Hope For The Best…

There is a well known professor in Russia who thinks that the United States is going to fracture into several countries. Sadly, he may be right.

History is full of stories of great empires that achieved dominance, crumbled from within, and then declined; achieved dominance, crumbled from within, and decline. The United States is not immune from these same forces of history.

Our military continues to be overextended in the Middle East. The U.S. government spends money it doesn’t have to bail out reckless banks and lethargic automakers and plans to spend more on universal health care and renewable energy. The Federal Reserve prints money out of thin air to buy government bonds as our No. 1 debt customer China worries aloud about the value of their investments.

At the same time, Mexico continues to collapse on our Southern border while politicians on both political parties favor amnesty for illegal immigrants that have flooded the country by the millions over the past decade. The overwhelming majority of Americans oppose amnesty. That doesn’t matter to our enlightened leaders, who are in the pocket of their corporate donors that favor open-border policies that leave wages suppressed and workers divided.

Americans are gradually migrating to areas where they will be among their own ethnically and culturally. Right and left ideologies both favor small, local organization of like-minded groups.

New York exhibits all of these traits. The post-September 11 unity in the city, like in the rest of the U.S., was short-lived. New York is as divided as the rest of the country. I wish it were not so, but it is and it may be too late to turn back the clock to a more unified time.

I hope for the best, but I find myself preparing for the worst.

Take This Job And Keep It

My new column is now online at Kotori Magazine. It’s about the dismal state of the economy and the fragile position everyone is in. Even those of us who luckily still have jobs are on edge, waiting for the pink slips to land on our desks.

Should I get laid off again, things would no doubt be rough for a while. I am already trying to save as much money as I can in case this happens. I know I will make it through though.

And there is an upside to unemployment and a silver lining to every set back. If it were not for being laid off in 2001, I would not be involved with music the way I am today and I would not have an online column.

Here’s hoping opportunity knocks in another form besides layoffs.

In Like A Lion

March started us on the path to spring by giving us a big dose of winter in the form of a blizzard. The approaching blizzard dominated the news Sunday and the city was prepared.

My commute to work in the mornings is usually delayed and crowded. The MTA does such a poor job on a daily basis that commuters are accustomed to frustrating travel. I noticed no difference in my commute this morning even though trains were officially delayed.

I like the snow, though I’m sure my attitude would be different if I was a property owner who had to shovel it. No, I am a lazy apartment dweller who can enjoy the beauty of the snowfall and be clear of the most obnoxious of its consequences.

A big snowfall is a beautiful sight to behold: a blanket of white over everything, bright highlights tracing the boughs of the trees and fresh landscapes unspoiled by footprints that will be gone soon.

The blizzard brought snow to regions that don’t normally see it. It is a chance for our friends in warmer climates like the South to enjoy a taste of real winter. So what if you hot wet or you didn’t get to spend more time at work. For the first time in five years, students in New York public schools had the day off because of the snow. Who can be against that? Enjoy the snow.

Freedom Of Speech … Just Watch What You Say

This afternoon I went looking to buy the New York Post. I don’t normally read the Post. It’s honestly not that great a newspaper, though they have the best headline writers in the business. I normally read The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times.

So why was I out looking to buy the Post? Because there’s an effort afoot to boycott the post and have its editor and a cartoonist fired.

The NY Post ran an editorial cartoon by Sean Delonas that referenced the shooting death of a chimpanzee in Connecticut after it attacked and gruesomely mauled a woman and what it saw as the sloppy cobbling together of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the Stimulus bill.

The message of the cartoon is simple: the stimulus bill was such a crazy and sloppy piece of work it could have been written by a crazed primate. But for the NAACP, its supporters and fellow racial activists, the cartoon is racist.

Because racists have called blacks apes and monkeys, a cartoon that depicts an ape or monkey and in any way appears to criticize the Obama administration is depicting Obama as monkey and is racist. If that absurd jump in logic is not bad enough, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous takes the racial hysteria one step further and said the cartoon was “an invitation to assassinate” President Obama.

If anyone should be offended by the cartoon, it is the victim of the recent chimpanzee mauling in Connecticut who suffered horrific injuries and her family. What makes the cartoon controversy so troubling is that such a narrow view promoted by race-baiting activists and politicians is taken so seriously by media outlets. The mainstream media should not only know better, but has a vested interest in standing up against such hysteria.

After the Post published a half-hearted non-apology, the NAACP demanded more careers be sacrificed at the altar of political correctness and called for a boycott of the newspaper until the cartoonist, editor and anyone else responsible for the cartoon’s publication be fired and a sincere apology made. The NAACP call for a boycott of the Post, which is why I was out looking to buy a copy of a paper I don’t really like and wouldn’t normally read.

“Anti-racism” has been the new McCarthyism in American politics for many years. The fear of being labeled a racist has the effect today that being labeled a communist used to have. Self-appointed guardians against racism apply that toxic label very loosely, to include anyone who questions policies of racial preferences, immigration or, since January 20, the policies of President Barack Obama.

The NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is celebrating its centennial. It was founded, in part, to stop lynching. Now that a person of color (“colored person” would be horribly racist, unless you’re the NAACP) has advanced to the White House, the NAACP finds itself in a search for relevancy. Smearing cartoonists and engaging in a racist witch hunt is not going to do it.

Instead, let us invite those denouncing the NY Post to heed President Obama’s call in his inaugural address, when he referenced scripture in asking us to now set aside childish things.

When I went looking for the Post, I didn’t find any. Both newsstands near my home were sold out. Maybe it was because it was late in the day. I prefer to think that it’s because people of all races are no longer drinking the PC Kool-Aid.

Trust Me, I’m An Expert

Like everyone else, you have probably lost count of the times you’ve been misled by a television weatherman, ripped off by a mechanic, or otherwise done wrong by an expert you relied on.

My latest Notes From A Polite New Yorker column is now online and you can ready my take on society’s overreliance on experts.

I make a special note to point out the dependence that many journalists have to experts. I work as a financial journalist covering the credit markets, the same credit markets that collapsed and took the global economy with it. Since there are few working journalists who have the expertise of the analysts, lawyers or brokers, we rely on talking to analysts, lawyers and brokers to get information. When groupthink takes hold within an “expert class” of sources, that thinking bleeds into news coverage.

I’d love to be able to say that I was a lone voice in the wilderness warning about impending economic doom, but I wasn’t. I listened to the experts when times were good. Good news stories are easier to write, and I did not feel confident enough in my grasp of the markets to ask the probing questions we should have been asking.

There are always dissenting voices though, and I’m proud that those were included in some of my stories during the heyday of easy corporate credit. So don’t discount experts entirely, but listen to a variety of them. And if all the news is good news, it’s too good to be true.

Good Luck

Today is Friday the 13^th, a day cursed with bad luck for those who are superstitious. There are many compelling explanations for how this came about. That the number 13 subverts the number 12, which is considered a number of wholesomeness with nature and the world (embodied in the 12 months in the year, 12 disciples of Jesus etc.).

The most interesting explanation is that the Knights Templar were wiped out by order of the King of France on Friday, Oct. 13, 1307. That seems to have a lot of traction now, though apparently the superstition surrounding Friday the 13^th didn’t begin until the 1800s.

While I can’t help but scoff at serious belief in the supernatural and don’t want to promote superstition, I must admit to being somewhat superstitious. I like odd good luck charms and rituals that will help me organize my day. My lucky number is four or some even number that features the number four, such as 14 or 44. I don’t like odd numbers. I trace that back to when I was in grade school and I was challenged to pick a number between one and 10. I picked four and was victorious. For the Chinese, though, four is like our 13 – an unlucky number to be avoided at all costs. So I would never cut in China with my choice in lucky numbers (I wouldn’t make it in China for a lot of reasons).

So enjoy today and make your own luck.