I took the train down to Portland, Oregon on Thursday. I left Seattle’s King Street Station at 10:00 a.m. on a train ultimately bound for Los Angeles. When we boarded there was a woman in our spot. She wasn’t given a window seat and wasn’t too happy about it. The car was rather full so I suggested that she move up to the cool observation car and just sit there for the entire trip. I saw her later and she thanked me profusely for my advice. We sat down in our extremely roomy seats and looked out the window like we were watching a movie.
This is just an incredibly beautiful ride as the track hugs the Puget Sound with the water framed by the Olympic Mountains to the west. Driving this way by car isn’t nearly as much fun. The train takes four hours and to go by car takes at least three hours. I would opt for the train every time. It’s just more civilized.
Portland is a great looking town although it seems a little sleepy. I would imagine that Seattle seems a little sleepy for visitors coming from bigger cities. The downtown area is as clean as a whistle. The street cars seem to be a truly civilized mode of public transportation and I like the fact that you can ride them with your bicycle. I haven’t heard much about how Portlanders feel about the system. I can’t believe thAT Seattle has yet to implement a rail network. The Seattle monorail project is mired in controversy even before a single rail of track has been laid.
I spent some time in Powel Books in Portland. This is an enormous new and used bookstore. I found an excellent copy of Richard Price’s Clockers which I read when it came out in 1992. Now that I have reread almost the whole thing I have to say that it is a masterpiece. Perhaps I’ll write more about this novel when I’m finished.
The train back on Friday afternoon was almost completely full. It made me happy to see that so many people are choosing to use this more responsible form of transportation. People need to get on board, so to speak. I think that a high speed rail down the entire west coast would be a great alternative to flying. I think a high speed line like I took in Spain could crank out the 961 miles from Seattle to San Francisco in about five hours—maybe six. When you consider that it takes you over an hour to get to the airport and clear security, a two hour flight, and then another 45 minutes getting from the airport to the center of town (Train stations are almost always in the heart of the city) I think a train would be a very viable and safer alternative. Fuck going to Mars; let’s start building a better railroad.
Sunday, March 07, 2004
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Right Wing Mantras Part III: Globalization Full Steam Ahead
The juggernaut of globalization is showing a few cracks after years and years of this ideology being taken completely for granted. Of course we must embrace the world economy; a world of efficiency and lower prices; a better world for every one of us. As this presidential race is showing, globalization now finally has more than a few critics. A few thinkers like John Ralston Saul have been pointing out globalization’s fatal flaws for over a decade but most economists were either all for it or at least waiting to see what would happen in the wake of massive outsourcing. Now we know: it is quickly turning into a disaster.
To criticize globalization was seen as the same thing as criticizing free trade. The opposite of free trade is protectionism. Everyone sees protectionism as a bad thing, and it probably is, but globalization is not the same as free trade. Manufacturing jobs have been pouring out of the United States at an alarming rate. Business owners claim that products can be made more efficiently in other countries. This is the central lie of the entire globalization argument: American workers are not inefficient.
What proponents of “globalization at any cost” fail to mention or remember is that we here in the United States spent the end of the 19th century and most of the 20th century in a sometimes desperate struggle to define acceptable labor and environmental policies. American manufacturers are bound by the social contracts forged on the fires of countless strikes and in countless senate hearings. The fact that manufacturers are bound by these contracts does not make them inefficient, it makes them responsible.
On the other hand, the Chinese side-stepped these messy labor-management struggles and their feet aren’t held to the fire on conservation issues. Of course they can make stuff cheaper if they can pay their workers next-to-nothing and then dump their waste in the Yangste.
I was paging through the Asian Economic Review a week ago when I came upon an article about Malaysia complaining about the loss of its manufacturing jobs. American manufacturers outsourced a lot of jobs to Malaysia. Now those workers have been undercut by workers in India and China. The same thing happened with U.S. steel production. At first we outsourced steel production to South Korea because they paid theie workers slave wages. As soon as the workers there rose up to demand better pay the managers packed off the steel industry and went to cheaper pastures.
For the most part globalization has been great at making some people obscenely rich while a lot of displaced American workers are stumbling around working two jobs to try to get back to where they were before their manufacturing jobs were sent overseas.
To criticize globalization was seen as the same thing as criticizing free trade. The opposite of free trade is protectionism. Everyone sees protectionism as a bad thing, and it probably is, but globalization is not the same as free trade. Manufacturing jobs have been pouring out of the United States at an alarming rate. Business owners claim that products can be made more efficiently in other countries. This is the central lie of the entire globalization argument: American workers are not inefficient.
What proponents of “globalization at any cost” fail to mention or remember is that we here in the United States spent the end of the 19th century and most of the 20th century in a sometimes desperate struggle to define acceptable labor and environmental policies. American manufacturers are bound by the social contracts forged on the fires of countless strikes and in countless senate hearings. The fact that manufacturers are bound by these contracts does not make them inefficient, it makes them responsible.
On the other hand, the Chinese side-stepped these messy labor-management struggles and their feet aren’t held to the fire on conservation issues. Of course they can make stuff cheaper if they can pay their workers next-to-nothing and then dump their waste in the Yangste.
I was paging through the Asian Economic Review a week ago when I came upon an article about Malaysia complaining about the loss of its manufacturing jobs. American manufacturers outsourced a lot of jobs to Malaysia. Now those workers have been undercut by workers in India and China. The same thing happened with U.S. steel production. At first we outsourced steel production to South Korea because they paid theie workers slave wages. As soon as the workers there rose up to demand better pay the managers packed off the steel industry and went to cheaper pastures.
For the most part globalization has been great at making some people obscenely rich while a lot of displaced American workers are stumbling around working two jobs to try to get back to where they were before their manufacturing jobs were sent overseas.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
The Chutzpah of the Working Class
I was going through a pile of papers at a coffee shop yesterday when I found the business section for The Seattle Times for Saturday, February 28, 2004. There was an article on Martha Stewart’s securities fraud trial, another about the government going after the $4.7 million dollar home and $50 million in assets of the former CEO of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling. Yet another story concerned the NYSE trying to get back the $120 million dollar salary it paid its former chairman, Richard Grasso. At the bottom of the page was a little something about 70,000 California grocery workers striking to keep their health benefits and their outrageous hourly wages of UP TO $15 FUCKING DOLLARS!! Can you believe the nerve of those damn grocery workers?
I have a train to catch so let me ruminate on the audacity of these uppity grocery store clerks.
I have a train to catch so let me ruminate on the audacity of these uppity grocery store clerks.
Right Wing Mantras Part II: Take Responsibility for Your Actions
“Take responsibility for your own actions.” Just another bullshit phrase the Right shoe-horns into as many verbal exchanges as they can. Listen to a conservative long enough and I just about guarantee you’ll hear them say this. It's just one of their many stupid fortune cookie sayings they throw out; an axiom coated with bullshit and filled with something worse.
On a side note, I like stock sayings, too, like, “That’s not funny; my brother died that way.” I like to shoe-horn that line from The Onion into my conversations whenever I can. It is just as stupid as the mantra of the Right but it keeps me entertained.
“These people need to take responsibility for their own actions.” I’ll bet Rush Limbaugh has said this about poor people about 10 million times. They need to take responsibility for their own actions and become rich and arrogant and stupid like him. Of course, when Rush was caught with a huge stash of pain killers he took responsibility for his own actions by blaming his problem on back pain. Thousands of pain killers for back pain? Take the pain like a man, Rush. I’ve had debilitating back pain; most athletes have at one time or another. I passed on the pain killers and opted for weight training. I save drugs for recreational use and I don’t get addicted and I certainly don’t get caught. But I’m a liberal who can‘t take responsibility for my own actions.
Rich people are able to take responsibility for their own actions but poor people are always asking for help. The fact that the federal government helps rich people more than poor people is beside the point. Dick Cheney’s Halliburton got billions of dollars in help from the government in the form of fat contracts yet in the vice presidential debates of 2000 he claimed that the government had nothing to do with his prosperity. He took responsibility for his own actions by using his status as a former public servant to make millions. That isn’t the same as somebody cashing a food stamp for a loaf of bread.
And speaking of food stamps; Hey rich people, doesn’t it piss you off when you see people buy candy with food stamps? It would but in the current stratification of America rich people don’t come within ten miles of poor people so they tell middle income people to be pissed at people on food stamps. Middle income people who are one lay-off from needing help themselves. Middle income people whose manufacturing jobs are being carefully scrutinized by the rich to see whether or not it is feasible to send their jobs overseas if it means they can increase profits.
Why do so many people who have “made it” in this country think that they did it all on their own by taking personal responsibility? I know people like this who have benefited from good, inexpensive public education and student loans and think that they did it all on their own. Now they bitch about paying taxes to support the programs that got them where they are today. This mantra of personal responsibility is pretty much a lie. We all count on a lot of things to help us meet our goals. Stop thinking that you are such a fucking island.
If I wanted to make this essay longer I could further elaborate why this phrase is so dear to the Right and their notion of seeing themselves as self-made men but long essays bore people and that's not funny; my brother died that way.
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Right Wing mantras Part I: The Private Sector is more Efficient than Government
I have been back from Spain for a week and a half. Because of all of the social progress that I saw there I seem to have a better ear for the political exchanges taking place here in America, both in print and on TV and radio. Certain things from the Right come out as screeches, like a nun running her fingernails on a blackboard. I have talked about this many times before but the Right has a series of mantras that they have all been repeating so often and for so long that to offer an opposing view is looked upon as naïve. One of these mantras is that we must privatize our economy because the private sector is more efficient than the government.
I guess no one has bothered to tell these people about the horrible failures in the private sector over the past few years. Even when a government project fails miserably, at least the spoils are spread over a lot of constituents. In the wake of the Enron, World.com, Tyco, and Adelphi failures only a handful of people made out with the loot. Even in their failure these companies furthered the poor distribution of income in the United States of America.
British Rail was privatized under the Tory government. At the time it was one of the world’s best rail networks. After a decade of private ownership it is now the worst railroad in Europe. Spain’s railroad is nationalized—like most of Europe—and it has gone from being one of the worst systems to one of the better ones on the continent.
John Evans, CEO of the Bellevue-based software firm, Solutions IQ, wants less government involvement in health care. “Less government in the health care system promises efficiency and reduced costs.” HUH? What the hell are you talking about, John? Once again he is just chanting his mantra and not opening his eyes. Have you ever actually looked at a hospital bill from a private U.S. hospital? I wouldn’t advise it unless you are pretty healthy. I can’t imagine any other sector of our economy that is as expensive, inefficient, and bloated as our health care industry.
Spain has national health care written into their constitution and I don’t think you could get them to abandon their system short of an armed invasion. I think we Americans would drop our current system in about two seconds if anyone proposed any reasonable alternative--every American except the people making fortunes from the current mess
I worked for the big bad government. I was in the Air Force and I worked hard, studied hard, and did my job. Are you telling me that a private institution could have done my job cheaper and more efficiently? I don’t think so. I know plenty of government workers who are highly motivated and efficient. I think we get our money's worth from the public sector. Are there inefficiencies? Sure there are but there is nothing like the graft going on in so many of the NYSE and NASDAQ publicly held companies. Not many government workers fly first class on the government dime.
For industries where we cannot allow failure such as defense, education, and social security ( I would also say health care) then we cannot allow these industries to be privatized. With privatization comes risks and failure is among those risks. You can’t have it both ways.
I guess no one has bothered to tell these people about the horrible failures in the private sector over the past few years. Even when a government project fails miserably, at least the spoils are spread over a lot of constituents. In the wake of the Enron, World.com, Tyco, and Adelphi failures only a handful of people made out with the loot. Even in their failure these companies furthered the poor distribution of income in the United States of America.
British Rail was privatized under the Tory government. At the time it was one of the world’s best rail networks. After a decade of private ownership it is now the worst railroad in Europe. Spain’s railroad is nationalized—like most of Europe—and it has gone from being one of the worst systems to one of the better ones on the continent.
John Evans, CEO of the Bellevue-based software firm, Solutions IQ, wants less government involvement in health care. “Less government in the health care system promises efficiency and reduced costs.” HUH? What the hell are you talking about, John? Once again he is just chanting his mantra and not opening his eyes. Have you ever actually looked at a hospital bill from a private U.S. hospital? I wouldn’t advise it unless you are pretty healthy. I can’t imagine any other sector of our economy that is as expensive, inefficient, and bloated as our health care industry.
Spain has national health care written into their constitution and I don’t think you could get them to abandon their system short of an armed invasion. I think we Americans would drop our current system in about two seconds if anyone proposed any reasonable alternative--every American except the people making fortunes from the current mess
I worked for the big bad government. I was in the Air Force and I worked hard, studied hard, and did my job. Are you telling me that a private institution could have done my job cheaper and more efficiently? I don’t think so. I know plenty of government workers who are highly motivated and efficient. I think we get our money's worth from the public sector. Are there inefficiencies? Sure there are but there is nothing like the graft going on in so many of the NYSE and NASDAQ publicly held companies. Not many government workers fly first class on the government dime.
For industries where we cannot allow failure such as defense, education, and social security ( I would also say health care) then we cannot allow these industries to be privatized. With privatization comes risks and failure is among those risks. You can’t have it both ways.
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