Rantle

By Eric Anschutz, April 1, 2009

To my readers: this column marks the last of my weekly musings. I will continue to write from time to time, but will no longer do so on a regular basis. I am grateful to the many of you that have sent letters and emails and telephoned and spoken to me personally with your usually too generous comments. It has been an honor and a privilege to occupy this corner for over two years, but it is now time for me to turn to other things, and for you to hear from other writers. Maureen O’Rourke and Wilma Murray, Manager and Editor of the Rossmoor News, deserve not only my thanks for their always kind support of my column, but deserve too the thanks of all Rossmoorians for the superb quality of this wondrously fine community newspaper.

As a “swan song” to my series of some 100 columns, I leave you with a few parting thoughts. Regular readers of this column will recognize that they represent a condensed version of notions central to values and actions that I deem important and constructive. The first thought is that we are a great country. The second is that our politicians are not living up to our greatness. The third is that we need to redefine the term “national security” to include civic well-being as well as guns and troops. The fourth is that Barack Obama seems to me to possess the capacity to become a transformational President. Let me elaborate, however briefly, on all four.

1. Thoughts on our “greatness.” America is, without doubt, exceptional. Sprawling from the Atlantic to the Pacific, rich in natural resources, endowed coast to coast with endless acres of fertile land, favorable climate, dynamic, creative and productive industries, our America has for two centuries been a magnet for the needy, the adventurous and courageous from every part of the world. The resulting diversity of our citizenry has given this nation a multicultural and richly colorful heritage that links our people to those of every other nation and culture on earth; yet, this unparalleled diversity has become integrated and blended to bring about a remarkable tolerance for differences among us, and a collective pride we share in things American. Our culture has spread across much of the world. Microsoft and Apple and Google and Cisco support and spur technology across the globe; Levi blue jeans and New York Yankee baseball caps are worn everywhere, and McDonald’s and Starbucks and Coke machines are as familiar and as ubiquitous in Europe and Asia and Africa as they are in California and Michigan and Alabama.

2. Thoughts on our political landscape. For a very long time, we Americans have been aware of serious failure in our system of education. Kids in Asia and Europe score consistently higher in tests of science and math and history than do our kids. We know too that our infrastructure is crumbling and outdated and inadequate. We have known for decades that we need to find a way out of our dependence on foreign oil. And we have known that health care in America is too costly and that too many of us are uninsured. Our politicians have failed to deal with these problems because while each of them requires massive investments, taxation to pay for them is always unpopular. We citizens are at fault too; beguiled by promises of lower taxes, we fail to understand that while repairing and building is costly – the real cost comes from not making the big investments needed to deal with our deficiencies.

3. Thoughts on our defense/foreign policy establishment. Our defense budget equals roughly the combined defense budgets of all other nations on earth. We maintain American bases and station American troops in more than 100 nations around the world. We have in very recent memory fought two very costly, unnecessary and widely regretted wars: Vietnam and Iraq. Long after the demise of the Soviet Union, we continue to develop next-generation nuclear weapons and maintain thousands of our nukes on hair-trigger alert, thereby compromising our right to the moral high ground as we (rightly) demand non-proliferation elsewhere. Against the advice of Defense Secretary Gates, Congress demands that we add to our bloated military arsenal by buying such weapons as more aircraft carriers (obsolete and unneeded), missile defense (unneeded and unproven), and more ultra-high performance fighter aircraft at a time when unmanned drones are the most useful aircraft we have. Our primary (I would say only) military threat is from pajama-clad religious zealots armed in the main with fanaticism and roadside bombs and box cutters. We continue to hemorrhage billions of dollars in two ongoing wars. Our withdrawal from Iraq is agonizingly slow, and ramping up our forces in Afghanistan seems to me clear folly. We have yet to understand that “national security” means not only lots of guns, but good schools, affordable and available health care, transition to alternative energy sources and deployment of a world-class infrastructure.

4. Thoughts about Obama. In calling him a “transformational” President, I take my cue from the courageous architecture of the administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus package, from Obama’s incisive intelligence and undisputed mastery of the technical and political details of all that is ongoing. The plan invests vast resources to stimulate the economy, and the investment addresses the very areas in which we need to spend to bring about the greatness of which our nation is capable. The risk is enormous: our already large national debt will increase further by trillions of dollars, but if it works, and if the economy is stimulated as projected, America will emerge with better schools than ever, an infrastructure that will make us the most vibrantly productive and most beautiful nation on earth, health care that will be both affordable and available and far more effective than ever before, and with a massive shift away from carbon based fuels to alternative renewable sources. Making it all happen will demand from Obama leadership skills and communication talents applied with the steadiness and consistency with which we know he is endowed. America could, at the end of two terms, be the “shining city on the hill” we all want. America will once again claim world moral leadership and become global exemplars in science and industry.

By Eric Anschutz, March 25, 2009

Americans, across the country, have long been concerned about the abysmal state of K-12 education. The drop-out rate from our schools approaches 50% among kids from minority communities. For those who do stay in school long enough to graduate, too many lack even rudimentary knowledge of science and math, and have little knowledge of civics and history.

Too many schools have been “dumbed-down” to the point where it has become possible to graduate from high school without having read a single book, without any grasp of the principles of algebra, and without the ability to write a meaningful paragraph. Few high school students learn anything of biology and physics and chemistry, and even fewer study a foreign language. Indeed, many graduate from high school unable to understand what appears in everyday newspapers and news magazines.

None of this is news. We have known for decades that our primary and secondary schools are dysfunctional and in woeful disrepair. There are many reasons, including a vast sociological and cultural divide, parental disinterest and lack of involvement, student apathy, class-size and teacher quality. There are two other reasons that seem important to me: teacher unions whose policies seemingly skewed to protect incompetent teachers, and local (rather than national or statewide) control of schools that has brought about vast differences in the quality of schools in rich and poor neighborhoods.

President Obama is making a frontal assault on this too long neglected and ever-worsening problem. His effort to improve schools is part of a four-pronged program (education, health care, energy and infrastructure) to restore economic vitality. The billions being spent will in the near-term restore our economy by helping to create and save jobs, but will in the longer term put us on a path to sustained growth and national greatness.

The President’s overall stimulus package adds up to $787 billion, of which $150 billion will be allocated (over a two year period) to education, thereby effectively doubling the budget of the Department of Education. There will be an immediate infusion of funds to cash-strapped communities, aimed at teacher lay-offs now ongoing across the nation.

In speaking about education, the President put it this way: “We have accepted failure for too long….America’s entire education system must once more be the envy of the world….What’s required is not simply new investments, but new reforms. It is time to expect more from our students….Improved education is not only a moral imperative, it is an economic imperative…the future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens.”

Here, taken from details provided by our new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (former Superintendent of Schools in Chicago), are some of the goals of the administration’s new education stimulus plan:

• Find best practices in schools across the nation, and internationally, scale them up and promulgate them nationwide.

• Make teaching the nation’s most respected profession, and raise pay accordingly. Seek the “best and brightest” to come into the teaching profession. Offer bonus pay for those who teach science and math, for those willing to teach in inner city “difficult” schools, and provide merit awards for teachers who achieve the highest rates of improvement for students.

• Dismiss substandard teachers. Tests for student achievement levels should be tough, and they should be the same across the country. If teaching is to be the most honored profession, teaching positions must be awarded only to the highly qualified. More teachers; fewer administrators.

• Keep kids in school for more hours, and for 10 or 11 months of the year. Create longer school days. Place all young children in pre-school classes; Pre-K schooling is crucial to future excellence of kids who come from deprived homes.

• Smaller class sizes are essential for success. We seek schools that are not only good, but “great!” The goal is that by 2020, American schools will graduate a higher percentage of kids from high school and from college than any other nation on earth.

• Work with parents to involve them in their kid’s education: encourage parents to monitor homework, turn off TV until homework is done, teach their kids to respect teachers and to esteem the value of education. Make kids (and parents) understand that education leads to better jobs and higher pay.

• Schools should be designated as community centers, open evenings and weekends to provide remedial instruction for lagging students, sports, drama, art instruction, health education programs, adult education aimed at lifelong learning, set aside rooms for pre-school classes.

• $30 billion of the $150 billion will be used to make college education available to greater numbers of people through more generous Pell Grants, student loans and tax credits.

• $20 billion of the $150 billion will be used for school renovation and modernization, thereby creating many construction jobs. Schools will become energy efficient models for the use of “green” technology.

• New Charter Schools will be encouraged, but only when they demonstrate innovation, excellence, and staffs selected with rigor. Indeed, charter schools are intended to become “laboratories for innovation.”

Will it work? We won’t know until we try. But this massive attempt to reinvigorate and improve our system of K-12 education is long overdue. And its success is essential if America is to remain at the forefront of nations. In the meanwhile, as efforts proceed to improve education, teachers formerly destined to be laid off will be retained, new teachers will be hired, and construction workers will be hired by the tens of thousands to repair and renovate schools across the country. The economy will thereby be stimulated and many workers will learn the “green” skills so essential to America’s energy and environmental well-being. America is being rebuilt to a new level of vigor and excellence.

By Eric Anschutz, March 18, 2009

For eight years we had a president wrapped in an impenetrable cocoon, refusing as a matter of principle, he told interviewers, to read newspapers or magazines or books or to watch TV news or commentary. But, now, there’s a new guy in the oval office. President Obama has made it clear that he does want always to hear in detail about the entire spectrum of policy options, especially from those holding responsible contrary views. He wants daily to take the nation’s pulse and to be always fully informed of what is happening in the country. Here are some of the ways he strives to bring that about:

• A correspondence staff sifts through the thousands of letters coming daily to the White House. Ten of these letters, selected for the variety of their content, are put on Obama’s desk every morning. The President reads each one, seeing this as one way of staying in touch with the mood of the country.

• Obama has asked his team to schedule at least one campaign-style trip every week. Audiences are deliberately designed to represent a cross-section of America, not just Democratic loyalists.

• He and Michelle make an effort to dine frequently at local DC restaurants. The President recently spent an afternoon hour with Michelle at a local school talking with second-grade kids and their teachers. On a recent evening, Obama went with a group of male friends to watch a basketball game between the Washington Wizards and the Chicago Bulls.

• His office phone has call buttons linked directly to every major department head. He calls them regularly to see what’s going on, and to provide his input.

• The President’s day begins each morning with a national security briefing, followed by an economic briefing and a meeting with senior staff. During these meetings, he expects to hear from all participants and to be appraised of ongoing actions and events and the spectrum of policy options.

• On most days, he holds a public event at 11 AM, and has lunch with one senior official or with VP Biden for in-depth discussion. In a major departure from prior presidents, Obama often leaves the White House to visit one of the Federal Offices: State, Treasury, Energy, and Defense.

• While Obama has dinner, a team of staff members compiles a briefing book. The book, described as “weighty” with government documents to prepare for the next day, is replete with material taken from current newspapers and magazines and books to keep him abreast of the national and global pulse. This new President does not go to bed at 9:30 – as did his predecessor.

• Though the White House is served by a large staff, the kids, Sasha (7) and Malia (10), are required by their parents to wake themselves up with their own alarm clocks, make their own beds and clean their rooms. For their new puppy, the two Obama daughters will be expected to pick up and dispose of dog-doo from White House lawns. Family life is kept as near to “normal” as possible.

• In their short time in residence at the White House, the Obama’s have hosted frequent gatherings. They plan to continue doing so on a regular basis, making every effort to reach out on a personal basis to members of the administration, to media, to Washingtonians, and to members of Congress – from both parties. On such social occasions, Obama has told people that he wants to be part of the group, not apart from it.

Those who have come to know President Obama are uniform in their praise for his man’s steadiness and self-confidence, and of his broad intelligence and depth of knowledge. His personality and demeanor have been compared to FDR and Ronald Reagan, both of whom seemed endowed with conviction that they could handle whatever came along. Conservative columnist David Brooks wrote tellingly of an interview with Obama in which he (Brooks) casually mentioned his own interest in the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Obama, Brooks tells us, responded with a lengthy and deeply informed commentary on Kierkegaard’s three stages of life, and then followed that commentary with a learned dissertation on how Kierkegaard’s philosophy related to the policy discussion at hand.

We do, indeed, have a new kind of President!

Having lauded Obama, let’s look across the aisle. Republican proposals to heal our economy are limited to two simple ideas: cut taxes and freeze federal spending. Economists across the board deride these proposals as simplistic and counterproductive, arguing that what we need instead is massive federal investment in the economy to provide stimulus needed to put people back to work. Priming the economic pump (and thereby rebuilding America) is of course exactly what Obama’s Recovery Package is designed to do. The more we hear from Republicans about their long-since disproved trickle-down economic proposals, the gladder we can be Obama won the 2008 election.

Bobby Jindal, Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh (labeled by someone recently as “the axis of drivel”) have surfaced as spokesmen for and would-be saviors of Republicanism. Governor Jindal’s kindergarten response to Obama’s classic State of the Union address made us all squirm in sympathy for the Governor’s visible fall from grace. Steele’s jejune and eerie ineffectiveness as Chairman of the Republican National Committee led fellow Republicans to call for his resignation just days after he took office. And Limbaugh reminds us more and more of an unforgiving black-shirted Mafia kingpin, lobbing rhetorical hand grenades tinged with racist, sexist, homophobic code words that delight his right wing audience and scare mainstream Republicans into accepting him as their spokesman. Republicans have become the party of “no.” It’s easy to just “oppose” when you have nothing of merit to “propose.”

By Eric Anschutz, March 11, 2009

I was led to write this column by a page one headline in the “Contra Costa Times.” It reads: “Bay Awash in Sewage Spills.” The article that follows goes on to tell us that “On average, human waste spills into the Bay more than five times a day, fouling the waters and shorelines of this environmental jewel and recreational treasure. Decrepit pipes, outdated municipal sewage treatment systems and poor upkeep (are the cause).” Page two of the same paper brings us another sad commentary: “ Schools wrestling with cuts,” class sizes are being increased 25%, teachers are being laid off, some schools are being closed.

All this leads me to wonder, are we living in Bangladesh, or is this America? For weeks we have followed the travesty of our state legislature unable to pass a budget resolution that contains anything resembling a tax increase. Because budget legislation requires a two-thirds majority to pass, the Republican minority has held our state hostage to their Reaganesque fantasy of a California that clings to misguided and long ago disproved trickle down economics.

And it’s not just California. During the recent meeting of US Governors, the point was made repeatedly that our nation has turned away from its long tradition of investment in the common good. Public investment, the Governors agreed, has built America, but after decades of neglect, the nation, they said, “is falling apart.” During the Governor’s conference, it was said that three-quarters of the country’s public school buildings are outdated and inadequate. More than a quarter of our bridges are obsolete or deficient. Our water systems, roadways, railways, airports, tunnels and subways are all in states of disrepair. Half the locks on more than 12,000 miles of inland waterways are functionally obsolete.

There are high-speed (300 mph) trains running between major cities in Japan, Germany, France and Spain. There are none in America. Not one. What is wrong with us? The answer is twofold: Republican aversion to taxation and national horror at the prospect of anything that can be labeled “socialism.”

Construction of world-class airports and trains and subways and schools and public buildings and parks and scenic freeways and levees and water supplies and waste management cannot realistically be done by individuals or by corporate America. Building these things requires government sponsorship, and it requires tax dollars. If we allow ourselves to be guided by Republican policies, taxes would be cut to the bone – leaving only enough to pay for our military (where Republicans can never get enough). A country so-guided would accelerate further along the ongoing downward spiral to unsafe and uninhabitable and inconvenient and unattractive public facilities. We would become more and more like Bangladesh, and be hopelessly bypassed by Europe, China and Japan, all of whom are making public investments on a massive scale, even in this time of economic downturn.

President Obama’s budget promises to bring us, finally, the “shining city on the hill,” envisioned but never built by President Reagan. If Congress enacts Obama’s budget, our nation will finally bring fully to an end the demonstrably failed “trickle-down” economic and social policies that began during the Reagan era. Obama’s plan, if it succeeds, will bring us nationwide affordable and efficient health care, vast improvements in education, rebuilding of our infrastructure, greater investment in science, and an energy plan that weans us from dependency on foreign oil and emplaces solar and wind and bio and hydro energy to address the global warming problem that threatens our very survival. All of this will raise productivity and earnings and tax revenues will rise accordingly.

Will it be costly? Sure. But these investments will over time more than pay for themselves. The vast resources needed to get it all underway will come, Obama’s budget tells us, from higher taxes on corporations and on personal incomes in excess of $250,000, imposition of higher inheritance taxes on very large estates, taxation of excess carbon emission, ending the war in Iraq, elimination of long-criticized subsidies for agricultural companies and banks and health insurers, termination of wasteful spending on unneeded cold-war military programs, and by revitalization of the economy by means of the already emplaced stimulus program.

Our politicians have been promising health care and energy independence and world class education for a very long time. We now, for the first time, have a President who has developed a plan and a budget designed to bring it all about. If enacted, we will be on the path to a more beautiful, more comfortable, healthier, safer and more egalitarian America. Finally!

My biggest concern about Obama’s plan is whether Congress will rise to the challenge by passing a budget that looks anything like the one the President has proposed. His health care proposals will meet with cries (and lies) of SOCIALISM, however ill-advised and wrong. Infrastructure spending will be labeled as pork. Tax increases for the wealthy will be labeled as giveaways to the poor. Republicans will object to the costs, forgetting that these are investments, not costs, and forgetting too that we will never become the “shining city on the hill” without ambitious programs of the very kind proposed by Obama – and never proposed or even fully envisioned by any former President..

Cutting taxes and leaving it to corporate America will not do it. We need a well-thought-out and unified plan, and money and intelligent direction from the top of the Federal Government to bring it all about. President Obama has shown us how to do it; Congress needs to legislate it into reality. And, we the people need to support it. If we want America to remain at the forefront of nations, wee can’t afford not to do it.

By Eric Anschutz, March 4, 2009

Columnist Tom Friedman wrote recently of his visit to New Delhi. On a drive through the city, he said, his route took him past the Chinese Embassy whose rooftop housed a Chinese-made solar hot water heater; further along, he passed the US Embassy, whose rooftop was covered with antennae and listening gear. The Chinese were demonstrating prowess with green-technology, thereby seeking to foster alternative-energy trade relationships with India; we Americans were overtly snooping on tele-communications from other embassies in New Delhi, and probably on the Indian government. The difference in emphasis is one we need to think about.

Just a few days after reading the Friedman column, I came across a news article citing testimony given by Admiral Dennis Blair during Senate hearings being held to confirm his nomination as Director of National Intelligence. Answering Senatorial queries about threats to national security, Blair asserted that our nation’s economic problems pose a far greater threat to national security than terrorism. Admiral Blair had it right: we now have a wise man at the head of our national intelligence community.

The juxtaposition of these two items leads me to address yet again the question of priorities. The term “national security” has over the years brought to mind such things as missiles and bombers and tanks and battleships. Though military posture and capability remain important components of security, we have for too long relegated economic strength to second place. We have ignored the fact that every dollar spent for military power subtracts a dollar from economic well-being. That equation is of special concern when we are buying weapons (or fighting wars) for which there is no need, thereby taking precious resources out of an economy already sorely depleted.

Admiral Blair is right to note that failed banks and non-competitive US car companies, and millions of housing foreclosures, and ever-increasing numbers of unemployed Americans are more immediate and far more urgent threats to the well-being of our citizens than are al Qaeda or the Taliban. We need to ask whether development of a completely unnecessary next-generation of nuclear weapons would do more for national well-being than hiring more teachers and policemen and trash collectors. We need to understand that global warming is a greater threat to the long- term survival of our nation than Iran’s uranium enrichment program. And that deployment of a new national electric energy grid is of vastly greater benefit to our national security than deployment of another aircraft carrier. According to Major General Robert Scales, some 70% of the US defense budget, since the early 1990’s, has gone to missiles and fixed wing aircraft. Yet, during that time, soldiers and marines have done most of the fighting.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is jousting with military chieftains to slow down or stop altogether a number of the costly weapons programs that he deems unnecessary. The super-costly F-22 fighter airplane is a case in point. Subsystems for the F-22 are made in 44 states. This pork-filled plane has been in development since the late 1980’s, at a cost so far of $65 billion. Despite the fact that 187 of them have been built, the F-22 has never been used in Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else. And, every day new vulnerabilities are discovered requiring ever-more development money.

Gates has sought to stop procurement of more F-22’s, but is thwarted by uniformed military reluctant to give up coveted programs, and by many in Congress (including 47 Senators) whose districts and states house defense contractors enriched by them. Gates has said that his measure for the utility of new weapons programs is whether they are needed to combat a known threat, not whether they are technologically possible. Given limited resources, he has written, the military services need to shift their priorities away from “baroque” high-tech weapons designed for threats of the distant future (or left over from Cold War premises) toward low-cost weapons effective for the wars we’re fighting now, and will likely fight in the foreseeable future.

In this time of high unemployment, some argue for continuing high expenditure on military programs, noting that cut back on these programs will exacerbate already severe unemployment. They note too that high-tech military programs employ engineers and scientists and skilled workers, the very people that need to be retained in the work force. Right! But the answer is not to continue building unneeded weapons. Instead, we need to find ways to direct the energies and talents of those who work at companies like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing and Raytheon away from unneeded weaponry and toward economically and socially useful areas such as green technology, urban transportation and waste management. How about turning organic waste into fuel?

I recognize that conversion of at least some part of our massive “defense” industry from swords to plowshares would take time, and would involve dislocations and retraining and (above all) a massive reorientation of our national mindset. Let it begin with the new definition of national security provided to us by Admiral Blair. Let’s remove the antennae from atop our Embassy in New Delhi, and our Embassies everywhere, and install in their place the latest green technology, thereby proclaiming globally our readiness to export it on favorable terms to all those who would ally with us in efforts to make this world a better place.