Category Archives: Current Affairs

Romney, Bain Capital, and the amorality of business verses Santorum, righteousness, and the immorality of being certain

Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings

Following the Republican primary has been both fascinating and scary. Fascinating because the players seem flawed to the point that the race sometimes seems like fiction. Scary because one of these guys could be the next president of the United States; unlikely, in my opinion, but possible. Of the two main players, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, Romney seems like the best bet because – as the conventional wisdom has it – he is probably just bullshitting and would be more moderate than he is pretending to be now. Maybe….I guess.

Romney is a businessman and business is, usually, amoral. Not immoral, just amoral as in morality is not really a factor. There are exceptions when the founder has a vision of a product or service that he or she wants to get into the marketplace, but I have never heard of a business that was founded to provide jobs. A business has to make money to survive and business, done right, becomes about making money. Even Apple, under Steve Jobs, which was one of the most Vision driven companies in the marketplace, moved its production to China to make more money. It is axiomatic; the better the business is run, the more money it makes.

A business that invests or takes over other companies doesn’t even have a product, it is only about making money. A couple of months ago, The New Yorker had an article about  the Stella D’oro Biscuit Company, a Bronx bakery that was bought by a private-equity firm like Bain Capital in 2006. It makes for fascinating reading and I suggest you follow the link, but the gist of the article is that a company that had taken great pride in its product and the way it treated its workers was  destroyed after it was bought out by a company that did not share that vision.

The private equity firm, Bain Capital, founded by Mitt Romney was founded to make money. Not to hire people, not to produce a great product, only to make money. They go where they think they can make  the most money like surveillance cameras when the Chinese government spends multibillions in an effort to blanket the country with devises to watch their citizens. Bain has bought in because they think they will make a  profit. The morality of China spying on its people is not a factor, the profit is. Jobs is not a factor, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, 22 percent of the companies in which Bain invested wound up either in bankruptcy or shutting their doors entirely. But Romney made money from them; apparently he is very good at making money.

I suspect that Romney would be pretty pragmatic as president. I wouldn’t like his appointments to the Supreme Court1, I wouldn’t like his Secretary of the Interior, but I doubt that he would be another George Bush the Younger attacking random countries.  Maybe a Nixon foreign or Clinton foreign policy and Bush the Elder domestic2 policy.

Rick Santorum, on the other hand, seems like a True Believer. 3 Somebody who would rather be right than President and, to misquote a former Speaker of the House, Thomas Reed, hopefully for the country, he will never be either.  Unfortunately for the country, he is and, seemingly, will be an influence. To see what kind of influence, check out this latest ad fro Santorum. Notice the subliminal flashing of Obama with  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at about the 40 second mark. The Santorum ad does its best to dehumanize Obama and when we dehumanize the other, the deranged take their cues. I think he is very scary.

1. Which is probably an understatement.

2. Or do I have to say heartland, now?

3. The True Believer is a book by San Francisco’s own Eric Hoffer on fanaticism.  

What is our goal in Afghanistan?

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings, War

I really don’t know and I don’t think anybody else does either. I guess that our goal is to beat the forces of the Taliban; to have the forces of of the old Northern Alliance – you know, the same Northern Alliance that the Russkis backed1 – be in some sort of stable control. I don’t think that anybody really thinks we are fighting for Jeffersonian democracy, in fact we may be hindering the re-establishment of the kind of ruling by consensus of elders or loya jirga that probably was closer to democracy than the rigged elections we are now backing.

Part of the problem is that we think that there is only one right answer on how to run a country and that is our way. This week has been a perfect storm of information – that is not the right word, maybe experiences? maybe events? – that has left me feeling our national hubris is staggering and we are not going to accomplish anything lasting in Afghanistan. The events revolve around, Vietnam, Iran, Afghanistan, and Korea.

Over at the Foreign Policy Magazine’s website, on Tom Rick’s Blog – The Best Defense – a former soldier has a post entitled Some reflections on the Vietnam War after visiting where my battalion was cut off and surrounded near Hue during Tet ’68 in which he says, among other things, while visiting Vietnam,  Not only are there no Americans on the roads, in the air or in the fields, doing what Americans do, the Vietnamese seem perfectly in control of their own destinies. Maybe they were then too, but we were too driven to notice. He goes on to say This makes me think about the American Way of War — maybe best expressed as “you move over, we’re taking over.” It is an interesting comment and worth reading.

Over the weekend and again this afternoon, I saw the Iranian movie A Separation. It was the best movie I have seen in a year, maybe longer. If you like movies or if you are just interested in relationships, see it. It won the Academy Award for best foreign language film but it should have won the award for best film. A warning, though, it is a devastating story about a couple getting separated. Much of the movie takes place in court or, at least, in front of a judge. As somebody who has gone through the American – really Californian – divorce legal system with lawyers making more money the longer they can string out the case and argue with each other, I was taken by how much better the Iranian system seemed to be. I am obviously not a Muslim – or a Christian for that matter – and didn’t agree with all the legal conclusions, but, it seemed more humane than our system which is built on confrontation and has pretty much left compassion at the door.

Then I read that some Staff Sergeant in Afghanistan has gone tragically amok killing, among others, sleeping children. Sleeping children!

Lastly, on the way home from the movie, we went out of our way to stop at a Korean market in Daily City to pick up some tasty Korean marinated meat and some kim chee. I spent a year in Korea, as a Sergeant in the Army on a HAWK Missile site looking down on Koreans2.  Americans felt superior and most GIs let the Koreans know it. Most GIs didn’t like their food and didn’t like their customs, we even didn’t even like their women although we were willing to pay to have sex with them. The Koreans in the unit I was in were relagated to being dog handelers and generators operators; they were not let near the radars or missiles. Strangely enough, when the Koreans helped us fight in Vietnam, they were considered superb troops. Oh! by the way, have you checked out the new Hyundai Elantra? It is awesome.

After all this rambling around, I do want to make a point. The world does not need us to be its nanny. Afghanistan does not need us to tell them how to run their country. No country does, not Vietnam, or Korea, or Iraq, or Iceland. No country! We are not doing very well with our own country and we certainly should not be trying to pull a Terri  Schiavo on other countries.  The Republicans seem to be worse in this regard than the Democrats, but both sides are culpable.

We should get out. Just get out!

 

1. This is somewhat of a simplification, but not much.

2. Something that, today, I am loath to admit.


Government spending and the economy

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics

I often wonder if the people who say that The government can’t make jobs. are just bullshitting or if they really believe it. I wonder the same thing when I hear Romney talking about President Obama – although he rarely uses President when referring to Obama – wanting to make the United States weak. My gut reaction is that they really do not believe it and they are just bullshitting but I am not so sure.

As an aside; this is one of the positions that people seem to come to from the completely opposite position without ever having stopped in the middle. When I was a young boy, Negros were Uncle Remuses that sort of sat around – rather than working hard because they didn’t have the Protestant ethic like White People – being kindly; then, with no stop in between, they became Black Panthers who were scary. In the same way, it used to be that Roosevelt – people who thought this didn’t call him President Roosevelt – didn’t end the depression, the depression only ended because we started spending lots of money – government money – on the war; now the same people say spending government money will not end a recession. End aside.

Anyway, it does seem self evident to me that the government can  make jobs. When the government hired companies to build the Golden Gate Bridge, they, in turn, hired workers. When the Obama Administration gives money to California for the Highway Department and they hire companies to rebuild the rest stop at Black Mountain Road on Highway 280, those companies hire workers. The additional work results in additional jobs.

But, somehow, by saying The government can’t make jobs. over and over again, people start to believe it. (I used to think that the left’s constant yammering about the right wanting to overturn Roe vs. Wade was similar, but, after seeing the anti-contraception – not to mention anti abortion – legislation passed in Republican majority legislative bodies, I am ready to admit I was wrong.)

Even if the meme does work, even if the people saying The government can’t make jobs. really do believe it, it is still bullshit. The Obama Administration created jobs with the Stimulus Bill and definitively made the Great Recession a little better.

Atrial Fibrillation and Obamacare

Americana, Current Affairs, Obama, Psychological Musings

 

Last week, I had a dizzy, nauseous spell – eposode as I don’t like to call it – and went to my doctor. Then, on the next day, to my cardiologist. It turns out that I have Atrial Fibrillation – and I don’t think that is the right way to put it, although I am or I caught Atrial Fibrillation is certainly wrong – and I am now wearing a new Holter monitor. A   Holter monitor records heart activity over a period of time. In this case seven days, my first one was for twenty four hours and was so big I had to wear it on my belt – this one is just stuck to my man boob and it lasts for seven days. Ain’t progress grand.

 

Speaking of progress, for some reason – maybe because a large percentage of doctors are conservative – the medical profession has resisted computerizing records. I am 71 and my files would require a wheelbarrow to carry around if most of them hadn’t – fortunately – been lost. The file at my cardiologist is probably about an inch and an half thick and I have only been going to her for about four years and she is only one doctor. As an aside; What we really need is a chip similar to the chip our cat has but that is going to be a real fight. I see over at Last Days News – where they tell us that These End Times Prophecies are 100% Accurate! In case you had any doubts- that a The Bible says those who take the 666 Microchip will receive the Wrath of God. I am not a Christian and I am not much of a believer in the Bible as an authority but if it really does mention Microchips, I will be instantly converted. End aside.

Anyway, on to Obamacare and computerized records. This week, both my doctors – well, I have more than two, but both doctors I went to – are deep into switching over to computers and it already seems to be paying off. My primary doctor entered her notes into the computer and my cardiologist has them the next day when I go to her office. I leave the cardiologist with a printed list of instructions rather than oral instructions and an hand scribbled prescription. I have a question about my meds and call the cardiologist, her assistant looks up my files at his desk, and in about fifteen second gives me my answer. Last month, he would have had to call me back.

By the time Obama leaves office five years from now, I suspect that few people will still want to revoke Obamacare.

Why are we in Afghanistan? We shouldn’t be.

Americana, Current Affairs, War

I don’t understand why we are in Afghanistan. I don’t understand what we are fighting for. I don’t understand what our men – and women – are getting wounded and dying for. I don’t know, even, how we would know if we were winning.

We are paying for truck companies to bring supplies in from Pakistan and up the highways across Afghanistan that, in many cases, we paid to build; then the truckers have to pay off the Taliban to pass on those highways. Or get killed. We are fighting the Taliban and funding them. And we can’t stop because we need the supplies to fight the Taliban but, if we were not fighting them, they wouldn’t be getting all that money. It is more bazaar than Catch 22.

Our strategy is to develop Afghanistan but almost everybody we hire is corrupt and Karzai’s family is especially corrupt. Because we are there, houses in Kabul rent for over $6,000 per month. The owners now live in Bahrain or Dubai, or some other nice safe place on the Gulf Coast. Drug export is a – if not the –  major source of export income for Afghanistan and the counter-narcotics mission is a waste of time and resources that just alienates the Afghans we are trying to get on our side.

Paradoxically, under Obama, we now have more troops in Afghanistan so we can fight the “big war” with American troops, just as we did in Vietnam. The plan in Afghanistan is to flood an area with troops, secure it, then rebuild it, and leave them a new, rebuilt area, in control of our “good” Afghan allies. In Vietnam, this was called the Oil-blot Strategy with fortified Strategic Hamlets. It doesn’t work.

When Obama first started talking about Afghanistan being the good war, I thought it sounded like such a good idea. I was wrong – which means nothing – and Obama was wrong – which means a lot. We should get out. Say it was a mistake, say we got Osama and we won, say whatever; just get out. This will not end well and it is time to cut our losses.