The New Gilded Age

The Gilded Age occurred in the 1880s.  After the Civil War, the United States has a business/economic boom, which fueled our growth and began the shift from Europe to America as the source of wealth.  It was a time when JP Morgan could gather the bankers to his office to avert an economic panic.  It was a time of the creation of companies like Standard Oil, steel companies, AT&T and the railroads.  Unfortunately not all of this wealth was created by new ideas and streamlining of business but the manipulation of stock on Wall Street, mostly by watering down stocks.  The negative side of this growth was the wide divergence in wealth between the working class and the captains of industry.  The ostentatious displays of wealth were show in the vast mansions and summer homes plus the rapacious buying of antiquities.  The captains of industry purchased politicians and the political bosses ran the government.


We are currently in a new Gilded Age with a vast disparity of income between the middle class and the wealthy.  The profits on Wall Street have come from manipulations of securities that provide no value to the economy other than to enrich the investment banks.  The investment banks funnel huge sums of money to the political campaigns of both parties.  Their lobbyist make the laws of the nation.  They ostentatiously display their wealth as the robber barons of old.

How are we to get ourselves out of this mess?  While Occupy Wall Street is helping to shine light on the problem, they have yet to offer any solutions.  The Gilded Age ended with an accident of history, the arrival of Theodore Roosevelt.  Will Obama be the new Gilded Age's T.R.  Unfortunately, I do not have the answers.

How the Tea Party Got It Wrong

Who are the members of the Tea Party?  They are predominately white, middle class men who are concerned with the economic problems facing America.  They claim that they are concerned about the size of the government and government deficits.  Surprisingly they support the Republicans or perhaps were co-opted by the Dick Armey and the Koch brothers, who took the United States from a surplus to the largest deficits.  Republicans have supported large deficits since Regan.  The Republicans refuse to raise taxes to cut the deficit, not even on the wealthiest one percent and believe in cutting middle class programs, such as Social Security, which would hurt the majority of Tea Party members.  Logically it does not make sense to support a party that is in the pocket of the wealthy.

Why was it acceptable for GW Bush to increase the size of government with unfunded programs such as prescription medicare and No Child Left Behind.  The Tea Party has no problem spending billions of dollars on wars but not on Americans.  It makes me wonder is their problem is that there is a black man in the Oval Office that they want to remove.

Hippiefest

Saturday I participated in Hippiefest a Concert for Peace and Understanding. I was outside where a local band was playing 60s music.  I noticed a few women pretending that they were passing around a joint.  They told me that they were reliving the old days.  Then I noticed a man smoking a cigar; he had a real joint behind his ear.   I saw him smoking it later.  I guess he was getting ready for the concert. There was a display of album cover that were drawn with chalk.  You could purchase it through a silent auction.  Someone did the Beatles "White Album", which my third graders could have done.

The show began with Felix Caivaliere performing the Rascals hits, such as Groovin and People Want to Be Free. He also did Wilson Picket's Midnight Hour.  Rick Derringer performed his hits.  I was not familiar with his work but I recognized Hang on Sloopy and Rock and Roll Hootchiecoo.  Gary Wright, the Dream Weaver, performed his early work with Spooky Toad.  He explained how he wrote Dream Weaver.   Gary was working with George Harrison, who invited him to go to India.  Harrison gave Wright books to read and one contained a poem about a weaver of dreams.  Mark Farner sang Grand Funk Railroad hits, such as Bad Time to Fall in Love, Some Kind of Wonderful and I'm Your Captain.  Dave Mason ended the show.  He performed Only You Know, Feeling Alright and All Along the Watchtower.  He was having problems with his voice so they played a blues song, which his bassist sang.

I was too young to be a hippie but I read about protesters spitting on soldiers returning from Vietnam and calling them names.  All of the artists acknowledged and supported the troops overseas.  Each performer was given an equal amount of time to play, which is a change from past shows.  I was surprised that there were not more people dancing.  I only saw two or three groups.  I guess the Baby Boomers are showing their age.  Despite drinking and at least one person getting high, it was a peaceful evening, just as it was billed.

The Moral Decline of Republicanism

The Republican Party has a schizophrenic history.  The party prides itself on its 1850s ant-slavery roots and the party of Lincoln.  In the decades after the Great Emancipator's death, the Republican party became the organ of greedy industrialists.  It has never lost its association with big business.  During Theodore Roosevelt's term as president, he sought to broaden the party.  He wanted a Square Deal for the people. Eventually Roosevelt and the Progressives broke from the party.  Republicans became the party of the status quo and represented big business more than the average American.   "The business of America is business."   It used scare tactics, such as the Red Menace to gain power. While Republicans claim to be strong on defense, the are responsible for the secret war in Southeast Asia and arms for hostage deals with Iran.

As I mentioned in previous blogs, I am a former Republican, who believed it was morning in America.  I believed that the party could not sink any lower but I am disappointed to be wrong.  The current debt crisis debacle shows that the Republicans are willing to put political gain before the welfare of the country.  In their lust for power, they are willing to cause a double dip recession to gain the White House.  They will block any initiatives to improve the economy in an attempt to defeat President Obama.  I do not believe even the Machiavellian Nixon would stoop so low.

Who is to blame?  Ultimately, it is the American people, who believe their simplistic approach to solving the complex problems facing America.  We need to be more educated.  Stop spending your time watching "reality" tv and awaken to the reality of the Republican agenda.  The gap between corporate executives and the rank and file workers is growing at an exponential rate.  The middle class is under constant attack and the Republicans want to balance the budget on their backs.  They want to destroy the middle class, with their tax and education policies.

Wake up everybody.  Take action before it is too late.

Winter in America

Over the weekend, Gil Scott Heron died.  I planned to publish a post on Sunday but I could not access my blog. While Gil Scott was the voice of a generation of black speaking out against racism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, my post will focus on a singular event.  It was February 15 1985 perhaps 1986, when I was living in Maryland.  My brother was visiting and saw that Gil Scott Heron was playing at Tacoma Station.  I was not familiar with his work but I agreed to go.  We set off for the concert, I had an address but no directions.  I knew D.C.  was laid out on a grid and was confident we could find it.  We drove around the nation's capitol witnessing the plight of the unemployed and homeless.  They were burning the wood at a construction site to keep warm. It was not an area that two white men would feel comfortable.  We found the address on the flier but there was no club there.  Finally after an hour, I went into to a convenience store to ask directions.  I left my brother to watch for the car.  Tacoma Station was in Maryland, not D.C. as the flier stated.

We entered the club and looked around.  We were the only white people in the place. Gil Scott did have a white guitarist. I admit to being a little nervous.  We were treated very well.  The people we spoke with were pleased that we had come to hear his music, that he reached a white audience.  I wonder what it would have been like if the roles were reversed and two black entered an all white club to listen to music.  I know that Gil Scott appreciated our presence.

Reflections on a Carl Sagan Excerpt

In The Demon-Haunted World (1995), Carl Sagan wrote:
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time-when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agenda or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."

This is a powerful sentence, which needs to be dissected.  In the fifteen years since it was written America has shipped most of its manufacturing overseas.  We have become more of a service economy, which is why it has taken so long to recover from the Great Recession.  There is no forward-looking leaders in America.  The politicians look only to the next election.  Corporate leaders look only as far as the quarterly or annual earnings reports.  There is no investment in the future. There is no vision of an interstate highway system, a transcontinental railroad or an Erie Canal.  The governor of Florida could not see how high speed rail could connect the cities of the state and certainly not how those cities could be connected to the rest of the country.  He was looking back to "Americans love their cars."  In the few months since he killed high speed rail in Florida the price of gas has risen to nearly $4 a gallon.

"When awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few" is coming with the attacks on public education.  Only those who are able to attend elite private schools will be able to experience those powers. The programs will be cut from public schools because of declining budgets.  Only the privileged, like Bill Gates, who was able to spend 16 hours a day on his private school computers, will have access to the latest technologies.

I am not sure if anyone in public office can grasp the issues or if they are just being paid to look the other way. The Great Recession was caused by irresponsible lending by banks, backed by Wall Street investment banks, yet no one was held responsible for this catastrophe.  Instead, the tax payers paid to cover their mistakes.  When the Republicans were in charge, they preached the value of debt and deficit but now that the Democrats are in the White House debt and deficit spending  is evil.

As for questioning authority, most Americans get their news from television, who reduces everything to 30 second sound bites.  How can the problems that plague us be comprehend in 30 seconds.  Those who do not get the news from television get it from an unfiltered Internet.  You do not what the author's agenda is.  Some are in the pay of the people who would benefit by the writing.  Most people, particularly the young, scan the Internet and do not read objectively.

I write this the day after the world was to come to an end, according to the pseudoscience of religion.    Many people were duped by his seemingly supportable mathematical calculations.  Others believe in Mayan calendar to point to 2012 as then end of the world.  It raises the question, has the slide into superstition and darkness begun.

Thoughts on the killing of Bin Laden

At first I was very excited by the news of the demise of Osama Bin Laden but then I began to think about the cost.  First there is the economic costs.  The Republicans preach about the deficit but one of the major causes of it is the "war on terrorism."  We are spending billions in Afghanistan and Iraq (which was not a source of terrorist activity).  Was Osama worth the economic cost?  We are spending billions in a country that is home to 100 al Queda operatives.  Second there is the cost is American life.  1500 Americans have died in Afghanistan.  I do not think there sacrifice was worth it.  Third there is cost of American values.  To fight terrorists Bush told us we needed to give up certain civil liberties, habeus corpus, unwarranted wiretaps, unreasonable search and seizure and unlawful detention. Lastly there was the cost to American prestige.  The wars in Iraq was the first time that America invaded a country that had not attacked us.  Since 911 we have become a diminished nation.