The President speaks

Why do we bother with this guy?

Here is the speech that I wish President Obama would give about the Iraq War, but which neither he nor any other president ever will.

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Juan Cole

Fellow Americans, and Iraqis who are watching this speech, I have come here this evening not to declare a victory or to mourn a defeat on the battlefield, but to apologize from the bottom of my heart for a series of illegal actions and grossly incompetent policies pursued by the government of the United States of America, in defiance of domestic US law, international treaty obligations, and both American and Iraqi public opinion.

The United Nations was established in 1945 in the wake of a series of aggressive wars of conquest and the response to them, in which over 60 million people perished. Its purpose was to forbid such unjustified attacks, and its charter specified that in future wars could only be launched on two grounds. One is clear self-defense, when a country has been attacked. The other is with the authorization of the United Nations Security Council.

It was because the French, British and Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956 contravened these provisions of the United Nations Charter that President Dwight D. Eisenhower condemned that war and forced the belligerents to withdraw. When Israel looked as though it might try to hang on to its ill-gotten spoils, the Sinai Peninsula, President Eisenhower went on television on February 21, 1957 and addressed the nation. These words have largely been suppressed and forgotten in the United States of today, but they should ring through the decades and centuries:

“If the United Nations once admits that international dispute can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the very foundation of the organization, and our best hope of establishing a real world order. That would be a disaster for us all . . .

[Referring to Israeli demands that certain conditions be met before it relinquished the Sinai, the president said that he] “would be untrue to the standards of the high office to which you have chosen me if I were to lend the influence of the United States to the proposition that a nation which invades another should be permitted to exact conditions for withdrawal . . .”

“If it [the United Nations Security Council] does nothing, if it accepts the ignoring of its repeated resolutions calling for the withdrawal of the invading forces, then it will have admitted failure. That failure would be a blow to the authority and influence of the United Nations in the world and to the hopes which humanity has placed in the United Nations as the means of achieving peace with justice.”

In March of 2003, it was the United States government itself that contravened the charter of the United Nations, aggressively invading a country that had not attacked it and against the will of the UN Security Council. The war was preceded by a summit in the Azores of the US, Britain, Spain and Portugal, for all the world as though it were the sixteenth century and a confusion between empire and piracy still prevailed.

Link to The whole speech

AP and Waukesha Freeman know how to set the tone to mark Hiroshima Day

CARRIER-KILLING MISSILE BEING DEVELOPED

Eric Talmadge August 5, 2010, 5:43 PM

ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON (AP)

Nothing projects U.S. global air and sea power more vividly than supercarriers. Bristling with fighter jets that can reach deep into even landlocked trouble zones, America's virtually invincible carrier fleet has long enforced its dominance of the high sea.

China may put an end to that...

Read the rest of this witless, jingo bombast here.

Nothing projects the American spirit of Miles Gloriosus as much as this sort of chest thumping.

And nothing misreads what the next--perhaps the ultimate--Sino-American confrontation is going to look like. The Chinese need not risk the dangers inherent in blowing up the U.S. military-industrial complex's favorite toy.

They merely need to keep the Renminbi pegged to the U.S. Buck and steadily decline to roll over the proceeds of their U.S. Bond holdings as they come due.

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The myths about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Every August, upon the anniversaries of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, comments resume about American decisions at the end of World War II. Despite the passage of 65 years, heated opinions are repeated as fact and myths become immortalized as truths. Beyond distorting the historical record, wishful thinking leads us to repeat past mistakes in new ways against new enemies.

Among the inaccuracies :

1. Japan was ready to fight to the end.

Facts: In an intercepted cable of July 12, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito revealed his decision to intervene to end the war. In Harry S. Truman’s journal, the U.S. president characterized the message as “telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace.” Tokyo was prepared to surrender unconditionally if the monarchy would be retained, the very position the Allies accepted after Hiroshima.

Five days later, Truman predicted that Stalin would “be in the Jap war by August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about.” Nevertheless, he ordered the bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6. The USSR entered the war on Aug. 8. Truman ordered the Aug. 9 bombing of Nagasaki anyway.

2. Dropping the bomb was necessary to prevent an American invasion.

Facts: In 1946, a U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey report based on intelligence available to the White House concluded: “Certainly prior to Dec. 31, 1945, and in all probability prior to Nov. 1, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russian had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”

3. Dropping the bomb saved lives.

Facts: Stanford historian Barton Bernstein’s study of declassified documents found that the worst-case scenario by military planners was 46,000 deaths if the U.S. invaded both Kyushu and Honshu islands. Since Hiroshima, these estimates have grown exponentially as if to justify using the bomb. In notes, Truman cites 250,000 casualties (dead, wounded, missing). His published memoir raises the number to 500,000 dead. Still later, he referred to saving a million lives. In 1991, President H.W. Bush claimed that the bomb saved “millions.”

Since both presidents, among countless others, ignored the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey conclusion that an invasion was unnecessary, it is no wonder average Americans do the same. All of these morbid calculations ignore the stark fact that more than 187,000 humans died at Hiroshima.

Read the rest

Russell Vandenbroucke, professor and chair of theatre arts at the University of Louisville, is the author of “Atomic Bombers,” a play that was broadcast on public radio to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima. This column was provided by the PeaceVoice Program of the Oregon Peace Institute.

Who ya gonna believe, Tim Geithner or your own lying bank statements?

The devastation wrought by the great recession is still all too real for millions of Americans who lost their jobs, businesses and homes. The scars of the crisis are fresh, and every new economic report brings another wave of anxiety. That uncertainty is understandable, but a review of recent data on the American economy shows that we are on a path back to growth.
[...]
While the economy has a long way to go before reaching its full potential, last week’s data on economic growth show that large parts of the private sector continue to strengthen. Business investment and consumption — the two keys to private demand — are getting stronger, better than last year and better than last quarter. Uncertainty is still inhibiting investment, but business capital spending increased at a solid annual rate of about 17 percent.

Together, private consumption and fixed investment contributed about 3.25 percent to growth. Even the surge in imports, which lowered the rate of increase of G.D.P., actually reflects healthy and growing American demand.

Omigod! We've turned the corner. Happy Days are Here Agai.... What's that? There's still a little downside?

We have a long way to go to address the fiscal trauma and damage across the country, and we will need to monitor the ups and downs in the economy month by month. The share of workers who have been unemployed for six months or more is at its highest level since 1948, when the data was first recorded, and we must do more to ensure that they have the skills they need to re-enter the 21st-century economy. Small businesses are still battling a tough climate. State and local governments are still hurting.

Train millions of 45-year olds to take jobs in the service sector at half their former income? Is this what you mean Mr. Geithner?

And while making smart, targeted investments in our future, we must also cut the deficit over the next few years and make sure that America once again lives within its means.

Yah! We're talking about cutting Social Security; making sure that your new job as an on-line customer service rep (which you stole back from some guy in Mumbai or Manila by undercutting his wages) will be still there for you until you're 75, and finally eligible for a pension.

h/t: Digby

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The Conway and the Clifton....Home, Sweet Home

A little research today confirmed a suspicion. I have lived about 60% of my years in Sears Kit Homes.

Something about "Kit" doesn't sound solid or long-lasting. But my research yields a fascinating story about how the Sears Roebuck Company, from 1908 through 1945 manufactured (In Cairo, Illinois and several other locations) more than seventy thousand solid, well-designed houses that arrived in one (sometimes two) railroad boxcars with complete blueprints and and an 80 page leather-bound book of instructions on assembly.

For 17 years I lived in The Conway on Madison Street in Waukesha. Twenty years ago I moved into The Clifton on Easy Street in the same city. Both were (are) solidly-built, enduring (one built in 1928, the other in 1931) residences (homes, nests, what else can I call them?) that will last another 80 years--with just a little attention to maintenance.

There's something very appealing about a house that you could buy from a catalog, from a company that offered you a mortgage on that house based on ONE condition: that you had a job.

And--best of all--the goods were delivered quickly, efficiently and cheaply on a Choo-Choo train.

The hero of San Juan Hill 'splains it all for you...

I'm so angry with that infernal little Cuban republic that I would like to wipe its people off the face of the earth. All we have wanted of them was that they would behave themselves and be prosperous and happy so that we would not have to interfere. And now, lo and behold, they have started an utterly unjustifiable and pointless revolution.
--President Theodore Roosevelt, 1906

As the second half-century of the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution unfolds, it is worth reviewing how the last ten American Presidents have fared in taming, uplifting and re-directing the Cubans and their pointless revolution.

All (some more than others) have huffed and puffed about giving Castro his walking papers...or an assassins's bullet. Six of them have gone to their graves knowing they failed. Four more have left office knowing they failed. And, the incumbent has been distracted, leaving all things Cuban to his Secretary of State, whose diplomacy has consisted of nothing since the opening gambit: "You change; then, we'll talk".

A recent book is well worth the time and effort demanded by a 700 pager. The title is from TR's genocidal rant. For an overview, the first three chapters are here.

That Infernal little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution, by Lars Schoultz

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This is what they call "tightening up" at HUD/FHA

We are three years deep in the housing debacle. Why are we only just now considering raising the standards for FHA mortgage insurance?

For the next 30 days, HUD is seeking public comment on the following policy changes, each of which are designed to mitigate risk to the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund while promoting sustainable homeownership for FHA borrowers:

1. Update the combination of credit and down payment requirements for new borrowers. New borrowers seeking FHA-insured financing will be required to have a minimum FICO score of 580 to qualify for FHA’s flagship 3.5 percent down payment program. New borrowers with credit scores of less than a 580 will be required to make a cash investment of at least 10 percent. Borrowers with credit scores of less than 500 will no longer qualify for an FHA-insured mortgage.
   
   
2. Reduce allowable seller concessions from six to three percent. Allowing sellers to contribute up to six percent of the home’s sales price to offset a buyer’s costs exposes the FHA to excess risk by potentially driving up the cost of the home beyond its appraised value. Reducing seller concessions to three percent will bring FHA into conformity with industry standards.
   
   
3. Tighten underwriting standards for manually underwritten loans. When using compensating factors in the underwriting process, lenders will be required to consider those factors which are the best predictive indicators of loan performance, such as the borrower’s credit history, loan-to-value (LTV) percentage, debt-to income ratio, and cash reserves.

Flagship Program?

FICO score of 580 is being promoted as the new and more rigorous ticket to admission, the new gold standard. Insanity for someone to be able to get a mortgage with almost nothing --$7,000 on a starter shack costing $200,000-- down payment with a rotten credit record. And just how rotten is a 580 FICO score. Here's a chart from the Fair Isaac Corporation, the developer of FICO scoring:

760-850	EXCELLENT
700-759	VERY GOOD
723	MEDIAN FICO SCORE
660-699	GOOD
687	AVERAGE FICO SCORE
620-659	NOT GOOD
580-619	POOR
500-579	VERY POOR

580 indicates deadbeat status.

And, the second "tightening" indicates how meaningless even the 3.5% is. Through sleight of hand and over appraisal, the seller of a house that is getting FHA insurance for the buyer, can boost the selling price, then make a "contribution" to the amount the buyer has to bring to the closing.

This is crazy stuff , based on "standards" to promote sales of houses and condos that banks would never finance on their own without there being a big deep-pockets co-signer.

My dad wasn't doctrinaire about many things. But he from time to time intoned with uncommon solemnity and a deep voice: "Never Co-sign". Then he'd repeat: "Never Co-sign". "Never ever ever Co-sign".

The FHA in the past did a pretty good job of underwriting the mortgages they insured. Default rates were managed by not taking risks on people who had no business trying to get loans they were unlikely to pay back.

Didn't we learn that low downpayments are a recipe for disaster? Apparently not. The reason that government programs of FHA will not do more than the miniscule tweaking they are considering is that government is just about the only lender making mortgages.

We are so deep in the hole that we'll never get out.

So, that becomes Reason #3 why the Waukesha Water Utility Scheme to divert Lake Michigan water is toast.

Reason #2 why Waukesha's Lake Michigan diverson scheme is dead....

...The Top 5 percent in income earners — those households earning $210,000 or more — account for about one-third of consumer outlays, including spending on goods and services, interest payments on consumer debt and cash gifts, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by Moody’s Analytics. That means the purchasing decisions of the rich have an outsize effect on economic data. According to Gallup, spending by upper-income consumers — defined as those earning $90,000 or more — surged to an average of $145 a day in May, up 33 percent from a year earlier.

Then in June, that daily average slid to $119. "I think a lot of that feeling that the worst was over has sort of abated," said Dennis J. Jacobe, Gallup’s chief economist.
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Sam Pizzigati, associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning research center, cautions against simply boosting the spending power of the rich through tax cuts or other measures. “Otherwise, we find ourselves in an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ world,” he said, “and the solution to the hard times that the economy is going through is to help the people that are not going through hard times.”
Motoko Rich NY Times, 7/19/2010

And now the rich have started tightening their belts.

The nearly $800 billion stimulus package, "cash for clunkers," the credit for new home buyers, the $1.2 trillion in mortgages the Federal Reserve purchased--they're all gone, used-up, finished. Those props that gave glimmers of hope for a turnaround will not be repeated. Because they failed.

The turnaround has made another turn, a U Turn; odds are it is in a very long downward slide. We'll need a conservative, low-cost fix that takes the water we have and fiddles it sufficiently to meet the standard, at a price we can afford. We will not need any extra water; we no longer can afford sprawling growth. The money markets continuing to offer impossibly low interest rates will not last (The Federal Reserve is keeping them so low they can't get any lower), meaning municipal bonds to finance the diversion infrastructure will push the price way beyond the lowball figure of $165 million.

People in Waukesha will be wanting littler houses on smaller lots, older houses they can buy at a reasonable price and fix up, houses in walking distance to schools and shopping. There is a glut of "upscale" (that word makes me gag, always has) houses--tract mansions built of chipboard and vinyl. All of this means that the tax base of Waukesha will continue contracting.

City government, including the Waukesha Water Utility, will need to put itself on a diet. And water diverted from Lake Michigan will be like a big gooey dessert--definitely off the list.

Foreclosures and Sheriff's Sales hit record high in Waukesha...

The Waukesha Freeman is a mess. It wasn't always a bad paper. But the last 20 years have been a long slide--from mediocrity, into banality and now unvarnished stupidity.

Home delivery in the afternoon has given way to mailed editions, arriving midday and later to those who want the bargain rate. It's available earlier for half-a-buck in a few newsboxes and on the grocery/pharmacy shelves. Conley Newspapers also publishes the West Bend News. They try to finesse that into economizing on the newshole. Thus, a feature called something like neighboring community news, gets Waukesha readers hot items about the West Bend municipal budget. Few in Waukesha give a rip about how a community fifty miles away spends tax dollars. I'm pretty sure they feed Waukesha "news" to the West Benders to save money in both directions.

Inexperienced reporting staff. Scant indication that anyone in the newsroom has even a shred of institutional memory. Total inattention to simple copy editing. The editorial/opinion page is an abattoir.

How do they stay in business? Simple answer: agate type, the tiny typeface used for classified advertising. As Dave Wagner, former Freeman Editorial Page Editor/News Editor, used to say: "There's gold in that agate type".

This week the Freeman appeared to hit a record. Nine full pages of advertising, but none of it commercial stuff. All Foreclosures, classified under the heading "Legal Notices". Actually, there was a total of twelve pages of legal notices. Replevin, requests for bids, probate of estates, small claims by hospitals and credit card companies took up three of the 12 pages.

I focused only on the foreclosures and sheriff's sales. It is hard to look at. Behind all the legal lingo, of course, is a mountain of hurt. You find the names of people you know. You gasp at how deep in the hole some are. This week three of the actions involved amounts above a million dollars

This is a look at nine consecutive columns, detailing 17 foreclosures. I didn't cherrypick high numbers; these are just as they were printed, consecutively, over the nine columns. Here are the foreclosure amounts.

$145,618 Mukwonago
$270,410 Big Bend
$ 80,023 Waukesha
$321,928 Waukesha
$278,937 Brookfield
$303,365 Sussex
$168,233 New Berlin
$196,419 North Prairie
$274,633 Delafield
$395,929 Elm Grove
$341,171 Dousman
$144,190 Meno Falls
$586,774 Meno Falls
$201,710 Muskego
$182,068 Wales
$417,852 Lannon
$229,132 Brookfield

Real estate agents try to persuade the hopeful, the gullible, the uninformed that the market is headed back up, that this is the time to get a bargain and ride it up, as real estate recovers, returns to previous valuations.

This much economic slaughter ought to give pause. I'll wager that none of these properties will draw auction bids even remotely close to what the banksters are trying to recover. If the auctions follow recent precedent, most will get no bids.

The only thing headed up is Freeman revenue. There's gold in that agate type.

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The pup is a year old today...

I've wondered several dozen times in the past twelve months ..."What in doggy heaven's name am I doing--at my age-- with a new puppy in the house". And the bride just grins and says "relax".

She's right.

This critter is smart, well-behaved, quick to learn, anxious to please, incredibly energetic, a helluva herder (He helps me get where I'm going by gently nipping at my heels in true sheep dog style). He's a mix of Australian Shepherd (high energy/mega smarts/lightning speed) and Poodle (doesn't shed).

Both of his forbearer breeds are working dogs. The dog's owners (that's us) need to supply the dog with a job or sufficient exercise to compensate for the lack of one. Lacking outside employment, the enterprising and energetic pup will get his own job. And it will invariably involve somebody's shoes.

Which leads Waterblogged to say, once again, "What in doggy heaven's name am I doing--at my age, and with a worked-over pair of Bjorns--with a new puppy in the house?".

He's here; he's staying; the bride is happy.

And--truth to tell--he's gotten to me , too.

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Just a piece of furniture...

This is, perhaps, an offbeat way to re-enter the blogosphere after an eight week absence, particularly in light of this blog's raison d'etre, that being a focus on water and the politics of Waukesha.

The bride read, from the MJS, an obituary of sorts: Porter's of Racine is absolutely going out of business , finis, no mas, going to close it's doors at the end of business tomorrow.

"...Any reasonable offer will be considered".

Well, thanks for the stuff--and the style--you sold over all those years. And, sorry to see you go.

The photo up top is of a table a young couple bought in 1974, shortly after purchasing a first home, a few blocks from downtown Waukesha.

Thirty six years of family meals around a comfortable, beautiful, just-the-right-size table. First for the two of us (no leaf), later for four (small leaf), occasionally, for six or eight (large leaf).

People told us to go to Porter's for furniture because they had high quality goods. It turned out to be good advice. We agonized over buying something for several hundred dollars, then gave in to the pull 0f something that we thought was beautiful and would last a long time.

A piece of furniture that is still beautiful and useful after 36 years of daily use. It is part of the family. It has seen lots of discussion; a season of adolescent sulking; a few meals that went catastrophically bad; many more meals shared with friends that were emblematic of lifelong and sustaining friendships. And barrels of vino, leading unfailingly to veritas. A certain amount of bullshit and lots of poker and pinochle.

This table is emblematic of the life of a family. It is sturdy, beautiful, enduring, useful. And an outfit called Porter's of Racine sold it to us a long time ago. It will be passed on to a next generation, maybe several generations.

We are grateful that there was a place that sold such things... things that last. It would be better if such an organization could survive in the age of chipboard "furniture". But, the table endures, survives.

May we all endure.


PS. Waterblogged went out-of-commission early in March due to an emergency appendectomy that led to a week of of pseudo-healing and recovery, only to relapse due to "complications," followed by another week of recovery-of-sorts that foundered on further "complications". Three admissions to the hospital in 20 days, each through the ER portal, is the reason WB has had nothing to offer on the hot item of Waukesha's elections and the decision to pursue getting a diversion of Great Lakes water to the City of Waukesha.

Despite the loss of 20 pounds in 25 days (believe me, you do NOT want this to happen to you), Waterblogged will return to the debate, regarding new leadership and new perspectives on how to ensure both Waukesha's viability as a community and its need for a safe and reliable source of water.

Perhaps the Waukesha Freeman pays by the word. Or, maybe it's a copy-editing lapse. Probably just a big hiring mistake.

Waukesha man, 18, charged with bail jumping
Complaint: Teen allegedly created disturbance at police station

By Sarah Millard Freeman Staff

WAUKESHA – An 18-yearold Waukesha man was charged Monday with felony bail jumping and misdemeanor disorderly conduct after an alleged altercation ended at the Waukesha Police Department Friday night, according to a criminal complaint.

Devin R. Fehrman was released from the Waukesha County Jail on $500 bail Monday. He is ordered to have no contact with any of the witnesses or alleged victims listed in the criminal complaint.

The alleged victim came into the front lobby of the Waukesha Police Department at about 8:45 p.m. Friday and told police Fehrman assaulted him because the alleged victim had taken a truck light from Fehrman, according to the criminal complaint.

The alleged victim told police that Fehrman and he were meeting at Summit View Elementary School to return the light, according to the criminal complaint.

While the alleged victim, who appeared “somewhat distressed,” was telling police about the incident, Fehrman arrived at the police department, according to the complaint.

“When Fehrman opened the first entry door into the breezeway of the lobby, he immediately appeared very agitated,” the complaint states. “Fehrman then opened the second door into the main lobby and started yelling at (the alleged victim), stating something to the effect that he didn’t ‘(explective) break into his house.’”

Fehrman allegedly was instructed by a police officer to get back and go outside the lobby, but Fehrman allegedly ignored the commands, according to the complaint.

The complaint further alleges the officer became concerned Fehrman would assault the alleged victim and because Fehrman allegedly was not obeying commands, the officer physically grabbed Fehrman’s jacket and pushed him out the front doors. The officer then called for back up, according to the complaint.

Fehrman allegedly told police that while he was meeting the alleged victim at the school, his arm became trapped after the alleged victim rolled up his window to his vehicle. Fehrman allegedly told police the alleged victim then began driving, dragging Fehrman until he was able to free himself, according to the complaint.

Police allegedly did not notice any injuries on Fehrman’s body that suggested he had been dragged by a vehicle, according to the complaint.

Fehrman allegedly also told police he did not use profane language at the police department and was not belligerent. Fehrman allegedly did tell police he was mad and as soon as he entered the department, the officer grabbed him and sat him down onto the floor between the two doors, according to the complaint.

Fehrman also is charged with child abuse from an alleged July 22 altercation. A 14-year-old boy allegedly told police Fehrman had hit him with a shovel, according to a criminal complaint.

Fehrman additionally is charged with felony bail jumping from an alleged Nov. 1 incident."

Johnny Dankworth

LONDON (Reuters) - Saxophonist Sir John Dankworth, one of the leading figures in British jazz for more than half a century, has died, his agent said Sunday. He was 82.

He and Cleo Laine played Milwaukee every year for a stretch in the mid-70s into the 80s. Always filled the Hall--Uihlein Hall. She was the headliner, but their show was like few other collaborations.

Cleo sang a capella this smidgen of a Sctottish folk tune between numbers:

I know where I'm going
And I know who's going with me
I know who I love
And my dear knows who I'll marry.

Some say that he's poor
But I say that he's bonnie
Fairest of them all
Is my handsome winsome Johnny.

Bet you didn't know Mayor Nelson in Waukesha has a Blog

You really need to sample the goodies on Mayor Larry Nelson's Blog

This is a blog on which it is promised that all kinds of exciting things are "attached".

But, none--not one--of the links will take you anywhere.

And the graphic display on the masthead is simply bizarre.

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Dr. King's most prophetic speech was not I have a Dream

Dr. King knew--as we all need to know--that his overriding message came in this speech, a speech that went deeper into his dream than the one that gets center stage on the King National Holiday.

One year--to the day and the hour--after speaking these words at Riverside Church in New York City, Dr. King was dead from an assassin's bullet.

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
By Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

Click for text of the rest of the address/or to hear the original recording

"Silence is betrayal..."

We betray the legacy of Dr. King, by not repeating and amplifying this message. I am persuaded that--had Dr. King survived until today--his speeches would be addressing Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel; drones and collateral damage; the unconscionable conduct of indiscriminate war--war that targets "terrorists" and kills non-combatant civilians--throughout the last decade. He would tell us, once again, that silence is betrayal.

The Riverside Church address greatly impelled the tidal wave of revulsion that pushed LBJ to abandon his pursuit of a 2nd term as president. President Lyndon Johnson had pressed (as only he could press) the Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act, The Voting Rights Act, Head Start, the Job Corps, Medicaid, Medicare, the War on Poverty and so much more in his first four years in the White House.

Yet, Dr King refused to give LBJ a pass--and was berated and abused by many of his followers in the civil rights movement for doing so--because of all the President had done. King spoke on the issue that challenged the existence, the very soul, of the Dream he had described to us in 1963.

I have--we all have--the cadences, the powerful imagery, the emotion of I Have A Dream, in 0ur heads.

We still need the challenge of A Time to Break Silence as a goad to our hearts, and our shared conscience.

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Larry Nelson's boast about being 36th "Best Place to Live"

Money Magazine, each August, gets down to list-making. And they publish the "Ten Best Places to Live" in the U.S. They go on to list the runners-up from 11 through 100. They have their criteria, their bias toward what makes up the good life.

And they slice and dice lots of data and opinion to come up with sub-lists: Skinniest (but no mention most blubbery), priciest, richest, best golf, easiest on commuters, least tax-hellish.

A recent comment published on a different site, but focused on the lists, had comments on the Money criteria. Here's a typical one:

What about culture, diversity, public green spaces, walkability, public services, bike-friendliness, etc. etc.? Why this kneejerk reaction that you have to have low taxes to be happy?

Regardless, we are told WAUKESHA IS ON THE LIST! It says so on the top line of the City's Web Site, close to the photo of our Mayor. The facts: just before the last election (2006) for Mayor, Money reported that, according to their criteria, our city, while not on the top ten list, was a distant "also-ran," #36 on a list of cities that made up part of the group that was "studied".

Whoopee!

I don't want to douse anyone's pride or jubilation, but--this being an annual ranking--I have to tell you, we've fallen off the list; we're washed-up; some other city is 36th. And we've fallen hard. We are no longer even in the rankings that have been published in '07, '08 and '09.

So, here we are in 2010, four years after Waukesha's brief moment at 36th Place. Larry Nelson continues to brag about how wonderfully "36th Best" we are. Get over it, Mr. Mayor. The things that got Waukesha on that list, such as it is, happened before your were elected.

During your four year term, a lot has happened, some of which seems useful, much of which seems disastrous. But, for whatever reason, we have fallen, not just down in the published rankings, but completely off the list.

Allow me to tell you about how much I think Waukesha--my home for the past 36 years--is the place where I choose to live because, for me, it has been the "Best Place". How it is the place I have lived most of my life, the place where I have the friends of a lifetime, where I want to continue to live because I like it.

Telling me, and the rest of the world, that Waukesha was once the holder of a fair-to-middling rating in a yuppie consumer magazine sells all of us short.

Now the economy is in recovery, we can afford a little military adventurism....

Ashton Carter, Undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, put the matter this way recently: “[N]ext to Antarctica, Afghanistan is probably the most incommodious place, from a logistics point of view, to be trying to fight a war... It's landlocked and rugged, and the road network is much, much thinner than in Iraq. Fewer airports, different geography.” In other words, we might as well be fighting on the moon.

In translation, this means at least one thing: don’t believe any of the figures coming out of the White House or the Pentagon about what this war is going to cost.

See the whole article by Jo Comerford at Tomdispatch December 17, 2009.

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An Open Letter to The Norwegian Nobel Committee

On December 10, you will award the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama, citing "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people." We the undersigned are distressed that President Obama, so close upon his receipt of this honor, has opted to escalate the U.S. war in Afghanistan with the deployment of 30,000 additional troops. We regret that he could not be guided by the example of a previous Nobel Peace Laureate, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who identified his peace prize as "profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time — the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression."

Read the rest and the list of signers...

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We are getting very close to the edge...

This from the mainstream business press this week:

Almost half (46%) of 2,148 consumers surveyed recently said they weren't confident they could come up with $2,000 within a month in a crisis--from savings, family, friends, credit cards or other sources.

Even among those earning $100,000 to $149,000 a year. almost 25% doubted they could raise it, according to the survey conducted by research firm TNS with academics from Harvard Business School and Dartmouth College.

"We wanted to know if people could fix a broken car or furnace," says Harvard finance professor Peter Tufano, who adds that most studies he has seen measure "how much cash people have... not how much they can access."

The survey results surprised him. "The ability to cope with emergencies is much less strong than we might have thought."
Business Week, Dec. 18, 2009

And This commentary and analysis by Charles H. Smith:

This survey offers a staggering set of implications. Let's grant that we have no idea if the survey was scientific, but we can assume that the academics from Harvard Business School and Dartmouth College would not besmirch their reputations with wildly inaccurate or fatally less-than-rigorous data collection. Let's follow the idea that 25% of households earning $100,000+ can't lay their hands on a meager $2,000. First off, only about 20% of households earn above $100K. Most households make do on a sum closer to the national median of $46,000.

What does it mean when households not only don't have $2,000 in cash (savings), but they also lack the ability to put their hands on $2,000 from family, friends, or even credit cards?

We can surmise:

1. Their social/family networks are either threadbare or populated by others without savings or credit;

2. Their creditworthiness is near-zero. Either they've maxed out the credit they once had, or their previous credit lines have been cut off in the general reduction of risk/credit, or they are in arrears/default and thus have zero credit.

It's also possible, and perhaps even probable (though we have no data to support this projection) that both are true: most of those in Americans' social networks are in dire straits/hanging by a financial thread and their access to credit either private or institutional is near-zero.

We might even extend our query deeper into social networking, and speculate that many Americans no longer possess a social network populated with people who they could ask for a loan. (A thousand "friends" on Facebook might not replace even one real friend.)

We might also speculate that many citizens are now wary of loaning their dwindling precious reserves of cash to anyone, even friends, who they rightly anticipate will be unable to pay back the loan if the economy continues devolving.

Perhaps the cultural ethics of the nation have been so eroded by the endless (and apparently richly rewarding) scams, fraud, embezzlement, cheating and lying that people no longer trust even their friends to act with fiscal responsibility--a suspicion fueled, perhaps, by the very fact that few were able to save even a paltry $2,000 for a rainy day.

Or it may just be that the majority of Americans are essentially one paycheck or unemployment check away from homelessness and hunger, and thus the social networks of most households are populated by others in the same general economic situation.

If so, we might ask: why have so many households failed to save even a modest sum? Let's grant that many households may well have already consumed their savings as job and pay cuts eroded household income. Medical emergencies alone apparently account for a significant percentage of financial ruination (foreclosures and bankruptcies).

But we would be remiss not to ask if some households have done better than others as the bogus prosperity evaporated, and if so, why. The answer is not difficult but it is terribly painful to those embedded in American culture's permanent adolescence: long-term shared sacrifice.

Those of you who reside in states with large immigrant populations probably know families who bought a home, and by combining three, four or even five incomes, paid off the mortgage in a few years. Was this possible if every household worker spent lavishly on consumer goods and the "luxury lifestyle" propagandized by TV? No. It was only possible if all the earners in the household rejected consumerist appeals to squander money and chose instead to sacrifice desires for the greater good, i.e. reducing the mortgage to zero and assemble a substantial savings (six figures in many cases).

Such thrift was commonplace in the post-Depression decades. People did not trust banks, hence my grandmother has six savings accounts, most with modest sums--she owned more savings accounts than dresses.

I remember my first credit card, which I only applied for after years of accumulating savings. I already owned land before I ever "owned" a credit card. This was common in the so-called "hippie era," which generally distrusted debt and institutions like banks. Hippies paid with cash or barter--at least until they devolved into yuppies.

This is not to suggest every household was financially able to amass substantial savings, but it is an open question to American society: how much credit and cash which could have been saved, with relatively modest applications of sacrifice and restraint, was squandered on "luxury goods," toys and travel?

The zeitgeist (especially television) encouraged rampant consumption and saving has been disincentivised for years by super-low interest rates. Nonetheless we have to ask how many private trillions were squandered, as a sort of cultural match to the trillions in public taxpayer funds squandered to maintain the financial Elites in their positions of power and privilege.

Responsibility for our financial ineptitude and precariousness runs both wide and deep.


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Still blooming on December 3rd.

Planting snapdragons in a sunny south-facing corner sometimes yields a crop of flowers that bring pleasure right up to Christmas.