Friday, October 14, 2011
Et tu, NY Yankees, and other betrayals
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The 3-2 score in the final Yankees’ playoff game with the Detroit Tigers was a real downer. Our power team is gone, as are the Mets and the Red Sox, there’s nothing’s left for the East Coast liberals to watch. I have nothing but admiration for the year-round Yankee fans, as well as pity for their neglected families and employers, as the fans doggedly follow all the wrinkles of the regular season. I’ve always been a post-season playoffs watcher, thrilled by the tense competition where the best meet the best.
The normally talkative Yankees had little to say after the loss, except for Derek Jeter, who stated that “Detroit has the pitchers, that’s where the game is won.” Come on Jeter, we saw the games. Their pitchers were inspired, yes, but our hitting? We left 11 men on bases in the final game. And Alex Rodriguez the guy who between slacks in hitting makes his name known by dating all the babes of renown, maybe he should think of changing his main focus? There is a certain obligation towards your audience that comes with big paychecks, it is in your social contract (remember Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and such), to make the rest of us feel upbeat, if not actually good, at least for the moment. It is important in this period of upheaval, where disturbing news threaten our equanimity every time we open the news media, be it dangers to personal life (e.g., tomorrow’s job), family, social, economic, national politics, or events of international unrest (Israel, ah) and outrageous strange crimes. And the stock market: one neighbor quips that “ 200 points one day, 400 the next, and soon it might become real money,” while another admonishes that the Dow has nothing to do with real life—but tell that to a fixed income retiree!
In politics, one wishes we were back to the 1980s, when bankers made only a few times more money than their employees. Practical politicians of both parties argued in public, but in private they drank together, made alliances and developed compromises, and always acted in the interests of the country. Thus, the democratic politicians were signing in behind President Bush in 2003, in effect trusting him and his facts, in authorizing the Iraq action. They did not “destroy the U in USA,” as the hate-spewing Republican pols do in 2011. There is actual rage towards the President of the USA on part of the makeup of the new thick-headed pols in search of a fantasy demon, a single enemy to destroy and miraculously return the world to normal, something that a seasoned practical politician or lawyer would not express.
I note, that regarding another search of an enemy, that of the Occupy Wall Street walkers, some of it comes through the Vancouver-based Adbreaker crowd, a publication that sent the 90,000 invitations resulting in the protest marches from Union Square area, starting on September 17. Adbreaker has a naïve anti –recession philosophy of stopping consumerism (“Don’t shop on Thanksgiving… no Nike…Coke… bank the savings.”) Micah White, their leader, issued a “to the barricades” call, echoing the Toronto and Vancouver riots against G8 and G20 meetings, and hoping for a Tahrir Bridge effect, as in Egypt, that resulted in the downfall of the Mubarak regime. That is revolutionary hooha.
Fortunately the sophisticated NYC angries converted the call to orderly walks , carrying provocative signs against the “one percent,” the greedy bank manipulators, and singing a few choruses of Solidarity Forever, accompanied by customary NY banjo sounds. The marchers made sure no NY property was broken.
Why bankers, now? Until the 1980s the bankers’ greed was limited by the 1940s Glass-Steagall law restricting banking functions; then in the 1990s the great Texas Senator Phil Gramm broke that restraint and opened the doors to derivatives, swaps and subpar mortgages, with low taxes . Add free trade, and no encouragement was needed for the emergence of the bonus-oriented top executive who does not mind swindling the stockholders and ruining the business, or the country, or world economy for the sake of short term personal gains, bonus or market or both. That’s the class of businessman that the tea party innocents protect from a slightly more proportional taxation (until 1986 the high earners were hugely taxed and accepted it). They are the manipulators, the one percent that the Occupy Wall Street 99 percent innocents attack. I’m with the marchers, but what jobs are produced by standing and walking with placards? The point is to get jobs, and the union participants see to it.
Just to remind us, stripping the “one percent” of some excess incomes is to help produce a jobs program of infrastructure repairs (roads, bridges), school buildings, education , less taxation for small businesses who hire and who do not lay off, and developing of new technology, particularly energy, where we can hope to catch up with our $800B annual import imbalance. We must develop agreements with the Chinese and the Little Tiger countries not to push in their state-subsidized product and destroy our new industries, a la the heat panel firms (Solyndra, First Solar etc; we have a complaint since Dec 2010, with World Trade Organization).
Next time I’ll try to be more cheerful. Send me good news, mcdobelis@gmail.com
The 3-2 score in the final Yankees’ playoff game with the Detroit Tigers was a real downer. Our power team is gone, as are the Mets and the Red Sox, there’s nothing’s left for the East Coast liberals to watch. I have nothing but admiration for the year-round Yankee fans, as well as pity for their neglected families and employers, as the fans doggedly follow all the wrinkles of the regular season. I’ve always been a post-season playoffs watcher, thrilled by the tense competition where the best meet the best.
The normally talkative Yankees had little to say after the loss, except for Derek Jeter, who stated that “Detroit has the pitchers, that’s where the game is won.” Come on Jeter, we saw the games. Their pitchers were inspired, yes, but our hitting? We left 11 men on bases in the final game. And Alex Rodriguez the guy who between slacks in hitting makes his name known by dating all the babes of renown, maybe he should think of changing his main focus? There is a certain obligation towards your audience that comes with big paychecks, it is in your social contract (remember Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and such), to make the rest of us feel upbeat, if not actually good, at least for the moment. It is important in this period of upheaval, where disturbing news threaten our equanimity every time we open the news media, be it dangers to personal life (e.g., tomorrow’s job), family, social, economic, national politics, or events of international unrest (Israel, ah) and outrageous strange crimes. And the stock market: one neighbor quips that “ 200 points one day, 400 the next, and soon it might become real money,” while another admonishes that the Dow has nothing to do with real life—but tell that to a fixed income retiree!
In politics, one wishes we were back to the 1980s, when bankers made only a few times more money than their employees. Practical politicians of both parties argued in public, but in private they drank together, made alliances and developed compromises, and always acted in the interests of the country. Thus, the democratic politicians were signing in behind President Bush in 2003, in effect trusting him and his facts, in authorizing the Iraq action. They did not “destroy the U in USA,” as the hate-spewing Republican pols do in 2011. There is actual rage towards the President of the USA on part of the makeup of the new thick-headed pols in search of a fantasy demon, a single enemy to destroy and miraculously return the world to normal, something that a seasoned practical politician or lawyer would not express.
I note, that regarding another search of an enemy, that of the Occupy Wall Street walkers, some of it comes through the Vancouver-based Adbreaker crowd, a publication that sent the 90,000 invitations resulting in the protest marches from Union Square area, starting on September 17. Adbreaker has a naïve anti –recession philosophy of stopping consumerism (“Don’t shop on Thanksgiving… no Nike…Coke… bank the savings.”) Micah White, their leader, issued a “to the barricades” call, echoing the Toronto and Vancouver riots against G8 and G20 meetings, and hoping for a Tahrir Bridge effect, as in Egypt, that resulted in the downfall of the Mubarak regime. That is revolutionary hooha.
Fortunately the sophisticated NYC angries converted the call to orderly walks , carrying provocative signs against the “one percent,” the greedy bank manipulators, and singing a few choruses of Solidarity Forever, accompanied by customary NY banjo sounds. The marchers made sure no NY property was broken.
Why bankers, now? Until the 1980s the bankers’ greed was limited by the 1940s Glass-Steagall law restricting banking functions; then in the 1990s the great Texas Senator Phil Gramm broke that restraint and opened the doors to derivatives, swaps and subpar mortgages, with low taxes . Add free trade, and no encouragement was needed for the emergence of the bonus-oriented top executive who does not mind swindling the stockholders and ruining the business, or the country, or world economy for the sake of short term personal gains, bonus or market or both. That’s the class of businessman that the tea party innocents protect from a slightly more proportional taxation (until 1986 the high earners were hugely taxed and accepted it). They are the manipulators, the one percent that the Occupy Wall Street 99 percent innocents attack. I’m with the marchers, but what jobs are produced by standing and walking with placards? The point is to get jobs, and the union participants see to it.
Just to remind us, stripping the “one percent” of some excess incomes is to help produce a jobs program of infrastructure repairs (roads, bridges), school buildings, education , less taxation for small businesses who hire and who do not lay off, and developing of new technology, particularly energy, where we can hope to catch up with our $800B annual import imbalance. We must develop agreements with the Chinese and the Little Tiger countries not to push in their state-subsidized product and destroy our new industries, a la the heat panel firms (Solyndra, First Solar etc; we have a complaint since Dec 2010, with World Trade Organization).
Next time I’ll try to be more cheerful. Send me good news, mcdobelis@gmail.com
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 1:07 AM 
