A hero for our times — Aung San Suu Kyi

The Burmese military regime just released the rightful leader of Burma from 20 years of on-and-off house arrest. 

She has committed her life to democracy in the country renamed as Myanmar by the military so much so that she didn’t see her dying husband in London for fear that if she left her homeland she would not be allowed back.

She is a hero by the example of her life and should not be measured by whether or not she brings democracy to Burma.  And no one knows what democracy means to a people under totalitarian rule for at least two generations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi

I visited Burma on a lark shortly after Aung San Suu Kyi was popularly elected and then prevented from seating her government.  It was a crazy time to be there.  Stupid in retrospect. 

Burma is a beautiful country with natural and archeological treasures.  

The military desecrates these treasures as easily as it does cemeteries, houses of worship and monasteries.  Some of the country is as ungovernable as are parts of Afghanistan, where tribes and drug trade rule.

Veterans Day

Yesterday was Veteran’s Day.

I was thinking a lot about war and life yesterday.  When I became a mother and god-mother, I understood that if my son (or god-daughters) went to war, I would have to go as well, because anything that is worth my child’s life, is worth my life.  (And the corollary: if you mess with my children, you mess with me.)  Of course, I think it would be hard to take your mom into battle.  But if you know me, you know that the enemy should be really, really, scared.

So, I am grateful to the young men and women who routinely put their lives at risk for the high stakes political chess that our world leaders play with way too much glee and ooky blood lust.

And I am grateful to the veterans of prior wars for their sacrifices.  It is hard to imagine old men and women in their prime, as spies (www.dailymail.co.uk/…/Tragedy-WWII-spy-Eileen-Nearne-escaped-Gestapo-died-alone.html) and soldiers and nurses on the front.  They look so old and enfeebled now.

Today, as I was leaving my office, I saw two old men in wheel chairs.  Using “old” is somewhat euphemistic.  “Ancient” is more appropriate.  Incapacitated and dependent.  When I see random ancient people on the street (as opposed to family), I cannot think of them as once young and vibrant.  I just see strangers with no past and probably not much of a future.

Except the two old men in their wheelchairs with their attendants were wearing war medals and insignias of their military service.  All of a sudden, they were not inconvenient and uncomfortable reminders of my future decrepitude.  I know that when they were young, they were warriors.  Given the number of medals, they were brave warriors.   And they have stories, of war and peace, love and hate, passion and indifference.  Maybe these were good, generous, upright men.  Maybe they weren’t.  Probably, like all of us, they fell somewhere in between.

Two of my uncles were reluctant warriors in WWII.  One was captured and imprisoned.  I know his story, which is powerful (www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Shapiro.html).  It was hard to know these things about my uncle.  I know it was hard for my uncle to remember, transcend the evil, and have his story known.

It wasn’t until my other uncle, Uncle Al, died about 9 years ago that I learned he fought in the Pacific in WWII.  He never talked about it (or maybe we just didn’t see enough of him to draw him out).  My father thinks he was at Guadalcanal.  Of course, that generation never talked about the war, even when the effects of the war crippled, or at least altered, the trajectories of their post-war lives.

Truth is that I didn’t know this uncle very well.  He was the third of five sons and got short shrift by three generations of our family.  He was a quiet man with great artist skill.  I wonder if I would have interacted with him differently if, while he was alive, I knew to look at his life through the prism of the bloodshed he must have witnessed and (possibly) perpetrated in some of the most grisly fighting of WWII.

Today, we have veterans who need our support.  Whether or not we agree with the politics, their mere willingness to go to war to protect and defend us is heroic.  We owe it to these young men and women to learn their stories, help them re-acclimate to post-war lives, and protect them from their deepest, darkest memories of combat and, yes, deal with the bad things they did “over there”.

It is hard to imagine that some of our warriors and their families have not yet been granted US citizenship.  It is hard to imagine that some of our warriors and their families are treated like second class citizens because of sexual orientation.  It is hard to believe that anyone thinks our returning veterans don’t deserve the very best in medical care and social services.

I just hope that no one has to wonder, when the veterans of our generation are in wheelchairs with attendants, if they will be remembered and honored.  I hope the next generations remember that they once were warriors, protecting and defending us.

From Ben to Bust in 234 years

Benjamin Franklin, a rock star of his generation, said, when signing the Declaration of Independence, “United we stand, divided we fall.”  Our founding fathers and the colonies, united, defeated a great and mighty empire.

Throughout our brief yet notable history, the cities of our nation were known for the dog-eat-dog way that fellow citizens treated their neighbors, eschewing the cornerstone of religious faith, all the while claiming to be part of the most upright of Christian nations.  But, outside the cities (or so I would like to think), neighbors helped each other and generations of families lived together, all working to keep everyone afloat.  Maybe it is the romantic myth of the heartland.  But, I am buying it, lock, stock and barrel.

Today, we live in a society where people are more worried about their morning lattes than they are about ending our two wars, reducing our crushing debt and the stopping all politicking, all of which threaten to bankrupt out nation.

There is no silver bullet cure for our woes.

I heard today that people say that the Congress should not have saved the 300,000 teacher and firefighter jobs because their unions are too strong and teachers earn too much for doing too little.  Ok, so, make the unions feel some pain, but does that justify keeping the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans?  The illogic is frightening and delusional.

So the great experiment started in 1776 is rounding the drain because of greed and me-first-middle-and-last mind think.

Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I will forgo my Bush tax cut that I never wanted and didn’t need to pay for health care and to start reducing the deficit.

How about this:  we make giving up the tax cuts voluntary.  Just like the optional $1.00 gift to Wildlife Preservation (or is it public campaign finance?) on our tax forms.  Just put a line item on the 2010 tax return that says, “This is how much more you would pay if the Bush tax cuts lapsed.  Do you want to pay this amount (a) to reduce the deficit, (b) to pay for health care for the uninsured or (c) 50% to each?” and publish the list of people who contribute to these funds.

Maybe neighbors will embarrass neighbors into paying the money (because if you’re not on the list, either you’re selfish or you don’t make enough) or we have a pledge drive and use positive peer pressure.

Either way, Mr. President, I am with you for letting lapse the tax cut I never wanted and our nation couldn’t afford.

Reagan insider says GOP destroyed the US Economy

This is so scary that I can’t even comment.  A must read.

Ok, I need to comment:  putting the GOP in charge again is like giving the lunatics the keys to the asylum.

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Reagan Insider: ‘GOP Destroyed U.S. Economy’

by Paul B. Farrell Market Watch
Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts. Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline

“How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy.” Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, “Four Deformations of the Apocalypse.”

Get it? Not “destroying.” The GOP has already “destroyed” the U.S. economy, setting up an “American Apocalypse.”

Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats’ Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider — someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology — says about America, helps all of us better understand how America’s toxic partisan-politics “holy war” is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.

But why focus on Stockman’s message? It’s already lost in the 24/7 news cycle. Why? We need some introspection. Ask yourself: How did the great nation of America lose its moral compass and drift so far off course, to where our very survival is threatened?

We’ve arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican.

Please listen with an open mind, no matter your party affiliation: This makes for a powerful history lesson, because it exposes how both parties are responsible for destroying the U.S. economy. Listen closely:

Reagan Republican: the GOP should file for bankruptcy

Stockman rushes into the ring swinging like a boxer: “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt … will soon reach $18 trillion.” It screams “out for austerity and sacrifice.” But instead, the GOP insists “that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.”

In the past 40 years Republican ideology has gone from solid principles to hype and slogans. Stockman says: “Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too.”

No more. Today there’s a “new catechism” that’s “little more than money printing and deficit finance, vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes” making a mockery of GOP ideals. Worse, it has resulted in “serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy.” Yes, GOP ideals backfired, crippling our economy.

Stockman’s indictment warns that the Republican party’s “new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one:”

Stage 1. Nixon irresponsible, dumps gold, U.S starts spending binge

Richard Nixon’s gold policies get Stockman’s first assault, for defaulting “on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world.” So for the past 40 years, America’s been living “beyond our means as a nation” on “borrowed prosperity on an epic scale … an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves.”

Remember Friedman: “Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.” Friedman was wrong by trillions. And unfortunately “once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors.”

And without discipline America was also encouraging “global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.” Yes, the road to the coming apocalypse began with a Republican president listening to a misguided Nobel economist’s advice.

Stage 2. Crushing debts from domestic excesses, war mongering

Stockman says “the second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40% of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970.” Who’s to blame? Not big-spending Dems, says Stockman, but “from the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.”

Back “in 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts,” but Stockman makes clear, they had to be “matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration’s hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces — the welfare state and the warfare state — that drive the federal spending machine.”

OK, stop a minute. As you absorb Stockman’s indictment of how his Republican party has “destroyed the U.S. economy,” you’re probably asking yourself why anyone should believe a traitor to the Reagan legacy. I believe party affiliation is irrelevant here. This is a crucial subject that must be explored because it further exposes a dangerous historical trend where politics is so partisan it’s having huge negative consequences.

Yes, the GOP does have a welfare-warfare state: Stockman says “the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending, exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget — entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.”

When Fed chief Paul Volcker “crushed inflation” in the ’80s we got a “solid economic rebound.” But then “the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts.” By 2009, they “reduced federal revenues to 15% of gross domestic product,” lowest since the 1940s. Still today they’re irrationally demanding an extension of those “unaffordable Bush tax cuts [that] would amount to a bankruptcy filing.”

Recently Bush made matters far worse by “rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures.” Bush also gave in “on domestic spending cuts, signing into law $420 billion in nondefense appropriations, a 65% percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy.” Takes two to tango.

Stage 3. Wall Street’s deadly ‘vast, unproductive expansion’

Stockman continues pounding away: “The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector.” He warns that “Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation.” Wrong, not oblivious. Self-interested Republican loyalists like Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner knew exactly what they were doing.

They wanted the economy, markets and the government to be under the absolute control of Wall Street’s too-greedy-to-fail banks. They conned Congress and the Fed into bailing out an estimated $23.7 trillion debt. Worse, they have since destroyed meaningful financial reforms. So Wall Street is now back to business as usual blowing another bigger bubble/bust cycle that will culminate in the coming “American Apocalypse.”

Stockman refers to Wall Street’s surviving banks as “wards of the state.” Wrong, the opposite is true. Wall Street now controls Washington, and its “unproductive” trading is “extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives.” Wall Street banks like Goldman were virtually bankrupt, would have never survived without government-guaranteed deposits and “virtually free money from the Fed’s discount window to cover their bad bets.”

Stage 4. New American Revolution class warfare coming soon

Finally, thanks to Republican policies that let us “live beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore,” while at home “high-value jobs in goods production … trade, transportation, information technology and the professions shrunk by 12% to 68 million from 77 million.”

As the apocalypse draws near, Stockman sees a class-rebellion, a new revolution, a war against greed and the wealthy. Soon. The trigger will be the growing gap between economic classes: No wonder “that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1% of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90% — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12%. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.”

Get it? The decaying fruit of the GOP’s bad economic policies is destroying our economy.

Warning: This black swan won’t be pretty, will shock, soon

His bottom line: “The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing … it’s a pity that the modern Republican party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach — balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline — is needed more than ever.”

Wrong: There are far bigger things to “pity.”

First, that most Americans, 300 million, are helpless, will do nothing, sit in the bleachers passively watching this deadly partisan game like it’s just another TV reality show.

Second, that, unfortunately, politicians are so deep-in-the-pockets of the Wall Street conspiracy that controls Washington they are helpless and blind.

And third, there’s a depressing sense that Stockman will be dismissed as a traitor, his message lost in the 24/7 news cycle … until the final apocalyptic event, an unpredictable black swan triggers another, bigger global meltdown, followed by a long Great Depression II and a historic class war.

So be prepared, it will hit soon, when you least expect.