WhirledView

"Buh Bye" to the disappointment known as the Liberal Democrat Party Conference

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

26 Sep 2012. 

The 2012 Liberal Democrat Party Conference closed in Brighton to the thunderous applause of the janitors.   

Who are they fooling? 

Liberal Democrats once again demonstrated utter dedication to fooling themselves.

Leader Nick Clegg grandly pronounced them no longer a Party of opposition but the third “major” Party of Government.  At less than 10% of the electorate in most polls that’s some “major,” isn't it.  

Environmental Secretary Ed Davy sought to reassure the remaining faithful.  Davy reminded them that Liberal Democrats polled only 4% when he first joined the Party. That’s some reassurance, that is.  

Mr. Clegg predicted the United Kingdom would move “from austerity to prosperity” by sticking to Plan A. He described Plan A as “flexible,” although Coalition leaders regularly insist it can’t be changed.  He ignored indicators the nation’s economy faces years of stagnation without definite end. He ignored the fact that more than 11 million are either unemployed or underemployed. That’s a third of the UK workforce.  He ignored the lost generation of youth for whom he infamously offers “free internships” that lead nowhere. He ignored the government’s growing borrowing to cover a growing deficit caused by falling tax receipts due to an economy once again in recession. He ignored the deepening public despair.   

One wonders what parallel universe Mr. Clegg occupies.  

On camera, the activists agreed. Their reception for Mr. Clegg and Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander, on the other hand, was far less enthusiastic than for the announcement former leader Paddy Ashdown will coordinate their 2015 General Election campaign.

 What were leadership to do? The economic Titanic hit the iceberg.

Privately, Liberal Democrats ask me, rhetorically, what were Mr. Clegg and company to do? When they came into government there was no money left in the Treasury.  We can’t all be college educated. We can’t all be middle class. We can’t all even be saved. The Titanic hit the iceberg.  

I appreciate the facts, but “the Titanic” is an analogy. It is an artificial construct imposed on the facts to interpret them. Such constructs provide an adherent a logic and a predictability that gives the narrative a range of options the mind can grasp quickly without too much agonizing.   But like all constructs, it is more self-fulfilling prophecy than the result of empirical research.  In this case the construct leads to a downward spiral into stagnation.  

But taking it on its own terms,  the Party still has uncomfortable facts to face. Conservative Coalition partners approach the “Titanic event” with “First Class to the lifeboats. Keep the Plebs back.”  Liberal Democrat leaders claim to moderate their partners. But to the outside world it looks more like appeasement, with nerve failing at every vital juncture.  

What would I have them do?  Grow a spine or stop pretending.

Delusion unpicked 

From the point of view of those who once hoped the Liberal Democrats would provide an alternative for raising all boats, one word sums it all up. That word is, “disappointed.”   

It is true that some of us are not convinced Labour offers better.  Mr. Clegg played that card in his closing speech. 

Labour’s Conference kicks off soon. The news coming out of Scotland concerning the Scottish Labour leader’s  recent remarks on the “something for nothing culture” are less than encouraging.   

But, whether or not Labour measures up is all about Labour. The issue is separate from whether the Liberal Democrats measure up.  On that point, everyone should now be all-too-clear.  

If Liberal Democrats actually believe what they say on camera, they fool only themselves.  In the public mind they are the Party who made pledges which, at the time they made them, they had no expectation they would have to fulfill, and which, upon entering into Coalition, they repudiated.  They have yet to hold the line on any pledges of importance to the "man in the street." They caved on Tuition Fees, privatization of the NHS (under the laughable rubric of “choice”), high earner tax rate reductions, the substitution of a universal elitist filter called "EBAC" for the more egalitarian GSCE, even adulterating banking reform.  

Leader Clegg argues they are the only Party of “fairness.” But we have seen what "fairness" means.  Wrapping a large reduction in tax for top earners in jolly Christmas rhetoric and a meagre reduction in tax to the lowest disguised to no one the large reduction for the top. My generation has been given so much, had so many doors opened, I cannot acquiesse to slamming them shut after us and calling it "fairness." How can Liberal Democrats?

If they think the public will forget, they are wrong. If they think Britain will “austere” itself back to prosperity, they are wrong. They are on the wrong side of the economics, the wrong side of the public on NHS reform, the wrong side of the facts on welfare reform, whose ugly details are only now breaking onto public awareness. 

"Buh-bye" 

For many who watched the performance in Brighton, this conference marks the end of patience. It is the end of third second chances. It is a final, “buh-bye.”

The Ambassador Stevens Journal: Perspectives on Disclosures

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

A reader wants to know what the Whirledview ex-diplomats would have done or said in the recent Case of the Benghazi Journal Revelations.  I won/lost the coin toss, so here goes.  But first, you need to know that the matter isn’t all that simple.

The short answer to the initial question is that, if I were still an official spokesperson, I’d probably have come up with something similar to the official Washington response to CNN’s use of deceased Ambassador Christopher Stevens’s notes.  But my public affairs version would also have been quite different. My remarks would have been terser, less emotional and less preachy.  I would not have been so hard on CNN. 

Why Was the Thing Just Lying Around?

What’s more, I’d have been thinking exactly what I’m thinking now, “Why the hell did American officialdom not search those premises (or get them searched by a trusted agent) long before a CNN reporter arrived to find the diary?  Why weren’t the premises cordoned off so reporters and others couldn’t forage around?”  In sum, why would I have be dealing with a tricky situation that shouldn’t have existed?

The State Department Angle

Consider what would have happened if the scorched premises had been searched the next morning by someone representing the U.S. mission in Libya.  The journal would have been in official hands, and it would have been mum’s the word until the pages had been read to see if anything Stevens had written had the potential (1) to actually damage U.S. national security, (2) to ease relations with Libya or (3) to embarrass the State Department. Such things could have been quietly noted, for present or future action,  after which the pages could have been passed along, with suitable sincere condolences, to the family (with further suitable provisos about suppression of the sensitive passages, assuming they weren’t first removed).

The Free Press Angle

Since CNN got to the diary first, the journalists did exactly what they should have done.  They aired the parts that were salient to an evaluation of U.S. policy and revealed nothing at all that could be called personal. This is why, as a government spokesperson, I wouldn’t have excoriated CNN.  When I was representing the U.S. abroad—and today, too—the American line was to encourage a free, unfettered and enterprising press as one of the foundations of democracy.  Wouldn’t it be counterproductive to blast CNN for doing its job properly?

A Private Citizen's Angle

That being said, as a private citizen concerned about U.S. policy in the Middle East, I am also happy that CNN took its reportorial role seriously, even though its editors must surely have known that a barrage of criticism would ensue. That’s my kind of journalism.

Back to the State Department.  Did the diplomats themselves, when they received the journal from CNN’s circumspect people, hand it over immediately to the grieving family?  Of course not.  That would have been totally irresponsible.  They had to know what Ambassador Stevens had written for reasons (1), (2) and (3) above. Let it, meanwhile, be noted that nothing of a personal nature which may have existed in that journal has been revealed by the State Department either. Both State and CNN have played fair with the Stevens family.     

The Family Angle

Now to the Stevens family.  It is a terrible thing to lose someone in the line of duty, but anyone related to any foreign service officer serving in today’s turbulent Middle East knows the risks—and knows also that any FSO, from Ambassador to junior officer, takes those risks knowingly, even gladly.  Few of those families will not be aware that journals kept by their loved ones, especially those found at the scene of tragedies such as that which occurred in Benghazi, may contain information that may help to explain a death.  The information might even prevent other deaths from occuring.  Thus, so long as nothing of a purely personal nature has been made public, I can’t justify objections to the State Department’s  examining it before it was rendered to the family. It is hard for me to believe that Ambassador Stevens himself would have felt this an invasion of his privacy.

The Foreign Service Life

Sometimes it’s hard for others to remember that a foreign service officer on duty is not a private citizen and that whatever he or she does is a matter of public interest.  For the same reason, a FSO must be circumspect when blogging and tweeting while serving abroad.  If an FSO doesn’t feel comfortable with these restrictions, the solution is simple: resign.

Chris Stevens wasn’t about to resign.  He was committed to his job and, by all accounts, he was good at it.  My colleague Pat Kushlis has raised important questions about the circumstances of his death, which seems to have been highly unnecessary.  For that reason alone, it was important that his notes be scrutinized before they were rendered to his family.  And, last but not least, CNN was not irresponsible in its reporting of the journal's contents.

Benghazi: So Many Questions, So Few Answers

By Patricia H. Kushlis

As the tragic news trickled – then flooded – out of Benghazi last week in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the US Mission in Benghazi (it has yet to receive Consulate status), circumstances surrounding the burning of that building and the deaths of the four American employees including US Ambassador Chris Stevens raise multiple questions in need answers. 

On September 20, Hillary Clinton announced the creation of an Accountability Review Board to look into what happened. Her announcement came none too soon.  The board’s inquiry is to be chaired by Thomas Pickering a veteran diplomat and former Under Secretary of State.  Pickering is smart, respected and an excellent choice. The panel will be operating under a law passed in 1986 intended to strengthen security at American diplomatic missions.

But where’s the line between adequate security and need for US diplomats to have decent access to people in the countries where our installations are located?  I think this balance still needs to be found. Pickering of all people must understand the dilemma but our massive security apparatus which has mushroomed since 9/11 and especially State’s Office of Overseas Buildings (OBO) and Diplomatic Security (D/S) also need to recognize that one size does not fit all.   

So many questions, so few answers

Nevertheless, if I were a member of Pickering’s inquiry, here are some of the questions – listed in no particular order - I would ask.

Shapps posed as Green, Mitchell’s a bully, so what? Jeremy Hunt’s in charge.

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

23 Sep 2012

Blindsided by Hunt

Prime Minister Cameron blindsided me in his Fall reshuffle. He appointed Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt to be his new Health Secretary. I wasn’t alone, but the question why the appointment caught me by surprise has troubled me ever since.

I had correctly seen that public revulsion to radical reforms, sleaze and economic malaise would force Cameron to change faces and tweak economic strategy (all the while denying a change). I correctly identified Grant Shapps as the key behind the scenes strategist who would be put in charge of changing the tune. I had even correctly identified that Jeremy Hunt would be removed from Culture.

What I didn’t see is Cameron putting a man whose reputation had been so badly tarnished and, more relevantly, had written a book advocating the dismantling of the NHS, in charge of the NHS. Cameron had pledged the NHS would be “safe in our hands.” The very appointment belied his repeated assurances Lansley’s team had miscommunicated his reforms. Cameron & Clegg say their reforms are not about privatizing the NHS.They are about choice.  But they are about privatizing and no choice is being given. The appointment merely underscores the point.

Today Shapps and Mitchell dominate the news. So what, Jeremy Hunt's in charge of the NHS.

Grant Shapps, it seems, posed as web guru, Michael Green, even while running for Parliament. He has previously denied he infringed copyrights in his private family business, pointing out “there’s no proof” a Grant Shapps was involved. But there may be proof a Michael Green was, perchance? Perchance he failed to disclose Michael Green in his legally required disclosures?

Andrew Mitchell dressed down a police officer, reportedly calling “her” a “f**g moron” and a “f**g Pleb” who didn’t know her place. The Officer insisted Mitchell walk his bicycle through the pedestrian exit/entrance to the 10 Downing Street compound. He had wanted to ride it through the vehicle access.   His liberal use of the “F” word is not in of itself especially distinctive. It is standard issue for a politico. Even if true the officer was female, as reported, it may be bad manners but it is common bad manners. The issue of “place” is much more damaging.“Pleb” is a derogatory, classist insult to ordinary Britons.

The papers suggest Mitchell’s job is on the line. But the papers also suggested Hunt’s was. Look where Hunt landed.

Kicking off the first "post Apocalyptic" general election campaign

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

20 September 2012.

It is Party Conference Season

No, put away that shotgun.

Party Conference Season is typically an opportunity for chest thumping, self-congratulation, claret slurping and table dancing.This year, it is clear the Party Conferences will kick off the next general election campaign, arguably the first general election campaign in a post Apocalyptic Era.

The stakes couldn’t be higher for the economy or democracy.

The Liberal Democratic Party Conference convenes 22 September 2012.

It’s leader, Nick Clegg, faces a declared rebellion.  Party fortunes are at a low ebb. Other than among die hard party loyalists Nick Clegg is most kindly appraised a Don Quixote. Some consider him a Chamberlain.  The Party has been cast in public imagination as the Party that snatched irrelevance from the jaws of the historic moment, betraying its promises on every major policy position of interest to the public, for the sake of maintaining its place in office. The truth no doubt is more complex, but complex truths are like Shakespeare’s  “the good men do” from Julius Caesar.  Rebels move to replace Clegg with Business Secretary Vince Cable. 

The Tory Party Conference convenes 10 October 2012.   

It’s leader, David Cameron also faces a declared rebellion.   

It isn’t entirely clear whether the rebellious actually design to overturn their respective leaders or force them to shift positions. But the challenge to Cameron appears serious enough.  

The Party trucked out former PM John Major and former Defence Secretary and Thatcherite darling, Ian Fox, to debunk on BBC the notion of replacing Cameron.   

Tory Party Chairman Grant Shapps  attacked London Mayor Boris Johnson specifically as unqualified to be Prime Minister. Although Johnson regularly denies the rumours, rumours persist he prepares the way to challenge Cameron.  It isn’t clear whether Johnson or rebels or both fuel these rumours.   But a recent poll produced interesting results. With Johnson as Leader of the Conservatives and Milliband leader of Labour, Labour only leads Conservatives by 1 point at a time when a Milliband-led Labour leads a Cameron-led Conservative Party by a solid 9-10 points minimum.  

Is the rebellion really serious? Or is the Conservative Party positioning itself to jump ship and look out for itself?  Conservatives deny they intend to jump ship. Conventional wisdom advises against it. But Conservative Party Chair Grant Shapps began actively recruiting potential Tory candidates, declaring openly on Twitter it is time to prepare for the General Election. Subsequent attempts to qualify the implications by reference to the scheduled election date have done little to dispel the speculation. 

The Labour Party Conference convenes 30 September 2012. 

Ed Milliband does not appear to face a declared rebellion. His party rides relatively high in the polls. A Times Poll this week shows Labour gaining 4 points, springing to a 15 point lead over its nearest rival. 

One must hasten to remind anyone in eyeshot that this could be an “outlier.”  Two subsequent polls are more in line with a solid 9-10 point lead.   

But in any case it is clear the increased popularity of Labour does not spring from the magnetism of its Leader. The same poll shows that despite the Labour lead the majority of the polled favour Cameron over Milliband as Prime Minister.    

Rather, the shift in the Times poll coincides with an apparent if unannounced change of economic policy at the Times. The Times recently warned the government in crystal clear language that the government risks a lost decade if it doesn’t change economic course. Just prior to the Times Poll, the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) issued a similar warning. The CBI represents major British business interests.   

Where is “The City”? 

Is business just nudging Conservatives or about to bail in favour of playing “kingmaker”  with Labour? 

If it is, it is not likely good news for the beleaguered British advocates for the disabled, poor, workers, education and the NHS, or their even more beleaguered constituencies.  

“The City” playing kingmaker promises to skew Labour’s energies toward self-centered priorities that favour “The City”- fueled by panicked self-preservation. Panicked self-preservation doesn’t compromise or consider the greater good. Panicked self-preservation prefers a weak leader who will do its bidding. 

A "post Apocalyptic Era"? 

Whether or not the shifting loyalties bring Labour to power (and with or without Ed Milliband), Labour, the Times, the CBI & the country have an uncompromising challenge ahead. Political convenience & conventional wisdom do not change economic or social reality. Economic reality confounds simple solutions. All spin, all grand rhetoric, all betting on a rising tide if only one waits long enough, all falter and fail.  Only results count. There is no appetite for wait and see. 

The real economic challenges are staggering.  

The supply of workers willing to work greatly outstrips the need for productive work to meet the actual demand for products and services.  Real wages fall. Real prices increase. As real wages fall and companies shed Full Time salaried workers for Part Time hourly wage earners or “independent contractors,” aggregate wages shrink further.  In short, no money no buy. No buy, no jobs. 

One can argue this is the product of a bottleneck accentuated by the vast divide between wages in the developing nations and those in the developed, magnified by neo liberal “free trade” and “competitiveness.”   The solution for the problem-- if indeed it is the problem--  is not cutting wages in the developed countries. It is raising wages in the developing countries while holding them steady in developed countries in order to generate increased demand.  However, I can just hear the “yeah, that’ll happen.” 

In this interrelated world the next simple solution, the reinstitution of trade barriers, falters against the realities of global economy and indeed global danger. Leverage has shifted to the developing nations. Whether or not some of this can be clawed back without triggering a major war, the fundamental nature of the shift in leverage will not change without a serious fight of uncertain outcome. 

Sustainability and the Population Bomb?

It may be we all face a more fundamental issue than economic bottlenecks in a world capable of sustaining perpetual growth. The demand-- and indeed the need-- of the many outstrips the resources to provide. Population outstrips depleting resources.  Malthus and Paul and Anne Ehrlich no doubt agree.   

I don’t know whether I embrace inevitability, but sometimes it does seem we live-- without recognizing it-- in a “post Apocalyptic” world. We don’t recognize it because “the Event” is a slow motion implosion rather than violent & sudden explosion(s). Whether or not the outcome is inevitable, the challenge is real.  

Keeping it real, keeping us democratic 

Presenting the situation as post Apocalyptic may help us understand the stakes and challenges we face.  An Economist’s classic “Competing for the scarce resources” hardly seems to cover the ground.   

Political leadership must more than just manage expectations if we are not to descend into the much imagined post Apocalyptic free-for-all.  Political leadership must manage balance.  It will not work any better than “austerity” and “competitiveness” worked to find some other PR phrase, say “predistribution,” to keep the “little people” at bay while leaders preserve the position of a miniscule minority of “winners” in a vast sea of disillusioned, outraged “runners up.”  The runners up already see themselves as having little to lose.

Whomever runs for office in the first true General Election of the post Apocalyptic era, they must present the public withhope they can trust, change in which they can believe. It would be a fundamental-- and possibly cataclysmic-- error to once again lead the public down a rose garden path, only to be proven to have misled them as to one’s intentions, policies, personal self-interest, associations, and capabilities.It will not work for the public to discover Labour in bed with, for instance, G4S or ATOS, or Rupert Murdoch.

It is my own view that we will not achieve the requisite balance in economic pain and gain, expectations, or security unless and until the political elite abandons the absolutist neo liberal paradigm to embrace the balanced and pragmatic pluralism behind the old New Deal. Details can be worked out, but a focus on the common good cannot.

The Biter Bitten

By Patricia Lee Sharpe.

Ha! Ha! Ha!  Not only am I laughing out loud, I’m rolling around on my nice but not outrageously expensive carpet from Pakistan and laughing.

Back in May Mitt Romney was on a begging session among his fellow rich guys in a supposedly safe place, a b(m)illionaires safe house, so to speak, away from the rest of us—yeah, away from us losers, us victims of our own fecklessness, who don’t understand that tax breaks and subsidies for the rich are rewards for achievement while tax breaks and subsidies for the poor and the middle class represent a waste of taxpayers’ money on the lazy and mediocre.

Sorry, got carried away.

The Unsafe Safe House

Unfortunately, it’s hard to keep the riffraff (and/or their sympathizers) out of every banquet or champagne-fueled reception for the rich. In this case, Romney’s remarks got videotaped, some parts have been revealed and now he and his campaign people are neck deep in damage control.  Seems that the Republican candidate is uncomfortable with the sound of the sound bites from the plutocratic party.

A Bite That Bites

He should be.  This is the biggie: Romney asserted that the 47% of the U.S. population who support the opposition aka Obama  have a dependency complex. (I know.  This sounds ambiguous.  Blame Romney, not me.)  That’s nearly half of the U.S. population, folks.  Insulted. And I’m one of the slug-a-bugs, it seems.  Month after month, year after year, I paid into Medicare and Social Security and now—Horrors!—I’m cashing in on that investment. 

Sound bite two suggests that all those lazy louts who support Obama should go out and get a high paying job so they, too, can pay taxes instead of depending on subsidies.  Yeah!  You can imagine what would happen if I came in the door seeking a job commensurate with my skills and undiminished ability.  They’d look at my birth date and laugh.  As for those with more recent birth dates, how many people applying for unemployment benefits wouldn’t jump at a job that would support a family–pay the rent, pay the medical bills, buy healthy food, keep the kids in shoes that fit, get them to school in clothes that don’t make their luckier school fellows bully them, buy books....you get the drift.  Where are those jobs?  Not the fast food jobs.  The real jobs.  With health benefits so people don’t have to depend on those nefarious government handouts.

According to Romney, even those of us with relatively good jobs weren't and aren’t really paying all that much in taxes, while the much maligned rich are paying through the nose.  That all depends on how you do the math, of course.  A middle class person, whose taxes come to 25-30% of current income, does indeed pay less in toto than a richer individual.  However, when such middle class people pay five figure taxes, the contribution to the common good cuts to the bone of, say, being able to pay college tuitions, whereas when a billionaire's tax bite hits seven figures (or more),  all he suffers is the irritation of an ever so slight modification of the budget for fine wines, the number of first class air tickets per annum, the type of luxury car he gives his kids or the annoyance of scrimping on the servant talley to keep up a fifth home in an expensive condo in a sexy world class city.  In short, we in the tax-paying middle class have not only been helping the poor (which is fine) but subsidizing the rich—and for decades.  And the only thing that seems to trickle down to those of us in the 99%  from Romney's perch in the plutocratic stratosphere is scorn—the kind that dripped from this recently revealed Romney failure to find the "elegant" expression. It’s amazing!  He should thank us.  He should be very grateful that most Americans, acting against their own best interests and increasingly out of touch with the reality of less upward mobility in America, still identify up not down.

Romney Blames the Victims

Back to the jobs issue, which Romney pretends to care about and sees as the justification for keeping the rich rich.  Yes, indeed.  Lots of jobs have been created by American-based business over the past decades.  The trouble is they haven’t been at home.  They’ve been in China, India, Thailand, the Dominican Republic—you name it.  No wonder Romney wasn't inclined to save an American company manufacturing cars in the U.S. and thus providing jobs for Americans.

Whoops! Sorry.  I forgot about the other jobs that have been created by American multi- millionaires.  Think of the huge need for maids and gardeners to look after those multiple homes—to say nothing of dock owners, etc., to cater for the multiple yachts.  And aviation people to keep the private jets flying at 36,000 feet over the America that Romney's pals would prefer not to see or understand.

Poor Mitt!

Well, I sympathize with Mr. Put-upon Romney over this sound bite thing.  I’m firmly with all fair-minded people who object to quotes being taken so brutally out of context that they seem to mean the opposite of what was meant by the naive speaker or writer who uttered or wrote them.   This, of course, is not quite the case with the Romney sound bite, which is a fairly accurate stand-in for his political views.  Sometimes it's worse to be accurately represented than to be misrepresented. 

But here’s where my sympathy really stops.  How on earth can Romney complain of being victimized by the sound bite monster when he’s worked overtime to profit by a much nastier version of the same trick?

The Bite the Republicans Gloried Over

Here’s how.  Barack Obama made some remarks that were mined for sound bites not too long before the Republican convention.  Trying to expose the fallacy of extreme individualism, Obama said something like this: business people don’t build their businesses all by themselves in isolation from the larger society. What he meant was that the most clever, hardworking entrepreneurs need government-built infrastructure, they need good roads and safe skies, they need bacteria-free food to feed their kids and unpolluted water to drink, they need police and fire protection, they need schools to produce able workers, they need a reliable judicial system to protect contracts—all coming from taxpayer funds. Reliable, honest government, regulating sensibly, allows business to succeed in America as it does not in most other places in the world. And so, surely, business people  should be just a little thankful to the rest of us for creating the context for their prosperity. Their parents probably helped, too, with emotional support at the very least.

The Republicans pounced on that delicious sound bite.  They have tried to make it appear that Obama and his Democrats have no respect whatsoever for the system that did indeed produce prosperity for decades after World War II—until Wall Street, deregulated thanks to collusion between Republicans and the Clinton administration, brought the country to its knees.

In short, the recent Republican convention was built almost wholly on exploiting, in every possible way, this tempting sound bite to discredit Obama and the Democrats.

So please, Mitt, no more complaints about the sound bite monster.

Jobs, not Sneers

And, meanwhile, about those jobs, Mitt.  How abound bringing the millions you’ve stashed so mysteriously and conveniently out of sight in the Caymans and Switzerland right home,  right now.  Show us by example that millionaires are responsible Americans who deserve their tax breaks, that you and the others want to build a healthy U.S. at least as much as you want to enrich yourselves.  Do it now.  Create more tax payers.  Put the money to work.  Generate jobs, not just (untaxed) interest income.

Even David Brooks, employed by the New York Times as its premier conservative columnist, couldn’t swallow the Romney line on this one. He asserts that Romney doesn’t understand America—or Americans, who work, by all reliable accounts, harder than any other people on the face of the globe, given the opportunity to do so. Read his column from top to bottom.

But Brooks is indeed a Republican.  He tries to protect the Conservative cause by admitting that Romney is running an incompetent campaign.  Worse, even as Brooks concedes that a full 47% of the U.S. population isn’t in dependency mode, he fails to mention the obscene subsidies that make the rich ever richer, subsidies that Romney and his backers never deplore.  Oil and gas subsidies.  Subsidies for rich  farmers.  That 15% income tax limit for people who make their money on money. And so on.

On the other hand, you can’t call the energy gang losers, can you?  Bankers aren’t losers, either. They are gainers.  They are winners.  The system is rigged to benefit them---and with the Supreme Court's Citizens' United decision helping them to buy elections, they are in a position to stay that way.   On top.  Gloating.  Sneering.

Pass the Hankie, Please

Poor Mitt Romney. He thought he was talking only to the well-oiled in-crowd, the people who were very hopefully interviewing him for the leadership slot, the people who are doing their best to buy him the presidency, the people who expect he will act to protect them, the people who have nothing but contempt for those who haven't made it into the millionaires club—and the word got out.

Thank heaven!

In the Keep of Yorkshire

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent   

In the silence of the keep

one forgets time,

even who one is.

Romance gallops as sunlit dust swirls

in search of glory 

among the clouds.

(Left, Castle Keep. Photo by John C. Dyer)

But this was a real castle with a real history, the Neville’s Raby Castle near Durham, County Durham. One of post Conquest Britain’s early seats of great power, Raby rises with surprising majesty above Yorkshire’s bucolic rolling green fields.

 

 

 

 

(Above, left to right, Raby Castle, Stable Entrance to Gardens, Raby Castle Gardens. Below, left to right, View from a Gun, Deer in Castle Park, Raby Castle 2. All photos by John C. Dyer)

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Left, Within the Keep, photo by John C. Dyer)

We came to Raby at the request of friends from the States.    

This trip was a reunion of sorts. I had missed my college reunion.  The couple we accompanied to Raby attended the same small college modeled on Oxford.

The Education/Immigration Conundrum

By Patricia H. Kushlis

In his column on Sunday September 9, Tom Friedman points out the chicken and egg relationship between education and employment.  The more education an American has, the more likely he – or she – will have a job.  Case in point:  Only 4.4 percent of American college graduates are currently unemployed. Conversely, 12 percent of high school dropouts are out of work.  Yet fewer Americans – especially young men – are graduating from college than before likely because of escalating costs of higher education.

The employment-education ratio is straightforward and linear: the higher one’s education, the better one’s potential for finding and holding a job.

While one can quibble that money does not buy happiness, most societies including America’s, value work.

Put it down to the Protestant work ethic – or whatever – but lazing around on the family couch or playing Angry Birds ad infinitum on a laptop or i-phone is not a socially valued attribute. Not for long anyway.

This is why Friedman – as did Bill Clinton in his brilliant Democratic National Convention speech - argues that if the US ever sets aside more economic stimulus money it needs to be invested in community colleges, Pell grants and vocational training classes.

Furthermore, Friedman argues, education in the Internet Age – or the age of Globalization and Technological Innovation - is about the continual reinvention of the self which means a never-ending race to update one’s knowledge and skills. Resting on one’s laurels after completing college or less is a recipe for failure in this knowledge-based hyper-competitive world.  

It’s the ability and willingness to learn complex tasks and the latest computer programs over and over and over again.   So far so good: keeping the brain active also helps keep it healthy. And, Friedman also points out that in this globalized age, low skilled jobs are melting away like Arctic icebergs in the Global Warming sun.  My analogy, not his, but I think you understand the meaning.

So where does the immigration impediment come in? What’s the connection?

Here’s the issue:  the more highly skilled jobs that are made available to foreigners determined by visa quotas set by the federal government, the less investment an American company needs to put into training America’s own.  Let’s face it: importing skilled foreign workers in large quantities is a cheap yet, in my view, socially counterproductive way to conduct business in these United States.

Nevertheless, hence the continual pressure from the private sector on the US government to increase the quota of visas for skilled workers from abroad. Companies claim they can’t find them in the US. They may well be right.  But why?  What about investing more in the people who are already here rather than contributing to an ever high unemployment rate that contributes to an ever larger permanent under-class?  Better education for Americans is not necessarily a “quick fix” to the problem – but it would benefit the country and the community in the long run.