One Dangerous World

War, terrorism, political famines, acts of God and random crimes. We live in a very dangerous world.

But even if we have to be on guard, most of us still try to live.

No one can know when they could get caught up in events where their very survival will be on the line.

You can drive defensively ans still be involved in a crash; you can eyeball all 150 people who board a crowded train car and still become a victim of collateral damage when and if something happens; you cannot make a storm change course by the force of your will.

But you can decide to live without fear.

For most of my young life I knew governments, the United States, the Soviet Union and others, could blow up the world.

Today the talk about limited nuclear war. Some extremely well armed countries are dealing with internal strife that could spiral into civil wars.

Who ultimately will control their weapons or keep up with their technology is anybody's guess.

We live in a very dangerous world, and while I may think about it, I am much too busy living life to worry about all the possibilities. 

Perhaps we will be here to see tomorrow, but maybe not.

What Exactly Do They Mean

There are huge differences between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives.

Fiscal conservatives often whine about domestic spending.  Public education, taxpayer supported health care, job training and economic development are generally bad ideas.

Social conservatives talk a lot about freedoms even as they try to force their views on the rest of us.

They want to peek inside your doctor's office and dictate what services you can get.  They want to put certain material into the classrooms and revise textbooks to eliminate realities they find objectionable.  They want to look into your bedroom and tell you who and how to love. 

Some of those desires may seem peculiar or invasive, even to people who live really dull lives.  But social conservatives are scary for other reasons.

All this talk about returning America to the values that the founding fathers intended. They draw their loudest applause when they talk about restoring, not creating, freedoms we've enjoyed in the past. They contend these things were never intended by the founding fathers.


They insist they love the U.S. Constitution, yet they object or condemn some of its most wonderful tenets.  They consider the role of the federal judiciary, by its very mandate, charged with interpreting the constitutionality of federal laws, reactionary and warranting restrictions and greater controls.


The question numerous pieces of legislation designed to ensure constitutional protections for all parties, both citizen and visitor. And they lament actions taken by Congress and affirmed by majorities of the legislatures of the states which alter the laws of the land and grow our Constitution as a living document.

When they talk about returning the nation to some unidentified past, what do they they really mean? Could it be they want a time when most if not all supervisors and people of power were white and male?

Are they seeking a time when women of any color or nationality had no real power and even their rights to property were based upon the whims of their fathers or husbands? Do they long for a time when immigrants, documented or not, were subject to exploitation and had few opportunities to seek relief in the courts?


Perhaps they wish to return to those times when law abiding people of varied backgrounds could be denied their franchise or dispossessed because of their race, gender, ethnic origin, religion, physical impairment or sexual orientation?


The danger here is that no one ever really explains what they mean when people considered the most promising conservative politicians start waxing nostalgically about the values of the past.  That's scary!

Opportunity in America is far less exclusive than it was even a few short years, and definitely a couple of decades ago. What may be the good old days for some seems like a return to a past with limited choices for a heck of a lot of Americans.

Sweet Memories

 Baby Boomers have lost a bit of their childhood. City, country, North or South, some things are part of our collective memory, and Nello Ferrara had a lot to do with that.

You may not know the name, but on the side of little boxes that likely were among the first things we ever purchased for ourselves, was the name Ferrara Pan Candy Co. If you still do not know what I am talking about, think Lemonheads, Atomic Fireballs, Redhots, or Boston Baked Beans.

Nello Ferrara passed away at his home outside of Chicago , Feb. 3.  He was 93.  It was Ferrara who led the company that came up each of these products. Some of them date back to the 1930s, and were enjoyed by the Great Depression era kids, when they were probably a penny for a little square of paper tied with a string.

He developed Atomic Fireballs after serving in Post War Japan. 

We all had our favorites. We bought the nickel boxes, looked for them inside the candy counter of the Saturday matinee, and wished without hope that the Easter Bunny would bring them instead of those ordinary Jelly Beans.

They became our comfort foods... Not something healthy our moms, aunts or grandmothers made, but something we bought from the first people we did business with using money out of our own pockets.

Even today, some of us will keep a few around. We will fib and say "they are for the grandchildren" but we have moments when we will put three or five or ei in our mouths and savor memories from childhoods that ended long ago.

Nello Ferrara made our lives sweeter. The candies he invented and the names he kept alive still make us smile. 

The one thing I remember most, is that they always did and always will taste better than that Brach's s--t!

The Nation Needs Great Works

"When more and more people are thrown out of work , unemployment results."-- Calvin Coolidge, U.S. President, 1923-1929

 

Those words made headlines in the Roaring Twenties, they were uttered by a committed deregulator in an era when irrational exuberance dominated the mood of investors, large and small.  Did I mention that the quote came shortly before the Wall Street Crash that led to the Great Depression?

(Photo By: Debra Davis-Holly)

I had really good history teachers in school and my love of the subject has helped me during more than 40 years as a journalist. While the technology changes from one era to the next, many of the problems are basically the same.  

Lessons Learned: When you turn the nation's future over to business, you roll the dice with leaders who are only accountable to their major stockholders. If things don't work out, a lot of little people lose out. 

 

Over the next nine months, we will hear a lot about freeing up business to create jobs and put Americans back to work. I'd love to see more jobs and more Americans working, but the people talking about that don't have real track records of creating good, permanent private sector jobs here at home.  

I'm not talking about part-time positions with no benefits, and I am definitely not talking about contract opportunities that pay by the day and leave workers twisting in the wind on taxes, unemployment insurance and healthcare.

 

Yes, lots of people need jobs, but the Great Recession has ended. Banks that were on the ropes are stabilizing and big manufacturing is rebounding. General Motors is once again the number one manufacturer of automobiles,  less than four years after a government bailout. Most of the Troubled Asset Relief Program funds have been paid back, but there's still a lot of work to be done, and much of that work could be projects literally right in your own backyards.

Drive through your community, or most any community in the nation, and you will see the results of bold infrastructure projects begun or completed as a result of public investment with the help of private labor. 

Examples? The interstate Highway System,  most major commercial airports, courthouses, schools, canals, ports, railroads, bridges, tunnels and water and sewage systems.

Photo By: Derrill Holly

When we have not invested in such things, the nation has suffered. When the world economy has stalled, those projects, financed by debt have kept people working and kept the nation moving forward.  They are productive pursuits that reap huge public benefits and tangible results.

Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton were builders. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and two guys named Bush were not.  

 

My conservative friends will note that this is a bipartisan list. It includes visionaries who saw value in using the nation's infrastructure needs to put idle people to work. It also includes a number of "stand patters" who saw no need to modernize. One group looked ahead and the other sought savings that now clearly were not reinvested in the nation's future.

There are obviously no guarantees in life, but if business leaders-- you know, the ones throwing all of  that money into Super PACs-- aren't ready to hire Americans for full-time permanent jobs, I just don't see giving them the reins to the future.

Who Knows the Time?

It's 2012


“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord” – Psalms 27:14
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I have no Mayan friends. Yet, I know the world has a fascination about academic translations of their ancient calendar. I am always open to learning and the older I get the less I dwell upon impermanence. I focus more on living life and enjoying the moments, hours and days that I breathe.
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“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” – Matthew 24:36

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So, I will not live as though 12-21-2012 shall be “the end of days.” I will simply live. As I do it, I will try to be a better person and share compassion and understanding with those who cross my path.

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“They ask you, [O Muhammad], about the Hour: when is its arrival? Say, "Its knowledge is only with my Lord. None will reveal its time except Him. It lays heavily upon the heavens and the earth. It will not come upon you except unexpectedly." Qur An 7:187

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I can strive to win, I can enjoy the companionship of family and friends, I can lead to move my family forward. I can also accept the opportunities arising from the impermanence of all things.
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Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world: a star at dawn,
a bubble in a stream; a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
a flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream. -- Sakyamuni Buddha

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No, I know no Mayans, but I know many types of people with many varied beliefs. So when the winter solstice of this waning year arrives, I will greet it hopefully, as I look ahead toward a future yet to be. DEH 01-01-2012