This past week I tuned into the press conference given by Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois when he named Roland Burris to be his choice to fill President-elect Barack Obama's recently vacated U.S. Senate seat.
The scene played out like a comic opera. Blagojevich looked shifty and like the canary who ate the catbird. Yep, that odd.
Even though it seems like everybody except the Pope has asked Blago to re-sign for trying to sell that very same senate seat in question, the Illinois Governor is within his right to appoint a successor to Obama before next Tuesday when the other U.S. Senators are seated--representative Bobby Rush's feeble race politics comments aside.
I have one word: Unbelievable.
I must admit, I miss watching the drama that is Chicago and Illinois politics. This is proving to be a tremendous boon for bystanders, Republicans, and people who love politics as theater. It shows how broken our political system is.
The long and short of it is: Roland Burris should be seated. Not because he is Black. That would be ridiculous, like seating someone because they are white or male or have a pulse (anybody seen Dick Cheney lately?).
Roland Burris should be allowed to take the seat that Governor Rod Balgojevich is appointing him to because Blagojevich is a sitting governor of the state within the fifty United States of America (that would be Illinois) and it is in his US Constitutional rights to be able to appoint a person of his choice to the vacated seat. He has not been convicted or impeached of anything.
Now, I'm no Blago fan nor do I fault Burris' for accepting the nomination from the disgraced governor; however, the rule of law is the most important part of this scenario.
Therefore, it does not matter what the fifty senators want that Senate Majority leader Harry Reid claims will be against any choice of Governor Blagojevich or even what a popular President-elect wants. Actually, it doesn't actually matter what the people or legislature from the State of Illinois wants. The legislature should have moved to impeach Blagojevich before they left for their Christmas Break. Now they must deal with the consequences of their hesitation.
Governor Rod Blagojevich is in his right to appoint and the Illinois Secretary of State, who is against the appointment, must certify Burris's nomination. Ironically, the Secretary of State is also another well-respected African American politician.
It's a brilliant in your face, F**K YOU to the people of Illinois from their governor, but it is legal and perfectly Illinois. It's Chicago politics at its theatrical best. Happy New Year, Land of Lincoln!
So, what are we teaching our children?
The rule of law and process.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
How long will the recession last?
The recession is effecting everyone and everything from the banking and credit industry to auto and manufacturing concerns. The gloom and doom is thick in the streets like one of those fogs in the Central Valley that rear ends semis, jack knifes fifth wheels, and upends mini-vans and cars alike. We're in for quite a dense and protracted foggy economic picture.
This current economic debacle has more to do with the lack of trust in the entire global system and the collapse in confidence that people and institutions are basically good and trustworthy. As a wise man once told me, it's like turbulence in an airplane. Turbulence just is. When you're sitting in your over-priced row 12, seat F and the plane hits a pocket of air that makes it dip and buck as if you're on a cheap carnival ride, most people who have flown don't start swearing at their pilot or flight attendants. They know that it is just turbulence. The bucking dip is neither good nor bad; it just is. That's where we are now. Billions of people around the world are fearing a calamitous airplane ride like people sealed in a financial flying tube. Now the pilot could make it worse by continuing to fly at the same altitude, neither asking for permission to go higher or lower, but staunchly staying the course. Those are our current pilots in Washington, New York, Detroit, Beijing, Mumbai, Islamabad, etc.
Getting back to my question: Just how long will this recession be?
Most experts agree, we haven't hit bottom yet. That's something we know for certain. In fact, most economists now believe that we began our turbulent recession starting in December of 2007, although most of these experts announced this month what the rest of us knew last year. That's some lag time.
What we know for sure is that people are still losing their jobs at an alarming rate; some analysts put the jobs lost at a half a million every month.
Also, retailers are just counting their receipts from the holidays. I visited a Northern California Target Store three days before Christmas of 2008 and a Costco the day before that. There was so much inventory on the shelves that you would have thought that we were at the beginning of the shopping season rather than at its end.
This signals that we won't be able to buy our way out of this crisis. When President George W. Bush urged people to "buy and shop" after September 11, 2001, we should have known our own misguided patriotism brought us to this place.
We'll be in it for the better part of the next eighteen months before we see the glimpses of some sort of recovery. That's June of 2010. What has to happen is we'll need to restore some trust in the system that has been badly damaged. If anyone did not believe in Chaos Theory, these last eight to twelve years should be proof that it does exist. That goes for global warming, too.
Not only should we be cleaning up toxic assets, we should also have the faith that the whole of our government and economy are out to help us rather than throwing us to the wolves. Unions, business people, government officials, bureaucrats, and NGOs must work together to restore and build our confidence and savings back up. I'm not talking about the halcyon Clinton or Reagan years but to a place that has never existed in American society. We all must come together, red states and blue states, Democrats and Republicans, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, Blacks and Whites. It's not "Kumbaya" that we should be holding hands and singing but "how can I help you because I can't do this without you."
People must save money and spend realistically rather than create a system (the economy, the environment, schools, etc.) that is leveraged to the hilt. It's not just financial literacy, but financial reality.
The reason why it will take 18 months to get ourselves out of this mess is because we need to have the courage to save and save ourselves rather than just spend ourselves silly--downsize rather than super-size--making sure that the courage of our convictions leads to a better and more hopeful world.
It's not just Barack Obama that believes in hope. We all must be a part of this solution. This IS our time.
Now comes gravity and our own brand new reality.
This current economic debacle has more to do with the lack of trust in the entire global system and the collapse in confidence that people and institutions are basically good and trustworthy. As a wise man once told me, it's like turbulence in an airplane. Turbulence just is. When you're sitting in your over-priced row 12, seat F and the plane hits a pocket of air that makes it dip and buck as if you're on a cheap carnival ride, most people who have flown don't start swearing at their pilot or flight attendants. They know that it is just turbulence. The bucking dip is neither good nor bad; it just is. That's where we are now. Billions of people around the world are fearing a calamitous airplane ride like people sealed in a financial flying tube. Now the pilot could make it worse by continuing to fly at the same altitude, neither asking for permission to go higher or lower, but staunchly staying the course. Those are our current pilots in Washington, New York, Detroit, Beijing, Mumbai, Islamabad, etc.
Getting back to my question: Just how long will this recession be?
Most experts agree, we haven't hit bottom yet. That's something we know for certain. In fact, most economists now believe that we began our turbulent recession starting in December of 2007, although most of these experts announced this month what the rest of us knew last year. That's some lag time.
What we know for sure is that people are still losing their jobs at an alarming rate; some analysts put the jobs lost at a half a million every month.
Also, retailers are just counting their receipts from the holidays. I visited a Northern California Target Store three days before Christmas of 2008 and a Costco the day before that. There was so much inventory on the shelves that you would have thought that we were at the beginning of the shopping season rather than at its end.
This signals that we won't be able to buy our way out of this crisis. When President George W. Bush urged people to "buy and shop" after September 11, 2001, we should have known our own misguided patriotism brought us to this place.
The healing process of a deeply wounded banking system, that has already led to nearly $1 trillion of write-downs, will act as a weight around the neck of any economic recovery in the latter part of 2009. Banks will likely continue the slow process of recapitalization and cleaning up the mountains of toxic assets on their balance sheets for a period longer than just the next few quarters. CNN-Money.com.
We'll be in it for the better part of the next eighteen months before we see the glimpses of some sort of recovery. That's June of 2010. What has to happen is we'll need to restore some trust in the system that has been badly damaged. If anyone did not believe in Chaos Theory, these last eight to twelve years should be proof that it does exist. That goes for global warming, too.
Not only should we be cleaning up toxic assets, we should also have the faith that the whole of our government and economy are out to help us rather than throwing us to the wolves. Unions, business people, government officials, bureaucrats, and NGOs must work together to restore and build our confidence and savings back up. I'm not talking about the halcyon Clinton or Reagan years but to a place that has never existed in American society. We all must come together, red states and blue states, Democrats and Republicans, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, Blacks and Whites. It's not "Kumbaya" that we should be holding hands and singing but "how can I help you because I can't do this without you."
People must save money and spend realistically rather than create a system (the economy, the environment, schools, etc.) that is leveraged to the hilt. It's not just financial literacy, but financial reality.
The reason why it will take 18 months to get ourselves out of this mess is because we need to have the courage to save and save ourselves rather than just spend ourselves silly--downsize rather than super-size--making sure that the courage of our convictions leads to a better and more hopeful world.
It's not just Barack Obama that believes in hope. We all must be a part of this solution. This IS our time.
Now comes gravity and our own brand new reality.
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