Of Kowtowing and Backtracking

For your weekend reading pleasure, here are a couple of updates on two essays I've recently written. The first concerns Wall Street's inordinant disrespect for profit reports, and the second concerns a presidential candidate's waffling on gay marriage.

At least these may provide a brief respite from Washington's petulant wrangling over the debt ceiling.

Kowtowing Corporate America Can't Even Win with Profits

Maybe I shouldn't have been so upset that Goldman Sachs' $1 billion quarterly profit wasn't enough to satisfy its Wall Street partners in crime.

Yesterday, oil giant Exxon Mobil posted a second quarter profit of $10.7 billion, a 41 percent increase over its previous quarter, and Wall Street punished the company by sending its stock lower by two percent.  Apparently, traders weren't pleased that Exxon had the temerity to post profits that were less than what ivory tower analysts were expecting.  For shame!

At least Exxon isn't rushing to fire thousands of employees to appease investors. Merck, the pharmaceutical company, announced yesterday it was chopping an additional 13,000 workers even though earnings trebled in the last quarter.  Their shares also fell two percent.  The official line from Merck involved their need to prepare for expiration dates on patents covering some of its most lucrative drugs.  But the 13,000 in announced layoffs, coming on the heels of a previous 17,000 in workforce reductions, amounts to a combined 30% cut in the company's number of employees. Actually, it's startling to consider how Merck managed to be profitable at all with supposedly so much dead weight on its payroll.

Both of these events yesterday provide further proof, in my opinion, that corporate America has gone bonkers trying to woo Wall Street's affections.  Obviously, the objective isn't profitability any more, but beating gamblers at guessing how they can best anticipate future changes in their industry.  Changes which, obviously, can best be met by getting rid of people who helped you grow your business in the first place.  Foresight and flexibility are well and good, but they're rapidly becoming bywords and code names for layoffs and unemployment.

Perry Wants it Both Ways, Kinda Like Gays

And then there's the slippery Rick Perry, governor of Texas, who has grown fond of crowing that his wife wants him to be president more than he does.  Last week, he embraced New York State's ratification of gay marriage as a triumph of Tenth Amendment states rights, picking the Constitution over the Bible as his reference document of choice. 

Except he's gotten a lot of backlash from his core constituency, hard-right social conservatives, who were baffled by his cavalier comments.  So Perry, forever burnishing his credentials as a career politician, tried a little backtracking on the issue.

In a radio interview yesterday with Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, the governor tried to parse his earlier eagerness over New York's gay marriage law by saying that, in fact, “gay marriage is not fine with me.” Which I didn't really think it was.

Yet unable to keep from sticking his foot in his mouth, Perry went on to advocate for a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Which would mean that Perry wants the federal government to tell New York State that it doesn't have the right to legislate otherwise.

Try and figure out for yourself what Perry was trying to say to Perkins:

“I am an unapologetic social conservative. I’m pro-life, I’m pro-traditional marriage, and the fact is we passed a constitutional amendment, and it passed by 77 percent of the vote in the state of Texas. Our friends in New York, six weeks ago, passed a statute that said know what, that’s New York and that’s their business and that’s fine with me. That is their call. If you believe in the 10th ame3ndment, stay out of their business if you live in some other state or particularly if you’re the federal government. The idea, the idea that the FDA is spending your tax money going after Lance Armstrong for something someone said he did in France is an absolute atrocity.”

Um... OK, Governor Perry, but is what New York State did still fine with you or not?

After all, if you want states to both be able to legislate gay marriage and not legislate it, you wouldn't be the only person who wants both ways co-exist peacefully in the political universe.  You also wouldn't be the only waffle-prone politician, either.

Something tells me you've just told us all we need to know about your eligibility to be president.
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New Rules for a Majority World

When I first came across the term, I wasn't sure what it meant.

"Majority World."

Turns out, it's a relatively new term to describe what most of us call the Third World. Those countries around our globe which suffer from economic stagnation and social regression. Defined mostly by poverty, but also civil rights abuses, and even political oppression.

You know - those places we so easily forget about while we're consumed with our own troubles and problems here in the Land of Opportunity.

When I first deduced the meaning of Majority World from the context of its usage, I smirked with indignation, like many of us do when we're struck with the haughty political correctness of something. Is this new term supposed to smack those of us in developed countries with a call of contrition and remorse for enjoying a standard of living most of our fellow planet-inhabitors can't? Is this some sort of linguistic penalty for First World excesses?

Times Change

Turns out, as I researched the term, its usage actually makes sense beyond its sociopolitical contrivances. Did you know the breakdown of countries by First, Second, and Third World qualifiers stems from the Cold War era, where countries were identified based on their socioeconomic allegiances? First World countries were the "free" countries aligned with the United States, Second World countries were the "communist" countries aligned with the Soviet Union, and the Third World were all of the "non-aligned" countries, which also happened to be disproportionately poor and politically impotent.

If you know anything about our modern world, you can see how this three-world view no longer applies. Economic fortunes have risen considerably for countries like Brazil, Chile, South Africa, and Thailand, which where considered part of the Third World in the 1950's. Although today, while these countries may not be what Americans would consider to be fully-integrated First-World countries, they're hardly the squalid little backwaters they used to be regarded as.

Look, too, at Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, flush with oil money, and home to some of the most ambitious construction projects of our day, including Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, and lavish Palm Islands development on artificial archipelagos. In the 1950's and 1960's, these were still mostly Bedouin sandscapes. Today, remarkably, the only remaining poverty exists in fetid colonies of foreign construction workers and servants for whom even the degradation of Islamic social stratification is better than, well, their Third World countries of origin.

Places where economic hardship still prevails, with little relief in sight. Places like Bangladesh, most of Africa, and Indonesia. The parts of the old Third World that haven't really changed much.

Even some of the poorer leftovers of the former "Second World" Soviet Union have fallen into the ranks of Third World ignominy. Places like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which weren't even much under Soviet rule, have simply fallen off the international radar, as North Korea would have done, if not for their petulant nuclear sabre-rattling every now and then.

All of which combines to paint a grim epitaph for the increasingly dated three-world economic classification system.

Don't Get Mired in Colonialism

So, OK, I can see why the term "Third World" can be considered obsolete. And although I'm not crazy about "Majority World," I can respect its intent.

Even today, after decades of industrialization and post-industrialized history, the majority of people on our planet still live in poverty. And not just poverty like we see in America's welfare society, where the definition still includes clean water, reliable electricity, readily available nutritious food, and generally more television sets than some middle-class households.

Unlike liberal social scientists, however, I'm not as interested in the politically-correct correlations between impoverished nations and European colonialism for which First World countries continue to be blamed. Yes, I understand that many Third World countries - err, I mean, Majority Countries - used to be colonial conquests of major European powers. However, the persistently incompetent governments which tend to rule these Majority World countries exist for many reasons. While I agree that colonialism as a methodology is undesirable, some nations have been able to salvage remnamts of it to their advantage, and even overcome it.

India, for example, as it struggles with growing pains as a rapidly-developing economy, wouldn't be where it is today if not for the civil and institutional infrastructure England provided under its rule. Granted, it probalby won't be a First World country anytime soon, as significant swaths of the country remain mired in subsistence living. But the political and economic building blocks India inherited from the British have helped make it the world's largest democracy and one of its fastest-growing consumer markets.

And perhaps the strongest argument against using colonialism as a crutch comes from the United States, which managed to cobble itself together as an amalgamation of colonies to pull off one of the most dramatic revolutions in history.

Democracy in Action?

Nevertheless, the overall point of Majority World countries being sensitive to their economic plight is worth making. And I'll leave the in-depth reasons for why many of these Majority World countries continue to languish in disenfranchisement for another discussion.

The importance of creating a distinction between First World and Majority World countries can withstand arguments over its historical reasons. And what is that importance? That if we in the First World believe so highly in democracy, then shouldn't we give more thought to how the rest of our world thinks and acts?

After all, if everybody on this planet got a vote, you and I would probably be voted off. As a people group, we consume most of the world's resources, create most of the world's pollution, and own most of the world's wealth.

And as I say so often on this blog, "to whom much is given, much is required."

Now, I'm not sure what form of payback we should be giving the rest of the world. But changing "Third World" to "Majority World" is at least a symbolic down-payment.
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Keeping Up Christian Appearances?

What do real evangelical Christians look like?

Hmmm. What are we supposed to look like?

Are we supposed to be wispy, kumbaya, peace-and-love groupies? Should we be in your face, thumping our Bibles on every bully pulpit we can find? Or must we disguise ourselves, blending into the scenery around us, picking and choosing our favorite parts of spirituality and pleasantly ignoring the stuff that makes us look legalistic?

What Do You Model?

Recently a gay, agnostic friend of mine asked me how Christians are expected to look and act. (Well, he claims to be an atheist, but secretly, I think he's less certain there isn't a divine being than he is that it's God.) Somebody had commented to him that Christians were supposed to be purposefully insular and cliquish to the exclusion of everyone who isn't our own kind. Yet my friend looks at me, a person who is relationally introverted and frustrated by it, and sees a disconnect.

If I'm supposed to be spending my time around goody-goody people, why am I friends with him? In fact, he knows he's one of my best friends, since I don't have many close associations at church. One of the reasons we get along so well, despite our vastly divergent worldviews, is that we share the same jaded view of pop culture, we've never been part of the popular crowd, and we both love Uncle Julio's restaurant in Dallas.

He lets me talk about stuff going on in church, and I let him talk about stuff going on in his relationships. We talk about our parents, our brothers' kids, and the people we used to work with. We met when we both worked at the same company.

Maybe I didn't model the proper exclusivity of stereotypical Christian relationships with my friend, so that's why now, he's curious about why I never seemed to hang out with a more holy-rolling crowd.

A Friend Indeed

I've heard of evangelical Christians who say they befriend unsaved people only to win them to Christ. I think that is a patently disingenuous, almost fraudulent reason to "befriend" anybody. What happens if the target for conversion never receives salvation? Do you dump them and move on to the next target? If you're not truly interested in having the friendship of another person, and they're more of a notch in your Gospel belt than a literal human being worthy of your time, how miserably cynical - and disrespectful of the humanity God has created - is that?

Besides, with my personality, as with my friend's, we're not ever going to be close friends with everybody. Neither of us have the charisma or the social magnetism to draw others to ourselves and have to fight them off with a stick. Well, my friend is far better-looking than I am, so if either of us had the chance, he would. But otherwise, maybe we do get along better with each other, rather than with some of the people in the social spheres in which you'd assume we'd circulate.

Is that wrong?

According to the Bible, in the book of James, "friendship with the world is enmity with God." But it doesn't say friendship with people in the world equates to hating God.

Don't Do Do's and Dont's

Yes, there are certain things believers in Christ generally do - or don't do - because they believe these things either honor or dishonor God. For example, we usually go to church, give money, read our Bibles, and help those in need because not only are we commanded to, but these practices help us develop in our faith. By the same token, people of faith usually avoid situations that could compromise morality. Depending on how we choose to do that, we tend to end up subscribing to lists of do's and dont's, in a pattern that some people describe as legalism.

And without going down a rabbit trail on this one, let's just say legalism generally can be described as performance-based religion. For example, some people assume that the reason I don't drink alcohol is because I'm legalistic, even though the real reason is because I'm concerned I could get addicted to it.

So do I look like a Christian? I don't drink alcohol, but a lot of Christians do. A lot of Christians claim to be ill at ease around gay people, but my friend and I get along fine. Granted, he's not a flaming, demonstrative homosexual. And neither am I a hellfire and brimstone type of Christian. Just as I'd probably become uncomfortable around a flamboyant gay person, my friend would likely have little to do with ranting fundamentalists.

But at least to me, it matters less whether I look like a Christian than if unsaved people like my friend know I'm one. When California radio preacher Harold Camping predicted the world would end on May 21 of this year, my friend and his partner quizzed me on how realistic that was, because they knew I am more balanced in my faith than Camping and his followers. When my friend throws his annual birthday parties, I'm never invited, because he knows the activities there wouldn't be compatible with my faith (although I've had church friends not invite me to their parties for the same reason). And we've had frank discussions about why I don't believe homosexual marriage is right, even though we both agree that married Christians have done a lousy job of proving me right.

Yet we're still friends. In fact, I'm confident enough that what I've blogged about today is accurate, I'm going to show him this blog entry.

So maybe I'm not what this acquaintance of my friend's would consider to be a poster-child for conventional Christianity.  Truthfully, I'm not sure what he thinks Christians are supposed to look like, but I have an idea, and I imagine I don't fit.  I don't tow the Republican party line, I'm not a neo-con capitalist, I don't not drink because I think doing so banishes me to Hell, I don't confine my friendships to the "right" people, I even let people be my friend who aren't saved, and I'm not afraid to point out foibles in the Christian culture.

However, if this acquaintance sees Christians as sinners saved by the grace of God alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, then I do fit.

And I pray that some day, my friend will, too.
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Tour de Bike Lanes

If they haven't hit your town yet, don't worry: they probably will soon.

Bike lanes.

Not for motorcyclists, but bicyclists.

From New York City to Los Angeles, bike lanes have been gobbling up existing lanes for motorized vehicles in a disarmingly furtive push to re-establish the lowly bicycle as a legitimate form of commuter transport.

What used to be a pet project of environmentalists and liberal city planners has become the stealth darling of city halls eager to re-brand their communities as hip, relevant, and athletic.

Not necessarily healthy - city leaders still want people to bike over to their nearest bar or gastronomic delight, after all - but athletic. Meanwhile, having a street full of buff, tan bike riders looks a lot better on your marketing material than politically-incorrect SUVs.

Pedal Pushers

For generations, bike-riding has been pretty much confined to conventional city parks, and recently, to linear parks and off-road trail systems. Now, after we saw gas spike at $5 per gallon in some parts of the country a couple of years ago, the bicycle industry has seized the momentum brewing in Americans, hungry for some economic thrills close to home, to expand the bike-riding experience on city streets.

And it doesn't hurt that bike riding has become fashionable again.

Indeed, there's more than one reason why bicyclists tend to be hip and young. And why bicyclists have come to demand bike lanes like never before in the United States. Might that have something to do with our country's thirst for adventure and the appeal of outdorsy fun? They're what helped spark our unfortunate SUV craze 20 years ago. These days, what better way to pump those endorphins than get your kicks riding your bicycle alongside boxy hunks of steel and glass that can flatten you like a pancake?

Except, actually, most bicyclists have hesitated about venturing out onto city streets precisely because they don't really want to be flattened like a pancake by a Ford Taurus or Lexus SUV. They want their thrills diluted by bike lanes, since we all know that thin strips of paint on any pavement provide incredible protection against a turning 18-wheeler.

Bicycle Built for Who?

Now, although it may sound like it, I'm actually not against bike lanes as a concept. I just don't think unprotected bike lanes belong on the same streets as motor vehicles. How can bikes and cars sharing the roadway be safe for anybody, let alone resolve traffic congestion, as some people claim? If city streets could be designed to allow for sufficient vehicular traffic flow, with bike lanes added to the sides and separated from the motorized vehicle lanes by a concrete barricade, then cars and bikes might be able to co-exist fairly well.

The problem is most existing city streets can't be reconfigured that way. And no matter what any bike lane advocate likes to say, reducing traffic lanes does not help relieve traffic congestion. Unless, by reducing the ease with which drivers can navigate certain streets, you force people to find new ways to drive to their destinations. But doesn't that obscure the real problem with congestion, and deprive businesses located on streets with bike lanes the commerce automobile drivers give them?

Not surprisingly, many people who oppose bike lanes on existing city streets tend to be the cantankerous sort of grumblers who don't like change of any kind. Some of them have developed wacky conspiracy theories about how environmentalists are trying to divide and conquer communities by stuffing bike lanes down their throats. Still others say that since bikes aren't taxed like cars, they don't deserve any more road space than they already have.

I realize many readers of my essays would try to put me in the "intransigent to change" category, but here in Arlington, where the bike lane debate suddenly burst onto the scene earlier this year, I support the creation of dedicated bike lanes on certain streets around town. Some streets are currently under-used 4-lane thoroughfares, and the City wants to make them one-lane each way with a center turn lane, with bike lanes added to the left-over space on the sides. I think that's a practical solution on those streets which currently lack the justification for two full lanes in each direction, which means that conflicts between bikes and cars should be negligible.

About the only conspiracy - if you could call it that - regarding bike lanes comes, I suspect, from the bicycle manufacturing lobby. They likely sees the threat of sky-high gas prices real enough to juice up their business, and getting more bike lanes is great advertisement for which they hardly pay anything out-of-pocket. And if you really want to explore the conspiracy angle, be thankful the cycling enthusiasts are enjoying more success than environmentalists pushing for lavish mass transit projects. Not that I'm against mass transit per say, but most of America's suburban subdivisions can't support things like bus routes.

I also don't buy the argument that since bikes aren't taxed like cars, they don't deserve more space on our roadways. Yes, motor vehicle drivers pay taxes when purchasing gasoline, but most roads are heavily subsidized by the Federal government, so people who own bikes still pay for our roads through their income taxes. Bikes also inflict far less wear and tear on concrete and pavement, so people who are worried about our aging street infrastructure should consider ditching their oversized cars before continuing that line of reasoning.

Balancing the Wheels

What a lot of people don't like talking about, though, involves a certain air of entitlement that seems to exude from many bicycle riders. This cocky attitude tends to pretend some things exist while ignoring those things that really do.

Bike lane advocates like to camp on the reality that bicycle riders enjoy the same legal rights as automobile drivers on public streets. Enthusiasts assert that both drivers and bikers should respect each other's prerogatives when sharing the same stretch of asphalt.

However, having the right to share space on roadways doesn't mean everything else balances out, too. Neither bikers nor drivers can avoid some obvious differences which no law can invalidate. Bikes offer inferior protection to cars. Bikes are also slower than cars, and they're less visible than cars. This means that in our ever-congested roadways, the heavier vehicle always wins. Why else have some SUV manufacturers begun installing bars below their vehicles to prevent their SUVs from completely rolling over smaller cars they might hit? The safety game is already lopsided on our streets, and adding more bicycles to the mix can't possibly keep people safe.

Of course, the emergence of bike lanes could force some changes that help make all of us in safer. Texting while driving, as well as other habits of distracted driving, could become fodder for stricter traffic safety laws as law enforcement agencies try to equalize the roadway battlefield as much as possible. Here in Arlington, I've advocated for street signs reminding drivers that bikers have a right to share our streets.

But although a great deal of responsibility rests with drivers to make sure we're all safe on the roads, bikers often don't like the restrictions and responsibilities drivers would like to see from them.

For example, why shouldn't bicycles be licensed? Shouldn't their mechanical functions be subject to inspections just like cars? Shouldn't they be required to have working lights and brakes? How about even turn signals? After all, they're sharing the same road with motorcycles and automobiles that have to pass annual inspections - why shouldn't bicycles?

And why shouldn't bicycle riders be licensed? Shouldn't they take a class and pass a test to prove their basic competence? Maybe they should also be required to purchase liability insurance. How many kids who've never taken a driving class peel out onto the street, completely oblivious to traffic laws, rights-of-way protocols, and other safety rules? We expect motorcyclists and car drivers to be licensed if they want to use our roadways - why not bicyclists?

Shall This, Too, Pass?

Perhaps one of the reasons bike enthusiasts chafe at restrictions and regulations involves their underlying understanding that all of this bike hooplah might just be another fad. It might not command this much attention again for a long time.

Bike riding resurfaced from the World War eras, rechristened not as rudimentary transportation but a hobby, and hung around through the Boomer's golden era of the 1950's. It made a brief appearance in the ecology angst of the 1970's, and has endured a prolonged dry spell since then.

For better or worse, very little exists in North America's post-modern society to sustain bike riding as a permanent replacement for the automobile. It's still mostly a fair-weather activity, since most employers don't want their workers showing up hot and sweaty, expecting to take showers in the company locker room before getting down to business. Anyway, most people commute 30 minutes by car - a trip that would become even longer by taking a bike on city streets instead of freeways.  And why bike to the grocery store when your spacious car sitting in the garage can get your purchases home before the ice cream melts?

Why take up precious road space - that most cities have had to fight to acquire in the first place - with something that likely will prove to be a fad? It makes about as much sense as creating a lane for roller-bladers (remember when that was all the rage?).  I'd almost think motorized scooters and motorcycles deserve their own lanes before cities gave bicycles one.  Motorized bikes are only marginally less-dangerous than bicycles on city streets.

Still, even here in Arlington, there are some quiet residential streets and even some commercial side streets where congestion and safety wouldn't be terribly compromised by the introduction of bike lanes. Tossing the bike lane lobby some crumbs for their hobby can't hurt too much, I suppose. After all, even in large urban areas, where population densities would seem to enhance the popularity of bike lanes, they're not really used as much as the vehicular traffic lanes right alongside them.

Meanwhile, the mostly young, mostly adventurous Lance Armstrong groupies who are agitating for bike lanes will begin to age and worry about their kids riding on busy streets. They'll discover that sweaty bike shorts aren't the best asset to help them move up the corporate ladder. And that the new generation of hipsters coming along behind them have found yet another youthful infatuation.

Wouldn't it be funny if it was muscle cars?
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Firing Up the Texas Oven

As this summer's first mega heat wave spreads towards the East Coast, consider this:

Today marked the 19th straight day of 100-degree-plus temperatures here in Dallas - Fort Worth, with no rain, and 100-degree days forecast through at least next Wednesday.

That's purt-near hot, folks.

So take it from me when I say that all it takes is putting things in perspective and knowing how to cope with the heat to endure it.

Here's a handy-dandy 10-point guide to help you out:

1. Our low temperatures here in north Texas have been in the 80's. Think about that when your high temperatures settle back to around 82 next week.

2. Even here in north central Texas, on the topographical threshold of true prairieland, hundreds of miles from the coast, it ain't no dry heat. The only people who say ours is a dry heat are folks from Miami, Florida.

3. Texans don't wear ten-gallon hats much anymore - they're called 10-gallon hats because that's how much sweat pours from your head while you're wearing one.

4. All those black luxury cars, trucks, and SUVs people like to buy because they have an air of luxury actually have air alright: suffocatingly hot air inside those heat magnets.

5. You've no doubt heard about how we grill eggs on car hoods, but that's just a myth. Not because car hoods don't get hot enough, but because it can spoil the paint job. We use sidewalks instead.

6. All those brown lawns you see? We call that color "summer green."

7. During the summers, the only things that freeze up are air conditioner condensers because they're running nonstop.

8. The irony about hand-washing your car is that when you're finished hosing off the soap, the car is practically dry, but you're dripping wet.

9. Having a swimming pool isn't as much a status symbol as owning a commercial-grade ice cube maker for when the pool water gets too hot (I know at least one family who has one for that purpose).

10. Umbrellas can be just as useful on a clear day as they are when its pouring rain.

For years, native Texans have wondered what will happen when the state's long-running population boom outstrips the land. Personally, I don't think there's much to worry about when it comes to overpopulating Texas. The state has its own built-in population control mechanism: summers.
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Goldman's Latest Billion Dollar Doozie

Banking giant Goldman Sachs earned $1 billion in the second quarter of this year, so they're laying off 1,000 employees.

Only on Wall Street is a $1 billion quarterly profit a cause for layoffs.

And speaking of layoffs, just yesterday, Borders booksellers declared it was going out of business, meaning the loss of over 10,000 employees nationwide. Silicon Valley player Cisco Systems joined the party, too, announcing 6,500 layoffs.

If you're keeping track, that's over 17,000 jobs lost in a day and a half.

Now, the Borders story surprises nobody.  Bookstores are rapidly going the way of land lines, incandescent lightbulbs, newspapers, and DVDs.  Electronic readers, the Internet, and plain old American dumbing-down have all contributed to rendering brick-and-mortar purveyors of reading materials obsolete.  Some business pundits actually even blame Borders for not jumping on the e-reader bandwagon more aggressively, like Barnes & Noble has done.  But the smart money has said for a while that America, the birthplace of pop culture, cannot sustain two major national bookstore chains.  Executives at Borders finally agreed.

Things aren't nearly as dire at Cisco, even though the common thread of playing catch-up runs through both companies. What took generations of cultural evolution to destroy the market for printed books - as witnessed by Borders - only took the warp-speed of technological obsolescence a decade or so to begin wreaking havoc on huge Silicon Valley corporations that didn't even exist a generation ago.  Caught up in the technology sector's backwater of badly-timed product launches and missed opportunities, Cisco is just the latest flickering networking star to need a time-out to regroup.  Industry watchers aren't planning on drafting the company's obituary anytime soon, but Cisco's retrenchment represents a cautionary tale in America's newest powerhouse industry that keeps all its players on its toes.

So at least the layoffs at Cisco and Borders make sense.

Bordering on the Ridiculous

According to its own press release, at the end of the second quarter, Goldman Sachs ranked first in worldwide announced mergers and acquisitions. The firm continued its leadership in equity underwriting, as well as worldwide equity, equity-related offerings, common stock offerings, and initial public offerings.

Whew - I'm no financial wizard, but that seems to be an awful lot of stuff to brag about, doesn't it?

Yet the Wall Street Journal bluntly spells out Goldman's $1 billion profit as a crisis:

"Goldman Sachs Group Inc. reported second-quarter net earnings of $1.09 billion, significantly lower than expectations, as difficult markets led the Wall Street bank to reduce risk taking to the lowest levels in five years. The per-share earnings of $1.85 were 42 cents below the consensus expectations of analysts, only the fifth profit miss in Goldman's 12 years as a publicly traded company."

Gasp! The horror!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a $1 billion profit is still a profit, right? Yet apparently on Wall Street, a $1 billion profit can be a bad thing. That by itself should provide sufficient proof that running companies to wow shareholders is a bad idea.

Since when have stock analysts usurped corporate boards, executives, and industry professionals? So a group of smug economic whiz-kids crunched some numbers and came within spitting distance of each other for Goldman's quarterly profit? Why can't the profit forecasters be wrong? Why does Goldman feel the urge to placate them? And if the profit forecasters are so smart, why doesn't Goldman axe the executives who were responsible for missing the "consensus expectations," instead of 1,000 of their hapless underlings? It's like feudal England all over again, only now with a bunch of ninnies from Ivy League economics programs running around crowing, "off with their heads!"

By way of a disclaimer, if you read the fine print, you'll see where Goldman claims to be posturing itself for protection against certain risks in the financial environment.  Since the profit everyone expected them to make came in under-budget, so to speak, it's possible to infer from the numbers that Goldman may be heading into murky economic waters.  Ostensibly, then, sacrificing 1,000 workers now will translate into jobs saved in the future if some of the gambles Goldman has been taking aren't as profitable as they have hoped.  Kind of an interesting statement to be making, though, considering many Goldman executives are liberal Democrats.  This doesn't exactly sound a note of confidence in President Obama's economic agenda, does it?

What "Too Big To Fail" Means in a Democratic Republic

Still, academic pragmatism aside, perhaps I'm not a good capitalist, but I simply can't see the long-term benefit to society from such a narrow-minded, money-centric business philosophy. Sure, maybe Goldman has 1,000 more workers than it needs, but senior management doesn't even try to disguise their disdain for their personnel by separating the two announcements of disappointing the industry's analysts and, oh yeah, a meager $1 billion PROFIT. It's almost like Goldman is embarrassed that it didn't have the foresight to fire a thousand folks before the analysts found out how disappointing the quarter was going to be.

To make matters even goofier, it's not even like Goldman actually creates anything, except more wealth for people who've already got it. They make money from money. Granted, there's a place for that in our society, and the elite high-net-worth people who benefit from this type of industry ostensibly help keep our economies going and our political machines well-oiled. But speaking of political machinery, didn't Goldman recently receive some taxpayer bailout money? To what extent can their current profiteering be credited at least in part to the largess of the American taxpayer?

I can appreciate that with the mess they've helped cause in Greece, along with their other sordid financial escapades in, oh, say, the mortgage meltdown, insider trading, Libya, and securities trading kickbacks, Goldman Sachs executives may be getting desperate to appease the only people left who will still talk to them at dinner parties; namely, the same greedy bottom-feeders who like to leech every last penny out of their investments: stock market players.  But seeing as how they're supposed to be too big to fail, might they be bending over backwards appeasing the wrong constituency?

While all this has been going on, non-institutional investors - ordinary taxpayers, mostly - have been pulling their money out of Wall Street, having already become uncomfortable with the risks in our economic environment, unconvinced they're able to play on a level playing field with cozy big-name brokerages, and disenchanted with the industry's recent reliance on bailouts.

Goldman may not care that it's losing the confidence of the American public.

But we do, don't we?

Talk about risk!
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What Would Rupert Do?

Did you know that Rupert Murdoch owns Zondervan Publishing?

That's right. The same guy taking all the heat for his News of the World staffers hacking the phones of dead people in England also owns the publisher of the Bible's New International Version.

Wow. Try explaining that relationship to St. Peter at the Pearly Gates! Is Murdoch trying to cover all his bases by owning one of history's tawdriest tabloids as well as one of the most widely-printed copyrights of the world's most popular book?

Actually, although some evangelicals have begun getting their knickers in a twist over the apparently sordid corporate arrangement, isn't it likely that Murdoch has little knowledge of Zondervan's current top-sellers? After all, officially, Zondervan's parent company is Harper Collins Publishers, and when Murdoch purchased Harper Collins over 20 years ago, Zondervan simply came along for the corporate ride. Since then, depending on your perspective, Zondervan has either been profitable enough - or not enough of a drag on profits - for neither Harper Collins nor Murdoch to pay much attention to it.

Making Money on What Somebody Else Has Paid For

Which brings up another ancillary topic, namely, the ethics of a Christian publisher profiteering on God's holy Word. Critics of the contemporary Christian marketing movement - of which I'm sometimes one - look at the consumerism mentality in the evangelical community and wonder if capitalists have finally figured out the market value of free grace.

Part of me believes that people who write a book or edit a translation of the Bible need to be paid for their work in proportion to the value they provide the worldwide community of faith. Since I believe that "workers are worthy of their hire," one of the easiest ways to make sure proper payment is made is to peg the produced work against the free market for that commodity. The fact that most of the market for the commodity of religious literature is in North America means that prices get set based on conventional printing and marketing costs following industry standards. You can argue all day long for the altruistic merits of writing for literature's sake, but at the end of the day, writers can't survive by eating the words they've written.

Believe me, I've tried - and I've had to eat a lot of my words!

Rock the Money Box

But it's that altruistic side of providing the Gospel to people who need it that can make for a somewhat seedy side to the Christian publishing game.

My first exposure to contemporary Christian publishing came in the 1980's, when the church I was attending staged a professional Christian rock concert outreach in Dallas. Several of the bands were sponsored by Thomas Nelson Publishers, another massive player in the Bible-marketing game, and Thomas Nelson would also be using the concert as a book launch for some title I've long since forgotten.

At any rate, our church sent out a request for volunteers, and since I was in college at the time, and it was summer, I took a day off of my part-time job to help out. Even though even back then, I wasn't crazy about contemporary Christian music. And certainly not Christian rock.

I showed up early in the day, and helped set up some things, but since this was a full-fledged major production with a union stage crew, there wasn't as much to do as I thought there would be. I ended up strolling around in the bowels of Dallas' old Reunion Arena, where the Dallas Mavericks used to play basketball, poking my head into rooms that were usually off-limits to the general public.

After lunch, I was walking down a hallway and went past a conference room with its door open. Looking inside, I saw officials from my church and Thomas Nelson, and nobody was smiling. Tension brewing between everyone in the room was wafting into the hallway, and although I don't remember what anybody was saying, I remember that voice tones were sharp and definitely not congenial.

Later I learned - from overhearing a couple of church leaders who were in the meeting - that Thomas Nelson was attempting to re-negotiate some of the terms of the event contract at the 11th hour. I don't know how much of that was true, or how much any naivete on the part of our church staffers might have led to some miscommunication and unrealistic planning. Yet the overall message was clear - this concert wasn't as much an evangelistic event as it was a business enterprise.

Some evangelicals shrug their shoulders in an attitude of "so, what else is new?"  Others so highly esteem capitalism that they assume selling the Gospel can hardly be a bad thing.  But still, even all these years later, after that concert in an arena that has since been torn down, I often wonder: Christ paid the ultimate sacrifice, and Christian publishers charge upwards of $700 for us to read about it?

The problem with unbelievers owning major Christian booksellers - and I'm comfortable assuming that Murdoch is not a born-again evangelical - should be obvious: owners usually control production. Even though Murdoch is probably not in daily - or even quarterly - communication with Zondervan management, he still has the prerogative of administering content and editorial oversight should he choose to.

Granted, I'm not familiar with the reasons Zondervan sold out to Harper-Collins, but they probably had something innocuously pragmatic to do with raising funds for further product development, securing better employee benefits, and even acquiring greater market share with a bigger-name secular imprint. None of those reasons are bad in and of themselves, but the more Zondervan relinquished its autonomy, the weaker their ability to withstand challenges to its Biblical integrity must have become. Shouldn't that have factored into the business decisions its executives were making?

Reading Between the Lines

Looking back at some of the titles Zondervan has published, and knowing what we now know about Murdoch's corporate involvement, I can squint my eyes and see how the dumbing-down of content and the appeal to mass-market touchstones could be correlated. Some of the books by Tim LaHaye, Rick Warren, and Rob Bell could fit right into the blather we see on Fox, another Murdoch brand. And none of those authors would probably be household names if the theories they've peddled hadn't benefited from the superb populist marketing Zondervan undoubtedly has enjoyed as part of the Murdoch empire.

For its part, Zondervan insists its business remains entirely independent of influence from News Corporation, Murdoch's conglomerate. And since I have no concrete proof to the contrary, I'll take their word for it. For now.

Meanwhile, if News Corporation continues to hemorrhage senior staffers and Wall Street valuation in the wake of its scathing London scandal, can any of its companies expect their worlds to stay the same for much longer? Will the push for even more revenue in Murdoch's remaining profit centers lead to any compromising in core competencies?

What might somebody like Murdoch do with the realization he owns a company which publishes God's Word?
_____

Oppressive Glee in Beijing's Koolhaas

  

Stalking the city.

Stalks of steel poking up like weeds

We saw previews of it during the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

A controversial new building, ostensibly for China's state television company, that looks like no other structure on Earth. Chinese officials hoped it would be completed before the games, but only now, in the summer of 2011, is it readying to open.

Well, as open as the Chinese government well let it, since the building is going to be headquarters for the Communist Party's crushing mass-media propaganda machine.

China Central Television's New Home

Some critics stop right there and say that's reason enough for any self-respecting architect to have shunned the commission.

For myself, I have to admit that on a purely aesthetic level, part of me admires Rem Koolhaas' CCTV Building. As far as a wow-factor is concerned, it could be the coolest superstructure ever built. Squatting 50 stories above the capital of China, it looks like what a conventional square-shaped building with a courtyard would look like if you pulled up one end of the building and left it hanging in the air.

Without a doubt, it's the most unconventional skyscraper ever built, which isn't necessarily a compliment to the Chinese government. Like a cartoonish nouveau-riche social-climber, they've brashly commissioned wildly expensive and flagrantly inefficient buildings all over their country during the past decade. They've flattened entire neighborhoods of historically beloved, quintessentially sino-urban hutongs. They've also resettled over one million people to build the world's largest dam, and engineered a sleek bullet train to wisk people between brand-new central China cities in which nobody even lives yet.

Hardly any of their projects would have gotten off the ground in the world's current democratic, market-driven republics.

And it's this social manipulation on such an staggering scale which can be captured, at least in part, by the CCTV Building. As imposing as it is impressive, Beijing's celebrated trophy by Koolhaas embodies all that's still wrong with China.

On the one hand, Koolhaas' design draws people to it in wonder and spectacle. The Chinese government does this wonderfully itself, as witnessed by its dizzying economic opportunities and its execution of history's most lavish Olympics ever.

On the other hand, though, the building's design could be explained as Koolhaas taking a shape of contortions and hammering human elements into it. Kind of like communism does, using power, domination, and control to remind people inside who's more important.

Not themselves, but the structure around them.

Picking Apart the Design

In the CCTV Building's exterior, we have an undeniably fascinating form of haunched pillars and a dramatic V-shaped prow. All of this requires an intricate structural system that, inevitably, defies conventional spacing and order. While the load-bearing elements in less-daring buildings can be less visible and, therefore, less of an interference with interior spaces, with Beijing's Koolhaas, the structural elements take over and dominate both the exterior and interior. They let people pass through, but they're ever-present, and imposingly so.

Splayed across the sleek glass walls of the exterior lays a black grid of steel structural supports, looking as if Spiderman's web got stuck on it, and some strands have already blown off. Perhaps Koolhaas intends for them to assure people going inside that he did his engineering homework, but it comes across as an afterthought to fortify the building in case of an earthquake.

Inside the CCTV confection, structural elements trump the purpose of space and, in some cases, even the execution of function. And while Koolhaas has made a remarkable attempt to incorporate these stubborn structural elements in his edgy interior designs, they also serve as an incessant reminder that the building is more important than the people inside it.

Enormous load-bearing poles appear to poke haphazardly through spaces from floor to ceiling, rudely interrupting the space, and dressed up to look like some sort of artwork or embellishment. It's like he had these beams running through otherwise usable space, and he tried gluing some sort of wallpaper on them to contrive some justification for them not being tucked away in an unobtrusive corner. After a while, however, I suspect his attempts to try and hide or apologize for the invasion of structural elements will become as tiring and frustrating as the propaganda that will be churned out of these spaces.

Comical Perspectives?

Seen from several bocks away, the CCTV Building morphs into some kind of klutzy cyclops lurching around the city, appearing to step over smaller buildings and the hordes of people and cars scurrying around like ants.

Very domineering, vigilant, and totalitarian.

Since that matches the character of his client, Koolhaas fulfills one of the basic requirements of any architectural commission: getting paid. But to the extent Koolhaas has simply played into the nefarious hands of his client, it could be considered a dismal monument for defeatist architecture.

Except, surprisingly, for a few Chinese culture critics who have developed a plausibly libidinous perspective based on what they suspect could be a subversive Koolhaas theme. Although most tall skyscrapers have a phallacized characteristic to them, some Chinese architects - perhaps miffed that their foreign peers have won all the big commissions - see in Koolhaas' design the explicit figure of a woman on her hands and knees.

For his part, Koolhaas has emphatically denied any pornographic overtones to his sculpturesque design. Unfortunately, he's been far more defensive of his complicity in the construction of an edifice whose functions could lead to human rights abuses.

Perhaps this cold, calculating narcissism is lost on an elite architectural community increasingly consumed by nihilistic pluralism. After all, Koolhaas isn't the first architect to dehumanize his craft. And it must be difficult to walk away from the billions of dollars China spends on these projects.

Symbolism Befits China More

As impressive as Koolhaas' CCTV Building is, however, how much more impressive would it be sitting in New York City, London, or even Tokyo, where the will of the citizenry and the logic of capitalism means more than it does in Beijing?

After all, any totalitarian state can build something like the CCTV Building if it's got the money. Meanwhile, I'm willing to celebrate the fact that Koolhaas' design in Beijing says more about the Free World than China realizes. Even if developers in the United States or Europe could pull off the myriad zoning and environmental logistics inherent in such a project, could they find a client or banker willing to spend so much money on what is essentially a whimsical pretension?

Having the world's coolest building is one thing. Having it so aptly portray its owners' motives and the tasks to be done inside of it, regrettably, is disconcerting.
_____

Dallas Redux and Reality

Yee-haw!

C'mon, y'all! Thar fixin' ta do a remake 'a Dallas!

(Translation: Ya-hoo! They're going to do a remake of Dallas, the 1970's television show.)

By now, you've probably heard that cable station TNT has commissioned a new show based on the prime-time soap opera Larry Hagman and Linda Gray made famous a generation ago.

And here in north Texas, where Dallas is still the largest city, some civic hand-wringing has begun as local leaders wonder how Hollywood executives will portray Big D this time around.

Back in the original show, Dallas was broadcast to the world as an oil baron's cutthroat battlefield filled with big cars, big houses, big hats, and big hair - even for the guys. And while, yes, that image wasn't entirely unjustified, it wasn't completely reality.

My family had just moved to north Texas from upstate New York when Dallas premiered, and like a lot of other "Yankees" who'd begun flooding the state from "up north," we couldn't tell if the city was following the show's lead, or the other way around. These days, we're told that initially, local Dallas boosters weren't impressed with the trite gaudiness with which Hollywood cast the city. But after tourism to the area and Dallas' international recognition took off, they learned to live with it.

Like almost anybody wanting fame, free publicity can cover a multitude of sins.

Except this time, California's television folks need to understand two things. One, not only is Dallas definitely not what the original series' producers envisioned it as being, but two, it's become a far more diversified place with surprisingly individual neighborhoods that may not exactly transition well into television.

Differences

What used to be one of the most WASP-ish of towns has had two female Jewish mayors since the first TV show, hosts one of the largest gay communities in the country, and has become white-minority.

Indeed, Dallas essentially exists as two distinct cities. There's the relatively white, relatively upper-middle-class North Dallas, and the mostly minority, mostly poor South Dallas, with a bit of a mix scattered throughout its eastern neighborhoods.

North Dallas sits mostly east of Marsh Lane and north of I-30, while South Dallas takes in everything else. Downtown is kind of the anchor of the split, and the closer you get to Downtown, the greater the mix between whites and minorities, and rich and poor.

The wealth of north Dallas starts with the supremely exclusive and virtually all-white enclaves of Highland Park and University Park, both of which share their own elite school district, and are surrounded by Dallas proper. Then comes Preston Hollow, where some of Texas' largest and most impressive estates sprawl behind towering walls, along winding lanes lined with towering trees. More money is tucked into gentrifying neighborhoods east of Central Expressway.

South Dallas' poverty doesn't really start until after you get past a couple of trendy inner-city districts, the sprawling freeway interchanges, and the softly-worn yet attractively venerable North Oak Cliff and Kessler Park neighborhoods, where some houses rival those of Highland Park.

Then the poverty hits you, with block after block of overgrown lots, crack houses, liquor stores, dilapidated apartments, pawn shops, and taquerias (Mexican restaurants). Hispanics comprise the largest group of minorities in Dallas, which sometimes agitates blacks who, along with many whites, have grown frustrated with the city's large population of illegal immigrants. Significant pockets of Middle Easterners, Asian Indians, and Hispanics live along the northern LBJ Freeway corridor, and east of the city's recreational White Rock Lake area. To this day, blacks stay pretty much south of Downtown, where they were segregated not so long ago, and where housing values remain the lowest.

Whereas the original TV show tried to claim Dallas' suburbs for the city itself, these days, most of the suburbs in Dallas County have their own identities and don't want to be lumped in with the identity of their larger neighbor, the county seat. In particular, Plano and Richardson are home to many "silicon prairie" firms and even have their own fine arts organizations. Irving and its master-planned Las Colinas district, snuggled up next to our bustling international airport and home to some of the world's biggest corporations, is a bitter rival of Dallas' when it comes to businesses relocating to the area. And Frisco, one of the blandest new exurbs you'll ever visit, isn't even in Dallas County, yet that's where most of the middle-class whites from Dallas are flocking these days.

Livin' Large in Big D

Since this new show will likely follow the same path as the original and feature modern power brokers squabbling over money and sex, the producers should understand that money in Dallas has gotten old enough that it's starting to look a lot like it does on the East Coast. That means expensive foreign cars, yes, but a surprisingly understated wardrobe, where the label speaks louder than the design. Money has also become much more discrete in Dallas, where smallish houses in the Park Cities can command hefty premiums simply because of their address, not necessarily their built-in amenities.

Of course, discrete in Dallas still isn't the same as discrete in Manhattan, Short Hills, or Westport. Bling still counts for something in Dallas, as does perfectly-styled hair, even if it isn't big. Make-up, too, has to be flawless, whereas in Manhattan, you never know if the unadorned face walking towards you on Madison Avenue belongs to a housekeeper or a hedge fund manager.

Nevertheless, Dallas is home base for Neiman-Marcus, one of the most under-stated fine retailers in the country, and also boasts a staid Rolls-Royce dealership. It's difficult to tell whether Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, or BMW is the official car of Dallas, since so many models of each prowl the city's streets. And they're almost all black - a beastly color, considering how hot our summers get here.

Ahh, yes: summers. If Dallas were a truly well-rounded city, it would be located near an ocean or one of the Great Lakes, or maybe some mountains. As it is, Dallasites have to make do with some man-made reservoirs, private swimming pools, and relatively inexpensive airline flights to Colorado. Some people insist on baking in the heat by jogging in wilted parks, sweating on water-sucking golf courses, or gasping in open-air patios at prestigious restaurants, but most simply hit the many local malls or multiplexes for stuff to do indoors.

The world-renowned Dallas Symphony Orchestra plays in the equally-impressive Meyerson Symphony Center, and a historic trolley rattles through a newly-trendy Uptown restaurant district. One of the area's most successful shopping center moguls built a remarkable sculpture palace, the Nasher Sculpture Center, and an increasingly popular light rail system continues to spread through the city.

Its school district may be in shambles, and its crime rate sagging only by degrees, yet Dallas still manages to hold its own in terms of desirability against the brand-new gated communities popping up in what was only parched farmland when the original Dallas aired.

"Where the East Begins" Doesn't Have the Same Ring

Perhaps much to its disappointment, however, the search for an identity - which has so far confounded Dallas - inevitably brings up the subject of Fort Worth.

Thirty miles to its west, and home to a legitimate cowboy heritage, Fort Worth proudly claims to be "Where the west begins" and "Cowtown." With the bona-fides to back it up.

Even Big D's fiercely beloved Dallas Cowboys play outside the county now, here in Arlington, right next to Fort Worth. Convention-goers staying in Dallas routinely board buses to Cowtown where they can watch a real cattle drive in the old stockyards, party at the "world's largest honkey-tonk," Billy Bob's Texas, and dine at what is probably the most famous Mexican restaurant in the state, Joe T. Garcia's (although I don't particularly care for it myself).

Fort Worth may not have the reputation for wealth and ostentation that Dallas does, but it's got enough energy industry tycoons to fund a far more diverse and internationally prestigious arts and cultural district than Dallas has. Its municipal politics are far less corrupt and divisive that those in Dallas, and its cross-cultural civic life much more cohesive.

Perhaps that mix doesn't make for as provocative a television show as someplace like Dallas, but interestingly, I don't hear many folks in Fort Worth complaining about all the attention their neighbor to the east may be getting from Hollywood.

After all, Dallas' most famous resident is probably Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, while Fort Worth's is probably Van Cliburn, the acclaimed concert pianist.

Which, in a way, says a lot about each city, doesn't it?

Boy, howdy - now ain't that sum'um?

(Translation: My goodness, you're right!)

Chances are, you could probably tell whether somebody will bother to watch the new Dallas based on which one of those wealthy locals they'd want as a neighbor.

As for me, I haven't cared much for the Cowboys since Tom Landry was fired.

Oh yeah - that's been since the original Dallas, too.
_____

Love of Money Aids Asylum Fraud

As the sensationalized case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn continues to wither away in Manhattan's courts, the reason it's doing so actually bolsters arguments for immigration reform.

It's not just because the purported victim in this case has credibility issues regarding the crime she claims took place in a luxury hotel room. She also lied on her asylum application to reside in the United States.

Doh!

The commitment of a crime as your first act in a new country doesn't make the best impression, does it?

Strauss-Kahn's accuser claimed she'd been gang-raped and beaten by soldiers in her home country of Guinea, but that story unraveled under questioning by New York detectives. They were investigating her background as they built what could have been a blockbuster case against the former head of the International Monetary Fund. Officials now acknowledge that hers is just another among the many examples of asylum fraud coming to light, particularly in New York City, one of America's largest immigration and asylum gateways.

Asylum Fraud adds Wrinkle to Immigration Debate

Apparently, an entire industry has sprung up in Gotham's seedier immigrant neighborhoods dedicated to providing scripts full of lies to people seeking humanitarian and political asylum in the United States. For example, Strauss-Kahn's accuser memorized a story to tell asylum judges that included the falsehood that her husband had been murdered. Russians exaggerate tales of homophobia back home, and many Africans exploit the crisis of genital mutilation to their advantage, even if it's never happened to them or anybody they know. Whatever the sociopolitical hot buttons reported in the international media, a rash of asylum cases of dubious credibility inevitably floods immigration courts here in America.

Nobody denies that plenty of legitimate cases of persecution, torture, oppression, and abuses of human rights exist in the myriad applications for asylum our government receives from people all over the globe looking for protection in the United States.

Actually, I believe it's one of the great characteristics of our country, that we are seen world-wide as a standard-bearer of civil liberties and personal safety. Governments who repeatedly deride our foreign policy and accuse the United States of fomenting international problems would do well to listen to the hope and desperation of those - maybe from those same countries which criticize us so - clamoring for protection here. To the extent our country can be a haven for those needing to escape sociopolitical turmoil in their homeland, we should continue, to paraphrase the Statue of Liberty's credo, "lifting our lamp beside the golden door."

But as with most opportunities, asylum has been beset with abuses. Many people simply want to come to America because it's easier here to build a comfortable lifestyle that in the country where they were born. After all, even a life of American poverty is far better than privilege in most African, South American, and Asian countries. So emigres who can't squeeze into our immigration quotas turn to lying and falsifying personal records, concocting wild stories of brutality and persecution which have never happened. To them, anyway.

Just to get inside our country.

With fraudulently-obtained immigration papers allowing them to work here legally and participate openly in our society.

You can almost hear them, coming through our front door, and hiring crooked lawyers to play our asylum courts like a warped violin. How they must jeer at the people who have to buy fake documentation to get through our back door and naively live here in secret.

No wonder ordinary illegals have become indignant at their plight.

Money, Money, Money, Mo-ney

In a way, Americans help make the case for asylum abuse and its sister crime, immigration fraud. Our culture flaunts our standard of living to the point where upward mobility is considered an inalienable right. Many Americans who wink at asylum and immigration fraud do so because they figure preventing anybody from economic success is, well, un-American.

Today, most Americans think money is the be-all and end-all of life. Not honor, or integrity, or - gasp! - serving others. Earning more money is what motivates most people. Getting additional education, building a resume, climbing the corporate ladder; much of our socioeconomic reality involves acquiring more money.

Well, a higher salary, anyway.

So with that mindset, it can seem hard to turn around and deny other people their chance at building financial equity just because they're not here legally. In fact, a lot of illegal workers may just help the rest of us by taking our mundane jobs, for which we can pay them at a cheaper rate, and thus further improve our own financial picture.

I'm not saying that working to improve your earning potential is a bad thing. Nor am I saying that we should be ashamed of ourselves just because we may enjoy a standard of living others might envy. Like I've said many times, it's the love of money that's the root of all sorts of evil. Not money itself.

Nevertheless, wouldn't it be boorishly insensitive of me to just push shut our border gates and turn a blind eye to the financial problems people face all over our planet? After all, I can't deny that wanting a better economic life is a bad reason to emigrate to the United States. My own grandmother came here from Finland to do just that - but she did it legally, with a sponsor and everything.

Sounds quaint, doesn't it?

Reform Benefiting the Countries of Origin

Then, too, we might be approaching this issue from the wrong direction. Instead of focusing on America's borders, what about taking a look at how we might help prospective emigres while they're still in their home countries?

Consider the popular crusade in Third World countries to encourage home-grown entrepreneuralism in towns and villages without any other viable economic opportunities. The once-fledgling industry of micro-credit, for example, has begun to blossom into a fairly respectable method of financing industrious indigenous people. People who get to remain with their families in their own hometowns, even if those places currently lack electricity or running water. People who may never attain a standard of living there that they might here, but people willing to make a go of it where they were born.

To me, this type of economic effort poses just one example of a sustainable solution to the economic crises plaguing vast swaths of our globe. Allowing people to come to the United States illegally poses a plethora of problems and represents a surprising inequity in and of itself. Instead, elevating awareness of how Americans can help the economically marginalized in their own countries could provide a vastly superior standard of living for them, and perhaps some beneficial economic partnerships for both us and them.

Think about it: Hasn't the world changed since before the United States had immigration quotas? Is America still the primary land of opportunity in the world? Is America as empty of people as it used to be? Or as awash in our own homegrown economic opportunities?

If the reason most people want to come to America involves money, we need to be realistic. Money is a finite resource. Yes, liberty is relatively infinite in the United States, and for those people whose very lives depend on escaping their homeland, we need to remain a land of hope and sanctuary. But aside from our legal immigration quotas, can we afford to let economics run a close second anymore when it comes to getting serious about asylum and immigration reform?

In a way, couldn't it be considered rather ironic that it was the then-current head of the IMF who has been accused of assault - by a woman who fraudulently entered the United States for economic gain?

Strauss-Kahn's accuser may have inadvertently made the best case for asylum reform that those most deserving of asylum could have gotten.
______

Staying Alive to Enjoy it

Do you have a healthy respect for death?

Or would it just get in the way of your fun?

This past weekend near Buffalo, New York, a legless war veteran fell out of an upside-down 70-mph roller coaster and died. He intentionally boarded the 200-foot-high amusement park ride with his family, even though he could not have avoided realizing that the safety bar - which secures the legs of passengers - and seatbelt couldn't possibly hold him, even with prosthetic legs.

Last Thursday, a fan diving for a foul ball fell head-first to his death here at the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. Video of his fall (since removed from most websites) shows the fan reaching out over a railing and away from his seat in a gesture his biological gyroscope should have told him was unsustainable. But the foul ball was being tossed by his six-year-old son's favorite player, so of course, the extra effort necessary to reach the ball was going to be worth it.

Reality can be cruel.

Color me hopelessly pessimistic if you like, but I simply don't understand risking your life for pleasure.

Risking your life to save somebody else's? Admirable.

Risking your life to have fun?  Possible proof of Darwinian natural selection at work.

It's one of the prices affluent societies like ours pays for a lifestyle based on gratification. We don't think bad stuff will happen to us, but we expect good stuff will. So when it comes to risking natural laws for the sake of fun - particularly when it comes to the laws of physics - participants in risky fun generally assume the odds of invincibility will work in their favor.

After all, you snooze, you lose.

Riding the roller coaster, New York's prosthetically-equipped war veteran was trying to join his loved ones on what many people would consider to be a normal family outing. His family said he hated to miss out on what others were doing because of his injuries. Reports even suggest that the amusement park staff didn't want to either embarrass or disappoint the guy, so they let him go ahead and board the ride, despite the risks.

Texas' fireman at the ballpark has been praised as being a devoted father trying to secure a treasured keepsake for his only son, just perhaps too eagerly. A guy who always went the extra mile, and would do anything for his boy.

Incidentally, the railing he fell over is higher than all international stadium standards specify, and the roller coaster in New York checked out mechanically and structurally. At least neither family has mentioned anything about filing any lawsuits - yet.

It's worth noting that another fan injured himself falling over a railing - attempting to catch a foul ball - at the Texas Rangers' ballpark last year, and he was a firefighter as well. Fortunately, even though he fell farther than last Thursday's fan, he survived, albeit with some chronic health issues.

Not that I have a problem with people having fun. But is "fun" more important than life?

Is risking being labeled a dweeb - the prospect of which is likely what motivates some gusto-seekers - worse than risking death or serious injury? An Iraq War veteran and small-town firefighter both enjoy a certain prestige (and rightfully so, I might add) as members of our society's heroic class; war heroes and first responders who generally put their life on the line for relatively low pay. How much leeway does society give them to dance along the borderline of logic when it comes to pushing the boundaries of risky behavior?

It's not outside the realm of possibility that these types of people could tend to develop an inflated, unrealistic estimation of their skills, coupled with an equally marginalized appreciation of danger. The greater the thrill and social credentials that come from defying death, the lesser one's ability to maintain a respect for those things that can cause death.

Living your life to the fullest is one thing. Staying alive to do it is another. But the fireman left one child behind, and the Iraq veteran left two. Is it too politically incorrect of me to point out that their bad choices have handicapped each family's ability to derive "fun" out of the future?

It couldn't have been worth it.
_____

Kim, We Hardly Knew Ye

 

Kim Talley was found dead in his bathroom yesterday.

I didn't even know his last name until after the cops arrived.  To us here in our neighborhood, he was simply "Kim," the cancer patient.

And right now, you know about as much about him as we did.

Yeah... that much...

The Martin House

We'd met Kim two years ago, after he moved into a house across the street.  Formerly a conventional 1950's-vintage single-family home, it had been converted into a hostel of sorts for cancer patients by an altruistic cancer survivor named Carole Anne.

An architect and businesswoman here in town, Carole Anne had bought the aging Martin House from its namesake family's heirs, and turned almost every room into a single-room-occupancy apartment.  Each remodeled room was available* at an exceptionally low cost for patients being treated at our internationally-renowned Arlington Cancer Center.  All the patients share a common living area, kitchen, and laundry room, plus a secluded patio.

And I say "internationally-renowned" because Carole Anne's second resident was a young man from the Netherlands, who came to Texas with his wife after they grew frustrated with their home country's medical offerings.  Oddly enough, they hired "black cars" (the term I learned in New York City for chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Cars and Chevrolet Suburbans) to take them all over town.  Sometimes even stretch limousines would sweep up to the curb beside the Martin House, adding a bit of panache to our quiet neighborhood.

During her own battle with cancer several years ago, Carole Anne appreciated being able to return to the privacy of her own home every evening after arduous treatments.  However, she knew of other patients from out of town who were staying in local hotels.  Since most of these treatments last several days, hotel tabs can get expensive quickly; Arlington plays host to many tourists visiting our amusement parks and national sports stadiums, so rates are not cheap.  Plus, most hotels aren't known for their soft, homey comforts.  So in a burst of beneficence, Carole Anne purchased a couple of houses in residential neighborhoods here in Arlington for patients who would prefer to stay in a less anonymous environment during their treatments.

You already know about her second resident, but her very first patient, a young man who came with his wife and small children from Louisiana, moved in before remodeling had even been finished.  Arlington Cancer Center represented the last hope for this sickly father and husband, who arrived relatively full-figured and burly, but was emaciated the last time I saw him.

After a year or so of fighting his disease, the father died, and his bereaved family returned to Louisiana.

Not before, however, they'd cleaned out the Martin House of the furnishings Carole Anne had acquired for all the rooms and kitchen.  Extended family members came over from Louisiana to help the new widow pack up, and their packing included virtually everything that wasn't theirs.

That blatant thievery really knocked the charitable wind out of Carole Anne for a while, but she plowed her energies back into her project, and before long, with other patients coming and going, Kim had moved in.

Kim Talley

Carole Anne made a point to come over and tell me about Kim, who was indeed a special case.  He - and whatever family he had - were estranged from each other, for a reason she didn't fully understand.  He was short, and slight, but we don't know where he was born, what he'd done for a living, if he'd ever been married, or had fathered offspring.  His cancer had cost him his voice box and most of his throat. So he kept a writing pad and pencil with him, and had developed an ability to grunt and wheeze some basic word sounds to communicate.

Indigent from years of expensive health issues, and chronically sick from the length and severity of his treatments, there seemed to be little he could do to provide for himself.  Indeed, there were days where Kim could barely function.  From what I gathered, most of his care at the cancer center was written off since he literally had no way to pay.

Kim wasn't nearly as old as he looked, which on a good day, was about 85.  I'm not kidding, or trying to be disrespectful, although he was probably in his late 40s. With skin which was practically translucent, surgical scars cris-crossing his neck, incision holes pock-marking both arms, a patchy hairline ravaged by chemotherapy, and glassy eyes bereft of emotion, the sight of him was disturbing at best.

Sometimes new sutures would bleed, and yellow puss would occasionally drip down his neck.

Being so dangerously thin, with zero body fat and hardly any muscle, he loved the summer heat here in Texas that wilts the rest of us.  For a while, he drove an old, black Isuzu Trooper whose air conditioning had quit years ago, but that didn't bother him at all.  Once, after the Isuzu broke down, a generous neighbor anonymously arranged to have it fixed at her expense.  Last summer, however, it finally gave out for good, and another neighbor loaned Kim a nice bicycle for some modest transportation.

Final Weeks

Not that he always had the strength to ride it, however.  The Martin House is perched on a slight hill, and lately, Kim sometimes needed to balance himself while mounting the bike by resting a foot on the slope of the lawn.

About two months ago, his Isuzu, which had been sitting in disrepair in a corner of the driveway, disappeared.  A neighbor mentioned that he hadn't seen Kim in a few days.  Finally, another neighbor called Carole Anne and asked after him.  You see, Kim had become kind of a community project for us.

As it turned out, Kim had been in the hospital, but none of us here in the neighborhood still knows why. Carole Anne had mentioned something about pneumonia, but somehow in the neighborhood grapevine, the idea that he'd undergone more cancer treatments got into the narrative.

At any rate, one afternoon I saw him again, on the front porch of the Martin House, in a thick exercise suit, in 98-degree weather.  The next day, I noticed he'd again come outside, but this time, was only wearing his underwear, and acting strangely.  I went over to see if he was OK, and quickly discovered he was rather disoriented.  However, when I asked if he wanted me to call Carole Anne, he vigorously shook his head, and went inside.

After about a week, I learned from a neighbor that he'd witnessed further disoriented behavior by Kim, in his underwear - again.  Another neighbor said she'd seen him in the middle of the street, lurching around in circles like a drunken sailor.  Finally, one evening, Kim fell off of his bike in front of the neighbor who'd loaned it to him in the first place, and he marched Kim back inside the Martin House with instructions to let us drive him to wherever he really needed to go.

Anything More?

By this time, our little cluster of neighbors had become frustrated at Kim's distressing condition, our ignorance regarding ways to provide effective support, and what appeared to be a certain ambivalence on Carole Anne's part regarding his care.  Little did we know that Carole Anne had already decided Kim no longer could function safely on his own.  She'd been phoning every agency and hospital she could think of, trying to get more help for him.

Since Carole Anne is neither a family member, a legal guardian, or power of attorney, however, even her efforts were proving futile.  She grew increasingly angry that nobody wanted to help a sickly, indigent man who couldn't talk who wasn't a senior citizen or a veteran.  Various government programs would provide medication, some public health benefits would cover hospitalization, but no minimal-care housing facility would - or could - open their doors for somebody like Kim.  That had been partly the reason Carole Anne had offered to let him stay at the Martin House in the first place.

Last week, Kim fell off his bicycle again, scuffing his legs, whose skin was as fragile as Kleenex.  He was so weak, he couldn't even pick himself up off of the pavement.  Another neighbor and I happened to be in our yards when we heard him fall.  Seeing him there, splayed across the pavement underneath his bike, Kim reminded me of what Beetle Bailey looks like after Sarge is through beating up on him.

Resiliency, however, kept Kim going.  The next day, he was back on the porch, appropriately clothed, grinning as best he could despite his misshapen mouth (so many surgeries had damaged his facial muscles), holding up his hands to demonstrate how much he was enjoying the heat. I saw him again on Sunday as I was driving home from church, and he was walking along the street under the blazing sun. I stopped and invited him to ride with me in my air-conditioned sedan back to the Martin House, but he waved me off, even though, finally, he didn't look like he was enjoying the heat very much that day.

A police officer working his death scene at the Martin House yesterday said he saw Kim on Monday, walking along a street near our neighborhood.  That evening, another cop found him collapsed against a stop sign nearby.  Since the police knew Kim from various 911 calls to the Martin House, the officer asked if Kim wanted to go back there, or the hospital, and Kim had opted for the Martin House.

As far as we know, that was the last time anybody saw him alive.

Around noontime yesterday, one of the other patients at the Martin House decided to check on Kim, because the television in his room had been on non-stop since at least Wednesday morning. Upon entering Kim's room, he saw Kim's feet extending from the bathroom door, and knew the worst had come.

Exit Softly

There will be no funeral.  Carole Anne called the one other person Kim told her he knew, his power of attorney, an uncooperative woman in Fort Worth.  But this "friend" of Kim's couldn't have cared less that he'd died - except that she wanted his Isuzu, if he still had it.  Carole Anne told me her attitude had been the same throughout this two-year ordeal.  Finally, Carole Anne told this "friend" that she'd clean out Kim's personal effects, donate them to a local charity, and sign his corpse over to the county morgue.

Legally, that's all she can do.

Last night, I commiserated with the neighbor who'd paid to get his Isuzu fixed, and we wondered if we should interject ourselves into the tableau of dysfunction that was Kim's final days, and arrange some sort of funeral.

We looked at each other and, with grim faces, decided that if Carole Anne couldn't do anything, it would be on the head of Kim's power of attorney if she let his passing go unnoticed.

Not the way any of us in our neighborhood want Kim's sad life to end.  After all, his was still a human existence, if not necessarily humane.  I'm sure there could have been more that the rest of us might have done - collectively and individually - to help him, and we all had logical reasons for why we didn't.   In the end, though, even cops at the Martin House yesterday, as they took statements from us, congratulated us for the amount of empathy we did display.  People languish in sickness and die all the time without anybody noticing, they said.

Still, it's a hollow praise, isn't it?  None of us think we acted extraordinarily to Kim.  We didn't really give him any extra common decency that we wouldn't accord anybody else.  Perhaps that's a nice thing to know about my neighborhood - that we do actually make some effort in looking after each other.

So yesterday afternoon, as the coroner's van arrived and the attendants wheeled their gurney into the Martin House to collect Kim's spent body, I stepped outside onto our front lawn.  It was beastly hot, but I stood silently in the shade of a gracious oak tree, paying my last respects as the corpse was brought back down the sloping lawn of the Martin House, and into the white van.

Mom and Dad were standing, together, inside - in the air conditioning! - watching solemnly from our large bay window.  And the street was silent, the Texas summer air almost hot to the touch, the leaves on our neighborhood's tall trees motionless, devoid of any breeze.

As if nature itself didn't know what to say.


* Update October 2021:  Thankfully, the Martin House returned to single-family-residence status about six years ago. Things were never quite the same after Kim died.  Newer practices in cancer care, plus the advent of Air BNB and other smartphone lodging apps, also reduced the need for that type of cancer hostel.
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Bikers Dying to Look Macho

Get a dictionary. Look up "ironic."

If it's been updated since this past weekend, your dictionary's entry might include this story as an example:

While riding his motorcycle in a rally staged to protest helmet laws, Philip Contos had an accident, hit his unprotected head on the pavement, and died within minutes. Doctors ascertained that his lethal brain injuries would not have been sustained had he been wearing... his helmet.

Don't you wonder if, right now, Contos might love a second chance to change his mind?

American Bikers Aimed Towards Education (ABATE), the group which organized the rally this past weekend near Syracuse, New York, is opposed to laws mandating helmets for anybody on a motorcycle.

And then Contos inadvertently proved why their position is a fallacy.

Wipeout

In 1959, my uncle was piloting his motorcycle along a scenic, rural stretch of roadway on an idyllic coastal island in Maine. Rounding a curve, police suspect the tires of his bike lost traction while going over gravel and pebbles along the roadside, and my uncle crashed.

A kindly farmer discovered him, dead, and before long, the whole community in that sparsely-populated corner of the county was shaking its collective head at the tragedy.

Back then, there were no helmet laws, just as there were no seatbelt laws for cars. Or, for that matter, any of the many Nanny State laws Americans deride today. Safety was an individual responsibility, yes, but some dangers weren't widely acknowledged. Today, we have all sorts of studies proving how essential motorcycle helmets and seatbelts are, plus public awareness campaigns to spread the word. But my late uncle, at the time the most free-spirited guy in my Mom's family, probably would be bristling at them were he alive today, just as Contos, the motorcyclist in Upstate New York, did this past weekend.

Celebrating his "freedom" to ride unprotected.

There Are Reasons We've Got Too Many Laws

Granted, like ABATE argues on their website, the best way to prevent motorcycle-related death and injury is good training for motorcyclists to avoid accidents in the first place. Helmets aren't always going to save lives, nor can helmets prevent accidents. But doesn't that still miss the point?

Helmet laws aren't intended to prevent accidents, either. They're intended to prevent deaths and brain injuries so the motorcyclist can live to ride another day. The health benefits of wearing a helmet are indisputable, and should be enough to encourage bike riders to voluntarily wear a helmet so that a law wouldn't be necessary.

But they don't, so it is.

ABATE argues that since many motorcycle-related deaths involve alcohol and/or unlicensed motorcyclists, how will adding yet another law to the mix really make bike-riding safer? People who will drive a motorcycle drunk probably won't bother to strap on a helmet, either.

With that logic, however, we could unravel our legal code backwards to virtual anarchy which, while that may sound attractive to knee-jerk Americans, isn't conducive to a civilized, productive, and beneficial society.

I'm Not a Wuss

I suspect the real, deep-seated, motivating force behind the animosity towards helmet laws involves the thirst for freedom, the craving for the adrenaline rush, and an infatuation with the bad-boy image riders get by not wearing a helmet. Helmets don't let your hair shoot back in the breeze (I'll have to take somebody else's word on that), they can look dorky, and - at least for people who bristle at rules - they can create the impression that you're a slave to government totalitarianism. That you're a pawn of the Nanny State. That you're a wuss.

Most people don't ride a motorcycle to convey an image of being a wuss. My own uncle didn't, and "wuss" wasn't even a word in 1959.

But that's the main issue here, isn't it?

It's not about demanding the freedom of helmet choice. It's not about the right to be stupid. It's plain and simple selfishness on the part of people who don't like being told what to do, and the lifestyle celebrated by people who don't like being told what to do.

Ironically, it's the very same people who don't like being told what to do who usually need a nanny, and that's why Nanny-State-creep has been taking over the United States. People who don't like being responsible and making good choices usually cause a situation when somebody else has to make those choices for them. All of a sudden, people begin to realize that we've become engulfed in a sea of laws, and automatically assume that laws restrict freedom. But what is freedom, anyway? Hasn't the term "freedom" been taken out of context here?

Free to Be...

No, not every motorcycle rider is a scofflaw or habitually irresponsible. And no, it's not particularly fair for all motorcyclists to be penalized because of the bad behavior of a minority. Most bike riders will live their entire life without getting into an accident, let alone needing to protect their skull as they bounce down a concrete road. So for them, having another law requiring something that's common sense seems onerous.

But since enough people don't exercise common sense and take advantage of inventions designed to protect them, since the economic costs of accidental death and brain injury can be enormous, and since the social costs of not wearing a helmet can be devastating to one's family and heirs, who's the one with a disjointed perspective?

We all know about health and life insurance factors when it comes to irresponsible behavior. We also sympathize for family members left behind when loved ones die simply for not taking basic precautions. And I speak from my own family's grief when it comes to motorcyclists not wearing helmets. It's a selfish decision to make, not wearing a helmet, and a pointless way to die or, perhaps even worse, end up spending the rest of your life in a vegetative state.

Here in Texas, you don't have to wear a motorcycle helmet if you can prove that you have enough insurance to cover your hospitalization should you get injured while not wearing one. And maybe that's a decent compromise, if you insist on refusing to protect one of your body's most critical organs.

But whenever I see motorcyclists riding around helmetless, I don't see a person demonstrating personal freedom. Or somebody wealthy enough to afford extra insurance. Or some masculine, macho, testosterone-fueled cool dude. Or dudette.

I see a person demonstrating a profound lack of common sense.

After Contos' death in New York, some readers responding to news coverage of the tragedy echoed a common refrain: they'd rather die free than being forced to wear a helmet.

Yeah. I'm sure that's what our Founding Fathers had in mind while they were fighting the British 235 years ago.

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of death by lack of common sense."

Doesn't have the same ring, does it?
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