Best Wishes

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to each of you and warm wishes for the best year ever in 2011.

Jerrianne Hayslett

Keys to Recovery

Conservative -- truly conservative, not pseudo- or nouveau conservative -- philosophies seem to be the key to the post-recession economic success of metropolitan centers in various parts of the world cited in a Brookings Institution survey, "Global MetroMonitor: The Path to Economic Recovery." Alan Berube, who reported on the survey, discussed it earlier this week on one of my favorite radio programs, "Conversations with Kathleen Dunn" on Wisconsin Public Radio.

Surprisingly, the metropolitan area that topped the list as having the best economy based on employment and production output per capita in the first year after the Great Recession was -- (drum roll) -- Istanbul, Turkey. The best the U.S. did was Austin, TX, which placed 26 (out of a total 150 metropolitan centers worldwide). Next best U.S. metro area was Virginia Beach VA at 36. The criteria were employmennt rates and output per capita.

So, why Istanbul? Two factors, according to Berube.

One is that Istanbul experienced no real estate bubbl. In other words, unlike a number of metro centers such as Las Vegas NV and Dublin, Ireland, that went through huge pre-recession housing booms, Istanbul took a conservative approach during economic good times and didn't overbuild. Both Las Vegas and Dublin were among the top economically successful metro centers pre-recession, and both were on the bottom post-recession.

The other is that its banks also took a conservative approach in their operations. They didn't engage in exotic "investiment instruments" such as credit-default swaps and other complex derivatives. As a result, when the financial world began to teeter on the brink of collapse banks in other parts of the world that did trade in such risky behavior parked a large amount of their assets in the safe havens of Istanbul banks, which enriched the Istanbul metro region.

Other metropolitan areas that ranked well in the first post-recession year are in Asia and Latin America. Lima, Peru; Rio de Janiero, Brazil, and Singapore, for instance.

Some common denominators among the successful metropolitan centers include low tolerance for corruption, not engaging in war and having a strong manufacturing base.

All three reflect conservative values, i.e.

(1) not liberally engaging in or condoning corruption;
(2) being very conservative about attacking and/or declaring war on another country;
(3) hanging onto and being very reluctant to and frugal about outsourcing jobs -- especially manufacturing jobs -- to other countires.

Berube quoted a Brazilian official he talked to about the Brookings report as saying, "We would rather go to our beautiful sun-drenched beaches than go to war."

One of the top metro centers, Shenzhen, China, Berube mentioned was a little fishing village of 25,000 in 1980 and is now a major manufacturing center and container-ship port of 10 million people. Manufacturing, according to Berube, isn't the end all for places like Shenzhen, but a foundation that is the basis for growth into modern technological industry such as telecommuncations.

In contrast, places such as Las Vegas that are consumption dependent with the majority of jobs in the service, hospitality and housing development wound up in the bottom of the rankings.

I'm on Twitter @jerrianneh

Instead of "His" and "Her" planes ...

My friend Jack Lohman, who publishes an enewsletter, "Throw the Rascals Out," http://www.throwtherascalsout.org/ and a Weblog, "Moneyed Politicians," http://moneyedpoliticians.net/resources/ offered his own thoughts on the more stringent TSA measures. Here's the beginning of his blog post on the subject:

TSA: Do you prefer Groping or Xray?

Or, why do we need this in the first place?
By Jack E. Lohman

“So let’s give passengers a choice: between a “total security plane” and a “zero security plane.” Take your pick, if you can find a pilot for the latter.”

That’s the flippant side of me.
The pragmatic side asks:   Read more at: http://moneyedpoliticians.net/2010/12/03/tsa-do-you-prefer-groping-or-xray/

And one of his readers had this to say:

First, the 9/11 events were not security lapses, so much as operational ones. All airlines policy on hijacking was to take the hijacker whereever he wanted to go. Cooperate. Had the airlines had a policy to resist (I know personally a pilot or two that will resist, no matter what) the 9/11 hijackings would have ended right now. All the pilot had to do was shove the yoke down to generate a negative G or so–putting anyone not strapped in on the ceiling, then yank it up to go positive a couple G’s. all those on the ceiling hit the floor with a serious thud. Couple of cycles of this and anyone not in their seat is dead of a broken neck. Pilot tells everyone to strap in–you better do so.
Now–some knowledgeable person is going to point out that trasnport aircraft are not certified for negative G maneuvers–and they would be right. But–the airframe has considerable safety margin in it–the wings are not going to come off. They have to be designed for inadvertent negative loading–turbulence., etc.
Second, your comment is not at all flippant. If we simply turned the airline security over to the airlines–along with a trebled damages provision–and let them do what they want they would take care of security far more efficiently. El Al’s security is oft cited–note it is El Al’s–not Israel’s. Airline A–pay them for a background check; they put your retina on file–you walk on, no checks at all. Don’t have your retina on file–get ready for the rubber gloves. Airline B (the one I would probably ride) hands all passengers a small baseball bat as they get on board. Don’t want to be on an airplane with baseball bat armed people? Don’t fly Airline B. Airline C doesn’t accept women in a burka–or anyone in a burka–who can tell. Fine– Airline D offers them a special deal.
My guess–we would both be a hell of a lot safer and a hell of a lot less inconvenienced.

OK, this is about it on the subject of TSA security procedures -- unless something else pops up.

Next, I plan to offer a couple of truly conservative suggestions on how Wisconsin can reduce spending, possibly enough to balance its budget -- unless something else pops up.

I'm on twitter @jerrianneh

A Taste of TSA's Medicine

A former flight attendant I know agreed with me when I shared with her my feelings about the new TSA passenger-screening procedures. She felt equally outraged. But she went further. She had an idea that would help matters, if not eliminate the intrusiveness and loss of privacy and dignity.

TSA training should include practicing theirfull-body scans and "pat-down" procedures on each other. Then after they've got a good dose of what it's like to have the interior of their underwear searched, the next step in their training should be to practice on TSA managment.

At the very least, she said, they would be more sensitive on the job with the real thing -- or things.

Or, I thought, they might find another -- more effective and less intimate -- way to screen for wanna-be terrorists

Protecting America in Perspective

For most of my adult life, I haven't been particularly prudish about what I wear. In fact, as a late-20s-something I modeled a pretty skimpy swimsuit at a mixed-company fashion show, and as a mid-lifer living in Southern California was a backyard sunbather wearing equally brief attire. And, while not immune from the sags and bags of age creep, things for now remain in pretty fair shape considering the mileage and years.

But I have become increasingly conservative about keeping more and more of me under wraps. No more short shorts, plunging necklines or strapless tops. And the last swimsuit I bought has a skirt on it like the kind old women wore when I was a kid. (I wore this suit a few of times to the pool at the hotel where I lived when working in Indonesia a couple of years ago. Sure felt weird having all that fabric ballooning out around me as I descended into the water, but it did cover up some less eye-appealing areas.)

Maybe that's why I recoil and mentally hug protective arms around myself at the idea of an airport virtual strip search or intimate body probe. I travel a fair amount -- maybe a dozen or so times a year by air -- and have been wanded a couple of times and patted down once when I set off the magnetometer. That was, "patted," not "probed" or "felt up" and didn't feel like I was being molested.

But when the body scanners and "advanced pat downs" became policy earlier this year, I swore off flying -- at least for the time being. (I felt safe doing so since I didn't have any flights scheduled or trips on the horizon that would require air travel.)

As public ire has spiked with the increasingly intrusive and privacy-invading procedures, I've come down pretty much on the side of the "If you touch my junk" dude in San Diego and others who have raged over what seems to be outrageously intrusive "patting."

Anecdotes such as the man with a bladder problem whose urostomy bag was punctured in a too-aggresive search leaving him to travel in his urine-soaked clothing, and the woman who was told to remove her post-cancer surgery prothetic breast were bad enough. Then there was the account I read a couple of days ago about a woman who had her panty liner examined.

On the other side are those who think safety should come first and are glad for the peace of mind that a plane they're on won't be blown up.

But just how effective are these new TSA measures? Some reports say not only are they not particularly effective -- that the underwear bomber's device wouldn't have been detected -- but that they are used only at U.S. airports. (A few years after U.S. airport security started requiring passenger-shoe removal in reaction to the so-called "shoe-bomber," I went through security at an airport in Germany. As I reached down to take my shoes off, the guard said, "You do not need do that. You are not in the U.S.")

Another recent report pointed out that intelligence agents and observant passengers, not TSA guards, have detected the few wanna-be bombers that have surfaced in this country since 9/11.

While the loss of 2,973 lives in the 9/11 attacks was horrific and tragic, that number pales in comparison to the 42,196 lives reflected in traffic-fatality statistics that same year. Of those, 17,400 were alcohol related.

As great as the loss of 2,973 lives on 9/11 was, not one life has been lost in the U.S. in a terrorist attack since then. Yet 327,433 mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, husbands, wives and other loved ones have been killed in traffic collisions since then (through 2009). Those lives were just as precious, just as loved and are just as missed as those lost on 9/11. And approximately 40 percent of those traffic deaths were alcohol related. Yet, the U.S. government has undertaken nothing that even begins to approximate the scale of attention, effort, expense and manpower, or created the degree of public consternation that 9/11 prompted.

Why is that? Because the 9/11 deaths occurred enmass? Because they were perpetrated by foreigners, or even worse, by Arabs? Because driving is an "inalienable" right? (Well, isn't flying, too?) Because when we drive, we feel like we're more in control? (Really?)

Why, given the enormity of carnage caused on the nation's highways and byways by alcohol-related traffic collisions alone, aren't we taking similar preventative measures as the TSA is doing to avert death-by-terrorist in the skies?

A parallel would be for every driver to be subjected to a sobriety test every time we get in our cars and prepare to enter a public roadway, and to have our cell phones, PDA's and other attention-distracting devices confiscated.

Ridiculous? Impractical? Too expensive? Unreasonable search and seizure?

No more, to my mind, than what's happening in our airports in reaction to what is a fraction of American air-travel deaths compared to those that occur on the ground.

But, shouldn't the U.S. government undertake measures to mitigate air-travel attacks? Certainly. What I question is the effectiveness, cost and practicality of the escalation of inspecting each individual passenger, particularly since each escalation is reactive, not proactive and when the U.S. is the only country doing so. Perhaps America should swallow some of its national huberis and seriously examine effective measures other countries have adoped.

I also question the great focus on -- and harassment of -- people who travel by air, when non-passenger-related cargo (i.e. other than checked passenger luggage) that's loaded onto the same planes as passengers is not similarly inspected.

Too costly. Not feasible. Those are two of the reasons I've heard. My suspicion is it's because, for the most part, that cargo is shipped by companies and corporations and the government is loathe to inconvenience or rile the moneyed business sector.

Money can generally be found at the root of most, if not all, political and business decisions. "Follow the money" used to be an axiom of good jounalism, which seems to have become as antiquated as shoe buttons. If that were still practiced, someone would have reported weeks, if not months, ago on how much former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff has benefitted financially from the sale of the so-called "full-body scanners" for U.S. airport use. Upwards of 1,000 are reportedly projected to be bought and installed. Rapiscan, a maker of these scanners, is a client of Chertoff's Chertoff Group, which has been touring the country, championing Rapiscan scanners.   

Someone recently coined the term "security theater" for what we've seen happening in the airport-security arena. The measures might not be particularly effective, but they do make the government look like it is doing something, and it's certainly enhancing the bottom line of at least one segment of corporate America.

Where IS the outrage?

Bob Herbert’s column “Winning the Class War” in Saturday’s New York Times about the race to the top—of money, not academic excellence—hit on a popular theme these days; the relentless consolidation of our nation’s wealth at the top 1 percent of the richest Americans.

This is another area in which I’m truly conservative. I truly don't think that is an American or democratic value.

U.S. laws , unfortunately for a good 90-plus percent of the rest of us, are increasingly liberal and generous in enabling the rich to pile it up to the detriment to those not in their rarified bracket.

Herbert focuses on how that negatively impacts the nation, including even the wealthy elitists themselves.

A telling paragraph in Herbert’s column says, “Recessions are for the little people, not for the corporate chiefs and the titans of Wall Street who are at the heart of the American aristocracy. They have waged economic warfare against everybody else and are winning big time.”

But, he points out, history—including our own—is replete with the rich in such aristocratic societies ending up being the losers. (Although we haven't had a U.S. version, yet, the French Revolution comes to mind.)

More telling than anything in Herbert’s column, though, is this comment posted by Times reader JLT of Palo Alto, California, (which, for anyone who might not know, is an exclusive enclave where the wealthy can live untouched, unaffected and uncontaminated by the hoi polloi):

“What we need is even more inequality,” wrote JLT, “so that people are motivated to study hard, work hard, and be successful. Bob Herbert wants a society in nobody is rich and everyone is equally poor.”

Perhaps I didn’t read into that comment what JLT might have intended—like hidden meaning, sarcasm or irony—but I detected no tongue in cheek in it.

So, 90-plus percenters, our problem is that we just haven’t studied or worked hard enough to keep from getting laid off, losing our pensions and savings or facing foreclosure on our houses.

I can’t help but wonder, though, what JLT’s story is. Who paid for his/her college education (assuming he has one)? Mom and dad? Athletic or government-funded scholarships? State taxpayers via a state university? Legacy admission? And who gave him/her a hand up in her/his career/life?

I truly believe former First Lady, now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was right in her book, “It Takes a Village.” No one ever does it alone.

Herbert’s column and JLT’s comment reminds me of an acquaintance who is about my (advanced) age and decries having to pay taxes, “big” government, the U.S. as “nanny” state, and so much more that echoes libertarianism, yet he, himself, has been cared for in total and benefitted from government in so many ways his entire life. (I’ll go into detail about him in a future post.)

A friend, referring to the increasingly wild gush of lucre into coffers of the already obscenely wealthy, recently asked where the outrage in this country is.

The answer is long and complex, but it wasn’t the TPers, despite all of their vitriol and recent political clout. No, if the real 90-plus percenters haven’t been completely overdosed into celebrity, shopping and other such vapid trivialities apathy, my guess is, the real outrage is yet to come.

I'm on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jerrianneh

I'm Truly Conservative

But I very liberally wish everyone a great Thanksgiving and happiness with all we have to be thankful for.

Liberal Conservatives

A friend replied to my “Epiphany” post of a few days ago, agreeing with my view of Las Vegas.

‘It makes me shudder,” she wrote. “Everything I want to avoid.”

Although she has self-identified as a lifelong liberal, after reading my blog, she’s beginning to understands that, like me, she might also be truly conservative in many respects, such as family and (truly conservative) family values.

“Family is where love and charity grow,” she said. “Family is at the very core of our society and needs to be strong, supportive and connected. Family does not have to be husband, wife and children, of course. It can be any close-knit group or even couple.” 

I stumped her, though, in asserting that in many way, people who embrace today’s concept of conservative (not!) ideology and label.

“Can you explain more?” she asked.

Sure.

In many areas, people who are called conservatives these days advocate the liberal application or use of a number of methods, tactics, policies, practices and options, which illustrates just how topsy-turvy, even meaningless, the terms have become. Here are some examples:

• The death penalty.  So-called conservatives are generally in favor of imposing the death penalty for certain types of crimes and even expanding it to include even more categories. That seems like a pretty liberal stance. E.g., the liberal application/use of the death penalty versus the rare and conservative use of imposing the death penalty.

• Military intervention.  Today’s conservatives are far more likely to support military attack and/or invasion and maintaining a military presence in foreign affairs, as opposed to those considered liberal in today’s parlance who favor the very conservative use of military force, only in the most dire circumstances in defense of our country and not pre-emptively. Just today a nouveau conservative commented on a Facebook status update I posted about a blog post titled “The Shock Doctrine Push To Gut Social Security And Middle Class,” comparing it to the run-up to Bush’s invasion of Iraq. “The"run up" to the war was as popular 8 years ago as Obama was 3 years ago,” he wrote. Perhaps with his crowd, but it sure wasn’t with mine and millions like us.

• Religious beliefs and practices. Modern-day conservatives—particularly those who profess to be Christian and even more particularly the more ostentatiously Christian—are not the least bit conservative about imposing their religion onto others, into political discourse and into public/policy. They have nery liberal views of how much their religion can be inserted into and influence government, the First Amendment to the Constitution not withstanding.

 Those are just a few areas. More later.

Revolution

Recently defeated South Carolina Republican Representative Bob Inglis was interviewed a couple of days ago on National Public Radio in a piece headlined, “Republican Swamped By The GOP Wave.”

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/20/131474413/exiting-inglis-laments-conservatism-s-derailment

Contributing to Inglis’s electoral defeat was what has become the right-wing political career-ending position of daring to say he “believes in” climate change (apparently, although not said, as having some degree of human cause).

As an aside, use of the term “believe in” in this and similar contexts, sends my eyebrows skyward, as if one would “believe in” climate change as though it were some kind of religious ideology or deity.

Despite Congressman Inglis’s 93% conservative” voting record (yet not “conservative” enough for today’s South Carolina voters), I agreed with much of what he said on NPR.

He lamented the disappearance of the Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt, whose platform as both a Republican and a Progressive of the Bull Moose Party, was conservation. I think that must have been the Republican Party of my parents, or at least my father, who thought the best light switch was one in the "off" position.

That concept of conservatism has been flipped on its head as today’s conservative archetype, instead of being frugal and thrifty, comprises the bigger-is-better, consume-and-throw-away crowd.

New York Times right-of-center columnist David Brooks snarked about the nation’s capital being awash last month with famously high-gas-mileage Priuses—Brooks’s stereotypical vehicle of Birkenstock-wearing, granola-eating, tree-hugging liberals—during The Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity.

So are “conservatives’” ideal vehicles gas-guzzling, super-sized SUVs and trucks? I think driving high-gas-mileage cars, eating healthfully and caring about trees are truly conservative virtues.

Also in the NPR segment, Inglis, in discussing the Tea Party, harked back to the French Revolution in which a populist movement turned the streets of Paris and other parts of France into rivers of blood—quite literally—with the wholesale purging of the nobility and privileged classes. (Inglis didn’t mention the rest of that story, in which the insurrection split into factions, attempted counter-revolution and countless pay-back executions (better hang tight to your heads, latter-day Robespierres), followed by the Reign of Terror years, which eventually produced Napoleon.)

Inglis’s reference to the French Revolution resonated with me as that bloody era in which innocents were indiscriminately killed off along with aristocrats and royalty has and continues to come to mind amidst the Tea Party rage that has morphed into elected officials with questionable qualifications and what might turn out to be anything but populist agendas.

Another nail in Inglis’s political coffin was veering off the conservative page by decrying faux assertions about President Obama religious faith, birth certificate and being a socialist/communist/fascist and the vicious attempt to destroy reputations and institutions.

I agree with the soon-to-be former congressman on that, too.

I'm on Twitter @jerrianneh

An Epiphany

The epiphany that I’m truly conservative occurred a little over a month ago while I was emailing with a friend. I had just returned from a Society of Professional Journalists convention in Las Vegas. My friend asked how my trip was and said that she had never been there, but thought it might be a fun place to visit.

It is, I replied, one of my least favorite places in the world (OK, of the places in the world that I’ve been). I had lived there for a couple of years in the ‘80s while working at a Las Vegas newspaper and have been back a few times since – on business. It doesn’t offer anything that I consider fun. So far as I’m concerned Vegas was bad enough twenty-five years ago and has only gotten worse since. So I unloaded on my friend.

“It is so fake and artificial and ultra-promotional of everything I dislike –gambling, smoke-filled hotels (altho they've made some strides to clean that up), drinking, prostitution, girlie shows, total debasement of women. Everything to obscene excess. You can't walk anywhere w/o guys shoving girlie cards in people's faces – a dozen or more of these guys every block wearing "Girls! Girls! Girls! Direct to you!" t-shirts. I'm way too conservative for all of that. I'm also way too jaded, cynical and judgmental about, not only the scene and the tourists who revel in it, but the hypocrisy of the über-religious and pious residents who are supported directly and indirectly by that Caligula-esque-fueled economy. But don’t get me started!”

The shocker was when I wrote, “I’m way too conservative for all of that.” It just flowed from my fingertips into the keyboard and onto my computer screen without any conscious thought from me. I sat and stared at what was staring back at me. Did I just write that? Surely I couldn’t mean it. But it had erupted so spontaneously. When my friend reads it, I thought, she will either snort with disbelief or think I've tipped off my trolley. I’m pretty sure she votes Republican, but have never talked politics with her because I value our friendship above trying to make political points or win any political debates.

That's when the epiphany hit.

It’s true, I realized. I am conservative in so many ways. Certainly in the ways that repulse me about Las Vegas. I don’t gamble and never have, despite living in places like Vegas where gambling is so ubiquitous. The spirits, wine and beer industry would go out of business if everyone drank as little as I do. I dress rather modestly and cringe at all the cleavage spilling out of the TV and off of movie screens. I feel relentless outrage over the double-standard, denigration, subjugation, misogyny, repression and belittling of females in today’s society and culture. (Some might consider that a “liberal” viewpoint, but it’s not. Those who engage in such behavior are very liberally discriminating against women and girls and doing so is certainly not a truly conservative value.)

Although I followed my Eisenhower-Republican parents’ political persuasion for the first decade or so after I married and got out into the world, with the passage of time, being a conservative has been increasingly antithetical to how I view myself politically.

On occasion, with the ongoing political polarization in this country, I have protested that some of the positions and ideology being espoused by political conservatives is anything but conservative in the pure sense of the word. But I had never incorporated that idea into my own identity.

But the more I thought about my reply to my friend’s email, the more I realized that I, in truth, am conservative and those who identify as political conservatives are, in reality, pretty liberal in many respects.

I’m on Twitter @jerrianneh

The Nazi Party's Left Wing

This seems rather strange to me. Fox News head Roger Ailes has called National Public Radio executives moderates or perhaps even centrists. How so? He said in an interview with Web-based "The Daily Beast" that NPR execs are "the left wing of Nazism."

Given that Nazis and Nazism is a form of fascism and the political far-right, wouldn't the left wing of Nazism be to the left of the far right, so that it would be toward the middle, politically?

Could it be that Ailes didn't really mean what he said?

Since he issued an apology a few hours later, apparently he didn't.

I'm on Twitter @jerrianneh

What is a Word

Conservative: Definition

1. Preserving.
2. Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.

3. Traditional or restrained in style: a conservative dark suit.

4. Moderate; cautious: a conservative estimate.

Am I a conservative? No. But I am conservative, and pretty much always have been. But my views don't match today's use of that word. That's because it has been appropriated by adherents of an ideology that is anything but. So I'm reclaiming it as my own because I Truly Am Conservative. Here's why:

• The death penalty should be imposed conservatively, if at all.
• Military force should be used only in the most dire circumstances in defense of our country and not pre-emptively.
• Religion is personal, no ostentatious displays, piety or imposition of one’s belief on others needed.
• Others' sexual activities and practices are their own business–I keep mine to myself, don't impose my views or beliefs on others and appreciate it when others do the same.
• Marriage for me is one person for life, but what others do is their business.
• As a fiscal conservative, I try live within my means, save and invest as much as possible, but have borrowed at times when I thought it necessary, such as when buying a house or car.
• As an ecological conservative, I try to conserve resources and re-use/recycle–well, OK, liberally. 

This blog will highlight a truly conservative view of social, political, financial and other aspects of daily life and discourse in this country and perhaps, at times, others.

If you would like to share yours, please keep it civil and courteous. Thanks.

You can also follow me on Twitter @jerrianneh