Category Archives: Random Blogging

Walking and Talking

In a speech last week in Washington, D.C., New Jersey Governor Chris Christie sang from the Republican playbook in criticizing President Obama’s recent economic interventions.

“We don’t have an income inequality problem,” Christie blustered. “We have an opportunity problem in this country because government’s trying to control the free market. We need to talk about the fact that we’re for a free-market society that allows your effort and your ingenuity to determine your success, not the cold, hard hand of government determining winners and losers.”

Aside from the somewhat bizarre assertion that we don’t have an inequality problem, most Americans (this one included) would agree with that basic assertion. Assuming a level regulatory playing field—a set of rules ensuring that everyone “plays fair”—the market should be the arbiter of business success and failure. We regularly quibble over the need for some of those rules, but it’s a rare politician or citizen (Republican or Democrat) who advocates government control over the economy.

Of course, there’s talking the talk and there’s walking the walk.

After his speech, Christie returned to New Jersey and signed off on a government regulation that blocks Tesla from selling its cars in the state. According to Slate Magazine,

The rule change prohibits automakers from selling directly to consumers, as Tesla does. Instead, it requires them to go through franchised, third-party dealerships, as the big, traditional car companies do. In other words, it requires that the middle-men get their cut. The Christie Administration made the move unilaterally, via the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. It was urged on by lobbyists for the state’s existing car dealerships, which fear the competition. The upshot is that Tesla will be forced to stop selling cars at its two existing dealerships in the state, and drop its plans to build more. It’s unclear what will happen to the employees of those dealerships.

There’s socialism, and then there’s corporatism and crony capitalism.

There’s rhetoric, and then there’s reality.

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What If?

Like many Americans, I’ve been semi-obsessed with the plane that disappeared over Malaysia. Apparently, it just vanished without a trace. As the days go by with absolutely no good information, the mystery grows.

In the absence of real data, a science-fiction devotee (I plead guilty) can let her mind run wild.

What if?

What if the aircraft was snatched from the skies by aliens from another planet? And what if, after examining the passengers and crew, the aliens returned them all unharmed and proceeded to make their existence—and the existence of many other inhabited planets—known?

How would we quarrelsome, primitive Earthlings react to the knowledge that we are (a) not alone; (b) not superior; and (c) vulnerable?

How would the clerics and high priests of Earth’s multiple religions incorporate this new information into their theologies? What measures would our “We’re number One!!” politicians advocate? (John McCain and Dick Cheney would probably go on Fox News, blame Obama, and urge a nuclear attack; Putin might actually put his shirt back on. Who knows?)

And what about all of our unhappy, modernity-rejecting bigots? The Aryan Nation, KKK and other white supremacists, the assorted “pro-family” homophobes, the good “Christians” who think all Muslims are terrorists, their Taliban counterparts, the anti-Semites and innumerable others who see Earth as an assortment of tribes forever divided between “us” and “them”? Faced with a new “them,” would they be able to adjust their definition of “us” to include all of humanity?

How would the civic, religious, intellectual and political life of our planet change if we had to confront irrefutable evidence that we are not alone, not unique, and not the Center of the Universe?

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Unbelievable

I spend a lot of time and energy promoting informed civic participation.

The problem is, informed participation requires accurate information. With the possible exception of loudmouth pundits on television and talk radio, I think we are all pretty weary of the fact-free slugfest that has replaced reasoned political debate. It has become a tired truism, but the ability of citizens to access credible information about our governing institutions is critical to our ability to engage in self-government.

Inadequate media coverage of local government is bad enough. When we can’t even rely on the accuracy of the information that is provided, either by local government officials or what’s left of our local media, how are citizens supposed to make informed decisions?

State government has reportedly been “cooking the books” over job creation figures for some time. The City-County Council recently had to subpoena the Mayor’s office to get information about a public document—a lease—that should have been a public record. And now—stunningly—we are told that the 30 million dollar deficit that threatened the viability of IPS and the jobs of hundreds of teachers, the looming 30 million dollar deficit that justified so many questionable decisions, never existed.

Think about that.

A while back, I posted about students who defended their disengagement from political life by saying they simply didn’t believe anything they read—that they considered it all to be spin and disinformation, and since they didn’t trust either the media or government to tell them what was really going on, they felt justified in opting out.

These days, it’s pretty hard to argue with that. And that doesn’t bode well for our American Experiment.

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We Have Met the Enemy…

Pretend you have just landed in the United States from another planet. You look around you at the various institutions you encounter. What conclusions would you draw about the inhabitants of this society?

With a few notable exceptions, you find newspapers and electronic news outlets focused on the trivial and sensational. When you ask those who produce them, they tell you that they are giving people what they want—and in the era of the Internet, they can count the clicks. You conclude that sports and sex are very important to these earthlings.

After some investigation, you also conclude that the majority of Americans view their governing institutions as just another kind of sport. They choose a team, and support the members of that team, who tell them what they want to hear—that the other team is cheating, that inconvenient facts aren’t true and that simple slogans hold the answers to complex problems.

Surely, you think, religion will be different. Religion, after all, was the way humans first tried to grapple with the serious questions: why are we here? What do we owe the others with whom we share this planet? What does it mean to be a good person? What, for that matter, is good, and what is evil? Although you do find many thoughtful religious figures grappling with those existential themes, you find many more whose message is exclusionary, authoritarian and small-minded—who insist that their Truth is superior, and even those who disagree must be forced to live by it.

I could stretch this exercise further. Our alien visitor could examine the behavior of the financial institutions that caused the Great Recession, and consider what that behavior suggests about the culture in which they operate.  Or the visitor could look at Hollywood and the entertainment industry, and speculate about the audiences they serve.

But here’s the point: We the People are that culture and that audience.

We are the ones following the celebrity scandal while ignoring reports on our government and society. We are the ones electing the buffoons who scorn science and evidence and elevate partisanship over both. We are the ones using religion as an excuse to demean and disadvantage our fellow-citizens. We are the ones conferring elevated status on “successful” operators who make a lot of money by buying lawmakers and fleecing the gullible.

My make-believe alien visitors would be entirely justified in concluding that we are being poorly served by our media, our government, and significant segments of our religious and business communities. But they would also be right to conclude that we are getting the institutions we deserve.

Pogo was right: We have met the enemy and he is us.

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Business Now and Then

There’s an interesting story making the (internet) rounds about Apple Corporation’s recent shareholder meeting.

Evidently, some Apple shares had been purchased by an organization devoted to climate-change denial. At the meeting, the group’s representative challenged Apple’s Chairman over the company’s considerable and laudable efforts to minimize its carbon footprint (including the hiring of a former EPA Secretary to oversee Apple’s environmental practices). He objected to the company’s environmental efforts, because they cost money without enhancing the return on investment, and were thus not in the best interests of shareholders.

Apple Chairman Tim Cook basically told the guy to stick it where the sun didn’t shine– that if he didn’t want a socially responsible company, he shouldn’t own the stock.

As gratifying as that response was, the exchange highlighted a major problem with the way far too many businesses operate today.

Most companies aren’t in Apple’s enviable cash and market position. The focus for most publicly traded companies these days is “shareholder value”—as defined by the next quarterly report.

It was not always thus. When most companies were still controlled by those that founded them, when they were operated and managed by people who owned them rather than by hired guns with golden parachutes, having a reputation as a good corporate citizen was a point of pride. Decisions took account of the long-term interests of the enterprise—and long-term was not the next quarterly report. There was recognition of the relationship between the health of the community and the prospects of one’s business.

If you look around Indianapolis today, you can see the difference between businesses run by their owners and those run by professional “managers” who all too often have no connections to the city and are marking time until they are “promoted” elsewhere.

Our civic life is poorer for the loss of people whose own prospects rose and fell with those of their companies and their communities—and who understood that responsible citizenship is good business.

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