Bush doctrine strangled Northland residents

By RON BROCHU

Since the 1960s, Duluth-Superior has seldom been uttered in the same breath as “prosperity,” so residents have grown not to expect much beyond inherent natural beauty and the clean, safe environment. But today’s challenge is much more difficult than usual, thanks to debilitating policies promoted by the Bush administration.
While corporate executives floated to soft landings beneath their golden parachutes:

• 1,900 residents of St. Louis and Douglas counties lost their jobs from January through November, about 1.4 percent of the workforce.

• 7 percent of Duluthians had no jobs in November, according to the latest figures, the highest rate in nearly five years.

Meanwhile:

• Minnesota’s jobless rate climbed to 6.4 percent – double the 3.2 percent when Bush was inaugurated in January 2001.

• Wisconsin’s rate was 5.6 percent compared with 3.7 percent when Bush took office.

Pain regionally and nationwide was triggered by federal decisions designed to generate baskets of money for people just like Bush—those who benefit when government turns its back on long-standing lending and investment regulations. When the house of cards finally toppled, even the wealthy couldn’t recover their losses, forcing Washington to bail out their best campaign contributors.

Dangerously dumb

If lies were money, George Bush would have become the world’s richest man instead of an icon for blissful ineptitude and failure.

While combining free market nonsense with delusions of grandeur, he dragged America out of the fast lane straight into a gaping sinkhole that’s devouring middle class dreams from Pennsylvania Avenue to Skyline Parkway.

According to MSN Money, his presidency cost the country about $11.5 trillion. In contrast, the United States had a $150 billion surplus when President Bill Clinton left office.


Nobody escaped the financial trauma inflicted by the unnecessary $3 trillion Iraq war and multi-billion-dollar bailouts designed to salvage irresponsible Wall Street banks and brokers. Each of us has a story.


About the time Bush Too was elected, I covered northwestern Wisconsin as a business reporter. My stories focused on an overheated economy. Resorts and restaurants from Hayward to Grand Marais were hiring foreign students because full employment had created a shortage of local workers. Fast food joints were paying a couple bucks over minimum wage just to cover their shifts. Property values, particularly for lake parcels, were climbing out of sight. Times were good, but much has changed.


Like many others, my earnings today have declined versus 2001, considering inflation. Like society’s aspirations, journalism and the quest for truth stumbled badly during the Bush presidency, tripped by years of top-level skullduggery that threatened freedom and privacy. The raging economy has been replaced by raging unemployment, record profits by record foreclosures.


Even worse, most educated people, including President Barack Obama, say the worst is yet to come.


My mailbox in December contained a letter from Wells Fargo that illustrates how Bush and his reckless advisors infected the worlds of government and business.


“In a recent account review, we noticed that you have not used your line of credit…for over a year. Since your account was inactive…it has been closed,” wrote corporate vice president Richard Nelson.


His words reflect a rather strange arrogance, considering that Uncle Sam invested $25 billion in Wells Fargo to ensure customers would continue to receive credit. But hubris and corporate handouts walked hand-in-hand during the Bush years – at least for the president’s friends. Firms like Blackwater and Halliburton exhibited both traits with impunity, so why not financial institutions?


Supported by the Troubled Assets Relief Program (“The Bailout”), Wells Fargo followed the most troubling path, purchasing Wachovia Corp., which was choking on toxic investments. The purchase nudged Wells Fargo closer to becoming the nation’s largest bank, increasing its corporate stature. But the investment hasn’t impressed stockholders. Trading at $44.30 on Sept. 19, the bank’s stock price has fallen to the $18-$19 range, contributing to its new credit conservatism. The stated intent of TARP, however, was to loosen credit and spark rebounds in the ailing real estate and automotive sectors.

Lies and damned lies

So far, $350 billion in TARP money has flowed from taxpayers to big business with few strings attached, and without any meaningful administrative restraint.

The inattentive gatekeepers included Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the TARP czar unhindered by traditional inconveniences such as congressional oversight, and also the Fed, which has refused to reveal which companies are receiving TARP welfare. But accountability was never important to Bush or his ilk, as Americans learned when weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq and torture was secretly sanctioned in Abu Ghraib. Nobody in Washington was ever deemed responsible. Quite the opposite, in fact. Recall that Bush praised Donald Rumsfeld even as the outgoing defense secretary resigned in obvious disgrace.


The fallout, unfortunately, is landing everywhere. Local residents have lost millions in their retirement accounts as stock prices precipitously decline. That forces retirees to spend less at malls, grocery stores, car lots and other places that provide jobs for working age residents. Food shelves are suffering from fewer donations, and the same can be said of other charities that support poor and homeless people throughout the Twin Ports.


Meanwhile, joblessness and uncertainty have convinced many that now isn’t the time to change homes or buy new vehicles. Even those who are still employed fear the recession could deepen, and their instinct is to spend less.


That’s grim news in a metro that was on the rebound. Residential construction in Duluth-Superior has stopped, with some new condo and townhome units sitting unoccupied for months. Talk has ceased about the potential Murphy Oil refinery expansion, as the possibility of finding a multi-billion-dollar private investor has virtually disappeared. Even a downtown walk along Superior Street reflects the downturn, the Athletic Club Deli being the latest victim.


It’s bad enough that some presidents – Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford – didn’t live up to expectations. George W. Bush, however, whipped America into a tailspin from which we may not recover. At the very least, our offspring will be paying the price for decades, and have nothing to show for it.


Published in the Jan. 23, 2009, Northland Reader


Author Ron Brochu archives his stories at www.ronbrochublog.com, where your comment is encouraged.

Digital TV offers faster speeds, better mileage

By RON BROCHU

By this time next month, Duluth’s antenna farm will blanket the Northland with digital TV signals in a foolish technology change that’s already outdated.

Proponents of the analog-to-digital transformation contend the move will improve picture quality, allow broadcasters to offer more channels and help emergency responders by giving them the former TV frequencies. Their overhyped message, however, overlooks much and paints a thin glossy sheen over system flaws.

We need look only at the recent past to debunk claims of improved quality. It’s the same argument made to promote the replacement of vinyl recordings with CDs, and analog cell phones with digital units. The argument for CDs was that they wouldn’t skip like vinyl. That was a crock, crock, crock, crock, crock, crock, crock, crock, crock, crock. Digital cellular, meanwhile, was going to be crystal clear. “Ca you h r me ow?”

Indeed, digital will allow local TV broadcasters to offer more channels. With the same half-million watts, they can pump out several signals. That ignores the fact, however, that just as many signals can be carried to any location in North America by a few satellites that consume only a couple hundred watts of solar energy. So why waste all the costly, scarce fossil fuel to power transmitters in every burb coast-to-coast?

This argument also fails to address the issue of whether local broadcasters can afford to provide multiple channels, particularly in small metros like Duluth-Superior. The advertising pie hasn’t grown in decades. Every year, the slices grow thinner. In a no-growth market, expansion is only possible at the expense of another player. There’s not enough advertising revenue for everybody to survive.

Moreover, how will those additional stations be managed? Hopefully, the common ownership of multiple radio stations won’t serve as the example. Can you say “dead air?” Or how about stations that simultaneously play two overlapping commercials? It’s the electronic equivalent of an erection that lasts more than four hours. Enough already!

The need for emergency responders to have more frequency spectrum grew out of the 9-11 attacks, when intra-agency communication failed miserably. But the added channels are useless unless municipalities can afford new equipment, and most of them can’t. The added channels will be useless without equipment that can put them to use.

A few things are for sure.

• The digital conversion has provided a cash infusion to overseas manufacturers. They’re working overtime to export flat-panel TVs to the United States, increasing our trade deficit.

• Old analog TVs will be cast aside in large number when the conversion takes place. Rather than paying a recycling fee, some owners will carelessly dump them in landfills, ditches or other inappropriate places.

• Some unscrupulous “recyclers” will merely export old televisions to foreign outfits that burn or bury the toxic components, endangering the environment in other countries. Out of sight, out of mind, eh?

But the conversion has some advantages. It will allow Americans to observe their financial demise in high definition. And if president-elected Barack Obama offers another taxpayer incentive package, which is likely, we could learn whether average people use the money to buy necessities or immediately squander it on enormous mind-numbing flat-screen TVs. In our entitlement-oriented society, the answer could be shocking, for most people believe we deserve that bigger, crisper picture even as the economy crumbles – just as they believe we deserve 20 percent annual growth in stock, bond and real estate values – at a minimum.

The digital revolution, unfortunately, has its limits. It won’t propel Duluth out of its budget deficit, Minnesota out of its revenue shortfall nor America out of its credit collapse. No amount of hype, including constant televised ticker-tape messages, will squeeze the city’s retiree healthcare costs into a beautiful new spectrum devoid of whining retired cops. Darn!

Hopefully, the digital signals will perform better when transmitters are raised to full power. Currently, some channels are nothing to brag about, pixilating or disappearing entirely only a mile from Observation Hill. Expect an uproar if the service doesn’t improve.

The conversion’s success could influence the less-hyped move to digital radio, which is taking off like a herd of turtles.

Like digital TV, digital radio more logically would be broadcast from low-power satellites, but that won’t happen. And it also will greatly benefit foreign manufacturers, because American companies no longer make radios, or much of anything for that matter, because we have labor laws and pollution controls. So we can anticipate more U.S. dollars flowing to emerging nations that soon will have a higher standard of living than America, despite their filthy air and water.

This country, by the way, lags others in the digital conversion, just as it lags others in providing broadband internet access – even as we pat ourselves on the back thinking America leads the pack. Our internet access also is among the costliest when compared with other nations, and providers are paving the way to make it even more expensive by limiting the volume of information we can receive without paying a surcharge.

They contend it’s to prevent heavy users from clogging the system, but many believe the true intent is to prevent people from watching the equivalent of television via computer. That, of course, would offer competition to cable TV giants, which seek to monopolize their highly overpriced services, including “bundles” that cost far more than buying individual components from separate providers.

Author Ron Brochu knows a ruse when he sees one. He archives his ramblings at www.ronbrochublog.com, where your comments will be posted whether they make sense or not.

Published in the Jan. 16, 2009 Northland Reader

Canadians will resolve Duluth Heights traffic problem

By RON BROCHU

The solution could be worse than the problem for Duluth Heights residents plagued by discourteous East Enders who race down residential streets en route to Miller Hill stores.

City councilors next week will debate whether to further restrict local traffic to cope with boorish sots who can’t see fit to drive Arlington Avenue between Arrowhead Road and Central Entrance. Councilors will consider a plan that would close Ideal Street and forbid east-bound traffic on a portion of Maple Grove Road as the next logical step to discourage “cut-through” driving. That’s in addition to existing Eklund Avenue barriers designed to prevent locals from being smacked down by drivers who view the neighborhood as their private shortcut.

In a letter to Heights residents, city engineers offer one alternative – remove the temporary Eklund Avenue barriers. That, of course, would be akin to waving a green flag at outside motorists.

The Maple Grove Road restrictions are hardly fair to those who live and pay taxes in the neighborhood. In essence, Heights homeowners would be penalized because outsiders refuse to drive along established thoroughfares.

Additionally, it would force neighborhood motorists to further congest Central Entrance, where rush hour traffic has become intolerable. Each day, more drivers are using East Palm Street to circumvent the 4:30 p.m. bottleneck between Central High School and Arlington Avenue.

The proposals will be reviewed by city councilors at the 6 p.m. committee of the whole meeting on Monday (Jan. 12).

It’s possible the discussion will be moot. Duluth-Superior will soon become part of a new country having ties with Canada, according to a bizarre scenario being advanced by a Russian academic.

The United States will fall apart next year, strangled by economic and moral decay, believes Igor Panarin, dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats.

“There's a 55-45 percent chance right now that disintegration will occur," Panarin, 50, said in the Wall Street Journal’s Dec. 28 edition. More specifically, he claimed the aforementioned decay – aided by uncontrolled immigration and collapse of the U.S. dollar – will spark civil war.

America, predicts the former KGB analyst, will split six ways along geographic lines, with our neck of the woods becoming the Central North American Republic. Presumably, we’d be answering to Ottowa instead of Washington, Prime Minister Stephen Harper rather than President Barack Obama, Ontario Premier Dalton James Patrick McGuinty rather than Govs. Tim Pawlenty and Jim Doyle.

The change might be advantageous for the Twin Ports, where residents already speak Canadian, drink Molson and worship Alanis Morissette. For instance, Minnesotans could nudge Pawlenty off of his Republican bully pulpit, from which he has vociferously chastised Duluth for being too spendy. There’s little appetite for his fiscal conservatism among our neighbors to the north, although Pawlenty may get some street cred for supporting a larger DECC hockey arena. In the new world order, he and other heavy-handed Republicans will be banished to Fargo, which will become a prison city for wealthy ingrates.

Doyle may survive, given his leftward leanings, but he would have to park the cheesehead and embrace the constitutional monarchy form of government. That could prove difficult. His primary skills are fundraising and pleading ignorance when state contracts land in the hands of overstuffed campaign donors. Those abilities aren’t needed given Canada’s brief election cycles and electoral process.

Unlike remaining regions of the former United States, the Great North American Republic would benefit from Canada’s single-payer health insurance. Small businesses could again afford to insure their employees, and governmental agencies – including cities, counties and school districts – wouldn’t have to constantly wrangle with unions over upwardly spiraling healthcare costs.

A substantially uglier scenario would emerge for America’s existing health system, which is controlled by profiteers and legislative lobbyists, designed primarily to benefit stockholders rather than patients. As the party fizzles, healthcare execs would have to adapt to a life without backdated options, forcing them to drive Lincolns instead of Acuras.

At the street level, Duluthians may actually be able to trade their SUVs for standard cars. Unlike the existing United States, Canada actually invests in its roads, replacing broken pavement with smooth new concrete. Its potholes aren’t large enough to swallow Toyotas, unlike the moonscape left in Duluth by mayors Fedo, Doty and Bergson.

Taxes, unfortunately, would be higher. But society would not collapse, as existing American politicians have led us to believe, nor would freedom disappear, as is evident in Canada and Scandinavian countries that lean toward socialism.

Is Panarin for real or just another publicity hound? It’s anyone’s guess, eh?

Author Ron Brochu archives his stories at www.ronbrochublog.com. He invites your comments.
Published in the Jan. 9, 2009 Northland Reader.