Cloth Cash Trough

Tucson, Arizona. Clothmeister Glenn Lyons was unavailable at his Downtown Tucson Partnership office today because he'd caught a plane back to Calgary to rake in extra cash above his $130,000 cloth gig running essentially a Partnership of Ward 6, the City Manager's Office, and their various "private sector" enablers. This is the guy that fired the director of Tucson Downtown Alliance so he could create a $60,000 cloth gig for the wife of a city council member's chief-of-staff. Apparently he supplements the city salary on Tucson's nickel in Canada. He's returned to Alberta on a regular basis since the fall, teaching real estate development classes.

Despite brutal city budget woes, butchering a Youth Employment Fund, and questionable Rio Nuevo hanky panky, cloth cash flow remains healthy. Perhaps Dr. Richard Florida could accompany them with some Rio Nuevo consultants to discuss "creative class development" in the Mediterranean. When is TREO's excursion to explore the Albuquerque resorts?

The Inflection

Thomas Friedman has a New York Times piece The Inflection is Near? suggesting that perhaps 2008 will go down in history as the year in which the United States, and by virtue of global dominoes, the rest of the world fully awoke to the unsustainable freefall of humanity so greedily devoured by the wealthiest gluttons enjoying domination of the planet for their own self-interests. Sustainability is the first word in the title of this blog by design. The astute have known for some time that sustainability is a word that will grow in significance in the political and economic discourse. It hasn’t even really begun to begin.

I speculate that’s about to change. The word "footprint" is about to take the stage with a vengeance. For good reason.

We’ve had a system that subsidizes gluttony and greed, allowing the disgusting to gorge themselves at a fraction of the true cost of their hyper-consumption of oversized meals in oversized houses with oversized garages containing oversized gas guzzling behemoths. It boggles the mind to fully appreciate how we have obesified what takes us from point A to point B. For what usually moves us a nominal distance in a nominal time, we need a vehicle with 2400 horsepower so it can feature a DVD, HD TV, wet bar, 200 pound leather sofa seats with 20 pound positioning motors, Jacuzzi, card table, gymnasium, golf course, auditorium, football stadium, zoo, circus, and museum. Think I exaggerate? Look at the vehicles produced in Detroit and the advertising designed to sell them. They’re STILL chasing horsepower. Think about that.

I want the tiny wheeled thing that brilliantly maintains safety standards and gets 125 mpg. I’ll do the DVD at home and exercise at a gym. I don’t need to go bowling and watch trapeze artists while I drive to work.

The auto industry should scrap everything it thinks it knows and start engineering from the 25cc mini-scooter. Every tiny ounce and cc added to the design needs to fully justify itself under the most brutal scrutiny in terms of function and economy. We need to retire the paradigm that insists we haul theme parks back and forth every day to do our jobs.

This is about more than cars.

Toxic Talk

I posted Dancing with a Snake last month about the GOP leadership vacuum and the nature of those seeking to fill it. Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reminded us that radio blow hard Rush Limbaugh has forcefully voiced his desire for President Obama to fail. Emanuel stated, "I do think he's an intellectual force, which is why the Republicans pay such attention to him."

Without getting into the semantics of such a failure (would Limbaugh like to see the economy implode to mass starvation?) one has to question the motivation of the CPAC crowd during these times. How do they scream for less governance in a nightmare brought forth by lack of governance? What data do they cite to forward the argument that the issues of our society are best resolved by whom, CEO’s? The data hardly supports the notion that unchecked these characters solve anything for anyone but themselves.

To agree with Emanuel requires me to twist the semantics of "intellectual" backwards. Limbaugh may be an intellectual force, but in the anti-intellectual direction. Like George W. Bush, he is the non-analytical who rejects the slightest introspection. From the self-anointed mantle of infallibility, Limbaugh bellows his self-righteousness, facts be damned.

At the local level (hey, some of my best friends are ... ) I’ve enjoyed conversations with more than a few elected Republicans I’ll go on the record as respecting. They include county supervisor Ray Carroll, Rep. Frank Antoneri, Senator Jonathon Paton, and others. I also got to know (rather well) another local GOP politician no longer holding office that demonstrated what I think may point to the death sentence of the Republican party, blind loyalty and unquestioning allegiance. She supported W "no matter what." Even though Randy Graf’s positions in 2006 made him a ludicrous candidate, she worked hard on that campaign. Why? Loyalty to the party.

Remember the bumper sticker, "Question Authority"? President Obama has welcomed intellectual rigor and the enrichment of the discourse regarding the extraordinary challenges we face. One of the elements blowhards like Limbaugh have in common is that they have never held office or had to solve a problem in the face of reality. Neither he nor Hannity nor O’Reilly nor Coulter nor Beck has seen let alone touched the trenches of crafting and passing legislation that helps one citizen. Not only do they have no solutions, they don’t even have questions.

The rage and hate infested rhetoric inflames dangerous elements the McCain campaign unintentionally exposed at its rallies. Whipping the base into a frenzy does not expand it. I think the GOP exacerbates its difficulties if it allows empty headed venom to become its voice.