The Longest Night

Last night was the longest night of the year; did you notice it? Yesterday was the winter solstice 冬至 when northern hemisphere receives the least sunlight. A popular Chinese custom to get you through the long night is to have family together to have ball shape dumplings 湯圓 made of sweet rice flour with various kinds of filling. Although it is much harder to do so nowadays, luckily Christmas will be upon us in a few days after winter solstice when most people do have time off to be together. Better yet, these dumplings are available year-round from Chinese stores, thanks to the modern food preservation and transportation methods.

Don’t recall exactly when it started, but the greeting “Merry Christmas” has often been replaced by the more politically correct greeting of “Happy Holidays”. The problem is I have had a hard time to name specific holidays other than Christmas and New Year. How many major religious holidays are there around this time of the year anyway?

The most popular one is of course Christmas on December 25^th of the Gregorian calendar. This shouldn’t surprise anyone since over 75% of the population in U.S. consider themselves Christians to begin with. For those who don’t concern themselves with the history of it, it suffices to know that the day was meant to honor and celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ (the word Christmas itself comes from Latin that means “the Mass of Christ”). For those who are more curious, I like Issac Newton’s suggestion that the choice of the Dec 25th date was meant to tag it to the winter solstice that seems to be consistent with the early beliefs of the connection of birth of Jesus to the “rebirth of sun” (for northern hemisphere!).

Anyhow, over the centuries with many twists and turns in the interactions of social, political and religious forces and circumstances, Christmas has evolved to become the most prominent holiday in the Christian-dominated world. However, it would not have been as popular if it were limited to be a religious event. The blurring of those boundaries and incorporation of secular and pagan’s customs in observance such as the myth of Santa Clause allows it to become popular and accepted by many countries in modern world today. Further, with its gift-giving custom, it has become tightly knitted with our economic fabric and “Christmas Shopping Season” is critical for practically all consumers and merchants, Christians or not.

When we first moved to New Jersey in 1979, we noticed near Christmas day, windows of some of our neighbors displayed a special candelabrum of nine-branched Menorah. We later learned that it is used by Jewish for the eight-night observation of Hanukkah (from the Hebrew word for “dedication”), the Festival of Lights. The celebration, from sunset to sunset, starts on the 25^th of Kislev, the ninth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew Calendar. It is for the commemoration of the rededication of The Second Temple in Jerusalem of the successful Maccabees rebellion against king Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire in 2^nd BCE. According to the legend, the Temple was purified and the wicks of the menorah miraculously burned for eight days, even though there was only enough sacred oil for one day's lighting. Thus the observation and ritual includes the kindling of one light at the nightfall of each of the 8 nights and a series of family and communal rituals are performed.

Unlike Christmas, Hannkkah remains a religious/cultural holiday and is now one of the most significant symbol of Jewish identity. Interestingly, the tradition includes giving Hanukkah gelt (Yiddish for "money") to children. I was told however many families nowadays give gifts as well, responding to the “peer pressure” from the popular Christmas gift giving custom.

For Islam, since Islamic Calendar is a pure lunar calendar that is not synchronized with the solar calendars (most lunar calendars are actually Lunisolar calendars), it is not possible to identify religious holidays that always take place around this time of the year. It so happens that for 2008, one of the most important Islamic holidays had just taken place. It is the Eid ul-Adha, Festival of Sacrifice, celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Ibrahim or Abraham to sacrifice his son for Allah, the Arabic term for God. It is on the 10^th day of Dhu al-Hijja, the twelfth and final month in the Islamic Calendar and the festivals last for three or more days depending on countries. The festival marks the end of the Pilgrimage or Hajj to Mecca each year for the millions of Muslims. People dressed in their finest clothing go to mosques to pray. Those who can afford sacrifice their best domestic animals and give large portion of the meat to the poor. The remainder is then shared with family and relatives.

All three religions above - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are monotheistic and closely related. They all revere Abraham in the Book of Genesis as the founding patriarch and thus referred to Abrahamic religions by scholars. They diverge on biblical interpretations and beliefs was further complicated by many issues including the contention for the land of Canaan. The result is more than one thousand years of conflicts and wars in many regions without clear resolution in sight. Almost two thousand years ago in China, Cao Zhi曹植 wrote the following famous poem within the 7 paces deadline that his King brother Cao Pi曹丕 gave him and escaped the execution: 煮豆燃豆萁，豆在釜中泣。本是同根生，相煎何太急。 It says essentially “We both come from the same root. Why are you then after me so much?”

Yes, we are all brothers of the same root. Why are some of us so eager to harm each other?

Happy Holidays and Peace!

Martyr or Corrupted Politician

7 months after the former president (2000-2008) of Republic of China (Taiwan) Chen Shui-Bian 陳水扁 (aka A-Bian) left the office, the trial phase of the first criminal case against him has begun. On Dec 12^th, government prosecutors indicted him along with his wife, son and daughter-in-law, and ten relatives and formal aides on charges of graft, money laundering, embezzlement and forgery. Early morning of Dec 13^th, he was released without bail by the Taipei district court on his own recognizance, ending the 30-day drama of his detention by prosecutors since Nov. 12^th.

At age 58, Chen Shui-Bian has accomplished a lot and could have left his office with his legacy in the history of democratization of Taiwan. He was born and grew up in extreme poverty but excelled academically. He attended the best schools of the island and obtained a degree in bachelor of laws from the prestige National Taiwan University. He became involved in politics at age 30 as a young lawyer when he represented and defended the "The KaoHsiung Eight" in a military court (Taiwan was still under martial law then) in 1980. These clients of his were the most prominent opposition leaders and co-organizers of the Formosa Incident, the landmark demonstration by oppositions in the largest southern city KaoHsiung.

Since then, he participated in and fought his ways through elections to serve at various capacities in local and national government and was the celebrated mayor of the capital city Taipei from 1994 to 1998 when he demonstrated convincingly his governing ability and integrity. He was a rising political star unlike other opposition party politicians who often were entrenched in party and petty politics. He was pragmatic and moderate in ideology. Promising reforms to the government, he was elected to presidency in 2000 with 39% popular votes in a three way race when the ruling KMT (nationalist party) of 55 years split into two contending camps. Four years later, he was reelected for his 2^nd term with a 0.2% margin.

Chen Shui-Bian is a shrewd politician. During his 8 years in office, with lack of mandate from both elections and minority position in congress, he often resorted to rhetoric of Taiwan Independence and acts of Taiwanization during his presidency that are designed to pit citizens against each other by ethnic origin or ideology. While I do not agree with many of his positions, I would like to believe he was driven for a legacy that his autobiography called “The Son of Taiwan”. I would postulate that he had made a conscious choice after he lost his reelection bid of Mayer of Taipei and began to walk down a different path of “end justifies the means”. He must have recognized long ago that for a young politician like him and a new party like DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) to contend with the incumbent KMT’s machinery, he needs significant financial resources. Indeed, by leveraging the power of his presidential office, he and his wife have managed to amass a significant amount of “contributions” at their disposal in short eight years. Whether he will be found guilty by the court as charged, his legacy has already been severely tainted in the court of public opinion. It is a sad day for him and for people of Taiwan.

Corruption of some public officials is nothing new in practically every country including U.S. as evident from historical records and the most recent charge against the Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. This is not to excuse anyone in any government who violated the trust of people including Chen Shui-Bian. We should however take a step back for a moment and examine the issue in a larger social-political and historical context. It is a fact that not until 1991, the opposition DPP was allowed to register and operate legally in Taiwan. It is also a fact that since the end of WWII when Rep of China reclaimed Taiwan from Japan, Taiwan was ruled under the Chiang Kai-Shek’s KMT who monopolized the resources to the extent that the designation of the nation’s vs. Party’s assets was sometimes arbitrary. There is no doubt that the initial growth and success of DPP came mainly from cumulated dis-satisfaction of some to single party rule and the conviction of opposition leaders and their supporters.

Unfortunately, no democratic system is ideal. As each country develops and evolves its own system and rules of game, a fundamental issue emerges. Elections and campaigns are costly. Where is that money going to be coming from? It is ironic but perhaps not totally surprising that Chen Shui-Bian is now alleged to have committed for the very same corruption and crimes that he and DPP have been accusing KMT of doing.

I am not optimistic that the integrity of Taiwan’s political system will see significant improvement anytime soon. The model and balance of executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government does not make it easy. Similar to U.S., attempts of reforms and increased transparency in campaign finance and related laws have been met with much resistance by the very legislators who are impacted but needed to pass such laws. The last hope is the will and priority of the people; after all, that is what the ideal of democracy promises us all. Until we draw a line and send a message that we will vote them out for violation of our trust, corrupted politicians will continue to try to “buy” enough votes to stay and abuse their power for their personal gains. We have no one else to blame but ourselves; that is the beauty of democracy as well.

Talk to you soon!

My Right Brain

After seven 2-hour sessions of oil painting workshops with Grace Graupe-Pillard, I managed to complete my first-ever oil painting of a still life. The thoughts and the memory of my late sister resurface again as I owe much of my interests and appreciation of arts and literature to her. Although she is no longer around for me to share my wonderful experience, I do fell we are even closer now as I attempted something that she did long before. This first oil painting of mine is for her as much as it is for myself.

My sister was 9 years older than I and the eldest child of our family. She passed away 22 years ago of T-cell lymphoma when she was at age 45. The last two times I was with her was 1985 in Taiwan; first when she was diagnosed of cancer and undergoing chemotherapy in the hospital. I can’t remember details of our daily conversations at her bedside or when we strolled down the hospital corridors and courtyards, but the images of her numerous vomits after she was injected with the chemo drugs remain with me till this day. Later in early fall of 1985, I visited her again when she was in remission and resting at home in a more hopeful mood, wearing a white hat to keep her bald scalp warm. She died in the following February.

She has always been the vanguard of her peers and our small family with the thirst to explore the world. Since our childhood, my brother (who is 18 months older than I am) and I were lucky enough that we were introduced by her popular to the world literatures by writers like Alexandre Dumas, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens. She also brought us to the world of classical music from violin sonatas, symphonies to opera arias by performers like Jascha Heifetz, Berlin Philharmonic, Mario Lanza and Maria Callas. In fact, I don’t recall we had any toys in the house when we grew up other than those shelves of novels and some 78 and later 33 1/3 rpm records. They were our best companions that got us through the boredom of the long summers and bonded us in ways we have never imagined.

She started working right after graduating from a vocational high school but never gave up her interest and dreams in arts. She commuted to the nearby city to take private water color painting lessons after work. When I was in high school, she transferred to an office in capital city Taipei and got admitted to the Night School of the then National Taiwan College of Arts where she pursued western fine arts primarily in oil painting. Back home, soon rooms of our small house became her gallery with her lively work. Once I entered the university and moved to the same city, she would show me those beautiful, heavy, and colorful books of masterpieces and take me to museums from time to time. After receiving her college degree and marrying a classmate of hers, she suspended her art work, stayed on with her full time government accounting job and raised two children.

Sis, I never got around to tell you how much I loved you and appreciated you opened my eyes and mind to arts and literature. Now I have more time to work my right brain, but you are no longer around to talk with me and see my work. Sis, please visit me soon in my dreams as you did sometimes. I miss you very very much.

Plum Blossom and Peony – Chinese National Flowers

Last time, we talked about kiku or Chrysanthemum, an Autumn beauty and the unofficial Japanese national flower. As Winter approaching, it is an opportune time to discuss a winter flower - Chinese Plum which is the national flower of Republic of China/Taiwan and unofficially, of People of Republic of China as well.

Earlier this year we visited the Staten Island Botanical Gardenof New York City and its Chinese Scholar's Garden寄興園,one of few places in north American where you can see Plum blossom in a SuZhou 蘇州 garden setting. By the way, Suzhou is a city an hour north of Shanghai that Marco Polo called “Venice of Orient” more than 800 years ago. It is famous for its sophisticated garden architecture integrating residence with water, fish, rocks, plants and flowers. Here are some photos we took that day; you can get some ideas of the celebrated plum blossoms and SuZhou garden.

How did plum blossom become so popular in China is not totally clear to me although the symbolism of it has been well-known for thousands of years. With over 2 dozens of dynasties of imperial rules, I actually can’t recall it being any royal families’ love or luxury. Rather it appears to be the favorite by the scholars, the most respect but non rich class in ancient China, thus the trend setting for the mass to follow. Some species of the trees are known to persevere and blossom in cold snowy winters that suggest fortitude and uprightness in adverse environment. It is people’s flower perhaps because of it symbolizes hope and inspiration despite tough lives through the winter.

There have been numerous poems and paintings of plum blossoms over the centuries. A representative modern one is by Mao Zedong 毛澤東 in Dec 1961 when he tried hard to encourage himself and others be positive and engaging, facing tremendous domestic and international crises during that time. Here is the poem along with Mao’s calligraphy and my English translation.

卜算子 詠梅
毛澤東

風雨送春歸，飛雪迎春到。已是懸崖百丈冰，猶有花枝俏。
俏也不爭春，只把春來報。待到山花爛漫時，她在叢中笑。

On Plum
by Mao Zedong

Storms return us the spring whose arrival is greeted with flying snows;
Energized plum blossoms over cliffs covered in ice.
Announcing solemnly the coming of spring;
They grin in pleasure as joined by others

In contrast, it has also been considered sometimes as symbol of self-righteousness and narcissism. Indeed Mao’s poem was in response to a negative and self-pity thought expressed in the poem of same style by the famous Song dynasty poet Lu You陸游 (1125-1210 AD) who wrote, as he felt he was underutilized and not appreciated and supported by his superiors:

卜算子 詠梅
陸游

驛外斷橋邊，寂寞開無主。已是黃昏獨自愁，更著風和雨。
無意苦爭春，一任群芳妒。零落成泥輾作塵，只有香如故。

On Plum
by Lu You

Plum blossoms next to the ruined post;
Met alone with storm under setting sun.
Unseduced by the coming Spring among the jealous flowers;
Fragrant remains as it dusts to the ground.

Does this give us some clues of the contradictions of the Chinese psyche? Well, not so fast! It is more complicated than that. With the plurality of Chinese culture and pragmatism, you will probably not be surprised if I tell you there is yet another unofficial national flower that is the (late) Spring peony 牡丹. New York Botanical Garden is Bronx does have a wonderful collection and display of them around May. Here are some photos that I took last season earlier this year. As you can see, they are truly stunning and symbolize, guess what, riches and honor, with its layers of large petals and majestic bowls.

Again, you would find many poems and paintings about peony in Chinese arts and literature. It is however more often than not one would find social concerns behind the glory of this flower as illustrated in the following poem by Bai Juyi 白居易 (772-846 AD) of Tang dynasty, one of the most celebrated poets in Chinese history.

秦中吟之十 買花
白居易

帝城春欲暮，喧喧車馬度。
共道牡丹時，相隨買花去。
貴賤無常價，酬直看花數。
灼灼百朵紅，戔戔五束素。
上張幄幕庇，旁織巴籬護。
水灑復泥封，移來色如故。
家家習為俗，人人迷不悟。
有一田舍翁，偶來買花處。
低頭獨長嘆，此嘆無人喻。
一叢深色花，十戶中人賦！

On Peony
by Bai Juyi

Spring is coming to an end in capital; flower market is bustling as ever.
Peony season is upon us as the riches gather to shop.
Price is arbitrary, but a function of quantity.
Hundred red beauties costs a bundle.
Protected from the sun in cover and wrapped carefully with guards,
Sprinkled in water and rooted in mud;

flowers retains their beauty while carried home.
People are accustomed to and obsessed with this luxury.
A farmer passes by the market,
And nobody noticed his long sigh.
A bundle of peony costs ten families’ tax.

On lighter side, before I go, I would like to share with you a popular Chinese song on Plum blossom. It was the theme song composed by Liu Jia-Chang 劉家昌 for his 1976 movie of the same title about movements against Japanese occupation in Taiwan during WWII. The song became so popular that it is often considered the unofficial national anthem (of Taiwan). Here is a video recording of it, performed in 1981 by none other than the late superstar Teresa Deng 鄧麗君 who was nick- named "Little Deng" (vs. then supreme leaderDeng Xiaoping of China) for her popularity.

Talk to you soon!

Barack Obama: The Nation’s Community Organizer

Republican Vice President candidate Sarah Palin (and others like Rudi Jiuliani) had mocked and belittled Barack Obama’s 3 year Community Organizer experience. In her speech at the Republican National Convention back in Sept. she said “… I guess small town mayors are sort of like community organizers except they do have actual responsibilities”. Now we all know who is not laughing.

For populist politicians like Sarah Palin who don’t seem to read much nor think deep, they should learn more about the work of Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), the father of modern community organizing. Community organizers, current and past including Barack Obama, have been influenced greatly by Alinsky’s teachings. John Maki’s July 28^th 2008 article on The Windy Citizen shed some lights into this very topic.

Whether you agree with his theory and approach, Alinsky did point a way to effect changes in a democratic society from bottom-up by educating and empowering people and communities to act and take power for themselves. For Alinsky, “organizing is the process of highlighting what is wrong and convincing people they can actually do something about it. The two are linked. If people feel they don’t have the power to change a bad situation, they stop thinking about it.” That is what has happened on Nov 4, 2008; enough number of people realized what was wrong, were convinced that they need to do something about it, and voted for Barack Obama to lead.

The path of community organizer is not easy. Obama went to South side of Chicago in 1985 when he graduated from Columbia University and worked with Gerald Kellman, Alinksy’s disciple, with a starting probational salary of $13,000 a year. Interestingly, 17 years earlier in 1968, Hilary Clinton did her senior thesis on Alinksy when graduating from Wellesley but declined his offer to join him. Later she went on to Yale Law School and ended up a different path to effect changes, working from within the system of power and establishment. Peter Slevin’s March 2007 Washington Post article For Clinton and Obama, a Common Ideological Touchstone explored the links.

In sum, Obama has learned and adapted the core ideas of Alinsky’s teachings with positive tactics and forces to the national level. His tens of thousands of voluntary ground army of persuasion, trained with methods of community organizing and lived and breathed with the average citizens across the states for the last 2 years, have rewritten the book of election campaigns. They demonstrated once and for all that one can build coalitions and effect changes without first becoming an elite and dominant power of the democratic system. At the dawn of a new era of American democracy, with careful navigation and competent implementations, we can hope to see a different and better society one day without an external community organizer – the ultimate success criterion for a successful community organizer.

Talk to you!

Kiku菊

New York Botanic Garden in Bronx, New York City, is a wonderful place to visit if you happen to like flowers, plants, trees and casual encounters with small animals and birds in a park setting. Every season, the Garden puts up nice flower shows to highlight the beauty of particular time of the year. In autumn, the obvious choice is Chrysanthemum and this year, it showcases again Kiku, the Japanese art of cultivating and shaping of Chrysanthemum. Considering Chrysanthemum is the Japanese Imperial Emblem and regarded as the national flower of Japan, you can imagine the exhibit would be impressive and indeed it was.

Kiku 菊, or Chrysanthemum was brought to Japan from China in 8th century. The royal family fell in love with it in the subsequent decades and centuries. The cultivation and enjoyment of kiku reached its height in the Edo period (1603-1867) when many varieties and displays were introduced. Four imperial styles of Kiku displays were shown at the Conservatory courtyards of the Garden. The new addition is the shino-tsukuri (“driving rain”) whereby two single stem plants were grown and trained into a shape of driving rain in a pot. Exactly 27 buds of a particular specie per pot is resulted in a 1,2,4,5,6,5,4 pattern from front to back.

Another style is called kengai (“cascade”) that literally means “hanging cliff”. Hundreds of small flowers from one single stem were grown and trained onto a boat shape frame over a 10-month period to depict the scene of chrysanthemums over a steep cliff.

Then there is the style ogiku (“single-stem”). It is the ultimate display of the overpowering individual beauty of Chrysanthemum in unison. 108 six feet tall chrysanthemums stand in an array, each supporting one giant ball of perfect blossom in diameter of over 6 inches.

The majestic one is the most difficult and elaborate style called ozukuri (“thousand bloom”) originally from the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden in Tokyo, formerly the imperial garden. 229 large blossoms in a mount shape were grown from one single stem in a giant pot spanning almost 8x8 ft. It is simply awesome.

In the courtyard, two rock gardens with chrysanthemums round off the kiku display huts. You also can’t miss many varieties of beautiful Japanese maples in vibrant fall colors, shapes and sizes. The visit makes a perfect fall outing as one sits on the bench under the soft autumn sun and is surrounded by these exotic plants and ponds filled with water-lilies in reflections.
Strolling further down the paths of the garden, we caught glimpses of several Henry Moore’s massive sculptures in their final days of display on the garden ground. Moore’s work “Draped Reclining Mother and Baby” of 1983 when he was 85 years old touched our nerves in particular; the disproportionally large, yet almost-hollowed frame of the mother shelters the baby from the world in her arm as she gives it all and lies confidently against the setting sun. Further down the road, we ran into a man who is feeding birds off his palm. A beautiful medium size red-bellied woodpecker hung around nearby and wait for her term.

As we walked back to the car and drove down to Manhattan, I can’t rid of the bright images of those chrysanthemums from my head. Every fall, markets and roadside stands of our area display and sell them in pots. Hundreds of small flowers of similar size silently cramped in a small hemisphere in uniformity for people’s attention. In few weeks of time, as the temperature drops, they lost their glory and faded away quietly. Why are Japanese so attracted to a sad flower like Chrysanthemum as winter is around the corner to pronounce its inevitable death?

Over 60 years ago, Ruth Benedict, a famous anthropologist, wrote an influential bookThe Chrysanthemum and the Sword 菊與刀 as a part of U.S. government’s WWII effort to understand the Japanese culture and psyche. While she never had the chance to be in Japan for her research and there were some criticisms of her book, this seminal work did offer unusual insights into Japanese society and remains relevant as one of the most important references in study of Japanese culture including Japanese themselves.

One key observation and theory proposed by Ruth Benedict was that Japanese is a shame-based culture (as opposed to a guilt-based) whereby it “rely on external sanctions for good behavior, not, as true guilt cultures do, on internalized conviction of sin. Shame is a reaction to other people’s criticisms...” The implication is that it is possible to look to others for acceptable social norms without strong internal examinations. As a result, it is easier to be swayed to engage in acts when people feel the mutual supports for a common cause be it good or bad. It is also easier for the society as a whole, as demonstrated post WWII, to switch to a completely different path and erases its own memory. In fact, until this date, most Asians are convinced that Japan has not truly apologized for its atrocities in WWII nor expressed sufficient remorse. Even when measured in words, Japanese government has used mild expression such as Hansei 反省 (relective remorse) instead of stronger words like Kaikon 悔恨 (active remorse, regret), or Shazai 謝罪 (apology). Indeed, some leading Japanese politicians continue to visit the Shinto shrine to pay tributes to renounced war criminals and its Ministry of Education has been rewriting its textbooks in attempts to play down its war crimes and aggressions.

The choice of the title of Benedict’s book and the symbolism of the coexistence of Chrysanthemum and Sword cannot be mistaken. The contrast of the elegance and fragile beauty with steel power and death is stunning. I will probably never truly comprehend the complex psyche of Japanese culture that is full of contradictions with delicate balances striving for perfection and order, but that is a beauty in itself perhaps. Shall we visit other national flowers and learn more aspects of various cultures sometime?

Talk to you soon!

The Rise and Fall of McMaverick

The 2008 Presidential Election is less than 1 week away. American and the world are about to witness the exciting and historical event that an African-American intellectual and activist from an average family becomes the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. My crystal ball says that Barrack Obama will defeat John McCain in an electoral landslide of 354 to 184 with a nationwide popular vote margin of 10% or 55% vs. 45%. Also the voter turn out, as measured by the ratio of the number of voters over the number of eligible (including those did not register) voters, will be over 60% like the highs during 1960s.

A little digression on the election rule: American President selection is not determined by the majority of the popular vote of the country. Rather, it is elected formally with the majority of its Electoral College of 538 representatives from 50 states who are in practice bounded by their state’s election results. That is, the next president is the candidate who wins 270 or more electoral votes. The number 538 came from the idea that the Electoral College needs to reflect the federated government system whereby each state has 2 senators and congressional districts and thus representatives whose number is proportional to the state population. There are currently 435 congressmen and 100 senators. In addition, Washington D.C. has 3 congressional seats. Thus the total number of electoral is the magic number 538(=435+100+3). Further, except for Maine and Nebraska who adopted the so called Congressional District Method in allocation of their electoral votes (4 and 5, respectively) according to the state popular votes, the rest all use the “winner takes all” system in which the candidate who won the majority votes as little as 1 vote, will be given ALL the electoral votes of that state. Thus it is possible that in this federated government system with the electoral allocation methods, a candidate who won in total populate votes of the nation may not be the next president that was exactly what happened in 2000 when Al Gore lost the election to George W. Bush. who received about half a million popular fewer votes.

While McCain and Palin continue to campaign and pray they may still win, and while their advisors and handlers are busy blaming each other, I would offer my humble observation of why McMaverick is doomed to lose this election from the beginning.

McCain has always been fond of and played up his maverick image of his 26 years of services in congress and in Republic party. To be a maverick, you need to define yourself with what your are NOT and the contrast of a contesting and dominating theme that you are against. That is, you are frequently on the minority side and can’t be seen to be a part of the main stream of your political party and ideologues. Of course, it is a possible niche position where you can retain some of your independence within the party and at the same time be perceived and admired as such by the larger public. That has been exactly John McCain’s favorite position and self-image.

Unfortunately, it is very different when running for a national office like the president. One needs to make the transition from maverick to one who can rally key constituents of the party to follow you and at the same time retaining the maverick image and core supporters in and outside the party. The bottom line is McCain has failed to accomplish the transition miserably. Instead, he appeared to be erratic, warbling and hopelessly lost.

McCain should know better; he was tested before in 2000 when he lost the Republican South Carolina primary to George W. Bush’s smear campaign. He is seen “correcting” his mistakes in this campaign and tried a few dirty tricks but just could not go all the way. He tried hard to appease the Republic base with moves such as having Sarah Palin as the Vice President candidate but just could not agree to and embrace some of their ideas. His overly simplistic gut views and beliefs, coupled with reactionary approach and lack of vision, are so shallow that he had nothing substantial or coherent with which he can persuade his own party and others. At the end, he failed to win the party right wings over and at the same time, lost the support of conservative intellectual in the process.

I reject the argument and excuse by some that it is all because of the bad economy and bad timing that McCain is behind in polls. I do believe people are making a rational choice as one has a rare chance to get a better insight of the candidates through the crisis before rather than after the election.

Like the idiom says, “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” John McCain won the primary and will lose the election because he is a maverick - John McCain runs against John McCain; both lose.

Talk to you soon!

Tax and Joe the Plumber

“Joe the plumber” from Ohio had become an overnight celebrity when John McCain mentioned him 21 times on the last presidential candidates’ 90 minutes debate on Oct 15^th. McCain has used him repeatedly since as the face of the claim that Senator Barack Obama, if elected, will raise taxes and hurt small businesses. McCain, Palin and their campaigns have also been pounding on and amplifying it further; they accused Obama being a socialist that has been one of the most derogative labeling in US politics, short of calling someone a commi.

While one may discount it as a desperate move of McCain’s in the final weeks of the struggling campaign, I was a bit concerned for a while since such an attack had worked against democrats before. Fortunately the odd is it would not work this time around, primarily because the lack of coherent and credible policies and ideas by McCain. Nevertheless this is an important issue and warrants a deeper look. As one reviews the video footage of Obama’s 2 minutes tax policy discussion with Joe the Plumber on the street (that is wonderful), one can see how Obama came to step onto a significant mine field of American politics when he said to Joe at the end “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Of course, such a comment can be interpreted in many different ways; that is where the fuss is about. At one extreme, it could be construed as a basic socialistic concept, that is exactly McCain is trying to do, where government, i.e., a centralized authority would “collect and re-distribute the wealth” to care for all somehow.

Being a federated nation where the revolution was started on a spark like the Boston Tea Party (protesting against the British’s unfair import tax policy of the colonies) in 1773, U.S. has had an interesting history and evolution of its tax system. Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers, was quoted to have said “… In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Thus the issue and debate were never about if there need be some taxes but rather who shall be paying for how much and on what bases. It would not surprise anyone that most of us react myopically and selfishly that the best tax policy is one that takes the least from “me” directly. Over the years, the result is the United States Internal Revenue Code, Title 26 of the U.S. Code (26 USC) that stands at about 8,000 letter-size pages long with over 3 million words. Indeed there is a huge industry of many segments whose primarily purpose in life is to support (and make a living of) the tax system from legislation through interpretation and implementation, to enforcement. To give you some ideas, the software giant Intuit whose popular TurboTax software dominates the market had generated over $700 million dollars revenue in 2006. Yet that is only 3-4% dollar wise of the tax preparation market that is dominated by professionals of CPAs and alike!

Perhaps more interestingly, it wasn’t until 1913 when the 16^th amendment was ratified that Federal government could impose direct tax on personal incomes as the Constitution had previously required the federal tax be levied in proportion to each State's population. Today, tax structure wise, federal government generates (and spends) its revenue primarily through income tax of individuals and corporations of many flavors, big or small or one-person. On the other hand, state governments tax mainly on income and consumption, i.e. sales and exercise taxes and local governments tax mostly on wealth like property tax. All together, the total tax revenue is about 28% of our GDP. Note that according to the IRS statistics for FY2007, net collections of federal individual and corporate income tax were approximately 1.1 trillion and 370 billion dollars respectively. The rest, approximately 900 billion dollars, was mostly employment taxes such as for social security.

Thus the first take-away is that U.S. corporate income tax is quite modest unlike what McCain and many Republicans have been claiming (that American business needs more tax breaks because its top marginal income tax rate is 35%, one of the highest among developed countries.) The truth is that according to the recent OECD (Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development) Report, the actual U.S. corporate income tax as a percentage of the GDP is at about 3.3% and is one of the lowest among the developed nations in the world. The only logical and intuitive conclusion is that thanks to pages and pages of all kinds of loopholes and tax credits/deductions for business by the congress with the “help” of lobbyists, marginal tax rate table does not tell us much about the effective tax.

Now let us turn our attention to the individual income tax that accounts for almost half and is the biggest chunk of the federal government revenue. There are tons of statistical data and analysis of all kinds on this for a long time. According to the IRS statistics of tax year 2006, there were about 135 million income tax returns (thus some include more than one person) with positive AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) after deduction etc. Out of these returns, about 43 million returns paid no federal income tax or in some cases, received refunds (note this does not suggest these returns are necessarily low incomes). Further the top 10 percent of those filings contributed about 70% of the total income tax revenue and the top 5% of those filings had AGI of at least 150+K dollars. This would probably explain Obama’s target and claim of tax breaks for 95% of people whose income (before adjustment) are below $250K. Thus it seems reasonable to expect his tax cut plan for modest and lower income families are doable since it accounts for less than 20% of the total federal tax revenue.

The more important question though is what observations and learning can one derive from these voluminous data; that is where different ideas, ideologies, and biases began to show. If you look at the analyses of these IRS data by conservative think tanks like the 2007 Hoover article or of conservative-leaning organizations like the recent Tax Foundation Report, you will notice that they highlighted the trend that the top individual income tax payers are accounting for increasingly more percentage of the total federal revenue. This is where the difference of conservatives vs. liberals lies: the conservatives argue this is unfair to the “rich” who would have to contribute to a larger share of the revenue. The liberals, on the other hand, noted that this proves that middle class hard working majority of Americans are not keeping up and falling further behind, not to mention the increasing populations of the poor and gaps (that drove down the % of contribution).

I have no desire to go into the debate of the impossible fairness question. It is more productive to look at the fundamentals so that we don’t get fooled by the half truths and labels. Let us be real; U.S. has had a long history of being a capitalistic society that is not going to change anytime soon. Further, a nation’s tax-to-GDP ratio is a more widely accepted quantitative indicator of degree of influence by government on social policies and how socialistic it is. Compared to socialistic democratic countries like Sweden and Denmark whose total tax revenues are close to 50% of their GDP, U.S. scored at about 28% and the tweaking of the marginal tax rates will not change much of anything; the socialism accusation of Obama’s is clearly a red herring.

I am not optimistic there will be any fundamental changes with the U.S. tax policy as there are too much imbedded interests and inertias. I do wish some smart guys would come up with a better policy that can simultaneously increase the total economic output, boost the middle class, and reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. Until them, I would be happy if the tax code can be streamlined and simplified significantly so that at the minimum, we do away with the wrong incentives and waste of non-productive work.

If McCain wants to engage in a more serious ideological debate, let me point out there are other indices of interest such as “happiness” (he doesn’t look very happy lately, does he?). Not that long ago, there was a Business Week report of a ranking of world’s happiest countries by researchers from Britain's University of Leicester. U.S. ranked 23^rd in that study. And 9 out of the top 12 most happy countries including Canada, Denmark, Sweden have their tax-to-GDP ratios higher than U.S.’s (the other 3 were not available), and are more socialistic than U.S. in some sense. Senator McCain, just remember: keeping more money in your own picket does not necessarily buy you more happiness!

Talk to you soon!

Economic Crises - Act III: 2008, Who Ate My Lunch?

As the U.S. (and global) economy teetering on the brink of a meltdown, Act III of the Modern Economic Crises was formally unveiled on Thurs evening, Sept 18, 2008 as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. made an unusual visit to the Congress; see e.g. the New York Times report of the event. Two weeks later, on Oct 3^rd, after much fanfare and drama as well as backroom arm twisting and deals, Congress passed a $700 Billion dollars rescue package and President G.W. Bush quickly signed it into law. In the last 20 days since Sept 19, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) stock market index of 30 of the largest and most widely held public companies in U.S. has dropped by over 2,000 points or nearly 20%. In comparison, the stock market crash of 1987 (for different reasons) brought the DJIA down by over 30% in 6 days starting from the black Monday, Oct 19, 1987.

Why Act III? After the Panic of 1907 over 100 years ago, the structure of the system guided by the Classical Economics that were developed initially by Adam Smith, the father of the modern economics, was found insufficient. Federal Reserve System, a version of the Central Banks found in Europe, was subsequently established to provide government an additional significant tool to intervene and to alter the behavior of the market when needed. Since then, we have witnessed two historical and trajectory changing episodes: Act I - Great Depression of 1929-1941 that ushered Keynesianism that believes in active government intervention using principally fiscal policy (through controls of government spending and taxation) and monetary policy (through control of money supply by Federal Reserve).

Act II began 40 years later when Keynesianism met its own limitation and was discredited in 1970s as its framework failed to address stagflation, a simultaneous occurrence of economic stagnation and inflation. For the last three decades, the synthesis of Keynesian on macroeconomics and neoclassical on microeconomics – so called Mainstream Economics emerged as the dominating framework with monetarism being the principal guide and monetary policy being the principal instrument of intervention as Alan Greenspan aptly demonstrated for almost 20 years from 1987 till 2006.

While economists continue the debate and analysis about how and why we get to where we are, and Presidential candidates are busy convincing us they are the right person to lead us out of the crisis, I can’t stop wondering am I one of those blind men in the Indian fable of Blind Men and an Elephant 瞎子摸象? Or worst yet, are we, the blind men, also parts of this continuously transforming elephant as well?

Let us pause for a moment to examine the basics if there is any hope for average person like me to begin to comprehend something as complex as economy. Before we explore further, Let us keep in mind that in practice there is no pure form of any ideology so we don’t get distracted by political terms and labels like “socialism and redistribution”, “tax and spend”, “fiscal conservative”, “de-regulation”, “free-market”, etc.

In 1978, Libertarian Vienna School economist and writer Henry Hazlitt added a new chapter “Lessons After Thirty Years” and published the new edition of his popular 1946 book Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics. Now another thirty years has passed, have we learned and done anything differently? The short answer is no.

In his 218 pages book of 1978, Henry Hazlitt first summarized the single lesson of the whole of economics in one sentence: “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” He then went on to illustrate, with 23 easy-to-understand examples, most popular economic fallacies.

The main take-away for me was that we, the blinds, are so easily confused by the half-truths that flood all channels that, intentionally or not, make us forget the fundamental law of economics “There is no free lunch” and the fundamental law of physics “Conservation of the Total”. The simple cruel reality is that the only possible real growth is to increase our collective economic outputs with more efficient production, delivery, and use of resources (that determine the Total in the conservation law). Everything else is a matter of when and who gets which part of the pie and how. As Gretchen Morgenson of NY Times noted in her 8/19 interview with Bill Moyer about this current crisis “…this is privatizing gains and socializing losses. So when things are going well, the managements make out, the shareholders make out, the counter-parties are fine. All the private sector people do well. But when something goes wrong, when decisions are made that turn out to be bad decisions, the U.S. taxpayer has to take on the problem…” There is no denial that we are all participants of this game, willingly or not, and there are no completely innocent but only ignorant bystanders. There are those who cleverly ate others’ lunches of the future before our very eyes and we don’t even see it! Remember the “trickle-down theory”? Have you ever wondered who got the crumbs and who got left out at the end?

Few experts did see and had warned us that we were approaching a cliff, noting several indicators and trend; see for example articles by NYU Professor Nouriel Roubini on his Global EconoMonotor. However, many of us including myself could not comprehend nor judge the intricate principles and operations, nor knew of crucial indicators of credit market such as TED spread. At the end, many of us fell back to wait-and-see and leave it to the “experts”. However, being wonderful social beings, we take cues and learn from each other; we “follow the herd” when fear erodes our confidence, shake our beliefs, and challenge our judgment at the most critical moments. Some tough it out and many caved in to validate the self-fulfilling prophecy. Then the cycle repeats itself again.

Is it really that hard to understand what is going on at least at an intuitive level? There appear to be inevitable oscillatory dynamics at various time scale due to the delayed actions-reactions. There are familiar examples in other systems such as the familiar alternating congestion of roadways due to reported congestions of one and the subsequent mass reroutes of affected drivers. Other examples can be found in Internet, chemical plants and so on. Indeed, it is well understood that inherent time-lags in these systems can cause oscillations and instability of the system. And ad-hoc well-intended but ill-designed and flawed monitoring and control attempts will only exasperate and worsen the situation. I am convinced that this is the basic nature of the system for which we are an integral part of it. I would challenge our smart economists please explain to us if this is true and why can’t we figure out alternate and more stable frameworks instead of arguing about how to tweak and fine-tune an inherently unstable and flawed system?

Of course, I might sound a little too critical of economists who are not really the ones to be blamed. As Henry Hazlitt pointed out at the end of his new chapter of the book: “the main problem we face today is not economic but political”. 30 years later, nothing had changed since what we have is still a fundamentally unstable political economical system. What we did manage to accomplish beyond incremental adjustments is the nuances of accelerated globalization and creation of “virtual capital”.

One of the things globalization did is to enlarge the system to include an increasingly larger part of the populations on earth, thereby allows us tapping into more resources and further leveraging more capitals. It effectively allows us pumping more air into a bigger balloon, sharing risks among more entities, and thus delaying the (louder) bursting of the bubbles and subsequent contraction. What made it worse was the creation and leverage of what I would call “virtual capital” whose excessive growth in forms of credits and risks pushed us over the edge. Do you know unlike traditional banks, investment banking companies like the bankrupted Lehman Brothers, the acquired Merrill Lynch, and the re-registered Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were not required to have any reserves to operate? By the way, the best explanation of the word “virtual” I have ever heard was from Internet pioneer Bob Kahn a long time ago. He once said “virtual is something you can see but it is not there (and transparent is something you can’t see but it is there)”. So, there you go.

It is tempting for us to believe that we can change and control the world. It is too convenient for us to have the wishful thinking that interventions by government through hands and mouths of politicians and experts can solve the problems and save us all. Democracy and Free Market ideals seem no longer compatible not to mention the market was never “free” to begin with. We expect multinational corporation maneuvers and government interventions on behalf of us by democratically elected politicians whenever things don’t quite work the way we’d like. We reward our politicians by electing and re-electing those who can benefit MY community and MY interest most, and then we complained about other “special interest groups”. We entrust our assets and savings and reward Wall Street with outrageous compensation as they are finding bigger and bigger stake tables globally, hoping that we all get rich fast.

There is an old saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” How many more times do we want to get fooled? American philosopher and aphorist George Santayana had also said in his work The Life of Reason, 1905. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” How many more times do we have to repeat it? It is time to change the fundamental structure of our political economical system.

Talk to you soon!

Education: a Crisis in the Making

Today, Sept 28^th, is the Teacher’s Day in Taiwan, a National Holiday when people express their gratitude and show appreciations to all teachers. It is the 2,559^th birthday of Confucius, the most revered and the greatest educator in Chinese history. His words of wisdom compiled in the Analects (論語) include the principle of “One must offer education to anyone regardless” (有教無類), Part 15 verse 39 that can be considered equal opportunity in education in modern context.

Confucius’ teachings and influence on Chinese civilization is so far reaching that Confucianism has often been considered synonymous with Chinese culture and a key component of East Asian countries as well. Indeed Confucian culture has been so deep rooted that it was a central target during the destructive 1966-1976 Culture Revolution in communist China launched by then its supreme leader Mao Zedong. It is also not an accident that with the morals, rites, ethics and philosophy Confucius developed, championed and later adopted by most rulers in China, religion has played much less a role in Chinese society compared to that in Western and other civilizations.

Of course, it did not happen by accident; there were significant economic and political incentives for being an educated man in Imperial China, in addition to its social statue. The implementation of open and fiercely competitive National Civil Service Examinations throughout the history of Imperial China offered rare opportunities to non-privileged people regardless who they are and where they are from to change their socio-economic status and rise to prominence in government. Although the system wasn’t a truly open and leveled playing field (e.g., wealthy families could hire high-priced tutors), the ideals of fairness and promotion of competency has been largely recognized by the public and has been operated for over 1,000 years.

In contrast, Western education system (see e.g., The History of Education by Ellwood Cubberley) can be traced back to Ancient Greeks with great teachers and philosophers like Socrates (who is 82 years younger than Confucius). It had gone through several transformations and hit the low point in early Middle Ages when the sole purpose of education was to serve the Church. Over the subsequent centuries however, starting with the stimulation through Spain of the great intellectual development of Mohammedans in Baghdad based on Hellenic learning, study centers of various subjects became popular across Europe as the authority of the Church weakened on secular matters and modern nations were formed. With the diversity in Western Europe geopolitical map and further thrust for exploration and dominance, science and technology had become a forefront of the learning and invention. It wasn’t until 18^th century however, public education system and literacy began to become a reality as democratic movements gained momentum in Europe. Meanwhile, Chinese Imperial court of Qing dynasty and many continued to bury their heads in the sand, ignoring the importance of modern education and eventually found themselves woke up too late at the end of 19^th century. The rest is history.

Today, United States, as a young, rich, vibrant nation with continuous influx of skilled immigrants has enjoyed unprecedented prosperity and power. While it has drawn admirations for its post-secondary schools and advanced researches, there have been increasing concerns and debates by some for its K-12 education with its decentralized public and private education system. Before we discuss it further, it is interesting to note a social attitude gap. In Part 16, Verse 9 of the Analects, Confucius was quoted to have said “… As to those who are dull and stupid and yet do not learn; they are the lowest of the people." Such a statement in U.S. today would certainly be criticized as politically incorrect and elitism.

According to various statistics, U.S. does spend significant amount of resources in education. Department of Education statistics shows that U.S. tax payers spend about 1 trillion dollars, or about 9% of its GNP, in education of all levels: 500+ billion dollars on K-12 and almost 400 billions on higher education, Yet at the same time, there are indications that US is slipping in its performance especially in K-12. For example, not long ago, OECE (Organization for Economic Co-operation & Development) published its latest PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) survey results and analysis of science, mathematics and reading knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds students. The assessment was carried out in 2006 with an extensive two-hour test comprising both open-ended and multiple-choice questions. More than 400,000 15-year-old students participated from 57 countries, including the 30 OECD member countries. Together these countries make up close to 90% of the world economy. One of the results showed the relative standing of the US student average performance in mathematics has dropped from 18th (out of 27) in year 2000, to 24^th (out of 29) in year 2003, and then 25^th (out of 30 OECD member countries) in year 2006. Similar deteriorating trends are also noted in Science and Reading.

One must wonder why more money did not get better results? Or one may ask a more basic question: why should one care when we are the most dominant nation with the strongest economy? The answer lies with the longer term implication on economic development of the country. While there are debates about the quantification of how education/academic achievement impacts the GDP (Gross Domestic Products), it is intuitive and researchers do agree that it definitely plays a significant role. (For more detailed discussions, see e.g. Debbie Viadero’s article on Education Week, 4/22/2008). As the foreword of the PISA report said well “…The prosperity of countries now derives to a large extent from their human capital, and to succeed in a rapidly changing world, individuals need to advance their knowledge and skills throughout their lives. Education systems need to lay strong foundations for this, by fostering learning and strengthening the capacity and motivation of young adults to continue learning beyond school.” Further, the reality is if others nations continue to improve, they will become more competitive and overtake yours. Thus one cannot be complacent and remains at the same performance level even.

Obviously, there is no magic formula or model of an ideal education system and the root causes of serious deficiencies are complex and widely varying. There are some who suggest that it is due to lack of “respect” for teaching profession (and lack of self-respect in some?). Although there is the myth and joke “He who can, does. He who can not, teaches.” (in George Bernard Shaw’s Maxims for Revolutionists , an appendix of his play Man and Superman: a comedy and a philosophy, 1903), I am not aware of any material differences, based on first- and second-hand experiences between say Taiwan (that scored highly on PISA assessments) and here. There are also those who suggest it is due to teachers’ (low) compensation. I am sure more pay would help, however I am not aware of any study that shows those countries whose students perform better paid their teachers any better. Further, wouldn’t the market forces of supply and demand correct it? Note the Department of Education 2008-9 Report shows that there are currently about 4 millions K-12 teachers for 50+ millions of students in the country. The median (9 months) salary of K-12 teachers was about $43+K in May 2006 and a 12% growth in demand is being expected that does not look totally out-of-wack. There are also those who criticize teachers’ unions had become a problem when they often emphasize seniority and job security over performance and development. How much of this is true is debatable but the fact of matter is that “pay by performance” concept, while intuitive, is by no means easy to implement given the lack of consensus of how to evaluate the performance of teachers.

When one looks beyond those details and local issues, I do believe there are a few fundamental and structural problems and solutions that are clear: For one, U.S. is one of the very few nations (or the only?) that do not have a coherent national education funding system and standard setting. The PISA study mentioned above has shown (see PISA presentation for U.S.) clearly a significant correlation of better student scores in Science and the adoption of coherent standard-based external exams. Of course, there is a simple historical reason for it - the Constitution had said nothing about education and thus left it to the states and locals. Indeed state level accounts for approx 46% and local 37% of the total funding of school systems. As a result, while there are benefits such as significant community participations in K-12 education, it does not always produce positive results and education often became victim of the local political, socio-economical and religious issues.

In his NPR interview and article “First, Kill All the School Boards” on the Atlantic Journal, Matt Miller of the Center for America Progress argued forcefully a radical proposal to nationalize the public school systems and establish equitable funding and coherent standards across the country. Indeed bold actions like it is needed to bring attention to the national level (haven’t we noticed the lack of it in the presidential and congressional elections?) and to focus people on the central challenge of education – intellectual and skill development of human capitals. I have no doubt that a practical and balanced approach can be developed with Federal standards and funding while supporting effective local autonomy.

Meanwhile, instead of waiting and doing nothing, there are a few things each of us can do to help. As a starter, if you are an administrator, on school board, or a concerned citizen, you should take a look of the recent report of the experimentation undertaken by the Oakland Unified school system. With its new equitable funding policy, the average student performance there has seen dramatic improvement. If you are a parent, pay attention and show by actions that you care very much about your children’s education and progress that will definitely help them for a better life in the future; you must not shy away from your responsibility and hide behind the excuse such as “kids should decide and figure out for themselves”. If you are a student, respect your teachers who try to help you, and study hard for your own better future.

And if you a teacher? Care for your students. Motivate them by raising expectations and show your confidence on them. Happy Teacher’s Day and talk to you soon!