After the champagne, the hangover

November 9th, 2008

Chicago

If you’ve been exercised by the trivial matter as to why U.S. president elect Barack Obama hasn’t yet called Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, then you don’t need google to find the answer. A number of explanations present themselves. That the Indian Prime Minister is away on an official visit, explains what Indians perceive as Obama’s tardiness, though not fully.

Obama found the time to call 15 other heads of state at the end of last week, including Pakistan’s Asif Zardari, which led Pakstan’s Daily Times to gloat about the U.S’s “no lift” stance towards India. It was pointed out, of course, that the countries Obama dialed were all “known U.S. allies” and that India, by inference, is not.

A better explanation is that Obama has just been swamped with work. The task ahead is enormous, and Obama was in a huddle with his transition team over the weekend to first make the key personnel decisions. There are hundreds of positions to be filled under the new regime, from Cabinet posts to the appointment of U.S attorneys in all states. Work on policy begins only after getting somewhere with settling these.

And when getting down to policy, his first three priorities are likely to be: economy, economy, economy. Telephone calls to India will probably be made only in case he’s having trouble with his bank account.

After a campaign full of prophecies and promises, it now comes down to priorities. Since Obama begins at minus $700 billion thanks to the bailout for financial institutions, there’s already a debate on whether to postpone meeting the (expensive) commitments he made on energy independence, healthcare, climate change and education, till after a plan for the economy is put in place.

With a middle-class that’s hurting, and a business community that suspects deep down that there is a small chance that the man could be the socialist the McCain campaign made him out to be, taxes will be very high on the agenda, however.

This isn’t the best news for India. At a time when at least a hundred thousand people are losing their jobs every month, Obama’s repeated promise of tax breaks to businesses that keep jobs in the U.S. would be a popular measure. Less off-shoring has obvious repercussions for India.

How soon such a measure will come into force, and to what extent, will decide how much Indian BPOs will suffer, but suffer they will.

The world, and India, probably celebrated Obama’s election after viewing it purely through a foreign policy prism. On that score too, India has a bit to think about.

The outline of Obama’s foreign policy can be found in a report published last year by a group of democrats called the Phoenix Initiative. Susan Rice, who is tipped to be Obama’s secretary of state, was part of this group. In brief, the report said that governments could not handle things like counter-terrorism and nuclear proliferation on their own and envisioned an interconnected world where (presumably) America held most of the “diffuse power”.

Obama has echoed that in speeches: “the threats we face.. can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries”, he said in his first major foreign policy speech last year. The threats are global, and need a global response.

In effect, this means, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman puts it, “show us the money”. Obama’s America will expect nations to contribute in tangible terms (”money, police, aid workers, troops, diplomatic support”) to its efforts at making the world a “freer” and better place.

Till the time that Obama talks about winding down the war in Iraq, that seems alright. But what happens when he shifts the theatre to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to “crush Al Qaeda and kill Bin Laden” as he has said he will? Perhaps he will call Zardari to let him know that he should stand clear of dropping bombs. And then make the call to Delhi for support.

What happens to our already rough neighbourhood then?

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Who’s nailin’ Palin? The media, of course.

November 7th, 2008

Chicago

No sooner was the McCain campaign pronounced dead around 11 pm on November 4, the autopsy began. The initial area of interest: the dissection of an appendage called Sarah Palin.

After two months on a roller coaster ride, in which the highs were over in the first few days (that is before she opened her mouth) Sarah Palin is back in Alaska endangering moose as predicted. She leaves behind a trail of clothing bills; a gaggle of McCain aides finally able to vent their frustration; and an audience that will miss Tina Fey’s version of Palin on Saturday Night Live. Fey, whose impersonation would have pulled at least as many votes (if not more, it came across as smarter) announced that the character was buried two days ago.

But first, to the aides. That the old man had made a terrible mistake was apparent enough to anyone who followed Palin’s babbling through the campaign, but it took a classy prank to finally convince the McCain camp.

A Canadian comedian pretending to be Nikolas Sarkozy spoke to her on the telephone, softening her up with general platitudes about women in politics, praising her looks and then going on to say that he was looking forward to the new Hustler ‘documentary’ on her (’Who’s nailin’ Palin).

This was about the time that people get it, but not Palin, who giggled. Furthermore, it turned out that although it was ’set up’ days before, she had not cleared the ‘interaction’ with the campaign high command, thus finally establishing her foreign policy credentials for all those who harboured doubts.

It emerged during the subsequent investigation by furious McCain advisers, that Palin had a ‘foreign policy adviser’ herself. Someone, it is believed who lives even closer to Russia than even she does. This man took the fall.

In the recent past, in addition to insightful interviews for the public at large, she had given subtle hints to campaign managers on the inside that she was not Madame Curie. It has been reported that it was difficult to convince her that Africa was not a country, but a continent, for instance.

Then came the bills. $1,50,000 spent on clothing for herself and her family at such hockey mom-frequented stores as Saks and Neiman Marcus. Those around her blithely bought stuff on their personal credit cards and were duly reimbursed by public money.

But more than the clothes, it was the entourage. Palins little and big were all over the campaign, jostling for space in strategy huddles with hapless policy advisers. “The dynamic of meetings change” as a result, one insider told The New Yorker. One report even has her opening the door to her suite clad in two towels, to tell an aide to wait with her husband in another room.

Why did McCain choose Palin? This is a difficult one to answer without kicking an honorable man that’s down. But how he chose her was revealed by the New Yorker’s last issue.

Palin’s attempted crossing from Wasilla to Washington began when a little-known fundamentalist blogger began a campaign promoting her after eliminating other women republicans using wikipedia searches. Then, in the Summer of 2007, two batches of influential conservative media personalities visited Alaska on cruises. Pain hosted both groups and floored them with halibut, salmon and plain charm. Bill Kristol, pundit on Fox News Sunday and influential writer for The Weekly Standard, was the most enamoured. He called her his “heartthrob” and as good as made the announcement of her candidacy before McCain got around to it in early September.

Palin had successfully used the very Washington insiders that she purportedly loathed to get on the ticket.

The New Yorker also revealed that McCain had spent a total of less than three hours with Palin before announcing her as his running mate. But the backroom boys didn’t fare much better. They most likely did not know at the time of the announcement that her teen-age daughter was pregnant (sort of important, isn’t it for a christian values. There were serious gaps in the obviously hurried vetting process before she was flown down to McCain’s retreat in Sedona, Arizona.

Now the question is, if the old man could divine Palin’s neighbour Putin’s thoughts by looking into his eyes in a matter of minutes, what was he thinking looking into Sarah’s for hours?

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Meeting President Obama For The First Time

November 5th, 2008

Chicago

Just as promised, the world changed on Tuesday night. Barack Hussein Obama became president elect of the United States. Less than two years ago, he had the wrong middle name for the job, he was of the wrong colour, and recently, it was pointed out, he had the wrong associates.

On Tuesday night, however, he was undoubtedly the right man. America voted for its first black president in a way so unequivocal that the world celebrated as it watched him ascend the stage in Grant Park, at the heart of Chicago, to accept his prize.

On Michigan Avenue, at the entrance of the park, they lined up from the morning. Those with tickets to one side, looking slightly privileged, with deck chairs laid out on the street and sunglasses. Those without tickets, to the other with placards begging to be taken in as a ticket-holders guest since they were from Seattle.

On a November day so perfect that many were reading it as “a sign”, whether they had tickets or not, there were picnics to be had while waiting on the sidewalk. Crabby babies to be fed. T-shirts, and new age ‘high definition’ Obama buttons to be bought. The buttons were just like regular ones, except they were like Obama’s message in a way: sharper, clearer (and dearer).

Evening fell and the barricaded gates of Grant Park opened to let about a quarter of a million people in, others watched from behind the tinted glass of insulated condos or hotels. Everyone straining to find out from the big screen or a neighbour whether Ohio had been carried or if Florida had failed them. Within three hours of the gates opening at 8, it was over, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennyslvania, Obama had prevailed everywhere. The TV stations announced the winner.

People held their heads in disbelief. The audience, even those without the celebrity or the additional tear glands that Oprah Winfrey possesses, cried, hugged and whooped. The last, did not stop for hours after Barack had come, seen and conquered (yet again). Tears rolled down Jesse Jackson’s face. Jackson had wanted to be president once as well, but he couldn’t get the democratic nomination because the wisdom of the time was that whites wouldn’t vote for a black man.

Twenty years since that bid, Obama was delivering his victory speech, glorying in America’s colour-blindness. It came just after McCain made his classy concession. If Obama placed the credit of victory at the feet of the electorate, McCain said the burden of loss was his and no one else’s to bear. For a brief while, the power of the old man’s words, spoken from a lectern in Arizona to an audience that was in despair, quietened the crowd in Grant Park.

And then, Obama appeared. Presidential, even when his wife whispered ‘love you’ in his ear, he spoke with an awareness of both the scale and the nature of the event he was at the centre of: “This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations… he said, going into an anecdote about 106-year old black woman who had stood in line to vote for him. “Tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.”

He’d pressed the button. That creed, or variants like ‘yes we did’, kept resonating through the streets of Chicago. Interspersed with cathartic whoops (that were composed of joy and bewilderment, though you couldn’t tell in what proportion) from wave upon wave of supporters. It was no point trying to speak out a solicitation, so the figure crouched on the pavement across the park merely held a placard: “I’m just hungry and homeless.”

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Tomorrow has come

November 4th, 2008

Chicago

By the time you read this, the world would have changed. The last stretch of that process is on right now, as a record number of Americans line up to vote on Tuesday. They don’t want history to pass them by–again–so two third of those eligible are expected to turn up, the highest turnout since 1908.

As I write this a block away from Grant Park, where an Obama victory rally is planned in about 12 hours, Barack himself is voting, accompanied by his wife Michelle in a Chicago booth. This is a live event on all major news channels.

He had just one word for his audience at his last campaign rally in Manassas, Virginia late on Monday night: “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow has come. He appears cool, smiling, talking to Michelle and his daughters, on a day his grandmother Madelyn Dunham (the woman who “poured everything she had” into Obama) would have loved to have seen. She died at 86 on Monday.

He was very close to her, but in an understated way, he’s moved on. He takes an incredibly long time to fill up the ballot. If everyone takes this long (about 10 minutes at the very least) then a lot of people will be left standing.

Joe Biden, who the democratic campaign made sure would vote in Delaware right after the Obamas finished in Chicago–just as a bit of airtime freed up–got the job done real quick. For those standing in queues in precincts around the country, this is more like it. Some of them came to vote as early as 5.30 in the morning–spending an acceptable hour and a half to complete voting. Already, there have been as many as 11,000 complaints of overcrowding and machine malfuctions, a notable complaint came in from veteran journalist Barbara Walters.

The polls all have Obama ahead: solid leads beyond margins of error that will lead to a resounding victory that no one thought was possible as he entered the race for the democratic nomination so many months ago.

He outlasted the Clintons. He also outspent them–which tells you what a strong idea he was selling. “Not a red America or a blue America, but a United States of America.” To the youth, on whom so much will depend today, he was the one they were waiting for.

When stood up to give speeches, he seemed to read poetry. When he sat down to listen–to opponents in a debate, for instance–he looked like a languid jazz musician who’s set his instrument down briefly, but is ready to pick it up and answer by hitting notes so precise they would have to be mathematical.

The economic crisis helped his cause. People became colourblind as their savings got wiped out and their houses foreclosed, they just wanted the right man for the job. Even by elimination, John McCain wasn’t the man: he blundered through the height of the crisis, at one point suspending his campaign to go to Washington.

This was inexplicable, because he said absolutely nothing there, and did even less. He also ensured that he hollowed out the experience argument against Obama by choosing Sarah Palin, who fumbled through the campaign like a B-list impostor trying to play vice-presidential candidate.

As if to confirm this (widely-held) view she told a reporter who asked her who she had voted for as she left a booth in Wassilla, Alaska, that she was excercising her right to privacy by keeping that information confidential.

That she may, perhaps by an act of God, still get to the White House is gives people the shivers even though halloween is over. It is much more likely that she will go back to shooting poor Alaskan animals from the air, in time to hoard meat for the winter, forcing the joke writers for the networks to go into hibernation.

This might change the world for the better. But there are far more profound changes in the offing. Should Obama get elected, the signal that the United States sends out to the world is that it has genuinely transformed. That it is not in denial about the financially destructive, militarily senseless and gravely injurious addiction of the Bush years, and is ready for rehab.

A large number of Americans don’t like the selfish, arrogant, consumptive, overweight–and now poor–person they see in the mirror the world holds up to them. They view this election as a chance to correct that.

Grant Park is getting ready. There’s an unprecedented number of cop cars. There are ribbons of roadblocks across orange stumps everywhere. Some say a million people will turn up. But it seems quiet in the morning, unless you listen hard to the sounds of the Chicago. The anthem of the election is playing out as traffic rolls down the streets and voters march to their booths, keeping time to ‘Yes we can, yes we can.’

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A ‘Front Row Seat To Witness History’ Contest

November 3rd, 2008

Chicago

I’ve been getting urgent mails from Barack Obama over the last few days. Me, and a couple of million other people, inviting us to join him at a rally in Chicago’s Grant Park on election night. National polls–even including the one conducted by Fox News–show Obama ahead by about 6 points overall and in unexpectedly opportune positions in States like Ohio, Virginina and Indiana. The rally has a victory theme to it–at the moment.

But there’s more to the mails than that. Obama’s ’signed’ mail a couple of days ago, was what you might call an initial offer: “This election will come down to what we do — or don’t do — in the next few days” he told me.

“John McCain and the Republican National Committee had $20 million more in the bank than our campaign and the DNC combined as of October 15th. They are pouring it into crucial battleground states, and we’re facing an onslaught of negative attacks.

“Your support will have a huge impact.

“Step up during this historic moment, and you could be there on Election Night.

“Will you donate $30 or more today?

As a bonus, we’ll send you a special edition Change the World T-shirt.”

$30 for a T-shirt? A second, improved, offer comes in, this time from Marianne Markowitz, Chief Financial Officer, Obama for America:

“This weekend the McCain campaign said they would outspend us by $10 million in the final days. This is on top of recent news that, as of October 15th, our opponents had $20 million more in the bank than our campaign and the DNC combined.

“We knew the McCain campaign was saving its resources for a last-minute blitz, and now we know just how much they’ll pour into it.

“No matter what, we need to match what our opponents are spending in the final stretch. We can’t slow down between now and Election Day.

“If you give today — any amount — you could be one of 5 first-time donors who will have a front row seat for the big Election Night event in Chicago with Barack.

“If you’re selected, we’ll fly you and a guest in and put you up in a hotel. You’ll go backstage at the big event and — no matter what happens — you’ll have a front row seat to history as we celebrate the supporters who got us over the finish line.”
Campaign manager David Plouffe, weighs in as well. But he doesn’t raise the offer any further.

The candidates have managed to make this the most well-funded campaign in history–well over a billion dollars have been spent already and–and in the final days it looks like they’re hosing the country down with dollar bills.

Obama, not limited to depending on party funding for his campaign (unlike McCain) had raised $640 million by mid-October. A quarter of this money coming from small donors with the allurement of a T-shirt or a front row rally seat, or, (why be cycnical) a promise of change.

There is no greater endorsement for a product than the fact that it sells $640 million worth. Also remember that the other three-fourths of Obama’s money is actually coming in from large donors/businesses. This is happening at a time when the mere mention of the phrase ‘distribution of wealth’ freaks people out.

But as people count down the hours to November 4, the Obama campaign is still counting its money. It’s never too late to get that extra $5. Besides, the ‘First time donor front row contest’ has added costs.

There’s a flight ticket, a hotel (they did not to mention a type, but let’s just assume it’ll be Motel Change, or similar.) And then there is expectation management: what if Motel Change is one of those common shower set ups with bugs between the sheets and no HBO?

You’ve been promised they’ll swap your room–even change the hotel. What you may not have been told is that it might take a few years.

Latest National Poll round-up:
Gallup: 51 Obama, 43 McCain. Up from 49-47 last week
Rasmussen daily tracking: 51 Obama, 46 McCain.
CBS: 54 Obama, 41 McCain.
CNN: 53 Obama, 46 McCain.
Fox News: Obama 47, McCain 44.

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Visiting Joe The Plumber’s house

November 2nd, 2008

Toledo, Ohio

“Hadn’t heard of him till last week”, says the lady at 457 Shrewsbury Street. Down a few houses from Toledo’s most famous address: ‘Joe the Plumber’s house.’

“Worked for the U.S. mail till five years ago, and I don’t remember them”, the lady says. Implying of course, that this old(ish) community is mildly under threat by recent infiltrators. Joe, or Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, is one of them.

In the last days of a campaign that’s trying to put the plumbing in after building the house, John McCain is banking heavily on Joe the plumber. In the case of an unlikely victory, the man who discovered Joe may well become secretary of state.

Joe himself might initially be contracted to flush the White House clean of any residual cigars or pretzels blocking a presidential brain, sorry, drain. After the successful completion of this task, there are a number of options. Ranging from succeeding Hank Paulson to an appropriate role in urban planning.

In the case of a loss…? Well there’s always a book deal: ‘Joe Who? How McCain chose the wrong man after choosing the wrong woman.’

‘Joe Who?’ would have been a fair enough question on Shrewsnury Street, Holland, suburb of Toledo. Till the day John McCain invoked Joe (13 times, I’ve been told) in a presidential debate on October 15.

Since then, Joe has become one of the characters of this election. Joining people like Bill Ayers (innocent; former terrorist and Obama associate); Jeremiah Wright (guilty; Obama’s former pastor, of being a christian isotope of Louis Farrakkan, though with different views on Obama); and Sarah Palin (guilty; vice presidential candidate, of opening her mouth).

The multiple mentions have changed both him and his street. The lady at 457 talks about the row of television camera crews and satellite dishes that lined it the previous week, which is otherwise lined by a salubrious row of maple. When on the trees, in end-October, the leaves they burn like little maple-leaf-shaped suns. When on the ground, they need to be swept off the lawn so that there’s a new carpet to sweep tomorrow.

This is what the lady at 457 is doing when we find her. A radio journalist from Holland is there as well, which tells you how widespread, intricate and interconnected the network of the world’s sewage system is. The lady has a distaste for the ‘15 minutes of fame’ idea–more for her street than for Joe.

In the end, she says, “It won’t make any difference at all.” Not many people knew Joe (it follows that even fewer liked him). It’s all become a bit of a joke around here. Seeing two journalist’s walk up and down, a few jobless young adults shout ‘Joe!!’ and run into a house, but it’s got an Obama-Biden yard sign.

At 355, Joe’s house, there’s an SUV parked. No yard sign. (Come to think of it, would there be yard sign in the Palin home in Wassilla?). Joe is out on the trail in Utah, being the showpiece at Republican rallies, and the bell is answered by a tall, fit, middle-aged man and two dogs.

This is ‘Tom’, Joe’s business manager. If you added Dick and Harry, you’d get your average plumbing (or law?) firm.

This business manager thing freaks me out a bit. Two weeks ago, Joe was an employee in a business that had 3 employees at $40,000 a year. Now he’s got a ‘Tom’. Who also keeps house and takes care of the dogs when he’s away.

But consider that there are book deals on offer; a possible country western music recording contract; and the chance of holding elected office. Joe is considering the Congress.

Joe’s house is fairly typical of the neighbourhood: a garage, a little drive, a nondescript screen door with a wire mesh, so we see the business manager divided up into tiny little squares. He won’t open the door. He tells us that we needed to have given notice. Joe isn’t average any more.

In fact, he was below average to begin with if you ask people with plumbing in their DNA, like Tim Antoine, a local taxi driver. Tim’s grandfather was a plumbing inspector, his father was a plumber, his son is a plumber. A certified one, unlike Joe–and is a partner in a business. He earns $85,000 a year, tops.

Joe doesn’t represent the average guy, says Antoine. That guy needs a job before thinking about owning a business.

“Many years I’ve been driving a taxi here in Toledo… I’ve seen a glass plant on the other side of the city, where I grew up in East Toledo there was a glass plant and that glass is now in China. It used to have 5,000 employees, there’s nobody working there right now.” There’s also trouble in the, much larger, automobile industry.

This is a result, Antoine feels of Clinton policies on free trade. So “you’ve got to be cautious” when leaning democratic. But then, while explaining why Joe doesn’t represent him, he says: “I can’t see how any working man can be pro-republican.”

As important on the ballot as the presidential vote in Ohio are the votes to purportedly protect/create jobs. Issue 5, for instance is a bid to remove the state’s 28% interest rate cap on payday lending. (This is America’s version of the village money-lender: interest rates can be close to 400%). The flip side is that 60,000 people reportedly depend on the industry, which isn’t profitable without absurd rates.

There’s issue 6 as well: advertised as the move that will bring 5,000 jobs into Ohio through the gambling business.

These are the concerns of the people on Shrewsbury Street, Ohio. Now that Joe’s out of the way–and the press is gone–they can think about them. They’re thinking: get a job, contemplation about owning a business can follow.

The republicans may have chosen the wrong Joe after all. He isn’t certified. Not to represent either the plumbing community; or his street; or indeed the working man. That guy would love to have Joe’s current position: smiling at rallies, negotiating book and record deals, dealing with the press through a business manager through a screen door.

But that guy also knows that the job is too good to be permanent. After November 4, there could be a load of sewage to clean.

Ohio Facts:

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American Images

November 1st, 2008

Dateline: Dinosaur, Colorado
The streets of Dinosaur
Town beautification, Dinosaur

A coffee menu, Dinosaur
Dinosaur by night
Freshly killed deer, Dinosaur CO

A close up of a dead deer
More deaths in Craig CO
Vail, a ski town in Colorado

Nobama in Rifle, Colorado
Nobama in Rifle, where they're "Raising McCain"
Harper's point, confluence of the Gree and Yama Rivers

The things people do for a living, promoting Crash TV in Denver
Happy to crash?

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Under suspicion in 9/11 school

November 1st, 2008

Sarasota, Florida

“We are what is called a school in need of improvement”, says Ms Marya Fairchild assistant principal of Emma E Booker Elementary in Sarasota, Florida, scene of a once famous video featuring George W. Bush.

This is where, on September 11, 2001, the president got the news that commercial planes had been flown into the Twin Towers. He was, as some people might recall, listening to second graders reading ‘My pet goat’ at the time. (There is controversy over whether he had his own copy of the book upside down, but let’s not digress.)

In the minutes before he heard the attacks had taken place, President Bush, heard the words “get ready” repeated over a dozen times. But it wasn’t Dick Cheney speaking into his earpiece it was a, teacher orchestrating a performance as the President promoted his recent ‘No Child Left Behind’ (NCLB) legislation.

Seven years on, it turns out that not just one child, the whole school has been ‘left behind’.

Booker Elementary remains a ‘C’ school, whereas every other school in the county is rated A. “Think of it like a trajectory”, says Fairchild, “we’re not on the path to meet requirements.”

How can it? It is a ‘neighbourhood’ school in the town’s roughest neigbourhood. “If you were to pull out a demographic report by this zip code, my guess is that this area would have the highest crime rate in Sarasota”, says Fairchild.

The school has 537 kids, 94% of them are from the (mostly black) minorities and 91% live below the poverty line. To get to it, you pass places that sell soulfood on the outside and drugs on the inside. You cross shacks and shanties and bums and cats. And, of course, a railway line. This is where most of Emma Booker kids live.

Here, you can find every reason why the Republicans trail in Florida. People are wary of four more years of the same. A lot of them blame the war for everything. For instance, couldn’t the poorly funded ‘no child left behind’ program benefit greatly from a fraction of the $10 billion monthly war bill?

Ms Fairchild taught history at the Booker middle school, to which a number of kids from the elementary school end up going, till 2005. I ask her whether she taught any of the kids who were there in the classroom when President Bush visited on September 11, 2001.

She says she doesn’t recall this having come up with any of her students. And then, quite suddenly, she doesn’t want to take any more questions. The interview is over. She tells me to get in touch with the school board for more information.

I step outside onto the parking lot and am in the middle of a call to Gary Leatherman at the board’s communications desk, when a police car pulls up next to me. It has been less than five minutes since I left the school building.

Deputy Perrin, from the Sheriff’s department asks me how I am doing–and what I am doing. He then tells me the reason why he asks: “Someone called saying a guy was roaming around the campus–with a bag.”

This is true. I tell him I have just been inside and spoken to the assistant principal. He says he’d better go and check.

A few minutes later, he finds me again at the head of the road. As he pulls up, another cop car arrives. Deputy Scott has been sent over as well. Perrin asks for my passport and is diligently entering its details onto the computer in his car. He tells Scott that I was asking about 911.

For a brief moment I don’t hear that right, I am about to say that I didn’t call 911 (the emergency number) when I realise that someone from the school did. Fantastic.

Scott, to me: “You don’t have any weapons or anything, do you?”

I laugh, somewhat nervously, and say: “Certainly not.”

Scott to Perrin: “You patted him down yet?”

As Perrin keeps working with my passport, Scott starts another round of questioning. Knowing that anything I might say may be held against me, I tell him the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I was there because George W. Bush was in one of the classrooms on the campus on September 11 2001, I say.

Scott’s badge said he’d served the department since 1994. He goes: “Oh, I was there that day. Spent anxious hours, traffic blocked all over the city. The president could have been a target. We had to get him out of here.”

I was thinking, well, the President was probably safest around here. The guys who executed 9/11 had been based closeby a few months ago, learning how to fly in flight schools in nearby Venice, but they’d reportedly left by August. On 9/11, President Bush was safer at Booker Elementary than he would have been at the White House, which was a definite target.

Deputy Perrin finally completed the data entry and said that his colleague required a photograph of me. I was, of course, the picture of cooperation. So right below the sign that said Booker Elementary, I posed for the snap.

I called a cab after the shoot was over and my passport was safely in my bag. Deputy Scott then asked me where I was headed next. I told him that I was bound for Orlando, then on to Alexadndria, Virginia, on to Toledo Ohio, to Chicago, Illinois, to Madison Wisconsin to parts of North Dakota…

“Man”, he said, “I wish I could travel like that. But I’m stuck here.” He is. On a patch across the street, till the time my cab arrives. Protecting the kids at Booker Elementary.

And I, with depressing visions of now being on a suspects’ database which says ‘must strip-search’ at every airport, head back to the familial warmth of the Sunshine Motel.

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Ron The Plumber …

October 31st, 2008

Sarasota, Florida

One of the most discussed characters in this Presidential election is a man called Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher–Joe the plumber of Toledo, Ohio which is a swing state. The gentleman who was terrified of Barack Obama’s ’spreading-the-wealth-around tax plan’. And who has became the centrepiece of the McCain campaign ever since the Republican senator repeatedly mentioned him in the debate.

Turns out Joe is actually a little too working class to be affected by the Obama plan. It taxes individuals and businesses with earnings of over $250,000. Joe makes $40,000 annually (but nevertheless aspires to buy a business worth several times his salary). The Obama plan woke him from his American dream rather rudely.

Ron the plumber, of Sarasota, Florida, which is also a swing state, has a very good handle on reality however. Sure, he dreams too: about steady work for himself and his college degree-holding wife. And for the employment to be a little less back-breaking than it is now at the hospital remodelling site he’s at.

He gets on all fours to show me what he does all day. Bunching his shoulders , twisting his neck at acute angles in imaginary closed spaces to simulate how he cuts, welds and rivets pipes that run unseen under neat buildings, keeping them functioning.

He’s on his knees ten hours a day, and they hurt. His clothes are covered with muck. He doesn’t get paid that much–most likely even less than Joe of Toledo.

But it wasn’t always like that. So what happened?

“What happened was the war. George Bush done this. Four years ago ,there was so much work here in Sarasota, work everywhere. Construction, hotels… and then the war started. And all the money had to go there…

“People that are rich, they can survive, but ordinary folks, they can’t. I used to have money in the bank and stuff. Now I’m living week to week.” The emphasis on the last phrase is as heavy as the burden of an unaffordable mortgage payment.

Fortunately, Ron doesn’t own a house he needs to pay for. He lives in a motel, where he makes the rent by doing odd plumbing and maintenance work for the property. If he earned $250,000 a year, he’d be thrilled to pay the extra three per cent.

“My wife’s trying to find a job. She got two college degrees. She can’t find no work. I’m grateful for what I got and I’m lucky… My trade, everybody needs that.” Then he chuckles and says: “When you get up in the morning what do you do? You know, so everybody needs that.”

As essential as it is, plumbing is still affected by constipation–in credit flows. Ron says so: “No new houses being built. So I’m lucky that I got a job with a company at the hospital.”

But he keeps blaming the war for the blighted times. “Osama Bin Laden is laughing at us from his cave or whatever and we’re spending billions in Iraq. It’s been seven years, he’s laughing.”

9/11 is quite close to the bone for people in Sarasota. It was in flight schools in Venice, less than an hour away from here that Mohammad Atta and other hijackers learned to fly aircraft.

Venice is a beautifully designed retirement town built in the 1920s, with wide roads and blue wave beaches, very attractive looking funeral homes, a small airport and several flying schools. But house prices in the area have been very badly hit: they are down an an average by about 40% from their 2007 levels.

Nothing new is being built, so Ron’s got fewer job options. You pass neat homes everywhere, with yard signs that say might say ‘McCain’, ‘Obama’ or ‘For Sale’.

Going by the numbers, if this guy ‘For Sale’ was in the race, he would defintely win–along with his running mate, ‘For Rent’.

Florida facts:

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In Salinas, freedom’s just another word

October 27th, 2008

“One day, up near Salinas, Lord, I let him slip away,
He’s lookin’ for that home and I hope he finds it
But I’ll trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday
To be holding Bobby’s body close to mine…
…. Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…

We’ve all heard ‘Bobby Mcgee’. And before I go into a pedantic diversion, let me just say that Bobby would have had a better chance of finding a real good home in Salinas now. Way better, at today’s prices, than in 1971, when Janis Joplin recorded the song on her album ‘Pearl’.

Salinas has had the highest rate of foreclosures in otherwise upscale Monterrey County. Banks took over the most properties from defaulting home-owners here. Walk or drive, you cannot miss the ‘for sale’ signs. Stay in your room, and there’s a brochure that advertise foreclosures and short sales (when your property is sold for less than what you owe the bank.)

So somewhere near Salinas, there’s a 5 bedroom house with a pool, guest quarters and caretaker’s cottage that’s a million dollars down, at $2.65 million.

But we know that Bobby isn’t rich (why else would he need to thumb a ride or have a bandana-sporting companion?) so let’s look for something in his range. And here its is: a great little 2-bedroomed condo overlooking Sherwood lake, at $122,300, provided you have loan pre-approval.

I doubt if Bobby could have got a ‘pre-approval’. A month or so ago, before the credit crunch, the story might have been different, but not now. And here I take my promised diversion: it would probably make little difference if Bobby were a male (as in Joplin’s version) rather than a woman (as in Kris Kristofferson’s original). Besides, Kris’s Bobby was looking for ‘love’, not a ‘home’. Usually, you need to put in some hard labour to find the latter.

But there’s plenty to do in the ’salad bowl’. In fact, this is probably the best time for a farmhand who harbours ambitions of owning a home. The realty ads, with their foreclosure, and predatory ‘pre-foreclosure’ lists say so: everything is going cheap.

The reason why you might find work here is the same as it was during the great depression of the 20s and 30s.

It is nature. All the Salinas Valley needs for you to eat it, is a dressing. The Salinas river, and timely rainfall, slakes the thirst of the soil to so satiate it, that it returns a lush green carpet of lettuce and broccoli (and grapes, of course) that are sent all over the world. From all accounts this business is currently doing better than banking.

Much the way it was when John Steinbeck lived here, witnessing the arrival of unemployed men from the dust bowls of Arkansas and Oklahoma looking for work, and writing ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ while he was at it.
The ‘Traveler’s Hotel’, where I write this, is about a cricket ball throw from long off to the keeper’s end at Eden Gardens, Calcutta, to the Victorian home where Steinbeck lived. It is now a restaurant, serving set meals with crunchy salads.

My $40 a night ‘Indian rate’ hotel in downtown hotel, is run by Jaggubhai Patel of Surat. (Menially: he sweeps the pavement in front, is up at 2.30 am to receive you and speaks no English). And by his son Cretin Patel. (Managerially: he is usually in a ‘meeting’; when he does speak, it is strictly in non-specifics.). Cretin, true to form, tells me that he will not get into details about Steinbeck, liberalism, crime rates in Salinas, the economic downturn, or how he will vote.

The one thing he does say, is that the economic downturn has affected “all businesses”. But it is the loss of homes that is the biggest concern. Not just in Salinas, but in California in general. Defaults are up 228% for the third quarter of this year as compared with 2007: nearly 80,000 people lost their homes. Default notices (served before foreclosures) have dropped, however, leading some to conclude that the worst is over, and others to say that the people who do the paperwork just cannot find the time to process so many notices.

You may not figure any of this as you watch as you watch the seagulls sweep down on the sterns of boats lined up at Monterrey. Or gulp a sample of clam chowder off the tray of a soliciting usher at a seafood place on the old fishermen’s wharf, with the incessant barking of sea lions in the background.

For those who have nothing left to lose, these may be worth nothing–but they’re free.

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