Considering Shame

Daniel Foster, in an essay that can be found in the January 23, 2012 issue of National Review, references a film titled Cinderella Man, one of Russell Crowe’s better efforts, that recounts the Depression-era struggles of boxer James J. (“Gentleman Jim”) Braddock prior to his emergence as champion of the world.

Mr. Braddock was then employed as a dockworker and was unable to depend upon steady work to support his young family.  In the movie, he is reduced to soliciting meager handouts from boxing acquaintances and even applying to New Jersey’s Emergency Relief Administration, where the woman behind the counter regards him with a mixture of pity and disappointment and says, “I never thought I’d see you here, Jimmy” as she counts out $19.  Braddock mumbles apologies to friends and agencies alike, but the burning shame that motivates him to rise to the pinnacle of the fight game also drives him to return every cent of charity that he ever took.

It was an excellent movie and a great inspirational story that underlined the great gift that one has (or perhaps used to have) of being an American and therefore able to rise above poverty and destitution through hard work and commitment.

Mr. Foster then cites the recently failed House Payroll-tax plan, which in his opinion tried to introduce “some small measure of shame long missing from our thinking about entitlements”.  Foster supplies some “shameful anecdotes”, such as the Seattle couple in the 1.2 million house who have nevertheless collected over $100,00 in welfare checks.  A bit more colorful, perhaps, than the creeping escalation that presently has endowed the unemployed with 99 weeks of benefits supplied by the taxpayers.

I’m sure that some of you who read this will have faced periods of unemployment in your adult lives, but I doubt if many (if any) have been reimbursed for nearly 2 years of joblessness.  Personally, I have collected unemployment for only a couple of brief periods over nearly fifty years of being in the work force.  It has been my experience that there is always work to be had, even if the available positions do not always fit our list of preferences.  Author Robert Heinlein was in his novels always a strong advocate of finding work as a dishwasher when times were truly tough.

But to consider shame only in the sphere of unemployment is overlooking its vital contributions to what Foster refers to as “the success of the American project”.  Being “on the dole” is no longer a cause for shame; indeed, our entitlement society even goes so far as to regard dependency, in not a few scenarios, as a laudable way of “getting over on the man”.

William F. Buckley, Jr. once announced that not everything that is legal is reputable.  An example in point, perhaps, is our utterly shameless political class and that is unfortunately highlighted by the current and ongoing deplorable behavior by all sides in this, an election year.  Not to mention the trashing of the Constitution and utter disregard of the rule of law in many instances by successive administrations to particularly include the egomaniacal Marxist inhabiting the White House and his so-called Attorney General at the Department of Injustice.  Political fear-mongering, a President who appears to feel that enticing people to ever-higher consumption rather than providing the leadership that will encourage them get back to work, and “movements” whose main accomplishments seem limited to disruption of general commerce and demanding that others shoulder the responsibility for their fiscal imprudence - all generate an unprecedented shamelessness.

A significant segment of our society seems to have embraced a mantle of victimhood that supposedly frees them from the previous cultural disfavor that kept in check such undesirable personal habits such as alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual promiscuity, unwed motherhood, public obscenity and vulgarity, petty (and not-so-petty) crime, greed, avarice, and other types of behavior that once would have generated general public condemnation.  The increase in these unsavory activities has contributed greatly to the fraying of the moral fabric of American society … and this decline is not an accident.

The bitter fruit of an engineered dependency characterized by childish self-absorption and immature behavior is slow to ripen, but its toxicity is none less virulent to a well-ordered and productive society.

America’s diminished sense of shame bodes ill for our future.

 

Creating Jobs Could Be Beneficial In Many Ways

I am sure that there must be more than a handful of readers out there who have experienced the frustration of being forced to rely on Customer Service/Tech Support representatives who are physically located many thousands of miles away from the source of the problem that has forced you to attempt to communicate with them.

And I use the word “communicate” advisedly.

My personal encounters began with the purchase of a new computer to replace the six-year old (ancient, I have been informed by many in the industry) model that seemed increasingly unable to handle the demands for increased RAM to power the newest “apps”.  Not a bad con game, this: continuously invent new and exciting programs that require ever-growing amounts of operational capacity, which in turn guarantees that your new computer will be obsolete in a disturbingly brief passage of time … requiring an update of equipment …. and on and on, ad infinitum.

Anyway, I was somewhat entranced by the capabilities of the new system that I purchased, particularly the ability to hold face-to-face conversations, through an ingenious system labeled “Skype”, with my oldest son, who is currently teaching conversational English to South Korean high school boys.  But the bloom soon faded from the rose when almost immediately my new computer exhibited a maddening tendency to randomly freeze up and stubbornly resist any attempts to reboot.

And so my relationship with the computer company’s Technical Support/Customer Service gnomes began.  Many hours built up attempting to converse with these entities, who I discovered resided in some warren in India, and who would invariably begin our conversations with a litany of questions that were always the same and had been exhaustively discussed during previous calls.  Communication clarity would vary, since some of these folks were reasonably conversant in English while others spoke with an accent that was difficult to understand.

I soon grew to despair over the iron-clad protocol that directed these conversations.  These folks are carefully programmed to apply a limited number of solutions to an infinite array of problems and I soon grew weary of having my computer taken over by these faraway trolls who would, after many minutes, happily pronounce my problem solved.  The problem, of course, would return in days or a week or so later and it would be back to the drawing board with another “technician” who would stoically recite the same questions and follow the same procedures with the same results.

My increasing irritation was eventually rewarded with arrangements being made to swap out the machine’s hard drive. A U.S. technician appeared on my doorstep and announced that his only function was to make the equipment switch and therefore could not do any testing to determine if indeed a faulty hard drive was the source of the problem.

The problem almost immediately again reared its ugly head, prompting more lengthy telephone “conversations”.  I finally grew irate enough to demand that the obviously faulty system be replaced and that opened a true Pandora’s Box of frustration and misery.  Technical Support referred me to Customer Service through a series of “holds” that eventually linked me back to Technical Support who informed me that they could not replace the entire unit and referred me to Customer Resolution, etc., etc.

During one heated (on my part) exchange, I demanded to be connected to an American representative, but was informed that such would be impossible.  After explaining that my next approach would be a truly nasty email to the company CEO that would include my unfavorable evaluation of Customer Service/Tech Support, I was informed that an attempt to make such a connection would be implemented, but the requested result could not be guaranteed.  I’m sure that the poor rep on the other end of the line had a story to take home to their significant other about the “customer from hell”.

I did indeed send off a nasty email that included detailed threats of forthcoming defamation.  I’m not sure which action was the effective one, but a few days later I spoke with a very pleasant gentleman here in America who assured me that a replacement computer would be on the way.  His word was good: I have the new unit beside me as I write this – yet to be installed - but the attempt will be made as soon as my blood pressure returns to a more comfortable level.

The point being, of course, that all of this aggravation could have been easily prevented through quick corrective action.  I have since learned through some contacts in the computer service/repair industry that such occurences are not uncommon and that the computer manufactures do little or no field testing on new products, but instead rely on the consumers to do this for them.  They have found it to be less expensive to replace “lemons” than to take the time and effort to prevent them.  Customer satisfaction has been relegated to a seat much further to the rear of the auditorium.

I apologize for taking so long to reach my subject of the title of this rant.  My suggestion to our government is this:  If you are truly committed to finding jobs for Americans (are you listening, Mr. President?) then simply make it a requirement that any American company providing goods or services within the United States must staff its Technical Services and/or Customer Support divisions with American citizens in an American location.  End of discussion.

The result?  Many jobs for Americans and an astounding reduction in the blood pressure levels of the American consumer.

And don’t route me through a maze of bureaucratic stations who will each assure me that it cannot be done.  Enough pissed off people can make it happen.

Recognizing the Enemy

I am no admirer of the Occupy Wall Street crowd.  Some on the Left have characterized their emergence as a Liberal answer to the success of the Tea Party, but I fail to see a loose coalition of union movements, idealistic emotional adolescents, George Soros’ tools, and 1960′s leftovers and wannabes as the equal to a true grass-roots movement that was responsible for the election of a significant portion of the newest members of Congress.

Then again, I also refuse to recognize anarchy as a viable solution to our nation’s current financial and social miseries.

Still, the OWS protestors have successfully highlighted the influence that Wall Street and other corporate entities have over our national policies and politics.

Let’s be honest.  Wall Street bought itself a President.  Even if one is intentionally ignoring the evidence of massive Wall Street financial contributions to the Obama election campaigns (past and ongoing), consider the infiltration of Obama’s Cabinet by stalwarts of the corporate world:

Obama’s first National Economic Council director, Lawrence Summers, (of hedge-fund giant D.E. Shaw and venture-capital firm Andresssen Horowitz) who has also had some nice paydays courtesy of Lehman Bros., JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup.

Citigroup’s Michael Froman, deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs.

Hartford Financial’s Neal Wolin, deputy Treasury secretary.

JPMorgan’s William Daly, Obama’s recent Chief of Staff and his predecessor Rahm Emanuel of Wasserstein Perella.

And a true star: Fannie Mae’s Tom Donilon, national security adviser (No kidding.  One of the geniuses who contributed mightily to Fannie Mae’s woeful state of affairs – upside down to the tune of trillions of dollars is running national security.  Plus, the former director of the White House Military Office, Louis Caldera, was on the board of IndyMac when it went defunct.  Makes one feel warm, toasty and secure, eh?)

And we don’t want to forget the leaders of the Obama economic-transition team Robert Rubin (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup) and venture capitalist vulture Warren Buffet.

Nor should we overlook Treasury Secretary/tax cheat Tim Geithner, who came up through the ranks as part of the Robert Rubin-Hank Paulson-Goldman Sachs cabal and went on to a position as chairman of the New York Fed where he was able to bestow tens of billions of federal (taxpayer) dollars upon a failing Citigroup through a structured investment that allowed the government to buy a 27 per cent share in the bank, for which it paid more than the entire market value of the institution.

But Obama is certainly not adverse to redistributing boatloads of goodies to other members of the corporate world such as his man David Alexlrod’s firm being allowed to set up Astroturf campaigns on behalf of Exelon subsidiary ComEd (despite the president’s voluminous denunciations of “Big Oil”).  Nor was Obama hesitant to appoint GE chief Executive Jeff Immelt to his White House jobs commission, or choosing former Kraft and Duke Energy board member Mary Schapiro to run the SEC.

(My acknowledgements to National Review contributor Kevin D. Williamson for the article “Repo Men”, from which this rogue’s gallery of unofficial lobbyists was compiled).

If you would like a more extensive examination of the joined-at-the-hip relationship between the Washington establishment and the Wall Street crowd, please peruse Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison, by Peter Schweizer of the Hoover Institution.  This laundry list of recent “Congressional insider-trading, self-dealing, IPO shenanigans, inexplicably good investment luck” should be enough to set your blood pressure at unhealthy levels.

The thing that shines through here is not merely the utter inadequacy of the Obama Presidency, but the utter corruption of our government structure and the complete moral collapse of both Congress and the Executive Branch.  And this is hardly limited to Democrats and their past and present administrations, but has been a burgeoning problem for decades.

Anyone who has been a member of the Washington establishment for more than two terms in office is justly suspect and that certainly includes the current four members of the Maine Congressional delegation.

It is long past time for our political establishment to be held accountable for these shortcomings, but to accomplish true “hope and change” the voters must be willing to closely scrutinize the records and actions of all candidates for office and most likely will have to make an electoral choice between the lesser of two evils – at least for the near future.

But keep in mind that the true measure of American exceptionalism is that we still have the opportunity to make changes through electing officials who can be directed to do the best for the population as a whole.  Allied against ethics and morality is the entitlement mentality and the significant number of citizens who are dependent upon Washington for a continuing check.

Iraq – An Ongoing Tragedy

It is of course no coincidence that American troops have been “brought home” from Iraq just prior to the beginning of an election year.  Wars and other conflicts are always planned, implemented, supervised and terminated by the ruling political structures.  The goals originally professed therefore generally have little to do with the eventual outcome of the action, having been adjusted to conform to the open (or hidden) desires of the current power structure.

Bears a strong resemblence to campaign promises, does it not?

Certainly the precipitous and poorly thought out withdrawal of American forces from Iraq clearly shows that the outstanding performance of America’s military has gone for naught and that chances are at least even that the Iraq may soon degenerate into the tribal and chaotic internecine squabbling which is the current trademark of so many Middle East countries.

Without the restraining influence of American and other international forces to act as a buffer, the fragile coalition under the rule of Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is already exhibiting expanding fracture lines.  The Kurds of northern Iraq continue their quest for autonomy.  The remnants of Saddam’s Sunni ruling class continue their contributions to sectarian violence through their increasing bomb attacks against Shia landmarks and population, while al Qaeda is replenishing its depleted jihadist forces throughout the country (with the help of Iran).

Neighboring countries are only too happy to exacerbate the divisions, Iran’s Shia government continuing to expand its influence through Moqtada al-Sadar, Turkey launching excursions into the Kurdish province and Syria sniffing at the doorstep.

The costs of the war in Iraq can be totaled thusly: 4,287 American lives lost and many thousands more wounded and maimed; as of last summer, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that to that point America had spent $709 billion to finance this exercise in nation building, while the Congressional Research Service pegged the number even higher at $784 billion.  These figures are obviously not complete and do not include the future costs of replacing millions of dollars worth of military equipment that is being left behind and will have to be replaced in order to keep the military units involved even marginally operational.

All of this blood and treasure expended to provide the Iraqi government and its people with the arguably-implanted “freedom” to govern, sustain, and defend  themselves while serving as an ally in the “War on Terror”.  Our hasty retreat may well undermine any or all of those accomplishments, despite the hard work and sacrifices on the part of our military.

Nation-building is not a desirable option in this day and age, particularly when dealing with the nearly insurmountable societal problems posed by the tribal mindset of such countries as Iraq and Afghanistan.  Our military has been weakened and our national resolve depleted.    It will take years to restore the damage inflicted upon our military’s human and equipment resources, and the current demands to inflict massive cuts in military spending and readiness could not come at a worse time.

It was a mistake to embark on such protracted military campaigns when more precise and targeted operation to retaliate against our country’s enemies might well have been as effective.  In addition, this is not the time to adopt a Ron Paul-like isolationism foreign policy profile.  All the more reasons to underline our desperate need for strong, intelligent, committed leadership from our political class to reverse the deterioration of America’s strength.

And all the more reason to underline the vital importance of this fall’s elections.