Category: Journal

The Star Spangled Banner

Com­plaints about Amer­i­ca’s nation­al anthem are com­mon­place. Some­where along the line, prob­a­bly in high school, I joined the cho­rus. “The nation­al anthem is ter­ri­ble and should be changed.” Then my mind was changed.*

It was in the nine­teen eight­ies, I believe. There was an arti­cle in The New Repub­lic in defense of the nation­al anthem. The prin­ci­ple argu­ment was that the song is unsingable by one per­son. The more peo­ple singing the song, the bet­ter it sounds. This makes it a per­fect stand in for democracy.

I was convinced.

The prob­lem with the nation­al anthem is that “we” do not sing it any­more. Instead of an activ­i­ty to which we can all con­tribute, it has become a spec­ta­tor event. Yes, some­times the per­for­mance by this or that celebri­ty is spec­tac­u­lar. But often it is not so good. Some­times bor­der­ing on, if not out­right, dis­re­spect­ful and insulting.

Yes­ter­day, The New Repub­lic pub­lished a blog entry on The Star Span­gled Ban­ner with links to a cou­ple of arti­cles on why it should not be the nation­al anthem. I guess the author did not search far enough back into the archives to find the arti­cle that changed my mind. Also to be found at the web­site of The New Repub­lic is a video slideshow of good and bad per­for­mances and attempt­ed per­for­mances of The Star Span­gled Ban­ner.

The ninth video in that slideshow is of Steven Tyler singing the anthem at the Indy 500 in 2001. The cap­tion reads:

Unable to remem­ber “the home of the brave,” Tyler replaced it with “the home of the Indi­anapo­lis 500.

But watch­ing the video, I don’t believe for a moment that Tyler for­got the last word of the song. He inten­tion­al­ly sub­sti­tut­ed the lyrics and paused for dra­mat­ic effect.

*What do you know? I guess I’m not so close mind­ed as I thought.

A Sea of Red Ink

As, I hope, most Amer­i­cans are, I am con­cerned about the fed­er­al debt. Already high at the end of the Bush years, the fed­er­al deficit is now even high­er, and the fore­cast for future years is even worse.

Clear­ly this is unsustainable.

I vot­ed for Oba­ma and I sup­port his agen­da. But at some point the deficit/​debt must be addressed. I believe Oba­ma to be an intel­li­gent man and an astute politi­cian. He sure­ly under­stands the poten­tial prob­lems of con­tin­u­ing to pile up debt. I have to believe that he has a plan.

And the plan is this.* Effec­tive­ly deal­ing with the fed­er­al deficit will not be polit­i­cal­ly pop­u­lar. Pro­grams will have to be cut and tax­es raised. It will take a lot of Oba­ma’s polit­i­cal cap­i­tal to do this. So much so, that it would be dif­fi­cult for him to get his oth­er agen­da items through after deal­ing with the deficit.

Of course, get­ting his oth­er agen­da items through might not leave him with enough cap­i­tal to deal with the deficit. So what to do? By leav­ing the deficit for lat­er, it con­tin­ues to grow to obscene amounts. A year (or two?) from now, con­gress will have no choice but to get seri­ous about the deficit. Democ­rats will have to accept some pro­gram cuts and Repub­li­cans will have to accept some tax­es. They will be push­ing each oth­er aside to cut and raise more than the other.

A guy can dream, right?

*No, I have no inside info. This is com­plete­ly spec­u­la­tive on my part.

Where Are the Lawyers?

I present for your con­sid­er­a­tion a warn­ing label that gives the read­er cred­it for pos­sess­ing com­mon sense.

Garage door warning label
Do Not Paint Over This Label

Note at the bot­tom of the label the addi­tion­al warn­ing to not paint over the label. The label fails to warn against paint­ing over the red screws. It is amaz­ing to me that the lawyers missed that.

Public Option in Health Care Reform

Health reform with­out a pub­lic option is incom­plete reform. A pub­lic option will increase choice and reduce costs. 

Oppo­nents of a pub­lic option cite the supe­ri­or­i­ty of a free mar­ket over “gov­ern­ment” intru­sion. The prob­lem is that 94 per­cent of the coun­try’s insur­ance mar­kets are defined as “high­ly con­cen­trat­ed.” A pub­lic option would increase com­pe­ti­tion and cre­ate a free mar­ket where there is not one cur­rent­ly. Because of this, a pub­lic option will play an impor­tant role in bring­ing down costs (even George Will agrees the pub­lic option reduces costs).

The pub­lic option should not receive any tax­pay­er sub­sidy that is not avail­able to pri­vate plans.

There needs to be ele­ments in place that pre­vent pri­vate insur­ance com­pa­nies from skim­ming off the healthy and leav­ing the less healthy for the pub­lic plan.

I’ve seen the argu­ment against the pub­lic option that it will put pri­vate insur­ance com­pa­nies out of busi­ness. If the pub­lic option does not receive any sub­sidy not avail­able to pri­vate insur­ance plans, then this should not be an issue. In fact, a com­mon theme of con­ser­v­a­tives is the effi­cien­cy of the pri­vate sec­tor and the inef­fi­cien­cy of the gov­ern­ment sec­tor, so this should­n’t be an issue at all.

Which brings us to the argu­ment that the pub­lic option will become a huge inef­fi­cient gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy. If it does, then it would be expen­sive and peo­ple would buy cov­er­age from pri­vate plans.

I keep hear­ing that such a plan would put a gov­ern­ment bureau­crat between me and my doc­tor. There’s already an insur­ance bureau­crat between me and my doc­tor (and that has­n’t always been so pleas­ant a situation!).

Final­ly, there is evi­dence that peo­ple with Medicare and Med­ic­aid are hap­pi­er with those pro­grams than peo­ple with pri­vate insur­ance are with those plans. (Hat tip TPMDC) And there is polling evi­dence that most Amer­i­cans want a pub­lic option.

The pub­lic option is want­ed and need­ed. Write your Con­gressper­son and Senators.

Regulating the economy

To be hon­est, reg­u­lat­ing the econ­o­my is most­ly over my head. Or, maybe, just bor­ing to me. Either way, when­ev­er an arti­cle men­tions deriv­a­tives two or more times, it is iffy that I will get to the end.

Still, it is an impor­tant top­ic. I’m sure some argue that the less reg­u­la­tion the bet­ter. And I can’t argue that. As long as there is enough, there should­n’t be more.

I’m guess­ing that every time an eco­nom­ic reg­u­la­tion is writ­ten, there are par­ties that imme­di­ate­ly set about find­ing a way around it. So, even though it is impor­tant for the present reg­u­la­to­ry scheme to be adjust­ed to new real­i­ties, we should nev­er assume that all con­tin­gen­cies are covered.

It seems like what we real­ly need is some­one who iden­ti­fies prob­lems and acts on them. Did­n’t most of Amer­i­ca under­stand there was a hous­ing bub­ble? Was­n’t this clear a cou­ple of years ago? Or ear­li­er? Did­n’t Fed Chair­man Greenspan com­plain of irra­tional exu­ber­ance in the stock mar­ket in 1996, four years before that recession?

In both cas­es, every­one under­stood that eco­nom­ic growth was being dri­ven by bub­bles. But no one had the polit­i­cal courage to do some­thing about it. Maybe end­ing a bub­ble inevitably leads to a reces­sion (and who wants to be respon­si­ble for that?), but I’m bet­ting end­ing the bub­ble soon­er rather than lat­er would lessen the recession.

Maybe the next round of eco­nom­ic growth will be pow­ered by an increase in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty instead of a bub­ble. You know, for a change.

Iran’s choices

I am copy­ing the fol­low­ing poem from 3quarksdaily.

    Inscription

Meh­di Akhavan-Sales

The stone lay there like a mountain
and we sat here a weary bunch
women, men, young, old
all linked together
at the ankles, by a chain.

You could crawl to whomev­er your heart desired
as far as you could drag your chain.

We did not know, nor did we ask
was it a voice in our night­mare and weariness
or else, a her­ald from an unknown corner,
it spoke:

“The stone lying there holds a secret
inscribed on it by wise men of old.”
Thus spoke the voice over and again
and, as a wave recoil­ing on itself
retreat­ed in the dark
and we said nothing
and for some time we said nothing.

After­wards, only in our looks
many doubts and queries spoke out
then noth­ing but the ambush of weari­ness, oblivion
and silence, even in our looks
and the stone lying there.

One night, moon­light pour­ing damna­tion on us
and our swollen feet itching
one of us, whose chain was the heaviest
damned his ears and groaned: “I must go”
and we said, fatigued: “Damn our ears
damn our eyes, we must go.”
and we crawled up to where the stone lay.
One of us, whose chain was looser
climbed up and read:

“He shall know my secret
who turns me over!”

With a sin­gu­lar joy we repeat­ed this dusty secret
under our breath as if it were a prayer
and the night was a glo­ri­ous stream filled with moonlight.

One…two…three…heave-ho!
One…two…three…once more!
sweat­ing sad, curs­ing, at times even crying
again…one…two…three…thus many times
hard was our task, sweet our victory
tired but hap­py, we felt a famil­iar joy
soar­ing with delight and ecstasy.

One of us, whose chain was lighter
salut­ed all, then climbed the stone
wiped the dirt-caked inscrip­tion and mouthed the words
(we were impatient)
wet­ted his lips (and we did the same)
and remained silent
cast a glance at us and remained silent
read again, his eyes fixed, his tongue dead
his gaze drift­ing over a far away unknown
we yelled to him”

“Read!” he was speechless
“Read it to us!” he stared at us in silence
after a time
he climbed down, his chain clanking
we held him up, life­less as he was
we sat him down
he cursed our hands and his
“What did you read? huh?”
He swal­lowed and said faintly:
“The same was written:

“He shall know my secret
who turns me over!”

We sat
and
stared at the moon and the bright night
and the night was a sick­ly stream.

Trans­la­tion: Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak

Even if Mous­savi was some­how declared the win­ner, not that much would change for Ira­ni­ans. It’s not like it would sud­den­ly become a sec­u­lar state with all the free­doms Amer­i­cans take for granted.

Father of the Grad

I have been remiss, though I plead exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances. I have had some com­put­er dif­fi­cul­ties that have pre­vent­ed me from manip­u­lat­ing pics.

My daugh­ter grad­u­at­ed from Franklin Col­lege last month. I am the proud Dad.

Father of the Grad
Father of the Grad

There’s not much more to say. She’s smart, tal­ent­ed and a fine young woman.

Father’s Day

I grew up a Chica­go Cubs fan. I don’t know exact­ly when I became a Cubs fan, but by the time I was ten, I was a Cubs fan. My best guess is that Ray Raynor, who did a morn­ing show for kids on WGN TV in Chica­go, was respon­si­ble for mak­ing me a Cubs fan.

Dad was a White Sox fan. But I had no idea that Dad was a White Sox fan until I was well into adult­hood. One would think that I might have got­ten a clue from the num­ber of times I walked in on him watch­ing the Sox game when the Cubs were also play­ing. I would com­ment that the Cubs were on and he always changed the chan­nel to the Cubs game. I just fig­ured he did­n’t know.

Some­time in my twen­ties or thir­ties Dad told me the sto­ry of how he became a White Sox fan. As a child, Dad was a Cubs fan. In 1929, Dad was twelve years old. The Chica­go Cubs were in the World Series for the first time since 1918 (when Dad was 2 years old).

It was the fourth game of the series. The Philadel­phia A’s were up 2 games to 1. But the Cubs were look­ing good to even the series at two games each with an eight run lead in the sev­enth inning.

But the A’s scored ten runs in that sev­enth inning, aid­ed by Hack Wilson’s fail­ure to catch two fly balls that he lost in the sun. Twice in the same inning!! Wil­son was the star of the team, hit­ting 39 home runs and dri­ving in 159 runs while bat­ting .345 that year, so it was dou­bly painful that he con­tributed so much to the bad inning.

The A’s won the game and went on to win the series. Dad could­n’t take it. He aban­doned the Cubs and became a White Sox fan.

As it turned out, he had made a good deci­sion. It took thir­ty years, but the White Sox won the World Series in 1959.

The Cubs looked good to get to the post sea­son in 1969 and I was right there keep­ing a scrap­book since Jan­u­ary. Every word the Chica­go Tri­bune print­ed on the Cubs was in my scrap­book. The Cubs blew it in the end and the Mets beat them out. I threw my scrap­book away in dis­gust, but I was still a Cubs fan.

Two weeks ago, the Cubs were mired in a slump and they were play­ing Min­neso­ta. The Twins had men at first and third with one out. A fly ball was hit to medi­um deep right field. Mil­ton Bradley, a high pro­file acqui­si­tion pri­or to the sea­son who has­n’t played well, caught the fly ball. Then he tossed it into the stands.

At that moment, I had an under­stand­ing of what my Dad might have felt back in 1929.

I’m still a Cubs fan (and I’ve enjoyed the last few games!) but it got me to won­der­ing. If I had switched alle­giance to the Sox after 1969, I would have only had to wait 36 years for a World Series win. As it is, I’m still waiting.