Yearly Archives: 2013

04.18.13
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Senate “NO” on Gun Control May Be The Tipping Point Toward Victory!

Readers of this blog know of my personal love of history. That perspective led me to look for the precedent of a major national event that changed history in favor of an issue popular with the citizenry but blocked by special interests.  Few would argue that special interests, mainly the National Rifle Association, derailed widely publicly supported legislation to introduce background checks into the process of gun purchasing.  The  Senate defeat, coming on the heels of the tragedy in Newtown,  has resulted in a public outcry with President Obama leading the charge. While the examples I will reference ( Newtown and The Big Burn) differ in many ways, both issues rose to the level of acute public passion.

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Just over a  century ago in 1910, America witnessed a devastating  national disaster that many historians have compared with the force of an atomic bomb. In August of that year a wind-driven forest fire raged through the states  of Washington, Idaho and Montana destroying  3 million acres of drought stricken timber lands, wildlife, dozens of frontier communities, and  killing 78 firefighters, many of them young college students volunteering on behalf of their belief in the newly created National Forest Service. No one alive in 1910 had seen anything like what author Timothy Egan describes in his book The Big Burn.

It is the back story here that begs for comparison with the fight for stricter gun legislation. There existed prior to the fire a bitter fight between President Theodore Roosevelt  and his Chief Forrester Gifford Pinchot and  the special interests  of the timber and mining industries. As  Egan describes it, ” The Robber Barons fought Roosevelt and Pinchot to the bitter end,  time and again derailing progressive legislation to protect the forests from the timber barons and the open lands from the copper mining interests.” Senator Weldon B. Heyburn of Idaho, the leader of the anti-conservationists  was a strident foe of any legislation to protect the land and it was his own law-firm ( no conflict of interest here)  that was the chief paid lobbyist for the timber and mining interests.  Quoting again from The Big Burn, Heyburn called federal forest reserves, ” an expensive, useless burden to the public.”

Following the fire, Roosevelt , now out of office,  seized the disaster as an opportunity  to try again to pass legislation creating national forests in  the West. In his effort to block the creation of any additional public land Heyburn  used  arcane Senate rules  to keep the executive branch from designating new federal forest land without congressional approval. Two years later, in 1912 , Heyburn was dead after suffering a stroke while ironically delivering a filibuster on the Senate floor. ( No 60-vote rule in 1910 a, just hours of talking to prevent a vote)

The Idaho, Montana, Washington inferno of 1910 became the tipping point on the public lands issue, what Egan calls, “The Fire That Saved America.”   Out of this  disaster came forth the enormous support for “public lands,” a National Parks System and  the conservation programs that are in place in America today.  Heyburn, his senate co-conspirator  Montana’s Senator William Clark and the timber and mining lobby were in their day comparable to the Senate opposition in today’s fight over gun legislation.   As a political lobby, Heyburn’s  law firm was the equivalent of the NRA.

If history repeats itself the hell-fire and public out cry created by  this weeks defeat of gun legislation in the U.S.Senate may be the Big Burn  of public indignation that results in the final passage of  even stronger  gun legislation.  Following the fire of 1910 , even though out of office, Roosevelt used his power to rally public support for public lands . Doris Kerns Goodwin’s forthcoming book on Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and  Robert Taft will further detail the enormous impact of the Bully Pulpit  on public policy.

After hearing  President Obama  and the father of one of the children killed at Newtown speak on Wednesday evening at the White House, there is little doubt that dedication, passion and leadership weigh heavily upon the likelihood that the public tipping point of public indignation has been reached on gun legislation and like the Big Burn,  will likely to be grasped from the jaws of defeat.

04.14.13
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WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH 41 TOLD THE NRA TO TAKE A HIKE!

Several weeks ago on this blog I referenced the updated version of former President George H.W. Bush’s book,  ALL THE BEST, My Life In Letters and Other Writings.  In 1995  the NRA’s  Wayne La Pierre  issued a fund-raising letter the basis of which was to raise fear over government troops, in this case the ATF’s use of force at at Waco, Texas, bearing arms against U.S. citizens!  Here from ALL THE BEST is President Bush’s letter of May 3, 1995 to then NRA President Thomas Washington with reference to La Pierre’s tactics!

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Dear Mr. Washington,

I was outraged when, even in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, Mr. Wayne La Pierre, executive vice president of N.R.A., defended his attack on federal agents as “jack-booted thugs.” To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as “wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms” wanting to “attack law abiding citizens” is a vicious slander on good people.

Al Whicher, who served on my [ United States Secret Service ] detail when I was Vice President and President, was killed in Oklahoma City. He was no Nazi. He was a kind man, a loving parent, a man dedicated to serving his country — and serve it well he did.

In 1993, I attended the wake for A.T.F. agent Steve Willis, another dedicated officer who did his duty. I can assure you that this honorable man, killed by weird cultists, was no Nazi.

John Magaw, who used to head the U.S.S.S. and now heads A.T.F., is one of the most principled, decent men I have ever known. He would be the last to condone the kind of illegal behavior your ugly letter charges. The same is true for the F.B.I.’s able Director Louis Freeh. I appointed Mr. Freeh to the Federal Bench. His integrity and honor are beyond question.

Both John Magaw and Judge Freeh were in office when I was President. They both now serve in the current administration. They both have badges. Neither of them would ever give the government’s “go ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law abiding citizens.” (Your words)

I am a gun owner and an avid hunter. Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.’s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns.

However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us.

You have not repudiated Mr. LaPierre’s unwarranted attack. Therefore, I resign as a Life Member of N.R.A., said resignation to be effective upon your receipt of this letter. Please remove my name from your membership list. Sincerely,

[ signed ] George Bush

La Pierre was later forced to apologize. However, reading today’s discourse from the NRA, not much has changed?

In an ironic twist, the very next letter in ALL THE BEST, following his NRA resignation letter,  is one that George Bush wrote in September of that same year to grieving parents who had lost a child.  The letter is so much the measure of the man and especially relevant today following the Newtown, Connecticut shootings, I felt compelled to reprint it here.

Our caring son, Marvin, called today, broken-hearted. He told me of your sadness, of the loss of your young son, of the terrible blow to you and your many friends.

I know that at this, the moment of your anguish, there is little that words can do to console. I’ll bet it does help a little, however, to know that you have so many loving friends who really care.

Long ago Barbara and I lost a tiny four-year old to Leukemia. Of course we felt  she was the most beautiful, wonderful little girl that God had ever put on this earth. We kept saying “Why our Robin? Why our gentle child of smiles and innocence”

Lots of people tried to help us find the answer. One woman wrote us and said, misquoting scripture, ” Let the little children suffer so they can come unto me.”  Maybe she had it right, though.

I can expect you are now saying ” Why.”

Well, I can’t, even now, pretend to know the real answer; but let me tell you something that might help a little bit.

Only a few months after Robin died, the grief and awful aching hurt began to disappear, to give way to only happy memories of our blessed child. Oh we’d shed a tear when we’d think of something she’d said or done; but the hurt that literally racked our bodies literally went away–gone, vanished, replaced by happy thoughts.

Now , 40 years later, Robin brings us only happiness and joy–no sadness. She’s never left us. The ugly bruises, trade marks of dread Leukemia, are gone now. We can’t see them at all.

I’ll bet your son, Chase, was the best kid ever. I hope your hurt goes away soon. I hope you will live the rest of your lives with only happy memories of that wonderful son who is now safely tucked in, God’s loving arms around him.

Barbara and I send our most sincere condolences. And all of us in the Bush family send out love.

Signed

Respectfully,

George Bush  ( Also known as Marvin’s Dad)

 

04.10.13
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THE GIRLS OF ATOMIC CITY/ EVIDENCE OF THINGS UNSEEN

The title of this posting  incorporates  two books, a work of non fiction and a novel. Both detail the secrets of the U.S. government’s  World War II  Oak Ridge Tennessee Laboratory from its creation in 1943 to the end of the Second World War in 1945.

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Denise Kiernan’s book The Girls of Atomic City, The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II , tells the incredible story of the overnight construction of  a  secret huge industrial complex ( Site X)  in Oak Ridge Tennessee, the sole purpose of which was to convert uranium into enriched nuclear fuel for the construction of the first atomic bomb under the stealth Manhattan Project. Within a year, Oak Ridge Tennessee grew to a community of 75,000 inhabitants and into one of the largest industrial complexes in the world!

Kiernan details  how thousands of young women were recruited to Oak Ridge from throughout the country  with the promise of good paying  jobs that would ,” Help Win The War.”   These young recruits , mostly in their early 20s ,  boarded buses and trains without knowing exactly where they were going and  not having any idea of the position they were about to assume.  Adding to this remarkable story is that for the duration  of their stay, none of the workers at Oak Ridge  ever knew the true nature of the work.  Only after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was the nature of their work revealed to them.

The Girls of Atomic City  tells the Oak Ridge story from the standpoint of the sociological  interaction of the thousands of young men and women living together in camp-like accommodations, finding a way to establish a social life while at the same time working on a top-secret project that even talking about to friends was forbidden.  Additionally, the book translates into layman’s language  the scientific process of creating the fuel ( enriched uranium)  for  ( The  Gadget )  which was to become the atomic bomb.

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What Kiernan does not develop  is the story of the enormous health hazards that these young women  and everyone at Oak Ridge were exposed to every day.  Marianne Wiggins’  novel  Evidence of Things Unseen,  accomplishes that in a beautiful love story that winds its way from Tennessee to the  eastern shore of North Carolina and the  back to the Oak Ridge Laboratory  to uncover the horror of the impact of radiation sickness upon unknowing workers.  In an odd twist, Wiggins’ novel completes Kiernan’s  work of non-fiction.

Denise Kiernan is also the author of Signing Their Lives Away and Signing Their Rights Away, the fame and mis-fortune of the men who signed The Declaration  of Independence.   Her work has appeared in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. 

04.02.13
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BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS-A SHOCKING LOOK AT INCOME INEQUALITY IN INDIA

Katherine Boo’s best seller Behind The Beautiful Forevers, Life, Death and Hope In a Mumbai Undercity is a shocking examination of how income inequality can condemn hundreds of thousands of humans, men, women and children,  as slum dwellers with no possible exit from their condition.  After completing Behind The Beautiful Forevers I wondered why the author placed the word HOPE in the title, as I came away with none.

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Boo illuminates the contrast in India’s caste system by establishing her story line in a Mumbai slum, Annawadi, beneath the shadow of India’s “other world”, the gleaming high-rise hotels that surround the international airport.  In Annawadi,  young and old, mothers, fathers and children live at the edge of a sewage lake in cardboard and tin shacks with no walls, doors or plumbing. Boo takes the reader through their daily lives of survival, picking through the garbage and waste of the upper classes and ironically paying bribes to the political bureaucracy for the privilege!

Hope?  Farmers borrow money to remain on their farms to avoid  conditions in the cities like Mumbai. Then, crop failure, a huge loan for seed with no way to pay. ” He was slow-minded, short on his lights and worked the fields, then took additional loans for his daughter’s wedding and felt trapped. Then he went and drank the poison ( insecticide).”

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Hope?  ” When a new school opened in the pink temple by the sewage lake, many of them gravitated to it, but it closed as soon as the leader of the nonprofit had taken enough photos of children studying to secure the government funds.”

Hope ? Boo details a society in which the poorest of the poor must pay bribes for the  most basic essentials in life, including food, water, the privilege to work, and inadequate medical care.

The very same week I completed Boo’s book, the March 30th addition of The Economist arrived at my desk with the headline CAN INDIA BECOME A GREAT POWER?  Behind The Beautiful Forevers makes a commanding case for a resounding NO!

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Katherine Boo is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a former reporter for the Washington Post. She has received a Pulitzer prize for her journalism.  This work of non-fiction is also worthy of high honors.  It has already been granted a National Book Award. Author Adrian Nicole Leblanc said it best in her praise for  Boo, ” There are books that change the way you feel and see; this is one of them.”

03.24.13
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FRANCONA-THE RED SOX YEARS-A MUST FOR FANS

Former Red Sox Manager Terry  “Tito” Francona’s book FRANCONA, The Red Sox Years written with Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy leaves little to the imagination with its insight into  the rise and fall of the Boston Red Sox under Francona’s leadership.

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All of the glory and  drama of the 2004 and 2007 championship seasons and the collapse of 2011 are played out within the intrigue of the relationship between Francona, Theo Epstein and the Red Sox ownership trio of John Henry, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino. Certainly this is a book for Red Sox fans but like  Moneyball  by Michael Lewis it provides wonderful insight into the inner workings of major league baseball. FRANCONA  also offers an inside look at Terry Francona’s personal life, his relationship with his Dad and his struggle with major health issues resulting from injuries during his career as a player.

Why did the downfall of the Red Sox occur after the incredible accomplishments of 04 and 07?  The narrative makes clear that winning the World Series in 2004 was all about the sport  but following the repeat victory in 2007 it became all about the money.  The Red Sox franchise at the behest of ownership became money machine in which everything Red Sox was for sale. When the performance on the field faltered in 2008 and 2009 and television ratings on the club owned cable channel began to plummet the financial concerns from the front office further impacted the play on the field. By 2010 fan and media pressure for another championship became so intense that the quick fix was to adopt the New Yankee strategy of throwing money at the problem. The result was the John Lackey, Carl Crawford  disaster and the ruination of Francona’s ability to control, the club house ethos.

FRANCONA is clearly a thinly veiled rout of the Red Sox top brass with Larry Lucchino receiving the bulk of the wrath. However, there is much in this book that reflects wonderfully on  the game and the Boston clubhouse culture established by Francona when he arrived from Philadelphia catapulting the Sox into  two World Championships.  Clearly, Tito and Dan Shaughnessy leave the impression that Terry Francona is a  “players manager”  and the perhaps best ever in the most difficult managers spot in all of baseball.  It was an impossible position for Bobby Valentine to fill in 2012 and Valentine quickly fell into the trap of making all of the wrong moves with Tito’s boys.  Will John Farrell have better luck?  As Francona’s former Red Sox pitching coach he has a better understanding of the culture,  ownership,  fans and the Boston media. What about Francona in Cleveland?  We will see how the “player’s manager” will perform. However, we can guarantee a hero’s reception when the  Tito and the Tribe arrive for their first game at Fenway this spring.

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By the way for avid  Red Sox and all baseball fans read Glenn Stout’s FENWAY 1912, The Birth of a Ballpark.  Baseball in simpler times!  Refreshing!

 

03.19.13
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BUSH 41 UPDATES ALL THE BEST-MY LIFE IN LETTERS AND OTHER WRITINGS

You may have caught the news that President George H.W Bush has updated the 1999 compendium All The Best, My Life in Letters and Other Writings. The new volume includes correspondence between father and son during the two terms of the George W. Bush presidency, including poignant comments regarding the war in Iraq and insight into Bush 41’s friendship with former President Clinton.

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George H.W. Bush has been a life-long writer of letters.  I received a personally autographed copy of the original All The Best when the then former president visited his hometown of Greenwich at a breakfast conducted by Just Books,  a prominent book store at the time that has since closed.  During Bush’s comments it became quickly apparent how emotionally involved he is when referencing his children and grandchildren. He readily admits and it was in evidence that he finds it difficult to read his own personal letters without tears.

I became aware of this up-dated version of All The Best while reading Richard Ben Cramer’s  What it Takes,  a wonderful work of non-fiction regarding the 1988 presidential election and Bush’s victory over Bob Dole and then Michael Dukakis.   Cramer credits Bush’s great communications skills as a key ingredient in the Bush victory.  Never in the course of that campaign was an opportunity missed to write a personal letter to thank a donor, to accompany a photograph or recognize a favor or personal introduction. That same discipline served Bush during his presidency and over a fifty year career in public life.

Letter writing is of course a lost art, replaced by e-mail and text messaging. It seems to me however that neither of the aforementioned leave the indelible impact of a hand-written letter. Letter writing is as inspiring for the author and the recipient.   Each of my children, grandchildren, loved ones and personal friends have received a letter upon all of the important occasions, accomplishments and challenges in their lives.  I have discovered that despite all of the e-mails, telephone calls and texts, it is these letters  that remain in their possession and often rekindle the importance of love, milestones and friendships. They become a landmark in an otherwise sea of words.  No surprise that All The Best strikes a chord with me!

Thoughts penned by one’s own hand are permanent fingerprints of the mind, ethos and soul. All The Best  may  define George H.W. Bush better than the  thousands of words written about him by others.

February, 10, 1997: Former President George H.W. Bush writing to a young girl whose Dad was killed while serving in the United states Army in Panama: All The Best, pp: 597 excerpts)

Dear Britnay,” You never knew your Dad. I didn’t know him either. I had to make the call that sent him into battle.— Your father was one of the ones that made the ultimate sacrifice. He gave his life. I think  your Dad felt he might die for he wrote a most beautiful letter to your grandmother, a letter that said among other things, ‘I am frightened by what lays beyond the fog, and yet do not mourn for me. Revel in the life that I have died to give you.’ — I shared this letter with our entire nation during my State of the Union Address on January 31, 1990. As I did I choked up because I knew your entire family was hurting.— I wish I had known your Dad personally. I think I would be a better man if I had known him, for his kind of courage lifts men up and inspires them. May God bless you in your life ahead.

George Bush.

03.15.13
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WHAT IT TAKES-RICHARD BEN CRAMER -DOES MUCH CHANGE IN AMERICAN POLITICS ?

Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist Richard Ben Cramer died in January of this year. Cramer is considered by many insiders to have been the best student of American presidential politics. His death brought to my attention the 1992 book What It Takes, The Way To The White House.  I can only express regrets for not having devoured this magnificent work sooner.

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What it Takes, the detailed narrative of the 1988 presidential primary and election,  is not for the casual reader. Its 1000-plus pages has been quoted as ” The ultimate insiders book on presidential politics.” Richard Ben Cramer places under a microscope the inner thinking and personalities of those who would place themselves into the 1988 race to become President of the United States. What makes the work even more provocative  is the relevancy of the 1988 election, including a bitter Democratic Primary that resembled in great part the divisive Republican Primary of 2012.

Cramer details with precision the backgrounds, personalities and political aspirations of George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt, Joe Biden, Jesse Jackson and the lesser players as well.  Of particular contemporary interest is the insight into the mind and ambitions of Joe Biden that may well play out again in the 2016 campaign for the White House. Cramer’s research into the Biden personality is so complete that these pages of What It Takes could well qualify as a Biden biography!  More on that to follow.

The 1988 Republican primary election is a match up between  Vice-President George H.W. Bush and Senator Bob Dole which results in an ultimate  November face-off between Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis.  While we think we know Bush better his having had What It Takes to win the presidency in 1988,  Cramer’s insight into how the Bush personality and family background made certain that victory is remarkable.  Bush had spent a lifetime building friendships, communicating and never burning a bridge.  He maintained a big picture view of the oval office.   The comparison with Dukakis is stark.  The Massachusetts Governor prided himself on being a micro manager and believed right up until election night that the job of the president what that of a manager with the words “leader and vision” rarely in his campaign vocabulary.

In many ways What it Takes is a series of biographies. While the book is commendable for this reason alone, don’t look for neat compartmentalized chapters on each personality. Cramer’s prose and story telling is much more sophisticated.  The reader will learn why Bob Dole, the “Bobster” became the “Hatchet Man,” why Gary Hart’s personality demanded that even after withdrawing over the Donna Rice scandal, he re-entered the race in denial that he had no chance. Joe Biden withdrew over a plagiarism scandal and re-entered the campaign only to be sidelined a second time by a nearly fatal aneurism.  Richard Gephardt worked harder than any Democratic candidate but failed to find a message. There is Kitty Dukakis, Barbara Bush, Jill Biden, Lee Hart, Lee Gephardt and of course Elizabeth Dole.

Along with all of the candidates the “press” and of course the  handlers, consultants and political advisors  have a constant presence in the narrative bringing out the often shameless  positions that candidates take to win elections.  Paraphrasing Cramer, the presidential election process ” cheapens the issues or ignores them,  reduces the dialogue to noise, is spendthrift, exhausting and hurtful.” Cramer leaves no doubt the attaining the presidency is a brutal obsession and leaving little left of individuality. Winning the presidency and moving into the bubble changes very little.

A most memorable reference from What it Takes concerns  the first Gulf War, Desert Storm.  How  did President Bush manage to put together the coalition to force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait?  “He was the only man alive who had  personal  friends as the heads of states in 30 countries. ” He called in the favors.

My takeaway is that George H.W. Bush was the only candidate in 1988 who understood in totality what was required to be elected president and  who was willing to make the sacrifices to attain the goal. He had learned that from a life-time in public service and from his family’s heritage.  Ironically, four years later Bush 41 may not have had the willingness to repeat the same sacrifices necessary to defeat Bill Clinton in 1992. Yet,  after the fray, they became good friends.

What it Takes is a big commitment of time but if you love the American political system and wish to gain a rare biographical insight into the minds of the players in 1988 your investment will be rewarding. Like all good historical research and writing the knowledge gained is relevent in the present.   Listen to what Bob Dole said at a convention  of Young Republicans in Seattle in 1988. ” Conservative does not mean callous. I’d like to see fifty wheelchairs in this audience, fifty black faces, fifty Hispanics, fifty Asian Americans. We have a responsibility to open up the doors of this party.”  Did anyone in the 2012 GOP inner circle hear the Bobster or were his words simply lost in the cacophony of just another campaign?

Other books by  Richard Ben Cramer: Ted Williams: The Seasons of the Kid (1991), Bob Dole (1994), Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life (2000), What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now? A Remembrance (2002), How Israel Lost: The Four Questions (2004)

 

 

 

 

01.28.13
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DISCOVER- ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA- THE NOVEL

Isabel Allende was born in Peru and raised in Chile. Her her 2009 novel Island Beneath The Sea, translated from its original Spanish, is the story of the evolution of slavery  in Saint-Dominque,  modern-day Haiti.  Allende,  like James Michener, establishes characters  so compelling that the reader becomes associated with every aspect of their lives.  Like Michener’s book Caribbean , Island Beneath The Sea begins with the saga of the annihilation by the Spaniards of the island’s Arawak Indians followed by the establishment of slavery as the economic  driver of the sugar industry throughout the Antilles.

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The devastation and human suffering caused by the Spanish  is compounded when the French replace Spanish rule by establishing a permanent colony on Saint-Dominque.  The story of the great sugar plantations and the abhorrent treatment of the slaves imported from Africa is told through the life of a slave girl, Zarite’,  born of an African mother and a white sailor, neither of whom she never knew.

Island Beneath the Sea is a generational saga of the children of mixed black and white blood, that was so prevalent in plantation life.  Young girls became the forced lovers of the plantation masters and overseers with offspring by the hundreds bought and sold in the cycle of human bondage.  The story of Zarite’s survival is riveting , bringing to the reader an understanding of the plantation slave culture, later imported to the American south. In broad terms, I would classify Island Beneath the Sea as a historical novel.

In the early 1800s with the great slave revolts devastating the island’s plantations, the slave culture of the Caribbean migrated to America.  The economic driver expanded to include cotton and rice. The novel captures reality as Zarite, having been transported by circumstance from Saint Dominque ( Haiti)  to New Orleans  discovers that her emancipation and freedom, even in America, is a glass only half full, as an entire sub culture of mixed race ethnicity evolves and plantation life for the slave does not change.

Our contemporary discourse regarding slavery, heightened by the release of the movie Lincoln, makes this novel even more timely. Throughout its pages lies the heritage of the greatest issue faced by American’s transcending the 19th and 20th centuries.

Isabel Allende is the author of nine novels including Ines of My Soul, Daughter of Fortune and Portrait in Sepia., all of which were New York Times best sellers.  I am thankful for the introduction to Allende by my daughter much in the same way as I was grateful to a good friend for recommending Anya Seton’s Winthrop Women.  You too will not be disappointed!

01.15.13
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A FALSE DAWN FOR FREE MARKETS- LAISSEZ-FAIRE?

John Gray is among Britain’s  ” former ” conservative  thinkers who had major influence on Margaret Thatcher during her tenure as British Prime Minister.

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Gray, a long-standing  unfettered free enterprise advocate , had an epiphany regarding his economic views and in 1998 published False Dawn, a highly academic discussion and prediction as to why a laissez-faire global economic system was unworkable and forecast the economic calamity that fell upon the U.S. and the world in 2008. Gray’s thesis in  False Dawn is that  the American-style unregulated free market system was the major contributor leading up to the world economic implosion of 2008!

False Dawn is a heavy reading assignment!  However, the perspective Gray brings to the discussion of  government’s role in the free enterprise system is both provocative and startling.  Of particular note is his reasoned analysis of why he now conversely believes that only government involvement in the framework of free-enterprise can prevent the income disparity that exists in both the U.S. and  international economic system.  Gray makes the case that income disparity, now seen in largely un-regulated world-wide free-enterprise economies, has led to economic perdition.  He  warns of the danger of the IMF for trying to impose the US economic model on the world.

So what is the take-away?  Has Gray gone from a Thatcher conservative to socialist?  I think not, but he is a strong advocate for the necessity of some government role in fostering growth and regulating free enterprise. The growth side of the Gray proposition comes from his advocacy of government  investment in infrastructure, scientific research and new technologies, all of which is  part of the contemporary economic and political dialogue!

Ironically, as I was finishing False Dawn  the January 12, 2012 issue of The Economist arrived with a cover story The Great Innovation Debate. While the article does not focus upon income disparity, it makes a strong case for government spending on infrastructure and basic research. As might be expected, the government investment advocacy does not come without The Economist warning of too much regulation “getting in the way of the 21st century’s innovative juices.” Many sides to a complex issue.

False Dawn is a great companion read to those fans of Tom Friedman, in particular Hot-Flat and Crowded and Robert Wright’s Non Zero. In all three cases you may wish to take notes!

01.11.13
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GONE GIRL-GONE GUY- ALL GONE

Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is all over every best seller list.

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Never having read Flynn before I said why not and what a surprise! Forget the substance for the moment, I will get to that but the format, diary like, allows the reader to quickly churn through this fast paced thriller.  No need to reference backward as each chapter begins with its own initiative, clues, blind sides and revelations to keep the reader guessing.  Without this format you may need MapQuest!

A troubled marriage, sinister plot, duplicity and murder travel this fast paced highway.  Yes, you may get lost before finding your way and I doubt very much you will predict the ending!  Flynn weaves social issues into the story including aging parents, Alzheimer’s, Colombo like cops and a female TV crime show host ever so anxious for the next accused man to vilify.  One thing is for sure, Flynn leaves few local folks in Carthage Missouri with little if any dignity!

So the perfect New York City romance ends in a thriller along the banks of the Mississippi! Can you ever go home again?   Just read this bit of copy to whet your appetite and if you are lucky enough to be heading to a warm weather beach this winter, bring along Gone Girl.

Nick Dunne ( husband) ‘”I am finally a match for Amy ( protagonist ). I was a callow boy, and then a man good and bad. Now at last I am the hero. I am the one to root for in the never ending war story of our marriage.  We are one long fighting climax.

Also by Gillian Flynn Dark Places, Sharp Objects.