Is the economy improving or are we just “muddling through”? Over the last year I’ve tried to note what we should look as reams of economic data are released and then spun by an eager, if naïve press. It’s time to go back and review what’s happening now that data for the end of 2010 is starting to come in.
Monthly Archives: January 2011
Dr. King’s Long Road
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
– The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Every year Dr. King’s Birthday comes around, and every year we have the same talk around the dinner table. My kids don’t feel that in a time when a black man is President there is as much need for Dr. King – the man, the life, the struggle, the values. Every year they want to tell me that this is their day, and they can honor Dr. King by honoring what he has done to make the world what it is, and I have to tell you I am happy for it.
But so much of what I want to tell them is what was not done, can never be, not in one man’s lifetime or in all the lifetime’s of all of us still here on this Earth. The ongoing struggle for a society that is just and decent is eternal.
I Still Like Mike
Who is to blame for the Depression that we find ourselves in? Some bloggers blame the economic stimulus program of Obama, despite it starting before he became President. Others like to point to Bush, on whose watch the big downturn started. Neither of these pat answers sounds all that great when you think about how much influence a President has on the economy, however. Does a nation this big really turn so quickly?
A little bit of analysis shows that if you have to blame policies from Washington, the best place to go is back a full generation – to Ronald Reagan. There are two distinct inflection points in both National Debt and Balance of Trade – what Democrats like Mike Dukkakis used to call the “Twin Deficits” – that clearly point to policy changes from that time.
The 70s
Every New Year, the memory comes back to me as if it happened yesterday. Craig turned to me in homeroom and said, “Can you believe the 70s are nearly over?” 31 years on it seems more like a ghost than a question. But the 70s, as a decade, were a lot more than really bad hair, clothes, and dancing. A lot of interesting things crystallized at this time that define the world we live in now.
Political Violence
A shocking act of political violence has turned our politics in on itself. The attempted murder of a Congresswoman who had endured many threats and survived a number of frightening situations begs to have made sense of it. The gunman appears to be nothing more than a lone nut acting out his own mental illness, but that doesn’t change the pressure placed on our politics by tough, violent talk over the last several years. What can we possibly make of it?
A step back is essential when something like this happens. I’d like to do my part to make sense of what is often called “senseless”.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 