Author: bfaure

Posted on

Things That Can’t Go on Forever, Don’t

The American economist Herbert Stein, counselor to presidents Nixon and Ford has been quoted as saying in various alliterations, “Things that can’t go on forever, don’t.”  The great social experiments in history, roman citizenry binding unlike peoples, islamic caliphates achieving the submission of  cultural disparities through religious”truth”,  the French Revolution eliminating social strata by eliminating the social elite,  and the Communist manifesto subjecting the self determination of the individual to the will of the collective have all come under the eventual reality of Professor Stein’s law, as natural economic forces for need for expression of individuality, survivorship of the most agile and fittest, need for rule of law, and the corrosion of the original experiment’s purity all come to bare.  We may be seeing a evocation of Stein’s law with the 75 year experiment of attempting to achieve social equality through the marriage of elected governments and the governmental growth industry of a population beholden to that government, a process strengthened and ever emboldened by the vast access to tax dollars.  Access that is truly vast, but owing to Stein’s law, not unfettered.  The citizens of Wisconsin June 5th determined to put Stein’s law into effect and soundly put an end to the progressively disastrous idea that a government held hostage by its own citizen employees was a permanent feature, and democracy in its current state existed only to re-inforce the notion and replenish the coffers of its enablers.

Wisconsin, a posterchild for the national and international trends of democratically elected governments to feed upon their own to sustain the ideal of achieving the universally secure life, had found over the last ten years the supposed  promise of  guaranteeing security to all had become an unholy burden.  Locked into having to produce a balanced budget by a constitution written years earlier by a more fiscally responsible and mature citizenry, increasingly unethical fiscal tricks were required to assure the entitled their unfettered cut of the budget.  Multiple elevations in the tax rate for both individuals and businesses eventually proved insufficient to feed the multi-billion dollar requirements of entitlements and the democrat Governor Doyle  did the only rational thing felt he could given the inseparable link of the entitled to the health and power of his party – he stole.  First hundreds of millions from the transportation funds exclusively set aside through energy taxes to maintain the transportation system, and then from health care professionals and patients through the state’s malpractice fund.  When that didn’t prove to be enough, he took what he could from a one time subsidy from the federal government’s stimulus funds, and retired, leaving the whole stinking pile for the next governor to deal with.  The election of 2010 between Scott Walker, a fiscal realist, and Tom Barrett, mayor of Milwaukee, who promoted a further expansion of unsupportable tax mechanisms, was Wisconsin’s first dip into the cold water of fiscal reality and stunned every one with electorate’s decision to go with the adult in the room, and promote Walker to Governor.

Walker proved to be one of those politicians that people who had co-opted government for their own devices had assumed they had intimidated out of existence – a politician who believed in every principle for governance he laid out,  and was determined to stand behind what he had campaigned on.  The backlash was immediate and total, because the stakes were so high.  If Walker could actually achieve fiscal sanity of government through realistic budgeting, shared sacrifice, and mechanisms for restoration of a more balanced relationship between the government and  the people it supposedly served,  without identifiable calamity, then all the myths and dire predictions of those who controlled the governmental entitlements would be exposed.  That would be intolerable, and the next two years reminded everyone of how determined, entrenched, and vicious the governmental oligarchy syndicate could be.  Wave of recall after recall election was promoted and paid for.  When the legislature did not immediately dissolve in the face of the intimidation, the syndicate looked to unseat the Supreme Court majority that stood in the way of constitutional support for legislative actions.  Death threats were aimed at the governor and legislators that stood in their way.  The indentured democrat servants were forced to flee the state by their masters in order to obstruct the process.  A mass of radical professional protesters filled the halls of the people’s capital with a cacophony of noise and filth and threatened to not leave until they got their way.  And when none worked , they risked all and aimed for the head of the beast.  They looked to recall Walker himself, and did so by presenting the mirror election of two years previously, Walker vs Barrett, so the electorate could show the world that they had been wrong the first time and recognized the error of their ways.

On June 5th, the governmental oligarchy rolled the dice for ultimate control – and lost.  Not by the squeakily narrow margins they had for so many years been able to manipulate, but resoundingly.

In just two years the impossible had occurred.  The political elected forces had balanced the budget through sustainable means, eliminated a towering 3.6 billion dollar deficit, achieved job growth rather than company flight in the state, funded its healthcare mandates,  restored local municipal control over budgets and investments, and did so without unethical pilfering or onerous tax increases on the backs of its economic producers.   Most stupefyingly of all to those who thought everyone was in on the take, the electorate recognized what they had achieved, and showed its overwhelming stamp of approval.

Herb Stein the professor may prove to be Herb Stein the prophet.  In democratic free market societies, there may yet prove to be self correcting capacities.  Deficits as far as the eye can see and beyond what might be conceptualized does not have to be the fate of an engaged electorate. If the alternative is securing one’s security at the expense of prosperity and all that future citizens, the electorate may be capable after all in discerning who is willing to present and follow though on solving problems, and   making a course correction before the crisis strikes.   The Wisconsin motto,  Forward, may have reached fruition in this election and may be the way forward for a nation that is about to face the same moment of electoral truth.  When all is said and done the resilience of the American Idea, that the unbounded power of its people to move forward is a beacon for the rest of the world may once again be the positive miracle of our times.

Posted on

Memorial Day and the 1st Minnesota

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are so many vignettes that ennoble the concept of Memorial day that to select one brief story seems wanting. Memorial Day, a day of remembrance for those who have served a higher purpose and sacrificed all for that purpose, is a special part of the American fabric.  The element of sacrifice certainly wasn’t in every case heroic – very likely in most it was the element of fate driven bad luck- in the wrong place, at the wrong time – but in all cases the sacrifice was contributive to the greater good that freedom and free will are worth exposing oneself necessarily to the harsh judgement of fate.

There have been some very special moments of great clarity in American history when the participants knowingly chose their sacrificial destiny in hopes of in some way extending the fragile life of the candle frame of freedom.  Many are sacrifices known but to few; some have reached the legendary status of epic saga.  What drives a man to face impossible odds and end his time on earth is no doubt individually diverse, but is it possible that hundreds of men could accept the same moment, the same clarity of purpose, the same love of freedom to willingly and collectively snuff their own lives out in defense of it?  It happened on the second day of Gettysburg, and it happened to the 1st Minnesota regiment.

The 1st Minnesota was formed in the initial passion of the start of the Civil War  in 1861.  The newly formed western states of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa were among the most enthusiastic to the cause of the Union, and there was little difficulty in filling the ranks with men who hoped to show their willingness to defend the concepts of the Union.  The regiment by the time of Gettysburg was already significantly battle tested, having served in the initial battle of the war at Bull Run and many engagements since.  Gettysburg was clearly to all however something all together on another level.  A vigorous southern army led by General Robert E. Lee, fresh from crushing serial victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville determined to take the war to the northern states and end it there.  Convinced of its own superior generalship and mettle of its troops, the southern army looked to a knockout punch and by the fateful connection  of various roads and turnpikes found itself in the “country” of Pennsylvania at the little town of Gettysburg.  The reeling army of the north, now led by taciturn General Meade, was positioned on the southern army’s flank protecting the capitol of Washington until direct contact between the two armies was initiated just outside Gettysburg.  The battles of the first day secured the positions of the two armies, and the next two days were to witness the ultimate clash of wills.

The fighting of the second day was filled with epic stories, and epitomized the snarling aggression of the Southern army to split the Union forces in two and finish the war for good.  Places with names like the Devil’s Den, the Peach Orchard, and Little Round Top saw man to man fighting of an intensity and drama that have reached legend and have been told innumerable times.  The Union army, bent like a fishhook around Cemetery Ridge, was pummeled on its left by savage thrusts of Southern warriors.  Southern Generals Mclaws and Hood punched deep into Union reserves all afternoon and the wavering the Union defenses were recognized by its on site Corps Commander William Hancock.  At about 6:20 pm a new blow north of the battered Union left came to the weakened center that had spent the day re-inforcing the left flank.  Alabama troops under General Cadmus Wilcox staggered the vulnerable center and a massive gap began to form.  All eyes saw the moment the same way.  Wilcox could eye the cottage that held the Union senior command and beyond it the road to Washington.  Hancock could see the unmitigated disaster of a union line split in two.  Devoid of troops and needing to gain time, he called out to the commander of the 1st Minnesota regiment, Colonel William Colvill, and ordered his 262 men to fill the gap and against over a 1000 southern marauders buy that precious time for the Union forces to reinforce the breech.

The great historian Shelby Foote captures the clarifying moment for all time:

“Colonel, do you see those colors?”  As he spoke he pointed at the Alabama flag in the front rank of the charging rebels.  Colvill said he did. “Then take them,” Hancock told him.

Quickly, although  scarcely a man among them could have failed to see what was being asked of him, the Minnesotans deployed on the slope- eight companies of them at any rate; three others had been detached as skirmishers, leaving 262 men present for duty – and charging headlong down it, bayonets fixed, struck the center of the long grey line.  Already in some disorder as a result of their run of nearly a mile over stony ground and against such resistance as Humphrey had managed to offer, the Confederates recoiled briefly, then came on again, yelling fiercely as they concentrated their fire on this one undersized blue regiment.  The result was devastating.  Colvill and all but three of his officers were killed or wounded, as well as 215 of his men.  A captain brought the 47 survivors up the ridge, less than one fifth as many as had charged down it.  They had not taken the Alabama flag, but they had held onto their own.

And they had given Hancock his five minutes, plus five more for good measure.

For those precious five minutes General Hancock needed to marshall enough reserves to stem the breech and save the Union army to fight another day, the 1st Minnesota sustained a casualty rate of 83%, the single greatest loss of men of any surviving military unit during a single engagement in U.S. military history.

To knowingly give up all that one has to potentially preserve freedom for five more minutes.  The 1st Minnesota serves as a reminder to all on this Memorial day of what true selfless behavior is and what it means to be called and accept the call.  In honor of Colonel Colvill and every one of the 215, as well as the untold others who gave their last measure so the rest of us could live in this great land of free people, God bless, and Thank You All.

Posted on

Euro Collapse – 2012?

 

 

 

 

 

The prudent thing to do when a major storm with potentially cataclysmic destructive power is heading your way, if you have sufficient warning,  is to prepare by boarding up the windows, gathering supplies, and make plans for the aftermath.  It is clear that the countries and organizations that are oases of financial stability in Europe are seeing the gathering storm clouds and preparing for a very rocky night.  The crushing weight of bond obligations are beginning to violently  shake the southern foundation of the Euro zone and the painful efforts at austerity by the countries at risk and the financial shoring up by the European economic giant Germany may be reaching its limits.  The aggressive efforts at trying to sufficiently underwrite Greece to allow it to stay in the Euro is cracking the will of both Greece and the underwriters, and the prime minister of Greece has declared the end of June as a point of bankruptcy and default, unless further funding is made available.  German patience and financial wherewithal is, as German Foreign Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich has declared, limited, with Germany “unwilling to just pour money in a bottomless pit.”  DeutscheBank Co-CEO Juergen Fitschen described Greece as a “failed state run by corrupt politicians.”  When your major lender has such opinions of your credit rating, the future is dark indeed.

The inevitable Greek default on their financial obligations, and resultant exit from the Euro now appears – inevitable.  The countries outside the Euro are preparing.  Switzerland, with its rock stable Swiss Franc looking Olympian compared to the Euro, fears the inevitable over valuing of the swiss currency as billions of euros pour into the safe haven of the Franc, and is contemplating a minimum rate for the Euro against the Franc to protect its export economy if default occurs.  Lloyds of London is reviewing the capacity to switch to multi-currency underwriting to protect its exposure on the continent.  The  overt effect upon Europe and in a global economy, the world at large, is return to deep recession, and to Greece, a catastrophic default with dramatic reduction in economic value, loss of savings, lack of supplies, and blackouts, as creditors cut off the lifeblood of the country.

Other than that, things might just get worse.

Spain’s major banks are reeling under the strain of increased interest rates, and the credit ratings for the massive economies of Italy and potentially France are due a significant downgrade in their credit rating, resulting in borrowing costs that may prove unsustainable in the continent inflexibly on a single currency. Defaulting by  Too Big To Fail countries like Spain, Italy and France would likely plunge the world into a depression.

The sixty year experiment of buying European peace and stability by assuring cradle to grave security for its citizens is coming to an end, and it is not yet clear its citizens have grasped their role in precipitating their impending crisis.  France, faced with limited,  peripheral reductions in its welfare state under Sarkozy, determined with its recent election of the Socialist Hollande to throw its fortunes to whims of destiny.  The United States, a debt behemoth that dwarfs any European obligations, is heading toward its own election in which the current socialist president who blithely expanded the national outlays by 22% over the last three years with no means of paying for it, stands a reasonable chance of being re-elected.

The concept of democracy is an old idea, but the inherent instabilities of this old idea are very modern.  Can a citizen recognize the difference between promises of security and the responsibilities of personal freedom?  Can a citizen be their own country, recognize their responsibilities and obligations, contribute where they can contribute and start being part of the solution, rather than the nexus of the problem. The world is going to find out and it looks like 2012 is as good a year as any for some real self realization.

Posted on

In The End – All Fizzle, No Sizzle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The present and future governor of the state of Wisconsin met in debate on May 25 in advance of the epochal recall election of June 5th, 2012 at which time the voting citizens of Wisconsin will determine if they are the same person, Scott Walker.  A year and a half of trench warfare politics with comments and actions at times bordering on buffoonery and hysteria have led to a culminating vote that will frame not only for Wisconsin but for the nation an electorate’s capacity to discern adult and necessary policy and electorally stand behind it.  The debate was a microcosm of the entire calamitous process of the past year. After all the yelling, Governor Walker remained serene and on point and his opponent Barrett, who gagged on the word governor, calling Mr. Walker “Scott” or “you”, waddled around the issues like – a man with no issues. If you are the political junky type, you can watch the nothing left to debate debate in its entirety  on C-Span.  After 18 months of incessant protest, innumerable recalls, million signature petition drives, and claims of Armageddon, the protest voter’s candidate found himself even unable to stand up for reversal of Act 10, the bill that constrained collective bargaining for some public unions and allowed Governor Walker and the state legislature to finally achieve budget sanity and balance, and the supposed line in the sand issue that led to all this recall nonsense in the first place.

The mayor of Milwaukee, Thomas Barrett, has engaged in two previous runs for governor and lost, with a recent clubbing by Scott Walker in the 2010 election fresh in his memory.  A politician who takes pride in having no discernible opinions that would irritate anybody or accomplish anything, Barrett has compared himself to Goldilocks,  “neither too hot or too cold- just right” as if  personality was the defining issue to solving the massive current problems of state and national budget crises.  Mr. Goldilocks while apparently personally aghast at Governor Walker’s legislative process to achieve budgetary balance had no problem in using the tools Act 10 provided him for balancing his own city budget, to the chagrin of the same public unions who must now stand wobbly behind him.  It seems Goldilocks was a hypocrite.

The problem for the democrat party of Wisconsin is after all the hullabaloo the polls are showing Wisconsinites are beginning to absorb the successes achieved by Governor Walker and elements that comprise his  true political talent.  The first legitimately balanced budget in years without one time gimmicks or tax raises. A pending budgetary surplus next year. The initial evidence of real private sector job growth and reduction of the unemployment rate. The restoration of rational purchasing and budgeting to local governments and local school boards.  The achievement of educational savings without significant layoffs or reduction in class size.  Mr. Barrett was left arguing that such success was making Governor Walker a national figure and a political “rock star”, and that was not what the state would get if they voted for Barrett.  Translation – I don’t want to be a success, just a guy …vote for me.”  I must say, that doesn’t  exactly send a tingle up my leg.

The polls would suggest that Governor Walker has a small but consistent lead of between 5 and 8 percentage points over Barrett in the final week leading to the election.  In the state of Wisconsin where  voting is done repetitively, and by busload,  and with voter ID being suspended by a liberal Dane County judge conveniently for this recall vote, the  Walker lead may be ethereal.   The process of democracy is at times very messy, but the Wisconsin recall drama over the last year and a half  has framed the issue in increasingly sharp focus progressively for the nation.   People – do you want a “guy” – or do you want a future?  Let’s hope we are done with those “guys”, and both democrats and republicans will finally be free to vote for people who are willing to be part of the solution.

Posted on

People We Should Know #21 – Elon Musk

          If all goes according to plan, tomorrow, May 7th 2012 will be a seminal day in the annuals of American entrepreneurial know-how spirit and the advance of science.  The Falcon 9 spacecraft, a heavy load rocket capable of manned orbital flight, will blast off from Cape Canaveral for an intended rendezvous and docking with International Space Station.  The unmanned spaceflight, if successful, will represent the first wholly private commercial orbital space transit and will throw the doors open to a huge new venue of private American economic enterprise and development, private enterprise space.  The driving force for the breakthrough company, SpaceX, and another of those amazing individuals America’s free enterprise system with its risk/reward pathway seems to continually produce, is Ramparts People We Should Know #21 – Elon Musk.

     Elon Musk is among those rare individuals who maximize their talents and energies on the concept of creation.  Like unique human forces like Steven Jobs and Burt Rutan, Musk has been forever searching for the path to the end product he has already envisioned, and success and failure along the way are assumed characteristics of the eventual conquering of the vision.  Elon Musk has already achieved conceptualization and production of the world’s foremost internet financial transaction system, PayPal, devised and shepherded the most advanced production line electric drive train automobile, the Tesla, and with Monday’s launch, potentially will be America’s primary private cargo and eventually manned transport service for the United States, a country without an available transport system since the retirement of the shuttle.  If you feel that this represents several lifetimes of contributions to the advancement of civilization, recognize that Elon Musk will not celebrate his 41st birthday until June 28th.

     Musk was born in South Africa of a South African engineer father and a Canadian mother.  At 17, he determined to emigrate from South Africa to avoid compulsory military service and eventually live in the United States, as he was quoted, ” It is where great things are possible.”  Settling with relatives in Regina, Saskatchewan, he eventually emigrated to the United States where he attended the Wharton School of Business where he achieved dual undergraduate degrees in business and physics.  He was accepted to graduate school at Stanford in applied physics, but lasted only two days before he was tempted with an internet software entrepreneurial opportunity with his brother in California’s Silicon Valley.  Musk has stated a driving force for him intellectually was to be involved in solving “important problems” – particularly internet, clean energy, and space.  Early success with Zip2, the company he started with his brother, brought capital of over 300 million when they sold their fledgling company to Compaq.  Capital led to the start of Musk’s company X.com, a financial services and internet payment company that morphed into PayPal.  In just three years PayPal grew into a force in internet financial services and was purchased by EBay in 2002 for over a billion dollars. 

      A 31 year old Musk could have taken the money and bought yachts and castles, but instead poured the money into two venues with visions of spectacular advance and horrendous risk.  He started the electric car company Tesla Motors in 2003 and the space exploration and transport company SpaceX in 2002. Musk poured much of his own money in both start up ventures and by 2010 was almost completely tapped out.  As if that mattered to such people.  Musk began to see some light with the addition of more deep pocketed investors and the resources of the United States government – as well as that old stand by, creative success and innovation.  The Tesla Roadster, an all electric sports car initially produced in 2008, and the soon to come Tesla S sedan, have carved out a market for the innovation buyer, promising the drive capacity of a modern vehicle tied to the clean energy of all electric power.  SpaceX, if successful on the launch and orbital docking test on May 7th, is in line for a multi-billion dollar services contract with the U.S. for cargo and eventually manned transport, that will revolutionize space transport and likely explode innovation, as only private competition can do.

     Elon Musk will create, because that is what he was genetically programmed to do.  We can all be thankful that people such as Elon continually focus their talent and energies on risky but worthy projects that benefit all of us, and make our lives better.  In a special way America’s unique entrepreneurial laboratory continues to produce amazing results that drive progress better than any organized educational process.  College dropouts like Steven Jobs and William Gates, savants with 3 months of official schooling like Thomas Alva Edison, and Google Stanford schoolboys Larry Page and Sergey Brin join Musk among the many who have thrown their talents into the success and failure game of American entrepeneurial adventures and advanced civilization beyond the what could be devised from an advanced degree.  What a magnificent creative cauldron is the American ideal of personal initiative, risk, and reward.  We do honor to our past by recognizing the elements of society that help nurture the Elon Musks of this world, and protect our future by preventing government from interfering with this very successful but fragile process.  Elon Musk will soon be 41, and one can only imagine what he has yet to offer.  Ramparts salutes Elon Musk as People We Should Know #21, and looks with certainty to next Elon Musk somewhere in our American midst, as long as we remember to let them fail or succeed upon their own unique vision – without us getting in the way. 

Posted on

Triumphalism

 

     Modern politics continued its progressive downward spiral in relevance last night. We were treated with the bizarre circumstance of an American President travelling half way around the world  to give a speech in the middle of an Afghan night to an empty room , fronting his only attendants, some lonely Humvees, extolling his leadership in achieving the triumphant “conclusion” of the war on terror.   And then he flew home.    This was to be the pinnacle of a carefully choreographed week of focus on the Obama commander in chief review.  First, the intense focus on Obama the Warrior, bravely leading a decision to send special forces into Pakistan against Osama Bin Laden, and contrasting it to the supposed hesitation of a President Romney facing the same odds.  Then, Obama the Avenger, with his army of drone assassins seeking out the Al Qaeda fugitives and annihilating them in their hideaways.  Finally Obama the Peacemaker, closing out conflict in Iraq, and the Afghanistan, and standing before the cameras of an empty room declaring victory and closure.

     If only…

     The current president certainly didn’t invent triumphalism.  It was not so long ago that a President Bush found himself landing a fighter on an aircraft carrier, standing before a Mission Accomplished sign and prematurely declaring the end of hostilities.  But there is a uniquely narcissistic character to this President’s framing of himself as the indispensable cog that drives the successes and fashions a compliant world.  It is disturbing and unseemly that the President and Vice President celebrate the “kills” as if they are bounty hunters or democracy’s enforcers.  First, the elimination of Bin Laden, then the “taking out” of Awlaki in Yemen, and now the the President bragging about the erasing of “over 20 of the top 30 Al Qaeda leadership”, continuing today with the evaporation of 15 nameless Al Qaeda militants in the Yemeni desert.

     What is the end game of this triumphalism? When did the policies and international interests of the United States becoming inextricably linked to  a hit-man superhero and a scorecard of results?   History is unfortunately littered with examples of premature crowing and assertions of personal indispensability.  These examples have more often than not ended  in untoward ends for both triumphalist and the cause they so blatantly declared superior.  The American model of being about the philosophy not the individual is being subsumed by a new kind of politics more suited for the propagandistic bellows of a 20th century dictator, and its bound to end ignominiously.  Being the President who has collected the most scalps is unlikely to be a respected leader among those who still have their hair.

     We are left with the scenario of an awkward gladhanding  speech to an empty room have way around the world designed to impress a nation back home.  It does nothing for me, and I suspect intimidates no one who is in this President’s crosshairs.  Triumphalism. Profligate spending.  No budget in three years, and no budget in sight.  Extra-constitutional judicial leanings.  A country in economic wilderness.  The driving force of re-election – I may have accomplished little, but I am great nonetheless.

    Put it all together, consider the delusion of the man and his conceptualizations of the American process and I remain convinced. Worst. President. Ever.

 

Posted on

The Wisconsin Recall

     The effort to recall Governor Scott Walker of the state of Wisconsin is the final drama of a two year long spasm in American politics. The saga includes such diverse fundamentals as the right to collectively bargain, the onus of states to present a balanced budget, the assurance of the integrity of the voting process, the constitutional duty of elected officials to represent their constituents, and the very concept of democratic election. All of these diverse philosophical elements have been personified in the visage of a solitary man, Scott Walker, and the effort to destroy him and his capacity as Wisconsin’s governor to effect these philosophical elements, has made this saga one of fundamental national import.  Whoever ends up holding the losing hand in this process, the governor or the public unions that have spent tens of millions to destroy him, will ultimately impact how the nation as a whole faces up to its impending debt crisis.

     Wisconsin is no isolated example of the corrosion of the American democratic process and the integrity of effective governance.   In a process that has built over decades, the perversion of government to provide a temporary safety net for those who are in need into a redistribution process of taking from the private sector to lavishly secure the public sector, has fractured local, state, and national governments.  Wisconsin with its ever expanding multi-billion dollar budget deficits fueled by enormous pension and entitlement demands was in popular company with states such as Illinois and California, in having to delve into ever diminishing resources of infrastructure and taxation to support the ballooning public sector demand.  The Wisconsin of 2010, after years of increasing taxes, raiding transportation and malpractice funds, and securing multiple insider protections for unions and casinos, found itself awash in a 3.6 billion dollar debt with no political will to restructure the madness.  The electoral result was a complete flushing out of the system, electing tea party sensitive majorities in both legislative houses, and a county executive of Milwaukee County, Scott Walker, to governor, who had run a platform of a fundamental reworking of the public sector. 

     The key issue of the election was governance.  If the great proportion of the annual budget is off limits due to the beholding of the politician to the public sector behemoth, what possible avenue is available to salvage a functional government to the actual needs of the populace?  This question resonated in Wisconsin, as it progressively is resonating nationally.  For the newly elected governor Walker, the key to permanently solving the puzzle was the public sector union capacity to hold the elected government hostage through the process of collective bargaining.  Public unions had utilized tax funded money pools to put into place politicians that would protect their economic clout regardless of the state’s financial health, and maintained those politicians in positions of power in a feedback loop that subverted their constitutional  responsibility.  Walker saw that disengaging the public official from the threat of the public union by removing the collective bargaining capacity and the power of unions to command the state to universally collect dues for them from state employees would free governments to re-balance the needs of the populace and the needs of the public employee.   The simple act of separating the unions from guaranteed access to an enormous money tree would allow the kind of reforms to finally bring sanity to the budgeting of state and local governments.

     The effect was earth shaking.  The legislatures passed expenditure reductions that required public employees in the manner of private sector employees to pay for some of their pension and healthcare benefits, and to provide the freedom for local governments to do the same.  For the first time in years budgets became balancable, projects sustainable, and real estate taxes spiralling ever upward into the first reductions in memory.  The seamy underside of the marriage of public unions with politicians, in essence the worker with management at the expense of the stockholder, became exposed.  The state for decades had paid exhorbitant fees for insurances it was required to purchase through the unions, and the immediate effect was profound reductions in insurance costs when the monopoly was removed.  The removal of the hammer of collective bargaining allowed the beginnings of discussions of educational process such as class size, the student experience, the capacity to reward goood teachers, and the effects of tenure on performance.  Massive change and massive change to come with the first rays of sunlight on a secretive and rigged process.

     The earthquake of change that Wisconsin became on the strength of the voter in 2010 was such a fundamental threat to the survivorship of entrenched powers both at the state level and nationally, it could not be allowed to stand.  The push back was immediate, and overwhelming.  National unions made Wisconsin their Stalingrad, pouring millions of dollars and thousands of soldiers into a two year epic battle to destroy the Wisconsin revolution before it could take national root.  The unions demanded and got the 14 democrat senators to flee the state rather than face their constitutional duty to represent their districts in an attempt to block the bills passage, they brought tens of thousands to bear in daily protests to pressure the residual senators to give in,  their engaged enormous resources to attempt to vote out a key supreme court justice to allow the court to swing in their favor and rule the laws unconstitutional, they mounted recall elections on six republican senators to attempt to swing the state senate democratic and block any Walker reforms, and now the final and ultimate effort, to remove the leader of all that change, Scott Walker, in the recall of recall elections, on June 5th, 2012.

     There have been only two other recall elections of sitting governors in the history of the United States, Governor Lynn Frazier of North Dakota in 1921 and Governor Grey Davis of California in 2003.  In each case, it was not malfeasance but what was felt to the governor’s disdain for the will of the people who elected him.  The 2012 recall of Governor Scott Walker is fundamentally an argument of the will of the people, the will of those who in 2010 voted a reformer in  versus those who felt that no reformer would dare to effect the changes Walker achieved.   The battle is positioning for a titanic climax which will have profound effect on the national question.  Can a nation democratically face up to its fiscal responsibilities when the electoral process progressively is owned by those who will benefit from maintenance of their levers of power and an ever expanding population of entitled who are rewarded for their vote?  Governor Walker, if triumphant, becomes a major national force overnight, and a nightmare that may cause public sector unions to never want to sleep again.  Governor Walker, Representative Paul Ryan, Senator Ron Johnson, head of the Republican National Committee Reince Priebus- something very big is brewing in Wisconsin.

 

Posted on

100 Years On, Its Still a Titanic Saga

    

      One hundred years ago today, the world became slowly aware of an unfolding tragedy in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic that resonates in our time as an engrossing saga.  The RMS Titanic, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York struck an iceberg at 1140 pm April 14, 2012 of the coast of Newfoundland, and so began a harrowing two and one half hour dance with death that ended with her sinking at 220 am April 15th, 2012.  Of the 2224  passengers, 1514 would not survive the night, making the sinking of the Titanic one of the largest loss of life at sea in peacetime recorded.   The unique confluence of one of the great engineering achievements of the twentieth century, the tragedy striking the boat on its maiden voyage, and the progressive binding of the world in the communications revolution that wireless provided has led to a story of tragedy of special nature and endurance.

     The RMS Titanic was one of three magnificent ships built by the White Star Line to create a luxurious and rapid transatlantic transport they hoped would make the voyage predictable and repeatable.  The concept was a boat leaving Southampton for New York every Wednesday and an ocean liner back from New York every Saturday, all in the modern convenience and luxury of a White Star craft.  Transatlantic voyages, forever a hazardous and lengthy process in the time of sail, taking up to six weeks to traverse 3000 miles of open forbidding ocean, was becoming through the miracle of steam power a tolerable six days, and in the magnificent luxury of the White Star Line, conceived as a pleasurable voyage. A one time one way perilous voyage was now being conceived of as a repeatable event, where vacations to Europe or America, business on either side of the Atlantic, or moving to American shores while not leaving the family far behind was possible and potentially commonplace.  J.P Morgan, an American financier and primary investor in the cruise line thought so, and in underwriting the building of the Titanic and her sister ships, saw it as just another inevitable triumph of man’s conquering of his environment.

     These were special ships and engineering triumphs.  The RMS Titanic was the largest ship built of its time, over 10 stories tall and 882 feet from stern to bow, displacing over 50, 000 tons.  Her massive reciprocating engines backed by turbine were capable of over twenty knots consistently, driving 23 foot propellers. An army of firemen were required to shovel the 600 tons of coal a day required to drive such engines.   She had 15 watertight compartments, and with the loss of any two, or the partial flooding of any four, the great ship could continue to float.  Over 15000 workers of the Harland and Wolff shipbuilding company of Belfast, Ireland labored 26 months to weld her 2000 6 by 30 foot steel sheet plates together with millions of rivets in the technology of the day. She was designed with a bounty of modern conveniences, designed in essence to be a floating luxury hotel, with spas, swimming pools, premier restaurants, workout facilities, and spectacularly furnished suites and verandas. She was a triumph of her time and the zenith of British shipbuilding capability and know how.

     The Titanic had her sea trial just a week before her planned transatlantic voyage but handled beautifully.  Captain Edward John Smith was senior most of White Star’s executive captains and was selected to oversee her maiden voyage.   The initial voyage contained many celebrities among its passengers, including one of the richest men in the world John Jacob Astor, the owner of Macy’s Department store Isidor Strauss, and the ship’s architect and designer Thomas Andrews.  Leaving Southampton on April 10th, she crossed the English Channel to pick up passengers in Cherbourg, France, headed to Cork, Ireland and then into the expanse of the Atlantic.  The Titanic was approaching Newfoundland on the fifth voyage day, entering the area of the Grand Banks known as “the corner” where ships routinely angle south towards New York.  The night of April 14th was quiet and moonless, and the water exceedingly still. Reports of rogue icebergs in the area were filling the wireless, usually the indication for ships to slow down with such poor visibility, but Titanic was part of a cruise line that wanted to establish predictability to transatlantic scheduling and continued unbounded into the iceberg zone.

      The starboard side impact with the iceberg that felled Titanic was one not envisioned by the designers, a glancing blow that caused only a minor plate buckling that however popped rivets , creating a sliver of water access to the ship’s interiors, transitioned fatally across five compartments. Water poured in at a rate 15 times the capability of the bilge pumps to remove it, and progressively the forward compartments inevitably filled until the stern tipped forward enough to allow water to pour over the bulkheads, filling one compartment after another.  Though the initial impact was so slight the majority of the passengers barely noticed it, the fate of the ship was settled in the original thirty seconds.  The next two and one half hours of progressive terror were inescapable from the initial failure of the rivets.

     The early morning of April 15th was filled with horror as the ship’s demise became progressively apparent and the surrounding dangers obvious.  The water temperature was estimated 28 degrees, creating a scenario of rapid hypothermia and death for any individual forced to contend with unprotected exposure, the lifeboats were too few and the stunned passengers and crew too disorganized to achieve a rapid and measured abandonment of the ship.  As the bow began to reach water line, the end became sudden, as the great ship, with thousands of tons of water pulling its bow toward the bottom, seized and split in half, its stern then pitched vertically with hundreds holding on as best they could , until it too past beneath the surface. Only 700 passengers and crew made it to the boats and those in the water due to the temperatures had no chance.  Despite two hours of distress calls it was three hours after sinking that the RMS Carpathia finally approached to pick up the survivors.

     The indepth story of Titanic’s last hours as told by the survivors was so filled with courage and bravery, terror and panic, chivalry and cowardice, that it seized the attention of the public and has never let go.  The incomprehensible defeat of modernity to the basest elements of ice and water, crushing the light out of a ship declared essentially in just two hours made the loss an especially poignant one.  Men had decided to conquer time and distance for their own needs and pleasures and the flaws in their assumptions had disastrously brought to bear.  There is nothing in the Titanic saga that stopped progress – the incredible speed of a six day voyage is now a seven hour flight from New York to London and many times the population of the Titanic make that trip every day.  But the moral of the story, man’s willfulness and pride in his achievements at times overwhelming his common sense continues to show itself this very day.  In 2009, an Air France transatlantic plane was lost with all on board when the pilots, attempting to navigate through a mid-atlantic thunder storm, mis-interpreted their air speed and in a stall continued to pull their plane’s nose upward, compounding their plane’s loss of air speed until the entirely capable plane was essentially flying vertically and with no forward momentum tumbled out of the sky into the Atlantic.  The vulnerability of man as he continues to stretch the limitations of his earthbound nature will always have potential tragedy shadowing him, as a matter of course.  One hundred years later, the Titanic’s tragic beauty appears before us as in a long ago dream, and reminds us of our own unpredictable journey.

Posted on

Sinking Ship

     A progressive frustration is building among those on the goodship United States that are seeing all the signs of a foundered boat and are seemingly unable to divert those who are naively or perhaps deliberately  navigating it toward the rocks.  What to do when you see the ship obliviously heading toward the iceberg and your warning shouts are drowned out in the stiff wind?  How to respond when the reef has been struck, water is pouring in and those in charge state everything is under control and continue to pretend there is no danger of calamity?  Is the ship so far out to sea that deciding to preserve yourself when she sinks ends up with you on a lifeboat with no hope for rescue or shore?  How does one respond when the captain responsible for navigating the ship through dangerous waters plows ahead blindly and when finally appreciating crisis blames all others for the debacle?

     We are rapidly reaching a time of impact for this ship that has been so steady through 230 years and the options for avoiding disaster are becoming progressively more limited.  What can been done when it appears a steadily larger portion of the ship’s population is trading responsibility for security and can not be counted on to work together and consider some sacrifice to right the ship?   Our educational process, which for several centuries has been anchored on the basic instruction of what makes the rights of an individual American unique and to be defended, has over the last decades become mute to the progressive ignorance of these American principles, and has traded them for propagandist causes and the shilling of victimhood.  It has permeated our culture to the point that the very pinnacle of leadership, the President himself, a supposed constitutional law professor, anointed the “smartest man” ever to hold the office, proves himself daily to be inexplicably ignorant of the very constitution he pledged to uphold, protect, and defend.

     The Constitution of the United States was a hard won, painstakingly researched and vetted document of specifically enumerated powers that left a template of easily understandable checks and balances to, above all, limit the powers of the rulers and preserve the powers of the ruled to navigate their own lives.  With few exceptions, it has proved to the world that even in a sprawling country of hundreds of millions, a steady and common sense course can be navigated despite so many competing interests.  In ship of state terms, it has until the very recent past seemed unsinkable, because the population at least had a basic understanding about how such a document protected them, and the government, though tempted, always bowed to the document’s ultimate logic.

    Now we face the unsteady decks of a 16 trillion dollar debt and a spending fetish that allows a self imposed spending limit barely a year before it has been consumed and must embarrassingly be increased because of a complete inability to accept its limitations.  We face the gushing waters of debt pouring into the hold, and the bilge pumps in the form of exhaustive but at the same time insufficient taxation unable to keep with the inexorable flood.  Most insultingly, rather than turn our damaged ship toward the safety of shore our leaders head it out to a deeper, more dangerous sea, as if they were free of the laws of nature, immune to the risk, and ignorant of the fate.

     One can only hope that on this ship of ours there are those of sterner stuff, who will see the crisis for what it is, and restore stability.  I just fear that the majority have forgotten what the original voyage was all about, and rather than man the pumps will look to their own safety and exit strategy.  What a sad loss for mankind it would be – because she was, and still could be, the most beautiful of ships.

Posted on

Papa Haydn

    

      This weekend is the occasion of the 280th anniversary of the birth of Franz Joseph Haydn, one of the giants of western musical expression and and somewhat under- appreciatedinnovator in bring ‘classical’ music into the form we know it today.  I find myself pulled lately into communion with Haydn’s music, retreating again and again into its ordered, civilized and uplifting beauty in this difficult modern time of ‘Sturm undDrang’.   Haydn encapsulated the image of the almost perfect genius.  He was clever and funny, he was self effacing, he was loyal, he was liked by almost everybody, and most of all he was good and only got better, in a singularly directed curve to greatness stopped only by his death.

     Haydn did not start out the universally loved and respected Papa Haydn.  He was born of relatively common circumstances on March 31st, 1732 in the little Austrian town of Rohrau in the shadow of the principality of the Esterhazy family that ruled nearby Hungary.  He showed early musical talent but for the most part was forced to gain a musical education piecemeal and informally, freelancing his way to the very infrequent profitable performer’s job and  means of assuaging his ever-present hunger.  One forgets that obtaining a consistent access to food was a driving force in most people’s lives at that time who were not born of wealthy circumstances.  The unknown historical imprint of Haydn might have ended there, had his particular skill at composition rather than performance not become evident to others.  It was his innate ability to produce original musical themes that brought him eventually to the attention of CountEsterhazy, who became Haydn’s benefactor through most of his adult life.  Haydn became the court appointed kapellmeister, and with it, the exposure of the regional world to Haydn’s organizational talents and prodigious work ethic.  With a consistent income (and therefore food) to provide fuel for his talents, Haydn over the next decades threw himself into all musical forms, and re-fashioned many of them into the structures we know of today.  He produced sonatas and concertos for performers that had mature structure, recurring themes, and cohesiveness that brought out the music into a mature, listenable form that highlighted the performer’s gifts.  He expanded the sonata form into new musical devices known as symphony and string quartet that utilized the various instrumental voices that stringed instruments were beginning to provide as the recent technological advances to make the instruments had made possible.  He provided the structural  bridge from the monumental but removed stylings of Bach and Handel to the elevated classicism of Mozart and finally to the romantic everyman idealism of Beethoven. And Haydn did it with supreme grace and respect such that all that took the bridge recognized him as the indispensable piece in their own development. 

     The music he created though was more than a bridge.   It was an original expression of personal genius that has held up well over the centuries as others equally renownedhave fallen away.  It is captured in both supreme compositional skill as well as beautiful melody. One hears the sublime pride Haydn felt in his homeland’s history and beauty in the magnificent melody of the third movement of the Emperor String Quartet, that eventually became the German national anthem.  The stirring of the performance artist as not just an echo of symphonic expression but the elevated musical voice of talent to be enjoyed and recognized for its own sake is the dominant imprint of the unforgettable Cello Concerto in C Major.  The series of ever expanding complexities culminating in the magnificent London Symphonies gave Beethoven the freedom to make the Symphony the supreme musical venue for the composer’s expression. 

     The catalogue of available Haydn music is immense, and frankly, almost all of it a delight of renewed appreciation of his gifts to any who will take the time to listen to the various forms.  A surprise is  in store for the investigator who re-looks at Haydn’s productive later years.  Freed from the demands of the  compositional requirements of the court, Haydn achieved a world status with his time in London and became independently wealthy.  He no longer had to create for the intimacies of the court, but could afford to take  the extended time and energy that more profound musical expressions required to devise.  Haydn, whose reputation for civilized, intimate composition dominates, proved every bit the Olympian composer that later reputations for Beethoven and Brahms were later secured.  Haydn’s epic masterpiece, The Creation, evokes the same exaltation and profundity that is credited to Beethoven’s Ninth or Verdi’s Requiem.  The expanded and ethereal buildup that leads to Haydn’s musical inspiration of God’s divine impulse to bathe His creation of heaven and earth in Light as single pizzicato note, makes the glory of the exposed divine creation in the beautiful noise to follow a moment of great theater on par with any in music, and has caused audiences to gasp and cry at the revealed Truth  for centuries. See for yourself as to whether your own emotions match the audiences of the centuries since at around 8’20” onward of the Creation moment in the third video below if you don’t have the patience to appreciate the entire performance.  The deeply religious Haydn has left for all time a monument to his devotion and thanks to the God of Creation that had given him the ability to express what others could only feel.  For our time, Haydn’s magnificent gifts to all of us continue to bring joy and appreciation for the beauty of His creation and our need to do what we can to preserve it.  And God said, Let there be Light – and through His creation that brought us Franz Joseph Haydn – There was Light.