TEN DAYS THAT CHANGED AMERICA FOREVER!

TEN DAYS THAT CHANGED AMERICA FOREVER

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© August 8, 2008

“A map does not exhibit a more distinct view of the situation and boundaries of every country, than its news does a picture of the genius and morals of its inhabitants.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728 – 1774). English poet, dramatist, and novelist.

THE PREMISE OF THIS VIEW

From the end of September to the first week in October of this year, 2008, my wife, Betty, and I traveled across the country from Tampa, Florida to north central Minnesota, a distance of some 1,800 miles to visit her ailing father, 91, and our grandchildren, twin girls of 3, and a baby sister, six months old.

During the course of this trek across country were the first presidential debate, the vice presidential debate, the panic on Wall Street, the ambivalent posture of Congress on the proposed $700 billion bailout or rescue package, the frustration of driving through southern states that had no gas at the pump or signs calling for regular at as much as $409.9 a gallon, and the seemingly bottomless drop of the Dow Jones Industrials as we saw our life savings continuously shrink daily with no end in sight.

There was also the collapse of banks across the country, escalating unemployment, plant closings, home foreclosures and bankruptcies with construction companies defaulting in the middle of projects. This was all reminiscent of the Great Depression.

Warren Buffett has called this an “economic Pearl Harbor,” but even he seems to be understating the crisis. The government is considering a move to take over American banks, as the sins of deregulation seem a harbinger of draconian regulation and oversight.

Panic is on Main Street and Wall Street, as Americans no longer feel secure with trust and loyalty evaporating at all levels.

The economic panic has spread to countries across the globe with similar infrastructure collapse followed by precipitous government interventions including bailouts and bank takeovers in painful imitation of the American economic collapse and reaction.

It is a global problem echoing the mantra of the United States: “Progress is our most important product,” always pushing for a greater Gross Domestic Product, never imagining the elasticity of the economic bubble could possibly break, and now the consequences. Several G-7 nations have simultaneously cut the prime interest rate banks lend to each other by five basis points, or half a percent, a clear indication of a global meltdown.

Yet, it is apparent with the bailouts, bank takeovers, and interest rate manipulations that no one is in charge, clearly understands what is happening, or why, much less what to do about it. Nor is anyone sure the tactics proposed will work for there is no grand strategy in this panic situation. All moves are by the seat-of-the-pants with crossed fingers.

A quarter century ago, corporate guru Peter Drucker said that the uncoupling of the real economy (i.e. productivity, innovation, and markets) would be devastating should it separate from the financial economy, which appears to be the case.

Former chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker under president Jimmie Carter recently said, “We need more electrical engineers, chemical engineers, and civil engineers to rebuild our infrastructure and less financial engineers.” He also said that ordinary Americans contributed to the current crisis by increasingly living on credit, buying more than they could afford and not saving.

Managing Director of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn claims that in a global economy we need a global economic policy, which is not possible because domestic considerations of nations take precedence over the impact on their neighbors. This was the case of the Irish Republic’s guaranteeing Irish bank accounts, resulting in a flood of currency going from Great Britain to Ireland forcing the Gordon Brown government bailout.

Director Strauss-Kahn also cited the importance of leadership that sponsors coordination of executive efforts to restore confidence and defuse panic.

Fifty or a hundred years from now, these ten days may be seen as a defining moment in human history, a time, incidentally, when my wife, Betty, and I were on the road. As we trekked across the hinterland, we could sense our personal, domestic, commercial and institutional world changing under our wheels.

Listening to and reading experts, it is apparent they agree, bad as the subprime meltdown, bad as the disastrous credit policies of commercial banks, and self-indulgent as consumers who refuse to save, productivity of workers remains high. They also agree that the real economy has uncoupled from the financial economy, which is driven by speculative hope and precipitous despair, making it hard to separate fact from fiction. They agree the financial economy is broken but no one knows for sure how much, or why, much less how to fix it.

A LOVE OF NEWSPAPERS

Being a habitual newspaper reader, especially of newspapers of the locale in which I find myself, it is hard to see these newspapers struggling to stay in print.

We returned to Tampa to find The Tampa Tribune reduced to comic book size with the op-editorial page completely erased reducing the editorial page to a combination of editorial, comment and letters-to-the-editor. The shrinking of hard copy news and a newsroom staff of professionally trained journalists marks an unhappy development.

Comments that followed are taken from newspapers read during this trek. Where appropriate, I have given my two cents. Regarding the new Tampa Tribune, I sense it is only ahead of the curve. Newsprint is dying replaced by legends on the Internet.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2008, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, “Other Views.”

“The High Cost of Racial Hype”: Thomas Sowell

Sowell writes of black identity and compares the “navel-gazing” of the present generation to worrying about losing touch with black roots and black brothers in the hood. “Like most good things,” he writes, “it can be carried to the point where it is both ridiculous and counterproductive for all concerned.” He continues:

“In a world where an absolute majority of black children are born and raised in fatherless homes, where most black kids never finish high school, and where the murder rate among blacks is several times the national average, surely there must be more urgent priorities than preserving a lifestyle and an identity.”

Sowell acknowledges that blacks, like the Irish and Jews have gone through periods of strong tribal identity for survival, but that is no longer the case. The Irish and Jews have become assimilated into the American culture without sacrificing or becoming preoccupied with their ethnic identity. He says it is time for blacks to do the same.

Sowell, a syndicated columnist who happens to be black, asks the challenging question: “Will time and energy spent on rap music and wearing low-riding baggy pants like guys in prison – as badges of identity – provide as good a future for young people as learning math, computers, and the English language?” He concludes, romantic self-indulgence and self-deception are luxuries most of us, whatever our ethnic origins, can ill afford

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2008, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, “Other Voices”

“Protecting Marriage Protects Our Children”: David Blankenhorn

Blankenhorn admits to being a liberal Democrat who does not favor same-sex marriage. “I spent a year studying the history and anthropology of marriage, and I’ve come to a different conclusion.”

He admits that marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, but it is not primarily designed to receive benefits or social recognition, but is primarily a license to have children. He writes:

“Marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage (and only marriage) unites the three core dimensions of parenthood – biological, social and legal – into one pro-child form: the married couple.

“Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you.

“Marriage says to society as a whole: for every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other.”

Anthropologist Helen Fisher: “People wed primarily to reproduce.”

While acknowledging that same-sex relationships have a foundation in love, Blankenhorn quotes the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who posited the conundrum: “The real conflict we face is not good vs. bad, but good vs. good.” Blankenhorn adds, “Reducing homophobia is good. Protecting the birthright of the child is good.” Thus, the conflict of two goods.

David Blankenhorn is president of the Institute for American Values, and author of “The Future of Marriage.”

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2008, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, “Other Views”

“It’s 1929 Again”: William H. Chafe

This article speaks with a similar voice to my book, “A Look Back To See Ahead” (2007), which attempted to alert readers to the lessons of the destabilizing 1970s. It could just as well have been 1929, as William Chafe points out:

“Sadly, history has a way of repeating itself. It is particularly alarming to note the parallels between the economic crisis that devastated America in the late 1920s and the implosion in the financial markets that is occurring today.”

Chafe goes on to identify the period as the “roaring twenties,” or “jazz age,” with
”flappers in their bobbed hair dancing all night,” and “half of all families going to the movies at least once a week.” The 1920s had an appetite for mass consumption. The Middle American mantra was: “a Ford in every garage and a Frigidaire in every kitchen.”

Beneath the surface, professor Chafe notes structural weaknesses flashed warning signs that were too easily ignored. Workers begin buying on credit. The distance between worker wages and executives salaries widened. Wall Street profits soared as investors bought stock on the “margin,” paying cash for only 10 percent of the stock price, certain the price would go up. The constant boom fueled economic growth. Savings of most consumers verged on zero. “Buy today and pay tomorrow” became the tune.

Then came the collapse. Wall Street went bust. Inflation and unemployment reached 30 percent or more.

(I was born after this collapse and remember soup kitchens in my hometown. We never had a refrigerator but an icebox, or owned an automobile. Through high school, I rode my bicycle the 2 miles to school. Since we never owned an automobile, I never learned to drive or acquired a driver’s license until I was a senior in college. No surprise, I have never bought into the narcissistic philosophy of consumption. The memory of my da on the WPA and the soup kitchens has sobered me to a conservative existence.)

Chafe writes:

“Clearly, there is a similarity between what happened then and what is happening now.” He points out the growing income gap between the rich and the middle class. In the 1920s, “CEO earnings on average were 48 times as much as an average worker, now he or she earns 480 times as much.” Savings were nonexistent in the 1920s; they remain nonexistent today.

(In my book “Corporate Sin: Leaderless Leaders & Dissonant Workers,” 2000, the “wage gap” is covered in some detail in “Something is wrong with this picture,” pp. 136 – 142.)

Chafe claims the subprime mortgage scandal is only the tip of the iceberg, concluding with regard to the approaching presidential election: “The real issue is who recognizes the historical parallels between 1929 and 2008, and which of our candidates is willing to address the structural flaws that have brought us to where we are.”

William H. Chafe is professor of history at Duke University, and author of “The Rise and Fall of the American Century: The United States from 1890 – 2010”).

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2008, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, ENTERTAINMENT

“Mr. Longfellow is waiting in the parlor”: Julia Keller/Lit Life

Julia Keller writes a delightful column on visiting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s (1807 – 1882) home in Portland, Maine: “Longfellow was one of those shaggy, solemn versifiers from the nineteenth century whose poems helped establish a distinctive American literature.” It made him rich and famous although Keller admits his melancholy narrative is out of touch with the times. Yet, she reminds us that these lines breathe life into our common culture:

“I heard the bells on Christmas Day/Their old, familiar carols play.”

“Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.”

“I shot an arrow into the air/It fell to earth, I know not where.”

“By the shores of Gitche Gumee/By the shining Big Sea Water.”

“Under the spreading chestnut tree/The village smithy stands.”

Keller ends her piece celebrating this poet as she runs her hands along the banister of his home, standing on the threshold of the parlor and hall, feeling transformed without apologies. “You could do a lot worse than Longfellow,” she says, “whose poems about the United States are filled with the sort of golden exhortations we could surely use right about now, as the nation’s troubles mount.

To wit, take “The Building of the Ship”:

“Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State/Sail on, O Union, strong and great/Humanity with all its fears/With all the hopes of future years/Is hanging breathless on thy fate!”

(We don’t write bombastic poems like this today. We are too sophisticated, too worldly, alas, too out of touch with our soul.)


MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2008, “The Campaign”

“Candidates contrasting leadership Styles”: Liz Sidoti, Associated Press

(One of the misnomers of the twenty-first century, a holdover from the 1960s is the emphasis on “leadership style.” If only leadership style were a determining factor, which it is not, it would be so simple to create an algorithm of some predictability.

Unfortunately, the content of character is what counts, and character defies definition. Throughout American history, leadership of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, and the two Roosevelts down to the 43rd president has proven “style” is superfluous but character essential.

Whatever a president’s style, such character flaws as an inflexible temperament, poor judgment and poor choice of key support staff, along with an impulsive nature has proven devastating. Character stimulates confidence and rallies people to embrace the times and to mount the sacrifices required. Character flaws have been endemic to presidents caught up in their personal obsessions while out of touch with imploding events. This was true in 1929 and in 2008.

Since Douglas McGregor and his “Theory X & Y” to Robert Blake and Jane Mouton and their “Managerial Grid,” along with the various motivational theories, the “right leadership style” has been equated to winning results. It is the basis of this article.)

Sidoti sees Senator John McCain to be action-oriented; Senator Barak Obama to be reflective and cautious, yet there is a time for action and a time for reflection given the circumstances.

McCain and Obama are seen to view the current tanking of markets from their “personal scripts,” according to professor Paul Light of New York University. McCain is emotive, seeing Main Street is paying for Wall Street excess, while Obama is measured in his response with a series of proposals to protect taxpayers.

The final assessment is that Republican McCain can be too hot, and Democratic Obama too cool. It is interesting to reflect that Jackson was considered a hot head, but an “Age of Jackson” followed his presidency, while Jefferson was considered super cool, yet his letters suggest he was quite hot under the collar dealing with the two Adams, and even launched a smear campaign against rival John Quincy Adams for the presidency.

(Leadership is a very human pursuit fed by ambition with a toxic appetite for power. Success is seldom a matter of style, but more a matter of the mastering this toxicity to do the people’s business.)

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2008, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, COMMENTARY

“How to avoid next housing collapse”: Clarence Page.

(I confess to being a big fan of Clarence Page, seeing him on television regularly on PBS with the McLaughlin Group.)

“What we now call the Big Financial Crisis of 2008,” he writes, “began with the well-intentioned goal of helping more working class renters become homeowners. But as more and more money chased fewer and fewer qualified home buyers, the needy were elbowed aside by the greedy.”

The carrot used was no money down interest only for higher home prices than the mortgage applicant could afford. Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, eased credit requirements on loans it would purchase from banks and other lenders. The purpose was to increase home ownership among minorities whose credit ratings and savings were too low to qualify for conventional loans. These alternative “subprime” loans could charge 3 or 4 percentage points higher than conventional rates.

It all started with president Bill Clinton, but president George Bush also embraced the expansion of higher risk home loans, indeed, calling on the housing industry to help at least 5.5 million minority families become homeowners by the end of the decade. Page ends the piece by saying, “we need the regulations and oversight that take into account human nature, including the inevitable tendency to make an easy buck off of someone else’s good intentions.”

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2008, MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, OP-ED PAGE

“The bailout: Couldn’t make this stuff up”: Garrison Keillor

Making reference to a recent avoidable train wreck, Keillor writes, “It’s just human nature that some calamities register in the brain and others don’t. The train engineer texting at the throttle and missing the red light and 25 people die in the crash – oh God, that is way too real – everyone has had a moment of supreme stupidity that came close to killing somebody.”

“On the other hand,” he continues, “the federal bailout of the financial market (YAWN) is a calamity that people accept as if it were just one more hurricane.” Then he takes after Senator John McCain:

“John McCain is a lifelong deregulator and believer in letting brokers and bankers do as they please – remember Lincoln Savings and Loan and his intervention with federal regulators on behalf of his friend Charles Keating, who then went to prison? Remember Neil Bush the brother of the C.O., who as a director of Silverado S&L, bestowed enormous loans on his friends without telling fellow directors that the friends were friends who, when the loans failed, paid a small fine and went skipping off to other things? McCain now decries greed on Wall Street and suggests a commission be formed to look into the problem. This is like Casanova coming out for chastity.”

(Keillor is not one of my favorite pundits, but he has a point, which masks the greater question: whatever happened to integrity in responsible office? I’m not just addressing politicians but authorities in all disciplines.

Take cigarette companies CEOs who told Congress there was no health hazard to cigarette smoking, when they had research data which clearly showed the linkage; or academics that promoted multiculturalism as a discipline when skills from such pursuit limited the horizons of students, not to mention colored their approach to community.

Whatever ever happened to leadership? There can be no leadership that puts special interests above integrity, personal advantage over service; personal good over commitment to the common good.)

Keillor, who admits to being a liberal, wonders what happened to lead the Republican Party’s “gimlet-eyed, steel-rim, crepe-soled common sense” to being taken over “by crooked preachers who demand we trust them because they’re packing a Bible and God sent on a mission to enact lower taxes, and less government.” They are there, he says, “except when things crash, and then government has to pick up the pieces.”

(The irony here is that George W. Bush’s presidency has managed the most bloated budget in the history of our nation, not only on the military but domestic front as well.)

“What we are seeing,” Keillor concludes, “is the stuff of a novel, the public corruption of an American war hero (i.e., McCain). It is painful. First, there was his exploitation of a symbolic woman, an eager zealot who is so far out of her depth (Sarah Palin) that it isn’t funny anymore. Anyone with a heart has to hurt for how McCain has made a fool of her. Never mind the persistent cheesiness of his attack ads. And now this chasm of debt and loss and the gentleman pretends to be shocked. He was there. He turned out the lights. He sent the regulators home.”

(The power of commentary is that you may not like what is said, but know that contained therein is more than a grain of truth. I felt for Sarah Palin when television’s Katie Couric interviewed her and asked what periodicals she read. It was apparent she is not a reader. She is a maverick like McCain mimicking his rustic action and cowboy economics.)

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2008, MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, ECONOMY

HOW WE GOT IN THIS MESS (Informational Editorial)

“Housing values never go down.” That simple premise enticed American consumers and Wall Street to load up on mortgage debt. Plunging home values now threaten to drag down the global economy.

l. The Boom 2000 – 2006

The Clinton and Bush administrations and Congress push to increase homeownership from about 63 percent of U.S. homeowners to 68 percent. Underwriting regulations are eased to allow more low-income borrowers to obtain a mortgage.

In 2000, the dot-com bubble bursts in March followed by 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Stock market prices tumble, interests rates cut to 40-year low by 2003. New home constructions and sales surge. Lenders use cheap money including adjustable rates. Subprime loans are made to borrowers with poor or no credit. Lenders pool the mortgages to sell on Wall Street with promise of high return.

Credit rating agencies bless these mortgage packages with the safest rating, AAA with the assumption home values will increase. Banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, pension funds and foreign governments gobble up these supposedly safe mortgage-backed securities. Firms buy insurance policies from American International Group (AIG) to protect their investments from default.

2. The subprime crisis: Late 2006 to Early 2008.

The Federal Reserve raises interest rates in June 2004, the first of 16 increases. The bubble begins to deflate a year later with the first wave of foreclosures, a slowdown in home construction and a slide in home values.

January 2006 Ameriquest Mortgage Company settles 49-state probe into deceptive subprime practices for $325 million.

April 2006 Fed Chairman Ben Bernake acknowledges signs of softening in the housing market. Median price of sales stalls, and then falls. Housing starts fall.

February 2007, new home sales drop 20 percent; sales of existing homes fall. The consumer economy stalls as home sales fall. Teaser rates give way to higher monthly payments. Owners unable to refinance miss payments. Foreclosures mount. Value of mortgage backed securities sinks.

3. The Meltdown 2008

Accounting rules require owners of the mortgage-backed securities to “write down” their value. As the housing market worsens, confidence in the value of any mortgage-backed security evaporates. Investors are forced to write off hundreds of billions of dollars.

February 2008, AIG and other agencies that sold insurance against defaults have to pay up and take similar writedowns.

March 2008, Bear Stearns, a major investment bank and underwriter of mortgage-backed securities, runs out of capital, and is sold to J.P. Morgan Chase.

April 2008, New Century Financial, the second largest subprime lender, files for bankruptcy.

September 7, 2008, mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, with more than $5 trillion in mortgage-back securities, are taken over by the federal government to avert bankruptcy after their market value fell by more than 50 percent.

September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers investment bank goes bankrupt.

September 2008, Merrill Lynch hastily accepts a purchase offer from the Bank of America to avoid Lehman’s fate.

September 2008, the Federal Reserve rescues AIG with an $85 billion secured loan in exchange for a 79.9 percent government stake.

September 2008, Bankers unsure of their total exposure to bad mortgages, raise interest rates for their best customers and shy away from lending money to others.

September 2008, fear of a deep global recession grows.

September 2008, saying piecemeal interventions are not enough Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Ben Bernake propose a $700 billion bailout under which the government would buy and then attempt to resell mortgage-backed securities.

4. The Proposal

The bailout package proposed by the Treasury Department is bigger than the entire 2009 budget appropriation for Social Security. The plan also calls for increasing the limit on the national debt, which has risen rapidly since 2001.

(This was a presentation of the chronological sequence of this economic catastrophe and reflects the value of newspapers.)

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2008, MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, OPINION

ONE VIEW

“Whatever momentum McCain had is now gone,” writes E. J. Dionne, Jr., “his derisive approach may help explain why the instant polls gave Obama an edge in a debate that many pundits rated a tie – and why women seemed especially inclined toward Obama.”

He continues, “When McCain lectured or attacked Obama, the Republican ratings would drop, and the fall was especially steep among women.” He goes on the say Sarah Palin was a reckless choice for vice president. “Palin has proved herself to be spectacularly unprepared for a national campaign and embarrassingly inarticulate and unreflective.”

ANOTHER VIEW

“A wild week and McCain comes out admirably,” writes Debra J. Saunders. She gives McCain high marks for intervening in the $700 billion bailout stall. “McCain was in a corner,” she says, “He clearly feared that if Congress did not approve a bailout measure, the economy would tank. Then, his bid for the White House would be doomed.” She continues, “Going to Washington, while political, showed America a candidate who will risk his electoral fortune to deliver the right policy.”

(It is clear that this quadrennial madness we must suffer every four years is a most human drama of fragile and vulnerable candidates, whom it could be argued embrace masochistic madness to seek such office, yet there is never a shortage of such madness. Soon it will be over, and perhaps as many as 90 percent of the promises of the duly elected new president will be quickly and arbitrarily forgotten.)

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2008, MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, BUSINESS

SUN COUNTRY WORKERS FACE 50% TEMPORARY PAY CUT

(Sometimes newspaper stories are almost impossible to comprehend. Sun Country Airlines is squeezed for cash and told workers on Monday it would cut their pay in half beginning next week and reimburse them in 2009. This is a promise, not a guarantee.)

Sun Country Airlines lost $47 million on $251 million operating revenue for the 12 months ending in June. The airline employs 1,000 during the winter season. Employees at this writing had not yet agreed to what CEO Stan Gadek claims is a survival strategy. Meanwhile, Tom Petters, CEO of Petters Group Worldwide, the holding company of which Sun Country Airlines is an affiliate, is under a Federal Securities investigation for fraud.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2008, MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, CAMPAIGN

The editorial page had a strong case for Wall Street rescue, but it paled with the anticipating vice presidential debate between Republican Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joseph Biden.

The inclination of both vice president candidates for gaffs was noted, which has become fodder for comedy writers. Biden, an Irishman, has a tendency to run his mouth before engaging his brain, while Palin, a proud tomboy, is more at home in the wild than behind a rostrum. Both candidates were chosen to appeal to needed constituencies for the head of their respective tickets to win election.

The debate on Thursday was viewed by more people than the American Idol finals, which says something, I’m not sure what.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2008, MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, OPINION

“Rural virtue, urban vice? Simplistic”: Steven Chapman

Chapman writes quoting Sarah Palin, “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity. They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in American, who grow our food, run our factories and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.” In other words, Chapman continues, “they are not like those idle, insincere, lying city folks who dare to suggest that America can sometimes be wrong.”

“The myth of rural virtue and urban vice,” he writes, is an old one in this country, and it persists no matter what they change in the landscape. Most Americans, it seems, can tolerate hearing of the superiority of the small town, as long as they don’t have to live in one. You wouldn’t know it from listening to country music, but four out of every five Americans choose not to reside in rural areas.”

Then Chapman lowers the boom:

“In 2007, a survey of eighth-graders by the Monitoring the Future project of the University of Michigan found that country kids were 26 percent more likely to experiment with drugs than middle-schoolers elsewhere. Overall methamphetamine consumption among adults and teens is more than 50 percent higher in the country.”

The story with alcohol is worse still. “Relative to their urban counterparts, rural youth ages 12 to 17 are significantly more likely to report consuming alcohol,” says a 2006 study by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, “

Nor is the countryside exempt from social problems. “The highest rates of births to unwed mothers are in the mainly rural states of Mississippi and New Mexico. The most urban states, New Jersey and California, do better than the average in out-of-wedlock births.

Crime is much more common in the city than in the country. Alfred Blumstein at Carnegie Mellon University thinks the explanation is pretty simple: “It’s a matter of social control. Small towns have networks of family and friends, and most everyone knows everyone else.” This deters crime in two ways: one doesn’t want to damage his reputation; nor is he likely to rob someone who can easily identify him.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2008, MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, OPINION

“Congress, so far, has traveled the easy roads in this crisis”: George F. Will

Will’s open the article quoting “Babbitt” (1922) written by America’s Nobel Laureate Sinclair Lewis:

“His name was George F. Babbitt. He was 46 years old now, in April 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.”

Babbitt, which I read as a boy, is a pungent satire of complacent mediocrity, about a man who revels in his own popularity, his ability to make money, his fine automobile, and his penny-pinching generosity. Babbitt also worships gadgets. He praises prohibition while drinking bootleg whiskey, bullies his wife, and ogles his manicurist. Although discontented with life, he is thoroughly satisfied with George F. Babbitt. Because his character is grounded in realism, realism that still haunts our American character to this day, it remains one of the most convincing characterizations in American literature.

Will writes: “We are waist-deep in evasions because one cannot talk sense about the cultural roots: Never shall be heard a discouraging word about the public.

“Beneath Americans’ perfunctory disapproval of government deficits lurks an inconvenient truth: They (the public) enjoy deficits, by which they are charged less than a dollar for a dollar’s worth of government.”

Like government, he claims, we prefer to buy and pay later, hitching outlays to appetites. This finds 1.5 billion credit cards floating “out there,” or nine per cardholder. Subsidized loans and cheap money has separated the pleasure of purchasing from the pain of paying. This is compounded by an entitlement mentality fostered by a welfare state believing a high standard of living is deserved untethered from savings or sacrifice.

Populism flatters people with a scapegoat to neutralize their despair. Today it is “Wall Street greed” which is contrasted with the virtue of “Main Street” sobriety.

Sinclair Lewis also wrote “Main Street” (1920) to puncture the egos of smug, self-satisfied Americans who considered their hometowns flawless. Will updates this, writing: “When people on Main Street misbehave by, say, buying houses for more than they can afford to pay, they blame the wily knaves who made them do it, such as the nimble Babbitt.” And so we have the $700 billion government bailout of these indiscretions illustrating the “enormous enlargement of government’s power.”

Then George Will adds: “Suppose that in 1979 the government had not engineered the bailout of Chrysler (now Ford and GM are in line for the same), might there have been a more sober approach to risk throughout corporate America?”

(At another level, I wrote in “The Taboo Against Being Your Own Best Friend” (1996): To attempt to do for others what they best do for themselves is to weaken their resolve and diminish them as persons. The same holds true of ourselves.” And, yes, corporate America as well.

The human group is a reflection of the individual. In that sense, there has been a century slide from rights to privileges, from opportunities to entitlements, from risks to the certainty of government intervention to break the fall, and for it we have the nation that has evolved.)

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2008, MINNEAPLIS STAR TRIBUNE, EDITORIAL

“Early focus on math builds a foundation” with eighth grade algebra key to success in later grades.”

The editorial quotes a study made by the Brookings Institution, which indicated that algebra was important, but many eighth-graders fail to grasp a fundamental facility with the multiplication tables and long division in arithmetic. The caveat of the editorial is the race to the future must build a bridge to it by mastering the fundamentals first.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2008, MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, METRO

“2.6 million check lands her in workhouse, not easy street.”: Rochelle Olson

Sabrina Walker, erroneously received a $2.6 million check from the state of Minnesota. She immediately went on a spending spree that included purchasing a car and jewelry for a total of $267,000. Once caught, and arrested, and in court for criminal sentencing, she said, “Indeed this was a mistake. I didn’t create this. I didn’t swindle the state. I didn’t trick anyone. I have suffered greatly from the moment this has been done. My dreams have been shattered.”

Walker, 38, could not see how she had done anything wrong, yet she admitted the money was not hers, that she did not earn it, and asked the judge for mercy and compassion. The judge sentenced her to nine months in the workhouse.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2008, MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, OPINION

“We needed united; we got ideology.”: Michael Gerson

Gerson writes, “America’s economic crisis has become a political crisis – with the second compounding and exceeding the first.”

This was Gerson’s claim before the $700 bailout was passed, blaming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as the culprit: “Pelosi has an unrivaled record for lacking achievement. In retrospect, it seems incomprehensible that Democrats chose a grating, partisan, San Francisco liberal to lead both parties in the House.”

Then he adds, “Congress is broken; Congress doesn’t work.” This he claims is especially true of the House of Representatives: “America is left with one portion of one branch of government that does not seem to work. House Democrats (the majority) seem temperamentally incapable of building genuine consensus on issues that matter.”

(For the past 170 years, or since the “Age of Jackson,” and the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the imperial presidency has grown in the body politic, yet Congress, which has suffered great decline, is always the “fall guy” when things go awry. Go figure!)

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2008, THE DAILY NEWS JOURNAL, MURFREESBORO, NATION

“Emotions connect old O.J. acquittal, new conviction: Simpson found guilty on all 12 counts against him.”

Jurors were asked to ignore O.J. Simpson’s past, but that is like ignoring the stripes on a zebra. “The former NFL star’s murder acquittal last decade and his new conviction for robbing memorabilia peddlers couldn’t have been clearer. The attorney for the family of Ronald Goldman – who was killed along with Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson in Los Angeles in 1995 – said he thought his hounding of Simpson for years to collect a $33.5 million wrongful death judgment pushed him to a desperate gambit to recover personal items he had lost.”

(Whatever you think of O.J. Simpson, and his acquittal for the death of his wife and young Ronald Goldman, this trial, which reads like a lynching, is unlikely to give the Goldman family peace or the American people closure. It is sad to see a man who rose from so little to become so much, from the greatest college and professional football player of his era, a film and television presence, and spokesman for many products to fall to this end. There go I but for the grace of God! Simpson is likely to end his days in prison, a situation that reads like Victor Hugo novel.)

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2008, THE DAILY NEWS JOURNAL, MURREESBORO, STATE

“Smoking ban eclipses 1-year mark in Tennessee; many businesses say they’re glad.”

“Industry and health groups in Tennessee say the vast majority of restaurants chose to ban smoking a year ago rather than banish those under 21 years old, and most appear glad they did. The state Health Department said that of the more than 20,000 hotels, motels, and restaurants statewide that it inspects, only 145 warning letters were issued for violating the law within the last 12 months. Of those, only seven escalated into fines.”

(We only encountered one place where smoking was allowed and that was at a service station-restaurant where we got gas and a quick meal, which was in Kentucky.)

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, THE DAILY NEWS JOURNAL, OPINION

“Our leaders can’t communicate”: Stephen Shirley

The young columnist quotes from the movie “Cool Hand Luke” for the title of his piece.

He starts with Congress: “Government leaders have failed to formulate and articulate to the American people a coherent argument in favor of the ($700 billion) rescue plan.”

He then takes on Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen’s renovation of the governor’s residence with no clear input from citizens calling it “Bredesen’s Bunker.”

This leads to the why and wherefore of local business leaders and the ensuing snafu in the construction of a new park.

He then takes on a local law enforcement officer asking how he could justify handcuffing a child. Next it is local school officials whom he finds clueless when they refuse a blind girl from enrolling in school. Lastly, it is the local school board that is on his radar. He finds its debate on a Hispanic donkey puppet on a children’s television show as pointless, ludicrous and a waste of time.

He writes: “I don’t understand why any of this is so hard for our leaders. If you want to propose something, do so in a public forum and be prepared to answer any naysayers. If you screw up, face up to your mistakes and your critics. Listen first and talk second.”

SUNDAY, THE DAILY NEWS JOURNAL, MURFREESBORO, OTHER VOICES

“Don’t blame meltdown on minorities”: Cynthia Tucker

(This Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page editor I esteem and this article is no exception to this regard.)

After quoting various television and on-line pundits that use the race card to blame for the meltdown, she quotes: “The heart of the crisis was caused by unregulated and lightly regulated mortgage brokers and independent mortgage bankers and affiliates that are not subject to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).”
She quotes University of Michigan law professor Michael Bar: “It would be quite odd if an act caused institutions not subject to its purview to do things that were inappropriate.”

This she finds important since the CRA made mortgages available to people without much in the way of income, assets, or credit. She writes:

“I hold no brief for dumb homebuyers, be they white, black or brown. But minority homeowners were frequently the victims of aggressive practices by mortgage brokers who received high commissions for steering buyers into high cost, subprime loans, even if the buyer would have qualified for a prime loan. The Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit research group, examined 50,000 subprime loans nationwide and found that blacks and Hispanics were 30 percent more likely than whites to be charged higher interest rates, even among borrowers with similar credit ratings.

“Again, lenders didn’t push those loans to comply with any affirmative action on lending programs. They did it to make money. That’s the same reason Wall Street’s masters of the universe created all those exotic investment vehicles – instruments they didn’t understand any better than some homebuyers understood their adjustable rates.

“If Wall Street was motivated by greed, President Bush was motivated by his belief in an ‘ownership society.’ In 2003, about the time that conventional lending standards evaporated, he said, ‘we want more people owning their own home. It is in our national best interest that more people own their home.’”

The FHA gave mortgages without a down payment, and Alan Greenspan – who Robert Woodward claimed to be a “maestro” – dismissed the idea of a housing bubble.

Tucker concludes, “Suffice it to say, the credit crisis is an all-American disaster, a melting pot of greed, recklessness and myopia. Those all-too-human traits aren’t limited to any particular race or ethnic group.”

(Pointing fingers never solved anything.)

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2008, THE DAILY NEWS JOURNAL, MURFREESBORO, OTHER VOICES

“No clear U.S. leader in McCain, Obama”

This is an editorial roundup of recent Tennessee editorial of the Associated Press. They come from The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, The Jackson Sun, and The Leaf-Chronicle of Clarksville. The underlying message implicit in these editorials while making specific charges relating to current crises is that we are failing to produce demonstrable leaders.

(It is one of the ironies of our times that with so much transparency, instant news and instant access to information via the Internet, with the capability of stripping our candidates intellectually and psychologically naked, we don’t know them and they don’t seem to know us.

More importantly, they don’t give us the confidence that they know how to lead, and as a consequence, we don’t seem to know how to follow, or even if we should. We elect a president if he forgives us our sins, and then cut him down when our sins cause us collective pain.

Presidential candidates quote history that we want to forget, and from which neither they nor we seem to have learned. They flatter us during the campaign, ask nothing of us, nor accuse of any excess. We all know that the bed we sleep in is the bed we make, and the problems we put to them are problems we know they can’t solve because they belong to us. Yet we dance this merry dance of lies every four years, while they spend a $ trillion to get elected knowing what corrections exist are already in place, and that the occupant of the Oval Office is cursed or benefited by a series of accidents.

It is quadrennial madness, and all these editorial writers know it, and should not be treated too harshly for being a little jaded for it.

Leaders today are atavistic and leadership is anachronistic. We have reached the unhappy and unsettling status in which everyone is a leader or no one is.

This long piece is my contribution to noting the ten days that changed America forever.