What’s wrong with America

http://nominnow.blogspot.com/2009/10/whats-wrong-with-america.html

If you ask me the biggest wrong with America after Wall Street greed is the archaic, bureaucratic and expensive education system that has continuously failed to live up to the demands of the new American economy led by technology and healthcare companies.

India on the other hand has hundreds of schools offering current Computer/ IT courses at prices Indians can afford, churning tens of thousands of qualified Indians every month. So US companies have to shop or set-up shop abroad for skilled staff since there aren’t enough qualified Americans with up-to-date knowledge application skills, hence the large number of foreigners in Redmond – obviously foreign education systems are good enough for trend setting companies.

Elite US Colleges are too busy chasing Nobel Prizes arguably transcending the mundane for pursuit of knowledge, but still elitist and pompous since they do not let their knowledge flow freely to lift the masses out of this hellish morass of misery which US is because US doesn’t know anymore how to compete and these colleges don’t teach US how to compete.

While the non elite colleges are busy trying to become elite forgetting that the basic reason for education is to equip and prepare students to succeed.

Most at risk are American kids because they are not being adequately prepared to compete with their foreign born and educated counterparts for basic technology jobs that pay $30-100 per hour middle-class wages.

American Colleges are directly responsible for the failure of the nation to produce the required programmers and nurses and the decline in American middle class. Bellevue College, WA charges $3,400 + the cost of electives for a Project Manager Certificate course. An Indian can learn that same course for a quarter of that cost.

Education is too expensive in America and traditionally out of reach for average American. High School was good enough in good old days, BUT NOT ANY MORE.  American colleges have no sense of sensible spending. Their campuses are ostentatious, they overpay their staff,  and despite huge endowments give little to welfare of America, yet lose billions on Wall Street. American Education System seems to be an extension of the Wall Street – greedy and unconcerned about the average American.

Like everything else Education too has to be globally price competitive or more and more Americans will be left behind.

The President should do something directly to help America by helping Americans acquire new world skills. He should subsidize continuing, technical, vocational education.

Following suit Bellevue College should make knowledge affordable so the unemployed in the State feel they have hope rather than hopelessly wait to be stampeded by foreign educated foreigners.

2 Streets of America

Mr. Robert Reich

” The real problem was on Main Street, in the real economy. Before the crash, much of America had fallen deeply into unsustainable debt because it had no other way to maintain its standard of living. That’s because for so many years almost all the gains of economic growth had been going to a relatively small number of people at the top”.”As long as income and wealth keep concentrating at the top, and the great divide between America’s have-mores and have-lesses continues to widen, the Great Recession won’t end — at least not in the real economy“. Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration.

Main Street is hungry, broke, and in a bad shape that keeps getting worst as Wall Street bounces along.

The readers of this blog will know my belief that the Wall Street American Dream is the Nightmare on Main Street of America of outsourced jobs; capital without boundaries pitting personal and corporate gain versus patriotic national interest:

1. Wall Street self interests are in direct conflict with American quality of life interests - better wages, decent health benefits are costs which erode profits, therefore sending jobs abroad boost earnings, so damn the American workeris the evident Wall Street premise.
2. Wall Street earns billions creating bubbles - 80′s real estate/ S&L crash, 2000 .com bust and recent/ current CDO and Toxic asset catastrophe – 3 cataclysmic events in less than 25 years pillaging America and pocketing billions in proceeds, and because frail, powerless governments have watched as impotent voyeurs, it likely will at will do the same anytime it can create a situation of profit.
3. Dow Jones highs do not meant more money in the average guy’s pocket. Though it’s lows equate to job losses and benefits cuts.

Reading The New Republic and Mr. Robert Reich in Salon express similar sentiment, albeit with less sentiment, is not a comfort to ego but a small growing assurance that if more people take umbrage at the rape of America there maybe a method of stopping the rapist.

Salon, The New Republic – keep talking as this is the gospel that will harrow our hell.

Why is Manufacturing Essential for American Well-being

Noam Scheiber – The New Republic

Noam Scheiber’s “Why we should cry for our shrinking Manufacturing Sector” should be required reading for Policy Makers and All Americans – as many if not most (Americans) do not realize the impact of globalization and loss of manufacturing jobs on everyday life in America.

Since coming to the US in mid 80′s I’ve personally experienced and observed a steady decline of income across mature industries. Each closed factory means not only displaced workers but also factory owners, who cannot or have not been able to make a transition from making towels and nuts to building a Google. I am not sure if there is an agency counting numbers like me who once were American middle class and now struggle to find jobs, but I know there are many treading bleak spaces, which will remain bleak unless we start making more things locally for our own consumption and ALSO sell in world markets because selling Boeing is not enough to offset the American trade imbalance.

Trade imbalance is a threat because in our case it equals shrinking employment base.

Wine, cheese, fashion, iPod, iPhone, small batch Bourbon prove that there is a whole lot of American enterprise and creativity creating products that China and India cannot make based on knowledge and cultural factors, therefor the key to is to develop small manufacturing across sectors to repair and rebuild the American Dream.

The proof that manufacturing and economic growth thus prosperity are related is India reporting 7.9% growth in its economy for 2009; and China going gangbusters, in these hard times - both large, diversified manufacturing nations.

Indian “Rape the Tax-payer” Law

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Its-official-now-Ministers-relatives-and-companions-can-avail-free-air-travel/articleshow/5365929.cms#write

It’s official now – India officially will rape taxpayers.

Both Houses of Indian Parliament passed a bill without discussion entitling Ministers to take along for free “any number of companions or relatives” by air – flying with the Minister, or flying by themselves.

Fly kith and kin for free, wherever, whenever is on top of free mansions, chauffeur driven cars, security detail, tax free “allowances” – the ruling party a reminder of feudal India, and like those oppressor rulers these elected men and women too flouting decency and accountability in a nation where running water is a fantasy for millions and children beg for food

This bill passed by Ministers for Ministers allows Ministers to fly by commercial airlines any number of their friends and family and bill the national exchequer, is a reminder that despite proclamations of being modern, changing, India is still that space where ruling forces shove their diktats down masses’ throats, who swallow meekly.

Lessons for BJP

Seattle, after 188 days of miserable weather, is sunny and warm and I’ve been immersed in Indian elections on Indian Channels. Being a US citizen, and having been away for a very long time, my interest in India may sound academic or voyeuristic, but its neither. It’s affection, it’s love. So even if I am not voting I am wishing India well, and my allegiance isn’t with a political party or ideology it’s with India and the Indian.

And my first impression of BJP on TV was dull, dreary, pedantic, morose, unshaven, unpleasant guys, and then morbid, fear mongers after watching the “bhai ho” advertisements.

So the first lesson for BJP: smile, shave and be pleasant

• Don’t sound pompous – talking like normal people do is okay – no need to sound like Hindi scholars
• Connect with the masses at grassroots level
• Don’t try to scare people into voting for you
• Define yourself – what does a Hindu party mean -

1. does it mean a minority hating group of guys who will spend national resources on Hindu festivals? If that’s the case you’re not my guys because I do not wish to hate or kill people carrying last names different than my kin, nor do I want you in my private prayer religious space – so if you are that then you are deranged deluded fools because no one in the connected Google MTv world will vote in a Hindu version of Bin-Laden.
2. however if you are an organization that will abolish reservation that bars Hindu’s from equal access to opportunity, will introduce Uniform Civil Code so that the law is of the land not religion and allow Indians to buy land in Kashmir then I would like to wave your flag because then you are making India an equal playing field for the Hindus
3. what does a lower caste, marginal farmer, share cropper Hindu mean to a Hindu Party – for almost a 1000 years of recorded history Hindus have been oppressed by Hindu kings, landlords, money lenders, religious heads, denied dignity and denied knowledge, our culprits being the chief practitioners of our faith. So while we ponder the Muslim atrocities – all real and all documented – we need our own moral rectitude, so what does a poor, lower caste Hindu mean to the BJP?

 

Growing up in Punjab I saw RSS camps (shakhaas) but never any milk of human kindness type of actions helping poor Hindus. In small towns before the days of sewers Jamadars carried human excrement in baskets on their heads, and Sant Fateh Singh’s followers brandished spears and swords demanding Punjabi Sooba – and RSS/ Jan Sangh were quite absent from either countering the Punjabi Sooba or doing something to uplift the Jamadars. The pattern remained the same – throwing stones, breaking windows protesting this and that but not protecting a single Hindu when Bhindranwale went on a murder spree, so the thing is you talk about being a Hindu party but you do not help Hindus, which is ludicrous.

Dalits found their voice in Samajwadi Party and then Bahujan Samaj Party because BJP abdicated all responsibility towards the marginalized rural poor Hindus, while carrying the reputation of being a party of urban traders and small businessmen. So in a country where many people live in villages that disconnect between the Hindu party and the poor Hindu resonates loudly.

If there were 1 single act of redemption and reinvention for BJP then that single act has to be service to the masses at the village level.

Breaking the Masjid was symbolic of pent up anger of a 1000 years but hunger and human needs are not symbolic. People need hope, health, food, education, water, peace and instead of developing an agenda to deliver those you are still stuck in blame games and fear mongering.

So to summarize:

• Be positive
• Be pleasant
• Be clear about your identity and aspirations
• Be nice – after millenniums of atrocities Hindus need to be nice to other Hindus and help erase dogmas like Swami Dayanand did.
• Be modern – recruit educated, rational, young people into your cadres lest you become obsolete because of being obstinately obtusely irrelevant.

Congratulations Rahul Gandhi

The courage to go alone in UP, the 100,000 kilometers of campaigning, the “mitti kha loonga” speech, the ballsy brainy admission that the Congress Party needs to connect with India at grassroots level and is an organization needing a face lift are hallmarks of a leader – and instead of retaliating with vitriol to the oppositions’ vituperative you gave your campaign a positive upbeat image making your opponents look dreary, scary, grumpy, pedantic, petty, hate mongers.

Congratulations Mr. Gandhi for a very classy campaign.

Indian 66%

66% of Indian population is under 35 – www.youthportal.gov.in/statistics/demographicdetails.htm

So why is that not reflected in the candidates contesting current elections? I mean why isn’t the ideology or the idealism of youth – hope, change, ambition, courage and things like that – reflected in the current crop of contenders who still carry dynastic lineages, criminal records, hate filled communally divisive ideas, negligible track records of holding down a job, and some of who are about dead?

If Indian youth pretending being Harold Robbin’s Americans on Page 3, or pretending being the MTv ghetto American, or that unique mix of English speaking-kurta/ jeans wearing doing nothing talking a lot Indian becomes worthwhile by doing something about India, and that might entail risk to comfort, health and maybe life, but then heroes are those who take risks, not flaunt their nothingness on page 3, then this 66% would be something to be proud of, to repose faith in as leaders leading India out of scary bad times sometime in this century.

Infomercial Gurus

Somethings defy commonsense – India’s obsession with Gurus is one of those. Superstition in this day and age being the other.

Bombay Stock Exchange listed Aastha Broadcasting Network (AABR.BO) calls itself “India’s No. 1 socio-spiritual-cultural television channel”. I found yesterday that it charges 5,000 Pounds (they do not bill in dollars) per month for the 30 minute time slot.

So these cats in saffron and white robes and saris with their beatific smiles and gobbledygook doctrine pay to be on TV, which is fantastic for Aastha since other TV networks have to pay for content instead of being paid to broadcast content.

Aastha wagered that Indians are Guru obsessed and launched a channel selling airtime to Gurus wanting to get into Indian heads. And that it gets away with 5,000 Pounds per month per Guru shows it’s right.

But why would Indians spend their leisure hours of life watching those who pay to speak on television? Those men and women would obviously want to recoup their investment by fleecing viewers for money.

These Gurus are TV hawkers. And how credible are Infomercials anyway? Infomercials from juicers to home gyms aren’t taken seriously, so how can meditation and salvation sellers on TV be taken seriously?

India, was starting your day with the daily horoscope on TV and the local Newspaper not enough that the day has to end with Guru Infomercials?

Is 2009 not the year that you would shed your ignorant Guru worshipping, astrologer believing ways? If not, then when? Or will you forever be the ignorant race of the self proclaimed wise?

To Mr. Obama

Dear Mr. Obama What took you so long to get to the White House? I guess I am wishing you were born earlier and live forever.

For years we’ve been raped and exploited by Wall Street and their ilk who promised us that if they took away our jobs and gave them to the Chinese and the Indians we would get better paying jobs and somehow become rich and happy with those countries becoming prosperous. So first they took away manufacturing jobs, then service jobs, and as India and China prospered we became poor, living off credit cards.

All along we were told that if we did not lose our jobs our companies would not be able to compete. Compete with who? And, why should we care if those companies are competitive or not if we don’t have the incomes to buy their products or save our homes. And we were also told that if we kept the jobs here and now are being told that if you take away the tax breaks for shifting work to Bangalore these companies might relocate elsewhere.

Mr. President let these companies leave for wherever they wish to go. They are only using America and Americans as a place and people to sell to. They do not wish to pay taxes, they do not wish to employ Americans, so why should we buy their products? Let’s send them away so we can rebuild our factories with American workers and give those companies a shot to sell in America which care about Americans and America.

God Bless you for trying to protect Buffalo from Bangalore – your and my enemies will try to thwart all efforts to bring American jobs back but please fight on as the Messiah of the people in the spirit of Gandhi and Mandela.

In this battle the Gandhi battle tactics that defeated Imperialism then will help defeat the modern Wall Street Imperialism – strategy of creating jobs and cooperatives at local level to create products and services to be consumed locally, creating self sufficiency and bypassing the large corporate distributors, processors and retailers.

Though it’s taken you so long I am grateful that you’re finally here as a hope of our liberation . Thank you for delivering your promises, thank you for battling real monsters in these 100 days, and thank you for showing the world that power doesn’t mean arrogance and excess.

You are the best thing that has happened to America – and we all are with you to make Buffalo prosperous again, and those who have that great affinity to award business and opportunities to Bangalore, those prophets of doom predicting doom if America protects itself it will destroy itself, can move to Bangalore.

God Bless America and Mr. President God Bless your family and you.

Indian Elections

Its human being mortified. Its human feeling frustrated. Its frustratingly mortifying being Indian if it means sharing some social, intellectual, value system DNA with badly spoken, bad intentioned men and women campaigning for another stab at power of stabbing India and Indians in the face.

Spastic press – excited like Indian press is – talking loud and fast, but not pressing politicians to abdicate vituperative of divide and hate platforms and no political party promising stemming violence, minimizing illiteracy, bringing clean water and safety to the poor makes me not ashamed to say I don’t feel proud of being Indian.