When a Professor Became President

“Freedom exists only where people take care of the government.” 

-T. Woodrow Wilson

How do you feel about civic responsibility? Our most important responsibility is exercising our right to vote for the people that run our government on all levels. In order to do this, we should do a certain amount of research concerning the people that receive our vote. The problem is that the vast majority of our "research" is based on watching campaign ads on TV. Rarely can you get a complete picture from thirty seconds of bullshit on a slick TV ad. Currently, our campaign ads have reached the point of uselessness because they twist facts, convey only half truths, or in some cases, lie outright. This isn't a problem with just one party. They both do it. Frankly, it offends me, because they think we're stupid, or at least lazy. They're usually at least half right.

Unfortunately, we get the government we deserve. We've become so jaded by being constantly disappointed by the people that we've elected, that we feel that it really doesn't matter who we vote for, since they're all bound to let us down in the end. I'm here to tell you that we can do better, but we need to make an effort. One way to start is to learn something from history.

I love to read. I also consider it my duty as a citizen to expand my base of knowledge, and reading books is one of the best ways to accomplish that task. Recently I finished reading Wilson by A. Scott Berg, which is a new biography about our twenty-eighth President, T. Woodrow Wilson. I never really knew much about President Wilson (including the fact that his first name was Thomas, not Woodrow), and always thought of him as a prim, uptight, stick-in-the-mud kind of guy. I knew he was reelected President using the slogan “He kept us out of war,” and then, before his second term even started, began the process to lead America into World War I. That had always seemed a bit incongruent to me. Of course that’s why it is always a good idea to add to your knowledge base. Our current world seems to run on sound bites and tweets, but they rarely present enough depth to fully understand issues.

One of my favorite historical quotes comes from George Santayana:  "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” which underscores the necessity of learning and applying our knowledge of the past to the problems of the present. However, I was surprised to learn that Wilson said: “The world’s memory must be kept alive, or we shall never see an end of its old mistakes.” This was said in a speech which commemorated the 150th anniversary of Princeton University and predated Santayana’s famous quote by a decade. It’s not surprising that Wilson recommended learning from the past since he was a professor of history at several colleges before becoming the President of Princeton University.

Another thing that surprised me was that old Woodrow wasn’t as much of a fuddy-duddy as our superficial first impressions of the man might suggest. His love letters to his first wife, who died in 1914 while Wilson was President, bordered on erotica in some cases. In 1915, he married a buxom younger widow that had caught his eye. He was known to be romantic, a good dancer, and even humorous. Wilson said that he left academia for public service in order to escape politics. You see, “politics” doesn’t just influence how our government is run, it influences how everything in the world is run. Apparently, Wilson thought the situation was worse in the administration of educational facilities than it was in Washington. Plus, he was going for a laugh. However, history suggests that despite his impressive record of accomplishments, he remained pretty much a novice in the politics of governance. 

Wilson held only two elected offices in his entire political career. He served briefly as Governor of New Jersey before being elected President on the Democrat’s ticket. His actions in office tend to reflect a more of a statesman-like approach to his jobs than what would be more typical for a politician. Wilson greatly admired the British Parliament, where the Prime Minister and Cabinet remained an integral part of the legislative body, feeling that it offered a better system for enacting needed laws and reforms. Unlike chief executives before or since, Wilson frequently left the isolation of the White House for the Capitol, where he addressed the Congress in person. He was also considered one of the most eloquent speakers ever to hold the top political office, which helped him push his agenda of progressive reforms.

America faced various problems at the start of Wilson’s first term as President. Wealth was increasingly concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest citizens. Corporations and wealthy individuals exercised considerable influence over elections. Teddy Roosevelt was elected to his first full term as President largely through campaign money provided by only four groups. These included the J.P. Morgan banking company as well as railroad and steel magnate Henry Clay Frick (once known as the most hated man in America). Although TR was known as the “trust-buster” and eventually ran for President on the Progressive Party ticket, he actually thought that the trusts should be regulated, not “busted” as his nickname would otherwise suggest. At the start of the 20th century, the average American worker toiled for long hours, frequently under less than ideal conditions. While Wilson was able to pass significant progressive reform measures, often as a result of magnificent speeches made in person to Congress, it seems that many of his efforts to provide some relief to working men and women have not endured.

Unlike today’s “free-market” loving Republicans, the Republican Party of Wilson’s time had enacted high tariffs on imported commodities, which adversely affected poorer Americans, by causing high prices for life’s basic necessities while providing excessive income to domestic corporations. At the urging of President Wilson, tariffs were reduced or eliminated, with the tax revenue lost from tariffs replaced by a tax on income. The wealthy hated the income tax, primarily because they were the only ones that had to pay. Most of the lower income Americans were exempt. While the wealthy pissed and moaned about the inequity of the income tax, the economy actually grew and improved, and wealthy Americans became even richer, and still enjoyed all of the benefits that entailed.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the First World War had begun, although at the time it had yet to be numbered. America, including its President, saw no need to embroil itself in this European brouhaha, remaining blissfully neutral, with the economy benefitting from increased trade with everyone. Sadly, Germany’s actions eventually forced America’s hand, and we entered the conflict on the side of England, France, and Italy (Russia was also an Allied Nation at the start of the Great War, but was dealing with its own internal revolution at the time, which eventually brought a communist government to power). The addition of fresh American troops, backed by our country’s incredible industrial might, turned the tide, resulting in a victory for the Allied Nations.

Wilson saw the chance that the victory offered. He made it his mission in life to make the world safe from this kind of horrible conflict forever more. The keystone of his plan was to establish a League of Nations that would have the power to prevent this type of total war through negotiated settlement with united world opinion to back it up, before it could ever get started.

One of the sad realities of learning about the lives of great men is when we are able to look back with perfect hindsight at decisions, or events, that prove to be their undoing. Wilson was a man that thought through a problem, then made a decision and stuck to it, never changing his mind. He sailed for Europe and the peace talks with a devoted cadre of minions who would offer no resistance to his grand plan. He should have made the group bipartisan, and included someone like his most vocal critic in the Senate, Henry Cabot Lodge. After months of negotiations and discussion, Wilson returned home with a peace proposal that he believed would forever prevent the kind of mass slaughter and destruction that had recently devastated France and Belgium, among other places. Furious over having been excluded from the limelight (as well as the actual peace process) Lodge and the rest of the Republican leadership vowed to sink the peace treaty, including its most critical element, the League of Nations, before it could start.

Another sad reality of our political system is that the American electorate loves to change its collective mind at the drop of a hat. The opposition managed to derail America’s involvement in the peace treaty that ended the war as well as quashing Wilson’s hope that diplomacy would forever prevent another world war through the negotiating process of the League of Nations. After two terms that mostly saw a healthy, rapidly expanding national economy, American voters elected a Republican-controlled Congress, Senate, and made Ohio’s Warren G. Harding President of the United States. Harding managed to become one of history’s worst ranked Presidents during his brief tenure in office. High tariffs were restored, and income taxes for the wealthy were significantly lowered under the theory that high income people were “job creators” in the economy, needing the extra income to create more jobs (recent research has shown that such funds are typically used for speculative purposes, not job creation).

By the end of the decade, stock market speculators plunged the U.S. economy into what we now refer to as the Great Depression. A decade after that, the League of Nations was too weak without America’s participation to halt German military aggression, and the conflict known as World War II began.

In recent years, campaign financing laws have been weakened, once again opening the door to excessive corporate influence with money considered equivalent to free speech. Our system of government has been held hostage by our own elected representatives, who, despite hard evidence to the contrary, are still claiming that tax cuts for the wealthy are necessary for job creation. History again seems to be repeating itself. It is time for all us to learn from the past, and apply those lessons to bring about a better world for us all.

Woodrow Wilson’s obsession with establishing the League of Nations on his terms led him to undertake a speaking tour of America in order to take his message directly to the people. The stress of the tour, following on the heels of the exhausting peace negotiations, led to a stroke from which he never fully recovered. Although the League of Nations was established, America never joined, and without us it was never able to achieve the results that were envisioned by its founder and principle champion. We’ll never know what might have happened had he been willing to compromise. It is a lesson for our time. It is a lesson for all time.

“The world’s memory must be kept alive, or we shall never see an end of its old mistakes.”   -T. Woodrow Wilson

More Thoughts From A Car Guy

Back in May, I was inspired to set down a few musings about automobiles that I called “Thoughts from a Car Guy.” Well, as the title implies, here’s some more. Car and Driver magazine recently wrote an article about one of their favorite places to road test vehicles. It’s located in Southeastern Ohio, in an area known as the Hocking Hills. This article points out a key fact that underlies the love that all “car guys” (and, of course, car gals, too) have for the automobile: the best cars are a joy to drive. They not only take us places, but allow us to appreciate the journey as well.

 I’ve got a friend named Mike who owns some land in the Hocking Hills, and he used to tell me about the fabulous roads in the area. It’s not a particularly easy place to get to from where I live, with lots of less than great choices of routes that will eventually get you there, even if it’s not a direct route. But I’ve found my way to his place a few times, and it has always been a fun experience. When I was leaving once, he told me the route to take on my way home. It wasn’t really the most direct route home, but Mike assured me that the road had just been repaved, and would be a joy to drive. I’m not sure exactly which car I was driving at the time, but I think it was one of the four Honda Preludes that I owned consecutively after I finally got rid of my Mercedes 280S sedan. The Prelude wasn’t a sports 

car, but rather a “sporty” car. It was front wheel drive with a four cylinder engine , but it handled better than most front drive cars, and I always opted for Honda’s smooth shifting 5-speed manual transmission, which the guys at Road and Track and Car and Driver both considered mandatory.

I found the road without difficulty. The scenery alone was worth the experience, but the road was a thing of joy. It wasn’t a road designed to modern standards. Some turns were reverse banked.  Large rocks and great trees sat far too close to the pavement. It didn’t matter. A huge grin spread across my face as I rowed through the gears through the sweeping curves, upshifting and downshifting frequently and happily. All too soon it morphed into a typically boring highway that eventually led to an even more boring (but much more efficient) interstate highway, and then home. That experience has lingered on for the decades that have passed since then. And I know what the writers at Car and Driver are talking about when they wax eloquently about their favorite roads in the Hocking Hills.

I found a similar road in west central Ohio quite by accident, when I was on my way home from an appraisal assignment inspecting a nursing home in a little town I had never heard of before. I had arrived by a different route from the northwest, but I had to look at some comparable land sales on my way home, which took me more south and east. At the time, my vehicle was a Honda SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle), a Passport, which wasn’t even manufactured by Honda but was a rebadged Isuzu assembled in Indiana. Since I lived at Lake Mohawk at the time, I had to have a vehicle that could tow my boat and personal watercraft. It had lots of “utility” but came up rather short in the area of “sport.” Fortunately for me (if you consider facing a couple of grand in repair bills “fortunate”), my vehicle was at the repair shop, Leyland Motors (http://laylandmotors.com/), which is owned and operated by a truly talented guy named Denny, who also happens to be a friend of mine. While my vehicle was in the shop, Denny lent me his personal Porsche 911 Carrera Targa to drive. Now that’s a friend!

It may have something to do with the geology of central and southern Ohio that leads to these fine driver’s roads. During the Ice Age, the huge glaciers that covered our hemisphere ended in these areas, and piled up the rocks that they had scraped off of the land in the north into this area that geologists refer to as “terminal moraines” (http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/portals/10/pdf/glacial.pdf) which creates the area’s undulating terrain. The road that I happened upon was a gently curving delight, carved out of a hillside, with a sheer rock wall to my left that fell away to gently rolling pastures to my right. It had been recently repaved and I was in automobile nirvana as I clicked through the Porsche’s

fantastic 5-speed gearbox as the car’s powerful flat-6 engine snarled at me from behind. Traffic was light and while the curves lasted, it was bliss in a borrowed ride.

I should probably add a few more comments about my friend Denny, who has provided me with many automotive close encounters. I used to live across Lake Mohawk from Denny, where he has a huge house with a garage that was almost as large as my entire house. But I had already known him for years before we both relocated to that scenic wonderland. If I consider myself a “car guy” then Denny is a CAR GUY, or even car guru, or perhaps car god. He’s done complete restorations on several cars, including a twelve cylinder E-type Jaguar roadster and more recently a little Triumph sports car. One beautiful spring evening, Denny, with his wife, son and daughter, pulled down my long straight driveway in an immaculate turquoise Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible. He suggested that I get my brother Gary, who lived with me at the time, and take a drive to a new family-friendly bar and restaurant in nearby Minerva for a drink. Oh yeah, he wanted me to drive. Like I said, he’s a good friend.

Gary and I took the front seats, while Denny and his family squeezed into the back (even Rolls-Royce convertibles don’t have very large back seats). We were on the road to Minerva when a railroad crossing loomed in the distance. I began to slow the Rolls, in order to give my tightly packed passengers the most comfortable ride possible. Denny leaned forward and said, “No, no, don’t slow down. Punch it.” In all matters automotive, I defer to the master’s expertise, and did as instructed. We flew across the uneven railroad tracks as if we had encountered a mere pebble on the highway. In the rearview mirror, I could see Denny’s “I-told-you-so” grin.

Minerva is a little village that straddles three counties in northeastern Ohio. It grew in importance due to its location along the Sandy-Beaver Canal (there’s a name that would never get used in modern times) in the early-1800’s, and the original coast-to-coast “Lincoln Highway” also known as U.S. Route 30, passes through the north end of town. As we drove toward our destination, I caught a glimpse

of an older Jaguar sedan sitting in front of an old, nondescript industrial building off to my right, but kept driving toward our destination. Now Denny is a true Jag aficionado, and he had been staring at the car as we drove past. He leaned forward from his seat and spoke in my ear. “Did you see that? That was a perfectly restored 1959 Jaguar Mark 2 sedan. Turn around. We need to go back.” Again, as in all matters related to automobiles, I deferred to Denny and turned the car around.

We pulled into the parking lot as a guy around our age emerged from the shop building, carrying a stuffed gorilla doll which was the size of a husky 12-year old, and placed it in the backseat of the Jag. Denny insisted on getting out first to talk with the man alone. We were strangers after all, with young children present, and Denny didn’t want to spook the guy before he had a chance to fully savor the fine-looking sedan. I suppose there is no better way to approach a fellow car guy in a less-threatening way than arriving in a sparkling clean Rolls convertible. We were all waved over in a matter of seconds, and introductions on a first name basis were made all around. I don’t recall the owner’s name after all these years, and he made only vague references to his job, cryptically mentioning having to “…go into the plant and sign checks once in a while.” Apparently he had level of financial comfort that the rest of us were still seeking.

The Jag was pristine and he was staging it for exhibit in a car show somewhere. In the backseat, the car had  furniture-quality little wood veneer picnic tables that folded down from the back of the front seat like a much nicer version of an airliner table. The gorilla had been placed on the rear seat with an open table from behind the driver's seat before him, as if he was about to turn to us and ask "Pardon me, but do you happen to have any Grey Poupon?" The trunk was open and revealed a custom-fitted old-fashioned wicker picnic basket, with leather straps on the underside of the lid that held real china dishes, silverware, and crystal glasses in place. He explained that the car was purchased from an Ivy League college professor who had purchased it new and driven it until he retired. At some point, he had driven it off the road and smashed into a tree, deciding that it was time for him to finally relinquish driving duties to someone else. Our host told us that the car had literally been shipped here in boxes and he had done a complete ground up reassembly and restoration. He had just gotten the car back from “his interior guy” who had restored the leather clad interior to better-than-showroom condition. We were too polite to ask what such a service cost, but it appeared that money wasn’t a real issue for our host. After gushing over the car for a few minutes, Denny peered into the shop, and then boldly asked if he could look around. Our host may have given young Daniel and Demi a worried look, but Denny sternly warned them “Don’t touch anything!” They were remarkably well-behaved kids, at least when mom and dad were around to keep them in check. Then we stepped inside.

Inside the shop can only be described as the ultimate Car Guy’s toy box. The walls were covered in old gas station and car dealership signs, among other automotive memorabilia. Just inside the main garage door was a late-40’s or early-50’s Packard Limousine in dark blue, with little chrome flag holders on the front bumper. I think the seats were missing, swapped for the Jag’s and taken by the “interior guy” for restoration. I could almost envision Harry Truman sitting inside, waving and smiling and wishing he was somewhere else, like maybe playing poker with his buddies. I think there was another older car inside, maybe an old Ford or Chevy, but I was on sensory overload by then, and I just can’t remember. I do remember a real old and very rare Indian motorcycle that our host was evidently very proud of which we all reverently gathered around before moving on. We moved through the building, carefully avoiding the tightly packed antiques which were everywhere. Outside, there were several other cars parked, awaiting the master’s careful touch. The one that really caught my eye was a 1956 Chrysler Imperial, with the taillights mounted above the tail fins. As the evening light faded, we finally thanked our host and bid him goodbye, heading off to our original destination and thankful that the children, and us, didn’t break anything.

I drove by the building several months later, and it appeared to be abandoned. There were no cars parked anywhere. I have no idea what happened to our generous host, but I can only hope that he decided to move to a larger building. He did need a larger toy box. Journeys are as important to drivers as destinations. It's often the unsought road that makes for the best traveling, and the unplanned destination that is really the place that we should be. As a car guy, my wish for you is to have many happy trips.

As a postscript, I offer this little insight about the difference between a car guy and a regular person. After my brother Gary had passed away in 2008, I was going through a box of his old photographs. I came across a photo of a Lamborghini Countach parked in my old driveway at the lake house with the passenger side scissor door open and pointing skyward. Perched in the seat and smiling from beneath his mop of curly brown hair was a very young Daniel, Denny's son, who by 2008 was a very tall teenager. It was the 4th of July, and I was heading down to my nephew's house at the lake to watch the fireworks, so I decided to take the photo over to Denny and give it to him. Arriving at his house, I first encountered Denny's wife, Diane, and showed her the picture. "Oh look at Daniel," she gushed, "how cute. Show that to Denny." I found Denny down by the pool, whipping up a batch of margaritas in a blender powered by gasoline fueled weed-eater motor. When I showed Denny the picture, his first response was: "Oh yeah, check out that car."

PPS: Thursday, November 21, 3013:
I was going through a box of old photos, and came across these shots of Denny's fully restored E-Type Jaguar V-12, and thought someone might like to see what a Car Guru's hobby looks like.

          

Big Ideas and Tunnel Vision

It’s been an interesting summer, but I haven’t written very much. I have been reading though. The three-volume biography of Winston Churchill by William Manchester and Paul Reid has been occupying much of my reading time. I finished reading it this morning, all 2,911 pages (OK, I skipped the notes at the end, which brings it down to a more manageable 2,600 or so). Churchill was born during the reign of Queen Victoria and died 90 years later, when Elizabeth II was queen, spanning a time from when steam power and horses dominated, and ending when atomic power and rockets had been developed. He was a fascinating man, full of insights and ideas, some of which were amazing while others bordered on lunacy.

One of Winston’s big ideas developed as a result of the static trench warfare experienced during the First World War. The major weapons in trench warfare were artillery (which Churchill always called “cannons”), machine guns and rifle-toting infantry. A typical offensive action would start when one side started firing their artillery toward the other guys’ trenches. After the typically massive bombardments, the attacking infantry would scramble from their trenches and race toward the enemies’ trenches. The enemy would pop out of their holes after the shelling stopped and open fire with their heavy machine guns, usually resulting in massive casualties for the attacking force. Overall, neither side gained much ground. A big idea was needed.

Churchill held several posts in the British government during the war, including First Lord of the Admiralty, or the government’s man in charge of the Royal Navy, which was the world’s largest at the time. For trench warfare, he conceived of a warship on land, and led the development of tanks (the name “tank” was chosen to disguise what they were really building, in case the enemy broke their codes). They were designed to run over and through trenches, deflecting the enemies’ machine gun bullets and protecting the infantry that would follow safely behind. It is said that the generals are always fighting the last war, meaning that they have difficulty adjusting to new technology. The main problem for the tank was that the generals fighting the war didn’t want the tanks, and didn’t really know how to use them. Many times, the infantry was put in front of the tanks for an attack, which defeated the purpose. Finally one general got it right and let the tanks lead the way, with the infantry following behind. The attacking force gained miles instead of the yards of distance that were the norm. Then for some reason, he had the tanks stop and ordered the infantry to surge ahead, where the enemy machine guns cut them to pieces, as usual.

Toward the end of the war, and during the peace before the next one, Churchill also learned to fly airplanes, and had visions of their importance for the future of warfare. But foremost in his heart were the huge, fast, heavily armored and heavily gunned battleships, which were the pride of the Royal Navy. He wanted more of them built when he became the British Prime Minister during World War II. The only problem was that the Royal Air Force already proved that these behemoths of the sea were obsolete. Using rather old and slow torpedo bombers, the RAF attacked and sank a large portion of the Italian fleet while they were anchored in the safety of their home harbor. However, Japan took notice of the British success, and used the same tactics to attack Pearl Harbor, where they destroyed or incapacitated all of the US battleships. Fortunately, all of the American aircraft carriers, which were the ships that really mattered, were safely out to sea.

During World War II, tanks became an important factor in ground warfare when they were finally massed in an assault force of their own and coordinated by radio commands. The aircraft carrier became the primary weapon for naval forces, with attacking aircraft replacing the huge guns on battleships. On land, airplanes were used in support of ground troops, again called-in and coordinated by radio. But all of these things were envisioned and developed by other people than the ones who first conceived of the breakthrough developments in the first place.

It is rare to find someone who comes up with a great idea to solve some problem and then continues to adapt that solution to solve other problems. The same situation is observed with the development of the computer. The original use of modern computers was for calculating the trajectory of artillery shells. They were then adapted for use by other government and business groups that required lots of data storage and calculations. When I started college, we learned to use a computer that had its own room in the Computer Science building, and we wrote our programs on stacks of punch cards (yes, I know, I’m practically a fossil). By the time I was leaving Graduate School, personal computers were just starting to show up. They were useful for creating documents, databases and doing calculations, but little else.

When Jobs and Wozniak created the first Apple computer, they thought its main appeal would be for home hobbyists, basically geeks such as themselves. Microsoft’s Bill Gates didn’t initially see the importance of connecting computers with the Internet, and concentrated his efforts elsewhere. It took Steve Jobs decades to realize that the computer itself shouldn’t be confined to a machine used on a desk or even a lap, but could instead be combined with a cell phone and carried in a pocket.

Big ideas and technological breakthroughs are important to our growth as a society. However, we must never view them as being a final product. Don’t restrict your view to tunnel vision, but always open your eyes fully in order to observe all of the possibilities that they offer. We must strive to focus on the potentials offered by the evolution of our thoughts and ideas. Maintaining rigidity in our beliefs may sound like a strong moral position, but it will lead nowhere except to stagnation and death of the system that has brought us to a greatness that we are already beginning to squander.

Ugly Americans...Not This Time

Quite a few years back, long before I got married, I took a little trip south of the border. It had been a brutal winter and I was sick of snow and stressed out to boot. I needed a relaxing getaway, preferably to place where there was sun and sand. The year before, some friends of mine had taken a trip to one of those all-inclusive resorts in Cancun, Mexico. They loved it, and told me what a great time they had there. I had quit smoking the year before, and set aside the money that I usually spent on cigarettes. Turns out it was a fairly substantial amount. I only had one small problem. I wasn’t dating anyone, and I didn’t want to travel alone. Luckily I was able to persuade one of our “water-skiing students” from Lake Mohawk to accompany me. Turns out it wasn’t that hard to convince her to spend a few days on the sunny shores of the Caribbean at the end of a long, drab winter. What a surprise.

Among the many pieces of advice I had received about Cancun concerned the convenient bus service along the strip of hotels, restaurants and stores that line the ocean. I was a bit skeptical, since the last time I rode in a bus (other than an airport shuttle) was the ones we used to ride to West Campus when I was a freshman at OSU. They were packed with students and careened wildly around corners, forcing one to become better acquainted with one’s fellow travelers than perhaps was prudent or hygienic. I could only imagine what a Mexican bus would be like. But they assured me that it was clean, comfortable and cheap, although the drivers did sometimes pull into spaces where my friends couldn’t believe they would fit. Turns out they were right about the bus service, at least in the beginning.

I had two criteria for my trip. I wanted to make sure that the weather would be perfect and that we wouldn’t be traveling when the college kids on Spring Break invaded the sunny shores. My choice of a week in early March started out just right. There were mostly older folks (or at least my age) at our resort. There were plenty of people, but it was a mostly well-behaved crowd. We wanted to go shopping for another bathing suit for Shannon the second day we were there, because she had only brought one with her, and we practically lived in bathing suits all day. So we took the bus. It was almost empty. The driver was pleasant, and the trip basically offered door-to-door service. I became a believer.

The next day, several American universities vomited out their young scholars so that they could engage the age-old ritual of Spring Break. When I was in college, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida was still the place to go, and we tried it a couple of times. But we usually ended up in Key West because it had better weather and a more laid-back atmosphere. Unfortunately for us, Cancun had become a new favorite destination, and masses of students began showing up. Our next bus trip was packed with students, most of them already drunk, even though it was before noon. The driver was trying to tell one particularly obnoxious young man that open containers of beer were not permitted on the bus, but the kid was giving him a hard time about it, swearing at him and spilling his beer. When we exited the bus, I gave the driver an apologetic look, indicative of my shame caused by my fellow countrymen. He rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. He had seen it all already.

We got off and I told Shannon we would take a taxi back to the hotel. We were done with the buses. She was a fun-loving girl, but was still upset by the behavior she had just witnessed. “That’s why they call us the ‘Ugly Americans,’” I told her. Now Shannon had hardly traveled anywhere in her life, not that I was a globetrotter myself, but she didn’t know what I was talking about. So I explained to her that Americans were noted for their bad behavior in other countries. They were arrogant and ethnocentric, caused by being a citizen of the rather exclusive club of world superpowers. Many of my fellow countrymen viewed themselves as a cut above the rest of the world’s population because they come from a country of wealth, with many advantages not enjoyed by the rest of the planet’s inhabitants.

“No people are so disliked out of their own country…. They assume superiority, and this manner is far from pleasant to other people…. They are overbearing, and haughty…. I have never seen among any people such rudeness and violation of good breeding…. As a nation they are intensely selfish and arrogant.” The strange thing is that this is not a quote written about Americans, but instead was written by an American named Robert Laird Collier who was touring England in the 1880’s. He was speaking about the world’s perception of the people of Great Britain, who ruled an empire upon which the sun never set in the time of Queen Victoria. But I doubt if they were the first people to face the scorn of the rest of the world. No doubt similar sentiments were expressed about Roman citizens as they frolicked around the ancient Roman Empire. I suppose it’s just human nature.

I read with interest this morning a little story about a budding international incident caused by a Chinese tourist visiting Egypt. Seems that a young man who was touring Egypt’s famed Luxor Temple carved 'Ding Jinhao was here' in Chinese on the 3,500-year-old stone sculpture. Chinese tourism has expanded rapidly in recent years. In 2012, the Chinese overtook Americans and Germans as the world's top international tourism spenders, with 83 million people spending a record $102 billion (expressed in US dollars) on international tourism. All I can say is welcome to your new reality China. This is what it feels like to be hated by everyone else.

It is important to remember that we must always walk in the other guy’s shoes before we form our opinions, or express ourselves through our actions. We may have tremendous advantages that are not enjoyed by everyone else, but that doesn’t make us better. It only makes us different. History has shown us time again that being wealthy isn’t always better than being poor, and money never has been able to afford the price of exhibiting class.

 

Thoughts from a car guy

I consider myself a “car guy”. I don’t have a garage full of them like Jay Leno, but that doesn’t matter. Jay and I could probably get along because like many people, we both love cars. I was at the local Ford dealership recently, and while I was there, I had to (heck, I wanted to) walk through the showroom. There, in the center of the showroom floor, sat two Mustangs, side-by-side. The blue one on the right had a "special sale price" sign in the window: it read $49,999. The black one on the left had a window sticker price of over $63,000. They were both hardtops, but had they been convertibles, they would have cost even more. OK, they were both Ford’s top-of-the-line Shelby Mustang GT500s, but still, that’s a lot of money for a Ford, even if they do have 650 HP. My dad bought one of the first V-8 Mustang convertibles back in 1964, and paid a little over $2000 for it.

Like many American males of my generation, I’ve always liked cars. I started reading car magazines about as soon as I could read, and I’ve never stopped. Even though I no longer define myself by the automobile that I drive I still like cool cars, and never pass up an opportunity to drive one or even just look it over. Over the years I’ve owned some very nice cars, including some expensive imported models. I’ve also had friends that have let me drive their cars.

I suppose you could say that I come by my love of automobiles honestly, because my dad liked cars and owned a wide range of models, from bizarrely quirky to awesomely cool. We had a tiny rear engine Fiat that Uncle Bob would take out to the cemetery behind our house, sit us on his lap and let us steer, as he would putt around the winding lanes. It was absolute heaven for a pre-schooler like me. We also had one of the first Saabs imported to the U.S., the one with the rear mounted, two-stroke engine, but we didn’t keep it very long. Everyone kept stopping us to tell us our car was burning oil. Being a two-stroke engine, it was designed to burn oil, just like lawnmowers.

Dad had a Ford Skyliner hardtop
convertible that we would take for a drive with the top down, during warm summer nights, with my brothers and I already in our pajamas in the back seat. Dad also bought an original Mustang convertible, red-orange with a white top and interior. At 6’5” tall, he wasn’t real comfortable in it. After a few weeks, he told us later, he took the car out on the Interstate, which wasn’t complete and ended in the north part of our county, and floored the accelerator. He said the car felt like it was going to take off, a feeling that left him uneasy. He drove the car straight to the local Mercury dealership and traded it in on a larger Monterey coupe, which had an inward slanting back window that could be opened. We kids in the back seat thought that was pretty cool too. Mustangs were so new, and in such high demand, that the dealership called the police to make sure that the car wasn’t stolen. They couldn’t believe anyone would want to trade-in a car that they only had for six weeks.

My dad bought one of the first Dodge Chargers ever sold in America as a Christmas present for my mom. The car wasn’t supposed to be released to the public until after the first of the year, but dad was good friends with the area’s biggest Dodge dealer and he let him pick it up in time for Christmas. It was a fastback design, and had a release in the trunk that lowered a panel behind the seats to allow for greater storage space. While you can find this feature on many autos these days, it was fairly unusual in 1968. My brother used it to sneak his friends into drive-in movies without having to exit the trunk in the usual way. We thought it was pretty cool at the time.

My dad also had a couple of dune buggies during the late 1960’s. These weren’t the heavily reinforced ones that they actually used to drive over sand dunes in California. Instead, they had rather flimsy fiberglass bodies mounted on a cut-down Volkswagen Beetle chassis. For a tall guy that didn’t fit into a Mustang very well, it seems a rather odd choice of vehicles; not that dad drove them very often. A guy down the street, who I think worked as an engineer at Goodyear, had a really cool one that he built himself. My dad was never that mechanically advanced, so he bought his already complete. We drove them in North Canton’s Memorial Day Parade one year, which is the only parade I’ve ever been in. Our first dune buggy started to fall apart when my oldest brother started driving it, and dad bought a slightly bigger one, but we didn’t keep it that long. It’s the kind of car that loses its appeal after a few hours.

In high school, my buddy Mark had an E-Type Jaguar convertible, which still ranks on the list of many car aficionados, including me, as the sexiest roadster ever built (although it was also notoriously unreliable and not really too comfortable for a long drive). My brother drove a Mercedes 280 SL roadster at the start of the ‘70’s, and it remains one of my all time favorites, being fast (Gary had a dozen or so speeding tickets during this time), comfortable, and safe. Denny, a friend of mine who is an extremely talented exotic car mechanic, has let me drive a wide range of superb cars, including various Porches, Lamborghini, and a couple of Rolls-Royce convertibles. He even lent me his personal Porsche 911 Carrera Targa to drive while he was repairing the engine of my Honda SUV. It took him almost two weeks, and I would have gladly let him take all month.

I’ve never owned a true sports car myself, which is odd for a car lover. I did come close several times though. When I was sixteen, I wanted to buy a vintage Jaguar XK-120, but my parents wisely pointed out that it would not be practical in Ohio’s winter. I came real close to getting a new 1976 Porsche 911SC when I was in college, but opted to get a Mercedes sedan instead so that I could haul around more people and stuff. Sports cars are nice, but I also loved to go water-skiing, and law requires you to have a driver and an observer when you ski. I remember a trip to Lake Mohawk in Gary’s roadster with my girlfriend sitting on my lap as my brother drove. While it was great feeling for my teenage hormones, Raeann had a less than well-padded booty, and it wasn’t really comfortable or safe.

I also considered buying a Toyota Supra, the original Mazda Miata, a Porsche 924, and a Datsun 280ZX Turbo. I took a test drive in the Datsun, back when dealerships just handed you the keys and let you take it out for a while by yourself. I stopped by the store to show it to Gary. The car used a synthesized female voice to prompt the driver to remember to turn off the lights and other warnings. When he got out of the car, the disembodied voice reminded him “your lights are on.” Gary responded without missing a beat, directing a question toward the dashboard wondering about the possibility that the young lady could perform other “functions” that incidentally would result in no talking. We had a good long laugh at his impromptu quick wit.

My nephew Paul has not only continued in the family tradition of being a “car guy” but also taken it to a whole new level. He’s currently restoring a 1961 Lincoln Continental Convertible. It’s a four door convertible with Lincoln’s famous “suicide doors”. His stable of autos also includes a Cadillac Coupe DeVille Convertible (he put a Grateful Dead sticker on the rear bumper, just like the old song) and a funky looking 1956 Nash, with front seats that fold flat into the back, making the entire interior into a bed. Oddly, his everyday vehicle is a pickup truck, which is a useful appliance in his line of work, but not the sort of thing that someone would drive for its handling abilities. But he loves his pickup, and that’s important. Some people carve up the turns and some like to cruise. It’s all good.

My dad has owned a variety of collectible cars over the years, although he had no real mechanical abilities to restore them. When I was a kid, he had a 1930’s-era Chevrolet Coupe. Later he had a huge, late-60’s vintage, yellow Chrysler 300 Convertible that never really ran properly. He also bought a Chrysler 300 H, a “racing” version of the big luxury coupe with a fiberglass hood and trunk, a hemi V-8 engine, and a Hurst racing automatic transmission. I used to borrow it whenever my Mercedes was in the shop. When you floored the gas pedal, the car lurched forward with gusto, pushing you back into the huge tobacco brown leather front bench seat. As the speedometer leapt upwards, you could actually see the gas gauge needle go down. I’m sure it never got gas mileage that went beyond single digits. But it was fun. And big.

While I look back in delight to the many fine automobiles that I’ve encountered in my life, I have to confess that the true “Golden Age” of the automobile may actually be happening now. Modern cars have more powerful and more efficient engines. Even twelve cylinder Bentleys get better gas mileage than Dad’s old Chrysler, and would blow its doors off in a drag race (well, yes, it does cost lots more). Airbags and crash engineering (pioneered by Mercedes and Volvo, but now used by all manufacturers) have made modern cars much safer. We used to joke that today’s smaller cars wouldn’t stand a chance in a collision with an older and bigger car, but a recent test proved that wrong.

I’ve owned some great cars myself, and if I had a lot more money, I’d probably have a real nice one, or two, or even three. Right now I like the Audi A8L with the twin-turbo V-8 (and an available mini-fridge between the rear seats) for a big sedan, and the Mercedes SL63 roadster for something smaller. Both of them cost over $100,000 each, use premium fuel, and get less than stellar gas mileage. It’s funny that as you get older, some things just aren’t as important as they used to be. I used to drive fast and far. A radar detector was mandatory equipment in my cars. Now I drive a four-cylinder econobox and get excited when the on-board computer tells me I’m getting 30 MPG. But if you want to lend me your Porsche Cabriolet for a couple of weeks, I might just take you up on it. After all, it’s convertible weather, and I’m still a car guy.  

         

The Ides of April, Edison and PCs

Legend tells us that a soothsayer warned Julius Caesar to “beware the ides of March,” which signified the middle of the month. This was before the invention of basketball, so I doubt that he was being warned of the danger of having his college hoops bracket busted. As it turns out, assassins were Caesar’s problem. But as history has shown us time and again, it’s the ides of April that have been a bigger problem for the rest of us.

I’ve always been more attuned to April 15th for a more personal reason: it’s my birthday. But many bad things have happened around April’s midpoint, and it has always bothered me. Lincoln was shot on the 14th, but died on the 15th. The Titanic struck the fatal iceberg late on the 14th, but took several hours, until the 15th to sink. April 15th is also the day that income tax returns are due here in America, which is no big deal now that I’m paid wages subject to withholding taxes, but was much uglier when I was paid only commissions or was a “self-employed” contract worker. That’s when real procrastinators find out just how much money they owe the government. Lots of people hate my birthday, thankfully most of them do so not because of me.

There are a host of other tragedies that have happened around the middle of April, and most of them are instantly recognizable by the word or two that denote the nearest city. Names like Columbine, Waco and Oklahoma City come to mind. This year as I sat in North Canton’s newest watering hole with my good friend and sipped a celebratory birthday cocktail, we watched the news feed on the big screen monitors above the bar as the name “Boston” was added to that infamous list. My thoughts and prayers go out to those people who found themselves in harm’s way.

Following closely on the heels of the Boston Bombing, another mid-April act of violence was committed against the American people. This one occurred in our nation’s capital and we know exactly where to find the perpetrators, although it’s doubtful that they will ever face any consequences to their act. The U.S. Senate voted to block legislation to expand background checks for purchasing guns. Recent polls taken by reputable organizations have shown that the majority of Americans in our supposedly representative democracy agree that at least this modest measure should be undertaken in an effort to keep mentally disturbed people from obtaining weapons designed to kill dozens of people quickly. However, the NRA, which now represents the interests of gun makers, not average gun owners, want no restrictions at all on gun sales. They’re willing to gamble with the lives of their children and ours that all such restrictions are bad for the sake of boosting sales. I think it’s a bet that most people don’t want to take, but our government responds best to bribery by lobbyists rather than to the wishes of their constituents.

As I was looking over a news service on my computer’s Internet server last week, I was reminded of another mid-April milestone. April 16th marked the 36th anniversary of the introduction of the Apple II, the world’s first easy to use personal computer. It’s nice to remember that some good things can happen in the middle of April. I wanted an Apple as soon as I heard about them, but I was a college student at the time, and couldn’t afford one. I worked on computers throughout my college years, but they were massive room-sized IBM units. It wasn’t until I started selling real estate in the mid-1980’s that I got a chance to work on a PC, but since then I have tried my best to make the PC a useful tool throughout my career. The personal computer has had a transformative impact on our world, and I’ve been around to see it happen.

Lately, I’ve been reading a book entitled The Age of Edison: The Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America by Ernest Freeberg. The title pretty much spells out the book’s content. Although we had candles, oil lights, and gaslight for many years, it wasn’t until electric light was perfected for mass consumption that the world was transformed into modern times. Of course Edison didn’t invent electric lighting. He didn’t even invent the incandescent bulb, but he did perfect it for mass-market consumption. We tend to think of Thomas Edison as a lone genius that toiled until he found the right filament to make his bulb practical. But his real genius came from directing the efforts of a group of highly skilled and intelligent workers to achieve his goals. In his Menlo Park and Orange, New Jersey laboratories, Edison pioneered the concept of organized research and development facilities.

It is difficult for us to imagine the world that existed before electric lights or the changes that occurred because of the rapid, widespread adoption of them. When the lights came on, factories could now work around the clock. Our entertainment, including theaters, sporting events and amusement parks, could now be enjoyed far into the night instead of being confined to daylight hours, allowing more people to enjoy them. Law enforcement initially praised electric street lights for casting its glow on the seedier elements of society and forcing them further into the shadows, but they also allowed for more late night carousing and the attendant social problems. The successful harnessing of electricity also gave rise to hundreds of other laborsaving devices, although in the process we often replaced beautiful artisan-produced items with cheaper factory-made goods. At the end of the nineteenth century America faced a shortage of workers. Electrical devices made up for that at the time, and became so successful that now we don’t have enough jobs to go around.

In our modern times, computers have had a similar life-changing effect on our world. It is also difficult for our younger people to imagine the world that existed before personal computers and cell phones, not to mention video games. In the businesses that I’ve been involved in throughout my career, we made huge increases in productivity primarily through the use of personal computers, and later, the Internet. Our bosses often resisted, hampered by the comfortable familiarity of doing things the way that they had learned them, as well as resisting the capital outlay required to purchase the latest technology. Things like fax machines and cell phones seemed like unnecessary extravagances at first, but quickly became requirements for doing business. Now, just as quickly, they are being replaced by newer technology. Hand held smart phones now handle most tasks done by several devices previously, and apparently modern workers much prefer text messaging and e-mails to actually talking with one another. Unlike electrical lighting, which allowed people to congregate outside of the home for longer hours, personal computing and its associated technologies tend to keep us physically separate from each other. At least that makes it tougher for potential bombers to do us harm, but I feel we have lost something in the process. The electrification of America has brought about constant change at an increasingly rapid pace, but change isn’t always good, it’s just different.

Edison’s beloved incandescent light bulb is now being replaced, although many seem to be reluctant to let it go. However, it will soon be illegal to sell one in this country. Modern LED bulbs are initially more expensive, but cost only a fraction to operate. The warm glow of incandescence is hard to replicate, but we have embraced change in the name of conserving our natural resources. At least that’s the story they’re feeding us. I think they want to sell more lamps and new lighting systems, but then I’m a bit of a skeptic. I have seen conclusive proof of the much lower electricity use of the modern bulbs, but I hope they can get the initial cost of the bulb down.

Although we give Edison much of the credit for the electrification of America, he was a supporter of the safer yet less efficient direct current (DC) system of distribution. He eventually lost out to George Westinghouse’s alternating current (AC) distribution system, which sends power across high voltage lines, then uses transformers to break down the current for home consumption. Edison worried about the dangers of AC, and went to great lengths to demonstrate the destructive power of his rival’s system, including a stunt that proposed the “Electric Chair” as a means of executing criminals (to his horror, the system became widely adopted by prisons for decades). He also filmed the electrocution of a rouge circus elephant. The film became quite popular; today we would describe it as a viral video sensation.

The Ohio-born Edison also has a local connection to my hometown area. His first wife died when Edison was in his late-30’s, leaving behind three young children. His friends quickly realized that a man like Edison, who often worked in his lab through lunch and dinner and then late into the night as he obsessed on his latest idea, would need help to raise his children. They introduced him to Mina Miller, the daughter of inventor/industrialist Lewis Miller, who is from Greentown, Ohio, just up the street from my hometown of North Canton. Edison and Miller married at the Miller home then returned to New Jersey and eventually had three more children. The old Miller home still stands near the square of Greentown, which isn’t really a city or even a village, but merely the name for a crossroads between Canton and Akron.

My mother and her family lived in the Greentown area for many years. Mom, her sister, and two brothers all attended Greentown High School. The school started at the time of the initial electrification of America, in the late-1800’s, and graduated its last class in 1957, in the midst of the Atomic Age (the school district was absorbed into the North Canton system). My Uncle Ralph graduated in the Class of 1941 (http://highschool.greentownohio.com/1941.pdf) and made the local papers when he was signing his enlistment papers on December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor. It wasn’t a knee-jerk response to the attack; he had actually signed up weeks before, and was just showing up according to schedule. Aunt Millie was one of sixteen members of the Class of 1944 (http://highschool.greentownohio.com/1944.pdf) while my mom graduated in 1949 (http://highschool.greentownohio.com/1949.pdf). My Uncle Robert (we only called him “Buck”) left school for the military before graduation, but his wife was a graduate in 1954.

The graduates of Greentown High organized an alumni association in 1908, and have held reunions for members of all of the classes every year since then. This summer will mark the 105th reunion. Several years back, the torch was passed to the “younger generation” of the association. Thus began my connection with the school when my mom became the treasurer of the alumni association. She received a card file with names and addresses of all of the alumni as part of her duties. Up until that year all correspondence had been addressed by hand. While handwritten addresses may be more aesthetically pleasing, arthritic hands demanded a change of procedures. I looked over what she had been given and told her that I could simplify her task. We set up a database for the graduates on the computer that could be used to print mailing labels and name tags. That year, we developed what has become known as “the list”.

No new names are ever added to the list, but instead each year it becomes shorter as members pass away. This year, the oldest graduate passed away at the age of 106. There is a dark joke circulating among the committee that all too soon there will be no need to hire a caterer for the annual event. Instead the remaining graduates will be able to fit around a single table at an area restaurant. So it goes for the little group born in the age of electrification that will expire in the age of computers. Or will the progress of technology name a new age before the group’s light is finally extinguished? As the electric producing industry entered the twentieth century, even its founder, Thomas Edison, declared that he didn’t really comprehend it anymore, and focused his attention on motion pictures.

It was a combination of security cameras tied into computers that helped the authorities identify the Boston Marathon Bombers, and an infrared camera that helped locate one of them who was lying in a boat, bleeding. The progression of technology can be used for good, but can also be twisted for use by forces of evil. My hope is that the world will become more like the little group from Greentown High School, constantly seeking out the company and fellowship of their fellow graduates with an emphasis on their shared experiences. However, the cynic in me also realizes that most technological advances are eventually perverted for malevolent purposes. Let’s just hope that there is another “age” following along behind the computer age, and not the extinction of mankind.

      

   

Two Movies and a Book

I really like movies, especially the ones that surprise me unexpectedly. There are many things in life that surprise us. Some of them are good surprises, while others are not. I’ve been told that I was a “surprise” for my parents. Some of us are dismayed to find out that they were not born from the grand designs of their parents, but personally, I’m quite content to be a “love child.” Seems a bit more romantic than entering this world as a planned decision. Often, surprises occur because they run counter to our expectations. Many find great discomfort when reality runs afoul of their preconceived notions. Over the years, I have learned to just roll with the punches and take life as it comes. There are times when I get upset by having expectations that far exceed the reality of experience, but I mostly try to maintain an even keel.

Recent weeks have seen the release of many highly advertised films for home consumption on DVD (I’m not high tech enough to go Blu-Ray just yet). I like movies almost as much as I like books, and while I prefer the full cinema experience, there are various reasons why viewing movies at home makes more sense for me, so that’s where I usually watch them these days. Recent events at movie theaters are troubling, and I like to see movies without the fear that some nut job is going to open fire on everyone there. Last week, I got five movies that I really wanted to see, with Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln topping the list. I love learning about history; this film is filled with recreations of important events from our past and it’s supposed to be mainly accurate from an historical perspective.

Also included in my bounty of films was the Robert Zemeckis film Flight starring Denzel Washington. I knew the film had a great action sequence involving a plane crash, and I’ve enjoyed Denzel’s work since his days playing a doctor on TV’s “St. Elsewhere.” I watched this movie first and although I didn’t really expect too much from it in comparison with the others I had seen or were about to view, I really enjoyed it. In fact, I liked it better than Lincoln.

I learned how to fly an airplane while I was a student in college. One of the perks of going to a really big university like Ohio State is that they have their own airport and fleet of aircraft. Of course I also learned that in order to become a really good pilot one would have to invest more time and concentration into the endeavor than I was prepared to give. So I abandoned it to the experts. In the film, Washington’s character is an extremely talented pilot, sort of like the real-life pilot, “Sully” Sullenberger, who heroically landed his powerless jet on the Hudson River and saved everyone on board. But unlike the clean-cut Sully, Denzel’s character is an alcoholic who uses cocaine to keep him alert enough to fly. But because he is also an exceptionally talented flyer, he is able to pilot his damaged aircraft to a controlled crash landing and saves almost everyone on board.

If you’ve ever known an alcoholic or drug addict, watching Flight was all the more realistic, because you know that it is tough to overcome those demons, and backsliding occurs frequently in real life as it did in the film. But eventually goodness triumphs in the film, although at a great cost to the main character. Likewise in Lincoln, the goal of passing the 13th Amendment that permanently outlawed slavery in this country was achieved. Goodness triumphed, but the main character was lost shortly after his goal was achieved. But we all knew that was going to happen. Maybe that’s why the film was a bit of a disappointment; we all knew how it had to end.

I’ve also been trying to finish a book that I picked up at the library throughout all of this movie watching. I mentioned it in a previous post, Smuggler Nation by Peter Andreas. The book details the influence of smuggling on our country from Colonial times through the present. It’s a very interesting book that reveals a side of history we seem to have little desire to confront, but has had an enormous impact on us all. I usually race through most books, but lately I find this one difficult to pick up, even though I’m almost finished with it. The first part of the book was entertaining and informative. I learned aspects of history that I didn’t really know before. But as the book touches on more current problems, it becomes more and more frustrating as I read about how our government’s reaction to smuggling has caused more problems, and escalated other problems to the point where things seem totally out of proportion.

Perhaps that was the problem that I had watching Lincoln. Observing the political process that was required to pass the amendment was a sickening experience. There’s an old saying that the two things you should never watch being made are laws and sausages. They’re both messy procedures.

In our nation’s effort to control drug smuggling, we first attacked the problem by focusing on the drug user, and increased criminal penalties as we outlawed the drugs. Then we tried to go after the smugglers. But since the desired drugs were now illegal, it became much more profitable to smuggle. Every time our country has success in slowing one source of smuggling, or one route used by smugglers, another took its place. The smugglers also gained more power and more wealth as a result, causing an upward spiral that continues to this day. We’ve become the world’s biggest jailer, and expended billions of dollars to stop the flow of drugs. It hasn’t worked.

We would be much better off if we completely decriminalized drugs. We could then divert the resources used to fight smuggling to the treatment of the drug addicts. It would be much cheaper than the amount we spend to imprison everyone involved. But our politicians are too weak and our process too messy for this to ever happen. As we were shown in Spielberg’s film, our political process was an ugly thing. It’s probably even worse now than it was in 1865. No one has the intestinal fortitude to stand up in Congress and say that they want to decriminalize drugs because most of their constituents are too uneducated to understand why this should be done, and the truth is that most of our politicians are too stupid to understand the overall concept as well. It’s much easier to say that a drug addict is a criminal than to admit that they have an illness that is treatable.

One problem is that smuggling creates a lot of wealth for those with the balls to get involved. Some of our nation’s major family fortunes were started by the proceeds from smuggling. Wealth buys votes, now as it did in the past. Lots of people are profiting from the legal efforts to stop smuggling. However, they would profit much less if smuggling were actually ended. That’s the other problem. Despite the fact that voters think of stopping smuggling as a desirable outcome, those involved in the process actually want it to continue. That’s because they are making profits from the process, not the end result.

It’s a problem in other areas as well. As I write this, the gun lobby is paying, in one form or another but usually within the boundaries of the law, for amendments to be added to unrelated legislation that will make the enforcement of any future gun control legislation to be more difficult, or even impossible. This is happening as polls show that the majority of Americans favor gun control legislation, especially in areas of background checks and limits to magazine capacity. Several states have already passed their own gun control laws, and federal action of some sort may even pass someday. But is it going to have the desired result? Probably not. The rich people are inciting the uninformed to resist, not because it is in the people’s best interest to have assault rifles and handguns with high capacity magazines, but because it will allow the rich people to gain even greater wealth. They will then retreat behind the fortified walls of their gated communities while the rest of us dodge bullets.

Personally, I’d like to have a machine gun. Something that could fire several hundred rounds per minute would be just fine. While we’re at it, I would also like an F/A-18 Super Hornet jet fighter, fully armed. After all, I have the constitutionally protected right to bear arms for my own personal protection, do I not? If having an extra 5 shots in the clip of my AR-15 is something that we should allow, why isn’t it possible for me to get my machine gun, or that jet? The fact is that someone wisely decided that it would be foolish for a civilian like me to have a fully armed military jet, or even a machine gun. In reality, I’m fine with those laws. I have no desire to get into a fire fight with my neighbors (although the idiot next door has tempted me at times) or to patrol the skies for enemy insurgents (I quit flying over 30 years ago, remember?). Those are actually reasonable constraints on my personal freedom designed for everyone’s safety. Just like having functional breaks on the car I drive is a reasonable law. Passing reasonable gun control laws is in the best interest of everyone, except the merchants of death that profit from gun sales. They’ll find other ways to make more money, they always do. As for me, maybe I’ll feel safe enough to go see a movie in a theater again. After all, I really like movies.

Prince William's Job

There are rumors going around that Britain’s Prince William may soon be out of a job. No not that job, the UK is not doing away with its monarchy and young William remains second in line for the throne, after his father and grandmother, the Queen. However, William’s present job as a pilot for the Royal Air Force’s search-and-rescue helicopter service is supposedly being farmed out to an American-based private company in an effort to save the government some money. I’m not sure I like the idea.

I’m not a die hard Anglophile and I don’t really care one way or another about the British Royal Family. Prince William seems to be a very nice young man, with a pretty wife and a child on the way. As far as employment opportunities, I think it’s safe to say that the Prince will have enough on his plate to keep him busy for the rest of his life. There is also little chance of his family going hungry any time soon. What bothers me is privatizing a service such as a helicopter search-and-rescue group. You see there really are jobs that are best performed by a government, where profitability is not the chief concern.

Suppose you are fortunate enough to be boating off the coast of England when a nasty storm comes up and capsizes your little craft. A private company is tasked with rescuing your incompetent (or just unlucky) butt from the frigid water, but determines that the storm is too dangerous to fly into because the corporate office has estimated that there is a significant enough probability that they might lose a multimillion-dollar aircraft. Your sorry ass just isn’t worth the risk. But suppose you then radio the rescue pilot and inform him that your sailing companion that day is none other than Donald Trump, who has guaranteed that he will cover any potential financial loss to the company. Is the rescue then attempted on that basis? Doesn’t really seem right does it?

“Privatization” is a popular buzzword these days and the concept is seen as a viable alternative to the ever-increasing size of government. There are many areas that the government could extract itself from and save the taxpayers some money, but there are other areas where it really isn’t a good idea. Imagine that you’ve taken a temporary assignment in a foreign country with a history of political unrest. One day a protest group devolves into a riotous mob and one of the targets of their hatred du jour is any American (including you). You flee as the angry mob approaches, running down an alley where you trip and fall, tearing your jeans and scraping your knees. Turning the corner, you sprint toward the safety of the American Embassy, which is just a block away. You are tattered and bloody, but safety is just steps away.

When you arrive at the gate, who is it that you want to be standing guard? I say please let me see a U.S. Marine, well-trained, well-equipped, and steeped in a tradition of duty and service to his country; a protector to whom the concept of being a fellow American really means something. What if instead you found a private security guard that had witnessed the approach of the dangerous looking mob behind you and decided that the corporation that he works for really didn’t pay him enough to take that risk, and locked you out? I don’t know about you, but I really don’t like the idea of trusting my life to a rent-a-cop.

Let’s say you don’t boat and don’t travel. You may think my examples are a bit too far-fetched to matter to a hard-working, self-reliant type like you. Well then how about if your granny (or any sweet little old lady that you know) lives in a city where much of its public services have been privatized and farmed out to for-profit companies. Now Granny gets a bit confused these days, and she forgets to pay the invoice for her monthly fire-protection plan that she received from Fire Protection Company, Inc. Of course, the worst thing happens and Granny’s scented candle burns down and catches the curtains on fire. In moments, the house is engulfed in a fiery conflagration, and dear sweet Granny is trapped inside. She is lucid enough to call for help (hopefully the 9-1-1 service wasn’t eliminated in the budget cuts), and the fire truck arrives in moments to rescue the poor thing. But wait, they receive a call from the home office. Seems the resident of that particular house isn’t paid up. Sorry lady, no rescue today. We gotta let it burn. Oh, by the way, we gotta let you burn, too. Think this an impossible example? It’s happened here in the good old U.S.A. (well, they haven’t let a granny burn to death…yet).

Governments have grown large and increasingly expensive, which is a problem. Yet there remain many areas that are better serviced by a tax-funded public organization than a privately-funded corporation. Being a “libertarian” doesn’t mean that you love freedom more than anyone else does, it just means that you’ve got some different ideas about how to run things that haven’t gained popularity, and perhaps shouldn’t. There are those people in our society, usually with wealth and power, who would have us believe that they have better solutions to the needs of our people than our more traditional ones. Personally, I’m all for new ideas or new technologies that can save us money. But let’s make sure that we think very carefully before we adopt any of those ideas. Oh by the way, our British cousins just may want to rethink getting rid of William’s current job, too. The RAF is probably better suited to saving lives than a company with a focus on the bottom line.

A Sea King helicopter

(Prince William's current ride)

        

     

If You Build It, They Will Come...Or Will They?

My last post concerned the reuse of an old factory facility in my hometown of North Canton, Ohio, the Hoover Company, and how the developers were taking advantage of historic tax credits to make a good deal even more lucrative for them. Some of the comments I received on Facebook suggested that I was against the entire concept of the reuse project. I’m not against it at all; I favor doing creative things with old buildings. I am against our government handing out free money to millionaires while ignoring those Americans who work hard and ask little from their state.

There’s another creative reuse plan for an old factory in the news now. It’s the former Hercules Engine factory, located just south of Downtown Canton. A group of developers that includes a member of the Timken family have purchased the property and want to remake the complex into a mixed-use facility. According to their website, the “…mixed use project will include residential rental apartments, class A office space, retail and restaurant space and a new Convention and Event Center. This brand new state of the art Convention and Event Center will, among other things, serve as the new home for the three primary events of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Festival (the enshrinement dinner, the gameday luncheon and the fashion show).” You may think I’m some sort of anti-progress Luddite, but I’m not a big fan of this project. Read on and I’ll tell you why.

The project is in the news because the Canton City Council voted to provide a $3 million loan for the first phase of the project, which will turn 125,000 square feet of former factory space into 95 market rate residential apartments. There was one council member voting “no” on the loan. After looking over the plans, she asked the question that no one wanted to hear: “Who would want to live there?” Such honesty in a politician should be recognized and rewarded. Oh, by the way, the project will qualify for millions of dollars in historic tax credits from both state and federal government, just like the Hoover Company project.

Getting people with money and good jobs to move back into the urban core is the Holy Grail for many cities, and Canton has been trying to do this for decades. Suburbanization has decimated cities. Most of them look like ghost towns on the weekends when the lawyers, bankers and government workers head home to the suburbs. Back in the mid-1980’s, I had an office job in Downtown Canton as a commercial real estate appraiser. I enjoyed working downtown; we wore suits and neckties to work, had lunch at Bender’s, the Mergus Restaurant or the Mayfair Tavern, and took a walk around town after lunch when weather permitted. We were located downtown because it was close to the county office buildings that included the real estate property records (land and building information, sales information, tax maps, transfer records, etc.) that were essential to our operation. The county government itself was an important client that needed appraisals for things like sewer easements and tax complaints. A few of us would come in to work Saturday mornings, when we wouldn’t be interrupted by telephones and clients, and could crank out some reports.

Coming to work on a Saturday was an almost surreal experience. Unlike weekdays, there was hardly any traffic, restaurants were closed for lunch, and parking was plentiful. I parked in one of the city’s newest parking decks that was located a block away from my office and connected to a new hotel and adjacent office building by enclosed skywalks. If it was raining, I could walk across the street in the protection of the skywalks, through the hotel and into the office tower, then exit the building and quickly cross the street to my office building, avoiding most of the rain. But it was much easier and quicker just to go outside and take the sidewalks. One Saturday, as I walked down the steps in the parking garage (there was no need to take the elevator since I was so close to street level because the deck was almost empty) I encountered a homeless man sleeping across the bottom of one of the steps. I carefully and quietly stepped over him and continued on my way. I did stop at the parking attendant’s booth and informed the woman working there of the unusual situation. She was flabbergasted and asked me what she should do. I pointed through the parking deck toward City Hall, adjacent to the west and said, “The police station is right there. I’d call them.” Then I crossed the street to my office and got some work done.

We didn’t stay downtown much longer, but it wasn’t really because of homeless people bothering us on weekends. Some of the data we needed was made available on computer disks, and the rest could be retrieved by one worker that we sent after it as required. Later, all of the data was available online, and continuously updated. Having a suburban office was closer to home, had an attached parking lot, and was more convenient to everything we needed, so we moved. Likewise, many banking operations were moved to suburban locations. Even law firms moved out of the city because they could be closer to their clients as well as a greater variety of restaurants and services. The lawyers could drive in to their infrequent trips to the courthouse when necessary. The process of suburbanization was started by the automobile, aided by the computer, and completed by the vast amount of information available on the Internet.

So cities must come up with creative ideas to get people to come back downtown. There are cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago and others that don’t have this problem, although they do face problems. People are willing to live downtown because they usually work there, plus there is a wide range of services readily available and there are things to do at night like professional sports teams, art galleries, theaters, restaurants and night clubs. Small cities like Canton haven’t really had such a complete array of choices for decades.

I heard a story once, I don’t know if it’s accurate and have since forgotten most of the details, but it sounds right so I’ll tell it here. Back in the ‘80’s Canton managed to get a minor league baseball team to locate here. They just had to build a ballpark. The man hired to aid economic development for the city proposed that the city acquire and assemble a group of unused or barely used properties near the city’s core and raze them in order to build the facility. It would bring people downtown for night games, allowing for development of restaurants and bars to service the fans before and after the games. This would hopefully build upon itself. More nightlife would lead to more interest in living downtown leading to additional support facilities and additional attractions: an upward spiral. I think it was a great idea.

Instead, the city chose to build at the south edge of town, in a flood plain at the end of a grungy industrial street. The facility would have decent access to the nearby interstate highway as well as on-site parking, but wouldn’t be within walking distance of downtown or any pre- or post-game eating or drinking establishments. It worked well for a short time, but the novelty soon wore off, and the finances of the team suffered. The city’s economic development director realized that the city government didn’t have a clue how to help themselves and soon departed for better opportunities. Eventually, Canton lost the franchise to nearby Akron. Guess what they did. They razed a group of properties and built a ballpark close to the city core. Bars and restaurants located nearby to serve the sports fans. It seems to be working pretty well for them.

Canton has been trying to lure people back downtown for years. An energetic young developer bought and renovated several old office/retail buildings near the square and managed to find some tenants to fill them. Happy with his initial success, he took over a project to renovate the historic Hotel Onesto into market rate apartments. The building is an architectural gem and retained much of its interior beauty, plus had a newer parking deck attached. The city’s mayor, a one-time high school cheerleader turned politician, gushed about how wonderful the project would be and said that she was ready to move-in as soon as they were ready to have her. The project still languishes unfinished long after completion was scheduled and no one lives there yet.

Several new restaurants have been opened nearby, and an “arts district” was created. Most of the restaurants received good reviews and were popular, at least for a little while. Some have closed, others reopened under new owners, but for the most part, none of them have had real long-term success. Lack of convenient nearby parking has been a problem. Our weather isn’t that great most of the time, and most diners would prefer to park in an adjacent well-lit parking lot than hope to find a convenient spot on the street. As yet there are no nearby residents who could both walk to the restaurant and afford to eat there when they arrived. Urban blight and its associated problems remain a significant problem that most cities cannot overcome.

Which brings us back to the Hercules project, and the perceptive question posed by the skeptical councilwoman: just who would want to live there? Of course the developers have market studies to assure any skeptic that market demand exists for the project and folks will be lining up to rent the cool urban loft-style apartments as soon as they are available. During my career in real estate, I’ve read dozens of such reports. Most of them are not worth the paper they are printed on except to the author who gets to charge dearly for this collection of “insightful analysis”. Figures lie and liars figure. Almost any MBA student could assemble data that seems to support the desired conclusion. I’m pretty sure I could still do it myself, but since I don’t like to mislead people, I don’t think I would. The problem is that market rate apartments must effectively compete with other apartments in the market.

Young professionals, the most desirable group of tenants, seek someplace to live that is convenient to work as well as amenities such as restaurants, dry cleaners, supermarkets, nightclubs and restaurants. In fact, these things are desired by almost all potential renter groups except older empty nesters (another important demographic), who might be less concerned about an exciting nightlife but more interested in other cultural amenities. There are also far fewer employment opportunities in downtown areas these days, so most potential tenants are already working in the suburbs. This project is located far enough away from all existing amenities that most would prefer the safety of driving to the prospect of a long walk through what still is considered to be a “bad” end of town. That negates the one thing that makes downtown living more desirable than suburban living: the prospect of a safe and easy walk to your destination. The most desirable alternative for most renters are nice suburban apartments, which continue to be constructed without fanfare or any government assistance (other than our current tax laws, which are a major help to all apartment developers). The financing for the Hercules project is falling into place. They probably will build it, but will anybody care?

At one point of time in its history, the Hercules factory provided 5,800 good-paying industrial jobs right in the heart of Canton. If renovation plans proposed by the developers succeed fully, there will be 95 families (of one or two each) living on the site, plus an additional group of low-paying support jobs for the convention center, hotel, and restaurant. There are also plans for more “Class A Office Space” at the site that would provide more jobs, but the demand for downtown office space has been falling for years, and the current state of technology offers little hope for near-term improvement in this area. Thanks to computers, even the federal government now allows some people to work from home, mirroring trends in the private sector.

So is there something better that could be done with an old industrial facility like the Hercules plant? Here’s an interesting idea: the best use for an old industrial plant is for an alternative industrial use. Space could be made available for start-up companies at little or no expense in hopes that some of them will succeed and bring jobs back to the city. If they needed to grow, a contract would require the city to help them find or build larger space within the city limits. How about if we paid unemployed industrial workers three years of unemployment benefits upfront under the condition that they use the money to form manufacturing cooperatives that would occupy space and bring jobs back to the city? With new jobs comes increased income tax revenue for the city. This money must be used to address the problems of urban decay.

More people would be willing to live in the city if there were more employment opportunities and they weren’t worried about crime. There would be less crime if there were more jobs. The workforce would be improved if there were improvements in education, and there would also be less crime committed by better-educated young people facing more opportunities. The problem is that all of these solutions require money, and that money comes from our taxes. Right now, we are using tax dollars to pay millionaire real estate developers to renovate facilities that either don’t require additional economic incentive (the Hoover Company project) or to provide benefits for projects with dubious outcomes (the Hercules project). I think that these tax dollars should be used in other ways to solve the underlying core problems that are at the heart of our cities’ problems, and provide for economic growth that will benefit everyone. Right now, we are using the tax dollars for the benefit of the real estate developers in hopes of some of it trickling down to the rest of us. So far, that hasn’t worked out very well at all.

View of former Hercules Engine factory, Canton, Ohio