Who Does What and Does It Matter

Here are some (numbers from 2008).

Employed Persons by Occupation, Sex and Age
Count (in Millions)	Occupation
52.8	Management, Professional and Related Positions
52.8	Total
24.5	Service
19.2	Office
16.3	Sales
14.8	Construction, Maintenance, Natural Resources
17.8	Production, Transportation
92.6	Total
145.4	Total, all occupations

So, there are 145.4 million Americans in the workforce in 2008, and 52.8 million of them are classified as "Management, Professional and Related Positions."

Sales is an anomalous classification. I believe most workers in that category are probably inside sales, working phones or behind counters. In the Department of Labor Current Population Survey (CPS) tables, sales and office are categorized together. This makes sense. However, I believe also that most persons in sales see themselves as in the category of "Management, Professional and Related Positions," rather than lumped in with "ordinary" office workers such as secretaries, mail clerks and receptionists.

Staying with the CPS classifications, management &  professionals represents 36% of the workforce. (That might give you pause.)  I'm not going to break out the "purely management" from "professionals" such as doctors, lawyers &c.

The reason I'm thinking about these numbers is that one of the constant refrains I hear from the right is that "Americans want ..." this and that. And mostly, I hear this refrain from people in the management classification.

If there's one thing I have learned decisively in 45 years in the workforce, it is that management does not put the welfare of the employee above the welfare of the manager's pocketbook and career. Management is very hierarchical (as is sales, another reason perhaps that they tend to self-identify together). If my boss' boss tells him to do something, he will do it, no matter what he thinks about it personally. He may find it morally or ethically repugnant; he may even think or know that it's illegal; but, he'll do it.

This ability to discount ethics and obey seems to be a quality required for advancement in the world of management. This may account for the rarity of whistleblowers within corporate management. When you think about all the corporate scandals -- the defective products, the financial malfeasance, environmental law violations: pretty amazing how few of these are brought before the public by knowledgeable individuals within the management teams that implemented them or ordered them.  If you have qualms about "sticking in the knife" or "turning a blind eye" on orders, you're probably not going to advance into a position to see behind the green curtain.

Another trait of management is a "Father Knows Best" paternalism. For the most part, managers seem to feel that not only do they know best how to do everything within their business, but they seem to feel a corresponding wisdom about every other aspect of life; and they feel that everyone else not a member of their team has a moral imperative to follow orders. One of the real sticking points in management-labor relations where unions are involved, is that management is absolutely, characteristically incapable of accepting that anyone other than themselves could possibly have anything useful to contribute to the running of a company. After all, if you _were_ competent, you'd be a manager!

The summary line is, that our politics are driven by the 36% telling the 64% what to do -- not just on the job, but in daily life. Now, when the country was founded, the Constitution was written by men who fell into the 36% category: at least, in thought patterns. James Madison was explicit in his description of the Constitutional government as being designed to prevent the "tyranny of the majority," because the anticipation was that the mob would be driven by envy of the aristocracy and would therefore have to be restrained. And the mechanism of restraint was brilliantly conceived.  For rather than applying force of arms, as done by all governments up to that time; and as evidenced in the recently thrown-off yoke of tyranny; the design of the government itself reserved the powers of change to those most deserving of them: the aristocracy; while at the same time, seeming to circumscribe all citizens within that group.¹

Our modern 36-ers are not far from that tree of thought. They believe that it is necessary for the government to be owned by business because if it wasn't, it would be owned by citizens -- and 64% of those citizens are the mob. Hence, again with brilliant insight into the requirements of political expediency, they describe what is best for themselves economically as what is best for "all  Americans."

To the extent that a public school system educates its students to be good citizens, it's bad for the 36-ers: because good citizens can sniff out the poison in the dialog. Hence, 36-ers are against a public  school system that is not devoted to producing "good workers": obedient, mercenary, consumption-oriented and politically malleable. "Sit down, shut up and do what you're told" is the essence of the 36-ers conception of public education. Of course, that's not the education they envision for their own children. To avoid that conundrum, we need vouchers to send their kids to private schools.

To the extent that a healthcare system provides adequate and sustainable care to all citizens, it's bad for 36-ers: because it places all citizens on an equal footing. You will never meet a 36-er who does not believe that he deserves better healthcare than a mother on welfare. You will never meet a 36-er who believes that that welfare mother's baby is genetically and morally equal to his own.

To the extent that a government restricts the avarice of the wealthy, it's bad for the 36-ers: because their lives are dedicated to the pursuit of avarice.

But there's a huge worm in the apple of the 36-ers' eye. There's a layer of citizens at the top of the pile, driving the body politic like a metaphorical brain. Mostly invisible to most of us, the very wealthy work the levers of power in the financial and political capitals of America.

The 36-ers do the dirty work for these rulers. These rulers live in a veritably unbreakable,  invisible bubble. When the 36-er manipulates the political structure to enhance his own comfort by extracting resources from some segment of the 64% below him, he silently passes on the bulk of that extraction to the rulers, gratefully lapping up the crumbs that fall to the floor in front of him.  Above all, hierarchical: just as he is greater than the 64%, the rulers are greater than he.

They keep you doped with religion, and sex, and TV
And you think you're so clever, and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants, as far as I can see.

America has morphed into a kind of feudalism. At the top we have our rulers. The 36-ers represent the gentry, and the lower 64% the serfs.   Everybody is expected to "know his place" and keep it.

Lawrence Lessig has recently penned an article for The Nation, How to Get Our Democracy Back. This article is well worth reading. I have read no more cogent summary of our current political status in America; it is a call to action.

There is no "third way" in American politics. Either business controls the government and turns its broad powers to the ends of profit-making and maintaining the aristocratic privilege of the 36-ers and their rulers; or the citizens control the government and turn its broad powers to the ends of social justice. There is no real-world scenario in which government is ever, will ever be, a neutral party in the daily operations of life in the State.

I can't say that I'm sanguine that we will "get out of the state we're in."

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." -- Mahatma Gandhi

¹ Yes, some of the founders recognized exactly what was being done by this design. Patrick Henry is famous for having repudiated the output of the Constitutional Convention, campaigned against it in his home state and helped force the hand of the nascent Constitutional government in order to secure the Bill of Rights; which Madison, et al were wont to regard as "unnecessary" once the government was in place. We owe more of our modern liberty to Patrick Henry than to James Madison.

Today's Poem

There's more to this poem by e.e. cummings than the first line. You
have to read it carefully (in my case, several times) to get the full
flavor.

a salesman is an it that stinks Excuse

Me whether it's president of the you were say
or a jennelman name misder finger isn't
important whether it's millions of other punks
or just a handful absolutely doesn't
matter and whether it's in lonjewray

or shrouds is immaterial it stinks

a salesman is an it that stinks to please
but whether to please itself or someone else
makes no more difference than if it sells
hate condoms education snakeoil vac
uumcleaners terror strawberries democ
ra(caveat emptor)cy superfluous hair
or Think We've Met subhuman rights Before

The mark of a good poem:  I can't even think of a followup comment that doesn't read lame.

Afterthought On Christmas

"It seems too much for any mortal man to appoint, or make an anniversary memorial [for Christ]." -- John Robinson, pastor of the Pilgrims and organizer of the Mayflower expedition

Christmas was condemned by the founders of the various Protestant churches as an unholy, even pagan celebration.

In the early 17th century, a wave of religious reform changed the way Christmas was celebrated in Europe. When Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan forces took over England in 1645, they vowed to rid England of decadence and, as part of their effort, cancelled Christmas. By popular demand, Charles II was restored to the throne and, with him, came the return of the popular holiday.

The pilgrims, English separatists that came to America in 1620, were even more orthodox in their Puritan beliefs than Cromwell. As a result, Christmas was not a holiday in early America. From 1659 to 1681, the celebration of Christmas was actually outlawed in Boston. Anyone exhibiting the Christmas spirit was fined five shillings. By contrast, in the Jamestown settlement, Captain John Smith reported that Christmas was enjoyed by all and passed without incident.

After the American Revolution, English customs fell out of favor, including Christmas. In fact, Congress was in session on December 25, 1789, the first Christmas under America's new constitution. Christmas wasn't declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870.  -- An Outlaw Christmas, History Channel

Far from wanting to "keep the Christ in Christmas," the early Protestants were more in the mold of Paster Ralph Ovadal, of the Pilgrim Covenant Church, who declared in a sermon in 2005,

Keep Christ in Christmas? Why would we want to keep "Christ" in Christmas? Why would we want our Lord's name connected to the word "mass"? Why would we want to keep His name at the center of a pagan, Epicurean festival? I wish Christ's name had nothing to do with that holiday. I wish the pope never mentioned our Savior on that day. I wish I had never heard heathens singing "Happy Birthday, Jesus" just before breaking out the booze and plunging into a cesspool of hedonistic pleasure.

Now, that's a fine bit of rant, though I'm not in accordance with the good Pastor's beliefs. I am not offended by selecting a day to celebrate the birth of our Saviour. I think it's a good thing, insofar as it refocuses our wandering attention onto what is important.

But, there are those who use the Christmas celebration, not to renew their relationship with God through marking the birth of his Son, but to further more earthly ends. Sometimes, it's akin to the Pharisee rending his shirt in public, to call attention to his praying. Other times, it's to rally political opponents to some current topic. Those actions betray the very Word we are bound to honor.

There are only two sacraments in our church (Congregational UCC): baptism and communion. Christmas is not a "holy day," as in a day made holy by the Lord. It is a day of remembrance, designated by men to honor one Who is holy, and whose sandal we are not worthy to tie.  Rather than making a spectacle of ourselves in its observance, we might better retire to a closet, like the Biblical publican, to ask His forgiveness that we need such a day.  Its existence testifies to the insufficiency of that honor in our daily lives.

The Philosophy of Being A Liberal

It's pretty simple, actually, and doesn't take a whole book to elucidate.

You accept imperfection in yourself and others. You believe in alleviating suffering, wherever it exists. You reject the notion that some people don't "deserve" help.

The world is an interesting place and you're curious about it. You like to learn and can change your mind if you get something wrong -- and even admit it.

You don't regard your own personal comfort as the defining characteristic of the value of a thing to you. You don't regard personal wealth as the measure of an individual's value.  Having achieved some material success, you worry that it might corrupt you.

You're not afraid to mix it up with individuals who have contrary views. But, you don't regard them ipso facto as inferior or corrupt. We can want  fundamentally the same things and have different views of how to get them.

You understand that economics and politics are means to an end, that they do not exist independently of the individuals that use them; and that the end they serve is "the greatest good for the greatest number." "The economy," like "the Market," is an abstraction useful for describing a subset of human activities; it is not the purpose of human existence.

It is not good to forget over what gulfs the spirit
Of the beauty of humanity, the petal of a lost flower blown seaward by the night-wind, floats to its quietness.
-- Robinson Jeffers, "Apology for Bad Dreams"

Dogma is the enemy of liberal thought (though even liberals can be cornered by it). The essence of the liberal paradigm is that one never arrives at the solution to a given problem, but only at a resolution. That is, problem-solving (social, economic, political) is like viewing a distant object through a telescope. You gradually adjust the view to make the object come into focus, resolving the image. But you never achieve perfect focus, so resolution is a process rather than a stationary endpoint, goal or final result. Further, everyone who looks through the telescope has a different optical paradigm, so what appears to be well-focussed for one viewer is decidedly out of focus for another. So the process of resolution contains not only the viewing but the social interaction necessary to determine the "reality" or "truth" contained in the act of viewing.

Read John Dewey's The Public and Its Problems for a succinct, dense and brilliant account of this concept and process.

You believe that personal liberty is the most significant aspect of the social structure. You can be a successful businessman in a totalitarian state. Personal liberty is not a requirement for economic liberty. Therefore, economic liberty does not guarantee or even imply personal liberty. On the other hand, having personal liberty creates conditions for economic liberty.

You believe that the rights of personal liberty are absolute, that the state has no countervailing right to arbitrarily restrict a citizen's liberty. You believe that the best defense of liberty is living free.  You understand that the government has no vested interest in preserving liberty; liberty only persists as long as citizens demand it, refuse to live without it.

Liberal thought, in summary, is not static, is not a box from which one extracts the appropriate answer to any question; but rather a process of examining the question and formulating an answer based on what is known. As the known expands, the answer changes.  Liberal thought thereby encompasses the unknown in a changing landscape of a perfectible world.

Why I Am Not A Conservative, Part Deux

No action has ever been taken by Conservatives (self-styled) to make America a better place. By "better place" I mean: morally more understanding, socially more accepting, economically more successful.  The essence of liberal position is that we are obligated to use government to accomplish these goals.

To make citizens more understanding, we implemented public education.  While we often overemphasize the need of a good education to get a "good job," from the beginning an educated citizen was seen as essential to  a successful democratic government.

"The less wealthy people,... by the bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government; and all this would be effected without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821.

Liberals have led the battle to make America a socially accepting society, in which the words "all men are created equal" would have weight and be borne out in daily life. Liberal thinkers and politicians have led the fights for the end to slavery, the end of child labor, the 40-hour work week, workplace safety, environmental protection, livable wages, universal suffrage.

They also have led the fights to maintain the liberties institutionalized in the Bill of Rights.

All of these struggles have been seen by liberals as essential to achieving the last goal, economic success. In the context of the nation, "economic success" means that all citizens possess the essentials: a decent, safe place to live, food on the table and clothes on their persons.

That's utopian. The many measures of the individual which prevent the achievement of the utopian vision will always be a part of our society.

And that's where government enters the equation.

The limitations of the human mind and imagination, the inability of human beings to transcend their own interests sufficiently to envisage the interests of their fellow men as clearly as they do their own makes force an inevitable part of the process of social cohesion. But the same force which guarantees peace also makes for injustice. -- Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society

If superior abilities and services to society deserve special rewards it may be regarded as axiomatic that the rewards are always higher than the services warrant. No impartial society determines the rewards. The men of power who control society grant these perquisites to themselves. ... The inevitable hypocrisy, which is associated with all the collective activities of the human race, springs chiefly from this source: that individuals have a moral code which makes the actions of collective man an outrage to their conscience. -- Reinhold Niebuhr, ibid.

I agree with Niebuhr's assessment, quoted above, and agree with him that the burden then becomes one of accepting that injustice will always exist in society and attempting to minimize it. Since we can't eliminate injustice, the role of government is to minimize it by distributing it equally among citizens -- to prevent, by force as necessary, the economically and socially powerful from subjugating the economically and socially weak.

Like "liberal," "conservative" as a political descriptor paints a significant swath of belief. But all conservatives  have these factors in common. They believe that economic and social power are theirs by right, because they are superior to the "disadvantaged," that is, to those who are weak or powerless.

In the end, the minority has only those rights that the majority chooses to grant it. -- William Rehnquist

Unlimited power to exert injustice on their own behalf, in any form, underpins the conservative ethos in modern America.  And it is the only function of government, in their view, to protect that power. The conservative believes that it is "unjust" to "force" them to pay taxes in support of public relief for the homeless; and "just" -- in all circumstances -- for them to evict a family from a home and make them homeless.   The conservative believes that the homeless man has no absolute right to a place to live, but he (the conservative) has an absolute right to prevent the homeless man from finding a place to live.

Conservatives opposed liberation of slaves, opposed universal suffrage, opposed the end to child labor in factories, opposed the end to segregated schools, opposed the inclusion of women in the work force, opposed voting rights for black Americans. That legacy of opposition to the expansion of political rights and social acceptance is still being built on today, as conservatives oppose programs to provide medical care to children (SCHIP), aid to impoverished schools, aid to children from disadvantaged backgrounds (Head Start), and yes, aid to families that are in danger of losing their homes.

I don't believe it is possible for a conservative to imagine any circumstance in which government should be allowed to "force" him to do what is  obviously, morally right. The very act of being "forced" to help his neighbor renders such help immoral, in his view. In fact, the conservative believes that the very fact of an individual needing help demonstrates that person's moral turpitude. When the conservative says "I believe in personal responsibility," he means that he doesn't give a damn why you need help, he's not going to help you because whatever happened to you, it's your own fault. You deserve to suffer.

And that's why I'm not a conservative. It's impossible to be a conservative without being covetous and I'm not covetous. It's impossible to be a  conservative without regarding your economic success as demonstration of your moral superiority.  Not a single day goes by, in which I do not acknowledge to myself that I am unworthy.  My life is built on the acceptance of that grace which I have been granted and with which I struggle.

My job is to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. -- Mother Jones

I, as a liberal and a Christian, believe that God brought me here to do his work. The measure of my success is not how much I accumulate but how much I help. I acknowledge the limits of my success and how far I have yet to go. That's the nature of being a liberal.

A Moral Reawakening

"Don't keep up with the Joneses; make sure the Joneses are okay." -- Jim Wallis

That resonates for me.

It's tough. Anne came up from the projects, raised in a world where there never was enough, where celebrations of holidays like Christmas were driven by handouts from charitable organizations. My parents weren't poor in material ways but spiritually impoverished. Both of us came out of those worlds needy.

Buying presents for your kids can become a way of fulfilling the needs that went unanswered when we were kids. We always want them to have what we didn't.

But a lot of that "what we didn't" can be traced back, not to the material lack, but to the spiritual lack. And you can see that the hunger for that spiritual fulfillment is never assuaged by the new pair of jeans or game for the Nintendo DSi.

Because it's never enough. A day, or two days after that new pair of jeans has been worn, a clamor is raised for another trip to the mall. And the tell is that often, the bag containing the newly-purchased items gets thrown on the dining room table and sits for two days before the new items are even  retrieved and used.

It's the act of purchasing, the recognition of the ability to buy, that has become important.

A couple of nights ago, we were sitting in the living room watching coverage of the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake on CNN, and Laura said "I'm going to pack up some of my toys and send them to the kids there."

That's the legacy we really want to give our kids. And however she came by it, we didn't buy it at the mall.

Services Available at One Small Bank

Last night, I was watching a video about the Move Your Money campaign that included a MSNBC clip in which the interrogators made some denigrating remarks about the level of services provided by community banks. The individual from MYM did not dispute these claims, which were in fact, not true; or at least, not necessarily true.

My wife and I are members of Mutual Security Credit Union.

• I don't know when they started online banking at MSCU, but I've had online web access to my account since I opened it in 2002. At that time, when I left Bank of America for MSCU, online banking was only available at BofA by paying a monthly fee and using a proprietary online-banking software client. There was no web access possible.
  

•  Online bill payment scheduling has always been available at MSCU -- free, as in "free beer." In 2002, online bill payment through my former bank was also fee-based.

•  I have two accounts at MSCU, my wife has two and her two sons each have an account. We can move money among our various accounts at will, through the online interface. For example, Anne handles most of our bills and I buy groceries. I "reimburse" myself for the weekly grocery buy by logging into her bill-paying account and transferring the money for groceries from the bill-paying account to my account. If one of the boys needs to borrow money, Anne transfers it directly from her account to his. When he wants to pay it back (hey, it could happen!), he transfers it directly. My check is auto-deposited into my account; Anne helps herself by transferring a set amount of it into the bill-paying account.

• You can move money between accounts over the phone by using MSCU's automated phone service, in the same way you can move it via the web interface.

• My ATM card is VISA-based and I've used it all over the country. Of course, I pay a fee -- if I use it for cash at a machine. It seems to me that people who complain about ATM fees ought instead to look at their cash usage patterns. I don't pay a fee if I used the card to buy gas in Tulsa or pay the restaurant bill in Daytona Beach. The solution to the fee issue is, figure out your cash needs in advance, get the cash you need; don't keep hitting the ATM for dribs and drabs of money! When I travel on business, I get my cash before I leave and I almost never have to pony up $2-$3 for a refill. When we go on family trips, Anne gets the cash for expenses ahead of time, as well.

• You can get almost all the help you need with your accounts through the online message system that is built into your account management interface.

• MSCU provides credit cards, a full line of loans (auto, mortgage, home equity &c), investments. You can apply for mortgage, auto and equity loans online.

• Our statements are "e-statements," emailed to us each month.

• The only service that big banks provide that MSCU doesn't provide, is the opportunity to write a letter to Cardmember Services in Delaware when you have a problem with your account.

Of course, if you're thinking about changing banks, you have to shop for services just like you would shop for features in a new car, or for amenable design in a new house.  But the canard that you're sacrificing "services" by going small is easily refutable.   And, it should have been refuted on MSNBC by the MYM spokesperson.