I married into a 1983 Camaro with T-Tops and a crappy electrical system. This car was the calling card that led to me knowing Gary Royster and LB Shepherd. Gary ran a little auto repair business out of a rather large garage behind his house. Gary was an excellent mechanic and serviced most of the people’s cars around Morgan City when they needed work. He usually had four or five cars in the garage and several more parked beside his driveway that were waiting on him to get to them. He was a distant cousin to my new bride as he had somehow married into the same rather extended clan as well. I was to learn right after I met her that most of Morgan City, Lacey’s Springs, and Union Grove was at least partially kin to this same clan. I could never keep up with how but we were always running into someone I had never met that was a distant cousin of hers.
As her car was often in need of service, I got to know Gary pretty well over the next couple of years. I could work on my own vehicles with enough expertise to fix basic problems but I also came to depend on Gary for keeping my own vehicles running when I couldn’t figure out that problem myself. Gary was rather small and trim, maybe 5’6” or so with very dark eyes and eyebrows under reddish blonde hair. He always had a greasy cap on his head and usually had a pair of blue coveralls on that were more or less covered in dirt and grease. He walked quickly with a kind of natural athletic grace to his step. Whatever quickness there was to Gary in his physical movements, he offset this with the slow deliberateness of his conversation. He always seemed to take a very long time to respond to any question; as if he were turning it over and over in his mind to find the best handle to grab it by before he even considered answering the question. There was ALWAYS a long pause between questions and answers, no matter what kind of question; even if it was just to ask him how he was doing. It wasn’t that he was slow witted, he was just very careful how he handled conversation.
He kept an ever-present rag in his pocket that always came out to wipe his hands on before he did anything. I can still see it appearing almost magically in his hand every time he set a tool down or started into any sort of activity out from under a car hood. His hands were small and square with the promise of the confidence he had whenever anything mechanical came into his immediate possession. I got to know Gary pretty well in the next few years as the Camaro was a poorly designed piece of engineering that we continually threw money at to keep running.
LB Shepherd was a good friend of Gary's and to say he was a character is putting it mildly. He ran a little auto parts store right beside his house on the outskirts of Morgan City. It was on the right side of Highway 231 where the Union Grove Road split off of to go to Scant City. LB was in his early sixties when I met him and had been running that auto parts store for many years then. It was very small and packed full of parts of every kind. When you walked in the front door you wondered how anyone could find anything in that mess but LB knew right where everything was and he usually immediately knew if he had the part you needed once he had it “isolated”. LB was big on isolation of problems. I think that was his favorite thing in the world really, as he was always a little disappointed if you came in the door knowing what part you needed. He wanted to help you “isolate” the problem.
If he couldn’t “isolate” the problem he would pick up the phone and call Gary Royster to get his help. It was kind of like having an expert on speed dial. The problem was that they usually disagreed at first. LB would often figure out what he thought the issue was but call Gary to confirm his suspicion. This was fine if Gary agreed but when he didn’t agree it could get complicated and take a while with them “discussing” over the phone.
A typical “isolation” issue with LB would involve someone coming in the store with a car issue of one kind or another. LB’s front door had one of those little bells on the top of it that rang whenever someone opened the door. No matter what else was going on this bell ringing was quickly followed by LB dropping whatever he was doing to assure the potential customer that he would “Be with him directly.”
“Directly” wasn’t a specific measure of time as much as it was an expression of intent. In other words, LB intended on helping them as soon as whatever present issue he was battling with was taken care of. Whenever this was accomplished, whether it was stocking the coke machine with bottles or helping another customer LB would smile directly at the customer and say “What can I help you with?”
LB was around 5’4” tall and probably very nearly was wide as he was tall. He carried a little bit of a belly but he was mostly just wide. He always wore green work pants and rubber soled black shoes with the thin little laces n them. He usually had on a clean little windbreaker jacket and a collared, thin-cotton plaid shirt under it He had thinning slicked back hair, a rather large and prominent nose and friendly light colored eyes that seemed to be either laughing or getting ready to laugh all the time. He gave the impression of someone who thought everything was funny and for the most part I think that was true with the possible exception of when he was trying to “isolate” a problem.
He also talked with an accent that was pure Morgan City. If there was any doubt where he was from it was only from people who didn’t know what a Morgan City accent sounded like. He moved quickly like he was always in a hurry and kept a whole counter full of those old auto parts books that only exist in computer hard drives today. The books were on a raised metal platform and seemed to have thousands of pages crammed together into each book that measured some 24 inches across. LB had worn the pages thin thumbing through them referencing parts to models and makes but he knew them so well it never took him long to find the correct page once he had “isolated” the problem.
A typical “isolation” issue would start out as follows:
Customer- I got a 74 Ford Galaxy with a V8 in it. It’s missing a little bit when I start up a hill.
LB- “302 Windsor?”
Customer- “Yes”
LB- “What kind of a miss is it?”
Customer- “Well…. it just stutters when I mash the gas pedal sometimes, usually on a hill. “
LB-“What you done to it so far?”
Customer- “I checked the plugs and plug wires but I’m not sure if it’s electrical or a fuel issue.”
LB- “Where you get your gas?”
Customer- “Always the same place. I run the same gas in my truck too so I don’t think it’s bad.”
LB- “OK…. What’s she sound like?”
This is where the conversation would start to get surreal. LB put great store in what things sound like. He was always concerned about vacuum leaks on carburetors. I think he had been stumped bad on a vacuum leak one time and had never gotten over it. He was forever suspicious of vacuum leaks after that. If you were a regular customer you knew to be prepared to mimic the sound that the car made when the problem occurred. If you weren’t, you usually had to get him to repeat his question so you could compute why anyone would ask such a question.
LB- “Does it wheeze?”
This question would be followed by his best impression of a vacuum leak.
LB- “WHhhhhhhhh…..” with his lips pursed together while he sucked in air as loudly as he could.
Customer- “Uh… no, I didn’t hear anything like that?”
LB- “Well you are lucky then. Them little vacuum leaks can be the very devil himself to find”
LB- “Does she jerk and grunt real hard when she starts missing?”
This question would be followed by LB jerking his head up and down while he grunted violently “UNH, UNH, UNH”
LB-“Or is more like a soft little rounded off stutter?”
This question would be followed by a slow craning in and out of his neck, “Mm…Mm…. Mm”
Customer- (Assuming they weren’t standing there with their mouth open in distress from LB’s emphatic gyrations) “Well…. I think it’s closer to the second one.”
LB- Scratching his head as he thought about it for a second or two. “74 Galaxie Windsor. Good gas. Good plugs. No vacuum leaks that we know of. And, Mm…Mm…Mm on the hills.” As he repeated the slow craning in and out of his neck while he scratched his head and looked at the floor.
LB- “Well. I can’t be certain but I do believe I’ve got it isolated. Let me call someone; just to check my figuring.” He would say as he headed for the phone on the counter.
With this pronouncement he would walk to the phone and call Gary Royster. I have been a witness to both sides of this conversation. I have been in Gary’s shop when LB would call and I have been in LB’s shop when he would call Gary and it always amazed me that neither one of them thought anything out of the way about their conversations. Gary never seemed to mind LB calling and LB never said anything in the way of greeting when he did.
LB- “Man’s got a 74 Galaxie V8 that’s missing on hills. No WHHhhhhh that he can hear, good gas, and she doesn’t Unh, Unh, Unh; but something like this. Mm….Mm…Mm…. and she doesn’t do it all the time… Fuel filter? I’d say partially clogged.”
There was always a long pause then, on both sides of the line. Gary didn’t answer anything quick; especially if it had to do with troubleshooting a car problem. If Gary agreed with the “isolation” he would eventually say “could be”. “Could be” was a strong affirmation. There was also the longer pause and “Mebby”. “Mebby” meant maybe but not with a lot of conviction. Either of these would usually be followed by LB either saying thank you are going into some more clues to the riddle that he might have left off hoping for a “Could be” response.
What LB didn’t want to hear was the dreaded “Couldn’t say”. “Couldn’t say” was Gary speak for “I don’t think so but you do what you think is best.” I never knew of Gary saying LB was wrong or even suggesting something else that could be the issue but he may have done it when I wasn’t around. Usually when they didn’t agree as to the root cause, LB would simply keep making possible suggestions until he got a “Mebby” out of Gary. This could take a while, between LB’s mimicking of every possible car a sound could make and Gary’s long pauses while he considered things inside out.
All of this would play out in LB’s store whether he had one person waiting or 5 people waiting. He didn’t mind selling you a new belt or a set of spark plugs but he loved “isolating” problems. The truth is that he was pretty good at it too. He helped me out on more than one occasion by insisting that we “isolate” the problem before he sold me a part. If you were in a hurry you probably shouldn’t be in LB Shepherd’s Auto Parts to begin with.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Friday, January 6, 2017
Political Leanings
I grew up in a very independent minded way. I questioned conventional wisdoms almost from the very beginning. If things didn't ultimately make sense with what I saw all around me, I wanted to know why. If things didn't seem to meet my expectations of what I thought was fair I wanted to know why. This need to know, the hunger to know why things actually function in the way that they do has been a constant in my thinking for as along as I can remember. It has driven my working life and my personal life in ways that seem quite natural to me but are often seen as incomprehensible by others. I can't say that I am completely unconcerned with what others think about me but it has never been enough of a concern for me to go against my own judgment of situations to accommodate anyone else's opinion about it.
This constant questioning of why has manifested itself in many different ways in my life. Some of them have not been comfortable or easy. I didn't go to college because there was nothing it offered me that I felt I couldn't learn on my own and I have always much preferred to learn on my own. In just the last few years I learned that there is a term for this mentality or approach; it is called autodidactism. An autodidact prefers to learn in an informal environment, usually outside of group settings. In my case I have always learned in this manner. In school, I would listen in class but I did my learning by myself; carefully going over the material in my own solitude without outside interference or input. I have always retained knowledge better in this manner. It is simply what works best for me and I suspect there are more people with this tendency than our educational systems realize but that is a subject for another day.
I was in high school when I first became interested enough in politics to pay attention to elections. I can remember local politics and Alabama State politics from much earlier but wasn't really interested enough to dig down into issues for my own understanding. I knew quite a bit about certain subjects that interested me but it was more from a historical perspective than any political ideology. Both my father and mother voted but I can't honestly say how they voted in any election; I think they believed it to be a duty having to do with living in a democratic form of government. I remember meeting some people in high school who were very politically oriented and were active supporters of Ronald Reagan in his first run for the president in 1976. When Ford won the nomination I remember being confused when these same people began actively supporting him over Jimmy Carter. It seemed strange to me that people who had been so adamantly against Ford just a few weeks previously were now overwhelmingly for him. It seemed somehow dishonest to me. It also was my first recognition that party politics are problematic.
I wasn't a big fan of Carter at the time. He seemed pious and placating and I had my own issues with organized religion by then that led me to believe he wouldn't be a good president. Carter proved to be a better president than I thought he would be. I admired his stance on human rights and the idea that our foreign policy should be a better reflection of our basic support of human rights. I believe he is one of the more honest national politicians we have had the privelege of having in office in my lifetime. I also believe that his inability to delegate and his detail oriented approach to policy often got in the way of his success but these are opinions I formed a long time afterwards. What I felt at the time was the same thing most everyone else did; the long term results of some very bad economic policy decisions by the Federal Reserve. These decisions led to the Fed's successful campaign to eradicate inflation at the expense of employment and growth. While this campaign was ultimately a success it was an economic recession producing policy that made jobs scarce and interest rates very high.
In the 1980 election, I was paying even less attention to politics. I was struggling to get started in a career as an electrician in an economy where construction was almost non-existant. While I wasn't naive enough to believe that it was Carter's policies alone that had led to this situation, I couldn't see where his policies were doing a lot to alleviate the situation either. If anyone asked me who I was supporting, I would tell them John B. Anderson. Not because I supported his policy goals but because he wasn't running as a Republican or a Democrat and I had some vague notion that party politics were the real cause of the problems we were experiencing but I didn't really know how that was happening.
When the economy turned around in the mid eighties I was happy about it like everyone else. I didn't pay much attention to politics throughout most of the eighties as I had little interest. I felt like my vote didn't matter very much in the long run and was pretty disgusted with what I saw as a power struggle between two parties that really favored little except their own advancement and continued power. I had little or no understanding of the real levers of power in this country that were running both parties from behind the scenes.
I paid more attention during the Clinton years but wasn't too happy with what I saw. Clinton seemed the ultimate politician with little or no real principle but an overwhelmingly strong drive for power. I remember hearing him described as the trial balloon master; put out some feelers, look at poll data and then decide what you believe in as a policy. I still think this is a pretty accurate description of Bill Clinton. It seemed to me that conservatives hated him as much for his success as any perceived policy positions that he took. His second term was, in my opinion the first steps toward the disaster that was to become the fiscal collapse of 2008 were taken by Clinton when he started deregulating the banking industry in ways that had not been done since the Great Depression.
I didn't recognize this at the time of course. When Bush II ran for president I was a lukewarm supporter. I never cared much for Al Gore as he seemed to slick by far. I became very interested in the election snafu in Florida. The case interested me because it was so unique. It was the first time in my lifetime that an election had been close enough to possibly be decided in the Supreme Court. Having researched the state supreme court's decision in Florida it seemed pretty obvious to me that Bush II would prevail as the ruling simply said you couldn't change the recount rules DURING an election. This made perfect sense to me and I didn't see it as a way to steal and election; just a way to make sure that the rules in effect at the start of an election are in place when the elections is decided.
I always thought Bush II was something of a buffoon and a bumbling idiot. I just liked him better than Gore. I had no party affiliation at the time and was adamantly opposed to the idea of blindly supporting a party in the first place. When 9-11 happened a lot of things began to change in my thinking. I suppose this is true for a lot of people but probably not in the same way that I was changing. I felt like we had to respond to that action with overwhelming force against the people who had been responsible for it. I was also not completely convinced that we responded against all the people who had been responsible for it. The Taliban in Afghanistan were obviously supporting Bin Laden and had to go accordingly. I had no issue with the actions we took there. Iraq I was much less sure about. After reading the official 9-11 report later I am now convinced that the other prominent actor in the scenario was Saudi Arabia. At the time of the Iraqi invasion I didn't see it as a terribly bad idea to get rid of Hussein. He was obviously a continuing problem in the middle east and I equated it to putting down a mad dog. If you see a mad dog in your neighbors yard do you have to wait for him to come into your yard before you put him down?
I became interested enough to delve more deeply into the long term policies that had led to 9-11. I was amazed that almost no politician in the national view tried to do the same thing. The fact of the situation is that US foreign policy in the middle east since WWII in support of our dependence on foreign oil has been a long term disaster. We have again and again supported dictatorial leaders who continuously abused their own people simply because they would sell us oil. The troubles in Iran, the troubles in Iraq, the troubles in Afghanistan, can all be traced to US foreign policy decisions in the middle east that were all put in place for two reasons. The first is our need for a large and uninterrupted flow of oil from the region and the second goes back to our long term cold war policies against any regime that became an ally of the USSR.
Add in our continuous and unquestioning support of some regimes in Israel that have attacked other nations in the region and have continually ignored UN rulings concerning lands they have taken over by force and we have long been the worst enemy of a very large contingent of downtrodden people all over the middle east. We are continually surprised that these people hate the US so much when in fact we have given them every reason to do so by propagating foreign policy that supports their oppressors in every possible way. Until we start to understand this reality and take it into account in our foreign policy decisions in the middle east this will not change.
We need an energy policy that removes our dependence on foreign oil. We have needed one for at least 40 years in a very desperate way but are no closer to having one than we were in 1976. Through a large amount of government support and research we have managed to learn how to frack oil and remove it from areas that were once thought to be too hard to get to in order to be economically viable as sources of energy. While this is a good thing in case of national emergency, it is not economically responsible to suggest that oil that costs $65- $75 a barrel to get out of the ground can compete in an open market with oil that costs $12 -$15 dollars a barrel to get out of the ground in the middle east. Add in the fact that the more expensive fracked oil is also more expensive to refine and the picture becomes even clearer. It is not a viable solution in today's market. The OPEC nations just conclusively proved that once again by opening the taps of their supply wide enough to destroy this nasccent enterprise in the US. They have done the same thing on several different occasions when the US have attempted to relieve our dependence on foreign oil through infrastructure development in renewable energy sources. They want us dependent on their oil. It gives them power and wealth and none of the major suppliers in the middle east want to see that change. There are solutions to this problem but we don't seem interested in pursuing them at the moment because a lot of US corporations are also dependent on this same system for their power and wealth.
Doing research after the invasion of Iraq by US forces, I am now convinced that the whole thing was a disastrous mistake. This doesn't excuse the fact that myself nor most other Americans recognized it at the time. A lot of the leading actors in the Bush II administration had been in favor of such an invasion long before 9-11 because they felt it was necessary to remove Hussein and they also believed that we could use Iraqi oil to change the dynamic with OPEC. With the collapse of the USSR this policy became even more attractive to this same group as they believed they could now do this unilaterally without interference. Several of the top people in the administration also directly profited from this venture. Largescale efforts to privatize the US support services in Iraq directly enriched both the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense amongst others. No bid multi-million dollar contracts for such support services were handed out like Halloween candy to many top Republican operatives throughout the war. While a certain amount of this type of activity has often come to the fore in US military actions, we have seldom, if ever, seen it done so blatantly from top administration officials.
Then came the economic collapse of 2008. Not only had the Bush II administration involved us in 2 wars that they hadn't bothered to pay for, they also managed to continue to de-regulate the banking industry and ignore all the warning signs that a certain amount of regulation is necessary in order for free markets to avoid becoming rigged games that reward those in charge while they defraud everyone else. The unlimited free markets crowd has still not recognized this very basic fact of economics. What the large banking interests in the US did in the years leading up to the collapse was criminal. Designing, packaging and selling knowingly worthless financial instruments to their customers is the very definition of fraud. Add to that the fact that they then went and designed other financial instruments that were solely and strictly designed to allow them to profit when all the fraudulent instruments collapsed world markets and you have a complete circle of criminal behavior that they profited obscenely in setting up and then profited obscenely in watching it collapse.
In many ways, the fiscal collapse changed my political views more than any of these other events. I simply couldn't understand what was happening to our economy in 2007-2008. It didn't make sense why the problem was so prevalent or why the dollar amounts needed to curb it were so massive. I spent most of the ensuing period studying economics. I wanted to understand what had happened. In the process I learned a lot of things that I simply didn't know before. The Federal Reserve's influence on the economy, how ratings systems work, how derivatives work, what the shadow banking industry is, the difference between banks and investment houses, how the government subsidizes mortgages but still allows private entities to profit from this subsidization, the list goes on and on. Each new discovery also pointed to five more avenues that led to other discoveries. I understand what happened now and have written about it pretty extensively in this blog. See "What Really Happened.... a virtual tale" for a condensed version.
This understanding has forever changed my political views as well. I shape all my voting decisions around the understanding of which party is most opposed to this type of activity. I see the financial industry and its continuing efforts to carry out this type of activity as the greatest danger to the survival of our country today. Not only the US economy, but the world economy is dependent on getting these people under control and keeping this from happening on that scale again. Most people don't understand that we still have not paid for the hole they put us in financially. The huge federal deficit and the unprecedented debt that the Federal Reserve has taken on to keep things afloat is still there. As our economy slowly begins to revive people don't understand how fragile the US economy still is because of these realities. We don't have the means of carrying out another bailout, we spent all our reserves and most of our international credit as the economic engine of the world keeping us from total collapse since 2008.
This isn't the only issue that I care about. It is the one I believe we have to take care of or face collapse. If the full faith and credit of the US government collapses none of the other issues we all care about will matter as a nation because we will cease to exist as a nation. Our world position has always depended on our economic strength and we face the very real possibility of destroying that forever with another such collapse. Meanwhile, the large banks and financial institutions that designed the disaster and grew even larger as a result of it have managed to increase their political control over the only entity that is a natural check or balance on their power; the US government. They have placed one of their own directly in charge of the US Treasury. At least the Republican president elect has nominated him for that position. This man participated in the development of the financial instruments that were worthless. He profited obscenely from the sale of these instruments and then later profited obscenely from the destruction of a lot of homeowners who got caught up in the mortgage debacle that resulted. He profited obscenely from government bailouts of the very entities that caused the disaster. There is absolutely no reason to believe that he will now act responsibly in trying to clean up the mess he helped create and became very rich designing.
There are a lot of reasons to believe that we have now put the foxes completely in charge of the henhouses that the government is supposed to protect. The US government is the only entity that is large and powerful enough to oppose these forces and we have just handed it to someone who is steadily putting the very people who oppose government control in charge of the offices designed to provide government control. Look across the board at Trump's designated department head appointees and you will see that in almost every case they have a long history of fighting against the regulatory agency they have been designated to lead.
The people have spoken. Now let them try to live with what they asked for. I sincerely hope this administration doesn't destroy what is left of the US economy but I also believe that they will inevitably advance towards that destruction because of the very nature of the people who are leading it. They believe we need to further weaken the government's power to regulate industry. Like anything else there is a fine balance between too much and not enough regulation. It seems obvious to me that we have erred much too much on the side of deregulation when it comes to most US industries. It is beyond question that this is the case with the financial industry.
This constant questioning of why has manifested itself in many different ways in my life. Some of them have not been comfortable or easy. I didn't go to college because there was nothing it offered me that I felt I couldn't learn on my own and I have always much preferred to learn on my own. In just the last few years I learned that there is a term for this mentality or approach; it is called autodidactism. An autodidact prefers to learn in an informal environment, usually outside of group settings. In my case I have always learned in this manner. In school, I would listen in class but I did my learning by myself; carefully going over the material in my own solitude without outside interference or input. I have always retained knowledge better in this manner. It is simply what works best for me and I suspect there are more people with this tendency than our educational systems realize but that is a subject for another day.
I was in high school when I first became interested enough in politics to pay attention to elections. I can remember local politics and Alabama State politics from much earlier but wasn't really interested enough to dig down into issues for my own understanding. I knew quite a bit about certain subjects that interested me but it was more from a historical perspective than any political ideology. Both my father and mother voted but I can't honestly say how they voted in any election; I think they believed it to be a duty having to do with living in a democratic form of government. I remember meeting some people in high school who were very politically oriented and were active supporters of Ronald Reagan in his first run for the president in 1976. When Ford won the nomination I remember being confused when these same people began actively supporting him over Jimmy Carter. It seemed strange to me that people who had been so adamantly against Ford just a few weeks previously were now overwhelmingly for him. It seemed somehow dishonest to me. It also was my first recognition that party politics are problematic.
I wasn't a big fan of Carter at the time. He seemed pious and placating and I had my own issues with organized religion by then that led me to believe he wouldn't be a good president. Carter proved to be a better president than I thought he would be. I admired his stance on human rights and the idea that our foreign policy should be a better reflection of our basic support of human rights. I believe he is one of the more honest national politicians we have had the privelege of having in office in my lifetime. I also believe that his inability to delegate and his detail oriented approach to policy often got in the way of his success but these are opinions I formed a long time afterwards. What I felt at the time was the same thing most everyone else did; the long term results of some very bad economic policy decisions by the Federal Reserve. These decisions led to the Fed's successful campaign to eradicate inflation at the expense of employment and growth. While this campaign was ultimately a success it was an economic recession producing policy that made jobs scarce and interest rates very high.
In the 1980 election, I was paying even less attention to politics. I was struggling to get started in a career as an electrician in an economy where construction was almost non-existant. While I wasn't naive enough to believe that it was Carter's policies alone that had led to this situation, I couldn't see where his policies were doing a lot to alleviate the situation either. If anyone asked me who I was supporting, I would tell them John B. Anderson. Not because I supported his policy goals but because he wasn't running as a Republican or a Democrat and I had some vague notion that party politics were the real cause of the problems we were experiencing but I didn't really know how that was happening.
When the economy turned around in the mid eighties I was happy about it like everyone else. I didn't pay much attention to politics throughout most of the eighties as I had little interest. I felt like my vote didn't matter very much in the long run and was pretty disgusted with what I saw as a power struggle between two parties that really favored little except their own advancement and continued power. I had little or no understanding of the real levers of power in this country that were running both parties from behind the scenes.
I paid more attention during the Clinton years but wasn't too happy with what I saw. Clinton seemed the ultimate politician with little or no real principle but an overwhelmingly strong drive for power. I remember hearing him described as the trial balloon master; put out some feelers, look at poll data and then decide what you believe in as a policy. I still think this is a pretty accurate description of Bill Clinton. It seemed to me that conservatives hated him as much for his success as any perceived policy positions that he took. His second term was, in my opinion the first steps toward the disaster that was to become the fiscal collapse of 2008 were taken by Clinton when he started deregulating the banking industry in ways that had not been done since the Great Depression.
I didn't recognize this at the time of course. When Bush II ran for president I was a lukewarm supporter. I never cared much for Al Gore as he seemed to slick by far. I became very interested in the election snafu in Florida. The case interested me because it was so unique. It was the first time in my lifetime that an election had been close enough to possibly be decided in the Supreme Court. Having researched the state supreme court's decision in Florida it seemed pretty obvious to me that Bush II would prevail as the ruling simply said you couldn't change the recount rules DURING an election. This made perfect sense to me and I didn't see it as a way to steal and election; just a way to make sure that the rules in effect at the start of an election are in place when the elections is decided.
I always thought Bush II was something of a buffoon and a bumbling idiot. I just liked him better than Gore. I had no party affiliation at the time and was adamantly opposed to the idea of blindly supporting a party in the first place. When 9-11 happened a lot of things began to change in my thinking. I suppose this is true for a lot of people but probably not in the same way that I was changing. I felt like we had to respond to that action with overwhelming force against the people who had been responsible for it. I was also not completely convinced that we responded against all the people who had been responsible for it. The Taliban in Afghanistan were obviously supporting Bin Laden and had to go accordingly. I had no issue with the actions we took there. Iraq I was much less sure about. After reading the official 9-11 report later I am now convinced that the other prominent actor in the scenario was Saudi Arabia. At the time of the Iraqi invasion I didn't see it as a terribly bad idea to get rid of Hussein. He was obviously a continuing problem in the middle east and I equated it to putting down a mad dog. If you see a mad dog in your neighbors yard do you have to wait for him to come into your yard before you put him down?
I became interested enough to delve more deeply into the long term policies that had led to 9-11. I was amazed that almost no politician in the national view tried to do the same thing. The fact of the situation is that US foreign policy in the middle east since WWII in support of our dependence on foreign oil has been a long term disaster. We have again and again supported dictatorial leaders who continuously abused their own people simply because they would sell us oil. The troubles in Iran, the troubles in Iraq, the troubles in Afghanistan, can all be traced to US foreign policy decisions in the middle east that were all put in place for two reasons. The first is our need for a large and uninterrupted flow of oil from the region and the second goes back to our long term cold war policies against any regime that became an ally of the USSR.
Add in our continuous and unquestioning support of some regimes in Israel that have attacked other nations in the region and have continually ignored UN rulings concerning lands they have taken over by force and we have long been the worst enemy of a very large contingent of downtrodden people all over the middle east. We are continually surprised that these people hate the US so much when in fact we have given them every reason to do so by propagating foreign policy that supports their oppressors in every possible way. Until we start to understand this reality and take it into account in our foreign policy decisions in the middle east this will not change.
We need an energy policy that removes our dependence on foreign oil. We have needed one for at least 40 years in a very desperate way but are no closer to having one than we were in 1976. Through a large amount of government support and research we have managed to learn how to frack oil and remove it from areas that were once thought to be too hard to get to in order to be economically viable as sources of energy. While this is a good thing in case of national emergency, it is not economically responsible to suggest that oil that costs $65- $75 a barrel to get out of the ground can compete in an open market with oil that costs $12 -$15 dollars a barrel to get out of the ground in the middle east. Add in the fact that the more expensive fracked oil is also more expensive to refine and the picture becomes even clearer. It is not a viable solution in today's market. The OPEC nations just conclusively proved that once again by opening the taps of their supply wide enough to destroy this nasccent enterprise in the US. They have done the same thing on several different occasions when the US have attempted to relieve our dependence on foreign oil through infrastructure development in renewable energy sources. They want us dependent on their oil. It gives them power and wealth and none of the major suppliers in the middle east want to see that change. There are solutions to this problem but we don't seem interested in pursuing them at the moment because a lot of US corporations are also dependent on this same system for their power and wealth.
Doing research after the invasion of Iraq by US forces, I am now convinced that the whole thing was a disastrous mistake. This doesn't excuse the fact that myself nor most other Americans recognized it at the time. A lot of the leading actors in the Bush II administration had been in favor of such an invasion long before 9-11 because they felt it was necessary to remove Hussein and they also believed that we could use Iraqi oil to change the dynamic with OPEC. With the collapse of the USSR this policy became even more attractive to this same group as they believed they could now do this unilaterally without interference. Several of the top people in the administration also directly profited from this venture. Largescale efforts to privatize the US support services in Iraq directly enriched both the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense amongst others. No bid multi-million dollar contracts for such support services were handed out like Halloween candy to many top Republican operatives throughout the war. While a certain amount of this type of activity has often come to the fore in US military actions, we have seldom, if ever, seen it done so blatantly from top administration officials.
Then came the economic collapse of 2008. Not only had the Bush II administration involved us in 2 wars that they hadn't bothered to pay for, they also managed to continue to de-regulate the banking industry and ignore all the warning signs that a certain amount of regulation is necessary in order for free markets to avoid becoming rigged games that reward those in charge while they defraud everyone else. The unlimited free markets crowd has still not recognized this very basic fact of economics. What the large banking interests in the US did in the years leading up to the collapse was criminal. Designing, packaging and selling knowingly worthless financial instruments to their customers is the very definition of fraud. Add to that the fact that they then went and designed other financial instruments that were solely and strictly designed to allow them to profit when all the fraudulent instruments collapsed world markets and you have a complete circle of criminal behavior that they profited obscenely in setting up and then profited obscenely in watching it collapse.
In many ways, the fiscal collapse changed my political views more than any of these other events. I simply couldn't understand what was happening to our economy in 2007-2008. It didn't make sense why the problem was so prevalent or why the dollar amounts needed to curb it were so massive. I spent most of the ensuing period studying economics. I wanted to understand what had happened. In the process I learned a lot of things that I simply didn't know before. The Federal Reserve's influence on the economy, how ratings systems work, how derivatives work, what the shadow banking industry is, the difference between banks and investment houses, how the government subsidizes mortgages but still allows private entities to profit from this subsidization, the list goes on and on. Each new discovery also pointed to five more avenues that led to other discoveries. I understand what happened now and have written about it pretty extensively in this blog. See "What Really Happened.... a virtual tale" for a condensed version.
This understanding has forever changed my political views as well. I shape all my voting decisions around the understanding of which party is most opposed to this type of activity. I see the financial industry and its continuing efforts to carry out this type of activity as the greatest danger to the survival of our country today. Not only the US economy, but the world economy is dependent on getting these people under control and keeping this from happening on that scale again. Most people don't understand that we still have not paid for the hole they put us in financially. The huge federal deficit and the unprecedented debt that the Federal Reserve has taken on to keep things afloat is still there. As our economy slowly begins to revive people don't understand how fragile the US economy still is because of these realities. We don't have the means of carrying out another bailout, we spent all our reserves and most of our international credit as the economic engine of the world keeping us from total collapse since 2008.
This isn't the only issue that I care about. It is the one I believe we have to take care of or face collapse. If the full faith and credit of the US government collapses none of the other issues we all care about will matter as a nation because we will cease to exist as a nation. Our world position has always depended on our economic strength and we face the very real possibility of destroying that forever with another such collapse. Meanwhile, the large banks and financial institutions that designed the disaster and grew even larger as a result of it have managed to increase their political control over the only entity that is a natural check or balance on their power; the US government. They have placed one of their own directly in charge of the US Treasury. At least the Republican president elect has nominated him for that position. This man participated in the development of the financial instruments that were worthless. He profited obscenely from the sale of these instruments and then later profited obscenely from the destruction of a lot of homeowners who got caught up in the mortgage debacle that resulted. He profited obscenely from government bailouts of the very entities that caused the disaster. There is absolutely no reason to believe that he will now act responsibly in trying to clean up the mess he helped create and became very rich designing.
There are a lot of reasons to believe that we have now put the foxes completely in charge of the henhouses that the government is supposed to protect. The US government is the only entity that is large and powerful enough to oppose these forces and we have just handed it to someone who is steadily putting the very people who oppose government control in charge of the offices designed to provide government control. Look across the board at Trump's designated department head appointees and you will see that in almost every case they have a long history of fighting against the regulatory agency they have been designated to lead.
The people have spoken. Now let them try to live with what they asked for. I sincerely hope this administration doesn't destroy what is left of the US economy but I also believe that they will inevitably advance towards that destruction because of the very nature of the people who are leading it. They believe we need to further weaken the government's power to regulate industry. Like anything else there is a fine balance between too much and not enough regulation. It seems obvious to me that we have erred much too much on the side of deregulation when it comes to most US industries. It is beyond question that this is the case with the financial industry.
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