It's The Legacy Thing

I think we now know what has driven this presidency into the dumpster. Just like Bush, this guy is consumed with building a legacy, and nothing else. He stands for absolutely nothing but his own image. It is utterly shameful. About the only thing one can say to sort of give him a pass is that it probably is largely generational. Like Bush, he really is seriously afflicted by the narcissism of the so-called "me generation."

First, he persisted and persisted and persisted in watering down and dismembering and degrading genuine health care reform, just so he could get something, anything, he could misrepresent as an accomplishment, instead of the catastrophic failure it turned out to be. And his prime enabler, VP Biden, was all too happy to publicly tell him it was a "big f'ing deal." Well, we all know it was an f'ing, alright.

 It dealt a death blow to any possibility of establishing a legitimate national health care system in this country for at least another decade or two. But the lame Democratic party, falling right in line like Biden, picked him up and put him on their shoulders as if he had won something, and he has been foolishly walking around with his chest pumped up about it ever since.

This brilliant accomplishment only whetted his appetite for doing great things. It set him up perfectly to be suckered into the lunacy of the manufactured debt ceiling crisis. He could have simply stood his ground as any reasonably strong president would have when subjected to blackmail. He could have and should have just shrugged off the ridiculous threats to send the government into default. He could have and should have plainly assured the Congress and the country that he would order the Treasury to continue to pay the bills, as is the duty of the president. He could have and should have preserved the integrity of the office itself, but he did not. You see, it's hard to stand your ground when you're running around trying to do great things.

At one point, he unbelievably compared himself to Lincoln. Makes you want to heave.  Even the very language he used early on in describing what he imagined he was doing was revealing and unsettling. He told us that he and Boehner were working on a "Grand Bargain." How's that for modesty? He couldn't even wait for others, much less history, to decide how this grand escapade would come to be seen. But it really didn't matter anyway, for it was all a farce. Boehner and McConnell were playing him like a drum. They just beat the sillies out of him, the same way he had been beaten in the health care fiasco.

Hubris has a terrible price. But this is a bill we and future generations will have to pay. It is hard to say what the actual cost will be. Who can put a price on what social security and medicare mean to this country and its citizens? It is not too much to aver that destroying them would translate into the end of a real and stable middle class, and  a serious demotion for the country as a whole, from first world to third world status. All of that is what this delusional latter day Lincoln "put on the table" for the predatory plutocrats to feed upon.

Another great accomplishment, Mr. President. Perhaps, as my wife joked this morning, you can go off and build houses like Jimmy Carter if you really want to be remembered for something good. Soon.

War Of Choice

No, I'm not talking about Iraq or Afghanistan. Although zerObama has indeed chosen to needlessly disgrace his presidency by perpetuating these grotesquely pointless money and blood lettings. Rather, I have in mind his war on the middle class and the poor.

How far have we fallen, and so fast. In only half a lifetime we have abjectly surrendered the war on poverty in favor of taking up arms against the ever growing legions of the poor themselves. And this horror is now being led and fed by a putative Democrat president. In oh so many ways, the Democrats are now every bit as sick and warped as the Republicans and Teacans.

One week ago today, I here asked the president to do something good. Sunday seemed an appropriate day for doing good.  I asked him to tell the Republicans and Teacans to take a hike, and to uphold his oath to defend the Constitution by ordering the Treasury to pay the bills this Congress and previous Congresses had already incurred. I privately hoped he would prove his most die-hard supporters right in supposing that he had all along been pursuing a sort of rope-a-dope strategy to ensnare and whip the evil doing Republicans and Teacans.

Sadly, we now know for certain that those hopes, as well as my request, would be realized in only the most tragic ways.  Turns out zerO had roped himself  (the obvious dope in this strategy) and the Democrats up in knots, and delivered wholesale victory to the evil of right wing ideology.  And, in a very perverse way, zerO decided to do something good on a Sunday, after all. He has today given the poor and middle class one hell of a good screwing.

Pelosi and Reid and Obama .... Oh,No!!!

This is not the land of OZ, but it sure feels like it lately. As this is being written, zerObama has ordered Pelosi and Reid to a meeting at the White House.  Boehner and McConnell have just concluded an egregiously bombastic and obnoxious press conference.

There are only two possibilities as to what the meeting is all about: zerObama has decided to grow-up, save his presidency, and assert his constitutional prerogatives, as well as meet his obligation to pay the bills  Congress has already incurred, or the big zerO is going to cave yet again to the crazies who are on a mission to destroy social security, medicare, and the middle class.

My guess? I have no confidence in zerO. We are in for long-term depression economics and a simultaneous shredding of the social safety net because this punk president is clueless and spineless. Pain and suffering all around. will be imposed on the vast majority of Americans, the rapidly shrinking middle class and the poor, but the plutocrats who own and operate almost all of the sell-out politicians will continue to make out like the bandits they are.

You don't know how fervently I hope I'm wrong.

Okay, You Decide

Often, I am tempted to supply conclusions I believe should be drawn from the facts pertinent to this or that issue, especially when I hear incorrect opinions based on the same information flooding the conversation, and crowding out the truth. This time I will refrain, I will let the facts speak for themselves. So, see if you hear what these facts are telling us the same way I do.

This morning's Times-Picayune contains a wealth of very useful, factual financial information relative to the right wing Republican/Teacan manufactured debt crisis. The article clearly breaks down three key areas of interest in this matter.

1. When was the current U.S. debt accumulated, and in what amount? The answer to this is during the George W. Bush administration it was piled up in almost 3 times the amount incurred at any other period in our history.
2. What is the total debt, and who holds it? The answer is the total debt is 14.3 trillion dollars, and 9.8 trillion dollars (69%)  is held by Americans. It is held by individuals, corporations, banks, insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds, state and local governments, and federal government trust funds like social security. That leaves 31% in the hands of foreign investors, with only 13% held by China, contrary to the widespread myth that China is our "banker." In point of fact, we are our own "banker."
3. Who would be in danger of being jilted on payments Congress previously agreed to make, if there really were a default after August 2nd? The answer includes innocent American victims such as social security recipients, medical providers, school systems, Federal employees, and Defense vendors (that is, the people and businesses who make the stuff our sons and daughters use to defend us).

So, a default would deliver great pain to a great number of good, solid American citizens and businesses who, in good faith, invested their hard-earned money in the United States of America. The idea that the United States of America would intentionally and needlessly deliver such pain to itself is like someone with a headache beating themselves in the head with a stick until the pain stops.

I won't say that people who would do such a thing are stupid or crazy, or both. I will let you decide.

The Only Day Of The Week That Makes Any Sense

You guessed it, this is Friday. Whoopee! Finally, after a long week of hard work, we get to the only day that makes any sense. It immediately precedes another of the great gifts of the labor movement, the weekend.

It is the easiest day to wake up to early, and the one I always anxiously want to get started, so as to get it over. You see, like most, I really do have a lot of other things I would rather be doing in life than that which I undertake to make a living.

Don't get me wrong, I am proud of the work I do and really don't resent or mind the physical and mental effort required to do it well. Union electricians earn every penny we make, and, thankfully, because we are union, we usually make enough of them for us and our families to get by on.

Regrettably, we just can't say that about most of the folks who work hard nowadays in this supposedly affluent country. And the various reasons we cannot are why I spend time writing this blog. But more on that perhaps later today, after I knock-off for the week from wiring the new East New Orleans Library.

Happy Friday!

What's It All About, Alfie?

Just a few thoughts at the close of the day on what has brought us to the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in as a people.

The rise of the right in the modern era began in the mid 1960's. Except for brief interludes of sanity, it has been on the march since that time. Its power is embodied in today's Republican Party, as well as in the newly organizing crazies known as the Tea Party (or, as I refer to them, Teacans).

What great and dramatic change occurred in the 60's to bring this on? Well, you know. Of course you do, don't pretend otherwise.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act finally enshrined the official and permanent renunciation of the original sin of this nation and this government (note: this characterization should in no way be misconstrued as a suggestion that anything could ever match or exceed the genocidal horrors visited on native Americans). But it did not purge the land of sinners. No, plenty remained, and they all resented mightily their well deserved moral upbraiding and scolding by this governmental action. No longer would they have the freedom to deny others their freedom.

An angry reaction not only was expected, it was openly welcomed and encouraged by the Republican Party. By 1968, a truly twisted and unlikely person, Richard Nixon, following his blatantly racially tinged "southern strategy," was able to win the presidency. The unrepentant sinners were responding in droves to the Republican anti-government rhetoric, which clearly translated into the message that anything powerful enough to insure equal rights for black people, was too damn powerful to do anything right.

The New Deal coalition was broken. And average white working people have been suckered into voting against their own economic self-interest, even survival, on every issue from taxes to unions and public education to banking regulation ever since. It has gotten so bad that they now are on the verge of acceding to the dismantlement of social security and medicare. Truly, such a thing would be an unprecedented act of economic suicide.

Unsurprisingly, the only groups who benefit from this dirty and thoroughly disreputable anti-government crusade are the well off, and the very well off. The rest of us suffer.

Ironically, many of those suffering the most are perhaps the greatest contingent of the Tea Party movement. They are clearly disaffected, hurting, confused, and angry. But whether they know it or not,  they have largely brought this pain and uncertainty on themselves.

Saying Something Stupid .... or Right Wing Talk Radio

The other day I heard Garland Robinette interview Loyola economics professor Bill Barnett on the WWL Radio mid-day ignorance show. These two luminescent intellects were attempting to enlighten the rest of us on the subject of social security by explaining that it is going broke ( at least according to them, it's really not ... but that's for another post) because, over the long haul, recipients take out much, much more than than the amount of money their individual contributions plus a fair market rate of return would have produced. They were chuckling and wrongly disparaging the most successful and important element of our social safety net in this manner so as to persuade us that it is unaffordable and must be gotten rid of, and that if you don't see it their way you are just greedy.

Oh, really? I remember these same two dim bulbs agreeing on something quite different back during the time when George Bush was trying to persuade us to privatize social security. Then, they were telling us that we would be better off (that is, they were appealing to our greed) by privatizing the program, because we would receive a greater benefit from our contributions plus a fair market rate of return.

Talk about drowning in your own logically lethal box, Houdini couldn't get out of that one.

And Robinette has the gall to call his ignorant show, "The Think Tank."  Think about that.

Things Are Going Swimmingly

Wow! The Times-Picayune this morning indicates we are once again a high achiever. We made it to number 5 on the list of the 12 cities most threatened by global warming. That's right, we're high on another list, alright, we're just not high and dry. The report says climate change can be expected to put the Gulf at our doorstep. Grab the sun screen and let's all head for the beach! I can hear Jimmy Buffet now, "New Margaritaville Orleans."

What I can't hear is any credible plan to head-off this looming disaster. Oh, there are ways to do it, to be sure, but they all involve money, and lots of it. Investing that money would not only save New Orleans and the other 11 cities, but also create vast numbers of new jobs. Hell, it might even give the next generation and more some hope of having a bright economic future on a livable planet. But it cannot and will not happen so long as the stupidity of short-sighted, greedy right wing economic thinking prevails in the land.

Public Meeting ..... Not!

The circus that is Louisiana State Treasurer John Kennedy came to town tonight. Once again the caravan of misinformation, false claims, phony predictions and cheap shots regarding the new LSU University Medical Center were unpacked for the performance ( an elaboration of the particulars in this matter can be read at  Hospitals and Restaurants). This post, though, is aimed at addressing an even more ominous trend than the  mendacity of politicians like John Kennedy and his henchman in this endeavour, David Vitter.

It is enough to give democracy and town halls a bad name. What is?  Why, staged shows like this one. It was ginned up to look like a public meeting, but was in fact more like scripted theatre. Virtually everyone there appeared to have learned of the event by way of a very limited notification process controlled by the circus itself, so as to insure an appreciative audience. Of course, all the media in town seemed to have been summoned to dutifully fawn over this charade.

Happily, Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO President Robert Hammond had managed to get wind of it, and invited me to accompany him. Mr. Hammond, as usual, did an outstanding job at the microphone straightening out much of the misinformation coming from Kennedy.

But in a sense the larger and more important matter comes down to this: When is a public meeting not a public meeting?  Why, when it is a public fraud, like many a politician.

Double Team Them, Again

Hillary 2012.

Face it, zerObama is a menace, get over it, and, as that well known progressive group proclaims, move on.

For sure, Hillary by now would have spanked these newbie, badly behaving, Republican/Teacan Congress Members, instead of cooing to them and futilely trying to rock them to sleep in their dirty diapers.

After all, Bill the other day came out full square in favor of the President exercising the constitutional option and satisfying the imperative of continuing to pay bills already incurred, regardless of misguided obstructionism by the Congress. For more on this, see earlier post,  Make My Day.

I don't know how much pillow talk still goes on between Hillary and Bill, but I bet they agree on this.

To Tell The Truth

Those of a certain age will know the television program reference in the title of this post. It seemed appropriate since I just watched President Obama on the tube being untruthful on the very serious subject of being a certain age.

He referred to his willingness to make adjustments to Medicare as part of an overall strategy to reduce spending. This sellout of seniors on his part has been fairly well reported over the last several weeks. And these reports, none of which has ever been denied, uniformly say that his intention is to raise the eligibility age from 65 to 67.

 Hold aside for a moment how awful, needless, and immoral it is to attack the social safety net for any reason, and ask if the proposed changes really would reduce costs. The answer is absolutely not.

Raising the Medicare eligibility age by two years will cause many seniors to watch helplessly as their fragile health declines, while they wait for the chance to receive needed care. Everyone can see the cruelty in this, but what is not as obvious is the false economy. The two year wait for care will not save the system money, it will cost more. Healthy seniors are not a cost burden no matter the eligibility age, but those with health problems, made to wait two years for treatment while the problems worsen, ultimately will present more difficult and expensive care issues. Of course, some will die during the two year wait, but probably not enough to offset the added costs of those who survive with greater infirmities for having delayed treatments.

So, if it's not even going to save us any money, why in the world should we sit by quietly while Obama and his Republican co-conspirators plot to kill off the old and ailing?

Yeah, I know, that's a pretty crass call to action, but I'm getting to where I'll try anything to encourage folks to notice that real people have very few real friends in all of this mess. I'm hoping all it takes is to tell the truth.

Make My Day

Please, Mr. President, act like a progressive, even though by now we all know you really are not one. Just for once, Mr. President, please, please do yourself and the country a favor, and act like you are on the side of the vast majority of the people, not the plutocrats.

This is Sunday. What better day of the week to do something good for a change. Go on, you can do it, I know you can. Tell the Republicans and Teacans to take a hike. Tell them that you will have no hand in their crazed determination to destroy most of what is good and right about America. Tell them you will no longer allow their dirty little schemes against hard working middle class Americans to soil your presidency. Quit the quixotic effort to drain the evil from their ideological swamp, come back to the high ground, and let them drown in their own turpitude.

Let them betray their true goals to the American people. Let them offer up a plan to realize their fantasy right wing economic agenda. Let them demonstrate once and for all that this foolishness relies on, indeed requires, the elimination of social security and medicare.

Get out of the way and let them explain to the American people how attacking the elderly will benefit anyone, including the younger generation. Let them tell the next generation that they can no longer expect to raise and provide for their own children, or otherwise go forward with their lives and dreams, unencumbered by the duty to house, feed, and clothe their own aged parents, as well as pick up the tab on obscenely high medical bills, courtesy of the out of control, rapacious greed of insurance companies, drug companies, and medical providers. Let them try to describe how foisting these ridiculous burdens on current workers will allow them to enjoy a decent standard of living, much less stimulate any semblance of an economic recovery. Please, don't just let these no good bastards try to do all this, make them.

But don't let them push the whole world, along with us, to the brink and over the edge of utter collapse, as they are threatening to do. You took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, the same one that says the validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned. So, do your duty, pay the bills. Dare the extortionists in Congress to shirk their own responsibility, violate their oath, and try to stop you  upholding yours. Just tell them, go ahead, make my day.

Debunking Exercise

So, by now everyone has heard - endlessly - from the scaremonger, panic stampeding Republicans and Teacans that unless we adopt stringently austere contractionary policies now, America will turn into umm .... Greece or maybe Spain or maybe even Italy. The ensuing horrors would be endless and awful, they say.

And, of course, we would deserve these punishments for our persistent crazed attempts to do what we can to maintain a middle class in this country. That is, for continuing to press for creation of well paying jobs - and lots of them, insuring good schools, nutrition and health for all children, as well as insisting on maintaining a secure and stable income stream and health care system for the elderly.

I have two questions.

Why do these people hate children, workers and elderly Americans so much? I dunno.

But I sometimes think they should be made to answer after at least five minutes of personal face time in front of a mirror.

How is America like Greece or any other Eurozone country? Not at all.

Only the economically illiterate imagine the slightest comparison is valid. The literate who say so, by contrast, are consciously spreading unfounded fears to force acquiescence to their own self-interested, greedy policies. I hardly know a better definition of evil. It makes you want to ask a strongly implied third question.

Why do these people hate America so much that they would make us out to be economically on a par in any way with the likes of Greece or Spain or even Italy?

The Eurozone countries are basket cases for having surrendered autonomous monetary power to the euro system, without simultaneously forging political unity and responsibility for overarching social needs. The dracma, the pesepa, the lira, the franc, etc. have all gone away. The euro is now the common currency of  the sundry European countries. And its supply is controlled through the operation of a euro central banking mechanism, outside and beyond the control of individual members of the zone. That means there is no longer any independent state capacity for financing governmental activities.

However, all social needs such as transportation (railroads, roads and bridges, air travel infrastructure, etc.), schools, health care, old age income maintenance, armies and navies, and many, many more remain the function and duty of individual nation states.

We are like this in no way whatsoever. It would be as if overnight the federal government informed, let's say, um .... Alabama, that from now on you will be responsible for all social security, medicare, medicaid,  transportation, education, flood control, defense, and on and on, expenses. But we will control and limit the overall amount of dollars you will have to do all these things.

Who in their right mind could wish such a stupid state of affairs be visited upon us and our people? Yet, that is precisely the kind of policy course Republicans and Teacans, especially, advocate. A thoroughgoing decentralization of governmental functions. They call it federalism, they don't call it catastrophe or disaster, but that is precisely what it would be.

So, it is, at the end of the day, incumbent upon the rest of us to ask the strongly implied question.

Why do these people hate America so much?

Hemingway and New Orleans

A brief aside for a rumination. I neglected to note yesterday was the birthday of the greatest artist in American letters of the twentieth century.

And except that I have for all of my reading life carried him around in my head, I am not aware that Hemingway was ever in New Orleans. Still, I have long believed, at least since the first two years of our marriage when my wife and I lived in the French Quarter, that had he been a young journalist here instead of in Paris in the 1920's when he so movingly portrayed Paris as a "Moveable Feast" during the time "we were young and poor and happy," Paris would by now be a mere afterthought in favor of this wonderful place.

Tragical History Tour

Movement is a sign of life. So, for several years now we have been able to, if nothing else, at least assure ourselves the economy remains alive as it oscillates in the range of back up, full stop, inch forward. If it had an automatic transmission, the shifter would read reverse, neutral, drive  creep.  It's like we're all being taken for a ride, but we're not getting anywhere, certainly not where we want or need to go.

Worse, the most vocal tour guides keep pointing us to the car crusher. They insist that the already severely depressed economy head down the road of further contraction. Such a hard right turn in a time of slack and sagging economic activity puts us on a one-way street to the junk yard.

Look, the corporate class is flush with cash, bank reserves are full to the brim, money is available to borrow at historically low interest rates, but there is little or no private sector investment because demand has utterly tanked, thanks to the totally tapped out consumer. It has absolutely nothing to do with government debt or deficits. Nothing. It has everything to do with the debt burdened balance sheets of everyday Americans.

A vibrant and vigorously growing economy needs a strong market for its goods and services, it needs customers with money to spend. It is just that simple. But working people in this country are overextended, scared to death, underpaid, and often not paid at all except for unemployment insurance. The good news is that the public sector, that is, government, can come to the rescue. The bad news is that it won't because we are too stupid or ignorant to let it.

Harsh words, I know. But I also know that we as a people richly deserve them. As others like Nobel laureate and NY Times columnist, Paul Krugman, have pointed out, this is like 1937 all over again. By then,  the New Deal had managed to pull the country from the depths of the Depression to a condition of nascent recovery.  But conservative political and economic pressure pushed FDR to reign in the spending in favor of belt tightening, budget balancing nonsense, and, bam, things started to go south again. Only the lavish spending occasioned by a small matter known as WWII was finally able to restore economic vitality. I would like to think that we are hellbent on reprising that script because we are historically illiterate, that we wouldn't act so stupidly if we knew what we were doing. But I fear I'm wrong.

zerObama

I still have the T-shirt. It says, "IBEW For Obama/Biden." That's on the front, the back says,"Labor 2008." Even then I was dubious and unimpressed. In fact, I admit it, I favored John Edwards, my wife had been with Hillary, and one son actually was always solidly for Obama, while the other son played guitar and painted. That's life.

Subsequent to the truly historic victory, I got the poster. You know the one, it proclaims, "Yes We Did" and it hangs handsomely in my den, even as this is being written.

However,  I could not now be more disappointed or disgusted. At least I thought I could not be until last night when I caught a clip of zerObama explaining to some group of students that he is so into compromise because Lincoln was, too, as evidenced by the Emancipation Proclamation.

Good Lord, here is a guy who not only is not into us, Democrats that is, as stated before by Paul Krugman, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/, he is not even into American History. A freshman in an American History survey course learns that the Proclamation had nothing to do with compromise, but was a lethal dagger Lincoln had longed to stick in the Confederacy, and he did just that at the earliest, most effective possible time, "freeing" all the slaves he had the power as president to free. Misinterpreting any part of this as some kind of compromise is stunningly stupid or ignorant or both.

Easy Economics Made Hard

With all the angst and anguish, carping and cat-calls, as well as just plain ignorance suffusing most public discussion of this terrible economy, you would be tempted to believe that it must be really, really, hard to figure out what we should be doing. Actually, it's pretty easy.

Just be ready to reject boilerplate truisms which sound like, well, sound advice.

An example is the oft repeated, "You can't get out of debt by making more debt." This kind of saying almost irresistibly elicits the thought, "Who could argue with that?" Well, the answer is that you could, and you not only could, you absolutely should. Here's why.

Getting out of debt by incurring more of it is extremely common. And it is common because it works. I bet you've done it, I know I have.

I have borrowed money to go to school and improve my income. I have bought tools on credit so I could perform work which would otherwise have been unavailable to me. I have made a loan to buy a truck to get to work instead of remaining unemployed.

I could go on. Your list may be different, but it comes to the same thing: using debt to make valuable investments yields greater value.

Now, take a look at the economy and what's wrong. We are suffering from scandalously high long-term unemployment, many who still have jobs are staggering under personal debt loads brought on both by lagging wages and the housing market collapse, much of our core infrastructure is simply falling apart from age and neglect, we remain dependent on fossil fuels which are subject to painful supply and price volatility, and, oh yeah, which are also killing the planet. Add to all of this that the wealthy pay lower tax rates, by far, than they have in over fifty years, all during the time the great American middle class was building and growing, instead of shrinking and dying as it is today. Now, there we have a real Kodak moment.

So, what do we do? Well, when you consider that business is raking in record profits, piling up money like never before without really having to do much if anything by way of investment, don't expect any relief from there. And with the beaten-down, scared as hell, nearly broke average consumer unlikely to cause any great uptick in demand or consequent need for private hiring, that leaves only government spending to break the stalemate.

You can be certain that if the simple, and simple-minded, prescriptions of  government frugality and retrenchment we hear everyday are taken seriously, and the public sector draws back too, we are in for a protracted period of hopelessness and decline.

The good news though is that money is as cheap as it has ever been. Interest rates are at rock bottom and no one wants to use this virtually "free" money. You can't make them. But the government sure as hell can use it, and use it well to invest in righting all the things gone wrong (see list above).

Rather than look to cut 2 to 4 trillion in spending, we should use that much or more to repair and rebuild hundred year old crumbling water systems, sewers, schools and bridges. These are all investments we know from experience pay off at least the rate of ten to fifteen percent on every nickel. Research and development of new and renewable fuel sources could well return far greater monetary dividends, as well as certainly relieve the burdens of climate change, coastal erosion, and vanishing traditional energy sources.

Also, do not fail to realize that cutting government spending now actually will explode the deficit and debt by further contracting economic activity, reducing revenues, and occasioning greater safety net expenditures. In other words, it is an open invitation for an unwelcome visit from our old friend Painful Irony.

We really should borrow damn near every penny on the planet that's being offered at near zero interest, and use it to restore real value to the balance sheets of the average citizen who then would be in a position to spike demand and cause private sector economic revival.

It is just that easy. It's so easy, I didn't even have to figure it out for myself. It's in all the history books. If we would only care to remember and be honest about the lessons of the past, it would be a lot easier on all of us. If we do not, it is going to be very, very hard for most of us for a very, very, long time.

HOSPITALS AND RESTAURANTS

First up, the hospital. Yeah, that's right, THE hospital. You know, the one we should have, the one we can have, and the one we have to have if we are to have the healthy and prosperous future we deserve to have.

The new University Medical Center (UMC), as proposed by LSU, easily will be the sweetest and most trans formative economic development in New Orleans or Louisiana since Etienne de Bore teased out a way to granulate sugar from cane here in 1795, and thereby revolutionized the agricultural base of the colony. It will anchor a world class Medical District bolstered by the almost billion dollar on-campus Veterans Administration Hospital facility, already underway. These two hospitals, together with the nearly completed LSU Cancer Research Center and the just finished New Orleans Bioinnovation complex neighboring on the downtown/river flank of the District, leave no room to doubt that we are on the threshold of  the greatest economic, intellectual, and social investment in our history.

As the comprehensive plan and vision for the District is realized, it will rival or surpass even the likes of MD Anderson. The best medical practitioners and research professionals from around the country will want to participate in its successes and achievements, people of means with the need for the best medical care available anywhere will flock to it, and, yes, people without means, who once depended upon old Charity, will enjoy a far superior level of treatment, care regimen, and outcomes than ever before.

Oh, that is of course unless the usual cast of self-interested money grubbers, in concert with their "Best in Show" well-kept kennel of political barkers, as well as those clueless dupes, the self-righteous (and deluded) do-gooder preservationist saviours of the city, can put across enough lies, stunts and tricks to derail the proposal. So let's look at the grubber-barker-gooder cabal (the GBGC or, if you prefer, the Unhealthy Alliance) and see what mischief they've been up to.

The grubbers include all those virtuous souls who long ago perfected a strategy of living high while raking money off the bones of the sick and dying, often even to the very last penny, and then some. For my money, all of the private health care operators - including the so-called non-profits - have earned the right to be so characterized. In the New Orleans area, Tulane and Ochsner enjoy marquee roles.

As for Tulane, it (and HCA, its partner in the operation of the Tulane Medical facility, which admits brags that its Nashville founding in 1968 places it among the very first hospital corporations in the country, a distinction some might imagine could have only been outshone by Marcello touting his pioneering work in the South) has more or less taken the lead in publicly maneuvering to exercise unwarranted control and undue influence over the scope, governance, and operation of the new Medical Center.

You see, Tulane Medical has long enjoyed a sort of free-rider status relative to the old Charity across the street. Tulane claimed training spots for its students and creamed high-end, insured, paying patients who might have initially been brought to Charity for emergency treatment, while LSU shouldered the real burdens of maintaining an aging, outmoded, and often underfunded public charity medical facility in a seriously impoverished urban setting. Now, good old Tulane is once again gaming the system hard to reap a huge portion of the benefits from whatever eventually comes about in the new District, while sticking LSU with the load. No wonder they call themselves the "Green Wave," always wanting to just swim in the money.

Although to date Ochsner has kept a low public profile, make no mistake that its financial interests would be clearly challenged by the full development of the UMC, as envisioned by LSU. And when such powerful financial interests are on the block, their political power always pushes hard (often behind the scenes) to insure an outcome wildly in favor of the health of the old pocketbook. I'd sooner bet against there being snakes in the swamp than Ochsner having politicians in its pockets.

Speaking of pocket politicians, I give you David Vitter. This cad is well-known for being interested in what's in his pants, as well as what's in others' - if you get my meaning. Anyway, as for his 11th hour crazy scheme to buy some used goods from Tulane/HCA and scatter-shoot pitiful little satellite clinics, significantly distant and inaccessible from the area where the indigent most need them, it was always only intended as a distraction. Meanwhile, Vitter's more serious attack on the UMC took the form of using his exalted senatorial status to block any effort at securing Federal backing for the bonds needed to complete funding for the new teaching hospital. Can you think of a dirtier abuse of power than intentionally jeopardizing health care for the most vulnerable among us just to satisfy some peculiar ideological idiocy and grovel at the feet of  political financiers? Thankfully, all the poster boy for Christian hypocrisy accomplished was to prove that the private market is actually awash in money, which can be had at dirt cheap interest rates by those - including public entities - willing to borrow and invest, contrary to scare mongering claims of imminent sky-rocketing interest rates, spread by knuckle headed right-wing conservative economists and pols. Consequently, financing for the UMC development, as proposed by LSU, was not even dented by the rocks little David slung at it.

Still, our would-be giant slayer did manage somehow to enlist two other little guys in the disreputable business of trying to scuttle the UMC, Treasurer John Kennedy and House Speaker Jim Tucker. Actually, the how part is not so difficult to figure out. John Kennedy is easily the silliest gadfly on the Louisiana political scene in generations. He wants to be everything, and imagines that he already is. He has tried and failed to become governor and a U.S. senator, and so has to content himself in the relatively useless post of treasurer. He is constantly ignorantly running his mouth on every subject under public consideration, in whatever media format is made available. When Vitter gave him the chance to make a big public splash, another belly-flop command performance was simply not to be avoided. As for Tucker, well, he is after all a legislator, a Louisiana legislator. And in the inimitable words of Earl Long, "There is not a man, woman, or child safe in the state of Louisiana when the legislature is in session." This guy has been all over the map on this one because he is only being true to legislative form. My guess is he will wind up where he started, in the camp of those pushing for the LSU plan, because that is where a Louisiana House Speaker would naturally be most comfortable.

Singing backup en falsetto in this grand ensemble we find our dear friends, the self-labeled preservationists. Bless their little hearts, or should I say heads? They only want what's best for us, right? I guess the best health care available anywhere in the country doesn't meet that standard though. Nor does the chance to put New Orleans on a footing for First World economic standing again, the first time in over one hundred fifty years. But before I go too far in portraying these guys as all the same, let me quickly point out that they are indeed of two distinct types. The leadership group is most assuredly never confused or mistaken about the whys concerning the campaigns they undertake. Their mission and motivation is always to preserve the status and standing of the upper-crust. They are the public front for the established money interests in this town who, more than anything else, are dedicated to remaining big fish in a small bowl, even at the cost of grinding poverty and endless deprivation for the majority of the population desperate for hope, for opportunity, for economic vitality and growth. Their greedy designs and schemes have been and are at work and on display in venues ranging from the Harrah's/Rivergate confrontation to the fight for the commercial revitalization of Canal Street to the instant case of a fight for the preservation of a "historic" district that never was. Sadly, the truly idealistic, well-intentioned citizen activist foot soldier preservationists are clueless dupes in this confrontation of competing and irreconcilably oppositional social interests. What is worse, they are dupes on two scores. The first and easiest one to expose is that, while they see themselves as executing audible calls from a Heavenly playbook, all along they are mere camp arms or, at best, back-ups to Hades' first string. The aristocratic, upper-crust  "PRESERVATIONIST" banner wavers gin these unsuspecting guys and gals up with all manner of "High Popalurum and Low Popahirum," throw them against the ramparts of progress and prosperity, and tell them it's really Rampart Street, and must be defended from the infidel despoilers of our pristine, sacrosanct heritage. What hooey!

Pathetically, they buy it. All of it. They swallow and repeat, even in letters to the Times-Picayune newspaper, blatantly false, and  intentionally  misleading costs assigned to operating the new UMC. Such a figure is the 100 million dollar annual state subsidy projected as necessary to sustain the new facility. This number is stupidly batted about to discredit the brilliant new Medical District, without ever caring to note the fact that the old, decrepit Charity was already knocking down 70 million dollars of that annual subsidy, just to keep it limping along. Additionally, they rely on the highly suspect and dubious conclusions of a firm that specializes in "Historic Architecture Preservation" which assert that a modern, state-of-the-art, high-tech modern medical facility could be shoehorned into the hoary, ossified, fossil of a structure which once housed Charity. Pshaw! These are the findings of an outfit with a clear interest in the outcome of this debate. Utter, utter, stupefying nonsense.

Worse, these luminescent intellects uniformly lack the perspicacity to question the basic foundation of their so-called "progressive" approach to these matters. In fact, their perspective is decidedly reactionary and backward. Preservation is for items kept in a museum or jars of formaldehyde. Vibrant, vigorous, thriving life requires the freedom to change and grow, to take paths not trodden and explore dimensions unknown and untested. Conservation of natural and cultural resources bequeathed to our generation is what is needed to move confidently and exuberantly into the future, not morbid preservation of what has already flowered and gone to seed. Preservation is a deadend.

Lastly, we turn as promised to the subject of restaurants. And, no, I am not here contemplating the notion of a last meal. But I do intend to deal, however briefly, with matters touching on life and death, and the so-called hospitality industry. Seems like a fitting conclusion to a piece dealing in the main with hospitals and health care, don't you think?

Anyway, we have recently experienced two very tragic traumatic events involving life-threatening injuries to highly regarded, well known restaurateurs/chefs in New Orleans. One was the result of a shooting, and the other a vehicle accident. In both cases, medical expenses were reported to have gone stratospherically out of reach. And just a year of so before these two incidents, a similar set of dire financial circumstances obtained for another high profile chef, as a consequence of unexpected complications arising from a rather mundane, day in-day out bump on the leg. In each of these cases, a widely publicized and ballyhooed fund raising campaign was undertaken by the hospitality industry as a whole to retire the staggering debts piled up by the need for expensive care, and the lack of adequate or, perhaps, any medical insurance coverage. Good for them, the leaders of the local hospitality industry, you might say, for extending help to colleagues in time of need.

But is that really the appropriate take away from these episodes?  I think not. What about the legions of ordinary work-a-day employees, uncelebrated and nameless to most of us, save for maybe a stamped plastic pin-on tag announcing that she indeed is Stacy, as in, "High, I'm Stacy, and I'll be your server today." What about the hard working people who take your order and bring your dinner, who dutifully answer your call for more of this or that or something else altogether, or who sweat and swelter over sizzling and searing surfaces preparing the day's bill of fare for your consumption and satisfaction, what happens to them when illness, accident or crime lays them low? I'll tell you what happens, they suffer mightily, sometimes they die, never are they celebrated and rescued from financial calamity courtesy of industry sponsored, party hardy, fund raising public displays of phony sympathy and concern. Almost all employees in restaurants and related businesses are  meagerly, nay, miserably compensated. Their greedy employers don't give a fig about providing even a decent wage, much less health insurance. Tip well, they sure as hell need it. But don't kid yourself, tips never fill the hole their stingy employers put them in. So, I'll give you a tip: when you see a rich restaurateur feigning social responsibility by coming to the "rescue" of a quaint little theatre in the hottest tourist district, while wanting to open yet another in a string of restaurants there, think how many workers have gone without the basics so that the boss could go around so casually flush, a real sharpie seeming so like a swell. Hospitality industry my left foot.

SHOUT OUT

Welcome to New Orleans Labor Voice. The NOLV blog begins with this post. It is offered as a vehicle to carry the voice of labor in New Orleans on local issues, as well as opinions and analysis of the political economy of the nation and world at large, from the working person's point of view.

The attitude here likely will seem  fairly aggressive, that is intentional. Someone once said that Winston Churchill drafted all the words in the English language, and marched them off to war during the darkest days of the bombing of London at the start of WWII.  History tells us that came out okay, despite the odds at the time. And while the assault on working people today may not be as overtly violent, it is just as serious and dedicated a campaign of violence on our standing in society and our capacity to live and work in dignity and security. Hence, what should be said will be said; more importantly, what needs to be addressed will never be ignored.

After years of  a devastatingly debilitating quietude, labor will have a clear, steady and forceful voice. Working people will reclaim a rightfully dominant, essential and just place in the debate on the important political and economic issues of the day. Conscious and ill-intentioned advocates of right-wing nonsense and hate, and the plutocrats who alone benefit from it, will be uncompromisingly exposed and dispatched with cogent argument and facts in support of the average citizen, desperate to once again enjoy a sense of  fair-play, hope, opportunity and prosperity. While even supposed allies -given to seduction by wrong-headed, uninformed, and misguided ideas, policies, and positions - will be challenged, chastised and corrected. Stick around.