Get Your Free Gas While It Lasts

In 1952, GM honcho, Charlie Wilson, told congress, “What’s good for General Motors is what’s good for the country.” At the time when he said this, his company was already working to eliminate passenger-carrying competition from metropolitan transit systems by buying up the urban trolley companies and transferring the rolling assets to the scrap metal yards across America. Nobody at the time ever tried to explain how this was good for the country, and Wilson’s words were widely quoted and pretty much accepted at face value. Nobody today would buy it.

Yesterday, we saw further evidence of GM’s deterioration, as if any further evidence was needed. The once-proud company eliminated dividends for shareholders, and with GM stock value at an all-time low, this was the last nail in the coffin for the unfortunate people still holding equity investment in the company. Also announced yesterday was the discontinuation of healthcare coverage for GM retirees over 65. I guess Medicare is expected to take up the slack. And, of course, the current honchos will eliminate some white-collar jobs (other than their own) to make it look like management is sharing the pain. I’ll bet GM wishes it now had all that money they spent to dismantle the trolley systems half a century ago.

Less than a year ago, TV advertisements for humongous Chevy pickup trucks were featuring macho cowboy-types at the wheel as the Chevy was pitted against Ford F-Series machines and Dodge Hemis to compare pulling power. You don’t need to be an internal combustion scientist to know that something which can tow a locomotive eats up a lot of gas. So now, with fuel prices higher than ever, General Motors has excess numbers of pickup trucks sitting around with no buyers. Their solution to this is to offer free gas for a short period of time to new buyers—the automotive equivalent of a sub-prime ARM home mortgage. And sure enough, that same kind of cost-camouflaging flim-flam that blindsided financially naïve Americans into home foreclosure now has Chevrolet-owner-wannabes taking the bait. They still want to be that macho cowboy-type at the wheel, at least until the free gas runs out. This is what passes for wise consumerism and automotive industry sales management in the 21st century. It might be good for General Motors, but not for America.

Latest DNCC Update-- Protestors Beware

The “Tip-Of-The-Spear” commandos finally flew out of town in their black helicopters, still insisting that their reason for visiting Denver was to prepare for a possible conflict in the global war on terror (see my blog on June 18). By now, their CPS systems are sufficiently programmed with the anticipated flash points where global terrorists might be likely to spread mischief during the Democratic convention in August. Take heart, however, for the merriment is far from over. The circus is, indeed, coming to town.

Today, the city constables working together with the Secret Service announced that the convention demonstrators will be “partitioned with double prison fences, eight feet high, and spaced eight feet apart so that people on one side cannot pass anything across the barrier” (their actual words). No mention was made of the razor Cortina wire on top of the fences, but I guess this is implied by the term, “prison fence.”

Additionally, there’s a ban on any paraphernalia that can be used to attach protestors to one another. This includes padlocks, bicycle locking chains, carabiners, ropes, pipes, cables, handcuffs, and pretty much any filament longer or stronger than a shoelace. So much for opposition unity. As if this weren’t enough, CCTV (closed circuit) surveillance cameras are reportedly being programmed with new face-recognition software that was developed by an American technology firm under a contract from China for use with their Olympic security systems. It makes you wonder why this much planning and thought wasn’t brought to bear prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Obamas On the Cover of the New Yorker Magazine

During my Independence Day sojourn to the nation’s heartland, I visited the Abraham Lincoln museum in Springfield, Illinois. I highly recommend this as a place of learning. One entire gallery of the spectacular museum is devoted to the political cartoons of the day that were published to attack Lincoln during his presidency, and they are unparalleled for their tastelessness, viciousness, and outright absurdity. The only lasting effect of these cartoons, lampoons, and caricatures was to make their creators and publishers look like idiots in the light of history.

I see a lesson in all this that might apply to the current uproar over the newest cover of the New Yorker magazine lampooning Barack and Michelle Obama as Muslim terrorists. The lasting effect will be to remind readers that the New Yorker editorial staff is delusional, and the magazine cartoonist is no Thomas Nast, but the whole affair should not cost Obama any votes. It’s true that there are people roaming around American streets whose peculiar religiosity has them convinced that Obama is the Antichrist. And there are many American patriots who actually believe that the United States Government keeps them safe, and for these folks, avuncular old John McCain is the iconic embodiment of that fantasy. And finally, there have always been the redneck goobers who listen to Rush Limbaugh three hours every day and think this makes them smart. None of these folks will ever vote for Obama, but not because of the cartoon magazine cover, because a New Yorker magazine is the last thing in the world that they are likely to read.

The New Yorker editors assured us that the whole thing was a parody. I believe this. But a parody is a lie, even though it’s humorous and very subtle. American elections for the last 50 years have always been fought with lies, with the best liar winning the contest. I fault the New Yorker staff for thinking that the average American can spot a subtle parody and realize it’s not the truth.

Management and "Happy Talk" Is Benching the Eagle

Just another day. Nine U.S. soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Budweiser was sold to InBev, a European beer maker. NYC’s Chrysler Building is now totally owned by Arabs in Abu Dabi, and 20% of the NASDAQ is owned by Arabs in Dubai. Twenty years ago, news like this would have been a cause for an outright revolt against the government, but today such news hardly rates attention. I am firmly convinced that if the U.S.A. were somehow pushed back into the Stone Age, 30% of Americans would still proudly display a patriotic American flag on the wall of their cave and continue to bitch about the opposing political party.

I don’t think that the 2008 election will make any difference whatsoever in the state of the country. No matter who becomes the next president, eight years from now gas will be $7 dollars per gallon, sea level will be two feet higher, and U.S. troops will still be cannon fodder in Middle East garrisons. And American public education, healthcare coverage, and airline travel will still be the worst in the industrialized world, just like it is now.

To support my thesis about the irrelevance of the 2008 election, I offer one simple proof. Just look closely at all the political TV advertisements, and listen closely to what all the candidates are saying. All of them, including McCain and Obama, see themselves as a manager rather than a leader. They talk about their “plans” (what a joke) to solve the nation’s problems, but never ask for the shared sacrifice that will be needed to endure the unsolved problems once the plans fail. Lincoln didn’t try to manage his way through the American Civil War. He worked instead to prepare his people for the worst possible outcome, even as he hoped for the best. FDR, when faced with the Great Depression and World War II, did quite a lot of managing, but still found time to warn the American people that the road out of the quagmire would be difficult and fraught with peril. Neither Lincoln nor FDR relied exclusively on “happy talk.” But then, nobody ever accused any modern politician of being another Abraham Lincoln.

FEMA To The Rescue (Again)

I was told that my last posting was too long, so this will be a short one. I spent Independence Day out in the heartland, near Cedar Rapids, where everyone was effected by the flood to one extent or another. If the mood there can be expressed in one word, the word would be "frustration." Over 2,500 homes are simply gone. Not just uninhabitable, but non-existent. Last week FEMA moved in 40 trailer houses, and to hear the PR spin coming from Washington, you'd think the housing problem was totally solved.

One woman who is both homeless and unemployed (her place of work was destroyed by the flood) told me, "I actually envy the poor people in Myanmar. The government there did nothing. Nothing from a government would be a blessing. Our government moved in and made things worse for us. All we ever hear is how we can't do this or that because it's unsafe. It's not about safety. It's all about control, and forced compliance, and-- above all-- it's about giving the impression that the government knows what's best for us. And to make the situation totally ridiculous, our government scorns the leaders of Myanmar for being dictatorial. First Katrina. Now central Iowa. When everyone in America has eventually had the benefit of firsthand government emergency response, it will be the end of our democracy."

There's nothing I can add to that, except to say, "Pray for the people in central Iowa."

It Takes More Than Democracy

There's a lot about the world that we're never told in The United States. I don't mean this in a sinister or conspiratorial way. Americans just have a rather insular focus, that's all. And there's a lot of what we ARE told that's bogus. Chief among the pieces of misinformation is the myth that the world would be some kind of utopia if only all the nations of the world were democratic.

The fact is that democracy is not rare. It's the most common form of government on earth. And about the only thing that democratic nations have in common is that they're headed by some person who beat some other person in an election. Democracy is no more sublime than that. The strength and success and splendor of the United States is not the result primarily of democracy. It's due far more to a pair of other fundamentals that originated with our Founding Fathers. They aren't codified in our Constitution, but they're so ingrained in our national function that we take them completely for granted. One is the notion that any citizen in the U.S. has a reasonable shot at owning the land that he lives on. The other is the prospect that any citizen in the U.S. can start his own business if he so chooses, and do it with a minimum of hassles. This is what's lacking in the rest of the world. I wasn't smart enough to figure this out on my own. But then I sailed around the world on a ship with guest speakers who presented on-board lectures. They pointed out what to look for, and I simply took their advice and saw with my own eyes how things operate in the countries that we visited. Here's what I found.

In Brazil and Argentina, it takes almost two years to get a license to open a business, and the fees for that license are so costly that the business takes about three years to recoup the investment. The result is that almost nobody bothers with the license. In Brazil and Argentina- in fact in South America as a whole- 50% of the GNP is black market. I don't mean this in the criminal and underworld context. It's just that half of all business conducted in South America is off the official radar screen. The businesses don't pay any tax. The government loses income as a result and can't afford any kind of business oversight or regulation, so customers interact with business at their own risk. But the real negative is that business lacks the motivation to reinvest in capital improvements because the business can be closed down by the government at any time. In South America, most of the voters are affiliated in some way with illegitimate business, so the majority voting block stays committed to the status quo. A change in leadership might mean tighter requirement for licensing or greater license enforcement. This is the essential reason why North America is rich and South America is poor even though both continents are democratic. Truth is- there are many people in South America who would be much better off living in a well-run kingdom rather than in their democracy.

Now about property ownership. I'm about to tell you more than you probably want to ever know about the slums that constitute a major part of many of the world's big cities. There is a deplorable phenomenon called, "exponential urbanization," and it's intimately tied to the inability of people to own property. We don't have anything like this in the U.S. so I'd like to paint you a word picture. I live in Denver where the municipal airport is twenty miles from the nearest edge of the city. If you have ever flown into Denver's airport, DIA, or if you've never been there, just try to imagine this. Imagine that all of the vacant land, now mostly fields of hay, between Denver and the airport is chock full of tiny shacks with roofs of corrugated tin or blue plastic cover material. Miles and miles are like this, with small irregular roads threading through the shantytowns, all unpaved and alternating between mud and dust depending on the weather. Imagine that everyone living there has to walk about ten miles to the Platte River near Brighton to fill two-gallon water jugs, and then carry the jugs back home to have a daily supply of water. No toilets, of course. And then imagine that all of these slums and shacks have been built in the last 10 to 15 years, so that the population of Metro Denver is 7 million instead of 2 million, because 5 million live in the slums. All of the land covered by slums, even including airport land between the runways, belongs to either the federal, state, or city government, or in some cases private owners who lack the clout to evict the squatters on their land. The point is, none of the land is owned by the people living on it, so nobody has any incentive to improve their dwelling beyond the status of a shack because they potentially can be booted out at any time.

Most all of these slum conditions are found in democratic countries. The squatters are a majority of the voting people, so the government in power can stay in power by raising the fear that a change in leadership might mean eviction from the government land. In 25 years, Rio de Janerio grew from 2.7 million to 14 million, Bombay went from 4 million to 23 million, and Delhi went from 4 million to 19 million. These numbers explain why the urbanization is called, "exponential." Most all of the population growth of these cities took place in the slums and shantytowns which they euphemistically call, "informal housing." And one last thing about the slums, they're a vast breeding ground for Islam. You can see the minarets poking into the sky throughout the slums because they are the only thing higher than a single story. Many more Muslims are now living in the slums of democratic nations than are living in all the Arab kingdoms and theocracies of the world, but you never hear about that.

I've described cities that I've actually visited on my global trip. I saw these places for myself. These were cities in democratic nations. Much of what I learned, I learned by a kind of simple osmosis, touching and feeling things and places that most Americans have never even heard of, and here's what I learned. The next time I hear someone tell me that spreading democracy is worth the sacrifice of American lives, I'll take that with a grain of salt, because I've learned that the world is just not that simple.

Vaccine and Autism

Thimerasol is the mercury-based component once used as the preservative in MMR vaccine, as well as most other human vaccines prior to 2002. Thimerasol is the part of the MMR vaccine associated with the suspected link to autism. In 1999, the FDA ordered all U.S. vaccine manufacturers to find an alternate preservative (not based on mercury or aluminum) and to phase out all use of thimerasol. By early 2002, thimerasol was gone and vaccines were mercury and aluminum-free. Since 2002, autism rates diagnosed in young children have risen, in some cases nearly doubling. Additionally, autism is being frequently diagnosed now in children who are "vaccine naive" (this is the medical term for "un-vaccinated"). So much for the MMR vaccine link to autism. The scientific principle of "cause and effect" dictates that the effect should disappear when the cause disappears. That has not happened. Therefore, there is no "cause and effect" link. End of story.

Well, not quite. There may never be an end to this story. Like the controversy over global warming, and like the eternal tug-of-war between evolution and creation, the debate about MMR vaccine and autism has now degenerated into another case of logic versus belief. And in this struggle, logic always loses because believers don't need logic to support their belief. Many people are throwing gasoline on this fire, and one of them is a woman named Katie Wright. Her father, Bob Wright, is the past chairman of NBC/Universal, and the Wright family runs the organization, Autism Speaks. This is a family with considerable influence, certainly more influence than the typical scientific investigator has. This influence could be used to help settle the debate, but sadly, the focus there is now shifting away from the science.

This would all seem like academic nonsense were it not for the fact that there are sincere people who need and deserve factual answers to the question, "Why does my loved-one suffer from autism?" They deserve better than what this debate is providing. Placing blame will never cure a case of autism, but placing blame on the wrong cause is doubly counter-productive.