Yonder ponders…

SELF GOVERNMENT AS SAFETY VALVE

“You should devote more air time to gay and lesbian groups.”

“Too many of your reports are about gays and lesbians.”

          “You could produce more programs if you got more companies to underwrite them.”

“Corporate underwriting is a trap.”

***

I once chaired the board of a public broadcasting company whose meetings were enlivened – and extended – by an open invitation to the public to attend – and speak at –them. And speak they did. Vociferously.

At first, I struggled to maintain order, if only to keep staffers from attacking, quitting or both. But after a few meetings, I figured something out. Most of the speakers equated talking with acting. What they really wanted was a chance to hold forth about things they cared about, to be heard, to feel that their opinions mattered, had weight.

In fact, few did.

Our company’s employees were capable and conscientious, but fiscal and operational realities constrained them. If only all those impassioned speakers had put their money where their mouths were.

Note the parallel between this public broadcasting company and our nation’s government. It, too, makes it possible for members of the public to express themselves in myriad ways. We write letters, launch E-blasts and sound off on talk radio. We speak out at city council, PTA, school board and public broadcasting company meetings, and on behalf of candidates and causes we favor.

“I speak therefore I act.”

So?

Let’s assume that most of us equate talking with acting, and that our talking doesn’t affect our governments’ policies much more than the viewers’ and listeners’ talking affected the policies of the public broadcasting enterprise whose board I chaired.

Is this a good or a bad thing?

Should it upset us if our cherished freedom of speech is really just a safety valve that enables policy makers to proceed with less concern that we’ll get in their way?

On the contrary. We should celebrate.

This safety valve is one of the most important attributes of our form of government. It permits us to express a variety of conflicting views without gumming up the works, triggering mayhem and eventually chaos.

So public opinion is irrelevant, right? No. Not when it mobilizes members of the public to move their feet as well as their lips. Think Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and the many other heroes of the civil rights movement. Or the farm workers in California’s Central Valley. Or the longshoremen in Long Beach. Or Prius purchasers. We may not agree with these actions, but they’ve certainly influenced our government’s policies.

Finally, the act of talking has another salutary consequence. It constrains our elected representatives – especially those who have to run for re-election every other year – and slows our political processes. When half of your constituents support an initiative and half oppose it, your impulse is to avoid – or at least delay – dealing with it.

Moral: Speak out, and be grateful for gridlock!

***                  

July 1, 2008

Yonder ponders...

WANTED: A NATIONAL BARNRAISING

Members of the Amish community work together to raise a barn. What if all Americans could work together to raise its moral equivalent? Imagine the benefits.

I propose that the next US president, be he John McCain or Barack Obama, launch an initiative that will attract the participation of many Americans and the support of nearly all of them, regardless of their political persuasions.

I call this initiative “Rebuild America,” and I imagine that it would tap American companies and American workers to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure – including its energy production/distribution and air traffic systems.

Does the nation’s infrastructure need rebuilding? Consider: A government study reports that nearly one-third of America’s bridges don’t meet minimum standards; our air traffic control systems are antiquated; our electricity grids will have to be thoroughly overhauled if we’re to take full advantage of alternative energy sources; many of our cities are unable to provide basic services to their residents; et. al.

Who’ll foot the bill? I imagine that – given that many if not most of the improvements would enhance our national security – much if not most of the funding would come from the Defense Department’s budget. Congress would have to appropriate the remainder, perhaps in the form of grants to participating states.

Were President Barack McCain to announce that this initiative would receive, say, five percent of the DOD's budget per year for the duration of his term – absent urgent military necessities – the sums would be sufficient to interest not only engineering and construction firms but also defense contractors. In order to be competitive, these companies would have to add to their capabilities, by forming new divisions, acquiring relevant companies or both. And they’d have to train and employ American workers.

Having invested to create the necessary capabilities, these firms would have a powerful incentive to support the “Rebuild America” initiative and to compete for its infrastructure projects on an ongoing basis, and their employees and shareholders and the American people would be better off as a result.

If Congress were to act on my suggestion above, participating states would augment the “Rebuild America” initiative – with expertise and perhaps funds – as they know from experience how best to implement infrastructure projects.

Is there a downside? Yes. One with a familiar and notorious name: Pork. Members of Congress would be anxious to obtain “Rebuild America” projects for their constituents (who’d lobby them aggressively, natch), and so would be seriously, if not irresistibly, tempted use their power of the purse to fund bridges to nowhere and other projects that would give new meaning to the term “infrastructure.”

How to at least minimize this risk? I see five ways: First, position “Rebuild America” as the people who launched initiatives like Teach for America positioned them. Second, recruit a team of veterans from the private sector; limit their tenure; and make sure their authority matches their responsibilities. Third, make “Rebuild America’s” activities as transparent as possible. Fourth, establishing an oversight board comprised of distinguished women and men who have reached a point in their lives that ensures their objectivity. And, fifth, engage the citizenry – by soliciting their suggestions, by inviting them to participate in projects in their areas, and by providing frequent and regular progress reports.

Reactions?

June 25, 2008

Yonder reports...

Moments of Truth

And Other Highlights from a Grand Tour

Moment One:

An experience in Istanbul two weeks ere my 70th birthday suggests that those who claim that one is as old as one feels have it wrong in my case. Paola and I boarded a streetcar whose seats were all occupied, and as I reached for a strap to steady myself, a young man sitting nearby caught my eye, stood up and offered me his seat. As far as he was concerned, one is as old as one looks, and I presumably looked ancient and unsteady to him.

Moment Two:

A week later, I was running up a long hill near Dozza, Italy, when I sensed a presence alongside me. I looked to my right and beheld a handsome woman who looked (!) to be in her 50s. We exchanged buon giorno’s as she overtook me. In a minute or so, she was 100 meters ahead of me and pulling away. And she was walking. 

How to explain these moments? Can it be that I really look so decrepit that I can't be trusted to stay standing on a moving streetcar, and that my jogging pace has slowed to the point that I can no longer keep up with middle-aged walkers? Or were my visage and energy simply reflecting the fact that I'd shelved my five liter/day diet Pepsi habit at the beginning of our odyssey two weeks previously? 

Note:

The final question above attests that your now-septuagenarian correspondent remains capable of wishful thinking.

Moment Three:

Epiphany in Urgup, Turkey, on market day: I’d always thought Henry Thoreau meant his comment that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” as an indictment of men. But as I watched the market’s throngs of sellers hawking their wares and buyers haggling over them, it occurred to me that he was really saying that circumstances beyond many men’s (and women’s) control hamstring them, make it impossible not to lead quietly desperate lives. Hmm, I thought, maybe I’m growing up as well as old.

Other Highlights:

Our month-long “grand tour” (Turkey, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Luxembourg) was as rewarding as it was ambitious. To motor around Turkey's Cappadocia region is to be treated to some of the most unusual (and impressive) topographies Paola and I had ever encountered. Montana-like panoramas that feature snow-capped peaks and craggy escarpments and hide deep gorges made it hard for this driver to keep his eyes on the road.

Yonder ponders...

THE DEAFENING SILENCE

Are we Americans so preoccupied with what Stephen Covey called “the Urgent” in his “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” that we’re failing to pay attention to – and talk about – what he labeled “the Important”?

Or are we and our news media not talking about what I see as an important threat because my vision is impaired; i.e., it’s really not important enough to merit our attention?

I report. You decide.

Consider:
* 160K of our nation's 500K bridges don't meet current standards; and the highway trust fund that would normally finance their renovation runs out of money in 12 months.
* Our federal government owes foreign governments, individuals and enterprises $9 trillion; and its assets amount to $1.4 trillion.
* It will cost us taxpayers $34 trillion for our federal government to meet its Medicare-Medicaid-Social Security commitments to us and our fellow citizens.
* If our military activities in Iraq were to end today, by the time the last veteran of them died, our government would have invested between two billion and three trillion taxpayer dollars in that nation's "liberation."
* Most of our state governments are cutting programs and raising fees in an attempt to meet their constitutional obligation to balance their budgets every year.
* The Democratic candidates to succeed President Bush promise health care for all, additional "investments" in public education, "fair trade," et. al., if they become our next president.
* The Republican candidate promises to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent and to give those tax payers who drive a summer “tax break” if he's elected.

* All three promise to increase the Defense Dept's half-a-trillion dollar budget.
          These facts – which no one disputes – suggest a consequence (to me) that no one acknowledges (as far as I know): The possible failure of our nation’s 219 year old experiment in self-government.
          Can We the People muster the political will to resolve our governments’ financial imbalances – given the widespread personal sacrifices it will certainly entail?

          Can We the People achieve the consensus required to kick the habits that are responsible for this imbalance; i.e., our consumption of energy and credit?

          Can We the People do these things quickly enough given the threats we face from those who wish us ill and our warming home planet?

          Finally, can We the People resist what history has shown to be a superficially appealing alternative, an authoritarian leader a la Vladimir Putin?
          I reckon that the sooner We the People confront these questions, the likelier it is that we’ll answer them affirmatively.  

          Conversely, the longer We the People procrastinate, the likelier it is that Joni Mitchell’s lament will come true:

“We don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone…pave paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Q & A

Q  &  A

Q Can self-government survive in the US?

We the People typically look to governments to meet our particular wants – lower taxes, more accessible/affordable health care, cheaper energy, safer foods, better schools, et. al. – based on the assumption that these governments will figure out how to do this somehow if they're led by officials who are sympathetic to these wants.

A.k.a. magicians. A.k.a. miracle workers.

We the People resolutely close our eyes to the obvious: Our governments don't have the wherewithal to deliver what we want, no matter who's running them, because their liabilities liabilities so far outstrip their assets that, were they private companies, they'd have to file for bankruptcy.

Here's a partial list of these liabilities: Social Security, Medicare, veterans' benefits, national defense, infrastructure, carbon emissions, energy supplies, public education and debt service.

Sadly, "We the People" includes the people of the fourth estate. To my knowledge, no journalist has yet asked a presidential candidate how he/she intends to deal with the federal government's de facto bankruptcy in his/her term of office, if elected.

This is an elephant in the room, and it's not just the GOP's.

We the People are flying blind because we're afraid of what we'll see if we open our eyes.

What will open them? I fear it will take a cataclysm, a nuclear 9/11, a significant interruption in the supply of oil, a regional war in the Middle East, Zimbabwe-like inflation (which may be the feds' sneaky way out of the government’s de facto bankruptcy).

I fear, too, that self-government will not survive its aftermath.

Let's hope that We the People wake up and prove my fears misplaced

A Can self-government survive? Here's my guess:

Predicting history is tricky. But I predict that, half a century hence, the historians who focus on the 2001-2009 Bush administration will headline their writings, "Cheney Won." Their sub-head: "Thanks in Great Part to Osama bin Laden."

On September 10, 2001, we'd settled in for four years of compassionate conservatism and a humble foreign policy, remember? We reckoned it was one term and out for this bunch. People who were paid to pay attention to international relations had long since dismissed the "road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad" geopolitical gospel that had been preached for a decade or so by Messrs. Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, Kristol and, latterly, by the enterprise they and others launched, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), remember?

Enter Osama bin Laden and friends (he's my nominee for TIME’s "person of the millennium" 991 years from now). In a matter of hours, they give Dick Cheney the opening he'd been looking (hunting?) for since Congress cut off funding for the Vietnam war, if not before; to wit, a once-in-a-career chance to shift power from the federal government's legislative branch to its executive branch. As consequential, they give PNAC's risibly unrealistic gospel gravitas.

Quick as a wink, the US was preemptively prosecuting a global war on terror against weird looking extremists who supposedly hated us, hated freedom, and wanted to destroy our freedom-loving way of life.

"Lock your doors, Americans! Look under your beds! Call 911 if you see a weird looking extremist!"

To achieve their geopolitical aims (secure access to affordable oil, a dominant position in the Middle East, the end of the "siege" of Israel), the vice prez and his PNAC colleagues recognized that a clear majority of the likely US electorate had to be frightened into acquiescing in a policy that didn't make much sense on its face – which meant they had to capitalize on the opportunity bin Laden, et. al., had handed them.

"Yo, Tim, this is your lucky day. The veep has agreed to be on "Meet the Press" for the entire hour. And to let you ask him about Saddam Hussein's plan to destroy his arch-enemy, the USofA, by arming weird looking extremists with weapons of mass destruction."

The vice president and his neocon/PNAC comrades succeeded, and democracy went into hibernation in the US. At least 50% of the 50% of Americans who vote decided that their choice was between order and chaos, and they opted for what most folks prefer most of the time.

Hasta la vista, self-government. Or at least the sort of self-government that values individual freedoms.

Is self-government merely hibernating, or is it comatose? I hope it's the former; I fear it's the latter.

I fear that the veep and his disciples have engineered something that will be hard to redress – in no small part by replacing Rehnquist and O'Connor with Roberts and Alito.

Let's hope I'm wrong.

PS. There's an exquisite irony here, or perhaps a diabolical strategy: At the same time the Bush gang was squelching democracy at home they were trumpeting it as God's 11th commandment everywhere else.