Childhood

January 1, 2009

by Sam Friedman

When I was
ten and reading Tolstoy,

and Dostoevsky,
and Gamow’s books for the populace

on number
theory and the birth of stars,

I worried
about Russia

and visualized
the future days

when the
Bomb would fall—

and it bred
in me a love for life

and a life
of rebellion,

of stoking
the fires of discontent

to bring
this system DOWN.

But what
if I were a kid in Gaza
today?

Reading nothing since my surviving
parent

had no money
for books,

and the
library had burned from Israeli bombs?

Eating little
since the border was blockaded

and a charity’s
truck had died,

hosed by
the Uzis of an IDF squad?

Playing
no more tag with my sister

since it
was hard for her to chase me

on her single
leg,

or to see
the game board

through
her haze-filled blasted eyes?

What would
my love for life become?

and what
would I want to bring down?

What should
I want to bring down?

and what
should WE burn

inside to
bring down?

and what
to build

thereafter?

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Letter to the Editor: Good Cars need Good Teams - by R. A. Letcher, PhD

Good cars need good teams -- designers, engineers, line workers… and learning-oriented managers by Robert A. Letcher, PhD [Author’s note: I submitted the following as a letter to the editor of The New York Times, after that paper carried an article under the headline, "To Fix Detroit, Obama Is Said to Drop Plan for ‘Car Czar’", 02/15/2009.] It is widely accepted that you can't win a horse race without a good horse. Of course, it helps to have a lot of money and a good plan for spending it. But, you still need a good horse. The authors reminded me of this when they wrote: “The companies’ plans are required to show progress in cutting long-term costs as a condition for keeping their loans.” I doubt GM and Chrysler can win this most important "automobile race" merely by having better accountants and more muscular negotiators: they still need a good "horse". That means the companies will have to show that their teams can still design and build cars that people are drawn to buy and willing to pay for: winners. I doubt they can. The problem isn't that they didn't know how to; it's that they don't know how to break out of the group-think that ensnarled them, their managers, their whole organizations, decades ago. I would be more optimistic, had the government also required the companies to include plans for transforming themselves into learning organizations. Aye, there’s the rub: learning entails risk-taking, not “yes people”.
Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm
Fiscal Therapy - Getting the economy back on its feet, giving taxpayers a break, saving your retirement fund and your kid's college tuition? Done. And it won't cost you a penny.

For years now, whenever I've been invited to lecture students on how our tax system works, I have asked a simple question: What is the purpose of the United States of America? The most common answer, be it at prestigious universities, elite prep schools, rural community colleges, or crowded urban high schools, is this: To make people rich. This should come as no great surprise. For anyone born after, say, 1970, the world has been shaped by Ronald Reagan's remaking of government's relationship with private interests—a vision of lower taxes, less regulation, and maximum economic leeway for those at the top. In this view, the pursuit of wealth is the warp and weft of America; everything else will follow. By contrast, the preamble to the Constitution tells us the nation's reason for being in 52 words that can be reduced to six principles: society, justice, peace, security, commonwealth, and freedom. Individual riches don't make the list. They are a product of American society, not its guiding purpose. Progress, then, must begin with a return to the best of the values that created this Second American Republic—one born, it's worth remembering, from the failure of the Articles of Confederation, whose principles (weak government, unfettered capitalism) found their resurrection in the economic policies of the past three decades.
read more at Mother Jones
How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely
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