White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

New Miracle Commodity: None Other than Bamboo

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In a time of new materials, a very old one is sneaking into our lives. You may have noticed that bamboo is making an appearance everywhere. There are bamboo floors – I hear there is one in the Holman Lounge of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.— cutting boards and walking sticks.
But Troy Wiseman, a Chicago entrepreneur, sees future growth for bamboo in clothing, paper and activated charcoal — which has hundreds of industrial and medical uses. And he sees it as the next big, green forest products industry.
Bamboo is a grass whose fiber is similar to timber. After a six-year, initial growing period, it can be harvested yearly. It can be cultivated on land abused by clear-cutting, poor crop rotation and over-grazing. For the soil, bamboo is a healing grass.
The Chinese have known of the wonders of bamboo for centuries. They construct houses from it, eat it (Giant Pandas will eat nothing else), make baskets, chopsticks, hats and weapons from it. In Hong Kong, bamboo scaffolding is used to erect skyscrapers; in Mainland China, this practice has been limited to five stories.
Yet in the West, bamboo has traditionally been thought of as a curiosity, not a valuable agricultural commodity. Wiseman, who is chief executive officer of EcoPlanet Bamboo Group, aims to change that with large-scale bamboo production, which also has positive environmental and social impacts.
There are around 1,200 species of bamboo, and some have given it a bad name. Gardeners have reason to be wary of bamboo which, if they plant the wrong variety, can grow like kudzu and is a virulent invasive species.
Wiseman’s company plants better-behaved “clump” bamboo that is native to and approved by the country he is operating in. EcoPlanet Bamboo has established two plantations in Ghana, and one each in South Africa and Nicaragua. He is negotiating to make a big land purchase in Asia that will produce bamboo for clothing, paper and activated charcoal, and will convert the plant remains into fuel for electric generation.
Wiseman describes himself as a “capitalist with a conscience,” and has the enthusiasm of a tent preacher when it comes to the business opportunities and the social and environmental benefits of bamboo farming. For bamboo plantations, you ideally need hot, wet weather – the very areas where old-growth forests are most under threat.
He describes the financial rewards, the jobs for third-world laborers, and the saving of forests as “my three bottom lines.” But he is quick to emphasize, “Don’t get me wrong, we’re a capitalist company. We’re about profit, but there’s a right way to do it.”
As a businessman, Wiseman can claim a record. He told me in an interview that he had co-founded the global B.U.M. clothing line which went public, a private equity-based financial services firm, which financed, among other things, a company that made “turducken,”which is a dish consisting of a deboned chicken, stuffed into a deboned duck, which is stuffed into a deboned turkey.
A competitive wrestler in his youth, Wiseman says he is more excited about grappling with the challenges of bamboo than anything else. He says he has interest from a large number of Fortune 500 companies, including retailer Costco and paper giant Kimberly Clark. Bamboo has natural anti-bacterial properties, which is why bamboo cutting boards are desirable in the kitchen — my wife has one. But these properties, it is believed, will make bamboo fiber popular for bandages, diapers, tissues, sanitary napkins and underwear.
I have not knowingly worn bamboo-fiber clothes, but bamboo and I have a history. As a boy, before the days of hobby shops, I made kites using bamboo slats for the frames. Bamboo was light, strong and available. Little did I know that I was continuing a fine Chinese tradition of kite making and flying. My kites were rather primitive — bamboo frame, brown paper sail, and glue made with egg white or flour paste — but they flew.
Now I am captivated not by kites, but whether the world has overlooked a valuable and beneficial source of wood and fiber substitute. Troy Wiseman thinks so, and I am inclined to believe it. Incidentally, my bamboo walking stick (which cost $24 at Walgreens) is light, good-looking and maybe a trendsetter. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

 

The New Work: The Individual as Microbusiness

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The genius of Uber is dumbfounding. I’m not talking about what it pays its drivers (not enough), whether it’s putting taxis out of business (it is). I’m talking about the sheer brilliance of unleashing the value stored in the family car. Likewise, Airbnb which isn’t denting the hotels, but is causing tax collectors to go apoplectic.
These Internet companies are unleashing the value that families have had hidden in their driveways and spare bedrooms.What’s next? Your guess is as good as mine. If your guess is right, there are folk over at Google who’d like to talk to you.
Airbnb (which connects people looking for accommodation with those offering it in their homes) may be a tad more exciting than Uber (which puts private car owners in the transportation business) because it is catering to a specific traveler market. Hotels have become so unpredictable in their opportunistic pricing that private travelers are happy to leave them to business travelers who are less price-sensitive.
Then there’s GrubHub, which offers free online ordering from thousands of delivery and takeout restaurants. It may well be the next big thing in the market.
These are three examples of how the Internet, which giveth and taketh away, is reordering the economy. They’re beacons for how the economy might replace the jobs that are being lost to computers. They also offer extra income or full employment for people who don’t have marketable educations: driving a car and keeping a pretty home don’t require college degrees in science.
The nature of work is changing, and one of the consequences is that more of us are becoming self-employed: private contractors.
The Internet enables a large number of artisan skills to be marketed. I’ve just found an online advertisement for a dressmaker. Long before Walmart and “Project Runway,” dressmakers abounded. Women would ask their neighborhood dressmaker to “run up something” for a special occasion or whatever. Mass retailing, plus the difficulty of marketing beyond word-of-mouth, pretty well ended that, but it may come back. Now you may live in Atlanta, but you can order a bridal gown from an Etsy dressmaker in Seattle.
The Red Truck Bakery & Market, housed in an old gas station in Warrenton, Va., sends its Meyer Lemon and other goodies across the country. Artisanal baking meets the Internet.
Years ago, a friend of mine developed a knit teddy bear. It was a beautiful thing; tactile, safe for small children. I don’t recall whether my friend had gotten around to naming her stuffed bruin, but he was a darling — although I don’t know why stuffed bears have to be male.
Anyway the said unnamed, unsexed, stuffed bear didn’t make it into many young arms because of marketing. The big retailers didn’t want it. Things are very competitive in Bear Land, and Paddington Bear and company don’t want other teddy bears crashing their picnic on the store shelves.
That was more than 30 years ago. Today, Bear X could be sold on the Internet. Now I’d wager the big chain retailers would come begging — offering the little thing a whole shelf for itself.
The miracle of today is that it could happen differently. The concomitant fact is that we’re going to need more cottage industry and more self-employed contractors because the jobs of yesterday are disappearing, and the companies are less and less inclined to hire permanent staff.
Years ago, the jewelry business moved offshore; now it’s moved to American homes. It’s possible for a creative person to make jewelry at home and sell it online.
A new age of self-employment is at hand. Recently, I’ve worked with two inspiring millennials. One is a gifted and filmmaker, and the other a computer wizard. Both are making a living, and neither has given any serious thought to getting a job in the conventional way.
It’s not the age of small business, but microbusiness: the individual with something to sell, whether it’s artisanal furniture or a skill. The millennials seem to know this instinctively, the rest of us are learning it.
Want to hire a veteran journalist who works from home? Call me. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

It Isn’t Your Father’s Workplace Anymore

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One thing we think we know about the Republicans is that they take a dim view of waste, fraud and abuse. So how come the U.S. House of Representatives, in Republican hands, has voted 56 times to repeal or cripple the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare?

They’ve put forth this extraordinary effort despite an explicit veto threat from President Obama. Their repeated effort reminds one of Onan in the Bible, which politely says he spilled his seed on the ground.

It’s a waste of the legislative calendar and the talents of the House members. It’s a fraud because it gives the impression that the House is doing the people’s business when it is holding a protracted political rally. It’s an abuse of those who need health care because it introduces uncertainty into the system for providers, from the insurers to the home-care visitors.

It’s symptomatic of the political hooliganism which has taken over our politics, where there is little to choose between the protagonists.

Republican groups think that Obama is the doer of all evil in the nation – especially to the economy — and the world. Daily their Democratic counterparts gush vitriol against all the potential Republican presidential candidates, only pausing for an aside about the wickedness of Fox News.

Their common accusation is middle-class job woes. They’re on to something about jobs, but not the way the debate on jobs is being framed.

The political view of jobs is more jobs of the kind that we once thought of as normal and inevitable. But nature of work is changing rapidly, and it cries out for analysis.

The model of the corporation that employs a worker at reasonable wages which rise every year, toward a defined benefit pension, is over. Today’s businesses are moving toward a model of employment at will; the job equivalent of the just-in-time supply chain.

While more of us are becoming, in fact, self-employed, the structure of law and practice hasn’t been modified to accommodate the worker who may never know reliable, full-time employment.

The middle-class job market is being commoditized, as the pay-per-hour labor market includes everything from construction to network administration. Sports Illustrated — synonymous with great photography — has just fired all six of its staff photographers. Don’t worry the great plays will still be recorded and the Swimsuit Issue will still titillate, but the pictures will be taken by freelancers and amateurs.

Two forces are changing the nature of work. First, the reality that has devastated manufacturing: U.S. workers are in competition with the global labor pool, and business will always take low-cost option. If unemployment goes up in China, that will be felt in the U.S. workplace. Second is the march of technology; its disruptive impact is the new normal — accelerated change is here to stay.

All is not gloom. The trick is to let the old go – particularly difficult for Democrats — and to let the new in. There will be new entrepreneurs; more small, nimble businesses; and whole new directions of endeavor, from gastro-tourism to cottage-industry manufacturing, utilizing 3-D printing. Individuals will be free in a new way.

Government needs to think about this and devise a new infrastructure that recognizes that the nature of work is changing. The emerging new economy should have simplified taxes and Social Security payments for the self-employed; portable, affordable health care; and universal catastrophe insurance, so that those who are not under an employer umbrella can benefit from the equivalent of workers’ compensation. The self-employed, rightly, fear the day they can’t work.

Rugged individualism has a new face. The political class needs to look and see the new workplace. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Lackluster City? Get a Brand

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If your city is mostly famous for being between two other cities, if its main claim to fame is “It’s a great place to raise children,” then it’s time for your city fathers to take a course in branding.
Cities that prosper — that bring in company headquarters, tourists and where the crazy rich want be — have to have distinguished brands.
New York’s brand is glorious excess. It has the brand of ever higher, stranger skyscrapers. The world’s most successful media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, has just plunked down $57.2 million for what looks to be the world’s most lonely living space: the top four floors of a 60-story, bronze-and-glass building of a kind that is now transforming the Manhattan skyline. Take a small plot of land, build until what you get is slender tower that defies nature and looks as though its purpose is to challenge a strong wind.
Murdoch’s aerie has glass on four sides, and he can see forever, at the least until other towers rise up. If you want to spy on him, you will have to do it by drone. His own paparazzi might try to get a picture using a drone, but where would they publish it?
If you have a few million to spare you can still get in the East 23rd Street building. But those that would make an eagle jealous have gone to Murdoch. Most of us would be scared up there: a new take on “Naked and Afraid” because without neighbors, there is no need to wear clothes.
Cities in the United States that have done the branding thing right are New Orleans, jazz and food; San Francisco, cable cars and attitude; Boston, higher education and hospitals (eds and meds); and Chicago, wind and the uber-hub airport. Washington is a special case: great museums, the White House and the Capitol, and palpable delusions of importance.
The branding ace, running in front worldwide, is London. The Romans gave it a head start, but it was not until the Swinging Sixties that London became a destination for the globe. You would think that the place had enough branding with the old features: Tower Bridge, the Tower, the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace, plus the Changing of the Guard.
But no. London keeps adding dizzying new features to its brand superiority. There is the Tate Modern, an art gallery in an old power station; the London Eye, a Ferris wheel that has captured world attention and city imitators; a bridge across the Thames River that wobbles, and now a new bridge is planned with gardens and shops on it. Then there are the taxis — black boxes, that remind you where you are in case you have overlooked the big red buses.
The current mayor of London, Boris Johnson (who has branded himself as a possible prime minister) has been keen to preserve and protect the London brand by insisting on preserving the double-decker buses, distinctive taxis and other expensive city bric-a-brac, because it is a hell of an investment.
Sure Paris has the Eiffel Tower, but it is aging. Rome has the Coliseum — talk about aging. And St. Petersburg has the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. But for city branding, London is in front and pulling away, as the Brits exploit the cash value of differentness.
Providence and Baltimore are two cities of which I am particularly fond. But I would urge the city leadership in both places to get a brand, a trademark. It pays. Rides (London Eye, Eiffel Tower elevators, the San Francisco cable cars) are sure winners. Could I suggest an amphibious train across Baltimore Harbor, and the mother of all rollercoasters – big, but not scary — in Providence?
Like London and New York, these days you have got to think big in city branding, or you will miss the incredible fun and profit of a city being silly.
Frivolity pays, ask London’s Boris Johnson — and share a thought for Rupert Murdoch, stuck up in the sky. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

The Uber Effect on Electricity

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Leon Trotsky said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” The same thing might be said about disruptive technologies.
The U.S.. electric system, for example, may not be interested in disruptive technology, but disruptive technology is interested in it. What Uber and Lyft have done to the taxi industry worldwide is just beginning to happen to the electricity industry; and it could shock consumers – particularly the less affluent – as surely as though they had stuck their finger in an electrical outlet.
The disruptive revolution is not only happening here, but also in Europe, as Marc Boillot, senior vice president at Electricite de France (EDF), the giant French utility, writes in a new book.
Ironically, here in the United States, disruption of the otherwise peaceful world of electric generation and sale last year was a bumper one for electric stocks because of their tradition of paying dividends at a time when bond yields were low.
The first wave of disruption to electric generation has been a technology as benign as solar power units on rooftops, much favored by governments and by environmentalists as a green source of electricity. For the utilities, these rooftop generators are a threat to the integrity of the electrical grid. To counter this, utilities would like to see the self-generators pay more for the upkeep of the grid and the convenience it affords them.
Think of the grid as a series of spider webs built around utility companies serving particular population centers, and joined to each other so they can share electricity, depending on need and price.
Enter the self-generating homeowner, who by law is entitled to sell excess production back to the grid, or to buy on the grid when it is very cold or the sun isn’t shining, as at night. The system of selling back to the electric company is known as net metering.
Good deal? Yes, for the homeowner who can afford to install a unit or lease one from one of a growing number of companies that provide that service. Lousy deal for the full-time electricity customer who rents or lives in an apartment building.
There’s the rub: Who pays the cost of maintaining the grid while the rooftop entrepreneur uses it at will? Short answer: everyone else.
In reality, the poor get socked. Take Avenue A with big houses at one end and apartments and tenements at the other. The big houses — with their solar panels and owners' morally superior smiles — are being subsidized by the apartments and tenements. They have to pay to keep the grid viable, while the free-standing house – it doesn't have to be a mansion — gets a subsidy.
It's a thorny issue, akin to the person who can't use Uber or Lyft because he doesn't have a credit card or a smartphone, and has to hope that traditional taxi service will survive.
The electric utilities, from the behemoths to the smallest municipal distributor, see the solution in an equity fee for the self-generating customer's right to come on and off the grid, and for an appreciable difference between his selling and buying price. Solar proponents say, not fair: Solve your own problems. We are generating clean electricity and our presence is a national asset.
EDF's Boillot sees the solution in the utilities’ own technological leap forward: the so-called smart grid. This is the computerization of the grid so that it is more finely managed, waste is eliminated, and pricing structures for homes reflect the exact cost at the time of service. His advice was eagerly sought when he was in Washington recently, promoting his book.
While today’s solar may be a problem for the utilities, tomorrow’s may be more so. Homeowners who can afford it may be able to get off the grid altogether by using the battery in an all-electric car to tide them over during the sunless hours.
The industry is not taking this lying down: It's talking to the big solar firms, the regulators and, yes, to Elon Musk, founder of electric-car maker Tesla Motors. He may be the threat and he may be the savior; those all-electric cars will need a lot of charging, and stations for that are cropping up. There’s a ray of sunshine for the utilities, but it's quite a way off. Meanwhile, the rooftop disruption is here and now. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

The Shame of Transportation: Safety

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The long history of transportation also has been a history of a struggle for safety. It's not over.
The recent crash of an AsiaAir Airbus A320, with the loss of 162 lives, highlights one of aviation’s lasting shames: The reluctance of air carriers to invest in safety unless they're forced to do so. While no lives would've been saved in the immediate crash, lives are saved over time from the information contained in the so-called black boxes – the cockpit voice recorder and the all-important flight data recorder.
After spending hundreds of millions of dollars, both of the AirAsia jet's black boxes have been recovered in the Java Sea. There is technology that would allow all aircraft to have cockpit conversations and flight data recorded on the ground throughout every flight. But the inhibitions are always the same: blind fear of cost and inertia.
One of the worst examples of this inhibition was the hardening of airliner cockpit doors. Airlines should've put locks and bars on cockpit doors when the first hijackings occurred in the 1960s. Many lives — and possibly all of the lives on 9/11 – could've saved, but governments dithered and airlines worried about cost.
In Washington, D.C., one life has just been lost in a subway incident. Shortly after leaving a city station, a Virginia-bound train came to a halt in a tunnel which began filling with smoke. Passengers in the darkened cars were choking and panicking; some lost consciousness and many were taken to D.C. hospitals.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it was an “electrical arcing event,” involving cables that power the third rail. Shamefully, there appeared to be inadequate training of personnel on the system and poor response from both the District of Columbia fire department and the fire officials on the system. Immediate question: If the electrical arcing problem was known, why wasn’t there an engineering fix? Cost, perhaps?
Every day on subway systems around the world, tens of millions of passengers descend into the ground in the belief that no expense has been spared to ensure that they emerge at their destination. In Washington, the risk was known and not apparently addressed.
There are millions of years of subway operating experience. Is there a global operating safety organization? Hopefully the NTSB, one of the more impressive government agencies, will point the way.
But is pointing the way enough? For decades, the NTSB has highlighted issues involving the safety of buses and little has happened.
More and more Americans are riding buses, which are marvels of comfort and can be the most efficient and economical way to travel between cities. With restrooms, wi-fi and reclining seats, buses are mode of transportation to be reckoned with.
But are buses as safe as possible in the event of an accident? Seat belts have not been installed and roofs have not been hardened against rollovers, which the NTSB has recommended for years.
I thought about this on a wintry night recently, when I packed a friend into a bus traveling from Providence, RI, to New York City. One had to wonder about the driver, who was upset about passengers who didn't have printed copies of their electronic tickets and about all the heavy baggage that he had to load by himself. He had much to worry about before getting behind the wheel on an icy, windy night for a four-hour drive.
It would've been more reassuring if the vehicle had been equipped with rollover protection and the passengers had seat belts to buckle up for safety. Fate, we know, does not like to be tempted. Yet thousands of buses take to the roads daily without being a safe as they could be.
Industries fight safety or environmental protection because of a blind fear of cost. But in safety and environmental protection, the cost is always higher for not doing what has to be done than for doing it. Those who provide transportation in the air, on the surface or under the ground, need goading to do the right thing. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

The Loud Silence from Islam

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A dark shadow passed over Paris, the City of Light, on Wednesday, January 7.. Well-organized, well-trained killers murdered 13 people in the name of Allah. As Shakespeare said 500 years earlier, about the heinous murder of King Duncan by Macbeth, “O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee.”
Indeed, recent horrors in the name of Allah have been so gruesome it is impossible to conceive the mutilated reason, the perverted concept of God’s will, and the unvarnished rage that has subverted the once admired religion.
The killers are ruthless and depraved, but those who inspire them are evil and those who tolerate them are guilty.
In 2005, when a Danish newspaper published 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed and riots were stirred up against the publishers, a meeting was arranged at a community room in the basement of The Washington Times. It was not organized by the newspaper but, as I recall, by an interfaith group. There were several fringe “let’s be nice” speakers before the main event.
The main event was the Danish ambassador and, to a lesser extent, myself. The ambassador spoke about life in Denmark and what the Danish government would do to understand and listen to the concerns of the Muslim community. My role was to defend and explain the Western concept of freedom of speech and the place satire. The overflow audience, which by dress and appearance was dominated by emigrants from Pakistan, was implacable.
I have spoken to some hostile audiences in my time, but this one was special: No compromise, no quarter. Nor interest in cultures other than their own. Ugly and insatiable rage came out in their questions.
They did not want to know about the values of the country that had given their brethren sanctuary, education, healthcare and a decent life. My audience only wanted to know why the blasphemers in Denmark and Norway (the cartoons were reprinted there) were not being punished. For good measure, they wanted to know why the American media was so committed to heresy against Islam. No thought that they had moved voluntarily to the United States and were enjoying three of its great freedoms: freedom to assemble, freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
They wanted absolute subjection of all Western values to the dictates of Islam. They had been fired up and they were angry, self-righteous and obdurate.
In 2009, I was invited to a conference of world religions in Astana, Kazakhstan. There were maybe 100 religions present, but at a featured session the conference degenerated into an Islamic diatribe against sexuality and the treatment of women (mostly in advertising) in the West. No dialogue. No discussion. Absolute certainty.
I mention this because of the reaction to the barbarity in Paris, and to a string of other barbarous murders across the world, from Muslims has been so muted.
“Je Suis Charlie” said millions of people in dozens of countries in sympathy with the murdered journalists and with their fight for press freedom. From Muslim leaders in the West, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations in the United States, there were statements of condemnation but no sense of outrage. From the bulk of the followers of Islam there was nothing. There never is. Not when innocent children are shot in their schools, or when aid workers are beheaded, or when or when satirical journalists are executed. The Muslim multitudes have acquiesced to evil.
When will those who believe deeply in Islam take to the streets to denounce the excesses of the few? After the horror in Paris, British Muslims took to the BBC to mildly criticize the murders, but more to vigorously demand a better deal for Muslims in Britain.
The medieval certainty of the leadership of Islam is endorsed by the silence of its congregants. The silence of the millions gives a kind of absolution to the extremists, intoxicated with fervor and hate. It will all go on until the good Muslims stand up and are heard. The guilt of silence hangs over Islam. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

 
 
 

Things That You Won’t Like in 2015

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The new year demands predictions. As those demands must be satisfied, here are mine:

1. President Barack Obama will be blamed for everything, from pet obesity to sunspots.

2. Jim DeMint, president of The Heritage Foundation, will continue to solicit me for money and will write me ingratiating letters as one conservative to supposedly another. Things are terrible because of Obama, he will say. But if I send him five bucks, the day can be saved for America.

3. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) will ask me for money, five bucks, to save America from the likes of DeMint.

4. Amtrak – whose high-speed train between Washington, D.C. and Boston, Acela Express, is so expensive only rich business people can afford to ride it — will seek a larger federal subsidy. At present, it stands at $1.3 billion. Ordinary people, who Congress had in mind as riders, can’t afford the Acela's astronomical and predatory fares. So it has become a service for business executives and corporate lawyers — you can tell from the overheard cell phone conversations. A billable hour is a terrible thing to waste.

5. The airlines will find new ways to discomfort you; watch out for toilets that big and tall people can't sit on, seats that recline a 16th of an inch, and bad food that you'll buy only if you're off your medicine. Don't change your ticket, bring a suitcase or seek a seat with legroom. There are fees for that kind of convenience and comfort. Don't ask for logic in routing: How about Providence to Washington, D.C. with two stops and travel time of 10 hours and 20 minutes? An air travel Web site tried to tempt me with that “super-saver” fare. I reckon you could hitchhike it in about the same time.

6. If you thought it was difficult to reach any large company in 2014, it will be much worse in 2015. There are consultants out and about America, teaching corporations how to avoid their customers. Gone are the days when you could expect customer service of some sort, albeit from Rajiv in Bangladesh. Amazon, always a pioneer, has produced the consumer go-have-sex-with-yourself masterpiece. If you have a question about your Kindle, you have to give them your credit card if you want it answered. It's the no-pay-no-help line.

7. Talking of the perils of being a customer, Bank of America refused to give me the phone number of the local branch where I have an account. When I finally got through to the manager, she said they didn't give out the number because “the phone would be ringing off the hook.” I didn’t know people called the bank just to chat. No thought that those callers might be customers. Just remember new the mantra of big business: “The customer is always wrong, a nuisance, and fitted for nothing better than hanging an hour on the phone with a simple inquiry.”

8. Next year the save-a-buck Congress will decimate the Post Office. Sad because it's the one place that still works, and where you can get a question answered promptly. That will not do. The Social Security Administration is efficient and polite, too. So Congress has its hatchet out.

9. Now that the Republicans have control of government, they'll be out to prove that government doesn’t work. I’m sure they will pull it off. The Democrats will be complaining – having snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the midterms.

How can you lose an election when the economy is turning around? Ask Sen. Franken when you send him your five bucks. Bet he won’t tell you. So I will. You turn your back on your president. That makes you look really bad, and looking really bad is a bad election strategy.
 

Happy New Year! — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

 

A Tale of Two Countries: Cuba and Vietnam

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HANOI, Vietnam — What do Vietnam and Cuba have in common? Short answer: The Washington Post.

In an editorial that shocked as much by where it came from as by its rather distended logic, the newspaper attacked President Barack Obama’s opening to Cuba. It did so because Cuba is still a Communist dictatorship, and argued that giving trade privileges and diplomatic recognition to Vietnam in 1995 had neither lessened the Communist grip there nor improved the human rights record at all.

Wait a minute. Cuba is still very much a Communist country, with severe restrictions on its people. Vietnam has a titular communism and a lot of personal liberty.

Cuba’s President Raul Castro has lightened some of the worst of the oppressiveness of the state but not by more than he has had to, given the changes that Western tourism has forced on the regime. It is still oppressive and there is no personal freedom for the Cubans. They cannot travel and when I was last there, a few years ago, they could not even go to the tourist hotels unless they were government officials.

I can say, though, that things were so much better than they had been when I first visited the island in the 1980s. Then the atmosphere was palpably repressive. The block committees for social spying were in full swing, and the good spirits of the people were shackled by the heavy, Slavic presence of the Soviets. It had the feeling of an occupied country.

By contrast, when I visited Vietnam in 1995, and traveled the length of the country, there was none of the sense of almighty government. Relations with the United States had just been normalized, and Vietnam was enthusiastically looking to joining the world. Businesses were beginning to take hold, and the war had been not so much forgotten as put aside.

One thing you did not get at that time in Vietnam was any sense the Marxist-Leninist dogma was affecting everyday life, or that the people felt oppressed. Those from the South, who had fought against the Communists on the American side, did complain of discrimination.

Fast forward nearly 20 years, and I am again in Vietnam. It is bustling, more prosperous, but still primarily a happy country with people free to travel. In other words, much a better place for personal freedom that the Castro brothers Cuba.

The rub is that human rights are abused in Cuba and Vietnam. Both get low ratings from Human Rights Watch on its listing system. It is not a wise thing to criticize the regime in either Cuba or Vietnam: If you do, the prison door will swing open and in you will go. However, I am told by the Dutch Embassy in Havana that they feel things are improving in Cuba. And sources in the U.S. State Department tell me that they think things are slowly getting better in Vietnam — and that they are already much better than they are in China. One thing I am sure of is that if Vietnam had not been so keen to trade with the West, it would not be as easygoing as it now is.

Next year, an important one for Vietnam, as it is the 40th anniversary of the ending of the war and the 20th of normalization with the United States. The government has ambitious plans to privatize as many as 400 companies that are at present inefficient state enterprises. Vietnamese business people told me they thought the country was on the move, going in the right direction.

Business is very important in “Communist” Vietnam.

By stark contrast Cuba has a subculture of tiny businesses, mostly restaurants, that are constantly harassed by government agents. In Vietnam business is celebrated. There are multi-millionaires in Vietnam. Not so Cuba.

One way or the other, the United States has this choice: Maintain the servitude in Cuba that the brothers Castro have been able to blame on U.S. policy since 1960, or let the force of openness prevail. I can tell you that things are better in Vietnam because of normalization of relations with the United States, and worse in Cuba because that has not happened.

To have open relations with China and to rue those with Vietnam, and to want to keep Cuba in limbo is incoherent and self-defeating. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Hanoi: Motor Scooter City

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HANOI, Vietnam — I want tell you about Vietnam: its people, its culture, its economy, its disputes, and its aspirations. But I can’t. Not yet.

Like other visitors to this capital city, I’m not focused on the wide, French-colonial boulevards, the roadsides decorated with extraordinary ceramic mosaics and the great parks; the glorious architecture, which tells its history; traditional, colonial and modern; or the fabulous food, informed by the French but resolutely Vietnamese.
No. I’m totally mesmerized by the traffic: one of the wonders of the world. It’s a wonder not because, like so many of the world’s cities, it’s so terrible, but because it flows in the most extraordinary way. It’s the triumph of a lack of system over a system.
For the most part, Hanoi has no traffic lights, except on major thoroughfares, and no stop or yield signs. Traffic moves along at about 15-miles-per-hour; sometimes a little faster and sometimes slower, depending on the time of day.
Looking at the traffic is like watching a column of ants, going hither and thither in a courteously chaotic way. The only absolute rule on the roads is to keep to the right. Everything else is improvisation.
At the heart of this traffic miracle, this way of moving millions of people with little delay, is the humble but iconic Vespa scooter, its imitators and relations, all powered with small engines in the 150 cc category. For those not intimate with the intricacies of motorcycles, a top-of-the-line Harley Davidson comes in at 1,247 cc.
But central to the Hanoi traffic triumph are scooters and very light motorcycles (some of them electric), the occasional moped and even bicycles — although compared to when I was here 20 years ago, the bicycle has nearly disappeared.
To the more than 3 million scooters, most of which take to the streets daily, add the skill, courtesy and physical courage of the riders. They weave, dodge, brake, swerve, swoop, accelerate and slow in what, to American eyes, is an unscripted ballet with a cast of millions. The dance is known, but the choreography is new by the split-second.
There are cars, too, but they’re the minority. They let themselves into the shoals of seething motor scooter riders with a confidence that I’d never have. I’d never go anywhere, being convinced that I’d plow down dozens of intrepid riders with my first tentative yards onto the road. You must not only have patience, but also enough boldness to know that the river of motorcycles — a river that ebbs and rises, but never ceases — will accommodate you.
I sit in the back of my taxi convinced that blood will flow as I watch young and old glide by with a determination only otherwise seen in NASCAR drivers. The dance is fast and furious; the music is all New World Symphony.
It is worthy of study by fluid dynamists. Maybe the traffic, the smooth-flowing traffic of Hanoi, should also be studied by sociologists.
Everything happens on the darting, rushing motor scooters and mopeds of Hanoi. Families of three are transported, young men and young women ride abreast and meet on wheels.
If you want to cross the street, pluck up you courage, ask forgiveness from your Creator, and step into the maelstrom of motorized wonder, believing, as you must, that the throng of riders in Hanoi have extrasensory perception and will part, like the Red Sea, for you.
Who would believe that watching traffic could be recreational? Worth the trip, almost.
Reporting on Vietnam, with its intriguing culture, emerging economy, territorial contentions, and future relationship with the United States, will have to wait. There may be a moped in my future. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate