The Oops Factor
Lessons Learned vs. Reasonably Foreseen

As citizens pour back into Houston after the passing of Hurricane Rita, reporters note that people are largely ignoring the edicts of public officials with regard to a staggered re-entry. The sad truth is that the victims of malfeasance and mismanagement have simply had enough of their public officials.

Last year people fled the Gulf Coast of Florida between the tornado bands of tropical storm Bonnie and the onslaught of Hurricane Charlie. As they did, Florida continued to collect highway and bridge tolls until irate evacuees used their cell phones to blitz radio talk shows. Even so, when the governor belatedly announced a lifting of tolls, the media allowed him to appear proactive. Charlie then hit a coastal town that had not been evacuated, Punta Gorda.

In New Orleans, there were no school buses, Church buses or Red Cross buses to evacuate the infirmed or the impoverished prior to Katrina. After three days of wandering back and forth in waist high water, victims looked into Fox News cameras as a reporter asked why these confused and exhausted people had not received any directions to shelters, collection points or bottled water. The handheld, boat mounted, truck mounted and helicopter mounted bullhorns were silent.

As tens of thousands of cars poured into evacuation routes outside of Houston, the gas stations had not been topped off. The tanker trucks had not been pre-positioned. The opposing traffic lanes had not been re-configured. As Hurricane Rita advanced towards the Texas coast at nine miles per hour, evacuees averaged three. Despite the ineptitude of evacuation "planners," it was only the persistence of individual drivers that kept them from becoming sitting ducks on the highway.

Each news conference by public officials begins with a self-congratulatory preamble. This is usually followed by the patronage round. These carefully crafted public relations events, though sometimes informative, have also become obfuscation devices. Our self-serving leadership has squandered billions of dollars on new and unnecessary layers of bureaucracy. They have talked of "lessons learned" when the problems were clearly foreseeable to anyone with a modicum of intelligence. How smart must officials be to think of lifting tolls and topping off the gas stations before an evacuation begins.

We, as citizens, are not getting what we pay for. Our pampered executives use tortured, circular logic to justify unconscionable compensation levels for themselves. And yet, our executive class is largely sub-standard. Why does the Red Cross pay one and a half million dollars to retire one executive while paying the next one two and half times what a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court makes? Why, if our airline executives are so good, are fifty percent of the nation's airlines in bankruptcy?

Oil industry executives have operated their infrastructure with no reserve capacity for over a quarter century. They have lined their pockets, and those of their "friends," with money from the investment that was never made. They worked their wholly owned and operated politicians to label ethanol as "subsidized" while the re-flagging of Kuwaiti oil tankers and the protection of mid-east oil fields are not counted as subsidies. Our elected "representatives" have promoted an inverted Darwinism that insures the survival of the un-fittest. Never mind that ethanol blends can be used to cut the petroleum content by as much as ten percent.

The great enablers are integrity challenged politicians that feign concern for the electorate while indulging an insatiable appetite for campaign contributions. Every politician knows there is something inherently dishonest about characterizing Gasohol as heavily subsidized even though petroleum producing companies and nations receive subsidies that, by comparison, dwarf those paid to wheat farmers. The executives, legislators and the watchdog turned lapdog are each party to a conspiracy of silence on the issue of the nation's cooked books.

A highly arrogant and condescending brood of vipers has siphoned off our financial resources as well as our most precious blood. Consumers pay for every oil industry contrivance; including the politically engineered barrier to market entry that has served to stifle innovation and thwart alternative energy initiatives since the oil embargo of the seventies. It is an industry composed of corporations identifying themselves as American for the purpose of collecting corporate welfare, and where they are Cayman Island corporations for the purpose of tax evasion. And, despite their rhetoric, because they view American workers as a liability, they move their customer service operations off shore. They demand loyalty to the corporation while exhibiting no loyalty to their workforce, their country or to humankind. Yes, selfishness has reached reptilian levels in a land where the democratic ideal appears to be three wolves and a sheep deciding on dinner

Where did the money go for Homeland Security? Where is the accountability for the equity draw down of this nation's wealth? Why is the once valued idea of maintaining this country's industrial base no longer fashionable? The false economies associated with building at coastal grade or below sea level, deferring levee upgrades, short changing our population's education or deciding elections on the basis of shallow argument are painfully obvious. Were it possible to conduct an honest, independent audit of the federal government, Enron would look well managed by comparison. But that audit will not be permitted by a parasitic in-crowd actively engaged in skimming our resources.

The spiritual idealism that took this nation from one level of attainment to the next is shunned by today's so-called leadership. There is a big difference between a service minded Clara Barton and her custodial successors. And, in the private sector, any corporate executive that can diddle with the numbers before the next stock holder's meeting is a perfect candidate for today's corrupt political parties. This is what happens when a separation between values enthusiasts and the state is imposed while the Bar Association bridges the branches and exerts its influence to nullify the separation of powers within the state.

There are precise formulas for media buys. Robber barons can easily craft public opinion. This is how a health care debate can be framed as "you and your doctor vs. government run health care." In reality it was about insurance industry run health care vs. government run health care. The corporate media did not challenge the deceit then and it is unlikely to now.

Shape shifters can always get their colleagues elected and their cronies installed. There's always hope for those with more money than brains. Just remember, it's not what you know but who you know. Sooo, we've got a new dance and it goes like this: If you can't beat em, do the Pareto flip! Be on the side that's winning! It's easier. It doesn't require any moral courage at all to champion the cause of the rich and powerful.

The famous economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that: "If a certain measure A is the cause of a loss of one franc to each of a thousand persons, and of a thousand franc gain to one individual, the latter will expend a great deal of energy, whereas the former will resist weakly; and it is likely that, in the end, the person who is attempting to secure the thousand francs via A will be successful."

Sincerity at it's best. A Boeing 747 consumes fuel at a rate of three thousand, six hundred and thirty eight gallons per hour at cruise. And yet, Air Force One was not the only aircraft required for multiple trips in support of an extended series of gulf-coast photo-ops. These became necessary to restore the presidential image. It stands to reason that when a politician refuses to cut his vacation short in the aftermath of a catastrophic event there is an associated cost. So do your duty! The President of the United States has asked you not to buy gas if you don't need it.

Rather than overstress our refinery capacity, we're asking you to yield an hour's jet fuel to the President by not using your Civic Hybrid for the next one hundred eighty one thousand nine hundred miles. Of course if you bought an SUV such as the Hummer, using the tax incentives wisely offered by our government, you need only stay off the highway for the next forty seven thousand, two hundred and ninety seven miles. Remember, self-gratification isn't just for the me generation anymore; it's a matter of national policy!

Oh, and one other thing. To stay the course it's important that your candidate can't articulate the unique value proposition for this country. It's also important that the golden parachutes go to the ones whose only management credentials are related to opinion manipulation. The lead balloons go only to the productive class such as the former pensioners of United Airlines and Enron. - Copyright 2005 Robert H. Kalk

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Self Serving

Members of congress have given themselves seven pay raises since the minimum wage was last raised in 1997. In 1979 a minimum wage worker's earnings were 4.3% above the poverty line. In 2005 the earnings of a mimimum wage worker is 30% below the poverty line.

Politics

Only in America do we use the word 'politics' to describe the process so well: 'Poli' in Greek meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures.'