The Body Politic USA

Since we are coming up on the 100th anniversary  of the sinking of the Titanic.  I thought this would be an appropriate way to commemorate an event, that no matter how terrible, was one of the defining moments of the 20th century.

Thomas Frank - Pity the Billionaire:

First some true confessions.  I’ve been doing a lot of reading over the past couple months.  A brief illness had put me off my game for a while and somehow a good read keeps the mind vital without taxing it as much as a steady diet of writing.  (In other words, I have been lazy for the past few weeks - but only for medicinal purposes.)  During that time I worked my way through Thomas Frank’s  “Pity the Billionaire”.

Frank has some very cogent arguments about how the far-right operates and how reality has morphed into an almost alternate universe from the rest of us.  Its a place where grass is blue and the sky is green.  In that topsy-turvy upside-down world  one of the most glaring ironies is the resurgence of Ayn Rand.   After all - corporate corruption and regulatory complacency had almost brought the entire world economy to its knees.  That should have been enough to consign copies of Atlas Shrugged to the paper shredders for the next half century.  But no…quite the contrary.

Ayn Rand For Dummies:

Rand contends that the true heros are the billionaires. The talented and few.  They are the masters of the universe.  They are our betters. They make ships like the Titanic possible.  But they are also the victims.  They are victims of our ingratitude.  Our inability to appreciate how they have made our lives better makes them so. They employ the people who built the ship and lifted them from them from homelessness and an early grave to mere poverty.  The people should be grateful to the likes of these billionaires.  They are the producers.  So they made a few mistakes and almost pushed us in to a second Great Depression that would have made the 1930’s seem like a cake walk - no biggie.  After all,  they are the JOB CREATORS!  And now the job creators are on strike, refusing to hire because we, the ungrateful public have made their lives so “uncertain”.

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Ed Schultz (see video below) had a segment about buying American during the holiday season.  I have to say, that sadly that is a lot harder than it would seem to be. Precious little is actually made in the old USA. We’ve become a service industry nation.  Sooooo, if you can’t find enough items made in America - the second best alternative is to support small local brick and mortar businesses over the holidays.

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The Nov. 4, 2011  New York Times article on STEM (science - technology -  engineering - math) career paths shows clearly and succinctly that NO ONE is engaging in true investigative journalism anymore.  The article by Christopher Drew, Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard) shows an appalling lack of insight into the issues facing flocks of interested and engaged science majors. Did this author spend five minutes in a laboratory talking to scientists working in the trenches?  No.

Yes, science and engineering are HARD.   OF COURSE ITS HARD...Science is fascinating in the abstract - but “doing science” is never easy.  If it were easy we would have cures for cancer, heart disease, obesity and all infectious disease coming out of our ears. We’d have a shuttle to Mars where people would take vacations and someone would be working on a Warp engine to go faster than the speed of light by now.  I know its hard because I have a Ph.D. from a highly regarded medical school  and was a molecular biologist by trade for over 15 years.

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I live in the northeast.   Unless you are living in a bunker on the moon - you know where this is going.   A “freak” storm headed up the east coast last Saturday.  That storm left 3 million without out power.

Ok - it was a crazy storm - but 3 million is about 2.5 million too many.  Our infrastructure should not be so problematic in the 21st century.  Secondly - as of yesterday it was being reported that over 2 million were still without power.  After 3 days they were just 1/3 of the way back to mormal?

Luckily, I have power.  I spent the better part of the last four days clearing downed limbs from my property  - That’s part of the new normal that can not be avoided.  But many people I know are still without power.  That should NOT be part of the new normal.  Nor should the fact that I reported a massive tree limb  from county trees on high tension wires blocking my ability to exit my driveway.  I called the authorities and still no action…4 days later????  A high wind could take down those lines taking power away from thousands of people - Let’s not even discuss the danger to me and drivers on the highly trafficed street my driveway sits on.   But I guess I’m being trivial.

Having the power grid down for millions of people would have 100%  unacceptable 20 years ago….

Back in the dark ages of the late 1970s I experienced my first grid failure.  Nothing special was planned, it was a hot summer night and my parents were in the city.  I had a friend over and we were working on a jigsaw puzzle.  Suddenly…all the lights went out.  Totally unprepared, we stumbled around in the dark  because - as we found out - flashlights are a hard thing to find in the dark.  Once we had a working flashlight,  I was able to secure a couple of antique oil lamps from the basement. Fortunately, we had oil.  After a bit of digging around, we found matches.  Over the next hour we set ourselves up with oil lamps and candles.  The whole time it never dawned on us that the whole power grid had gone down.

Why?  For the same reason we weren’t at all prepared for the lights to go out.  Today a heat wave and lightening storm would be a signal to prepare for a blackout.  Back then, our grid actually WORKED.  Stuff like that just didn’t happen in the modern rockin’ world of the 70s.  I had a battery operated radio - so we finally turned that on and heard that all of NYC was in the dark.  We were STUNNED!

In the aftermath, there were investigations - the event was not taken lightly. I was pretty young at the time, certainly there must have been some political grandstanding that I was unaware of. But in the end….Government cooperated with the utilities.  They pulled themselves together and went about insuring that this would not happen again!

Let the finger-pointing begin…..

Those were the good old days…..Now the entire process has degenerated into a finger-pointing contest.  Our local utility  (ConEd) points rightly at local and county governments…Why didn’t they trim county, and city-owned trees that run alongside many of the major power lines?  With the highest property taxes in the nation - that’s the least they can do.  The county and city points to ConEd stating truthfully that they are woefully understaffed and the grid is antiquated.  They also point out that this is the case  even though ConEd customers enjoy the second highest gas and electric rates in the nation.

And the blame game continues into the recovery phase.  ConEd blames the county for not clearing the downed trees quickly enough for them to work and the county blames ConEd for not getting the grid back on line and nothing changes except that the burden of this mess is passed on to the consumer.   I  personally  have spent $2000 of MY MONEY trimming back county trees that lie near my property over the last two years. I will also have to invest in a generator because losing power for days on end is now an integral part of my life.   So what the #$%! am I paying such a premium for in terms of taxes and utility bills?

The New York Times has an article today that sums it up nicely…When each bad storm means more dark days..

A pox on BOTH of your houses - both ConEd and and Westchester County are equally blameworthy, but the bickering and finger-pointing gets us nowhere…

Neither our government or the utilities are functioning…which  I admit has become a common theme of mine.   But the essential culprit here is the lack of government oversight and REGULATION.  Anyone who thinks lack of oversight and regulation have nothing to do with need to think again.

Look what happened to the grid in California when Enron got its grubby hands on it because of deregulation by the FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) ?  Does anyone remember what a mess that was?  Rolling blackouts, soaring prices, shortages contrived by unregulated utilities taking power stations off the grid during peak usage just to jack up prices.

Deregulating public utilities  is a mistake of monumental proportions.  They are natural monopolies and the consumer is therefore at their mercy.  Such industries require rigorous oversight or we will rapidly devolve into a society that relies on oil lamps, candles and fires to keep us warm.

When did we become completely incapable of investing in our own country?

The tea party wanted to get government out of their lives….well careful what you wish, you just might get it.  Government out of your lives means an uncontrolled, grid, bad roads, crumbling bridges, poor railroad transportation, an air traffic grid woefully out of date…and eventually - a third world nation.

What about the cost to the “job creators” the tea party keeps howling about?  The small businesses they claim to champion can be devastated such frequent interruptions.   But the tea party just keeps screaming that higher taxes would bring small business to its knees - so the obvious impact of major power grid interruptions get swept under the rug.

But think on this -  why would a business - large or small be  interested in setting up shop in  areas where the power grid can collapse like a sand castle when the tide rolls in?   Further, if you think the businesses that are still here will stay when they find they are doing business by candlelight every time it rains - think again.

Recently I wrote a blog about how trading stocks for the sake of doing so damaged the economy because it was a non-productive way to make money. The same is true for commodities trading - only in this case the consequences for the general population are worse - far worse….

A couple of weeks ago I was in running my dogs in the park and an acquaintance  of mine came in with her two dogs.  I mentioned the stock market and  she started asking  about commodities prices.  For about half a second I wondered why this was a concern.   Then it hit me - she is the owner of  a coffee shop which is also a roasting establishment.   Commodities prices have a massive impact on her life and profit margins - and coffee has gone crazy over the past year.  Admittedly some of this was due to weather issues - but much of it was sheer speculation.
The same holds true from the oil speculation that was one extra nail in our fiscal coffin in 2008.   High oil prices drove the cost of living sky high in the middle of recession in 2008 and helped lead the country off a financial cliff.  But the impact goes even further than  that.  People die from commodities speculation. When food products are involved - such as wheat death and malnurishment  result.  In poor countries such speculation driving prices sky high can mean the difference of eating or not.  Indeed, the high price of wheat was a big factor in rebellion in Tunisia and in Egypt.

© 2011 - RMGHicks - http://www.thebodypoliticusa.com - All rights reserved.

Sometimes you find a supportive voice where you don’t expect to find one.  I have to admit that I have a soft-spot for Jim Cramer….Beyond the fact that he autographed a book for my Dad shortly before his death….he does try to make Wall Street explicable to those of us who have not spent quality time on the floor of the stock exchange.   He had words of wisdom about the #occupy Wall Street movement and highlighted the concerns of many about “direction.”  Cramer has a unique opportunity to shape that focus the movement…by reaching out to them He certainly had enough to say about justice not being done…

Bravo Mr. Cramer!

I have a confession to make.  It is official - I just made more money this year trading a single stock than I made either teaching or selling homes or doing any of the other things that I have been trained to “do” or “produce.”  Given the fact that I am a card-carrying “progressive” this is a sad state of affairs indeed - particularly since the sum I made trading Apple stock on dips and peaks was hardly impressive.  For “playing the game - I do not apologize.  In times like this we have to do what works..and like I said - since I didn’t have much money to trade with in the first place - no markets were shaken to the core by my actions.

My financial worries aside - this leads to a bigger issue that has far more serious implications for  the American  economy and Main Street America.

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Much of the criticism levied at the #Occupy Wall Street movement has pinpointed the fact that in general the protesters lack “direction.”   These people are not fools or bums and those who would dismiss them lightly do so at their peril.  They are savvy enough to know something is wrong. Very wrong.  They have the right target in their sites.  They are disgusted with Wall Street and the “too big to fail” banks that have yet to be held to account for the misery they have inflicted on millions of Americans.  They understand that the banks were bailed out.  They understand that instead of lending the largesse from the taxpayers - the  banks took the money and locked it up.  They get that  the super-rich, the big banks, and multinational corporations  are sitting on  the trillions of $$ that are desperately needed to kick start our economy.  They understand that until that money circulates - the misery on Main Street will only increase.

But specific demands are harder to get to…

So here are some demands that would give the movement “direction”.  They are particularly relevant to an #Occupy Wall Street movement in that it targets Wall Street and the big banks.
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This year I just wanted to get through the 10th anniversary of 9/11… There was a fatigue in me that I think the entire country is sharing that made me want to turn away and move on.   Days like this are days of reflection.  And given the state of the world our country, the environment and the economy perhaps I thought it was best not to reflect too carefully.  After all, we know what we are going to see and it isn’t pretty.  It is perhaps best that we pass this one by quickly and not stare at the reflection too carefully.

But I was up late last night and happened by a special on CNN with Sanjay Gupta regarding the “dust” of 9/11 and it brought home to roost many things that I find very disturbing about America.

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The republicans have FINALLY found a tax hike they can get behind.  Why?  It increases taxes on he poor while sparing the super rich - who are carry so much water for the rest of us - from an more undo responsibility.

But in order to justify the tax hikes - there must be a villian -  a  group of people who can be demonized for not properly pulling their weight.  What better target than Main Street America - particularly  the working poor?

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