It Looks Like Life Support for 2010

I was born nearly eight decades ago in 1932—not exactly a vintage year in a vintage decade. On our 180-acre pile of rocks near Little Falls, we raised oats, barley, corn and soybeans for our milk cows and pigs. We sold many a little pig at “The Biggest Little Pig Market In The World” when times were just half-bad. We had no indoor plumbing and no electricity until President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats brought the Rural Electric Administration to the unlit and unwashed in the boondocks. I remember we put running water in the barn first, so the cows could push that magic lever and have water delivered right to their bowl. Good for milk production, you know.

Even at the height of the Great Depression we enjoyed life because we didn’t know any better. We raised almost everything but salt and coffee on the farm so we always had plenty to eat. We listened to the tube radio at night when the reception was good and borrowed “78s” and wound up the old Victrola. Life’s necessities did not require a long list. We had battery-operated party-line telephones to contact our neighbors in emergencies and our friends for chats. We could eavesdrop on phone conversations until so many spies got on line the calls couldn’t go through. One could determine who was listening in, so once in awhile you gave them a spicy rumor they could pass around the neighborhood.

How Life Has Changed in Seven Decades

I don’t remember any of our family ever seeing a doctor. We just toughed it out and survived. I remember as a teenager hearing about the girls who needed “a minor surgical procedure” at the local Catholic hospital. A big day for the family was going to Green Prairie Fish Lake. Dad had always made our wooden boats, so we all knew we had to soak the boat before rowing around the lake.

I never saw a dentist until I went to Marine Corps basic training at Parris Island, South Carolina after my first year of college. I still have many of the fillings. I joined the Marine Corps Reserve Officer Candidate program so I could escape the draft and the Korean War. I wanted to stay in college and get my BA.

I remember blowing $120 on college tuition my first day at Moorhead State Teachers College. It was money made clerking at J.C. Penny during high school – and at another hundred odd jobs. Sorting out rotten from good seed potatoes for 50 cents an hour while they went by on a conveyor belt was one of the most boring jobs I have ever had. Rotten potatoes have a distinct smell.

College was cheap those days because our politicians were not trying to turn Minnesota into Mississippi. They thought education was more important than building stadiums with private boxes with taxpayer money so the rich could look down on the pissants. The University of Minnesota was not sending lousy football teams to Toilet Bowls for $1.3 million either. But I digress.

In Every Decade of My Life, We Have Had Recessions

I think my eighth decade on this Earth is going to be like my first one. I see no reason for the Great Recession to end soon. The Great Depression lasted almost a decade and it took a world war to eventually put people back to work. We aren’t making anything of consequence anymore. We make poor movies and discordant, catatonic Brittany Spears music for world-wide distribution.

Asia will be making most of our cars soon. It already makes almost all of our electronics. Cruise ships are made in Finland, so are huge container ships. Furniture is made in Mexico. We no longer dominate the wind generator market. What do we manufacture besides fighter planes, bombers, pilotless drones, armored personnel carriers, various missiles and guns of all kinds?

We do lead the world in something – arms sales – but it is a limited market. The middle class used to make autos, microwaves, computers, refrigerators, freezers and TVs, and bought houses, cars and boats with the wages. I just don’t see that happening again. How many homes were built by neighbors speaking English and making living wages in the last five years?

How are we going to stay on top of the heap? Our children and grandchildren will have to lead the world in nanotechnology, medical devices, electronic innovations, and basic research if we are going to remain a business, a political and military superpower. I just sense it is all slipping away.

Wall Street Madoffs are still more interested in making money on somebody else’s money than before the 2007 crash. They don’t seem to understand they are ruled by greed, not economic reason and logic. Instead of looking toward the future of this country, investment bankers are still fascinated by collateralized mortgage securities, derivatives, credit default swaps, sub-prime mortgage packaging, short-term profits, and all of those other financial schemes put together by Wall Street No-Nothing geniuses. The bankers have basically destroyed a huge chunk of the middle class.

The Good, Bad, and Real Ugly

We have had some good decades, but most of them have been spoiled by terrible political-military decisions. In my eighth decade it was important to respond to the country that sheltered the 9/11 hijackers. A “just” war was defined succinctly in President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech. He said, “War is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly.”

The Afghanistan War certainly fits his definition. But the Bush-Cheney folly in Iraq, attempting to bring “democracy” to tribes that have been killing each other for thousands of years, has been ranked by historians as our worst foreign policy blunder in history. Two more roadside bombs in Baghdad this morning. We still have idiot politicians and subservient generals talking about a “win” or “victory” in Iraq. “Win” what? Our Iraq “friends” are now awarding oil contracts to every country – except the U.S.!

There is still no political agreement among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds on how they are going to govern and how they are going to split oil profits. Over two million Iraqi refugees living in other countries still refuse to come “home” because they are afraid they will be killed. I don’t think our politicians and generals understand yet that we lost the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars five years ago. They are both “unwinnable” now in geopolitical terms. What a waste of our people and profits.

In the decade of the 1950s we grew the middle class by manufacturing things that people needed or wanted. College students could work at odd and unpleasant jobs and pay their tuition. The Korean War was fought to prevent the commies of the North from taking over the democrats of the South. And Harry Truman needed to send a “stop” message to Moscow. But we went wrong when we listened to General Douglas “Dugout” MacArthur when he advised that China would not enter the Korean conflict. His error in judgment, common among “political” military leaders, was confirmed when 300,000 Chinese troops crossed the Yalu and chased our troops down the peninsula.

Vietnam’s General Half-Track and the Five O’Clock Follies

We spent part of the decades of the 1960s and 1970s keeping all those Southeast Asia countries from falling to the communist “domino theory” created by the Dulles brothers at the State Department and the CIA. Over 58,000 men died in another civil war where we won every battle in the jungles for eleven years but eventually lost the war. General William Westmoreland, no Alexander or Napoleon, always pleaded with Lyndon Baines Johnson for more troops at the “Five O’Clock Follies” press conferences in Saigon. LBJ knew we were going to lose but sent them anyway.

In the decade of the 1980s we went on a military spending spree that finally broke the back of the Russian economy, resulting in the collapse of the Soviet “Union” and the Berlin Wall. We spent billions restoring old WW II battleships to use in the next wars. We kept B-52 bombers in the skies 24/7. We built a dozen new aircraft carriers so runways could roam every ocean and sea, policing the world.

We also ushered in another era of greed, culminating in the great savings and loan debacle under that great budget balancer Ronald Reagan. Some economists have said we blew over $500 billion of the people’s money on that one. Between new White House china and free ball gowns for Nancy we had a couple of recessions, a big tax cut for the rich, and then increased taxes for the middle class.

Reagan and his Republican cohorts, with the votes of some conservative Democrats, charged practically everything to the U.S. Treasury credit card during his two terms, adding $1.69 trillion to the national debt. Reagan added more debt to our accounting ledger than presidents from George Washington through Jimmy Carter. In that he was the first one to reach that high level, I believe it would be nice if The Best Congress Money Can Buy would commemorate Reagan by placing his image on a new trillion dollar bill.

President George H.W. Bush followed Reagan’s economic credit-card style by adding a record $1.4 trillion to the national debt. Since 1981 and Reagan we have had 20 years of Republican presidents and nine years of Democratic presidents. Only President “Slick Willie” Clinton reduced the national debt (by 8.8 percent) during those 29 years. The most profligate, undisciplined spender in our history was President George W. Bush, who often claimed he was listening to a higher authority than his own father.

Lurch must have missed the part about squeezing the camel through the eye of a needle. Putting huge tax cuts and two wars off-budget would be something only a Wall Street investment banker would try to do. But remember, Lurch’s healthcare program depended upon the uninsured going to hospital emergency rooms. If they couldn’t help, he could get you an appointment with Oral Roberts, the faith healer.

I wonder who he would recommend now that Oral has passed on. He added $4.9 trillion during his eight years and certainly is responsible for at least $2.5 trillion more, that has been hung on Barack Obama, in his first year trying to correct the financial mess left by The Great Decider. Reagan, Bush ‘41, and Lurch added $7.47 trillion to the national debt while Clinton left budget pluses and only $1.54 additional national debt. No wonder our debt has to be raised to $12 trillion.

Vintage Year? I Doubt the Grapes Will Even Grow in 2010

I fear for our children and grandchildren in the future. Good paying jobs will not be in abundance unless we concentrate on basic research. We have the worst division of haves and have-nots ever seen in the world. One in four children are on food stamps along with one in eight adults. Americans have spent so much on drugs the Mexican government has confiscated 14,441 vehicles used in the drug trade. They include hundreds of Hummers, Rolls-Royces, Mercedes, BMWs, Cadillacs, and other even more expensive luxury autos.

Although Home Depot laid off 7,000 employees while the housing market collapsed, the board of directors raised the CEO’s pay 20 percent to $9.24 million. He waived a $1.2 million bonus! Three of his fellow Home Depot executives received bonuses between 35 and 48 percent. The previous Home Depot CEO, Robert Nardelli, got a $210 million golden parachute on top of his yearly salary of $32 million when they fired him.

Wall Street will post $59 billion in profits this year while the unemployment list of 22 million keeps growing. New York financial experts figure that $18 billion will be paid in bonuses to fat cats. At the new Trump Hotel on Waikiki a hamburger goes for $22. A football game at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium costs $758 for a family of four. While all the good jobs are going overseas, five customers paid an average $144,000 to Bio Arts for cloning their dogs. The average Major League Baseball salary rose to $3 million.

The Gophers sold only 1,512 tickets out of 10,500, thus losing $434,340 at a Toilet Bowl last year. Does this make any sense?

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