By Robert P. Schoene
It came as no surprise to learn that Canada is joining the growing number of penniless nations. No, they are not broke like Greece. Instead, the Canadians will follow some of the most economically-stable countries in the world when it stops minting their one cent piece. The United States is surely not far behind, given the increasing cost of producing the penny, which is more than it’s worth. The preponderance of electronic payment methods, from plastic to smart phones, also is making cash of all denominations superfluous. You can even buy a cup of over-priced coffee with your iPhone these days.
So it’s no wonder that countries like Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain have done away with their lowest-denominated coins without incident or even a fond farewell.
The demise of the penny, if and when it comes in the United States, will be met with some nostalgic memories for the generation that grew up with a jar full of coins in the kitchen that was dipped into for small financial emergencies. Certainly, anyone who used the streets of New York as a playground during the 1950s or earlier, can only think kindly about the impact the penny had on their lives. You could do things with a few cents in those days.
‘Two-Cents Plain’
A cold “two-cents plain” was a welcome thirst-quencher on a hot summer’s day in any neighborhood candy store. You put your two pennies on the cold stone counter and watched with anticipation as the bubbling seltzer poured out of the soda fountain into a large Coca-Cola glass. If you had ten pennies, you could spend big and get an Egg-Cream, that delicious fountain-made chocolate soda that had no egg or cream in it, but tasted rich and smooth as though it did.
Pennies were always easy to come by if you knew how to fish for them through the street gratings that cover the air shafts over subway stations. All you needed was a long ball of string tied to a small padlock and a piece of freshly chewed gum stuck to the end of the lock, which would pick up coins from the ledge of the shaft maybe 20-feet below.
For some inexplicable reason there were always coins on those ledges, possibly dropped from the pockets and purses of bus-riders, who were getting on buses at the stop that corresponded with the subway station staircase near the street corner. So an enterprising kid could lie on his belly over the grating and patiently bounce the lock with the sticky gum over the dust-covered surface far below. More often than not you’d come up with something; usually a penny, but sometimes a nickel or a dime.
Next, you’d try to multiply that found money by taking part in another street pastime that everybody got into – pitching pennies. Pitching pennies is a simple enough game, but it does require dexterity with two finders so it must be explained to the young electronic gamers of today, who mostly use their thumbs and would never think of getting dirty.
Any number of people can play. The only requirement is a penny, which is tossed, flipped or rolled about 10-feet along the street to land against a wall, usually the bottom step of a stoop. The individual style of play is optional. The player who lands his or her penny closest to the wall wins the pennies of all the other players.
So to our generation the penny is much more than the lowest denomination of coin. It was in some small way, part of a rite of passage; the first lesson about the value of money and playing to win on the streets. If you were good at fishing for coins through the subway grating, it meant you didn’t mind getting your shirt and pants dirty for a little coin and that you stuck to a task until you got what you wanted (or your mother screamed out of your apartment window for you to come home for dinner).
The penny also helped us develop skills that would serve us well later in life; like playing dice, instead of pitching pennies. We’ll miss those pennies when they are gone, because they remind us of a less complicated fun time when we took our pleasure from little things.
And, That's That...
Friday, August 10, 2012
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
'Even a Website Needs Wood'
“Even a website needs wood,” is, to me, the defining phrase of a novel by Pete Hamill titled “Tabloid City.” The book is not Hamill’s best. After his “Forever” painted the vivid landscape of New York City past and present, it has been impossible for him to do better. “Tabloid City” is a murder mystery wrapped in the demise of a tabloid newspaper that very much resembles the New York Post.
Hamill worked at the Post when he was a newspaperman and his main character, Sam Briscoe, editor of the New York World in the book, could be a mirror image of Hamill himself, tired and aging, being pushed out of print by online media. Hamill even evokes the memory of Paul Sann, the actual executive editor of the Post during its heyday in the late 1950s.
Hamill accurately describes the city room of the Post and names some of its other occupants, the photographers, rewritemen and general assignment reporters, who shuttled in and out creating a buzz. I was there too and, like Hamill, I remember how Sann would pluck lines of led type out of page forms on the stone-topped tables of the composing room to make space for new leads on stories in one of five editions each day.
Hot Competition
Newsstand competition drove the daily newspapers of New York City in those days. There were six dailies then, each with multiple editions. There were the broad-sheets, the Journal-American, the World Telegram and Sun and the Herald Tribune, but the battle for the most sensational front page headline was most intense between the tabloids – The New York Post, the Daily News and the Mirror. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were in a class of their own, above the fray, setting their own standard whether anyone followed or not.
That’s where the reference to wood comes from. The large letters that made up the words of the front page headline on a tabloid were made of wood. They would call attention to the hottest story of the moment in letters above 48 picas in size. The reporter who got the “wood” was the star of the moment and editors always wanted to know “what’s the wood” for the next edition to beat the competition on the newsstands.
Briscoe’s dead newspaper is survived by an online news outlet in the book that he cannot abide so as he wants to push his former reporter to go after the hot angle on the story of the murder he tells himself that “even a website needs wood.”
That’s an irony that you can only appreciate if you worked for a newspaper in New York City before the age of computers, when newspapers were composed on linotype machines, the pictures were etched in photo engravings and pressmen actually shouted “Stop the press!”
And That Was That…
Hamill worked at the Post when he was a newspaperman and his main character, Sam Briscoe, editor of the New York World in the book, could be a mirror image of Hamill himself, tired and aging, being pushed out of print by online media. Hamill even evokes the memory of Paul Sann, the actual executive editor of the Post during its heyday in the late 1950s.
Hamill accurately describes the city room of the Post and names some of its other occupants, the photographers, rewritemen and general assignment reporters, who shuttled in and out creating a buzz. I was there too and, like Hamill, I remember how Sann would pluck lines of led type out of page forms on the stone-topped tables of the composing room to make space for new leads on stories in one of five editions each day.
Hot Competition
Newsstand competition drove the daily newspapers of New York City in those days. There were six dailies then, each with multiple editions. There were the broad-sheets, the Journal-American, the World Telegram and Sun and the Herald Tribune, but the battle for the most sensational front page headline was most intense between the tabloids – The New York Post, the Daily News and the Mirror. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were in a class of their own, above the fray, setting their own standard whether anyone followed or not.
That’s where the reference to wood comes from. The large letters that made up the words of the front page headline on a tabloid were made of wood. They would call attention to the hottest story of the moment in letters above 48 picas in size. The reporter who got the “wood” was the star of the moment and editors always wanted to know “what’s the wood” for the next edition to beat the competition on the newsstands.
Briscoe’s dead newspaper is survived by an online news outlet in the book that he cannot abide so as he wants to push his former reporter to go after the hot angle on the story of the murder he tells himself that “even a website needs wood.”
That’s an irony that you can only appreciate if you worked for a newspaper in New York City before the age of computers, when newspapers were composed on linotype machines, the pictures were etched in photo engravings and pressmen actually shouted “Stop the press!”
And That Was That…
Friday, April 8, 2011
The Singularity of Aging
A recent Time magazine cover story told us that technology is advancing at such a rapid pace that the human mind which drives its discovery may be superfluous by 2045. Curiously, around the same time, people will be looking forward to the longest life expectancy of any generation. The number of people 65 and older is expected to more than double worldwide to about 1.5 billion by 2050 from 523 million last year, according to estimates by the United Nations.
More people will be living longer with technology essentially doing all of the work. That can’t be good. Techno-futurists see the moment when superhuman intelligence can take over as “The Singularity,” a term they took from astrophysics that refers to the point at which the rules of ordinary physics no longer apply, Time explains.
‘The Singularity” has taken on a life of its own and become a movement of thinkers at the outer edge of the many ramifications of that moment when artificial intelligence collides with human intelligence. Singularitarians, as they are called, are, for example, seriously looking at the biology of growing old as a problem that has positive solutions. They see the human body as a machine that can be repaired periodically, much like a vintage car. Clearly, advances in everything from heart transplants to more efficient artificial body parts suggest that they may be right.
Meanwhile, marketers and the people who make stuff right now are waking up to the inescapable reality that the population of the world is already aging at a rapid rate, raising hither to for ignored questions about how to appeal to this well-heeled market.
New interest in what older people want and need has led researchers to simulate the physiology of aging so that people who want to capture the billions of dollars controlled by the elderly can experience what it feels like to be old. The experiments conducted at MIT’s AgeLab, which have gotten wide publicity of late in print and on TV, put people in the shoes of the aged so they can know the physical restrictions of growing old.
The AgeLab reportedly hooks up hip young marketing types, who want to experience the pain, to a jumpsuit of pulleys and restraints that restrict movement and function the way the aging process might.
A better idea, it would seem, is to hire older people to recount how they feel; what they like and don’t like. If the marketers are concerned about the validity of the findings, there are already machines that do that so that they don’t have to wait for “The Singularity” to determine what aging is all about.
And That’s That…
Friday, February 4, 2011
Hard Economic Times Breed Superheroes
It is not by chance that there is a spade of superheroes hitting the large and small screens of entertainment at this time. Unemployment remains at or above 9 percent across the nation, people continue to lose their homes in foreclosure at record numbers, the rich get richer on Wall Street and there is precious little to suggest any significant change for the better in the foreseeable future.
So let’s create some superheroes to take our minds off of reality for awhile. That’s what happened in the 1930s, when, at the height of the Great Depression, characters like Superman, Batman and the Green Hornet lit up the skies in comic books, over radio and on the silver screen, doing battle and winning the day against larger-than-life villains.
It was 1936 when the Green Hornet and his masked sidekick, Kato, first roared onto the air waves in their futuristic car, the Black Beauty, to fight crime. There have been several manifestations on a variety of media of the mild-mannered newspaper publisher, Britt Reid, by day, who transforms himself into the Green Hornet at night to bring evil-doers to justice with his superior intelligence and martial arts skills. Kids would literally watch the radio, fixated by the theme music, the classical “Flight of the Bumblebee,” which was often their first introduction to the music of masters like Nikolai Rimsky-Kosakov.
More important, the Green Hornet and other similar radio shows provided an escape into fantasy from the harsh reality of bread lines, Roosevelt’s fireside chats and the dust bowl that swept across the previously fertile heartland of America.
Not surprisingly, The Green Hornet is now a major motion picture, playing in theaters across America at this moment, when the scares of the Great Recession still burn, the unemployed are faced with a jobless recovery and global economic turmoil is the new reality.
Escape from Reality
The escape from reality also is reaching into our homes via TV series, such as “The Cape” on NBC. The series depicts an honest cop who is framed by a corrupt private police force, headed by a billionaire seeking to control the fictional Palm City, California.The billionaire is himself the arch villain, Chess, who is behind the crime wave terrorizing Palm City, until the honest cop darns the all-powerful cape that enables him to take on the bad guys.
Another fictitious California town, Pacific Bay, is the setting for “No Ordinary Family,” a comic sci-fi drama on ABC that traces the extraordinary powers of an otherwise seemingly average family of four. They, of course, use their powers, gained after surviving a plane crash in Brazil, to vanquish evil and champion good.
The father is beefy and bald, but he can jump really high and he now possesses Herculean strength, which enables him to foil criminals in the act, while his scientific researcher wife can rush around really fast, making peoples’ heads spin. Why that’s a super power is hard to comprehend, but combined with the daughter, who reads peoples’ thoughts and the son, who figures everything out with his super brain that sees intricate equations and formula in his minds’ eye, they support the bumbling father as he brings super human justice into our homes.
It’s easy to appreciate why both series are set in California. The state has, thus far, come closest to going down the tubes in debt. Jerry Brown, the “new” retrofit governor, should be able to fall back on fictional super heroes as he seeks a way out of near bankruptcy. The rest of the country can blame over-heated liberals and look to the Tea Party for salvation.
Brown’s California is the most debt-ridden state in the union. Its massive deficit is pegged at $25.4 billion through the upcoming budget year.
The many states, in general, face a collective budget gap of $175 billion through 2013, even after closing gaps totaling $230 billion over the past two years, the National Governors Association reported, according to the Reuters news agency.
Brown, a Democrat, wants to fill the gap with a combination of $12.5 billion in spending cuts and $12 billion in tax hikes, and will ask voters for approval, the news agency says. He is no stranger to tax fights. In 1978, during his earlier stint as governor, California voters passed Proposition 13, which constrained the state's ability to impose new taxes.
Failing new revenue sources it looks like we’ll all have to wait for the new Superman movie to get lost in the world of the original super hero once again. “Superman: The Man of Steel,” will be played by British actor, Henry Cavill, who is reported to be a “hottie.” The movie is slated for release in December 2012 and, alas, we’ll probably still need the escape from our lingering economic troubles.
And That’s That…
So let’s create some superheroes to take our minds off of reality for awhile. That’s what happened in the 1930s, when, at the height of the Great Depression, characters like Superman, Batman and the Green Hornet lit up the skies in comic books, over radio and on the silver screen, doing battle and winning the day against larger-than-life villains.
It was 1936 when the Green Hornet and his masked sidekick, Kato, first roared onto the air waves in their futuristic car, the Black Beauty, to fight crime. There have been several manifestations on a variety of media of the mild-mannered newspaper publisher, Britt Reid, by day, who transforms himself into the Green Hornet at night to bring evil-doers to justice with his superior intelligence and martial arts skills. Kids would literally watch the radio, fixated by the theme music, the classical “Flight of the Bumblebee,” which was often their first introduction to the music of masters like Nikolai Rimsky-Kosakov.
More important, the Green Hornet and other similar radio shows provided an escape into fantasy from the harsh reality of bread lines, Roosevelt’s fireside chats and the dust bowl that swept across the previously fertile heartland of America.
Not surprisingly, The Green Hornet is now a major motion picture, playing in theaters across America at this moment, when the scares of the Great Recession still burn, the unemployed are faced with a jobless recovery and global economic turmoil is the new reality.
Escape from Reality
The escape from reality also is reaching into our homes via TV series, such as “The Cape” on NBC. The series depicts an honest cop who is framed by a corrupt private police force, headed by a billionaire seeking to control the fictional Palm City, California.The billionaire is himself the arch villain, Chess, who is behind the crime wave terrorizing Palm City, until the honest cop darns the all-powerful cape that enables him to take on the bad guys.
Another fictitious California town, Pacific Bay, is the setting for “No Ordinary Family,” a comic sci-fi drama on ABC that traces the extraordinary powers of an otherwise seemingly average family of four. They, of course, use their powers, gained after surviving a plane crash in Brazil, to vanquish evil and champion good.
The father is beefy and bald, but he can jump really high and he now possesses Herculean strength, which enables him to foil criminals in the act, while his scientific researcher wife can rush around really fast, making peoples’ heads spin. Why that’s a super power is hard to comprehend, but combined with the daughter, who reads peoples’ thoughts and the son, who figures everything out with his super brain that sees intricate equations and formula in his minds’ eye, they support the bumbling father as he brings super human justice into our homes.
It’s easy to appreciate why both series are set in California. The state has, thus far, come closest to going down the tubes in debt. Jerry Brown, the “new” retrofit governor, should be able to fall back on fictional super heroes as he seeks a way out of near bankruptcy. The rest of the country can blame over-heated liberals and look to the Tea Party for salvation.
Brown’s California is the most debt-ridden state in the union. Its massive deficit is pegged at $25.4 billion through the upcoming budget year.
The many states, in general, face a collective budget gap of $175 billion through 2013, even after closing gaps totaling $230 billion over the past two years, the National Governors Association reported, according to the Reuters news agency.
Brown, a Democrat, wants to fill the gap with a combination of $12.5 billion in spending cuts and $12 billion in tax hikes, and will ask voters for approval, the news agency says. He is no stranger to tax fights. In 1978, during his earlier stint as governor, California voters passed Proposition 13, which constrained the state's ability to impose new taxes.
Failing new revenue sources it looks like we’ll all have to wait for the new Superman movie to get lost in the world of the original super hero once again. “Superman: The Man of Steel,” will be played by British actor, Henry Cavill, who is reported to be a “hottie.” The movie is slated for release in December 2012 and, alas, we’ll probably still need the escape from our lingering economic troubles.
And That’s That…
Monday, January 17, 2011
Guns Don’t Kill, But…
The argument that guns don’t kill people, people kill people is, of course, logical to a point. It takes a person to pull the trigger and ideally that person should be of sound mind and well-intended. When the gun in question is a Glock with a 31-round clip all logic ends. That weapon in that configuration has one purpose; to assault, wound and kill people. Sadly that is what we recently saw in Arizona.
In the aftermath of that tragedy there is soul-searching again about how easy it is to acquire a gun in many states. Certainly, even the most fervent supporter of the Second Amendment right to bear arms would agree that guns should be kept out of the hands of the mentally deranged. The process, however, does not allow enough time for that essential disconnect.
In this regard the United States can take a page from its territory in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico. Packing heat is as prevalent on the island (per capita) as it is on the US mainland, however, the process of legally acquiring a firearm is lengthy and costly. The process begins with the purchase of the firearm and an application for possession within ones home. Consideration of that application involves an investigation by the police, including a visit to the home for a personal interview with an investigator, who also talks to the spouse and neighbors to assure that they have no objection to the applicant’s possession of a firearm.
A permit to carry a concealed weapon in Puerto Rico is even more involved. It requires that the individual go to a lawyer for an affidavit establishing a valid reason for carrying a weapon, such as personal safety, which considering the level of criminal activity, is reason enough. However, the person seeking to legally carry a gun must finally go before a magistrate to swear to handle the privilege responsibly.
This whole process can take a month or more before the individual can actually take possession of a weapon. Yes, the procedure is pretty much cut and dried and very few people are denied the right to own and carry a firearm, but the various checkpoints allow the authorities to catch blatant crazies who should be nowhere near a lethal weapon.
Again, people fall through the cracks but the net that tries to catch them is strung more tightly in Puerto Rico than it is in most states of the union. As a result, violent crime in Puerto Rico, and there is much of it, is criminal in nature and mostly drug-related. It rarely is prompted by acts of passion in the Latin tradition, but there has never been a mass murder of the magnitude that concerns everyone in the United States today.
Hopefully, there never will be and, hopefully, our nation will find a way to reduce the risk of similar acts of senseless violence in the future.
And That’s That…
In the aftermath of that tragedy there is soul-searching again about how easy it is to acquire a gun in many states. Certainly, even the most fervent supporter of the Second Amendment right to bear arms would agree that guns should be kept out of the hands of the mentally deranged. The process, however, does not allow enough time for that essential disconnect.
In this regard the United States can take a page from its territory in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico. Packing heat is as prevalent on the island (per capita) as it is on the US mainland, however, the process of legally acquiring a firearm is lengthy and costly. The process begins with the purchase of the firearm and an application for possession within ones home. Consideration of that application involves an investigation by the police, including a visit to the home for a personal interview with an investigator, who also talks to the spouse and neighbors to assure that they have no objection to the applicant’s possession of a firearm.
A permit to carry a concealed weapon in Puerto Rico is even more involved. It requires that the individual go to a lawyer for an affidavit establishing a valid reason for carrying a weapon, such as personal safety, which considering the level of criminal activity, is reason enough. However, the person seeking to legally carry a gun must finally go before a magistrate to swear to handle the privilege responsibly.
This whole process can take a month or more before the individual can actually take possession of a weapon. Yes, the procedure is pretty much cut and dried and very few people are denied the right to own and carry a firearm, but the various checkpoints allow the authorities to catch blatant crazies who should be nowhere near a lethal weapon.
Again, people fall through the cracks but the net that tries to catch them is strung more tightly in Puerto Rico than it is in most states of the union. As a result, violent crime in Puerto Rico, and there is much of it, is criminal in nature and mostly drug-related. It rarely is prompted by acts of passion in the Latin tradition, but there has never been a mass murder of the magnitude that concerns everyone in the United States today.
Hopefully, there never will be and, hopefully, our nation will find a way to reduce the risk of similar acts of senseless violence in the future.
And That’s That…
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Looking for Celebration?
As 2010 approaches its final days, we’re all looking for a reason to celebrate. The economy is still in the pits and there are as many people unemployed now, in what the economists call a jobless economic recovery, as at the height of the recession, but an atmosphere of cooperation seems to be taking hold in the nation’s capital that might bode well for 2011.
President Obama has moved first to give the Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives in 2011, what they wanted most; an extension to the so-called Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers, including the richest. The concession gives the President and the liberal wing of his Democratic Party a much-needed continuation of unemployment benefits for the jobless and some economic stimulus measures for small business people, who provide most of the jobs in the nation.
The extremists in both parties will not be satisfied, but, in fact, it is when the Democrats and the Republicans share power and responsibility that they can accomplish the most for the American people or be damned for not doing so at the polls in the next election.
The big money Republican interests that gave President Obama and his party a beat-down in the November midterm elections, may, therefore, stop sitting on their hands and pump serious investment into the economy that finally creates significant new jobs. New jobs beget consumer confidence that turns into spending and, hence, more new jobs. Who knows the trend might take off and some of us might be able to stop frowning so much.
Unlike our friends who live in Celebration, an “ideal” community created by Walt Disney near his amusement world to promote sameness. They are ruffling their brows because the unthinkable has just happened. Celebration had its first murder since its development in 1996 and allegedly solved the crime in days. What actually happened is for the courts to decide and it is sure to generate national news coverage again because of the uniqueness of the occurrence in this plastic Central Florida community.
The murder has already generated national attention. Tourists, who normally would go directly to the theme parks, are stopping in Celebration to see what this picture-perfect town is all about. They don’t stay long. A few gift shops, some restaurants (a couple are very good), a retro 1940s soda fountain and movie house and that’s about it.
It’s hard to realize that people actually live in Celebration. There are families, moms and dads, kids and pets behind those cookie-cutter doors that until recently used to be kept open. Now sadly one of those fortunate people became a victim of violence, making Celebration as nervous as most other communities in America. Welcome to the real world, where we have lots to celebrate, if we’re very careful, keep our loved ones close and work hard, assuming, of course, we can find a job in 2011.
And, that’s that…
President Obama has moved first to give the Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives in 2011, what they wanted most; an extension to the so-called Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers, including the richest. The concession gives the President and the liberal wing of his Democratic Party a much-needed continuation of unemployment benefits for the jobless and some economic stimulus measures for small business people, who provide most of the jobs in the nation.
The extremists in both parties will not be satisfied, but, in fact, it is when the Democrats and the Republicans share power and responsibility that they can accomplish the most for the American people or be damned for not doing so at the polls in the next election.
The big money Republican interests that gave President Obama and his party a beat-down in the November midterm elections, may, therefore, stop sitting on their hands and pump serious investment into the economy that finally creates significant new jobs. New jobs beget consumer confidence that turns into spending and, hence, more new jobs. Who knows the trend might take off and some of us might be able to stop frowning so much.
Unlike our friends who live in Celebration, an “ideal” community created by Walt Disney near his amusement world to promote sameness. They are ruffling their brows because the unthinkable has just happened. Celebration had its first murder since its development in 1996 and allegedly solved the crime in days. What actually happened is for the courts to decide and it is sure to generate national news coverage again because of the uniqueness of the occurrence in this plastic Central Florida community.
The murder has already generated national attention. Tourists, who normally would go directly to the theme parks, are stopping in Celebration to see what this picture-perfect town is all about. They don’t stay long. A few gift shops, some restaurants (a couple are very good), a retro 1940s soda fountain and movie house and that’s about it.
It’s hard to realize that people actually live in Celebration. There are families, moms and dads, kids and pets behind those cookie-cutter doors that until recently used to be kept open. Now sadly one of those fortunate people became a victim of violence, making Celebration as nervous as most other communities in America. Welcome to the real world, where we have lots to celebrate, if we’re very careful, keep our loved ones close and work hard, assuming, of course, we can find a job in 2011.
And, that’s that…
Friday, October 15, 2010
Voters Deserve Better
There’s an old adage about elections that people get the leaders they deserve, but this time around voters deserve better.
Less than a month away from the midterm election that will select local, state and congressional representatives we are bombarded with nothing but negative attack ads on TV and debates about why not to vote for the other candidate. Alas, there is precious little being said about what candidates will do in terms of positive action and initiatives to make our lives better.
Here in Florida Democrats, Republicans and, yes, even the darlings of the Tea Party appear to be petty hate mongers. Are all the candidates liars and thieves? Probably not, but that’s all we hear, charges and countercharges, insults and denials and vague generalities regarding the critical issues that are important to us all.
Unemployment is still the single most important concern in Florida and across much of the nation, but what specifically can you refer to as a plan to create jobs, beyond the broad strokes of education and re-training for the industries of America’s new economic reality, whatever that is.
There is only one candidate for elective office that I’ve heard at any level in Florida who has articulated the key to creating jobs. Bill Segal got it right when he said in a recent televised debate that he’d fly anywhere in the world to bring jobs to Orange county. He’s the Democrat running for mayor of the county.
That’s the formula for success. You go to the companies with the highest potential for employing people and explain why they’ll make more money operating in your town. Teodoro Moscoso was the pre-eminent creator of jobs, who first wrote the book on the process that served as the model for developing countries. He was the architect and chief engineer of Puerto Rico’s highly successful Operation Bootstrap industrialization program in the 1960s and 70s, responsible for attracting the jobs that lifted the island out of poverty.
Moscoso knocked on the doors of every boardroom he found to convince corporate decision-makers that they were better off making their widgets under the American flag in Puerto Rico. As a result, many major pharmaceutical and technology companies still produce their high value-added products on the island, even though the tax exemption that originally lured them there has long gone. While there are now fewer jobs in more efficient plants, the core of skilled, technology jobs still on the island are the one ray of hope in an otherwise dysfunctional economy.
That was Moscoso’s legacy to the people of Puerto Rico. If the candidates in Florida and elsewhere in the US of A want our votes, they should take a page from the economic development chapter he wrote and tell us how they will open the doors to the current corporate world to create employment opportunities.
And, That’s That…
Less than a month away from the midterm election that will select local, state and congressional representatives we are bombarded with nothing but negative attack ads on TV and debates about why not to vote for the other candidate. Alas, there is precious little being said about what candidates will do in terms of positive action and initiatives to make our lives better.
Here in Florida Democrats, Republicans and, yes, even the darlings of the Tea Party appear to be petty hate mongers. Are all the candidates liars and thieves? Probably not, but that’s all we hear, charges and countercharges, insults and denials and vague generalities regarding the critical issues that are important to us all.
Unemployment is still the single most important concern in Florida and across much of the nation, but what specifically can you refer to as a plan to create jobs, beyond the broad strokes of education and re-training for the industries of America’s new economic reality, whatever that is.
There is only one candidate for elective office that I’ve heard at any level in Florida who has articulated the key to creating jobs. Bill Segal got it right when he said in a recent televised debate that he’d fly anywhere in the world to bring jobs to Orange county. He’s the Democrat running for mayor of the county.
That’s the formula for success. You go to the companies with the highest potential for employing people and explain why they’ll make more money operating in your town. Teodoro Moscoso was the pre-eminent creator of jobs, who first wrote the book on the process that served as the model for developing countries. He was the architect and chief engineer of Puerto Rico’s highly successful Operation Bootstrap industrialization program in the 1960s and 70s, responsible for attracting the jobs that lifted the island out of poverty.
Moscoso knocked on the doors of every boardroom he found to convince corporate decision-makers that they were better off making their widgets under the American flag in Puerto Rico. As a result, many major pharmaceutical and technology companies still produce their high value-added products on the island, even though the tax exemption that originally lured them there has long gone. While there are now fewer jobs in more efficient plants, the core of skilled, technology jobs still on the island are the one ray of hope in an otherwise dysfunctional economy.
That was Moscoso’s legacy to the people of Puerto Rico. If the candidates in Florida and elsewhere in the US of A want our votes, they should take a page from the economic development chapter he wrote and tell us how they will open the doors to the current corporate world to create employment opportunities.
And, That’s That…
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