Kick in the Doors

Al-Qaeda, and its “franchisees” and copycats have been active for some fifteen years, since the first attack on the World Trade Center. All they have shown is they are cunning, unprincipled and stupid. Mostly stupid.

OK, they have managed to knock down the Two Towers, raise holy hell in Mumbai (killing almost 200 people), and do a bunch of other terror. But it gets them nowhere politically.

Even if the objective were to impose a kind of political hostage situation, they would still have to publish demands. Demands that can be met. They don't

Instead, they just kick in doors. They kill a lot of people, and get a lot of people really pissed. And they show they are bad people whose example of how to live is not worth following. Who, even a Muslim, is going to turn over government to a bunch of thugs like these who claim to want to impose “Sharia.”

Sharia is a system of behavior, and both ethical and commercial law based in part on the Quran. From both the implementations of Sharia now in parts of Nigeria and in Afghanistan in the late 90s, it is more about goons imposing their personal fiefdom than a code of behavior. People don’t kick down the door to improve your legal code. They do it to rob and kill.

But they need to recruit thugs, the ones at the top do, so they dazzle prospective recruits with promises to make their lives better. Leaving aside the misogynistic bull about dozens of virgins, many of the prospectives do lead lousy lives or come from places where most people do.

We, the U.S. have not helped end this economic oppression. We kiss the butts of the Saudis who suck treasure out of the backs of their non-royals. We abandoned the Afghanis after they kicked out our enemies, the Russians. And we invaded Iraq. Decades earlier we imposed (thank you, CIA) secret-police government on the Iranians (who are Shiite Muslims, albeit not Arabs). We acted like the bloody Great Satans they called us, kicking in their doors.

So these people, most recently in Mumbai, are hoodlums, but we help their leadership recruit, by our own thuggish behavior. We need to straighten out our own act By that we will make recruitment so much more difficult their AK-47s will turn to rust.

Yakety yak

“Take out the papers and the trash/Or you don't get no spendin' cash/ … /Yakety yak (don't talk back)” (The Coasters, 1958).

This is fitting for wayward teenagers, but I also think for the overpaid and rigid-minded top managers of the Detroit carmakers. For years, their attitude has been, “We’ll make them our way and make the customers buy ‘em.” (If everyone is in lightweight, fuel-efficient cars then you don’t need an SUV to be and feel safe.) Now it’s “The taxpayers are stupid—they’ll just give us the money.” Ain’t gonna happen.

Well I say these companies need to take out the papers—bad labor agreements that promised more for retires than could be delivered—and the trash—the shortsighted managers and Board members. They need lean and mean management that looks forward into the 21st century, not back to the 20th. Or they don’t rock and roll with spending cash from American taxpayers.

The best way is probably through a pre-pack bankruptcy, GM first, rewriting the labor agreements, replacing management and Boards. With their lawyers driving to court in Toyota hybrids.

Fun with Dick and Jane

Dick and Jane are average parents in their early 40s living in a typical successful suburb of D.C. with their children Dirk, 10, and June, 12. Dick is a business lawyer, Jane a dermatologist, and both have thriving practices. Their children love and trust them and honor the moral precepts Dick and Jane have taught them, including honesty and thrift. They are about to be surprised.

Dirk and June will find out that their parents have kept from them that the banks holding their parents’ home mortgage and an equity line of credit have each recently threatened foreclosure because there have been no payments in two months. Nor have Dick and Jane told their kids—of course not—that each has been having an affair, and that each gambles heavily—Dick on the stock market and Jane on horses. Gambling and other living beyond means have consumed the family finances. Still, each parent has just bought a new car . They used money they got from their own parents to make mortgage payments, in turn borrowed on homes long since paid off. They rewarded themselves for their ‘hard work in their professions’ by trading in their year-old cars on new ones. Dirk and June have just found out about all this from other kids in the neighborhood.

Fortunately, this story is an allegory. We are the ones who have been abused and misled, by the captains of the financial and banking industries. Dick and Jane have no hope of renewing their relationship with their children, and their children—although resilient—risk never getting back on an even keel.

The only hope is if Dick and Jane humbly and sincerely beg forgiveness after admitting all they have done.

Still, as an allegory this story tells us what must happen if the American lending system, and hence the entire American economy which depends on it, can be restored. No amount of tinkering with cash infusions, buying out bad assets or other tricks of the economists’ toolbox will succeed, although they are necessary.

No, American bankers and financial CEOs and their cohort must do what Japanese business managers do when they have totally screwed up. They must resign in abject dishonor. They know who they are, and must act voluntarily for the good of the country.

Rituals serve a purpose, and by no means only in Japan . Such an expiation ritual and nothing less—not the blathering routinely served up to Congressional committees --will flush out the emotional toxins and the odors of greed, dishonesty, unearned bonuses and deferred compensation that pervade our economy today.

That would be change everyone could believe in. When we again believe in each other and ourselves, then our economic plight will disappear like miasma in sunlight, but not until.

Open Letter to Baltimore Mayor Dixon

Dear Mayor Dixon:

Apparently Baltimore City thinks it is outside the U.S., like “Camp Freedom” at Guantanimo. Get arrested in the City? Do at least 10 or 12 hours inside the mausoleum known as the Detention Center, incommunicado, without access to counsel. Any other jurisdiction around the state and its 3-4 hours, with access to a lawyer. This way, even if the State’s Attorney enters a Nolle Prosequi you have still been punished. After all, the cops wouldn’t arrest you if you were not guilty, would they?

Bull. The Baltimore cops would bust the people at a costume party for impersonation.

Fine. Your cops keep acting like that and I will keep staying out of the city. I come to concerts at the Meyerhoff maybe half a dozen times a year, and then get the hell out before I get busted for jaywalking or maybe for aiding and abetting someone else’s jaywalking.

Provide state financial help for the City? Forget it. I used to live in the city years ago, and used to have fond feelings. I supported aid to the City.

Until that couple from Pennsylvania got busted a couple years ago near the stadium for getting lost, then “parking” in a no-parking zone while they tried to get someone to direct them to a highway home. They spent half a day in Gitmo on the Patapsco.

Then my daughter got busted on a phony shoplifting rap and got put in Gitmo on the Patapsco. I realized Baltimore had become place to stay the hell away from, a post apocalyptic jungle like in a bad sci-fi movie. Good luck to you. You need it.