A Ray of Hope for the Instant Gratification Generation

Professor Stephen Valdes

Most of what you hear about the economy can be right or wrong depending on yourself interest, whether it is Democrat, Republican, cable and radio news entertainers or Tea Party. And because we have midterm elections coming up.

America is too big and diverse to be described by blanket statements. We are 50 states on 3.7 million square miles with 307 million people who produce $14 trillion in annual GDP and privately hold $54 trillion in net assets.

You can’t argue the facts that the economy which was set to collapse under the previous administration began to recover in the spring / summer of 2009. Third quarter of 09 it was up 2.9% and 4^th quarter boomed at 6%. This pattern has stuck and is slowly moving forward with a first quarter of 3.5% and moving up slowly. Too slow for those who expect everything to be solved in a half  hour sitcom

Many doubt the way it’s being done with deficit spending, and government intervention. We all want simple answers to complex problems. And in the mist of our materialistic credit orgy, our educational system failed to give us the intellect needed to look at the problems we have made for ourselves in rational terms. So many of us turn to the false gods of pundit entertainers for answers.

Blame it on the government! Excuse me? Blame it on ourselves for letting it happen! As long as our credit cards were good, no one questioned. But as the house of cards crumbled we have to blame someone or some institution, rightly or wrongly. Not my fault. I put a yellow ribbon on my car, and brought a big screen TV on credit.

The latest Rasmussen pole tells us that only 23% of the people of the United States believe that the Federal government has the consent of the governed. This is what sparked a popular uprising of folks to become the Tea Party. A populist movement that is increasingly alarmed at the explosion of earmarks, bailouts and government spending that marked the waning years of the Bush administration, and continues  with the Obama administration.  The Tea party reminds us all, Democrat, and Republican alike that America was founded on the revolutionary concept of citizen participation, activism and the primacy of the individual over its government. The major divisions in this country are no longer between parties but between political elites financed by global corporations and we the people.

Unfortunately 60 % of us don’t vote, and of the 40% that do, less than 15% understand the issues. We have lost our revolution at the take out window of McDonalds, and the easy money the Feds gave us to buy things we couldn’t afford. We were seduced by Madison Avenue, and Wall Street. 73% of our economy is driven by consumption, so if you aren’t spending, the economy is hurting. The American dream isn’t about materialism, but the spirituality of man. It’s a shame that we have to learn our lessons the hard way, but who ever said life was fair.

One of the fundamentals in this dilemma we find ourselves in is confidence. Confidence in our leadership, confidence in the economy, and confidence in our ability to see the future. Business managers are reluctant to commit to new hires, and added inventory. The average consumer is only spending necessities, and investors are freaked at every bit of negative news.

All is not doom and gloom.  The Kiplinger letter out of Washington D.C., which forecasts for management decision making, stated that the bad news we heard in  August arises from temporary woes not persistent problems. Labor Layoffs in June and July were mostly of short term Census workers, and the expiration of tax credits for home buyers, and the European financial crisis.  Neither of these influences will be permanent, and the trend of increases in imports and exports from 9%-12% will reassert itself in the coming year. Housing isn’t fixed, but it took 20 years to get there.

Most of the components of growth are here. Big banks have the funds to lend thanks to shrinking loan losses and strong earnings, and $275 billion in excess liquidity as of the first quarter. What’s more, profits for the S&P 500 were up 46% from second quarter 2009. Lastly consumers are getting their budgets in order. 19% of household income went to debt payment in 2007. Today, 17%, the lowest since 1998.

So for those in the Instant Gratification Generation who have been lead to believe that the global economy will recover in two years or less by TV entertainers, and  politicians that want their power back, start reading more, look for answers, rather than affirmations of your own opinions. And look to where left and right can converge, and demand accountability of your politicians, and get involved in being an American.  

24 Hour News Cycle

24 Hour News Cycle, Where Opinions are Facts
Professor Stephen Valdes

The media lynch mob for Shirley Sherrod, an anonymous agriculture department bureaucrat, serves as a great example for the 24 hour cable news cycle, and how it is manipulated by political power brokers to manage how you perceive the reality of so called fair and balanced portrayal of the news
An obscure right wing blogger decided to spin a highly edited video to embarrass the administration of a black president condoning the use of black racism to supposedly destroy our very social fabric. Using nothing less than a three minutes edit of a 45 minute speech to the NAACP, the Sharks of cable news ran with it for all it was worth till the white farmer, the supposed victim of this reverse racism, told the truth to the cable mob, the administration and the public. Ops, the media screwed up again. The government fired a career employee for fear of any backlash in the coming midterm election, and Fox News pulled in its horns, and many of us believed it…
The persistence belief that the stuff of daily political reporting is actually truth, rather than objective journalism is again laid bare. Objective reporting of political news is not dramatic and partisan enough for many of us out in TV land. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that issues and truth doesn’t matter because voters are often deeply ill informed, and less than 40% even bother to vote. This is what happens when people get their news from “ideological noise machines” rather than from real news outlets.
In a totalitarian state, the propagandist works hand in glove with the secret police to hammer home their agendas, and keep the mob in check. Here however something much worse is eroding our free press. We, the news consumers are also part of the problem.
Studies conducted in 2005 and 2006 at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, it often made their beliefs in the inaccuracy stronger, particularly if those beliefs were politically partisan.
We look at Fox news with only nine hours of news content a day, and the rest devoted to conservative opinion programming, and blogging from the right and left with no regard for accuracy or content. Now we have left leaning MSNBC shooting back its own attacks, and for the rest of the so called corporate driven news outlets, the logical perception is to give their customers what they want, partisan political soap opera to reinforce whatever opinions they have. How many other politicians and public figures have been thrown to the lions in this manner only to have careers and their working futures destroyed by the rush to judgment? Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald summed it up when he spoke of reporting facts by saying. “You only quantify for the benefit of the head. You toss the raw meat of emotion for the benefit of the heart”, and that’s what sells. We need the balance of the center, what we now might call the silent majority, with a non partisan sense reality.
At the dawn of the internet age we were awed by being the first generation of people to have the entire tapestry of human knowledge within our grasp and at our computer key board. We instead find ourselves stranded in a Misinformation Age where truth is multiple choice based on whatever you chose to believe in. we no longer are burdened with the need for facts or verification , we have become intellectually lazy. After all, it was on the internet…

“We have met the enemy, and it is us”

We humans tend to blame everyone else but ourselves when we are faced with the truth about our relationships, careers, and in this case the government. Its all governments fault …
No, it’s all our fault. We are the ones to blame, because we refuse to face the realities of the world and its problems. We are spoiled by an economy that has been running on credit and averse to making the sacrifices that we must face. In this last local election less than 23% of us bothered to vote. The last time the government asked us to sacrifice for the common good was WWII. Korea, Viet Nam, the Bush wars, have called for nothing more than a magnetic ribbon on your SUV claiming we support the troops. And as long as it wasn’t your sons or daughters, we went on our merry way, spending and supporting the politicians that gave us bread and circuses and an economy based on credit. How much longer can we live this unsustainable lifestyle? Did we change with the Oil embargo of 1973?, the dot com bubble of the 1990’s?, the terrorist attack of 9/11? Is the current economic meltdown changing us, and now the catastrophe in the gulf? These have all been based on our petroleum dependent lifestyle. It is you and I not the government. They just give us what we want, in exchange for keeping them in office, to grow rich and prosper, while we has not sustained an increase in overall wages in over 10 years. What are you doing as an “individual”, a Citizen to save our country, our planet? Think about it…
For those on the Left, no amount of government regulation will solve the problems. The government’s role is to support innovation, and create a climate of fairness for both investor and worker to thrive. Those on the Right want less government and taxes, so you better decide what services you want to give up. You can’t have both. If you don’t like healthcare, get rid of Medicare, the VA, and Social Security. We can’t complain about America until we look at ourselves and ask what we have done to change it. Talk is cheap, and driving to a Tea Party rally in an SUV is hypocritical.
Both parties and those who bothered to vote created the mess we are in. The rest of us were too busy buying on credit and expecting the housing bubble to go on for ever. Hey, I’m getting fat why should I care. My 401k is growing, why look at how Wall Street is using the banks to keep their ponzy scheme going. Both parties sent BP out to drill for us and to keep it cheap so we will be happy driving . If we have met the enemy, and it is us, then we are the ones that must change it. Don’t blame it on the government. We are the solution. If we are serious about change, then do your part. Walk or bike, turn down the air conditioner,
don’t waste gas, recycle, and vote. Get involved.
The Tea Party and every other populist movement that springs up during economic down turns are predictable. They lash out at the problem and as times improve fade away into our old unsustainable life styles. That’s why we need to solve the big problems now, not postpone them. Or pretend that when our lobby driven government gives us, lowest –common denominator solutions, their going to work. We can never go back to business as usual, because like it or not, the best days of the empire are being challenged by a global economy.
Many people think that all we have to do is live the lives of the founding fathers. The answers to all our problems can’t be solved simplistically by going backwards to 1776 when there were only 2.5 million Englishmen in America. We are a diverse nation of 350 million, with 35% of our population non European. India, China, Brazil and Russia are challenging us for economic dominance on a world stage. We can’t live the Darwinian capitalism that those on the right demand, and the care taker government that those on the left want. Both of them are going too far in keeping us in political gridlock. It is you and I in the middle who must get off the couch, lose the fat around our gut, and start the change from within. And be prepared to sacrifice to archive the best parts of the future that both the left and right aspire to. If government is the problem then we are the solution. And time is running out.

The loss of traditional heroes and values gives rise to the new conservative radical

Professor Stephen Valdes

In the past ten years, or as conservatives see it, since Ronald Reagan, life as they knew it crumbled before their eyes. Every pillar of society from the church, with their incessant sex scandals, Wall Street, professional sports with its drug fueled criminality, the main stream media, political scandals with wars and economic ruin at every turn, it has all revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both…

All forms of former authority, have given rise to a growing anxiety crisis. According to Time magazine,  Banks are trusted by 32% of the populace, down from 50% in  2004. Newspapers down to 24%, and the Congress, a paltry 12%. Our CEO’s have likewise betrayed us. From Enron to Exxon, these grossly overpaid executives have gotten their obscene bonuses while we drown in upside down mortgages, and shrinking job opportunities. We have gone from hate Bush, to bash Obama. Science has betrayed our trust with climate change so we turn to a  half term Governor from Alaska for homilies rather than learned discourse

Now to make matters worse, an ongoing ethnic and demographic shift from a white European country, to a diverse and latinized majority by 2050. This is a profound change to our national image.  The “white only” sign on our institutions from the church to the lunch counter have only recently disappeared. We have tended to view minorities as parts of this great nation, and white Europeans to represent the whole.  All of this will change by 2050 with the European being the new minority. Our shaken faith in institutions, and the very soul and character of our nation is leading to great anxiety, if not down right fear of change. And with every great societal change comes the profits of doom seeking to cash in. The Rush Limbaugh’s, Glen Becks, and Fox news.

The most obvious effect of all of this will be the impact of political change over the next 25 years. Our politicians realize that the so called minorities are now becoming politically active and are reluctant to endorse any initiatives that would invite a backlash from nonwhites. The rabid right sees the left as agents bent on the destruction to all they hold dear as they look to new hero’s who understand their anxiety (even if they are the ones raising the level of fear mongering) as it self destructs on its own weight. Glen Beck summed it up with the suggestion that the white man responsible for the worst mass murder in Alabama was “pushed to the wall” because he felt “silenced and disenfranchised by political Correctness. “ .  

With this new demographic will come new groups and profits dedicated to defending the interests and rights of European Americans. Both political parties will be taking up the cause of the oppressed white minority. Race will continue to be the defining cause of our politics. Groups like the Tea Party will cry out for justice and a return to the past. And this brings me to the subject of this piece.

Fear of the future has always kept the conservative philosophy alive. The modern conservative is no different. His fight is with history itself. Glen Beck has developed a large following based on a fear of progressives starting with Woodrow Wilson. He’s the president that gave us the League of Nations, the Federal banking system,  income tax and Probation. Big government at its worse, not to mention the growth of an industrialized nation. Funny thing is that a conservative Republican  government brought us to the brink of our current economic disaster.

So then, how does this new conservative anxiety respond with no heroes to guide them and the very face of the nation changing?  We now see an attack on all the imagined crimes of the progressives from social security to socialized medicine. Tear out the welfare state by the roots, and conjure up the devils of the cold war, “Socialism!”It is our birth rite to live free in an economic state of nature where humans live in harmony with an untainted market. Darwin at his best. Living as our European ancestors did, wiping out the aboriginal inhabitants who would not bend to the concept of private ownership of property, (that also included other humans).

So here is the essence of the revolt against the government stripped bare. Modern civilization with its taxes, regulations, social justice (Jesus said that) and technology, and worse yet, the changing demographic of a multicultural world with no hero’s. For todays frighten conservative the correct model is simplicity itself; it’s every man for himself. The concept that  government exists for the betterment of society, is being replaced by a yearning for the simple days before the industrial revolution when a man was judged by his ability to master the environment with a gun and a plow…Conservatism then, is a revolt against the progress of civilization itself.