Timesizing® Associates

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Good News, August 11-20, 2000
[Commentary] ©2000 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

8/19/2000  glimmers of intelligence -

1. Study proposes new strategy to stem global warming, by Andrew Revkin, NYT, A12.
   An influential expert on global warming [Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan] who for nearly 20 years has pressed countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide...now says...that the quickest way to slow global warming is to cut other...greenhouse gases first.... [His] team...reported its findings this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.... As a result, he said, the world may find it easier and less costly to slow climate change that he and other scientists had thought....

2. [The Swiss are the world leaders on public referendums -]
   Switzerland: Vote on foreigners criticized,
   AP via NYT, A4.
   The Swiss government spoke out against a proposal to limit the country's foreign population... [But it is a public referendum, and the critics are supposedly public servants, so what is their basis?]
   ...saying such a measure would damage Switzerland's economy and credibility.
   [Too late. Switzerland's reputation is already damaged by its long retention of Nazi loot, much of it from Holocaust victims. And the Swiss government's primary accountability is to their own citizens, not to anyone else.]
   Swiss citizens will vote on Sept. 24 on the proposal to cap the proportion of foreigners at 18% of the population. As of last year, foreigners made up 19.2% of the country's residents.
   [We like the public referendum to surface this issue - that is definitely the wave of the future. But we think the percentage should be an open question on the referendum. Or the referendum should be split in two - (1) wanna cap foreigners? (2) what percentage?
   [The fact of the matter is that despite all our neo-liberal affection for total openness, a lot of people, including immigrants themselves (like us), are getting very worried about the speed that all this is happening and the lack of integration or assimilation of newcomers, even their lack of language abilities in the new country. Well-intentioned do-gooders just want to pour any amount of anybody in anywhere and leave the logistics to someone else. It's like archeologists, who typically want to get out and experience the romance of the "dig," but the crates of stuff they ship back to their homeland with every intention of attending to later, typically languish and rot, unstudied and untranslated, in the basement of museums back home. It may not fit with our "aren't we lovely" image of ourselves, but the public in every land has a perfect right to discuss this issue openly (speaking of "openness"!) without our affecting shock and outrage and imposing pressures on them, and they have a perfect right even to set limits that they are comfortable with, on a problem that they are going to have to pay for in the future, one way or another - not us. (And btw, if we don't stop aghasting and start discussing this soon, we are going to greatly heighten our "'balkanization" index as well. "Ridiculous!"? Hey, remember the American Civil War? That little episode of U.S. attempted balkanization cost us more lives than all previous wars in American history, and could have been prevented by a single different vote when the slavery question came up in Congress in the 1790s.) We are currently pouring immigrants, legal and otherwise, into this country at totally unprecedented rates, and we're not supposed to even think about this, let alone breathe a word about it out loud???]

3. DOT worried about Greyhound,
   Bloomberg via Boston Globe, C1.
   US regulators said they will consider imposing new conditions on the 1999 purchase of Greyhound Lines Inc. by Laidlaw Inc., after the largest US bus company said funding problems might force it to stop operating [contradicting] assertions made in the merger application that Laidlaw's financial strength would help the bus line..\..
   [What in God's name are Laidlaw executives playing at? Slapping around employees for more forced overtime mayhap?]
   The Surface Transportation Board, part of the Dept. of Transportation [DOT], said that it will decide in a month whether to impose [further] conditions on the already-completed purchase or take other, unspecified action....
   [Wouldn't it have been "more efficient" to block this takeover in the first place?!]
   Greyhound provides the only nation-wide bus service in the United States.
   [Hmm, some airline interests behind this threatened shutdown perhaps, disregarding that bus travellers are generally poorer? Or a move to immobilize the poor - stop them from getting together to talk, or God forbid, organize - as wealth concentrates further and further and further?]

4. Doctors remove Buchanan's gall bladder, AP via NYT, A9.
   [Oh good!  That - plus taking on that black female VP running mate - should definitely help him lighten up and improve his abrasive +/- racist image.]

1. [1 UPsizing]
   Constellation Energy Group, NYT, C4.
   ...Baltimore, a utility owner, said it would build a $250m powerplant in Holland Township, Ill.

2. Boeing plans to close 2 plants and move 600 workers, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   The Boeing Co. plans to close two...plants near Seattle and shift their 600 workers to other jobs as part of an ongoing streamlining effort, union officials said yesterday. Boeing briefed the machinists' union on its plants to shut a small-parts factory near Mukilteo and a machine shop in Kent, said Bill Johnson, district president of the International Assoc. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Each plant employs about 300 workers, who would all be moved to new jobs at other plants in the area, Mr. Johnson said, confirming details reported in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
   [For some reason we believe them in this case - that they're really concerned about retaining their skill set, that they're really going to transfer these employees and that they're not just looking for an indirect way to get rid of them. Maybe it's the involvement of the union. At any rate, it's a welcome contrast with the prevailing employee-dissing stupidity of so many CEOs today.]

3. a flurry of good stuff on the Globe ed & oped pages today -

   [perhaps best summing it all up and organizing it -]
   Signe's view,
   cartoon by Signe Wilkinson, Boston Globe, A22.
   [Shows two hippies on the left (T-shirt "stop whatever!") saying "The two political parties are EXACTLY alike!" and a broadly smiling matron (wearing campaign buttons that say Guns are good, Pro-life, Abstinence only, No evolution, End affirmative action) on the right replying "Then you won't mind when we take over the Congress, White House and Supreme Court!"
   [It seems progressives have 3 layers of obstacles in this millennial year -

   1. The gut-wrenching ones listed on these buttons - the gun lobby, the anti-privacy movement to abolish abortion, those who would abolish contraceptives as well, creationists, those who would abolish affirmative action and put nothing in its place, plus, from Barney Frank's criticism of Ralph Nader as reported in "Democrats unload on foes," op ed by David Nyhan, Boston Globe, A23 - abolishing gay rights, plus from "The souls of Republicrats," op ed by Derrick Jackson, Wednesday's (8/16) Boston Globe, also p.A23 - the drug war, the world's highest incarceration rates, the elimination of welfare, the death penalty.... Derrick Jackson today is still spinning his wheels on this level of obstacles to progress, "Memo to Al: Get hip on a label," by Derrick Jackson, Boston Globe, A23 - "So far, all the Democrats have been able to do...is keep invoking the 40-year-old 'New Frontier' of JFK [or even the 65-year-old 'New Deal' of FDR - ed.]. The Democrats cannot win like that. Gore needs something new. What would be the opposite of [the Republicans' powerful label] 'compassionate conservatism'?..."

   2. The slightly fuzzier ones targeted by "A government of, by, and for special interests," op ed by Molly Ivins, Boston Globe, A23 - "You will once again be inspired by our system of campaign financing upon learning that in May, after 27 years of study, federal regulators announced a plan to publish rollover ratings for cars and light trucks.... It took 27 years because the auto industry kept objecting..\.. Rollovers kill 9,500 Americans a year.... So now we get to the grand American tradition of suing the rascals. Except...three Texas Supreme Court decisions...seriously limit our tight to sue corporations.... The lone dissenter on the court, Justice Jim Baker, said, 'We all know what is going on here. What is going on here is that Texas Supreme Court justices are getting campaign contributions from big companies'.... The corporations have bought our legislators, bought our judges, and prevented regulation and even ratings by the executive branch. That's all three branches of government. Plus, the corporations are taking away the legal tools that the labor movement won at such painful cost to defend the rights of workers. Does the phrase 'concentration of power' mean anything to you?"
      There are similar fuzzier obstacles targeted by "The media's deal with the devil - The truth is very often kept secret," op ed by Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe, A23 - "...Suddenly the cell phone rang. 'You're on the list'.... I was on an approved invite list to one of the convention week's most sought-after private parties.... Then...there was a downside... this party...was considered 'off the record'.... So being an honorable woman, I will not tell you whose fabulous backyard I stood in, under a full moon so beautiful it made the entire tableau look like the most perfect of movie sets, what legendary political clan circulated graciously on the lush, springy lawn with guests who included a bevy of media stars, or what network correspondent introduced the US senator, who sang an offkey duet in Spanish with a Clinton...cabinet secretary, accompanied by a spirited Mariachi band.... I will tell you what I learned from the experience that was not off the record and was much more important than the event itself. Being there was far too seductive.... I went, I saw, and I wanted to write. At the same time, I went, I drank wine, and I wanted to be an insider.... I have met the enemy and it is us. We are the ones being schmoozed and entertained, then spun and positioned...gaining access that makes us feel important, [but on the condition] that we will not tell anyone else what we saw or heard.... Really, what good is the truth if only an elite group gets to hear it on the promise that they will not reveal it to the consumers who buy their work?... Maybe that is the true reason real people aren't reading newspapers or watching television news as much as we and our owners want them to.... Much is written these days about the intersection of business and politics and how it drives the American electoral process.
      [This gets back to Molly Ivins' point about the corruption of our government, about which Molly might have said, "Maybe that is the true reason real people aren't voting as much as we and our owners (say they) want them to." Back to Joan Vennochi -]
      Too often the press leaves itself out of the equation, reporting...as if we are just observers rather than participants...."
      [So here we are at the dawn of a new millennium and we're faced with a corrupted government and corrupted news media. So much for efficient implementation of progress and feedback on implementation. So much for system self-optimization and cybernetics. So much for sustainability, maybe even survivability. We are seeing the process by which "the first become last." Mark 10:31 et al.]

   3. The even fuzzier obstacles to progress targeted significantly by no professional writers, but just by a reader - "The new philosophy of the free marketers," letter to editor by Ken Falor of Westford MA, Boston Globe, A22 - "Re Edwin Locke's Aug. 16 op-ed article, 'The attack dogs of the left, chasing capitalism's winners': Did anyone notice a radical new position of the far right in this piece? Locke...declared the new philosophy of the free marketers is that each man gets what he earns.
      This has the clear implication that inheritance taxes should be 100%, since what newborn baby has earned any property at all? Does this also imply that lottery winners should be relieved of their wealth, since no 'earning' was involved? As a 50-year veteran of business, I also noted how important the element of chance was to many business 'successes.' Sometimes 'just being there' was incredibly important. Should we look into this as possibly undeserved income?
      The fact is that even if inheritance taxes were 100%, the wealthy would have incredible advantages over the poor - in education and in contacts. Where would George W. and little Jeb [or for that matter, Al Gore - ed.] be without their father's friends? But the whole point of ideology is not to have to think, isn't it?"
      [Here a reader points to the obstacle behind the corrupting of our government and our media - the "widening income gap" or in more actionable terms, the concentration of wealth. Its corollary, the concentration of power, was referred to by Molly Ivins above.]

   [We would like to point out that these 3 layers of obstacles to progress are here listed in reverse order of importance. The Republicans are quite happy with things just as they are - they believe we are in an economic boom and this is the best of all possible worlds, a virtual utopia - so they're not interested in obstacles to progress except in terms of people who are trying to "fix what is working" - at least for them. So they have set up a smokescreen of relatively unimportant but gut-engaging issues - all those listed under Layer 1 above. And the Democrats and most progressives have been totally suckered into expending their energies on what is here Layer #1 but what is actually Tier 3 in importance. At least Ralph Nader is focussed on Layer #2, the corruption of government and the media by the big corporations and the big money interests. But there is another layer even deeper than that, where the real problem lies.
   We would argue against Barney Frank that Nader is completely justified in "ignoring guns, abortion, gay rights, and a lot of other divisive social issues," i.e., completely justified in ignoring Layer 1 obstacles to progress because so much of the ongoing, never resolved, and never resolvable divisiveness on that level is just being fostered and fanned by Layer 2 obstacles, the fact that our government and our news media are bought and paid for by the top 1% of our population who now own as much as the "bottom" 95% put together.
   But similarly, we would argue that it is completely justified to ignore Layer 2 obstacles to focus on Layer #1. As far as we know, Phil Hyde is the only political campaigner in the world's largest economy at the dawn of the third millennium who is focused on this most important, most strategic layer (#3 above). The problem for people like the Republicans, or the satisfied Republicrat who's buying the "selling of your soul" represented by the New Democrat, the "Republicrat," in another letter to the editor today, is the problem most memorably captured by G. K. Chesterton in what we call the "Chesterton pan-utopian trap" - the blithe assumption that no man will want more than his share (or even know what it is) - or even further, that sharing doesn't matter and that it's completely harmless for us to proceed as far as possible toward a situation where 1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth or even 0.000000000001% of the population owns 99.9'% of the wealth. There are no adverse consequences. It's just fine. "I don't begrudge Bill Gates his money" etc. From reading about the Roaring 1920s, we believe that this is precisely the mentality that took over during the 20s and came to a head on October 29, 1929. Human beings share soooo much, starting with language and moving on through stories, especially ritual and calendar rules, and alphabets and scripts, and lifestyle stories whether big-city or rural, and (ac)counting and math rules, and programing and artificial languages now, we believe that arguing against sharing, as we used to do, is incredibly naive. In fact, we need a new technology of sharing, to let our social technology catch up with our computer technology. We offer as a firstcut of the kind of flexible, economic sharing necessary for real human progress in the new millennium - as a resolution of the deepest obstacle layer to progress (unlimited concentration of income and wealth) - a program that starts by spreading and sharing employment-based earnings. We call it Timesizing.]

1. [1 UPsizing]
   NEC [Systems] to open consulting facility in Littleton [Mass.], Boston Globe, C11.
   ...a 40-person consulting shop...to help small and mid-size businesses move their their operations online and manage their technology needs....

2. Indonesian leader disarms his critics with laughter,
   by Seth Mydans, NYT, A10.
   JAKARTA...- With puns, jokes and a toubh of naughty wordplay, Pres. Abdurahman Wahid lifted the mood of Indonesia's bitterly feuding legislature [yester]day, soothing it with the fundamental message of his presidency: debate and disagreement are acceptable, even healthy.
   [We commonly overlook the fact that the most basic discovery of democracy is the discovery of the concept and possibility of loyal opposition. This country discovered it in the 1790s and 18-00s with the emergence of two distinct political parties, the federalists for central power and the democratic republicans for states rights. Britain discovered it slightly earlier with the opinion groupings that swirled around Charles II, in the 1660s and 70s - the high-church tories, descended from the cavaliers, who sided with the monarchy, and the low-church "Scots horsethieves" or whiggamores, descended from Cromwell's roundheads, who sided with parliament. Perhaps it's no accident that Charles II, the "Merry Monarch," like Wahid, brought levity into a serious situation and allowed wounds to heal.]
   In an extemporaneous address that epitomized the seachange he has brought to politics and leadership in Indonesia, Mr. Wahid drew repeated laughter, sometimes chuckling to himself as he spoke.
   The 700 legislators, who had greeted him mostly with hostility throughout the bulk of a two-week special sessoin, interrupted him frequently with applause.
   Divided among themselves, against the president and along religious and political lines, they found themselves applauding when Mr. Wahid stated his credo of "tolerance, diversity and the rule of law".... He was once again the Muslim teacher of his roots, using humor, parables and indirection to make his points.
   [Perhaps he has also looked into daoism, whose originator, Lao Tzu, said, "Veil your extreme brilliance, lest the people, seeing it, be burnt."]
   And he reminded the assembly, meeting on Indonesia's 55th National Day, of the nation's credo: unity in diversity.... Seeking to defuse tensions, he joked about the multiplicity of languages, ethnicities and religions in this sprawling archipelago and its 210m people. At one point, he startled the legislature into laughter by making a pun on a political acronym and producing the words "hanging out your underwear"....
   "I've been very impressed with this assembly," he said. "We have had an open debate and this showed that we have a warm brotherhood and people can speak their minds. We don't have to be worried or suspicious because there is no regime to haunt us"..\..
   [= A veiled reference to Suharto, who used military strong-arm tactics to enforce unquestioning unity.]
   "I hope we can be mature enough to discuss any kind of problem that we have, because each of us has his own ideas. This kind of openness will preserve the treasure of our diversity"....
   [And this man is blind?! If only the Muslim Taliban in Afghanistan, who yesterday claimed Islam absolutely forbade women to work and shut down widow-run bakeries (thereby consigning these women and their children to starvation, see next page in today's Times, A11 - decision reversed tomorrow, A6) - if only they too had the breadth and tolerance of this blind man, Abdurahman Wahid, President of Indonesia.
   ["This kind of openness...." Wonder what's the Indonesian word for "openness"? The Russian for it is "glasnost." Its great prophet was Mikael Gorbachev. Despite Saint Reagan's "winning the Cold War" etc. etc. etc., Gorbachev's the one who really had the courage and really took the risks. And if we recall rightly, really had a lot of humor along the way that eased the way.
   [Abraham Lincoln too, at least throughout the 1850s, used to go down to the corner store and crack jokes, in his strange high voice, with "the boys" - according to Lincoln's Unknown Private Life - An oral history by his black housekeeper Mariah Vance 1850-1860, Ostendorf and Oleksy, eds., and why didn't they front the crucial recorder-editor, Adah Lilas Sutton?!) [Wahid, Lincoln, Gorby & the Merrie Monarch - not to be confused with the last-named's Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Clarendon, Edward Hyde, our namesake, who was prudish and moralistic, but then who, when banished to Belgium, wrote the Histories of the English Civil Wars and preserved many of the lessons of those times, lessons like the birth of a certain vital oxymoron known as loyal opposition. So we progress by contradictions, and find more and more creativity at the burgeoning borderline between obvious opposites.]

1. Parental notification law ruled unconstitutional, pointer summary (to A29), NYT, A2.
   The NJ Supreme Court...struck down a law requiring that the parents of an unmarried girl under age 18 be notified before she can get an abortion.... The court held that it imposed a burden on minors seeking abortions that it did not impose on those who continue their pregnancies.

2. Drug Warrior's Pledge, ad by TomPaine.com, NYT, A27.
   I pledge allegiance to the Drug War
   of the United States of America.
   And to the hypocrisy for which it stands,
   One notion, under Czar, indefensible,
   With incarceration and injustice for all.
   [Luckily Brazil has seen the light -]
   Brazil balks at drug plan, Reuters via NYT, A7.
   BRASILIA...- Sec. of State Madeleine K. Albright won support from Brazil today for strengthening the region's fragile democracies [what about your home plutocracy, Madeleine?], but failed to enlist it behind a $1.3B fight against Colombian drug traffickers and rebels....

1. [1 UPsizing]
   Honda expanding in Britain, by Alan Cowell, NYT, C4.
   Bucking a trend among Japanese and other automakers, the Honda Motor Co. [will] spend $700m \to\ expand its British car production capacity to 250,000 a year by 2002. ...The expansion [will include] a new [100,000-car/yr] plant...near its existing factory at Swindon. [Other car firms] have complained that the strength of the pound against the euro makes their...exports from British plants too expensive.

2. Verizon strikers' focus on required overtime echoes labor complaints at other companies, by Diane Lewis, Boston Globe, C1.
   [Isn't this the same issue the nurses at St. Vincent's Hospital were striking about back in April when we went out to Worcester, Mass. to join them on the picket line? See our 4/02/2000 story. Maybe American labor is finally getting smart and focusing on its key issue, control of workshare per person in terms of worktime per person, specifically, enforcing a maximum workweek per person. They either get a grip on that, or they continue to lose ground. This is the issue they fumbled in the 1930s, accepting instead the no-leverage distractions of minimum wage and government makework from Saint FDR. Arguably the biggest mistake of the century. Yep, here's the mention -]
   
   • In April, 535 registered nurses walked off jobs at St. Vincent's Hospital in Worcester after negotiations between Tenet Health Care and their union, the Mass. Nurses Assoc., broke down. The reason for their anger: a contract proposal mandating overtime [up to 16-hour shifts! -ed.] when patient admissions were high.
   [And another example -]
   
   • In 1997...2,800 [UAW] workers struck the Warren, Mich. [GM] powertrain plant. Among other things, the union wanted the company to hire several hundred workers to make up for retirements and reduce overtime stress....
   "Mandatory overtime is one of the most important issues in American workplaces today, especially among professional or skilled workers," Tom Juravich, director of the labor center at UMass-Amherst, said yesterday.
   [No, it isn't "one of the most important issues" Tom - it is THE most important issue, bar none. Loss of this issue in the 1930s is documented by Ben Hunnicutt in his monumental "Work Without End" as THE reason American (and world!) labor lost power over the last two generations, once the labor scarcity of World War II was offset by women entering the workforce, the baby boom, and immigration. We can't assume that " no man will want more than his share," even of work, or that "market forces will take care of it." Market forces take care of minimum wages and benefits when government adjustment of the workweek - downward - makes sure there's no "residual army of the unemployed." But market forces never have and never will take care of the level of the workweek. In 1500 BC, the "government" was Moses on Mt. Sinai, and he came down with a shorter workweek as item number four (i.e., the Fourth Commandment = "...Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh is the sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it, thou shalt not do any work...." Exodus 20:8-11). So if worktime regulation is socialist or communist, the Holy Bible is socialist or communist and the God of Moses is socialist or communist. In fact, however, this has always been a key part of progressive capitalism, because if you balance the center of the economy with one well-designed and well-positioned regulation, you don't need any other regulations. And socialism or communism is burgeoning maximum of detailed regulations, not a stable minimum of generalized ones, ideally just one. As the centuries roll by, that one central regulation changes and generalizes further, but in our lifetimes it is in the area of worktime per person. We either share that more evenly or we concentrate skills, work, income and wealth to such an extent that the economy repeatedly gets topheavy and keels over in great depressions that are only "solved" by war. And "topheavy" here means the splitting of the consumer base into people with money and no time, and people with time and no money.]

3. Tax cut in Israel, Dow Jones, C4.
   The Israeli government cut taxes on a wide range of consumer and capital goods in a move the finance minister, Avraham Shochat, said would help lower the country's rising tax burden. ...A tax known as the purchase tax would be cut on 630 goods from rates that are now as high as 85% to as little as 5%. In some cases, the tax will be eliminated altogether.
   [Good that the tax burden is coming down, but on a specified list of 630 goods??? Talk about government micromanagement! All they have to do is "tax wealth concentration and untax wealth circulation" - except for harmful goods (e.g., drugs) and services (e.g., prostitution).]
   The tax cut comes as the Israeli economy enjoys its fastest pace of growth since 1995, a development that has caused tax revenue to soar 17% in the first 7 months of the year.
   [OK, then, how about we cut the taxes on American taxpayers who are currently being forced to subsidize the Israeli economy to the tune of $5B a year, plus the $3B additional we get soaked to subsidize Egypt so we don't appear to be completely playing favorites?! What a double outrage.]

• 8/14  E-commerce report - As innovation lags behind and the mainstream moves in, Net entrepreneurs look for ways out, by Bob Tedeschi, NYT, C7.
  Like many senior-level Internet executives, Christine Harmel, CEO of Interactive Resource, a firm in Manhattan that matches Web site developers with clients, was present at the birth of e-commerce. Working on the Net since 1995, Ms. Harmel...has experienced years of the 80-hour workweeks and has watched the industry transform itself from a stomping ground for young workaholics who wanted to change the world, into a stomping ground for young workaholics who want to change their tax brackets.... "We're burned out," Ms. Harmel said, speaking of Net entrepreneurs of a certain level of experience and fatigue. "Some of us are tired and rich. Some of us are tired and not rich. But we're all tired".... [She] wants to abandon the long workweeks of the Web industry. [last sentence from photo caption -ed.]
  [And doesn't it ever strike them as strange that they're supposedly developing more and more time-saving technology, but working more and more hours? Free time is the most basic freedom. If we don't have that, we don't have a life. And we don't have modernity, let alone anything advanced or futuristic. Timesizing can give it all to us.]

• 8/13  [First, the Burlington Northern RR, then Fleet Bank - now mental elephantiasis strikes CEOs in another industry - and gets quick punishment.]
  United flight disarray seen imperiling merger bid [with USAir] - 'Imagine if we had an even bigger airline tied up in this pilot showdown. It would have America on its knees.' Tom Parsons, Bestfares.com editor, by Dave Carpenter, AP via Boston Globe, E7.
  United Airlines' schedule chaos comes at just the wrong time for a company trying to persuade federal regulators to let it get bigger.... The airline is having its worst summer in years. Thousands of flight cancellations, an abysmal ontime record and bitter finger-pointing between pilots and management all have combined to heighten public aggravation with the world's largest airline....
  [Let's face it. These clowns in the CEO suites can't even handle what's already on their plate, let alone taking on more. They're basically not interested in real, market-building, employee-satisfying, management any more. They're just interested in the ever-greater violence and drama of downsizings and takeovers. But "sew the wind, reap the whirlwind." Burlington Northern's merger with Santa Fe and Union Pacific's previous merger with Southern Pacific (1996) did have the American West on its knees for the last couple of years. Thank God the regulators had the sense to block the further merger with the Canadian National RR. Fleet's merger with BankBoston has banking in New England on its knees right now. Every one of their customers with half a brain is just waiting for life to calm down enough to jump to a smaller bank. Many already have. Now let's see if the regulators have the smarts to block United's grab for USAir. There's nothing whatsoever sustainable in all this "king of the hill" posturing. It's all motivated by the get-rich-quick, money-for-nothing, casino mentality of Wall Street, which as in the 1920s, has once again become wall-to-wall, bubble-bloating speculation. But sustainable reality is a very long-term trend away from greater violence and drama and toward greater gentleness and variety.]

• 8/13  The honors list, by David Warsh, Boston Globe, E1.
  [Ah, Warsh is finally back to what he does best - commentary on contemporary economists.]
  ...John Kenneth Galbraith...91, was the oldest of the 15 people honored Wednesday at the White House \with\ the Medal of Freedom.... It is the nation's highest civilian award....
  Galbraith was the only one of the 15 of whom it can be said confidently that his influence will continue long into the 21st century.
  [And yet, wondrous to relate, he has not been granted the Nobel Prize in economics. Warsh even has a chapter called "Why Galbraith Won't Receive the Nobel Prize" in his Economic Principals (sic) book (1993, p.123). Maybe it was something about the reasons for Galbraith's influence -]
  The reasons are simple. He is...not a scientist but..\..a writer [and] a humanist..\..and he has filled an important gap. He has been the chief critic of the dominant tendencies of modern economics....
  [And as such, the chief keeper of the tradition of Thorstein Veblen? Maybe so, in terms of pithy critique and puckish humor. But in terms of building on Veblen's critique with a worktime-based analysis and starting the next great economic design project - a democratic, flation-neutral, market-based, full-employment economy - the award goes posthumously to Arthur Dahlberg. See our bibliography page. But then, Dahlberg did not luck into the kind of sustained celebrity and readership that Galbraith has enjoyed -]
  "The Affluent Society" was published first in 1958, and received new editions in 1969, 1976, 1984, and 1998.
  [By contrast, Dahlberg's books are just "settin' waitin'" while his nemesis, Rexford Tugwell, gets all the retrospectives. As Bucky Fuller put it, "The Universe may not call upon you for important service. But just be ready if it does."]
  ...[Galbraith] is committed as few others are to seeing things whole..\..
  [That's his secret - he entered early into the ecological point of view. In The Affluent Society for example, he slams the concentration of wealth -]
  "To furnish a barren room is one thing. To continue to crowd in furniture until the foundation buckles is quite another."
  [Galbraith has always had a certain sympathy for worktime economics, in the various semi-articulate forms that presented themselves to him (it's awfully tricky to articulate time-related insights that are at once so deep and so obvious). However, his own nostrums ran along New Deal and Great Society tracks -]
  The book is an eloquent brief for more public investment: in education [not training -ed.], the amelioration of poverty and inequality [not their total absorption into a much more dynamic middle -ed.], environmental quality [can't argue with this one -ed.]....
  [The economic design of the future will have a simple and direct way of taking the frequently wasted pressure off public investment by means of automatic private-sector reinvestment - in human capital - at levels that would seem colossal to us today. This is what we're driving at in Phase 2 and Phase 3 of the Timesizing program.]

1. 2 UPsizings reported, totaling 1700 Canadian & unspecified South African new jobs -
   1. Bombardier plans plant, Reuters via NYT, B14.
      ...a $115m plant at Mirabel airport in Montreal to assemble its new 90-passenger CRJ900 jet.... The company said its 70-passenger CRJ700 aircraft would also be assembled at the plant. The new factory should be completed by the spring of 2001 and is expected to employ 1,700 workers by 2003.
      [Thank God for that/Dieu soît remercié pour ça. Quebec in general and Montreal in particular really need jobs.]
   2. Wackenhut set to build new prison in South Africa, by Henri Cauvin, NYT, B2.
      ...a 3,024-bed maximum-security penitentiary....
      [Clearly a mixed blessing creating unspecified new jobs for employees who, like those they guard, will have to spend time in a lockup environment.]

2. [1 UNtakeover]
   American Re bid for United National is halted, Bloomberg via NYT, B3.
   ...Its planned $350m acquisition [see 8/24/99] of the United National Insurance Co. [fell] through because of delays in getting regulatory approvals linked to Holocaust-era insurance claims.... The Pennsylvania Insurance Dept...made clear that it was [American Re's parent] Munich Re's refusal to join the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims that was the stumbling block.

3. Central bank in Japan raises interest rates, by Calvin Sims, NYT, B1.
   [Thus indicating that interest rate fiddling is cosmetic and higher rates won't lethally damage the struggling economy.]
   Forcefully asserting its view that Japan's economy is now growing firmly after years of false starts, the central bank raised interest rates today for the first time in a decade, defying strong pressure from government officials to keep borrowing costs close to zero.... The central bank [will] steer...the overnight call rate [that] banks charge each other to 0.25% from virtually zero....
   [This could counterintuitively increase loans by offering more incentive to lenders to take on the risks inherent in lending. But Japan will have to share the vanishing human work if it is ever to sustainably pull out of recession. And the most flexible, market-oriented way of worksharing is Timesizing.]

4. Recycling - our gift to tomorrow, 3 letters to editor, NYT, A26.
   1. By Eliot Spitzer, NY Attorney General.
      I take issue with John Tierney's implication that recycling is "hopelessly uneconomical" and that walking away from recycling might be better for the environment (Big City column, Aug.8). Too often, narrow cost-benefit analyses like Mr. Tierney's ignore the public health and environmental costs associated with the increased pollution from landfilling or burning solid waste rather than productively resuing it. Recycling promotes sustainability and is good public policy.... In New York State, recycling is also the law. My office has sued the upstate city of Amsterdam for abandoning its recycling program. I call on every level of government to join me in a recommitment to recycling.
   2. By John Cantilli of Cranford NJ.
      John Tierney's discussion of the local economics of recycling is rather shortsighted.... Recycling paper, plastic, glass and metal saves trees, oil and energy derived from combustion of fossil fuels. Combustion also causes global warming and acid rain. The benefits of recycling are not only obvious. They are also priceless.
   3. By Kelly Hayes of Brooklyn.
      Re "The Negatives of Recycling in New York," by John Tierney...: Perhaps our children's generation will no longer look at the costs of recycling in [Tierney's] terms. They just might decide that the emission levels produced by today's sanitation trucks are unacceptable, and [emision-recycling] alternatives never thought of today will be considered. The next generation could decide that the amount of [disposable] packaging used by manufacturers of consumer goods and foods is appalling and force a change. Because of our recycling practices today, the "disposable" mentality of our society is gradually changing....
      [Here's hopin' - and especially the "disposable employee" mentality!]

5. double salvo from Nader -
   1. Nader on Nader, letter to editor by Ralph Nader, NYT, A26.
      Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Aug. 10 Op-Ed article taking me to task is deeply flawed by his erroneous premise and conclusion.
      First, I have indicated that there are "few major differences" between the two parties, not that there is "no difference between Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush" as Mr. Kennedy wrote.
      Second, I have never said that I would vote for George W. Bush, whom I have strongly criticized across the country, if forced to choose between him and Al Gore. Indeed, I have never stated for whom I have ever voted or expect to vote since the 1960's, though it can be assumed that I will vote for the Green Party candidates this year.
   2. Nader ad breaks formula, by Peter Marks, NYT, A8.
      ...The Green Party candidate for president unveiled his first television commercial this week, the first truly irreverent candidate commercial of the 2000 election....
      [And what better year for irreverence for the status quo - and idealism for the future?!]

6. Buchanan chooses black woman as running mate, by Janofsky & Ayres, NYT, A8.
   ...Ezola Foster...a public school teacher and administrator for 33 years, ...twice [a] candidate for Calif. State Assembly [and] founder of a Calif. organization called Americans for Family Values \shattering\ the emerging image of the Reform Party as a haven for white conservatives [our italics - ed.]
   

1. DNA frees inmate years after justices rejected plea, by Barbara Whitaker, NYT, A12.
   ...In 1988, the Supreme Court..\..ruled that Larry Youngblood did not need to be released from prison just because evidence that might have exonerated him on child molestation charges had been damaged. But this week, 12 years later, DNA testing of evidence in the case [did exonerate him]....
   [Our rich and insulated judges are losing it. Does Larry have any way of extracting compensation for those 12 lost years from these commonsense-flouting fatcats?]

2. Nader walks the line, AP via NYT, A13.
   Ralph Nader, the Green Party presidential nominee, walked the picket line with striking [CWA] telephone workers in Falls Church, Va., yesterday, looking for votes and saying he was unconcerned that the strikers' union had already endorsed Al Gore. "That's to be expected," said Mr. Nader, who [had] joined Communication Workers of America [CWA] employees who are on strike against Verizon Communications. "[But] at the rank and file level, it's open competition," he said. 'The other candidates will not even talk about these issues." Those issues include federal labor law and corporate influence on public policy, centerpieces of [Mr. Nader's] campaign....
   [At last, a (non-racist) kick-butt presidential candidate.]