My own sojourn here in the Keystone State concludes this week. School begins again next week in the U.K. with a class in international communications, one theme of which is the consolidation of media -- news, entertainment, film making, Internet sites, etc. -- into a handful, that is six, large transnational corporations, namely Time Warner, Disney, Sony, Bertelsmann, Viacom and News Corp. The reading includes "The World is Flat," by Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, who expounds on the effects of globalization on the services industry as well as the changes the coming generations can expect in the world of work.
Friedman, I think, is a Utopian. He sees the best, rarely the worst, in worldwide trends that remove barriers to digital commerce and communication. That progress that results from outsourcing and offshoring will create a new middle class in places like China and India and thereby result in vast new markets and opportunities for ever-creative Westerners, like us. In the meantime, suffer. Our lot is social dislocation, job loss, public and private debt, along with a vast new population of poor who may never find work and will be forced to rely on public assistance, as reported here by the very same NYT.
Friedman takes note of the upheaval all these globalizing changes are causing, but he is the sunny optimist who believes Americans will exercise their penchant for adaptation, creativity and enterprise to keep their country on the cutting edge of prosperity.
I also think he tends to ignore the idea that globalization rests to an extent on consumerism and conformity, much of it dictated by the aforementioned five big media companies. He has a problem with results. Two of his early, prime examples of things to come are McDonald's franchisees who "outsource" drive-up orders in order to eliminate the employee who takes your order from the window, and Wal-Mart, whose supply-chain improvements ensure low, low prices. He overlooks the fact that at the end of the labor and cost saving processes, I'm left holding a McDonald's hamburger or a device from Wal-Mart with built-in obsolescence, if it's built to last at all. Have you eaten at Mickey D's lately?
Friedman made me angry and anxious. His flat world makes me uncomfortable, but what he describes is undeniably taking place and to ignore it is to invite peril. His book challenged me and forced me to think, which is what a good book does. Read it.
Student Discontent
Speaking of school, military spouses like me who took advantage of a Defense Department program called My Career Advancement Account, or MyCAA, were gobsmacked last week with a surprise announcement that the program is on an indefinite hiatus while its overseers give it some kind of once over. That means thousands of people are left high and dry in the middle of degree- or certificate-seeking programs without the tuition assistance promised to help us find meaningful work.
No warning was issued that the program would be put on hold, nor was any explanation offered other than the program would be reviewed, basically, to determine whether it is meeting its goals. MyCAA administrators gave cold advice to tap our spouses' GI Bill, if need be, to continue in school until the review period, however long, is past. Some folks point out that maybe our spouses had plans for their GI Bill money themselves (mine does) or that it makes better sense to hand it over to their offspring. (The government, before creating MyCAA, also allowed military members to make their updated GI Bill tuition assistance money transferable to family members.) Something is afoot, but little reporting is available other than a rehash of the announcement that appeared in Stars & Stripes.
Answers that identify the real, underlying issues with the program are non-existent. Is it underfunded? Is there sloppy accounting? Has someone had second thoughts about what is seemingly a very generous program? MyCAA gives qualified applicants $6,000 toward a wide range of eligible education programs. The aim is to help spouses find "portable" careers and thereby increase the chances that the military member, now married to a career-fulfilled spouse, will stay in the service. I use mine to pay tuition for a graduate program in international relations through the University of Oklahoma, a program OU provides at military bases under a DOD contract.
Secretary Gates has made a number of changes and cuts in order to beef up the actual warfighting efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Could this be another attempt to save some cash in the Defense Department? Stay tuned.
Compare & Contrast
Two noteworthy passings occurred in the past week, Al Haig and Fred Weyand. Haig got more press, by far, and for good reason. Like him or not, Haig stood tall on the national stage. He occupied a central position in the Nixon White House as chief of staff during the Watergate era, and then again for a spell as Reagan's secretary of state. He's probably best recognized for his ambition and thus is certainly reduced in popular recollection as a one- or two-dimensional character, scheming and unquestioning in pursuit some great geo-political goal. He is easily caricatured, unfortunately, I think, as an uberpatriot with few scruples.
I had the good fortune to elicit a "no comment" from the general on the one opportunity I had to question him. The Republican Party sent a battalion of party luminaries, Haig among them, to campaign in 1986 in Pennsylvania's 11th congressional district on behalf of Marc Holtzman, the young challenger to the incumbent Democrat, Paul E. Kanjorski. Haig appeared with Holtzman at a local American Legion or AMVET hall, the details are vague. My colleague, John Bull, and I arrived early at the event, headed for the bar, made note of the two ideologically correct lovelies interning for a local radio station, a pair we dubbed the GOP Twins, and took our seats in the back row. I recall asking the former SoS about progress freeing hostages in the Middle East somewhere, and what did he know about it.
"No comment," he barked, adding that he wouldn't risk any ongoing attempt to free said hostages by making any public pronouncements.
All I accomplished, I think, was to give him an opportunity to sound like he maybe knew something about something when he probably didn't. But who knows.
Weyand, the last U.S. commander in Vietnam, presents a different model of a general. Haig put out the vibe that he was always willing and ready to execute the program, and by all accounts he was an intelligent man. Weyand, who was also willing to carry out orders, had reservations and made those reservations known. He too was intelligent, no doubt, but was a thoughtful man in a way Haig, on the face of it, may not have been. What would Haig have done in Weyand's position? What would Weyand have done as Haig? Would Watergate have the same meaning if he, by some dint of fate, had found himself the White House chief of staff? Would Vietnam have cost us more young men if Haig had been, in the last chapter, running the show?
Inside Looking Out
I have seen this Frontline documentary already under another guise as it appeared on Brit television last month. Check it out. It's riveting.
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