Bottom Up and Middle Out
Joe Biden shows us what Bob Dylan meant when he said "He not busy being born is busy dying"
I don’t usually write about national politics but Biden’s State of the Union Speech and what is being said about it is really something.
According to his political enemies, Biden is a man suffering from dementia.
No Way Hose! Biden is a man who is still busy being born and at his age, being born means an advanced stage of development drawing upon years of political experience capable of weaving converging threads together as a singular expression of a new political paradigm.
A jovial Biden commences the State of the Union address by congratulating the new Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, resetting the political tone of American politics toward mutual respect and cooperation.
And then Biden, pushing eighty years old, gives voice to the moment and drives the narrative and details the policy of the new paradigm rising out of the wreckage of almost half a century of trickle-down rhetoric that delivers trickle-up policy.
”Bottom Up and Middle Out’ is the catchy hook of Biden’s narrative. supported by a list of impressive achievements in his first two years. Among the achievements, Biden highlights that over the past two years, a record-high number of over ten million Americans applied to start new businesses. Every time a new small business is started it is an act of hope, said Biden.
Biden sets multiple records that surpass the standards of the last forty years and beyond, a period in which the top-down centrally managed economy expanded and the concept of a job came to be synonymous with working in a large corporate culture.
Speaking directly to middle America Biden enlightens reasons why the policies enacted by his administration shift the balance of government wealth distribution from trickle-down to bottom-up and middle-out, not by eliminating top-down management but by aligning it with the principles and values of bottom-up and middle-out.
Appealing to the right’s mantra “America First”, all construction materials used in federal projects will be required to be made in America, which simultaneously appeals to anti-corporatism progressives. The announcement elicits a standing round of applause from a full house.
But when Biden says “Let’s cap the cost of insulin for everyone at thirty-five dollars a month, only one side of the aisle stands and applauds an act that shifts the balance of benefit from the top to the middle.
When Biden introduces the Cowboys in The Sky, ironworkers who built the Cincinnati skyline, I am reminded of my grandfather Art Andersen, a small farmer, who worked on installing the electrical infrastructure in his Iowan Town. Biden’s vision connects Americans to our historical identity aimed at restoring pride and dignity in work, an unspoken tip of the hat to the movement rejecting hierarchical corporate culture for its abusive treatment of workers
The series by Cher Scarlett is a fascinating read by a brilliant mind telling a personal story and a report about whistle-blowing on Apple’s secretive company culture
We have to reward work, not just wealth’- President Joe Biden
Biden speaks to a broad spectrum of Americans about issues they face in their lives and explains how solutions to their problems are also instrumental in reducing America’s deficit. He tells of investments at the top of the economy in the chip industry designed to bring chip manufacturing back home to where the technology was first invented, and investments in infrastructure across America, large-scale projects that will create many jobs, and he tells of policies to bring the cost of drugs down, of passing legislation requiring large billion dollar companies that have not been paying any taxes to pay at least 15% of their profits in taxes repeating many times ”This will reduce the deficit” and “Now let’s get the job done!”.
Biden threads the complexity of individual interests into a complementary whole delivered in a colloquial style that belies the sophistication of his thought. Then Biden smoothly orchestrates the far right into publicly agreeing that social security is not on the negotiating table and then firmly states that bartering with the budget is a no-go as well.
Sigh of relief!
Biden is being compared to distant historical figures.
Biden’s trip to Ukraine is the first time a president has visited a war zone not controlled by our side since Abraham Lincoln.
Harold Meyerson writes in the American Prospect about Biden’s State of the Union speech. “In fact, it was the first time the word “antitrust” was mentioned in a State of the Union address since 1979.” Meyerson ends his story with the words ”Cultural issues were anything but the major focus of his speech last night, the core of which was really a straightforward appeal to working-class voters that was not just culturally affirming but also economically tangible. You have to go all the way back to Harry Truman to find a Democratic president who made those themes the centerpiece of his presidency. And against all odds, we should recall, Truman was returned to office.”
Nick Hanauer also writing in The American Prospect puts forth the concept that Biden is executing a paradigm shift over the policies that both sides have pursued in economic development over the past forty years and says “The essence of his argument is that a thriving middle class is the cause of economic growth, not its consequence.”
Exactly!
Hanauer continues that “The president understands that narrative precedes policy. President Lincoln spelled this out by saying that “public sentiment is everything … He who molds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.” Said in a more modern way, narrative explains why to do something. Policy describes what to do. Narrative is strategy. Policy is tactics.”
Biden delivered both in his speech.
How much of Biden’s philosophy will trickle down, and how long will it take? The question is not about economics. Economics are tangible results that are already evident. I am thinking about cultural shifts in values.
I recently viewed Build Maine and Grow Smart Maine, Policy Action 2023, Preview of Proposed Legislation. Here we see two private sector non-profit organizations developing legislation.
I speculate that this is an outgrowth of The Municipal Housing Development Permit Review Board established in LD 2003. The board is to be made up of non-profit organizations and provides grants to municipalities if the municipality implements ordinances approved by the board.
The first statement on the website:
Maine’s current uncoordinated approach to building places is causing real, unintended, and significant social,environmental, financial, economic, and cultural challenges and requires the creation of a cohesive approach to land development, redevelopment, and placemaking
This rationale has been periodically reiterated since 1976. The language changes over time but the concept remains the same. For example, the Purpose Statement for the Finance Authority of Maine, and the Purpose Statement of The Maine Development Foundation. The coordinated approach means central management of the many by the few who dogmatically believe that they are right about everything and entitled to single-mindedly design the society in which we all must live.
I submit that the goal of the iteration is the same throughout recent history but the method of achieving the goal is contrary to the method upheld in the preamble to the Maine Constitution. Maine needs to follow Biden’s lead and draw upon earlier models- such as The Maine Constitution. Thanks for the signaling, Joe!
PREAMBLE.
Objects of government. We the people of Maine, in order to establish justice, insure tranquility, provide for our mutual defense, promote our common welfare, and secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, acknowledging with grateful hearts the goodness of the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe in affording us an opportunity, so favorable to the design; and, imploring God's aid and direction in its accomplishment, do agree to form ourselves into a free and independent State, by the style and title of the State of Maine and do ordain and establish the following Constitution for the government of the same. (emphais by author)
The adage “God works in mysterious ways” invites one to follow a path of discovery. By calling on God to guide us, the Maine Constitution advises a government of man that is small. A centrally managed government continually expands to manage more and more of everything, squeezing out room for God’s mysterious ways, which can never really be squeezed out and keeps on being born.
I do not wish to target others who may feel their intentions are good, but the agendas being advanced as good affect everyone but everyone is not allowed to be a part of the conversation. There are other perspectives, that did not have a voice, until the rise of the content providers, a forum of many individual voices, such as that of Cher Scarlett and Ms. Mary Ann countering the organizational voices. Biden is tuning in to the new dialogue. The becoming economy is not about capitalists, it’s about people. Content provider platforms are the media voice of individual people creating the social narrative, that used to be managed by organizations. New content provider platforms are on the rise and innovating.
Years ago, when I commenced a journey of reading the Maine policies of the centralized economy, I soon felt that wealth and capital were the true objectives of the Maine government that can be achieved by simply replacing the existing population with a wealthier population. The conversation was consistently framed financially, such as a goal for the per capita income to be 90% of the national per capita income by 1985, (the Governor’s Report of 1976) a goal that can be achieved through population displacement, because it is not the people that matter to the State, it is their income that matters.
Biden’s new tagline is ”The economy isn’t about money - it’s about people”
Thank you, Biden! What a simply spoken declaration - but when was the last time we heard it?
Back then, as I read the Maine economic development policy and associated rhetoric, I imagined a future when all rural land would be for the use of the wealthy only.
The future I imagined is being implemented by LD 2003 which mandates concentrated housing zones in every Maine municipality permitting “overcrowded” housing concentration for the workforce and permanent residents of ordinary means. “Overcrowding” means housing density that is unhealthy for human living.
Unembarrassingly Erin Cooperrider calls overcrowding a “density bonus” transparently identifying that housing is about profits not people:
Since the potential for changes in housing limits and metrics, Coopperrider said. “This plan shows 3.5% density bonus for affordable housing, so three and a half times what’s allowed currently (which is) two and a half times.” buildout will take about a decade, Cooperrider said there will be hurdles in development, namely density; the project is designed for 162 units which exceeds the local maximum by 47 units. However, recent legislation, LD 2003, has opened up Selectmen get housing development presentation
The new narrative attributes the reason for overcrowded housing zones to be “preserving open land that provides access to recreation, hunting, and important ecological systems that will help sustain us in the face of a changing climate.” source
The justifying organizational rhetoric for overcrowding affordable housing concentration zones is to preserve the open land for environmental reasons, the dismissal of the need for healthy human living environments found in this thinking would have Lewis Mumford turning over in his grave.
An alternate theory about what motives this land use planning is supported by the details in LD 2003.
Despite the fact that the unelected commissioners who developed the framework for LD 2003 decided not to include short-term rentals in their study, the act stipulates that overcrowded affordable housing zones are not permitted to be rented as short-term rentals. The commissioners who concocted LD 2003 are aware enough of the destructive effect of short-term rentals on places to prohibit short-term rentals for one economic class, if not for all economic classes.
The prohibition of short-term rentals in concentrated affordable housing zones identifies the cause of the permanent residential housing shortage as the short-term housing industry, supporting that the motivation behind LD 2003 is the short-term rental industry’s need for room to grow, an industry that expands only in only one way- in personal homes, or what was once personal homes of the people now designated to live in overcrowded housing zones.
The State of Maine collects a 9% sales tax on bookings and services for the short-term rental industry. Is this why the State is becoming proactively involved in managing municipal ordinances, to insure the availability of grazing pastures for its cash cow?
Giving this theory the benefit of the doubt, the placemaking by the organizational network of The Municipal Housing Development Permit Review Board re-invents Maine as a giant Airbnb territory scattered with urban blocks of corporate-owned undersized and overcrowded housing units where the permanent residents of ordinary means dwell, reminiscent of the housing projects that surrounded Pratt Institute when I attended in the 1960s. We were advised not to wander in the direction of those places.
The character of place created by the unfettered expansion of the short-term rental industry is the elephant in the room. Having chosen to ignore short-term rentals in the study, the new central managers of our communities cannot now acknowledge the effect on the character of a place dominated by a short-term rental community occupying the former homes of residents now living in overcrowded housing projects. A diversionary story is spun about squeezing the resident community into places too small and overcrowded in order to preserve the open land for recreational and environmental purposes.
Control. Control. Control. You will live in this tiny cell and your recreational activities will take place in this designated park and your creative and innovative activities will take place in this public-privately owned facility. These are the places central management has made for you. Obey!
The place-building committee is building controlled environments to house the workforce who is then expected to show up to work at company-owned facilities and “innovate” and their innovations will be owned by the ownership class who owns the facilities. Everything reinforces the ownership-working class divide, including the fact that those living in concentrated housing zones cannot profit from short-term rentals that have created this dystopian place.
Yeah right. I think there may be a few things you are overlooking.
However the planners spin their rationale, the human character of the place is still defined by the permanent residential community herded into overcrowded units surrounded by a wealthy vacationers community that needs its essential workers.
But in the real world character of place has a human dimension. I grew up on the Boothbay Peninsula between two cultures. There has always been a deeply felt cultural divide between the locals and the visitors and summer residents. It can only deepen if the local residents live in corporate-owned overcrowded housing surrounded by a wealthy and transient community occupying their former homes.
I can’t help but wonder what this strange statement found on the Build Maine- Grow Mainen website actually means:
In Maine we see two different kinds of places - the ones we love, the reasons we chose to move here or chose to stay here, and the ones that we have been building for decades which are isolated and look, feel, and function ina way that is not authentically Maine. These places actually erode the places we love and need
It reads like a self-contradiction so common to the central planners. The places I would call inauthentic are the ones they plan, particularly now that LD 2003 has mandated that community character will be centrally managed by the State. Community character is not a matter local and municipal in character, says the State in defiance of that annoying Home Rule Amendment. Something’s got to be done about it!
Conversely, Biden’s speech is remarkably self-consistent. A rarity.