GOING, GOING, GONE

With his self admitted ignorance of economics and a campaign staff composed of powerhouse lobbyists who engineered the Ponzi Scheme which has put our economy in a tailspin, it looks like McCain's chances for the Presidency are Palin.

Originally published in Daily Herald, October 2, 2008

DEATH VALLEY DAYS

After 58 motion pictures over twenty-seven years, fading screen actor Ronald Reagan took his last dramatic turn for two seasons as the Old Ranger on the TV show Death Valley Days in 1964-65.

Starting his adult life as a New Deal Roosevelt Democrat in the 1930's, Reagan became more and more conservative as he became wealthy and successful first as an actor, then as an tough talking corporate spokesman for General Electric. Governmental regulation and fair taxation which fueled the world's largest economy after the Great Depression, became the bogeymen of this zealous promoter of minimal domestic government, low taxation and deregulation of business. Reagan was so slick at his new craft that he parlayed his soothing voice, movie star good looks and conservative charisma to the Presidency in 1980, just twelve years after winning his only other two elections as Governor of California.

I first observed Reagan as the befuddled professor in the 1951 movie, "Bedtime For Bonzo", which became the hallmark of his fading acting career. He then became ubiquitous on TV, first as the host of GE Theater preceding his last hurrah as the Old Ranger. Fast forward fifteen years and there was Reagan winning the Presidency and becoming one of the few transformational leaders of the 20th Century. Sadly, it was not a transformation for the better. I stared in disbelief as President Reagan proclaimed, "Government is not the solution, it is the problem". My working class folks prospered under the New Deal and I applauded as an activist Supreme Court and an aggressive executive branch and Congress provided civil rights for my darker hued American brothers and sisters. Reagan's governmental bogeyman wasn't mine.

Gee, if government was such a problem why would men like Reagan lust so mightily to control it. It didn't take long to find out. The Reagan Revolution involved loosening the sensible regulations which kept big business and old fashioned greed from undoing the social compact. The second phase involved poking holes in the safety net for the less fortunate like saboteurs at a high wire act. In short, the Reagan Revolution meant to kill the very New Deal reforms and benefits that a young, idealistic Reagan championed.

With an eight year respite during a Clinton presidency that straightened out our social priorities while building a budgetary surplus, the Reagan Revolution has dominated the last twenty-eight years. The Bush administration which limps to the finish line with abysmally low support and calamitous problems to solve, has practiced Reagan's philosophy with a vengeance.

And if the Old Ranger turned on TV today in the Hereafter, he might surmise, upon seeing the meltdown of our economy from an unfettered and utterly glutinous business class set loose by lobbyist controlled leaders, that he stumbled upon an fresh episode of "Death Valley Days".

STRUCTURALLY DEFICIENT PRIORITIES

One year and thirty-five days ago the I35W Bridge in Minneapolis collapsed into the Mississippi River killing 13, injuring 145 and closing a vital transportation artery in the Twin Cities.

The disaster made plain what we in the logistics profession have known for the past eight years. America, under both federal and state government, has permitted, even encouraged a scandalous neglect of our transportation infrastructure which is contributing to our concurrent economic decline.

At least, we surmised, this tragedy would spur America to commit to rebuilding and renewing this infrastructure which is so vital to our economic well being.

Sadly, the usual happy talk we get from governmental leaders again amounted to NATO – “No Action, Talk Only”.

The Associated Press reports little progress in repairing and rehabilitating each state’s twenty most heavily traveled and structurally deficient bridges. Just 10 percent of 1,020 major bridges had their structural defects fixed. Two thirds of the most heavily traveled problem bridges have had zero major work down besides regular maintenance.

President Bush has vowed to veto one billion dollars of a proposed federal increase in infrastructure repair. In Minnesota, the replacement of the I35W replacement is scheduled to open September 15, 100 days ahead of schedule in spite of Gov. Tom Pawlenty, who vetoed a $6.6 billion transportation spending plan. The state legislature overrode Pawlenty’s veto and then fired his transportation commissioner. Minnesota also initiated a $2.5 billion draft bridge improvement plan to replace eleven major spans over the next decade. It will also use new tax revenue to refurbish 120 bridges that lack structural redundancy experts believe led to the I35W collapse. Pawlenty was too busy burnishing his image as a tax cutter to care about infrastucture.

And President Bush? In the 400 days since that structurally deficient bridge dumped doomed commuters into a watery grave, he has squandered $117 billion, not to secure and build up, but to prosecute endlessly a made up, senseless war. In subscribing to the conservative theory that government is the problem, not the solution, he spends every day proving precisely that.

Originally published in the Daily Herald, September 28, 2008