Just one quick news item: Bush, Mr. America, Mr. If-you're-not-with-us-you're-pro-terrorism, handed down a pardon today to Leslie Owen Collier for VIOLATING THE BALD AND GOLDEN EAGLE PROTECTION ACT. To be fair, I'm sure it was warranted, but how do you stand for all that is symbolically American while allowing people to use pesticides banned for their effect on bald eagles? Seems stupid to me. He's done worse. I just thought this was funny.
I hate Kornheiser from MNF. He got slapped down by Jaworski near the end of the game for saying stupid shit like "what do people think of the decision to let Favre go now?". Jaws made a great point after listening to this dribble, one I'm sure most of America missed. Jaws said that the decision to let Favre go was made in the LONG TERM INTEREST of the packers.
This is one of the beauties of being human- the ability to plan for the future. Humans have the unique ability to plan long term projects, set goals that will not be completed for months, and invest in ideas that may not pay off for a decade. But, historically speaking, particularly under capitalist doctrine, it's all about the short term. It's the 'what have you done for me lately' syndrome. Not turning a profit this quarter? Fire the exec and bring in someone else. Fire the lowest ranks and dump more work on fewer people. (Note: this is called "enhancing productivity"). Rather than improving the business or attracting new customers that will provide long-term profit and stability, we focus on the next financial report. We don't care about the health of the company so long as they pay their dividends on time.
Now, to be fair, there have been extraordinary periods (think FDR public works or Eisenhower's interstate freeway system) when we HAVE invested in things for the future at the expense of some current consumption. The building of the hydroelectric dams provided the energy needed to power the industrialism of the twentieth century (and was responsible for us winning WWII). The freeway system allowed awesome transportation of goods and services. The national power grid (when it was first put together) was over-built in order for later expansion. All of these things helped make America the great place that it is.
But now we're not doing that. We're not investing in the future. We're haggling over a few billion dollars that could be used to build state-of-the-art water treatment facilities, schools, universities, parks, museums, and roadways. We're spending trillions (TRILLIONS!!!) on wars, missiles, and nukes. We've reset our priorities and they seem to be narrowly focused and have no provisions for what will happen, planned or unplanned, in the next two, three, five, or ten years.
This mentality can be shown no clearer than by GM, Ford, and Chrysler showing up in D.C. begging for money. For 20 years they've been outsold and out managed. They've continued building trucks and SUVs when the market was CLEARLY shifting to smaller cars, higher quality cars, and better warranties. Rather than making the necessary business changes they chose to keep following the path of short term profits (a la high-priced SUVs) at the expense of long-term liquidity, long term market position, and long term survival. Now they expect the taxpayer to cover their complete ineptitude and allow them a few more years of life to play catch-up using our dollars instead of their own.
I hear people cry that now is not the time to invest in new mass transportation infrastructure, not the time to pay down the national debt, not the time to invest in human capital (education, job training, etc). When, exactly, IS the right time? Obviously the last 20 years weren't right since we are still lacking those things. But the situation is worse because we have no plans and the system that WAS put in place (with great foresight I might add) is aging and dying or becoming irrelevant in our changing social and economic landscape. The few things we've managed to invest in are great, but are still totally inadequate for what's coming even 10 years down the line. Adding three buses a year does almost nothing to alleviate our transportation problem or our addiction to oil. Also, has the price of this stuff EVER gone down? Are we waiting for liquidation sales for this stuff or what?
Bottom line: we are NOT preparing our children for the high-tech jobs of the information age, we are NOT prepared for the strain of additional people on our power grids or transportation networks, and we are NOT prepared for the changes that are needed in our energy usage and fossil fuel dependency. We are not using our ability to plan for the future to actually do that. This lack of action and investment will only hurt us in both the short term and the long term. Thank you, Jaws, for making the point. It's just as important in football as it is in the real world. And we are failing miserably.
13 comments:
Bravo!
When are you running for office - you have my vote!
But what are the people who bought hybrids thinking NOW, since gas is so cheap?
Hopefully they are thinking, "Yay, I am still using less gas than everyone else so that when this temporary price drop is over and we face the reality that oil will not be around forever, I can know that I did something to help."
When are YOU running for office, Janelle??
I wouldn't run for office. Too many good people go in with good intentions and come out beaten down. I just don't have it in me to stretch the truth that much so often. And I want decisions made on rational terms without boiling everything down to the economy or abortion, since those are apparently the only two issues in the U.S. political debate. I wonder if there are a lot of good senators and representatives that only serve short terms because they can't stand the culture or if this is something you do for life because you love the thrill. Personally, I think I could play the game, but I just don't have that part of me that will turn a blind eye to very bad policy just to get a good one passed. These omni-bills are ridiculous. You might get very good ideas, but there's so much garbage in there that the whole thing gets scrapped when people realize just how many bad ideas there are.
THAT is EXACTLY the kind of politian we need!
I always wondered about that idea. Ever since I was little, I've been pretty good at using language and I've realized that people will believe ANYTHING that you tell them. That's a bad combination if I had nefarious intentions. It's not because I'm some kind of guru...it's because the majority of people don't LISTEN or THINK about what is being said to them. For example: during Kerry's debate, he said he would give nuclear material to Iran and then get it back once it was used up in energy production. What kind of energy policy is that, giving nuclear material to states with known bomb-making intentions? But people just filed it under "energy plan" without thinking. Another example: McCain, in his last debate, said that education was not racially unequal and that we should focus on improving quality via vouchers to private schools. This is wrong on so many levels, I can't begin to critique it. But not one single paper commented on it. Instead, they argued about abortion and who looked more irritated. This plan implies MORE money taken from public education and given to private schools, which will only make education MORE racially unequal since poor inner city kids can't afford this crap even with vouchers. But only about 7 people were paying attention.
Individuals can be very intelligent. I'm not saying ALL people are stupid. I'm just saying that, in my experience, people are hesitant to learn, want to do minimal thinking, and just want to be told the answer. People love new gadgets, but don't want to know anything about how or why they work. That's why we've got cell phones that do everything for you. You don't have to remember phone numbers, be able to add or subtract, or even remember an appointment. Your phone will give you all those answers and you can go back to surfing the internet for videos of monkeys flinging poo at each other. That's not how I operate (well, poo flinging may be funny, but not a good use of thinking time) and that's how I would expect a government to run- let people make their own choices and just step in to prevent abuses and when necessary for the common good.
I always thought I could make it in politics. At least get elected and make people think I was doing the right thing. But I don't know if I would get anything accomplished. I'd block all legislation that contained buddy-buddy politics, uninformed or unsubstantiated assumptions, tax breaks for people that aren't even paying what they owe now, etc. Which isn't much of a record to show when you need to get re-elected. Most people would call that doing nothing or being picky. I would call it success in keeping money from being spent on unnecessary things (e.g. subsidies for tobacco growers). Oh well...maybe one day. I should start by finding an actual job that pays actual money so that I can have a nice campaign base and not rely on interest groups. And maybe join a community group or two to get some 'experience'. Then we can go from there.
Unfortunately, politics is really about the compromises...making a deal on something you don't want in order to get passed what you do want.
Madison thought that this would help keep the government from becoming too powerful and only get critical legislation passed.
Instead, it led to a huge government with out-of-control spending and ALL the rich people with their hands in the government's deep pockets (people from both sides of the isle).
I think the idea is valid but doesn't work so well in practice. I'm all for compromising. But I have a hard time stomaching legislation based on faulty premises, bad assumptions, flawed or absent data, and with one eye on who will make some money. We can compromise on some things- monuments, naming things after presidents. I'm even willing to compromise on major projects- say who gets to oversee them, what the right-of-ways are going to be, where new power lines will be run. But we aren't even getting that far. We're not even reaching an agreement that these are valuable things (updated infrastructure, 21st century schools, etc). The politicos say they are important, but they're not moving this stuff forward.
People will say "what about No Child Left Behind"? This is what I mean though- legislation based on flawed logic, very bad assumptions, and a model that has been shown to not work in just about every place it's been tried. But for the sake of 'doing something' that's what we got.
We aren't investing in our future ability to function at the level of a world leader or power because of this short-term mentality. Once again, we'll wait until it's an absolute dire emergency before making a choice, and then it will likely be made rashly because we waited so long. Like CA...we didn't invest squat in updated electric infrastructure, then we wonder why we have brown outs and have to buy power at 10-100X it's normal price on the peak market.
I don't know if it's the politicians necessarily. I think there are a lot of opportunities here for grass-roots action. We have to show that 1) this is important, 2) there is profit potential in doing it first, and 3) we don't want to settle for emergency planning (witness Katrina, Andrew, Ike...and that's just hurricanes). Maybe this is something that a group of dedicated people need to take over instead of relying on top-down leadership.
I planned to run for office the 3rd term after Brandon's re-election. But that didn't work out so well for Hilary, so I'm reconsidering.
Part of me wants to file this away under "reasons why America is the shit."
Part of what, to me, makes America so great is that we change, but not too fast. We change at a fairly reasonable pace, and though we do so with some compromises and some flaws, they get ironed out over time.
Want to pass good legislation but can't muster enough support? Promise a little bullshit money for a bullshit local program, then then later cut that money and move on with your life.
Maybe it boils down to "the ends don't justify the means" but in a nation of 300 million, you won't realistically be able to do ANYTHING without greasing the wheels just a little bit. If the choices are "stick to your guns and run the country into the ground" or "be cool and let things progress at a slow, good pace" I will take the slowness every time.
If the US had freed the slaves, then run Obama in 1912, what would have happened? Revolution in the streets? Secession on a scale large enough to scare Lincoln's ghost?
Sometimes I think a sharp kick in the rear is exactly what this country needs, but at the same time-- we've been able to go from "you can't use my water fountain" to "you can lead the free world" in just a couple generations-- that is pretty amazing, no matter what your ideology may be. We must be doing SOMETHING right.
P.S. Janelle? You are the Hillary I would support!
Agreed. Slow change (in the right direction) is better than no change. Every once in a while you need that swift kick, but on the whole the system is designed for gradualism.
I'm not opposed to letting a little slop run around. But we're talking slop of epic proportions. The slop we currently let in is enough to run good social programs or fund good science or implement good foreign aid ideas. I'm more incensed at the idea that we are "fighting terrorism" at the expense of being prepared for the next 20-30 years domestically. Not that rooting out terrorism is bad, just that the expense per person is so high that even with a fraction of that spent domestically, we could have modernized health care, water quality, transportation, or power infrastructure. Of course, terrorism is only one example, but there are plenty of places where we are spending billions with minimal return.
I'm not even totally opposed to earmarks. There's a difference between getting money to build an important bridge or improve a hospital. It's quite another to get money for water fountains, statues of your representatives, and other paraphernalia.
I'm not fully opposed to implementing trial programs either. But the idea that programs pop into existence based on total fictions with no real understanding of the situation or on stereotypes of the target group (NCLB, the Patriot Act, DHS, etc) is absolute insanity. The data supporting some of this crap is less than tenuous, but we do it anyway rather than using that money for things we DO KNOW we will need.
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