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About jparquette

Fortunate and blessed in companionship with my wife of fifty seven years, in health and in modest, but more than adequate circumstances. Life is good.
January 8, 2012 · 6:41 pm

The Fourth Greatest President in American History (Part 1)

Future Mount Rushmore?

President Obama consistently differentiates Himself from mere mortal politicians. No great surprise that in his impregnable narcissism during an interview on “Sixty Minutes” he portrayed the ‘accomplishments’ of his first term as superior to any prior president with the possible exceptions of Johnson (presumably Lyndon), FDR and Lincoln.  (Click here to watch video – back arrow to return to blog.)  I am hard pressed to catch my breath with that claim.  Even CBS had to do a double take (or in this case an outtake).

Compare the Roosevelt response to the Great Depression and the Obama response to the financial crisis of 2008.  A debate about Keynesian economics is way beyond the scope of this humble blog, but FDR faced a far worse unemployment and financial crisis than we experienced in 2008.  Unemployment topped 25% with a 37% rate of non-farm unemployment in 1933.  He built permanent public works projects such as the Hoover Dam and developed a public employment program, the Civilian Conservation Corps, which hired young, single men between 18 and 25.  These men were exercised into good physical shape, trained to be more employable and accomplished multiple conservation goals in erosion and flood control, forest culture and protection, disaster relief, structural improvements and wildlife conservation – not quite the same as the nonexistent ‘shovel ready’ jobs of the Obama era. Over its 9 year history until the beginning of WWII, over 2.5 million young men had jobs, money for their families and restored dignity.  Stan Musial, Aldo Leopold, Chuck Yeager, Robert Mitchum, Archie Moore, my father and father-in-law were all enrollees.

In contrast, President Obama crafted the most egregious example of pork barrel earmarks-for- friends Federal spending in American history, over $800 billion.  His history of crony capitalism extends from the earliest years of his career.  As an Illinois state senator in his book, “Audacity of Hope”, Obama told of having his credit card declined when his law business was out of money.  His political ally and wealthy campaign donor, Robert Blackwell, paid him an $112,000 legal retainer to save him from bankruptcy.  What his book failed to note was that State Senator Obama shepherded through a $320,000 Illinois tourism grant to subsidize a state Ping-Pong tournament that benefitted Blackwell’s table tennis company.

President Obama’s long political and financial connections with the now imprisoned ex governor, Rod Blagojevich and real estate developer Antoin (Tony) Rezko as well as with millionaire slumlord and Democrat king maker Valerie Jarrett (still with him as his Senior Advisor on Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs) and Mayor Richard J. Daley are well documented in NY Times bestselling author, Michelle Malkin’s 2009 book on the Obama administration history, “Culture of Corruption”.  President Obama’s roots are deeply embedded in Chicago Democrat machine politics.  The corrupt profligacy of the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009 is no surprise, but a predictable continuation of his record.

In the interest of brevity, let’s look at just one facet of the Recovery Act, the Department of Energy’s 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and 1603 Grant Program for alternative fuel and green power projects.  As documented in Peter Schweizer’s recent book, “Throw Them All Out”, oversight of the loans distribution was not entrusted to a scientist or even an experienced Department of Energy bureaucrat, but to Steve Spinner, an Obama appointee.  Mr. Spinner was previously on the campaign’s National Finance Committee, was a significant campaign contributor and bundler himself; he sat on the White House Business Council.  The grant allocations were stage managed by Sanjay Wagle, who was the co chairperson of Cleantech and Green Business Leaders for Obama, which supplied millions for his campaign.

Of the $20.5 billion in ‘green’ loan guarantees, $16.4 billion went to companies “either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers – individuals who were bundlers, members of his campaign’s National Finance Committee or large donors to the Democratic Party.”  Most were early backers of his presidential run for office.  The Solyndra scandal was the most public failure ($573 million in loan guarantees), but there were others.  As you may remember 35% of Solyndra was owned by George Kaiser, major Obama donor and bundler.  The President personally went to the California factory twice to brag of all the green jobs created there.  Solyndra never was able to manufacture a solar panel for less than they sold it for.  After the bankruptcy, all jobs were lost almost overnight.

Loans often went to previously small or almost nonexistent companies.  The owners often took advantage of the credibility lent to them by the guarantees, took their companies public and cashed out.  Steve Farber, a major donor to the DNC and the 2008 convention host, along with Steve Westy, who bundled more than $500,000 for the campaign, openly advertised in the Wall Street Journal that their connections would ‘hook up’ a company for loans and grants.

Some, such as Granite Reliable Wind ($135 million), were companies directly connected to White House staff.  The company was owned by CCMP Capital, of which Nancy-Ann DeParle, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, had been the managing director.  A wind farm subsidized by the Federal government cost less than 55% of what non subsidized companies had to pay.  Grants were given to companies with less than 10% private equity skin in the game.  Normal grant approvals required at least 30% private equity investment.  The Congressional General Accounting Office found numerous incidents of a lack of transparency in the applications and favoritism to ‘friends and families’ among the winners. The GAO was ignored.

A final typical example was Leucadia Energy, which was awarded grants and loan guarantees totaling $3.5 billion for three separate projects.  The company is a subsidiary of Leucadia National.  At the time of the administration’s decision, Leucadia Energy had annual revenues of $120,000 and one employee, when it was given billions.  Perhaps not surprisingly, Chairman and CEO Ian Cumming was a member of the 2008 Obama National Finance Committee and DNC Convention Committee.  Cumming wrote large personal checks contributing to Obama campaign funds in the weeks just before the approvals.  Eighteen months later in December of 2010, exactly three jobs had been created.

Next week another aspect of this fourth greatest presidency.

“Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.”  George Washington

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January 2, 2012 · 7:35 pm

Retrospectives

Papa Jack hanging Christmas lights in our first house in Maine

Retrospectives for the previous year are ubiquitous in late December:  “The Best Of” and “Worst Of” lists – movies, theater, books, television, every sport known to humankind and Broadway shows; news stories of significance ranked by their impact on our lives and imaginations; fashion and entertainment “ins” and “outs”, championships and crushing defeats.  Late December also evokes a personal retrospective.  December 29th marked what would have been my father’s 95th birthday and the 29th anniversary of his death on the day he turned sixty six, especially poignant for me since I will turn sixty six in February.

Papa Jack was, as are we all, both ordinary and extraordinary.  He didn’t make any Man of the Year lists.  He was a salesperson selling all manner of products and services over the course of his career from land in Arizona to Yellow Page ads and Walpole Woodworker’s fence; death befell him prior to retirement, he liked his work most of the time.  A father of six and grandfather of fourteen, Papa Jack was an imperfect, but unforgettable Dad. He had few role models to learn to be a father, growing up in pre-Depression three deckers in Lynn, MA, a small hardscrabble mill city of working poor and lower middle class folks north of Boston.  His own father, a show troupe manager from Buffalo, NY, was killed in World War I shortly after my father’s birth; his mother, a former Vaudeville singer and Irish immigrant, died when Papa Jack was still a teenager.  Before World War II, he assembled aircraft engines at the “G.E.”, Lynn’s largest employer.   After Pearl Harbor, he joined the Army.

His closest Army buddy was ‘Sonny’ (John) Laracy, the twin brother of my mother, Betty, which is how my parents met.  Sonny and Jack slogged through half of France, Luxemburg and Belgium; he never told us combat stories, except for one.  Most of his WW II stories poked fun at his predilection for humor and running afoul of rules.  Sonny and he were scouts in an advanced Intelligence and Reconnaissance unit for the 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion.  My dad was a sergeant, and they had their own Jeep, although he told us of driving a half track as well.

In the early bad days of the Battle of the Bulge, in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium, troops were pinned down in the snow by deadly artillery, tank and small arms fire.  On December 18, 1944, my Dad and Sonny were separated as the Germans overwhelmed their position; my Dad remembers looking across a field and seeing Sonny racing away, waving back at him, unable to come back with only a suicidal run risking the lives of the other soldiers clinging to the Jeep as an option.  My father, along with many others, was captured and spent the next three months as a prisoner of war.  He spent several weeks living in a boxcar when American Mustangs returning from protecting bombing runs frequently strafed German trains.  The Americans would form the letters P O W in the snow to caution the pilots and stop the shooting.

At the end of his three months as a POW, the Germans drove several canvas roofed trucks transporting the Americans into a remote field.  The prisoners were herded out of the trucks to stand shivering in the snow.  Another truck backed up to the huddled men, surrounded by their guards. The tailgate dropped to reveal a tripod mounted machine gun and two grim German soldiers, one of whom jacked back the action to chamber the first round.  A tense and hopeless silence followed with only the sounds of the cooling engines.  No birds sang.  After what must have been minutes, but seemed an eternity, the soldiers manning the gun laughed mirthlessly, and the truck drove off, leaving the prisoners to make their way back.  When their captors slipped away, American soldiers soon liberated them.

I remember when I was ten or so, attending a Fourth of July cookout at a friend of my family’s.  The friend was Norwegian by birth and had a wood fired sauna in his back yard.  My dad went in with a couple of others.  As a joke, one of the other men jammed a shovel against the door, and started setting off firecrackers against the walls.  My father yelled for him to stop.  He did not.  My father screamed the only time I ever heard that sound; he was a big man, a strong athlete.  He kicked the door off its hinges and emerged furious and shaking.  The joker ran into the house.

My father was the king of street football quarterbacks among my friends and brothers. In his early twenties, he was the home run champion of the Lynn Softball League, playing for the General Electric team.  Before Tee Ball existed he almost despaired of trying to teach his eight year old son how to hit a baseball.  He patiently drilled a hole through a ball, and secured it with a string and a nail to a tree branch where I would happily, though for the most part, ineffectively flail away.  He stood and called out in the stadium at my college graduation, “That’s my boy!”

My dad drank a bit too much, smoked too much, told an easy, usually irreverent and wonderful joke at any opportunity, especially at wakes, and could quiet a room with his memorable Irish tenor.  Not a dry eye after Danny Boy.  My earliest memories of church are in the choir loft while my father would solo Ave Maria or Panis Angelicus.  To help remember his voice, we only have three songs recorded by my brother on a Dictaphone at my cousin’s wedding in 1970. The sound quality is not good, but he can be clearly heard on this link.  Papa Jack sings “On This Day”  Back arrow to return to post.

He was, like most of his generation, flawed, but resolute, and for his kids, a faultless hero.  A year before his death, he came up from Massachusetts, and we roomed together at a three day Catholic men’s retreat in Augusta, Maine near where I lived.  During recreation time, we played in a volleyball tournament and won.  He no longer could soar as he once had, but was a master of the heart breaking deke and soft placement of a point winning shot.  At the end of the three days, our families joined us.  We all took a turn telling briefly of our experience on the retreat. I was able to tell him and the couple of hundred in the audience that I loved him and always had.  I’m forever grateful that I did.

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December 18, 2011 · 4:08 pm

Dona Nobis Pacem

The Christmas vs. Holiday tree controversy is threadbare and tedious, even in Rhode Island.   Going into the last week of Advent, it is advisable to avoid other combustible topics unrelated to the season: brevity and simplicity this week.

Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ: the rest is accoutrement. This is a particularly difficult focus to maintain in 2011. George Will once wrote in an honest, low moment, “Christmas will soon be at our throats.”  Regardless of Black Friday, marketing that begins in October, tinsel, flash, dreadful derivative music and parties, our little family prefers to keep the gift giving thoughtful, but minimal, sing perennially moving traditional carols, hold candlelight processions led by the little ones to the crèche my father-in-law built and my mother populated with exquisite hand painted ceramic figures of the Baby Jesus, Joseph, Mary, sheep and shepherds, camels and kings.  Simplicity in this thorny time of year is our hope; attaining simplicity is an annual struggle.

Two Advent readings resonate this year and convey two most valuable Christmas lessons. The saints speak most eloquently.

 The first reminds us to seek out peace, even and especially when chaos and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) threaten to overwhelm.  From Thomas à Kempis’s classic, “Imitation-of-Christ“:  “A man who lives at peace suspects no one.  But a man who is tense and agitated by evil is troubled with all kinds of suspicions; he is never at peace with himself, nor does he permit others to be at peace…  Above all things, keep peace within yourself, then you will be able to create peace among others.  It is better to be peaceful than learned.”

The second Christmas message is that every human being we encounter has intrinsic worth as their birthright and must be treated with dignity and respect irrespective of the accidents of nativity, appearance, intelligence, equanimity or station.  The eternal human soul is existentially dearer than church or planet or universe or any ephemeral thing.   From a sermon by Blessed Isaac of Stella, a 12th century abbot:  “Christ dwelt for nine months in the tabernacle of Mary’s womb.  He dwells until the end of the ages in the tabernacle of the Church’s faith.  He will dwell forever in the knowledge and love of each faithful soul.”

So to each of you precious souls reading these words and to those you love: Merry Christmas, a peaceful, simple Christmas season and a blessed 2012.

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.      Garrison Keillor

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December 11, 2011 · 8:38 pm

Entropy

Wind turbines appear from a distance to rotate anywhere between indolent and enthusiastic, but in close their lethal potential is apparent.  Perfectly balanced atop a two hundred and fifty foot tower, three graceful blades encompass a diameter of nearly one hundred and forty five feet.  At the tips, they crush through the air at nearly one hundred miles an hour.  To steady powerful torque, the tower is anchored in tons of concrete.  Their whistling has been compared to the sound of a rapidly flying duck close over the water, only louder and incessant.  Clustered wind farms, located in geography with steady Class Four and Five winds, drive neighbors and wildlife to distraction.  The base of a typical tower well north of Cheyenne is littered with corpses of dead birds and bats, including sage grouse, which finds half of its North American habitat in Wyoming.  Since steady winds and large human populations are usually not found in close proximity, hundreds of miles of high voltage towers are necessary to transmit the electricity.  The wires and wind farms disrupt the routes and winter feeding grounds of migratory mammals such as antelope, elk and bison.  When the wind is becalmed, there is no power; when demand is not required for the grid, the spinning is fruitless.

The point is not that this means of generation is tilting at windmills, but that any source of power carries an environmental impact and is imperfect.  A coherent energy policy continues to elude us.   “Green” advocates condemn all power generation that consumes fossil fuels, but the alternates do not provide an answer in the midterm future.  When total expenditures for various methods of power generation including construction, fuel and production costs, waste disposal and decommissioning at the end of their effective lifetime are tallied, the costs per kilowatt hour and the percentage each represents of U.S. total generated power are as follows:

  • Hydro electric:  $ .03 – 6.1%,
  • Nuclear: $. 04 – 19.7%,
  •  Coal:  $ .04 – 48.7%,
  • Wind:  $ .08,
  • Solar:  $ .22 – All renewable sources, including wind and solar: 3.0%,
  • Natural gas and Petroleum: $ .10 – 22.5% (21.4% of it gas and 1.1% oil).

Given the percentages of our energy derived from hydro carbons as well as their cost advantages, it is not clear how they could be supplanted by renewables hastily without profound economic disruption.

Nuclear and hydro have their own limitations. Carving out hydro dams is disruptive, interring whole towns under millions of tons of water, and the site opportunities are limited.  Although spent nuclear fuel can be reprocessed with 99% efficiency, eventually waste has to be safely stored and sealed for centuries; Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima remind us that human error or uncontrollable natural events can visit catastrophe upon wide areas.  Biofuels have been a disaster of rainforest depletion and higher food prices for those most vulnerable.   Solar cells require energy intense manufacturing similar to computer chips, and the mining of silicone and other minerals has its own inherent environmental degradation.  A solar cell must produce for almost a third of its projected life to “pay back” the energy consumed in its manufacture.

The controversy over the Keystone Pipeline and the process of horizontal drilling and “fracking” is yet another unresolved opportunity.  The enormous reserves of natural gas and oil from shale deposits in the United States and Canada have the potential to give us time to let economic forces develop alternative sources.  Yet, we remain deadlocked and even insult our friendliest neighbor.  Canada will sell their gas and oil; whether they sell to us or build an alternate outlet to their western harbors to ship to China remains to be seen.

“Fracking” may create some problems for aquifers, but the findings in Wyoming, Pennsylvania and Texas are to date inconclusive.  The only compromised well water appears to be in remote areas where old mines were revived with the process much shallower than is being done in new exploration.   When wells are drilled deep, protected by intervening horizontal geological formations and encased properly, there seems to be little risk of contaminating ground water.  Environmental activists want no use of hydro carbon based fuel, and so oppose the process and the pipeline irrespective of their real or perceived risks.  But gas burns cleaner than coal.

A “keystone” is a carved stone at the apex of an arch, that most efficient and enduring architectural element.  The keystone secures the structure and balances the opposing forces of the arch.  Perhaps this is an appropriate metaphor for a solution.  Along with converting more electrical generation and vehicles to natural gas, using our own reserves and buying from Canada, delivering it via the Keystone Pipeline to our own refineries in Houston leads us down the road to energy independence.  The pipeline has been studied in depth for three years and no serious environmental risk has been identified.  Construction of the pipeline means 20,000 jobs almost immediately.

Oil and gas production in our country with the new technology has grown jobs in this industry from 200,000 to 440,000 since 2003.  $38 billion in Federal loans under the current administration has added only 3,500 green jobs, and much of the money was wasted in Solyndra scandals and billions more in tax credits as windfalls to wind farm developers, artificially lowering their costs. Let the market sort out the efficiencies we need to solve our multifaceted energy challenges and end our dependence on unstable nations with stated intentions to destroy us.

Latin proverb:

Destitutus ventis, remos adhibe

“If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.”

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December 4, 2011 · 6:42 pm

The China Model – Handle with Care

Ambulances and vans pull to the side of a remote road and idle; surgeons and assistants wait patiently just after sunset.  Gun shots signal the onset of frantic activity.  The final few hundred yards are driven into an open area; still warm bodies of executed criminals, political prisoners and religious dissenters are carried into makeshift mobile operating facilities.  Body parts are hastily harvested with the occasional chest contraction or gasp from not quite yet dead donors.  The commodity market for livers, kidneys, corneas and the occasional heart not ruined by a bullet is lucrative (about $4,700 for a good kidney). Victims were given anti coagulants to help ensure good results and told the injections were anesthesia to mitigate pain during their executions.  The only provided anesthesia penetrated the right side of their chests at 300 meters per second from a Norinco knockoff of the 9 mm Tokarev Model 213, the reliable sidearm of Chinese officialdom.

Not some ghastly science fiction by Michael Crichton or Robin Cook, but true horror in an immense region in northwestern China called East Turkestan.   No , this story is true and was related to Ethan Guttmann from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies by two former doctors forced into service by the Chinese Army:  Nijat Abdureyim and Enver Tohti, and was published in last week’s Weekly Standard.  They were ordered to cut deep and fast.  An estimated 65,000 Turkestan, mostly Muslim, were ‘harvested’ in the late 1990’s.  Ethnically, the original inhabitants are Turkic and now a minority to the imported Han Chinese.  More recently, this profitable sideline of culling those that challenge the state was visited upon the unlucky chosen of Falun Gong, three million of whom were funneled through Chinese corrections facilities.  Prisoners were blood tested and tissue matched before those selected for execution were lead away.  Occasionally, Chinese officials in need of a kidney or liver waited in a hospital and were matched with a not yet dispatched donor.  At the end of a restaurant interview, Dr. Tohti turned to Dr. Abdureyim, saying, “Nijat, we really are going to hell.”  His companion was silent and knocked back his beer.

When girls were born to Turkestan women, mid wives were known to inject them with “antibiotics”, which were not administered to Chinese infants.  Within two weeks, the babies turned blue and died.  If confronted, mid wives told the mothers their babies were simply not up to handling the “medicine”.  Well documented ‘one child’ policies and forced abortions by the Chinese government expose pervasive human rights abuse.  Tallying the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution, the government of China has murdered millions in the interest of the supremacy of the far left State and the People.

A second article about China this week by Andy Stern appeared in the Wall Street Journal editorial pages.  Mr. Stern is a fellow at Columbia University’s Richman Center and is the former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).  According to the filing with the Federal Election Commission, the SEIU PAC was the largest single contributor to President Obama’s election campaign with over $27 million taken from the dues of healthcare, property services and public employees. Stern was appointed by President Obama to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (?!?).  During his tenure, the SEIU also donated $6 million to ACORN, the community action group discredited for voter fraud.  The SEIU was deemed the “most engaged and influential” lobby for the ObamaCare bill.  Stern was the most frequent visitor to the White House during the first year of the administration – 22 times according to White House logs.   Perhaps some microbrews in the Rose Garden discussing preferred mentors of President Obama like Saul Alinsky (author of “Rules for Radicals”)?

In his editorial, Stern praises the superiority of the China model of the “planned economy” as clearly the future. The editorial is smooth and persuasively written.  “The free market fundamentalist economic model is being thrown onto the trash heap of history”.  He cites China’s ascent to become the world’s second largest economy, their 10% wage growth (although many citizens in China still live in third world conditions), their commitment to next generation Information Technology (how much is pirated is not mentioned), and he waxes most rhapsodic about their penchant for five year plans, while the “Americans are planning only for the next election”.  Five year plans worked out especially well for the late, unlamented Soviet Union.

A third “China” allusion this week is cited in a Yuval Levin National Review article. Peter Orszag, former budget director for the Obama administration, is quoted from his editorial in “The New Republic”.  He tells us we need to take power from Congress and give it to “automatic policies and depoliticized commissions.  Radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.”  President Obama has frequently said similar things, presumably as long as he controls the commissions.  He has told aides that making the changes he wants would be a lot easier if he was the president of China.  Whether ironic whimsy or a revelatory foretaste is up to you.

A favored quote of Saul Alinsky is, “History is a relay of revolutions” and another is “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”  His plan for the radicals of the sixties was to clean up, get haircuts and infiltrate through political action to the highest positions of power they could attain.  To underestimate their intelligence and determination is a grievous error.

The left is alive and well in Beijing, on American campuses like Columbia, in unions like the SEIU and on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, in Washington, DC.

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”  — Galileo

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November 27, 2011 · 9:43 am

Assassins

On Good Friday in April of 1865, the guard on duty outside the Presidential box, John Parker, took advantage of the time President and Mrs. Lincoln would be watching the play, “Our American Cousin”, to descend the back stairs of Ford’s Theatre to the adjacent Tatavul’s saloon and ordered a tankard of ale.  At the other end of the bar sat John Wilkes Booth, building his courage with a whiskey after completing his preparations. The assassin left the tavern, and as a celebrity actor strode unimpeded through the theatre.

Booth slipped into the unguarded dark corridor leading to State Box in Ford’s Theatre.  Timing his arrival to coincide with the funniest line of the play, he hoped the laughter of the audience would cover any commotion before he took his shot.  Booth checked through the small hole he had bored in the wooden partition earlier in the day and saw the back of the president’s head.  Silently he pushed back the unlatched door, extended his arm and discharged his derringer.  The ½” ball smashed into Lincoln’s skull just behind his left ear, traversed his brain and stopped just shy of exiting near his right eye.  President Lincoln slumped forward in his chair without a cry and died the next morning across the street in the commandeered bedroom of a boarding house with his wife Mary in the next room still in the clothes stained with her husband’s blood.

Booth’s co-conspirators, George Atzerodt and Lewis Powell, were not as lethal.  Powell forced his way into the home of Secretary of State William Sewell, and with his Bowie knife repeatedly slashed the bed ridden Sewell.  After a long recovery Sewell lived.  The hapless Atzerodt was too drunk to go to Vice President Andrew Johnson’s room at the Kirkwood House.  Only Booth accomplished his part in their deadly conspiracy to destroy the top three positions in the Executive Branch of the government.  Booth was never tried and was shot through the spine while resisting capture; he died at 26.

With the survival of the barely educated Andrew Johnson from Tennessee, the aftermath of the Civil War was dramatically altered and America’s “Reconstruction” followed a bad turn.  Lincoln had made clear his intentions of leniency and reconciliation, planning to use the balance of his final term in office to lead the country through healing and opportunity for nine million freed slaves.  The brutal corruption of the “carpetbaggers” sanctioned by vengeful Congressmen and undeterred by the inept Johnson sealed in the bitter resentment of the former Confederates and the ascendency of the Klu Klux Klan.  Embedded racism and Jim Crow laws persisted for another century.  A deep wound did not heal.  What could have been had President Lincoln lived can never be known.

Ninety eight years later in November of 1963, another president fell, but this time to a lone assassin, the troubled Lee Harvey Oswald.  A former U.S. Marine with a history of court-martials, Oswald returned from a three year defection in the Soviet Union with a Russian wife and child.  He hoped to emigrate again, this time to Cuba for another try at a “purer” version of socialist utopia, but Cuba examined his record and rejected him.  In April of 1963, Oswald missed with a sniper shot at retired General Edwin Walker, hitting the window frame in Walker’s home office.  He was never a suspect until after Dallas.  Oswald got a job at the Texas Book Depository in Dallas.

Lee Harvey Oswald brought an inexpensive, 6.5 caliber mail order, bolt action Carncano scoped rifle to work the day the route of President Kennedy’s well publicized motorcade was to pass in front of the Book Depository.  Oswald set up in a sixth floor window in a nearly deserted section of the warehouse and waited.

His first shot passed through President Kennedy’s neck, probably not fatal, and seriously wounded Texas Governor John Connally, sitting in the front seat of their convertible limo.  The second shot missed.  The confused driver inexplicably slowed the limo.  The third shot slammed into the president’s head, tearing out massive portions of his brain and skull.  He was rushed to Parkland Hospital, but President Kennedy was certainly instantaneously brain dead.   Oswald later in the day murdered Dallas policeman J.D. Tippitt when Tippitt exited his patrol car to question Oswald.  He was never tried and after his capture was gut shot in jail by Dallas strip club owner and police hanger on, Jack Ruby; Oswald died at 24.

Vice President Lyndon Johnson, a former Texas Senator, was sworn in on the plane that carried the President’s body before it headed back to Washington.  Kennedy’s wife Jacqueline stood next to Johnson still in the clothes stained with her husband’s blood.

President Kennedy had spoken of pulling back from Vietnam and was a fiscal conservative. Johnson escalated the Vietnam War and ushered in the Great Society welfare entitlement that debilitated the minority population for the next fifty years.  The war and the subsequent assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy five years later precipitated a generation of disillusionment, discontent and dilettante revolution, the repercussions of which ripple down to this day.  What could have been had President Kennedy lived can never be known.

Quote attributed to a homily from St. Marcarius (fourth century Egyptian monk):

“When a house has no master living in it, it becomes dark, vile and contemptible…. Woe to the house where no master dwells, to the field where no farmer works, to the pilotless ship, storm-tossed and sinking.”

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November 20, 2011 · 8:29 pm

Demographic Insecurity

Three seemingly unrelated stories in the last two weeks, on further reflection, seem to me inextricably entwined.  The Washington Post carried excellent coverage about the financial woes of our Social Security entitlement program.  For the first time in history, during 2010 Social Security went ‘cash negative’, spending more money than it took in.  Senate  President Harry Reid’s (D-Nevada) response was typical of the left, “Let’s worry about Social Security when it’s a problem.  Today, it is not a problem.”  Apparently the plan is to wait until the house is fully engulfed and the roof collapses, then call the fire department and try to save the foundation.

In 1940, there were 42 workers paying in for every one collecting.  In 1950, there were 16; in 2010 there were 2.8, and projections for 2030 are for 1.9 workers per retiree.  Those 1.9 should count on working long and hard.  In 1940, the average life expectancy was 62.8 years.  In 1950, it was 66.3, and in 2010, the average American will live until 80.  Most clearly, “Houston, we do have a problem.”

Social Security, according to those who know, is by far the easiest to fix among the big three entitlements: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  Raise the retirement age, index the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to prices, not wages, perhaps privatize some of it, move up the contribution rate slightly or means test the benefit recipients or raise the contribution cap, and we are there.  The longer the corrections are postponed, the more draconian will be the necessary remedy.

The second story last week exacerbates the first:  the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in the United States dropped to 1.9 total births per fertile woman.  In 1960, the rate in the U.S. was around 3.6; in 2009, it was 2.05.  2.1 new births are necessary to sustain a population.   We postpone childbearing into our thirties and limit it to one or two children by and large; we live in a contraceptive society that frequently views children as either burdens or carefully protected and rare trophies.  When we factor in 53 million abortions in the U.S. since Roe v Wade and compare that to total employment of around 154 million and to economy growing consumers numbering 300 million, the implications for long term funding of retirement benefits become manifest.

The United States is following most of Europe into a spiral leading to an aging population incapable of supporting itself over time.  While sub-Saharan Africa and Muslim countries are exploding in population growth, the West declines.  (see link to CIA statistics on world wide TFR)  In Europe prospects are more barren still. France, like Japan and Canada, offers generous tax benefits and even payments to couples having children.  They are struggling up over 2.0 TFR with the incentives.  Greece and Italy have TFRs below 1.5, and they retire at younger ages.  Greece and Italy have crushing debt, and their bonds are on the brink of complete melt down.  There is the potential to devalue the Euro catastrophically and jeopardize the European Union itself.  Here we have Occupy Wall Street, which is bad enough. In Greece and Italy, faced with austerity measures that could cripple their debt supported standard of living, the well reasoned response has been full blown riots and burning, overturned cars.

Further complications: the Muslim population in Europe, which is a significant constituency already, has three times the birth rate of the native population.  Some European countries will have a Muslim majority at current trends before the middle of this century.

The final story adds a third perspective.  In Egypt, with the ascendency of radical Islam after the Arab Spring, life for the 8 million Coptic Christians, which was always hard, has become untenable.  Churches are bombed, massacres are threatened, and there are no Christians allowed in any leadership roles, including schools and government.  Under Mubarak, many times assaults on members of this ancient Christian sect were ignored.  Often the victims would be arrested as trouble makers, stifling the reporting of attacks.

Now he’s gone, and it’s gotten worse.  Harassment comes not just from radical Islamists, but most attacks originate from among the ordinary Muslim majority population over some imagined offense against Islam: a Coptic Church being renovated or built, the rumor of a sexual relationship between a Coptic man and a Muslim woman or just some perceived disrespect towards Islam from a Christian.  In October, a 17 year old Christian was told by his Muslim teacher to remove a cross he wore.  When he declined, the teacher began to beat him and was soon joined by the students.  The beating stopped when he died.

My suggestion is this:  If you are planning a visit to Florence or the Vatican while the Euro is cheap, sooner is better than later.  Michelangelo’s David will lose some of his cache with a robe on, and the Pieta will be nowhere to be found.  Ladies, get your burqa out of the cedar closet.

Allahu Akbar, anyone?

Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?  T. S. Eliot

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November 13, 2011 · 8:54 pm

PRODUCTivity

As the population of our planet increases, so does the quantity of goods and services provided.  According to a recent article in “The Economist”, 28% of all human years lived (cumulative by all people) since 1 AD were lived in the twentieth century.  23% of everything produced by all of humanity since the birth of Christ has been produced in the first ten years of the 21st century. Exponential growth in the Gross Domestic Product of all nations has been driven by and continues to drive the ratcheted ever upward productivity of nations, competitive businesses and individuals.  But at a cost, and a cost we have yet to understand or adjust to.

Could the inventor of the telegraph, which revolutionized communication and required specialized operators, have envisioned the average modern home’s ability to instantly transmit for pennies and a few hours’ worth of learning not just text, but pictures, videos and sound?  The telegraph ended the jobs of thousands of message carriers and created fewer new ones.  Laser printers and copiers and fax machines displaced jobs as well as typewriters and carbon paper.  Now paperless offices and scanners and direct to e file record keeping will cut more jobs and render more skills to history with coopers and wheelwrights and stenographers.  The ease of spreadsheets with multiple “what ifs?” eliminated thousands, if not millions, of the jobs of financial analysts and bookkeepers. Very few futurists even attempt to foretell the coming effects of artificial intelligence and well programmed robots.

At each turn of the ratchet of productivity, fewer people are called upon to do more for far less expense per transaction.  But at a cost, and a cost we have yet to understand or adjust to.

I review (however cursorily), respond to, delete or file over 60 emails a day on average – some days many more.  Emails are layered on top of dozens of phone calls (landline and cell), text messages, a profusion of meetings and nearly constant interruption by folks just walking into or by my office.  I am not unusual and work in a primarily blue collar industry that by definition will always remain local to a great degree (construction and construction related products).  What primarily white collar, international business associates deal with is, I would assume, more intense.  Amongst the communications from customers, coworkers, bosses, subordinates, suppliers, sub contractors, architects and engineers is the obligation to produce the work fed by the communication – the reports, analysis, planning, new bids, and successful results.

We have become by necessity what is now a wan and enervated boast at the coffee pot as we replenish our caffeine levels – harried and frantic multi-taskers for ten or more hours a day, plus a couple of more on the phone to and from our workplace.  We are called upon to sustain the attention span of squirrels and survive on the ability to jump from branch to branch and acorn to acorn with alacrity and agility.

Yet the brain study scientists caution us that the human mind cannot strictly focus on more than one task or thought at a time.  Our own experience confirms that. So while we scan (or even write) emails and hold a phone conversation, only one of these tasks gets adequate attention, or for that matter, any attention.  We’ve all had the admonition of someone (occasionally wives, who know us so well) asking us impatiently, “are you on the computer?” while talking to us on the phone.  We sometimes forget things that are important and remember things that are not.

We drink from a severed water main, constantly adjusting our intake to seek equilibrium somewhere between dying of thirst and drowning in the torrent.  Our productivity has a cost, and we have not yet understood it or adjusted to it.  Our jobs, if we let ourselves sink, become as C.S. Lewis once wrote, “dust, grit, thirst and itch”.

Lest we despair, I offer the following:  if what we are doing is what we truly are called to do at this time in our lives, then we do others and ourselves a disservice by complaining about the unavoidable reality of that vocation.  We seek to value what we are called to do, and if we are doing it to the best of our ability and occasionally with joy, then we bring to each day some gratitude, kindness and a desire to end the day with a bit more wisdom than we began it.

Quote from the theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, later modified as the Serenity Prayer of the 12 Step Programs of AA:

“Lord, grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed; courage to change that which can be changed, and wisdom to know the one from the other. “

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November 6, 2011 · 8:15 pm

Let’s Party!

Much has been written comparing and contrasting the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protestors and the “Tea Party”.  Both groups evidence great dissatisfaction with our current state of affairs, and each has chosen a different path to express that dissatisfaction.  The “Tea Party” leaders pay for the necessary permits to assemble, have organized effectively to influence elections, pay the costs of their own clean up and for the most part have become a formidable political force focused on shrinking a bloated and inefficient government.  The OWS leaders, where they can be identified, engage in civil disobedience, illegally squat on public land (yes, you can picture the whole graphic) and don’t shoulder the costs of their demonstrations; they are an eclectic fusion of discontent and fringe causes focused on an incoherent ideology.  At best, they are what Jonah Goldberg calls “dreamy anarchists”.

OWS embraces the full circus of the politics of alienation from militant vegans to Black (and Gray) Panthers to the deranged homeless.   Their sites in NYC and Oakland have many criminal complaints ranging from assault and theft to sexual misconduct and rape. The leaders discourage reporting to police any crime in their makeshift tent community because they spurn the legitimacy of all authority.

However, the OWS protestors are not without some rationale for their discontent.  Like their forbears of the sixties, who had some valid grievances of racism, sexism, government corruption and bellicosity, the current banner wavers find justification for their disassociation in some genuine evils.   If there is a constant in their chanting, the bogeyman is “corporate greed”.  Every day seems to expose another scandal on Wall Street or in the business community.

  • Citibank agreed to a $285 million settlement with the Security and Exchange Commission for selling risky mortgage derivatives with hefty fees to investors, then going short on the same CDOs they sold.  i.e.: They bet successfully against their own investors on financial instruments from which they benefitted greatly selling.  Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase settled similar suits last year.
  • Until two weeks ago, Rajat Gupta was one of America’s most respected Wall Street directors for Goldman Sachs and Proctor & Gamble after working his way up to become the managing director of the well-regarded McKinsey & Co. consulting firm.  He was arrested and accused of passing inside information to his friend, former hedge fund king, Raj Rajaratam – information from which Rajaratam made or saved millions.   Mr. Rajaratam is currently serving an 11 year prison sentence for other offenses.
  • Solyndra took hundreds of millions in government guaranteed loans through the Department of Energy, dissipated it all and filed for bankruptcy.  One of the founding investors of the company was former Dept. of Energy official,  Stephan Spinner, who is a significant bundler for Obama campaign fund raising. Congress is attempting to subpoena Valerie Jarrett and Larry Summers, current and former administration officials, who had a hand in pushing for the loans.
  • Another major bundler of funds for the campaign is Jon Corzine, the ex Democrat Governor of New Jersey. A former Goldman Sachs director, as Chairman and CEO, he took MF Global recently into the sixth largest bankruptcy in American history.  He resigned last week amidst charges of a misplaced $600 million, falsifying financial statements by hiding debt and misappropriating client’s money.  They destroyed the investments of many by making bad, risky bets on European bonds.

OWS has plenty of grist for their mill; the problem is that they seem more intent on getting someone else to pay their student loans, beating drums, breaking windows and defecating on police cars than driving substantive reform.  This is all quite entertaining; however the causes of our discontent cannot be remedied by protests or for that matter political action in the short term.  The bleak facts are these:

  • The Federal Reserve projects that unemployment won’t drop below 8 until 2014 and real GDP growth won’t exceed 3% until at least 2013.  We ain’t out of the woods.
  • The bottom 40% of American households earns less in inflation adjusted dollars than they did in 1989.  The next 20% are about even.  The top two tiers have improved 6.4% and 17% in twenty years.  Yes, the rich are getting richer, but at less than 1% a year.
  • The concern is systemic:  a prospering middle class, which was the buoyancy of the mid twentieth century economy, was secured in well paying, blue collar jobs that for the most part no longer exist.
  • Globalization means that workers in Michigan aren’t competing for good jobs with workers in Pennsylvania or Ohio any longer; their competition is in Malaysia, Mumbai and Shenzhen.  And nothing is going to change that.  Tariffs, trade wars, higher taxes and xenophobic rants will not modify the certainty that our economy has changed, and it will never be 1950 again.

Wall Street greed should be prosecuted when it crosses the line, but if we taxed them all to penury and spent it all on government make work, what ails us will not be fixed, only made worse.  So, OWS, please call us to dream of a better world, but don’t rail against the tide and wind until the winds no longer blow and the tide doesn’t come in.  What is needed is hard work, sober judgment and the creative spirit that made America great.  We need dreamers, and even more we need doers.

Quote from a letter to George Will from William F. Buckley on conservatism:

“We must do what we can to bring hammer blows against the bell jar that protects the dreamers from reality.  The ideal scenario is that pounding from without we can effect resonances, which will one day crack through to the latent impulses of those who dream within bringing to life a circuit that will spare the republic.”

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October 23, 2011 · 4:47 pm

Color Blind

This week we mark the twentieth anniversary of the appointment of Justice Clarence Thomas as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.  Judge Thomas was thoroughly “borked”, a verb now in common usage after the savage hearings that brutalized the eminently qualified Robert Bork and refused him his appointment to the Supreme Court.  Justice Thomas survived the liberal vitriol and personal attacks of tumultuous Senate confirmation hearings to become one of the best respected ‘originalist’ voices for strict constitutional interpretation of American law.   He succeeded Thurgood Marshall and as an African American conservative continues to be a lightning rod for the left.

After serving as head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under President Ronald Reagan, he was appointed first as a Federal judge on the Washington, DC Circuit Court of Appeals, then to the Supreme Court by President George H. W. Bush. For twenty years he has served with distinction and hopefully will continue to do so for another twenty.

In his autobiographical, “My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir”, Justice Thomas writes eloquently about his young life when he learned about personal responsibility and persistent work from his grandfather, as well as the value of education from the nuns at parochial schools in Savannah, GA.  His earliest language was Gullah, an African dialect spoken by his parents, descendents of slaves.  He went on to Holy Cross College and Yale Law School.  His spoken English now is evocative of the powerful cadences of James Earl Jones after disciplining himself for many hours in college language labs when a Jesuit professor and mentor warned his brilliant student that the Southern patois of his youth would limit his opportunities.  Justice Thomas at his core fervently believes in equal opportunity for all citizens and in the hard work necessary to take advantage of them.

As a strict interpreter of the original intent of the writers of the Constitution, he reserves special disdain for those laws which use race as a determinant of results such as affirmative action.  He has called the culture of affirmative action and racial biases favoring minorities by lowering standards for them as the modern version of the old slave holding plantation.  In Adarand v. Pena (1995) striking down racial quotas in government contracting, he wrote, affirmative action is “racial paternalism” whose “unintended consequences can be as poisonous and pernicious as any other form of discrimination.”  The unexpressed presumption in this condescending racism is that minorities cannot achieve equal results without props and winks.  For a person of Justice Thomas’ achievements, this is particularly galling.

Shelby Steele, an African American author, scholar and documentary film maker, is a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute and another conservative opponent of all things racist, with racism being defined as treating people differently because of their race.  Professor Steele is widely published, and his book “White Guilt” is the best exposition of the case against affirmative action I’ve read.  In peril of my sounding too “sixties”, “White Guilt” is full of those consciousness raising ideas that forever change one’s preconceptions.  His writing is clear and alive, not pedantic or pompous as some academic works can be; I commend “Grandfather’s Son” and “White Guilt” most highly to anyone looking for well thought out counterpoint to politically correct jargon about race.

To presume a very brief synopsis of “White Guilt”: after the Civil Rights Act in 1964, by  admitting of the terrible wrongs throughout prior American history done by  whites towards blacks, whites diminished greatly their moral authority  necessary to continue to lead and govern.  To address this loss and threat to power, rather than encouraging blacks  to earn the breakthroughs codified by law in their new found equal rights and opportunities,  whites attempted to preempt the moral high ground by a series of actions  starting with President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society legislation.  The “Great Society” promoted guaranteed equal  results, including affirmative action and a debilitating welfare program that  systematically undermined black family life.  Black leaders like Julian Bond, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton chose to  leverage white guilt by espousing a self serving victimization attitude for  blacks, by identifying themselves through their race rather than their accomplishments  and by viewing the self sacrifice of personal responsibility necessary for  permanent gains as a further oppression rather than freeing.  In terms of lasting impact on the black  community, the net results have been decline with negligible impact on black  poverty and truly awful impact on black families.

The  statistics are condemning.  In 1960, 22%  of black children lived in single parent family homes; today 66% do, and 80% of black  children will spend a significant portion of their youth not in contact at all  with their fathers.  The sad facts are  these:  black male irresponsibility  enabled by the Great Society programs after fifty years has resulted in 53% of  black males dropping out of high school.  In NYC, there is a 72% drop out rate.  If a person takes three specific actions, only 8% of them will end up  below the poverty line.  They must  graduate from high school, not have a baby before they are married, and not  have a baby before they are 20 years old.  If they don’t do all three, 79% will be in poverty.

We need to  listen to Shelby Steele and Clarence Thomas, not Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton,  if we ever hope to see the equality and opportunity enshrined in our Declaration  of Independence enacted for all of us, irrespective of race.

Quote from “White Guilt”:  “No worse fate could befall a group emerging from oppression than to find itself gripped by a militancy that sees justice in making others responsible for its advancement.”

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