THE TRUE CHINA SYNDROME: CHINA MELTS DOWN

I am going to begin with a story which appears to make me its hero.  And, yes, I admit, I made a difference.  But the real heroes of the story are those who are not at the center of it, some not even mentioned.  The result is a moral for our times.

In the early 80s, Japan was resurgent as its Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) guided its economic development.  America feared in economic emergence, even its eventual ascendency, as a major economic power and competitor.  To meet this perceived threat, the Reagan administration proposed moving the nation’s energy laboratories from the Department of Energy to the Department of Commerce.

At the time, I was consulting to the Energy Research Advisory Board under the Assistant Secretary of Energy with the quasi-Dickensian name of Alvin Trivelpiece.  Al and I knew each other from his days as a Senior Vice President at Science Applications International Corporation and my continuing time as a consultant, eventually to become its longest-ever consultant.

One day, Al sought me out in the ERAB office to ask my opinion of the Administration’s proposal.  I gave it, and he asked me to accompany him to a meeting with the Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige the next morning.  I expected to be a back-bencher supporting Al.  Instead, Al gave me a battlefield promotion by introducing me as “Dr. Hays,” “an expert on the national labs.”  The Secretary and I shook hands, he invited me to sit across the desk from him, and he grilled me.  Most meetings with Secretaries are 5-, maybe 10-, minute affairs; ours went on for 30 minutes, with his chief of staff, Clyde Prestowitz, taking notes.  When the meeting ended, Clyde asked me to stay on for a further confab, which lasted an hour.  (BTW, Clyde went on to a notable career as the founder and president of the Economic Strategy Institute.)

My objections to the transfer were three quite simple ones.  One, if the transfer were to occur to make them more responsive to industrial needs, the labs would shift their focus from basic research, which no companies did or would do, to applied research and thereby eliminate our “seed corn.”  Two, we had no reason to fear the Japanese economy because its emergence reflected the temporary greater efficiencies of new plants built after the war and its production of conventional products.  Three, MITI’s control of this Japanese economy would come to a bad end which economies controlled by oligarchies, regardless of ideology, come to: rigid, unimaginative, resistant to technological change.

Two days later, Al sought me out in the ERAB office once again, this time to tell me in Washington’s oblique way of sparing praise that the proposal had been withdrawn.  Later, under MITI’s guidance, Japan lagged technological development, and plateaued into stagflation.  It retains a solid economy, but it conquers no worlds, old or new.

I tell this long story for two reasons.  First, I think that we perceive China now as we perceived Japan 40 years ago.  There are differences.  China has the world’s largest population, which can give a China-based industry a large market and the resources to grow it larger.  It also has invested heavily in education, especially at the university level.  And the flows of information make isolation from technological development elsewhere readily available.  At the same time, recent events show that the Chinese government increasingly emphasizes politics more than economics as it increases controls on existing and emerging economic giants within its borders.  In the long run, if its policy continues, China will realize the conditions which stifled Japan.  In addition, China’s foreign policy, by making its economic power a weapon of diplomacy, is generating resistance to its economic imperialism.  Growth will continue but at a reduced scale.  Although those who prosper under China’s current policies will abide government control for a time, that time will not be forever.  As the government encounters difficulties, even reverses, and struggles with them, as struggle it will, larger companies, especially those increasingly reliant on international markets, will demand a sharing of power, which will be liberating in many ways.  At the same time, its foreign policy will have to moderate to maintain those international markets.  Willy-nilly, China will bring itself to heel.

This no doubt bold prediction is a comforting ointment which has a fly in it.  If America continues to disrupt and damage itself by divisive politics, it will fail to adopt policies with commensurate budgets necessary to invest in education, research and development, and the technical infrastructure to facilitate domestic and foreign trade.  Attacks on expertise make war against America and its survival except as an impoverished apartheid state.  The fact-, truth-, and reason-defying propensities of the Right—I include the Republican Party, the Proud Boys, and the other what-nots or what-nuts—, if ascendant and dominant politically, mean that America will be unable to maximize its human resources to make adaptive, informed responses to changing economic, environmental, and technological circumstances.  Even military advantage will erode if the civilian-industrial complex loses its strengths in innovation and enterprise.

The second reason for telling this story follows upon this comment.  I appear to be the hero.  But the real heroes are Baldrige, Prestowitz, officials in the White House, and President Reagan himself.  They listened to someone who disagreed with their proposal, cared not about his politics (I am not now and never have been a Republican), and regarded his facts and arguments without questioning his motives.  The question is not one of “national unity”; it is a question of common sense and a shared commitment to the public good, which, as in any society, requires some sacrifice of individual autonomy.  Otherwise, there is no America.

HERE'S LOOKIN' AT YOU, LAS CRUCES

In a TV commercial for Mennen aftershave, a man in pajamas scans his morning beard in the bathroom mirror.  Two hands not his slap his face—to which wake-up he says, “Thanks.  I needed that.”  Las Cruces citizens have neither mirror to see nor hands to wake themselves.  They are what they tolerate.  Let a gender, racial, or religious slur pass without protest, and they share in the expression of bigotry.  Ignore incompetence, failed effort, and wasted money and resources, and they get more of the same.  Do nothing to reform police abuses—let City Council cover them up with an audit rigged to exclude pertinent cases—, and they enable their perpetuation.  As John Stuart Mill, not Edmund Burke, said, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”  (PC correction: women, too.)

Let me give an example from a televised working session of the City Council several months ago.  When police reform was a topic of discussion, Councilor Johana Bencomo spoke in support of a civilian police review board, and Mayor Ken Miyagishima scolded her.  Sadly, her response was to flinch and fall in line, not to rebuke him for demeaning and bullying her, and stick to her guns.  Yet I make some allowance for her shock at the Mayor’s ugly public behavior.  I make none for the other Councilors—women: Gandara, Stuve, Flores; men: Sorg, Vasquez—who stayed silent, too weak or unprincipled to muster support of a sister or a colleague.  The “silent treatment” in these Councilors’ response to the Mayor’s shabbiness is typical of moral weaklings.

City Council is no better at setting policy and supervising its one employee, the City Manager, to ensure its enforcement in the city government under his control.  Let me give an example from environmental policy, much ballyhooed by Councilors.  Public Works projects ignore settled policy to avoid undue environmental damages.  A dozen years ago, PW planned to clear-cut the Brown Farm floodplain—which meant cutting down a half dozen mature trees.  As work began, I called the Mayor, he promised to check, and PW told him that the work was only to dredge two channels (yes, that botch-up).  When he reported this reply, I said that PW had lied to him and invited him to see for himself.  He came to my house, saw the work, realized that PW had lied to him, and called to have the work halted.  Fast forward to today.  PW began its fiasco by again starting to clear-cut the site.  Neighbors and I asked it to stop; PW measured ground levels, found that avoiding the trees would not cause pooling or divert stormwater, and spared the trees.  Councilors are dishonest in setting environmental policy for which it takes credit but does not ensure that its City Manager enforces it on departments.

Disrespect and dishonesty result from government disjointed and dysfunctional.  Council passes policy, which may or may not go into effect.  The City Manager may or may not direct the affected departments to comply with it.  Department Directors—PW for one—may or may not do so.  In such a government, mediocrity or worse flourishes unfettered by approved policy.  When Council policy says one thing and city employees do another, standard operating procedure is to cover up disparities and damage, with dishonesty.

The epitome of dishonesty is the spokesman for transparency and accountability in policing Chief of Police Miguel Dominguez.  His “Eight Can’t Wait” testimony to City Council that officers are human and make mistakes, but that the department admits them is a testimonial to unabashed cynicism.  For, in my case and, I assume, others, he has broken promises and refused to admit mistakes.

With such leadership, police officers are equally dishonest, with Internal Affairs tasked to devise excuses, however contorted, for conduct contrary to legal principle or LCPD policy.  In a redacted portion of an Internal Affairs memorandum, Officer Juan Valles denies antisemitism, and officers in the IA and LCPD chains of command accepted his denial: just his luck to be the Animal Control Officer responding to citizen complaints at a home prominently displaying a Star of David.  He implies that any other ACO—that is, all other ACOs—would have cited me, as he did, for five violations without evidence or proof of their actual occurrence, as that IA memorandum admits.  He implies that all LCPD officers are liars.  Many believe so.

The shameless dishonesty reaches the Las Cruces Law Office.  City Attorney Jennifer Vega-Brown recently wrote, notwithstanding the IA memorandum, that all five violations actually occurred and are “well documented.”  She can get no more dishonest than by denying the truth admitted by LCPD investigators and refusing to defend her denial.  Her lie has a purpose: to give City Council and the LCPD cover to take legally dubious actions “on the advice of counsel.”  In a display of power to protect herself, she advised Council not to respond to a blog critical of her.  Though knowing better, all members, accepted her spurious claim that doing so would risk a rolling quorum (meant to reach decisions in secret).  In line with their tolerance of dishonesty, they obeyed her command.

After several blogs on PW incompetence and waste in the past decade, and after nearly two dozen blogs on LCPD and Law Office misconduct and dishonesty in the past two years, silence or somnambulance prevail.  The local media—The Bulletin, The Sun-News, KRWG, KTAL—and their commentators have tolerated all of it.  You, my readers, have, with one exception, then just once, to warn me of police retaliation, also tolerated all of it.  So, if you are what you tolerate, what are you?