"A Question of Balance"

For those among you who aren't enlightened to the world of classic rock music, the title is from a great album by "The Moody Blues," released in 1970, which contained the hit single "Question." Anyway....

My point in this current blog is to say that we've lost our "balance" on economic issues, in my opinion, and reviewing the poll numbers, I'm not alone in that assessment. Generally speaking, if you're not wealthy, you're pretty much pinched, left out and in decline, or afraid that you'll be joining the ranks of one of the first two. If you're wealthy, or managing the money and assets of the wealthy, you're probably doing very well, thank you!

These silly futures markets are just another way to ram it to the rest of us. There might be a crisis in the Middle East, so let's jack up the price of oil and gasoline. Some politicians are starting to get serious about using corn and other products to produce fuel, so let's jack them up, too! The big money people reap the bucks, and the rest of us can't win, oil, corn, natural gas, you just name it. Like drug dealers, they've got us hooked on products, and now we can't find a way out. At least drug dependent folks can go to rehab. The futures markets look more and more like legalized gambling, and the public is footing the bill for the gamblers.

Many workers have lost or can't afford health care, costing some people their very lives, as they can't get proper medical treatment. That's a form of legalized murder, in my book. If I sound extreme, it's because the balance has shifted so much in favor of the wealthy and their surrogates, that if we're EVER to get some sort of balance back for average people, we're going to have to lay these things out there, POINT BLANK, no hedging on the words. If the wealthy were having a tough time turning a buck, I might well have a different view on all of this, but as I noted in previous blogs, they are raking in record amounts of money, and the gap in income distribution has widened accordingly.

We all share a common human frailty, blind spots. The ego driven business people and the money managers for the super wealthy scare me more than some of the super wealthy themselves. They can't see what they're doing to other people. In my opinion, some are so absolutely ruthless, that about the only other people on earth that compare to them are to be found only in groups like Al Qaida. If you don't believe me, just listen to some of the business shows on TV. Further, while Bush has now come out and talked about income disparity, his administration has not done a hell of a lot to help people who've experienced job dislocations, or wage and benefit cuts caused by so called "globalization," an agenda pushed very much by big business and the wealthy.

In the 1930s, as banks failed across the nation, the president closed the banks. The wealthy and businessmen screamed that, with this measure, the end was near, but Roosevelt's action helped save the very banking system that had gone so awry. The wealthy like dog-eat-dog, but that's because, in most cases, they aren't going to have to scrape to get their next meal, pay rent, buy gas to get to work, or keep their utilities on. There's a hell of a difference.

I'm usually not much into "conspiracy" theories, but with globalization, and stock and futures markets now worldwide, Americans have lost a great deal of ability to control many situations. So, if oil starts to skyrocket, a president can't say, "Close the markets, until this situation calms down," because the rest of the world markets will go on. I'm just wondering where all of this is leading. Businessmen said how great American private enterprise was before, that is, before 1929!

Reminiscing About Television

With TVLAND and some other cable stations running a lot of the old programs, it got me to thinking about how things were way back when. Some of you may remember when the staple of television programing was the "Western." No matter how hard they try in today's television/movie world, they just don't have the same "feel" as the Westerns from the 1950s & 1960s (actually two of the venerable shows, "Bonanza" and "Gunsmoke" lasted into the 1970s.)

And then there were the prime time variety type shows, like Perry Como, Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Milton Beryl, Flip Wilson, Jack Benny, Ed Sullivan and I'm sure others I'm just not recalling at this moment. They tended to rely heavily on comedy, but they actually did have a variety of acts, and they helped many new acts get a lift up to the big time. Late at night, Jack Paar, and later Johnny Carson held down the post prime time slot.

And news, at 6 p.m. came the local news. It only lasted fifteen minutes!!! Then came the national news, and it lasted fifteen minutes!!! In both cases, the allotted time included commercials! News was news back then, not some of this silly stuff that gets on nowadays, when they're trying to fill up time. And the networks didn't break in every half hour with today's "breaking news." When the networks broke in, it was something really important on a national/world level, not this stuff where "There's a warehouse fire in Dallas and firemen have responded with ten trucks." I'm sure that's important in Dallas, but it isn't really national news. And, while there certainly were limited choices in television stations back then, the shear fact that the three major networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS, wanted to air their regular show line ups made them far less inclined to get onto a story and just beat the living hell out of it. Today, the cable news stations just get onto something and run it into the ground, in my opinion. I have no idea who Anna Nicole Smith is, and I DON'T want to know!!! I listen to a radio program in the early morning in Cleveland, and I remember someone called in and asked why she is famous, and one of the guys on the show answered, "I don't really know, except that she is famous for BEING famous." To be quite honest, that's pretty much the extent of my knowledge about this woman, and I'm sorry that she died, but otherwise, who the hell cares?

Well I know that we can't turn back the clock, and I don't think I really want to, but it never hurts to give some perspective to some of these things, and we do learn from the past.

Local Government Consolidation

Here we are in the 21st century, but in my opinion, many local governments remain mired in the era of the Founding Fathers. Here in Ohio, we have 88 counties. Now, I'm sure there were lots of reasons 88 counties were formed two hundred years ago, but in this day and age, does Ohio need 88 separate government entities? Likewise, many big cities have been in decline for quite some time. Their populations have dwindled as people took to newly formed suburbs, creating extensions of the mother city. Again, here in Cleveland, if I took the time to count them, I suppose I'd find something on the order of 75 suburbs. All of the various entities cost lots of money to operate, but all have similar services that are provided to residents. So, do cities need all of these separate suburbs?

I'm not claiming that any type of government consolidation will be easy, as there are lots of parochial interests at work, but there has to be a way, perhaps step by step, to combine government entities, while still giving certain "autonomous" government functions to various locales. You may have to check me on this, but I believe in northern Italy, the German speaking area is part of the whole of Italy, but has some independence in certain governance matters. Likewise in France, where the German speaking areas in Alsace have a similar situation. If the Germans and the French and the Germans and the Italians can set aside some of their differences, certainly we can set aside our far less contentious differences as Americans. I'm sure Mayor Whatshisname will not want to lose his power in his little bailiwick of 5000, and that County Commissioner May Belline won't want to relinquish authority in her capacity of serving her constituents in her little county that was once very rural, but is now urban.

Then we have the great bugaboo of America...race! Black politicians (primarily, but not exclusively in cities) will not want to dilute their power by having demographic changes made to the electorate (that is the addition of large numbers of non-Black voters). Some non-black citizens will not want to be given responsibilty (that is taxes) for large numbers of Black and poorer folks of any race.

I don't know how the rest of the country administers school systems, but here in Ohio, it seems a bit crazy to me. Each city controls the public school system. This has really created a serious funding problem, as obviously, if you live in a wealthy suburb, your schools get lots of money; however, if you live in a working class suburb or the city proper, not as much money is available. It all baffles me. Again, there has to be some consolidation in this nutty system, and people need to realize that kids are all in the same boat. We need kids, wherever they live, to have good educations, now more than ever, with all of this "globalization." Again though, lots of self interest is at work here, real or perceived.

It still comes down to the idea (I'd actually say "fact," according to some studies) that all of these small governing bodies take lots of money to provide the same services.

Are We Too Geared To The Media?

Notice the title is in the form of a question. Where would we be without a free press? (Oops, that's another question!) The problem I'm having is, we seem to gear so many things we do to the media. When we went into Iraq, the military decided to let a number of media personnel be "embedded" with various units (maybe the military is now "in bed with the media."). When we were searching for Bin Laden, the military gave briefings to the media about how we were tracking him and his entourage, as if Al Qaida didn't get reports on what was being said on American television and written in our newspapers. If you think back, we told them that we were monitoring cell phone calls! Strangely thereafter, Bin Laden quit communicating by cell phone and radio. Duh!!! Of course, the media and the military then said that Al Qaida had already figured out what we were doing, but how do we know that for a fact? Thank goodness we didn't tell everything in the media about the plans for D-Day in World War II, it would have been blabbed everywhere that we were going to land in Normandy. Back then, the media was far more responsible and, since television was just developing, there were no TV ratings to consider.

And let's not forget our elections, where in the Constitution does it say anything about the votes having to be counted within fifteen minutes of the polls closing so they can be put on TV? And further, let's not forget the times when the media issued "projections" about races that were given BEFORE the polls closed!!! After the hysteria of the 2000 presidential election, and the saga of the "hanging chads," etc., I think we got carried away, but much of this was led by the media giants claiming some sort of "right" to justify any process that would allow them to announce results quickly, not accurately, but quickly. Our overreaction to that whole episode gave us computerized touch screens that don't always work properly, or don't tabulate correctly. Maybe we need to go back to paper ballots, which are in fact used in some cases anyhow, if machines have mechanical problems. Forget about the media's crap about having the results quickly. I'm not saying that paper ballots are flawless, but we've certainly discovered that machines have problems too. Maybe having the personnel to count paper ballots is more expensive, but in a society where the integrity of elections is of the utmost importance, maybe we need to spend a little more money on the basis of our form of government, and NOT cut corners.

Gesundheit!

With a downturn hitting many of the world's stock markets, it makes me wonder, with all of our entanglement in trade deals, if the rest of the world sneezes, will we catch cold? Further, I heard a small item on the radio about some American industries using young workers in what are essentially dangerous jobs, paying them very little, and giving them little if any special training for these dangerous jobs. I'm NOT totally against trade, but we're lowering our standards to try to compete with countries that don't have worker protections.