TRICKSTER!

We Need the Rain

I remember sitting on a porch in coastal South Carolina this past summer waiting in a sheltered rocker for an inevitable storm to arrive, watching as the skies became swollen and black.

Months later, back in New York, after a hot, dry summer gave way to a bitter, wet and stormy winter when many of the assumptions of the way people live around here came to an ignoble end, I wrote this song. It had been a wonderful few years of dry, sunny weather, but, as people said often in those days, we needed the rain.

Spent the last few weeks pulling together a demo. Pardon the singing  (tho' the vocal sits nicely in the track thanks to the the wonderful upper midrange hump of the RCA 77DX in its omnidirectional setting), but dig the decent lead guitar tone thanks to the great Seymour Duncan Seth Lover pickups (as close to a new PAFs as you're gonna get).

Listen to the demo of We Need the Rain here.

Out on the horizon a messenger wind
corkscrews the trees while the sky closes in.
And the dust devils rattle like a blender full of teeth,
grinding raw the protection for the meat underneath.
The sidewalks of the city are empty now of men.
And I stoop in desert doorstep looking for someone I knew here way back when.
Sometimes things happen you can never explain.
We love the sunshine but we need the rain.

We took what we could carry and burned the rest
and slept in the open with our guns at our chests.
O the wailing and crying! O the mourning and grief!
The prayers for forgiveness and the prayers for relief.
By the houses of the holy where they purify the dead
I met a Yankee peddler whose father always said:
"You can't take it with you, but you can't remain."
We love the sunshine but we need the rain.

By the banks of the river that the willow trees frame
I knelt in the sand and scratched out my name.
I emptied my pockets of curses and keys,
and on the high ground near Dover joined the refugees.
I wheeled out on the ridge like the vultures always do;
turned around one last time, looked back, and thought of you.
It all turns to powder--ain't no use to complain.
We love the sunshine, but we need the rain.

Let 'Em Fail

The US auto industry has been dead man walking for a generation, it's ultimate demise stalled by a series of stays of execution (the Chrysler bailout), happy accidents (the SUV boom), and labor givebacks. The current credit crunch has done little more than hasten the final insolvency of GM, Chrysler and Ford. With collapsing of credit drying up sales, the companies' cash burn has become unsustainable (GM burned almost $7 billion in cash in the third quarter leaving it with too little cash to survive another quarter) and private money has disappeared (investor Kirk Kerkorian walked away from a new round of investment in Ford and is liquidating his remaining position selling shares at a reported loss of $700 million).

Sure there's plenty of blame to go around for the woeful situation including generations of unimaginative management focused more on eking out incremental revenue (for example by expanding the now cratering auto finance business) than on designing, manufacturing and marketing the best, most innovative, most competitively priced, most consumer friendly cars. (The increasingly hysterical claims about the fallout of a potential GM bankruptcy--2.5 million jobs lost, for example--have done little to enhance the reputation of GM CEO Rick Wagoner.)

But as much as anything, there are trends beyond management's control have doomed US car manufacturers--the high cost of fuel, the low cost of labor elsewhere, the legacy costs of pension and health benefits for two generations of employees. As long as these externalities remain realities--and that's for the foreseeable future--America's big three automakers will remain insolvent. In other words, there is no saving the industry as we know it. These companies need to become smaller. They need to make fewer cars. They need to employ fewer people. They need to focus on many fewer name plates. They need innovative new manufacturing processes to allow for made-to-order assembly. And most of all they need to operate in the future with much lower benefits costs. In other words, these companies don't need the kind of prolonged life support that Congressional Democrats are proposing, they need complete reorganization.

In the US we have a process for completely reorganizing companies. That process is called Chapter 11 bankruptcy--in which creditors take control of a failing company and rebuild it under the auspices of a federal judge. Forestalling a Chapter 11 reorganization by propping up the current industry structure and its three insolvent companies would be a tragic disaster and an enormous missed opportunity for the nation. And if it occurs it will represent the worst kind of business as usual in Washington--where preserving a marriage of political convenience (in this case between the Democratic party and the UAW) trumps the nation's best interest.

Saving Chrysler, Ford, and GM is not the same thing as saving the banks. If the banking system fails the entire economy grinds to a halt and a recession becomes a depression. If the the auto companies are forced to operate under bankruptcy protection, sure jobs are lost, but the system survives more or less intact.

That doesn't mean the government would have no role to play in the bankruptcies of the big three. Each would of course be operating under federal court supervision. Most likely the US government would be a major provider of debtor in possession financing to the companies. Active involvement of the federal government in the bankruptcies of the big three would ensure that the US maintains the capacity to design and manufacture automobiles (a compelling state's interest), limit the collateral damage of job and benefits losses, and promote the crucial national security goal of curing the nation's addiction to oil.

Most importantly, the government must seize this moment to completely remodel the way the nation provides retirement and health care benefits to its citizens--call it America 2.0. Since the early 1950s the auto industry has represented the gold standard in employer-based health care and retirement benefits and for 25 years at the middle of the American century--when American industry and the US dollar ruled the world; when it was a labor not a service economy in which labor quality, not technology, was at the source of industrial productivity; when the median age of the nation was much younger and its citizens' lifespans much shorter. It was a system that worked fantastically well under those conditions providing car companies with huge profits and providing even non-college educated blue collar workers compensation enough to buy homes, raise healthy families, and retire with stability. But since the 1970s global economic conditions have shifted tectonically while our national system for providing for citizens has changed only incrementally.

Our system of employer based benefits no longer works for anybody. It's created a retirement crisis and a two tiered health care system where the rich get phenomenal health care while the majority of the nation is stuck with second class care and where job growth is restrained by the swelling cost of benefits. A government bailout of the big three that preserves the current system, or worse one that federalizes benefits for car company employees without changing the structure for all American citizens and companies would be a tragic lost opportunity.

The looming failure of the US auto industry is the first test for the President-elect. So far Mr. Obama has shown precious little leadership on the matter. I understand the politics. If the government acts in the lame duck session, Obama can insulate himself from the political fallout that a true transformation would entail. But the season of politics is ended and the season of leadership begun.

Election Night: Dancing in the Street & Bulletproof Glass

The only parallel in American history I can conjure for the sheer catharsis the nation witnessed last night--young people dancing in the streets in front of the White House, hundreds of thousands weeping in a Chicago park--is the famous story of Andrew Jackson's first inaugural, when an exultant mob thronged the Capitol steps after Jackson finished speaking, following him to the White House where they crashed the ball, dancing on couches, carrying off food, partying in the streets.

That night in 1829 remains a famous symbol of  the Jacksonian transformation in American life. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing depended on where one stood on the social and political ladder.

Wrote Washington socialite Margaret Smith to a friend:

But what a scene did we witness! The Majesty of the People had disappeared, and a rabble, a mob, of boys, negros, women, children, scrambling fighting, romping. What a pity what a pity! No arrangements had been made no police officers placed on duty and the whole house had been inundated by the rabble mob. We came too late.....

This concourse had not been anticipated and therefore not provided against. Ladies and gentlemen, only had been expected at this Levee, not the people en masse. But it was the People's day, and the People's President and the People would rule.

The events of the next few years will determine whether or not Barack Obama is the kind of transformational force he clearly has deliberate ambitions of being. The moment is his. He asked for it, but no doubt the burden is awesome; and he certainly looked dour and lonely in a crowd last night.

In the end, as corny and Capra-esque as it may sound, the difference maker for Obama was hope--a simple shot at a better tomorrow for a people beginning to despair of that chance--hope, but also inspiration. Forget the money, forget the ground game, forget Iraq, forget the economy, Obama's his ability to instill confidence with his unflappability and his ability to appeal to people's inner aspirations are extremely rare traits even among leaders, and it was those qualities--the man himself, not the ideas, not the issues--that won the day.

But it was only this morning, after sleeping on last night contrasting images of the spontaneous jubilation of the people and the, frankly, grim and dour countenance of the object of their adulation--that I was struck by a stark contrast between inauguration day 1829 and election day 2008--90 linear feet of 10-foot high bulletproof glass.

In 1829, after Jackson was done speaking, the people mobbed the Capitol steps.

The south side of the Capitol was literally alive with the multitude, who stood ready to receive the hero and the multitude who attended him. . . When the speech was over, and the President made his parting bow, the barrier that had separated the people from him was broken down and they rushed up the steps all eager to shake hands with him. It was with difficulty he made his way through the Capitol and down the hill to the gateway that opens on the avenue. Here for a moment he was stopped. The living mass was impenetrable.

By contrast, there stood Obama, at his moment of triumph, orphaned, alone, barricaded. Credible threat, abundance of caution, standard operation procedure? I don't know--the Secret Service isn't big on revealing its intelligence or methods (though I have seen them prepare a building for the arrival of a Vice President and it's quite a lock down even without a crowd of 200,000 in an open space surrounded by skyscrapers). But in this stunning moment when Americans poured into the streets to share something profound with one another--something about hope, something about race, something about unity--Obama's solitude seemed profound.

Yes We Can

So many inspiring, amazing things about Obama's all but inevitable victory tonight (as I write FL, NC, and VA are too close to call but CO, NV, CA, WA and OR are about to be called for Obama putting him over the top), not least of which is the sheer excitement of seeing the election of an African American president, something I never would certainly not happen in my lifetime--in many ways a realization of our greatest ideals, ideals which are all too often clung to as abstractions but rarely realized.

Plenty of time later to kick around the lessons of this election, to debate whether or not it represents an embrace of the left or a repudiation of the right (a little of the former, a lot of the latter), and, if Obama hangs on to win VA and NC whether or not the election represents a reordering of our regional politics...but one thing that the election certainly represents is a generational shift. Never again will a baby boomer lead this nation, never again with the cultural and ideological sides that were drawn in response to the 1960s define our public discourse. Among the highest aspirations I have for an Obama presidency is for a post-ideological, post-culture war administration that rules, yes, from the center-left, but from a pragmatic center-left position. There are so many national problems to solve that solutions which produce the greatest good for the greatest number, not ideological purity, must guide the decision making of Obama's generation. My generation.

"Duh" of the Day

“The last six months, during which the SEC and the Federal Reserve have worked collaboratively with each of the firms pursuant to our memorandum of understanding — have made abundantly clear that voluntary regulation doesn’t work,”

-SEC Chairman Christopher Cox in prepared testimony at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.