Turn to your Governor

What we need now is: 

50 working Governors. . . each one taking charge of their respective domains.

And those same Governors must agree—while leaving polarized party politics in the dust of social media mass confusion—to solve the problems, small and large, as they arise — in each state. 

Each state is unique, with its own factor of population density, and its own percentage of citizens whose jobs depend on travel (potentially spreading the disease), and its own ratio of citizens who can actually “work at home” instead of having to “go to work” in the morning.

Governors taking charge — this is the true “federal” of federalism. The .gov in Washington — the so-called Federal government — must function, in this pandemic emergency, as a resource for the various states, as they are better equipped to solve their own problems.

But they do need — and will need for a long time — help from the national .gov, the chief executive of which is Donald Trump.

We need this strategy because each Governor is closer to the ground . . .

 “the ground” being a metaphor for . . .

 that  unique strategy policy required for the recovery of his/her own state, for which he/she has been elected to govern and protect. . .

To govern and protect, by: 

~ defeating Covid, according to the unique vulnerabilities of that state’s population distribution and demographics.

~ replenishing the economic opportunities and needs as an appropriate response for the unique conditions in that State.

Eventually, 

Each Governor will be accountable to the citizens of their own state, as citizens express, in the next election,  their appreciation or disapproval of that governor’s proficiency in responding to the Covid challenge of 2020.

The Governors need to get together and corner Trump into being their resourceful servant, instead of the other way around.

Glass half-Full

Who's got the Work?

In the predictable dialectic of American politics, the federal outcome is a burgeoning synthesis of the two parties.
Republicans like to trickle wealth down from the top, while Democrats prefer to spread it broadly from the bottom up. I think the GOP strategy is more consistent with the habitual, historical inclinations of the human race, and is therefore probably more effective. Whereas the Demo approach requires more social engineering and bureaucratic effluence.
Affluence vs. effluence is what we're talking about here in America.
Whether the statist Dems win the day in November, or the individualist Repubs gain the advantage, there is only so much that either administration can do to make an impact on the way things happen.
Our great ship of State is so massive that it just about takes three or four years to get the thing directed in a different direction from where it was headed before all the elocutionary hoopla.
So whether the Repubs or the Dems prevail in November, I'll work along with the victors, and try to do what's best for me and mine, by whatever resources are sent down the pike, or up it, as the case may be.
I of plan to vote for Romney/Ryan, because I want to see our great vessel veer toward less interference for people who are trying to earn a living in this difficult economy. The sad state in which we find our great economic machine is, by the way, nobody's fault. It is what it is, a function of both our collective genius and habitual dysfunction.
I want to see in the days ahead an official encouragement for those of us who are inclined toward less, not more, dependence on the obese nanny state. This is what I think we need just now.
Nevertheless, We the people will choose in November which way this barge lollygags through the next four years. After the dust settles, what's most important is that we pull together as Americans to get this beached barge back out into the channel of commerce. It could be that the very survival of our nation depends mightily on us working together, with emphasis on that word: working.
What is "working" anyway?
Working means you and me finding finding something that needs to be done and doing it, or finding something that you can do well, and doing it, whether or not you are being paid what you think you are worth, because times are hard.
Therefore I say, to all ye citizens of this great United States of America, certainly don't forget to vote. But more importantly, find something to do that will benefit you, your family, or your community. If you are unemployed, or if you are underemployed, you will do yourself and all the rest of us a big favor by doing something productive today, instead of languishing on the couch with a video or a six-pack or a jagged little pill.
You got to go out and git it; it ain't gon' come to you, as my friend Stacey says. Don't wait for the government of anyone else to lay it at your doorstep. Stay busy, and together we'll get this thing up and running again.
There's only so much the politicians and the corporatists can do for you. Really, when you get right down to it, the future of this nation depends on you, and me.
So get busy.
Glass half-Full

Wage Deflation

It is no coincidence that the last three callers--Shawn in Cincinnati, Philip in Louisville, and Edward in Baltimore-- on yesterday's Diane Rehm show made comments about wage deflation, because this is what is happening in America.

The developing world, BRIC countries et al, are now cranking consumer goods much cheaper than we can. No way around it. The great expansion of national wealth and productivity that we were manifesting a hundred years ago is what the emerging countries are now in the midst of. There is nothing wrong with this; its the way the world has always been. The lean and vigorous youngsters have always surpassed the older folks . This applies to nations and whole economies as well.

I enjoy listening to the Diane Rehm show immensely, and frequently. I caught it yesterday while painting and cleaning a vacant apartment, which is part of my job. Thank God for my job.

Susan did a nice job of filling in for Diane, as usual, although no one will ever really fill Diane's unique footprint in public discourse. The panel was, as usual, well-chosen, with Jim, Jerry and Betsy, all of whom are highly qualified to talk about their topic at hand, jobs and the economy.

But the illustrious panel spent the first twenty minutes or so, as is typical for today's talking heads, in the predictable media obsession about what Bernanke said, and the snail's pace increments of labor statistics and GDP and all the gov numbers and blahblahblah.

I got a little upset when Jerry said the major reason we're not getting job recovery is because growth is slow. Well that's like saying the sky is blue and leaves are green. Now Jerry had some very good points, as did the other panelists, points about international competition in business and manufacturing, discouraged workers and their segment of the unemployment statistics, the "sugar high" of Fed-generated liquidity, the "still real dangers" that threaten our hyped-up recovery, gains in the first part of the year with declines in the second half of the year and how that may be a pattern in the last few years, whether and how/why companies are producing more goods with fewer workers and less pay, the necessary once-and-future skills development and job training programs that our country needs and the emperor's new clothes and so forth.

But those three callers from the rust belt--they really drove, and without planning it, the point home: wage deflation. Too many people looking for work in a short production economy--wages go down. Its just supply and demand, as supplied to employment. No rocket scientist needed there.

But its time that some Americans start taking new directions; we need to find something else to do. And it is no coincidence that the first caller, Chad in Lansing, spoke about his chosen field of training and employment--agriculture--and how strong that sector is in our economy just now.

Agriculture has always been the heart of our great American expansion, and perhaps it always will be, because we have an abundant resource that many nations have a shortage of--land. And, as Jerry pointed out during the enlightened part of the discussion--the demand for food is high. Always will be. Not to mention energy sustainability, appropriate technology, etc. which is another topic altogether. Gotta go to work now; have a nice day.

Glass half-Full

Shovel-ready? Hammer down

In the early 1980s, I worked with a large crew of men to construct the Linn Cove Viaduct. This massively intricate bridge project was a missing link to connect the two halves of the formerly uncompleted Blue Ridge Parkway. It was a long roadway which had begun during the Roosevelt New Deal jobs program in the 1930s; we finally finished the job in the 1980s during the Reagan years. The parkway wound through the Appalachians in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia.

This is funny, in an ironic way. The bridge's construction had been initiated by the granddaddy of American Democratic Keynesian Liberal Make-work Jobs programs, Franklin Delano Roosevelt; but its completion almost fifty years later was achieved during the administration of that great uncle of American Conservative Republican Trickle-down FreeMarket productivity, Ronald Reagan. I see some common ground there.

It must have been the presence of a rugged mile-high mountain (called Grandfather) in North Carolina, and a world war, that had prevented completion of the Parkway under the New Deal. But that was ok with me and the several hundred other guys who finished the job back in '85 or so. We were fortunate to have had the opportunity to do the work, and thus provide meat and bread, homes, paid light bills and so forth for our families during those years.

After that job, boy, was I in for a long string of years learning lessons in the school of had knocks. But Pat and I, managed, by God's grace and all that sweat equity, along with her embarkation on a nursing career, to get the three young'uns raised and off to Duke and Carolina. 'T'weren't easy, though.

But I was thinking, this morning, August 6, 2011, about that great public works project in which I played a part back in the day. Although I had been a student of English Literature, Political Science, and cannabis at LSU about a decade earlier, and although I had spent a few years after that selling debit insurance, newspaper classified advertising, and printing, I had drifted into the construction trades because--long story short--I was tired of using my mind instead of my hands. But of course I was yet to learn what "tired" is really all about.

All the current discussion about JobsJobsJobs! got me thinking about this. After hearing Democrats theorize these last few months about the FedFix making jobs, and shovel-ready jobs and infrastructure and why-cant-we-do-it-in-the-road projects like the WPA and like Interstate Highway constructions beginning with Eisenhower and so forth, and after hearing the Republicans wax eloquent about Main Street and balanced budgets and job-creators and free markets and efficiency and productivity and so forth, I woke up this morning thinking about that amazing work we did on Grandfather Mountain to finish the Blue Ridge Parkway, back in the day.

Believe me, it was no "shovel-ready" project. In fact, I'm wondering about this whole idea of shovel-ready, and make-work for the sake of keeping unemployment levels down.

The Linn Cove Viaduct on Grandfather Mountain, about twenty miles from where I live, was an astounding feat of engineering expertise. The design and calculations for that bridge had required, I am quite sure, years of preparation. As a novice steel worker--what they call a "rodbuster" who ties rebars together with steel wire--I had nothing to do with the brains part of the work. And I had nothing to do with the "shovel" part of the work either. I just did my job tieing steel, 40 hours a week, until all 53 segments of the 1/4 mile structure had been assembled and passed along to the concrete crew.

After each of those multi-ton segments had been intricately constructed in steel and concrete, with varying specifications in each segment determined according to each segment's unique position in the 1/4 mile S-curve--after all that--the huge pieces were taken on even huger trucks out to the bridge site on the side of the rocky mountain. And since there were, in the 1/4-mile length of the bridge, only seven direct-support points, an elaborate system of high-tension cables was strewn through the entire structure as it was being built to keep the thing up in the air.

And a multi-ton crane was driven out onto the cantilevered, epoxy-glued, cable-held roadway-in-mid-air with support at only one end, until seven segments had been erected and the next support structure was reached.

Maybe you didn't follow all that, but perhaps you will believe me when I say this: what men and women have figured out how to do on the face of this God's green earth--and what they subsequently do--is amazing, and seems miraculous. Furthermore, as this bridge project was an example of what humans can do in massively intricate works of concrete and steel, consider this:

The nano-projects we undertake beneath the world of electron microscopes and DNA and gene-snipping, and laboring viruses, amino acids, and polymers among the electrons with quarks and neutrinos and so forth is perhaps even more amazing. But I'll not go there, as if I could.

For general improvement of the human condition, we have a lot of work out there that needs to be done. Its good work, if you can get it. But so much of it, especially these days, is for smart people, skilled people, in this age of pioneering technology. If we can find ways--whether by FedFix make-work infrastructure projects or by MainStreet SmallBusiness, or by some combination thereof, I know not--we can make the employment happen. Perhaps we can make connections between the work that truly needs to be done and those skilled workers who are properly trained to design the work, engineer it, and then do the work, and thus keep unemployment numbers down to reasonable levels.

As for the unskilled folks, I'm not so sure how we'll keep so many of them busy. We make wisecracks about MickeyD's and the everybody's-favorite-store-to-hate-even-as-we-shop-there. But I do know this. Everybody has to eat. And I'm not convinced that it is FedFix's constitutionally-mandated responsibility to feed all these people, and pay their mortgages and light bills and flat-screen tvs and cellphones and whatnot. Such a massive undertaking is, as they say, unsustainable. Not only that, but its downright socialistic, and counterproductive in terms of inspiring the much-needed innovation and creative systemic improvements.

I suggest its time for unskilled folks to get back to the land. Grow food for yourself, your family, your community, instead of buying it all from bigbox stores that have been supplied by fleets of petroleum-spewing trucks that may be carrying suspect salmonella in their highly-processed payloads. This is advisable for skilled workers and educated people as well, if you have time. You might need to cut down on the tv time.

And while you're tending the garden, take some time out of the hot sun to do courses at your local community college or university. Therby, you may learn how to make this nation, and this world, a better place.

Glass Chimera

No quick fixes for us

If our crisis is really, as most folks are saying, about jobs, then we are destined, I hates to tell ya Buckwheat, for yet another rude awakening. Over the next two years we'll come face to face with the rude discovery that Repubs are just as clueless about quick-fixes for employment as the Dems have turned out to be.

The tea party crowd is strong on individual liberty and empowering the people to control their government instead of the other way around. That's good. But their policies of dispersed government and free enterprise will take years to produce benefits under the present conditions of catastrophic economic rearrangement. Capitalism, having been usurped by derivative-wielding uber-speculators, has crashed. It will have to be reinvented at the grassroots level by We the People to reflect the enterprising improvisations of a desperate populace who would otherwise find themselves tyrranized by a very strong current toward 21st-century statism.

Democrats are now dazed with deer in the headlights shock over the sudden dissolution of their overzealous progressive mandate; they are being herded, temporarily, into a dunce corner until we collectively discover that the Repubs don't have any effective quick-fixes for putting folks back to work either.

A year or two from now when the Repubs are shown to be equally clueless at blood-from-a-turnip employment schemes, maybe we'll begin to face our real economic problem.

Which is?...

We're not manufacturing much stuff any more, because folks in the developing world can make everything so much cheaper. Like it or not, that's what has happened, and will be happening for the next century or so, if our planet sustains us for that long.

Consequently, we are going to have find something else to do in America to keep ourselves busy, housed and fed.

And what might that busyness be?

We could start by cultivating food again, locally. That's what we started out doing several hundred years ago. And we were pretty dam good at it too. Production of healthy food needs to be our once-and-future emerging industry; at least that way most folks will have something to eat while they renegotiate their mortgages. Those expansive suburban backyards will have to take on a decidedly agricultural character, instead of the keep up with the Joneses lawn-yawn vanity that has castrated their productive use for the last sixty years.

It's hard work, though. Ask the Mexicans who've been doing that gathersome labor for us for the last few decades. Maybe we'll sweat off a few obese pounds, though, as we learn once again about the true meaning of the phrase "back to work."

When we get too pooped with farming in the back .40, we can take a break, head for the garage, and tinker for a while with solar collectors, windmills and battery-powered soapbox derby cruisers. That's the true meaning of power to the people in this era of peak oil perkitude.
You think I'm kiddin'? Well, maybe a little bit.