Social Contract broken in U.S.?

Yesterday on NPR's On Point, with Tom Ashbrook, I heard David Brooks of the New York Times, indicate his contention that everyone in the U.S. has to sacrifice some of the benefits to which they have grown accustomed, because the country cannot afford to pay for those benefits. He was thinking of sacrificing at least 1% of the care provided by the state for health, and/or social security.
The discussion focused on the Inaugural Speech of John F. Kennedy, in which the world heard the words, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!"
David Brooks is well known as a voice from the moderate conservative right in the U.S. and I have great respect for his views, his person and his signfiicant contribution. He also articulated some differences between the time that speech was delivered and today. One of those differences is that in 1961, trust for government, he estimated, was running around 70%-80%...that is that people trusted government to do the right thing for the country. Today, according to Brooks, that figure is around 19%. I would think that figure is fairly accurate.
Why have the people lost trust in their government, in the U.S.? Could it be that the social contract has been broken by the government itself? Could it be that the government has taken the people for granted, for example, in thrusting the country into wars that either were not needed or were unwinnable. Think of the costs of Vietnam, and then the first Gulf War, and then the Second war against Iraq and now Afghanistan. Not only have those wars proven disastrous, politically, but they have sapped the U.S. Treasury, making it now necessary to make those cuts to benefits that government provides to ordinary people. The capacity of the U.S. to make and sell on the world market is impeded by the relative costs of labour to produce those products. The government must have seen this outsourcing coming and yet, like those large almost unmoveable war ships, and those huge corporations that are/were so difficult to turn around (IBM and General Motors come to mind) did very little to adapt to the seismic changes, perhaps from a perspective of arrogance. Certainly, there is evidence that some giant corporations did not make changes to their business model soon enough and convinced their shareholders that "everything was just fine" with the company.
It reminds me of the male tendency to avoid seeing the doctor, at all costs, including his life. "I'm fine!" is a line we have all heard, especially from very ill male acquaintances, too often very close to us, and for too long, making it difficult if not impossible for corrective interventions to be effective.
Another potential cause for the fraying of the social contract is that government leaders have a strong aversion to admitting mistakes. They have adopted, and all political persuasions are guilty, a posture of never acknowledging their mistakes publicly. Consistent with the corporate Public Relations Playbook and their-    public images of success,
            of not attending to the details,
            of not seeing the big picture,
           of not weeding out weak links in their human resource chain,
           of not doing any harm to the environment, or to their workers or their clients
           of not taking action when there are active alcoholics in strategic positions, unable to function adequately, let alone profesionally....
these failures must always trump the truth that those same corporations are not doing those things and they are also not telling the truth about their sins of commisssion or of omission either.
When the truth is sacrificed, especially in times of crisis, there can be little surprise that the social contract has been broken; and the people with whom that contract is supposed to be a form of protection, and a form of support and a form of inspiration lose trust and faith in those whose responsibility it was/is to preserve that contract, and they perhaps also lose faith in the capacity of the leadership to regain their trust, and that is when the body politic becomes desperate.
We see such desperation in Haiti, in Tunisia, in Angola, in Yemen, in Pakistan, in Iran, in Iraq, and the list of failed states grows every day.
As for the U.S., it too has the potential to become a failed state, if for no other reason than the hopes and expectations of its people have been raised so high by promises that may not be able to be fulfilled, while it continues to spend more on armaments than the rest of the world combined...
Now there is an indication of the results of a tsunami of both hubris and paranoia!

Mr. Harper: we are not "comfortable" with your government

By Canadian Press, in Toronto Star, January 19, 2011
Notes on an interview with CBC's Peter Mansbridge
“My own sense is Canadians have gotten comfortable with this government,” he (Prime Minister Harper) said.

“I think most Canadians understand that we're a government that is ... reasonably confident, focused on real issues, on trying to make the country better, not trying to enrich or glorify ourselves.”
He was resolute about leaving the abortion file firmly closed.

“Look, Peter, I have spent my political career trying to stay out of that issue. It's one on which people, including in my own party, have passionate views. They're all over the map,” he said.
“What I say to people (is) if you want to diminish the number of abortions, you've got to change hearts and not laws. And I'm not interested in having a debate over abortion law.”
On reinstating capital punishment, Harper said simply: “I don't see the country as wanting to do that.”
When Mansbridge pointed out that he seemed to be closing the door less firmly on that issue, Harper added, somewhat disjointedly: “Well, I personally think there are times when capital punishment is appropriate.
Personally favouring capital punishment as appropriate as a phrase in a nationally televised interview plays directly to Harper's political base....removing funding for therapeutic abortions from the foreign aid money going to the 'third world'..also tells the world where the Prime Minsiter stands...
As for 'Canadians growing comfortable with this government' and 'focused on real issues' and 'not trying to glorify ourselves'...this sounds more like a right wing conservative preacher's sermon stressing the importance of humility and hard work..once again playing to his political base. His government's insistence on attack ads against the Liberal leader, just as they did against Stephane Dion, is another sign of Harper's attitude of political gamesmanship. He will do and say anything to destroy the person of the enemy, and not have to deal with the policy alternatives from the other side.
The prime minister is a conservative; he thinks and acts and breathes the same air as former President George W. Bush and his government briefly initiated a new policy whereby Canada no longer automatically sought clemency for Canadians facing the death penalty in democratic countries like the United States. A Supreme Court ruling forced the government to abandon the policy.(From the same CP storyabove).
He leads a government that stands squarely behind a policy of increased incarceration at a time when TEXAS has announced plans to reduce incarceration and emphasize rehabilitation and community service as more effective treatment for convicted criminals. (Ironically, the Texas approach is driven by escalating costs of incarceration when state budgets are being severely trimmed, and not because of some instant 'conversion' from the state with the most death penalties in the U.S.) Harper's government is spending an additional $2 billion in prison construction...following a pattern established by the U.S. over the last decade. And that policy follows his government's expansion of sentences, as their morally and socially and ethically bankrupt approach to criminals.
They want to spend $16 billion on fighter jets, when that money would be better spent on a guaranteed annual income, on a national housing policy and an enhanced social assistance policy, including clean water and healthy diets among first nations peoples.
The Harper government is far more interested in serving the interests of its right-wing constituency, than it is in serving the needs of the average Canadian citizen, including the nation's very poor.
No, Mr. Harper we are not comfortable with your government. We do not believe that you are trying to make the country "better" to use your word and we do not wish to see you with a majority.

Binge Drinking...let's talk about it

From The Canadian Press, in Toronto Star, January 18, 2011
A national strategy is needed to control overall alcohol use in Canada, particularly heavy drinking or binge drinking, says an editorial Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Although no one wants to live in a nanny state, it says that taxpayers are feeling the burden of heavy alcohol use and simple evidence-informed regulations and policies are worth considering.
"Public health agencies, the hospitality industry, liquor manufacturers and control boards, municipalities and major granting agencies should collectively turn their attention to evaluate strategies to curb binge drinking," states the editorial, signed by doctors Ken Flegel, Noni MacDonald and Paul Hebert.
They point to the tradition of "happy hour," the sale of cheap alcohol for a short period of time in a bar or restaurant, and question whether it does anything more than promote risky behaviour among price-sensitive people such as college students and the socially disadvantaged.
Statistics indicate 8.8 per cent of Canadians reported binge drinking over the past five years, and most were men aged 15 to 24. Five drinks or more in one sitting, and four drinks for women, is considered binge drinking.
The editorial calls for studies to learn which interventions work best, suggesting scrutiny of approaches such as minimum unit pricing, restricting availability or advertising.
In addition, it says health-care professionals should routinely ask patients — especially young patients — about alcohol consumption and related risk behaviours.
"Children and youth should be reminded that binge drinking can result in serious loss of self-control and therefore heighten the risks of involvement in dangerous sex, rape, violence or injuries," the editorial said.
"Dialogue can also reinforce how easy it is to die while intoxicated or to cause death on the road.
Nanny state or not, this problem is in need of attention by all public officials, governments, schools, universities, colleges and distribution outlets for alcohol, such as sports bars and "happy hours" in any venue.
From this desk, there seems to be a silent complicity with the issue of binge drinking, except for the occasional television public service announcement from MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) or some NHL coach urging views to select a different option than driving while under the influence of alcohol.
We are preparaed to talk about the dangers of driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol but we are not prepared to talk about the dangers inherent in excesive drinking in itself.
Are we so polite or are we so detached that we "don't want to interfere with another's private life"....almost as if we think, "If they want to drink, that's their business, and I have no business expressing a different view"?
I recall a conversation in the U.S. after I had conducted a funeral for an individual who had died of alcohol poisoning. His spouse attended the funeral, herself also an active alcoholic, and in danger of losing her life from the same poisoning. A couple of months following the funeral, I met a social worker who had paid her a visit, presumably because of her excessive drinking. And in that conversation, I heard him say, "It's not illegal to be an alcoholic; it's only illegal if you hit someone with your car while you are under the influence of alcohol." The social worker was, himself, an active, untreated alcoholic. I threw up my arms in frustration and walked away.
The relationship with substances that can and do control lives in North America, like alcohol and non-prescription drugs, is so virulent and so difficult to manage, if not control, as to be a scourge on the social and political culture. Our rates of 'dependency' on alcohol and on non-prescription drugs far outstrip those in Europe and the problem is one that is, or seems to be, literally both unsolveable and under the radar.
We treat the bodies that are broken from the disease in the Emergency Rooms; we treat the effects of the disease through social work interventions with family members of the offending/diseased person; we patrol the streets and highways with the intermittent R.I.D.E. program (Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere) and there is evidence that at least on the roads, there are fewer drivers who are under the influence of alcohol.
So, some parts of our interventions are having some positive impact. And, I'm sure the police forces do not have the resources to conduct as many R.I.D.E. sessions as they would like.
The Canadian Medical Journal is a reputable publication, and these authors are not innocent to the impact of binge drinking, and while this piece will be considered by some as "pompous and arrogant and even presumptuous" by those who do not want to hear these thoughts or read these words, nevertheless, the issue is one that can and does result in unnecessary deaths, for example, of university students across North America every year.
How our society confronts "pressure" or "anxiety" or "stress" or "depression" or "loss" or "trauma"....these are dynamics that require support systems, real friends who will intervene with both courage and compassion because they had talked about the situation before it becomes a "problem"....
We have become so isolated from one another, and so alone in a world of ubber-communication devices that "keep us connected" in the most superficial ways, that a woman apparently suffering from dementia can leave her home, in Toronto, and wander in her neighbourhood with very little on, and die from hypothermia on the coldest night of the year, even though her screams were heard by at least two people who identified themselves after her death was made public.

Attack ads...show bankrupt political operation

By Jane Tabor, Globe and Mail, January 17, 2011
The Tory attack ads show Mr. Ignatieff , mostly in black and white, looking rather sinister as a deep-voiced narrator suggests he will do anything for power – including entering into a “reckless coalition” with the separatist Bloc Québécois.

If there is one thing, NOT in the Liberal playbook for the upcoming campaign, let's hope it is not more of the crude, rude, insulting character assassination ads that the Harper Conservatives are running on Ignatieff.
There are so many policy issues, and operational issues, that are like cherries waiting to be picked, left over from five years of Harper government.
His constant reiteration of "the economy is the best in the developed world" as what one has to assume, he would like his legacy to read, while appearing on CBC's The National tonight, left this viewer wondering if he has been sleepwalking through the last five years.
Harper did not create the five chartered banks, whose fiscal responsibility is more of the foundation for Canada's performance in the economic crisis. To claim credit for our fiscal recovery is smoke and mirrors.
We have a much larger debt and deficit than before Harper entered the PMO, and his government still intends to spend billions on prisons, on fighter jets and has squandered billions on the G8-G20 meetings for political theatre, and hopefully (in their mind) their own political good fortune, while failing to deliver a seat on the Security Council at the United Nations.
While acknowledgiong that the Bloc Quebecois's intrenched power in Quebec "makes it very difficult for anyone to form a majority government," he nevertheless continues to link the concept of a coalition to that party, as if it is the only variety of a coalition that is worth talking about. In the CBC interview, he did make one distinction between the previously proposed Canadian coalition and the current coalition in Great Britain...it was the party who 'won' the election that formed the coalition in Great Britain, not the parties who lost the election.
The Liberal's question for voters, tried many times in the past, sounds like this:"Are you better off after five years of Harper government?" ....and of course, the rhetorical answer is a resounding "No!"
However, a few "eye candy" ads, and such questions, without detailed and compelling national policy proposals, will not move the voters in Mr. Ignatieff's direction. On the day of the death of Senator Keith Davey, the Rainmaker, who made politics "fun" for Pierre Trudeau (according to Jim Coutts), Mr. Ignatieff would do well to take a page from Mr. Davey's book, and make his job and the near future a little more pleasant, considerably less professorial, and a lot more imaginatively challenging for all Canadians.
Let's all hope he succeeds in painting a canvas of hope, challenge, and responsible inspiration!

U.S. still more embedded in Military-Industrial Complex

There is something strange going on in high public offices, including the editorial rooms of both the U.S. and the U.K. over separate issues that makes me curious, a little timorous and somewhat surprised.
The testing of a single fighter jet by the Chinese has aroused considerable angst from the Secretary of Defence and the Pentagon, while the President of China, Hu Jintao, expressed surprise and appeared not to know anything about the test, when Defence Secretary Gates was visiting with him recently. The military establishment in the U.S. raised its rather loud and influential voice in alarm, apparently using the occasion to suggest the development and purchase of additional military might for the U.S. to counter a Chinese potential threat.
Another way of seeing this little 'drama' is that the U.S. military establishment might be expressing excessive fear, covered in jingoistic terms, seeming to appear conventional, in American political terms.
Was it also paranoia that danced across the headlines in Great Britain last week, in 72 point fonts, decrying the loss of "favourite nation status" by Great Britain, to France, in light of President Obama's routine expression, while French President Sarkozy was visiting the White House, "the U.S. has no greater friend than France."
The headlines screamed, "Have we lost out to the French again?" "Is Britain no longer a special friend of the U.S.?"...and other headlines from not merely the tabloid press but also from the higher echelon newspapers.
The irony of this situation becomes even more clear and dramatic when one realizes that practically all U.S. allies receive the same salutation from their American host whether that host is president, Secretary of State,  Vice-president, National Security Advisor,  Republican or Democrat. It is as if the State Department has written a script to which all national leaders are committed, and those leaders have also committed the phrase to memory, as part of the duties of their office.
With both Great Britain and the U.S., albeit in different ways and in different circumstances, emitting a little panaroia publicly, one is not sure whether these minor "glitches" herald a new vulnerability, of the healthy kind or rather a significant brittleness that one thinks of when contemplating a high-pitched violin string that is about to snap.
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the Farewell Address by outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a life-long Mennonite from Kansas, who was also the Allied Commander in Europe in World War II. His speech reeled against what he called the "military-industrial establishment" and the dangers inherent in the excessive potential of that complex to more than take over the U.S. budget. In the light of this address, which also included phrases linking the spending on a single bomber while the equivalent amount of money would build solid brick schools in 30 cities. The President actually used the word, "debt" against the rest of the budget, that the military expenditures were becoming, robbing the hungry from food, for example.
His speech came in January, 1961, three days prior to the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, news of which event overwhelmed the coverage of the outgoing president's address. One significant piece of information about the address is that while the Democrats were making loud noises about the "missile gap" between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, especially in the light of the Russian Sputnik that lifted off in 1957, and the need for the U.S. to catch up in military spending, President Eisenhower was quite aware that, in fact, there was no such gap between the military capability of the U.S. and the Soviet Union. His speech was, therefore, a rather prominent pronouncement against the power of the military, with political allies, to generate public sentiment in favour of excessive spending on the military. During his presidency, the number of nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal rose from 1000 in 1953 to 23-24000 in 1957, hardly indivicative of a need for more spending "to keep up with the Soviets".
Today, on the evidence of a single U.S. soldier who called into NPR's On Point today, who actually witnessed this disparity, on his tour in Afghanistan, electricians and plumbers are earning anywhere between $200k and $450K a year in salary, in the private sector, hired by the Pentagon to work in the barracks inhabited by the soldiers. There is no doubt that the soldiers living in those barracks are not making that kind of money, while they are employed by the Pentagon.
It is quite clear that Eisenhower's concern is more than a little relevant today, and the climate of fear, generating more military spending, at the expense of deep social needs, continues unabated.

Mr. Hu comes to Washington

By David Sanger adn Michael Wines, New York Times, January 16, 2011
Mr. Hu’s strange encounter with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates here last week — in which he was apparently unaware that his own air force had just test-flown China’s first stealth fighter — was only the latest case suggesting that he has been boxed in or circumvented by rival power centers.

American officials have spent years urging Mr. Hu to revalue China’s currency, rein in North Korea, ease up on dissidents and crack down on the copying of American technology, and they have felt at times that Mr. Hu agreed to address their concerns. But those problems have festered, and after first wondering if the Chinese leader was simply deflecting them or deceiving them, President Obama’s top advisers have concluded that Mr. Hu is often at the mercy of a diffuse ruling party in which generals, ministers and big corporate interests have more clout, and less deference, than they did in the days of Mao or Deng Xiaoping, who commanded basically unquestioned authority.
China’s military has sometimes pursued an independent approach to foreign policy. So have many of China’s biggest state-owned companies, sometimes to the United States’ detriment. The result is that relations between the world’s largest superpower and its fastest-rising one are at one of their lowest point in years, battered by confrontations that took Mr. Obama by surprise — and, on occasion, Mr. Hu as well.
Some obvious questions emerge, both from this piece in the NYTimes, and from Fareed Zakaria's GPS on CNN yesterday.
Are the military, which seems on a separate course from the civil politicians in the Chinese Communist Party, controlled by those same politicians?
Since the military is alleged to hold the view that the U.S. is the enemy of China and that war with the U.S. is "inevitable" (Zakaria's word), and since the Chinese leader seemed completely unaware of his own country's testing of the stealth fighter, and since Mr. Hu is coming to Washington in the very near future, what stance is most appropriate for the Obama White House, in these upcoming talks?
We already know that the Chinese government have declared that a cyber conflict is their preference to a military conflict with the U.S., and now that we are learning that the Chinese military (the largest army in the world) considers conflict with the U.S. 'inevitable' there seems some reason to reflect on the current state of relations between China and the U.S.
Everyone knows that China's economic development is like a runaway train down a mountain, so great is its speed and force, yet at the same time, everyone also knows that Chinese people earn barely a meagre income for their work, work in extremely poor conditions, and breathe polluted air, and in the midst of this "emergence" on the world stage, it would be highly unlikely that the Chinese military would not consider itself a significant player in the role that China plays on that stage.
Mr. Hu and his colleagues have been resistant to raising the level of their currency, in order to slow down the imbalance in trade with the west. And so while we will likely see smiles on the faces of both Mr. Obama and Mr. Hu following their talks in Washington, there is every reason to consider those smiles more of a Hollywood production to calm the legitimate fears that the west has about China's geopolitical intentions.
Is that metaphor of the train galloping down the mountain, regarding the economy, also a metaphor for an out-of-control nation, whose leaders have lost their grip on the various sectors, economic, military and industrial, that are vying for power within the Chinese communist state?

Frye: Slams May Exams, and the impact on Can. Lit.

By Northrop Frye, from Northrop Frye, A Biography, by John Ayre, Random House, Toronto, 1989, p. 74-75
The periodic warping and twisting of life brought about by May examinations has long been accepted (but)...the sheeer magnitude of the injustice involved in asking the hopes of our civilization to stake their most valubale years on the fortunes of a few hours at the end of each is sufficiently appalling in itself to dismay the stoutest, and when this is backed up by a mob psychology of a small college (Victoria College,University of Toronto) centred in residences, in which the leaders are always on the side of panic, the result is a distorted and almost inhuman existence.
Final exams in fact sabotaged real education for both ordinary and serious students. The former "find examinations an insuperable barrier in the way of getting an education"...As for protean scholars, whose work "is necessarily careful, labored and systematic...a random and time-limited quizzing is an impertinence." Using the Spenglerian image of the seasons, Frye saw the blight:"the possessor of a really fine mind who goes to college to have it orientated is at a hopeless disadvantage. If he gets a flash of genius towards the end of April, he might just as well have an attack of measles for all the good it does him. It is probably for this reason that the fine arts, which require real talent, genuine love for the work, careful and properly balanced and regularized study, and to which examinations are consequently fatal, have been so rigidly ruled out of the 'arts' courses. Literature still remains, however, mainly for the benefit of women. As a result Canadian literature is decadent and commonplace, for the literature of a young country needs to be young too, and what is done in Canada, though it may partake of the stifling heat of summer, the cheap gaudiness of autumn, and the sterility of winter, can never reflect the awakening enthusiasm of spring which those educated here have always missed--for the average man brought up on May examinations knows as little about spring as he does about a sunrise.