Opinion-Columns.com

Bunker Mentality at WTC

It had to happen, there were just too many opposing interests in the rebuilding of Manhattan’s World Trade Center.  Call it Freedom Tower if you must, but it’s been bunkerized, made fearful instead of free by the heavy hand of Skidmore, Owings Merrill (the Wal-Mart of architectural firms).  There is absolutely nothing even recognizable left of Daniel Libeskind’s award-winning original design.

Libeskind and Skidmore’s David Childs no longer speak. Yesterday’s unveiling of this mundane, heavyhanded and pedestrian-unfriendly hulk showcased attitude instead of architecture, including:

• Libeskind’s unwillingness to walk away from being trivialized as a designer. Color that decision, if not yellow, surely saffron.
• The developer’s (Larry Silverstein) unending greed for floorspace in a building no tenant will anchor. Red will suffice.
• Skidmore’s eagerness to do anything, no matter how ungainly, to secure a commission. Brown?  Does brown work for you?
• Governor Pataki’s desperation to get something built after truculently driving Goldman Sachs out of the project. Orange.
• Michael Bloomberg’s fear of losing yet another Manhattan battle with an election looming. Blue, maybe even azure.
• The NYPD (incredibly) driving design issues in a decision so off-the-wall that it defies description. Color that embarrassment pink.
• And finally, that killer of all things bold and beautiful, no one being clearly in the driver’s seat. Gray, the gray of a leaden sky.

Stir as energetically as you like, call a press-conference, the resulting color, rather than prismatic is sticky, gooey, mud-colored brown. 

“I think it will be very safe,” Governor Pataki said and it was difficult to know if he meant politically or merely bomb-proof.  Certainly a 200 foot ‘base’ of windowless concrete should deflect terrorists to the Chrysler or Empire State buildings, if that’s what’s meant by safety.  Mayor Bloomberg said the tower would “climax the greatest comeback in the history of our city,” which one could only take to mean his own re-election.  Childs, speaking of the architecture, said, “I feel better about this than the original,” a statement easily understood in his profession as he elbowed out the better designer to substitute his own blurred vision. I won’t quote Libeskind, he sold himself on the cheap in this travesty of manipulated public relations.  Perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to walk away. Berlin is not New York and never will be.

The inescapable fact is there is no market for this building, no possible way to profitably fill 2.6 million square feet of rentable space.   One can already see the writing on the wall; that city, state and federal government will be called upon to move in their massive bureaucracies so our national pride will not be injured by the obvious fact that law firms, accountancies, bankers and brokerages will not take the risk.

Hubris stood tall in the saddle of this reconstruction from the start, but it had one thing going for it and that was the beauty of the solution.

Now that’s gone as well.  Muttered to death by conflicting personal agendas.

See Taking My Country Personally on my personal web site.

Spreading Democracy

President Bush has painted boldly his desire to be the Johnny Appleseed of democracy throughout the world and it’s an ambitious goal.  Hard to argue with the ambition, but plans are one thing and implementation quite another.

Democracy is a process rather than a door opened to those who are shut out.  Democracy means a continuing dialog with the governed that our own country has struggled with since its inception two hundred, twenty-nine years ago.  It can’t be delivered like independence. 

Independence can be fought for and won or given at the stroke of a pen by colonial powers.  But either way, history bears witness to how seldom democracy delivers the goods and how often the experiment evolves into dictatorship.  Dictatorship is the last grasp of idealism foundering on the rocky shoals of establishing democracy.  It’s always out there under the surface, a malevolent force to be reckoned with, a greed ready to assert itself.

Democracy is more agony than celebration and revolutions have the need to celebrate. Society in revolution has for the most part already suffered enough agony and the evidence of more to come, as we’re seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan, wears thin when the image itself, that golden ring, is not clear. “What are we doing, where are we going? . . . will someone just get the water and electricity back on and stop the car-bombing.”

Water, electricity and quiet streets are the iron of society.  Democracy is highly tempered steel, forged by compromise under heat and pressure and the powerful are disinclined to compromise.  Easier and more profitable to take control, to dole out democratic principals as minimally required.  The masses can always be bought off by peace.  Dwight Eisenhower understood that, saying, "I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it." Democracy is the vision of a few, but peace is a stroll in the evening with one’s family, stopping for ice cream.

Democracy is tangled and muddy, the process like making sausage.  New and freshly formed democracies want solutions and progress rather than conferences and compromise.  Never easy, the sausage-making is most difficult in countries and cultures that have no history of inquiry.  Lands previously controlled by warlords, dictators, gangsters or religious fanatics are particularly barren ground for the cultivation of democracy and Afghanistan and Iraq combine all these elements. 

It’s a tough, nearly impossible job and anyone who looked impartially into this part of the world and its history would have known that.  Makes me wonder what Dick Cheney was smoking when he predicted Iraqis would greet us with flowers and democracy would prove to be George Tenet’s ‘slam-dunk.’

To America’s credit, a start has been made and only Allah can know what the end result will be.  Allah rules in this part of the world and Turkey is the sole example of Islamic democracy. Not much of a track record if you're the odds-maker.

So it’s not been easy and and will not be.  Attempting to export democratic ideals always comes up against the power-structure-that-is in the hope of selling the power-structure-that-might-be.  If there is an enduring principal that rules humanity it is that men and women will always act in their own best interests. 

The best interest of power is power.

A Win For Everyone But Big Oil

Farmers win, the consumer at the pump wins, our nation's relief from the grip of the oil cartels wins, even the Florida and Gulf coast sugar industry wins if we follow and expand a tested and successful model.

Where’s that model?  Quick, show me.  That sounds like a national headline instead of a Saturday ho-hum article buried in the Washington Post.

Yeah, the model is Brazil.

Brazil?  Isn’t that in South America, that long, skinny country that covers almost the entire west coast?  No, that’s Chile.  Brazil is the big hunk of the country with a seashore on the east coast, home to the Amazon rain forest and Rio de Janeiro.  Enough geography . . .

Brazil is a sugar-cane growing country and the cane industry fluctuates wildly depending on world sugar markets, plus the fact that it’s an absolutely terrible place for people to work.  That, plus the high prices and diminishing oil resources worldwide, plus the fact that cane (along with corn, soybeans, beets, cornstalks and grass) is an easy ethanol source, plus the fact that ethanol runs fine in cars, plus the fact that it’s thirty or forty cents a gallon cheaper at the pumps, makes for a lot of pluses.

And a long list of perceived, but narrow-interest negatives: 

• Exxon and the boys aren’t really wired with that mind-set and so they keep on throwing money at Washington to keep renewable energy from happening. 
• Too disturbing to Shell et al profit structures
• Too much capital investment in old technologies
• What are we gonna do with all those drill-rigs and the prepaid bribes to various thugs around the world?
• What do we do with tanker fleets?
• No one at my country club even knows a cane-sugar grower.
• Does the Middle East matter without oil? Okay, that one’s not narrow interest.

Of course change will come, but only after we’ve dirtied-up the remaining pristine areas of the world, steam-rollered human rights in favor of petro-dollars in a few more of the ‘stans,’ further poisoned the politics of the have-nots in favor of the haves and warmed the planet to near extinction. We're currently mining oil in Canada. 

All of the above have a dollar value, but they are intrinsically life-style values.  It’s been an observation of mine that life-style has yet to yield to profit and this has made of me an advocate of follow-the-money when chasing bad guys and offer-the-money when enticing behavior.

With this in mind, I suggest administrations present and future offer outrageously advantageous tax breaks to Big Oil to refashion itself as Big Biofuel. I know it’s not a catchy name, but giving away most of the American West got the railroads built and they didn’t have a motto either, unless it was “Moving the Indians to Build California.”

• Thus will poor agricultural societies in temperate zones become less poor, growing various crops that are convertible to ethanol and thus will the increasing thirst (and ability to pay for) private automobiles be counterbalanced by environmentally sensitive fuels.
• Tanker owners can transport fuel instead of crude, as there’ll always be an imbalance between those who produce and those who consume. 
• Oil rigs can be left to rust, dismantled for scrap or painted silly colors and declared art objects. 
• The Middle East can once again become a nomadic land and sleep for an additional two thousand years.

Brazil’s Agriculture Minister said if the U.S. would open their markets by lowering tariffs and promoting flexible-fuel engine packages, they would contribute to both world prosperity and peace.  Yet my newspaper said that efforts to gain wide acceptance for biofuels in America have faced political, economic and technical obstacles not present in Brazil.  And I guess that’s right.  The moneyed interests in Brazil want it and those in America don’t.

It’s probably a deal-breaker.

A bunch more environmental issues muddying the waters on my personal web site.

China and Unocal, Have a Cookie!

 China's unsolicited bid to takeover Unocal is equaled every ten days in less obvious investments like Treasury bills and real estate, but that doesn’t keep Congress from going ballistic.  Politicians are not really very smart and for the most part are economic idiots, running, running, running for office but seldom having run anything else in their lives, such as a business. 

So don’t look to Capitol Hill for guidance, you're better off in Webster's under G.  It’s panic-time and the lemmings we keep sending to Washington (mostly to keep them off the streets at home) are collectively scratching their heads and wondering how to position themselves.  Unable to find an economic truth glowing in a dark room, they’re suddenly calling for trade sanctions and an economic accounting in the China matter.

Well boys and girls of the Senate and Congress, gather ‘round and try not to sniffle.  There’ll be milk and cookies after the explanation. That $1.9 billion Bush is borrowing each and every day is real money, the same kind you spend when you get out your credit-card, write a check or lay out a few Franklins.  What that means is that every ten days, kiddies, we’ve sold off a piece of America equal to Unocal.  Yes, that’s right.  Repeat after me, “Every ten days we are selling off a piece of America equal to Unocal.”

There now, feel better?  Wipe your eyes, here’s a cookie.

Now, boys and girls, here’s something else to remember, so lis-ten care-ful-ly: if you run a business and every day you spend more than you earn, someday they’re going to take your business away from you and won’t let you play with it any longer.  There, there, don’t cry.  Here’s another cookie. Repeat after me, “If I spend more than I bring in every day . . . and I keep doing it . . . pretty soon they won’t let me play with my country any more.”

I know, you’d like to get a big old stick and hit that bad old China.  But you see, it’s not really bad old China, the bad old China thing is just like those creatures under the bed that go ‘woof’ in the night and we don’t believe in those anymore, do we?  There, there, wipe your chins.  Have another cookie.

So now, instead of getting a big old stick and hitting bad old China, we’re going to thank China, because more than any other country in the world, they’re lending us the money every day that we’re spending to sell off our country.  You’re all so cute.  Your eyes just got so big when I said that.  Have a cookie.  Repeat after me, “We’re all going to thank China for helping us sell off our country.”

Now kids, gather ‘round and let’s see what we could do to not sell off our country, because we don’t really want to do that, do we?  Let’s put on our ‘thinking caps.’  Everybody got theirs on?  Good.  Well, we could:

• Put a tax on the wars we’re fighting right now and the ones we plan.  That’s how wars are usually paid for.  Oops, I almost said ‘financed,’ but that’s a tricky-poo word, isn’t it? That would stop half a billion dollars a day and that would help us not sell our country.
• Or we could maybe stop giving away so much of what we earn in this ‘business’ we call a country.  Remember when we talked about spending more than we earn?  That was fun, wasn’t it?  What we earn is called taxes.  Nod your heads if you understand.  And Mr. Bush and you, boys and girls, gave away a thousand Unocals in just the last four years.  My, that was bad, wasn’t it?  Don’t cry, here’s a cookie. If we didn’t do that, we would have more money than we spent every day.  Wouldn’t that be grand?  Let’s all say it, “That would be grand!”

What do you think, kids?  Does any of that make you feel better?  Did it make that bad ol’ China worry go away just a little bit?

Time now for your nappy nappy.  Everyone put your heads down and no peeking or giggling.

There are lots more things that make me nuts, all of them on my personal web site.

No Child Left Behind . . .

. . . even if we have to drag him, fake her statistics or jam their futures down everyone’s throat.  Which confirms the universal truth that figures don’t lie, but liars figure.

Ostensibly, everyone is in the education game for the benefit of children.  But increasingly the players polarize, shrinking back to protect their turf, be they boards of education, state and federal education committees, layers upon layers of administrative staff, teachers’ unions, vendors of everything from school busses to backpacks and school meals and, finally . . . exhaustedly . . . bitterly and in extremes of frustration and despair . . . the parents of schoolchildren.

George Will says in his column---Anyone who thinks parents hunger for greater academic rigor should try to get parents to pay the price -- more dollars for more school days and, even less tolerated, decreased vacation time for little Tommy and Sue and their parents -- of increasing America's approximately 180-day school year, which is 40 to 60 days shorter than in much of the rest of the industrial world. George is right.

David Broder takes his own view on the same editorial page---But parents are much more likely than teachers to believe that expectations and standards are set too low and that students are not sufficiently challenged. An earlier survey by Achieve Inc., a private business group, reported that only 24 percent of recent high school graduates said they faced challenging standards. David is right as well

Those who are not right are the fiddlers with the process who believe that education can be reformed and improved from the top down.  Advocates of top-down management have us in our present condition; paralyzed by administrators, fractured by mandated bussing, strangled by boards, commissions and committees . . . in short, at an angry impasse.

Individually, each prejudiced piece of the pie feels attacked and every point of view either out-shouts its opponent or sets its jaw and dares progress to happen.  The industrial metaphor for what’s happened in education is our long-gone heavy industries, toppled by intransigence and the inability to innovate.  Sadly, we are off-shoring our educational responsibilities as well and the evidence is the increase in private school education, the last best place to equip a bright mind for college. 

And they are, in huge and unarguable numbers, all bright minds.  The drop-outs and underachievers (how I hate that word) are bright as stars in the night, but we can’t see them through the low-lying clouds of administration.  We don’t need to administrate, we need to innovate.  We require invention instead of intervention.  We need small victories in the place of massive defeats. 

Classroom by classroom, teacher by teacher, student by student, family by family we need to bring ourselves into contact and make agreements.  Contact is what has been missing in the mandates from higher up.  Agreements begin with students rather than committees and generate the force of achievement only with the blessing and approval and active participation of the families involved.  Small victories.  Little improvements that can be improved-upon further and perhaps (but only perhaps) provide models for further inclusion into broader curricula.

Children are bursting with the need-to-know and by system and analysis, by argument and compromise, by law and decree, from above . . . always above, we have stamped out and turned off and manipulated that need-to-know until it turns defiantly into a need to get out. Our student-children have been stamped, spindled and mutilated.

Pray God we humble ourselves sufficiently to see the shine in our neighbor's children’s eyes.

There are lots more things that make me nuts, all of them on my personal web site.

The Jack-Armstrong Political Action Committee (JAPAC)

Depending upon a ground-swell, a sea-change or some other water-related metaphor, I hereby offer myself as CEO, Chairman and Grand Omnipotent Potentate of the Jack Armstrong Political Action Committee (JAPAC).  You may well ask its purpose . . . more on that later.  First, to an explanation of its name, which, as all successful marketers know is paramount to recognition, branding, profitable side and after-markets as well as general acceptance by the public, mention by Jon Daily and a slot on Oprah.

Jack Armstrong, as those with a touch of gray at the temples may remember, is the first part of that great American weekly radio show, fully known as “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy.” The show ran from 1933 to 1950, so ‘touch of gray’ might in some cases be ‘toothless and drooling.’  No matter, it was sponsored by Wheaties and made ‘breakfast of champions’ a huge brand name.  Enough background . . . trust me, he’s an icon, this Armstrong guy, grandly American and will make paying off politicians a brand name as well, instead of the currently scum-baggy association it has with furtiveness and third-party interventions.

We’re going to bring Congressional payoffs out of the darkness and into the sunshine.

Having tried to clean up politics by investigating committees, special prosecutors, district attorneys and ethics committees, we . . . the American people . . . are preparing to join the National Rifle Association, Petroleum Institute, various trade associations and nefarious special interests in the purchase of good government.  If we can’t vote for it and having been unable to shame it, we’re going to damn well buy it.

The statistics are favorable.  The NRA has for decades prevented the 70% of Americans who favor gun control from getting it . . . for the tiniest of contributions.  In the 2000 Senatorial election, the NRA gave John Ashcroft $5,950.  For shame, John, we’d have ponied up another hundred bucks, easy. They got Olympia Snow for $3,000, what a bargain. 

Shoulda called us, too late now.

Chevron Texaco put Tom DeLay’s vote in the box for $5,000 . . . Tom DeLay, for peanuts . . . of course his value is diminishing by the day and they might get him for a couple grand the next time around.  If he's still around.

I tell you honest government is within striking distance, perhaps for the first time in history.

$260 million for each single dollar contribution, presuming we can count on the whole country.  Well, JAPAC wasn’t born yesterday (actually, it was thought-up then), so we know there will be slackers even though they’ll probably begin to demand results as well. But a few folks will kick in two or three bucks, so it’ll even out.  Think of it! Decent government for the cost of a box of Wheaties.  As CEO, Chairman and Grand Omnipotent Potentate, can you expect me to do my magic on your behalf?

Trust me.

See Taking My Country Personally on my personal web site.

The Incentive Killers

There are damned few incentives left in modern-day Europe to pull it out of its economic doldrums and the recent bashing the EU has taken on referenda on the proposed constitution are emblematic of continental malaise. Here in the Czech Republic, the government recently opted to tax small businesses 6,000 crowns a year minimum tax, regardless of whether they actually made a profit or made anything---thereby closing down 18,000 little people, the grandmothers who crochet little odds and ends or paint decorative eggs for the annual Christmas festivals, as one example. 

On top of embarrassment over disintegrating constitutional support, budget meetings in Brussels blew up last week over entitlements, the French calling Brits greedy and Tony Blair referring to Jacques Chirac as merely one of twenty-five rather than the voice of the EU.  Chirac doesn’t like to be called merely anything. The French are touchy.  Elegant, but very touchy.

World orders are in disorder everywhere.  Perhaps it’s their nature.  Chaos in its most natural environment. America has its problems with unilateralism and runaway deficits, while the U.N. exists in a state of disunity that has come to define the world body.  The European Union seems to be splitting at the seams and whole continents (Africa and South America) are falling apart.  The Muslim world levitates in what (under the most complimentary of terms) can only be called a state of flux.

Humans across the planet are thus drained of their energies by never-ending power struggles among their leaders.  Creative energy, the natural state of mankind when it is given even the smallest of encouragements, struggles mightily under the load of excessive manipulation, taxation and corruption.  France whimpers over Britain’s $6 billion rebate on their annual EU contribution (probably correctly) as Tony Blair fires back that French farmers consume $13 billion in funds (correct times three). The EU structure encourages farmers to consume 40% of the annual budget while representing a mere 5% of population and 2% of jobs.  There’s that mere word again, but it's small wonder that populations so widely discriminated against are not having the constitutional offering.

Meanwhile, catering to EU farmers and the high levels of social welfare throughout Europe have the continent in a bind.  European citizens have become used to limited working hours, extensive vacation time and early retirements. That’s a hard trend to change and yet it’s been delivered free of charge by decades of politicians to buy votes. This constant purchase with no apparent value other than sustaining one party or another has bankrupted Europe.  Suddenly the bill for free of charge has come due. A similar purchase of the electorate in America has the country perched on the edge of bankruptcy. 

What are voters to do, turn it down? 

Comfort is an incentive-killer, it’s a fact as true as any you can name.  Corruption knocks off incentive as well and our world is increasingly split between the comfortable and the corrupt. 

• America (comfortable and corrupt)
• European Union (comfortable and corrupt)
• Africa (corrupt)
• South America (corrupt)
• The Muslim World (corrupt)

It seems that the natural energetic state of man maximizes early and, as his society matures, the incentives become less.  Europe’s weakness is that it has no history (or structure) favorable to renewing that energy.  The largest share of America’s strength lies in the fact that it continues to reinvent itself through business. Business is unforgiving.  Business culture innovates (airlines in the thirties), matures (the fifties) and declines (eighties) into bankruptcy.  The same airline model can be found in the auto industry, or steel.  In a strange and ongoing renewal, bankruptcies mow our economic lawn, bringing up the new and green, mulching the inefficient.  Diametrically, Europe works overly hard and overly long at keeping anything at all from going broke, even as its farmers consume most of its largesse.

But economic miracles begin and end with grandmothers hand-painting eggs to sell at the yearly market.

More at my personal web site about what interests me outside America.

Picking Up Our Marbles and Going Home

Strange things happen to those ordinary twerps who wrangle their way into the House of Representatives.  They spend thirty years or so in that august companionship, get to be chairman of this or that utterly meaningless committee and begin to believe they are no longer ordinary twerps. 

Henry Hyde, Chicago’s off-the-wall representative in the House of Similar Idiots (a.k.a. House of Representatives) has come up with another of his stem-winding solutions to the problems of the world.  Hyde, you may remember, is the stalwart defender of the public who single handedly insisted on the impeachment of Bill Clinton and then was roundly embarrassed by the dearth of impeachable evidence.  Thankfully, this aged crank is retiring, but not before leaving his name on yet another piece of landmark legislation The Henry J. Hyde United Nations Reform Act.

I include his photograph, which looks like he was posing for a sculptor, possibly the same one who didn’t sculpt Dan Rostenkowski, another Chicago stalwart.

This Hyde with no Jekyll-side, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, introduced and passed a bill cutting U.S. dues to the United Nations in half. Talk about a positive influence on international relations, Hyde is spearheading what he calls ‘radical surgery’ in an effort to steamroller the U.N. into reforms.  He has a list and, like Santa, he’s checkin’ it twice.  Jesse Helms used to play Hyde’s part in this passionate play and one can only speculate on who will take up the cudgel when the last of these old farts retires.

Congress cannot set dues at the U.N.  the only thing Congress can do is withhold money (as Helms did for a decade), force the United States into arrears and put the ball in the U.N’s court as to whether or not they are thrown out.  That, of course, won’t happen.  It didn’t happen under Helms and it won’t happen even if Hyde’s study in hubris passes the Senate, which isn’t likely either. Traditionally, the Senate is the branch that calms down the wilder instincts of the House, smoothing its fur, scratching its chin and merely sighing at the likes of Tom DeLay.

It’s a platform, this ignorant bill, from which Hyde can bray like a donkey.  Every charge that he levels at the United Nations (and many of them are absolutely correct) is true as well of the United States Congress (in particular, his own H of R);

• Paternalism
• Unpopularity within America
• The wasting of billions of dollars
• Unconstrained bureaucracy
• Cushy member-missions to exotic climes (always near a golf club)
• Family members on the payroll

It would be an elegant thing if funding of the House and Senate were halved until they made similar reforms.  Comically, Hyde's legislation calls for an ethics office to uncover conflicts of interest at the same moment in history the House has succeeded in crippling its own ethics office.   

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Bush administration, already stung over the opposition to it’s choice of John Bolton as ambassador to the U.N., must deal with this further embarrassment coming from its party base in the congress.  Who could even guess what the climate is at the U.N.?  No doubt they are all aquiver over the double-whammy of Bolton and Hyde.

Which, of course, is the point.

For more comments on Washington at work, see my personal web site.

It’s 1am, Do You Know Where Your Credit Card Is?

Forty million more credit cards at risk out there, who-knows-where.  That, according to this morning’s revelation and this it's time an Arizona credit-card processor, Credit Card Solutions, who dropped the ball. This latest security failure is just another of the embarrassments of recent months that have now put nearly everyone with a card at jeopardy.

A visit to Credit Card Solutions web site makes no excuses and takes a very straightforward approach to explaining what happened. Unlike government, credit card processors depend upon consumer faith in their integrity and so they get out in front with the truth instead of making knee-jerk denials.

But it’s happened again and as I suggested in an earlier commentary, no one knows where the incursions end, if anywhere. Congress is in a turmoil of what-to-dos with each elected official salivating to get his name attached to a piece of legislation. The problem is that no one really knows any more about how to handle this then they do the more pervasive but less threatening issue of spam. Charles Shumer, Senator from New York didn’t waste any time getting a news release out that said "Hardly a week goes by without startling new examples of breaches of sensitive personal data reminding us how important it is to pass a comprehensive identity theft prevention bill in Congress quickly."

Quickly isn’t likely to fix it, Chuck.

MasterCard says it supports the extension of data security laws. MC would have transaction processors (like Credit Card Solutions) and data brokers (Trans Union and others) meet the same standards as banks. If they were required to meet the same standards as banks, they would no doubt absolve themselves from any losses due to fraud, but collect a fee someplace along the line for the cost of the fraudulent transaction. Shockingly, that’s what card-issuing banks do. They not only take themselves conveniently off the hook, but charge fees to merchants for reversing unauthorized charges. It’s just another income stream for the banks.

The banks are sitting pretty. Banks always sit pretty.

It's retailers who are left holding the bag financially and with all the hand-wringing in Congress about consumers at risk, it’s really the world-wide merchants, particularly those who do business on the Internet who are taking a bath. For all those dancing on one foot and the other, eager to throw this or that law out there with their name on it, no one knows how to do it. At least not without the banks leading the charge and that just isn't going to happen.

If the banking industry were part of the liability stream, there’d damned sure be a quick fix along the lines of additional encryption or a layering of access codes. But banking interests are best served by easy access to cards and they have thus far insulated themselves from taking any kind of hit when things go wrong.

Wouldn’t it be a miracle to see Congress go after the banks?

For more comments on Washington at work, see my personal web site.

 

An Open Letter to Tony Blair

Dear Tony,

You’ve just been re-elected to a history-making third term as Prime Minister of Britain and you really don’t have to lick George Bush’s boots any longer.  Although it’s too late to redefine your position supporting the U.S. on Iraq, it’s a watershed moment in the world’s approach to warming.

You are the Chairman of next month’s annual G-8 meeting in Scotland.  Seven of the eight member countries are agreed on the wording of environmental standards.  The lone holdout is America and George Bush’s unreasonable behavior toward Kyoto and the world environmental crisis.

Tell him to take a hike.  There is absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain, including a lasting place in history as the man who would not back away when principle opposed financial greed and finally succeeded.

Juliet Eilperin’s shocking article, U.S. Pressure Weakens G-8 Climate Plan, in Friday’s Washington Post hammers away at the same old issue . . .  that the Bush administration just doesn’t get it. We’re finally seeing what Dick Cheney was up to in those energy conferences he’s refused to divulge for the past four years.  Insider trading as energy policy, what else can you call it? 

No one even blinked when Phil Cooney, chief of staff on the White House Council on Environmental Quality got caught last week cooking the books on government climate change reports that were issued in 2002 and 2003. Before taking this sensitive job, Cooney headed the climate program at the American Petroleum Institute. Well, there’s an impartial guy. After being fingered last week, changing scientific findings to suit himself and his president, Cooney retired from government service.  This week he announced his new job . . . he plans to join Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company, this fall.

The wording of Cooney’s edited document will help determine or, more accurately, help limit and obfuscate what action the G-8 countries take as a group to combat global warming. The members, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia are all signatories to the Kyota Protocols and all in favor of strong language and stronger actions. Unanimous, but for one.

According to Eilperin’s account, one deleted section from the G-8 working copy cited “increasingly compelling evidence of climate change, including rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures, retreating ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels and changes to ecosystems.” Instead, U.S. negotiators inserted a sentence reading “climate change is a serious long term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe.”

Long-term? Challenge?  Potential?  The North Pole can now be reached by boat.

So, c’mon you Group of Eight, refuse to go along.  Then perhaps you can truly hold up your heads as a group of eight instead of a group of seven dictated by one.

A bunch more environmental issues muddying the waters on my personal web site.