HOSTAGE SITUATION

The word hostage may be a little dramatic but, there is real drama in shutting down most of the transportation construction in the United States. Confused, well I am too. I can not understand why absolutist wingnut lawmakers would want to eliminate six million jobs when unemployment hovers around ten percent. Don’t get me wrong. As you are probably aware, I feel healthcare reform is and should be one of our highest priorities. It is also of paramount importance to get healthcare reform which actually reforms healthcare. Lawmakers however, have been at this for nine months. It is time to quit deliberating and start legislating.

A few legislators will tell you they have passed a continuing resolution (CR) to fund transportation projects until the complete transportation reauthorization can be passed. What they don’t tell you is the current CR funds transportation for one month at a time. So, in my state, the resulting funding is one-twelfth our normal funding. Our budget which normally approaches one billion dollars is reduced to around 83 million. This is in a world where most construction projects end up around 30 million a piece. Our state department of transportation is faced with funding three projects statewide or a handful of really small projects. No state DOT will take the risk of having to use local monies to fund large projects until Congress fully funds transportation programs.

The effect of a one month CR on states and cities is to stop bidding and constructing projects until they are assured funding in a multi-year transportation bill.

As the left wing insists on a public option and the right wing tries to eliminate it, construction companies everywhere are handing out pink slips. As the right holds out for liability caps for doctors, engineering firms who design transportation projects are going under. As the left tries to eliminate the Medicare Advantage Program and the right continues to tell seniors they are losing their Medicare coverage, materials producers are idling their facilities. Steel, concrete, asphalt and stone producers are sending employees home. Finally, because little federal gas taxes are making their way back to the states, states are considering furloughs and other methods to reduce state staff.

That’s right, we have already paid for road maintenance and improvement projects at the pump. Our money is being held hostage in Washington. We are paying to watch our transportation industries and our bridges crumble.

So as the politicians revel in political one-upmanship, you should be worried about the bridge you travel over every day. Sadly however, that’s not the only thing you could be worried about. Investment banks on Wall Street are busily over extending themselves again. The financial industry and transportation are just the tip of the iceberg. The business of the people grinds to a halt while the wingnuts stymie the debate. It’s become a funny joke to use the Otto von Bismarck quote, “laws are like sausages, it is better not the see them being made.” It is not so funny when people are starving to death waiting on that sausage.

Thoughts on Labor Day

Labor Day has become the last chance to go to the beach before the kids go back to school instead of a celebration of our blue collar work force. With the decline of labor unions, we seem to have forgotten the power of motivated, intelligent and well paid workers. In the global economy, it has become increasingly clear our kids will be forced to get some education past high school. With good reason, parents are urging their kids to go to college and steering them away from a life of blue collar labor. This is understandable because blue collar workers are under siege from all sides today. Since, all but the most innovative and complex items will be manufactured in China for the foreseeable future, why would a parent wish for a life of layoffs and shrinking wages for their child. Why is the blue collar class even necessary in the new global economy?

Why should we care about our blue collar work force? Wouldn’t it be better for the United States if all blue collar workers were sent back to school to be doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists?

Doctors, scientists and engineers are critical for US success in the global market place (a column for another day) but, we dismiss the blue collar worker at our peril. During World War II, we overpowered our enemies not only with our military but, with pure unadulterated industrial might. A pilot who survived a shoot down in that war would have a brand new plane the next day. This allowed total air supremacy in Europe and near air supremacy in the Pacific. The blue collar work force was so important in this effort we put our wives, daughters and mothers to work outside the home for the first time. The same is true to a certain extent today.

We need to maintain our ability to build military equipment in our country. Some would say our strategic partners like the European Union will be happy to build our tanks and planes for us. Let’s say, for example, we need to bomb Dilbert’s favorite place, Elbonia, into submission for harboring terrorist. For this example however, the EU has economic ties to Elbonia. Without a blue collar work force trained to build planes required for the war on Elbonia, the EU could simply cut us off.

The strongest argument, beyond defense, for the maintenance of a healthy economic middle class may be the situation we find ourselves in today. In previous recessions, the American blue collar worker was there to buy our way out. Cars, washers and big-screen TV’s were the economic engine which made life better for all. Today, with blue collar workers the victim of falling wages, increasing healthcare costs and credit extended to them by unscrupulous financial markets, they are simply not able to help. They work harder, smarter and productivity has never been higher. Blue collar workers, however have taken a beating and are sadly not up to the task. Many economist will tell us the 2009 recession will be long and deep because the blue collar worker is not there to bail us out.

So as you soak up the last rays of summer or fire up the grill, I am sure one of your free market worshiping absolutist friends will be there. They will tell you Darwin was right and economies work best on the principle of “survival of the fittest.”  They will tell you it is natural, no, required, for blue collar workers to lose their jobs to cheaper Chinese workers. They will tell you business should be free to systematically exterminate blue collar workers who want to organize or demand a part of the stockholder’s dividend. After all, they will say, companies owe them nothing.

I might tell them to give the blue collar worker a break at least on Labor Day.

JIM DEMINT, WHAT’S YOUR PRICE

When the Senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint, told the group Conservatives for Patients Rights,

            “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him,”

most pundits and others passed the comment off as pure politics. I wish it were just politics. When I look at DeMint’s top twenty donors I begin to believe DeMint is using politics to take care of his campaign donors. If you look at his top twenty according to www.opensecrets.org you might begin to get another picture also.

The donor picture begins with the Club for Growth at 70 thousand. This is a right-wing bunch who believes in “freedom” among other things. DeMint and the Club for Growth using the word “freedom” is a little like yelling ice cream at a day care. I guess the implication is to disembowel the rest of us of our fondness for tyranny. The Scana Corporation, a utility, comes in second with 53 thousand. I don’t think we need to guess where he stands on climate change. Third on the list at 32 thousand is Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, LLP. On their website they say:  

Our attorneys guide healthcare providers, healthcare service companies, and investors through the sensitive hurdles and strict scrutiny of governmental and societal factors faced by the industry

I guess one way for healthcare profiteers to negotiate government’s strict scrutiny is to donate to a senator. Fourth on the list at 27 thousand is AT&T. I wonder how he voted on the keeping the phone companies from getting sued for wiretapping.  Fifth on the list is Edens & Avant at 19 thousand. They own 130 shopping centers on the east coast.  At sixth, eighth, ninth and twelfth were Cancer Centers of the Carolinas, US Oncology, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and United Health Group, respectively, for around 63 thousand dollars. Since they are second only to the right-wingers, I think I would be safe to say the healthcare industry helped DeMint get elected. I guess he feels like he owes them something. Maybe if he uses words like “freedom” to tell conservatives they can politically finish the President, he can motivate conservatives to kill health reform. Maybe if he delivers, he will have settled his debt.

To be sure, I may have been a little hard on Senator DeMint. Campaign finance is just too tempting. As a disclaimer, I must refer you to a previous article and tell you there are left wing DeMints too. All of them are in the pockets of those who would prefer to continue to profit from our literal misery. The forces aligned against healthcare reform are very good at the money game. They have one win under their belt and are pretty cocky. Since they only have to create enough doubt about a plan to maintain the status quo, I guess I would be pretty cocky too.

OBAMA GUT CHECK

Today a very good friend of mine invited me to Washington for a protest against healthcare reform among other things organized by Tea Party people. I told my friend I did not like runaway spending but, I felt something had to be done about healthcare. My friend is a very intelligent person who is always open to intelligent debate. Last week I would have told him the cost cutting in healthcare reform would decidedly reduce government expenditures in the long run.

I no longer have the luxury of the cost cutting debating point in light of last week’s Congressional Budget Office Report.

Today President Obama blamed the lack of Senate healthcare reform legislation on politics by people like Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC). I doubt DeMint’s motivation is primarily politics and there will be more on that in another article. I however, believe President Obama needs a little soul searching and possibly a new game plan on healthcare reform. So far, the President has put House Committee Chairmen in charge of writing healthcare legislation. The Chairmen include Henry Waxman (D-CA), Charles Rangel (D-NY) and George Miller (D-CA). Waxman has received more than 66 thousand and his committee has received more than 1.3 million dollars in campaign contributions from insurance and health interest groups. Rangel comes in at 70 thousand and his committee at 1.8 millon. The list is similar for both the Senate and House Committees who are drafting the legislation. Republicans seem to have the edge but, democrats too have received boatloads of cash from groups who would really like healthcare reform to go away.

That’s why the President needs to go away and rethink his approach to this issue he says he cares so much about. Instead of allowing legislators who have monetary motives to craft healthcare reform legislation which does not reform, he should do it himself. He should publicly propose amendments which may actually shift some of the obscene profits of the healthcare industry to covering all Americans. He should use his bully pulpit and notorious arm twister, Rahm Emanuel, to shame the legislative industry stooges into actually reducing potentially catastrophic spiraling healthcare costs.

Reducing the cost of healthcare, believe me, is the key to winning the argument with well-informed and well-meaning moderates and independents. These citizens legitimately want to know why adding another trillion dollars to our deficit is a good idea. The only answer to the question is saving money later.

40 YEARS SINCE WE WERE INSPIRED

You might have heard. The 40^th anniversary of Neil Armstrong being the first man on the moon is coming up in a few days. Living so close to Huntsville, Alabama, I have seen a good bit of hype about the anniversary in the local press. I saw an article in the magazine section of my paper and I am sure there will be a few national news stories on the actual anniversary date. The story in the USA TODAY Sunday magazine insert caught my eye.

The story caught my eye because several people including Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sally Ride and John McCain were asked how the event impacted their lives. Tyson, the college professor turned PBS Nova Science Now host, seemed to have an experience similar to mine. I remember watching the landing on a small 19-inch black and white TV with my father, mother and infant sister in Nashville, Tennessee. I remember how awed my father was when NASA actually pulled off the feat. My dad should not have been surprised because he worked, for a time, for a space contractor, doing computer test simulations for the Saturn V launch vehicle. Perhaps his excitement rubbed off on me because adults had trouble making out the fuzzy image on the small TV. I am sure my six year-old mind did not comprehend what actually happened that day.

 What happened that day was repeated six times in my young impressionable life and I am sure I probably said more than once I wanted to be an astronaut. I was never to slip the surly bonds of earth, except for a few flight lessons and a few commercial flights but, I did become an engineer.

What’s your point Joe?

If you feel technology is the way out of our economic mess. If you feel having more scientists and engineers are the way to get there. Then, you should understand the value of a manned space program. Let’s call it the Air Force method of recruiting.

Have you ever seen airmen greasing fittings on the tractor which pulls airplanes on a recruiting commercial? Have you ever seen an airman cleaning out the porta-potties on transport planes in a recruiting commercial? Well, of course they don’t show any of those critical tasks being performed on an Air Force recruiting commercial. What do they show a young 18 year-old when they want him to join the Air Force? They show the sexiest part of the mission. They show pilots breaking formation in F-22 Raptors. They show pilots flying simulators which make a kid’s X-Box at home look like Pong. How many Raptor pilots do you think are recruited each year as a percentage? I would bet it is a very small percentage.

For a large percentage of us, calculus is not really fun. I personally learned the math so I could do the fun stuff like science. My dad taught math and I still hated it. I did however, see the thrill in his eyes when he explained where Neil Armstrong happened to be on that hot July day in 1969. He and Neil inspired a love of science that would only be reinforced later by my high school science teacher. At the end of the day, like most kids, I would have never learned math for math’s sake. Like the Air Force, I was shown the Raptor and not the hard work required to make the Raptor fly.

My point in this article flies in the face of what another celebrated spokesman scientist, Doctor Carl Sagan, preached. He and many other scientists called the manned space program a waste of money. They would tell us a thousand robots like the famed rovers spirit and opportunity could be launched for the cost of one Shuttle mission. However true it may be, most kid’s eyes glaze over when they see a little six-wheeled rover digging in red dirt. You need a real person hopping in a big tall rocket and blasting into space to capture the mind of a twelve year-old. You may think twelve is a little early but, in today’s education system, twelve is when a kid begins to decide which math to take. To be able to take calculus in high school you have to take algebra in the seventh or eighth grade.

So when we talk about seventh and eighth graders making poor math scores on achievement tests, I submit the best way to fix the problem is to inspire them. Inspire a new generation of Joes, Neils and Sallys. It’s easy to talk about a manned program and hard to fund it in an ongoing meaningful way. It is especially hard when we consider manned space flight a luxury. If you think about space flight in terms of a recruiting tool to help our country regain it’s technical edge, it begins to look more like a necessity.

WHAT THE CRAP?!

There a moments from time to time when you wonder if people are, as my high school civics teacher would say, “using there head for something besides a hat rack.” When a group of lawmakers who I believe to be mostly Democrats decided to reverse the reduction in GM and Chrysler dealerships, I found myself wondering what the crap they were thinking.

For about two seconds the idea sounded reasonable. We do have an economy which is hemorrhaging jobs. Automotive dealers do provide jobs. The government does own a controlling stake in these companies by virtue of the bailouts. I guess the legislature is a sort of voting member of the board. Ok, that’s where the logic begins to break down.

Break downs in management, as any basic management course will tell you, almost always occur when there is an unclear chain of command. Trying to make two bosses happy almost never works. In case the lawmakers haven’t noticed, the man at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is trying to manage the problem. The Obama Administration, an army of bankruptcy lawyers and boat load of stakeholders have spent months trying to save the two car companies. The bankruptcy of the car companies has been painful for everyone. Workers, management, bond holders and stockholders all got punched in the financial nose. Some dealers got hit too.

So why would a few members of Congress decide to pick winners and losers after months of negotiation have been mercifully concluded? Why are dealership jobs more important than assembly line jobs or bond holder losses? I’m no economist or automotive expert but, in my town I see a two to one ratio of domestic to foreign dealers. Having too many dealers has to be counter productive.

I haven’t looked but, I’ll bet, as usual, Congress’ interest is probably about the money. Dealer groups have donated the right amount to the right Congressional campaigns. Obviously, they gave more than the other interested groups I mentioned. I wonder if we will ever be tired of people with the most money getting the best representation in our capitols.  

The Grape 2009 Tea Party

As many of us finished our taxes, there were “Bipartisan” groups who told us we were wasting our money. These groups, who were mostly conservative, demonstrated anywhere they could find a camera. They called the gatherings tea parties. I find the allusion to the actual Boston Tea Party both scary and a disservice to the real patriots who participated in the historic event at their peril. The question in 1773 was being taxed without the ability to elect the representatives who would levy the tax. The last time I checked, everyone who wished to vote in the last election voted.

Did they serve a side of sour grapes at the tea party in 1773?

Conservatives seem a little sour right now. They told us everything from bailing out banks to healthcare reform was a waste of money. They told us the deficit the Obama Administration proposed in this budget was obscene. They told us we were mortgaging our children’s future. Did they have a tea party during President George W. Bush’s Administration? Many conservatives continue to defend President Bush’s optional war which ran up over a trillion dollars in deficits. Did they forget about the Reagan deficits? I guess, if you’re buying bullets and lasers, deficits are ok.

Conservatives are trying to get some free press on a day which is painful but necessary. They want to tap into the usual angst which accompanies tax day. Conservatives like Senator Judd A. Gregg (R-NH) send us mixed messages which they to try pass off as philosophical differences worthy of a tea party.

“The budget is reasonably honest, and in fact, I give them credit for having brought on line and made clear the costs of the war,” Gregg told NPR’s Melissa Block.

“But the budget itself has some real serious problems, in my opinion, because it is a massive expansion in spending and a massive expansion in taxes. And the real problem is that in the out years, not only does it increase spending in taxes, but it passes on to our children a government that can’t be afforded, and that’s a big problem.”

One of the major items of the budget is the 650 million dollars set aside for health care reform. This might be our best hope of reducing entitlement costs which balloon the very out year deficits Gregg and others have mobilized the tea parties to fight against.

The irony is that Gregg is probably more interested in killing the set aside than the actual deficit. It turns out his number one contributor in the 2006 election was Blue Cross Blue Shield. In a career, his top three donor industries have been insurance, pharmaceuticals and health professionals. This is the kind of thing right wingers do.

Right wingers like to drag out a bunch of poor kids with their piggybanks on tax day and tell us the evils of deficits. They want us to starve the budget of any chance of real reform. They want us to demand this so their fat cat contributors can continue to make obscene profits. Americans got to vote. They decided Gregg and others needed a little break from power. They can whip up all the tea parties they want but, America has voted. Fifty-two percent of us want to spend a few bucks more today to keep from paying later.

The New York Times Should Stick to Its Knitting

The New York Times sold my paper today and one of my friends lost his job. My paper was the Times Daily in Florence, Alabama. I will keep my friend’s name to myself. I call it MY paper because I have subscribed, bought or stole it for more than 26 years. I, for a brief time, even delivered it. My wife did too. A paper route is a character building experience full of life’s lessons. You learn people will turn off their lights and stay quiet to keep from paying the paper boy. It was also a lesson in advanced finance. A paper carrier has to do a credit risk calculation before he throws every paper. Customer service, you find, is the key to a Christmas tip. My paper and those tips helped pay for my Volkswagen.

The stages of my life have been, in part, defined by my paper. At first I looked for my name on the honor roll. I looked and looked. The next stage of my life was seeing who got married followed by seeing who had a baby. Now regretfully, a few of my friends are showing up in the obits. My paper, and the M*A*S*H reruns mom sent were the hottest commodity in my Army barracks in Germany. However, I think my buddies really only wanted to see the commercials dad didn’t delete on the M*A*S*H videotapes. The paper was a unique resource for the cost of everything from a used Chevy to who won a ball game. When I ran an engineering business I wanted to know if my firm got the contract at the council meeting. Since I have begun blogging, I am always interested in what and how the professionals are writing. In general, the paper has been a part of my whole life.

Life is what a paper is all about. I guess when the New York Times bought my paper and sent a new guy to help run it, I was concerned. Turns out however, the last guy was a pretty good egg. He began going to my church and his unassuming nature made he us instant friends. You could tell he loved the paper business. He knew how important a human touch was to my paper. He wrote a column each week which usually dealt with some mundane part of everyday life. Invariably, the column was a situation my family and I had experienced. The column was a break from all bad news. I think my friend understood we needed a break. He probably told his editors the same thing from time to time.

Only time will tell if the group who bought my paper will give it the same love and care as my friend. Love and care seems to be the first casualty of the national trend of sagging circulation. The papers seem to only respond with consolidation and the elimination of people like my friend. My friend bucked what I am sure was a hallmark of the New York Times papers. He really tried to find out what living in the Shoals was all about. He hired reporters and editors who cared about how to serve people like me.

Serving might be the key to the crisis in newspaper circulation. Instead of transferring papers to the internet, maybe papers should look to the people who grew up reading and printing the dead tree version. Maybe the newspaper business should look into the things which make a daily paper useful to the people who buy the subscriptions and not people who would rather read two lines of a story on the internet. Maybe they should keep people like my friend who are older but, have lots to give before retirement. Instead of spending time on the business of papers, maybe they should spend time on the art of the paper business. They can blame it on circulation and money if they want. Part of the problem however, might be papers are getting rid of people like my friend.

Alabama Bingo and California

What does an obscure lawsuit surrounding the gay marriage ban in California have to do with the current bingo question in Alabama? Maybe more than you think. Recently, there was an attempt to keep the names of donors a secret in the fight over gay marriage in California. Some argued that donors to the campaigns in support of a ban could be threatened if their names were made public. Furthermore, they argued it was a free speech issue. They told us publicity and sunshine were limits on speech. People would not speak out with their money, they said, if they had to identify themselves. I personally believe this argument is a stretch. I think the framers of our Constitution had stump speeches on the town square and handbills on trees in mind when they wrote our First Amendment. This idea has little to do with the obfuscated political action committees and slick TV commercials that are our political system today.

So what does this have to do with the latest tiff in Alabama over electronic bingo or slot machines?

Well, we already have a problem with sunshine in our state. Our problem is with the political variety of sunshine and not thermonuclear radiation. Once again, Alabama ranks 49^th in campaign disclosure by the respected campaigndisclosure.org. So along with being ranked 45^th in education, 29^th in being safe from crime and 43^rd in highway conditions among all states, Alabama may also be near the bottom in political sunshine. We already have de-facto secrecy among political donors. We have this situation without a court’s ruling. The political sun doesn’t shine in Alabama.

So what does political sun have to do with Bingo? Well, if history is our guide, Alabama voters may be voting counter to their wishes. Voters could be confused because they are not able to associate donors with causes or candidates. A great example might be a 1999 push for video poker in a few counties. Polls showed in the August before the vote that 61 percent were in favor of video poker. By August only 51 percent were in favor. So what changed?

One of the things that changed was media blitz by Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition. The Coalition pointed out moral issues associated with gambling and went on a state-wide get-out-the-vote campaign. This is where sunshine in funding and the messenger become important. If Alabamians had known the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians were funding the Christian Coalition’s moral outrage about video poker, Alabamians may have been a little less receptive to Coalition’s message. A congressional report on the subject outlined how Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Relief were used by the Choctaws to insure their casinos in Philadelphia, Mississippi would not have Alabama competition. There were even plans to use Jim Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, a multi-media Christian group, in ads bought with over a million dollars of Choctaw monies.

You can bet, pardon the pun, the Choctaws and other gambling interests are gearing up as we speak. They won’t contact you directly over slot machines or bingo. They will use someone you trust like Jim Dobson. What’s worse, we won’t know the difference because Alabama politicians don’t want you to know. Some of the people in those issue groups like the Christian Coalition won’t know either. The money will be transferred from political action committee (PAC) to PAC, washed and laundered through so many people we won’t know where it came from. Websites which easily hash out who gave how much to whom in other states won’t be able to make sense of the Alabama system. In the upside down world of Alabama politics, the politicians and groups most adamantly against slot machines may be ironically taking the most money from out-of-state gambling interests.

Editor’s Note:

I went to the Focus on the Family website and asked for a response to this article. I will leave it you to decide if the question was answered.

Banking on Vengeful Duplicity

When the American International Group or AIG announced bonuses this week, it brought two basic problems with finally fixing the credit markets in perfect focus. AIG said it was lawfully obligated to give millions in bonuses to employees who had contracts which said a bonus was due. After receiving bailout monies from the taxpayer to forestall the pending demise of the company, these bonuses were both counter to common sense and seemed to be an obscene gesture toward the taxpayer who bailed them out.  The responses to this act might be an excellent study in how complex fixing our credit markets will be.

Many who spoke about the credit markets on the Sunday news shows fell neatly into two camps. One camp, mostly Republicans and the Obama Administration, told us forcing AIG to violate those contracts was against the law. Furthermore, they explained how AIG reneging on those contracts would destroy the legal fabric of our society. It might even make nervous markets fall off the cliff. The second camp made the strangest bedfellows. They consisted of conservative politicians like Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) and left-wing free-market haters. They seemed to be more Old Testament in their approach. “An eye for an eye,” seemed to be their response. “Let’em fail”, Shelby told us.

The argument for the bonuses goes something like this; it would be illegal for the taxpayer, who arguably owns most of AIG at this point, to force the company to forgo the bonuses. It is ironic how many who make this argument also wanted to see United Auto Workers or UAW contracts and agreements destroyed in bankruptcy. They also ignore the “cramdowns” banks are about to have to take on foreclosed mortgage contracts in personal bankruptcies. Other things like how Wall Street pays based mostly on a bonus and not in a normal paycheck are also argued. This too is ironic because some on the Sunday shows claimed many of the bonuses were to be paid to the derivative and credit swap traders who helped drive AIG in the crapper.

Some just want AIG and unhealthy banks to die. They envision a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or FDIC style takeover. Give all the depositors up to a quarter of a million dollars each, pay off the taxpayer loans and whack everything else which is left into partial payments for other creditors and bond holders. No one knows who all will have to take less than what is owed them by AIG or the banks in a so-called “haircut”. That uncertainty has led some to call these institutions,” too big to fail.” Those who say too big to fail fear a Great Depression style collapse in which it will take years to recover.

It is time to get over it.

Our financial system has ground to a halt and it has to be fixed. There will be both undeserved winners and losers. If we insist on punishing the guilty, there will be plenty of punishment to go around. We can sit around and wait on all the culprits of this mess get it. We can wait on a fix which gives us an iron-clad guarantee that no one who was the least bit careless gets a dime of bailout. We can wring our hands as we contemplate the deficits and debt it will take to fix this mess.

We can wait to fix this mess as our economic crisis relegates the United States into a third world country. If my calculations are right, we are losing two million dollars in gross domestic product and 361 jobs every minute we wait. People talk about the next generation owing China. We already owe China and once we wait for dust to settle from the failure of megabanks like Citi, Chase, Bank of America and all those they owe it might take a generation to dig out of the hole. By the time our economy recovers, we may have lost our place as the world’s largest economy. The vengeance motive and the duplicity we employ deciding which industries we save might make us feel better. It may give us the chance to settle old scores like a dislike for unions or investment bankers. That satisfaction may still be costing our grandkids in growth and jobs.