MB Civic

Who’s “Minding” the Store?
(or please pass the whole wheat bread)

By Brad Parker
12/24/2007

If Calvin Coolidge was right and, “the chief business of the American people is business”, then the current management needs to be fired, without a pension. It is bad enough that the Republicans celebrated their unchallenged federal control with wave upon wave of higher and higher deficits but the Democrats giddily joined in, as if their complicity would go un-noticed in the binge of corruption and malfeasance. Moreover, where were all of the Ivy-league MBAs during this collapse of reason? Absent while searching for their scruples? Is there no decency left? Well, in a word, no.

We have quite literally gone to hell in a hand-basket. Perhaps the current Democratic crew in Congress has the fortitude to stand up to their corporate enablers? Remember though – it is hard to bite the hand that feeds you, so we will wait and see but don’t hold your breath dear reader. So, in lieu of any current political leadership - it’s time for some new, BIG ideas on how to right the ship of state and clean the Stygian stables of the marketplace. Herein, I offer the following proposals from a Progressive Liberal Democrat’s point of view. They are offered from a sociological as well as an economics perspective, putting people before profit.

Local / Renewable / Sustainable / Humane

If we use those four words – local, renewable, sustainable, and humane – as our maxim, our code of conduct, in the futuring of business then we can mitigate the disasters that are unavoidable and enhance the possibilities for prevention of the afflictions that are brewing. Narrow self-interests must yield to enlightened self-interests. A little more sharing will go a long way. A cleaner greener world is still possible but time is perilously short.

We must rise to the occasion, open our minds and work together to untether ourselves from the tainted past. We must demand that our elected officials turn the ship of state away from the rocky shoals of stupefied greed. While we are at it, we had better get the looting of the treasury out of their clammy palms with some true transparency. Post all upcoming expenditure bills on the Internet so we can all weigh in on their efficacy before any votes are taken. Make every economic bill a jobs bill not a corporate profit bill. Make every trade agreement fair not free. End the obscenity of the so-called War on Drugs. Make the tax system progressive not regressive. The better you do in Business America the more you are responsible for maintaining it. Paying more in taxes because you made more in profits as an individual or company is a privilege not a punishment. You owe it to the company that made it possible for you to earn those greenbacks – Business America.

Our American government is the most successful business enterprise in the history of the world if you insist on looking at it that way. It is time to stop privatizing or selling it off to the lowest incompetent bidder. It is time for all stakeholders to reinvest in our shared responsibility and opportunity. Like Robert Johnson sang – we’re down at the crossroads with the hellhound on our trail. As a Progressive Liberal Democrat, I see a possible clean and green future but it will take a massive correction in course for Business America. Cal Coolidge may have been right about something but not about the business of America. When the only business in America is business - with no principles, no ethics - then the business is finished. Put the people before the profit and we can finally get down to business.

Organic / Green Up

It is a happy coincidence that the color of American money is green. After all - Green represents growth, vitality and the unfolding of new ideas. Green represents recycling and clean energy. Green also represents the organic agriculture industry. Over the next decade, organic food will become the dominant symbol of not only good nutrition but also a sustainable planet. Locally grown will broaden the horizon of possibilities for a reinvigorated market system of fair trade. When the counter-culture bloomed in the last century, grocery store shelves carried only white bread with few exceptions. Hippies and New Agers brought consciousness to the health of the nation with the retail availability of “whole wheat bread”. This coincided with the publication of the “Whole Earth Catalog”. Then came “Earth Day”. Now, what seemed bizarre and dangerous has been revealed to be practical and pragmatic. The soundtrack of the “Summer of Love” - do good for all and not just for the few - is becoming mainstream fair trade economics and none too soon.

However, beware dear consumer of the phenomena of “Greenwashing”. That is when corporations try to put a positive spin on their products and services by claiming to employ environmentally sound business practices when the truth is that they are merely painting themselves green and not organically growing themselves green. Take dairy products for instance. If you keep all of your cows in a crowded feedlot and just give them grains and water, you could claim to have “organic” dairy products but that’s a stretch. Taste some milk or cheese from cows that roam green fields eating green grass and you will know what I am talking about. Every business has the potential for green, organic growth and sustainability but consumers must remain vigilant as to the truth of every companies “green” bona fides.

Energy Independence

Big Oil is dead. Of course, the big oil operators, private and public have known that for years. They are all for conversion just as soon as they squeeze that last dollar/euro/yen/yuan out of the last barrel of crude. We cannot afford to wait for that. The Republic of the United States of America should declare a complete end to the use of all energy extractables (oil, coal, natural gas and uranium) in ten years. We should follow the lead of the Apollo Alliance and be bold, like JFK’s prediction of putting us on the moon in ten years. There is no need to wait until the science makes this practical. Lead with a BIG idea and the science will follow.

Renewable energy produced here in America along with alternative fuels (wind, solar and geothermal) and conservation is the future. One has to wonder why there is not a LEED “Green Roof” with solar power cells on every public building – city, county, state and federal – in America already. There is a direct line connecting whole wheat bread and the “Prius”. Democratic Party leaders should muster the courage to not only discern but also promote it instead of leaving it to the Japanese or Brazilians to show us the way forward.

Healthcare for All

The saying, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, was coined by old Ben Franklin. It has never been more apt. With corporations crowding the exits from their responsibilities to their work force past and present because of the rising cost of private healthcare, it would seem that the time for prevention is at hand. That prevention will be found in Single-payer Universal Healthcare for all Americans. In addition, if that healthcare is led by more preventative medicine then the costs of cures and procedures will decrease dramatically. America will at last join the civilized world when the citizens who vote politicians into office will be afforded the same level of healthcare that the politicians vote into law for themselves. All businesses will enjoy more green – profit - with the cost of healthcare off their books. All citizens will enjoy more green – vitality - when their investment – taxes - is vested in their health and well-being.

Drugs & Medicine

All drugs and medicines and their abuse should be reclassified as a medical problem and not a criminal obsession. The legacy of J. Edgar Hoover and the sociopathic leaders of the Twentieth Century must be brought to an orderly close. The War on Drugs is and has always been a war against logic and reason. The Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 must be repealed. Sadly, only Republican leaders like William F. Buckley, Milton Freidman and George Schultz have had the courage to recognize this glaring reality.

As of yet there are no leading Democrats, save in the grassroots or at the local level, with the courage to face this calamitous obscenity. Illegal drugs and their cultivation and distribution have undermined every society on the globe so much so that now even once legal over the counter medicines like cold remedies are part of the worldwide trafficking of substances threatening to bring down civilization as we sit by idly and watch. If you are for the “War on Drugs” then you are for terrorists, gangsters, murder, rape, over-crowded prisons and corruption on a scale not witnessed since the Dark Ages. If it is not the root of modern evil then it is at least the grease on the wheels. The “War on Drugs” is the wellspring of funding for every modern madness - especially organized terror.

Some Democratic leader must summon the mighty courage as well as loss of vanity and ambition to lead us out of this purgatory and into a new age of reason. Drugs are a medical problem not a criminal problem. If we are honest with ourselves and our descendents, we will dry up the swamp of so many of these tyrannies by ending the criminalization of drugs and beginning the era of education, rehabilitation, taxation and legalization.

Investment / Taxes / Infrastructure

Who built the highways that connect every corner of America? Who pays for the police, the fire fighters and the emergency services? Where does the money come from to provide for the common defense? How do we afford municipal water and sewer systems? I could go on but you get the point; we all want these benefits to society and more and somehow they must be invested in for everyone’s mutual benefit. We are woefully behind in that endeavor. Katrina’s swath of pain is a symptom of the greater cause of this dilemma, which is the failure to secure the infrastructure and invest taxes for the public good.

Our American infrastructure is paid for by our American investment in our government. This is most commonly known as taxes. If you regard America as one large business enterprise, as many conservatives are fond of believing, then we are the shareholders. We are the investors in this enterprise. As stated before, the current management, who work for us, must go. Then we, the shareholders and investors, must reassess where we want our investment dollars, i.e. taxes, to be spent. Unfortunately, Katrina and the crumbling bridges, schools and hospitals of America are currently neglected not only for reasons of corruption and malfeasance but by the so-called Reagan revolution against taxes. Grover Norquist and the sniveling purveyors of, “no more government” – “no more taxes” were bald-faced liars on the hustle for our money and they have gotten way too much of it.

Taxes are not a punishment - unless you are one of the deceitful grifters of the Conservative No-Think tanks - they are an investment. Like most investors we have been happy to let our brokers (politicians) run the investment funds and manage the company until now we find our accounts in the red and we are busted, dead flat broke and headed for monumental bankruptcy. The sub-prime meltdown of 2007 is only the beginning of the Main Street ‘Global Warming”. Be advised though that the pigs at the trough - corporate oinkers and the bleating swine of the political hackocracy - are living high off the investment (taxes) they have stolen from us, the shareholders. There are far too many examples to cite here so just pick one of your local thieves.

Whenever the new Democratic led Congress investigates the waste and fraud, they will not have to look very far to find the missing money in the budget or the waste and the corruption. Just look in the mirror. If you think, I am being unfair, check out how much money each one of them has in their campaign funds treasure chest. A good start to cleaning house would be to call for Full Public Campaign Financing at every level of the government. In fact, that may be the best remedy for everything that ails U.S. It is past time to get a refund on our investment, fire the current managers and get back to building our business – the infrastructure that works for all of us.

Jobs – the Primacy of the Middle Class

Name the most valuable resource in America? In the world? If your answer was – people – then you are a winner! Now, what is the one thing all of the people need to sustain them? A job. Mahatma Gandhi pointed out long ago that the machine was replacing the human hands in the workplace to the detriment of the stability of the community. This lesson was lost on the industrialists who could only see their own profit – community be damned. That state of affairs was tenable for a period of time but that period has passed.

Even before we run out of the most valuable resources that nature has gifted to us – water, air and land – life will become unsustainable for humans because the parasite will have eaten the host. That is – the ultra-rich and monopolist corporations, which they control, will have devoured so much of the productivity of the working class that the entire scheme of capitalism will fail. With no jobs and no productivity, the working 99% will no longer be able to support the idle 1%. Rome repeats itself on a worldwide scale. Of course this is all avoidable. Good jobs that pay a living wage with benefits and the opportunity to become an owner not just a worker are necessary for a sustainable economy. Somebody tell Wall Street.

Federal fiscal policy, beginning just before 1913, when the 16th amendment to the Constitution was ratified creating a federal Income tax, has been for more than 100 years chiefly designed to enhance the economic well being of Americans. At least that was the theory. Regrettably though, rich citizens ate the largest part of the pie baked in Congress. Clever prescriptions like the tragicomically named “minimum” wage provided flimsy band-aids to the sustained imbalance between rich and poor. Only during the FDR years and into the 60’s was public policy generating a more robust middle class. Since the Nixon years, wages have stagnated. This is not only a glaring reason for a true “living” wage but public policy designed to enhance responsible consumer spending. Asking the profligate electeds to lead in responsibility is laughable at best.

A balance between the income of the rich or managers of Business America and the stockholders - workers and citizens of Business America - is necessary to keep the business model sound and afloat. However, the gap between the ultra-rich and the poor is widening at an exponential rate. With more of the wealth created in any society – and wealth is created by the working class not the monied class (e.g. productivity) – going to fewer people at the top, our America as a business model is fatally flawed. Imagine running your own small business, corporation or household where the majority of the profit only went to the top managers. You guessed it – your operations would fail. Who wants to work for nothing? Certainly not the CEOs of corporate America. Warning – kill the buying capacity of the American consumers and the corporations die. Oh – and do not count on global markets to bail out the craven dismantling of the American working class. Without the American middle class – the global pipedream vanishes. Therefore, it is either more good jobs or too much of nothing. As Bob Dylan wrote, “too much of nothing makes a man feel ill at ease”.

Public Education

How can you get people to work in the 21st Century jobs when 15 to 20% of Americans are illiterate and only 25% have gone to college? The answer of course is a more robust “Public” education system. However, current educational trends show a stampeding, to the mantra of “privatization”, towards charter schools. When this idea – vouchers part II – first crept out of Knoxville, Tennessee, Chris Whittle said that business could educate our children better than the government. In reality, it was just a clever bait and switch game calculated to take the curriculum out of the teacher’s hands and the money out of our pockets.

Charter or voucher schools follow a cut and gut philosophy used by take-over specialists to buy then flip undervalued companies. Once they have the green light in any school district, in come their quasi-private schools in place of our public schools. Memorization and testing replace learning and experiential immersion. The arts and physical education are minimized or eliminated. The books are brought in from publishers who toe the new line on just the facts but not the reality in all subjects. Graduation rates are insured at the cost of any semblance of a real or classic education.

Here again, the business model of top-down command creates citizens with a shell of an education. Meanwhile, the public schools are drained of their funds so the test results can show that the charter/voucher schools are better and the downward spiral continues.

It is time to stop this ineffectual shell game and get back to public schools with a broad liberal arts education. A welcome addition would be to offer technical schools as well for those students inclined toward the new technological frontier of the Internet. Every neighborhood should have the best in facilities, books and teachers. To make that possible, teachers should be among the best paid jobs not the least. You can throw in firefighters and police for that raise while you are at it.

Re-Train America

Ok – we get it now. You cannot continue to put an unending stream of automobiles on the face of the planet without disastrous results in air and land use quality. So, let’s go back a step to go two forward. We should “re-train” America. Rail travel in all of its forms – light, metro, high speed – is cleaner and greener. As a massive infrastructure undertaking, at all levels of government, it would create more good jobs and new industrial innovations than any other project including space exploration. America’s non-productive and pointless war economies could be recycled into heavy industry with a purpose. The world would follow suit if they wanted to keep up. Therefore, more rail travel would lead to less auto travel, creating numerous environmental benefits. Mass transit would at last replace the bloated highway budgets and urban development might be able to come into a sane perspective as well.

Internet / Entrepreneurship

Technology always pushes the past and its masters out of the way. As most business bon vivants are fond of saying – it is amoral. What is immoral is when the power to control technology lays in the hands of an elitist few. Most interesting about the underlying principles of the latest tech tool – the Internet – is that control (favored by the wealthy past) is the antithesis of its fundamental architecture, which is, “facilitation”.

Notwithstanding the forgoing statement, major business leaders and old-line businesses are scurrying about trying to devise newer and cleverer ways to subvert the public good and get a grasp on the Internet. Of course, this is futile. For starters, the Internet itself is designed to be so democratic that all tyrannical master plans are merely foolish flops on arrival. More importantly, if allowed to flourish as a democratic technology, former titans of industry stand a better chance at reaping larger profits. Now, that is truly ironic. Again – facilitation of greater participation in the rewards of productivity will increase the bottom line of every interest as long as they are shared interests, e.g. the common good. This is not a new idea limited to technology though. Our Constitution was designed with the same principle in mind – facilitation of the many rather than control by the few. Hmm – maybe the Founders were on to something!

If allowed to stand as a public utility, maintained for the many not the few, the Internet will provide the greatest advances in entrepreneurship, public discourse and futuring of the Liberal Ideal heretofore known – in America and across the globe. Within the architecture of the Internet, lies the potential for not only the democratization of information but also the democratization of wealth.

Environment / Resources / Recycling

If you need to be convinced that the Climate Crisis is real, then like the dinosaurs you are headed for extinction. If I may presume to speak for the majority of sentient beings though, we don’t relish the thought of going down with you. So, what is to be done? How can we save the planet?

Well, the planet doesn’t need to be saved. As has been said before, the planet will do just fine if we manage to finish off our miserable existence upon it. It is we, the people, who are in danger of perishing not our mother earth. We can avoid this calamity only if we wake up to the central theme of this entire essay: enlightened self-interest must prevail over narrow self-interest. We are all self-interested. That is a function of our survival instinct. In this decade, millions of years of human evolution have come to the tipping point. Either we all survive and thrive – together – or we all disappear into the echoes of time.

Every being is dependent upon the vitality of every other being. We are inextricably mixed. All resources – especially water – are rare and must be managed for the benefit of each of us. This does not mean that a utopian dream is achievable but without greater sharing and less disparity between the haves and the “ain’t ever gonna haves” we are doomed and sooner than we think. Of course, nothing is written yet. Wise use of our most miraculous resource, human reasoning, might just save the day. I think mother earth would like to keep us around for a little longer. Stay tuned.

Last but not least, I think that it should go without saying or contradiction that “recycling” every possible resource is paramount to our design of a cleaner - greener world. We should all start by recycling our outdated notions of I got mine – you get yours.

China Collapses

Amid the furious dash to be embraced by the illusion of billions of consumers eagerly awaiting our every possible trinket, a dark and ominous truth is emerging. Its ramifications promise to annihilate the largest number of humans ever, in one long agonizing fell swoop. I refer to the imminent collapse of Communist China – aided and abetted by globalization and mountainous greed.

Simply put, the industrialized nations’ perversion of sound labor practices, as witnessed in the unconscionable abandonment of manufacture in the developed world and the switch to basically slave labor in China, will reap what it has sown. This curse of chasing lower and lower labor costs will come home to roost in horrifying ways that were avoidable and predicted. A century of labor organizing, workplace safety and necessary business regulation will be for naught - especially to the hapless Chinese workers.

Recent discoveries of tainted food and products from China are only the tip of the iceberg of the coming internal Chinese collapse. Imagine what America would be like today if robber baron corporate interests had prevailed here over the last one hundred years. What would life in America be like without laws to protect workers, public safety, food supplies, regulate unsafe manufacturing, reduce pollution, root out corruption and graft, prosecute elected officials who steal from the public treasury etc.? Yes, I know that many of these protections and laws are not working, as they should here but what if there were none at all? What would America look like then? It would most closely resemble the plot of one of HBO’s recent dramatic series. It would start as the Sopranos, evolve into Deadwood and end up as Rome. That is where China exists today. A lawless land pillaged by foreign investment and so-called Socialist or Communist leaders who are nothing more than gangsters. If you‘re looking for a persuasive argument about the absolute necessity for Labor Unions and the right to organize, not to mention the right to vote, this is it.

Consider just this one scenario of the soon to be Chinese collapse: a healthcare system unprepared for hundreds of millions of emphysema and asthma victims all showing up at the same time. Besides the monstrous effects of no pollution controls in their air, water or land use, the Chinese have been happily consuming the world’s largest number of cigarettes per capita for decades. When the business practices ennobled by Wal-Mart and a host of other companies are combined with the environmental catastrophe fast approaching the Chinese healthcare system, as lacking as it is, will be brought to its knees. Then, the business interests will be unsustainable and the government will disintegrate as the wealthy try to catch the last plane out, stranding the vast majority of citizens.

Running away from everything that made America and its middle class work is going to costs us all – especially the Chinese. As I said, if the business of America is business then the current management needs to go if only for creating this onrushing gruesome calamity in China.

In Conclusion

There is nothing new in these proposals. These concepts are a compendium of common sense, win-win ideas that were available long before the Hippies and New Agers dared to utter them. Maybe it is their simplicity - as expressed in John Nash’s brilliant equilibrium theory - that has made them illusive. Perhaps it’s the venality of the ruling class and their desperate zero-sum proclivity. Of course, there is the inertia of the voting class and their fearful manipulation by political strategists - breeding a catatonic state of disinterest. Whatever the cause, most likely all of the above, the results are killing us.

Progress demands a new idea of community doing business in a local, renewable, sustainable, humane paradigm. All other models have failed and will continue to do so. As a Progressive Liberal Democrat, I believe in a new course of human interaction and interdependency. I have presented a few of the ideas that would make that new world possible. My hope is that collecting these progressive proposals for furthering business into one article will stimulate debate and most importantly – ACTION! Hesitation and obstruction are no longer viable.

Now is the time for change. This is the place for a breakthrough. We are the people who can make it happen. So, please pass the whole wheat bread and let us get back to “minding” the store.

(Many thanks to my editor – Margie Murray – VP Valley Democrats United)