Archive for the ‘Current Affairs’ Category
Hearing the message of a despised messenger
I spent more than 20 years in high tech marketing before recently moving my career in a different direction. I never thought I’d be in the position of defending Bill Gates, who for most of his years at Microsoft has been widely despised for his ruthlessly competitive leadership style.
I am quite certain many in and out of high tech are uttering something like “yeah, right” having learned of Gates’ speech before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland calling for “creative capitalism.” Gates has been creative all along — as in always finding ways to put his competitors out of business.
That’s the old Gates. The new Gates is the extraordinary, soon to be full-time philanthropist. And that’s who was speaking yesterday.
“We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well…I like to call this idea creative capitalism.”
Call it whatever you like, Bill, but it’s about time people of your stature use a platform such as the World Economic Forum to urge big business, in particular, to attend to the needs of the neediest.
We can kill the messenger, but his message must be heard:
“I am an optimist…But I am an impatient optimist. The world is getting better, but it’s not getting better fast enough, and it’s not getting better for everyone.”
Now consider for a moment how free market apologists construe the words of the world’s most successful capitalist of our time. Here’s Larry Kudlow, CNBC and National Review, spouting off:
Don’t you just love it? A guy without a college degree who invented a new technology process in his garage that literally changed the entire world, a guy who took advantage of all the great opportunities that a free and capitalist society has to offer and got filthy rich in the process, is now trashing capitalism and telling us it doesn’t work. What chutzpah…
So I just have to smile when billionaires like Bill Gates and George Soros turn cold shoulders to the blessings capitalism bestows. Or when their buddy, Warren Buffett, broadcasts the importance of hiking tax rates on successful earners and investors.
Look fellas, the command-and-control, state-run economics experiment was tried. It was called the Soviet Union. If you hadn’t noticed, it was a miserable failure.
Is that what Bill was doing, trashing capitalism and urging Communist state-run economics? Is that what the putative richest man in the world meant yesterday when he said, as the AP reports, “business must work with governments and nonprofit groups to stem global poverty and spur more technological innovation for those left behind”?
Thanks for clearing everything up, Mr. Kudlow. I always suspected business leaders who join the struggle to eradicate poverty are nothing more than closeted Communists. I mean why take personal action when you can just let the free market fix everything.
Tags: Bill Gates, communists, creative capitalism, global poverty, Larry Kudlow, World Economic Forum
Posted in Business & Economics, Current Affairs, Politics | No Comments »
‘The War’ and the war
I have sat transfixed through nearly every gruesome and heartrending hour of Ken Burns’ telling of “The War” this past week. It’s almost been enough to take my mind off the war; I mean that one our administration wants to call the war on terror. Unfortunately, the last world war didn’t make history of all war. Loss of limbs and lives continues unabated in places we Americans choose to fight and in plenty of other spots around the globe we choose to ignore.
Today I find myself looking to compare the war my father fought in with the one our soldiers are ordered to contest in Iraq. But I stop short. There really is no comparison, aside from the individual bravery, sacrifice and brutality common to all wars. Still, I can’t help but observe the Iraq news backdrop to the 15-hour airing of “The War” — BlackWater, the mercenary, ahem, private security firm coming under harsh criticism for a recent tragic confrontation in Iraq. I suspect many other Americans go to the same place I do as they hear about the involvement of Blackwater and other private profiteers of war: cynicism. We grow even wearier. What else can we expect from an administration for whom the invisible hand of the free market belongs to God. Of Blackwater, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich remarked:
“If war is privatized, then private contractors have a vested interest in keeping the war going. The longer the war goes on, the more money they make.”
And therein grows the cynicism of the day. If it’s good for business in America, it’s good for America. Chalk up war as another commodity to be bought and sold. Of course Corporate America benefitted tremendously during World War II. But Americans then were not afforded the luxury of cynicism. The war could not be won without the all-out efforts of business and every other institution. Whatever it took, whatever the cost to win the war was what Americans signed up for. They had little choice. Those who would destroy us had to be destroyed.
When I imagine Baghdad, I don’t see the tyrants of Berlin or Tokyo. I picture the civil war leaders of Hanoi and Saigon. I don’t find towering figures like FDR and Churchill to take comfort from. I seethe over the deceit of Bush and Blair. And I don’t witness the sacrifice of all Americans. I see volunteer soldiers from the ranks of our most disadvantaged families and a depressingly large swath of our citizenry more concerned with Britney Spears’ wellbeing than that of our warriors.
So how will filmmakers years from now look back on America’s war of 2007 and counting? You can easily guess my prediction. What’s yours?
The country moves on, but not New Orleans
I wanted to be back in New Orleans Wednesday, standing with its citizens as they observed the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I never visited the area before the storm and the flooding. I saw it for the first time last October after making my way by car along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and onward to New Orleans. I needed to see for myself what nature and human incompetence and indifference had wrought. Three months later I made an unplanned return trip to the city with a group of Portland volunteers to help gut flooded homes.
Hurricane Katrina hit me just as hard as 9/11. If 9/11 stole my feelings of security as an American citizen, Katrina filled me with anger and frustration. It’s been nearly six years since the Twin Towers fell, and only two since the levees broke. That may explain why I still feel more raw emotions in the aftermath of the hurricane. Or maybe it’s because our nation’s responses to the two catastrophes were so starkly different. One heroic. The other shameful. Americans came together after 9/11. We stared dumbfounded into our TV sets after 8/29, unable to find our greatness.
Two years removed, our country continues to fail the people of New Orleans and surrounding parishes. As reporters in the city observed Wednesday, with the prodding of President Bush, there are signs of progress to be sure,
“But vast stretches of the city show little or no recovery. A housing shortage and high rents have hampered business growth. The homeless population has almost doubled since the storm, and many of those squat in an estimated 80,000 vacant dwellings. Violent crime is also on the rise, and the National Guard and state troopers still supplement a diminished local police force.”
And that’s to say nothing about the city’s decimated educational and health care systems. The people of New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast are suffering. Deeply. Still. And we can still help. For starters, check out US Sen. Mary Landrieu’s page on volunteering in New Orleans. Maybe we can give the victims of Katrina a reason to celebrate when the third anniversary comes around.
Hopeful signs in a global economy
I’m certainly not a champion of economic globalization. Nor am I among those who believe globalization is the root of all evil. The issue is simply not black and white for me. This piece in the Washington Post today helps explain why.
The global economy is giving opportunities, albeit slowly, to India’s lowest castes. The article touches on one young woman from India’s Dalit caste – the so-called “untouchables” – being hired for a well-paid job at a Philadelphia child social services agency. Her father, when he learned of her hiring, said, “I’m so happy and so proud. I never dreamt of such a thing for our family.”
Ideally, no one would have to travel half way around the world to find good work. But for now, American employers can offer hope for a better life to people who have only known discrimination. Of course, this country also has its own long history of prejudice, a fact not lost on Dalit activists, who, according to the Post, “have even lobbied the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus, with whom they see common cause and a shared experience in discrimination.”
Yes, a globalized economy can offer hope and opportunity to the oppressed and poor. Now imagine if that were actually the rule and not the exception in global commerce.
Thoughts of Minnesota
The majority of my life has been spent in Oregon, but it was Minnesota where I was born and raised. Many of my former high school and college classmates made their way to the Twin Cities and settled down, while I headed to the far west. I am thinking of them and all Minnesotans today. Catastrophic events like yesterday’s 35W bridge collapse at rush hour just don’t happen there. Or so it seems. But if ever there was a state whose citizens would come together in a time of crisis, it’s Minnesota. Be well, all of you.
When will the tragedy end?
Here in Portland, many miles from the city of New Orleans, 100 or more evacuees from hurricanes Katrina and Rita have lost a vital piece of public assistance. Catholic Charities says it has exhausted all of its $350,000 in hurricane relief funds, ending what has been described as “Portland’s longest-running large-scale program” to help evacuees resettle in our community.
This is yet another reminder, if indeed you need one, that a great American tragedy is still unfolding, with no apparent end in sight. The two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is almost upon us. Soon media will descend upon New Orleans to report on the progress, or lack thereof. Some reporters will go looking for hopeful signs of recovery and find them. Others will bear witness to the thousands of still-empty and forlorn homes and commercial centers that cover wide swaths of the city. And they will ask incredulously why so little has changed two years removed from what the locals call The Storm.
Like thousands who have volunteered to help in New Orleans, I got up close and personal early this year with the physical and emotional devastation caused by the flooding. I was part of a volunteer crew that gutted homes for a week under the coordination of Medical Teams International. I interviewed homeowners and others while I was there. Our team coordinator Alex, a 37-year-old life-long resident of New Orleans, lost three friends to suicide in the course of three weeks in November and December 2006.
“Two were specifically related to the situation with their home and not to be able to get any headway, and basically living in cars. One of the guys actually hung himself at his house. The other guy shot himself. The third guy crashed his car.” A fourth friend killed himself with alcohol and pills just a couple weeks before we arrived. Same age as Alex, this guy had given him his first job in banking. Alex evolved that position into a lucrative financial career. Then the storm changed everything for everyone.
I have seen or read nothing that makes me believe the situation is vastly improved from what we saw back in January. My ears still ring with the words of Lee Eagan, an affluent local business owner whose family roots extend back hundreds of years in New Orleans. His home was spared by the flood, but hardly his emotions.
“I stand on my front porch. Two blocks from my house the water stopped. If I looked north from my house eight miles to the lake, everything flooded. If I look to the east, out this way, 23 miles, everything flooded. Now you do the math and you figure out how much geography, how many houses, how many people, how many photographs, how many wedding dresses were lost. And then you add it all up and you come up with one word: depression.”
It makes me wonder how those evacuees who had depended upon the generosity of Catholic Charities in Portland are feeling today.
Tags: American tragedy, Catholic Charities, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, Medical Teams International, New Orleans
Posted in Current Affairs, Hurricane Katrina, Oregon | No Comments »