I ran across this posting on the blogsite of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, the union representing folks who work for various Ohio state agencies. The thrust of their post was a conclusion that Bob Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve had suggested that the American economy is suffering because we don't have enough unionized workers filling the middle class -- as though increased unionization of workers would solve the problems of our economy.
America seems to have become a nation of special interests. We don't know how to work for the common good anymore. There is an association for every big and little group, and they spend all their time carving out narrow positions that benefit their members, regardless of the impact on the whole. This writer for the public workers' union has become so polarized with his union rhetoric that he could grab these few observations from Bernanke and turn it into a call to embrace unions as the solution to our problem. Here is my response:
I believe you may be putting words in Dr. Bernanke’s mouth.
Another way to look at his statements is as an indictment of the unions. The failure of the unions to do their part to keep the American manufacturing workforce employed has resulted in the shrinking of the working class to the point that it is comprised mostly of public employees who now enjoy some of the best wages and benefits in our economy.
I grew up in a manufacturing town where many workers were members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. My father-in-law was employed by the largest company in the area, and he was a member of OCAW. Repeatedly through our life, the union went on strike for better wages and better benefits. Sometimes the strikes lasted many months. During one particularly long strike, the company simply moved a significant portion of its manufacturing operations to a non-union facility in Texas, never to return. Eventually the issues were resolved, and my father-in-law went back to work because he had enough seniority. But the jobs that had been relocated to Texas never returned, and the younger workers lost some of the best jobs they could ever have.
Unions have a role; I'm not anti-union. There is little question that had the unions not fought for worker safety and decent pay and benefits, our country would be worse off. Nor do I deny that I individually benefitted from growing up in a union town, where my Dad could make a comfortable wage and have excellent benefits.
There aren’t many middle-class manufacturing jobs left in my hometown. My father and my grandfather both had 40 year careers with the same employer, but nearly all the kids of my generation had to leave to find work. So now instead of a viable manufacturing economy, my hometown has rich folks (mostly bankers, lawyers and doctors), poor folks (both the African-Americans of the inner city and those living in rural poverty), and lots of unionized public employees and health workers in the middle class.
The key to prosperity in any economy is the ability to bring in money from outside the economic zone. A city prospers when its commercial entities can sell a product outside the city. Not only are people put to work, but the public facilities and public services can be funded by reasonably taxing revenues on the sales of good shipped outside the region. That revenue is money from outside the economic zone – Other People’s Money.
To sell products outside the economic zone, the prices have to be competitive. During the first thirty years following WWII, the US had a virtual monopoly on the combination of manufacturing capabilities, a skilled work force, and the capital needed to be a global supplier of manufactured goods. We could charge premium prices for our exported products and in turn pay premium wages to our workers.
But in the last twenty years, other countries have developed all these things as well, and their labor force is willing to work for a lot less than the prevailing wage here. We also got sloppy and let other countries take our product quality edge away as well. Consequently, most manufactured goods can be made overseas with both higher quality and lower cost.
So we have a choice to make: regain our competitiveness in terms of quality and cost, or continue to shrivel into a welfare state where the only people working are those employed by the government.
Welcome to the Soviet Union. That worked out well. One would argue that the most successful communist country ever, the People’s Republic of China, understands that full employment for its workers still means being competitive on the world market. The middle class in China and India may never have the material wealth of the Americans of today. But they are coming from such poverty that even a low-paying job creates a huge lift in economic status.
The Golden Age for the US is over unless we step up to the challenge of competing with the Chinese and the Indians. American labor unions can either help lead our country back to manufacturing competitiveness, or drag us to third world status. It’s either take the pain now, or leave the mess for our children.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Gun Control
In the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, the debate is once again raging about handgun control. Here's what I think on that topic:
The framers of the Constitution wanted to ensure that no government, at any level, could enslave the people. Exactly what kind of weaponry the people need at any given time to achieve that protection can be debated. Back in the 18th century, the King's soldiers were equipped with pretty much the same weapons available to any citizen: rifles, pistols, swords and horses.
Not so today. If the Governor orders the National Guard to roll into my town with tanks so he can force us to work in the license plate factory, then I'd like to have some RPGs, or at least a little C4 to rig an IED... all the stuff we gave Osama bin Laden to fight the Soviets.
I suppose the next best thing is a deer rifle with a good scope. I'd much rather pick off the oppressors from a distance.
Some of our troops are issued handguns, but rarely as a primary weapon (e.g. tank crewmen are issued pistols, but their primary weapons is, well, a tank). A handgun is useful only for close proximity fighting, with the primary objective being to put the other guy down before it comes to hand-to-hand combat.
Does the limited utility of a handgun in warfare mean that we can ban handguns and satisfy the protections intended by the 2nd Amendment? I'm not ready to go concede that point. I think that if I wanted to be prepared to go to war with a government that intends to enslave me, I'd like to have that handgun. After all, they get to use tanks, helicopters, mortars, assault rifles, heavy machine guns, grenade launchers and all kinds of stuff that are already banned from private ownership.
I can have a semi-automatic rifle, a semi-automatic shotgun and a handgun. Oh, and a crossbow. Doesn't seem like a fair fight. I'm going to have to fight dirty (like the Minutemen hiding in the trees vs the Redcoats), and so I'd like to keep the handgun.
And yes, the consequence is that bad things can happen when handguns are broadly available.
But lots of people are killed by cars, maybe more than are killed by guns. In fact, I was almost wiped out on my motorcycle last night when a girl talking on her cell phone made a left turn right into me, stopping only a few feet away from the collision. My personal experience is that a driver talking on a cell phone while driving is way more dangerous to me than someone with a handgun.
Yes, 33 people died in this one incident, and that's a tragedy. How many were killed yesterday by impaired drivers?
We don't even care anymore. It's not newsworthy.
The framers of the Constitution wanted to ensure that no government, at any level, could enslave the people. Exactly what kind of weaponry the people need at any given time to achieve that protection can be debated. Back in the 18th century, the King's soldiers were equipped with pretty much the same weapons available to any citizen: rifles, pistols, swords and horses.
Not so today. If the Governor orders the National Guard to roll into my town with tanks so he can force us to work in the license plate factory, then I'd like to have some RPGs, or at least a little C4 to rig an IED... all the stuff we gave Osama bin Laden to fight the Soviets.
I suppose the next best thing is a deer rifle with a good scope. I'd much rather pick off the oppressors from a distance.
Some of our troops are issued handguns, but rarely as a primary weapon (e.g. tank crewmen are issued pistols, but their primary weapons is, well, a tank). A handgun is useful only for close proximity fighting, with the primary objective being to put the other guy down before it comes to hand-to-hand combat.
Does the limited utility of a handgun in warfare mean that we can ban handguns and satisfy the protections intended by the 2nd Amendment? I'm not ready to go concede that point. I think that if I wanted to be prepared to go to war with a government that intends to enslave me, I'd like to have that handgun. After all, they get to use tanks, helicopters, mortars, assault rifles, heavy machine guns, grenade launchers and all kinds of stuff that are already banned from private ownership.
I can have a semi-automatic rifle, a semi-automatic shotgun and a handgun. Oh, and a crossbow. Doesn't seem like a fair fight. I'm going to have to fight dirty (like the Minutemen hiding in the trees vs the Redcoats), and so I'd like to keep the handgun.
And yes, the consequence is that bad things can happen when handguns are broadly available.
But lots of people are killed by cars, maybe more than are killed by guns. In fact, I was almost wiped out on my motorcycle last night when a girl talking on her cell phone made a left turn right into me, stopping only a few feet away from the collision. My personal experience is that a driver talking on a cell phone while driving is way more dangerous to me than someone with a handgun.
Yes, 33 people died in this one incident, and that's a tragedy. How many were killed yesterday by impaired drivers?
We don't even care anymore. It's not newsworthy.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
School Vouchers & Economic Segregation
I have watched my community be systematically harvested by residential developers and the politicians on their payroll, and a couple of years ago decided to do something about it. As a business executive, the first thing I wanted to understand was money flows -- where did money come from, and where was it going. It was only then that I understood the complex relationship between suburban development and school operations.
It comes down to this: the public school system has the authority to suck up money from the local taxpayers to build a school system which is has sufficient quality to attract more people to the community. That creates the demand for more houses, and the developers get rich. In fact, they get so rich that they spend a lot of money supporting the local politicians to make sure the developers are granted all the zoning and infrastructure support they need. Every anti-development politician in our community has been ridden out of town on a rail.
The trouble is that this is a Ponzi scheme. People build houses in our community because they love the schools, not knowing that their incremental tax contribution doesn't come close to paying the full cost of the demands they place on the school system. So the school board keeps coming back to the same taxpayers over and over to get more money to cover the funding shortage. Meanwhile the developers are getting richer all the time.
Having read and studied the proposed amendment language a couple of times, I'm quite sure that it will cost me more, and our school system will get less. The clue is one sentence in the amendment which says something like "no district will get more than it needs." I'm confident that it means districts like our will be capped, just as we are under the current budget.
If the stereotype is that right-wingers like big business and left-wingers like big government, then I’m as centrist as one can get. I think both are bad because all big entities seek self-preservation above all else, including their reason for existence.
My recommendation is to transform to a pure voucher system, where the money follows the kids. The vouchers are paid for by tax dollars, and every kid gets exactly the same dollar value assigned to their vouchers. Only accredited schools can turn in vouchers to the State for cash. To be an accredited school, the school must accept any student from Ohio, accept the voucher as 100% of tuition, and operate as a not-for-profit entity (ie no shareholders and no distribution of ‘profits’). The staff of the school must consist of licensed teachers, and the curriculum must meet the current state requirements. The kids must be able to pass whatever standardized testing is administered today. The State would have the responsibility of providing a transportation system which would take a kid from their home to any school within a reasonable distance at no cost.
I think we would end up with a combination of multi-building systems and individual boutique schools. Some would offer broad curricula and others would specialize. I envision the current school administrators running these schools (with some tune up of their business skills) under the supervision of a Board of Directors elected by the parents of the students who attend the schools.
I don’t understand why we give kids and parents a choice where to send their kids for post-secondary education, but not for primary and secondary education. Do we suddenly become better consumers of educational services when our kids graduate from high school? Why don’t we dictate where kids can go to college?
And finally, we have to recognize that public school systems in Ohio remain segregated, despite several decades of desegregation laws. But we do it in a more subtle and nefarious way than the days of explicit racial segregation. Our line today is: “anyone can attend our schools as long as you can afford to live in our neighborhood.” Consequently, the urban schools are poorer and less White than ever. Of the three largest districts in the state, Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati, the non-White population is 71%, 84% and 76% respectively. And they have among the largest per-pupil spending in the state. Blue Bexley did a beautiful analysis showing that there is no positive correlation between per-pupil spending and standardized test scores. Sending more money into these school systems won’t make the kids any less poor or the schools any less segregated. What we need to do is give those inner city kids a chance to attend the lily white suburban schools.
Sadly, as our own school district (Hilliard) has grown larger, the same kind of implicit segregation has crept into our community. While we are only a suburban district, our population is now over 75,000 and there are 15,000 kids in our schools. The affluent neighborhoods are in the northern part of the district and the multi-family and low-income housing is in the south. With 22 neighborhood school buildings, they are beginning to take on differing profiles that match the economic geography. With a third high school scheduled to come online in three years, our community is now engaged in a reassignment of neighborhoods to schools. Some, including me, want to use this opportunity to rebalance the demographics across the three buildings. Many, particularly those of the most affluent neighborhoods, want the attendance boundaries drawn simply on the basis of proximity. One person even got up and said that “those people” live in “those neighborhoods” because they want to! Like if a poor black family hit the Lotto they would say “hey, let’s stay here in the ghetto.”
If I wanted the state to spend more money on anything, it would be by creating affordable housing in the suburbs. I’m not talking about another generation of ‘The Projects’ but rather a community development policy which says that x% of any new housing development must be dedicated to affordable homes, interspersed through the whole development. Of course, this has zero chance of being implemented. Most of our suburban neighbors would gladly pay more and more taxes to make sure the poor blacks folks are kept in the ghettos where they belong. When we want to help the black folks, we’ll go to their community and work in the soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Then we’ll go back to our safe affluent neighborhoods, go into our big house with two cars in the garage, and set the alarm just in case we were followed.
We can’t keep feeding money into the same old system and expect it to get better. We need a new system. We need to let Americans – all Americans – do what they do best: Have a choice.
It comes down to this: the public school system has the authority to suck up money from the local taxpayers to build a school system which is has sufficient quality to attract more people to the community. That creates the demand for more houses, and the developers get rich. In fact, they get so rich that they spend a lot of money supporting the local politicians to make sure the developers are granted all the zoning and infrastructure support they need. Every anti-development politician in our community has been ridden out of town on a rail.
The trouble is that this is a Ponzi scheme. People build houses in our community because they love the schools, not knowing that their incremental tax contribution doesn't come close to paying the full cost of the demands they place on the school system. So the school board keeps coming back to the same taxpayers over and over to get more money to cover the funding shortage. Meanwhile the developers are getting richer all the time.
Having read and studied the proposed amendment language a couple of times, I'm quite sure that it will cost me more, and our school system will get less. The clue is one sentence in the amendment which says something like "no district will get more than it needs." I'm confident that it means districts like our will be capped, just as we are under the current budget.
If the stereotype is that right-wingers like big business and left-wingers like big government, then I’m as centrist as one can get. I think both are bad because all big entities seek self-preservation above all else, including their reason for existence.
My recommendation is to transform to a pure voucher system, where the money follows the kids. The vouchers are paid for by tax dollars, and every kid gets exactly the same dollar value assigned to their vouchers. Only accredited schools can turn in vouchers to the State for cash. To be an accredited school, the school must accept any student from Ohio, accept the voucher as 100% of tuition, and operate as a not-for-profit entity (ie no shareholders and no distribution of ‘profits’). The staff of the school must consist of licensed teachers, and the curriculum must meet the current state requirements. The kids must be able to pass whatever standardized testing is administered today. The State would have the responsibility of providing a transportation system which would take a kid from their home to any school within a reasonable distance at no cost.
I think we would end up with a combination of multi-building systems and individual boutique schools. Some would offer broad curricula and others would specialize. I envision the current school administrators running these schools (with some tune up of their business skills) under the supervision of a Board of Directors elected by the parents of the students who attend the schools.
I don’t understand why we give kids and parents a choice where to send their kids for post-secondary education, but not for primary and secondary education. Do we suddenly become better consumers of educational services when our kids graduate from high school? Why don’t we dictate where kids can go to college?
And finally, we have to recognize that public school systems in Ohio remain segregated, despite several decades of desegregation laws. But we do it in a more subtle and nefarious way than the days of explicit racial segregation. Our line today is: “anyone can attend our schools as long as you can afford to live in our neighborhood.” Consequently, the urban schools are poorer and less White than ever. Of the three largest districts in the state, Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati, the non-White population is 71%, 84% and 76% respectively. And they have among the largest per-pupil spending in the state. Blue Bexley did a beautiful analysis showing that there is no positive correlation between per-pupil spending and standardized test scores. Sending more money into these school systems won’t make the kids any less poor or the schools any less segregated. What we need to do is give those inner city kids a chance to attend the lily white suburban schools.
Sadly, as our own school district (Hilliard) has grown larger, the same kind of implicit segregation has crept into our community. While we are only a suburban district, our population is now over 75,000 and there are 15,000 kids in our schools. The affluent neighborhoods are in the northern part of the district and the multi-family and low-income housing is in the south. With 22 neighborhood school buildings, they are beginning to take on differing profiles that match the economic geography. With a third high school scheduled to come online in three years, our community is now engaged in a reassignment of neighborhoods to schools. Some, including me, want to use this opportunity to rebalance the demographics across the three buildings. Many, particularly those of the most affluent neighborhoods, want the attendance boundaries drawn simply on the basis of proximity. One person even got up and said that “those people” live in “those neighborhoods” because they want to! Like if a poor black family hit the Lotto they would say “hey, let’s stay here in the ghetto.”
If I wanted the state to spend more money on anything, it would be by creating affordable housing in the suburbs. I’m not talking about another generation of ‘The Projects’ but rather a community development policy which says that x% of any new housing development must be dedicated to affordable homes, interspersed through the whole development. Of course, this has zero chance of being implemented. Most of our suburban neighbors would gladly pay more and more taxes to make sure the poor blacks folks are kept in the ghettos where they belong. When we want to help the black folks, we’ll go to their community and work in the soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Then we’ll go back to our safe affluent neighborhoods, go into our big house with two cars in the garage, and set the alarm just in case we were followed.
We can’t keep feeding money into the same old system and expect it to get better. We need a new system. We need to let Americans – all Americans – do what they do best: Have a choice.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Schools: Natural Monopolies?
Bad voucher ideas have given vouchers a bad name.
Monopolies are rarely a good thing. Economists have a concept of 'natural monopoly,' which refers to a situation where the cost of infrastructure is so great that once one entity stakes out the territory, there is no economic incentive for a competitor to build a parallel infrastructure. For example, once one company builds a natural gas distribution network through a city, no one else will bother. Generally, when such a natural monopoly exists, the government takes the role of regulator to protect the consumers. Hence the ICC and its offspring, the FCC, and all the state public utility commissions.
We used to think telephone networks were like this, which is why Congress granted AT&T monopoly status years ago. But technology changed (cable tv and cellular in particular) and now we have lots of choice in our local phone service -- at least if you live in a metro area.
We have a similar situation with the schools I think. Many believe school systems are a natural monopoly, but I don't think that's necessarily true. In a metro area, in Ohio at least, we typically have a poor urban core surrounded by a collection of wealthy suburbs. This is nothing more than new age segregation, just as surely as if there were "po' folks keep out" signs on the suburban town limits. I think one of two things should happen: a) all the metro area school districts should be merged and any kid in the district should be able to attend any school they want (transportation provided); or, b) every kid in the metro area is given a voucher worth the average per-student spending in the metro area, and that voucher can be used to pay 100% of the tuition in any school in any district in the area.
In the rural areas, the situation is different. Population density is too low to afford much in the way of choice. Land values are low as well. But there are two distinct situations here too. In the case of agricultural areas, there is a sustainable economy with high employment, but not a lot of wealth (land poor as they say). It is reasonable public policy, in my opinion, to make it worth being a farmer, and if that means subsidizing the schools, so be it.
But there are other rural areas which aren't farmland, such as southeastern Ohio. My family settled in Lawrence County in the 1790s (my gggggrandfather was a Revolutionary War veteran), and there are many generations of my family buried there. But there aren't so many of my relatives left there today. Just as my ancestors left Europe to seek a better economic climate, my generation bailed out of post-industrial Appalachia to find better places to raise our families. We should not subsidize the cost of living for families in places without a viable economy just because there are many who would rather take Welfare than move.
Therein lays the most difficult problem of all. How do you incent the parents to go find a better place to live, yet not punish the kids of the parents who are too stupid or lazy to move?
Sam Kinison once said we shouldn't be sending food to Ethiopia, we should be sending them U-Hauls.
Same idea.
Monopolies are rarely a good thing. Economists have a concept of 'natural monopoly,' which refers to a situation where the cost of infrastructure is so great that once one entity stakes out the territory, there is no economic incentive for a competitor to build a parallel infrastructure. For example, once one company builds a natural gas distribution network through a city, no one else will bother. Generally, when such a natural monopoly exists, the government takes the role of regulator to protect the consumers. Hence the ICC and its offspring, the FCC, and all the state public utility commissions.
We used to think telephone networks were like this, which is why Congress granted AT&T monopoly status years ago. But technology changed (cable tv and cellular in particular) and now we have lots of choice in our local phone service -- at least if you live in a metro area.
We have a similar situation with the schools I think. Many believe school systems are a natural monopoly, but I don't think that's necessarily true. In a metro area, in Ohio at least, we typically have a poor urban core surrounded by a collection of wealthy suburbs. This is nothing more than new age segregation, just as surely as if there were "po' folks keep out" signs on the suburban town limits. I think one of two things should happen: a) all the metro area school districts should be merged and any kid in the district should be able to attend any school they want (transportation provided); or, b) every kid in the metro area is given a voucher worth the average per-student spending in the metro area, and that voucher can be used to pay 100% of the tuition in any school in any district in the area.
In the rural areas, the situation is different. Population density is too low to afford much in the way of choice. Land values are low as well. But there are two distinct situations here too. In the case of agricultural areas, there is a sustainable economy with high employment, but not a lot of wealth (land poor as they say). It is reasonable public policy, in my opinion, to make it worth being a farmer, and if that means subsidizing the schools, so be it.
But there are other rural areas which aren't farmland, such as southeastern Ohio. My family settled in Lawrence County in the 1790s (my gggggrandfather was a Revolutionary War veteran), and there are many generations of my family buried there. But there aren't so many of my relatives left there today. Just as my ancestors left Europe to seek a better economic climate, my generation bailed out of post-industrial Appalachia to find better places to raise our families. We should not subsidize the cost of living for families in places without a viable economy just because there are many who would rather take Welfare than move.
Therein lays the most difficult problem of all. How do you incent the parents to go find a better place to live, yet not punish the kids of the parents who are too stupid or lazy to move?
Sam Kinison once said we shouldn't be sending food to Ethiopia, we should be sending them U-Hauls.
Same idea.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Ohio Governor on Iraqi Immigrants
Our newly elected Governor drew criticism this week when he said he didn't think any of the 7,000 Iraqi refugees President Bush plans to bring to the United States should be sent to Ohio. He has subsequently said he wishes he could retract his comments.
I wish he hadn't wimped out on this one. I'm hoping that Stickland will be an effective governor, and I've liked what I've seen up to this point. Ohio, and particularly Columbus, is already home to a substantial immigrant population, and it is straining our public assistance and school systems.
I watched a documentary recently about the effects of Somali immigrants on the little town of Lewiston, Maine (Columbus has one of the two largest Somali communities in the United States, along with Minneapolis). Lewiston once had a decent factory-based economy based primarily on the lumber industry. Today, Lewiston is struggling, with many of the sawmills shut down. On top of that comes a large population of Somalis who receive US government assistance, far in excess of the unemployed workers of Lewiston says the townspeople.
There, as is the case here, the Somalis are are well-organized, family-based Muslim community. They know how to reap the benefits of the government assistance programs, and the locals feel they are being pushed out of the way. It is breeding a troubling level of discord in this little town.
In another posting, I wrote about my concerns that the local Habitat for Humanity program seems to be yet another public assistance program which has been taken advantage of by the Somalis and other African immigrants. If you go by the house our group built last year for an west African family, you'll see two DishTV satellite antennas on the side of the house. This is the setup required by DishTV for a high-definition TV setup. I have to admit feeling taken advantage of.
So Governor Strickland -- please don't be sorry for your remarks. You said what I feel, and I suspect many others in Columbus would say. Our state has its own needy to care for, and our communities cannot take the stress of the concentrated and well-organized groups of immigrants right now. We're an old-economy state that needs its resources to make the transformation to the new economy. Let's welcome our Iraqi friends to areas where the new economy is already underway (e.g. Silicon Valley, Seattle, Florida).
I wish he hadn't wimped out on this one. I'm hoping that Stickland will be an effective governor, and I've liked what I've seen up to this point. Ohio, and particularly Columbus, is already home to a substantial immigrant population, and it is straining our public assistance and school systems.
I watched a documentary recently about the effects of Somali immigrants on the little town of Lewiston, Maine (Columbus has one of the two largest Somali communities in the United States, along with Minneapolis). Lewiston once had a decent factory-based economy based primarily on the lumber industry. Today, Lewiston is struggling, with many of the sawmills shut down. On top of that comes a large population of Somalis who receive US government assistance, far in excess of the unemployed workers of Lewiston says the townspeople.
There, as is the case here, the Somalis are are well-organized, family-based Muslim community. They know how to reap the benefits of the government assistance programs, and the locals feel they are being pushed out of the way. It is breeding a troubling level of discord in this little town.
In another posting, I wrote about my concerns that the local Habitat for Humanity program seems to be yet another public assistance program which has been taken advantage of by the Somalis and other African immigrants. If you go by the house our group built last year for an west African family, you'll see two DishTV satellite antennas on the side of the house. This is the setup required by DishTV for a high-definition TV setup. I have to admit feeling taken advantage of.
So Governor Strickland -- please don't be sorry for your remarks. You said what I feel, and I suspect many others in Columbus would say. Our state has its own needy to care for, and our communities cannot take the stress of the concentrated and well-organized groups of immigrants right now. We're an old-economy state that needs its resources to make the transformation to the new economy. Let's welcome our Iraqi friends to areas where the new economy is already underway (e.g. Silicon Valley, Seattle, Florida).
Sunday, December 24, 2006
More Thoughts on Iraq
In response to http://jimblake-wv.blogspot.com/2005/07/national-will.html
Folks in our society have an expectation of immediate results in general. The first Gulf War fit very well in that regard -- over in 100 hours (if you don't count the months of logistics build up and the air prep). The problem is that lots of people, including our President, thought invading Iraq was the same kind of engagement as driving Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. We watched it on the news with live feeds, and thought it was over when the statues of Saddam Hussein were toppled.
Wrong. That was just the beginning.
Our military is not designed for engagements like Vietnam and Iraq. We train and equip our armed forces to engage uniformed forces who are holding territory. We believe victory occurs when the enemy government surrenders and ceases hostilies. Then we come in and help rebuild the country as a democracy. At least that's the WWII model.
This is a revolutionary war, where the good guys and the bad guys are both citizens of the same country. If one takes a close look at our own War of Independence through the eyes of the British, we never really defeated the British, we just fought on until the British nobility lost its will to continue. They went home (returning for the War of 1812), but we did not pursue them in an attempt to conquer the British homeland. We didn't even try to take Canada. Our victory was their loss of will. The Vietnamese communists had to feel very much the same way when we pulled out.
In Iraq, like Vietnam, we're letting the fighting drag on because we're letting the enemy keep their supply lines open. The fighting will never be over until we put a stop to that.
Here's the real shame: We are once again putting our young people in a position of deciding whether the person in their gunsight is a friendly or an enemy, knowing that a wrong decision will cause himself, his buddies, or an innocent person to die. How we can scar another generation this way?
Are we not fighting hard enough? Are we not bringing enough force to bear on the situation? We pretty much bombed Germany and Japan to rubble in WWII. Is that what we have to do to Iraq? I don't think the shooting will stop even if that happens.
Do we have to put a fence around Iraq so that the enemy can no longer be supplied? I think we must, or we have to get out before we sacrifice another wall full of our children.
We went into Iraq for trumped-up reasons, a half-assed plan and an ill-defined mission objective. How did we let that happen again?
Folks in our society have an expectation of immediate results in general. The first Gulf War fit very well in that regard -- over in 100 hours (if you don't count the months of logistics build up and the air prep). The problem is that lots of people, including our President, thought invading Iraq was the same kind of engagement as driving Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. We watched it on the news with live feeds, and thought it was over when the statues of Saddam Hussein were toppled.
Wrong. That was just the beginning.
Our military is not designed for engagements like Vietnam and Iraq. We train and equip our armed forces to engage uniformed forces who are holding territory. We believe victory occurs when the enemy government surrenders and ceases hostilies. Then we come in and help rebuild the country as a democracy. At least that's the WWII model.
This is a revolutionary war, where the good guys and the bad guys are both citizens of the same country. If one takes a close look at our own War of Independence through the eyes of the British, we never really defeated the British, we just fought on until the British nobility lost its will to continue. They went home (returning for the War of 1812), but we did not pursue them in an attempt to conquer the British homeland. We didn't even try to take Canada. Our victory was their loss of will. The Vietnamese communists had to feel very much the same way when we pulled out.
In Iraq, like Vietnam, we're letting the fighting drag on because we're letting the enemy keep their supply lines open. The fighting will never be over until we put a stop to that.
Here's the real shame: We are once again putting our young people in a position of deciding whether the person in their gunsight is a friendly or an enemy, knowing that a wrong decision will cause himself, his buddies, or an innocent person to die. How we can scar another generation this way?
Are we not fighting hard enough? Are we not bringing enough force to bear on the situation? We pretty much bombed Germany and Japan to rubble in WWII. Is that what we have to do to Iraq? I don't think the shooting will stop even if that happens.
Do we have to put a fence around Iraq so that the enemy can no longer be supplied? I think we must, or we have to get out before we sacrifice another wall full of our children.
We went into Iraq for trumped-up reasons, a half-assed plan and an ill-defined mission objective. How did we let that happen again?
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Finding Lucho
I was building a PhotoStory from some old pictures my Mom had, and was struggling to find some music to accompany the video. Mom was born in the Panama Canal Zone and lived there most of her young years. When we were kids, Mom loved to play records by a Panamanian organist named Lucho Azcarraga, and the sound of his music is deeply rooted in my psyche.
Sadly, Mom's old records are pretty much shot, and I don't have an operational turntable anymore besides. But you gotta love the web -- Lucho's granddaughter has a website where she sells CDs of his recordings, and I ordered one last night. Here is a sampling of his sound.
Can't wait for the CD to arrive.
Sadly, Mom's old records are pretty much shot, and I don't have an operational turntable anymore besides. But you gotta love the web -- Lucho's granddaughter has a website where she sells CDs of his recordings, and I ordered one last night. Here is a sampling of his sound.
Can't wait for the CD to arrive.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)