Monday, November 24, 2008

Who Is Too Big To Fail?

Who are the companies that are too big to fail?

Do they know who they are? Does anyone? Can we get their names on a list?

The companies that are too big to fail should be on a list now, so that government oversight can begin to study why they might be failing. Maybe we can stop some failures.

Save some money.

In Loco Parentis

"In loco parentis" means "in the place of a parent". In the place of a parent, our schools teach our children. In the place of a parent, our government provides nurture when we fail.

These days the government is being given responsibility to nurture failing corporations which it never had a chance to advise or manage. Like wayward lives fallen to the gutter, these corporations have eaten themselves alive with executive bonuses and credit obligations. Their stocks have fallen to reflect their value.

Would their loss be like human death? Will injecting cash plug the holes in their boats, or will it just keep them floating a little longer?

Cash comes at a price.

Citibank - too big to be allowed to fail - is going to receive government aid, says the New York Times today.

With no strings attached?

That's not good parenting.

Perhaps the group of corporations that are "too big to be allowed to fail" need to begin accepting government oversight now, before they fail?

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Rural Poverty - The Invisible Poor

Urban poverty captures attention from the newspapers, which are, after all, urban. But what about rural poverty? The hired man who has one too many kids. The laborer who can't find a farmer to help. They are unemployed, but they never had an employer.

You have corn meal mush for breakfast. It makes a yellow mountain in the bowl. On good days, there's a little bit of butter melting and making a lake in the center and a moat of milk around the sides of your little mush mountain. On really good days, there's brown sugar to mix into the butter lake. This is what we ate in Ohio in 1950.

You don't drive into town but once a week. Do all your business then. Stop by the dump on the way in, come back with groceries.

I tied a second knot in my shoestring once and realized that if everything was spaced just right, it would work perfectly fine. But a third knot would not. Two was the max. It didn't make sense to put on a new pair of shoestrings until both left and right shoestrings had knots in them.

The schoolbus comes and takes the kids to a piddly little school down the hill. One classroom per grade. Oiled wood floors and old glass in the playground. Old teachers.

That was the outer world.

The high school - the better one, in the next county - taught two courses of study - shop and agriculture. What else was there to prepare for? Where else was anyone going?

Rural families today are in a similar plight. Rich in fresh air, poor in other resources. The cost of going into town has made life marginal. Perhaps the new lowering of the price of gas will ease this. But until Congress sees their need, poor rurals are a forgotten population.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Barter Is The Base

As the financial system totters and falls, the barter system of which it is just one extension will continue to survive. Barter values goods and services in terms of other goods. I will chop your winter's wood if you will make me clothes. I could cut hair in my front room for food. I will survive.

To recover, use the financial system to enhance barter. Make the financial system serve the process, rather than be the process.

I would accept dollars or donuts in my home barber shop. A mix of dollars and donuts is more stable than a pile of either.

Friday, November 14, 2008

The Mormon I Loved

He was a married man, but he spoke in the sissiest voice you ever heard. Raised a Catholic, he had converted to Mormonism because it seemed more logical. He was willing to affirm belief in the golden plates, even though at some level he knew the truth. He could believe that around 400 AD an emigre from Egypt to the Americas named Mormon and his son Moroni inscribed the Book of Mormon on golden plates and buried them in upstate New York, waiting for Joseph Smith, who discovered them, translated them with a mystic stone into the Book of Mormon and then reburied them, never to be found again. Believing in an all-powerful God, my friend could not hold this account impossible. Therefore - he could believe it possible.

We roomed together for six months long ago, long before the world exploded into madness. Our first night together, he came out of the shower nude, lay down on the sofabed, and announced that he wasn't shy, and that he hoped I wasn't, either. We weren't.

Far from his home in Salt Lake, far from his wife and nest-departed offspring, he could be freer.

He was loyal to his church. He tithed. He wore the special underwear that guarantees fruition.

He was also wonderfully entertaining, travelled, fun to have adventures with, and sensitive to my own life as a fully ripened fruit on God's little apple tree.

A lease opened up. He was gone.

We had fun.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Dust Settles

The dust from the mix-up between "no-drama Obama" and the heroic war victim candidate of the Republican party is slowly settling. Senator McCain is home in Arizona, driving his own car again. Alaska Governor Palin is back in Wasilla. The media, grasping at what straws remain of their campaign, has discovered that in her two month career on the campaign trail, Palin spent far more on clothes than the $150,000 previously reported. The IRS awaits.

And it appears that she thought Africa was a country, not a continent. A high school graduate!

McCain's slogan "Country First" somehow got turned into "Country First, Western Second" as their campaign fell from mottoes and sloganeering into a Grand Old Opry show starring Joe The Plumber. They fired their chief foreign policy advisor a week before the election for leaking to the press about splits in the campaign. Diva Palin was being ignored by the Presidential Candidate. A new slogan "Mac Is Back!" appeared. McCain had been here all along, but "Mac" was back? A hamburger? It worked for McDonalds... So now they are home.


The President-Elect has invited Rahm Emmanuel, head of the Democratic Congressional Caucus and Congressman from Illinois, to be his Chief of Staff. The President-Elect is getting his first intelligence briefing from the CIA, the same one the President gets. This will help make sure they are on the same track.

Soon they will take the President-Elect to Wilberforce Air Force Base and show him the little bodies of victims of a strange wasting syndrome that are presented to visiting dignitaries as space aliens recovered from saucer crashes. This display has altered world history. Perhaps it will again.

Meanwhile on 53rd Street in Hyde Park, 30 feet of sidewalk have become devoted to Obama t-shirt sales. A policeman directs traffic at the corner. Inside the Valois, Channel 7 is interviewing four black guys sitting at a table. The place where Obama gets his shoes repaired is just up the street.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Obaman Ocean

A wave of committed voters, hardened by years of Bush regime 'sacrifices', gave their permission yesterday for a new era to begin.

The wave overflowed the voter suppression efforts of the Republicans.

It overflowed the fraud of false and slanderous messages spewed by the Republican Party. They confused their own faithful, that twenty-five percent of the population who truly believed that Obama was a muslim, by broadcasting endless TV commercials saying that he had spent twenty years listening to a screaming Christian pastor every Sunday. A Christian holiday. The party scrambled their message and broadcast their own confusion. And everyone knows that that pastor only screamed once or twice.

The Obaman Ocean overflowed K Street. Money from lobbyists no longer is needed to run for office. Congressmen no longer need to sell themselves to industry in order to win votes.

Obama's campaign connected people of like interest over the internet. Want to start a group like "Sudoku Players For Obama" ? Be his guest! Gather minds together and develop your Sudoku agenda. Let there be improved instruction about Sudoku in the schools and the teaching of Sudoku classes in prisons. Insert your agenda into the platform.

Want to buy a copy of his campaign organization software? He built his ground campaign using Microsoft's Net 2.0. The next version, Net 3.0, is just around the bend. Anticipate developers. Every dog-catcher will want one.

It's your world, now, people.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

"Don't Boo My Opponent - Get Out And Vote!"

... said the candidate for President. The one who is expected to win today.

His opponent, mired in tradition, strives for boos. Although he promised a clean campaign, forces beyond control - his own party, for example - have been throwing slime. In the final week of the campaign, faced with polls telling them that slime isn't working, they have doubled their effort.

Someone must feel that seeing the same TV commercial ten times increases the interest generated by seeing it once. Someone must feel that hearing authoritarian voices telling us what to do inspires faith and loyalty.

Being the party whose President was crow-barred into office by a Supreme Court ruling and has since bankrupted the country with a war of adventure, the Republicans started the race a few laps behind. Candidates not linked to special interests were hard to find. Their presidential pool included an actor who once played the role of President on TV and could play it again if needed and a former mayor whose city once was tragically attacked. The purest of them all came forward.

Embarrassed by own his riches - 7 homes and 13 cars - their candidate immediately attacked his opponent as an elitist. This elicited a response about "the white-haired old man" from a hot modern actress whose name was used unwisely in their ad. A video response.

Suddenly the campaign was McCain versus YouTube. McCain made a speech standing in front of a green screen, not realizing the video editing power in the hands of the multitudes. A feast was created in his name.

Meanwhile, the former community organizer who had become the candidate of the Democratic Party organized America. From the ground up.

Interested voters who discovered his web site could find themselves invited to a party in their neighborhood. They were invited to connect with peers. If they contributed a buck or two online, they were invited to call voters on the phone and to go with groups to visit them.

The Obama campaign constructed a digital matrix on which real life then could grow.

McCain's campaign put up billboards. Surfaces. Mottoes. Obama told people that they were the change they needed.

Why sit and boo when you can stand up and vote?

And so, today we will.