Unknown Buddhist

While Donald Trump has been appointing and the media has been analyzing Trump’s Twitter account posts, the rest of his fan base has been waiting for news about lost jobs. As most of us know, the coal and steel industry has seen tumultuous decades. But saying President Obama and Hillary Clinton were ultimately responsible for every man’s lot in life is simply overstating the world’s economic engine.

Much of the damage occurred long before either Clinton and Obama graced our presence. For instance, experts say the notion of bringing Pittsburgh back to its post-World War II heyday, with large mills supplying tens of thousands of jobs, isn’t going to happen. By 1982, 133,000 steel workers in the area had been laid off. By January 1983, the job losses in the steel industry contributed to a 17.1 percent unemployment rate in the Pittsburgh area.

In upstate New York, the Lackawanna Steel Company was founded in 1840 and existed as an independent company until 1922. In 1922, Bethlehem Steel bought Lackawanna and operated the facility until operations ceased in 1982. Bethlehem filed for bankruptcy in 2001. Ala in all, Lackawanna once employed approximately 20,000.

Inexpensive steel imports and the failure of management to innovate, embrace technology, and improve labor conditions contributed to Bethlehem’s demise.

In a strange reversal of Trump’s fan base, critics in that era claimed protectionist steel trade policies created a lack of competitiveness as American steel producers like Bethlehem were shielded from foreign competition by quotas, voluntary export restraints, minimum price undertakings, and anti-dumping and countervailing duty. These   measures were in effect for 30 years preceding Bethlehem Steel’s collapse.

To return steel and coal industries back to the days of yesteryear, Trump has to overcome several problems.

First problem that few, if any, have discussed is that steel foundries are gone. To put it bluntly, there is no infrastructure to rebuild. The former Bethlehem steel plant is now the site of the Sands Casino and the former Lackawanna Steel Company site is a wind farm.

Secondly, manufacturing jobs haven’t disappeared just because of trade deals, cheap imports and foreign tariffs. Today’s manufacturers use everything from robots to product-tracking systems to trim costs and increase efficiency and quality. That often means fewer jobs than companies needed to do the same work years ago.

Third, it’s well known coal helped drive the steel industry. Yet today, there’s easier coal to get than those in the Appalachian mines. Once mines have closed they don’t reopen when cheaper alternatives exist. For instance, fracking technology has made natural gas an abundantly cheap form of power.

Globalization and opening of world markets; a slowdown in Chinese manufacturing, creating massive over-capacity in its steel plants; a subsequent boom in cheap Chinese exports and a collapse in the global steel price will not be rectified by Trump in 48 months.

Whether or those manufacturing jobs could have been saved doesn’t matter. They aren’t coming back, at least not most of them. How do we know? Because in recent years, factories have been coming back, but jobs haven’t. Factories built today are heavily automated, employing a small fraction of the workers they would have a generation ago.

For those older among us who hold liberal and progressive political views, let’s not forget we survived Nixon, Reagan, and Bush. It wasn’t pleasant but we survived. We will survive Trump. This is not to say that the policies of past presidents weren’t flawed, and that they did not make any lasting impact. They were and they did. Still, we survived. We will survive Trump. As of today, we don’t really know what will happen under Trump because nothing he has said so far means much. He seems not to have much commitment to his own words.

Last week I actually listened to the Benghazi hearing. Then, I went watched the fiasco. After eleven hours, I sat for a moment and ponder a most interesting question: “What if the interviewee was either Donald Trump, Ben Carson or Chris Christie?”

Whether you believe Hillary Rodham Clinton or not, commentator Eugene Robinson echoed it correctly when he said Clinton must have been mindful of the old adage that you never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake. Clinton was very presidential. I just cannot see any other Republican candidate looking so presidential.

Chris Christie claimed Clinton was “unaccountable” because she left the Benghazi compound’s security arrangements to be handled by lower-ranking professional. Yet “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson noted Christie gave a similar explanation to exonerate himself in the George Washington Bridge scandal.

Overdosing on his Miss World pageant sound bites, Donald Trump claimed he could unify the world …. A pseudonym for “All I want is for world peace.” Ok, actually he said he could unify congress. A former CIA analyst stated, “What was learned was irrelevant. What was relevant wasn’t discussed.”

And here’s why I agree.

Rep. Trey Gowdy told Clinton he understood that people in both parties suggest that this investigation was about her; further stating this investigation was about four people who were killed representing our country on foreign soil. That argument comes across condescending ten minutes into the hearing.

For example, while the Benghazi committee has spent $4.7 million for three hearings, the deaths of two-dozen from a bombed a hospital operated by the charity Doctors Without Borders, in Kunduz, Afghanistan appears particularly uninteresting. Congressional leaders have spent little time investigating why some 30 Americans are being held hostage overseas today. The 2009 suicide bombing at Camp Chapman in Afghanistan did not merit this kind of scrutiny. That was when seven Americans working for the CIA were killed when a man who was supposed to be an informant, invited by American agents to be the base, turned out to be a radical jihadi, a suicide bomber who blew himself up.

The hearing only served to embarrass Republican lawmakers in search of a political crusade. In recent days, some prominent Republicans have even admitted as much. The Republicans are expected to issue a report. May it be the final chapter of a wasteful and counterproductive exercise that accomplished nothing.

Thus, I am left with my opening question. Basically, how presidential would Trump, Carson or Christie be were it them?

The annual rite of passage has adorned my radio because our local NPR affiliate, is performing another “Radio Held Hostage” week, (loosely translated … pledge drive).

NPR is great for telling you how “free” radio isn’t free.  Various stories of wealth and grandeur pull at listener pursestrings, hoping some listener will call and pledge. One frequent tactic is the overly used “Driveway Moment.”  If you’re unfamiliar with the pitch, here’s what a “Driveway Moment” is about. Quoting NPR:

“Maybe it’s happened to you as it has to countless others. . . . You’re driving home, listening to a story on NPR. Suddenly, you find yourself in your driveway (or parking space or parking garage). Rather than turn the radio off, you stay in your car to hear the piece to the end. It’s a Driveway Moment.”

I’ll admit, I am an NPR contributor. Somehow, year after year, after year, after year, they manage to secure some form of contribution from my pocket book.

Still outside of the Diane Rehm Show, call-in radio programming seem deceased and the remaining NPR programming is stale. Click and Clack retired long ago, yet NPR continues to cycle out-of-date material as “entertainment.” Talk of The Nation died a horrible death and was replaced by a boring, less than stellar “Here & Now” and This American Life has been known to recycle material as well.

In truth, almost all NPR programming changes were specifically targeted to reduce programming costs. Facing continued year-to-year multimillion dollar deficits, management has shed direction, cut personnel and offered buyouts. Yet, NPR has retained some of the most overly priced talent possibly.  At last report, Steve Inskeep, co-host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” still rakes in more than $334,560 yearly. Renee Montagne, co-host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” swallows $321,919 while Robert Siegel, cohost of “All Things Considered,” clears $321,860. You get the idea … the list goes on and on.

This leads me to my own personal NPR “Driveway Moment.” One day prior to the latest pledge drive, I learned Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep has begun a journey along the U.S.-Mexico border — from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Ah … Why? What the hell for? To the casual listener, Inskeep is taking is a vacation. Hell, I could pay my Uncle Guido some gas money and hotel and he’d be in heaven.

To counterpoint, NPR will claim that as part of some project, a team of NPR correspondents is pursuing stories about people, goods and culture crossing that border. Still as a man who has to clutch every buck owned, my “Driveway Moment” was understanding that NPR, who pays the likes of Inskeep and others, salaries in excess of $300,000, to do what my old man did for years: pack the kids in station wagon and drive.

What’s interesting about my “Driveway Moment” is that all of us deal with money everyday. Even as a Buddhist, there’s not a day where we don’t actually have contact with money. So you would think that money would be a really important for NPR and for us. Yet, like many, NPR seems to separate themselves from the ethics and consciousness.

In truth, Buddha didn’t have a credit card. But that doesn’t mean we can live without credit either. If you think you can, try traveling 50% of the time for business without a credit card. However, like a good steward of faith, we must be vigilant and actually be careful about that which has been entrusted.

If Inskeep had come to my father and asked to pursue a US – Mexico border trip, my father would have said, “Have a hell of a vacation. Oh … send some pictures.”