggers? Sadly the answer is those in the boats do not want anymore company.
At last Mr. Obama realizes that there is no crossing the aisle on health care reform. It is clear the administration will be forced to craft a bill unilaterally and force it through Congress. This will please few people but at least it will be viewed as some progress and provide the Democrats with some political cover this fall.
The debate on this issue highlights a concern I often have; we are probably too democratic for our own good. Minority rights, granted by the Constitution, are what has always set us apart, the tyranny of the majority has never been accepted in this land. (OK, I know we locked up the Japanese during WWII and so on, but for the most part, we have zealously protected the rights of small groups) In the global world, I am beginning to think we need to adjust our vision as to what constitutes an adequate level of control over majorities. We now have the tyranny of the minority in place.
Health care costs are going to make life difficult for our business community in the global marketplace. I give the President credit for his professorial long-term view; he sorely misjudged our willingness to sacrifice for the future of this country. We want it now. And we want someone else(?) to pay for it.
The thinly veiled public relations exercise going on in Washington today over health care reform reminds of a story about Benjamin Franklin. As you may recall, Mr. Franklin, always a master of self-promotion, invented a machine powered by heat that made enough noise to convince passersby that he was working on projects well past midnight. In his autobiography, he boasted that this device greatly improved his reputation amongst bankers and other community shakers.
I think the President needs to eschew these Franklin-meetings and seize the bully pulpit. He should look to Mr. Truman for inspiration; that President was faced with a similar nihilistic Republican Congress. He labeled them the “Do Nothing” Congress and rode that slogan to victory in 1948.
I realize people are sick of name-calling, but it is time to clearly define the teams and their goals. Health care reform is complicated and probably will not pay dividends for years. But we have to start somewhere. Consider this fact; when India’s Tata first rolls their cheap sub-compact down the assembly line, the costs to build that car starts at zero. Ford’s Focus, on the other, starts down the line with about $7,000 of expense to pay for past retirees, a large portion of which is for health benefits. Something has to be done to lavel this playing field.
I have finally made peace with my new reality. And it is probably yours as well. All of us are facing a new era of working longer, harder and for less money. If you are looking for someone to blame you are missing the point. What we are seeing is a return to normal global economic patterns. The play is the same, only the characters are playing different roles.
Thomas Freidman last week referred to us as the “grasshopper generation”. Americans are used to feasting on the bounty left by the Greatest Generation. We have collectively failed to work or save enough. The home equity line became our dope; the banks the corner drug dealer.
The great post-war era of prosperity is over. We shot ourselves in the foot when we discovered Italian shoes and Volkswagens. It has been downhill ever since. Only we could not see it coming. Regaining that time is not going to happen. Auto workers cannot expect to retire at 50 with a boat and cabin on the lake. Public sector workers are not going to be quitting early either, our governments are equally bereft of largesse.
The Tea Party people are perhaps the most misguided of all. This crisis is not about feckless bankers, government debt or big-spending politicians. This problem is more about the rise of other countries; whose npeople not used to feeding on the wealth left by their predecessors. They are by nature more hungry and more willing to work harder. What we first need to realize is that the Cleavers have left the room. The sooner we do that the sooner we will regain our footing.
