Where We Are Isn’t Pretty, and It Isn’t Us

Posted on November 21, 2008
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If there was ever an example of why the nation is in deep economic disarray, it’s the result yesterday of the visit by the “Big Three” auto companies to Washington. That and the real restate environment I happened to learn about in my old neighborhood in Queens, New York.

The auto companies displayed no sense of regard for public and congressional opinion by showing up at House and Senate hearings in private jets and without a plan on how to spend $25 billion in “bailout” aid in a convincingly useful manner.

Yet Congress showed no awareness of its own role in avoiding creation of a national health care system that would relieve the auto companies and other employers of heavy health insurance costs.

What we saw at the auto hearings was a dire example of how much we have lost sight of the public interest ? our common interest ? in an era of unfettered market capitalism.

And in my old neighborhood in Queens, there is a timeworn house for sale with an air-conditioner hanging out its front window. Asking price: $549,000. More than a half-million dollars for a home that has no doubt been a comfortable, yet work-a-day, residence for years upon years. If this house sells for anything close to the asking price, I’d say it’s a candidate for default in the future. And there are still, apparently, many offerings like it on the market.

We cannot sustain this dereliction of reality in manufacturing centers, the nation’s capital and my old neighborhood. We have to realize we are one people living in context with our time and needs, not speculators on our common future.

An Earmark to Celebrate – There Must be Others, Too

Posted on October 24, 2008
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Central Pennsylvania Congressman Tim Holden was at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center yesterday to announce and get deserved credit for a $2.8 million appropriation he included in the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for development of the Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute. He’s done that six times now, and has provided $31 million for the emerging, $121 million center through congressional appropriations.

Congressman Holden was celebrating “earmarks” needed to build an important new medical center in his home territory. And why shouldn’t he? What’s the function of a congressman but to represent valid public interests back home?

So long as he does it openly, which Congressman Holden does. His name has been on the appropriations for the Hershey cancer center. They’ve been listed for anyone who wants to track them. They have originated in partnership with the National Naval Medical Center and its own cancer research. That’s why they’re in defense appropriations bills.

When John McCain inveighs in a broadside manner against earmarks, does he realize that he’s indicting projects like the Hershey cancer center, among other similarly worthy ones? Does he wonder what congressmen and senators are supposed to do if not to think and act creatively in support of the public interest back home? Are they supposed to sit around waiting for the president, or fate, to provide for everything?

The strength of America is in the health of its people and in the creativity of their leaders as long as those leaders have a pertinent sense of priorities. Rep. Holden and his Hershey and Navy research partners pretty clearly do.

“The most-feared words in the English language are ‘You have cancer,’” Rep. Holden said during his Hershey news conference. “Too often, people in central Pennsylvania have had to travel to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh or Baltimore, and we’ll have a state-of-the-art facility right here in Hershey that can provide those services.”

That’s an earmark and a congressional service ? provided openly and above-board ? that’s well worth celebrating, not condemning. And repeating, until the new center is built, dedicated and functioning for the benefit of Central Pennsylvanians. That’s precisely, it would seem, what representative government is about.

Guilt by Association…but with Walter Annenberg?

Posted on October 9, 2008
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John McCain joined in with Sarah Palin today in attacking Barack Obama as being associated with William Ayers, a Vietnam War-era radical and now a professor at the University of Illinois. A McCain TV ad laid it on too: It claimed that one of the nonprofits on which Obama and Ayers worked was a radical education foundation.

The foundation? Why the Annenberg Challenge funded by the Annenberg Foundation, which was founded by the late Walter Annenberg.

If Walter Annenberg, the sometimes testy publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, founder of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and Richard Nixon’s ambassador to Great Britain, had ever heard himself described as a radical…, oh my! (Annenberg founded the Annenberg Challenge to improve school performance.)

What, a Role for Government After All?

Posted on September 18, 2008
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The stock market reversed course and gained 400 points today upon reports that the federal government may create an entity like the Resolution Trust Corp. (RTC) of the ’80s and ’90s to take over corporate bad debt.

What’s that, a role for the federal government? Every time I hear that government is “too big” and serves little useful purpose, I cringe. During the 1930s we recognized that there is, indeed, a necessary role for modern government (apart from raising armies and fighting wars). It’s to monitor and enable the efficient functioning of important programs and markets in the interest of us all.

When the government, the Federal Reserve and whatever other agencies, laid back and allowed the unregulated “derivatives” market to soar, that was a misuse of government – government held in abeyance. “Deregulation” is going to be shown up as one of the more colossal frauds of our time.

When Wall Street gets into scary straits because of unregulated excesses, there are sighs of relief when government officials – the secretary of the Treasury and the chairman of the Federal Reserve belatedly show up – to sort through the turmoil and, hopefully, stop it. “Where’s government been?” frightened folks ask. “Off on the sidelines, sent there by free market ideologues,” is the answer.

Now word that an agency like the RTC in the earlier savings and loan crisis may be created to take debt off the balance sheets of reeling firms prompts cheers. “Bear markets are very sensitive to news. And on a scale of 1 to 10, this one is a 13,” said Scott Fullman, director of derivatives investment strategy for WJB Capital Group in New York.

We need to recognize that government exists to protect the general welfare, year after year, and maintain balance between the people and greed. If greed powers the markets, it also can ruin people who get caught unawares, or are encouraged to make bad investments, including home mortgages they can’t afford.

Government is, or should be, a balance wheel and safety check, a necessary umpire and regulator of tactics that can go awry and cause enormous harm. It’s role is indispensable, and we ought not to be hearing otherwise from reckless politicians and power brokers.

Need Amtrak be a Stepchild?

Posted on July 31, 2008
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When you book a train trip on Amtrak to the West Coast, you’re told by Amtrak that “we don’t control the tracks” and that some delays are possible to let freight trains go by.

In an era in which we should be rethinking our transportation priorities, and acting to change habits involving gasoline consumption, it seems there’s something wrong with Amtrak being a stepchild on the rails.

It’s not as simple a matter, no doubt, as “people over freight.” Yet it does seem there should be a new priority for passenger train traffic for the rail system. We should at least be talking about that as part of a clear-eyed view of energy choices to diminish reliance on automobile and jet fuel. Shouldn’t we?

Ethanol Backfiring on Cornstuffs and Comprehensive Energy Planning

Posted on July 14, 2008
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At a Chamber of Commerce luncheon the other day, a Pennsylvania state legislator asked the speaker, the head of a snack foods company, what was the “single thing” that could be done to check the rise in snack food prices.

“Quit using ethanol,” the executive replied without a moment’s hesitation. “It costs too much to produce and it’s eating up the corn crop.”

A neat illustration of what happens when you take a piecemeal approach to energy policy.

The same thought occurred on a visit to a candy shop recently. Giant multi-colored lollipops brightened the predominately chocolate hue of the shop. But they won’t much longer. “When those are sold, I can’t get any more,” the proprietor explained. “The candy company is going out of business. Corn oil has become too expensive.”

So maybe corn-based ethanol wasn’t such a great idea, given its inflationary impact on foodstocks. Yet we’re committed to it. The Associated Press reports that the U.S. has 134 ethanol plants in 26 states with 77 more under construction or expanding, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group for the ethanol industry. And this year’s corn crop, expected to be a record, is worth about $52 billion.

“Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department says economic growth in developing countries, tight global grain supplies and demand for ethanol have pushed corn prices to record or near-record prices,” AP adds. “Governors from the coal fields of West Virginia to the corn fields of Iowa talked at their summer meeting about moving beyond ethanol produced just from food sources.”

Wouldn’t that sort of conversation, along with alternatives – like electrically powered hybrid cars – have been better held before the nation committed to corn-based ethanol? That may have seemed the simplest expedient at the time, but it actually reflected a lack of systemic leadership on energy. When will we learn that big problems require big, inclusive, well-thought-out, planned and explained solutions? In short, statesmanship.

‘Listening’ at a Pool Table

Posted on June 27, 2008
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This is how novels get written (I often wish I had the creativity and staying power to write one): A friend at our retirement community told me today that the 101-year-old male friend he plays pool with two afternoons a week can’t play any longer. Why? Because women residents have wanted to play pool, too, and have been given from 1 to 3 P.M. each day to do so.

Two world class pool tables are involved. For the 101-year-old male player, pool has been an important Tuesday and Thursday ritual, for exercise and companionship with the friend who calls for him and walks him over to the “pool hall”. Now the friend says, “We’ve been shot down.”

Well, maybe not, really. My wife checked with another woman and was told that the centenarian was told he could play at one table and the women at another on “his” days. But he doesn’t want to play with women in the room.

If that’s so, there’s probably nowhere else to take this. But what’s happening here? My friend may not have been really listening to the situation, and thus missing an important facet of it. Or he may have decided to put it aside, not sort through the intricacies and possibly arrive at a solution. Or there may be no solution. This is an example, a reminder, indeed, of how communication doesn’t occur until there is close observation/listening and then all-important feedback on whatever messages are in play.

An injustice could be unfolding here, but to whom? The “deprived” centenarian or the women who, bless them, want to play pool too?

Wouldn’t it be fun to be a staff person at a retirement community and sort out relationships like these?

Energy Behavioral Changes on the Highways: ‘Get With the Program’

Posted on June 18, 2008
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President Bush has come out for offshore oil drilling. Whether that’s good policy or not, it’s an expedient announcement, given all the opportunities he had to change his position before gasoline reached $4 a gallon.

But, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, we don’t need energy policy changes as much as energy behavior changes. Our political system seems unable to produce behavioral promptings for the American people, only a crossfire of bickering over policies. That really needs to change.

How about a president or congressperson who told the people something like the following:

“Gasoline may come down in price a bit, but we need to act as though it will always be $4 a gallon, or higher, for it will be unless we manage to reduce consumption significantly. To do that, we, the Amerian people, need to change our consumption habits. For example, I am today asking state and local police officials to begin strict enforcement of highway speed limits. I know I don’t have authority over state and local police, but I want to enlist them as leaders in a behavior change campaign – a behavior change like that with which the American people united to win World War II.

“My message to my fellow Americans is, “We have to all get with the program. If that means driving at the stated speed limits, we have to get with the program. The program is to curtail gasoline usage as much as possible without giving up our cars (as many Americans did during World War II). We have to realize that oil will be in shorter supply than it has been, and we have a responsibility to future generations, as well as to ourselves, to see that it is used prudently. We have to get with the program.

“Our carmakers also have to get with the program. They need to achieve more ambitious gasoline mileage goals, with more fuel-efficient cars, than Congress has yet legislated, sooner. Detroit, too, has to get with the program.”

That would be a message with meaning, one that would get our attention. Instead we have the President making a late-inning policy announcement and coastal governors and the congressional Democrats retorting that it is ill-advised. Nobody is talking about behavioral change on the highways, and that’s what’s needed. We have bickering as usual, rather than getting with the program.

Even if offshore drilling is authorized, as unlikely as that is, it would be years before any new oil is discovered and refined. What might oil prices be then? It’s time for behavioral change, and national leadership to prompt it.

Free Rides to Try Out Buses – Remember Them?

Posted on June 17, 2008
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Are we at a historic turning point in American community development – that of turning back the suburban tide?

The Wall Street Journal features two California commuters as emblematic of many around the country, it suggests, who are finding “the driveable suburb – that bedrock of post-World War II society – …a mile too far.”

The Journal quotes Christopher Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a developer of walkable areas that combine housing and commercial space, as observing that the spiraling price of gasoline, plus the preference among many younger Americans for urban living, may be signaling the “beginning of the end of sprawl.”

If so, reeducation is going to be in order for many people who have been accustomed to driving to work. And that’s precisely what the County of Lebanon Transit Authority (COLT) in Lebanon, PA, has been attempting this week. COLT has been offering free rides on its buses to give people an idea of what it’s like to ride a bus to work.

My Dad could have told them. For 50 years, he rode a New York City bus from the outer edge of Queens County to a subway station 10 miles closer to the city and then on to his job as a loan officer at a Time Square bank. Some days, many, in fact, he had to be a straphanger on the bus as well as the subway.

But he died at 90, and I think that commuting was healthy for him, especially the five-block walk to and from the bus-stop, year-round, in all sorts of weather.

COLT and other transit authorities may have to fine-tune their runs, that is to say, increase their frequency a bit during rush hours, and their fares probably will have to be somewhat more than competitive with the price of gasoline. There’s also a question whether sprawl patterns have gone too far for public transportation to be feasible in many areas. Maybe strategic parking lots can be introduced, or wives or husbands can serve as morning and evening “taxi drivers.”

Whatever. If the long-needed redress of development and transportation patterns is going to start taking hold, let’s hope that people find COLT’s free rides inviting and satisfying as a “new” way to get to work.

Apple and AT&T on Buying a New iPhone: ‘Bring Your Tent’

Posted on June 14, 2008
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Neither Apple nor AT&T are making any arrangements for customers to preorder at least a portion of the new iPhones (3G) that will be placed on sale July 11. This is a sad, smug policy at both companies.

What Apple and AT&T are saying is, “The only option you have is to come early on July 11 and, maybe, bring your tent if you want to be successfully early.”

This isn’t just a smug policy, but an arrogant one, on the part of both companies. Consider the faithfulness of Apple or AT&T customers who have been planning for an iPhone, waiting for the new model, and now have no firm idea as to when they will actually be able to acquire one.

A company makes an announcement, as Apple did this week, that a new product will be available for purchase on a given date. But if it’s a wildly popular product, like the new iPhone, such an announcement means nothing in terms of when the product can actually be obtained. For would-be purchasers who might take the initiative to preorder, if preording were possible, no recognition is given nor arrangement made.

So for people, like myself, who have been waiting to build an iPhone into our businesses or acquire one for some other personally urgent purpose, there is no recourse but to bring a tent and set it up outside an Apple or AT&T store in the wee hours of July 11. That’s what Apple and AT&T appear to be saying and, what’s more, don’t appear to care: “Thanks for all those years of faithful use of our products, guys, but get in line.”

This is particularly annoying on Apple’s part, whose stores are widely scattered, involving lengthy drives in a lot of cases. But it’s corporate relations at their worst by both outfits.

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