Contempo Magazine Blog

This week we learned that 1 in 10 Americans is now in if not close to home foreclosure and that almost 2 million Americans have lost their jobs.  President Elect Barack Obama has told the nation that things are going to get worse before they get better.  This week in Chicago about 200 workers  have forcibly occupied the building from which they suffered a lay off from the Republic Doors and Windows Corporation after having been told no paychecks or severance will be payed because Bank of America is holding the money.

The American ideology has always accepted a large discrepancy in wealth and reward for workers versus management but not without turmoil nor limit.  Henry Ford and Bill Gates are cultural heroes for founding new technology and institutions which created new jobs and wealth for the nation.  For most of our history we have accepted the tenet first put forth by Adam Smith in his book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments,  that people acting in their own interests within the confines of society can have an effect for the public good.

The relationship between worker and management in the United States has not always been peaceful. Previously in our history during tough economic times when there was a perceived indifference or excess of the management class significant violence has occurred.  Out of these difficult times, the American labor movement was born which recognized that American workers had basic rights to negotiate for fair treatment and payment from their employers.

Americans today are angry at corporate America.  They are seeing billions of dollars going to white collar Wall Street and executives receiving millions in golden parachutes.  Despite a few discussions by politicians of potential arrest and prosecution of the criminal white collar crime by executives nothing has really happened.  Almost everyone in America realizes that American automakers are kaput but many do not want to see the American autoworker suffer for the failures of the corporate executives.

The Chicago sit-in may well be just be the pre-eruption smoke of a volcano of American worker sentiment getting ready to erupt in the next few months.  Almost no recognized economist can say when the current economic crisis will start to improve or even stabilize and we are beginning to hear many of them talk about the fact that the Great Depression lasted 10 years.

At the same time that employees of Republican Door and Windows can not get their paychecks, the CEO of Merrill Lynch, John Thain, which was bought up by Bank of America is demanding a 10 million dollar bonus this year in addition to his 800,000 dollar salary. This is a prime example of what is the greatest threat to our economic system, the outright criminal and selfish greed that now pervades America’s upper level corporate executives.

More than 30 years ago America’s great business schools which produced the current generation of American CEO’s promised to teach business ethnics and corporate responsibility to their students.  Business used to be about productivity, margin, and efficiency not about stock options and bonuses. Our current economic crisis is absolutely attributable to selfish decisions made by American CEOs in the major industries of finance, energy, and manufacturing.

There are many who are calling for a change in our corporate system and make no mistake some change must be made as the current system is unacceptable. Some are calling for severe government oversight or even significant government ownership in strategically important entities.  Conservatives rightly oppose these measures as being in conflict with the concept of private enterprise but they cannot accept the status quo.

Conservatives should advocate changes in the corporate and personal income tax structure to reward or punish CEO behavior. In return for a significant potential high reward for leadership, America’s executives must also accept reasonable risk and responsibility.  In addition to tax penalties there needs to be increased prosecution,legislation, and enforcement of white collar criminal behavior of executives acting in their own interests against their corporation’s interest. Strict accountability standards for American CEO’s is the only way we will be able to maintain the American form of capitalism and avoid the coming worker unrest.

Tony Magaña grew up in McAllen Texas, attended Texas A&M University, served as an officer in Army Reserve, and holds a doctorate from Harvard University. The co-founder of Contempo Magazine has participated in Valley business for over 20 years.He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

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We are becoming a significant voting block but will Hispanics ever become significant statewide or nationwide leaders from Texas. It can be reasonably argued that the 67% of Hispanics who voted for Barack Obama made the difference in his being elected. No doubt the political punch of Hispanic voters now counts in major elections, however, their ability to get governorships and senate seats continues to be limited.

Hispanics as a group overall across the nation are a diverse ethnic group. The spectrum of political idealization runs from extremely conservative Venezuelans and older Cubans to extremely liberal New York Dominicans.  However, the fact is that often they will vote somewhat in majority or nearly a majority for a candidate as they did for Bush in 2004 and Obama in 2008. So their diversity would not keep them from voting for a Hispanic candidate.

Although Hispanics are the largest minority they are still a minority in the state of Texas. Currently they account for 25 to 33% of the population in the state.  Fifty percent of all Hispanics in Texas live in in five counties: Harris, Bexar, Dallas, El Paso, and Hidalgo. Another four counties have between 500,000 to 100,000 Hispanics each. Thus they are concentrated in certain areas of state.

Political bartering between the power brokers of both political parties in Texas has resulted in gerrymandered districts for federal and state office that tend to guarantee a candidate for one party or another.  There are very few swing areas in the State of Texas. Many of us, Hispanic baby boomers, can remember the days when even though in South Texas we were more than 80% of population we had no Hispanic representation in government even locally.

The advancement of civil rights and the loyalty of the Hispanics to the Democratic party that was increasingly fostered following World War II was rewarded by the granting of these Hispanic districts.  Areas where Hispanics are the dominant population such as in South Texas routinely see Hispanic candidates often running against Hispanic candidates usually in the Democratic party primary which serves as the real election.

These elections are reminiscent of the ethnic local elections in America’s urban centers during the early 20th century. Ethnic identification and branding to the accepted local norm become the most important ingredients for political success.  For example, in a recent race for a local state judgeship, a local Hispanic Princeton graduate Republican was soundly defeated by another locally educated Democratic Hispanic with several arrests for driving while intoxicated who campaigned solely on his genuineness as a local candidate. He successfully portrayed his Republican opponent as an outsider.

This isolated world of political engagement that occurs in these Hispanic areas may be a fertile ground for grooming local leaders but is it damaging Hispanic’s ability to be able to run in state wide elections?

In 2002, an ideal chance for a Hispanic candidate to take a statewide office occurred when Antonio Sanchez, Jr., a millionaire oilman Mexican American from Laredo, Texas decided to run for governor.  The Democratic primary leading to Mr. Sanchez’s nomination was a very controversial race. Those familiar with South Texas and Hispanic politics know that one of the rules of Hispanic politics in Texas is that it they can get negative and dirty.

Dan Morales, the Texas Attorney General, at the time had recently won a large tobacco settlement for the State of Texas. However, he was found to been involved in wrongly to trying to reward private representation in excess of what they deserved and also his brother was convicted of political misconduct.  When Mr. Morales lost the primary, he endorsed Rick Perry, the Republican candidate, rather than endorse Sanchez.

Mr. Sanchez was a widely traveled and well educated man who came from a politically savvy  family.  He was well acquainted with the business world but had not held political office. By the time of the election he was only able to get about 30% of the vote and did not run again. No doubt his lack of political experience in running a political campaign and also the lack of Hispanic experience as a whole in running a statewide campaign to appeal to the majority hampered his chance for success.

Recently, Texas legislator, Rick Noriega, a Mexican American from Houston ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate.  Mr. Noriega’s campaign was disorganized and not well supported initially but he did not run as a typical ethnic candidate.  Smart political maneuvering by the incumbent Republican, John Cornyn, resulted in early endorsements from Democratic Hispanic leaders in South Texas against Noriega.

At times in his campaign he seemed unsure how to frame his ethnicity. He was criticized by the politically influential magazine, Texas Monthly, for not rushing early on to get endorsement in South Texas from Hispanic democrats. In retrospect, I think Mr. Noreiga did the right thing by not painting himself as primarily a Mexican-American candidate for governor.  He suffered more from a poorly organized statewide Democratic party than he did from delayed South Texas endorsements which could have backfired on him statewide.

Hispanic success in the United States has allowed us to preserve our own subculture to a greater degree than just about any other immigrant group. We take pride in our Spanish language media and our ethnic neighborhoods in Miami, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and the Rio Grande Valley.  At the same time, we need to be careful that we are not seen as a separate culture apart from the whole.

Both political parties in the recent Presidential election treated Hispanics as if the only issue they cared about was immigration.  Major news media assumes Hispanics only watch Spanish language media as do politicians, so that there are now almost no Hispanic journalists in English language media.   The shrinking National Association of Hispanic Journalists has been warning of this important issue for some time. Nick Jimenez, a columnist for the Corpus Christi Caller Times, describes the true reality of Hispanics in Texas quote “Now being Hispanic in Texas means the immigrant who arrived last month and who can’t speak a word of English and the Mexican-American who celebrates Cinco de Mayo but that’s the only Spanish they know.”

Hispanics have made significant political progress over the past 40 years but it may be reasonably argued that we are creating a separate world for ourselves within America. The candidacy of Barack Obama was very different from that of the “ethnically correct” Jessie Jackson. Leaders in the Hispanic community need to begin to talk in terms of American issues and not just Hispanic issues.  Hispanic Democratic political campaigns in Texas need to become a more civilized discussion of issues without the dirt. Mr. Obama embracing his rival Hillary Clinton was a brilliant political move that should teach all Hispanic politicians a valuable lesson.

As a subgroup in society, Hispanics must be careful not to become culturally isolated in our institutions, neighborhoods, schools, and our responsibilities in government. We have won the right to vote but we need to do more to get on the ballot.

Tony Magaña grew up in McAllen Texas, attended Texas A&M University, served as an officer in the Army Reserve, and holds a doctorate from Harvard University. The co-founder of Contempo Magazine has participated in Valley business for over 20 years.He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

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What does it mean to be technologically superior as a country? Does it mean a country makes the most discoveries?Has the most machines or factories? Does it mean its citizen’s use the most technology in their everyday lives? Most Americans and the world have assumed that the last remaining superpower, the United States of America, was technologically superior to the rest of the countries in the world.

The decades long decline of the American car industry would seem to directly contradict that we are a technological superior country. Have we ever been the most technologically superior country? During World War II, almost every weapon we made before and during most of the war was technologically inferior to those of Germany, Japan, and even Russia.  It was only our large manufacturing capability that really allowed us to overwhelm our enemies rather than our technological prowess.

Anyone who has traveled the world over the past 30 years can tell you that many less developed countries were quicker than the United States to develop cellular telephones and satellite television reception.  In fact, the less sophisticated cable television networks in the world are actually in the United States.

Precision machining and manufacturing by highly skilled technicians in the electronics industry, for example,  flourishes in Asia because they have prolonged training programs to make skilled economically competitive workers for such industries. In the United States, manufacturing has moved as much as possible to automation rather than highly skilled technical workers because we do not produce them like other countries.

Very few countries in the world guarantee a minimum wage to unskilled workers like the United States. When you combine that guarantee with a national high school drop out rate approaching 40% it means we produce a highly paid but unskilled workforce that cannot compete with highly trained machinists and electronics technicians. Our industries thus become based upon automation and unskilled labor jobs.

As the rest of the world sees its standard of living and education improve this discrepancy of the United States with the rest of world will only become worse. Within our life times, the middle class in India and China may well become larger and more affluent per capita then the middle class of the United States.

The crisis of the American automobile industry is just the latest that has seen electronics, textiles, and other products produced more abroad than at home. We are a society of the extremes, college graduates and high school dropouts, but without a real economic means to produce a real middle class. Those who dream that there can be a middle class of unskilled workers consisting of a high school education or less have to accept the reality that this is creating a caste in our society below that of Europe and Asia.

American automobile manufacturers convinced that American public that American made larger cars were safer because they had superior safety technology than foreign made imports. This is only reason that they have been able to keep any market share at all even though subsequent developments in safety by foreign imports showed that them to be equal to or superior to American cars.

We must create a society where the average worker economically produces equal or greater then competing workers in other countries. Rather then making them work longer hours for less pay with less education, we need to find ways to establish a workforce with better education, better skills, and more technology that makes them more productive.

We need radical changes in our education system to adequately prepare the vast majority of the population to be able to obtain economically viable employment.  The sense of entitlement felt by many of the American population and current disregard for hard work espoused by those who view American life as being in a lottery is inconsistent with our future survival as a major economic power.

Those in America’s executive board rooms have this same problem with false sense of entitlement as well. The corporate culture in the United States is all about individual wealth and power and not about establishing an organization for the public good. Look at the difference in the way the Japanese see Toyota or the Germans see Daimler-Benz.

Many are saying we need another New Deal with government funded infrastructure jobs to pull us out of this economic crisis.  What they fail to see is that the skills of our average uneducated worker have really not changed much from the 1930s so that is still the only type of jobs that many can still do.  It is time for America to admit that it is not a technologically advanced country and to correct our inadequacies in education and the corporate culture. Protectionism against an ever advancing globalization of economic efficiency will not serve America in the long run.

Tony Magaña grew up in McAllen Texas, attended Texas A&M University, served as an officer in Army Reserve, and holds a doctorate from Harvard University. The co-founder of Contempo Magazine has participated in Valley business for over 20 years.He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

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