Can’t Stop A Corporate Caterpillar

Caterpillar is doing very well these days. Last year, its pretax profits were something approaching three billion dollars. Even Bill Gates has to admit that’s a lot of dough. Just about any corporation with the possible exception of an oil conglomerate would be more than happy to trade financial statements. The company has an exceptional product, it has an exceptional service, and it has an exceptional workforce of more than twenty thousand people to help deliver both.

Caterpillar is headquartered in Illinois, a state that would love to have Caterpillar’s finances. Illinois is facing a serious revenue shortfall that is in the billions. Because of the budget woes, new Illinois Governor Pat Quinn recently increased the corporate tax rate from 4.8% to 7.0%. This didn’t sit well with the financial juggernaut Caterpillar. It is now rumored that Caterpillar CEO Douglas Oberhelma is entertaining offers with generous allowances from other states if Caterpillar would move its headquarters out of Peoria, Illinois. Indiana, Iowa, and Texas have admitted to lobbying the company. And Caterpillar, like many corporate entities that have a strong financial portfolio, knows it is sitting in the driver’s seat and there is little doubt that it will take full advantage.

States are clamoring over each other to create jobs. That’s not quite accurate. That would be true if states were working with entrepreneurs and businesses to do something new that didn’t exist before to actually create a job that didn’t exist before. That’s job creation. It is more accurate to say that states are clamoring over each other to steal jobs from other states. States circle each other like vultures looking to pick the bones clean of any peer that might be facing a financial hardship. Illinois raised your taxes? That’s so unfair. Come to Texas where you’ll pay next to nothing to help the social collective. Don’t do that! Come to Indiana where we place so little emphasis on education that we’re cutting school budgets in half. Hey Caterpillar! Come to Iowa because we’re so desperate, we’ll make the schools pay you to move here!

States like Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Ohio are so desperate for corporate America’s favor that they are racing to the bottom of corporate tax rates so much so that they are willing to cut any services necessary and raise taxes on anyone and everyone else who isn’t a business. Hey corporate America! You don’t like unions? We’ll make a law to make unions illegal just for you! And corporate America is doing everything it can to feed this frenzy. If states were sharks, jobs are chum, the blood and guts from slaughtered animals used to work these animals into a hunger induced frenzy. And like a hungry shark, a hungry states act on impulsive instincts to do whatever’s necessary to get the chum.

More and more we should be able to see for ourselves that corporations place little value for on our neighborhoods and communities. As soon as a better deal comes along, a corporation like Caterpillar will do the financial analysis necessary to determine if it’s better for the corporation to pull up stakes for greener pastures. Instead of rolling up its sleeves and doing what it takes to help Illinois get back on its feet, Caterpillar will make more money hiring moving vans to relocate. Hell, Texas might even offer to pick that cost up if they can have a commitment by the end of next week. How can a company like Caterpillar resist?

Caterpillar can resist by remembering that it should be more than just a financial decision. Caterpillar should remember that it is part of a community that is struggling right now and it has the resources to help the state in a time of need. It has done well in Illinois. No doubt it will continue to do well regardless where it calls HQ. But Caterpillar has a long history in Illinois. That relationship should mean something.

Now if the state is making it difficult for the company to do its business, that’s another animal altogether. Hell yes, leave! But if it’s just a matter of the company can do a little better somewhere else where the public officials are more willing to short change their communities to give Caterpillar an even greater edge, then that will certainly come back to bite that community. Sacrificing the investment in schools and other public services for the sole purpose of jobs is a fool’s folly. And when the workforce in the community is so poorly educated that the company is having difficulty, they probably won’t hesitate to abandon that community as well.

And if companies like Caterpillar want to leave a state that they called home for close to a century because they can make more money elsewhere, let them. Obviously, one day somebody is going to come along who is going to have a better financial package to leave and it will be too attractive for the company to pass up.

Now that Illinois knows what little value Caterpillar has in its relationship with the state, maybe it’s time Illinois works to help somebody else develop a new company that can take Caterpillar’s place. Maybe Illinois should play this game as well. Certainly there is somebody out there willing to help communities grow and is ready to make a longer term commitment. Maybe the state should do something to actually create jobs instead of selling its future in a bid to keep jobs with a company that will only leave. It’s just a matter of time.

Revising The History Of Racism

It’s been a while since the stupid statements were made, but I was recently reminded in a video of conservative Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann, a favorite politician of many in the tea-party, going on record in front of a group opposed to taxes in Iowa to say that the founders of America worked tirelessly until slavery was no more.  Next thing you know Ms. Bachmann will be telling people that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson fought alongside Ulysses Grant and Abraham Lincoln in the North’s effort against the South in the civil war.  But it is a fact of history that the founders had no problems owning slaves and accepting as fact that people of obvious African descent were less than their peers of obvious European descent.  It is a matter of fact that the United States Constitution that the founders wrote established a nationally accepted policy that enslaved black people were counted as only 3/5ths of a human being.  When it comes to people trying desperately to white wash America’s shameful history of treatment towards people of African descent, Ms. Bachmann has reached a significant new low.

Prior to Ms. Bachmann’s attempt at revising our sordid past, there was conservative Mississippi Governor Haley Barber doing his part to change history of race relations in prior to the civil rights era.  Mr. Barbour went on record to say that race relations weren’t nearly as bad as he remembered it when he was growing up back in Yazoo City.  Mr. Barbour credits his fond memories of racial harmony to the White Citizen’s Council, a white supremacist group that Mr. Barbour refers as a benevolent group of business men.  It should be noted that this group of business people would use their influence to terminate the employment of anyone who had the audacity to support desegregation or voting rights for blacks or anything else that could be remotely interpreted as an attack on white privilege.  The ultimate form of peace is an all-out domination and control of any opponents.  And many of us who bother to learn and remember our racial history will have no problem recalling Mississippi’s torrid support for the oppression of black people.  Mr. Barbour’s fond memories of life prior to the civil rights era are probably due to the fact that he was white and really didn’t give so much as a rat’s ass if black people were being oppressed.  It’s probably why the black community in Mississippi continues to suffer disparity to this day under Mr. Barbour’s governance.

The racially insensitive behavior of these two conservative politicians is hardly exceptions.  Hardcore conservatives will stand on stage and point to a minority in the predominantly white crowd and proudly use a racial epithet while wearing a smile, probably mistaking their political rally for one of their klan rallies.  All too often when a conservative politician wants to inspire public support for an attack on a social program all they have to do is paint the picture of an undeserving minority taking advantage of a flawed system.  Ronald Reagan can paint a picture of the welfare queen on the Southside of Chicago who dupes a poor unsuspecting government of thousands of dollars and everybody comes to know her as Shaniqua, a name that has black connotations.

For people who like to bury their consciousness in the sand, statements from people like Ms. Bachman and Mr. Barbour and many others may come as a shock and somewhat of a surprise.  These people will listen to some lame excuse such as words were taken out of context or that somebody simply misspoke.  This is nothing new.  These people wouldn’t be where they are today if it wasn’t for the support and admiration of so many people who stand ready and willing to buy into the most implausible and nonsensical explanation to justify their statements and actions of blatant racism.  Like Ms. Bachmann and Mr. Barbour, so many people are ready to revise American history with feel good rhetoric void of anything resembling reality.  Slave holding forefathers working tirelessly to end slavery and white supremacist organizations doing their best to uphold racial harmony are ideas that rank right up there with unicorns and the Easter Bunny.

And the fact that these people can give such blatant revisionist depictions in front of crowds to thunderous applause is just another indication of how many people in this country are ready to turn back the clock on what little racial progress we have made as a nation and return us back to an era of racial disharmony.  The fact that leaders of government make racially insensitive statements is no surprise to people who remain aware of the condition of racial disparity in this country.  Indeed, the fact that it happens so often probably does a lot to help explain why racial disparity remains so prevalent to this day.  Unfortunately, the bigger problem is that so many more of us stand idly by, tolerating all the revisionism in our midst.  Nobody should be going around revising history so blatantly.  Nobody who knows better should be tolerating this sham.

The Arrogance Of Ignorance

The chain of disasters that appear to be without end in Japan got me to thinking. We’ve known for a while that Japan owes its very existence to the ever evolving geography along the ring of fire that outlines the Pacific Rim. It stretches along the western coast of North America, up to Alaska, over to the eastern coast of Russia and downward to Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, across the bottom of the Pacific, and then up the western coast of South America in one of the world’s biggest circles.

A lot of scientist and other experts talk about the Earth’s seismic activity along this rim as just a part of life on planet Earth. And we’ve accepted that. We know that they’ll be earthquakes and tidal waves and other significant events in these places. But we chose to ignore this information and take our chances that the big one that we are always told is coming is so far into the future that we don’t have anything to worry about. Like many things, we leave our future generations to handle those problems. All we need to do is worry about what’s happening now in our own lives and we shouldn’t spend valuable brain cells worrying about what will eventually happen but chances say won’t happen today.

So with that in mind, people will chose to live in a place that might not be safe in the long term. For example, we know that an earthquake is going to hit California. Everybody talks about the big one that will have Los Angeles succumb to the same fate as the lost city of Atlantis. But right now it’s just not that important and we chose to dismiss such an eventuality. At least until it happens. So until then, many of us will make the choice to live as if nature is simply not a factor.

The earthquake and tidal wave that hit Japan a couple of weeks ago were not unexpected, they were anticipated. That’s why Japan invested so much into earthquake and tsunami monitoring systems. The Japanese wanted every advantage to minimize the risk of living in such an environment. But with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, it spears that some of the choices they made were rather foolish. Why build nuclear power facilities along the coast where they can be subject to multiple blows from nature?

The earthquake and tidal wave that hit Japan were traumatic. To say that those two events caused catastrophic damage would be an understatement. It was as if the Earth itself was attacking. The devastation was utterly complete and it was widespread. It was another reminder of just how insignificant we are in relation to this lone planet, let alone the grand scheme of things we call the universe.

But as traumatic and as life altering those two natural events may have been, if that was all the Japanese people was dealing with, they would be picking themselves up, cleaning up the damage, and making plans to rebuild. Unfortunately, the Japanese people have the added unnatural burden of dealing with a nuclear meltdown of their own creation. The potential for radiation poisoning has the Japanese population abandoning their homes, businesses, neighborhoods, towns and villages to escape a disaster with the potential for far more significant devastation. While the wall of water may have washed away entire areas of population and killed thousands, the water will subside and people can inhabit an area once again. On the other hand, radiation has the potential to be deadly for thousands of years to come, leaving an area uninhabitable for many lifetimes to come. Nature has the potential to be deadly. But it appears that our own decisions have the potential to be even deadlier.

The devastation in Japan is just the latest example of people collectively making the wrong choice. When people made the choice to live in New Orleans, a city that exist below sea level right next to a sea of water and then protect it from disaster with a levee system designed to handle a category 4 storm while ignoring the potential category 5, they were playing the same type of gamble. The Knox mine disaster where the waste pool from coal mining was placed on the sides of mountain above the place where people live was a bad choice. History is full of them.

We all make choices that have all kinds of consequences. Going left when we should’ve turned right can be devastating. But we can minimize the impact of such consequences by making sure we make informed decisions. But when we intentionally and willfully ignore what we know and take risk to thrive and build things in places that we know are potentially dangerous, we make the choice to compounds nature’s wrath with the wrath of our own arrogant complacency.

Disaster In The Land Of The Rising Sun

Talk about an unfortunate set of events.  Friday’s massive earthquake off of its northeastern coast was Japan’s biggest ever and the seventh largest in the world according to data from the United States Geological Survey.  The quake was massive.  It registered a magnitude of 8.9.  The quake shook Japan like a rag doll in the mouth of a pit bull sans lipstick.  I saw a video of tall skyscrapers swaying like palm trees, resisting the temptation to collapse and saving the lives of the occupants, but no doubt suffering significant damage that will require their soon to come demolition.  But the earthquake was just the preliminary.

Shortly thereafter the massive tsunami ravaged the island nation.  The massive wall of liquid force knocked anything manmade out of its path.  It pushed cars and trucks out of its way like so many Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars.  Huge cargo ships weighing hundreds if not thousands of tons were tossed aside like toy boats in a bathtub.  And homes and buildings were swept away as if they were made from a deck of playing cards.  The destruction surpasses anything seen in your typical disaster movie.  The landscape left behind looked as if it was violently raped and left for dead.  What was once a pristine coastline now looks like a war zone.  The earthquake powered wave of water reached onto the land like a giant hand and pulled thousands of people to their deaths out to sea.  And the unfortunate chain of events still isn’t over.

Like a script from a bad movie that just doesn’t know when the quit the crisis is compounded with the threat of a nuclear holocaust.  Several of Japan’s nuclear powered electric plants were damaged either buy the earthquake or more likely the tsunami or both.  Backup systems intended to keep the plants safe from meltdown failed.  Through their own series of unfortunate events, several of the plants have already suffered explosions as their cores have gone critical.  Radioactive gas or steam has either escaped or was intentionally released to prevent further damage to the facility and compounding the disaster.  A safety zone was erected around several facilities and the surviving population within was evacuated.  An untold number of people have been doused with radiation and will need to be checked and many will need treatment.  And with so many power facilities crippled, the government has instituted a program of electricity brown outs.

And all of this happened in just three days.  The wave after wave of calamities is enough to send anyone single nation into despair.  But if any nation of people has the ability to recover from this doomsday onslaught it has got to be the nation of Japan.  This tiny island nation went toe to toe with the United States in World War II.  The people here know how to sacrifice for the benefit of their entire nation.  Their children don’t have to worry about some politician cutting funding for their schools.  As a nation, they value education and know that their future depends on their children.  Japan is thick with capitalism, but the CEO of Japan Inc. doesn’t make five hundred times the salary of the average worker.  The CEO doesn’t get huge bonuses by laying people off and sending unemployment numbers higher in order to pay higher dividends to shareholders.

A doubt very seriously if a Japanese politician would ever make it to the big leagues by making the suggestion that public funding should be withdrawn from the tsunami warning system.  Regulations for the design of building’s resistance to collapse in an earthquake would never be relaxed in order to help somebody save a buck and make bigger profits at the expense of putting other people’s lives at risk.  A lot of people in Japan take their social responsibility very seriously.  People in Japan aren’t as likely to be quick to support selfish acts that could actually doom entire segments of their population to a second class citizen type of existence or, even worse, a third class status.

People in Japan think more of themselves, more of their neighbors, and more of their nation as a whole.  They will make mistakes; all people do.  But when those mistakes are made, the people of Japan will band together and rise to the occasion and meet the challenges that they face as a cohesive unit.  And when circumstances occur outside of their control, they will meet that challenge with the same fervor as well.  They may not be able to beat back a tsunami.  Nobody can.  But what they will do is recover as a nation.  They may have been knocked for a loop.  But there is a reason Japan is called the nation of the rising sun.

It won’t be easy.  The Japanese people have a long road to recovery ahead of them.  But it’s a fair bet that they will erase the scars of devastation from this past weekend.  They will meet this challenge.  Their country will recover.  That’s what can happen when a nation of people can put aside differences, exercise a strong sense of social responsibility, and work together for the benefit of everyone.  In all honesty, this disaster couldn’t have happened to a nicer country.

Quick Notes 201103

Thursday, March 31, 2011
Opening Day

It’s opening day for baseball! America’s favorite past time is now officially in the running to help distract us from what’s truly going on in the world.

Friday, March 25, 2011
The Queen of Egypt

Elizabeth Taylor, who played the most famous/infamous depiction of the Queen of Egypt, passes.

Monday, March 14, 2011
A Tsunami Wave Takes Japan!

A tsunami wave takes Japan!